The Invention of Exile (31 page)

“Well, take a piece,” Leo says. “And leave a pack out in the open? Leave it right here,” he says, patting the dashboard. “Make you look like a true American.” Vera laughs, Austin too. He watches his father fumbling with the packs of gum, gathering them and placing one after another back under the visor, arranging them in a neat row beneath the red rubber band Leo had used to secure them into place. He readjusts the visor. Leo reaches over and removes a pack of gum. He hands it to his father.

“Go ahead and open it,” he says, holding it before him, watching as his father takes it in his hands, opens it, the red string breaking through the thicker green wrapper. The pleasure of the silver sheen and scent of spearmint. He unwraps the foil and folds the gum into his mouth, chewing. He places the pack on the dashboard, on a straight line. Leo moves it a bit, sets it on an angle, on the diagonal to look more casual, he doesn't know why, just makes him nervous otherwise. He puts his arm out the window, banging the outer door with his palm.

“All right now, all right,” he says as he turns the car around the corner and toward the border crossing. “You ready for this?”

“I think so,” his father says, offering a half smile.

 • • • 

A
USTIN
'
S
WINDOW
IS
OPEN
.
He can hear the tires on the road, the gentle idle of the engine at rest, then the sputter of gas and the idle again, back and forth—time enough for thought, an action of reversal. The border patrol shack is white. A freshly painted white. Black trim. A hand-painted wooden placard announces the current exchange rate: twelve pesos to the dollar. The border guards stand outside the customs house, disaffected and bored. Their badges and buckles glint gold and white under the 3:30
P
.
M
. sun and the wide sky hovering like a dome, the same sky he's stood under all these years. He can hear Leo telling him to be calm. He adjusts his neck collar and feels the tightness at his mouth, the way his jaw moves up and down over the gum, tasteless and growing stiff, brittle. That, and his heart, full and constricted as if struggling with all the fear and doubt and hope and guilt wrangled inside of him. All the while he can hear Leo saying, “easy enough,” “easy enough to cross.”

They drive past signs.
Principia Región Fronteriza
/You are entering border region.
Mercancías Generales
/General Merchandise. The searchlights are dead during the day and he can see the other cars go before them, stopping at the window, an exchange of words, a quick once-over of papers before passing through. It was easy for them—one, two, three had been allowed admittance. He can expect the same. What were the chances of being stopped? He quickly works out an equation of probability, but knows now that he will have to leave it all to chance or to have some faith and that faith will have to carry him across the border, yes, but also the many miles through, and once again on the train trip, and even more so when walking down Main Street, searching out the old street, a right and then left, two blocks down, stepping through the gate and up to the front door. Would it last? He already feels faith waning. He is tiring. He does not know if he has the strength to see it through. It is a lot to ask of one man.

He sees some Mexicans at the pedestrian crossing—women with their mesh bags of yellow and green, handwoven, their low-heeled black shoes are covered in a film of chalky dust. He watches their faces burst into smiles, an ease coming over them as they entered their side, their country, free to giggle at some complicity, remarks about the border guards no doubt, he thinks, their white shirtdresses and bobby socks, hair cropped short, clipped to the ear or held back with barrettes. They come together and disperse, walking in single file now, their silhouettes thrown into relief against the flat barren fields that stretch to the dry brown foothills in the distance—a terrain that seems to shame the meager customs house, which sits tiny as a toy beneath all the austerity, blatant, serene.

“Identification.”

“Yes, sir.”

The guard's sunglasses, cracked and fixed with tape, hang from a rope around his neck.

“Where you people headed to?” he asks, his voice a low growl. He turns one passport over in his hands, examines the paper, looks at the picture, back to Leo and back to the picture again. He does the same with the other two. Flips through the pages, runs his fingers along the front embossed seal.

“California,” Leo lies. The border guard places his hands on the hood of the car and hangs down so that his face is framed by his forearms. His sunglasses hit the top of the open window.

“Which way you headed?” he asks, talking to Leo, Austin's eyes on the dashboard as he feels the guard's gaze make a once-over of the car.

“Eight-nine,” Leo says. “ Then the Pacific Coast highway.”

“You may have some trouble then,” the guard says. Austin cannot move, his hands are suddenly shaking, his mouth parched, but he keeps chewing the gum, finds it a welcome distraction, chewing in a series of threes—one, two, three, one, two, three. He can see the guard standing to take a step back from the car, pointing across the border.

“Accident,” the guard says. “You can take your chances, but you might be backed up there for miles.”

“Thanks. We'll see what happens,” Leo says.

“All right. Go on ahead,” he says, waving them through. Austin's heart is beating, and they sit in silence, a bit stunned, as Leo maneuvers the car through the crossing point, driving a few yards before speeding up onto the highway. Austin is unable to speak. The sun in his eyes. He shakes his head, rubs his forehead, brings his warm hand to his neck, cracking it a bit as he turns it left and then right.

Leo is laughing, Vera sits forward, her hands resting on the seat back. She is talking to him, asking him if he is okay, joining in Leo's laughter.

Austin knows he should be thankful, that he should be flooded with relief, that soothing balm, and not with what he feels now. A tenseness along the shoulders, in the chest as if he'd stored up all this energy to cross and had not yet felt its release. From the interstate Austin can see the scalloped outline of a general storefront, the rounded cupolas of restored missionary churches, whitewashed and pristine, colored by the amber light of the setting sun.

“Stop the car for a minute,” Austin says.

“What? Here?” Vera looks around.

“Stop the car. A minute, please.”

“Sure thing.”

“I just need to step out for a moment.”

Leo presses on the brakes, the car slows as he pulls it gradually to the side of the road, but not slow enough so that the car skids a bit on the gathered gravel. A cloud of dust encases the car, some coming through the windows. Austin closes his eyes, feeling the car roll to a stop. He places his hand on the warm silver door handle, clicking it open and stepping out to stand at the side of the road for a moment before making his way down the embankment—four strides and he's in the field. From behind, he can hear Leo and Vera talking, getting out of the car now, doors slamming shut and the certain sound of someone sitting on the hood, the tin dented with a little popping.

The cacti are scattered before him like pieces on a chessboard. Some of the crown cacti rose to his height, their late-day shadows long and slanting, like his own.

“Hey,” Leo shouts. “How does it feel to be in the U.S.?”

“Good,” Austin calls over his shoulder, waving a hand up in the air. He walks about twenty paces, stands still for a moment, dragging his sole along the ground, disturbing flies from their dusty slumber. They flitter up and loop, coming to rest on some safer surface.

He is in the United States. No voices, no sudden arrest, no men to take him, no guns or bayonets, blackjacks or clubs, no tumult of questions. What had he expected, now safely across? An onslaught of something—joy maybe. But he doesn't feel that. Some change in the weather at least as if all the minutes, years might gather and fall back to him like the distinct drops of a sudden rain, heavy and laden in descent, spattering the dry fields and mountain ranges, the parched cacti, soon soaking his clothes, his skin.

That did not happen.

Instead, the sun sits above the horizon like a bored and discontented child who will not go away. He puts his hand to the back of his neck, squeezing the tightened tendons, staring at the random scatter of cacti along the hillocks in the distance and those closer to him.

He could have crossed years ago, kept on walking that night when he'd found his Sonnie in that field, so much like this one here, sweeping him up so that the boy could hang off his neck. He'd moved then amid that open field as if wading into the dark, unknowable ocean. That was when they would have needed him—then—when he could lift him, throw the boy over his shoulder, when they were all just little tikes. And now? To go back he wonders if they can forgive him his absence. It had all been for them.
I love . . . I miss . . . I pray for health . . . years . . . time. . . .
What did it all mean, all those years? He'd once been the young man who'd written so ardently, “There is nothing in the world stronger than love of heart and soul for only in it there is life and happiness.” He thinks of Leo's and Vera's efforts, but he knows he is right, this will not be a reclaiming of those lost years. He is in the United States; he's never felt more foreign. He had tried. He had succeeded and yet he had failed. He turns to Vera and Leo, thinks of Julia and feels loss and gratitude and then remorse and guilt and the bitterest of sorrows, regret—he could not be the man they wanted him to be.

He picks up a stone, can feel its coarse warm skin. He tosses it up and down in his palm and then throws it like a discus toward a crown cactus. He misses. He picks up one stone after another, watching each hit the earth so that a little cloud of dust billows up from the impact, butterflies now scattering in their anxious flights. He throws the last stone, and it is like throwing down a gauntlet. He looks back to the car. Leo and Vera sit waiting, silhouetted by the curve of the horizon. How they'd grown. Two adults. They'd come for him, to bring him here, to bring him home. He pauses. Looks around. It is as still as any winter he has known.

I am grateful to several people who, combined, created a network of support, encouragement, generosity, advice, and friendship that helped me to write this book.

Thank you to the Hunter College MFA program and to Susan Hertog, whose generosity allowed me to study at Hunter on a Hertog Fellowship. Special thanks to Peter Carey, Donna Masini, Colum McCann, and Tom Sleigh, whose courses served as inspiration and whose care and community buoyed me through a period of difficult loss. I am also grateful to all of my Hunter MFA colleagues. My deepest gratitude is reserved for Colum, my adviser at Hunter, who saw the potential for this novel early on.

Thank you to Salman Rushdie, whose advice, example, and feedback on this novel challenged me and helped me to grow as a writer.

Thank you to Francisco Goldman for daring me to always write closest to the emotional truth.

I am also grateful to John Freeman for publishing an excerpt of this novel. Thank you to everyone else who helped in that publication (my first), including Patrick Ryan, Ellah Allfrey, and Michael Salu.

Thank you to my wonderful agents, Caroline Michel and Rachel Mills of Peters, Fraser and Dunlop, and to everyone else at PFD; their enthusiasm for this novel is greatly appreciated.

Thanks to my amazing editor Andrea Walker for her intelligent and insightful editorial suggestions, which helped me make this a stronger book. Special thanks also to my current editors, Virginia Smith and Ann Godoff, for their input and guidance and for providing me with continued support at The Penguin Press.

I'd like to thank Elaina Ganim for her reading of an early draft of this novel. And thanks also to Corinna Barsan, who read some of the very first pages. Their friendship and encouragement were crucial during the intial stages of this project.

For her friendship and perceptive observations and critiques, I'm deeply grateful to Maria Venegas.

I reserve special thanks for Nicole Parisier, who read my early fiction, encouraged me to continue writing, and offered me a seat at her dinner table for several much-needed meals during the writing of this book.

Thank you also to my former professors at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, Julie Malnig, who taught me the craft and joy of research, and Bella Mirabella, who has continued to take interest in, and support, my creative endeavors. I'm also grateful to Gallatin's Lauren Kaminsky for her help in researching Russian history.

In researching the Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920, I'm indebted to the following history texts: Robert W. Dunn's
The Palmer Raids
, Constantine M. Panunzio's
The Deportation Cases of 1919–1920
, Kenneth D. Ackerman's
Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare and the Assault on Civil Liberties
, and Christopher M. Finan's
From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America
.

Thanks to Abby Gardner, who believed that this novel would see the light of day even when I wasn't so sure, and to the entire Gardner family for offering me a home away from home when needed.

To Alison Clarke, who once long ago made it possible for me to have a room of my own, thank you.

For their friendship, time, shared laughter, and encouragement, thanks also to Wen-Yuan Betts, Sarah Eggers, Antonia Fattizzi, Dara Feivelson, Allison Lehr, Soledad Marambio, Meagen Marcy McCusker, and Brenna Sheehan.

Thanks to D.B. for helping me to piece together my own narrative.

Thanks also to my cousins on the Manko side of my family, Thomas Selleck, Laura Selleck, and Susan Selleck, and, of course, to my Aunt Ollie (Olga Selleck). I'd also like to acknowledge the Manko boys, Gregory, Danny, and David. We all stand on the shoulders of the man on whom the main character of this novel is based, and their encouragement and support was essential while writing this book. Special thanks to Laura, whose research helped locate important primary source materials.

My deepest gratitude is reserved for my immediate family. Thank you to Paul and Kate Manko, and especially to Paul, my brother, who read several drafts of this novel and whose wonderful, keen instinct for story helped shape this book. To my grandmother, Louise Ciccone, your love and warmth fill my heart and these pages; thank you. To my aunt Diane Ciccone, thank you for your support and encouragement and for always being there when I need you. Love and thanks to my mother, Carol Manko, for her unwavering belief in this novel and in me and in all of my dreams, whether they required a pair of pointe shoes or a pen. I could not have done any of it without you. I'm also indebted to my father, Harold Manko, who passed away while I was writing this book, but who instilled in me a love of story and an appreciation for the arts, which led me first to dance and then to writing.

Lastly, my greatest debt is owed to the man whose life story inspired this book, the late Austin Manko, who, I hope, will not be forgotten, and also to the late Julia Manko, who, with grace and strength, fought to keep her family together . . . across several borders.