Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Three Years Ago
Syria
That week, there were numerous blackouts across the Middle East, and Elena was cursing the ever-failing generators and writing by candlelight, by hand.
Her hand cramped, and she sat back in her office chair, gazing into the pitch-black desert night.
The air-conditioning was on full blast, and her sweater wasn’t saving her.
Tiny hairs sprang up across her arms and legs.
Elena was on deadline, her head spinning with stories, interviews, and potential angles.
Because the cell phone towers were down, she hadn’t heard from Timothy in several hours, although there was a plan for them to have dinner together and catch up.
Timothy had been traveling with the army for the past several weeks, sending dispatches back to both Elena and their editor.
There was buzz about his reporting back home, proof that what he was doing out here mattered.
Timothy always maintained that Elena’s work was important, too, but objectively, he knew he was the better war correspondent, which, she knew, was essential for him.
He would never have dated a woman who was better than him. But nobody was better than him.
Too frustrated to work any longer, Elena packed up her things, blew out her candle, and fled the office.
When she left, she heard the zing and crying scream of far-off bombs.
After a few years in the Middle East, she’d grown accustomed to them.
They put her to sleep at night. She no longer thought as much about how dangerous this career was.
It was funny that you could really get used to anything if it happened to you for long enough.
As Elena walked the long, slender dirt road that led to Timothy’s apartment, her eyes were filled with sudden light.
All around her, the apartments and housing blocks and little businesses lit up.
The generator was back up and running! Her heart filled with joy.
Maybe tonight she and Timothy could cuddle up and watch a movie.
Perhaps they could pretend—for two hours or so—that theirs was an everyday life.
Suddenly, her phone buzzed and buzzed with countless messages.
The cell towers were back, too. She pulled her cell out of her bag and stood in stunned silence as she watched message after message come in from Millbrook, of all places.
Most of them were from ex-neighbors or old friends, including Maxine, her ex-best friend from high school. Only two were from her mother, Carmen.
MOM: Your father died.
And then another, two days later: I assume you won’t be here in time for his funeral, as you haven’t answered anyone’s calls or texts.
Immediately, Elena began to shake. Her knees clinked together, and her ears rang. It felt almost the way it had the first time she’d seen and heard the distant bombs going off. This time, the bomb was her heart, and it was inside her.
Through others’ text messages, she pieced together what had happened.
There had been an accident, sort of. Her father had been helping her mother hang something in the downstairs bathroom when he had a heart attack and collapsed.
The ambulance had rushed to the house, where the EMT workers had tried to resuscitate him and failed.
Elena’s eyes filled with tears. But here in Syria, it felt wrong to cry out on the streets like this.
She ran the rest of the way to Timothy’s, her heart pounding, until she rushed through his door and fell on the kitchen floor.
Timothy was wearing an apron and cooking fajitas. He looked down at her as though she were something he didn’t want to step on, for fear it would mess up his shoes. Finally, empathy kicked in, and he knelt and put his hands on her ears.
“Tell me what’s happening,” he said.
Elena hadn’t realized she’d begun to sob again.
She got up and staggered to the kitchen table.
In another act of empathy (which in retrospect was bizarre), Timothy poured them both glasses of wine and sat with her.
Elena let the words tumble out of her. “My father died. It was sudden. It happened during the blackout. I missed the funeral. My mother hates me. My mother hates me.” She said these last words over and over again in a kind of mantra.
Timothy finally interrupted her. “Your mother doesn’t hate you. If anything, she understands your continued working more than anyone.”
Elena made a sound in her throat. “That’s not true. Family comes first for her.”
“Isn’t this the same woman who missed your eighth birthday party because she was breaking a story?” Timothy reminded her.
Elena was surprised, too, that Timothy remembered such small stories from her youth. She realized that, for much of their relationship, she’d been waiting for him to tell her how meaningless their relationship was to him.
Was this finally proof that he really and truly loved her?
Her heart swelled, despite everything. And she hated herself for that—for finding joy in the midst of this awful sorrow. Her father was gone.
“You’ve given everything to your career,” Timothy went on.
“You’ve worked tirelessly to become one of the best war correspondents in the field.
You’re always gathering sources, conducting interviews, and reading about the goings-on of a situation that the average reader can’t fully comprehend.
And more than that, you’ve lived in the midst of this stress, putting your body and mind at risk, all for the betterment of our society. ”
Timothy took both of her hands in his, and Elena had the thought that he was giving himself a pep talk instead of her.
“Your career is all that matters,” Timothy echoed. “It’s what will outlast you.”
Elena flared her nostrils and let herself fall into his eyes. “You really do sound like my mother,” she said finally. “It’s uncanny.”
“I look forward to meeting her one day,” Timothy said. “I always imagined her as the most rational of all people. But she’s grieving right now, Elena. And grief is never rational. You know that.”
“Rationally, I do know that,” Elena said. “But I’m grieving, too.”
Timothy gave her a look that she translated as: Don’t let yourself get carried away.
That night, Timothy and Elena ate their dinner in silence as Timothy scanned through emails and jotted notes to himself on his pad.
Elena was inundated with images of her father from her long-ago past. Now that she was thirty-nine (how had that happened?), it felt as though she’d been a child in another lifetime, as though her father had taught her to ride a bike and climb a tree and enjoy a chocolate chip cookie a thousand years ago, if not more.
Guilt tugged at her stomach. She should have been home more often. She should have been a phone call away when her father collapsed.
Suddenly, she was on her feet. Syria was nine hours ahead of Millbrook, which meant that it was two in the afternoon.
Incredibly. “I’ll be right back,” she hollered to Timothy, who probably couldn’t hear her over his genius note-taking.
She entered his bedroom, closed the door, and sat at the edge of the mattress, her heart pounding.
She tried to imagine the conversation she’d have with Carmen before it happened, if only to get her mind around it. But her mind was blank.
Carmen answered on the third ring but didn’t say anything.
“Mom?” Elena gasped, then burst into tears.
“Mom, I just got your texts. Mom, I’m so sorry.
” She fell onto Timothy’s bed and stared at the ceiling, willing time to stop or go back.
“The generator and cell towers were down for days. I had no way of hearing anything. I’m so, so sorry, Mom.
I’m so, so sad and sorry.” Her shoulders shook.
Still, her mother said nothing, not for another three minutes of Elena’s weeping and apologizing. Elena knew that if Timothy heard her, he’d be disgusted. But she couldn’t stop.
“Are you done?” Carmen asked.
Elena was stunned speechless. Done crying for her father? Would she ever be done?
She imagined her mother at the kitchen table, wearing her typical journalism outfit: her blazer and those cute gray pants.
She imagined her mother doing just what Timothy was doing right now, making notes, thinking about her articles.
But how could Carmen keep working at a time like this? How could Elena?
“I’m going to get on a plane,” Elena promised her mother. “I want to come home and help you through this.”
“Help me?” Carmen sounded on the verge of laughing. “What makes you think anything you could do would help me?”
Elena felt as though she’d been smacked, which wasn’t necessarily a strange thing when it came to her mother. “Please, Mom,” she whispered. “I messed up, but I want to fix it. I want to grieve with you.” She swallowed. “We need to do it together. I can take time off.”
“Time off? And I suppose you expect me to take time off as well?”
Elena rolled her eyes into the back of her head.
Why did her mother have to be so difficult all the time?
She wanted to point out how unimportant The Millbrook Gazette was in the grand scheme of things and how her father’s life (and her mother’s love for him!) surely outweighed whatever was going on in Millbrook.
She bit her tongue to keep from saying “Oh, do you have to write about another family barbecue? Another basketball game? You know, I’m writing about war?
Perhaps the most consequential and horrendous thing humankind has ever done?
And I’m still willing to take time off to be with you? ”
But she knew better than to throw her weight around in front of her mother like that.
Grief made everyone act like the children they were on the inside.
“I’m going to buy a flight,” Elena said. “You don’t have to take any time off. But I want to be there. I want to see you. You can do whatever you want.”
“Don’t bother,” Carmen said. She hung up.
For the following days, Elena walked around in a state of nightmarish grief and anger.
Many times, she prepared to buy a flight ticket, and many times she stopped herself, remembering her mother’s cruelty.
Why didn’t her mother appreciate all Elena had done in her field?
Wasn’t journalism what Elena had been born to do?
Her grandmother had even been a journalist, for crying out loud, during a time when women often didn’t work outside the home.
The fact that her grandmother had died tragically before her career could really get started was yet another reason for Elena to keep going.
She wanted to honor Grandma Rosa’s memory!
But as the days passed, things didn’t necessarily get any easier for Elena.
At night, she suffered the most, tossing and turning in bed beside Timothy, who finally asked her to spend a few days at her apartment instead so that he could get some sleep himself.
Elena understood. She also understood that her relationship often made her feel lonelier than she would if she were alone.
Being so far from home, from the United States, from a country that wasn’t war-torn and dangerous, made her cling tighter to her relationship, to the point where she didn't recognize herself.
And then, very suddenly, it had been four months since her father had died, and it felt too late to return home. Elena knew she would carry this grief around with her for the rest of her life.