Cyclorama, page 30
Kitty was still in the hallway, laughing with Judith’s daughters. She looked happy in a way she rarely did at home. Carrie walked over to her. “I’ve gotta go,” she said. “We’ll have to do this some other time. Have you seen Dad?”
“Nope.”
“When you see him, tell him I had to leave. You can explain why. I’ll catch a Lyft or something and see you at home. I’m so sorry, Kit.”
“It’s fine, Mom. Obviously.”
Carrie rushed downstairs, then outside. Adrian was standing by the car turnaround, talking to someone in a van. Carrie turned her back to him and called the clinic. Straight to voice mail. She called her office manager’s direct number. Straight to voice mail too. She texted the managers’ group chat—Be there in 20 minutes—then called for a car.
Adrian walked back toward the school entrance carrying a big bouquet of red, white, and pink roses. Carrie caught up to him as he was about to open the main door. “Why aren’t you upstairs with the rest of them?” he asked.
“Something happened at the clinic,” she said. “I’m not sure what. Someone called in a complaint to Homeland Security, there was a raid; it sounds like a nightmare. I called a car. They’re all still going out. You should go with them. I’ll be home when I can.”
Adrian didn’t seem to be processing. “What happened at the clinic?”
“It got raided,” said Carrie.
Adrian’s lips curled upward, the beginnings of a smile. It lasted for only a second. He stopped the moment he noticed Carrie noticing him doing it, but Carrie remained stuck in time, frozen at that smile.
“What?” Adrian asked.
Something told Carrie not to say what she was about to say. But then she thought: Honest, straightforward, say what’s on your mind. “Did you?” she asked.
“Did I what?” Adrian was charming when you agreed with him, but when you challenged him or seemed to doubt his version of events, his face took on a belligerent, doltish aspect. “Did I what?”
“Call?”
“What call? Who?”
“The clinic.”
“What?” Adrian had never been violent—he just got surly and snide—but you could tell when he wanted to hit someone or something, and that was almost as bad. “You think I would seriously do something like that?”
“I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t do anymore, Adrian. I have no idea what goes on in your mind. I have no idea what you do when I’m at work.”
“Yeah, well, I could say the same thing about you.”
“That’s not remotely fair. This night was supposed to be about Kitty, and every time I turn around, you’re off making some surreptitious phone call.”
“Oh,” said Adrian, eyes big and sarcastically earnest. “Do you wanna know who I was on the phone with?”
Carrie’s phone vibrated. She checked her display: YOUR DRIVER, ZADIG, IS ALMOST HERE. GET READY TO MEET HIM.
“I happened to be talking to the florist, making sure Kitty’s bouquet would get here. Which is something”—Adrian brandished the flowers—“that you, who thinks you’re the only one who cares about your daughter, didn’t think of.”
Carrie’s car pulled up. “You don’t bring roses to a fucking Holocaust play!” she shouted. She got in the car, then slammed the door. She considered texting Adrian to apologize, but if she was being totally honest now, she wasn’t all that sure she was sorry.
The car drove east, then turned north on Ridge, heading past the university facilities building that stood on the site of the old Tinkertoy factory. The driver had a French-language news station on; the announcer spoke too fast in an accent Carrie had trouble deciphering. She thought she heard the word “clinic.” “What’s he talking about?” Carrie asked.
“La politique.” The driver told her that the Haitian president was in Miami, reassuring immigrants in Little Haiti that they wouldn’t lose their temporary protected status. It was a different story than the one Carrie thought it was, but still part of the same story. What was happening to America? Carrie barely recognized it. All the sights out her window were familiar—streets where she’d learned to drive, places where she’d taken Kitty to parties and soccer games, the nursing home where she’d visited her grandmother, and then her mother—but every day all the stories she heard insisted she was living in a world unlike the one she thought she knew. In spite of everything, she didn’t know what she believed about this country anymore.
Casa Segura was on Howard Street across from the site of the old Wisdom Bridge Theatre. The clinic had been fashioned out of three adjoining storefronts that had once been a convenience store, a travel agency, and a pet groomer. As Carrie got out of the car, everything looked both right and wrong at the same time. On days the clinic was open, it was a bustle of activity: nurses and doctors coming in for their shifts, families arriving in groups, cars running their engines outside, neighborhood kids Scotch-taping posters for church carnivals in the window, thumbtacking them to the community bulletin board. On closed days, it was desolate: drawn blinds, locked grate over the door, kids or old people peering in, trying to see if anyone was there.
Today, the lights were bright, but nothing seemed to be going on. Whatever had happened was already done. Carrie keyed in the entry code and opened the door. No one at the front desk or waiting on the benches; no one in the classrooms or examination rooms. At the reception desk, there was a pad of paper on a clipboard—phone numbers and scrawled signatures; they stopped abruptly at eight forty-five P.M. Cheery signs on the walls printed in half a dozen languages seemed sad and ironic: WE WELCOME REFUGEES HERE.
“Dr. Caroline.”
“Inez, what happened?”
A stout nurse in gray scrubs, her hair long and black with little puffs of white in it, ran to Carrie. Usually, Carrie shook hands with her colleagues. Tonight, she and Inez embraced.
“What happened?” Carrie asked.
“It was insanity,” said Inez. “Mayhem. Everything.”
“What?”
“All at once it happened. We had so many people here, I don’t know why so many people. The line, it went onto the sidewalk; maybe because the weather’s been better. Then out of nowhere—”
“The raid,” said Carrie.
“Precisamente.”
Inez held Carrie’s hands as she described what had happened—a seemingly normal evening interrupted by armed men in black vests, helmets, and military gear blocking entrances and exits, forcing their way into rooms, flashing emergency warrants, questioning people, rifling through papers. Why were they here? They’d gotten a call. A call from whom? They couldn’t say. What about a lawyer? They could sort that all out downtown: “Come on, let’s get moving, we’re wasting time.”
“Where’s everyone now?” Carrie asked.
“The processing center. Congress Street.”
“I’ll head down. Can you close up?”
“Not yet, Dr. Caroline,” said Inez. “We have another problem to deal with first.”
Inez shut off lights until only the emergency halogens were on. She cocked her head towards the hallway, beckoning Carrie to follow. Past the empty rooms, a door was marked DANGER. ELECTRICAL. NO ADMITTANCE. Inez opened the door, revealing a small windowless room: white walls, concrete floor, fuse box, computer server, a slatted grate where a window might have been, warm air wheezing in from outside—the scent of fried food and something that smelled like suntan oil. There were two pale orange plastic chairs; sitting on one with her feet up on the other was a girl about Kitty’s age with frizzy black hair and frosted blonde tips. She wore tight, faded jeans, red socks, and a dark blue denim jacket over a pink T-shirt—on it, a photograph of some pop star Carrie didn’t know.
“How long’ve you been here?” Carrie asked the girl, whose eyes flitted from side to side as if she weren’t used to focusing on anything stationary. She mumbled something to Inez, who said something back.
“Not long,” Inez told Carrie. “After everyone was gone, I opened the door and found her in here. She looks at me; she asks, ‘Is it safe now?’ What do I say to her? ‘Is it safe now?’ Will it ever be? Who can say?”
The girl’s name was Eleonora Acevedo. She came from Guatemala, Inez said, then told Carrie her story: the family sugarcane farm that went bust after a rival family burnt it down; the move to Guatemala City, where her brothers got caught up with a rough crowd; the dad who gave her money to go to America, where she could stay with cousins in Urbana, Illinois. The girl had taken a bus to the Suchiate River, then waded across into Mexico, caught rides that got her from Tapachula to the border, then a raft across the Rio Grande. Dogs had chased her through tall grass until she got to a highway. Hitchhiking, walking, sleeping wherever she could, she had found her way to Illinois, where she worked for nearly a year cleaning hotel rooms until her cousins told her that America was different now: having her live with them had become too much of a risk; maybe she should go to Chicago and apply for asylum there.
“This is only the second night she’s been in the city. She can’t stay here all night. She needs a place. Can you think of somewhere?” Inez asked. “I wish I could do it. But my mother, she always needs help, and so many people are there, going in, going out, and I don’t know who half of them are. Do you know some place? Somebody? At least until we find her a lawyer?”
The answer was obvious. So was its rejoinder. The answer should have been that Carrie herself could do it. Wasn’t that exactly what the play she’d seen tonight should have told her to do? Wasn’t that the exact sort of answer she had been taught to give even before Anne Frank back in high school, when she was tutoring Hebrew school kids? Wasn’t that the philosophy she had based her entire career on?: Welcome the stranger, ask no questions. Wasn’t that why she had spent those years in Cameroon? Wasn’t that why she had taken a year off med school to volunteer for the Red Cross—why she had quit her job at Rush-Presbyterian to found Casa Segura with fifty thousand dollars of her own money that she still hadn’t told Adrian about because she knew he’d flip out? Of course she should tell Inez and Eleonora yes.
But of course she couldn’t. Because she couldn’t rule out the possibility that Adrian had made that call tonight. And even though he denied it, she could no longer say for sure that her husband hadn’t become that sort of person or that his anger at being accused wouldn’t turn him into one.
“I think I know someone who might be able to help.” Carrie stepped out into the dark reception area and took out her phone. She looked out onto Howard Street. A police car was parked across the way.
“Yeah, hey, what’s going on?” Franklin asked. The phone connection was bad. There was crackling in the background, something that sounded like sirens, then a gust—wind, maybe.
“Frank?”
“Carrie? I can barely hear you. Where are you?”
“The clinic.”
“Can I call you right back?”
“Can you make it really right back?”
“One minute.”
Carrie held her phone in her palm. She turned the ring volume all the way up, briefly worrying that Franklin wouldn’t call back, but he was the only person she knew who was as reliable as she was: a minute meant a minute, no more.
“Hey, what’s up?” Franklin’s voice was softer on the phone now but clearer; it sounded like he was in a car.
“Where are you?”
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Where?”
“In front of Tyrus Densmore’s house. He’s dead, and someone tried to set his place on fire.”
*
Franklin entered Casa Segura in a flurry, a dead ringer for his rumpled father: shaggy hair bouncing, collar of his slate-colored shirt askew, old paint splatters on his blue jeans and boots. He kissed Carrie lightly on the lips.
“You smell like smoke,” Carrie said.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” He told her about Densmore, the accident, and then the fire.
“Do they know who set it?” Carrie asked.
Franklin didn’t say anything.
“Do they think it might have been—” She stopped, unable to bring herself to say Declan’s name.
“It’s kinda looking that way,” said Franklin.
“That poor, tortured soul.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t think I have room in my brain to think about that now. C’mon.” She took Franklin’s hand and led him to the electrical room where Inez was sitting with Eleonora.
“He is your husband?” Eleonora asked.
“No,” said Carrie. “Just a good, good friend.”
“We better get going,” Franklin said. “I doubt anyone’ll come back here tonight, but why risk it?” He spoke to Eleonora slowly and clearly in both English and Spanish. “I’m a journalist,” he said. “And I might write about you and what happened tonight. That okay?”
Eleonora nodded. The idea seemed to perk her up, as if talking to an American reporter was something like being a movie star.
“We can take my car,” Franklin said.
“I just need to help finish up here first,” said Carrie.
Franklin held up a hand. “Five minutes?”
“At most.”
Carrie helped Inez close up and turn on the alarms, then met Franklin and Eleonora in his Toyota. During the intervening time, it seemed as though Eleonora had recounted her entire autobiography. Franklin had always had that effect on people—made you feel not only that your story mattered but that by talking to him it would matter more.
They drove to a Bakers Square and sat in a booth where Franklin ordered cheesecake and black coffee; Eleonora, a Coke, fries, and a cheeseburger; Carrie, just jasmine tea.
“You can take it easy,” Franklin told Eleonora. “Odds are you’ll be okay for now. This is a ‘sanctuary city,’ and they’re not gonna track everyone down even if they want to. You got forty million undocumenteds in the country and more in Chicago than anyplace outside New York or L.A. Most people here, everyday people, they’re on your side, and when they hear what happened tonight, there’ll be an outcry like you wouldn’t believe.” He handed her a small black notebook and a pen. “If anything ever comes to mind, anything you think I should know, you can write it in here.”
“You really think you can write about this?” Carrie asked Franklin.
“Don’t you think I should?”
“Will they let you?” The last time Carrie and Franklin had talked about his job, he seemed desperate: his stories didn’t get enough clicks, but he couldn’t live with himself when he tried to write stories that did.
“Nah, my boss told me I’m ‘golden’ now,” Franklin said. “Ever since Cal tweeted that story I wrote about Densmore, I keep getting more and more followers. A million people follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and I can’t even figure out how Instagram works or what I’m supposed to use it for. I just got a raise.” He took out his iPad and scrolled to a page on it. “You know all about the sanctuary movement, right?”
“Sure.” Carrie knew that a few of her clinic’s patients were staying in church basements and rectories while they waited for asylum hearings. She didn’t know many details, though. Part of the point of the way her clinic operated was that they asked only for as much information as they needed, didn’t check IDs, didn’t know anyone’s story unless someone wanted to tell it.
Franklin swiped his iPad screen. On it was a list of names, places, phone numbers, and email addresses. “It’s a whole network,” he said. “Like a new underground railroad. Priests, rabbis, imams, people like you and me, they’re opening their doors, talking in coded group chats, burner phones, all that whatnot. Half the people on this list, I’d trust ’em with my kids, probably trust ’em as much as you or me.”
Carrie scanned the list. Halfway down, she felt a warm rush of recognition—the same lovely feeling she got when she saw someone she’d missed for a long time.
“I forgot he’s still there,” Carrie said.
*
The framed news clippings and photos on the wall of Jeremy Horvath’s study in Beth Shalom narrated the rabbi’s history: Horvath, hands locked with those of other protesters behind a NO NUKES banner; Horvath shaking hands with Senator Tom Hayden; Horvath at a Season for Concern candlelight AIDS vigil; Horvath at a fundraiser, embracing state senator Barack Obama; Horvath with a group of pastors touring the wreckage in Gaza; Horvath and his husband holding hands as they walked down the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
At Beth Shalom, Horvath had always been the cool rabbi, the one nearly all the girls had crushes on, the one who spoke with a hot New York accent, drove a Dune Buggy, talked about the years he’d spent on a kibbutz, and, at school assemblies, interspersed “Maoz Tzur” and “Ocho Candelas” with songs by Carole King and Jackson Browne.
Now Horvath’s silver beard was perfectly coiffed, his silver hair expensively groomed. With his deep-red collarless shirt with silver buttons, tight black jeans with silver snaps, boots with silver buckles, and small silver hoop earring, he suggested more hip Spanish priest than veteran suburban rabbi as he set about converting his study into living quarters for Eleonora. He drew the drapes, pulled the couch into a bed, wiped the refrigerator and two-burner stove. He led Eleonora into the sanctuary, dark save for the orange Eternal Light that had been flickering over the pulpit three and a half decades ago when Carrie had first brought Franklin here. “You can pray to any God you want,” Horvath told Eleonora. “This is a safe space.”
They stayed for nearly an hour, discussing how long Eleonora could stay, how Carrie and Franklin could come by to take her shopping or go outside with her when she felt like taking a walk, how Horvath could raise money for her from his congregation. But Carrie’s mind kept returning to those words the rabbi had spoken in the sanctuary: “a safe space.” The phrase and concept seemed so easy to grasp yet harder and harder to find. When she was a child, her house had seemed safe—even when her sister had a fit or her mother berated her. But then, sometime in high school, maybe because she was past the age where she ignored the arguments her parents had behind closed doors, maybe because she had felt herself growing older and seen her mother and father growing old, she felt safest elsewhere—in the Annex until Declan and Mr. Densmore had ruined it; with Franklin at his home or in this place until they went their separate ways; with Adrian and Kitty in the house her parents had bought for them—until she came to believe that anyplace that felt safe wouldn’t feel that way for long. Like the Annex where the Franks and Van Daans lived until the Nazis arrived. Like the theater tonight after the final blackout until the lights came back up. Like America until she realized it wasn’t the place she thought it had been and maybe never was. The idea for Casa Segura had been that it would be safe too.
