And I close my eyes. Because that’s another thing I like about Dr. Ghosh. He’s not too pushy.
THE NEXT DAY, I’M WAITING
for him. Because it occurred to me last night that while I do not care a damn what Dr. Ghosh thinks about my family, I don’t want some government report misrepresenting what my abuela did for me. What if I’m dead sometime, and this report that Dr. Ghosh is probably writing gets sent to her, and in it, she sees all this stuff about my mom and my dad and nothing about her. Imagining that makes me sick. I practically jumped out of my bed to tell the nurse to call Dr. Ghosh, but I knew they probably wouldn’t make the call, and he probably wouldn’t have appreciated it if they had.
“Good afternoon, Luis.”
“Dr. Ghosh. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have? Well, that’s good. That’s good news. What do you have to tell me?”
“It’s about my abuela. My grandmother.”
“Yes?”
“She raised me, you know. And she did a great job. Not that you can tell from seeing me here. I mean, what I did and all. But I had a really nice childhood. My mom was an addict, but she wasn’t even important. My abuela loved me so much. I was really like a prince.”
“What do you mean, ‘what you did and all’?”
“What?”
“You said that I might not know you had a really good childhood because of ‘what you did and all.’ What did you mean?”
“Dr. Ghosh. It’s not about what I did. I’m trying to tell you that my abuela gave me a very nice life. And I wasn’t some screwed-up Mexican kid who signed up for the Army to stay out of jail or something.”
I almost said, “to get his green card or something,” but that made me think of Sam, and I don’t want to talk about Sam either.
“Okay. Okay. How do you feel about being Mexican-American, Luis?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you mention it a lot. You mention your Mexican heritage a lot, but then you talk about Mexicans trying to stay out of jail or your father’s Mexican gang. I was just wondering how you feel about having Mexican heritage?”
Like I said, Dr. Ghosh has some really shrink-stink questions. I can’t think of a response to this, so I keep quiet. I look away too, so it won’t feel as uncomfortable. I really don’t have anything to say to Dr. Ghosh about this.
“All right, Luis. Will you tell me about your abuela? She must be very special to you.”
Dr. Ghosh has a slight Indian accent, and I’ve never heard anyone say abuela quite like he does. I want his report to say something good about her, so even though I am kind of irritated at Dr. Ghosh, I answer.
“She’s a great lady, my abuela. She’s got a good job. She went to college when I was a kid. Her husband, my abuelo, died in a car accident when my mom was about fourteen, which was really hard on the family. But he had insurance, so they were okay that way. My abuela had worked in his office part time, but then she went to work in the executive office of the Boyd Group, and now she has a job at the Mirage.
“I grew up in the house she bought after my mom and my uncles left. It’s real nice. We have a pool. She sent me to Catholic school, but I didn’t want to go after eighth grade. I had friends on my block and they were going to Valley, the public high school, and I wanted to go with them. So, you know, it’s not like my childhood was really about who my mom was or my dad. I’m middle class. If my abuela hadn’t taken me in, I would have been in trouble. But she did. She took me in. She did everything for me. She raised a whole second family. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Thank you, Luis. Your abuela sounds like someone I would like to know. I’m glad you had her.”
“Yeah, well, I just don’t want some report about me mixing up my story. Making her out to be someone she’s not.”
“Yes. My report. Luis, I have to leave now. I have somewhere else to be. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Sure. Thanks, Dr. Ghosh.”
That’s the first time I’ve used up all the time he had. Usually I quit talking, and he decides to go.
DR. GHOSH IS LATE THE
next day, and for an hour or so, I am pretty pissed off. It would be just like the Army to stop paying for a shrink because I finally told him something. “Hey, we got you to talk. Not as tough as you think you are, are you? Yeah, we got you to talk. Now, suck it up and figure it out on your own.”
I’ve built up a pretty good head of steam by the time Dr. Ghosh walks in. And even though he hasn’t done anything, and apparently the Army hasn’t either, I’m still mad.
“Good afternoon, Luis. How are you feeling today?”
I don’t answer. I can’t believe how angry I am. If my head wasn’t busting open like it is, I’d knock Ghosh to the floor. Dr. Ghosh. What the hell sort of name is that? What are Indians anyway? Buddhist? Muslim? Something else. Dammit. Well, who the hell does Dr. I’m-so-important Ghosh think he is?
“Luis, you seem a little upset. Do you want to talk about it?”
Man, I hate those shrink-stink questions. I roll over, and then maybe I doze off, because the next thing I know, there’s a nurse in the room, and no Dr. Ghosh, and she wants me to get to the chair so she can change my bedsheets. Change the sheets. Boy, I really did a number on myself this time.
THE NEXT WEEK, I START
to let myself think of Sam a little. I want to remember that day, that mission. What happened just before. Why was Sam on the left? What was he doing?
I’ve thought about this day a lot, right after Sam got hit, just before I was hurt. And there’s a blank there. Even though I didn’t get a scratch, I can’t remember that day clearly. Sergeant Reidy asked me to write it down. The Army always wants a detailed report when something like that happens, but I kept coming up blank. We were on the road, we were making our usual pass, and then there was the explosion. But why had we stopped the Humvee? Why had we gotten out? Why was I so far away from Sam?
I can’t remember.
You don’t survive ninety-one IEDs taking a random stroll. Sam and I never did anything randomly. We were lucky, sure, but we were smart too. And we never did something without thinking it out first. Not if we had the time to think.
And then I think about that other day.
The day I will never tell Dr. Ghosh about.
Or anyone else.
I am the only person still alive to remember that day, and I guess I tried to get rid of that evidence too.
We weren’t on a run.
We were on a leave.
Off the base.
Sam wanted to get out. Have a conversation with someone not in Kalsu. Maybe a meal. But we were strung out. Three guys killed that week. Doing what we did. Could have been us. We pretended like it couldn’t have been, like we would have seen something, sensed it, but when you’ve fucked with ninety-one IEDs, you value two things: care and luck.
Yeah, we were careful. Nobody was more careful than Sam and me.
But we were lucky too. And that’s what we didn’t talk about. Couldn’t talk about. Because after ninety-one live ones, after enough guys die around you, you know that you don’t own luck. You know that luck runs out.
So there we were. In this dust-bit dirty market that served as the center of the village. We were paying attention, of course. We knew they hated us. Roles reversed, we would have hated them.
But even though they hated us, they loved us too. Especially their kids. We had candy in our pockets, and Sam had this damn yo-yo. He was some kind of yo-yo champion back home. Ever heard of that? A yo-yo champion? Well, if you’re from Wisconsin, it’s possible. So he’d get this beat-up wooden Duncan going—really fast—and as soon as he knew he had some kids hooked, staring at him from doorways and tent flaps and things, he’d start doing tricks. Obvious stuff—around the arm, under the leg—and then stuff you’ve never seen a yo-yo do. Fa
ster and faster—he had this extralong string—and all the time with this goofy spaced-out look on his face. Like he was in some other world. Like when he had that yo-yo going, he might have been in Wisconsin, or Nirvana, or God knows where. Sam usually looked stern, but when he messed around with a yo-yo, in the market, knowing the kids would be watching—hell, not just the kids, everyone—he blissed out.
I liked watching him too. But I hated that blissed-out stare. It didn’t fit with the Sam I knew, the one I trusted. I was always on double alert when Sam was like that, because he didn’t seem to be on alert at all, and I needed to keep it together for both of us.
So maybe it makes sense what happened.
A bad week. Me on double alert. In the market. None of our guys around.
There was a shout. Someone yelled something—I thought he said Allah, which scared the hell out of me—and then he came tearing at us, at everybody watching Sam. And something was on fire. He had a torch, or his shirt was on fire, I still don’t know which. I don’t know if he was attacking us or just trying to get some help because he somehow caught fire. People screamed, everyone was moving. I had my gun out, I was trying to see the man, trying to see what he was doing—fast, you got to think fast. And then I saw him.
The kid.
Ten, maybe eleven.
Looked like all the rest of them. Huge eyes. Thin.
And he was carrying something. A bag. Very gingerly. And I saw him look at the man, I saw that he knew him; he was so calm, he knew why the man was running. The kid had this bag, and he was headed straight for Sam. And I saw it. Everything had slowed down. My mind was crystal clear. I could see it all so perfectly.
The man was a decoy. The boy had a bomb. And he was headed for Sam.
“LUIS. ARE YOU AWAKE? IT’S
Dr. Ghosh.”
I’m awake. I roll over. I’m not mad anymore. I don’t know why I was mad. But I am a little startled that he walked in right then. Just then. He can’t read my thoughts, but sometimes it feels like he can. It feels like they might just beam out of my head and straight into his. And that makes me nervous.
“Hi, Dr. Ghosh.”
“Luis, the nurse tells me your physical therapy is going well. You’re working hard. I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, well there’s not that much else to do. Did you notice?”
“Yeah, I noticed.” He smiles, as if I’ve said something funny. So it occurs to me that Dr. Ghosh’s job probably isn’t that much fun—talking to guys like me—and I give him credit for smiling when he gets the chance.
“Luis, I want to ask you about that kid again. The one you talked about when you were still unconscious. Have you remembered anything about him?”
Man, this guy does not give up.
That’s what I mean about him reading my thoughts. I must have yelled about a lot of things when I was knocked out. How does he know to focus on that kid?
Well, Dr. Ghosh may think that he’s smart, and maybe he even thinks I’m some dumb spic, but he isn’t smart enough to get that out of me.
AFTER I SHOT, NOTHING HAPPENED
like I thought it would. People started to scream, and Sam came out of his blissed-out yo-yo trance, and I yelled, “Get back! He’s got a bomb!” Then the kid’s mother ran right up to him, him and the bag, and collapsed over the top of him, and nothing blew. Nothing blew but my mind and that crowd and that mom.
And then some guy dropped down next to the two of them, holding the mom, trying to get to the kid. And he grabbed the bag. Held it up.
“This? This! Is a bomb?” He spoke English. He yelled right at me.
And he dumped the bag out.
And Sam, who hadn’t even seemed to react to the guy on fire, just like that, he had his gun out, and he was pointing it, at the man, at everyone, and yelling, “This didn’t happen! This didn’t happen! This did not happen!”
And then he was grabbing me, and we were running, and we were back in the Humvee. We didn’t go back to Kalsu, we didn’t go back until the last possible minute of our leave. We drove all the way around to another village. Got out. Bought something. Sam did his yo-yo thing. Made eyes at some girl, enough so that some guy—her brother, maybe—came out and gave Sam a shove. Sam said, “Hey!”
And the whole time, I was shaking like a madman. I was shaking so hard that my teeth banged together and hurt for days. We didn’t talk. We didn’t say a damn word about what had just happened. There was a minute where Sam touched my arm. Just touched it and held his fingers there, and I think I stopped shaking. But then he let go, and the shaking started again.
Sam didn’t react when the guy shoved him—the brother or uncle or whatever the hell he was. He didn’t react, but he looked at the girl again. And the guy shoved him again. Then Sam was done.
It took me a while to figure out why Sam took those two shoves. I’d never seen him eye a girl wearing a hijab, and I’d never seen him take two shoves.
Sam and I were smart. And we were careful. And we didn’t do anything without thinking about it first.
“LUIS. THERE’S ANOTHER BOY I
want to talk to you about.”
Boy. Dr. Ghosh had never used the word boy before. He used the word kid, which is the one I use, the one I must have used when I was unconscious. What does he know? What did I say?
“Yeah.” I say it slowly, like I don’t care, like I haven’t noticed he used the word boy. Dr. Ghosh is smart. He knows he used boy for the first time.
“This is a boy who wrote you a letter. Do you remember that?”
Now I am confused, because I don’t know anything about a boy and a letter. Dr. Ghosh must see this on my face, because he says, “You got the letter just before the accident. Just before you got hurt. Have you remembered anything about that day?”
I don’t remember that day. I remember the fact. I remember that I shot myself. But that’s it. Weird, huh? Like, why would I be sure I did that if I couldn’t remember anything about doing it?
But I don’t.
There was the time before I knew why I was in the hospital, when I was trying to figure out what Dr. Ghosh meant that someone had shot me, and then there was just the knowledge. I had shot myself. And I had done it with a .22. Which isn’t even an Army issue.
And Dr. Ghosh and I talked about that too. When I told him that I had remembered, I told him that I remembered the information but not the event. He said that was pretty typical, and that I might never remember, or I might, and I should just talk to him about it if I wanted. I could bring it up whenever it came up, so to speak.
And he didn’t seem to care about the gun. Where I got it. Why I used it. Dr. Ghosh didn’t seem to think that was part of the story.
“Yes, Luis, you got a letter. From a young boy in Las Vegas. It was a school project in his third-grade class, I believe. To write to soldiers from Nevada.”
I don’t remember.
I don’t remember anything about this letter. And I am wondering why Dr. Ghosh is bringing it up. What difference it makes. Last Christmas, we got boxes of stuff from people in Las Vegas. The Blue Ribbon Moms sent us stockings filled with coffee and licorice and socks.
“The thing is, Luis, you got a letter from this little boy. And you answered him. You wrote him a letter back, and you put it in the post. And then you shot yourself.”
So that’s why Dr. Ghosh is interested in that letter.
Because I wrote the boy back.
What did I write to him?
I can’t remember anything about this. What would I have written?
Did I send a suicide note to an eight-year-old kid? The thought makes me queasy real fast, and my head just starts pounding. I can’t stand it. I sort of gasp. And I look around for the button that calls the nurse. And then Dr. Ghosh is standing next to me, and he’s holding my hand, and he says, “Luis, it’s okay. It’s okay, Luis. We’
re not going to talk about this right now. I am going to sit here, and you can rest. I’ll have the nurse give you more for the pain.”
And so I close my eyes. And my heart is beating. And my head feels like it has come off my body, it’s the size of this room, but I keep my eyes closed, and I don’t move, and I don’t think about anything. Because I might be about to die, right here. No .22 needed. That’s how much it hurts. That’s how crazy my body is going.
11
* * *
Avis
I SWING BY NATE and Lauren’s house about two. They need some glasses for a party they are having, and I have promised to leave them on their doorstep. Jim and Nate biked the Red Rock loop over the weekend and stopped to hike into Icebox Canyon. We used to love to take Nate and his friends on this hike, when they were big enough to manage the boulders and to follow the stream of water into the narrowing rock walls, until the sky was just a sliver of azure and the world the width of a hallway. If we hiked long enough, we came to a waterfall crashing over the mottled sandstone above and into a stone basin. Nate and his friends would splash there, and sitting at that clear pool of water in the desert on Sunday, Nate had gotten upset, angry that Jim wanted to sell the house.
I have to admit, hearing that made me feel good. On the night we told Nate about the separation, I thought he blamed me. He said something to Jim about giving me another chance, a comment that was still burning in me, so to hear that he had stood up for me yesterday pleased me. It’s hard not to want Nate to be angry at Jim.
I AM SURPRISED TO SEE
Nate’s door standing open when I pull up. I get one of the boxes out of the trunk and call his name as I head up the walk. Nobody answers, but I hear a sound as if something has fallen.
Then I am in the doorway, shocked by the scene before me.
“Nate, what are you doing? Stop!”
Nate has Lauren in a vise grip. His hand is squeezed so tightly around her wrist that I wait to hear the snap. His other hand is in her hair, pulling her head sideways. She is oddly silent, intent on getting free, or on not antagonizing him further, or maybe even on not letting me know how much pain she is in.
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