Read Online The World Without You by Joshua Henkin - Free Book Online
Authors: Joshua Henkin
Ads: Link
duck in the AV room, attending to him, the look on his face, the grimace, the Oh, Noelle, oh, God , the feeling that they’d melded. But then he would roll off her and she’d be alone again, a lump of shame, and his gaze was slack and distant, his eyes like sea glass, and she swore she would never do it again, never have sex with another boy, but then the next one came along and she convinced herself this one would be different.
Even as a baby she was self-punishing. She would tug on her hair and squeeze her stomach. As a teenager, she developed trichotillomania; she pulled out clumps of her own hair. Sometimes she thinks she was simply born this way. Other times she traces it back to Leo. She was four when her mother got pregnant again, and from the start of the pregnancy there were complications. Finally, labor was induced at thirty weeks. In the delivery room, Leo’s heart rate plummeted, the umbilical cord was noosed around the baby’s throat, an emergency C-section had to be performed. There was some question about loss of oxygen. Leo developed late; he didn’t walk until twenty months and he spoke even later. The doctors said there might be brain damage, maybe simply learning disabilities, maybe nothing at all. Those first few weeks, no one except Noelle’s parents was allowed to handle him. The quiet, the delicacy, her mother sick, the baby sick, the baby’s sleeping, don’t wake the baby, don’t disturb the baby, don’t hold the baby, don’t drop the baby. Always the baby, as if it were hubris to give him a name. Don’t touch the baby, as if telescoping to Noelle’s most unspeakable thoughts: her wish to drop the baby, to kill the baby, to be the baby. It was what she’d been her whole life; she’d always assumed she’d continue to be that.
She was the last one to see Leo alive. He spent Shabbat with her and Amram in Jerusalem, and a few days later, in Iraq, he was abducted. Then came the week when the family was on TV, pleading with his captors for his release, handsome, buoyant Leo looking drugged. And when his body was flown home, President Bush called him a martyr in the war to rid the world of evil. He invited Noelle’s family to the White House. Publicly, her mother refused to go. She wouldn’t allow her son to be used that way, to become an instrument in the service of the war.
Immediately, the family was frozen out. Rumors were floated, the sources unnamed, that maybe Leo wasn’t as innocent as people had said. He’d violated journalists’ protocol; he’d wound up where he wasn’t supposed to be. Why, Noelle wonders, did these rumors surprise people? You slap the president in the face and he slaps you back. And she speaks as someone who voted for Bush, who sent in her absentee ballot from six thousand miles away. Her brother is dead—she still grieves for him—but Bush is the best friend Israel has ever had. She’s the one who has to live with the terrorist attacks, the sounds of katyusha rockets going off at night.
Brain damage? Learning disabilities? In no time, Leo had outstripped her, as successful in his own way as Clarissa and Lily were in theirs. It was a relief to move to Israel; finally she wasn’t simply someone’s sister. She views the girl she was in high school with disapproval, but it’s a faint, abstract disapproval, as is the pity that accompanies it. She regards the sex the way she regards everything else. She wouldn’t deny it was her, but it doesn’t trouble her any longer.
Across the aisle, Amram is flipping through a computer magazine. He’s in the software industry; at least he was until he lost his job. She still doesn’t know what happened—Amram won’t talk about it—but the specifics are almost beside the point. What happened is what always happens. Amram is smart, but he alienates people. Temperamentally, he’s meant to be the boss and he hasn’t accommodated to the fact that he isn’t the boss, so the real boss fires him. Noelle knows what
Even as a baby she was self-punishing. She would tug on her hair and squeeze her stomach. As a teenager, she developed trichotillomania; she pulled out clumps of her own hair. Sometimes she thinks she was simply born this way. Other times she traces it back to Leo. She was four when her mother got pregnant again, and from the start of the pregnancy there were complications. Finally, labor was induced at thirty weeks. In the delivery room, Leo’s heart rate plummeted, the umbilical cord was noosed around the baby’s throat, an emergency C-section had to be performed. There was some question about loss of oxygen. Leo developed late; he didn’t walk until twenty months and he spoke even later. The doctors said there might be brain damage, maybe simply learning disabilities, maybe nothing at all. Those first few weeks, no one except Noelle’s parents was allowed to handle him. The quiet, the delicacy, her mother sick, the baby sick, the baby’s sleeping, don’t wake the baby, don’t disturb the baby, don’t hold the baby, don’t drop the baby. Always the baby, as if it were hubris to give him a name. Don’t touch the baby, as if telescoping to Noelle’s most unspeakable thoughts: her wish to drop the baby, to kill the baby, to be the baby. It was what she’d been her whole life; she’d always assumed she’d continue to be that.
She was the last one to see Leo alive. He spent Shabbat with her and Amram in Jerusalem, and a few days later, in Iraq, he was abducted. Then came the week when the family was on TV, pleading with his captors for his release, handsome, buoyant Leo looking drugged. And when his body was flown home, President Bush called him a martyr in the war to rid the world of evil. He invited Noelle’s family to the White House. Publicly, her mother refused to go. She wouldn’t allow her son to be used that way, to become an instrument in the service of the war.
Immediately, the family was frozen out. Rumors were floated, the sources unnamed, that maybe Leo wasn’t as innocent as people had said. He’d violated journalists’ protocol; he’d wound up where he wasn’t supposed to be. Why, Noelle wonders, did these rumors surprise people? You slap the president in the face and he slaps you back. And she speaks as someone who voted for Bush, who sent in her absentee ballot from six thousand miles away. Her brother is dead—she still grieves for him—but Bush is the best friend Israel has ever had. She’s the one who has to live with the terrorist attacks, the sounds of katyusha rockets going off at night.
Brain damage? Learning disabilities? In no time, Leo had outstripped her, as successful in his own way as Clarissa and Lily were in theirs. It was a relief to move to Israel; finally she wasn’t simply someone’s sister. She views the girl she was in high school with disapproval, but it’s a faint, abstract disapproval, as is the pity that accompanies it. She regards the sex the way she regards everything else. She wouldn’t deny it was her, but it doesn’t trouble her any longer.
Across the aisle, Amram is flipping through a computer magazine. He’s in the software industry; at least he was until he lost his job. She still doesn’t know what happened—Amram won’t talk about it—but the specifics are almost beside the point. What happened is what always happens. Amram is smart, but he alienates people. Temperamentally, he’s meant to be the boss and he hasn’t accommodated to the fact that he isn’t the boss, so the real boss fires him. Noelle knows what
Similar Books
