Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I stepped quietly into the house, my white shoes pattering on the floor. I was late. Very late. Mom will probably be worried, and then she’ll shout at me and then she’ll cry. And then I’ll get heavy boots. But I really had to finish my project, and I can’t do it at home because I need a computer with a program called Photoshop to draw the formation of all the stars above New York in December. And then I need to draw another diagram of how the formation of those stars might alter the orbit of the earth around the sun in billions and billions of years to come. It’s all a theory, but it could still happen. I’m hoping that Stephen Hawking will like it and take me as his protégé. So you see how important it is to me; one of my raisons d’être.

I don’t think Mom will understand how much the project really means to me. I think she might say that I shouldn’t concentrate so much on ‘things like that’ and that I should concentrate more on playing with things ‘suitable for my age’. But then she’ll go on to say that it’s amazing that I’m so interested in science and that I should read more books. So she’ll go and buy me some more books because she wants to do what Dad used to do. Sometimes she doesn’t make sense, and there aren’t any books on how to make sense of mothers who don’t make sense.

I think I could write a book like that, where I write down everything that Mom says that doesn’t make sense, and then translate it into what makes sense. But then most of the time I don’t understand what she’s trying to say so I don’t think it would be a good idea. I like things that have a right or wrong answer, but then I also like things that could be right or wrong, like if the formation of the stars above New York in December could alter the orbit of the earth around the sun.

It was then that I noticed that Mom wasn’t home.

I went in every room in the house and called for her, but she wasn’t anywhere. It was dark outside, and Grandma wasn’t back at her home yet because she didn’t answer her walkie-talkie. I wondered where she was, and I wondered where Mom was. Maybe they were both out together, maybe even with the renter, who I know is my grandfather even though Grandma doesn’t think I know that. Maybe Mom has gone to see a clairvoyant to try and talk to Dad. I don’t believe in ghosts, and I don’t believe in clairvoyants, which is a combination of two French words, which I know because I nearly went to see a clairvoyant after Dad died. But then I saw Stephen Hawking’s letter to me on the wall, even though it’s not really from Stephen Hawking, and I thought that ghosts weren’t real and that I couldn’t talk to Dad after he died, and that I’d only be talking to myself.

Maybe Mom decided to leave because she doesn’t love me anymore. Does she even care if I come back late? She hasn’t left a note so either she didn’t know she was going to be out so late or she doesn’t care. Maybe she went out with Ron, who is now my father-but-not-my-father. Mom doesn’t miss Dad anymore, that’s why she remarried. Ron keeps trying to act like he’s my dad, but he never will be, so I think he should stop trying. I told him so. Mom told me off afterwards when Ron wasn’t there, but I told her that it was true, and that I don’t like him and that I think it was a mistake to marry him. Mom got very angry and started to cry and said, “Why can’t you just be happy? He’s gone, get over it!” That made me really angry so I screamed at her and told her that I didn’t love her and that she was the worst mother anyone could ever have. I went to Ron and told him that his wife was stupid and that the only reason he liked her was because she “succotashes your Balzac”. I got really heavy boots after that, so I told Mom that I was sorry and that I didn’t mean any of it, and that I only said it because I’m still upset about Dad. Then I told Ron that I was sorry, and that I was really glad he married Mom because I could see it made her happy. It still didn’t stop me from giving myself a new bruise that night.