Are We There Yet? Read online

  “To reunions,” he says.

  “To reunions,” Ari echoes.

  The Slurpees don't taste the same as they used to. Maybe that's because it's a foreign country. Maybe it's because nothing ever tastes the same as it did when you were ten. Or maybe the 7-Eleven syrup has changed.

  Danny and Ari ponder this and soon ponder other things. Before they forget, they exchange addresses and phone numbers and e-mail addreses. Danny promises they will keep in touch.

  At the hotel, Ari hugs Danny goodbye. Danny is not used to being fully hugged—just the sports-guy hugging-without-touching. But this is the real thing, the hug that lets you feel held.

  They say goodbye at least five times, and then Ari leaves. Danny heads straight back to his room—he's had a wonderful night, and he doesn't want to press his luck. He sticks his tongue out at himself in the mirror and finds that it is still the color of a neon sky. He remembers how he and Elijah would have contests to see whose tongue could stay blue the longest. Hours without drinking, trying not to swallow needlessly. This makes him smile now. He realizes it will always make him smile, if he can hold on to his brother in some way. If he can make his way through all the distractions, back to what they once shared. And still share.

  He takes a shower and heads to bed, ready for a good night's sleep. Then, at the last minute, he thinks of something else to do.

  He reopens his letter to Will and adds another page.

  He writes about how things have changed and how things don't have to change. He can't go back to the past, he knows. But maybe there's a chance of getting Elijah back.

  Elijah's possessions haven't been scattered far, so it doesn't take him long to gather them. Julia keeps asking him if he's sure he knows where Danny is staying. She offers to call, to let Danny know Elijah is coming. Elijah tells her not to bother.

  She won't give him an explanation about what's happening, and why he has to leave. All at once, he's realizing she's not the kind of person who gives explanations. She might not know herself.

  He wants to ask, Are you sure? But he's afraid the line between a yes and a no would be frustratingly unclear.

  Soon his bag is packed. There's nothing else to do. The maid has already cleaned up. There's just the matter of leaving.

  “So goodbye, I guess.”

  Julia hands him a slip of paper.

  “My parents' address,” she says. “You can always reach me there.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, I know this probably isn't what you thought would—”

  “It's okay. Really. I just have to go.”

  Julia hovers in front of the door.“I mean, when I said it was the end, it wasn't—oh, I don't know. The end doesn't have to be the end, you know. You can stay, if you'd like.”

  “No. It's okay.”

  “I see. No, you're right. Can I get your address?”

  Elijah writes it down for her. It feels like an empty gesture now, whereas once he thought it would be the key to their future.

  “I'm sorry,” she says. She hasn't opened the door, but she's no longer standing in front of it. “Tell Danny I'm sorry, too.”

  “For what?”

  “For ruining your holiday.”

  Elijah knows that any goodbye kiss won't end up being a goodbye kiss. So he just bows his head a little and thanks her for dinner. Then he opens the door and leaves. In the hallway, he stops for a moment and waits to hear her turn the lock.

  She doesn't, but he heads to the street anyway.

  Elijah needs to walk. He needs to forget about destinations and meanings and plans. He feels like a door has opened and he has walked into a world filled with his own mistakes.

  Once, when he and his friend Jared were on acid, they stumbled across a pad of Post-its. Immediately, they began to label everything they encountered: DOOR and BOOK and HAND. Each Post-it bestowed a cosmic sense of clarity. The door was a door because the writing said DOOR. The floor was a hand because the writing said HAND. It seemed, for a moment, that they could live their lives that way, as omniscient identifiers and casual illusionists.

  Elijah wishes he had the acid now, and the Post-its, so he could make Julia the JULIA he wanted her to be, and his life the LIFE that he had thought he had been living. He wants to bend time backward, so he could write dozens of postcards to Cal, so he could label as SORRY the very things he's now done. If Danny's Post-it said BROTHER instead of DANNY, would that work? Could Elijah take an eraser to ROME and suddenly make it HOME?

  He is not angry with Julia. He is confused by her actions, and his own. As he walks through the midnight streets, he tries to reach into her side of the conversation, to pull out the cardinal truths.

  He keeps picturing Cal in Providence, walking to the P.O. box, hoping for some word from him.

  He imagines them building forts.

  He thinks of his parents, and how concerned they'd be to see him walking where all the stores have long since closed.

  He imagines Julia back in her hotel room, sitting absolutely still, or moving completely on.

  There can be no destination. He can't go back to her, and he can't go on to Danny. He doesn't want to have to account for himself right now. Either Danny will say something and Elijah will explode, or Danny will say nothing and Elijah will disappear completely.

  It's not about the city, it's about the walking. Really, he could be anywhere now, because he wants to be nowhere. Rome is lost on him. It's the time of night when no one walks alone. Couples eye him warily, as he walks with his bag slung over his shoulder. He finds himself on the same street he and Julia took to the Colosseum, only it's totally different now.

  Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is that—comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there. He hasn't been thinking of there nearly enough. He hasn't been a good enough friend.

  I'm sorry, he says to Cal, and to his parents, and to Julia, and to Danny.

  Because he doesn't know what else to say.

  “Stai bene?”a voice asks.

  He has been standing still on the sidewalk. Now he looks across the street and sees a young woman and her date. The man wants to keep walking, but the woman has stopped.

  “I don't understand,” Elijah explains.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes. Thank you.”

  “Are you lost?”

  “I'm not sure.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The Pantheon?” Elijah says. It's the first building that comes to mind. “I'm supposed to meet someone outside the Pantheon.”

  The man laughs and takes hold of the woman's elbow. She shrugs him off, whispering, “Un attimo.” Then she crosses the street, pulling a pen from her pocketbook. Her mouth is all lipstick, her eyes dark as the lashes.

  “Give me your hand,” she says. Elijah holds out his palm. She takes hold of it and draws a map. At the end of the map is a star.

  “That,” she says, “is the Pantheon.”

  “Sofia!” the man calls. With a curious smile, she turns and runs back across the street.

  “Thank you!” Elijah shouts.

  “Avanti diritto!” she calls back, and is gone.

  Elijah stares at his hand. It is a complex map, without any names. Just a beginning, an ending, and a path.

  Remarkably, he finds his way. Never once closing his fingers. Never once looking anywhere but where he is.

  By the time he reaches the Pantheon, there are hints that the sun will soon rise. He sits on a bench and stares at the building's exterior—rather plain, with only a hint of what's inside.

  As he waits for it to open, he falls asleep.

  Danny arrives first. Elijah arrives second. This time they are separated by minutes, not years.

  The Pantheon is empty.

  Danny
does not notice. He is staring up into the eye of the sky. He is standing in the golden beam of light that falls to the floor. The lifting dome, a chorus of geometry. Crowned by the circle of air, the eclipse of architecture. An opening where nobody would ever imagine one to be.

  Elijah wakes up on the bench, gathers himself together, and walks inside. At first he is overwhelmed by the building. The silence. Then he sees the one figure standing there. And knows immediately who it is.

  He walks over, puts a hand on his brother's shoulder. Danny turns, and Elijah is moved by the relief that rises to his face. Danny is about to say something, but Elijah gestures him to be quiet.

  The two of them look around.

  No one but the statues.

  Nothing but the space.

  They cannot believe it. They marvel at the emptiness. As if the building has been waiting for them, preparing for this moment and this moment only.

  The guard stands by the door, unaware.

  The sunlight streams down on them as they look up and ponder the tiles that reach toward blue. The quiet is extraordinary.

  Elijah walks into the shadows, his footsteps keeping time over marble. Danny begins to circle, too, until suddenly they are in orbit around each other, reverently floating through the room. They look at statues and cornices and old-spoken words. They look at the colors that fall under their feet—white marble, red marble, black marble. They look at the dome and the intimation of air. They wait for someone else to walk in the door, but no one does.

  They look at each other and share a smile of disbelief and wonder. Their orbit becomes more pronounced, and now they are truly circling each other, not speaking a word, not daring to look away. It is like a dance, because they are partners. It is like a dream, because there is nothing else.

  They will have this.

  Danny stands in the center of the light, so the sun can stare down at him. Then he closes his eyes and extends his arms. He can feel the space of the building, like he can feel the building itself beneath his feet.

  Elijah stays in the shadows. He too closes his eyes. He holds them closed for a minute, maybe two. For he knows that when he opens them, things will not be as they once were. Tourists will arrive. A cloud will cross the eye. They will no longer be alone together. But they will still be together.

  Slowly Elijah opens his eyes and walks to his brother. He thinks of the Statues game. He thinks of red twine spinning from trees, and his brother's hands as they pushed him on the swing.

  Elijah extends his arms so that his fingertips touch his brother's. Then, just once, they spin like children.

  This is what is lost.

  This is what is never lost.

  “Where have you been?” Danny asks. His tone is not accusatory; it is genuinely concerned. They are standing in the undirected light of day now, next to a postcard vendor outside the Pantheon.

  “Just around,” Elijah replies. He knows he must look like a total unbathed freak.

  “Where's Julia?”

  “In her hotel room, I think. Back there, in the Pantheon, did you …?”

  Danny nods.

  “So it wasn't just me?”

  “No. It wasn't just you. It was just us.”

  “Wow.”

  The pleasure on Danny's face flickers. “Are you going back to Julia's now?” he asks.

  “No,” Elijah says. “We, um, said goodbye.”

  This is not what Danny was expecting to hear. “Oh,” he says. “For good?”

  “For good.”

  Elijah is surprised by how angry he doesn't sound.

  Danny wants to hear more of the story, but he doesn't really have the grounds to ask. He's never asked before, so it would seem strange to ask now. He also wants to know whether or not Elijah found out about Julia's late-night visit. Elijah doesn't look as if he's found out, but maybe he's just hiding it.

  In the end, Elijah will never know, and Danny will never know whether or not Elijah knows.

  “So where have you been?” Danny asks. “Where do you want to go now?”

  “How about the ruins?”

  “Sure.”

  “You haven't been there already?”

  “Nope,” Danny lies. (Elijah won't know this is a lie until a month later, when Danny drives up to Providence and brings along his few vacation photos.)

  They both take a minute before leaving the Pantheon's sight. Elijah buys a few postcards. Danny takes out a pen, and they write to their parents, thanking them. Then Danny gets out his camera, and they ask the postcard vendor to take their picture. Just to prove they've been here. Together.

  As they head off to the ruins, Danny asks Elijah what he's written on his hand.

  And Elijah tells him a true story.

  When they get to the ruins, it begins to rain. Neither Danny nor Elijah has an umbrella, and neither will admit he wants one. So instead they dart from overhang to overhang— and end up standing without cover, daring to be drenched.

  Elijah is inexplicably moved by the broken columns and fragmented floors. He cannot help but find a meaning and a message in their poverty of stature. This is what remains, he thinks. It seems a valuable lesson on a day when card catalogs are dying, communications are deleted, and buildings crumble under the weight of society's expectations.

  Danny sees Elijah's remorseful expression and doesn't know what to think. Does such an expression come from knowledge or innocence? Sometimes it's so hard to tell the difference.

  The rain will not let up. For a moment, Elijah thinks he sees Julia, and his feelings zigzag. But it's not her—not her at all. She is no longer a person in his life; instead, she is a person that other people will remind him of.

  Danny and Elijah run to a cafe, the dirt of Italy slowly gathering on their shoes and their legs. A bad case of the doldrums seems to have hit the natives along with the rain—the waiters look glum, almost forlorn. Although Danny has picked up enough Italian to place his order, he is afraid that if he speaks a few words in Italian, the waiter will assume he knows more than a few words. So he sticks to English, thereby assuring that the waiter will not smile in return.

  “So where do you want to go next?” Danny asks Elijah after the waiter has departed.

  “I'd love to see the statue—you know, the one with the face that you can stick your hand in.”

  “The one from Roman Holiday?”

  “Yes. Exactly. How did you know?”

  Soon they are talking loudly, animatedly, impersonating Gregory Peck. They are reliving the movie and debating its finer points, agreeing only upon the ending.

  How strange they must seem to the unimpressible Italian waiters and the pop-star Spanish teens and the Japanese image collectors and the umbrella-sticked British pensioners—two grown American brothers, talking about how Audrey Hepburn makes them cry.

  Danny proposes a nap, and this time Elijah doesn't disagree. He is surprised when Danny stops at the door of the hotel.

  “What the hell?” Danny shouts.

  “What is it?” Elijah asks. Then he sees what Danny is seeing— a small swastika, drawn on the door of the d'Inghilterra. What's inexplicable is not just that it was put there, but that the hotel hasn't noticed—or has even kept it up.

  Danny immediately pulls a pen from his pocket and begins to cross it out. Elijah keeps watch, but nobody stops them. The door is bleeding ink—Danny is pressing so hard that he is chipping off the paint.

  “It's gone,” Elijah tells him. And indeed it is—replaced by a dark, ugly blot.

  Danny goes to complain to the manager, who appears sympathetic. Then the Silver brothers return to their room. Danny heads straight for the shower. Elijah writes belated postcards to his friends and waits his turn. He starts one postcard to Cal, then writes three more. Even though he'll see her tomorrow, he wants to give her something she will be able to keep. He tries not to think about Julia, and in the act of trying, he thinks about her. But she seems vague now. Not a part of the real story.

  “
All yours,” Danny says when he gets out of the shower. He is wearing one of the hotel robes.

  Elijah is gratified to find there's still hot water. He closes his eyes and breathes in the steam. When he looks down at the drain, he sees a small ring of hair. Danny's hair. It is irrefutable proof, but still Elijah asks himself, Is Danny losing his hair? This would mean that Danny is growing older. Is changing.

  So strange.

  Elijah's inner snapshot of Danny is long out of date. But he hasn't realized it until now.

  “What are you looking at?” Danny asks when Elijah steps from the bathroom and stares at his hairline. (It looks fine. Although there is a little gray….)

  “Nothing,” Elijah says. “I can't believe we're this old.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Danny is already under the covers. It is two in the afternoon. Sunlight filters through the window, but Elijah gets into his bed anyway.

  “We'll walk around a little before dinner,” Danny continues driftily. He is turned away from Elijah, but entirely conscious he is there. “You can tell me what you've been up to.”

  “Okay.” Elijah closes his eyes and imagines that afternoon is night.

  “And then we'll have a nice dinner.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “And walk around some more.”

  “Sure.”

  “And then I'll teach you multiplication.” Elijah smiles. “Perfect.”

  “I'm glad that you're here.”

  “So am I. I'm sorry about—well, what happened.”

  “So am I.”

  Danny thinks this will be the end of the conversation, but then Elijah (thinking of Julia, thinking of Cal, thinking of college applications, thinking of the confusion and elation and mistakes of the past week) asks,“Is this what growing up is like?”

  And Danny answers, “I think so.”

  They will stay together until they leave the next day.

  V. ARRIVAL

  After they get through customs (Elijah's pot having been left for the maid service in Rome), they are confronted by a throng of eager, peering faces. Danny scans the crowd and sees his parents a little way off. His mother is reading a magazine and his father is staring at the flight listing.