He took out the check and laid it on the coffee table for her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You wouldn’t consider moving back in, would you?” She started shaking her head no before he even had a chance to answer.
“I’m not so sure it would be a good idea.”
It was hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, he’d still held out hope that their lives could be mended and somehow they could get back together. But now that dream was over. She was right, there would be no upbeat endings for her. She was just on fire with unhappiness, and she burned anyone who got near her without even meaning to.
“I’d like to walk Arthur to school this morning,” he said. “I know it’s not technically part of our deal, but …”
“It’s all right.” She gestured limply with her cigarette, letting a dragon of smoke rise through the air. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than me getting him out of his room today.”
He left her on the couch and went down the little hall to knock on Arthur’s bedroom door.
The morning wasn’t supposed to go this way. This should’ve been his day back in the sun. He’d had a vision of carrying Arthur on his shoulders down Broadway, with the camera crews chasing them. The hard part would come later when he had to take Elizabeth in to talk to the FBI.
“Hey, buddy, come on out.” David tried the doorknob when there wasn’t any answer to his persistent knocks. “I’m here for the victory lap.”
“Run away, Daddy,” said the voice behind the closed door. “They’re still after you.”
“Arthur, it’s all right.” He turned the knob again, vexed and bewildered. “The bad time is over.”
When there was no answer, he pushed against the door and was surprised by its stiff resistance. He pushed again a little harder and realized Arthur had one of his little two-foot-high wooden chairs wedged against it.
David’s heart fell just a little. Please, God, not another one. Don’t let my son go crazy like my wife. We’ve come too far for this.
“Arthur, no one’s going to come for you. I swear. The bad guys have all gone away.”
There was a wiggly little nervous pause, with thumps on the floor, boards creaking, and uncomfortable wheezing. Was he going to barricade himself in there? David put his head against the door, thinking this would be the final kick-in-the-teeth irony. That he’d been so busy trying to save his own neck these past few days that he hadn’t seen his own son drifting away from him.
“Arthur, please,” he said. “I did all this for you. None of it means anything if I can’t be with you. I know it’s hard to understand. But I just want …” He stopped and took a breath, not wanting to burden the child but not wanting to lose the connection either. “I just want to walk you to school. Trust me. It’ll be all right.”
The door opened a crack. “You promise?” A small green eye peeked out.
“If anyone tries to follow us, I’ll run ’im through with a sword.”
The door flew open the rest of the way to reveal Arthur fully dressed in backward khaki pants, red flannel shirt, and sneakers on the wrong feet. His room was in a shambles behind him, as if there’d been some kind of drunken, frenzied Lego festival during the night.
“Where’s your sword?” he demanded.
“We’ll have to look for it.” David took his hand and pulled him toward the living room.
There would be time downstairs to fix Arthur’s clothes and make sure he’d had breakfast. Right now, all he wanted to do was get the boy out of the apartment. There was something here that would swallow him if he stayed too long. The bad cloud.
“Here’s your bag, sweetie.” Renee teetered toward them with Arthur’s backpack hanging off her arm. “I put your inhaler in so you wouldn’t forget it.”
She bent down and hugged Arthur for what seemed like a very long time. Then she stood up on tiptoe and kissed David on the cheek.
“I’m glad you’re going to be all right to take care of our son,” she whispered in his ear.
He rested a hand on her shoulder and studied her a moment as she pulled away. Smoking and worrying were starting to give her face new lines and shadows. And whatever pills she was taking had dulled the shine in her eyes. He suddenly had a vision of the next few years of her life: the frantic mood swings slowing down and giving way to inertia and long, sad days smoking on the couch. He hoped she wouldn’t end up on the street, but he felt powerless to change her trajectory, whatever it would be.
“I’m not going to get better, am I?” she said quietly.
“I don’t know.”
He kept hold of Arthur’s hand as she went to open the door for them. This one I’m saving, he thought. Okay, you’re not going to be the guy who hits it out of the ballpark or saves the beautiful girl from drowning. You’re going to be the guy who gets his kid to school in the morning.
“Be good to yourself, Renee.”
He moved out into the hall with his son and let the door close behind them.
63
AS SHE SAT by herself in the cafeteria, watching Mr. Fitzgerald walk around the room accepting congratulations from other teachers and students, Elizabeth thought again of the story about her father and the Jordan. The water moving over the stones and his childhood disappearing over his shoulder. That was how she felt today. Like there was a river separating her from everyone else.
Later on this afternoon, Mr. Fitzgerald would be taking her across another river and into the city to meet the FBI men. The agents had wanted her to come in right away, but Mr. Fitzgerald’s lawyers had advised her to wait until they worked out a plea agreement guaranteeing her immunity.
She got a high sweet ache in her chest thinking about what all this would do to her father. She’d meant to say something to him last night but couldn’t find the nerve. His only son was a terrorist and his daughter was going to turn him in. Her father. All he’d ever wanted out of life was to work hard and provide a home for his family, a place where they could all live together. Many times her father had told her of his dream, that if he worked hard enough and God smiled his way in His beneficence, he might even build another home outside Bethlehem, where he might return one day, and die under the shade of a tangerine tree, surrounded by all his children and grandchildren.
But now that vision was dying and he didn’t even know it. She looked around the basketball court–sized lunch room, watching some five hundred other students laughing, joking, sharing easy confidences. Another world she would never be part of again. This was supposed to be Blue Day in her class. Silly, really. It wasn’t even an official theme day, like at the end of the year. It was just a fad. Everyone was supposed to wear at least one blue item because of something a DJ on WBLS said. Merry Tyrone had blue laces on her white Nikes and Seniqua Rollins was filling out a navy hooded Georgetown sweatshirt. But Elizabeth had chosen just to wear her usual black T-shirt and green fatigue pants. To put on anything else seemed too frivolous for what was about to happen.
She opened up her book and tried to lose herself in A Tale of Two Cities once more, but the words wouldn’t come alive for her. There was too much electricity in her mind. Why was it in most books women had to make the quiet sacrifices no one noticed, while the men got to stand on the gallows and make great speeches?
“How’s it going?” Mr. Fitzgerald had circled the cafeteria and was now standing over her.
“Okay, I guess.” She licked her lips and fumbled with her book. “I’m kind of nervous. I’m hungry, but I can’t eat anything.”
A piece of undercooked chicken and a starchy mound of mashed potatoes sat untouched on her plate.
“Look.” He knelt beside her. “We probably shouldn’t talk here for too long, in case people get suspicious. The FBI guys are outside and they’re taking us to the city in a couple of hours. So I just want to make sure you’re still okay about this.”
“I don’t know.” She pulled at the end of her shirt.
“You don’t know?”
He looked at her plate and hung his head. “No,” he said.
“I think it makes me a coward.” She sniffled.
“Look, if anyone’s a coward, it’s me,” he said, focusing with sudden heat.
“What do you mean?”
They both looked around, noticing that amid the daily ruckus more and more eyes were turning toward them, taking in their intimacy.
“Never mind,” he said, standing. “We should talk about it later in the car. I want to make sure we both understand the consequences of what’s about to happen here. I don’t want to be the one responsible for ruining your whole future.”
She looked past him, hearing something building in the distance, like the gathering of the sea.
“Then maybe you’re not,” she said, turning back to her book.
Nasser arrived at the school just before one o’clock with Youssef and Dr. Ahmed. At some point in the last few hours, with all the fussing with wires and strapping on of dynamite, the throb in his ears had become so loud that he could hardly hear anything else.
His thoughts were becoming disordered. He stood on the front steps of the school, thinking about traffic and honor and the end of the century. The dynamite sticks felt rough against his stomach and the masking tape pulled at the skin on his back. Wasn’t there a better way to do things at the end of the century?
Dr. Ahmed pulled open the front door of the school and went in ahead of the other two. The black guard with the sharp-creased pants was gone and instead two white men stood by the metal detectors, as if they were waiting for this confrontation. FBI men. Nasser recognized them right away. They had the same clean-cut barbaric look as Calloway, the one who’d questioned him at the car service. The one on the left had sandy-colored hair and blue eyes like the Israeli soldier in the story Nasser’s father used to tell about the coffee beans. As soon as he saw Nasser and the others, he began tugging at the side of his windbreaker, as if he was about to pull out a gun.
The throb in Nasser’s head got louder, pounding against the base of his skull.
“Please,” he made himself say. “I’m dropping off my application for the principal. He said it’s okay.”
Yes, this was right, what he was about to do. It was a heroic act.
Blue Eyes looked at his partner, a bald, modest-looking man with light-colored eyebrows.
“Hey, Don.” Blue Eyes’s voice was barely an insect twitter beneath all the throbbing. “You wanna get on the walkie-talkie, tell them we have some visitors?”
There was a shimmering trail of tension in the air. Blue Eyes’s hand disappeared into his jacket, as he came down the steps, his heels making a deliberate click-clack in perfect time with the blood beating in Nasser’s head.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said with the kind of exaggerated official politeness that gives way to brute force in a split second. “Do you have some kind of I.D.?”
Standing next to Nasser in the doorway, Dr. Ahmed and Youssef looked at each other. These men who’d expected so much of him. Who’d risked their own lives in jihad. The life of this world is nothing but a sport and a pastime. The true reward comes later. Nasser tried to force himself once again to believe that. Maybe in acting right now he would finally come to believe. A hero sacrifices. That’s what he does. Everyone learned that in school.
“Yes, of course,” said Dr. Ahmed. “Here is our I.D.” He reached into his waistband, pulled out the .38, and before either of the agents could react, he shot each of them once in the head and once in the chest for good measure.
David was standing in the middle of the cafeteria, talking with guarded friendliness to Henry Rosenthal, when the three outsiders came into the room. And immediately, he knew not just the circumstances but the very texture of his life was about to change.
The first one in was a big bald man with a heavy gut and a graying beard. He walked the length of the cafeteria and took up a position in front of the emergency exit at the eastern end of the room, like a volunteer fire warden. The second one also had a beard, but was smaller, with a long horse face and a cheap dark suit without a tie. He seemed utterly impatient, as if he’d been kept waiting in a doctor’s office for half a day. And the last to enter was Nasser Hamdy, back in school again, looking ferocious and distracted, a man with a mission.
He walked right by David, marched up to his sister sitting at an empty table nearby, and stared at her. Not a loving brother-sister look. It was something less forgiving, less comprehending. Then he seemed to make a decision. He stepped onto the seat next to her, climbed on top of the picnic-style table, and ripped open his shirt with both hands.
For a few seconds, he stood there over her, surveying the vast, stunned lunchroom, with his arms outstretched and his skinny torso bare except for a key hanging from his neck on a chain and five brown sticks of dynamite taped around his middle. Displaying himself as if to say: Step right up, come see the Incredible Exploding Boy of Coney Island.
A wave of panic went through the cafeteria. Five hundred-odd kids standing up, screaming and ready to bolt.
“Ho shit!”
“Oh my Gawwwd!”
“Get the fuck down from there, niggah!!”
David felt like the back of his head had been yanked off and his mind was emptying out. What do I do here? He looked to the main entrance and saw the horse-faced man pull out a small handgun and hit Tisha Cornwall full in the face with it when she tried to elbow past him. She sank to the floor, stunned, with her nose and mouth bloodied, while he held up the pistol proudly, ready to shoot anyone else who tried. At the other end of the room, the big bear-like man was bracing himself against the emergency exit, not showing a gun, but clearly implying he had one just by his implacable stance.
Fear pressing down hard on his bowels, David began to run through the possibilities for tragedy. If anyone tried to rush Nasser, he’d likely set off the dynamite with the toggle switch hanging on his belt, killing everyone in the vicinity. However, if the kids all attempted to run out the door at once, the horse-faced man would surely shoot several of them, the rest would trample one another, and the bomb might go off anyway.
“Come on, you sissy-ass terrorist motherfucker!” Seniqua was screaming taunts at Nasser, her pregnant belly waggling. “Get on down, so I can kick your faggot-ass!”
Merry Tyrone had her by the shoulders, weeping as she tried to hold Seniqua back. Kevin Hardison kept bobbing up behind the two of them, yelling: “Step to it, niggah! Step to it!” Nydia Colone was on her knees nearby, praying loudly. Obstreperous Q, Ray-Za, and five other boys were huddled in a corner, clearly formulating some testosterone-crazed plan to try rushing all the terrorists at once.
Lungs tightening, David realized he had to take control of the situation somehow. No one else would. He clambered unsteadily up onto one of the tables next to Nasser’s, raised his hands, and shouted at the top of his voice.
“AWWWRIIIGHT, PEOPLE!! CHILL!!!!”
Everything seemed to stop at once. Kids froze and fell silent. Nasser lowered his arms a fraction. Even the two older men at the opposite ends of the room looked up, interested in what he might have to announce.
But David, already streaming with sweat and pumping adrenaline, had no idea what to say next. His storehouse of comparable experiences was barren. All he had were his father’s words: Nothing happens and then everything happens.
“What is going on here?” he yelled at Nasser.
The little man with the gun answered instead. “We are here because there is no other way to get your attention!” he called out in slightly stilted foreign-university English. “You are all too busy watching television! Muslim peoples are suffering all over the world and you do not care! You support our oppressors, because you are cowards and
hypocrites! And you think you are heroes!”
His eyes searched the crowd of students, looking for someone who was following his message. Sensing he was throwing it over their heads, he tried to make adjustments.
“If you had a city here where only white people are allowed to work and own properties, you would call this racism!” the little man shouted out, trying to enunciate carefully. “But you are supporting it! You are supporting it because this country itself was based on racism and on the slavery of black people and the confiscation of land from the Indians. And then you invent terrorism by dropping the atom bomb in Japan and killing hundreds of thousands of women and childrens! So this is the only kind of language you understand.”
It was useless trying to talk to this one, David realized. The little man was clearly one of those people who are born hot.
Nasser was a better bet. He was young, David reminded himself, and still a little unformed. Perhaps he hadn’t turned himself into an absolute monolith of unappeasable rage yet.
“Nasser, why are you doing this?” he asked, turning and facing the boy as they both stood on tabletops some ten feet apart. “This is your sister here. These are your friends. Why would you do anything to hurt them?”
“These are not my friends!” Nasser spat out. “And my sister is a whore. You’ve made her that way!”
David saw Elizabeth shut her eyes as if to deny this was really happening. Seniqua shook a fist at Nasser and the rest of the kids in the room quietly seethed, ready to tear the visitors apart at the first opportunity. David glanced around the room, doing the simmer-down pat with his hands, hoping no one would jump up and do anything foolish that might get them all killed immediately.
“I’m not a whore, Nasser,” Elizabeth finally spoke up in a wounded voice. “My heart is as true as yours.”
“Then why?” Nasser stared down at her, his frail chest heaving over the dynamite. “Why, why, why?! Why do you act this way? Why do you betray me? Why is everything like this?”
Man of the Hour Page 38