American Subversive (37 page)

“Ashley,” Julie said, “watch the language.” To which Ashley responded, “I didn't say it,” which was true enough. And the TV stayed on.

Julie, I noticed, became increasingly irritable the closer she came to her children, and now she shoveled down beets and peppers in a frenzy of agitation. She was all cleaved out in a deep-scoop sweater dress, but my father barely gave the ensemble a second look. He twirled his pasta around his plate and lobbed me halfhearted questions about New York. Julie cut him off to ask about Cressida. Though she'd never actually admitted it, Julie was an avid online reader of both Roorback and my possibly former girlfriend's dating columns. I stumbled through an answer as she opened another bottle of wine and began some kind of private drinking game, taking a long gulp every time Pacino snorted a line. My father asked what I thought of the new “hybrid” in the driveway, and I was formulating a response when Julie, surely drunk now, put her glass down and said, “Can you believe they finally caught those Muslims?”

“What Muslims?” my father asked.

“The ones who bombed Barneys. I heard it on the radio when I was upstairs getting dressed earlier. Three Pakistanis and one from somewhere else.”

She said this as if her ancestors had arrived on the
Mayflower;
in fact, Julie's Vietnamese mother had arrived on a 1973 Pan Am flight from Thailand, the ticket paid for by a U.S. marine (Julie's father) who had saved her from a village he'd then helped destroy.

No matter.
Muslims?

“What are you talking about?” I said, more sharply than I meant to.

“I don't know. Go listen yourself. I was just
making conversation
.” She eyed her husband, as if
making conversation
was exactly what he'd asked her to attempt. “Loretta bought a birthday cake at the store if anyone wants any.” With that, Julie stood up, presumably to mute Pacino, who was in full machine-gun phase, but she walked past the TV and disappeared into the house.

“Four Muslims,” my father said. “That'll be the talk of the town. Good thing you don't cover real news. They'd be calling you back to the city.”

“Still, I better check on things,” I said, getting up.

“Can't it wait?” my father asked, eyeing the empty table, then the kids.

“I'll only be a few minutes.”

I bounded up the stairs to my father's office and clicked my way to nytimes.com. There it was, a brief, recently posted article near the top of the home page. I read it quickly, but there wasn't much additional information—just four Muslims (the fourth was an Indonesian) arrested in an apartment above a chop shop in Flushing, Queens. I opened my e-mail. The most recent was from Touché; he'd linked to the same story, then added
WTF?
underneath. Which about summed it up. It was nine forty-five. Fifteen minutes until I called Paige. She'd know what was going on. I heard my father trudging across the living room downstairs. How had four Muslims entered the picture? Did Paige know them? Or was there—and why was I just thinking of this for the first time—a chance that Paige had been lying this whole time? I rubbed my temples and watched the minutes pass slowly by.

When the hour finally struck, I picked up the phone and listened for anything out of the ordinary—clicks or beeps or tiny
interruptions. There were none, so I dialed my home number. The phone rang, once, twice, then I hung up, as instructed. I dialed again. It rang again. Isabel. Call her Isabel. I'd thought about circumnavigating my father's house to make sure no one was expecting a call, or about to make one, but I didn't want certain parties to know I was so desperate to use the phone. And so—

Paige wasn't picking up, which was impossible. She had to be there. Five rings. Six.
Seven
. I waited, like some pathetic lover, for another minute. Then I hung up and called one more time, just to be sure. Nothing.

What the hell was happening? Had she finally fled? Or turned herself in? Or had news of the arrests somehow changed the game plan? Maybe the Feds had raided my studio, had been right there huddled around the ringing phone. They'd traced the call and would come tearing into my father's driveway at any moment. Well, fuck it. They could have me. I wasn't about to take off running.

Back downstairs, the dishes lay piled in the sink, awaiting Loretta. The kids were gone, maybe even in bed. I wandered over to the bar, poured myself a small Maker's Mark, and found my father in the library off the den. He was reading the paper of record.

“You get the
Times
up here?” I asked, flopping down in the only other chair.

“God, you sound like Julie, who seems to think we live in Lapland.”

Julie wouldn't know what continent that was on,
I didn't say. But how often I wished I had, wished I could shake the man out of the thick boozy fog that had rolled in some years ago. I looked around the room, his refuge, which Julie had painted a rich shade of teal. The built-in bookshelves were lined with war epics and presidential biographies that could have belonged to any well-off white man in any state. Above these, though, on the highest shelves, sat the aging books of his New York past, literary novels and liberal polemics written (and inscribed) by old friends. They were the only things he'd taken from our West Side apartment, and now they sat by the ceiling, unreachable without a ladder, unreadable without remembering—

The phone rang. My father shook out the paper, exasperated. “That'll be for Julie. Probably her masseuse calling to confirm whatever she's got scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure,” he said, without looking up.

“Well . . . I guess I just want to apol—”

“Aidan!”
Julie shouted, from upstairs.
“It's for you!”

“Who is it?”
I shouted back.

For a moment there was no answer, and I imagined her gleefully falling into conversation with Touché or even Cressida—whoever'd tracked me down up here.

“Isabel.”

“A new one?” my father muttered. “Why doesn't she call your cell—” But I was already up and out of the room. The closest phone with any privacy was back in the kitchen, and I shouted up to Julie—wherever she was—to hang up when I got on.

“I wasn't planning on listening in,”
she yelled back, then I heard her apologize into the phone. I cringed—those two speaking!—and almost out of breath picked up the phone and pressed
TALK
.

“I've got it, Julie, thanks,” I said.

“Whatever,” Julie replied. Then there was a click.

“Are you sure it's just you?”
Paige asked. There was background noise. She was outside somewhere.

“Yes. Are you okay? I tried calling the apartment but—”

“Listen to me,”
she said, with urgency. “Do you know a thin British girl with reddish hair and freckles who apparently has keys to your place?”

“Yeah. My girlfriend. Or ex. We've been—”

“Fuck, Aidan! You think you could have mentioned she'd be dropping by? Is there any way she'd know who I am?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Why? What happened?”

“She
saw
me. I was in your apartment earlier and the intercom buzzed.”

“You didn't answer, right?”

“Of course not. And I couldn't risk looking out the window, so I opened your door and listened down the stairwell. I heard someone come into the building, then what sounded like a woman's boots climbing the first flight. If whoever it was had a key to the downstairs
door, she probably had a key to
your
door, so I grabbed my wallet and my bag and got out. I couldn't go up because you said the roof was locked, so I had to go down. She was still on the second-floor landing, so there's no way she could have seen which door I'd just come out of. We passed each other on the third floor. I didn't get a great look at her, obviously, because I didn't want to make eye contact, so I just muttered the requisite “Hello,” and she did the same in what sounded like a British accent. And then . . . then she looked back over her shoulder. Like
she recognized me
.”

“And she went into my apartment?”

“I think so. I pretended to leave the building, even slammed the downstairs door and everything, but I stayed in the foyer and listened. She knocked a few times and I heard your door opening. Aidan, who is she? And what was she doing?”

“She doesn't know anything. We had a fight a few weeks ago and kind of ended things. We haven't spoken since. Her name's Cressida.”

“Cressida? Cressida Kent? The
Times
reporter?”

“Yeah. How do you know who she is?”

“Because I
read the paper
! Because how many Cressidas are there? Because . . . oh, Aidan, you're dating a
New York Times
reporter?”

“Look, it'll be okay. Where are you now?”

“It
won't
be okay. I'm at a pay phone on Fourteenth and Seventh. I can't go back to Weehawken Street. It's too hot now. The whole city's too hot.”

“But did you see the news? They picked up four Muslim guys in connection with the Indigo bombing.”

“What? What are you talking about? I haven't seen any news in hours. Are you sure? My God, that's terrible.”

“They had nothing to do with it?”

“Four Muslim men? Of course not.” She sounded annoyed that I'd asked. “Either the Feds made a mistake, or, more likely, they're trying to cover their asses.”

“Maybe it'll give you some breathing room,” I said hopefully.

“The only thing it'll give me is an even better reason to turn myself in.”

“
No,
Paige
.
Just wait. I'll come back right now. It's a disaster up here anyway.”

“But haven't you been drinking all night?”

“Then I'll leave first thing in the morning and be in the city by nine. We'll figure it out, I promise.”

“I have nowhere to stay.”

“How about this,” I said, in a voice almost too calm to be my own. “There's a place two blocks away from you called the Liberty Inn. It's on the West Side Highway. They rent rooms by the hour, so they won't ask a lot of questions. Check in and just stay put. I'll come straight there. I won't even go home first.”

Paige paused a moment before answering.

“Okay, fine. But, Aidan, there's something you need to understand.”

“What?”

“
You can't go back to Weehawken Street now either, even if you want to
. Not until this plays out. One way or the other. Now I've got to go.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” But she'd already hung up.

I put the phone down and sat there. Now what? Renegade strands of pasta lay coiled on the countertop. I took a breath. My apartment was the only thing I really had, and even that was rented. Paige had warned me—had
begged
me—to post her story, and I hadn't listened. Or I had. I had listened, and understood, and made a choice. And I wasn't upset. Instead, I wanted to get in the car and go fix things.

My father was reading, his drink a memory, melting ice. I offered to refill it, and he shrugged. “Sure, why not?” Back and forth I went through the oddly silent house, and when we once again had drinks in our hands (mine was mostly water), my father lifted his glass. I did the same.

“A bit hectic tonight,” he said. He sighed, then took a sip.

And just like that, I wanted to hug him. I was in trouble, and he was my father.
Still
my father. A man who'd lived his life with the top down and endured the consequences with a kind of obstinate fatalism. I could have used that quality then. That unflappability. Suddenly I had the same feeling I'd had that day in the barn with Simon Krauss, the desperate need to confess, unburden myself . . .
get some help
. But what did we understand of each other anymore? A father winding down and a son spinning in place.
Stay up there,
Paige had said, but as I gazed at my father's once handsome profile—his unnatural hair, his jaw set like plaster, his copper skin reptilian-dry—I just didn't see
any way in. If this was how the American success story ended—with complete and utter disconnection—then I wanted no part of it.

“Dad, I have to get back first thing in the morning.”

“Mmm. I could tell something was up. The bombing?”

“Yeah. Things are going a bit crazy.”

“That's why I moved up here. To get the hell away from all that nonsense. The politics of fear and terror. At some point you just have to throw in the towel.”

“What about fighting back?”

My father took another sip and chuckled. “Tried that once, doesn't work.” He looked through the window, toward the gray outline of the water, but only for a moment. There was all the space in the world out there, but no room for what could have been.

He wouldn't understand, but I said it anyway: “I might not see you for a while.”

“Oh, nonsense. I'll come down to the city this winter. We'll grab some dinner, me and you. Is ‘21' still open?”

“I think so.”

“Then it's a date.”

He stood up and we shook hands, and, yes, we hugged. Then he went upstairs to bed. I stretched out on the couch, but couldn't sleep. At some point I turned on a light and started leafing through my father's old novels. Love and loss, life and death: mankind's enduring themes laid bare on brittle pages. Soon, I was back on the road, in the last lonely hour of night. I almost turned my lights off to drive by the stars, and a month before I would have. But now such a small act of insurrection seemed less than liberating. Besides, I couldn't risk it. If I wasn't yet wanted by the law, I
was
needed at home. The feeling thrilled me. I buzzed with energy and for a while forgot the danger I was in. And the lie that I had told.