Via Dolorosa(54)
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” he lied.
A spacious outdoor Japanese restaurant, determinedly festive with its green and red crepe lanterns dangling from a wire above the courtyard, called to them. They claimed a table nestled in the hug of azalea bushes. Prerecorded koto music played on hidden speakers. When the waitress came, she collected their orders with the incisiveness and mastery of a skilled musician executing a well-rehearsed solo, though the child was maybe fifteen, sixteen at most. Plum wine was served, an aperitif, along with a ceramic bowl of edamame, heavily salted. This close to the sea, the air was pleasant and fresh, and they could only smell the sea and their own food and nothing else could interfere.
“I’m going to have the smoked salmon,” Emma said. “Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
“Do it, sweet,” he said. The name, sweet, registered with both of them. It was the first time he had used it since things went wrong between them. Since the storm.
When Emma’s meal arrived, it looked handsome and neat, garnished with rings of purple onions and brown sugar, the salmon smoked straight to lox. He had miso soup before his meal and, with his plastic spoon, played with the tofu cubes in the broth.
“I’m thinking about going back to school,” she said after some time.
“For real? Since when?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about it.”
“What would you study?”
“History,” she said. “Some type of history. Maybe European history. Maybe art history.”
“All right.”
“I like the idea of someone writing all that history down. I like the idea of learning about what happened before we were ever here, and how it continues to change us. I want to learn about it, I think.”
“All right,” he said again.
“Or maybe poetry.”
“You’d be good at that.”
“Do you think so?”
“Sure,” he said. “You’re always reading it.”
“That’s true.”
“You used to love writing poems.”
“Do you think I should start writing them again?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Well, I’ve been writing a little, you know,” she said, watching her salmon. It was as if she feared it would flip right off the plate and somehow make its way back to the sea if she removed her eyes from it for even a second. “A little, anyway. Just recently.”
“Oh, yeah? When?”
“Sometimes when you go off to paint. Thinking of you being an artist makes me want to be one, too. Or to try, at least.”
“I’m sure you could do it,” he said. “I remember when you used to do it.”
“I like being an artist,” she said. “I like pretending it, anyway.”
“You’re not pretending it if you’re really doing it.”
“How do you know when you’re really doing it?”
“When you lie,” he said. “You know you’re an artist when you lie for the sake of your art.” He’d gotten it from Isabella Rosales. While he hadn’t fully agreed with her on this at the time, here, now, it made the most sense to him in the world.
“I’m not a good liar.”
“It’s a different kind of lying,” he said.
“Is it?”
“It’s the only good kind.”
“Can I ask you about the painting?” she said. “The mural?”
“All right.”
She said, “Is it difficult for you?”
“You mean because it’s taking me so long?”
“I suppose,” she said. She seemed embarrassed to have brought any of it up now.
“It’s all right,” he told her.
“I didn’t want it to sound insulting.”
He nodded with compassion, almost smiling himself now, and said, “It’s the first thing I’ve painted since coming back from Iraq. I didn’t know how hard it would be. I wasn’t prepared, I guess.”
“What is it?”
“I just can’t seem to fully focus. It keeps going off in different directions and I can’t seem to paint it straight, if that makes any sense. But it’s getting better, getting easier. I had a good day with it today.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I just meant—I mean, I thought it was difficult for you because of your hand.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t even occurred to him.
“I thought it was taking so long because it hurt you to do it.”
“Oh.”
“Does it? Does it hurt you to do it?”
He almost felt himself say it, but then concentrated on keeping his mouth shut. He looked at his own plate—beef domburi, rice, diced avocado cubes, the cloudy yellow miso broth—then, inevitably, felt his eyes shift to his right hand, his right arm. Holding chopsticks. In shirtsleeves, he could only make out the gnarled twist of scar tissue that navigated his palm, up over his thumb, around the back of his hand. He could not see it, but he was all too familiar with the way it trailed up his arm, spiderwebbing along his flesh. The visual was ingrained in him. Still, now, even in the cool (or maybe because of it), he could feel its faint, ghostly throb. There would never be an escape from the throb.