by Mira Jacob
“What else?”
“Go talk to him.”
“You go talk to him!”
“Chi!” Her mother snorted to cover up the fact that even now, in the midst of illness and disaster, she was unwilling to set foot on the porch. “What nonsense! Leaving your own father to wander around like some yakking idiot?”
“I don’t think we leave him at all, not when we’re not sure if he’s …” Amina watched her father lift a level into the air, reading the fluorescent bubbles like they were measuring something. “Anyway, I think we should keep an eye on him.”
“I am not watching this man like one television! You think I have nothing else to do?”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re busy cooking food that no one likes to eat.”
“I am cooking food that will fatten him up! You want him to waste away to nothing? He needs reserves for radiation!”
“So go back to the kitchen, if that’s where you want to be!”
Kamala gave her a long, cold look. To Amina’s surprise, she threw open the screen door, marching straight onto the porch. It seemed to curl and shrink around her, like wood chips spent by flame, and she paused for a moment, getting her bearings. She thumped through the machinery with her fists clenched, little puffs of sawdust gasping at her heels. “Thomas!”
He took no notice of her, bending to adjust the radial dial.
“Thomas!” Kamala shoved a pointer finger between his shoulder blades.
“Cha!” he yelled, wheeling around to face her. “What!”
“What are you doing?”
Thomas looked around nervously. Whether it was the simple fact that she was on his porch for the first time in fifteen years or that her clenched, fuming face was doubled up on him like a fist, Kamala had him spooked. He took a quick breath before saying, “Talking to Itty.”
“Why!”
Why? Amina blinked from the laundry room. She would not have thought to ask why.
“Because …” Thomas looked behind him, presumably to where Itty stood. “Because he’s here.”
Kamala took this in with a frown, then dodged to the side suddenly, as though she might catch a glimpse of Itty if she were fast enough. She straightened, looking back up at Thomas. “You see him?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
Thomas nodded.
“Then tell him to go.”
Thomas looked stricken. He began to tremble visibly, dropping his eyes to the floor.
“Thomas, you hear me? Stop this now.”
Thomas shook his head, lost, it seemed, to the shavings and filings and occasional winking screw or nail.
“Hey!” Kamala barked and he looked up at her. “What are you doing?”
“I … I don’t know.” He swallowed, his eyes filling with tears. He looked behind him and then back at Kamala. Amina watched from behind the screen, her eyes and nose suddenly liquid with grief. He should not go like this. He should not lose his dignity.
Thomas’s shoulders tented up and down with the effort of trying to speak, but Kamala stopped him, squeezing his forearm. She spoke so softly, Amina had to stop breathing to hear her.
“Never mind. Not important. I am going to be in the kitchen cooking. I will not leave unless I tell you first. Come get me if you need. Okay?”
Thomas’s head dropped. Kamala turned and strode back toward Amina, who only now realized that the droning she had heard in the back of her mind was not just some by-product of too much emotion, but the live and urgent trill of the telephone. Anyan George was calling back. Kamala opened the screen door and walked into the kitchen, past the still-ringing phone.
“It’s for you,” she said.
Jamie Anderson had not swept his entryway recently. That afternoon, as Amina rang his doorbell and paced, she almost crushed a tiny cluster of anthills dotting a seam between bricks and had to do a funny hop-skip to right herself. But no, even breathing hard, even disturbed by Anyan George’s lack of help (“Keep an eye on it,” he’d said, as though looking away were an option), she would not destroy another creature’s carefully wrought world. If she were God, she’d be a little fucking kinder.
A few seconds passed. She rang the doorbell again. She had hung up the phone with Anyan George and driven straight there, not admitting to herself that she knew exactly where she was going until she had pulled up behind Jamie’s station wagon.
Could he really be out? Amina banged on the door. She stepped forward, letting her forehead drop against it. If this were a movie, Jamie would open it right now. She’d fall into his arms. They would make love. She wouldn’t know if she had an orgasm because women in movies never touched themselves during sex, and it made her suspicious of their climaxes.
It was not a movie. He really wasn’t home. Amina backed up, willed the pressure in her chest to ease up. It was probably a good thing. What was she doing there, really? She did not know this man. She did not know his temperament, his cleaning habits, and the haste had been a ruse, a trick to keep from thinking clearly. By now her hand had found the doorbell and she rang it over and over again, not for any real hope of summoning Jamie, but to feel the power of her own cause and effect. There was a bubble in her lungs, the kind that happened when she stayed underwater for too long. Air Supply. She gasped with understanding. They really were such a better band than anyone knew.
Without warning, the hair on her arms stood on end, her animal brain understanding a split second before the rest that someone was behind her. Amina turned around to see Jamie stopped on the sidewalk a full house back. His park blanket was tucked under his arm, football-style.
“Hi,” she said. Jamie nodded at her once, the kind of nod you give across a room when you have no intention of getting closer. A neighbor switched on a radio that briefly blared rap before it was turned down and rerouted to NPR.
“You’re here,” he finally said.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t go back to Seattle?”
“No.”
He waited for her to say more, but she couldn’t, unnerved by the reality of him, his 94 ROCK T-shirt, the wariness on his face.
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“I left you two messages.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Jamie’s eyes did not leave her face, and though nothing in them looked vulnerable toward her, she remembered their first kiss, how strange and eager they had both been, like two mutes trying to describe a freak storm.
“I had a funny week,” she said.
This seemed to release him from whatever paralysis he’d fallen under. He walked to his car, opening the hatchback and putting the blanket in, shutting it with a neat slam. She backed up as he made his way to the front door.
“How long have you been here?” He smelled sweet and chlorinated, like a day by a pool.
“Not long.”
“Huh.” Jamie unlocked the door and pushed it open, motioning for her to enter first. She walked through a foyer to a sunny, sunken living room with two couches. Amina walked toward the smaller one as Jamie set his keys down.
“Nice place.”
“Have a seat.”
She had not been so far off about the rugs and fertility sculptures. A huge kilim calicoed the floor, and earthen pots of various sizes nestled in niches. Pillows dotted the sofa, and in one corner a surprisingly ornate wooden desk held neat piles of paper. Other than that, though, it felt like a man’s house, plantless, dusty, and with a barrenness she couldn’t quite place until she realized there was nothing hanging on the walls.
“Nice artwork.”
“Want something to drink?” Jamie ducked through an archway, and she heard the fridge door open. “I’ve got seltzer or beer.”
“Just water is great.”
The soft thud of cabinets turned into a running faucet, and a cheerless, robotic woman’s voice announced three messages. The first beep was followed by a reminder from the dentist’s office. The second was a husky-voiced gir
l. “Hiii, Professor Anderson, I’m really sorry to have to call you at home, I just have some questions about next semester,” she said, sounding stoned and possibly naked. Jamie hit the fastforward button.
“James Mitchell Anderson,” a laughing voice said after the third beep, and Amina’s stomach lurched with recognition. “Your nieces would like to talk to you. We’ve made up this game with that photo from the Quinns’ party where we draw you new hair every week and tape it on, and this week Cici—”
“Mohonk!” someone clearly little and delighted screamed in the background.
“Yes,” Paige laughed. “You have a Mohawk this week. Green, actually. But I think you’d totally dig it. Anyway, call us back. We’ll be around all afternoon.”
“Paige has kids?” Amina asked as Jamie walked into the room with a glass of water and a Corona.
He tossed her a coaster before sitting on the opposite couch. “Three daughters. The youngest is six months old.”
“Does she live here?”
“Yup.”
Amina nodded. “Cool.”
Jamie took a long swig of beer. His gaze bounced toward her and away.
“So how have you been?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“Working a lot?”
“Yup.”
A light-blue sedan pulled up in the driveway of the house across the way, and Amina watched it, breaking into a sweat. Did he want her to leave?
“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” she said. “I had a kind of weird week.”
“No big.” His fingers drummed against the bottle. “Four weeks.”
“We got my dad’s test results back. He has a tumor.” She was too nervous to look right at him but sensed his flinch from her periphery. “In his brain. A brain tumor.”
“When did you find out?”
“The day after I saw you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Was he? Amina looked at Jamie’s face for comfort or sympathy and instead saw reticence, like he did not want to catch what she had.
“So anyway, he’s starting treatment next week.” Her voice pinched with an effort to keep calm. She took another sip of water, her hurt blossoming quickly and more substantially than expected, like some stupid sponge toy that grows to five times its original size in water. So this was what it felt like to tell other people the truth. It felt like shit.
“Anyway.” She stood up. “So that’s what has been up with me. What about you? Seen any of your former students? How is Maizy?”
Jamie frowned. “What are you doing?”
She was pacing. Amina shrugged.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked.
“Are you mad at me?”
“A little.”
She stopped. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah.”
“Because I didn’t call? I just told you we found out—”
“I know. I know that.”
“Then what—”
“I don’t know. It’s not like you don’t have a good reason. But you asked if I was mad, and I am, kind of.”
There was something about the reasonableness with which he said this, the entitlement, that made her want to reach over and throttle him. Amina spun on her heel, heading toward the front door.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?” She turned around. “What am I doing?”
“Don’t turn me into some asshole.”
“You’re doing that all on your own.”
Jamie put his beer down. “Sit down.”
“What for?”
“Can you please sit back down?”
Amina wavered in the middle of the room, momentum shooting off to equally impossible outcomes. She wanted to be back in Seattle. She wanted to be in her car already, driving back to Corrales. She wanted to be back to the night in the park, with his collarbone on her tongue. Jamie motioned to the spot next to him on the couch. She walked toward him and sat stiffly. A fresh puff of dust motes flew into the air between them.
“I just thought you had left,” he said after a moment. “And that sucked, but then at least I had something to tell myself. Man, she felt so much she just had to leave.” He laughed self-consciously. “And then it turns out you were here ignoring my messages.”
His face turned toward her like a bruised flower, something sad and too delicate in its dark center, and she shrank a little.
“I didn’t want to talk about it,” she said.
He did not look particularly moved by this information.
“I just … I kept thinking once we knew for sure what we were dealing with, we could just tell everyone at once and get it over with. But every week it seems like we know less, and now it’s just …” She leaned back against the couch, the fight in her replaced with a calmness bordering on exhaustion. “The biopsy showed low-grade cells, but the problem is that might just be that small area of the tumor, and it might be worse somewhere else. My dad thinks it is, anyway. And then he seemed totally fine until this afternoon, and now he’s …” Amina snorted, gesturing into the air. “And honestly? I don’t want to talk about this with you. Not now. This is like the biggest boner killer I could think of.”
She watched a piece of fluff wander through the air in front of her, horribly aware of the silence that descended.
Jamie cleared his throat. “Did you just say boner—”
“Yes. I don’t even know where that came from. Fourth grade.”
“It’s sexy.”
“Really?”
“No. But it’s sweet. That you were thinking about that, I mean.” She pushed her leg against his on the couch, thinking about how saying a small, true thing for the first time felt much scarier than not saying anything at all.
“I don’t know,” Jamie sighed. “It’s not like I’m some expert at this. To be honest, I was a total dick when my mom got sick.” He shook his head. “But I think you go one of two ways with this stuff—you either try to be good to the people around you, or you give yourself a free pass to act however badly you want to, you know?”
Amina nodded. He was right. Even if she hadn’t been appallingly close to his neck, the smell of his skin filling her with relief and arousal, she would have had to cop to that.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His hand was on her leg. Amina watched as it slid down to her knee and back up, his fingers stroking the inside of her thigh.
“So what happened today to finally get your ass over here?” he asked, and she shook her head. She pulled his hand higher and watched gratefully as it disappeared under her skirt. She would tell him later, when they rose from the couch parched and flushed, ready to guzzle down the entire fridge’s worth of beverages, but for right now, she was ready to stop talking.
The entire household was asleep by the time Amina got home that night, which made the next thing she needed to do infinitely easier. She found Prince Philip curled up against the coolest patch of the dining room floor and tugged at his collar until he stood up.
“Come,” she said. He padded after her, through the living room, kitchen, and laundry room, out onto the porch, where they stopped just long enough to pick up a flashlight. Amina opened the screen door that led to the yard.
“Go,” she said.
She stumbled after him in the dark, trying to stifle the feeling that she was playing the part in the movie where the well-meaning woman gets murdered in her mother’s eggplant patch.
“Stay away from the beans,” she hissed once they were between the rows of vegetables. The dog went down the row that led to the trellis, and she walked down the other row, passing beds of lettuces, cucumbers, and snap peas, as she made her way to the back of the garden. Kamala’s bucket of garden tools waited mid-row, and she picked a small shovel out of it before continuing to the back.
“So what did he say about the jacket?” Jamie had asked as they sat on his kitchen counter that evening, passing a bottle of seltzer back and forth.
“He said that he was sor
ry.”
“That’s all?”
“What else would he say?”
“Well, why did he put it there in the first place?”
Amina frowned. “Did you hear the part about the tumor?”
“Yes,” Jamie said, squeezing her leg reassuringly. “But that’s medical. The doctors will deal with that. But what was he trying to do? That’s the part you’ve got to figure out.” There was an earnest, Hardy Boy–ish glint on his face that made her uneasy.
“I just told you he won’t talk about it,” Amina said.
Jamie scratched his neck. “Is the jacket the only thing he buried?”
Now, in the dark, she scooped through the damp soil, trying not to think too hard about the snakes that roamed the garden regularly or made temporary houses from sun-warmed spades and bags of blood meal. Her hand brushed something hard, and she recoiled, fumbling for the flashlight.
Glass. Not a shard, but a nice, rounded edge, which when pried loose appeared to be a jar of something. For one horrible moment, she thought she was looking at human organs, but a longer, calmer look revealed nothing more terrifying than Kamala’s homemade mango pickle. She put it down next to her and kept digging. Not ten seconds later she hit a cardboard corner, which turned into a warped copy of Nat King Cole’s Love Is the Thing. Just under that, the gilded cup of Thomas’s BEST DOCTORS IN THE SOUTHWEST 1991 trophy lay on its side. A few minutes later, as she stared at the glittering clump of Thomas’s car keys, Amina shut her eyes, submerged by the panicky feeling that the objects had not been hidden so much as they’d been biding their time, waiting for her to find them. She stood up, feeling sick.
“Fucking fuck,” she said out loud, and across the garden Prince Philip wagged his tail guiltily, sending the bean pods into silvery applause.
“Let’s go,” she said, walking toward the gate with everything jumbled in her hands. Prince Philip did not follow her. She shined the flashlight on him. “Hey, move it.”
He walked toward her reluctantly, one long bean disappearing under the soft curtain of his lip, but stopped, looking dolefully back at the trellis. She did not have patience for this. Amina stalked the twenty feet toward him, grabbed his collar, and wheeled around. A flash of white burst into her line of vision. She gasped. There, waiting politely at the side of the path she had just walked down, was a brand-new pair of white Velcro tennis shoes.