When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

“Shit hits the fan, you come running home. Life is good, I don’t hear a fucking word.”

“That’s nice, Ma, thanks.”

“You should’ve called first if you were bringing people here.” She waves her cigarette at Harry.

“Ma, this is Harry.” He puts out his hand but he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. She ignores him. “You still could’ve called.”

“Ma, the cell phones aren’t working.”

“Then what’s the point of those things?”

“Can we come inside, please? It’s been a rough morning.”

Harry tries again. “I’m sorry we aren’t meeting under better circumstances. It’s been quite a shock for everyone.” My mother looks him up and down and I see what she sees: pinstripe suit, slim-cut trousers, pink dress shirt with white cuffs, and he said “quite.” Gay and a foreigner. This wasn’t going to go well.

“Are you fucking kidding me with this? What the hell is this supposed to be?” Ma fumes from the step.

“Harry, I’m sorry, excuse my mother, she’s not a people person. You know what, Ma, I’m glad you’re OK, we’re going now. We’re going to Sharon’s. Tell Frankie I’m over there.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Gigi, is that you? Donna, I’m waiting for my sandwich!” My dad shuffles up to the screen door in a sleeveless white undershirt and sweatpants. He’s wearing old-man fake-leather slides, with the straps that cross in an X. The kind you buy at the supermarket or in the bins outside the 99-cent store. Except for my dad’s work shoes, my parents don’t buy real shoes anymore. They only go to King of Liquors, ShopRite and sometimes the Chinese takeout, and you don’t need real shoes for that.

“Come in, come in, what the hell happened, Gigi, Jesus Christ, are you alright, who’s this guy? What happened to you, son, you look terrible. They fell, you know, the towers collapsed. Those sons of bitches. Are you alright, were you there?” He says “collapsed” and I feel it—the sound, the cloud, the ash. Our near miss. I look at my dad. His thinning hair is gelled stiff and combed back from his big face. He’s got two homemade tattoos from his army days, one on each arm. They’re just blurry blue splotches now—an American eagle on the left arm and a heart on the right. It’s been years since you could read “Donna” scrawled inside it.

I force myself to speak to get that sound out of my head: “I don’t know, Dad. I just ran. What happened?”

My dad opens the screen door to usher us in but when he looks up into the distance his face goes gray, like his hair. He’s looking at what’s left of the million-dollar view he used to have. I turn around to see the clouds of smoke pouring out of the skyline. Our view of Manhattan, our American Dream wallpaper. Gone.

My dad says, “Gigi, c’mon, it’s over. Don’t look.”

“They’re both gone?”

“Yes, lollipop. Don’t look. Are you alright? Donna, where’s my sandwich? Jesus Christ, Gigi, get in the house already.”

I grab Harry’s hand to go inside. My dad goes on: “Kids, come in, come in. Now who is this?” We walk into the living room.

“Dad, this is Harry. I know him from, um, we work together,” I say, glancing at Harry so he knows to just go with it. “I found him on the boat and he needed a place to go.”

I nudge Harry toward a seat and I look at the living room of my childhood. Brown shag carpeting, olive-green sofas with worn upholstery and Ma’s ironic choice of coffee table—“country oak” with hearts carved out on the legs. And, of course, the wood-laminate paneling. It’s in every room of the house.

There’s a hatch in the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Always handy—an easy way for Ma to pass Dad his sandwiches and yell at us and be sure that we could hear her. Dad moved the TV so she could see it through the hatch from the kitchen. But today there’s only the planes crashing over and over. The towers collapsing into dust on repeat.

“ ‘Found him on the boat,’ she says, I can’t believe you bring perfect strangers here to the house like this,” Ma shouts through the hole in the wall.

“Jesus, Ma, Manhattan…I got no fucking shoes on. Please, today can you give me a break?”

“Donna, just make the goddam sandwich! Alright, kids, you OK on that couch? Sorry, what’d you say your name is, son?” I can see the beads of sweat on Dad’s top lip. He turns to Harry.

“I’m Harry, it’s very kind of you to have me here. It’s been quite an ordeal this morning.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Jaroslaw Stanislawski, you can call me Jerry. You met my lovely wife, Donna. What’s your name again?”

“Harry.”

“Oh, like one of those princes? Right? Prince William and the other one’s Harry?”

“Uh, well, I suppose…”

“You know him? Nice guy?”

“No, I don’t know any royals, he’s still quite young, just a lad really, we just share the name.”

“Oh my God, Dad, of course he doesn’t know Prince Harry. Do you fucking personally know Giuliani?”

“He’s from England. How do you know he doesn’t know Prince Harry, you ever aksed him?” Aksed. It took me years to learn to say “ask” with an s, only after my first boss told me he wouldn’t let me on the phone with clients until I could say it right.

“No, I didn’t ask him, because not every British person knows the Royal Family, Dad.”

“And how do you know I don’t know Giuliani? What, you think he’s too good for me to know? What, you come around here so much you think you know my associates?”

“No, you’re right. I forgot. You’re totally a City Hall insider.”

“Why’re you yelling? We have a guest. Anyway, excuse my daughter, Harry, we tried our best, but what can you do? You know, nature-nurture,” and he smacks Harry’s knee and laughs his wheezing smoker’s laugh and Harry laughs too, out of politeness, or