The Fates Will Find Their Way (12 page)
“Remains to be seen,” said Sissy. “I’ll probably be at that bar on High Street later tonight, though. My aunt’s agreed to watch the girls. Spread the word, if you want. Company will definitely be appreciated.”
O
ur wives were strangely compliant when we told them about Sissy and her unexpected invitation to have drinks at the bar on High Street the night of her dad’s funeral. We thought, at first, that they had misunderstood us—that we were inviting them to go with us—and we panicked. They seemed amused by our confusion, which made us feel young, made us feel like children, and we didn’t like it. Somehow, the older we got, the less we were taken seriously by the women in our lives—mothers, wives, and one day soon, even our daughters.
“Don’t worry,” they said, bouncing the baby up and down, hoping to get the last of the hiccups out of those tiny lungs. “I know I’m not invited. It’s fine. We’ll take the dog for a walk, watch a movie. Really, it’s fine.” They rubbed our backs and laughed. “You need to relax,” they said. “Really. You’re too young to look so anxious.” The back rub felt good but also patronizing, and we worried at the implications of such a combination of feelings.
. . .
B
y eight o’clock, most of us were at the bar—Paul Epstein, Jack Boyd, Winston Rutherford, Chuck Goodhue, Stu Zblowski, Drew Price, Marty Metcalfe, Trey Stephens, even Danny Hatchet, especially Danny Hatchet. We were all there. Drew and Paul were playing pool; the rest of us had taken seats at the bar. Danny ordered a round of tequila shots, and a few of us were wondering who was going to end up paying for those shots when Trey announced that the entire night was on him. It was one of those gestures we both admired and hated him for. On the one hand, the tab was taken care of and that was a relief; on the other, suddenly we were schmoes for not being able to make the offer ourselves.
We were like kids in a record store with our first summer paycheck, anxious to spend the money, desperate to find the right albums. For the first time in our lives, we didn’t talk about Nora Lindell; we didn’t talk about those three little girls or even the giant Mexican. Trey talked about putting a swimming pool in his backyard (his recent inheritance was clearly burning a hole in his pocket), but Jack Boyd, who’d missed the funeral but taken a cab straight from the airport to the bar and who’d chosen real estate as his calling, advised against it. “Swimming pools are money-suckers. Unless you plan to die in that house, I’d leave the swimming pool idea alone,” said Jack. “Anyway, you’re not married. It’s not like you’ve got kids you need to entertain. Unless, hell, you want to build that pool and babysit for us during the summer?” We laughed when Jack said this, like it was the craziest idea we’d ever heard. Who, after all, would ever volunteer to watch a kid that wasn’t his own? Trey laughed too. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he?
The thing we wonder about now—turning on the grill in the backyard, getting the coals ready and the steaks marinated—is whether or not Trey knew his inclinations even then. Was it already in him? Or did it take seeing Ginger Epstein to draw it out of him? Were there others we didn’t know about, would never know about? Often it would take a wife’s hand on the shoulder to pull us away from these reveries. “Honey,” she might say, “the coals. Are they ready? The kids are hungry.” And they would always be tender at these moments, always impossibly understanding, as though they could see our thoughts, read our fears, our worries. Sometimes, it’s like they almost understand how incredibly overwhelming it all is—to be a man, to be a father, a husband, a human being, responsible for the lives of others.
W
ho knows how many hours we waited at that bar? How many games Paul and Drew played and lost or played and won? What we know is it was late, we were drunk, when the bartender held up the phone and said, “Is there a Daniel Hatcher here? Daniel Hatcher?”
“Hatchet,” someone said.
“Is someone going to take this?” the bartender said.
Danny moved in the direction of the phone. We tried not to watch him, tried not to care who was calling or why. We probably even looked at the TV for the first time, probably asked the bartender to turn up the volume on a game we didn’t even care about—all this in an effort to look like we didn’t care, to let Danny, each other, ourselves, know how much we didn’t care about that phone call.
Drew Price would swear later that he saw Danny slam his fist into the bar just after he hung up the receiver. Sometimes—not always—but sometimes Drew’s pleasure in other people’s pain was just a little too much.
“She’s not coming,” said Danny when he turned to face us. “Sissy. Something about the girls. But she’s not coming.”
Chuck Goodhue said, “Shit. Figures. I got to go,” and left the bar without saying goodbye. We thought maybe it was something at home, something with Peg and the girls, and we made mental notes to call in the morning and make sure everything was all right. When we did finally call the next day—not in the morning, it had taken us till mid-afternoon to recall his sudden exit from the bar—he was completely calm. He might even have chuckled at the earnestness with which we’d asked if he was okay. “Fine, really. You’re a good man for calling. Everything’s fine.” Of course, we know now that night at the bar waiting for Sissy must have significantly cut into the few hours a week he was able to spend with Minka Dinnerman. “Fuck,” we remember him saying as he left the bar. “Fuck, fuck.”
Danny left his Nissan at the bar and Trey, after giving the bartender his credit card number and telling him to take good care of us, drove Danny home. The rest of us stayed till closing, drunk enough to reason that staying out till two a.m. would get us into less trouble than going home at midnight, drunk enough to think we wouldn’t mind the ramifications in the morning.
A
t some point, we had started throwing pool parties of our own. “It’s too much,” we told our mothers, “to ask you to entertain our friends
and
their children. Come to our house,” we said. “It will be easier all around.” They acquiesced, though they knew what this meant. This meant we were finally in our primes, finally adults, finally able to take care of ourselves and our families. Which meant they were getting older, turning a corner, admitting defeat. But this was life, after all; this was progress; this was what we’d been born to do.
We owned homes, had wives. Some of us had more than one child by then. In many ways, we were kings. Everything was ahead of us. Exercise was voluntary, not mandatory. Our bodies promised to stay thin, retain muscle indefinitely. Our wives, though they were turning maternal, still doted on us. Still made us feel like high schoolers after they put the baby down late at night, then slipped into bed and whispered what we wanted, what we needed to hear.
D
rew Price and his wife had the biggest pool and the best outdoor barbeque setup and so it made sense, when they were willing, to have the pool parties at their place. Saturdays were ideal. Our wives were less strict about how much we drank and the kids still had a day to recover and lounge around the house, doing homework if there was any still to be done for school or camp or whatever. And it was a Saturday—we were twenty-nine that year—when the Prices threw the last pool party of the summer, the pool party that would mark the beginning of Chuck Goodhue’s affair with Minka Dinnerman.
Everyone was there—the Zblowskis; Paul Epstein and his wife and their little girl; Jack Boyd (with wife number one, who lasted only long enough to have a baby and secure some pretty serious alimony); Chuck and his then-fiancée Peg Whitney; Trey Stephens with one of the nurses from Peg and Chuck’s newly minted psychiatric practice; Minka (whose position at Dinnerman Mercedes meant she pulled up to every pool party in the most current luxury sedan, something we noticed our wives noticing every time); even Danny Hatchet, whose unpredictable construction schedule meant he wasn’t always around, was there for a little bit of the party. And, of course, our parents were there for that party, too. They came early, had a few gin and tonics, and left just after the sun went down, just as our children started to complain about going to bed, about not getting more ice cream, about getting in the pool one last time. Complaining children always seemed our parents’ cue to leave. “We’ve done this before,” they’d say, not even attempting to make excuses or apologies as they moved towards the driveway and their cars. “We’re too old to listen to babies howl. It’s your turn.”
A
t some point, after our parents left, a few of us slipped inside to switch from beer to something stronger. Though our parents drank gin and tonics at noon, it still felt strange to drink liquor in front of them. Funny that even as we were so high on life, so fully in control, we still deferred to their status as our former leaders. Senility would strip them of that title altogether soon enough. But for a while still, even as we sensed the shift, even as we felt our flow, their ebb, we still respected the memory of their youths. It’s as if, somewhere far back, we were cognizant of the fact that the ebb would one day come for us—one day—but not then, definitely not then. Because, just then, we were sneaking inside, drunk already from the sun, ready to get drunker still off the strong stuff, the good stuff.
But really, those were the days: going home with our families, the bedroom windows opened high; the breeze coming in, lifting the smell of chlorine off the pool; the faint whiff of linden from the trees we’d only just planted around the pool; the babies humming in the adjacent room; our wives moving their bodies steadily over us, beneath us, their hands still deft, still young, still willing. What didn’t we have then? What could we possibly have fantasized about other than what was in our hands, in our homes? Forget Nora Lindell. No, never fully forget Nora Lindell. But, for a moment, pretend that she is still with us, has always been with us. Isn’t what we have still good? Isn’t this life still perfectly adequate? Would she really have provided us anything our wives haven’t? Perhaps. Yes, perhaps. But that night, after the Prices’ last pool party of the summer, everything felt wonderful; we were whole, complete, content. We had drunk like fish, we had tanned like hides, and now we were ready to sleep like kings. Summer was almost over and we were, I do believe this, happy that night, happy that year.
T
his sky could be an Arizona sky,” said Nora.
“What does that mean?” asked Abja.
“Arizona? It’s a state in America,” said Nora. “Home of the Grand Canyon, skiing, deserts, cacti. There are mountain lions there. Did you know that? ‘Good oak,’ that’s what the name means.
Aritz Ona
. You probably like that, because it has a meaning. The state bird is a phoenix. No. That doesn’t make sense. The state capital is Phoenix. I don’t know what the state bird is. I could make one up. A cardinal, maybe. Like the football team.”
There was silence.
“Are you done?”
“Yes,” said Nora. She slid her hand up Abja’s shirt and twisted a nipple until it hardened. Abja pulled Nora’s hand away.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I do know that’s not what you meant. Yes.”
“Then explain how this sky could be an Arizona sky.”
They were lying on their backs on the roof of Nora’s hotel. Abja had put down a blanket. She seemed always prepared for the dirtiness. Nora was always surprised.
“Turquoise, red, orange,” said Nora, pointing to the layers of the sky. “Do you understand the word
garish
?”
“Are you trying to teach me?”
“I would not presume to teach you anything,” said Nora.
“Then maybe, yes, explain that to me too. The word
garish
.”
“Not quite ugly. Tacky.”
“Tacky?”
“Like garish.”
“You are no teacher.”
They were holding hands. Despite the heat of the city, of the roof itself, there was a breeze glancing the tops of their bodies that night.
“In Arizona, I grew eucalyptus. I swam almost every day. There was a pool in the backyard.”
“I have been swimming four times in my life,” said Abja.
“Including the day you were born.”
“Yes,” said Abja. “Including the day I was born. I like your memory.”
They were quiet awhile. Abja squeezed Nora’s hand and Nora squeezed back.
“I have three babies in Arizona,” Nora said finally.
There was more silence.
“What do you think of that?”
“I think that I knew you had babies, but I did not know how many.”
“How did you know?”
“Your breasts,” said Abja. “You have the breasts of a mother.”
A beetle brushed against Nora’s thigh, she shook it away.
“They aren’t babies anymore. But I can’t imagine them as anything else. I’m stilted that way. I can only think of what is or what has been. I can’t see anything else. There’s no creativity up here.” She knocked on her head with a fist.
“Do you want to tell me about the babies?”
Car horns now, children yelling and laughing from the streets below, cans being kicked. A caricature of a city, but the caricature came from somewhere. Mumbai spreading beneath them, people everywhere, it was too much for Nora even to think about, much less to try to imagine.
“No,” she said at last. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Look at me,” said Abja. She did, and they kissed. “Now look again at the sky.” Nora did as she was told, and Abja kissed her neck.
“There is something,” said Nora.
“There is something?”
“I think I’m sick.”
“Because of the drinking,” said Abja. When she spoke, she spoke the words wetly, softly into Nora’s neck. “This is something you know I agree with. I would not mind if the drinking were less.”
“Yes,” said Nora. “But no, that’s not what I mean. I think I’m dying.”
“Now, see, there is that imagination you think you do not have.”
“No,” said Nora. “Not imagination.” She took Abja’s hand and placed it on her left breast. Abja caressed it. “Here,” said Nora, directing Abja’s fingers. “Feel.” Abja touched the lump, moved it back and forth between her fingers. “Do you feel it?”
Abja sat up. “What is that?” She was angry.
“Please lay back down. I don’t like it down here without you.”
Abja did as she was told, but she did not look at Nora. The orange was fading into the red. The turquoise was nearly black. The sky was almost any other night sky.
“What I think is cancer,” said Nora finally. “It’s in my family. Cancer all over. We’re unlucky like that.”
“Do not make this a joke,” said Abja.
“This is not a joke.” There were tears in the corners of Nora’s eyes. “Not a joke at all. I can feel my body disappearing. Like it isn’t always here. I can feel it. Do you believe me? Does that make sense?”
“It is time for you to go home maybe,” said Abja.
“I like it out here. It’s not too late yet,” said Nora.
“That is not what I mean. You have gotten too good at misunderstanding me. I don’t like it.”
“You do like it,” said Nora. “I’m sure of that.”
“Then I do not like
you
very much right now.”
“I’m sure of that too,” said Nora.
“Listen, little American girl,” Abja said, holding her hand again finally. There was sweetness in her voice again, almost something maternal. “I think it is time you go back to your family. I think it is time you go back from wherever you came. And I think those people who you have left behind, I think they will find you a good hospital and I think you will live to become an adult.”
Nora cupped one of Abja’s breasts in her hand. She moved her body so that she was speaking into the cupped breast, which, though covered, was moist with sweat.
“I’m not a child,” said Nora. But she was a child. She would always be a child. How could she ever be anything more than a child to us?
“Yes, I remember you telling me that. And no, you are not a child. But do this for me, yes?”
“No,” said Nora. “I like it here. This is where I want to be. For the first time, this is exactly where I want to be. Can you understand that? I like the noise. It will be a good place for me to die. You’ll see. I’m going to be good at it. Just wait.” Nora put a hand on Abja’s face. “I’ll make you very proud.” Nora was full-out crying now, but she was also laughing, and the laughter, for the first time, frightened Abja. For the first time, she saw there was a very good chance that Nora truly was sick.
B
ut, more likely, what ended up happening was this. Before Abja could help Nora die, before they could watch together as her body ate away at itself in a way very similar to how Mr. Lindell’s own body must have eaten away at itself, Abja died in the bombings. Nora would have been there that day, just as Stu Zblowski and Marty Metcalfe swore she was, at one of the cafés. She was drinking beer. Abja was drinking milk and tea. A British tourist had asked to take their photograph. “Do you mind?” He motioned to his camera. Nora leaned into Abja, they locked their arms around one another. Their tattoos blurred together then, the designs becoming a seamless series of lines continuing from one woman’s arm onto the other’s. “Beautiful,” he said, before moving away from them. “Beautiful.”
The flattery of the photographer had put them both in a good mood. “I’ll get you another beer if you ask me nicely,” said Abja. There were days when they pretended the cancer didn’t exist. When they behaved as if they’d never even discussed it.
“Kiss me,” said Nora, and she did.
Abja was gone thirty, maybe forty seconds, when the first blast went off. It was loud—no—deafening. The sound came from all over, but the dust was across the street. The screaming was across the street. The next blast was closer, heavier. The dust was thicker, the screaming was more immediate. Nora turned to look inside, to see if she could still see Abja, but the café was gone. The people inside were gone. Or maybe it was a trick of the chaos. Maybe it was only the dust disguising the café.
There was more screaming, another blast. There might have been more after that, but she wouldn’t remember. Nobody who was there would remember every blast. The stories were conflicting. Some would insist the first blast had come from Nora’s café. Others would say that, no, the first blast had come from the café across the street from where Nora and Abja had been.
It took hours for the dust to settle, for the people to be hushed, calmed, treated. There was a bandage on Nora’s arm when the news cameras started filming. She didn’t know how the bandage got there. It’s impossible to say whether or not Nora saw the news anchor from her—our—hometown. If she had seen her, she definitely would have recognized her. It’s strange, either way, to think that Nora would linger there in the background. Shock, probably, nothing more than that. Though there is the chance it was deliberate, as small a cry for help as you can imagine. She’d thought, perhaps, something like this:
If they see it
,
if they find me
,
okay. If not
,
okay.
Or maybe not. Maybe there were no thoughts at all anymore. Maybe her brain had been reduced once again to images only, no words. A bottle of beer, a cup of tea, a hennaed arm, a camera, a British accent, a kiss, a scream, dust.
There is only that brief footage. We’ve all seen it by now, one by one, at work, our office doors closed behind us as if we were doing something dirty. We found the footage online, used our work computers to watch it over and over to confirm or contest what Marty Metcalfe and Stu Zblowski had seen.
The footage, honestly, isn’t completely convincing. The image of the would-be Nora Lindell is tiny, blurry at best. The woman is red-haired. She is both full-figured and slight, just as Nora would have been by then. The face appears freckled, though perhaps it’s merely sunburned or dirtied from the blasts. There is a bandage on her right arm and throughout the forty or fifty seconds of footage, she stands, rather dazed, her left hand spread open across her chest, which appears to be hennaed, though it might just be the soot and our eyes turning the randomness of filth into the intricacy of design.
What is convincing, though, is this: Both Marty and Stu, in two different living rooms, on two different television sets, in two different cities—Stu at the side of his newly pregnant wife on a soft leather sofa in New England, and Marty on the fabric love seat his grandmother had given him in a two-story Craftsman three streets over from the house where he grew up—both these men saw the image of this wounded redhead in Mumbai, and both believed it was Nora Lindell. All the more compelling that Marty would have noticed the figure at all since the news anchor, his lady love, should have been the only thing occupying his interest.
But for the cynics—for the nonbelievers, for those who require something more tactile and less spiritual than a simple thought shared by two dissimilar men—we offer this: the photograph. We have all seen it. It was Winston Rutherford who saw it first, and without even meaning to. For the rest of us, it was less accidental. We went where he told us to find it. The southwest wing of the newly built media and news museum in D.C. Enlarged, mounted, full color, the photograph hangs amid the permanent collection of the now-famous photographer Eli Brown.
The photograph is titled, simply,
Mumbai
,
Four Minutes to the First Blast.
The women in the picture are stunning, though it is true that the Westerner seems sickly, skinnier than she ought to be. The Indian, on the other hand, is something out of
National Geographic
. She is brown, with even browner tattoos that, it’s also true, appear to jump from the skin of her dark arm onto the skin of the white and freckled Westerner’s arm. Is it a tourist with her guide? Is it a teacher and her student? Are the women a couple? Are they lovers? Are they in love? These things are impossible to tell. But yes, they have to be. Is it Nora Lindell? Well, this, too, is impossible to tell.
But doesn’t it have to be? Because haven’t we all made this decision, all come to this common conclusion. All but Winston Rutherford, who will tell you, quietly and respectfully, that the woman in the photograph is
not
Nora Lindell. He will tell you this and he will tell you to let the whole thing go already, and you will almost want to believe him. And yet, and yet isn’t it funny he felt compelled to tell you about the photograph in the first place? Isn’t it strange that he gave you specific directions in order to find the photograph more easily so you could see it for yourself?