Peacekeeping

by Mischa Berlinski

  “I wasn’t unfaithful,” Kay said. “I was a good, decent, devoted wife.”

  “The couple was unfaithful,” said Louise.

  “Bullshit,” said Terry.

  That got a smile out of Kay, first in a long time.

  After he got the first confession out of his system, Terry loved confessing. Two decades he’d spent coaxing men to confess their sins, and this was the first time he’d ever seen it from this side of the table. He knew this from the interrogation room, the way getting someone to talk the first time was hard, getting them to stop talking was harder. Sometimes he’d want to tell them, Shut up, you’re digging yourself a deeper hole. Same dynamic at work with Louise Something: the urge to talk and talk and talk. Every time you tell the story, you tell it different, you tell it deeper. First story: wasn’t me. Second story: was me. Third story: was me and I’m good. Fourth story: was me and I’m bad. Nth story: used to be me. How much it had bothered him that Kay stopped seeing him the way she used to, like he was her hero. How there’d been a place in his heart that was Kay’s, and he’d given it to this other lady. How they’d made love twice a week, most times at her place. How they’d watched TV together afterward.

  “What did you watch?” Kay asked.

  “You know, whatever was on.”

  Kay wincing, the TV hurting her more than the sex.

  “Did you love her?” she asked.

  Terry didn’t know how to answer that. He’d always known where home was. That should mean something too. He’d never lost his head for her. There was just this thing that was Kay’s and he’d given it to her. But it was Kay’s and if you knew that thing was Kay’s—doesn’t that mean something too?

  So that was how the other thing went. Whole time it was happening, the thing inside him that told him what was right and what was wrong was pointed firmly in the direction of wrong. Terry White was the kind of guy—he liked to be able to look everyone in the eye. If you can’t look your own wife in the eye, something’s wrong. He knew that. And when Kay knew, really knew, that he understood that, that’s when she let him come home. Separate Kay and Terry and interrogate them about his thing with Miss Whitman, and they’d have ended up telling pretty much the same story, word for word. That’s all you can really hope for: one marriage, one story.

  So what you got to understand, what you really have to understand, is that this thing with Nadia was all different. What you got to understand is that the thing inside him was pointing the other way round.

  * * *

  What you got to understand, Terry was saying—what you got to understand is—

  He lit a cigarette.

  He had never wanted a woman more in his life, from the first time he saw her, which was on the very night he had heard gunfire and, motivated by blind, stupid instinct, headed in the direction of danger. The siren of his vehicle had interrupted the assault. By the time he was at the house, the judge was already half out the door, standing on his front stoop with a shotgun in his hand. Didn’t even know how to rack it properly. Terry was worried that the judge would shoot his own balls off. Then they’d gone inside, patrolled the house, rooftop to kitchen, back terrace to bedroom, where Terry had seen Nadia sitting in bed in white underwear and a gray camisole. The judge had slipped into the bedroom, closed the door—the last thing Terry saw was her green eyes staring into his, a straight-out soul connection if there ever was one.

  A week later Terry was in charge of a special unit doing close personal protection, officially training the PNH who would be assigned to protect VIPs, in truth, the judge’s shadow himself—and those days, Terry barely saw Nadia: she seemed to flit around the background of the judge’s existence like a fawn. Terry was a deer hunter, and he knew that you don’t see the does like you saw the bucks. He’d be watching baseball with Johel on the big screen and she’d be listening for the voices of hunters in the glades, those strange green eyes sweeping the room side to side. It took a long time, maybe months, before she could just sit in a room with Terry and be still—we’re not talking anything else, brother, but sitting in a room. How many words did they say to each other in all that time? Two dozen? How many smiles? One, two, at the most? If you were a different man than Terry, you might have thought she just didn’t like you. But Terry knew just who she was right from the start; he had seen it too many times not to understand it.

  Here was a woman who was frightened for her life.

  Driving patrol, lying on his cotton mattress, or swimming long sea laps down at the beach, he was thinking about Nadia, what it was like when she and the judge were alone together, what they talked about, what they did. How she felt when she saw his big body coming to her in the night. What Terry always knew, what made him a good cop, was that you could feel this way and the other way all at the same time; he knew that we all could feel this way and the other way all at the same time. Son of a bitch had it coming; worst thing I ever did was shoot that son of a bitch. I’ll hate that cunt until the day they put me in the earth; how could I have done that to the woman I loved? The judge was the best man he ever met, and sometimes he thought the bastard was like one of those creeps who preyed on small children.

  No doubt in Terry’s mind he’d give his own life to protect the judge’s.

  No doubt in Terry’s mind the judge could make a difference around here.

  No doubt in Terry’s mind that Nadia was with the judge because she had nowhere else to go.

  Nowhere else to go—that’s just one of those phrases Terry had never thought about until he got to Haiti. An American always has someplace else to go. That’s what it means to live in a big country. Big country is a big way of looking at the world. Haiti was the first time Terry ever thought about life in a little country, like living in someone’s armpit, tight and narrow and hot and hairy. Terry got up in the mountains, looked out at the sea: that was the prison wall, right there. One goddamn hill after another, all of them leading to a place like this place. Nadia couldn’t get past that wall. Where was she going to go? Some other nasty-ass butt crack of a Haitian village? Port-au-Prince? The Dominican Republic? Live in some Santo Domingo whorehouse, selling herself? She had the judge. That was all she had. Judge plus Nadia equals Ongoing Life. Nadia minus judge equals Death. That was the simple pair of equations that governed this lady’s existence.

  And believe it or not, Terry had been determined not to touch her, determined to be good. Good husband, good man, good friend. Once in his life, he wanted to do the right thing by everyone—by Kay, by his family, by the judge, by himself, by the hungry kids with red hair. Just look himself in the mirror and know that he could tell his story straight-up to a stranger on the street.

  But then came Tuesdays, when the judge’s maid washed the laundry out on the back terrace of the concrete house and hung the laundry on a line. The house overlooked the Caribbean, and Terry would sit out there with the judge in the evenings, watching the sun set in the direction of Jamaica and drinking a Prestige, utterly and absolutely soul-struck by the sight of Nadia’s underwear swaying and sashaying and cavorting in the breeze, simple white cotton women’s panties and bras, stroked gently by the wind.

  And still he wanted to be good.

  For four months he tried to be good, and when you had it like he had it, four months is a long time, brother. In four months, how many times did the two of them talk one-on-one? Maybe twice. Once, in the kitchen, Terry was making rum cocktails. “Do you want one?” he asked. “I don’t care,” she said. “Then I won’t make you one.” “I want one.” “Then cut up some lemons.” That was conversation number one, reproduced verbatim, interrupted by the lumbering bigfoot presence of the judge, wanting to know if Terry had heard the latest from Les Irois. Terry turns around, and she’s gone. Terry had to cut that lemon himself. No rum sour for her.

  What you got to understand is that Terry loved them all—that can happen too. Loved the judge like a brother and Kay like a wife and Nadia like a woman. Those long drives up into the moun
tains, the judge and Terry had talked about Nadia, the way they talked about everything else. That’s when Terry started to fall in love with Nadia, just from hearing Johel talk about her. The judge had come back to Haiti determined to save and reform her, turn her into a solid citizen. Johel knew she was an intelligent woman: sometimes he’d tell her things about the law, and she’d tell him things back that’d make him think long and hard. So the first step was going to be to school her. Second step, teach her a trade or open a little business. Last step of the program, she’d be a free and independent woman. Only thing was, the judge had failed to consult Nadia. She wasn’t interested, not at all. Didn’t want to make plans. Didn’t want to go to school. What do you want to do? No answer. Are you sad? No answer. Happy? No answer. Johel got so frustrated he’d shake, trying to talk to her. Then he’d see her taking a shower, hear her singing, she’d come to bed. So soft, so gentle. Remember that he loved her. Man, she drove the judge crazy. You couldn’t fight with that woman. Reason with her, and she’d just stare at you. She was unhappy, she’d just leave. She had a cousin who lived near Carrefour Charles, she’d head up there like a runaway slave. No cell phone reception. Stay there until the judge himself hoofed his way up the mountainside to get her. Johel went a day without her, it was like his heart was breaking into shards of glass. Only place he ever saw her relaxed was up in the village. Watching over her cousin’s kids. Every day in the church singing. Making music. Carrying water. Washing clothes at the river. She said she hated the village, but Johel saw a calm in her up there. That was where she belonged. What was she doing with him? What was he doing with her?

  (And Terry knew, not knowing how he knew, what it was to wake up first thing in the morning to that big, unshaven face. The judge never talked to her; he talked at her. Came back at night, that mouth opened and shut and opened and shut and opened and shit and Nadia—she didn’t understand a word. Words just didn’t stop. Johel and Nadia played off each other like this: he talked&talked&talked, and Nadia could see all the while right into his jealous heart—because nothing that the judge felt or wanted was a mystery to her. No woman who had been pawed and loved and struck by as many men as Nadia could fail to understand a man’s heart. Terry imagined Nadia telling herself to be grateful that she wasn’t still in prison down in Florida. Then Nadia starting to wonder what the difference was. Terry could imagine how once a week the judge climbed on her. That big body riding on her, smelling like onions. Grunting. Sticky. The judge eating, just eating and eating and eating. She wanted to wear pretty things, the judge saying no. She wanted to go to Port-au-Prince, the judge saying no. She wanted to dance, the judge not able to keep his feet in line, move her around right.)

  Sometimes Johel would ask Terry questions. Whaddya think? Would you leave Kay home with him? The “him” in question was the gardener. The plumber. The next-door neighbor. Terry said, “You got to be confident, Johel.” But the judge was fat, had always been fat. He didn’t see himself with a woman like Nadia. Didn’t know if he satisfied her. It could torment him, just wondering what she thought of him. She had left him once, and the pain of it had almost killed him: he thought the pain of it the second time around would kill him.

  But when it came to Terry, the judge was blind. And had he been just a little jealous, Terry might have backed off, put in for a transfer to Port-au-Prince. He’d been in Jérémie long enough. But the judge, who noticed every man and boy in Jérémie who’d ever thought about his wife, didn’t want to notice the way Terry’s face went red if Nadia was present, didn’t want to see Terry’s eyes roaming her slender body. Law of nature: a dog’s got to growl if he wants to keep the bone.

  That’s the way it was, those long drives with the judge and Terry. Talk, talk, talk: marriage, marriage, marriage. Not easy for me either, brother. Let me tell you about Kay. Let me tell you about Nadia. Fuck ’em all. Let’s get a beer.

  And in all that, Terry felt, for the first time since his sister’s death, the first—shit, he didn’t know what to call it. Call it love, okay? Just call it love. And “love” wasn’t the right word at all. It was like the ice was melting in his heart.

  * * *

  Louise McPherson. Christ alive, that was her name. That was going to drive me crazy. Louise McPherson. Good ol’ Louise.

  Nice lady, but didn’t know shit about marriage.

  * * *

  So there was this incident—made him think long and hard.

  Sometimes, if Marguerite Laurent was shorthanded and the judge was out in Port-au-Prince, she’d ask Terry to take a turn on patrol. So he was riding shotgun on the way to Chambellan with Eric, from Quebec. Eric spent his free afternoons at a local orphanage, fixing the roof and carrying the kids around on his shoulders, acting like the grandfather none of these kids had. When he went home on leave, he organized a toy drive, his whole community pitching in to buy a couple hundred stuffed animals. That’s how all those little bears and otters and ocelots could be found on sale in the marché, right next to the mosquito nets distributed to the poor by the WHO.

  Terry asked Eric, just to pass the miles, not really wanting an answer, what brought him to Haiti.

  Eric tells him that all his marriage he’d been a first-class dog. He saw a pretty girl, he’d call his wife, tell her that a case came up. “I was a bone on legs,” he says in that Canadian way, as if he’s got a sinus infection from hell. He tells Terry he cheated on his wife in hotels, motels, bars, lounges, rented apartments, and the back of his car. “I hear you,” Terry says, thinking all of a sudden about Kay, about how he wants to do right by her.

  So Eric knew every sleazy motel in Quebec. He’d had mistresses, girlfriends, lovers, ladies who gave him a romp if he gave them a call once a year. When they were younger, he and his madame had these big fights—knock-down, drag-out, change-the-locks, call-the-other-cops fights. Then she’d just resigned herself, got this sad look in her eyes. Made him want to get out of the house, that look. So it was just three years ago, Eric said, after thirty-three years of marriage on his terms, that he woke up one morning, his wife (he says whatever the name of his fat-ass Canadian wife is, but what Terry hears is Kay) in bed beside him, made himself a cup of coffee, went off to work. Later Eric left a message on the answering machine telling (Terry hears it again: Kay) that he was working a case late. He didn’t come home until it was almost dawn. He found (Kay) just where he’d left her, still lying in bed, just like she was when he got up the day before. The doctors said it was an aneurism. (Kay’s) body was already going stiff.

  When the paramedics took Eric’s wife away, they had some trouble getting her through the door into the hall. They had to bend her this way and that. There was some talk of having to get her out through the window. Somebody, not realizing that Eric was in earshot, made a joke about a saw.

  Then, when she was gone, Eric hit the button on the answering machine. There was his voice saying “Honey, working a double shift tonight. Back late.” The worst part of it all was that he couldn’t look at his kids now. They were just the spitting image of his wife. It was as if she were looking at him, hating him, wondering how he could have been off loving up some other woman while (Kay) was lying un-mourned, unwept, unnoticed in her deathbed. When the kids looked at him, their eyes said, You bastard. So now he was in Haiti, working with the orphans just so he didn’t have to be back in Quebec looking into his kids’ eyes.

  Eric finishes his story and looks at Terry. Appropriately somber-eyed.

  And what happens is, they’re still driving, and this big old hawk came swinging up over the cliff, hunting down some cute mouse for breakfast. Terry never could forget that hawk, how it came swooping down out of nowhere until it was about this close to the windshield, then swung out over the mountainside. Terry thought that bird was going to come right through the fucking window.

  He says to Eric, like nothing happened, “I hear what you’re saying, brother. I really do.”

  * * *

  After that Terry stayed away
from Nadia, best he could. Man can have two desires in his head. Man can discipline himself. Man can say no. Man can stay away. That was when he started thinking seriously about the road. That was when he started pushing the judge on the road. It’s more like a game than anything else. Man’s never gonna build a road. Pushing the judge, just a way of marking the miles out, you know? Banter. Talking smack. Bullshitting.

  Only the judge was listening. Every time he tells the judge, “You got a destiny,” son of a bitch hears destiny-destiny-destiny, like footsteps echoing down a marble corridor. He wants to listen, though, Terry’s happy to talk. Because he believes in destiny, because he believes we’re meant for greatness. That’s when he starts believing in that road himself. He starts seeing it. He stops thinking about Nadia so much and starts thinking tarmac. He’s thinking how he’ll tell his nephews, I built a road. He thinks he’s out of the woods with Nadia. Judge says, “Come on in for a drink.” Terry says, “Nadia home?” Judge says, “Most likely.” Terry says, “Maybe tomorrow, brother. Got Kay on Skype tonight.”

  Four months. Kay visiting. Making love to his wife. Driving out with the judge. Talking politics. Thinking about the future, even after Haiti. Building. Planning. Lot of serious talks. Long swims. Road. Feeling like everything is getting solid again.

  And then—just like that—just like that goddamn hawk coming down on the car, Eric throwing on the brakes, the patrol fishtailing and throwing up a cloud of dust—just like that—

  * * *

  Start with this. Terry had this thing he did, walking around cemeteries. Some people don’t know the dead can talk. That’s their secret. But someone’s got to be listening.

  In any case, it’s something he’s done since he was a kid—spending an hour or two every now and again prowling around the cemetery, looking at gravestones, looking at the flowers, thinking about the ancestors. One of the few truly effective antistress things he knew, taking a walk in the cemetery. Quiet place, put every damn thing in your life in perspective. Spend an hour visiting the dearly departed, come away with your brain rearranged.