by Kate Hewitt
“Yes, my mother, my brother, and I.”
“You were detained because you were Bosniak?”
“Half Bosniak.” Bosniak, a Bosnian with Muslim heritage. And that had been enough to start a war. “My father was Muslim, my mother Catholic.”
“And why were you released?”
“It was a prisoner exchange, just the women and children.”
“And what happened after you were released?”
“I went to a city called Mostar, where I stayed with my relatives until the war ended, and then after, until I gained refugee status and came to America.”
“It took a long time to gain that status?”
Three years from the point of application, when I’d been eighteen and able to apply as an adult. “It often does.”
“What did you do during that time?”
I shrugged. “I went to school, and then I worked in a local shop.”
Lisa nodded slowly, looking unsurprised, unmoved. She’d already known, I realized. It all had to be in my immigration records. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I understand talking about this might be troubling for you.”
It wasn’t troubling; I refused to let it be so. I refused to feel anything about any of that, but even so I resented her making me say it. “May I go now?”
“Of course. You are free to go at any time, Maria. You are merely helping us in our inquiries. Thank you for coming in.”
I nodded, not wanting to say anything more. I rose from my seat and started towards the door.
“If you remember anything,” Lisa called after me. “Anything at all… you will be in touch, won’t you?”
“Of course,” I mumbled, and then I was out of the room, taking big gulps of air as if I’d been suffocating.
“Are you all right, Maria?” Cathy asked, looking concerned as she came up to me. “Let me get you some water.”
“I’m fine.” Just as I’d told the man on the street yesterday, just as I kept telling myself, all these years: I’m fine. I’m fine. What else could I be? No one would believe me if I told them the truth—that, inside, I think I am probably as dead as Laura West now is. That I have been for over twenty years, and by choice, because being alive hurt too much. Far better to be a ghost, drifting through my days.
“I’m sorry about the police,” Cathy said in a low voice. “They don’t realize how troubling it can be, to have police here, asking all sorts of questions. The man on the subway was most likely just some stranger on drugs. That’s what everyone thinks.”
I nodded slowly, wanting to believe her, even as I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that something had been familiar about that sketch, that perhaps I had seen that man before. Here, at Global Rescue? Or on the street? Or was I just imagining that sense of familiarity, out of some sort of misplaced fear?
I left Global Rescue and walked back to the subway station, one foot in front of the other, head down. The day was clear and cold, the sky a hard, bright blue above. Mid-November, and the city was gearing up for Thanksgiving, a holiday I had never celebrated. The sense of expectation, like snow in the air, passed me by.
Back at the salon, Neriha merely raised her eyebrows and I shook my head. I had a customer waiting and I immersed myself in work, in the comforting and mind-numbing routine of washing, cutting, brushing.
I’d trained to be a hairdresser here in America, as part of a charitable program to help refugees gain new skills. There was something innately satisfying about it, taking the old and making it new. Creating beauty, even in such a small way. I always enjoyed the pleased smile of my customer in the mirror, as she turned this way and that, admiring the way her hair swung or bounced.
But today, as I snipped and chatted by rote, my mind drifted back to Laura West. I kept remembering bits of conversations we’d had over the last year, things I’d thought I’d forgotten but seemed to have stored somewhere deep inside. Ella was the name of the middle daughter. She’s so quiet. Still waters run deep and all that, I suppose, but I worry about her. She takes things to heart.
And Ruby, the youngest, had been an accident. A happy accident, we call her, although there aren’t really any accidents, are there? I can’t imagine life without her now. She knows her own mind, that’s for sure. And she has a temper to match her hair. That’s why we named her Ruby… she had a full head of it when she was born.
She’d shown me a photo of Ruby, with her curly red hair and a determined expression; it had made me smile. She looked like a bright, sparky sort… like how I used to be—once, a very long time ago.
I thought about Ruby now. Did she understand her mother was gone forever? Could a child that small even begin to grasp what it meant? I pictured her curled up in bed, hugging a teddy bear, missing her mommy. It made me ache inside, stirring up an old sorrow that had been long buried. I didn’t like the feeling.
“There.” I put my hands on the shoulders of my client as I smiled determinedly at her reflection in the mirror. I did not want to think about old sorrows, or stir anything up. “Do you like it?”
“I love it,” she answered, preening a little, and I stepped back, satisfied.
Laura West’s murder, the police’s questions, it had all brought the past bubbling up for me, but I needed to forget it again now, as best as I could. Every day was a lesson in forgetting, a sheer act of will. I’d done it before, and I could do it again. I would.
“Do the police think someone from Global Rescue shot her?” Neriha asked in a low voice once my client had gone and I was sweeping up whorls of hair from the floor. She’d seen the story on the news, and asked me for the details, which I’d given reluctantly. Neriha had been helped by the center as well, although she didn’t volunteer there. She spent her free time at the Bosnian American Association here in Astoria and kept trying to get me to come along to their potluck suppers and quiz nights, but I always refused.
I shook my head as I swept the discarded hair into a dustpan. “No, they think it’s probably just some homeless person or something like that.”
But that night, back in my apartment, I turned on the news and waited for a report about the investigation. It is still unknown whether Laura West knew her assailant, but investigations continue at the nearby Global Rescue Refuge Center, where she volunteered on a regular basis, and where she had been traveling home from when she was attacked.
I sat back, hugging my knees to my chest, and thought about that sketch of the unknown man. What had been familiar about him? Maybe nothing. Or maybe he had come in to Global Rescue, once or twice. There were plenty of drifters, people who came through without staying or using the services. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t have to change anything. After everything that had happened in my life, that was all I wanted—for things not to change.
And yet they would, very soon. Irrevocably. Wonderfully. And terribly. All of it together, and I had no idea.
Five
Nathan
The morning after Laura died, I woke up to sunlight streaming through the windows as I stretched in bed, my toes seeking her presence, the feel of her smooth calves against my bare feet, the sleepy warmth of her next to me. Instead, all I felt was a cold, empty expanse of bed sheet.
I opened my eyes, and reality slammed into me all over again. My wife is dead. It echoed through me, just as terrible, still so unbelievable. When would it stop being a shock? Days? Months? Years?
Yesterday had been a nightmare from start to finish. Finding out… telling the girls… and then the phone calls. So many phone calls. Laura’s parents, my mother, friends, colleagues, having to tell everyone what had happened, how much I still didn’t know. The police had called as well, asking me to come in today, to answer some questions.
All afternoon and evening I had kept the TV off and refused to check my phone. There was only so much new information I could handle, but I knew I couldn’t keep it all out forever. Not even for another day. I’d already told the girls they could stay home from school, although I
wondered if the distraction would have been preferable.
Laura’s parents were driving to New York today, to help out with the girls as well as the funeral, which was still to be planned. The police were expecting me this afternoon. Reality encroached even in that moment, as I lay in bed and felt Laura’s absence like a physical ache, an emptiness inside me, an echo resounding through the room.
If I closed my eyes, I could imagine that Laura was in the bathroom, getting ready. I could almost hear her tuneless humming as she moved about, the whisper of her clothes as she put them on. I pictured her leaning over me, telling me to get up, giving me a lingering kiss.
Of course I was imagining a fantasy. I woke up before Laura every single morning, and the days of lingering kisses in bed were, for the most part, long gone. If anything, I would have been hurrying, slightly impatient, my movements clipped and precise, my mind already leaping ahead to the first meeting of the morning. Laura would have stretched in bed, snuggled down under the duvet again with a little sigh of contentment.
How can you get up so early?
I have to, I might have said, or, if I were feeling more charitable, I’ve always been a morning person. But a pinprick of irritation would have needled me. I get up early because I have things to do. I hadn’t wanted Laura to go back to work when the girls were small; financially, with the price of childcare in the city, it hadn’t made sense, and I wanted Laura to be there for the girls the way my mother hadn’t for me. She’d wanted it, too.
But when Ruby had started preschool, I’d encouraged her to get something part-time, just a little bit to help with household expenses, and she’d prevaricated.
I don’t want to go back into publishing. I barely earned anything as it was…
What then? I’d asked, feeling impatient, and Laura had shrugged. Something more. When Ruby is a little older. It feels like too much right now. She’s still so little.
Too much? I remember biting back a sharp retort at the time. What was too much, I’d wanted to say, was the tuition bill for Walkerton. The mortgage on this apartment that we’d both fallen in love with. Walkerton might have been mostly my idea, but Laura had wanted this place. She’d picked out the marble countertop, the distressed oak in the kitchen.
And then there were all our other expenses—the trips to Cape Cod every summer to see her parents, which they insisted on paying for, until I wouldn’t let them. The swimming lessons for Ella, ballet for Ruby, piano for Alexa, all outrageously expensive because this was Manhattan. Even a dinner out, with babysitting, ran to a few hundred bucks.
But I didn’t want to nickel and dime Laura now; I just wanted to hold onto the memory of her moving about this room, the feel of her warm body next to mine in bed. When was the last time we’d made love? It suddenly felt important to remember, to imbue it with special meaning, but it had to have been weeks ago, a fumble in the dark when we were both tired. Nothing special at all.
I opened my eyes to stare at the ceiling, trying to banish both kinds of memories—the wished-for and the real. They all hurt.
“Daddy, I’m hungry.” I turned my head to see Ruby standing in the doorway of my bedroom, her hair in a wild red tangle about her face. She was wearing a pink nightgown decorated with unicorns that was far too small for her, but last night she’d insisted it was her favorite and I hadn’t had the strength or desire to argue.
Alexa had stayed in her bedroom through the whole evening, and when I’d checked on her, after Ruby was asleep, she’d been lying on her bed, her back to me, her voice muffled by the pillow as she’d told me to go away. Helpless, unsure whether to press, I had left her alone, feeling guilty for doing so. It was easier, but it still felt wrong.
Ella had stuck to my side like a silent shadow, although she’d agreed to reading a story together when I suggested one. I had no idea what was going on in her head, or any of their heads, even my own. How do people survive grief? How do we keep going and going, like wind-up toys, marching forward when all we want to do is fall apart?
Somehow we managed, one agonising, endless step at a time; the girls fell asleep, and I stumbled to bed, Laura’s absence like a silent scream echoing all around me.
Now I beckoned to Ruby and she scrambled into bed with me, snuggling up against my back, a solid warmth.
“We can’t have a Ruby sandwich anymore,” she said in a small voice. That’s what we did—Laura and me on the outside, Ruby in the middle, on far too many early mornings, when I’d resented the intrusion, rolling over and pulling the duvet hard over my shoulders in silent protest. Never again.
I turned towards her and gave her a clumsy, one-armed hug. “It’s okay, Rubes. We can still have a sandwich. An open one.”
“What’s that?”
“One without a piece of bread on top.” And even though it was so ridiculous, talking about sandwiches, that statement made my eyes well up. I pressed my face against her hair and did my best to keep the tears back.
I wasn’t a crier. I never had been. Laura had teased me about needing to be stoic, a reaction to my mother’s endless emotional theatrics, and maybe it was that, at least a little bit. But part of me just didn’t see the point. Why let trivial things, whether moments or movies, affect me? Reach me? Why let anything?
Laura would cry at a Kleenex commercial or a sad story in the news, whereas I remained relatively unmoved even through the biggest tearjerker of a film. I think it had annoyed her sometimes, my lack of emotion, but I’d told her it was just the way I was, or maybe it was a guy thing.
Don’t be so sexist, she’d say, laughing. Guys can cry, Nathan.
I felt like crying now, but I didn’t. I held it back, because I had to. For Ruby’s sake, and for my own.
“Do you like open sandwiches?” she asked and I bit my tongue.
I hate them. They don’t make sense. They’re messy. They fall apart.
“I love open sandwiches,” I told her, my voice only just steady. I sniffed hard and then rolled out of bed, my body aching. “Come on, Rubes. Let’s get some breakfast.”
She looked up at me, all wide eyes and tangled hair. For a second I thought about tossing her over my shoulder, tickling her tummy. Good morning sunshine… I couldn’t make myself do it. I felt too tired, too sad, as if I’d never say that again, never feel that light-hearted, that happy, if I ever had. Maybe that was a ghost memory too, a fantasy like the rest, the family life I’d thought I had, that I’d been taking for granted.
Had it even existed?
“Can we have pancakes?” Ruby asked.
Pancakes? Buying donuts was my special Saturday treat, not making pancakes. I had no idea how to go about it, but I felt as if I couldn’t say no to Ruby about anything, not now. “Sure,” I said wearily. I’d figure it out. I’d have to.
The kitchen was a mess from dinner the night before—takeout pizza, the boxes still on the table filled with half-chewed crusts, the milk left out all night, dirty dishes not even in the sink but at least somewhat near it.
Laura normally tidied up after dinner; in fact she always tidied up after dinner. I brought a few dishes from the table to the kitchen, acting as if I were doing my share. Occasionally, on a Saturday morning, I unloaded the dishwasher, feeling magnanimous. What an ass. It was a strange thought to have about myself.
“Let me just clean up in here,” I mumbled to Ruby. “Then we’ll figure out pancakes.”
Ruby perched on a stool at the marble-topped breakfast bar, her chin propped in her hands, as I stuffed the pizza boxes into the recycling bin and poured the soured milk down the drain. It was half past six in the morning and I was exhausted, feeling hungover even though I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol. It seemed as if I was doing everything in slow motion, my limbs heavy and uncoordinated.
“Can I help, Daddy?” Ruby asked when I’d managed to load the dishwasher and the kitchen was semi-clean. Having Ruby help would make the whole exercise take longer, but I supposed that was the point. I knew Laura would have told me i
t was.
Time together, Nathan. That’s all they want. They don’t need the toys or gadgets or vacations. They just want us.
Had she actually said that, or was I imagining it? I couldn’t separate the real memories from the wished-for ones, and I wondered if I ever would be able to.
“Sure, you can help,” I said, and started looking through Laura’s extensive collection of cookbooks for a pancake recipe. There wasn’t one, at least not that I could find. Everything was ridiculously fancy—crepes Suzette with brandy sauce was the closest thing, and I certainly wasn’t up for making that.
My fingers traced the crumpled pages, one with a smear of something on it, another with a line crossed out and scribbled over in Laura’s handwriting. Better with two eggs. It was a recipe for a cake I didn’t remember her ever making.
I ended up googling a recipe on my phone, as Ruby stood on a stool, swathed in a huge apron, determined to do as much as she could. Flour and sugar piled in soft white drifts on the counter as she measured everything, teaspoon by painstaking teaspoon, while I sagged next to her, one elbow on the counter, too tired to prop myself up.
“Can I do the egg, Daddy?” she asked, her face alight with eagerness. “Please? I’ll be really, really careful.”
“Okay.” It was so much easier just to go along, to keep saying yes.
I handed Ruby an egg that she gave an almighty crack and then promptly dropped on the floor.
“Ruby!” My voice came harshly, a matter of instinct, as I moved my bare foot away from the mess of yolk. My daughter’s face crumpled.
“I’m sorry, Daddy…” She gulped back tears but they came anyway, in gulping sobs, her little body heaving, and I put my arms around her.
“It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have shouted. I’m sorry.”
She sniffled into my shoulder as I patted her back, feeling utterly inept.
“What are you guys doing?” I looked up to see Ella standing shyly in the doorway, sporting an impressive case of bedhead, twining one leg around the other like a stork.