by Laila Lalami
“You don’t have to explain,” Tareq said mildly. “This is your home. You’re welcome here anytime.”
“Happy Father’s Day,” I said, giving him the greeting card I’d bought that morning at Walgreens. The stationery aisle had been packed with children young and old, and somehow I had managed to keep my composure until I saw a little girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, asking her older brother if he thought their dad would like the card she’d picked out. I had to sit in my car for a while after that, trying to collect myself before I could drive to my sister’s house. “Where is everyone?”
“Thank you for this,” Tareq said. He seemed genuinely pleased and held on to the card as we spoke. “Your mom’s not here yet. The kids are playing, and Salma’s out on the deck. Why don’t you go talk to her? I’ll bring you ladies some lemonade.”
From the family room came the sound of a crash—a Jenga tower?—and the taunting laughter of Aida. I slid the glass door open and stepped outside. Under the shade of the umbrella, Salma sat on a lounge chair, so motionless that for a moment I thought she was sleeping. She was in a mint-green top and white linen pants, a vivid rendering of what Orange Coast magazine might have featured under Casual Weekend Wear, and her hair was in an elaborate updo that must have taken hours of practice. But when she looked up, I noticed deep bags under her eyes, which not even her carefully applied makeup could disguise. “Oh,” she said. “You made it.”
“Of course,” I said, bending down to kiss her on the cheeks. “I can only stay for a couple of hours, though. I have to go back to work.” I took the chair next to hers. My back hurt from having carried boxes of groceries earlier that morning, and I stretched my legs out and heaved a sigh of relief. A soft wind blew, rustling the leaves of the sage bushes that bordered the deck. Beyond it the lot sloped into a valley of Joshua trees, and, in the distance, giant red-rock formations. “What a great view you have here, Salma.”
She smiled. “Yes, it’s nice and clear today, too.”
Maybe it was the satisfaction in her voice that grated on my ear, or maybe it was seeing her lounging like this, but instantly I found myself thinking about Baker’s arraignment. Salma had made no effort to be in court, hadn’t rescheduled her clinic appointments, hadn’t even called me afterward to hear the details of the hearing. I was trying to think of a way to bring this up when the door slid open again and Tareq appeared, carrying a pitcher.
“I have a migraine,” my sister told him, somewhat abruptly.
Tareq didn’t reply. He stirred the lemonade with a metal spoon, bruised the mint leaves for a minute, then poured two glasses.
“The bright light can’t be good for you,” I said. “Maybe we should go inside.”
“No, I like it out here.” Turning to her husband again, she asked, “Can I get a pill?”
A raven landed near us and eyed the ground for any crumbs. Tareq waved it away. “Drink the lemonade,” he said. “It should help.”
“I’d rather have something.” Her eyes were pleading.
“I’ll leave you two to catch up.”
I didn’t know what to make of this exchange between them, or the tension that I sensed beneath their pleasantries. Why wouldn’t he give her something for her migraine? “Are you all right?” I asked her after he left.
“I’m fine,” she said.
For the first time, it occurred to me that the perfection my sister wore like an armor was starting to show some cracks. It could only be grief, I thought; grief had done this to her. All at once my irritation disappeared. I reached across the side table to touch her arm, and immediately she put her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. “Oh, Salma,” I said.
“I’m fine,” she said again, and took a long sip of her lemonade. From the neighbor’s yard came the rattle of a wire fence being opened, followed by the joyful barking of a dog. “Why do you have to leave so early anyway?” she asked.
“I told you, I have to go back to work.”
“You mean the restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“Nora, why are you doing this?” she asked me warily. “Mama doesn’t want to run the restaurant anymore, and she shouldn’t have to. She’s getting on in years, you know. She just wants to retire.”
“She can still retire. I can buy her share of the business so long as you keep yours.” Then, warming up to my idea, I said, “We could be partners, you and I. The Guerraoui sisters. How about that?”
“That sounds nice, but then what? Who’s going to run it?”
“You don’t think I can?”
“It’s not that. I just thought you wanted to write music.”
“I do want to write music, but I’m also not letting Baker get away with murder and I’m not giving up on Dad’s dream.”
“It was his dream, Nora, not yours. You don’t want to be living someone else’s dream, trust me.” Her voice brimmed with rage. She swiveled her legs off the ottoman and sat facing me, looking at me so intently that I thought she might grab me by the shoulders and shake me. “Look, if you’re going to do something as crazy as writing music, you might as well commit to it. Get rid of the diner and go write the best goddamn music you can.”
I was startled by her sudden passion. What could have caused it? And was it connected to the strain I had noticed earlier with her husband? These two made an ideal couple, or so I had always thought. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, bewildered by the turn our conversation had taken.
My sister gazed at me, as if deciding whether to trust me with whatever troubled her. A horned lizard skittered across the deck, finding some shade under the twins’ bicycles. The raven came back, taking a few hesitant steps toward the dining table. I waited. Salma seemed about to unburden herself, but the glass door slid open, and my mother appeared. She was out of widow’s white, and the cobalt blue of her dress made her look much younger. In her hands was a tray laden with summer dishes—vegetable kebabs and calamari salad and grilled eggplant and cut watermelon. The twins followed behind, arguing about who had won the game. Tareq came out, too, carrying a pot of coffee. And just like that, the moment of intimacy between my sister and me was over.
We moved to the table, where Tareq opened his gifts, commenting nicely about each one with a few nice words. From Aida, he received an unwearable silk tie, in a pattern of blue stripes on a bright yellow background. (“Thank you, habibti. Yellow is my favorite color.”) From Zaid, a fancy pen. (“I’ll use it to write my prescriptions.”) From Salma, a state-of-the-art audio system. (“I can’t wait to try it out.”) From my mother, a box of Belgian chocolates. (“These are my weakness.”) And from me, the card I had given him earlier. (“You’re so thoughtful.”)
But for the rest of the day, I found myself in the throes of a deep melancholy. How rare it was for my sister and me to talk about anything, let alone about something intimate. And just as we were about to, the moment had passed.
Jeremy
At the end of June, I had to go to a two-day training session on de-escalation techniques that Vasco had ordered a few weeks earlier, when the Bowden incident was still on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. The training was taking place in San Bernardino and, rather than drive the fifty miles back and forth, I’d decided to stay in town with one of the other deputies. For two days, we sat in a classroom and were told very different things from what we’d been told at the academy: attempt to defuse a tense situation with words, not weapons; if the suspect is agitated, demonstrate empathy by paraphrasing his statement; do not become emotionally involved in the encounter; assess the outcome before resorting to force. At the end of each unit, though, the trainer insisted that we had to do all this while putting our own safety first.
At dawn on the third day I drove back home, going straight to the police station for my regular shift and afterward to the community center, where I met Fierro for his support group. I was bone tire
d, and went for the coffee that sat at the table under the wall clock, pouring myself a giant cup and hoping it would be enough to keep me awake through the evening’s session. Fierro was in a foul mood. The promotion he’d been promised at the Walmart had not materialized, he told me, and he would remain sales associate for the foreseeable future. “Something else will come along,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I sounded convincing.
With a grunt, he leaned back in his chair, waiting for the moderator to arrive. But a few minutes before eight, we discovered that Rossi was out that night. His replacement was a frail-looking therapist named Dexter, who kept clicking and unclicking his ballpoint pen. “Who would like to start tonight?”
Doug, the bald-headed guy who always raised his hand first, talked about how agitated he was all the time, how he couldn’t eat anything, what a tough day he’d had. After twenty minutes of his aimless chatter, Adriana, the nurse, got frustrated and interrupted him. “There are other people here,” she said sharply.
“Now, now,” Dexter replied, his palms raised. “Let’s calm down.”
“I am calm,” she snapped.
Fierro was sitting with his arms crossed and his good ear cocked toward Adriana. “She didn’t say nothing,” he agreed. “She’s calm.”
Doug objected to being interrupted, Adriana asked what he thought would happen when he wouldn’t shut up, and Fierro agreed with her again. It took Dexter a long while to regain control of the room. But then he called on someone different to speak, and that upset Doug, Adriana, and Fierro all at once. I tilted my wrist discreetly to look at my watch. There was so much I still had to do that night. Fill up with gas. Write a check for my car insurance. Run a load of laundry, I was out of clean socks. Suddenly I felt ten pairs of eyes locked on me, and realized I had missed something. “Sorry. What was that?”
“Would you like to share something about your anger?” Dexter asked.
Me, angry? Well, since he asked. I was angry that Vasco had been using that abandoned baby for PR advantage. I was angry that he’d sent us to a training session in San Bernardino just to make himself look good. I was angry that people were afraid of my uniform. Inside it, I was just like them, but they only saw me as a political prop or some movie fantasy, nothing in between. I was angry about the war. God, was I angry about the war. People were being killed while Bush was painting still lifes and Rumsfeld was writing books and Cheney just wouldn’t fucking shut up. I was angry that I had to spend my evening here, listening to other angry people. “I’m just here for support,” I said.
“He’s with me,” Fierro said, raising his hand, seemingly relieved that he finally got a chance to speak. He talked about the usual: his wife. How she had moved on, how she had a new life with somebody else, how he’d been left behind. Adriana nodded thoughtfully while he spoke, as if she understood or agreed with him. It seemed that this support group was helping him open up about himself, and I was glad he had stuck with it, but I wondered how Mary was doing now, too, and I made a mental note to call or visit her at the hair salon. I needed a haircut anyway.
At the end of the session, as we were putting the folding chairs back in the utility closet, Fierro asked when Rossi would be back. “I’m not sure,” Dexter told him. “I think he might be moving out of state. But I’ll be here.”
It was dark when we stepped outside, and the air was muggy.
“I don’t like this new guy,” Fierro said as he pulled out his car keys.
“He’s just getting to know everyone. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“I guess,” Fierro said as we crossed the parking lot. “Wanna hit the bowling alley?”
“Not tonight.”
“Come on, dude. Just a couple of games.”
“No, I’m too tired.”
“You didn’t want to go last week, either.”
“I’ve got a lot going on.”
“How about a game of poker? My neighbors are playing tonight.”
“No, man. I feel like I’ve been driving for three days straight. I’m exhausted.”
“All right, then.” We shook hands, and I got into my Jeep and pulled out of the parking lot onto the 62. My windshield was dusty and in the yellow glare of my headlights the road seemed hazy. Never mind filling up with gas, I thought, or writing a check for the insurance, or running the laundry. All of that could wait. What I really needed now was some care, and some sleep. I turned on the radio, settling on a classic rock station, and headed for the cabin.
* * *
—
All the lights were on in the house. You could see everything inside, as clearly as if you were in a movie theater: the flower arrangement on the mantelpiece, the shelves that strained under the weight of books, the antique wooden chandelier, a baseball cap hanging from the hat peg. The fresh coat of paint made the kitchen look new and it startled me that even Nora at the window looked new. After she told me about her encounter with A.J. at the bowling alley, I’d insisted she get a second bolt for the front door, and I still planned to fix the loose screen on the kitchen window. The sound of my tires on the driveway gravel made her look up from the sink, and she dried her hands and came to the door. “How was training?” she asked.
“It was long.” I stepped across the threshold, took her in my arms, and kicked the door closed with my leg. All my worries shrank when I was with her. The loneliness I’d once taken for granted had disappeared from my life and in its place was something I hadn’t experienced before, the feeling that our two solitudes had joined together. Everything receded from my attention—the humming of the swamp cooler, the cooing of the turtledove, the music on the stereo. She was all that mattered. In another moment, we moved to the bed, struggling with buttons and hooks and zippers. I was taking off her bra when she froze and pushed me away, screaming. “There’s someone at the window.”
She scrambled for the sheets to cover herself, but I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down to the floor beside me. Covering her mouth with my hand, I listened to the sounds that came from the back of the house—a chair falling, keys dropping, footsteps across the backyard. “Stay right here,” I whispered, pulling up my pants. “Don’t move.”
I turned off the light, picked up one of the hiking sticks that slanted against a corner, and went to the front door. Outside, the light from the new moon was so scant that I could see only a few feet in any direction. I crept along the wall, past the swamp cooler with its birds’ nest, and rounded the corner to the backyard. The sound of the wire fence being scaled made me run blindly toward it. Only when I was about six feet away did I get a good view of the Peeping Tom trying to climb it. I swung the hiking stick and landed it with all my force on his hip. There was a cry of pain and then he fell to the ground. I swung the stick a second time, but a familiar voice stopped me. “Dude. Take it easy. It’s just me.”
“What the fuck?”
In the darkness, Fierro’s skin looked pale and his features seemed drawn as if by charcoal. He got up, rubbed the pain from his hip. “You swing that thing like a baseball bat. It hurts.”
“The fuck you doing here?”
“You missed bowling night again.”
“So you followed me?”
“I got curious where you’ve been going the last few weeks. You never want to hang out anymore.” He dusted himself off and pulled his hoodie over his head. Then he made that whistling sound he’d picked up from Fletcher, shaking his head at some realization he should’ve had long ago. “I didn’t know you liked hajji pussy so much.”
I punched him so fast his head snapped back. “Stay away from her,” I said.
He stumbled, let out a gasp, put his hand on his jaw, then steadied himself. “I’ll go wherever the fuck I want.”
I threw my fist again, but this time he was expecting me, and dodged it. He tried to land a punch, too, and we tumbled together to the ground, swinging an
d kicking at each other. The dirt scraped against my chest and I could feel specks of sand lodging themselves between my shoulder blades. Then my head hit something hard—a rock at the edge of the fence. There was nowhere else for me to go. I kneed him in the groin, then pushed myself up, straddled him, and began to pummel, not stopping even after I felt blood on my knuckles.
“Jeremy,” Nora called. “Jeremy. Stop.”
I pushed myself up and took a moment to catch my breath. The numbness cleared, and suddenly I felt the cut on my eyebrow and the ache in my hands. But aside from these, I felt good. Great, even. As though I’d been welcomed back to a familiar place.
“What happened?” she asked as she came closer.
She’d put on a pair of shorts and a white camisole, so thin that the outline of her breasts showed. I took a step forward, placing myself between Fierro and her.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Go back inside, baby.”
Behind me, Fierro was struggling to get up.
“What’s going on?” she said, craning her neck to look at him. “What’s he doing here?”
“Go back inside.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Inside. Please.” Her eyes traveled from Fierro to me, and back again. She seemed about to say something, then decided against it and walked back to the cabin. I watched until she had rounded the corner, then turned around. Fierro was still on the ground, his sweater halfway up his chest, his pants covered with dirt. With some effort, he stood up and dusted himself off. We looked at each other, taking the measure of what was happening, here in the dark and empty yard of an old cabin. Then he did something that stunned me: he started to cry.