Текст книги "House of Sand and Fog"

Автор книги: Andre Dubus

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

 

I DO NOT KNOW IF IT WAS THE GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE MY NADI DRANK,or if it was because Esmail had fallen asleep early before his television in his room, or if it was simply the joyful news of the real estate appraiser who I hired to come here yesterday, the news I thank God for and cannot yet believe, that this bungalow is worth four times what I paid for it and the appraiser sees no difficulty in our finding a buyer for it, especially with the new widow’s walk that will overlook the sea. Perhaps it was that, or the new cassette player I purchased for her at Japantown in San Francisco late yesterday afternoon, I do not know. Man nehmee doonam. All I can be certain of is yesterday God kissed our eyes, and last evening my wife invited me to her room for only the third time in the years we have lived in America.

We lay together in the darkness listening to a new cassette of a singer reciting the rubaiyats of Fayez Dashtestani. Behind this a man softly played the ney, a shepherd’s flute, and soon she pulled me to her and it was almost too much; I felt I was a young man again, lying with my new bride. Nadi held my back so tightly and I saw again my father on our wedding day carrying the fat sheep to the doorway of our new home. It was summer and very hot and because of the west wind there was dust upon our fine clothes. My father wore a suit of black, and his forehead and cheeks were shining with sweat as he carried the sheep under his left arm, the long knife in his right hand, and he knelt and held the sheep at the open doorway, the sheep beginning to bleat, struggling and kicking beneath my father’s weight, Nadi squeezing my hand in both of hers as my father pushed the blade deep into the sheep’s throat, pulling it free, letting the blood fall onto the threshold of our new home, Nadi’s father squatting and rubbing the blood into the wood with his fingers, behind us the women and men clapping and a hot wind blowing over us all, Nadi’s breath upon my neck, the crowd pushing us into the dark house past the dying sheep, its rear legs twitching and jerking in the dust.

The shepherd’s flute continued. My wife moved to rest my face upon her shoulder and she rubbed her fingers gently on the skin of my head as if I were her own child.

Soon the music ended and she was asleep, but I could not sleep. I went to Esmail’s room and turned off the television, then I covered him with his sheet. Even curled there, his body took up nearly all the bed. He is growing so quickly, faster than did his sister Soraya, that standing before him in my robe, I felt proud and frightened all at the same moment.

And now I wake upon the living-room sofa just before the sun and I feel a sadness that I did not stay in bed with Nadereh, for I do not know if last evening will come again anytime soon. And I remember Soraya when she was a girl. Her legs were long and thin and brown, and her mother forever had her wearing a pretty dress of some kind. One evening upon my return home, when she had no more than seven or eight years, I remember my daughter stepping out onto the rear veranda to greet me. I heard her laughing and I looked up from the auto and saw her standing at attention in her yellow dress, her tiny knees barely touching one another, wearing the visored hat from my old sarvan’s uniform. The captain’s hat was of course so large it fell forward and covered her eyes and I remember that lovely gap between her two front teeth as she laughed and saluted, even though she could not see me or anything else.

She is now a man’s wife. At this thought I rise from the couch, dress, and take my tea outside to the rear lawn. The tall grass is slightly wet and it begins to itch my bare feet as I walk around the bungalow with my hot cup. It is still quite early. Stars are visible in the sky. Today the young najar begins construction of the widow’s walk, and I do not know if it was perhaps a mistake to begin advertising the sale of the home before the job is complete. I lower my eyes to the dark woodland across the road and I stop still, for parked there beside the trees is the appraiser’s red automobile. I feel a sudden lightness in my chest and a heaviness in my legs; I am certain he has driven here to inform me it is all a mistake, this bungalow is not worth anything. But as I step over the hard cool road I am embarrassed at my fear, at my doubt; the car is quite new-looking and not the appraiser’s at all, and of course he would not drive out for business at so very early in the morning. Pourat many times told to me I was not a man of faith and of course I was forced to agree with him. It is why I am forever expecting disaster around the corner from God’s smile.

There is a slight movement within the automobile. I approach and peer through the window glass to see a young woman sleeping upon her back in the front seat. She is dressed in short pants and a shirt without sleeves. Her arm rests over her eyes. I look in the rear window, but she is alone. Once again I shake my head at how these American women live. I look once more at her naked legs and feet, then I return to my yard with my tea.

 

T HE SKY IS DARK AND NICKY IS ON A BROWN HORSE STANDING IN Astream. I’m there too, knee-deep in water. He sits in the saddle, looking down at me the way he did the morning he left, like it’s too late to do anything and he’s made up his mind to leave right away before he gets too sad about it all and won’t be able to move. Except his horse won’t move. It keeps looking at me with its big eyes. Every time Nick jerks on the reins the horse opens its mouth and lets out a high-pitched whir. And when Nick kicks its ribs with his heels it sounds like a rock hitting a hollow tree. I put my hand on the horse’s damp neck and look up at Nick, then everything changes and he and I are sitting on a couch somewhere, both smoking, me pleading about wanting a baby, Nick sitting so still and quiet, looking straight ahead like I’ve just asked him to drink cyanide. I can hear the horse outside, the whirring and knocking. But who’s the rider?

Who is the rider?

I opened my eyes and sat up in the front seat of the Bonneville. I could taste last night’s cigarettes and I turned the ignition key halfway to light up the digital clock. It wasn’t quite eight in the morning but already the sun was coming warm through the windshield and on the maroon upholstery and me. The woods were thick and shaded as always, and deep inside were spots of sunlight. Then I heard the sound that had been in my sleep, and I turned and looked across the street at the house. Two carpenters were up on the roof above my kitchen.

They were both shirtless and one of them was ripping away shingles with the claw of his hammer while the other was using his power saw to cut through my roof, my father’sroof, Frankie’sroof. Their pickup truck was parked in front of the house close to the driveway where last night I saw a new white Buick in the shine of my headlights as I drove up the hill, but now it was gone, and I should’ve listened to Lester Burdon and stayed away from here. But it was the only place I could think to go so late at night after driving around for over an hour, talking myself out of checking into another motel somewhere. Now the two carpenters stood together and used crowbars to pry a huge square of my roof off. They let it fall to the ground, then they stood on the floor of my attic between the rafters. The one with the saw started cutting right into one of them and I scooted behind the wheel and jerked open the door and ran across the street barefoot. I yelled up at them, but they couldn’t hear me over the saw, so I stepped around my roof and climbed up the ladder. They were both tan and one of them had a tattoo of a diner on his shoulder. The other one stopped cutting and looked from me to the one with the tattoo, then back at me again.

“What are you doing?”

The one with the tattoo dropped his hammer into his tool belt. “Excuse me?”

“Who said you could dothis? This is myfucking house!”

He peered over the roof down at his truck and my car. “And you are?”

“I ownthis house. Me.Get off my roof.”

“Are you Mrs. Behrani?”

“No.”

The other carpenter reached into his apron, shook a cigarette from its pack, and lit it. I could feel him looking at my bare arms and legs, and at my hair all ratty from sleep. It was cold last night and now my head felt stopped up and I felt so out of place and wrong.

“Mr. Behrani hired me. You’ll have to talk to him.”

I looked from the tattooed carpenter to the one smoking his cigarette. He glanced away from me and took in the view and I turned and saw the rooftops of Corona below, then the green-gray ocean stretching out from the beach to the horizon. Somehow this made me madder and I climbed back down the ladder and began stepping over the shingles and one of the carpenters yelled to watch out for nails just as I stepped on the upside-down plywood where dozens of nail points were sticking out and now four or five of them were sinking into the heel and ball of my foot. I screamed, jerking my knee up, the blood dripping. “Shit.”I hopped and sat down, then twisted my foot up, but there was so much blood I couldn’t see where the holes were. “Fuck.”

“Here.” The tattooed carpenter squatted in front of me and tied a bandanna tight around my ankle. He helped me stand and guided me to the front steps, myfront steps, and he knocked on the screen door. I had my hand on his bare shoulder, my elbow against his back. His skin was warm and damp and I could feel the muscle under it. I was thinking how I hadn’t brushed my teeth or washed my face, that I’d slept in my car last night and now was bleeding on my own doorstep waiting for a stranger to answer.

A black-haired boy came to the door. He was maybe fifteen and he wore bright orange surfer shorts and a loose T-shirt. He glanced down at my foot I wasn’t letting touch the ground. A woman came up behind him. She had short thick hair and dark eyes with hardly any makeup. She was wearing a designer sweat suit, and there was a big ring on her left hand. I wanted to say that she was in my goddamn house, that she had no fucking right to remodel it, but the carpenter spoke up first and asked her if we could use the bathroom to wash my foot, and if she had something we could use to keep the blood from getting on her rug. And it was herrug. I could see it on the wall-to-wall carpeting behind her, a huge deep red and brown Persian rug. The woman told the boy something in what sounded Arabic or Israeli, and the boy went to the kitchen and came back with a plastic trash bag he handed to the carpenter, who bent down and pulled it loosely over my foot. I felt like throwing up, my stomach contracting. The woman was looking at my hair and face, my wrinkled shirt, and her eyes seemed so full of caring I took a weak breath and didn’t say anything as she stepped back and let the carpenter and me inside.

I had one arm on the carpenter’s shoulder, the other holding the plastic trash bag onto my foot. We passed a silver coffee table with bowls of nuts and wrapped chocolates set on top of it. There was a plush sofa and expensive-looking lamps. The carpenter stopped at the kitchen and asked the woman where the bathroom was, but before she could talk I told him to go all the way down the hall. I leaned on his shoulder and hopped through a house that didn’t seem like mine anymore; the door to my bedroom was open and I caught a glimpse of a queen-size bed with brass posts. On the floor near the windows were huge potted green plants, and on the carpet around the bed were small rugs, deep purple, green, and black.

In the bathroom I sat on the edge of the tub and let cold water run over the sole of my foot as I watched the blood swirl down the drain. The carpenter stood beside me with his hands on his hips. He still had his tool belt on and his hammer handle was swaying against his leg.

“When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

“Ees she yet bleeding?”

The woman reached by me, her arm brushing my face, and I smelled lavender and cotton. She knelt on the floor, adjusted the water temperature, then took a bar of soap and washed my foot under hot water. She called to her son in their language, then she sat on the edge of the tub, gently took my foot and swung it to rest in a towel in her lap. It was a white towel, thick and soft, like only five-star hotels use, and I started to pull my bleeding foot from it.

“Ees it to hurting so much?” She looked into my eyes with hers that were so dark, the lines in her face delicate-looking, like she hadn’t had them long.

“I don’t want to ruin your towel.”

She smiled but I don’t think she understood what I said. Her son came to the room with a box of cotton balls and a roll of Ace bandage. He said something to her—Arabic, I decided—then he said to me with no accent at all, “I use it for skateboarding. Don’t worry, I washed it.”

“Sorry, but I have to know what the story is before I continue the job.” The carpenter stood in the doorway and watched while the woman swabbed the bottom of my foot with a clear liquid that smelled like ginger. My face got hot, and I held my finger up to him to wait a second, though I didn’t know what I was going to say next. The woman pressed a cotton ball to each puncture in my foot and she started to wrap it tight with the Ace bandage. Every turn or so she would glance up at my face to see how I was. Her son left the bathroom and I heard a TV go on in what used to be the room Nicky practiced his bass in. I looked up at the carpenter and said quietly: “I’ll talk to her husband.”

“Fine. Sorry about your foot.”

I watched him walk down my hallway with his tool belt and shorts and no shirt. I felt abandoned.

The woman pulled the last bit of tape up around my ankle, kept it there with her thumb, then held it down with a safety pin. She smiled at me and we both looked at each other a second, which made me pull my leg from her lap and stand up, but I couldn’t put weight on my foot without a burning ache shooting up my shin. She helped me out of the bathroom and I half-leaned on her all the way to the living room, where she guided me to the sofa behind the silver coffee table. I was about to say no but she moved a pillow, slid the bowl of sweets off to the side of the table, then rested the folded towel there for my foot; all I could do was sink into the softness of the couch.

“I carry you tea and sugar. You must for rest.”

I watched her walk into my kitchen and reach into a cabinet for a clear glass cup. On the wall across from me were paintings of mountains on a waterfront, of bearded men in robes on horses. On the lamp table beside me was a family portrait of the woman smiling next to a bald man in a military uniform. Sitting in front of them was the same boy who’d answered the door, only he was younger, his face more smooth and round, and beside him was a beautiful young woman with long black hair that went past her shoulders and hung over her white blouse. She had her mother’s eyes and the gentle smile too.

“That is of course our family pictures.” The woman rested a black breakfast tray on my lap. The tea steamed up into my face as I sipped it, and she went into the kitchen and came back with a small bowl of red grapes.

“Thank you,” I said. She smiled at the other end of the couch and put a cube of sugar in her mouth before she sipped her tea, placing the cup in a saucer on her lap. She was looking at my bare legs, the high hem of my cotton shorts, her face taking them in like my mother would. My cheeks flushed. I could hear the muffled noise of the carpenters cutting through wood above us, then hammering something, then cutting some more. The woman was sucking softly on the sugar in her mouth. The grapes were cold and sweet, but I wished I’d never driven up here last night and I put the tray on the table, sat up, and stood on my good foot.

“No, you must for rest your foots. Your friend must to the hospital bring you.”

I made my way around the table and hopped to the door. Draped over the edge of the silver table was the folded white towel, my blood drying all over it. “Thanks for your help, but he’s not my friend. I don’t even know his name.”

CONNIE WALSH WAS in a meeting when I limped up the stairs above the Café Amaro and told Gary I wanted to see her and I’m not leaving till I do. He looked down at my bandaged foot and asked what happened, but I sat without answering because I felt like killing somebody right then, anybody, but not him, especially when he dragged a chair over for me to rest my foot up on while I waited.

Connie Walsh’s morning clients were two women a little older than me and better dressed. They walked out of the conference room laughing, but when they saw me sitting there with my foot up on a chair that almost blocked their way, their laughter dropped down to smiles as they squeezed by and disappeared down the stairs.

My lawyer stood in the doorway. “What happened to you?”

“They’re tearing my fucking house apart.”

“What?”

I hopped by her into the meeting room that smelled like clove cigarettes. All the tall windows were open and the room was full of sunlight. I leaned against the table and crossed my arms over my chest to keep my hands from shaking. “They’re remodelingit. What are you going to doabout that?”

“Have a seat, Kathy.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I want to fucking kill somebody. How come they don’t even know they’re squatting in somebody else’s home? I’m tired of this shit.” I lit a cigarette.

Connie sat down and called out to Gary to please bring us two cups of coffee. She looked up at me with a patient look on her face. “The courier just brought over the paperwork from the county this morning. I was planning to review it and call you this afternoon.”

“I don’t want you to call me,I want you to call those Arabswho are cutting up my house.”My voice broke, but I wasn’t going to let whatever was under it break through. Gary came in and left the coffee. My foot felt swollen so I pulled out a chair, sat down, and rested my leg on another.

“What happened?”

“My yard is a construction site.”

“You were there, Kathy?”

“That’s right.” I emptied a whole packet of Sweet’n Low into my coffee, stirring it while Connie launched into a soft-voiced lecture on why it’s a good idea to stay off the property so she can do her work unencumbered.

“It’s very important we’re both clear on this,” she said. “Agreed?”

I looked at her, at the premature gray in her hair, at the serious look in her face, and I was still so mad at how far all this was actually going my throat felt closed up, but I said yes, then drank from my coffee. Connie excused herself to go get the paperwork. Outside, on the flat roof of the Roxie Theater across the street, two pigeons were perched on a brick chimney stack in the sunlight. They stood together looking out over the street below, their beaks jerking front and back, right and left, as they took in the scene.

My foot hurt. I smoked another cigarette and thought how at least today was my off day with the cleaning and if I was lucky I might be able to put enough weight down tomorrow to work. But on the drive over my right sole ached so much I had to sit almost kitty-cornered and use my left foot on the gas and brake pedals, making me sit as low in the seat as an old lady. I started to stand to go find my lawyer, but then she walked back into the room smiling, carrying a manila folder in front of her.

“I was right. They sent your signed statement with everything else. Here.”

I took it from her. It was the original statement both Nicky and I signed in front of the notary. I looked at his signature, each letter of his name written so neatly while mine was a hurried scribble. I used to think he did that so people wouldn’t have to decipher it, so he wouldn’t make things hard for anyone, so he wouldn’t leave behind a mess. I used to think that.

Connie Walsh said a few things and I looked up and nodded at her like I’d heard.

“And it’s obvious they decided to put it to rest with that statement, so I’ll fax them a letter today and we’ll follow it up with a phone call before offices close. If they don’t offer to rescind the sale immediately, we’ll sue the county for a bundle. Are you still at the motel?”

I shook my head no. “I want you to call those people in my house, too. They’re already more at home there than I ever was. That’s not right.”

My lawyer tapped her pencil in the palm of her hand. “Did you get their names?”

“I don’t know, Bahroony or Behmini, something like that. They’re Middle Eastern. Please call them up and tell them to put the roof back together and get out.”

She left the room and I heard her tell Gary to draft a letter for the courier service. The pigeons flew off, and I told myself I should feel good the county had sent the sworn statement that would get me back into my and Frankie’s house, but there were four holes of heat in my foot, a stiffness in my neck from sleeping in the car, a tightness in my throat, and for a second I saw myself emptying most of the storage shed into the Bonneville and driving straight back East, just pull into my mother’s driveway and tell her everything, that I had no friends, I was smoking again, I just scrape by cleaning up after other people, all I do is watch movies I don’t remember, my husband left me, and I lost the house, Ma; it’s gone.

“Where are you staying, Kathy?” Connie walked in reading some paperwork. She had on her round glasses.

“Nowhere.”

“You’re not with friends?” She was giving me eyes that were sincere but holding back too, and I pegged her right away for the kind of person who couldn’t live with herself for not doing the right thing, but also the kind who could never say no, so they really wanted you to lie to them so they wouldn’t have to dothe right thing like invite me to stay a week with her.

“Yeah, I’m with a friend.”

“You are?”

They always did that too, pushed your lie till it almost broke. “I want to be back in my house by this weekend, Connie, all right?”

“I can’t promise you anything, but we’ll do our best.” She smiled and stood and showed me to the door. As I hopped to the stairs, she said not to worry and she hoped my ankle would feel better soon.

IT’S ALMOST EASIER being down and alone than when you’re up and no one’s there to share the view with you. Not that I was feeling that great as I drove south on Skyline Boulevard through Daly City in the sunshine. Addicts are supposed to be famous for expecting disaster around every corner from good luck, but now I did have my hopes up a little Connie Walsh might have this mess straightened out by the weekend. I needed some distraction.

I rested my right foot on the hump in the middle of the floor beneath the console. The ache wasn’t as sharp, but now there was a warm throbbing that came with my heartbeats which were faster than normal because I was smoking practically one cigarette after another. I was also thinking of Lester Burdon again, his sad eyes and crooked mustache, his little station wagon driving off into the fog. I knew I’d been thinking of him off and on since then; I kept seeing that dark need in his face as he sat across from me at Carl Jr.’s. Men who have that look usually want to bite into you like you’re a fresh cool plum; and after they’ve bitten, sucked, and chewed they expect your juices to come back and stay sweet. But Lester’s need seemed different than that. There was a gentleness there too, a patience. So maybe it wasn’t really a need at all, but a wanting. Maybe he wanted.

In Daly City, I pulled into a gas station and hopped to the rest room with my makeup bag and toothbrush, a clean T-shirt and pair of underwear. I cleaned myself up, climbed back into my Bonneville with my wrapped foot, then dug through my pocketbook for Lester Burdon’s card. It had slipped into my checkbook between two blank checks: Lester was something called a field training officer and his office was at the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department in Redwood City. I put the car in gear, used my left foot for the gas, and drove onto the Bayshore Freeway, heading south.