That's Not a Thing

by Jacqueline Friedland

  I hear the ding of the elevator and look through the all-glass wall of the conference room to see Moe emerging from the opening doors, along with another young man who is probably the interpreter. Though it’s not the same interpreter who was with him last time. Rose walks out to the reception desk, and I follow behind her to greet them.

  “Good afternoon,” the man with Moe says. “I am Arnie, the translator.”

  “Excellent.” Rose speaks first, showing herself to be the one in charge. She reaches out to shake Arnie’s hand. “I’ll try not to keep you too long.”

  Arnie is older than Moe, probably in his mid-thirties. He’s taller, too, somewhere around five foot eight, as opposed to Moe’s mere five feet, four inches of stature. They have the same caramel-colored complexion, but Moe is the handsomer of the two, with his sparkling brown eyes and wide-open smile. I notice for the first time that his teeth are in surprisingly good shape, though I wish he would lose the silver hoop in his left ear.

  “It is . . . good . . . seeing . . . you.” Moe ekes out the greeting word by word, as he nods at Rose and me. She and I exchange an openly impressed glance, silent kudos to the bit of progress Moe seems to be making with his English.

  We sit down at the conference table, Arnie and Moe on one side, Rose and I on the other. I have the irrelevant thought that we’re in the perfect position to begin a rousing card game as Rose charges straight to business. She begins asking Moe for elaboration on his prior statements, one after the other. He tells us again how his village was inhabited by Rohingya people like him, a Muslim group that has been persecuted in Myanmar for decades. He explains that the Tatmadaw, which are the Burmese armed forces, have been targeting the Rohingya people for ethnic cleansing.

  I hold up a finger indicating that Moe should pause in his story, and I turn to Rose. Her dark eyebrows are rising in what appears to be impatience. “This is the same information he’s already told us. We need more information about how these conditions affected him personally. Can you try to steer him in that direction?”

  Rose sighs as she turns back toward Moe and Arnie, rewording her question. “What happened to you, Moe, in your home, that made you decide to leave?”

  Arnie repeats the question in Burmese, and Moe’s eyes shift from Rose to me and then back to Arnie before he responds in Burmese. “They arrested my uncle, but with no reason,” Arnie speaks as though he is Moe, his eyes on Rose. “They took him away.” Moe is finally telling us something new. “My mother, she told me to go, to escape before they came back for me. I did not want to go, because then my mother and my sister would be unprotected. The secret police, they are known to commit terrible violence on the village girls or sell them. So I would not go away.”

  He stops then, as though that is the whole story.

  “What happened next?” I press. Rose shoots me a look like I’ve spoken out of turn, as though only she can ask the questions.

  Moe eyes scan the room as he answers the translated question, looking everywhere except at us.

  “My cousin told me the Tatmadaw were coming back, that they were at the other end of the village, making more arrests, that they had my name and they were coming for me. So then I did run.” He swallows. “I don’t know now, about my mother.”

  I remember my musings from earlier, about Moe being one of the lucky ones, but as I watch his face tighten, I begin to rethink the word lucky.

  “What about your sister?” I ask, and I feel Rose tense up in the leather chair beside me, her anger at me for commandeering the conversation escalating.

  Arnie repeats the query in Burmese and Moe swallows hard, like the question has surprised him. The interpreter says something else, in his own words, and Moe shakes his head, his jaw clenched.

  “What is it?” I ask as Rose’s phone pings with a message from its spot beside her notepad on the table. I glance her way as her eyes dart to the screen.

  “You know what?” Rose interrupts, pushing back from the table. “They need me downstairs for a few minutes. You seem like you’ve got this.” She flings the words in my direction, her tone acidic.

  I am too focused on the question of Moe’s sister to care whether Rose is miffed that I’ve somehow encroached on her authority.

  “Thanks for your help,” she adds to Arnie as she whisks up her papers and marches back toward the elevator.

  “Your sister,” I say again as soon as the glass door swings shut, my eyes focused on Moe.

  He shakes his head no, and I’m surprised he understood.

  “Please,” I say directly to Moe, but then I glance quickly at Arnie, wondering if he can help convince Moe to reveal the information. “The more we know about what happened to you, the better we can argue your case. Evidence about your other family members is important to your application.”

  As Arnie repeats my words, Moe lets out a heavy breath of air, his eyes shifting from Arnie to me, then back to Arnie, and finally to his hands. He pulls absently on a loose thread hanging from his chambray shirt before speaking again, quietly.

  “I found her,” Arnie translates, “in Mae La, in Thailand. I didn’t think I would see her again, but then she was there, standing in the center of the small market, just beside the mangoes, on my fifth morning in the camp. She had a wound healing down the side of her face, a scar coming, but besides that, I thought she was all right. All she knew of our mother was that the military men had taken her somewhere. We couldn’t go back for her, so we started making plans to go somewhere else together—Australia, America.”

  He looks up at me, and I nod encouragingly.

  “She was not all right, though.”

  Though I can’t understand his words directly, I can hear that Moe’s voice is laced with anger now.

  “She had been made pregnant by the Tatmadaw.”

  Moe pauses to clear his throat, turning his gaze out the window in an effort to compose himself. While I wait, I realize that he hasn’t mentioned his sister’s age.

  Finally, he continues.

  “When I found people to get us the documents,” Arnie translates, “so that we could go out from the country, through Bangkok, she was so near the time when the baby would come. I said we should wait to go until after the baby came, but she refused to travel with the child. She thought it was safer for them both just to stay at Mae La. Safer for me also, if they didn’t hold me back, she said. She refused, refused,” he repeats.

  Moe looks at me and pauses for a moment to wipe his eyes.

  “And I left anyway. I left her behind.”

  We are all silent as we absorb the enormity of Moe’s words.

  “How did you make the choice?” I ask, my curiosity genuine, not simply a desire to fill in blank spaces on the I-589.

  He purses his lips, thinking for a moment. When he finally speaks, Arnie nods before translating:

  “I decided that she would not want me to give up my future for her.”

  Although Moe makes this declaration as though the decision had been a simple one, I can see virulent emotions simmering just below the surface. As I watch the vein pulsing in his forehead, I wonder what I would have done in his place. My lawyer’s mind notes that Moe’s application will, in fact, be significantly stronger with this new information about his uncle’s arrest, his mother’s disappearance, and his sister’s sexual assault, all of which will establish that the alleged pattern of mistreatment by the military directly affected his family. Shame on me for not having discovered this information sooner, as the offenses committed against his family go toward proving the legitimacy of the threat of harm he perceived toward himself. It will help if Moe has any proof of these events —papers regarding his uncle’s arrest, or even a photograph of his sister with a bulging belly. I worry that if I ask, I’m going to find myself holding a photo of twelve-or thirteen-year-old girl.

  I open my laptop to stall for a moment, and I see an email waiting from Peri Holz, the administrative assistant I share with a few other junior lawyers. I click
the message and read, Emergency Kinderwohl meeting in twenty minutes.

  I quickly tap back a reply: Thanks. Pls let them know I’ll be a few min late bc I’m with another client.

  Screw them and their chewing tobacco. I’m not leaving this meeting before it’s good and finished. Maybe there’s a part of me that wants to poke the hornets’ nest, provoke the higher-ups into firing me. But when I think about how pissed Alexandra, the supervising associate, will be that I didn’t come running to the meeting, I flinch. Okay, so maybe I should start wrapping up this conversation.

  I ask about a photo, but Moe has nothing of the sort. Rose reappears and sits back in the chair she had vacated, without saying a word, as if she is waiting for me to fill her in. Moe’s reference to his future has reminded me that we still need more information about his plans, about how he is going to become a contributing member of American society if his application is granted. I remind Rose about this line of questions, and she asks Arnie.

  “The IRC got me a position in a Chinese restaurant uptown. I wash the dishes and sweep the floors. I hope soon they are going to give me more hours of working time.”

  I wonder if I should try to get Moe into the class Wesley is running at the soup kitchen, help him learn skills that could translate into more hours of work for him somewhere. But then I remember that Wesley is almost finished with the course. If he’s not teaching another semester of the life skills class, he must know that his health is about to start deteriorating more rapidly. I swallow the lump that has suddenly risen in my throat and turn my attention back to Moe. “We’re going to do everything we can,” I say, looking directly at him, as though we don’t need Arnie’s help in order to communicate, “to make sure you get the future your sister wanted for you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  May 2017

  I wake up to bright sunshine streaming in through Aaron’s weak excuse for blackout shades and feel strong arms wrapping themselves around my middle. It’s been more than five weeks since I moved in, but I still haven’t finished unpacking my boxes. I tell myself that it’s some sort of new procrastination trait I’ve developed and not a metaphorical act symbolizing a reluctance to commit. I’m trying my level best not to let any of my lingering feelings for Wesley jeopardize my future with Aaron. While I must admit to myself that I haven’t completely ejected Wesley from my thoughts since I saw him last, I have made a concerted effort to avoid him, which is also an effort to protect my relationship with Aaron.

  Although now, as I lie in bed with my eyes open, staring at the six closed moving boxes piled on top of each other against the opposite wall of the bedroom, I wonder if I should just check to see how Wesley is doing. When Aaron asked me nearly two months ago, the day after our argument on the topic, what I was going to do to help Wesley, I told him that I didn’t think the disease had progressed all that far yet, that I could wait until Wesley really needed physical assistance before I stepped in. Neither of us has brought it up since. I have also stopped going to the soup kitchen, having finally realized that my plan to desensitize myself to Wesley by spending increased time in his orbit was just a weak rationalization on my part.

  It’s Saturday, and Aaron is starting a shift at the hospital in a few hours. I decide to get up and make us brunch before he heads to the gym. Better yet—I pull out the stack of takeout menus above the fridge in his kitchen, pick up my phone, and order us some crêpes and omelets from the French-Greek gastro-diner down the street.

  The food arrives twenty minutes later, and I marvel at the speed at which things can happen in this great city I’ve lived in for the last decade. I tiptoe back into the bedroom and then ask myself why I’m creeping, since I’m planning to wake Aaron anyway. I sit on the side of the bed and take a moment to admire the expanse of his naked back. I feel a primal surge of lust thinking about the vast amount of space this one human manages to occupy, and an equal sense of contentment as I run my hand over his bare shoulders.

  “Good morning, Dr. Rapp,” I say too loudly, knowing the noise will jar him into consciousness.

  He turns over relatively quickly and fixes me with one of his irresistible grins, all teeth and just the littlest hint of a single dimple. “Ooh, are we role-playing? Are you finally going to be my nurse?”

  “Shut up.” I punch him playfully in the thigh, or what I think is his thigh, beneath the white sheet. “I ordered Nutella crêpes and spinach omelets. Come.” I give a little yank on his hand. He ambles out of the bed, pulling on a pair of drawstring jersey pants that greatly flatter his abs, and then follows me to the living room.

  As we sit on the couch and each unwrap the foil from our crêpes in our standard “dessert first” brunch move, I breathe in the smell of chocolate spread and decide that today I am going to wear my big-girl panties.

  “So, I think I’m going to visit Wesley today,” I announce, proud of myself for declaring my intentions in advance of my actions.

  Aaron glances over at me and then looks back to his crêpe. “Okay.”

  “I thought I’d go down to the restaurant this afternoon, just see how he’s doing.”

  “Okay,” he says again.

  I turn my body on the sofa to face him and take his chin in my hand, turning his head toward me. He raises his eyebrows at me and keeps chewing. For all I can tell, he looks genuinely calm.

  “I’m going to take what you say at face value,” I tell him, “so if you’ve got a problem with this, say so. Otherwise, I won’t know it bothers you.”

  “It does bother me,” he says, and I wonder what to say, “but I think it’s the right thing to do, and you need to do it.”

  We stare at each other in silence for a moment, each evaluating the other’s position.

  “Okay,” I finally say.

  “Okay,” he says, and turns back to his food.

  “But,” I say, and I wait for him to look back over at me before I continue speaking, “you are my priority, and I don’t want to do anything you’re aren’t okay with, so you have to speak up. If you see something, say something.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re my priority,” I repeat, willing it to be true.

  THREE HOURS LATER, I am standing on Greenwich Avenue, wondering if I should be here, staring at the painted door of Thunder Chicken. I think back to that moment outside my building several weeks ago, when I felt like Wes was going to kiss me, when I almost let that happen, and I know that I am playing with fire. But then I remember the way Wesley and I used to be, the magic that seemed to swirl around us like a vortex every time we looked at each other, and I push open the door of the restaurant with an involuntary burst of excitement.

  A willowy hostess awaits at a podium just past the vestibule. “Good afternoon,” she greets me with some sort of Eastern European accent that I can’t place and not even a hint of a smile. “You have a reservation?”

  I didn’t expect the restaurant to be so full at lunchtime, but every last table appears to be occupied, and another group of people is walking in the door behind me. I hadn’t meant to come at such a busy time, and I second-guess myself. But then I see the hostess looking behind me at the next group, getting ready to dismiss me, and that gets my goat.

  “I’m not here to eat,” I tell her. “I’m looking for Wesley Latner.”

  The young woman’s eyes snap back toward me as she looks me over now from head to toe, taking in my casual white T-shirt, black leggings, and white platform sneakers. Clearly, in my informal garb, I am not from the health department. Maybe she thinks I’m some sort of stalker who’s pining after Wesley and tracking him back to his restaurant. Which, actually, is precisely what’s going on.

  “Chef is very busy with the brunches. It is about what?”

  “Oh. I’m just . . .” I look back at the room full of diners, bustling servers, and laughing patrons, a group of fashionable people all clearly in the know about clothing, eateries, and everything else that makes someone someone in this high-stakes city. “I�
�ll come back another time.” I pull my phone out of my purse and glance down at the screen as I turn to leave in a lame attempt at looking busy and important while I go.

  As I scoot past the two couples that have been waiting behind me, I hear someone call my name and turn to see Wesley coming toward me. I’m struck, as always, by the draw I feel toward the vivid emerald of his eyes, his thick lips, but then I notice his awkward gait and I look down to see that he’s using not one, but two canes, as he hobbles toward me. His jaw is clenched as he approaches, and I can tell that he is expending great effort to make it appear as if this hurried walking is not enormously difficult. I hustle back past the other patrons who are still waiting for the hostess so that he can stop the charade.

  “Hi,” I say as I lean in to give him an awkward kiss on the cheek. He leans forward on his canes, and our cheeks connect for a split second before I step back.

  “Sorry,” I say in a rush, “I was coming to check in on you, but I didn’t realize you guys would be so busy. I don’t know why I assumed you did primarily a dinner business.”

  “No worries,” he says as the hostess passes by, four slate menus in her hand, leading two couples around us. She dips her high cheekbones down in a nod toward Wesley, who nods back absently.

  “They don’t really need me,” he says, his eyes back on me. “I’ve handed over the reins and have only been coming in to oversee my replacements. For better or for worse, it seems I’ve found two very capable guys, and I’ve effectively made myself obsolete.”

  “Oh, well, then do you want to sit and catch up for a minute?” It’s more forward than I usually am, more forward than I expected to be today, but I don’t want Wesley to remain standing on my account. I glance around quickly, wondering where we can even sit down, as even the seats at the bar are full.

  “Sure,” he says, sounding relieved, perhaps even pleased. “There’s an office in the back.”