ALIVE AND ALONE

We had been searching together for six and a half months when Mr. Black told me he was finished, and then I was all alone again, and I hadn't accomplished anything, and my boots were the heaviest they'd ever been in my life. I couldn't talk to Mom, obviously, and even though Toothpaste and The Minch were my best friends, I couldn't talk to them either. Grandpa could talk to animals, but I couldn't, so Buckmin-ster wasn't going to be helpful. I didn't respect Dr. Fein, and it would have taken too long to explain to Stan everything that needed to be explained just to get to the beginning of the story, and I didn't believe in talking to dead people.

Farley didn't know if Grandma was home, because his shift had just started. He asked if something was wrong. I told him, "I need her." "You want I should buzz up?" "It's OK." As I ran up the seventy-two stairs, I thought, And anyway, he was an incredibly old guy who slowed me down and didn't know anything useful. I was breathing hard when I rang her bell. I'm glad he said he was finished. I don't know why I invited him to come along with me in the first place. She didn't answer, so I rang again. Why isn't she waiting by the door? I'm the only thing that matters to her.

I let myself in.

"Grandma? Hello? Grandma?"

I figured maybe she went to the store or something, so I sat on the sofa and waited. Maybe she went to the park for a walk to help her digest, which I know she sometimes did, even though it made me feel weird. Or maybe she was getting some dehydrated ice cream for me, or dropping something off at the post office. But who would she send letters to?

Even though I didn't want to, I started inventing.

She'd been hit by a cab while she was crossing Broadway, and the cab zoomed away, and everybody looked at her from the sidewalk, but no one helped her, because everyone was afraid to do CPR the wrong way.

She'd fallen from a ladder at the library and cracked her skull. She was bleeding to death there because it was in a section of books that no one ever looked at.

She was unconscious at the bottom of the swimming pool at the Y. Kids were swimming thirteen feet above her.

I tried to think about other things. I tried to invent optimistic inventions. But the pessimistic ones were extremely loud.

She'd had a heart attack.

Someone had pushed her onto the tracks.

She'd been raped and murdered.

I started looking around her apartment for her.

"Grandma?"

What I needed to hear was "I'm OK," but what I heard was nothing.

I looked in the dining room and the kitchen. I opened the door to the pantry, just in case, but there was only food. I looked in the coat closet and the bathroom. I opened the door of the second bedroom, where Dad used to sleep and dream when he was my age.

It was my first time being in Grandma's apartment without her, and it felt incredibly weird, like looking at her clothes without her in them, which I did when I went to her bedroom and looked in her closet. I opened the top drawer of the dresser, even though I knew she wouldn't be in there, obviously. So why did I do it?

It was filled with envelopes. Hundreds of them. They were tied together in bundles. I opened the next drawer down, and it was also filled with envelopes. So was the drawer underneath it. All of them were.

I saw from the postmarks that the envelopes were organized chronologically, which means by date, and mailed from Dresden, Germany, which is where she came from. There was one for every day, from May 31, 1963, to the worst day. Some were addressed "To my unborn child." Some were addressed "To my child."

What the?

I knew I probably shouldn't have, because they didn't belong to me, but I opened one of them.

It was sent on February 6, 1972. "To my child." It was empty.

I opened another, from another stack. November 22, 1986. "To my child." Also empty.

June 14, 1963. "To my unborn child." Empty.

April 2, 1979. Empty.

I found the day I was born. Empty.

What I needed to know was, where did she put all of the letters?

I heard a sound from one of the other rooms. I quickly closed the drawers, so Grandma wouldn't know I had been snooping around, and tiptoed to the front door, because I was afraid that maybe what I had heard was a burglar. I heard the sound again, and this time I could tell that it was coming from the guest room.

I thought, The renter!

I thought, He's real!

I'd never loved Grandma more than I loved her right then.

I turned around, tiptoed to the guest room door, and pressed my ear against it. I didn't hear anything. But when I got down on my knees, I saw that the light in the room was on. I stood up.

"Grandma?" I whispered. "Are you in there?"

Nothing.

"Grandma?"

I heard an extremely tiny sound. I got down on my knees again, and this time I saw that the light was off.

"Is someone in there? I'm eight years old and I'm looking for my grandma because I need her desperately."

Footsteps came to the door, but I could only barely hear them because they were extremely gentle and because of the carpet. The footsteps stopped. I could hear breathing, but I knew it wasn't Grandma's, because it was heavier and slower. Something touched the door. A hand? Two hands?

"Hello?"

The doorknob turned.

"If you're a burglar, please don't murder me."

The door opened.

A man stood there without saying anything, and it was obvious he wasn't a burglar. He was incredibly old and had a face like the opposite of Mom's, because it seemed like it was frowning even when it wasn't frowning. He was wearing a white short-sleeve shirt, so you could see his elbows were hairy, and he had a gap between his two front teeth, like Dad had.

"Are you the renter?"

He concentrated for a second, and then he closed the door.

"Hello?"

I heard him moving stuff around in the room, and then he came back and opened the door again. He was holding a little book. He opened it to the first page, which was blank. "I don't speak," he wrote, "I'm sorry."

"Who are you?" He went to the next page and wrote, "My name is Thomas." "That was my dad's name. It's pretty common. He died." On the next page he wrote, "I'm sorry." I told him, "You didn't kill my dad." On the next page there was a picture of a doorknob, for some reason, so he went to the page after that and wrote, "I'm still sorry." I told him, "Thanks." He flipped back a couple of pages and pointed at "I'm sorry."

We stood there. He was in the room. I was in the hall. The door was open, but it felt like there was an invisible door between us, because I didn't know what to say to him, and he didn't know what to write to me. I told him, "I'm Oskar," and I gave him my card. "Do you know where my grandma is?" He wrote, "She went out." "Where?" He shrugged his shoulders, just like Dad used to. "Do you know when she'll be back?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I need her."

He was on one kind of carpet, I was on another. The line where they came together reminded me of a place that wasn't in any borough.

"If you want to come in," he wrote, "we could wait for her together." I asked him if he was a stranger. He asked me what I meant. I told him, "I wouldn't go in with a stranger." He didn't write anything, like he didn't know if he was a stranger or not. "Are you older than seventy?" He showed me his left hand, which had YES tattooed on it. "Do you have a criminal record?" He showed me his right hand, which had NO. "What other languages do you speak?" He wrote, "German. Greek. Latin." "Parlez-vous français?" He opened and closed his left hand, which I think meant un peu.