We Are Called to Rise

by Laura McBride

“How are you, Nate?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “It just seems like your Dad and I can do better on our own right now.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “Will you tell me about it? What happened?”

  “Why, Mom? Haven’t you already made up your mind? Don’t you already know that I went crazy and killed a kid’s mom? Don’t you already know that, Mom? You and everyone else who watches the local news?”

  His voice is angry and hurt and oddly high. And for once, this emotion does not make me afraid. What else could he feel?

  I wait.

  “They were both crazy, Mom. The man and the woman. He was just belligerent. Corey could handle him, but she was really crazy. She was shaking and grabbing her son and holding him by the neck and talking about Allah and how she would rather be dead, and her children too. I was trying to save that kid’s life, Mom. I was trying to protect my partner. That’s what I was doing.”

  Nate believes what he is saying. Others are going to believe him too. Because it’s true. It is what Nate believed, it is what Nate was thinking. But it’s not the whole truth. And as much as I want it to be, as much as I want my son to be innocent now, I know that what Nate was thinking is not quite the right measure here. What was he thinking when he had Lauren by the hair? What was he thinking when he crashed that car? What would someone else have been thinking faced with that woman and her child?

  I don’t speak.

  “You’re my mother, and you don’t believe me. Dad believes me. Lauren believes me. The guys on the force believe me. My sergeant believes me. What does it say that you don’t believe me, Mom?”

  “I believe you, Nate.”

  And I do. I believe that this is what he believes and what he was thinking. How can I tell him that I don’t believe that what he was thinking was rational? That I don’t believe he can be trusted to think rightly? At least, not always.

  “Do you, Mom? It doesn’t feel like you believe me. You’re sitting there, and I don’t think you believe me.”

  “Nate. I love you. I have loved you your entire life. But I am afraid for you. I see—”

  He interrupts me.

  “What, Mom? You see what? What do you think you see? What do you think you know? Do you think I’m crazy? Do you think I’m some crazy-ass warrior, Mom? Some guy who can’t stop fighting? What do you know about it, Mom? What do you think you know?”

  “Nate. Please.”

  “Please what, Mom? You obviously think I’m crazy. Maybe you’ve always thought I was crazy. You always blamed me for Paul. You’re so on your high horse about a fight I had with Lauren. Did you ever think about my side of that? Did you ever think Lauren might have been at fault? No, it’s always Nate’s fault. I’m your son. I’m your only child. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “Nate, what are you talking about? Stop this. I am on your side. I will always be on your side. I think you need help. I think something happened to you, in Iraq, this last time. I think you need to see a doctor.”

  “So, it’s my fault. Right. Some crazy immigrant tries to kill her son, and I stop her from doing it, and I’m the one who’s wrong. That’s how you see this, Mom? That’s how you see it?”

  He is standing now, and he is angry, and for an instant, I am afraid. But then a deep calm comes over me. If Nate is dangerous, if Nate cannot control himself, then I am the one who should be here. Better me than Lauren.

  “Mom, do you know what it was like being your kid? Being the child who was born after Emily died, being the only kid you and Dad had? Do you know what that was like, Mom?”

  “Nate, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you, Mom. You and Dad and me. It was so intense. I could never get away from it. Being everything to both of you. Just me. There was no one else. I don’t even have a cousin.”

  “Nate, this isn’t the problem.”

  “Yes, it is, Mom. It was too much. It was too much for me. Too much for Dad. Why do you think Dad’s with Darcy now? Don’t you see, nobody can take it? How much you care? How intense you are?”

  I don’t know how this conversation got started. I don’t know how we are talking about me, about what is my fault, instead of about what has happened. I intend to place my hand on the table, but it comes down hard. It lands with a clunk, and it rattles the cup, and that startles me, so perhaps that is why my voice is not as strong as I want it to be.

  “Nate. This isn’t what we are talking about. This isn’t the point.”

  “You scared the hell out of me, Mom. You were always afraid something was going to happen to me. I was going to run in the street, or fall out of a tree, or get cancer or something.”

  “Nate, I didn’t hold you back. I let you climb to the top of every monkey bar, ski in Utah when I knew there were avalanches and you would not stay on the trail, drive around in that truck as soon as you were sixteen. You joined the Army at eighteen, and you think I held you back? You think I was overprotective?”

  “You weren’t overprotective, Mom. You weren’t overprotective.”

  His voice is so bitter. And we both sit. Silent.

  Finally, I speak.

  “Nate, it’s true. I was always afraid for you. I tried not to let that limit you. I tried to let you be who you were. This bold, bold boy. I didn’t want to hold you back. The last thing I wanted was to make you afraid.”

  “But I was afraid, Mom.”

  His voice breaks.

  “I’m scared, Mom. I’m going out of my mind. It’s not about you. It’s not about what you did or didn’t do. I always knew you loved me, you and Dad. Hell, I felt like the whole neighborhood loved me. I’d never have survived Iraq without that. Because you can’t imagine, Mom. What it was like there. What we had to do.”

  He’s crying now, fat, slow tears that drop on the table between us.

  “I thought I would die every day. Every hour. Not at first. Crazy shit happened in the first tour, but I don’t know, it didn’t bother me like it bothered some other guys. I mean, we were at war. We did what we were told to do. People died. Kids died. Women died. But I thought we had to do it. I thought it was part of a grand plan. What my generation had to do.

  “And then, I don’t know, it just changed. I mean, what were we doing over there? What was the plan? Why were we there? Some hot-shit general would come to Baghdad, or some senator, and it was all the same. They didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t know what they were talking about. They didn’t even listen to our officers, the guys who really knew what was going on. We were fighting one war in Anbar, and they were fighting some whole other war, with a whole different set of rules, in Tikrit. So what were the rules? Was I supposed to know who should die and who shouldn’t?

  “And the way guys died, Mom. The way our guys died. Not when you were expecting it. Not when you were all geared up and looking for the enemy. No, guys just died going to take a piss. Picking up an old lady’s scarf. Backing up to throw a football. You never knew when.

  “Or how it would happen. There’d be a lid on the ground, just a standard garbage lid. And you’d think the wind had blown it off. Like if you saw it on your street at home. And some guy would be talking, telling us about how he was going to paint his house for his wife, and then he’d lean down, start to pick up the lid, and the whole thing would blow. And the guy would blow too. Just blow apart, right in front of you. You’d be throwing your arms up, trying to get away from the blast, and you’d see the guy’s leg in the air next to you.

  “And there were kids everywhere. They were hoping we would have chocolate. They’d want to play ball. Until one of them would light someone up. Someone would lean over to hand the kid a piece of chocolate, and boom, the kid would go up. A bomb on his back. Did he know it? Did he know he had a bomb? Who put it there?

  “You’re afraid of the kids.
You’re afraid of the old ladies. You’re scared as hell of any rock you can’t see around, any building with a hole up high, where a gun might come through. You’re looking for it all the time. You’re seeing it even when it isn’t there. And then guys are doing stuff. Stuff you can’t believe. Sick stuff. Cruel stuff. Stuff you couldn’t imagine in training. And the officers are looking the other way. And you’re thinking that if they weren’t doing that stuff, you probably would be dead already. Because maybe they’re scaring the locals a little. Maybe their crazy stunts are keeping things a little in control.

  “And then you get back. And you’re home. And Lauren is asking me about my life there. And what am I supposed to say? You can’t even imagine it. It’s like a dream. Only you’re still so damn jittery. And I’m still looking for that hole in the wall up high, and the rock, and the kid with the bomb. I’m looking for it all the time. I can’t stop. If I hadn’t been looking when I was there, I’d be dead. I wouldn’t be here, Mom. But I’m still waiting to get killed here. I can’t stop feeling like something is about to happen, something bad, something I have to be ready for, I have to be quick, I have to be ready.”

  I don’t think Nate has ever said this many words in one burst to me.

  And perhaps for the first time I see that Nate is like Rodney, and like Sharlene. Something has happened to him that is more than he can bear. He wants to steel his courage, to soldier forth, but he keeps sliding back. I try to look at him, try to say something that will help, but he can’t look me in the eye, and I can’t think of what to say. I wait, looking at him, hoping the right words will come to me. I want to tell him that the pain will go away, that it will be possible to go back to the way life was before, but I don’t know this. I have seen that this doesn’t always happen, so the words won’t come.

  He sets his head on the table, and I lay my hand on his hair.

  I tell him that I love him, that I will always love him.

  He doesn’t respond, doesn’t move.

  But I know he is listening, and I tell him over and over.

  IT’S FUNNY WHAT COMES TO

  mind when the worst possible thing happens. After Jim left, I thought my life was over. I had tried so hard, and Jim had stopped loving me anyway. But failing isn’t proof that nothing matters or that we were fools to care. We fail even though things matter very much; it’s the possibility of failure that makes them matter even more.

  I can hear Cheryl’s voice telling me her “fraction of a mite of an atom of a life is fucking great.” I can hear myself asking her why anyone would care if an ant stepped on the leg of the ant in front of it, or whether a mussel dried out after a high tide. And finally, for the first time since I wagged my middle-aged ass at Jim, who coughed, I can see clearly how crazy my thinking was. At fifty-three years old, I almost lost what I had somehow known from the time I was a small girl. I almost lost the knowledge that made my life work, the awareness that got me out of Sharlene’s world, the faith that made three decades of marriage possible and everything good that happened in those years: the family we had, the friends we made, the laughs we shared, the tears, the everything of it. At fifty-three, I almost forgot what Avis Briggs always knew.

  It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing.

  What is most beautiful is least acknowledged.

  What is worth dying for is barely noticed.

  I GREW UP, THE BASTARD

  child of a dirt-poor mother, in downtown Las Vegas. I raised my son in a town nicknamed Sin City, in a place most American families wouldn’t dream of bringing their children, in a state where prostitution is legal and gambling is sacrosanct. And the little world we created, Jim and I and all those other hopeful families, was a little bit of perfect, a little bit of just what children are supposed to have, of just what families are supposed to be.

  “Tell me the truth, how much time do you spend wishing you lived somewhere other than Las Vegas?”

  “That’s a trap. Don’t waste your time thinking of that. Live this moment.”

  “Bullshit, Avis. I know you’ve thought about leaving. I would kill for a street with a bookstore and a coffee shop and something to look at. I would kill to be able to walk somewhere. To see a tree.”

  “Oh my God, to live in a city with a subway system. Not to even own a car.”

  “Where our kids could like go somewhere, without someone driving them? Where we could be outside in the summer?”

  “Where there are schools with windows in the classrooms? And green grass? And some normal number of children?”

  “What if our kids could all bike to a decent park? Or the store? What if the store wasn’t a 7-Eleven?”

  “Ahhh. Bliss.”

  “Yeah, but what about us? What about all of us gals? Where could we all go? We’re in this together. Ella wrote in her second-grade essay that she had four moms. I mean, yeah, I wish I had some family in town, but if we all did, we wouldn’t need each other. It wouldn’t be like this.”

  “Julie, you’re a sap. We love you.”

  “That calls for a drink. Let’s open the wine. Someone order pizza before the kids start collapsing.”

  Julie and Cheryl and Jill and Margo and I might have had that conversation a hundred times when our children were young. Over and over. And Julie was right. Having each other was enough. What we had done was enough.

  Yes, visiting some other place, some beautiful city, a beach, a forest, street life, yes, all that could make one wish for something else: for something other than asphalt and concrete and strip malls, desert dirt, stucco roofs, skinny little trees being held up by thick bands of rubber. For a day or two, one might dream of another life, a life that would make a better-looking film clip, and then get back to this one, this life that was also easy, where the money was good, the houses were cheap, the sky was always blue, and everyone was free to make a friend, to join a group, to try something new.

  Boomtown.

  And because it was so easy, so take-it-for-granted easy, we did take it for granted. My friends dreamed of the lives they were meant to live. As they kept on living this one. I dreamed of the childhood I didn’t have. As Nate lived it.

  And it seems like we were right. Living in the picture-postcard city, in the beautiful place, wouldn’t have been everything we imagined. Because if we already had all that, would we have tried so hard to make it work here? Would we have worked so hard to keep our children friends, to put on musicals at the school, to insist that the city add a crossing guard on Pecos, to spend all our New Year’s Eves together in one chaotic champagne and Scrabble and noisemaking heap?

  Because we did.

  Because that was the thing about making it all work in a boomtown.

  We created a community out of nothing. And we were proud of it. And maybe we didn’t look like a lot of other communities out there. We weren’t much alike. One of us had turned a trick in a casino before she finished high school. Others of us had gone to college. One of us had never been inside a church. Others of us prayed daily. One of us had never known a grandparent, an uncle, or a cousin. Others had grown up in families in which nobody had ever divorced. Some of us had relatives who were drug addicts, some of us had worked nights in casinos, some of us had grown up thinking darn was a curse word. Some of us were military families, some of us could barely stand to rec
ite the Pledge of Allegiance.

  We weren’t a community anyone would predict.

  That’s what we were trying to say in all those conversations about wanting to leave but not wanting to leave each other. We lived in a misunderstood city, in a place that thrives only by convincing outsiders that it is something it is not, and the magic is how free it leaves those left within. That was true for Sharlene, and it was true for me, and it was true for my friends.

  And what we built did matter.

  Even if it didn’t last. Even if it didn’t change the world. Even if lots of families were doing the very same thing in lots of other communities. It still mattered. For a little while, a man and a woman fell in love and did the best they could for their children. For a little while, a neighborhood of families helped each other out, and loved each other’s kids, and tried to make the world better. And some of those kids will do the same thing. And some of those kids will have a hard time. And some of those marriages will last. And some won’t. And it still all mattered.

  25

  * * *

  Roberta

  THE AHMETI CHILDREN WERE assigned to Lacey Miller, and I had known her for years. I stopped by on Tuesday, just after the staff meeting. They would have gone over all the new cases, and Lacey would have an idea what the options were for Bashkim and Tirana. The children had been placed in separate foster homes, at opposite ends of the city, and my first priority was to find out if there was any way to fix that.

  Lacey’s desk was in a kind of open alcove off the stairs, and we couldn’t discuss the case in a coffee shop, so we met in the director’s office. Lacey didn’t care for him, and even though he was out of town, her body radiated a slight unease at being in his space. We sat at a small conference table near the window. Lacey’s head was silhouetted against the black lines of the window frame and the sunny panes of glass. It hurt to look directly at her, and I couldn’t see her face clearly. I kept trying to avoid the painful contrast of light and dark behind her head.