Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  Michael shrugs, allows Rashid to signal the waitress for a second cup.

  “Who else knows you’re here?” Michael asks.

  “No one. An acquaintance in Pakistan knew I was coming only, but we aren’t in touch.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “At a hotel downtown.”

  “Which one?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Would his son turn him in to the authorities?

  “Yeah, maybe it’s better if I don’t know. All right, so how did you do it, I mean how did you manage to live in secret for all this time?”

  “I made a small life for myself, a small salary working as a mechanic, and I saw very few people. I had protection from a man…a man with some influence.”

  “Did people know your name, know who you were?”

  Rashid shakes his head.

  The waitress arrives with Michael’s tea. “What can I get for you?”

  Michael orders the hot breakfast dish advertised on the table.

  “Two please,” Rashid grasps for some commonality.

  Michael pauses, running his hands through his hair. Rashid, attentive to Michael’s every nuance, recognizes the mannerism as Kathryn’s. But his features, his coloring, his build clearly reflect Rashid.

  “What would you do if my mother called the police?”

  “Is she planning to?”

  “Let me tell you something about my mother. She’s not like you. I can’t even believe she ever married you. She doesn’t like foreigners, doesn’t like unknown or unexpected things. She just tried to be normal, an American, a hardworking single mom. She never said a word about you.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  Michael shakes his head, marveling at what this man doesn’t understand. “Imagine me, a five-year old kid. I see my mom almost disappear before my very eyes, she doesn’t get out of bed, she doesn’t laugh, she doesn’t even look like the mom I was used to. I have some idea that she’s sick because my dad died. When she starts to get better, the last thing I want to do is remind her of the thing that hurts her.”

  Two huge plates arrive, piled with eggs and potatoes, onions and peppers. Rashid looks up, the television projects images of a happy grey-haired couple walking on a beach, sitting at a restaurant, strolling in a park—an ad for financial services. If he had stayed, could their life have been like that?

  “Do you think I could ease some of her suffering?” Rashid asks.

  “Do you really imagine that she wants to see you now? You can’t change anything that happened, you can’t make any of her past easier for her now. She’s struggled to be happy. Her sons are making her proud, she has money for retirement, she has Johannes for company, what would you think you could do?” Michael takes a bite of his breakfast, looks down as Rashid flinches.

  “Who’s Johannes?” Rashid asks, jealousy unexpectedly flaring his nostrils.

  “Her friend. Not sure the nature of their relationship, not my place to ask.”

  “Do they live together?”

  “No. Somehow we agreed I was the man of the house. I don’t think I would have liked someone else coming in and taking my mother’s attention away from Andrew and me.”

  Rashid observes his son before him, clean shaven, well dressed in a button down shirt and jeans, handsome and poised. How long did it take? How soon after he left did the kindergartner turn into the man of the house?

  “You seem to have done a good job. I knew Kathryn would be strong, but you…I didn’t expect…I see you and she didn’t need me.”

  “Oh, we needed plenty for sure. Andrew didn’t remember ever having a father, and what did I know about being a father? But Mom always taught us not to dwell on what we didn’t have. We had each other and we had Uncle Ted and his family.” He takes a sip of his tea. “We still do.”

  “Do you think…” a ringing sound interrupts Rashid’s question. Michael reaches for his pocket, looks at the screen and then gestures for Rashid to be quiet. “Hi Mom…I’m just getting breakfast…yes, I can come by. I’ll be there in about a half hour…I love you too.”

  He sets the phone down. Rashid stares at it. How close she is now, the real woman, still living and breathing. And loving. He doubts he will ever again feel her love directed toward him. Michael eats quickly. “I have to go. You understand.”

  “Of course. Will I see you again? Do you have more questions?”

  Michael puts down his fork, takes a deep breath. “Give me some time. Call me in a couple of days. I’m not sure what the purpose would be for us to meet again.”

  Rashid closes his eyes and bows his head. “I will.” When he looks up Michael is already at the cashier stand, paying the bill. The television displays another commercial, a father and son riding bicycles along a tree-lined path. Rashid looks away.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  Rashid nearly jumps at the knock on her door.

  Kathryn motions for him to relax, to stand down, as if he were a frightened animal in her home. “It’s Michael,” her tone sharpens, “my son.”

  The words sting, reinforcing the violence she has done to his memory. As she opens the door, Rashid stands again, slowly. Michael greets her. Though still handsome, he looks different than he did a few days ago at breakfast, his eyes darkly circled, his face now shadowed with stubble.

  “Rashid,” Michael acknowledges him.

  “Michael,” his father replies in kind, “thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  Kathryn stands between them, barely comprehending how they could be connected. “I’ll get us water.”

  “Please,” Rashid says meekly.

  The two men sit in Kathryn’s living room, facing each other, not talking, listening to the sound of glasses on the counter, water rushing from the faucet. When Kathryn returns she serves her son first, placing a protective hand on his shoulder. She sets the other glass in front of Rashid on the table.

  He feels untouchable.

  “Andrew?” he asks quietly.

  “Andrew’s not coming,” Kathryn says. “He told me he wants nothing more to do with you.” A desperate chuckle escapes from the tightness in her chest. “What the hell do you expect us to say?”

  He presses his lips tightly together. “Nothing. I don’t expect you to say anything.” He sips from the glass and sets it back down.

  Michael holds his mother’s hand.

  Rashid inhales. “I have come tonight to tell you I won’t bother you again. I was foolish to dream I could possibly return to you, that you would allow me back into your lives.” He looks at Michael, holds out his hands. “He is such a man, such a very good man, Kathryn. I will be grateful to you all my life that you’ve raised this son…our son…into this man.”

  “By myself,” she jabs again at his wound.

  “Yes, I imagined I was helping with the money I sent.”

  Kathryn flinches at the memory of those envelopes, sits down on the arm of Michael’s chair.

  Rashid runs a hand over his clean-shaven face. He has taken off his turban, removed his beard. He no longer needs to hide behind some other identity. He feels exposed, wonders how to start with what he knows he has to say. “I learned to live only in my imagination.” He looks from Kathryn to Michael and back again. “For twenty years I imagined reuniting with you, with all three of you, and continuing our lives. I prayed for your safety. I believed God would protect you, would compensate you somehow for your suffering.” He presses his hands into his thighs, rests them uneasily on his knees. “But this was not your reality.” He resists the impulse to accuse her of murdering his memory, never speaking of him to their sons. “I understand now that I held on to this impossible fantasy for my survival. Not for yours.”

  She lets go of a deep sigh, closing her eyes against the sight of him, whatever attractive appearance he had once possessed, ground away by the intervening years.

  “So after I leave here tonight, tomorrow morning, I’ll go to the authorities. I will allow
them to decide my fate.” He looks out the window into the darkness, unable to bear the distance separating him from these people he loves just a few feet from him. “This world has nothing left for me.”

  “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for your suffering.” She shakes her head. “You’ve brought this on yourself, and now after all these years, you come back like some ghost to haunt our waking lives. Please go.”

  “What?” Michael blurts out.

  Rashid and Kathryn turn, surprised to see Michael leaning forward.

  “How can you think that would be acceptable to me?” he demands indignantly. “How can you think that after abandoning us, after all that you’ve put my mother through, after all the experiences you denied me and my brother, that you can just appear, like you came out of thin air and then abandon us once again?”

  Rashid looks helplessly, “What do you want from me?”

  Michael utters an incredulous sound, almost a laugh. “What do I want from you? At least some time to let me decide.” He stands up, looks down on his father. “I don’t know who you are. You might be a monster. You might be some kind of misguided militant, or a victim of some backward tradition. But for some reason my mother married you, at some point you were here with us.” He grimaces, resisting the tears shining in his eyes. “I remember who you were. I was a little boy who had a father. And then I was a little boy who didn’t. And as if that weren’t hard enough to comprehend, for twenty years I was not allowed to admit any of those memories, to anyone.” He paces away from his chair. “You may have been underground in fucking Pakistan, but my childhood, my memories have been underground too, afraid of the wrath of her suffering.”

  Kathryn looks at Michael, cut by his words.

  “Sorry Mom, I don’t blame you, but you weren’t the only one he left.” He steps closer to Rashid, towering over him. “So at the very least, you owe me some time to decide for myself about whether or not I want you in my life.”

  Silence hangs in the room.

  She speaks first. “Michael, he can’t stay.” She turns to Rashid, “You can’t stay. Forget the emotions for a minute, he’s a fugitive,” she raises her shoulders at the obvious fact. “Every minute he’s with us, we risk our own innocence. Michael, you should understand the legal implications better than I do.”

  Michael sits again, now on the arm of the sofa, just a cushion away from Rashid. “Are you still an American citizen?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have an American passport. I’m traveling on a green card.”

  “A legitimate one?”

  “No,” Rashid averts his eyes with the admission.

  Michael pauses, thinking. “Well, you were once a U.S. citizen so you have rights to due process under the law and to legal representation.”

  “For what? I will admit my guilt, why would I need representation for that?”

  Michael holds his hand to his forehead, closes his eyes in frustration, then speaks with forced patience, “Because your sentencing could still be negotiated.” When Rashid doesn’t respond, Michael says very deliberately, “You could avoid the death penalty or solitary confinement.”

  Rashid smiles ruefully. “I’ve already endured both. I’m not afraid of those things.”

  “But I am.”

  Rashid blinks with surprise. “So what should I do?”

  “You will not go alone,” Michael commands. “Tomorrow, I’ll go with you. I’ll provide you legal representation.”

  “No Michael,” Kathryn gasps.

  “Mom, I’m a grown man. This isn’t your decision.”

  She flinches at his defiance, the independence she has always instilled in him.

  “You will wait tomorrow, until I come for you. All right?”

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” Rashid looks up into the eyes of his son, sees the reflection of the little boy, wonders at the mystery of how he has become this man.

  “I’m sure.” Michael does not soften. “You have to commit to me that you won’t talk to anyone from the government without me present.”

  “You have my word.”

  Michael holds out his hand to confirm the agreement. Rashid hesitates then grasps Michael’s hand, pulling tightly, and then he feels the arms of his son around him. Something inside him cleaves, allowing all the years of waiting, all the guilt and fantasy and self denial to swirl into the whirlpool of the past and his horizon fills from pole to pole with the strength of his son’s exquisitely paternal embrace.

  The sight of these two men causes Kathryn to catch her breath. She feels the years without affection, without her complement. Would she recognize those arms again?

  “Michael, you should go home and get some sleep,” she speaks as they separate from each other.

  He nods to Kathryn, again the obedient son. At the door, he glances at Rashid and then at his mother. “Are you sure you want me to leave you,” he hesitates, “alone?”

  “I’m OK,” she reassures him.

  Rashid stands near the door, unsure what to say next, expecting her to ask him to leave.

  Kathryn turns back to him. She looks at his hands, avoiding his face. “If you’re going to give it all up tomorrow, this could be your last night of freedom.”

  “Or my last night of exile.”

  “All of a sudden, I…how do I say this? I have so much to say to you. So much anger, I thought I just wanted you to disappear again so I wouldn’t have to deal with you. But now that I know I’ll lose you again…”

  He allows the silence to linger before speaking. “What can I say to you? What can I give you? Anything I have the power to do.”

  She covers her face with her hands, drawing inward, vulnerable. Slowly, he reaches out one hand to touch her arm, then the other until their arms form a circuit, an energy flowing back and forth between them. In the space between them, the void, the absence and longing lingers. But she allows him to reach across, to make his way to her. In the hesitation she crumbles, her cheek rests against his chest, the heart inside beating furiously. And his arms are around her. He braces for the end of this moment, savoring her life next to his. Then, directed by a will she cannot control, she presses her palm into the small of his back, holds him to her, wishing she could stay like this, wishing the time before and the time yet to come would fall away, leaving only this feeling of connection.

  Rashid speaks the words that threaten to burst through his chest. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For so many things, I don’t have enough words to say them.”

  Chapter 5

  Two days later

  * * *

  The phone rings, waking Kathryn from a pleasant dream. In the moment before she remembers that everything has changed, again, she answers the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Kathryn Capen?”

  “It is.”

  “This is George Dalrymple, I’m a reporter with the New York Times. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your son and his client, Rashid Siddique.”

  She is suddenly wide awake. “What?” She looks at the clock, 6am. “What do you know about my son?”

  “The Department of Justice has released a statement that Michael Capen is representing his father, Rashid Siddique, in a hearing to determine sentencing for the 2010 double freeway bombing.”

  She pauses, allowing the reality to settle. “I have no comment.”

  “Are you sure? This will be a big story, if you don’t speak for yourself, others will likely write their own interpretations of your position. Likely it won’t be pretty. They’ll probably speculate that you had some knowledge of Rashid’s exile, perhaps you even helped him.”

  His aggressiveness irritates her. “I will excuse your bad manners. And again, I have no comment.” She hangs up. She wants to go back to sleep, but knows this call will be followed by others. Her mind lurches to Andrew. She calls him. Her heart sinks when he answers not from the fog of sleep, but with an anxious alertness.
“They’ve called you?”

  “Yes. What am I supposed to say?” He sounds like a little boy.

  “Nothing.”

  “I mean really, Mom, a week ago, I was just some guy going to school, seeing a girl. I was normal. And now, I suddenly learn my dad is a terrorist, my brother is a sympathizer, and my mother has been lying to me my whole life. I mean…what the fuck am I supposed to tell the reporters?”

  She pushes back the sheets to get out of bed, a few black hairs still on the pillow. She cringes at another truth she has refrained from telling either of her sons. “You don’t tell the reporters anything. Don’t even answer their calls.” She goes to the window, looks out to the ocean, an indistinguishable grey under the morning clouds.

  “And then what? I just go back to my classes like nothing has happened?”

  She sees a van pull off the street and into the driveway of her complex. The news television station call letters and the satellite mast provoke a maternal instinct. “Andrew, listen to me, I think you should pack a few things, it’d be easier if we weren’t here for a little while.”

  “Pack? And go where? What about my classes?”

  “Grandma’s house has a long driveway and a gate, we can be buffered there.”

  “Mom, you’re not exactly sounding rational here. I’m not running to Grandma like I did something wrong. I’m just doing my thing and my whole family is going ape shit around me. If I’m going anywhere, it’s over to my girlfriend’s place, at least Hema is who she says she is.”

  “I really think it’d be better if we were there together, you and me with Grandma.”

  He lets out a snort. “Better for who? I think you’ve lost the right to claim you have any idea of what’s best for me.” Silence. He disconnects.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  Kathryn’s mother makes her a cup of coffee, adds the milk and sugar in the proper proportions. Even before Kathryn had moved her suitcase in past the door, her mother had set her to peeling potatoes for the evening’s stew.