by Laila Lalami
“Yes,” Maurice said. “He was very clear about what he wanted. Something elegant and timeless. He didn’t like anything we had here, so we had to custom-order it. That’s why it took so long.”
I tried to picture my father standing right where I was, looking at all the rings on display in this shop. Nothing here had been good enough for his lover, his love, his soon-to-be-fiancée. No, this couldn’t be true. It seemed to me as if Maurice were talking about some other man, a stranger. Because how could my father have done something like this? Did my mother know he was getting ready to leave her? Nothing about the last few days suggested that she knew about an affair. “Who’s the ring for?” I asked. “Do you know the woman’s name?”
“No, I’m sorry. He came in alone. I’ve never had a situation like this come up before.” Maurice watched me for a moment, and then he cleared his throat. “So. About the balance. Your father put down half, and half was due on delivery.” He placed the jewelry box in front of me. A diamond solitaire. Princess cut. The inside of the ring bore three words, three precious words, etched in cursive. “The total comes to $3,250.”
“I can’t pay for this. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
“But I can’t sell this ring to anyone else, not when it’s already inscribed. What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.” I pushed the jewelry box across the glass counter and walked out of the shop. Standing in the parking lot for a moment, I wondered if the phone call my father made to me on the day he died might have been about this. Was he going to prepare me for what he was about to do? From behind came the sound of hurried footsteps.
“Miss,” Maurice called out. “Wait.”
But I got into my car and left. As I drove back to Yucca Valley, I thought again about the Cold War between my parents, the long silences that followed, silences I had mistaken for peace. Instead, the rift between them had deepened. Now I remembered that, the previous October, Salma had invited my parents for a weekend in Lake Tahoe, but at the last minute my father had begged off, saying he had too much work to do. And on Thanksgiving, he’d disappeared for a couple of hours and no one had been able to reach him. But if those were signs of an affair, I hadn’t noticed them.
Who was the woman? How long had he been seeing her? Did he bring her to the cabin? Did he sleep with her in that big bed, the bed where I had been sleeping not two hours before? All the certainties I’d once had about him vanished. I was overwhelmed by feelings I couldn’t quite put into words yet. In my haze, the only thing I could feel clearly was the weight of his secret; it was mine to carry now. I couldn’t tell my mother about it, because it would only compound her grief, and I couldn’t trust my sister with it, because she told my mother everything.
Driss
I know how this looks. A woman like her, young enough to be my daughter. But it wasn’t cheap or crude like that. I didn’t chase after her, I didn’t make promises. And it wasn’t love at first sight, either. There was no thunderbolt, no magic moment. It happened slowly, day by day. She came into the restaurant one Sunday morning, took a seat at the counter, and ordered the breakfast special. Because of the wide-brimmed straw hat she hung on the back of her chair, I thought she was a tourist, here for the weekend, but when I brought her the eggs and hash browns she’d ordered, she asked me if I knew whether the hardware store two blocks up from the restaurant was open on Sundays. She needed to buy paint for her floorboards.
The next week, she was back. We started talking. I found out she was from San Ysidro, a couple miles north of the border with Mexico, and until recently had worked as a bartender, but after an acrimonious separation from a man she had been with since high school, she’d decided to start over. Move to the desert. Open a vintage store. Growing up, she’d always shopped at thrift stores or at the Goodwill and, as a result, had learned to spot stylish, inexpensive clothes. “I have an eye for what other people miss,” she said. And I could see she had good taste, from the linen dress she had on, the red kerchief around her neck, the leather-strapped watch on her wrist. But what really drew me to her was the ease of her smile.
She’d leased a commercial space near the antique stores on the 62, in that little stretch where tourists and beatniks always stopped on their way to concerts in Pioneertown. She was working on refurbishing the place, getting ready for the grand opening. I knew what that was like, starting a business in a new town, so I tried to help. I went with her to see the space, gave her my opinion about local contractors, who could be trusted and who couldn’t, who was punctual and who was on desert time. She considered my advice, took some of it and discarded some, but she always listened to what I had to say. I had forgotten what that was like. Being listened to, I mean. Her name was Beatrice.
I won’t ask you to understand what happened. I just want you to imagine it. We were standing in the middle of the store, with the morning light streaming in from the windows, and we were talking about the wallpaper. In several places, especially by the front and back doors, it was stained or peeling, so I recommended a local contractor for the tedious job of stripping and repainting. Beatrice ran her hand over the paper, which had a pattern of pink vines on a light green background. “You’re right that it should go,” she said, “but I will keep it here, in the alcove.” In that little nook, she said, the wallpaper was still in its original condition, and would be the perfect background against which to display antique hair accessories and costume jewelry. I scribbled the name of the contractor on the back of my business card and handed it to her. When she took it from me, our eyes met and she smiled. That is the moment I always go back to when I try to unwind what happened between us.
I’m sixty-one years old now, a grandfather already. Maryam and I were married more than half our lives, and I thought we would spend the other half together. We argued a lot, especially in the last few years, but that wasn’t why we grew so far apart. The truth is that we were always different, from the beginning. We met in 1978, at a UNEM meeting at the university in Casablanca, but I had been there because I wanted an end to government corruption, better schools, fair wages, things like that, whereas she’d come to find a friend who’d borrowed a textbook from her and never returned it. I was driven by a sense of optimism, which I don’t think Maryam ever really shared; she was more the pragmatic sort. When the police arrested Brahim and Karima and others like them, I wanted to stay in Casablanca and continue the fight, but Maryam wanted us to move here.
Always, we had to do what she wanted. She couldn’t compromise. Once, I remember, when we were still newlyweds, we went to the fabric market to shop for curtains. Our apartment was on the ground floor of a converted colonial house, but it faced commercial buildings on all sides, and it got very little sunlight. We agreed on sheer curtains because they would let in what little light there was, give us some privacy, and wouldn’t be expensive. The shopkeeper unrolled sample after sample, while Maryam assailed him with questions: how much is this one, how much is that one, are you seriously asking for this much, do you have this in other colors. Then she picked out damask curtains. “But this will block the light,” I said.
“It’s such a pretty pattern,” she replied.
I tried to imagine our living room with those curtains, and I couldn’t. On the weekends, I liked to sit by the window and read the newspapers, but with these curtains I knew I’d have to sit on the balcony or go to a café just to get through the morning news. “You like something with a pattern?” I spread out the fabric samples on the counter. “Then how about this lace? It has a pattern.”
“I don’t like lace.”
“No lace. Let’s try cotton, then. It’ll let in some light.”
But Maryam didn’t like any of the fabrics I chose, so in the end I gave in. We bought the curtains she liked and went home. I got the ladder and brought out my tools, but every time I drilled a hole, she’d tell me the rod needed to move a little higher or a little lower. W
hen the curtains were finally up, we had five holes in the wall and the rod slanted on the left. I don’t know why I’m remembering this, so many years later, it’s such a small thing. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to understand what happened myself. All I know is that life is short. Without realizing it, I had been traveling down the road from birth to death with the wrong companion. But now I had found the right one, and I didn’t want to give her up.
Coleman
The victim’s daughter came into the office, her eyes telegraphing that she had some news. It took her a while to get to it, and maybe I should’ve been more patient with her, but I was having a rough morning. I’d just found out that Miles was flunking math, which was infuriating to me because it had been his best subject when we lived in D.C. Now he had two Ds in pre-algebra. Meanwhile, the PTA ladies had asked if given my line of work I could chaperone for the seventh-grade dance, but I had to say no because I had a district meeting that night. I was pretty sure I had blown my last chance with them. I would never be admitted to their tribe. And to make things worse, Vasco was pressing me about this hit-and-run. He was getting bad press about a police-beating incident earlier that spring, and he was desperate for some good news. All of this is to say that I had a lot on my mind when Nora Guerraoui came to speak to me that morning. She shifted in her seat, drained the glass of water she’d asked for, clicked and unclicked the clasp of her bracelet watch. I thought about the pile of paperwork on my desk, all those silver Fords waiting to be checked and cross-checked. “What can I do for you, Ms. Guerraoui?”
“Please, just call me Nora.”
“What can I do for you?”
More fiddling with her watch. Another minute passed. “So I came across some information?”
“All right.” Let this be good, I thought.
“I don’t know if it’s relevant to the case.”
“Why don’t you tell me what it is? We can decide if it’s relevant later.”
“My dad was having an affair.”
Oh, that.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“These things happen.”
“But you knew?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Texts on his cell phone.”
“It wasn’t locked?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s dumb.”
Love ain’t smart, I wanted to say. I’d seen it before, people doing the dumbest things you can imagine, out of love or lust or whatever you wanted to call it, all along thinking they were going to get away with it because they were special. And thank God for that, or they’d never get caught.
“Who is this woman?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why?”
“Safety. Privacy. Plus, I have a duty to preserve the integrity of this investigation.” A knock on the conference-room window made me look up. It was Murphy, holding up a bottle of cold lemonade. Want one? his lips mouthed. I shook my head no, though my throat felt dry. The weekend before, I’d driven Miles to the baseball game Murphy had told me about, in the community park. Murphy was there with his son, Brandon. I didn’t know if he had prepared Brandon beforehand, but that kid went right up to Miles and started talking to him. Miles had grown about a foot over the previous year, and that had made him awkward, almost like his brain hadn’t caught up with his body. His voice had grown deeper, too, and he wasn’t used to the sound of it, which might have had something to do with his being so quiet all the time. But he followed Brandon to the field, and the more time passed, the more loose-limbed he got. After a while, Murphy came to sit next to me on the stands. We talked for a bit. That’s all we did. We just talked. But leaving the field, I felt a little weird about the whole thing. You sure? Murphy mouthed from the other side of the office window, holding up the lemonade again. I nodded. Yes, I’m sure.
“Is that woman involved?”
“No,” I said. The woman in question—remarkably young, unremarkably pretty—had a solid alibi. She’d cut herself that night while trimming her plants and had been getting two stitches in the ER at the time of the accident. When I interviewed her, all she could talk about was how the old man loved her, how he was going to leave his wife for her, how they were getting ready to move in together. I couldn’t see a motive. It was a dead end, as far as I was concerned.
“Please tell me her name.”
“I can’t do that.” I could tell she was going to try finding out anyhow, which I couldn’t blame her for, but I didn’t want this to get messy. “Nora,” I said, as gently as I could, “what difference would it make if you knew? It wouldn’t change anything about what happened. It’s better not to know.”
“Better for whom? It’s not better for me, I can tell you that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Who is she?”
“I can’t say.”
“But if it’s true that she’s not involved, what harm is there in telling me her name?”
“I’ve already explained why I can’t do that.” She was trying to get me into an argument, maybe coax me into saying more, but I resisted. Again she clicked and unclicked her bracelet watch, it was a nervous tic. “And still no new witnesses?” she asked.
“No, not yet.”
“Something isn’t right. If this was just an accident, why didn’t the driver stay at the scene and wait for the police? Why didn’t anyone see anything?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“What if I offered a reward? Would that help?”
Sometimes it helped, sometimes it created noise. People who were hoping for a reward could get creative with details. But it was going to take me weeks to check all those silver Fords, and a reward would speed things up considerably. This was my chance to turn things around. “How much were you thinking?” I asked.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars? Is that enough?”
That’s a lot for a teacher, I thought. At least, I thought she was a teacher. Her mother hadn’t been too specific on that, she’d been too busy telling me about the other daughter, the dentist. When Miles was still a baby, Ray and I had wanted to have another child, but we were both focused on our careers and it never worked out. Then we got a little too old to try. So I didn’t know what it was like to have two children, especially two daughters. The dynamics of it, I mean. Maybe the mother couldn’t help being prouder of the dentist with the successful practice and the adorable twins. I was just an observer myself, but I couldn’t help comparing the two daughters as well. Only the younger one was calling me every day, asking about the case. At first, this had irritated me, but now I found myself warming up to her. She was trying to help. “Twenty-five thousand is fantastic,” I said, unable to repress a smile, in spite of the circumstances. “We’ll have to make a formal announcement in the paper and on the radio. We can even print some posters.”
Nora
To share details of my father’s life with a stranger went against every instinct I had, and yet I did it, hoping that, in return, the detective would give me a clue that might unlock the mystery of his affair. Even if it was just a name. After all, names can tell stories. If she was a Fatima, say, then maybe my father had met her through his Moroccan friends in Los Angeles. If she was a Jennifer, then she was almost certainly decades younger than him, and he’d probably met her at a bar or the gym. If she was a Guadalupe, then I’d wager he’d tried to impress her with his fluency in Castilian Spanish. But no matter how directly or indirectly I asked about the woman, Coleman remained unmoved.
By the time I walked out of the police station, it was early afternoon and a dry, hot wind was blowing from the east. It whipped my hair violently against my face, so that I had to gather strands of it in my hands just to see my way through the parking lot. My mouth tasted like dust. I got into my car, switched on the ignition, and waited for the AC to kick in. Ac
ross the lot, two sheriff’s deputies stood together under the shade of a palm tree, smoking and talking, seemingly unbothered by the heat and the wind. I watched them for a moment, then stepped out of the car and went back into the station. “Could I speak to Deputy Gorecki?” I asked the receptionist.
She brushed her fringe out of her eyes. “Who should I say is asking?”
“Nora.”
“Last name?”
“Guerraoui. G-u-e-r-r-a-o-u-i.”
She looked defeated, but recovered somehow and told me to have a seat. The television screen in the lobby showed the local news, with the sound turned off and the closed-captioning turned on: the town council had met to review requests for funding for next year; electric-line repairs would be blocking part of Yucca Trail all day tomorrow; the Marine Corps would hold a live-fire exercise in Johnson Valley. Then it was commercials. I was on the verge of leaving when the door opened and Jeremy came out, a speck of mustard at the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” I said.
“No worries,” he said, running the back of his hand across his mouth. “Is everything all right?”
I nodded, even though nothing was all right. In his uniform, he looked tall and imposing, an impression that was reinforced by all the things he carried—gun, baton, pepper spray, taser, and whatever else hung on his belt. In a strange way, this made what I had to say to him seem like a confession. “I just wanted to apologize about the other night at McLean’s. You were right, I shouldn’t have tried to drive.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I could’ve gotten into an accident and hurt someone.”
“You were in a lot of pain.”
I had been. I still was. And the pain was complicated now by the realization that my father had a secret life, that for weeks or months or even years, he’d lied and tricked and cheated. He was the person I trusted most in the world, and now I was learning that I didn’t really know him. I should never have picked up that damn phone in the cabin, I thought, I should’ve let it ring. I felt dizzy with loss.