My New American Life (15 page)

She flopped down on the spongy bed, grateful to be safe in this simple, more or less clean room among hundreds of simple, more or less clean rooms, a bed, a deadbolt lock, a phone, towels, TV. No flat screen, but big enough. And most important, all hers.

She took off the floral bedspread they couldn't wash between guests and lay down on the sheet that, she hoped, they could. The pillows were comfortable, and the remote was placed precisely where a mind-reader had imagined Lula's hand reaching. Lula clicked through the channels, pausing at a talk show on which today's subject was marriage. The middle-class couples confessed their infidelities and cried, the poor couples refused to confess and then got trapped into telling the truth when their lovers appeared onstage. Then they cried and shouted. Some of the poor women cried, but none of the poor men. None of the middle-class women yelled, but many of them cried. Had Mister Stanley cried over Ginger? One night, on her way upstairs, Lula had heard a sound like someone sobbing from Mister Stanley's room. Just the possibility that it might be Mister Stanley had upset her so badly that she'd convinced herself she must have dreamed it. But now she thought, Who wouldn't cry? No wife, no fun, no girlfriends, a job he hated, a son who seemed to despise him.

Lula must have slept. Stadium lights from the parking lot shone into her window. Trucks whined past on the highway. She switched on the news and watched a congressman apologizing for his adulterous affair, then a group of senators calling for an investigation into charges that U.S. soldiers tortured prisoners in Iraq, then the president telling the press that the United States didn't torture. It was interesting how everyone lied and only the adulterers got caught. She was lucky to be in this warm motel and not in a smoldering ruin in Baghdad. No sooner had she thought this than another story came on, about a family of refugees from Katrina still living, eight to a room, in a motel outside Denver.

In the desk drawer was a flyer from a pizza delivery chain. Lula hoped the restaurant served steak. At two minutes to seven she left her room and found Mister Stanley waiting at one of a few tables in an area lit by the glowing juice and milk machines. Very Eastern European. Mister Stanley raised his glass of something golden in an uncharacteristically effusive greeting.

“Good evening,” Lula said.

On the wall a shrimp and a lobster wearing top hats and tuxedos were jitterbugging to the notes of a song whose lyrics were “Surf and Turf Tonite!”

“We're pretty far inland for the surf,” Mister Stanley said.

“I was thinking that too,” said Lula. But the pride they took in their wise decision to skip the catch of the day evaporated when the bruised-looking Harmonia-student waitress informed them that their only choice was between spaghetti Bolognese and fried shrimp. She thought the kitchen could do a vegetarian Bolognese, but she wasn't sure.

“I'll have the spaghetti,” Lula said.

“Make that two,” said Mister Stanley. “And bring us your best bottle of red. For once I'm not driving.”

“The wine's forty-eight bucks,” the waitress said. “For which it will suck, I guarantee.”

“Bring it, please,” said Mister Stanley.

Lula said, “There were places like this at home. In the mountains. The cook only prepares one thing, but it's always great, and there's usually a goat or even a cow turning on a spit out back—”

Mister Stanley said, “We can assume with some confidence, there is no goat outside.”

The waitress brought the wine, already opened. That wouldn't have flown at La Changita. Lula wanted to object on Mister Stanley's behalf. But that would only make the situation more awkward. Mister Stanley poured Lula a glass, then filled his own and said, “No ceremony here.” He seemed disappointed by the spaghetti's rapid arrival and gave the waitress a sullen look, which went unnoticed. She plunked down a shaker of grated cheese and stalked back to the kitchen. Mister Stanley let his pasta cool as he drank the wine, and Lula did the same.

“Have you heard from Zeke?”

“Why would I?” said Lula. “He's having fun.”

“What did you think of that Bethany?”

“Super friendly,” said Lula.

“It's so strange,” said Mister Stanley.

“What's so strange, Mister Stanley?”

“Call me Stanley, please. It's strange how alone I feel. And Zeke isn't even gone yet. Maybe if my marriage had lasted, I could be looking forward to a new phase of life. Ginger and I could be traveling. Poor Ginger! I have nightmares about her drowning and not being able to save her. If she'd been happy with us and hadn't . . . fallen ill, I'd have someone to talk to, someone to share the heartbreak of losing the boy—the young man!—who five minutes ago was an infant in our arms. Have you ever had those dreams in which you're trying to walk or drive and everything's dark and you can't see?”

“I don't drive,” said Lula, ungenerously. Of course she'd had dreams just like that.

“May you never have that dream, and may you never discover how closely it mimics real life. Groping around in the darkness, taking all the wrong turns. Don tried to warn me before I took this job with the bank. But I thought . . . I don't know what I thought. The money and the power . . . I thought the additional income would be good for Ginger and Zeke, and that I could somehow improve the lives of all those poor folks who needed my help.”

This was more emotional intensity than Lula had heard from Mister Stanley in all their previous conversations combined. It could affect their relationship, and not in a positive way. Not knowing more than she needed to was a policy that Lula tried to follow, not only with Mister Stanley, but also with Zeke and Don. It was how you survived under Communism. Who said you had to be intimate with everyone's personal secrets?

He said, “I always imagined that on the day Zeke left for college I would cheer up Ginger with a surprise—two business-class tickets to Venice!”

Lula tried to picture Mister Stanley's head in Ginger's lap while the gondolier serenaded them with swoony Venetian ballads. She said, “It's not like Zeke's moving to another country.”

“Losing is losing,” said Mister Stanley.

Now was the time for Dunia's half-full-glass pep talk, but no matter how she tried, Lula couldn't see what was left in Mister Stanley's glass. He said, “After they leave the house, it's never the same. It's not supposed to be the same.
Then
you'd have a problem. Those kids who never leave home and turn into . . . I don't know what they turn into.”

Lula said, “They turn into cannibals hiding body parts in the freezer.” She stopped. Mister Stanley was looking at her strangely. “That happened in Albania. Also here. I saw it on TV.”

“TV.” Mister Stanley made a face. “The point is, no one prepares you. Empty nest? Just that word—
nest
—is a joke. Empty heart and soul is more like it. That's why it blindsides you. I know you probably think we're not much of a family, Zeke and I—”

“Family is family,” Lula said.

“But what I want to tell you, Lula, and what you'll find out when you're a parent, is that every time I see my child, I'm seeing every moment that child has been alive, every stage of his life, the baby, the toddler, the older kid. Besides which I'm seeing my own life—”

Lula wanted to cover her ears. The sorrier she felt for Mister Stanley, the harder it would be to leave. Lula was alone too, but she still had a chance to find someone with whom to take that gondola ride. How pathetic, to console herself by measuring the potential brightness of her future against the certain gloom of Mister Stanley's.

He said, “This college admissions process thing is an evil plot to make one hate one's last months with one's child. Even if you know it doesn't matter, you still get sucked in.”

At least Mister Stanley was saying
one
and
you
again, instead of
I
or
me
. Lula twirled a forkful of crunchy pasta and tasted the afterburn of chemical tomato, harsh but with a comforting similarity to the pizzas she made for Zeke. She hoped Zeke was having fun.

What was that jangly music-box tune? Lula stared at her purse as if a small rodent was banging on a toy piano inside it.

“Answer the phone,” said Mister Stanley.

“I can't find it,” said Lula.

“Push the goddamn green button!” Mister Stanley said.

Zeke said, “It's me. It's me. It's Zeke. Tell my dad to come get me.”

L
ula didn't remember the motel being so far from the college. Perhaps it only seemed distant, every mile lengthened by her lack of confidence in Mister Stanley's driving and by her terror that they would never find the dining hall entrance where Zeke had said to meet him.

“Where the hell is he?” said Mister Stanley.

Zeke emerged from the shadows and jumped into the back seat. “Let's get out of here. Don't even think about asking.”

“Have you eaten?” said Mister Stanley.

“Let's go home,” said Zeke.

“You need protein,” his father said.

Some guardian angel of paternal instinct must have been guiding Mister Stanley, because after fifteen minutes on dark country roads, they pulled into the parking lot of a diner crowned with the feather headdress of a neon Indian chief. Zeke slid into a booth near the window. Mister Stanley sat next to him and Lula across the table.

Lula was glad she hadn't filled up on motel spaghetti. She ordered a tuna melt, a piece of lemon meringue pie, and a large Coke. No, make that coffee.

Mister Stanley ordered the burger deluxe, then changed his mind and asked if they had a plain can of tuna, no mayonnaise, which they did, though it clearly lowered the waitress's opinion of Mister Stanley. He said, “I'll have coffee too. The hard stuff. Caf.”

“Coffee,” the waitress said. “And you, hon?”

“I'm not hungry,” said Zeke.

“You need a minute?” the waitress asked him. “You can tell me when I bring your mom and dad their coffee.”

“How could Lula be my mom?” demanded Zeke, after she went away. “She would have had to have me when she was ten years old!”

Mister Stanley said, “Zeke, you can trust us. What happened?”

No one expected Zeke to answer. Lula was startled when he said, “We were each given a big sibling, you know, instead of a big sister or brother, which is so corny and sexist. Bethany was my big sibling.”

The waitress brought their coffee. Sipping his, Mister Stanley watched Lula burn her tongue.

“Careful,” he warned her, too late.

“We went back to Bethany's room and talked,” Zeke said. “Really talked. She told me about her town in New Hampshire, and how she's the first person to go to college in her family, and I told her about us and Mom—”

“What did you tell her about us and Mom?” Mister Stanley asked.

“The truth. Nobody was trying to impress anyone. It was like we'd been friends forever. We went and heard these kids she knew in a band, practicing. We had dinner in the cafeteria. The food sucked, no one could eat it. But lots of kids came and sat with us, so it was fun, and then we went to her room and—”

“You don't have to tell us this part,” said Mister Stanley.

“You
do
have to tell us this part,” said Lula. How stupid was Mister Stanley if Zeke was willing to talk? Let Mister Stanley look daggers at her. “What happened in Bethany's room?”

“As soon as we got there, Bethany said she was going to the bathroom and she'd be right back, but after a while this other girl came in and asked where Bethany was, and the girl got all stressed and said she thought I knew, everyone knew, you had to watch Bethany constantly because she would try to kill herself the minute she was alone. Sometimes she got better, but she went through bad times. And this was one of them. Her friends had convinced the school to let her stay if they watched her round the clock. She told me they'd try to find her—”

“What kind of school is this?” interrupted Mister Stanley. “To allow such a thing! To permit a mentally ill girl to give tours of the college. And to put you in such a position! What happened to the poor girl?”

“What happened to
me
!” Zeke said. “I sat on the edge of her bed, thinking how lucky she was to have friends who cared about her so much. Also how weird it was, because Bethany seemed so cool and at peace with herself. Her friend told me to wait there, in case Bethany came back. And if she did I should hang on to her and find a way to let someone know. I started to get really nervous, thinking the whole college was probably searching for Bethany. She might be dead, and it would be my fault, even though no one had told me.”

“It wouldn't have been your fault,” said Mister Stanley. “It would have been the college's fault.”

Zeke said, “Finally I went out into the hall, and I ran into this older dude, some kind of hall monitor. He asked me if there was a problem, and I told him everything. Like a scared little bitch. The dude said, ‘Fuck me, are those bastard theater kids up to that shit again?' ”

“That person was in authority, and he used language like that?”

Zeke ignored his father. “It turned out they'd done it plenty of times. They call it real-life serial theater. Punking, college style. They do it to kids who are applying. Kids they figure won't get in, so they won't have to deal with them later.” Zeke's voice had thickened with tears.

Mister Stanley said, “How could a tour guide and her sadist friends presume to know who will be admitted?”

Lula longed to throw her arms around Zeke and hug him to her chest and promise that soon, sooner than he could imagine, all this would seem funny. Though it was equally possible that it never would. Once, some girls in Lula's neighborhood had locked her in a storeroom. It hadn't made her claustrophobic or done any lasting damage, but still sometimes a bathroom lock jammed, and it all came back. She wanted to tell Zeke that he would grow up and be happy and loved. Today, she'd been mistaken for his sister and his mother, and tonight she felt like both, wishing she could protect him from so much she couldn't control. Maybe that was what family meant: wanting, and not being able, to help the people you love. She used to wish she could get her parents a nicer place to live than a room in her aunt's apartment in Tirana. The biggest apartment in the block, practically a villa, was occupied by the family of the prettiest girl in Lula's class, a girl who early in life had pimped herself out to a Party official.