House of Sand and Fog

by Andre Dubus III

  I pulled on my underwear, shorts, and Nick’s button-down shirt Lester wore last night and I went barefoot downstairs. The tin pot of coffee was on the cool half of the stove, though it was still steaming, and I took a paper napkin and stepped out onto the porch. Lester wasn’t anywhere, the sun bright on the trees and brush. I only walked as far as the woodpile before I squatted and peed, closing my eyes to all the daylight, smelling the split wood. I wanted four aspirin and a Coke, an air-conditioned movie. It was Tuesday, my day off from cleaning. Maybe Les would want to go with me, maybe even see two back to back.

  I was brushing my teeth on the porch, using a cup of ice water from the cooler to rinse, when he walked up the trail from the river. He was bare-chested, his black hair wet and dripping, an empty coffee cup in one hand, his T-shirt in the other. He smiled and asked me if I slept well. I was rolling water and toothpaste foam around in my mouth, and I turned away from him to spit it over the porch railing. I wanted to be in a bathroom. I wanted a hot shower, a clean mirror, and a locked door. I didn’t know how I looked when I turned back to him, but I hoped it was better than I felt. I wondered if he had a hangover like I did, but I didn’t want to ask; I didn’t want to draw any attention to my drinking. “I slept like a dead person. You?”

  “I was too drunk to notice.” He pulled on his shirt, then stepped up on the porch to hold and kiss me. He tasted like coffee, but smelled like the river, like mud and moss. “I had a great time last night,” he said, but he looked kind of down when he said it, like it had happened a long time ago.

  “Go for a swim?”

  “Just my head.”

  I followed him into the house and he poured me some coffee, then refilled his cup and we sat down across from each other at the small table beneath the window, a sunbeam lying across the tabletop. Les looked outside, his face in shadow. I started to reach across the table to touch his hand but something made me stop. “You okay?”

  He looked right at me. “Sometimes I feel guilty because I get paid to roam the countryside and think about things. You know how your mind can just drift off? And next thing I know I’m thinking about Carol, and how much I’d love to see her married to someone who loved her the way she loved him.” He looked out the window. I wanted a cigarette, but was afraid if I got up for one he would stop talking.

  “Once, outside El Granada, I drove up to a 7-Eleven right before they closed. Some boy had just pulled a Stop and Rob, but I didn’t know it yet, and I was getting out of my cruiser just as he came out the front door, this real skinny Filipino kid, no older than sixteen or seventeen, holding a bunch of bills and a silver revolver pointed straight up at the sky from pushing the door open with that hand. And neither one of us moved, we just looked at each other.

  “I wasn’t calm, but I wasn’t scared either. There was only my blood and my breath, and his too. I could feel it. Like we were the same body. Then I asked him if he wanted to talk, and he nodded his head, still holding that hogleg up in the air. I had both my hands on the top of the door where he could see them, but he seemed stuck where he was—he couldn’t go back and he couldn’t go forward. I could hear the cashier moving around inside the store, so I told the boy to bring his gun over if he wanted to, but he didn’t have to give it to me, he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do.

  “And then he started to cry, Kathy. I don’t remember leaving my patrol car but next thing I knew I was standing in front of him, and he was younger than I’d guessed—twelve or thirteen—and I was unloading his pistol and he was crying so hard I put my arm around him. His back felt so thin to me and I just held him, telling him he did the right thing. Everything would be all right. The store clerk came out yelling something, but I wasn’t listening; my hands felt oily. My voice sounded strange to me. I kept saying comforting things to this boy, but it was as much for me as for him.”

  “Jesus, Les.” I reached over to put my hand on his, but he stood and took his cup to the stove and poured himself the last of the coffee.

  “And I kept thinking of my own son, of Nate, and I vowed for the hundredth time I would take such good care of him he’d never have to get that desperate. Get that turned around.” Lester looked out the screen door, standing there tall and barefoot, his shirt hanging out of his jeans, his shoulders hunched slightly. There was something about him I’d never seen before, only felt, a goodness behind all the sadness in his eyes, maybe an acceptance for all we could never quite be, him included.

  “I need to go home for a while today.”

  I nodded, but something dark and hollow opened up inside me.

  “I need to explain things to Carol better. And Nate and Bethany. I should be home when they come back from school.” He looked down at his hands and I was thinking how he’d just used the word “home” twice in a few seconds.

  “It’s okay, Lester. I’ll go catch a movie or something and catch you when you get back.”

  “I don’t deserve you.”

  “Yes you do.” And I put on a smile, went over and kissed him, opening my mouth against his, but he cut it short and climbed up to the loft to get his shoes and all I wanted to know was this: was he telling himself he didn’t deserve me so he could leave me? Was he leaving me? But the question was so ugly inside me I was afraid if I asked it out loud it would come to life between us with claws and fangs.

  We were quiet as we walked through the woods to the cars. I was sweating, and I was sure I must smell bad. At his station wagon, Les turned to me, then both his hands were holding my face and he kissed me hard and dry, said he’d see me later, and he got into his car and I backed mine out so he could leave.

  I sat on the porch in the morning shade and smoked my last cigarette. My mouth and throat felt like one long ash, and my fingers were shaking a little, though I didn’t know if that was from last night’s drinking, today’s coffee and nicotine, or thinking now that Lester’s pain about his kids was so bad he really wouldn’t be coming back at all.

  I drove the Bonneville to a mini-grocery gas station off the Cabrillo Highway and bought two Diet Cokes and three packs of cigarettes. It was still morning, but the sun was so bright off the white facade of the small building it hurt my brain just looking at it. I watched the sunlit cars and jeeps and vans go by, the people inside them young and cheerful-looking, and I pictured driving straight into them all. But no car was moving fast enough to do the job, to do more than just ruin the gift Frank had given me and Nick, my only asset now; no one was going fast enough to obliterate me. And that’s what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living.

  My hangover had settled deep and black into me. I started to feel afraid of everything that moved: the traffic in front of me, the gas station attendant pumping gas into a jeep, a lone kite hovering so tiny above the ocean, my own hand as I raised another cigarette to my lips.

  I put the car in gear and made my way onto the beach highway heading north. I turned on the radio, but a DJ was hawking a free trip to Cancún, his voice full of good cheer, and I switched him off, the air-conditioning too. I rolled down the window and let the beach wind blow into my face. I drove through Half Moon Bay for El Granada and thought of Lester’s story of the Filipino boy, then I pictured him hugging his own two kids, his small son and daughter, and remorse moved through me so hot and thick my stomach felt queasy. I hadn’t thought about any of this the way the kids would. I only pictured them at my house laughing and playing, eating meals I cooked for them, sleeping in Nick’s old practice room. Now I imagined them crying themselves to sleep at night, and I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another. I drank from my Diet Coke, but it was just sweet empty chemicals down my throat, and I felt myself get shaky knowing that I’d been too weak to keep my situation in my own lap, and now I was letting myself have a huge part in destroying someone else’s family. As I drove through Montara, heading north for Point San Pedro and Corona, I tried to do what t
hey used to encourage in Group: ask yourself the questions in life that scare you the most. But I already knew the answer; I knew why I had gotten drunk last night, was smoking so much again, and why I was sleeping with Lester Burdon: losing my father’s house had been the final shove in a long drift to the edge, and I thought about calling Connie Walsh again, just tell her to sue the county for as much as she could get. But that would take months, maybe years, and still my father’s only heirloom to Frank and me would be gone and even though it was just a little place in a low-rent beach town, I refused to be the one in the family who had let it slip away.

  I started driving faster and kept seeing my mother’s face, a different look of hers this time, one she’d sometimes give me after Nick and I were married and rationally recovered, both working, when at a family gathering—a christening or a birthday, or Sunday dinner—I’d catch her watching me; I would just glance over and see her taking me in, her lips parted but slightly bunched, like she wasn’t quite sure what to think. Had she been wrong about me? Was I actually going to turn out all right? And somehow her watching me, looking like she was holding her breath doing it, was also me watching myself. I was her and she was me, and I couldn’t stand not tolerating my own company, not tolerating the very center of me.

  The beach wind through the driver’s window was warm and I could smell car exhaust and seaweed. I was sweating under my clothes, sweating out the beer and last night’s nicotine. I wondered if Lester, in his drunkenness, had come inside me. I felt suddenly close to crying, and I didn’t know if that meant I loved him or not. I didn’t know. I needed badly to take a long shower.

  As I drove into downtown Corona, slowly passing the one-or two-story shops, the glare of the sun off their windows making my eyes ache even with the sunglasses on, I thought about renting a motel room for the day just to recoup. But recoup for what? More waiting? More sliding over the dark edge? Instead I drove out to my Colma River residential, the divorced accountant’s house, and let myself in. I showered in the downstairs bathroom, wishing my suitcase was still in the car. Maybe I should have taken all my things from the fish camp, put them back in storage, and just let Les off the hook completely.

  I towel-dried my hair and walked naked down the hall into the daughter’s room. Sunlight came through the sliding glass door to her small deck overlooking the river, and her bed was made. Propped against the pillows was a Cabbage Patch doll, a stuffed Garfield cat, and two teddy bears. I walked barefoot over the carpet, opened her top bureau drawer, and pulled out a pair of rolled yellow cotton panties. They were a little tight around my hips, but clean. I snapped on my bra, stepped into my loose khaki work shorts that still smelled like mosquito repellent and wood smoke, and used the blow dryer on her dresser to dry and feather my hair. Then I opened the rest of the drawers, pulled out an oversized turquoise T-shirt from Fisherman’s Wharf, and put it on, telling myself I would return it clean and folded. In the mirror my face looked pale, my eyes tired. There was a purple cosmetics bag on the dresser, and I poked around inside until I found some eyeliner and blush. The blush was too pink for me, so I thumbed away as much as I could, but it still showed. It was a color cheerleaders wore, so bright and instantly cheerful their faces could sometimes look almost fluorescent. It was okay if I looked cheerful, but I didn’t want to look cheap, not for the colonel’s wife. Somewhere between the fish camp and here I’d decided that’s who I had to talk to. If she really didn’t know the situation, then I would tell her. Just drive up there, wait for her husband to leave, and talk. No threats. No men shoving their weight around. Just two women talking out our problem.

  I went back to the bathroom, folded the damp towel neatly over the rack near the sink, then opened the medicine cabinet and shook four Anacins out of their bottle, tipping my head back and swallowing them dry one at a time. Outside, a car drove up nearby, the engine shutting off, and I held my breath and didn’t move. The car door slammed, then I heard the door of the next house down open and shut and I let out my breath. I took one last look around the bathroom, put on my sunglasses, and left, thinking this is wrong; it’s so wrong to invade someone else’s home.

  IT IS A DAY OF BRIGHT SUN, TOO WARM FOR THE FULL SUIT AND SILK tie I wear as I drive past the large shopping malls and automobile dealerships, the restaurants and clothing boutiques of Redwood City. Since I left the lawyer’s office in Corona, I have allowed myself the relief of air-conditioning, but I feel no other such relief. Over weak American coffee and for another one hundred and fifty dollars, the lawyer with the bow tie confirmed for me my suspicions of our visit from this Joe Gonzalez. He told to me it is highly unlikely any persons at the county tax office would send a police officer to threaten me. And when I informed him the man wore a gold star from the Sheriff’s Department of San Mateo County, but no name badge, which I know to be required in this country, a look of concern passed over the short lawyer’s face and he said to me that Corona was in the jurisdiction of that department. He telephoned them directly, but I was not surprised he discovered there was no such officer of that name. The lawyer passed to me the telephone, and a man who identified himself as a lieutenant asked if I would care to travel to Redwood City to discuss this further.

  The Hall of Justice building is eight or nine floors tall, across the street from a courthouse whose roof is a very large dome of stained glass. It momentarily reminds me of a mosque in Qom, its mere sight bringing me a comfort and sense of confidence I have not otherwise been feeling. And it is a comfort being inside the building as well; the ceilings are high, the floor hard and polished, and I am directed by a court officer to the fifth floor where men in the same uniform as the so-called Mr. Gonzalez sit at desks, attending to computer keyboards or telephones. I am reminded of my old life again, my offices at Mehrabad, and I stand erect when I am greeted by the lieutenant with whom I spoke from the lawyer’s office. He is dark-skinned and quite trim, with the very short hair of an American marine or army officer. He announces he is with the Internal Affairs Bureau, and he leads me to his office, where he requires a physical description and I of course mention the man’s tall height and his mustache. The lieutenant asks of any particular pins or badges on the officer’s blouse, and I inform him of the gold star, the badge of two pistol barrels crossed together, and when I tell to him of the gold letters FTO, he regards me quite carefully, then excuses himself from the room only to return very soon with a single sheet of black-and-white photographs of officers’ faces.

  “There are only eight field training officers in the whole department,” the lieutenant says, though he does not smile at our good fortune. I immediately point to Mr. Gonzalez’s face, which is in the second row of photos, and I take note of his name: Burdon, Lester V.

  “Are you completely confident this is the officer, sir?”

  “Yes. That is him. That is the man who threatened me.”

  The lieutenant writes something upon a pad of paper. He then asks me additional questions as to why this man, a stranger to me, would want me to leave the property, and so I explain our situation, saying as well that I do not know the reason this man is involved. Perhaps he is a friend of the previous owner? The lieutenant hands me an official complaint form, and I take nearly three-quarters of the hour to record in my neatest writing and my best English grammar what happened the evening before. The lieutenant thanks me, and as he escorts me to the elevator, he assures to me he will pursue the matter and please do not hesitate to call us should there be any more disturbance.

  I drive northward upon the Bayshore Freeway. I make loose the tie at my neck and I am thinking and feeling many things. Among those law enforcement officers in that very orderly building, I felt in the manner one does when meeting a distant cousin and seeing one’s own brother or sister in the face of that cousin; even if you have never before met this relative, there is the urge to embrace him simply because you share a measure of the same blood. That is how I instantly felt among all those uniformed men. And I begin to question my desire
to find work only with aerospace companies. Perhaps, after selling the bungalow and while searching for the prudent investment opportunity, I might attempt finding a position with a local police department. Chera na? Why not? I am a naturalized citizen. And I would be quite content taking only an office position, answering the telephone, or perhaps watching over prisoners, taking their fingerprints or some such detail. I would be able to work amongst men of duty and discipline.

  But meanwhile, I have of course several pressing concerns. In all my military years I witnessed many times what could happen to a soldier who reported the infraction of another soldier to an officer. He is no longer to be trusted; he is shunned and usually beaten by many. One man, a young air soldier named Mehran, was drowned in a toilet at Mehrabad, his killer never proven. And I have no illusions of how this man Burdon may take my reporting of him. As I drive the Buick Regal past the San Carlos airport, the sun bright upon the runways beyond the tall hurricane fence of the freeway, I consider simply selling the bungalow back to the county for what I paid, perhaps even taking a loss for the widow’s walk. We would have nearly as much as we started with and all these troubles would be behind us. But then what must I do? Work upon the highway or at another convenience store or even in a police department while I watch the remains of our savings disappear? No, this I can no longer do. It is evident now that I have discovered a real estate opportunity that can only come about as the result of a bureaucratic mistake. It is unlikely, given the marketplace, that I will triple my money as surely as I can with this bungalow on Bisgrove Street. No, we must stay and sell. Sometimes in this life, only one or two real opportunities are put before us, and we must seize them, no matter the risk.