My New American Life (14 page)

“Sure.” Lula drained the last of her drink.

“How come you don't have a boyfriend?”

Did Zeke imagine that was what her story meant? She almost said, I do have a boyfriend. “What kind of boyfriend would I meet here? Even the mailman's married. You want to fix me up with someone?”

“My friends are pretty young,” said Zeke.

Lula hovered over Zeke as he ate three slices of pizza, then tossed the rest in the garbage because she didn't want Mister Stanley seeing the wretched meal she'd made for his son. After that she went up to her room. Let Mister Stanley drink his scrumptious glass of water solo.

That night, Lula woke from a dream in which Dunia's streaked face emerged from belching clouds of black smoke. How she longed for Dunia's counsel, her bad hair advice, bad fashion advice, bad boyfriend advice, bad immigration advice, bad life advice. Dunia was the only one with whom she could talk about Alvo. She could ask Dunia to read the tea leaves of bad-boy courtship. But how could Lula even think about her own problems when Dunia might be in danger? Probably Dunia was fine. People changed e-mail addresses. They moved back home and forgot you. Or they bounced back your e-mails as punishment for your staying in New York without them.

Or maybe Dunia wasn't okay. Maybe lazy selfish Lula was just telling herself not to worry. In the bar on Second Avenue at the Albanian World Cup game party, she'd met a woman who ran a nonprofit that rehabbed Albanian girls after they'd been trafficked. The woman gave Lula her card, and Lula checked the Web site, on which you could order pillowcases the rescued girls embroidered, which was not an encouraging sign of their reentry into their old existence, or any existence at all. Wasn't it time for Lula to tell Mister Stanley and Don about Dunia? What could they do? Alert Interpol and the CIA because her friend wasn't returning her calls? Don would pay attention only if Dunia was in some secret U.S. prison, which Lula doubted.

How could Lula find her friend, short of going back? A real friend, unlike False Friend Lula, would do anything necessary. She promised herself not to forget how lucky she was, living her comfy new American life in Mister Stanley's comfy house instead of selling her body to some tuna fishermen in Bari or hiking up her skirt on a service road beside a Sicilian
autostrada
.

Chapter Seven

O
n the morning of the college trip, Lula was ready early, dressed in her peacoat and the cheap secretary suit she'd bought for her very first meeting to discuss her case with Don. By the time Mister Stanley came down, Lula had made a thermos of coffee and packed a bag of low-fat cheese sandwiches, cut in half. Mister Stanley tasted a sandwich half.

“Delicious,” he said, taking it along when he went upstairs to wake Zeke. Forty minutes passed before Zeke slouched downstairs. His hair was glued in two hornlike tufts, and his black T-shirt and jeans looked slept in.

Zeke threw on his jacket, opened the back door of his father's Acura, and lay down with his face pressed into the crease of the seat.

“You've got to put your belt on,” said Mister Stanley. “We'll be on the highway.”

“I'll sit up when we're doing forty,” said Zeke.

“Crash test dummies implode at thirty,” Mister Stanley said. “I've seen their heads fly off.”

“Please, Dad,” said Zeke. “I'm tired.”

Mister Stanley said, “Of all the moments to regress.”

“He'll be okay,” said Lula.

Turning to watch Mister Stanley's house recede and vanish, Lula felt as if she were leaving a child who might grow so quickly as to become unrecognizable in her absence. How melancholy the house looked as it watched them go. She tried to see it through Ginger's eyes, as a prison she was escaping, a jail guarded by those tyrannical warders, Zeke and Mister Stanley. What if it were Ginger who'd sneaked into the house and bathed in Lula's tub? The hair in her soap was red. Ginger was a redhead, a clean freak, and probably cagey enough to misspell
beauty
and
heal
and to try to think like an Albanian male. But Ginger was in Arizona. It must have been Alvo. A warm rush melted the ice chip that had lodged briefly in Lula's heart.

Mister Stanley had printed out pages from MapQuest, which he handed Lula. “Ginger was the family navigator,” he said.

Lula said, “You should get GPS.”

“I wouldn't know how to work it.” Mister Stanley tried to sound dismissive, as if a GPS system was a frivolous toy and anyone who used one was a frivolous toy person. But he couldn't carry it off. The Wall Street guys who'd eaten at La Changita were all about their gadgets.

“It's not that difficult,” Lula said.

“How do you know?” asked Mister Stanley. “Do you ever use that cell phone—”

Lula said, “All the new cars in Albania, GPS comes standard.”

“This car sucks,” said Zeke. “I wish we could take the Olds.”

“The gas would cost more than your first year's tuition,” said Mister Stanley.

“Give me the money instead of school. That's what I've been saying!”

“I'm glad you're sitting up,” said Mister Stanley. “Now please put on your seat belt.”

One of the favorite after-hours conversations at La Changita concerned the spoiled brattiness of American children, a category in which the waitstaff included the customers. Everyone had a friend who worked as a nanny, everyone had watched some mom bribe her little monster into putting on his mittens. Lula didn't volunteer her opinion, which was that no one knew how to raise kids, they just screwed them up differently in different places.

“Turn that down,” said Mister Stanley. “We can hear that racket leaking through your earphones.”

“Ear
buds
,” said Zeke. “Not phones.”

The singer was screaming the same two words over and over. Back pray? Black pay? Mister Stanley gritted his teeth. Zeke disappeared into his music, and Lula felt as if she and Mister Stanley were coworkers trapped in an elevator between floors. She leaned her head against the cool window and let her mind drift back to her lunch with Alvo and its unclear conclusion. Kiss kiss. Little Sister.

“Please, Zeke,” Mister Stanley pleaded.

Lula had resolved to stop comparing Mister Stanley to Albanian fathers, with their overly manly approach to raising manly Albanian sons. It was darling, the way Americans put so much faith in going to college, the way American parents bought their baby birds a dovecote in which to roost for four years before their maiden flight out into the world. In Tirana, university students were like neighbors in a roach-infested slum, six to a dorm room, all working the same shitty job, smoking pot, drinking cheap raki, waking up in bed with a guy you sort of recognized from English class.

The traffic thinned as they passed oily black trees and swamps choked with russet weeds. How bleak everything was, even the new mansions like hairless patches of mange scratched from the fur of the mountains. The cold window burned Lula's cheek. She shut her eyes and let the tires sing her to sleep.

When she awoke, Mister Stanley was exiting the highway.

“Some navigator,” he told Lula. “Good thing I memorized the directions.”

“Sorry,” said Lula. Zeke's head was tipped back, and his breath whistled in his nose. They drove past some barns and a meadow. Though she'd always hated those shooting trips with her father, now the memory of them filled her with grief. Twice her dad had slapped her for missing the target. No wonder she'd refused his offer to teach her to drive. It would upset him to know she'd never learned. Alvo had said: one lesson.

“Zeke,” said Mister Stanley. “Wake up. Do you really want these schools to catch their first sight of you passed out?”

“You see anybody looking?” said Zeke. “Dad, you're getting like Lula.”

Lula said, “Meaning what?”

Mister Stanley said, “Here we are. Harmonia College.”

“Great. The gay one,” said Zeke.

“Mrs. Sullivan suggested that you and Harmonia would be a good fit,” said Mister Stanley. “And that with your grades and SAT scores you'd have a decent shot.”

“Mrs. Sullivan is gay,” said Zeke.

Lula had expected something brick and ivy-covered. A college in a movie. This one looked like Albania. Windowless, half buried in sod like the dictator's bunkers.

Mister Stanley said, “This place had a rough time during the sixties. Prehistory to you guys. But when they rebuilt, they figured they'd skip the breakable glass. In case the students rebelled again.”

“Rebelled against what?” said Zeke. “The skyrocketing price of weed and K-Y Jelly?”

Mister Stanley sighed. “Mrs. Sullivan mentioned that it used to have a reputation as a druggy school, but all that's long past.”

Zeke said, “Let me get this right. We're begging them to let us blow one hundred and twenty grand so I can smoke grass and have gay sex.”

“Look,” said Mister Stanley. “There's the admissions office. Visitor parking.”

“Should I wait in the car?” asked Lula. Two young women in identical parkas and jeans walked past the windshield, holding hands.

“What did I tell you?” said Zeke.

“You might as well come along, Lula,” said Mister Stanley. “I don't think they'd mind if we bring a friend.”

A friend? Was that what Lula was? Friend-of-the-family Lula.

Friend
was not how the admissions secretary assessed Lula's situation. The girl in harlequin glasses and a pencil skirt gave her a long, icy stare. Was Lula the dad's young Russian mistress, the son's pedophile older girlfriend? Or was Zeke correct about it being a gay school?

“Ezekiel Larch,” said Mister Stanley. The secretary asked if they'd taken the tour. Mister Stanley said no, they hadn't.

“They left about five minutes ago. You can probably catch them if you hang a left and head up the path toward the arts building.”

“Thank you,” said Mister Stanley, grabbing Zeke's elbow and hustling him toward the door, with Lula following close behind.

“Have fun,” called the receptionist. “Let us know if Zeke is still planning to stay over.”

Stay over? Zeke looked at his father as if he'd just heard he was being put up for adoption.

“Applicants can stay overnight,” explained Mister Stanley.

Zeke said, “Thanks but no thanks. We're leaving right after the tour.”

It was easy to find the gaggle of parents and teenagers shifting from foot to foot in the cold as they listened to a Viking maiden in a Peruvian poncho. A peaked, striped knitted wool cap with earflaps ended in hairy blue strings that vanished in the tangle of her yellow curls.

“Welcome,” she said. “I'm Bethany. I'm a sophomore. Concentrating in theater.”

Everyone in the group checked Zeke out, sizing up the competition and concluding that Zeke was unlikely to offer much competition, so they didn't have to bother checking out Mister Stanley or Lula, although some of the dads checked out Lula and then looked guilty in case she was Zeke's older sister.

Bethany said, “And you're—?”

Zeke tried to think of a way not to answer, but at last gave up his name.

“What a beautiful name. Welcome to Harmonia, Zeke. You'll love it.”

“This is like science fiction,” Zeke whispered to Lula. But within moments he'd surrendered, dazzled by the high beams of Bethany's smile.

Lula and Mister Stanley trailed behind as Zeke followed on Bethany's heels—sandals in this weather!—into the eggy smelling, overheated cafeteria, past the organic salad bar, the troughs of mystery chunks bubbling in thick ochre sauce, the plastic canisters excreting coils of peanut butter. They toured the sunlit art studios where a group of students were spraying newspapers with red paint, then a theater in which another group was painting a backdrop of a red desert crisscrossed with white picket fences, which, Bethany explained, was for a production of
Our Town
set in outer space.

Bethany extolled the range of vegan dietary choices, the enviable art careers of the faculty, the deep spiritual beauty of the ninety-year-old Egyptian poet with an endowed chair who had mostly quit teaching but who lent his super-beautiful spiritual vibe to college events. It seemed to Lula that Bethany was directing much of this at Zeke, interrupting her monologue with questions designed to draw him out.

“What kind of food do you like, Zeke?”

“Pizza.” Nervous laughter.

“This one cook, Mario, makes this amazing three-cheese-and-pineapple pizza.”

“Awesome,” said Zeke.

“Do you paint, Zeke? Have you ever been in a play?”

“No, but I'd like to,” Zeke said. The other kids glared at Zeke as if he'd pushed his way to the front of the line and had already been admitted.

After they'd trekked through a suite of rooms, each containing a grand piano, Bethany said, “Everybody at Harmonia is some kind of artist.”

“I like music,” said Zeke.

“What bands do you listen to?” Bethany asked.

The parents had begun making discontented clucking noises. Perhaps some sort of protest might have erupted, but Bethany or no Bethany, their kids might still want to go here.

“My Chemical Romance?” said Zeke. “Ever heard of them?”

“I totally love them,” Bethany said. “There's this great jazz class here called Noise. Last year one kid put his drumsticks through the snare drum, and the teacher, Bob Jeffers, gave the kid an A.”

“Bob Jeffers teaches here?” said one of the fathers. “I used to go hear him years ago—”

Bethany ignored him.

“A class called Noise?” said Zeke. “That is superior.”

Lula tried not to wonder why Bethany had fixed on Zeke, hardly the most attractive boy among the prospective students. Maybe she saw something in him. His sweetness, his vulnerability. Love was strange, everyone knew.

Sure enough, at the end of the tour, as they stood before the chapel where, Bethany told them, Harmonia graduates were always returning to marry each other, she reminded them about the Day and Night at Harmonia admissions option, which enabled applicants to go through a day of classes and have dinner and stay in a dorm, if they'd reserved in advance.

“Did we reserve?” Zeke asked Mister Stanley.

“Actually, yes,” said his father, for which he was rewarded with the first grateful look Lula had ever seen Mister Stanley receive from his son.

Was Mister Stanley really going to hand over his child to this predatory female? He wanted Zeke to go to college. And this might be the only college that wanted him, a fear that Mrs. Sullivan seemed to have planted in Mister Stanley's mind.

Three other kids, two boys and a girl, stepped forward. That they had also made arrangements to stay made Zeke's going with Bethany seem less like a kidnapping than like an admissions option.

“Everybody have cell phones?” asked Bethany.

Everybody did.

“Your kids will call you first thing in the morning. We'll take good care of them. Don't worry.” Then she thanked everyone and repeated what an awesome school Harmonia was, and left with her captives in tow.

“Let's go,” Mister Stanley told Lula. “Before Zeke changes his mind.”

Lula thought, He won't.

M
ister Stanley must have memorized this segment of the directions. Because without much trouble he found the chain motel by the side of the highway where they had reservations.

“Nothing luxurious,” he told Lula. “But it's the only game in town.”

Glass doors glided open, admitting them to the lobby. A nervous boy, perhaps a Harmonia student, regarded them fearfully from the front desk. Mister Stanley had reserved two rooms, just as Lula expected. The clerk apologized because the rooms were on different floors.

After they got their key cards, Mister Stanley said he needed a nap. Lula was probably tired too. In the elevator he mentioned that, if she wished, they could meet downstairs for dinner at seven. Well, yes, in fact she did wish. She hadn't eaten anything all day except for one low-fat cheese sandwich. Lula continued up to her floor, where her key card didn't work. Red light, red light.
Buzz buzz
. Don't panic, try again. Green arrow, green light. A chimpanzee could do it. Not until she entered her room did she realize it was almost dark outside. The best thing about the shortest days of the year was the promise that the days would get longer. There was nowhere to go but up. The key in a slot made the lights go on. Cheap energy-saving bastards! Be thankful, Lula told herself. They were trying to save the planet.