‘How many come from Wisconsin?’ I ask, but Noah says he doesn’t know anything about Wisconsin, except that the architect Frank Lloyd Wright was born there, and he himself has no desire to visit.
‘I don’t miss it,’ I say quickly, just in case he thinks I might.
Eventually, with all this talk of ambulances and people and prayers, I ask Noah about the two holes in the ground. The ones downtown, where those giant buildings used to be. I was small when it happened, too small to understand, but yesterday I went to the memorial, and as I traced the names of all the people who died that day, felt the grooves of their existence under my fingertips, I knew something irretrievable had been lost in this place. I did not take a single photograph, although some people were taking selfies by the twin pools, posing at the edge of all those names.
‘Nearly three thousand people died at Ground Zero on 9/11,’ Noah tells me. ‘And we’ve lost many, many more rescue and recovery workers since then. Turns out all the debris down there, all that dust and ash, was toxic. Enough to cause cancers that are still being diagnosed today.’
I shudder. Thinking of dust and ash and feeling, suddenly, as if I can taste the dead in my mouth. Noah stares at me and then smiles softly.
‘You know something? When a star dies, the dust and gases left over can form a nebula. Which is truly one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see. But nebulae get even more interesting, because they also signify regions where bright, new stars are formed. Stellar nurseries, they call them. Stardust, then, is both the end and the beginning of things. A galactic reminder that birth and death are not so very different.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I tell him, truthfully, ‘that stars could die.’
I suppose I thought some things are just always there. Thinking back now, it seems so obvious. That everything changes. When Noah shows me images of nebulae on his laptop, he is right that stardust is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But the thought of stellar nurseries and dying stars make my chest tight. It is a reminder that nothing is constant, when I so desperately want everything to stay exactly as it is right now. Eating dinner with Noah, waiting for two short, fat corgis to be dropped off tomorrow, and knowing where I will be, not just tomorrow, but the day after that.
This too. I am tired of beautiful things making me sad. I should like to love something without turning it over and discovering exposed wires, cheap parts on the other side. For the first time, I wish he wasn’t so insistent on telling me the truth of things.
But I thought you wanted to know how things work, Baby Joan.
I can almost hear Noah say this in response to my sudden melancholy, and as we clear the table and prepare for bed, I force a smile for all he is teaching me, all that I am learning about the world. I don’t tell him that I never want to look at nebulae or those holes in the ground ever again.
Something happens on Day Thirteen, the same day Ash tells Ruby he is coming to New York. I decide to take photographs of the Empire State Building, which I don’t like nearly as much as the Chrysler Building, but they’re going to project paintings onto the building’s fa?ade once it gets dark, an exhibition of some artist I don’t know, but would like to, because you must be something when they let you use the Empire State Building as your very own art gallery. I catch the 1 train and most of the cars are half empty tonight, so I have my pick of where to sit. As we wind our way downtown, I read the subway adverts for life insurance policies and community colleges and try to catch the graffiti slogans whizzing by outside the window, all the obscure messages sprayed across the subway tunnel walls. Who writes these things all the way down here? How do they get over the sparking tracks to paint their thoughts across the broken, dirty concrete? As the train slows between stations, I look to my left and see a blood-red sentence dripping, fresh: Your days are numbered. I stare at the bleeding letters running down the wall and feel that tightness in my chest again, before the train hisses beneath me and we’re jolted forward, away. Just a stupid message, left by someone making their art amongst the rats and the rubbish but, still, it makes me think of dying stars and holes in the ground, and suddenly I don’t feel like taking pictures of a building anymore.
It is as if, here on this train, I have suddenly been reminded to not lose sight of the other me, the one who knows that life and people play all sorts of tricks on the unsuspecting. I am not someone who doesn’t know about corners and turning, after all. I am not someone surprised by the way life can change in an instant, with no regard for how happy you might have been just seconds before, your hand twisting against the handle of the kitchen door.