shoutout to hanukkah and finals for happening at the same time [peace sign emoji]. the title is from emma lazarus's poem, the waters of babylon.
Fall doesn't look like fall in this part of South Dakota. There is no gradual fade of light into dark, no marking the passage of one month into another with leaves melting from green to orange until a breeze of icy Northeastern wind sends them fluttering to the ground. There aren't many trees. If one were to simply look outside, the way Claudia is doing now, it looks like summer, except for the way everything looks sort of brittle at the edges.
The sun hangs high and accusing in the sky, and if it weren't for the chill seeping through the windowpane beside Claudia's left arm, which hangs draped loosely around her shins, it would be easy to believe you could leave the house without so much as a light jacket. She watches out the window, eyes skimming over a view so familiar she could have drawn it from pure memory, and doesn't really see any of it. All of her attention is currently focused on the phone at her ear. Claudia's brother is somewhere far, far away, but if she closed her eyes and concentrated just on that voice she knows so well, she could almost imagine he was close enough to touch.
That voice is as familiar as the view from the window, but like the boarding house's autumn backyard still stuck in masquerade summer, there is something off about the way Joshua sounds today.
As he talks about his job, about his plans for the upcoming holidays, Claudia begins to pick apart specific details of the way he's speaking, the hints that something isn't quite right, eyes meandering over the yard while she listens.
Joshua's vowels drag long, sentences meandering around cleared throats. (There's a ribbon caught in the fence from Myka's birthday party, whipping back and forth in an icy breeze otherwise undetectable.)
Every so often Claudia hears a heavy breath, Joshua dragging in air like it weighs tons. (The blue of the cloudless badland sky has a pale, whitish tint, like a sigh of frost has crept across the horizon, a filter over the sun leaving the glow anemic and watercolor.)
Kitchenware clinks in the background, up and down and across counters, but there's no water running, no food sizzling. He isn't cooking, just moving things around. (Pete enters her view from the lower level of the boarding house, and the red in his cheeks could have been from sun except that his coat is buttoned to his chin and his breath fogs in front of his face.)
"Have you found a synagogue yet?" Claudia asks the question when the silence has drawn on so long from Joshua's end she'd almost think he'd hung up, if it weren't for the distant scrape of some kind of metal utensil across a wooden surface. She looks away from the yard as she waits for an answer, and her elbow comes in contact with the glass as she turns, the bolt of ice cold shock running up her arm.
She's been uncharacteristically quiet during the call so far. Those that know her wouldn't call Claudia a quiet person, but she doesn't usually say much on these calls with Joshua. She likes to listen to him talk instead, soak in the sound of her brother's voice. Even though he's been back for a while now, it's hard to bridge twelve years of silence.
Twelve years of echoes, her brother's off-key singing on Friday nights, months of Shabbat services that she'd been bored to tears through. After he'd been gone, though, Claudia would've given anything to be there again, bored in a service it was more important to Joshua to attend than it was to her. That's why she asks now, memories of Joshua's voice combining with the upcoming holidays to prompt her to want to know details, want to put together the clearest picture of his life that she can.
"Yeah," Joshua says, and the heaviness lifts slightly. Not much, not nearly enough, but it's there. "There's one a fifteen minute drive from my apartment, I like it a lot. Smaller than I'm used to, but it's nice. I've got invitations to holidays and the choir is going to do a thing with a violinist for Kol Nidre, it's gonna be nice."
People were important to Joshua, and she's glad to hear that he's found some, where he's landed now. Claudia can't imagine how hard it's been for him to have lost the friends he had before, unable to contact them, let them know he's still alive when it would raise more questions than they can allow for, if they were to see him as he is, the same way he was when he vanished more than a decade ago.
It's the thought of the way things were before the incident with the compass, the one that changed her life forever, brings Claudia to another memory. She looks back outside, down at the grass below her window, the stretch of still-green lawn spreading out from the back porch, and sees a different lawn, behind another house, in another state.
"Do you remember how we would do Sukkot? When I was a kid?" Claudia blurts out, interrupting whatever Joshua had been saying about the older couple who had invited him to a Yom Kippur break fast dinner with their family. "With the tent poles and the fairy lights, and we'd put down sleeping bags and spend the whole first night sleeping in it. Remember that?"
There's a beat of silence, and when Joshua answers, he sounds different. There's amusement, and a hint of concern, though still behind it all that exhaustion remains, forming the basis for a plan in Claudia's mind.
"Of course I do, Claud. Why?"
"Because I want you to come build a sukkah with me this year." The idea had been a passing fantasy at first, the tantalizing dream of getting to spend a Sukkot with her brother again, until it cements down into a real idea, a plan spurned on by that sick tiredness in Joshua's thready voice. Claudia has never done well with helplessness, and she has latched strongly onto this one way she might be able to do something.
"What?" Joshua almost sounds like he's laughing, but it's too late. Claudia is determined.
"I mean it, Josh! Come out for Sukkot. Build a sukkah with me in the yard behind Leena's, we can decorate it with all kinds of wicked Warehouse shit. I'm sure two thousand years of Sukkots means Artie's got some neat tricks. We can make food-" Claudia makes a face and cuts herself off mid-sentence. "You can make food. I can burn food. It's a part of my charm."
Joshua's shadow of his former laugh only serves to further cement her resolve.
"C'mon, dude, let's show these weirdos what they're missing, I'd love the chance to watch Jinksy eat dinner on the ground in a sukkah. C'mon." Dragging out the last word, Claudia calls forth memories of a little girl with wide, pleading eyes, turning on her most persuasive voice to bend her older brother to her will.
"Fine, fine," Joshua interjects, and the words are half syllable, half huff of entertained air. "I'll come, okay? Count me in for a sukkah at the boarding house. I'll be there."
They hash out details for a few more minutes until the conversation peters down. It had been hopeful and lively for a time, but by the point that Claudia says goodbye and ends the call, her face is drawn and solemn. She looks out the window, breath lightly fogging the pane of glass, until a cleared throat catches her attention.
"How much did you hear?" she asks, turning in her window seat until she's fully facing the young man standing in the doorway.
"A bit. What's Sukkot?" Steve walks fully into the room as he speaks, sitting down on Claudia's bed and raising an eyebrow in anticipation of her answer.
Claudia makes a face, waving the hand still holding her phone. She doesn't really want to spend time explaining this right now, despite good, innocent intentions behind the question.
"Jewish celebration thing, there's like a tent and some plants and whatever. You'll see in a couple weeks, Josh is gonna fly out and we're gonna show you guys how it's done."
Steve leans back on one palm, nodding. Even reclined as he is now, one foot dangling over the side of the bed off the floor, weight supported by a hand propped on her bedspread, there's something about him that feels intentional. His expression is serious, his body turned towards Claudia like he's expecting an engaging conversation.
"Yeah. I heard you talking to him about flights. So why do you look so worried? You sounded excited to see him but…" Steve's free hand lifts from his side, waving towards her head. "What's with the face? That's your 'something's wrong and I've gotta fix it' face." Claudia's features twist, and Steve's eyebrows shoot up. "And that's your 'I'm about to blow Steve off rather than tell him something' face."
Shaking her head, Claudia looks away. She thinks about the question, about her brother, about how scary just sounding tired can be.
"Endless wonder," she says finally. Steve frowns.
"Excuse me?"
"A world of endless wonder," Claudia repeats. "That's what Mrs. Frederic told you, right? When she invited you to come here?" He nods, and she does too. "Yeah. Endless wonder. That's what the Warehouse means to me, to you, to Myka and Pete. When we first got him back, Joshua sat around depressed, he didn't so much as leave the boarding house. Getting out into the world was good for him, but… He sounds bad, Steve."
"How do you mean?"
Claudia sighs. Her chest feels tight and her cheeks hot. She's never handled worry especially well, anxiety gnawing at her heart and sending her pulse up.
"He sounds tired." It's such a small thing when you say it out loud, and Claudia cringes. Steve, however, doesn't waver, face remaining just as serious and intense as it had been at the start of this conversation.
"You're worried about him," he says, and Claudia nods.
"He did so much for me. He sacrificed and worked and did everything for me." As she keeps talking, Claudia's voice gets high and tight. Her eyes sting and she looks away, focusing on the chip in the edge of her phone case, picking at it with a thumbnail. "He stayed out late with me when he had work in the morning, building that tent in our backyard for Sukkot, stringing lights and telling me stories about the stars that we could see through the gaps in the sukkah roof. That… When I was little, that was my…" She stops talking, thumb digging hard into the phone.
"He gave you endless wonder," Steve finishes, quiet and gentle.
Several seconds pass until Claudia is reasonably sure she can speak without her voice breaking.
"I've seen what a little wonder can do for people." Claudia pauses again, fleetingly amazed the phone's outer casing hasn't split in half. "I know what the Warehouse did for me. Every person it touches is changed, most for the better. And I thought… Maybe a little of the Warehouse's wonder can help Joshua. I don't know what's wrong, but…"
Steve gets up now. He walks over and sits on the window seat next to her. It's a pretty tight fit, the points of her knees digging into the side of his thigh, but Steve doesn't seem to mind, leaning back against the chilled window and looking sideways at Claudia.
"I think it's a good idea," he says, and there's no mocking in his voice. "Bringing him here. Showing him a little of the Warehouse's wonder."
He's completely sincere, Claudia thinks. Damn.
It hits her harder than she'd like it to have, and she lists forward with a groan, forehead dropping heavily to the crest of Steve's shoulder. She can feel him chuckle slightly through the way his arm jerks just a bit. Then fabric rustles against skin as he lifts his arm up and around, adjusting them both until they sit leaned against each other, points of contact a warm defense against the cold of the glass behind them.
"I think that's a really good idea, Claud," Steve repeats, squeezing her a little for emphasis. "Maybe we can sit outside at night, and you and he can tell us about the stars."
"I'd like that," Claudia says quietly. "The stories really are wonderful."