Bastille Day, page 9
She looked at me, and I could not deny it. Could not pretend I did not feel something.
Everything.
All right, then.
I clicked my pen. Closed my pad. Put it in my jacket pocket. Crossed my hands on the table in front of me.
“No,” I said. “You know that it isn’t.”
Our waiter turned up at the side of the table, a chalkboard menu in hand. “Ah, la belle mademoiselle,” he said.
“Merci,” Nadia said, smiling at him.
“May I tell you about our specials?” he asked, and then he proceeded to. He had brought the English board, and we ordered off it. “Does mademoiselle wish a drink before dinner?”
“A drink?” she murmured. She nodded to herself. “Oui. Un Prosecco, s’il vous plaît.”
“And we’ll have a bottle of the house red,” I said, “with dinner.” He nodded, and went off to put in our orders.
“My mother-in-law almost pulled a knife on me,” she said. She looked up at me, and then a small smile began to spread across her face. “When I told her I was going out to dinner with a friend. ‘Your days of having friends are over, little girl,’ she said. She stood in front of the door, blocking the way out.”
“Arab women are tough as hell,” I said. I knew all about that.
“I told her she could try to stop me. But I told her that when Ali asked me why his mother was in the hospital with broken bones, I would have to tell him, ‘her own clumsiness.’”
“Jesus,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were a ninja badass.”
“I’m not,” she said. “But I wanted to come to dinner tonight.” She glanced down at the table. “I wanted to see you.”
I looked across at her. “Why?”
She looked across the table at me, and her gaze made me tingle.
Our waiter arrived with our drinks and stepped back, waiting expectantly.
“Shall we?” Nadia asked.
We took a look at the menu. Nadia ordered the duck. Le canard. I asked for the Wednesday special, Coq au vin. We would suspend judgment on dessert, but I suspected chocolate mousse.
The waiter stepped away. Nadia raised her glass, nodded at me.
“Salud,” she said.
“Salud,” I returned. I could not help but say it. “I am glad to see you.”
“And I too am glad,” she said.
We clinked glasses, drank, set them back on the table. We set for a moment in silence, then she spoke.
“When I was at Stanford,” she said, a finger trailing in the bubbles of her glass, “I bought a scooter.” She nodded to herself. “It was a radical act.”
“Because Saudi women aren’t allowed to drive,” I said.
She raised her glass, saluted me, drank. “Exactly.”
“Fucking sharia,” I said.
“Pray let us leave Islam out of this,” she said lightly. “I bought the scooter from an engineering student. Ian, at Cal Poly. He was from Brighton, originally. Had come over to study mechanical engineering. Brighton is on the south coast of England. A resort town. I looked it up after we met.”
I nodded. I knew vaguely where Brighton was. The shore was rocky, as I recalled. It was a terrible beach.
“When Ian sold me the scooter, he told me he’d teach me to ride. He was good as his word. He used to sit behind me, his fingers on my sides, just on my lowest ribs. He was the only man besides my father who had ever touched me.” She spiraled that finger through her Prosecco. “He would ride behind me, hip to hip, shouting into my ear. I’d get off the scooter, vibrating. The feel of his hands still on me.”
I nodded.
“I was a sophomore in college,” she said. “My suitemates were bright American girls from Michigan, Delaware, Kansas. Their futures were wide open. They were going to meet a man, fall in love, pursue their careers. I wanted all of that. I wanted to make a difference. And I knew that my father intended to marry me to some rich old Saudi sheikh. But for a moment there at Stanford I thought that the future might hold more for me.” She drained her Prosecco, nodded to our waiter who wondered if she wanted another. Papa Hemingway would be proud of all of us.
I took a sip of my Kir Royale. “Did you love him? This Ian?”
She deliberated. “Back then? I don’t know. Maybe I thought of him as a way out of my dilemma. Maybe that was a part of it.” She shrugged. “But I also thought: If he does want me, he will protect me. He will take care of me. I don’t have to go home. I can marry someone I choose. I can have a life for myself, not just for my family.”
“In Brighton?”
“In Brighton. In California. I did not care.”
“Did you love him?” I asked again.
She did not seem to mind. “I slept with him. I thought perhaps we were in love. I thought perhaps we would get married.” She made a sour face. “To my very great surprise, I got pregnant.”
To my very great surprise I felt my stomach draw tight. I was jealous of Ian from Brighton. If he had showed up at that moment, things would have gone very badly for him.
“I was on the pill. I didn’t think that could happen, but it did. When I told him I was going to have a baby, I realized my mistake.”
“Mistake?” I asked, my heart falling and soaring all at once.
She took a sip, set her glass back down. “Ian was furious. ‘Get rid of it,’ he said. ‘I have a girl back in Brighton. I’m not going to be tied down to some stupid Muslim bitch who doesn’t even know how to take care of herself.’”
And although I was glad he had bowed out, the stupid selfish short-sighted son of a bitch, I could not help but know how badly betrayed Nadia had felt.
Could not help but feel that this had broken her heart.
I had myself gotten a Dear John letter in Iraq, an email from my fianceé back in Texas. The boys in the unit I traveled with commiserated with me. Three of them had gotten Dear John communications that very week. All of us, hearts broken, crying into our contraband alcohol about unfaithful bitches.
All of us dreaming a story that turned out in the end not to be true.
“So you did it?” I asked her. “You had an abortion?”
“I did,” she said, her face open and full of heartbreak. “Stupid. I thought maybe when I had done it, when I had gotten rid of my baby, he would come back to me. But he didn’t.” She laughed, bitterly. “I never saw him again. A few weeks after, something inside me snapped. I can’t explain it. I rode that scooter off the road into the San Francisco Bay.”
“Like Vertigo,” I said, my eyes wide.
“Yes,” she smiled. “Like in Vertigo.” Her smile faded. “But that time, no one came to rescue me.” She looked across at me. “I told myself that no man would ever make decisions for me again. For the past few years, I even thought that might be possible. But sometimes I think I’m still in the water, flailing, sinking.”
The waiter brought back our entrees, set them on the table. He set down her second Prosecco, backed expertly away.
“So that is my story,” she said, her palms up. “Or one of them. One of the most important, to be sure.” She looked at me pointedly. “Frederick said that we were both scared. What are you scared of? Did you have an Ian?”
I laughed against my will. “I thought so once,” I said, pushing my chicken around the plate with a fork. “I was engaged. My fiancée broke up with me when I was in Iraq. I felt like crap for a while. She left me for a sports reporter. Not even a very good one. I heard from a couple of other folks in that newsroom. Turns out they’d been cheating on me the whole time. Even before I left. Once I knew, I actually felt better. It kind of explained a lot that wasn’t working.” That was bad, but it wasn’t the worst. “But no. My heart has only ever really been broken by the men who left me.”
“Hmm,” she said, cocking her head to one side.
“Not like that,” I said. “I am totally rocking the females. But you were asking about heartbreak. Heartbreak is losing the people you love, right? Maybe it’s Ian from Brighton, Her Majesty’s United Kingdom, even if he turns out to be a world-class shit.” I poured myself a glass of the house red. “Or maybe your loss is Master Sergeant Calvin Jones. Who could also be a world-champion.” I toasted him. “Or maybe it’s an Iraqi interpreter named Khalid who grew to be your closest friend in the world. You know, my father and Khalid died within a few weeks of each other.” My smile did not reach my eyes. “I think maybe I went into the bay too.”
She inclined her head. “I am sorry, Calvin. I Googled you after you gave me your card. I saw that you covered Iraq for CBS. Guessed that you saw some horrible things. I didn’t realize how horrible.”
“Bad enough,” I affirmed.
“So Master Sergeant Calvin Jones. Your father.”
I nodded. “He was.” I said. “He did his best. It wasn’t—wasn’t enough.” My lips were in a tight line. “If I ever have children, I will try to do better.”
She smiled shyly. “If you have children? Do you want them?”
I nodded. Actually smiled. “The very thought scares me shitless. But yes. I want children. A son. A daughter.”
“Me as well,” she said quietly.
“You once asked me how I enjoyed the Middle East.” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I didn’t. Iraq broke me. I came back to Texas, just barely holding on. Rob pulled me out of the river. And for ten years, I was okay. Just okay. But. I worked, I found a girlfriend. I lived a little life. No big drama. But at least I didn’t die.”
“It is good that you didn’t die,” she nodded. “This girlfriend?” She gave me a significant look.
“I told you,” I said, raising a finger. “We look good together. Kelly and me. But I don’t know what she loves. What she fears.” I chewed on my Coq au Vin, which was very good. I made a happy noise.
She smiled across at me. “Should I be jealous of this Kelly?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know,” I said. “Should I be jealous of this Ali?”
Her chin dropped. Her shoulders fell.
“I thought perhaps for just a moment,” she said, without looking up, “we could just be a boy and a girl at dinner.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I reached my hand across the table, laid my fingers atop hers. She pulled them away, put her napkin on the table, pushed her seat back.
“I can’t pretend that Ali is not out there somewhere,” I told her. “That the clock is not ticking.” I motioned out at the night beyond and put my hand on hers again. “But you chose to be here tonight. You could choose other things as well.”
“I have not been given a choice,” she said angrily. She took a deep breath. “Not the slightest choice.” I thought she might get up now and leave.
“You’re afraid that nothing will ever get better,” I said. “That maybe this hard thing is the most you can ever hope for.” Bless you, Frederick.
“Maybe,” she shrugged. “What am I supposed to do?”
I looked across at her, this woman I had pulled out of the Seine, this beautiful brilliant woman with her sad brown eyes.
I looked across at her, I saw her, and I decided.
A gate swung open again, clanged against the wall, woke the entire neighborhood.
“Inshallah,” I muttered to myself, and to whoever might be up there listening.
“Excuse me?” She pulled her hand out from under mine again. “God willing?” Maybe she too knew what that usually meant.
“Nadia,” I said. The silence stretched out like ripples in a pond, but I had decided. “Will you come and watch the Bastille Day fireworks with me from the tower of the American Cathedral? It’s just down the street from your hotel.” She nodded slightly—she knew where it was. “I know you might have to rough up Ali’s mother again.”
“Fireworks?” she asked, her face blank.
“Yes,” I said.
“With you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I nodded. “With me.”
She looked across the table at me, shaking her head. “Fireworks,” she repeated. “Why fireworks?”
“Please, Nadia,” I said. “Come out with me tomorrow night. Let’s celebrate France. Let’s celebrate—” I stopped there.
I reached across the table, my fingers falling atop hers, and this time they did not flee. “Please. Just a boy and a girl.”
She looked down at our fingers, mine atop hers, and she too seemed to come to some point of decision.
“Inshallah,” she said, shrugging.
“No,” I said. “Mean it. Please.”
She took pity on me. A smile spread across her face, and her hands turned over to give my hands a squeeze before she dropped them, scooted her chair back in, and picked up the menu.
“I love fireworks,” she said. Then she handed me the menu. “Let’s have dessert.”
8.
Paris
July 14, 2016
Thursday
I have not told you the truth. Not the whole truth.
I promised you honesty, and there’s one significant place where I see that I have fallen woefully short.
I haven’t told the whole truth about my father.
I wanted you to love my father, just as I want to love him.
But he was not perfect.
Far from it.
I may, for example, have given the impression that my dad beat my ass that one time when he caught me cheating. But the truth—the whole truth—is that he was a violent man, that whippings were the bare minimum of what he did to me, that he drank hard when he was home, especially after we lost my mom, and that when he drank, he didn’t care what he did or who he hurt.
Funny. He didn’t drink in country. Maybe that was the one place he ever felt completely at peace.
Because at home in Killeen, after my mom was gone, he drank ten fingers of Jack Daniels or a twelve-pack of Coors every night. And God help you if you crossed his path, drew his attention, pissed him off.
For a long time—too long—I just took it. The open-handed slaps, the fists thudding.
I just took it.
Who knows why? I knew that what he was doing was wrong. I could have told someone. A teacher. Someone on base. There was no part of me that accepted it, no part of me that thought he had the right to treat me like this, no part that ever believed I was somehow in the wrong. But then again, I thought my father was a god. Not the capital-G God. But my father made the world turn, somehow. He was smart and brave and competent. He could make things with his hands, just like he could break things with them. His men looked up to him, followed his orders without a question. He had killed men. Rescued others.
My mother had loved him.
He was larger than life, certainly larger than me.
Somewhere along the way, though, I just got tired of it. When he went on a week-long training mission at Fort Hood, nobody thought anything about his fifteen-year son, left behind at home for seven days. He tried hard not to remind people that he was raising a child. And I was happy for the quiet that week. I got too used to it, maybe. I climbed into my dad’s liquor cabinet after school, got down his big liter bottle of Jack Daniels, noted the level, thought I would fill it back up with water the night before he returned.
But they finished the mission a day early because of equipment failure, and I was teenaged drunk on Jack and Coke when he walked in, and took in the scene.
“What the hell are you doing, Cal?” he asked.
I would have thought it was pretty obvious. But for some reason I had to speak.
“Oh,” I said. “Are you my father now?”
He set down his duffle, rolled up his sleeves, told me to stand up.
I did.
I pushed my chair back.
I glared.
And I went for him.
Stupid, I know. I didn’t have any training in hand to hand. He had training and experience and a man’s body. What I had was anger and resentment. And about four and a half Jack and Cokes.
I lurched toward him, threw a hard right he deflected easily with his left hand, threw a left he sidestepped. Then he shook his head, and I knew things were about to go south for me.
Honestly, he was merciful. He took me down onto my back, hard, pinned my arms across my chest, knelt on me. I flinched, ready for the fists that were coming, ready for worse.
My father was trained to kill people.
But there were tears in his eyes. I’d never seen them before, never saw them again.
He shook his head again, hard, like he was shaking something loose from it.
“Don’t ever raise your fists to a man if you aren’t prepared for the consequences,” he told me gruffly.
He got up off my chest. Held out his hand. Pulled me to my feet.
I waited for the pain.
Which didn’t come.
He indicated my chair. We sat down together at the table. He took a short glass, poured himself some Jack, neat. Raised it to me. I raised my glass. We clinked.
“To absent friends,” he said, rubbing the corners of his eyes. “To those we loved and lost.”
“To those we loved and lost,” I said. I could assent to that toast.
He never touched me again. I don’t know why. Maybe he saw that from that point on he would have to do serious damage to me. Maybe something clicked into place for him that reminded him he was actually my father. I can’t say.
All I can say is that I don’t know how to bring him to life for you, this man I feared and tried to please and cannot get over.
I want you to love him.
And I want to love him too.
Those were the things I thought as I lay awake, the things that maybe I will always think.
I had not slept well since I arrived in Paris. Not a surprise to me, or, presumably, to anyone who knew me. I had not slept well since Iraq. Since before Iraq, really.
Fitful. Occasional. Light. These were the words that described my sleep.
I hadn’t slept on the flight over from Dallas, although I’d done my level best. A whiskey in the DFW airport, another on the plane, wine with dinner. Nothing. Still awake enough to watch Captain America: Civil War twice, and to follow the progress of our flight on the seatback screen, watching that tiny little British Airways plane planted over the vast ocean. When we got over the part of the Atlantic that was the deepest and darkest on the map, I started finding it hard to breathe.
