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

see the window and the smoking hole in the skyline. I can’t move. Matty’s sobs are audible even with the phone pressed to me. I stay still, gripping the receiver, staring at the glass in Frankie’s picture frame. I’m not looking at Frankie, though. He’s gone. I’m looking at me to check if I’m still here. If now is real.

Broken glass grinding under my mother’s weight; my father still yelling her name. If I move, if I take my eyes away from the picture, if I put down the phone, it will be the start of after. Acid burning the back of my throat. My heart beating in my mouth. I don’t know if I’m breathing, the air’s too hot. Our lives divided now, in this minute, into before and after. If I keep my eyes on his face in the frame can we stay in before?

Everything’s moving too fast and everything’s moving too slow. I’m underwater. I want to ground myself to the earth, into the earth. But there’s nothing to hold on to. Everything spins. The sound of rushing blood fills my ears. Is it mine or Frankie’s?

Harry gently takes the phone from me. I think he wants to move me, make me sit down, but I keep hold of the wall. Stay focused on the glass in the frame. I find words: “Help my mother.”

When I look away from the photo I see Harry with my parents. This morning he was going to work but now he’s dusting broken glass off my mother’s knees. He helps my dad, unclenches his hand from the edge of the kitchen counter and brings him to a chair. Cleans the cuts on my mother’s arm with a dish towel. I keep hold of the wall. Harry finds the whiskey and some coffee mugs and pours my parents a drink. They sob. For a long time. I keep my palms against the wall.

It’s a minute later or an hour later when Ma says, screams, “What do we do? We have to do something! What do we do?” She’s asking the air; she’s asking God.

“We don’t know, we don’t know that it’s true, that he was there. Right? Eugenia, right!” My father pleads with me, shouting; wet, bloodshot eyes searching me for an answer. “Leave a message, tell him to call us,” Dad says, once, twice, a hundred times, not understanding that the cell phones aren’t working; that I can’t leave a message; that if Frankie were alive he would be here with us by now watching this shit on TV; that his son will never answer the phone again because his son is dead. But still, for my dad, I dial Frankie’s number again and again from the kitchen phone, knowing that it won’t ring and that he won’t pick up.

There’s nothing to do. There’s no hospital to go to, no ambulance to call, no rescue to make, we can’t do any of the things that you do in a disaster to make yourself feel useful, less impotent in the face of fate. We can’t go to the City, everything’s on lockdown. This isn’t a fire in someone’s house where we could stand outside and watch them pull Frankie out on a stretcher, or see him walk out covered in soot and coughing. This isn’t a car accident on Hylan Boulevard that we could drive to, or an ER we could meet him at and run alongside his gurney. There’s nothing, nothing, there is nothing. Nothing to do but wait for the phone to never ring with his voice on the other end of the line. My dad drinks from the mug with Garfield wearing a Santa hat and my mom holds the one that says Exxon. One was a Christmas gift long ago, the other a freebie for filling the tank. Before.

It’s a minute later or an hour later that Harry puts me in a chair at the kitchen table with my back to the hatch so I can’t see through it to the window. He shuts off the TV. Sweeps up the glass, cleans the drops of blood off the floor. He says to my parents, “I’m sorry.”

Dad says, “I know, son. Do you think maybe you could try to call and leave him a message? Here, I’ll give you the number…” and Ma says nothing.

Then Harry goes outside so that me and Ma and Dad can stare at the walls in private. We don’t speak. The fridge hums. A bird chirps outside. I hold Dad’s hand across the table. I listen to my parents’ breathing. Every few minutes, one of us bursts into tears, as though it’s the first time we’ve heard the news, and then we stop. We wait for grief and fear to tell us what to do next.

Finally, Matty and Michelle are at the door. She’s high and hysterical, clutching the cell phone that Frankie bought her. Michelle. I’ll remember her as she is now, in tight jeans and snakeskin high heels; nails newly done in red; her wavy dark hair straightened; her big Louis Vuitton on one shoulder; her name in gold script hanging from a chain around her neck, a diamond dot over the “i.” All done up to see Frankie. Ready to celebrate his interview and everything to come. The plans they made yesterday, before. Now she’s cradling the phone, his last words in her hand; her heart broken in her chest.

Harry sees them in. On autopilot Matty shakes Harry’s hand, then pulls him in for the one-handed bro hug, ignoring Harry’s hesitation. The sight of Matty feels like hands tightening around my neck. Feels like not wanting to live but having to. Matty, in crisp jeans and a white T-shirt with the sleeves tight around his biceps, thick gold chain, Yankees cap on backwards, pristine white Nikes. He smells like a cologne factory. He could be Frankie. They have the same chain. I’m sure Frankie put his on this morning. I’m