Let me hear your voice one last time.
A short story by Per Grankvist.
With a beep, the answering machine kicks in. ”Are you there?” I ask.
Why isn’t he picking up the phone? Oskar should be home by now. A while ago, on the radio, they said that all schools had been closed and that all the kids had been sent home.
I just want to hear his voice.
Just one time.
One more time.
I’m sitting on the floor, back against the elevator shaft, not far from my desk, with the phone in my hand. I’m trying to cover the microphone with the other hand to make it easier for him to hear what I’m about to tell him but also to muffle the sounds around me.
”Are you there?” I ask another time.
The sound of someone breaking another window reaches me. I hope I managed to keep him from hearing it. Some people are still screaming but there’s less hysteria than before. Most of them are crying instead; hushed cries, silent cries or have become like me: run out of tears. You can only cry for so long.
I can feel a slight breeze through the office. At a desk nearby, peeling sheets of paper are the top of a stack of documents placed in a tray marked “inbox.” They land unevenly on the grey wall-to-wall carpet in front of the desk like flakes of ash from a campfire.
Yet, it’s not a windy day today so I guess the breeze is created when the air is pushed through the building through one of the smashed windows on the west side. Although some smoke is leaking from around the door to the stairwell, it doesn’t smell too much. The smell of plastic or perhaps heated rubber is stronger. I felt the same smell after that PepsiCo truck that braked in panic into the intersection of 38th and Lexington on Saturday.
People react very differently when they give up and realise they are doomed. Some people, like Rhonda, belong to the screamers: They scream, scream, scream. I wonder where they find the energy to continue to scream. Mark belonged to another group: those who don’t scream at all but focus on acting, getting a grip on things, and establishing control. But this situation is incontrollable.
We’re trapped up here.
The power is out. The elevators have stopped. The stairs are blocked. Mark and I were among the first to open the door to the stairwell and so became among the first to realize this might not end happily.
Mark was also one of the first to jump. When nothing else could be managed or controlled, he at least made that decision himself. Having closed the door to the stairway, He marched up and down the main aisle a few times like he used to do when contemplating a problem, still ignoring the fact that we used to tease him for that he looks like something a Batman would do in that series from the 1960s. Occasionally, he stopped, addressed no one in particular, and asked questions like “Do anyone see any rescue helicopters hoovering around us?” He then stopped by the coffee machine and poured himself a cup of java in the same fashion he always did before entering a meeting that he felt a bit uneasy about, such as the staff meeting a few months ago where he had to let us know there would be layoffs. He finished his cup and started walking to the window, and only then did I realize what he had decided to do.
I didn’t see the jump. I turned away seconds before, just the same way Mom always told me to turn away as there was something scary happening on TV. “You don’t want to have those images stored in your head”, she said, adding that images like that will always come back and haunt one, sooner or later. Maybe she was right. I can count the number of nightmares I have had in my life on one hand.
We always try to control what we can and tell ourselves that we can manage how things unfold. All those little things in life we try to control as a way to make it look like we also control the high things in life. By focusing on the details we avoid seeing the full picture.
We make sure we stretch after a workout to avoid muscle sorriness but cannot detect if we have cancer. We try to teach our kids about all things of life but cannot control anything about how their lives will be. We make sure everyone is buckled up before we leave but cannot control if the truck driver is being blinded by the morning sun in a way that makes him not notice the red light in an intersection and smashes into a car heading north on Lexington. Oskar and I were three cars behind that car.
”Are you there?” I try to sound as calm as possible when I speak in order to give him the courage to pick up. To make him feel it’s ok to pick up.
The smell of his pyjamas. The way the skin on his shoulder feels beneath my fingers. His hands are in mine on one of our expeditions. All that is incredibly close to me. It required no effort to sense him and all the symbols for what he is:
That little smile. The bubbly desire to tell me something he learned. His feet, the cute little feet in striped dirty socks. How he stretches in our bed in the morning. His green jacket hanging on the hook in the hallway. His head rested on my arm when we were talking in bed. My beautiful little seven-year-old. His lingering way of asking things,” Dad?”
Hi said it last night, after I told him the story about the Sixth Borough. Hi said,”Dad?” and I said, ”Yeah, Buddy?” and he then said, ”Nothing”. It happens often: he’s on his way to asking something but then changes his mind. Often I interpret it as he’s finding the answer as soon as he starts so ask me, as if the question in itself works as a catalyzer. Other times there’s something in his voice that I interpret as if there’s nothing that prevents him from following through, a fear of asking the wrong question, of not fitting in. For the record: I never said something he hashed was wrong or stupid. Really: never.
Oskar is seven. He’s the big boy and the little guy at once. The big boy who has stopped agreeing with me all the time and instead is validating if it’s true or not. At the same time: the little guy who speaks in a childish voice from the past when he asks if he can sleep in our bed or if I want to share his, who still loves to sit on my lap and who feels life is at its best when we go out on our little expeditions, as I call it.
Not too long ago, I set us up to the task of finding something from every decade during the 1900s. He purred like a cat during the entire expedition as we found one thing after the other, and at the end of the day, he got me to agree that we would do expeditions at least once a month for the rest of our lives.
I was about to tell him that I suspect that in a few years, he’d rather hang out with his friends on weekends than go on expeditions with his dad to find random stuff all over the city, but I didn’t.
You never know how long it will last, how long you will top a popularity chart, or how long you will live.
“Are you there?”
It’s the fifth time I’ve tried to reach him. The first time, I just wanted to calm him because he must have heard what had happened in school. Or do they perhaps leave it to the parents to tell their kids themselves? Maybe they just tell them that something big has happened and leave it to the parents to explain the details of it, allowing them to answer questions like “Why do those planes fly into the towers, Daddy?” in the way they prefer.
They must have told them, haven’t they? They would find out anyway as soon as they got home and parked themselves in front of the TV to watch the morning cartoons, only to find that all shows were cancelled and that all networks were live. At least that’s what they are saying on the radio.
It’s a funny feeling hearing something being told in the third person when you’re experiencing it yourself. Rhonda’s radio surprised a lot of us by having batteries. It’s a generic radio, probably bought at a discount at a discount store, connected to a socket somewhere under her messy desk by a long white cord that people curse over every time someone trips over and falls because of it. She bought the radio one Monday morning and asked if I minded her listening to WKTU 103,5 FM while working. I said no, and it has never been switched off since then. She has never changed channel — not once! — as if she had realized that all the other buttons were fake, and she was too embarrassed to admit it, so she claims that she loves WKTU.
Shortly after the big bang, after Mark and I realized the stairway was full of smoke and fire, we returned to our desks in order to evaluate our options. That’s when we heard the radio was still on as if nothing had happened. Surprisingly few things fell over in the short shake that followed the bang. A high ugly glass vase with plastic flowers has been greeting our visitors at the front desk, a few binders from the top floor of the bookshelf behind Rhonda, and a milk carton somebody had placed too close to the edge in the kitchen. That’s about it, at least looking out from where I am.
The outside view is relayed to us through a silver-coloured radio speaker the size of a coffee saucer. It told us all schools were closed and because we live so close, Oskar is allowed to walk home. I’m the one supposed to pick him up from school today, as Linda flew to Los Angeles for a meeting early this morning, and so I got this idea of calling him and telling him everything will be fine.
That’s what I’ve been telling the answering machine the first four times I’ve been calling. I’ve said he needn’t worry and that things will be fine, one way or another.
But our view has been dimmed, not only from the smoke rising outside the windows on two sides of the tower, originating below us. A few minutes ago, I heard a voice through the silver speaker say that there are hundreds of us trapped on the top floors of the south tower and that there’s not much anyone can do. We had hoped for them to tell us that there were rescues on the way, that they’d been ordering as many helicopters as there were in the greater New York area to take to the sky to save us, one by one. Surely, there must be more than a hundred choppers in the area. We had also hoped they would say that the Air Force would soon be hovering above us, troopers abseiling on the facade to winch us up and to safety.
Instead, we’re told all air traffic in the US is grounded and ordered to land at the nearest airport possible because of other jets flying into other buildings. Only a miracle can save us, said some expert on the radio. It was then people started jumping.
“Are you there?”
For heaven’s sake, Oskar, pick up the damn phone! That’s what I’m thinking at the same time I try to sound composed. I’m convinced he’s at home by now, probably listening. I feel it.
I don’t know why he woke up last night and yelled at me. Maybe he had dreamt something? Sometimes, he shares what he dreams with me, and it can be anything. As his grandmother used to say, there’s nothing wrong with the boy’s imagination.
When I told him the story about the Sixth Borrow, he asked and then took back his question. We were just lying there on our backs for a while, looking at the stars painted on the ceiling. After a while, it felt like he was asleep.
Although I didn’t like the song “I am the Walrus” from the beginning, it has become our special song, and because I sense he likes it, I always try to whistle it or hum it when I’m around Oskar as it always makes him smile. So I whistled it low, almost like a lullaby, as I left his room and returned to my bed.
I check my watch: 10.23 AM. It’s only been ten hours since we were together in his bed.
This morning, we hardly exchanged words, as if we both felt there was no need for words after last night’s coyness.
This morning, everything was normal. I shaved, brushed my teeth, drank coffee out of my mug, read the New York Times, went to the metro and swiped my Metro Card, took the train through the tunnels under Manhattan to my stop, went to the WTC, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the buttons for the top floor. I sat down at my desk. I found myself humming, “I am the Walrus.” Please, Oskar, pick up the phone. Please!
I just want to say…
Where shall I begin? I want to say I love you and am so sorry that I will never see you again. You and mum must be careful and take care of each other and that things will be fine even though they didn’t on this day. I want to say that I think you’re clever and caring and so nice to everyone, and I’m so proud that you always want to learn new things. Your curiosity is endless, Oskar, and I love you for that, too. I love it when you discover something new and say “Oh!” with your sweet little voice whenever another piece falls into your big puzzle of how the world works. I want to say I do hope you find someone as hungry to understand the world as you are and that I’m so sorry I will never get to meet your kids and that they will never get to know your dad.
I want to tell you that it is as lovely to be with your kids as it is for kids to be with their parents. We just don’t always understand it or voice it there and then. And so I’m sorry for the times when I didn’t say how much I’ve appreciated your company, Oskar. The time we give our kids is, in reality, time you give us, and we ought to be more grateful for that.
I want to tell you how incredible much I’ve appreciated all those things we’ve done together, all those adventures we’ve embarked on as a team. I said it, but I should have said it twice as often. I might be at the top of your popularity chart this week Oskar, but you will be at the top of mine, forever.
I want to tell you that I already bought your Christmas gift: a deck of cards with fun facts from the world that I thought you could play with every day when you come home from school, like now when you’re waiting for me to come home. I ordered it to the office so you wouldn’t accidentally find it. It’s the third drawer of my desk, already in Buzz Lightyear wrapping paper. I want to tell you how sorry I am that you won’t get something from me this Christmas, Oskar.
Oh, I so want you to be her with me, Oskar. I do realize it would mean you would, too, die, but I still would want you to be here with me so that we at least explore what happened after this life together. Just you and me, Oskar. Just the two of us. You are in my lap. Your little hand is in mine. My arm around your shoulders. And even if there is no such thing as life after this, even if it just stops and goes black as a movie ends, we would discover that together, and none of us would have felt left behind. I know this all sounds selfish but I think it would be the best for you to. Just thinking of how sorry you will be when you realize I lied when I said everything will be ok or how indefinitely sad you will be from knowing that we will never meet again, never play again, never cuddle again makes me feel like the seems of my chest is to be torn open, makes my head too small, causes my jaws hurt from the tension. I would want so save you from all that.
So Oskar, let me please talk to you one more time. Please let me say something about all this that I want to say to you. Please don’t let me be taken away without the chance to say goodbye to you, sweetie. And so I ask yet another time “Are you there?”
The voice you hear on our answering machine is Oskar’s. He tries to make himself appear slightly older than he is. The other day, he recorded the message standing on top of the stool in the kitchen, as if the added length would make the caller assume he was older.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Schells residence. Here’s the fact of the day: It’s so cold in Yukatia, which is in Siberia, that the breath freezes instantly with a cracking sound they call the whispers of the stars. On extremely cold days, the towns are covered with a fog caused by the exhaled air of people and animals. Please leave a message.” And then a beep.
I’ve heard the fact of today five times today.
If he doesn’t pick up anytime soon, this will be the longest message on the answering machine. Is he really not hearing me? Isn’t the call coming through? Am I in some radio shadow behind the elevator shaft? How typical. What if what can be heard is only noise? Maybe my previous messages haven’t gone through either? The concrete wall is more than lukewarm, so I might as well change place.
How often haven’t I worried about losing Oskar? I’ve worried that something would get stuck in his throat when nobody’s watching, to get run over by one of the taxis that speed, for him being involved in a car accident when his grandma is taking him to her cabin up north because of her poor eyesight, for her not watching him when he’s getting something stuck in his road or him getting cramp when swimming. I’ve worried that he would poke in the toaster with a fork, that someone would kidnap him when he was in kindergarten or that his particular school would be the first site for a school shooting in NYC.
Every day when I drop him off at school, these thoughts run through my head. If he’s going on an excursion, I worry that he will get lost in Central Park or that something will come crashing down on him and his classmates from one of the many construction sites around town on their way to or from the excursion.
But not once have I worried for myself. Not once.
When I told Oscar that I would always be there for him, it was a promise that I intended to keep. Every time I have to go out of town for a few days, I always say “I promise, nothing will happen to me” to sooth his worries. “It’s important that you’re careful when I’m away — I don’t want anything to happen to you, buddy,”, I say, as if the responsibility was his alone. And then it turns out, the thing that happens, happens to me.
“Are you there? Are you there? Are you there?”
I’m afraid to worry and even scare him, but it’s hard to remain calm. I’m standing up now, and I can see a group gathered on the floor in front of the coffee machine. It’s right where we usually have Monday meetings, like yesterday. Mark then told us there wouldn’t be as many layoffs as initially planned since American Airlines expected increased demand during the fall and thus would need us to take on more work for them.
There are seven, maybe eight, people sitting on the floor. Their eyes are closed, their hands joined together. They are ready. Somebody even seems to have turned off Rhonda’s radio. The on-off button was apparently real.
But I’m not ready yet. I understand what’s going to happen and how this will end, but I’m not ready yet. Not until I’ve talked to Oskar.
There’s more smoke now, it seems to cover our windows on all sides of the tower. There’s more smoke in here too. A few feet below the ceiling, the smoke resides like a dark grey indoor cloud and I can see how it spoils out through the smashed windows and runs upwards, like an inverted stream of muddy water running towards heaven rather than to the ground.
People seem to have stopped jumping.
I approach the group by the coffee machine with my phone to my ear. Something is cracking close to the elevator shaft, and panes of glass are breaking for no reason.
We’re close to the end. We’re incredibly close.
Suddenly, I temporarily lose balance. The floor isn’t even anymore but at an angle, and in the next moment, I feel that imploding feeling in my belly. It feels like being at the very top of the roller coaster at Six Flags as the cars start pointing downwards and coming down. We’re falling. And yet I ask Oskar one last time: “Are you there?”
-
This is a homage to Jonathan Safron Foer, inspired by the absent yet ever-present character in his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Image by windowsoftheworld
