Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

stay?
    Stay?
    Here. What if we stay here at the airport?
    He wrote, Is that another joke?
    I shook my head no.
    How could we stay here?
    I told him, There are pay phones, so I could call Oskar and let him know I'm OK. And there are paper stores where you could buy daybooks and pens. There are places to eat. And money machines. And bathrooms. Even televisions.
    Not coming or going.
    Not something or nothing.
    Not yes or no.
    My dream went all the way back to the beginning.
    The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp.
    Two by two.
    Two giraffes.
    Two spiders.
    Two goats.
    Two lions.
    Two mice.
    Two monkeys.
    Two snakes.
    Two elephants.
    The rain came after the rainbow.
    As I type this, we are sitting across from each other at a table. It's not big, but it's big enough for the two of us. He has a cup of coffee and I am drinking tea.
    When the pages are in the typewriter, I can't see his face.
    In that way I am choosing you over him.
    I don't need to see him.
    I don't need to know if he is looking up at me.
    It's not even that I trust him not to leave.
    I know this won't last.
    I'd rather be me than him.
    The words are coming so easily.
    The pages are coming easily.
    At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It became a sapling, which became a seed.
    God brought together the land and the water, the sky and the water, the water and the water, evening and morning, something and nothing.
    He said, Let there be light.
    And there was darkness.
    Oskar.
    The night before I lost everything was like any other night.
    Anna and I kept each other awake very late. We laughed. Young sisters in a bed under the roof of their childhood home. Wind on the window.
    How could anything less deserve to be destroyed?
    I thought we would be awake all night. Awake for the rest of our lives.
    The spaces between our words grew.
    It became difficult to tell when we were talking and when we were silent.
    The hairs of our arms touched.
    It was late, and we were tired.
    We assumed there would be other nights.
    Anna's breathing started to slow, but I still wanted to talk.
    She rolled onto her side.
    I said, I want to tell you something.
    She said, You can tell me tomorrow.
    I had never told her how much I loved her.
    She was my sister.
    We slept in the same bed.
    There was never a right time to say it.
    It was always unnecessary.
    The books in my father's shed were sighing.
    The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing.
    I thought about waking her.
    But it was unnecessary.
    There would be other nights.
    And how can you say I love you to someone you love?
    I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her.
    Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.
    It's always necessary.
    I love you,
    Grandma

BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE
    Mom made spaghetti for dinner that night. Ron ate with us. I asked him if he was still interested in buying me a five-piece drum set with Zildjian cymbals. He said, “Yeah. I think that would be great.” “How about a double bass pedal?” “I don't know what that is, but I bet we could arrange it.” I asked him why he didn't have his own family. Mom said, “Oskar!” I said, “What?” Ron put down his knife and fork and said, “It's OK.” He said, “I did have a family, Oskar. I had a wife and a daughter.” “Did you get divorced?” He laughed and said, “No.” “Then where are they?” Mom looked at her plate. Ron said, “They were in an accident.” “What kind of accident?” “A car accident.” “I didn't know that.” “Your mom and I met in a group for people that have lost family. That's where we became friends.” I didn't look at Mom, and she didn't look at me. Why hadn't she told me she was in a group?
    “How come you didn't die in the accident?” Mom said, “That's enough, Oskar.” Ron said, “I wasn't in the car.” “Why weren't you in the car?” Mom looked out the window. Ron ran his finger around his plate and said, “I don't know.” “What's weird,” I said, “is that I've never seen you cry.” He said, “I cry all the time.”
    My backpack was already packed, and I'd already gotten the other supplies together, like the altimeter and granola bars and the Swiss Army knife I'd dug up in Central Park, so there was nothing else to do. Mom tucked me in at 9:36.
    “Do you want me to read to you?” “No thanks.” “Is there anything you want to talk about?” If she