The Other Americans(7)

“We’re not talking about money,” Salma said. “We’re talking about Baba’s restaurant, which he cared about immensely, as you yourself pointed out a little while ago.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, what did you mean, then?”

“It would be good if your husband was a bit more sensitive, that’s all.”

“He was only trying to help.”

The doorbell rang, startling me. Salma went to answer it, her bracelets jingling on her wrist at a steady pace, as though she were keeping time. With a growing ache in my chest, I finished folding the napkins. Only a day in this house and already the arguments had started. I didn’t understand why people were visiting the house so soon; it could have waited until after the funeral. I didn’t want to hear the story, told again and again to each new visitor, of how my father had been found unconscious on the pavement by a schoolteacher out on her nightly run. The paramedics arrived only minutes later, but it was too late, he was already dead. I didn’t want to be asked where I was when it happened, or how I heard the news. I grew tired of shaking hands with my sister’s friends, tired of hearing their hushed voices. After a while, I retreated to the deck.





Jeremy




When I got to her house, the front door was open. I could hear the din of overlapping conversations inside, some of them in a language that felt familiar to me but that I couldn’t understand. There were several pairs of shoes lined up at the entrance, and I wondered if I should take mine off as well, but what if she wasn’t even here? Framed photographs hung along the hallway, including one from our high school jazz band. It occurred to me that I had never been inside her house before, and yet for ten years my likeness had waited for me on the wall.

In the living room, I found myself in a crowd of strangers, all of them standing in small clusters, drinking tea from tiny blue glasses. Her mother sat on the sofa, absorbed in a conversation with an old man in a black jacket and a white skullcap. The phone rang in the kitchen. Someone called out for a glass of water and an Advil. The house was loud and stuffy and I felt out of place. I had come straight from the police station, and now I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. Then I saw her on the deck.

I walked through the glass doors, relieved to be out of the crowd if nothing else. It was just after dusk, the sky turning from blue to black. Along the wooden fence, bundles of red Indian paintbrush glowed like the embers of a dying fire. The floorboards creaked under my shoes. “Nora,” I called. At the sound of my voice, she turned around. Her hair was long and black and fell about her shoulders. Her eyes were as I remembered them, dark and direct. She was wearing a green dress cinched at the waist with a narrow belt. In the yellow light that came from the living room, her skin looked golden. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She looked at me wordlessly, and for a moment I had the horrifying thought that she didn’t remember me and that I shouldn’t have come at all. But then she crossed the deck, her bare feet light and silent on the wooden slats, and hugged me. Warmly, I thought later that night as I sat in a bath. “Thank you for coming, Jeremy,” she said. When she stepped back, her gaze was drawn to the living room. A sudden wail soared, and a chorus of bereaved voices rose in comfort. She looked at me again, this time with despair. “Would you mind—could you stay for a bit?”

“Sure, of course.” I sat beside her on the wooden bench. But for all my certainty about coming to see her, I had prepared nothing else to say. I settled on something simple. “Your father was a good man.”

“Thank you for saying that,” she said, and touched my arm lightly.

“I remember when we had afternoon rehearsals, he’d come and listen to us. To you. None of the other parents did that.”

She crossed her legs—they were long and brown, and her toenails were painted red. I forced myself to look away, patted my pocket, tried to remember how many cigarettes I’d had that day. Fewer than five. My new one-day limit. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No, go ahead.”

I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke away from her, but the wind was against me. For a week now, fierce Santa Anas had been sweeping across the valley, bringing with them heat, dust, and the calls of wild animals from the mountains. Between gusts of wind, a low murmur drifted out from the living room.

“How did you hear about my dad?”

“One of my colleagues is working the case.”

“You’re a detective?”

“Sheriff’s deputy. You sound surprised.”

“I thought maybe you would end up a teacher or something. You always turned in the best paper in AP English.”

But that was my only AP class. The truth was, I hadn’t been a great student in high school. Always distracted, the teachers said. It wasn’t distraction, though, it was exhaustion. I worked after school, took care of my sister, and stayed up most nights until my father came home. Nothing the teachers talked about in class seemed all that important by comparison. In AP English, at least, we got to read novels, and I’d always loved reading. I took a drag from my cigarette and tried to picture myself the way Nora had, in a classroom with kids, but the image seemed incongruous to me. The path my life had taken was the only one I could imagine for myself now. “I guess we don’t always end up where we expect,” I said. “What about you?”