The Garden of Last Days

by Andre Dubus III

  But how could he not look at them? Never had he seen so many uncovered women, their bare skin shiny with oil. And nothing happens by mistake. All is part of the plan of the Sustainer and the Judge. They were put on these beaches under the hot sun for a reason; perhaps it was to give him and his brothers a taste of what waited for them.

  But this woman across the aisle, Bassam cannot look at her any longer, at her fat sunburned leg, the dimpled flesh of it—she does not even know how deeply she sins against the Creator. None of them do. This is what has troubled him. On the flight here from Dubai, he expected to see kufar like the American officers in the souq, tall disrespectful warriors laughing at them as they walked through the day fully aware of their actions. But not these stupid people living to please Shaytan and not even knowing it. They are like dogs except they are worse than dogs because they work hard to put you to sleep as well, to make you drunk, to take your money and your clothes and your dignity and your faith.

  Their very way of living itself seeks to separate you from the Ruler.

  Eternal vigilance: the Egyptian has been correct all along not to join himself to any of them—with a smile, a shake of the hand, a polite hello or goodbye. He has been right to turn them away with his eyes. He has protected himself and their mission and now it is what Bassam must do as well, that is all—separate himself from those who would separate him from his own faith.

  The woman laughs once again and he feels a hot anger flare inside him and burn: how close he has come to truly losing his place in Jannah and it is their fault—Kelly’s and Gloria’s, Cliff’s and April’s and the black whore’s and every waitress to whom he was polite, every librarian, every fuel attendant, and he only prays his judgment has not compromised what, Insh’Allah, will be done. He only hopes he left nothing behind in the Neon. He checks his pockets but there is no paper. Did he forget the receipt of his wire to Dubai? And why did he leave the tote bag in the trash? He should have put the contents into another bag within the container. But now a kafir maid may want the tote bag, a new black Nike, and she will have to empty its contents. And what will she find? Everything. The aeronautical maps and flight manuals, the Egyptian’s protractor and German dictionary, the flight-school books and Imad’s book on judo and the computer printout from the airline companies. What will she think then, Bassam al-Jizani?

  THE DOCTOR WAS a woman. She had long gray hair streaked with black she kept pinned away from her ears, and she wore no lipstick or eye makeup, but when she held his broken wrist in her cupped hand, AJ felt cared for once again, first by the old cop and now this doctor, and he felt bad telling her the bucket came down on it. She just nodded and listened. It was hard not to look at the smooth pale skin of her throat.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Hour, hour and a half ago.”

  She kept her eyes on him, hers behind her glasses a blue-gray that wasn’t cold, just neutral, like she would never judge him but needed the truth and knew he wasn’t giving it to her.

  He looked away. There was a color chart of the human body, intertwining strands of red sinew pulled from bone to bone. She laid his hand back down on his leg.

  “It’s fractured. A nurse will take you to X-ray and we’ll go from there, all right?”

  She smiled at him, but it was that deputy who took him, his hand squeezing AJ’s good elbow all the way down the corridors.

  “You can ease up, sir, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That’s for damn sure.” The deputy said nothing more. AJ could smell his deodorant and dry-cleaned uniform, his judgment of him, this man maybe even younger than AJ, who was treating him like he’d done something sick and wrong but they would find out soon enough that the girl was fine and he’d taken good care of her just the way he said he had.

  But now he sat in the backseat of a moving patrol car, one cuff loose around his cast, the other snug against his wrist. Outside was too bright to look at, the sun glinting off car chrome and concrete, a palm frond drooping as if he’d let it down somehow, and he shouldn’t be surprised they were taking him to county but he was.

  You can’t just drive off with somebody’s child, he knew that, and maybe he should be thinking more about it than what kept running through his head, the old cop’s words: Alan, we’ve been to your home. We’ve spoken with your wife.

  Man, she could say he was crying, she could say he was drunk and driving, she could even say she hated him and never wanted to see him again—just don’t say anything about my bad hand, Deena. Please, honey, tell me you didn’t say I was already hurt when you saw me last night.

  JEAN LAY ON her sofa with a pillow over her eyes. She was trying to calm her erratic heart, trying to breathe, trying to fully accept whatever had to be accepted, the fear returning, swelling inside her as if it would swallow her, and April’s words still tore through her head like a whip of barbed wire.

  Then Jean heard her actual voice calling for Lonnie to hurry, please hurry. There was the slam of her door upstairs, the fall of her feet on the outside steps, then Lonnie’s, heavier, and Jean was off her sofa and at the door so quickly she felt faint and grabbed at his arm.

  “They found her. She’s all right.” Then he was gone.

  She may have wept. She remembers kneeling on the floor of Franny’s room, her forehead pressed to the pillow, her eyes squeezed shut. Now her body felt light and loose in the joints but it wasn’t easy to breathe and her mouth was dry and briny. She told herself to rest, to try to get a few moments’ sleep, but when she lay down on her bed it might as well have been electrified.

  Franny, oh Franny.

  She made herself eat a slice of buttered toast. She made herself drink coffee, though it only added to this feeling her body was somehow drifting away from her, something old and tired that had its own needs whether she liked it or not. And it needed rest. But not till Franny came home, not until Jean had held her and kissed her and started doing for her whatever could be done. But how much longer would this take? They’d been gone over two hours.

  She watched the news. There was a police photo of the man from a previous arrest for beating his wife. He had a boyish face, though he wasn’t handsome; he looked unintelligent and angry, something seething beneath the surface, and Jean was certain she would kill him if she could. But she isn’t dead she isn’t dead she isn’t dead. This phrase ran itself over and over inside her steadier than her own pulse. It was there as she stepped out into the vapored heat that smelled of bougainvillea and mango leaf and damp roots in soil; it was there as she reached into the slatted shadow of the stairwell and turned the water faucet until the hose stiffened over the dried coffee April had spilled; it was there as she squeezed the nozzle’s trigger and sprayed the ixora and allamanda, the bougainvillea and cabbage palm and jacaranda; and it was there inside her, a mirror to her own astonishing aliveness only two days after the suffocating knowing that, she, Jean Hanson, was going to die here in this garden Harold never got to see.

  She was smiling. She turned the hose on her face, her mouth open to the warm mist that tasted like rubber and brass, and she swallowed and swallowed, the water beading up and running down her forehead, cheeks, and chin.

  IT WAS SERGEANT Toomey who stood in the sun beside the emergency room door. A pair of green aviator lenses were flipped down over his glasses, and as Lonnie pulled up the Tacoma, the old cop saw her and smiled and she got the door open and ran to him and hugged him hard, pressing her wet cheek to his chest, his big hand patting her back.

  “We found her, hon. We sure did. We sure did.”

  He led her to a small yellow room and left her alone. It was cold with too much air-conditioning and April couldn’t sit down at the table or one of the chairs against the wall. She crossed her arms over her chest, goose bumps rising across her skin. The only window looked out at a corner waiting area where Lonnie sat talking to Sergeant Toomey.

  The last minutes now were almost a hallucination. Did he really say she couldn’t see her daught
er just yet? Did he look her in the face and say that? “Just yet?”

  And now Lonnie on the other side of the glass, shaking his head and shrugging at whatever Toomey was asking him. This new friend of hers who knew nothing about her and that’s what she was seeing, wasn’t it? They were talking about her.

  Franny asleep in her car seat, purple syrup on her chin and at the corners of her mouth, the hot coffee spilling on April’s thigh like some scolding God she should’ve listened to, the drunk little foreigner and his money, again the images searing her—her daughter’s small thighs, her smooth abdomen, Franny’s eyes wide when she chokes, these things seen by someone else, in a different way, a sick way, and they find her in some car in a garage, and her mother is not staying in this room without her another fucking second!

  The door opened just as April reached it. Sergeant Toomey held it for a short woman in a cardigan sweater who glanced at April and pulled out a chair and placed a notebook on the table. She looked over at April, the door closing behind her.

  “Are you April Connors?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Marina.” She offered her hand.

  April ignored it. “Are you a doctor? Where’s my daughter? I want to see her right now.”

  “Please, have a seat, Ms. Connors.”

  “I don’t want to sit. I want to see my daughter.” Her voice broke. She took a deep breath that moved unevenly through her. Pinned to the woman’s blouse was a laminated ID card, her photo there, some writing.

  “I’m a child protective investigator, Ms. Connors. Please, do sit down.”

  Child. Protective.

  April pulled out a chair. Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry and tacky. There was the dead dog curled on its side on the shoulder of Washington Boulevard, its matted fur and sunken rib cage. “Is she okay? Just tell me—” She tried to swallow, looked at the woman’s knees. “Is she all right?”

  “She appears to be, yes.”

  April covered her face with her hands, her crying filling the room like the air itself had been waiting for it, Franny swaddled in a blanket in her arms, her pink face, her closed eyes, that thin patch of hair on her head. And it was as if a rope had been lifted away from April’s throat.

  “Here.”

  April lowered her hands. She wiped at her eyes and took the tissue from the box the woman slid over to her. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” The woman glanced at April’s T-shirt and bare legs, her flip-flops. She looked down at her closed notepad, then back up. “This has been very difficult, I’m sure. But you should know that in situations like this, where a child is left unattended and is put in some kind of danger—”

  “She wasn’t unattended. I paid someone to take care of her! She was not unattended.”

  The woman raised her hand. “Please, let me finish.” There were gray hairs at her temples, though her skin was smooth, her eyes warm but guarded. Like a nurse. “It’s clear to me you love your child very much.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “But we have a set of guidelines we go by—we must go by—whenever a child has been placed, knowingly or unknowingly, in a potentially hazardous situation.”

  “But, she—”

  “Please, Ms. Connors, let me finish.” She took a breath, straightened her shoulders. “The medical exam indicates your daughter was not sexually abused.”

  The woman blurred. April looked down and shook her head, the quivering breath filling her lungs a gift, everything a gift.

  The woman patted her hand. “Your daughter will have to be examined further, by me, to make sure of this. But the physical indications do look good. Would you like a glass of water?”

  April nodded. She dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. The woman was in the corner of the room, filling a paper cup from a spring water dispenser. April looked out the window. Lonnie was watching her from his seat. Two old women were sitting next to him, talking to each other.

  The woman handed her the water. It was cold and April drank it all. “I just need to see her. Please, she needs me.”

  “Yes, she does. But—” The woman picked up her pen. “Because she was put in a situation where her abduction occurred, I’m afraid I’m required by law to assess her home life before she can be returned to you.”

  “What?”

  “Is there a relative she can stay with?”

  There was a jolting inside April’s chest, a queasiness spreading through her belly. “What are you saying? For how long?”

  “It could be a few days, it could be longer. We have ten days to complete the investigation.”

  “Ten days.”

  “Yes. Is there someone I can call?”

  April stared at her. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d just said or meant. Did she just say what she’d said? Franny had never spent one night away from her. Not one.

  “Ms. Connors? April?”

  “What?”

  “Where is the father? Does he live with you?”

  “No.”

  “Can I contact him?”

  “No, he’s up north. He’s nobody. He’s nothing.”

  Marina DeFelipo, that was her name, April could read it clearly on her ID card, this child protective investigator, who opened her notepad now and was writing.

  “Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”

  Her mother smoking at the kitchen table, waiting for Franny to hurry up and eat. “No, I have no family here, but my landlady takes care of my daughter. She has her own bedroom there and everything. Look, she watches her all the time, I only took Franny to work last night because Jean was in the hospital; she can stay with Jean, can’t she?”

  “It’s possible. What’s her address and telephone number?”

  “It’s the same as mine.”

  “What’s the same?”

  “Her address. We live above her.”

  Marina DeFelipo sat back in her chair. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, it can’t be the same residence we’re investigating.”

  “Why not?”

  “That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”

  April said nothing. She could feel her heartbeat. The sick emptiness inside her. The cold air of the room. But it was all so unreal. This conversation could not possibly be real.

  “Do you have any close friends I can call?”

  Stephanie in her new condo in New Hampshire, her fake breasts and polished nails and sincere smile, Lonnie out there, alone now, skimming a magazine, his Puma club T-shirt under the fluorescent light.

  “April?”

  She shook her head.

  The woman wrote something on the pad she quickly closed. “Your daughter will have to be placed into temporary guardianship.”

  The air in the room had knives in it, a whirring, an electric hum. “A foster home?”

  “Yes, she’ll be safe.”

  “She’s already safe! I can’t fucking believe what I’m hearing, I paid someone to take care of her and she didn’t and it’s not my fault. I want to see my daughter. I want to see her right now!”

  The door opened, Sergeant Toomey there, one hand on the knob. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. April was breathing hard. She didn’t remember standing. Her knees were water and she was caught now between both of them, this investigator of families and this policeman who hadn’t slept all night either, who’d found her daughter and brought her here safe. In his presence she felt ungrateful and very tired, a blood-deep tired she spoke through now: “I just want to see her. Please, she needs to know I’m here. Please. She needs to know that.”

  THEY HAVE TWO rooms attached one to the other. Two beds in each, a polished television cabinet, a clean bathroom with golden floors that shine, a kind of stone not found at home. The carpet is new and will not be an insult to pray upon, and the window has a view of a courtyard, small tables beneath the trees.

  Imad takes one room for himself, though the Egyptian may stay here with them for one night,
Bassam does not know for sure. From the minibar he takes a Perrier water and opens it and drinks half of it and lies upon the bed. The room is cool, comfortable. He is tired from the trip and from his night of no sleep. Tariq stands before the open television cabinet, the remote control in his hand. He presses the buttons until there is a picture. He presses more and then there is sound. A man swings a long steel rod and watches the ball fly into the air and land so far away on the short grass near the hole, a flag sticking out of it, hundreds of kufar watching silently behind ropes on both sides of the green. The low voices of the announcers. As if this were a holy place, as if what these people were doing was important.

  Again he is a boy, standing behind rope in the crowd in Riyadh. He has six or seven years and he is here with his married brother Adil and their uncle Rashad. Bassam no longer remembers why he is in Riyadh, so far from Khamis Mushayt, but he is standing in a crowd of many people, his brother behind him, his hands on his shoulders. There is a wooden platform. Two men are upon it, one standing, one kneeling. It is after the midday prayer and the sun is high and it reflects sharply off the blade of the sword held by the man in the black kaftan. At his feet the kneeling man weeps from under a hood, his hands bound behind him, he weeps and recites the Al-Fatihah. This seems to confuse the other man for he pauses and holds the sword high and waits for the weeping man to finish.

  Not of those who have incurred Your wrath.

  Nor of those who have gone astray.

  The sword falling in the sunlight, the soft cracking sound, the thump of the hooded head as it rolled along the platform, blood spraying from its base so redly. In the crowd there was the cry of a woman, prayers muttered by men. And Bassam could look at the hooded head but not the body that held it, not that.