A Sister to Honor (15 page)

He was on the bed now, clothes stripped off in the overheated room, eyes shut, picturing it, torturing himself. The cleft between the breasts, the salty taste under the fullness. Only they weren't Afia's breasts, which he'd never seen; they were Evie's breasts, in the V-neck sweater she'd worn at Bertucci's. Then they were Valerie's breasts, Valerie from last spring, and his hand was on himself now, her pale body against the sheets, the slight fat of the belly. Girls, how they wanted it. How consequences meant nothing to them. How they touched you and drew you in, how their breasts shook when you thrust. Faster and faster his hand moved. He was almost there, almost, almost, seeing Evie's breasts, how she wanted it, when his mobile rang, but he wouldn't stop, no, he would come into those breasts, that cleft for his cock, and she wanted it, they all did, and finally he came.

He let his head drop back. His hand swiped at the mess on his belly. In a minute, when the throbbing ceased, he would get up and wash himself. The mobile had gone silent but then gave a chirp, a message for him. With his unsticky hand he reached for the thing and checked the call.

The orgasm washing over him shrank to a sour trickle, then dried up. The call came from Nasirabad, from his home. His father—who in three years had never picked up a phone to make the costly connection, who had last put his hand on Shahid's shoulder to declare how he trusted him to watch over his sister—had something important to say to his son.

T
he Monday after Lissy conferred with Shahid about lineups, he came to practice glowering. The next day, he was absent. He didn't return her calls. The other guys worked their games, preparing for the Trinity match, and didn't ask about their number one player. Lissy's nerves were jangling. Shahid had been on top of his game, keen for the challenge of revamping the team. It had to be something personal getting at him. It had to be his sister.

“He say anything to you?” Lissy asked Afran.

Afran shrugged evasively. “He's had papers to write.”

“Don't you take Poli Sci with him?” she asked Gus, who appeared faithfully at every practice and was improving in tiny increments.

“That's right, Coach.” Gus was bouncing a squash ball on his racquet, his eyes flicking up and down. She wondered. Had he seen Shahid's sister? Did he know the girl was engaged? He gave no sign, and she couldn't think of a way to ask. She'd never said anything to him about the moment she'd witnessed in the squash center. Sometimes players confided in her about their romances—certainly on the girls' team they did—but Gus kept his own counsel.

“So was he in class?” she persisted.

“I didn't notice, Coach. It's a big class.”

The same with the others. They hadn't seen Shahid, or they'd caught sight of him but he was busy, going off to study. He'd been working on his car, Carlos said. But Shahid had broken a major rule: shirking practice without calling the coach or informing any of his fellow players. While the guys ran drills, Lissy brooded. They were evasive, not because they didn't like Shahid or because they were hiding stuff from her—she felt certain of that. They were confused, as she was. Shahid was their glue, their light, the wind at their backs. And they'd rather be seen as secretive than clueless about a teammate, especially one they all depended on.

Next day, again, no Shahid. Only a few days remained before the match with Trinity, the best squad in the country right then, the only one ahead of Harvard. Jamil plopped down on the bleacher beside Lissy after he'd finished a punishing series of setups and volleys with Chander. Even his dreadlocks sported beads of sweat. “Coach's head be in the clouds,” he said.

“Sorry, Jamil. You looked good out there. Getting that wrist action.”

“We going down to Trinity.”

“They're the best. We'll give 'em a run.”

“You playing Shahid?”

“Doubt it. He's missed practice all week.”

Jamil nodded soberly. “We got to get him back for the big one, though.” Looking at him—his walnut skin, aquiline nose, the dimple in his right cheek, details the likes of which she came to memorize for each player—she raised her eyebrows. “Harvard,” he said.

Lissy chuckled drily. “Let's get past Trinity first.”

“Without Shahid—”

“Either way.”

“Man's doing a lot of sufferation, me think.”

Lissy's eyes flicked to the others on court, then back to Jamil. “Are you, like, delegated to persuade me to let him play, Jamil?”

He put up his hands, the long pale fingers. “Ease up, Coach. I be on your side.”

Was there another side? she wanted to ask. Instead she rose; paced the courts; harangued Chander on his footwork.

February was in full stride, with its thawings and freezings. The roads were sloppy, icy at night, a fresh coat expected to fall and then melt by the weekend. At breakfast the next morning, after cutting the crusts off Chloe's toast—spoiling her, Ethan thought, but Lissy had never liked crusts when she was a girl—Lissy said, “If Don Shears weren't breathing down my neck, I'd cut Shahid slack. But there's Trinity in two days. Harvard next week. Not even Shahid can go up against Harvard without practice.”

“Have you seen his sister?”

She shook her head. “Whatever's happening with her and Gus, I'm probably best not knowing about it.”

Ethan looked up from the sandwich he was fixing. He often scheduled patients during lunch hour, when they could break free from their jobs, and he ate on the fly. “You could send Shahid to counseling.”

“To you? Not sure I could stay out of it. This is my number one we're talking about.”

He smiled, his glasses reflecting the light. “I'm the one who keeps you out of it. But he doesn't have to see me. Send him to the counseling center. Sounds like a young man with stuff on his mind.”

It was a misty morning. Outside, Chloe's latest snow creature was losing weight, its fallen scarf a wet tangle. Lissy lifted her to kiss its frozen mouth good-bye, and then they left for day care. She made it through a morning coaches' meeting with an extra cup of coffee. By noon students were slipping and sliding their way into the building for PE classes. The entrance hall carpet was soggy. Three calls to Shahid's cell, meanwhile, had gone unanswered. Putting off lunch, Lissy keyed herself into the women's faculty locker room in hope that a workout would lift her spirits. From the crisp blouse and slacks she wore to the office—male A.D.s, she'd noticed, got by in tracksuits—she changed to cycling shorts and a T-shirt in need of a wash.

The workout room wasn't a fitness center yet, but it did the trick. A half dozen stationary bikes and ellipticals, a couple of rowing machines, a full set of Life Fitness stations, a mirrored corner for free weights. One of the first things Lissy had done as A.D. was to silence the Top 40 radio station that used to blare here. Sure enough, students now came in with their iPods and earbuds, and the faculty, like Lissy, appreciated the relative silence, the sound of straps sliding over heavy metal rollers and lungs expanding. With the new fitness center they would add tiny TVs to the treadmills and bikes, but that noise, too, would pass through the earbuds.

Two of Lissy's female players, Liza and Margot, were already on the ellipticals. She waved to them. Some administrators refused to visit the run-down facility; Don Shears, she knew, had joined the local health club rather than let students see him in exercise shorts. But Lissy liked breaking through the barriers, and she didn't mind having students, especially the girls, see a middle-aged woman staying in shape. “Some guys on the team were looking for you,” Liza said as she set her resistance higher.

“They'll figure out I'm here,” Lissy said.

Normally she started with aerobic work, but this time she began with weights. In their heft she could feel the power of her muscles. Free weights first, to work on breathing and balance. Take her mind off the absence of Shahid, the pressure from Don to beat Harvard in eight days. Bench press, hammer grip. Tricep extension. She breathed and counted. As she turned to the leg press, she spotted Afran and Carlos, weaving between the bikes. They'd probably tried her office first, and this was their next stop. She waved with a fifteen-pound dumbbell, then frowned when she saw the looks on their faces.

“Got a sec, Coach?” Carlos asked.

“Always,” said Lissy, her standard response. Setting down the weights, she wiped her face with her towel. “You find Shahid?” she asked. “Did you talk to him?”

“It's not Shahid,” said Afran.

“It's Gus,” said Carlos.

“Gus?” Lissy frowned. Gus had been at practice yesterday, working hard as always. “What's wrong with Gus?”

“He's at Berkshire Med Center,” said Carlos.

“Christ.” She pictured a fistfight, a broken jaw. “Not one of those football guys,” she began, though what she was picturing was Shahid, seeing what she'd seen that afternoon in the corridor, Shahid breaking Gus's nose.

“He had an accident,” said Afran. “With his car.”

With the news that no one else was involved came a hidden rush of relief. “Where? In this lousy weather? Is he hurt?”

A dumb question, she realized. Gus was in the hospital; they had just told her.

“Broke his leg, apparently, and a couple of vertebrae,” said Carlos.

“Was anyone else—”

“No. On the road to Northampton. His brakes, like, gave out.”

“Well, he shouldn't have been driving in this crap. Have you seen him?”

“We just came from there,” said Afran. “They put him on a bunch of pain meds, he's pretty out of it.”

“I imagine.” Vertebrae, she thought. Could mean everything or nothing. At the least, he was out for the season. “Well, thanks, guys. I'll head over. Is Shahid there?”

“I—I left him voice mail,” Afran said with a quick glance at Carlos. “I think he's on his way.”

“Yeah, good.” She stopped at the door. Margot and Liza had stepped off the machines and gathered around Carlos. “You boys tell the team, okay? Send out a quick e-mail. I'll announce the new lineup at practice.”

“Right, Coach,” said Afran.

As she scraped snow from her car, she realized. Gus must have been headed out to see Afia. How foolish, to risk country roads in this freezing slop. Did the girl know? Someone had reached Gus's teammates. They should have started with the captain, with Shahid. But it was Afran who'd come to alert her. Could it be that, after his burst of enthusiasm at the start of the term, Shahid was so wrapped up in his own life, his own future at Harvard, that he would just abdicate, hang his coach and his teammates out to dry?

“Selfish asshole,” she muttered to herself. Just when you think you've got the player of your dreams, the stuff of real leadership, he falls into drugs or infatuation or self-pity, and there goes everything you've tried to teach, all the honor of the team. She wanted to hammer her fists on Shahid Satar's chest. To call him what he was: a traitor. Furiously she scraped at the windshield. When she was finished, she flung the scraper into the car. Then she leaned on the hood. She gathered her breath.

This wasn't about Shahid. She was the coach. She had a wounded athlete. Her job was to tend to him. And to pull the squad together. And to win, Shahid or no Shahid. “Got that, girl?” she said to herself. She sounded like her own coaches years ago, making herself snap out of it. She tucked herself into the dark car and headed through the snow-misted morning, toward Berkshire Medical Center.

E
smerelda was Afia's favorite aunty from the Price Chopper, and also the one who lived halfway between Northampton and Devon, so it was from her that Afia had begged a ride to the Berkshire Medical Center. As the car pulled to the curb under the big
Emergency
sign, Esmerelda looked out suspiciously at the figure huddled below the awning. “Don't like the looks of that one,” she said.

“Oh,” said Afia, keeping her voice light, “that's just my brother.” And promising Esmerelda she would call if she needed a ride back to Smith, she zipped up her puffy jacket and stepped out into the cold. The sun was sinking into the horizon, leaving a sky gone cobalt in the wake of the storm. Shahid stood by the revolving door, his hands balled into the pockets of his warm-up jacket. When she tried to step around him, he blocked her way.

“Please, Shahid lala,” she said in Pashto. “Don't let's argue.”

“You could have told me.” His voice came out tight. He must have been standing there in the cold, waiting for her—knowing she would come, she couldn't stay away—for a long while.

“Let me by,” she said.

She strained for the door, and he caught hold of her wrist. “You have no idea,” he said, “what's at stake here.”

“What's at stake is your teammate Gus!” He frightened her, but something in his grip told her he wasn't all that sure of the ground he stood on. “Can't you bother me later?” she said, lifting her chin. “He might have died.”

At that word,
died
, Shahid's grip tightened. “Afia, look,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I don't want to fight. You lied to me—”

“I never lied.”

“It's called a lie of omission. If you took a class in ethics you'd hear of it. You took me for a fool, and like a fool I went and pledged my life for you. Now we have a serious problem.”

“My problem is I need to go through that door.”

It was Taylor who'd told her about the accident—Taylor who checked Facebook the way other people checked their watches, Taylor who'd seen the post from Afran. And at once Afia had known. Gus was in the hospital because of her.

“For what?” Shahid was saying. “Think you can satisfy your lust in the hospital, Afia?” His voice cracked; he was losing control. “Is that what you need? What you—”

“It's not lust, Shahid,” she interrupted. “It's called love.” There, she had said the word. No hiding anymore.

“Bullshit,” he said. “It's a disease you've caught.”

“Thank you, Baba.” With a sudden jerk, she managed to twist free of his hand. She rubbed her wrist. “Neither of you knows anything about it.”

He sighed. He didn't move away from the door, but he didn't try to grab her either. He said, “I'm not just your brother. All right? I'm your friend.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“Afia, listen to me. They've found another picture.”

She looked up, startled. His face had softened, the forehead knit with worry. “Who found a picture?” she said. “I'm not stupid, Shahid. I wouldn't post—”

“On Taylor's Facebook? The photo you sent her, or the photo she took? I don't care where it came from—”

“None of my friends take photos of me.” Afia swallowed. Could Taylor have done something so idiotic? They paid no attention, these girls.

“Well, someone did, and now it's too late. We have no choices left, okay? I'm putting you on a plane.”

“A
plane
?”

“To Peshawar. I'll get Uncle Omar to pick you up. And then—”

It was too much, too much. She had broken this off, she had shoved love into a box and sealed it with tape. And now—now she would be punished? And Gus, punished? “I'm not getting on a plane,” she said, lifting her glasses to swipe at her eyes. “Gus is in
hospital
.”

“I don't give a shit.
I'll
be in hospital, or worse, if this keeps up.”

A car door slammed behind her. A pair of worried-looking parents got out. Both she and Shahid stepped aside, to let them through the revolving doors. Then she turned her gaze back on her brother. Her glasses had fogged up; his face was blurry. “How can I go back?” she asked at last. “They will kill me.”

Shahid's mouth twisted. He planted a hand on her shoulder. “Nonsense,” he said.

“They will kill me,” she repeated. “Look what they've already done to Gus.”

“You're crazy. Who's ‘they'?”

She searched her brother's face, but it betrayed nothing. Still she would press him. “Gus got his brakes checked two weeks ago.”

“And there's ice on the roads. He shouldn't have been driving. If he hadn't been coming to see you—”

“I talked to him. The road was sanded. He was braking around a turn, and suddenly no brakes. They will kill me, Shahid.”

His palms on her cheeks were cold. “Listen to me,” he said, leaning down to her. “This story you're telling, this story about what happened to—to, you know. Your boyfriend.” He pushed the word out. “This story is crazy. But if you
don't
go home? That is one scary true story, Afia. You can't keep on like this. You'll be cut off.” He let go her cheeks and seized a bit of air with his right fist. “Or worse.”

“I can't be responsible for what people say in Nasirabad, Shahid lala.”

She tried to push past him, but he grabbed the edge of her jacket. His voice went sharp again. “You've betrayed your whole family,” he said. “Baba, Moray, our cousins, our uncles, everyone. You
mark
us. And still we're being generous with you. When you go back to Nasirabad—”

He spoke truth. That was the horror of it. Her shame would spread like poison gas, rapid and uncontainable. “Go back,” she repeated, “to be accidentally poisoned? Found dead in a car crash?”

“Married, Afia. That's all. Safely married.”

She lifted burning eyes to him. “I turned him away, you know,” she said. “I told him I was engaged. I broke his heart. And for what, Shahid? For what? So someone could go break his body, too?”

“Afia, the guy had an accident.”

“Did he? Gus is a careful driver.”

“Oh, you know that, do you? You've been driving places with him?”

“Not for many weeks. And I've missed him. I'll say that now, Shahid, no matter what you do to me. And if somebody hurt Gus so they could scare me away from him, they didn't know me, not on the inside.”

She had hit home. She saw it. He let go of her jacket. He wanted to be on her side, she could see that, but it would do no good. There were no sides, really, only honor or death. “You should scare a little easier than you do,” he whispered.

She had no more words for him, not now. Turning, she pushed through the revolving door.

•   •   •

T
hat night and the next, she slept in Gus's garage. Or failed to sleep. It wasn't the sound of garbage trucks, backing up in the parking lot on the other side of the fence, that kept her awake. It wasn't the restless prowling of his cats, Ebay and Facebook. It wasn't being alone, because the animals and the sense of Gus all around her kept her from feeling alone. It was anticipation. Any moment, she felt, the door would swing open and Shahid would stand there, his dark eyes glowing, in his hand a blade to scar her face the way Lema's family had. She forced herself to get up, use Gus's moldy bathroom, pour herself a glass of water. Finally the cats settled down on either side of her, and she drifted off.

She was staying at the garage through the weekend so she could feed Gus's animals. She was missing a day of classes, but she had her books with her. It wasn't possible to go back and forth by bus; the buses stopped in Springfield, taking three hours for a forty-mile trip. And she had to be at Gus's side, at least until the doctors were sure he would be all right, he would walk and run again, he would miss nothing more than the squash season. The team would be absent two players this weekend, because Shahid was being banned from the Trinity match. Afia knew because Shahid had rang her mobile to tell her, again, that he was taking her to the airport, sending her home—and, he'd added, if it weren't for her, he'd have led his team to victory. But no, she'd messed that up, and she'd mess up his whole life if he let her stay in America.

She had to get off the phone, she told Shahid; she was at the library, studying. He didn't believe this lie, but she didn't care. If she had only a few days left in America, she would spend them with Gus. Even if his accident had been just that, an accident, she was still to blame. He had been bringing her a Valentine's present, a big box of chocolates and a slim gold bracelet that sat, now, on the crate serving as a bedside table. She hadn't broken off with him convincingly enough; he'd thought he could win her back. And now either Shahid or kismet had caused his car to go off the road. She wanted to think kismet, but Shahid's face had loomed at her at the hospital entrance:
You should scare a little easier than you do.

This photograph Shahid scolded her about—there it was, on Taylor's Facebook timeline. Some Dartmouth guy named Kent Star had tagged Taylor, but the photo centered on Afia, perched on Gus's shoulders, last fall at the apple orchard where they'd gone, a group of them from Smith and Dartmouth. One of her happiest days, soured now. Friday night she called Taylor and ordered her to erase it. “Jeez, girl, calm down,” Taylor said. “I don't even know this Kent dude, he just friended me. Must be one of Chase's crowd.”

“Just take it down, Taylor. Please.”

“Where are you, anyway?”

“Gus is in hospital. An auto accident.”

“Ooh. Ouch. I thought you broke up with him. Can I borrow one of your scarves?”

“Take away this photo, first. Then yes, please, of course.”

Saturday morning, she cleaned the lizard's cage and sprinkled flakes on the surface of the aquarium. The fish rose, nibbled delicately. The trickiest was Pearl, the snake, who was due for a mouse. The mice lived in a tiny cage under the table. Gus bought a dozen at a time, on the same days when he bought crickets for the lizard; they lived as food-in-waiting. Quickly, blocking all thought, Afia opened the top of the mouse cage and thrust her hand in. She wasn't squeamish about death. She had dissected plenty of frogs and fetal pigs, and on the farm in Nasirabad you saw death on a regular basis. But choosing which creature's life would end in these next five minutes felt like playing God. Blindly she clutched a hairless tail, swung the gray creature over to Pearl's cage, and dropped her in. Then she went to brush her teeth. If she had been half the scientist that Gus was, she'd have stayed to watch the snake's jaws unhinge as he took the mouse whole. Instead she brushed her hair, threaded earrings into her lobes, and emerged when the snake's middle sported a telltale bulge.

When she'd fortified herself with orange juice and a stale bagel from Gus's fridge, she bundled into her down jacket and the delicious boots Shahid had bought her. She lifted her bag over her shoulders. It was a two-mile walk to the hospital, and the air outside cold enough to pinch her nose shut. Today and tomorrow she would study at Gus's side, in the hospital; tonight she would care for Gus's animals, then sleep for the last time in sheets smelling of Gus. When they discharged him from the hospital it would be to his mother's home, not the garage—but Afia would be back at Smith by then. At Smith, or in Nasirabad. What would happen with Shahid's threats to take her away she didn't know, but she couldn't stop her life while she waited to find out.

One thing she knew: She did scare easy. Nothing else bad could happen to Gus, or she would never forgive herself, whether for shaming her brother or for offending Allah or simply for tipping the scales toward bad luck. Never again would she run her fingers down the chiton-like ridge of Gus's vertebrae; never again would she taste the salt left behind by the soft press of his thumb on her lower lip. This thing that her roommates found so important—this romantic love—she could give up. What she couldn't give up was Gus's own bright future, clear as a vision in the Cup of Jamshid that Anâ used to tell stories about.

•   •   •

A
t the hospital, they brought Gus a lunch of egg salad sandwich and applesauce that his mother, Mrs. Schneider, kept urging him to eat. “Mom, please,” Gus said, lifting the yolky mess with a plastic fork and letting it dribble onto the small square plate. “It smells like cat food.”

“It shouldn't go to waste,” said Mrs. Schneider. She tipped her head toward Afia with a what-can-you-do expression. This was Afia's second encounter with Mrs. Schneider. The first had been Thursday, the day of the accident, when she had rushed past Shahid and his threats to learn that Gus was in the casting room. She had taken a seat in the waiting room across from an ample woman with deep red hair who set aside her magazine and her reading glasses to say, “So you must be Afia.” She might as well have said,
So you left the gates unlocked
, so resigned and accusatory was her low, rich voice. Afia had wanted to sink several floors down, below the hospital's basement. But once her views were known, Mrs. Schneider made no further issue of Afia's presence. She asked about her studies and what she wanted from the cafeteria. When Gus was settled in his room and visiting hours were due to end, Mrs. Schneider had said simply, “I'll leave you two lovebirds alone,” and left the room, taking her judgment with her.