The Shooting (37 page)

The handyman felt irritated by that.
It make no difference,
he said.
A man not loser just because humble job and little money.

I know that, Dad. Damn. What's the matter?
But he did not know what the matter was. He could not say. But he did know, didn't he?

Remembers Clayton lounging in the chair sideways, his long legs draped over the arm, watching his zombie shows. He imagines Howard sitting like that now, as the middle-aged attorney puts down his cup of tea and leans forward in the chair. —It appears the opposition feels threatened enough by you, he says, —to have called DHS with an anonymous tip. Some functionary there without enough real work to do took them seriously enough to pull your papers and take a closer look.

He feels his heart shrivel. His wife looks at him. He does not look back at her because he knows it is bad and he has no solution. Nonetheless he says, —It okay, I fix it. Is it money? Maybe we can borrow it.

Howard says, —I'm afraid it's the rare problem money won't solve. It's very serious. Look, I don't know where you got those papers or who you got them from, and I don't want to know, but—

—We
earned
them. We
deserve
them. People
believed
in us, his wife interrupts.

Howard ignores her. —All I know is I have seen them and they are in fact inauthentic. You are, I'm afraid, unlawfully present in the United States of America.

—No, no, no, she whispers, looking at her husband who does not look at her, cannot.

—What does that mean? he says, though he knows what it means. It means they must leave the country. They cannot live in it.

And that is exactly what Howard says.

She stands up but does not go anywhere or say anything. She just stares down at Howard in silence.

Howard says, —We'll appeal of course, but it's a long shot, this is pretty cut and dry. Especially because, well, put it this way: it's a different story if you have a child.

He hates Howard.

—Where will we go? she says.

—You'll be returned to your home country

She sits back down.

—God no, he whispers, —we'll be killed. He is holding her hand but it is wet and cold. Puts his arm around her.

—I cannot breathe, she says.

He is choking too. His chest constricting.

—It's not necessarily permanent, Howard says. —You will be allowed to apply for a visa from your home country.

—It not
home,
he chokes out.

—We'll put in for expedition, Howard continues, ignoring him, —and if we're approved, which I'm confident we will be, considering your high profile and all the noise Jenny will make on your behalf, there have been cases where people in dangerous countries have had residency papers in their hands in as short a time as one year. Howard stares off in a way that chills his stomach and pulls his chest even tighter. —Thing is though, and I'll have to partner up with an attorney with more immigration law experience to confirm this, but the problem is that you came here. Once someone is found to be illegally present, it triggers a bar from reentry for a mandatory minimum length of time. You should not have come here.

—How long? the handyman says, staring at the spot on the carpet where Clayton spilled something when he was ten and tried to clean it with laundry detergent, leaving a pale discoloration that made the handyman so angry because it was a new carpet—how was he angry about that? Why did he care? What is a carpet?

—For what it's worth, rest assured that Jenny is out there right now raising real hell for you, putting heavy,
heavy
pressure on officials to get them to approve a waiver.

This has the thud of dishonesty to it. —How long? Tell me the truth.

—Well, the law says ten years, but—

—Ten years? he interrupts.

She says, —I would rather die.

He corrects her. —We
will
die.

—I'm sorry, Howard says, —it's sickening. We will do what we can. But to spare the police coming here and arresting you, I've told them
you'll turn yourselves in in the morning. Now having said that. Howard shifts in his chair, loosens his tie. —Jenny knows people who are willing to help. In fact, I think they represent your only option right now.

—Good, who, how?

—They can get you out of here to a safe haven. Iceland.

—But we don't want Iceland. We are Americans. America is our country.

—Well, America says otherwise, doesn't it? Look, these people Jenny knows, they can get you everything you need for a good life in Iceland. You'll have a job, a place to live. You'll have authentic papers. Full health care. Support in your retirement. This is a very good opportunity. Tomorrow morning I'll be out front in a cab to take you down to the courthouse to turn yourselves in and go before the judge, who, 99.9 percent, will have you removed back to where you came from. But there will be another car too, also waiting out front tomorrow morning. I urge you very strongly to get into that one. Do you understand me?

Iceland. After Howard leaves they look up Iceland on Clayton's computer. Last year in Iceland, another country with plenty of firearms, there were seven gun deaths. Seven. In America there were 32,179. In Iceland they do not have whatever it is inside Americans that kills. They do not have the myths about themselves. They have myths, in Iceland, but they are not American myths. America itself is a myth. Iceland is just a country. We will live in a country, not a myth. In a country there is life, in myth, death. So we will go to Iceland. Right? People like us go through what we did to get here only to find it does not exist and never has, that what does exist is a meat grinder into which they feed people like us. There is no freedom, no opportunity. Not really. For them there might be. For them. Do we not understand it yet? Haven't we learned? Can't we admit it? Won't we? The country we love and gave everything to does not exist. Myths are what they want here, even if they kill them and their children. And nobody changes because in order to change they would need to admit the truth: that it is all a myth. So they keep choosing myths over people. They choose everything over people
here. Whatever it is, if they can put it before people then they put it before people. This country kills its own so it can remain the same. They would rather there be death and horror than there be change. So why would we not run for our lives? Why would we choose to be victimized again? Why don't we go, why don't we protect ourselves?

(Sheeple XII)

 

When she is seven years old she writes in her diary:

I love my husbin I will mary my husbin I will not mary Steven Mcdoogl he is not my husbin! Who is my husbin? I doent no! but i love him!

When she is fifteen years old she writes in her diary:

Clayton, I love you so much. You are the man for me. My soul mate, my rock, my better half. You cheer me up when I am depressed. You always know how to make me laugh. Oh and you are sexy as HELL! He he! I can't wait til end of summer. I will
definitely
make it worth the wait for you. Let me just say 1 word: surfboard. HA HA! When we are finally alone and joined as one on that magical night it will be soooooo beautiful. I love being your girlfriend. We are not just a silly high school relationship are we? We are for real. Baby, I cannot wait to be 16 with you. We're gonna have our licenses! You can drive out here to the boonies. And we can think of some other things to do in the car too (tee hee!). Muah muah MUAH! Next year will be AMAZING, I cannot wait. I love you, Clayton, I love you I LOVE CLAYTON. STACEY ♥ CLAYTON. SM ♥ CK.

When she is sixteen years old she writes nothing in her diary.

When she is seventeen years old she writes in her diary:

A bad day. Sucked dry & numb. Cannot sleep eat shower. Grades fucked. Mom saw my legs, she knows. Meds not working, make me fat and jittery and not sleep. New psych tmrw. Keep seeing him. Saw him at mall today. He never sees me.

When she is eighteen years old she writes nothing in her diary.

When she is nineteen years old she writes:

Finally saw the movie last week. had to turn it off. have not gotten out of bed since.

When she is twenty years old she writes:

David told me he loves me. I could only stare back at him and say nothing. He cried and said I was breaking his heart. Then he left. I felt relieved, I felt free. I could be alone again.

When she is twenty-two years old she writes in her diary:

Driving to work today I saw him walking down the street. It was him. This was the first time I had seen him in a few years. My heart turned cold, so cold. I had to pull over. It was so startling. It made me realize how much he has become a memory of a memory. I had not realized how warped and calcified he has become to me—until I saw him today. Have I made him that way? Can we do this to each other? It is like all the gray amber in my heart in which C has been locked suddenly shattered—and out he stepped, gleaming and real yet different because it is him and not the memory, it is the real him who I had forgotten in favor of whatever I have turned him into, whatever it is I remember when I remember him. It all came back today. How his voice sounded in my ear in that bed, his scent. How his lips felt. What he felt like. That was so long ago. Why am I not over it? I thought I was but I am not. I called in to work. They gave me a hard time but I don't care. I have not cared about anything, really, since C. How many times have I been fired or just left a job without saying anything to anyone? What is there to care about? I am supposed to be on the way right now to Brian's family lake house, with Brian. I called him and told him I could not go and he said why. How could I explain? I told him I had never been in love with him, that every time I had told him I was I had been lying. I could hear him dying on the other end. "How could you say that?" he whispered. "It's just the truth," I said, "it's just what people do, there is no love." He said, "I don't believe you." I said okay, whatever, and hung up.

When she is twenty-five years old she writes in her diary:

Life is being tethered to the sun & when you are young you are tethered tightly to it. But as you age you lose and you suffer and this is drifting out further from the sun, on a longer tether. And you drift further and further away & you get colder & cannot pull yourself back closer to the sun even
though you can see where you used to be, how close to it you so recently were—how warm and good it was. & you do not even know you are drifting at the time. To be alive is to feel/see/experience yourself diminishing. Not as it happens but shortly after. So you will know you have. This guy Ken keeps contacting me about C. This memorial thing. 10 years. Driving me crazy, wishing Ken would just let it go. And leave me alone.

When she is thirty-two years old she writes:

I told Ken today that I love him. And I meant it. First time that has been true since C. He knew C too, he was C's best friend, I sort of remembered Ken vaguely but we did not meet really until C's 10-year memorial, 7 years ago. Since then he and I have been putting one on every year, to raise money for gun violence prevention. At the 10-year Ken told me how destroyed he was after C, that he wanted to kill himself. He had a plan and everything. After going to C's the morning after to say bye to Mr. & Mrs. K, he was going to go jump off the Manhattan bridge. But then at C's house he saw all the people there for C and Mr. K seemed to zero in on Ken, like he sensed something. He came over to Ken and put his arm around him and told him how much C loved him and how good of a friend Ken was to C & thanked him for that and told him that he has a whole lifetime ahead of such great friendships to contribute to, people to give to the way he gave to C, so keep strong and doing good because people will need you & your love. It made Ken see things differently. He thought that was heroic of Mr. K to even think of him at that moment, having just lost C. He didn't know any man could be like that. It was what C would have done. It made Ken think, the world has people in it like C and Mr. K and I don't want to leave it, I want to live in it, I want to be a part of it, there is love to be had and love to give, I will keep strong, I will do good, I will live. So he stayed alive. Ken is the only man I could ever love. If Ken were not here I would love no one. I would just spend the rest of my life the way I have been since C: getting colder and meaner and harder and sadder... God have I needed what he has brought back into me life—desperately. He brought life back into it. He has me going to counseling, first time since I was maybe 17, and it's helping this time. He's got me back in school, get my degree. After C I did not even apply to college, even though I'd been a straight-A student. Just didn't care. Everything felt fraudulent and hopeless and meaningless. Not anymore. Being back in school at 32 among all these 18-year-olds makes
me realize what babies we were when it happened and how sad that we had to deal with what we did so young. The way I used to deal with it, when I was a baby, was to not talk about it, but Ken makes me talk about it. He opens my heart. He pulls me back toward the sun. And I do the same for him. We anchor each other there, tightly, so we do not drift away from it. I spent 17 years after C isolated and terrified and trusting no one because love was devastating when it was ripped from me so young. I have gone along trusting nothing and no one, always afraid of everyone and thinking that made me free. I was not free. I was the opposite. With Ken only now am I free. Because I am afraid of nothing. Because I have trust. That makes me have love. He & I are the only ones who understand what the other has lost and the love we have we could have only with each other. We are one. He is my rock, my soul mate, my better half. He was my husband before we married, he was my husband before we ever even met. I write this from paradise.

When she is thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, and thirty-six years old she writes nothing in her diary

When she is thirty-eight years old she writes in her diary:

Ken smiles and says

As he first holds our baby

"Let's name him Clayton."