My New American Life (22 page)

“I'm blasting the heat,” said Alvo. “You'll be broiling in a minute.”

As the temperature rose, the mood inside the SUV grew relaxed and mellow, as if they were old friends or even family. Mama, Papa, Zeke. And though Lula was the one who was close to Zeke, the one paid to watch Zeke, the one who cared about Zeke, Papa was in control. Let Alvo have the power. It was a relief to have someone help her carry the weight. Only now could Lula admit how heavy it had been, only now as she pretended that she and Alvo were sharing the responsibilities of raising a teenage son. Borne along on the current of this convivial warmth came the chilling certainty that she would never see Alvo again.

“Better?” said Alvo.

“Nice ride,” Zeke said.

“Thanks,” said Alvo. “Lula's Cousin George hooked me up with a guy who got me a break on the vehicle.”

“Is that how you guys know each other?” asked Zeke.

“Want to drive?” said Alvo.

“Are you serious?” said Zeke.

Alvo hadn't bothered asking if Zeke had a license, nor did Zeke bother mentioning that he wasn't allowed to drive at night. Mister Stanley would kill them. He would especially kill Lula. But eventually he would forgive her for having found his son.

“Would I ask if I wasn't serious?” Alvo said. “I don't joke about my car.”

“Then sure. Definitely,” Zeke said. “Awesome.”

Alvo motioned for Lula to get in the back. And though it would have been simpler for Lula to sit behind Alvo, she went around to Zeke's side so she was standing there, waiting for him when he got out.

“Be careful,” she said. “You know what your father—”

“My
fodder
?” demanded Zeke. “What about my
fodder
?” Was Lula's accent so thick? The first time Lula met Zeke, he'd complimented her English. Since then he'd never once corrected or criticized her. Lula might have asked what she'd done to deserve this if she hadn't just seen his mother naked and raving.

“Have fun,” Lula said and kissed Zeke's cold cheek, something she'd never done. He shrank away. By the time Lula had fastened her seat belt, Alvo was asking Zeke if he knew where everything was on the dashboard.

“It's a little new to me,” said Zeke. “My ride is a 1970 Olds.”

“Sexy beast,” said Alvo. “They don't make them like that anymore.”

If only Alvo could read Lula's mind now as she beamed him the information that Zeke had never driven at night and was doing so for the first time on an icy Christmas Eve in a sixty-thousand-dollar vehicle with a gun in the glove compartment.

“The brights, the dims,” Alvo said.

“Got it,” Zeke said. “All systems go.”

Zeke drove slowly. The streets were empty. At least it had stopped snowing. Lula began to enjoy it. She was disappointed when they reached Mister Stanley's and glad when Alvo said, “Keep driving.”

As they passed, Lula stared into the brightly lit windows. Was Mister Stanley still there? Had he managed to get his wife cleaned up and dressed? Mister Stanley's Acura was in its usual spot, but there were no silhouettes on the shade that Lula had pulled a lifetime ago when she and Alvo sneaked into her bedroom.

Zeke didn't leave the neighborhood. Though he was breaking one big rule, he wasn't ready to break them all, and he stayed within the borders his father had drawn. They made a ten-block circuit and twice passed the house. The third time they saw an ambulance parked outside. Zeke drove a few blocks, rounded the corner, stopped, and switched places with Alvo.

“Nice parking job,” Alvo said.

“Let's go home now,” said Zeke.

Mister Stanley was starting his car and preparing to follow the ambulance. Its unhurried beacon spun a thread of light that spooled out and snapped back, like the string of a yo-yo.

Lula rolled down her window and asked Mister Stanley if he wanted her to go with him.

He said, “That's very kind of you, Lula. But I think we've got things under control. I'd rather you stayed with Zeke.”

Zeke yelled, “Merry Christmas, Dad. How's Mom?”

“Merry Christmas, Zeke,” said Mister Stanley. “She'll be fine. Are you sure you guys will be okay?”

“We're sure,” said Lula.

“They will,” Alvo said. “I'll check everything out before I leave.”

“I appreciate that,” said Mister Stanley. “I locked the front door.”

“I've got my keys,” said Lula.

The ambulance flashed its lights, and the two-vehicle cortege began its mournful crawl down the street.

“Good luck, Mister Stanley,” called Lula.

“I'll let you guys say good night,” said Zeke. Lula and Alvo watched him go into the house.

Alvo said, “The badass runaway rebel took his keys.”

“The kid is smart,” said Lula.

Alvo said, “The dad's gonna turn him gay if he doesn't give him some slack. Do you and the kid really need me to come inside and check the closets and look under the beds?”

“Of course not,” Lula said. If only she and Alvo had done that the first time. The last time.

“It's been quite a night,” said Alvo.

“First it was fun,” said Lula. “Then it wasn't fun.”

“Next time, all fun, I promise,” said Alvo. “I'll call you.”

But he wouldn't. Lula couldn't have said how she knew. But she knew. There wouldn't be a next time, let alone
all fun
. Alvo had the gun back. He wouldn't call. In the end he had decided: She was bad news and bad luck.

“See you soon,” said Lula.

“Happy New Year,” said Alvo.

Chapter Eleven

L
ula awoke to a grainy cold light and a sky the white of tombstones. The inside of her skull felt like her childhood jack-in-the-box, a clown that popped from its tin cube, banging its drum in terror. Now the pounding played a demonic duet with the clanging church bells. Happy Birthday, Jesus!

All over America, children were hyperventilating with joy, grabbing their mattresses to keep from racing downstairs and ripping open their presents. Lula knew that this was the made-for-TV version of American life, that half the population was sick and alone or homeless, conscious of the holiday only as something they wanted to end, preferably after free turkey in a steamy, malodorous shelter. But how many households were recovering from a Christmas Eve when Mom showed up naked and smeared with chocolate and shit, a night when the lady of the house held hostage, at knifepoint, the Albanian nanny and her date?

Now Lula remembered why her room was so cold. She'd left a window open in an unsuccessful effort to eliminate the lingering stench of Ginger's madness.

Her fingers still reeked of gunpowder. She remembered her father describing one of their neighbors as the kind of guy who fired off one shot and spent the next three days sniffing smoke on his fingers. That's how her dad got sent away. The smoke-sniffing neighbor had been a police informer. Say something like that, it gets back.

Her papa had gone to jail until he promised one of the prison guards a tribal musket, and they let him go. He'd been away for slightly less than twenty-four hours, but from then on he referred to himself as a former political prisoner. Though Lula had been very young, she remembered that day, counted off in seconds and by the nonstop cups of tea her aunt prepared for her mother, who sat at the kitchen table, veering between extremes of panic and resignation, motionless but for the raising and lowering of the tea cup. The memory of those hours had merged in Lula's mind with the Communist TV news, the maddening tick tock of the clock behind the drone of the stern newsreader. And now the clock had slowed again in Mister Stanley's house, marking off the minutes until a father and son awakened to the reality of last night's visit from Ginger. It could happen anywhere, the nasty twist of fate that turns time into your enemy, implacable, mean, and patient, dragging its feet to torment you.

She was surprised to find the presents she'd bought for Mister Stanley and Zeke, still in their Christmas wrapping at the top of her closet, survivors of Ginger's search-and-destroy. No one would feel like celebrating. But even so it seemed wrong to have spent the money and effort and not try to help Mister Stanley and Zeke enjoy their sorry Christmas. She averted her eyes, as if from a wreck, as she bent to pick up her fancy underwear. She stood too fast, and a slosh of bile slapped the back of her throat.

Lula brought the boxes downstairs and placed them beside the other presents on the kitchen counter: an envelope with Zeke's name on it, a small package addressed “To Dad from Zeke,” and a large box, wrapped in silver paper with a card that said, “For Lula, Merry Christmas from Stanley and Zeke.” The presents looked stranded and ashamed to have been left on the counter where everyday objects congregated: the mail, the groceries, the newspaper. Even without the tree, couldn't Mister Stanley have arranged the gifts near the fireplace? Everywhere parents were telling their kids that Santa had read their letters and heard their prayers and rewarded them for being good American children by bringing them the latest Barbie, the must-have video game. Not at Mister Stanley's. Their Christmas Eve visitor could hardly have been less like the jolly grandpa flying in from the Arctic.

How would Lula face Mister Stanley, and how would that conversation begin? Good morning, Merry Christmas, sorry about your wife. Her fear of discomfort, awkwardness, and an incapacitating rush of sympathy for her boss warred against her desire to hear what had happened with Ginger. Curiosity won out, and Lula ran the coffee grinder hard. Soon she heard the murmur and splash of Mister Stanley's shower.

Sunday Casual Mister Stanley walked into the kitchen.

“Smells good,” he said. “Merry Christmas, Lula. Are you feeling all right?”

“I don't know,” Lula said.

“You look a little pale,” he said. So did Mister Stanley.

“It's the light,” she said.

He poured himself a cup of coffee and, with his back to her, said, “Sorry about last night.”

The sadness was almost too much to bear. The sadness and the pity.

“It's not your fault,” Lula said.

“I know. But it must have been upsetting. And naturally one worries that a person might reasonably decide not to continue working in a house where this sort of thing occurs.”

Where did Mister Stanley think she would go? And who did he think Lula was? A person who would abandon him and Zeke at a time like this? And why was he apologizing to a girl he'd caught in his house on Christmas Eve with a “cousin” who obviously felt so comfortable around a gun that he'd taken it with him, for which Mister Stanley had thanked him? And what was “this sort of thing”?

“How is your wife?” Lula didn't know what to call her. Not Mrs. Ginger. Not Mrs. Larch.

“We were lucky. Despite what my wife believes, her doctor's a human being. He was able to recommend an excellent facility. We were lucky they had a room.”

Lucky
. Someone had dressed Ginger. Someone had bathed her, or not. But yes, they were lucky that no one had been shot. Lucky that Zeke hadn't disappeared forever into the night. Lucky that wherever Ginger had gone was a five-star resort compared to the least hellish Balkan asylum.

“Well!” Mister Stanley said. “Between Ginger's care and Zeke's college, we're not going to be retiring any time soon.”

We
? Lula could hardly breathe until she realized that Mister Stanley meant
I
. She was about to make some chatty remark about how this was like Albania, where doctors treated you differently depending on how much you paid. Or maybe she should mention how, under the dictatorship, mental hospitals often doubled as political prisons. People used to say, You meet the most interesting people in the nuthouse. Or anyway, the purest. Normally Mister Stanley enjoyed comparisons between Albania and here. But maybe not at the moment.

“Thanks for looking after Zeke,” he said. “Thanks for finding him. Jesus. I hate to think—”

“He wanted to be found. He was worried about you.” It was true, it was easy to say, it made Mister Stanley feel better, and it gave Lula a break in which to recover from the memory of Alvo letting Zeke drive his SUV. Nothing could have been better for Zeke. How much heart Alvo showed! She would never see him again. But the breakage of her romance was a hairline fissure compared to the chasms that must have opened last night for Zeke and Mister Stanley.

Lula turned to hear Zeke say, “Is this Christmas? Is this
it
?”

“Zeke,” said Mister Stanley. “What a pleasant surprise. We didn't hear you come downstairs. Good morning. Merry Christmas.”

Lula scrutinized Zeke's features but couldn't see much difference between his crumpled frown and the face he showed his father every weekend morning. If you didn't know Zeke, or even if you did, you might not conclude that this was a kid whose mother had just had a breakdown in front of the nanny and a cool Albanian dude who let him drive his Lexus. Maybe it would hit Zeke tomorrow morning, or the next day, or maybe in twenty years. If there was one thing Lula had learned from Balkan history and from American TV, it was how long memories could stay bottled up before the cork exploded. Another cloud on the bright horizon of Zeke's future wife.

Mister Stanley said, “Lula, open your present.”

Lula said, “Zeke first. It's Christmas. Zeke's the kid.”

“Ladies first,” said Zeke.

Having only one gift to unwrap, Lula exaggerated the drama of removing the paper, opening the box, and lifting the laptop from its Styrofoam nest. Chromosomes or maybe hormones worked in tandem so that both Zeke and Mister Stanley turned away at the same moment, with the same gesture, ducking as if from a blow, so as not to see Lula cry. The tears were real, but she faked a sob to prolong her time to float on the swell of pleasure and gratitude for this perfect gift, this generous investment in her future. She would deserve it, she would be worthy. She would work like a dog. She would make up beautiful stories and not pretend they were true. She would devote herself to the journal she'd neglected since she met Alvo. There was no reason not to, now. She had nothing to hide. Her authentic new American life would start fresh from today.

“Thank you,” Lula said. “Now you, Zeke.”

Zeke opened the envelope from his father. “Thanks. I can always use cash.” He unwrapped the belt from Lula and slung it around his waist.

“Awesome studs! Thanks, Lula!” She'd underestimated his skinniness. Even on the last notch, the belt slipped down his hips. She had also underestimated the ferocity of the metal grommets that turned the belt into armor, the perfect fashion accessory for the collapse of civilization.

“It can be fixed,” said Mister Stanley. “We can punch another hole—”

“You think everything can be fixed, Dad,” said Zeke. “Nothing can be fixed.”

“Hmmm . . . ” said Mister Stanley. “Let's see what Santa brought
me
.” He thanked Lula for the Nano even as the earbuds popped out of his ears. Saying he'd figure it out on his own, he stuffed it back into the box from which it would never emerge again.

“To Dad,” read Mister Stanley. Zeke's quiet snort was intended for Lula, but Mister Stanley heard, and an echo seemed to linger until Zeke said, “Hope you like it, Dad.”

Mister Stanley unwrapped a book. “
The Diamond Sutra
!”

“Buddhist meditations,” said Zeke. “Helpful when you're . . . stressed.” The last word created a depression in the air that slowly filled with disturbing images from the previous night.

Mister Stanley paged through the book. “That's very thoughtful of you, Zeke. Very unexpected. I'm touched.”

“It wasn't my idea,” said Zeke. “Abigail picked it out.”

“Abigail?
Don's
Abigail?”

Zeke nodded.

“I didn't know you two were in touch.”

“She meditates instead of eating,” said Zeke.

“That's not smart,” said his father.

“Abigail and Shirley and I—”

“Who's Shirley?”

“Another friend.”

“But it's such a geriatric name,” said Mister Stanley.

“What does
geriatric
mean?” Zeke asked Lula. Why was he asking her? Last night, switching places outside Alvo's car, he had made fun of her accent.

“Elderly,” said Lula.

“Shirley's a kid in my class. I'm tired. I'm going back to sleep. I didn't get a lot of rest last night. Merry Christmas. Thanks.” Zeke took the belt but left his dad's check on the counter.

“Do you want to go visit your mother?” his father called after him. “I thought I'd—”

“Next time,” Zeke said. “Or maybe the time after that.”

“Probably just as well,” Mister Stanley told Lula.

“Excuse me too,” said Lula. “I'm also really tired.”

Mister Stanley said, “Before you go, can I ask you one question, Lula?”

“Anything,” Lula whispered. Then louder, “Anything.”

“How
did
that gun get in the house?”

“You asked me. I told you. I guess your wife brought it with her. I never saw it before. She must have picked up the knife in the kitchen. For backup.” Ginger should have thought twice about what she did to her son. Now among the things she had lost was the right to say what had happened. Who would believe Ginger's story, even if it were true?

Mister Stanley said, “That Buddhist book he got me . . . you don't think it might be a sign of . . . I don't know . . . something he inherited from his mom?”

“Some girls convinced him it was cool. He explained that. Remember?”

“Right. I suppose that is a relief,” said Mister Stanley. “Be sure and drink lots of water.”

Lula sat at her desk until she heard Mister Stanley leave. She watched him shuffle out to his car and drive off. Then she got her new laptop and carried it up to her room. Moments later Zeke knocked and asked if she wanted help connecting to the Internet. Lula said she needed help powering it on.

It made for a pleasant afternoon, sitting on her bed and letting Zeke play with her new computer. For the rest of Christmas Day, neither said a single word that wasn't about electronics.

T
he next morning, Dunia called to ask about Lula's date. Had the perfume worked? Lula said her date was . . . interesting. She would tell Dunia more when she saw her. Dunia asked what Lula was doing New Year's Eve. Lula said she wasn't sure, her guy might be out of town on business.

Dunia said, “He's your guy now? And he's away New Year's? I thought you said he was in construction? What kind of contractor goes away on business on New Year's? Is he cheating on you already?”

“We're still in the getting-to-know-you phase,” said Lula. “Everything's very new.” Lula tried to freight that
new
with unfolding romance and passion. What a good little actress she'd become since she'd found it so hard to tell the visa officer about returning home to marry her fiancé on Christmas. If the fiancé had existed, yesterday would have been their anniversary.

“I see,” said Dunia gloomily. “Steve says he wants a private New Year's Eve, the two of us quietly sharing a bottle of great champagne. Just the idea of it makes me want to kill myself and vomit.”

Lula made her promise she wouldn't kill herself. They smooched their phones and hung up, swearing to get together soon. It was nice to have a friend, even one she had to lie to. The next time she saw Dunia, she would tell her the truth about her date with Alvo and about Ginger's visit.