Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel

by Karim Dimechkie

  While Max watched Nadine working in her yard one day, a bee rammed up against the living room window from the inside. The bee wouldn’t accept not going through the glass; doing so would have acknowledged a wall at the end of the universe, where space froze into an impenetrable block, posing as a continuation; a moving picture. Refusing this discovery, the bee bashed its head against it, over and over.

  Max got a cup and a piece of paper from the kitchen to catch the bee and throw it outside. He trapped it, opened the front door, murmured a couple of words to the cup about liberty that resembled a Coach Tim pregame speech, removed the piece of paper, and drove the cup forward like a dagger. The bee flew about five feet away, and then, as if connected to a string tied to Max’s front tooth, turned around and blitzed his face. Max actually shouted the word No! as it bombed down on him, its stinger curled under itself. When it plugged him right between the nose and lip, he barked in pain. The bee imbedded in his skin, its legs wriggling, fizzed like an electric charge. Max started head-banging and slapping at his mouth, his fight instincts convinced this was his demise. Nadine dropped her hose and ran over. Once he saw her approaching, he calmed down and looked at her in embarrassment, the dead bee now in his palm.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m okay,” he told Nadine. “It’s okay, I’m sorry, I’m fine.”

  Leaning her round face down into his, she said, “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She scrutinized the dead bee. “So weird how he’s willing to die just to hurt you a little, huh?” Her breath was hot and clean.

  They both examined its coiled body. Max looked up at her. There’s something surreal about seeing someone up close you’ve only watched from afar. Everything about it is surprising, somehow less realistic. She was one of those people who, the closer you got to, the more sublime her face became. Her brown skin seemed to emit light. She had high cheekbones and large canoe-shaped lips.

  His eyes were open too wide, and he closed them halfway. “Maybe this one wasn’t right in the head,” he said, then immediately regretted it, realizing it didn’t fit with what she’d said. The sting puffed up under his nostril.

  She smiled her bright teeth at him, one of the front ones slightly overlapping another. Max thought of a pair of crossed legs. “We haven’t met yet. I’m Nadine.”

  “I—Max,” said Max.

  “I-Max?”

  “I mean, I am Max.”

  She laughed, and he felt himself levitating.

  Kelly appeared at his side and introduced herself. Then she leaned stiffly against the doorframe, like a tipped vase. Looking nervous, she straightened out and put her arm around Max. How different these two women were. Nadine had a health and assuredness emanating from her that made Kelly seem anemic somehow, damaged. A gray lung sitting next to a pink one.

  He’d noticed a few times before in the grocery store that Kelly treated black people like walking miracles. They were the ultimate minority in her hierarchy of subjugated peoples. She seemed to be simultaneously praising and pitying them. Speaking to Nadine quickly and with random gigglings, Kelly told her that she’d just moved here and also just got fired and also just escaped an abusive relationship and also just doesn’t get along with any of her family members and is also fresh out of friends she can trust, ha-ha. When Nadine glanced down at Max, Kelly clasped his shoulder more tightly.

  “Well, listen,” Nadine said, “you guys should come over for dinner sometime. I think it’s long overdue that we get to know each other.”

  “Absolutely,” Kelly said, a little stridently, “we will definitely take you up on that. And you too, don’t you hesitate to come over anytime!”

  “That’s great. It was nice meeting you two,” Nadine said. “I hope your lip feels better, I-Max.”

  She turned to walk home, and when Rodney came out of the house, Kelly nearly bolted toward him, passing Nadine and extending her handshake well before she’d left the driveway, as though it towed her to him. Max returned to his observation point behind the living room window. Rodney changed his default bored and moderately offended expression into a broad, youthful smile. He stood straighter, chuckled a lot, and ended up inviting Kelly into their home. Nadine followed in after them. To distract himself from wondering what it was like in their house, Max took a shot of vodka, chased it with cranberry juice, and watched the Lebanese civil war documentary again.

  Over dinner, Kelly told Rasheed she’d met the neighbors and how nice they were. She couldn’t stop talking about them: Nadine’s doing her residency at Bell Children’s Medical Center to become an internal doctor, she’s a Democrat, an avid reader of literature, a music lover, and so pretty. And she’s only twenty-six! Can you believe it? And besides becoming a doctor, she’s done everything you can think of. She lived in Nepal for five months, volunteering at a leper colony, and lived in this Buddhist monastery in Thailand after that, but didn’t really identify as Buddhist anymore, and before all that she went to high school in Paris because her dad was a diplomat from Cameroon. She can’t understand where Nadine found the time to do all she has in so few years. And the boyfriend, Rodney, he’s ex-military, writes some kind of political column now, and wants to start a business that sells—she forgets, some kind of workout machine through a mail-order catalog or something.

  While putting a forkful of spinach, arugula, tomato, and honey walnut salad in his mouth, Rasheed said, “And her father was a political person who committed suicide. A very corrupt man.”

  Kelly and Max exchanged a look.

  “What?” she said. “How do you know that?”

  “Mr. Yang reads the international newspapers.”

  After dinner, Max got Mr. Yang’s business card out and dialed the number he’d known by heart for seven years. He liked holding on to the card while he dialed. Mr. Yang explained that when he met Nadine and heard her last name, he asked if she was related to a diplomat he’d read an article about years ago. She said that diplomat was her father. A man caught up in all kinds of illegal activities. He came home one day, walked past his wife and children, stepped out onto the balcony of their Paris apartment, and dove into the street. Mr. Yang remembered a strange detail in the article: that before killing himself, he had gotten a haircut. Mr. Yang stopped on the word haircut like it was a small garden potato he was trying to swallow. Max had never heard Mr. Yang being so emotional and didn’t dare ask why the part about the haircut choked him up.

  Max had just fallen asleep when Kelly came into his room, waking him up to say good night. She climbed into bed and spooned him. A new line was being crossed here—hugging in the dark. He had an erection, and loathed his body for it. Lying there with his eyes split wide open, he felt numb and invaded, as if awake during surgery.

  She said, “Lucky boy, there’s so much pain in the world and you are so lucky to have a roof over your head and plenty to eat and people who love you so much.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered, though he didn’t understand her regression. Hadn’t they exceeded this baby talk? Hadn’t she been discoursing on world politics and ethics just this morning, convincing him of a more socialized world where we take care of those born with a lesser lot in life? It was perplexing to admire her ideas but despise her physical company.

  “He’s seen dead people before, you know? Women, children, you name it. He’s been there.”

  “What?”

  “Your dad. He knows about death. The things we see in those movies, he knows them firsthand. That’s why he doesn’t want to be reminded.”

  “Oh.” He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah.” He wondered what his father could have told her thus far. It took Rasheed twelve years to impart any specifics to his own son, and Kelly hadn’t even been here a month.

  “He knows about losing people. Close people.”

  “Yeah.”

  “His wife. And lots of others.”

  “His wife.” The ceiling felt like it was slowly lowering. “My mom.” It wasn’t Max and his father’s private stor
y anymore.

  “I think so, honey. I think so. He told me about the time she invited a peasant into their home to teach him how to read and write. Sounds like a remarkable lady. Her dad was so pissed off when he came home to a street man sitting with his daughter.” She laughed.

  Max didn’t know anything about that. His mind conjured up an image of a bathtub running over with blood and dirty dishes. “Did he say anything else about my mom?”

  She wormed her body closer, clearly in the mood to feel needed. “Honey, I really don’t know much about the story. You know he doesn’t talk about that stuff. But I’ll ask him for you, okay, sweetie? I’ll tell you everything. I promise. I love you. I love you just for being you. You don’t have to do anything but be yourself to be completely loved by us. Isn’t that lucky? Wouldn’t it be beautiful if everyone could have that?”

  “Thank you. Yes.” Conscious of his erection again, he felt her presence become intolerable. Even her body heat felt invasive and dirty to him now. He lay unmoving, as if he hid between a whale’s jaws; the smallest movement would cause her to snap down on him. He suppressed an urge to scream. She perceived his discomfort enough to release him, but didn’t leave.

  “I don’t think I can sleep,” he said, meaning, Because you’re here.

  “Just try, honey. Just close your eyes. I know it’s hard.” She brought her arm over to hug him again and accidentally grazed his penis through the blanket. She pulled away as if burned by it.

  “Sorry!” he said.

  “No, no, that’s okay, honey. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. That’s really normal. It’s fine.” The honor in her voice repulsed him. It was like this when I woke up! It has nothing to do with you! he wanted to yell. He just wished she’d leave. Instead, she said, “You know, when I was your age, my mother made me feel ashamed of that kind of stuff. She told me those urges were evil. And that was wrong. She made me feel so—unclean and alone.” She brought her face closer to his. Her breath was sharp and everywhere. “There’s nothing shameful about your urges, Max. You’re allowed to feel that way, and you’re allowed to relieve yourself too. You know that, right?”

  He couldn’t possibly respond. Why was she talking like she was being helpful?

  “Wait. Do you know how to relieve yourself?” She said. “Have you let yourself do it before?”

  This he couldn’t answer intelligently either. Of course he knew how to relieve himself. But out loud he resorted to the quick shirking response he always gave when supremely uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”

  She lay in silence for a while before eventually sighing. “Okay. That’s okay. What you can do is rub it against the bed, up and down. You’ll sleep like a baby right after, I promise. It’s all right. I’m going to walk you through this. I’m not going to leave you, honey. Don’t worry. Now turn over onto your stomach.” Indignantly, he did. He turned away from her, facing the wall. “Good. Now go ahead,” she said, “move up and down so it rubs against the bed.” Unsure as to why, when she told him what to do, rooting him on in eerily soothing tones, he obeyed. He rubbed slowly at first, then with a certain determination. Kelly patted his back, like she was burping an infant. Rocket exhaled loudly, and Max felt pathetic but couldn’t stop. He rubbed harder and harder, and gradually brought himself closer to her, turning to face her with his eyes sealed shut. Her hair touched his face. She didn’t move away; she lay still, repeating, “It’s all right, you’re doing fine, you’re almost there,” until he found himself actually rubbing it against her thigh. Their skin never made direct contact, and she showed no sign of there being anything remotely sexual about it on her end. This made it so much worse, as though she were making a brave sacrifice for him. When he came, she said, “Goooood,” like when a dog fetches a stick.

  She swept his bangs off his sweaty brow and kissed the tip of his nose. He heard her lips part into a smile. “There. Now you know how to do it. Anytime you have those urges, you can just do that by yourself and feel good about it, okay? No shame.” Before leaving, she imposed a final meaningful pause that seemed to say, We’ve just shared something so special.

  Danny Danesh once drew a naked woman on his stomach, her legs spreading open from his bellybutton. Fascinated by this image, Max went home and did the same to himself, staring at the disproportionately large vagina in the bathroom mirror. He put his pinkie inside it like Danny had done for his friends. The physical discomfort of touching the knot of scar tissue back there was something Max kept going back for well after he’d scrubbed the woman away. Whenever he needed to be uncomfortably invigorated, he jammed his pinkie into his navel. It had the same allure for him as licking a nine-volt battery over and over, or continuing to sniff the air when something foul lingered in it.

  He was lying in his tree house now, cramming both pinkies into his belly button, when he heard his father’s voice. “What are you doing in here?”

  Max, who’d been grunting from the discomfort he caused himself, sat up. “Nothing.” It took a while to make out the outline of his father’s head, poking up into the tree house.

  Rasheed said, “We are going to play board games with Kelly. I bought the Game of Life today. Come inside.”

  “All right. Dad?” he asked his father’s shadow of a head. “Did my mom teach a peasant how to read in her father’s living room?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kelly told me.”

  Max stared at him long enough for Rasheed to feel the need to say something more. In a single breath he said, “She got into fights with her father when he came home and saw bunches of peasants sitting around the coffee table. That’s all.”

  “Bunches of peasants? I thought it was just one peasant.”

  He sighed. “Listen, there may have been one or there may have been bunches. I don’t remember. The point is she wanted to help the world, like Kelly. She was incredibly tough cookies, just like Kelly. So tough that she didn’t tolerate people very well who asked too many questions about her or who didn’t care about the Game of Life.” He slapped the tree house floor twice to get Max moving. “Okay, come down now.”

  Max avoided Kelly’s eyes as they played the board game that didn’t resemble anyone’s life he knew of. Rasheed and Kelly drank and laughed a lot as they played. They looked happy. Max felt sad but did an excellent job of hiding it. He went to bed before they finished, claiming he was just sleepy.

  The next morning, Sunday, his father’s day off, Max shuffled into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of Bran Flakes at the round table. He disliked the gaps that the round table made up against the corner. There existed a profound unfairness in those two being forced together.

  Instead of eating, he squirted yellow dish soap into the bowl and watched the dense globules refuse to mix with the water and cereal. He wanted an egg to crack into the bowl now. What would happen? Would the yolk join the soap? Rupture and smoke around the bran flakes? Float at the top, like a sun? Would everything blend together into a brownish wet cement guck, a thick substance he could sculpt with, or throw at someone’s stupid unwelcome face?

  He opened the fridge in search of the egg but got sidetracked by a brilliant red apple sitting on the bottom shelf. A puddle of milk gleamed a few centimeters from the apple, yellowed and motionless. The apple was lighter than it should have been. Probably meant a cushion of air separated the skin and flesh. He took an angry bite, and smacked up and down on the floury consistency and that web of cold skin. He spat the patch of apple into his palm and squeezed it into a kidney-shaped lump, then pressed it back into the apple where he’d taken the bite. Placing it in the milk puddle, he rotated the bitten and replastered part away from him so that it faced the back of the fridge.

  Kelly came out wearing a brown T-shirt and dirty-white terrycloth shorts. “Ready for a big breakfast?” she said. “I’ll need some ingredients from the store.” Her thighs were diagramed with veins and olive-green bruises.

  Max wondered what she was playing
at here. He stammered, “I just, it usually just takes me a second to plan out what I’m going to cook and everything, so—”

  “I know. But I’m going to take care of it this morning.”

  He should have expected this day to come. On previous Sundays she had managed to simultaneously compliment the meal Max had prepared while slipping in stories of her own breakfast achievements from her past life. Now, finally, she would be the head chef.

  “Max,” Rasheed called from his bedroom, “go to the store and get her the ingredients for breakfast, please.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She handed him a list and twenty dollars. “Hey,” she said, “I’m not trying to take over or anything, but I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t make a mean frittata.” She blew him a kiss before going back into the room with his father and shutting the door.

  Outside, he saw Rodney raking leaves into a trash bag. The rake looked brittle in his hands. He boomed at Max, “Hey there!”

  It took Max off guard. They’d never exchanged a word before. “Hello.”

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  His eyes beaded about. “It’s summer.” And on top of that it’s Sunday, he wanted to say.

  Rodney squinted a little harder than the sun had previously made him. “I’m Rodney.”

  “Hi, I’m Max.”

  “Good to meet you, Jack.” The way he said it, Max wasn’t sure if Rodney had misheard him or if Jack was some kind of nickname. “Too bad it’s only now you say hello. After how many months of living across the street from me?”

  You’ve never said hello either, Max thought.

  Rodney winked. “I’m just messing with you, man. Hey, make sure that bike seat isn’t too high. Don’t want to injure the goods, know what I mean?”

  Max looked down at where his goods met the seat and mumbled, “You got it.” He started riding off but stopped when Rodney continued talking.