by Lise Haines
I thought again of that word Sor had used once: transcendent. It was like being back in our early years, when resources were scarce but we saved as much as we could for each other.
She proposed a toast to my new job, and I made one to her sculpture and her new territory. She leaned forward. I could see all the way down her dress to her belly. I had forgotten that bra or hadn’t seen it before, and I hoped no one else had. She laughed lightly and kissed me on the mouth.
The good hard work of her day glowed from her skin. Pulling back a little, she took my hand and led me over to her bed, which used to be our bed. We made love with generosity, and I stopped being lost. I stopped entirely.
Mona
There used to be a sword swallower in Millennium Park, and she did something called The Drop. This is a move where she let the sword free-fall through the pharynx and esophagus, straight into the cardiac opening. She explained this at the start of the performance, making sure we understood that the tip of the sword would pass within millimeters of the aorta and the heart. I tried to imagine I had the discipline of that sword swallower after I read about the Kaminskis. I walked around knowing I was millimeters from a pain that could take me out. I tried to hold it together until I could pull the sword out or be brave enough to let someone draw it out of me.
I was in that kind of shock where someone is talking right into your face, someone you’ve known for years, but you have no idea who they are.
As soon as I saw Richard after my shower, it hit me that he’d be standing there next week, and next month, and the month after that, doing everything he could to make the world appear normal, but he would be the constant reminder that it wasn’t. He would become more of a sign than a man. He would point to the sudden drift, the impact, the explosion.
I had opened the conversation. I knew he was hoping I’d talk with him about anything irrelevant, any nonsense. When I turned and saw him open his mouth I gave him a chance to break it all down for me. He was the storyteller after all. He often had the last line of his stories before he even began. “Tell me about the people in the hit-and-run,” I said.
I waited for his remorse. I waited for it to spill from his eyes and mouth. But it was as if he had forgotten altogether. It’s been so long. You were young. He made it into another story, a false story. I kept the pressure up, but he just went into his routine, spilling a package of Lola’s cookies that weren’t his to spill.
When I couldn’t take another minute I ran out of the apartment, stopping at each landing to catch my breath. I fled down the block in a halting way. At first I didn’t see the guys at the rehab center smoking their cigarettes with nowhere else to go except the ramp in and out of the building. One of them called, “Hey, come talk to me!”
“What’s the hurry?” another yelled.
I kept going, and after three blocks I was hit with a side stitch and slowed. I thought of going to Nitro’s. He didn’t care what I showed up like or where I’d been or where I was going.
I didn’t have my pack or wallet with me, so I had to hitch a ride along Clark Street. One guy stopped, and I held the door open, looking at the purple velvet interior of his car and the tattoo of a woman with a beat-up face on his neck. I really ticked him off when I said I’d changed my mind and felt like walking instead. He sat there for a while, window down, calling me a cunt as I moved up the street.
A woman who looked like someone’s grandmother—not mine but somebody’s—stopped and took me right to Nitro’s door. The whole way she asked how I was doing in school and if I helped around the house, and I kept saying fine and yes, and finally she let me out with a solid scold about hitchhiking.
This time of day was early for Nitro. His hair was matted, and the stubble along his chin looked chewed up in places. He wore one of his shredded T-shirts, and maybe he didn’t realize he wasn’t wearing any clothes below this, his dick just hanging there. The place was cluttered even for him, and the jumbo screen was on with a frozen game.
Nitro pulled on a pair of jeans and dropped into his leather chair, watching me. I once heard him tell someone this was his LC3, his Le Corbusier, also known as a cushion basket. I found it offensive that he went on about it. To me it was a chair.
I cracked open a couple of windows and dropped onto his couch. Picking up the controller, I released the game and began to run through the village. He had this nostalgia for the ’60s and ’70s even though he wasn’t alive then. So there I was, searching up and down the streets of Saigon, M16 in position, shooting whatever I had a chance to shoot. I had an arsenal of grenades to set off, and in the distance I saw the napalm drops. I heard screams. Plenty of screams hit the air, though I couldn’t see anyone on fire. I knew that photo by Nick Ut of the girl struck by napalm running down the road naked, the guy in the background loading his camera.
I heard the choppers and ducked into a bar.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“Fuck if I know,” I said, turning friendly fire on an ally. I was obliterated instantly, my score demolished.
Coming back to life, I started over.
“You usually text first,” he said, “and later in the day.”
“I think you need a new controller. Did you see that? I had my finger on the button.”
“Are you on something, babe?”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Let me help.”
“Nothing’s going on. Just a few people blowing up, that’s all. Do you have something to eat?”
“I could make you an omelet.”
“I’m sick of your omelets.”
“Okay …” he said. Nitro was a patient guy, but he was reaching a limit.
The screen froze again just as I discovered VC hiding in the basement of a bar. “Goddamn it!” I yelled and stood up and threw the controller at the wall so hard the housing split apart and the batteries flew. A small patch of plaster chipped and fell.
Nitro jumped up and took me by the wrists.
“Let go.”
“Not until you tell me what this is.”
I squirmed, but he locked down harder.
“You really want to let go of me, dickhead,” I said.
“And let you smash up the whole place?”
“I’m fine,” I said, taking a breath. “I’m ready to tell you. As soon as you let me go.” I looked at the floor, waiting. I counted. I looked up and smiled at him.
Slowly he loosened his grip. He reached over and pulled a strand of hair away from my face.
I hauled back and belted him in the gut.
“Jesus. Fuck.”
“Don’t ever pin me like that again,” I said.
“Is this about your father? Because you just punched a man when he wasn’t ready. You could cause a fucking rupture.”
“I am. I’m causing a fucking rupture,” I said.
He reached out as I walked toward the door but must have thought better of it.
On the way down in the elevator I could feel myself fill with heat. There was a high whine in my ears. I burst out onto the street and looked for a ride.
This guy who kept looking over at me like he wasn’t sure I was sitting there in his car took me north. Along the way I felt dizzy, and my stomach clenched. I asked him to drop me off at the cemetery. He took me right there without asking for directions. Some people have a way of finding death.
The lake was iced over, and the only sound came from the cars fleeing around the curve. Looking across the gravestones and mausoleums, I saw some half-finished repair work. No one in sight, only a slow van on its way out of the main gate. In the warmer seasons the waves pound against the limestone break on the other side of Sheridan, and mist comes off the lawn as the morning temperatures shift. There have been reports of seeing an aviator out in the lake. The aviator has a routine where he struggles to stay afloat but ultimately drowns. Then his ghost hauls itself up out of the water, crosses Sheridan, and enters the cemetery, where it disappears.
I found t
he office, and inside a woman sat behind a counter, wearing three cardigan sweaters, one on top of the other. Her red hair was little more than a spidery wisp. An electric heater cranked by her feet, and she held a folded newspaper close to her face, squinting at the type. Without looking up she said, “Getting ready to close for the day.”
“Is it too late to find a couple of graves?”
She peered over her bottle-thick glasses as I gave her my grandfather’s name on my father’s side. He had, my mother said, raised his son by knocking him down a set of childhood stairs until he toughened up. Mostly Dad made him an ogre and placed him in a broken-down castle in his stories, but last year Mom told me it was a house in Cicero, and my father’s collarbone snapped when he landed the wrong way on the last step.
The clerk stood to her full height. She wasn’t more than four foot six or seven. Maybe it was this simple matter of height or the electric heating unit blasting away or too many fluorescent lights beaming overhead, but I began to feel unnaturally tall.
“Burial date?” she asked, looking at the file drawers.
I began to sweat and pressed a hand against my brow. It’s possible I was floating a little. I was looking down not only at this tiny woman but somehow at myself—at my blue hair and my sudden concern with the ancestors.
I made a stab at a date, and she retrieved her glasses and set to work. She opened the first of many index drawers, looming in close to look at the cards, then slamming the drawers so fast I was amazed she didn’t catch her nose. She flicked through hundreds of cards, each search followed by the hard smack. As she ripped along I could almost feel my head bump against the ceiling.
“Write this down!” she said, her eyes black dots now. “There’s a pencil in the basket!”
In the basket of golf pencils were small slips of paper that she must have cut with a fingernail scissors, all the edges scalloped. She called out a number, and I wrote it down, my hands shaking. Then she pulled a laminated map out from under the counter and started to give me directions.
“Are you a Nazi hunter?” she asked.
“No, are there Nazis buried here?” I had a sick feeling, wondering if one of my family members …
“Ghost tracker?” she said.
“Not that I—”
“If you’re recording anything for film or television, you have to fill out a permission form. Do you need one of those?”
“No to film and television,” I said.
“Don’t forget to take a brochure as you go.”
When I got outside the gravel under my boots tugged me back to earth. I had begun to think I was going to take off like a helium balloon as soon as I hit the open air.
Moving toward the lake, I followed the map but couldn’t find the number I had written down. I looked back at the office. The lights were off and there was no sign of the woman. I had hoped to talk with my father’s parents, to ask why they had screwed up so badly. I had thought about desecrating their monuments. But when I looked again I saw I had written my own name on the piece of paper and there were no numbers at all.
I walked toward the road, picking up some snow and holding it against my face.
Ajay must have seen me from his windows when I got to the building. He stepped into the hall suddenly, shutting the door behind him. He put a hand against my forehead and then my cheeks.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“I can see how fine you are,” he said, taking my hand. “You’re burning up.”
I told him I was going to Cynthia’s.
When we got there she had me sit on the couch, and she took my temperature.
“Almost a hundred and three,” she said.
I believe we had a discussion about whether I should go to the walk-in clinic, but maybe we were talking about the walk-in closet. Words poured out like quick bursts of rain. If it was a clinic, my mother couldn’t pick up those bills, and there was little I could do on my pay. I said I was staying put.
Ajay brought a glass of water and a bottle of analgesics. As I held my hand out Cynthia said, “You have the most interesting line in your palm between the Girdle of Venus and Line of Head. Sort of an accidental line.”
I liked Cynthia, so I was patient when she went off on things. And when I considered this later I understood her way of making uncertainty into a game.
“She should drink something,” Ajay said.
“There’s orange juice. It’s important to keep your electrolytes together,” Cynthia said.
Ajay went off to the kitchen to rifle through the refrigerator. I asked Cynthia to take my phone and send a message to my mother saying, Out tonight.
A minute later she showed me the screen that said, Have fun.
Soon I was drenched in sweat and trembling. Cynthia pulled back the curtains to the walk-in closet and turned on a small lamp that sat on a wooden crate. She found a pair of PJs for me, and I slipped under the covers.
“I’m worried if I shut my eyes I’ll start circling Calvary.”
“You’re okay,” she said.
It was dark out when Ajay nudged me to move over. I sat up and let him try my temperature again.
I took a few sips of the cold juice he held out. “What’s Cynthia doing?” I asked.
“I believe she’s giving us space.”
I touched his shirt where the tattoo was drawn.
“I’m having it taken off,” he said.
“Constantina,” I said.
He gave me a funny look. “Yes … we talked about her,” he said.
He kissed my hot cheek, and I rested against him.
It took a moment to understand he was asleep next to me and Mr. Kapur was standing at the opening to the closet, railing at us in Hindi. My mother was crowded in next to him, trying to keep Mr. Kapur calm. She raised her voice in graduated decibels, asking him to stop shouting. Cynthia pushed in behind her, not wanting to miss anything. Ajay rolled over, mumbling something, and his grandfather reached out and swatted his legs. I thought this would wake anyone. In his sleep, or what appeared to be his sleep, he tried to bat his grandfather’s hand away.
Finally Mr. Kapur yelled, “How could you mix yourself up with this girl?”
Ajay’s eyes popped open. He looked at me and then over at the group filling the doorway.
My mother said, “Maybe if we all relax a little we can find out why they’re here.”
Cynthia rolled her eyes.
“Get up, you miserable boy!” Mr. Kapur yelled. Then he tapped Ajay on the bottom of his feet with one of his cowboy boots.
“Ahhh! Stop, old man. Stop,” Ajay said as he sat up.
I began to shudder again, and my mother said, “Are you sick?” But instead of waiting for me to answer she nudged her way around Mr. Kapur and crowded into the tiny space. Leaning down, she felt my forehead and asked me to take my temperature again.
“What a wretched country,” Mr. Kapur said. “Young unmarried people fornicating everywhere you look. No one with the slightest shame.”
“We probably shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” my mother said.
“It’s like A Night at the Opera, where people keep piling into that small cabin on an ocean liner,” Cynthia said.
Mr. Kapur gave me a long, sorry look and said, “I do not know what I have done to deserve … to deserve …”
All of us watched Mr. Kapur. He seemed to have forgotten what he deserved. He cradled his head in his hands.
“Is he crying?” my mother asked softly.
“He just needs a minute,” Ajay said and got up. He came back with a chair from the kitchen so his grandfather could sit down.
I handed the thermometer to my mother and asked if there was any ginger ale. Careful not to disturb Mr. Kapur, Mom went into the kitchen to search, and I heard Richard’s voice move in the living room. I guess no one had bothered to close the front door.
“What’s going on?” he said
“I don’t want him here,” I said.
“Is Mona oka
y?” he asked.
Ajay looked ready to take my father on if necessary.
“I’m making coffee. And I have some cognac,” Cynthia said, as if we were having a social event and this was the time to make a toast to the New American family.
“She’s fine,” Mom said, stepping into the hall to address him. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
“If you’re sure,” Dad said. Then there was a long pause before his footsteps receded and the door clicked shut.
“He left Lola alone?” I said, starting to get up.
“She’s on an overnight,” Mom said.
“I better get my grandfather downstairs,” Ajay said to me. “Leave your phone on.”
As he slipped past my mother she stopped him and asked, “Is he … has he become more forgetful?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“That kind of temper, I saw it in my aunt.”
“So far the progression is slow. But yes, things have changed,” Ajay said.
“You talk about me like I’m not even here,” Mr. Kapur said.
“Daa-daa-gee, we need to go downstairs now,” Ajay said.
But this only seemed to get him going again. “I forbid you to see her.”
“We can talk about that,” Ajay said.
“How will you finish your schooling if you get carried away and bring a child into the world? You will have to work instead, the way I work. I met your grandmother when the time was right. That was all. There was a dowry. My schooling was complete. Your grandmother was all I needed, and I married her, which is the proper way.”
“Come on. I’ll make breakfast,” Ajay said.
As they made their way downstairs Mom came into the closet. Sitting at the end of the mattress, she touched my feet.
“Lola and I could stay down here until he leaves,” I said. “Cynthia would be happy to have us.”
“I could make the couch up or just give them my bed,” Cynthia said, handing my mother a glass of ginger ale.