A Brilliant Novel in the Works (12 page)

“I tried to kill him with a piano,” I told my editor. There
was silence on the line—as there should be upon saying something as ridiculous
as what I’d just said.

“You what?” she finally responded.

“Runaway pianos,” I told her. “Four of them. But I couldn’t do it.”

“Are you joking? Somebody tell me this man is joking.” Even
though we were the only ones on the line, we both waited in the
hopes of this someone stepping in.

“Will you fire me?” I said. “Please?”

“You’re doing this to yourself.”

I’d been lost for a long time and it was not her fault.

We waded through our third silence.

“Yuvi?” she said. But this time it was her friendly voice, like
when we first met, and not her why-can’t-you-write-a-normal-novel voice. “Am I still in the past tense?”

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

When your brother-in-law is getting a colonoscopy, it’s not
the kind of thing you can sit and watch with popcorn in your hand, cheering
on as the fiber optic camera explores what is on the other side of your brother-in-law’s
anus. So you go to the waiting room and you wait. Alone.

Alone is fine. You should be familiar with alone. You are
no stranger to alone. But the hospital waiting room makes you
want to cut yourself all over your body. It’s a kind of lonely far
lonelier than alone. The couches are vomit green. And there is
a round table in the middle of the room with no chairs in sight.
And there are two TVs at opposite corners of the room, up at
the ceiling, and they are both showing the same nightly news
with the same upset grandmother in the same old terrycloth
robe crying about the same busted-up piano that lies crushed
all over the sidewalk.

Even though things feel better for you, the hospital is the
kind of place where your world is supposed to go from bad to
worse. It’s the point in the movie where some force—whatever it
is—presses down on you to test your strength. And you are not
a man of strength. So you eat your Fritos in fear of the whatever.

And while you fear the whatever, a man comes into the
waiting room and sits next to you. Of all the vomity couches
in all the waiting rooms in the world, he chooses yours. Part
of you wants to thank him for the company. And part of you
wants to run for the hills.

His skin is dark. Middle Eastern dark. Just like your skin.
And you see that his hair—though much fuller—is just as
blacker-than-black as yours. He’s got thick black stubble, the
kind that could destroy an electric razor. And even though
he doesn’t look at you, even though he is watching the
grandmother cry about the precious piano, you know that all
he is doing is looking at you.

Maybe he is Israeli, you think. Maybe he has a mother
from the land of Israel just like you.

“Damn,” the man who is brown-like-you says. “This
room is depressing. I hate hospitals.” And he looks at you,
for the first time, officially, and he smiles a little, and it’s not
symmetrical—the left side rises more than the right—and you
enjoy that.

And then you two make hospital small talk. You talk about
food and bad television and dirty clothes and upright pianos
and grandmother robes, taking good care to talk around the
reason each of you is in the hospital.

His accent is only just a hint. It’s small, like he has lived in
the States since he was five. But it’s there. And you recognize
it. Or to be more accurate, you recognize what it’s not. It’s not
Israeli. And so when he asks, “Where are you from anyway?”
you get scared.

The response doesn’t come from your brain. It’s a reflex that
is sent straight from the nerve endings in your spine. “Spain,”
you say. In some situations, you emphasize your Jewish
background to the point of absurdity. In other situations you
hide it at all costs. One part Fear. Two heaping spoons of
Shame. Stirred in a thick sauce of Terror.

It’s a terror you’ve had since you were a child. Even though
you never talk about it, even though you’ve lived an easy and
simple life where you can afford to write about piano collisions
fearlessly in your underwear, you’ve still got this terror deep
in your bones. Since you were born. Since before you were
born. Your father had it growing up in the only Jewish family
in the small town of Division, North Carolina, and his father
had it living in pre–World War II Poland, and his ancestors
had it in the pogroms of Russia. Your mother had it living
in Israel, and her mother had it living in Palestine, and her
ancestors had it when they escaped the Spanish Inquisition.
And you. Even though you have no experience to back it up,
you have this terror too.

Your brown comrade says, “So you’re a Spaniard,” with a
little disappointment. More than just a little.

“Yep,” you say with a false sort of confidence even the
vomity couch knows is a lie.

“I’m Palestinian,” he says. He says it so enviously easily.
Like we’re living on a planet free of prejudice and stigma
and terror. And you see his dark eyebrows go serious as he
says it. Like he has recited a verse from a precious text. But
underneath the seriousness, you see a hint of his smile. Like he
is experimenting with his stance on the issue. And underneath
the smile, you see a little twitch, a little shakiness. Like he
went through quite a bit to get to this point of confidence and
his demons are not as far away as they might initially seem. In
any case, you admire his confidence and you wonder whether
you might learn from this.

But when he says, “I thought maybe you were also,” you
interrupt him with an unwavering, “No.”

“My mom’s from Spain,” you say. “Portugal, actually. Right
on the border there,” and you point to a fictitious map floating
between you two.

Where did this come from? You’re not a liar. You didn’t
think you were a liar.

“Well, I grew up in Cleveland,” he says, “so I guess I’m not
really Palestinian.”

“I grew up in Atlanta,” you say, “so I’m not really…” And
you close your eyes. Which direction do you want to go?
How thick is that Shame and Terror reduction? You take in
a deep breath and blow it out. Let the whole shameful world
in and out of your system as this man waits for you to finish
your goddamn sentence. In a regular story, this moment
should only take a moment. But for you, there is so much
space in this moment that there is even room for one of those
italicized back stories that your editor tells you to avoid like a
gastrointestinal plague.

Your first girlfriend—the Southern Baptist, the one who
damned you to hell before and after you both lost your virginity—she was a
beauty. Adopted by a God-loving Southern family, she was of Chinese descent,
but raised with an accent that more aligned with Roswell, Georgia, than Shanghai
or Beijing. But she had cheekbones that were higher than her pastor’s pulpit
and lips that were hotter than the words of God.

She loved you. You loved her. There was a lot of love in the air. And
when she told you her God was loving while your God was vengeful, you agreed
with her. “I’m sorry,” you said in apology of your avenging Lord. And when
she read you Matthew 21:17, you said, “Wow,” in appreciation of her sweet-hearted
Lord. And as you watched those warm lips speak those warm words, you imagined
that they weren’t just the words of God, but the Lips of God that you were
watching. And wanting.

You asked those precious Lips to repeat the words. You asked her to press
those moist lips against your neck as she told you the words again and again.

When she said that you two were destined to have four children and that
you two would teach these children to love Jesus, you said that was fine.
And it did seem fine. She was lovely and sweet and you didn’t exactly have
any kind of belief system in place. She had apparently done her homework,
so why not go with her plan?

It could have gone that way. It could have been just fine. Except for
that one time, at that restaurant, when there was some disagreement about
the bill, and you two were apparently overcharged by the waitress. Your beautiful
Baptist whispered to you, “That woman nearly Jewed me out of fifteen bucks.”

You always loved verbifying nouns, but you’d never heard this one before.
And even though you were not sure if you were or you were not a Jew, it didn’t
really matter.

Your response was just as idiotic as her statement. “Jew this!” you said,
and you walked right out on her. You walked right out on those cheekbones
and those lips, as if they had never spoken the words of God
.

“Israel!” you say. “I’m from Israel!” And it’s such a relief
to admit this to your Palestinian friend. You think to tell your damn editor
that sometimes an italicized back story is just what you need to push you
to the next level.

At first glance, it’s an expressionless face that he’s got.
But you look through that expressionlessness to find the
expression. You know there is something there. But you still
turn up nothing. He knows how to guard his expression better
than you know how to pry. So you tighten your abdominal
muscles, just in case.

“I don’t like what Israel is doing with the settlements,” he says.
It is like he is complaining there are no more paper towels
in the bathroom. You can tell that what he is not telling you is
far bigger than the little he is.

“Yes,” you say, “it’s a mistake,” as if to explain that you are
not in charge of the paper towels in the bathroom.

You feel some relief in not taking responsibility for the policies of a whole
country—you’ve got enough shame when dealing with the policies of just one
short, balding, Jewish man. To be honest, you are too distant from the problems
in the Middle East to speak properly about them. But you were born there.
Your mother was born there. And there’s a monologue running in your head that
won’t shut up:
It’s messy. There is survival. One little country. Two
little countries. So much hate. There is terrorism. The real terror and the
terror of terror. There are policies and there is posturing. There is propaganda.
There is history. So much history. A history in which everyone has been unfairly
wronged, depending on where you mark the starting point. My people have died,
your people have died, there is blood and broken bones and prayers and whispers
and cries and bombs and bibles and betrayals and blasphemy and the smell of
a camel shitting in the desert. It’s messy
, you want to tell this man
who undoubtedly knows better than you. But it’s too messy to even know how
to open your mouth.

You start to feel dizzy.

You can feel your heartbeat at your temples.

And suddenly, through all this mess, you notice that your
brown friend has a gorgeous brown nose. It’s crooked, just
barely, like maybe it was broken a long time ago. And you
wonder who he is waiting for in this waiting room. You smile,
relieved when you realize that you don’t have to talk about the
Middle East right now. You don’t have to say everything all
at once. And besides, this is the wrong novel for that kind of
problem. It is too big for this novel.

As you get lost in all your thoughts, you see your Palestinian
friend looking down at the hospital’s dirty floor. He has
perhaps been thinking the same things as you, has perhaps
come to the same conclusion as you, will perhaps save this
subject for later.

“Mine is dying,” he eventually says to the floor. “How is
yours?” His eyes are unwaveringly brown.

“What?” you ask.

“It’s my father. Prostate cancer. What about you?”

“Oh,” you say. “It’s my brother-in-law. And he’s just getting
a tube with a camera up his asshole.”

Your friend laughs. He laughs loudly in an octave too high
for someone with such thick stubble. He laughs like it has been
a long time since he has laughed. Then he wipes his mouth
from all the laughter. And he doesn’t know how to proceed.

You say, “My father had prostate cancer too.”

“Did he die?”

“Yes,” you say. And you watch his face turn into something
that is far from controlled. The sadness in his eyes makes you
realize that he is as close to his father as you were to yours.
And so you explain a little more. “But he didn’t die from the
cancer. He did well without the prostate.”

Your friend kicks his shoe into the floor a few times. “With
my father,” he says, “it is in the bones.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, knowing that when it is in the bones,
the war has basically been lost.

There is a long silence. A piece on the danger of bedbugs
plays on the television news and it makes you itch inside of
yourself.

“Tell me about your father,” you say to your friend, trying
to ignore the picture on the television about how to inspect
your mattress for bugs.

Your friend gladly tells you about his father. This is a man
who has been a mercenary, a pawn shop owner, a poet, a
clown, a lion tamer, a mystic, a journalist, a therapist, a peace
activist, a comedian, and a cancer patient. Your friend is a
wonderful storyteller and, after he finishes, you wish he could
tell you more.

“In his day,” your friend says, “my father was a real mensch,”
and you realize that that is exactly what you wanted to say,
except you didn’t because you were ashamed not to know the
Arabic equivalent.

You exchange numbers. You find out that his name is
Yousef. His business card says that he’s a journalist, just
like his father. You give him your business card, which says,
“writer, neurotic jew.” You tell him that you’re not sure about
the writer and the Jew part, but the rest is all true.

“No,” he says. “You are a writer and you are a Jew,” and
you’re not sure whether he means that in a good way or a bad
way or some other kind of way.

“We should do coffee,” he offers.

“I’d like that,” you say. And whether or not you two will
ever meet again, you are confident there is sincerity in this
moment.

You hope the very best for his father’s prostate, and he
hopes the best for your brother-in-law’s anus.

His hand is warm and big and strong and you shake it a
little too long and with that warm feeling still inside of you,
you go to find your dear brother-in-law, whose rectum should
now be camera-free.