I READ THE ARTICLES, OF
course. I know about post-traumatic stress, and the possibility of minuscule brain bleeds from powerful explosions. I’ve read the scenarios about hundreds of thousands of soldiers with “shaken” brains from IEDs.
My question is, what am I supposed to do about that? What is Nate supposed to do? My son came back from a war alive. But who came back? Who’s the man who just pushed me to the ground, who nearly attacked his disabled uncle?
A WEEK LATER, THE FOUR
of us sit down to talk about what happened between Nate and Lauren the day I dropped by. They come to my house. Our house.
I make a meal, and Nate and Jim and Lauren and I sit there for the first time in months. It is only the second time Jim has been home since he left. We sit down awkwardly, in the same chairs we have always sat in, feeling oddly formal.
But by the time we are done with dinner—by the time Jim has told a story about an eighty-six-year-old man who has been eating twice a day at the buffet since 1993, and whose Keno numbers finally came up; by the time Lauren has told us about the new program she is trying out with her seventh-grade special ed students; by the time Nate has given up refilling his plate and is just standing at the stove, eating the last of the curry out of the pot—we are a family again. I have to pinch myself to remember that this is not real, that Jim doesn’t live here anymore, that we are not going to have many meals like this one.
And all of that mutes the shock of what I saw Nate do to Lauren and the fear I felt in Rodney’s yard. It seems simple, really. Nate is having a hard time adjusting to civilian life. He’s having anger issues. Well, of course. You can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the news without reading about this.
There are services offered at the base. It’s important to be discreet, not to jeopardize Nate’s new job with the LVPD. It’s true. I actually convince myself that this is just a new normal; nothing that a modern family can’t manage.
And maybe there’s a hint of how wrong I am in Lauren’s face. In the time it takes before she answers Jim’s question.
“Lauren, has anything else happened? Are you feeling okay?”
She pauses. A long, quiet pause.
“Nate and I have talked a lot. I know Nate loves me.”
If you think about it, this doesn’t answer Jim’s question.
“Have you and Nate talked to a counselor yet? Have you contacted someone at the base?”
Nate takes over.
“Dad, Lauren and I have worked this out. I know the services that are available to me. I know you and Mom are worried, but I’m not a kid anymore, right? Lauren and I are fine. I love Lauren. I would never hurt her. You’ll have to trust me.”
Of course, we want to trust him.
We look to Lauren, and she smiles. She smiles at Nate.
And right then, when we have just been so happy together, when life has been so normal, it makes sense. They are deeply in love. Nate would never hurt Lauren.
15
Roberta
ONE THING ABOUT A
desert: it accentuates certain distinctions. If you live in one of the master-planned communities shoved up against the red rock hills or set down in a natural basin with an artificial lake at the center, then you might spend the ordinary moments of your life with palm trees fringing your view of the sky, with green grass abutting tended walking paths, with flower beds that are unearthed and replaced monthly, with artfully lighted pools that appear to magically slip into the horizon. Such resort-like luxuries are everywhere in a town that has an abundance both of cheap labor and of people who know how fantasies are created.
But the desert is unforgiving to the indigent. It offers no relief from the harsh landscape of unplanted, dusty yards, of blowing trash, of peeling, sunburned wood siding, of cheap tilt-up concrete walls, of wires sagging between rough-hewn wooden poles, of potholes and graffiti and men curled in the foot-wide shadows cast by faded, abandoned campaign signs. Without water, there are no leaves, no trees, no bushes, no meadows, no fields, no loamy dirt rich with life to soften the barren ugliness of Las Vegas’s poorest communities.
The neighborhoods crouching along Washington and Carey, between Martin Luther King and D, are low and flat and desolate. Tiny dirt yards, occasionally pitted with curly dock or oxalis, are enclosed by battered-looking chain-link fences; a wide-shouldered pit bull might strain at the rope tied to a stake in the ground, or a scrawny mutt sidle head down, waiting to be kicked, along a broken curb. Plastic chairs line up near the front doors of multiresident complexes, every building identical to the one beside it: all one story, all the same gray-white shade of untended stucco, all rising starkly from the dusty earth, not a green shoot in sight. In some chairs, people sit, aimlessly watching what little goes on, or calling to a neighbor about the sounds heard in the middle of the night, or offering advice to the single mom fired from her job the day before. Twelve-year-old boys slide by, the laces of their enormous athletic shoes dragging on the sidewalk, and a younger boy plays soccer with a basketball against the side of a building.
A lot of people I know have never been to this part of Vegas, close as it is to town, and even more of them wouldn’t dream of stopping here. Too bad, because the Seven Seas has the best fried catfish in town, and Marty and I laughed our way through a lot of Saturday nights there, back when the electric slide was the dance we did, back when everybody had a crack about my flat ass or Marty’s ham-footed moves, back when somehow those cracks were proof that we were welcome anyway.
Today I’m meeting Teddi-Ann Mapes at the Seven Seas. I haven’t been here in a while, and although it’s a dilapidated-looking structure set on a desolate corner, and the thought crosses my mind that my car might be gone when I come out, I’m still looking forward to lunch. Teddi-Ann’s son, Emmitt, is in preschool at the Baptist church nearby. We can talk for an hour, and then I’ll walk over with her to pick him up before naptime starts. Emmitt doesn’t like naptime.
She’s there when I walk in.
“Robbie, hi. Is this table okay? Or do you like to sit in the bar?”
“No, this is great. “
We’re in a small room next to the take-out counter and the kitchen. It’s not as smokey as the main room.
“Teddi, you look good. Your hair’s long again.”
“Yeah, it’s easy at work because I can just clip it up, and it’s cheaper than getting it cut.”
“You doing all right?”
“Oh yeah. I make great tips. I just can’t stop buying stuff for Emmitt. He’s so cute, Robbie. He doesn’t look like anyone in my family, and he doesn’t look like George, so I guess I just got lucky.”
George was Teddi-Ann’s boyfriend for years. If you could call a drug addict that pimped a fifteen-year-old girl a boyfriend. I suppose Teddi-Ann would say that George was a step up from her father, a fanatic who believed in harsh discipline and the right of a sire to mount his own daughters.
Teddi-Ann was one of the first kids I ever worked with as a volunteer advocate. She was yanked out of her house when she was ten, after a school nurse reported a venereal disease, but all Teddi could think about was getting back home because she had a seven-year-old sister there. I’ll never forget the way her determination to go home rocked my world. We were all rushing in, trying to protect her, and she fought like a hellion for the right to save her sister.
Well, some lessons you never forget. Some people you never forget. Even if they’re only ten years old. In the end, the system I was part of, as a volunteer CASA advocate, as a lawyer, as a concerned citizen, didn’t do much for Teddi-Ann at all. We never got her permanently removed from her father. He did whatever a judge ordered him to do. Took classes, attended meetings, signed pledges, and got to the courtroom, wearing a tie, on time. He got those girls back. And then Teddi-Ann met George, and we lost her for a while, until she showed up, pregnant and alone, at the Shade Tree. But if Teddi-Ann inherited one thing from her father, it was his ability to figure out a system, and when she was finally old enough, she used that skill to set herself free.
She was chosen for a long-term transitional shelter program and left four months before her contract ran out, because she’d already made it. Teddi had a good job, day care for her baby; she was ready to manage her own life.
“How’s Emmitt doing?”
“He got into Agassi Prep! I got the letter last week. That’s why I moved here, Robbie. That’s why I’m living here, so he would have a chance to get in, and he did.”
Her grin’s a mile wide, and I can’t help it: my eyes water. A lot of times, I see that people don’t get what they deserve, one way or the other, and then sometimes someone does.
“Come on, Robbie. Are you crying?”
“No. I’m happy for you, Teddi. I’m happy for Emmitt. It just makes me happy.”
“Well, I mean I really thought he would get in. It’s a lottery, but you have a better chance if you’re in the neighborhood, and we meet the income preference too, but then I was waiting, and I just got so scared. When you called last week, I didn’t even want to tell you what I was waiting for. But it worked out. Everything works out, Robbie. It really does.”
“Well, it’s wonderful news. It’s going to be great. Is he excited about Christmas?”
The question was out of my mouth before I remembered about Teddi-Ann’s odd upbringing.
“Oh, yes. We have a tree up. I put lights on our patio too, and I even helped them make popcorn garlands at his school. It’s a Baptist school, so Emmitt sings ‘Jesus Loves Me’ every night. I took him to church on Christmas Eve last year, and I’m going to do it again.”
“I like Christmas too.”
“But you’re Jewish.”
“Yeah. But I like Christmas.”
WHEN I WAS TEN, A
girl I knew from Hebrew school came over to my house. She’d been to my house other times, but I guess she’d never been there in December.
“What’s that?” she asked, as if she’d never seen a Christmas tree.
“It’s our tree. You don’t put one up in your house?”
“No. We’re Jewish. I thought you were.” Her voice dripped. I hadn’t known she’d care. Maybe I hadn’t even noticed that our Jewish friends didn’t put up a tree. Which sounds funny, but it was no big deal in our house. We went to Hebrew school, we belonged to Beth Shalom, and we put up a tree.
My dad loved Christmas. He’d stay up with my mom, smoking a cigar while she wrapped all our gifts in foil paper with red grosgrain ribbon. He didn’t wrap himself. He had fat fingers, and no patience for measuring or tape, but they’d stay up after we went to bed Christmas Eve. I could hear them laughing in their room, and I would imagine them pulling out gift after gift, my mom meticulously wrapping, my dad puffing away. The next morning, I could smell my dad’s cigar in the paper, in the ribbons. I’d put the gifts to my nose and sniff before opening them.
A few days after my friend’s comment about the tree, I got up the courage to talk to my dad.
“Dad, why do we put up a tree? Is it okay?”
“Okay? Of course it’s okay. It’s not big enough for you this year? You think we should have it bigger next year?”
“No, Daddy. I just, I don’t know, we’re Jewish.”
“Popkin, we’re Jewish. So we can’t have a tree? Is that some Talmud law? Jewish kids can’t have a tree? Where’s it say that in the Torah? Hmm?”
“Well . . .”
It was hard for me to get out, because I didn’t want to make my dad mad, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But I’d been thinking about it, and I was a little scared.
“It says no false idols. It says a Jew who has false idols is a non-Jew.”
My voice came out small, and for a while, my dad didn’t say anything. And then I heard his big laugh, and his arm slipped around my shoulders.
“So, Popkin, you’re trying to tell me you been praying to that tree?”
His eyes sparkled.
“No, Daddy.”
“Popkin, this is why we live in Vegas. When we came to Vegas, I said no more people looking at us, no more having to live one way and not another. No more being the Jew, not being the Jew, are you being a Jew. We’re Jewish. We couldn’t get away from that if we wanted to. Ask your friend Jackie if she wants to come over on Christmas Day. Tell her we have a present for her. See what she says.”
TEDDI-ANN LOOKS AT ME QUIZZICALLY.
“I’m sorry, Teddi. I was thinking about Christmas. When I was a kid.”
She smiles. I wonder if she has any memories of Christmas as a child. It’s not something her dad would have gotten right. But she’s smiling anyway.
“Emmitt loves the lights in people’s yards. There’s a house down on West Adams that’s incredible, and I told him we could drive by it every single night. I mean, he just loves all the reindeer.”
And that’s how it is with Teddi-Ann Mapes, who had some of the toughest breaks I’ve ever known a kid to get. She’s barely old enough to drink a beer in a bar, but she makes me feel like the world’s going to work out; like everything anyone ever does—no matter how small, no matter how inept—is worth it. Because one of these days, the person you help is Teddi.
16
Luis
I KNEW SHE WAS
there before she spoke. It’s how she smells. Which I can’t describe because I don’t know the word for her smell. But my abuela’s skin has its own odor, and one of my earliest memories is of that smell, and how it meant that no matter what had been happening, everything would be okay now.
I lie there, as still as I can, and try to breathe her in without letting her know that I am awake. I want just to take a deep breath in, but I don’t want her to say anything, I don’t want to open my eyes, I don’t know what to say to her, so I lie there, still, and let just the hint of that odor in.
She is sitting in Dr. Ghosh’s chair. I hear her shift position once or twice. My abuela is short, with a round apple body, and I can almost see her perched on the edge of the chair so her feet will touch, and then shifting on the seat to rest her back, and her toes lifting off the ground. I smile slightly at this, and she notices immediately, because, of course, her attention has never wavered.
“
Mi amor
. Luis. I am here.”
I’ve been dreading this moment. Because of course I’ve been waiting for her, I need her, and I can’t bear for her to see me like this—to know what I have done, even if nobody has told her the whole story yet. Tears start to leak out of the sides of my closed eyes, which is exactly what I don’t want, and I keep lying there, perfectly still, concentrating on thinking about nothing, and feeling these hot tears sliding down my temples and pooling near my ears.
“Luis. Luis, Luis, Luis.”
She says my name over and over like it is a prayer, almost sung. This makes the tears come faster. I can’t help myself. I take a sort of ragged breath in, and then I stiffen, because it was hard enough to face Dr. Ghosh with everything I feel, and to face my abuela is impossible.
You can’t get away from anything in a hospital. You’re lying on a bed, and you can’t even get up to go to the bathroom by yourself, and if someone comes in and just foists something on you—some experience, some memory—you cannot get away. You are just there. Abuela is not going to go away, so my heart starts racing. I really can’t deal with this.
“Luis. You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to say one word. Later, maybe you can open your eyes, just for a moment, so I can see you. But you don’t even have to do that.”
I open my eyes.
Everything is blurry, because of the tears, but there she is, exactly the same. Everything that has happened to me, the way being in her home feels like someone else’s life, hasn’t changed her. She is the same.
She doesn’t lean in too close, and she doesn’t touch me. My abuela always knew that some pain requires space. When I was a little boy, she would wait until I crawled in her lap or reached up for a kiss. She didn’t lean in to me or pull me toward her. I still remember how safe that felt, and how much I hated that my mother, the few times she saw me, would rush in for a hug, pull on a curl, and say, “What, Luis, you aren’t going to give your mama a hug?” I should hug her, though I never knew that she was coming, though she never said good-bye. My mother would kiss me, my body taut, then set me down, and say, “Mama, he’s kind of uptight. Are you too hard on him? You know that doesn’t work. Look at me, right?” And laugh, her stretched laugh, as if we were supposed to believe she found this funny, when anyone could hear that she had lost the ability to find anything funny a long time ago.
“Thank you, Luis.”
That’s all Abuela says. And I close my eyes.
WHEN I WAKE UP, SHE’S
still there. Not in the chair, though. She’s by the window, and she’s fiddling with the string that controls the slats. Those blinds have been hanging at a slant, because the one string is pulled tighter than the other, for as long as I’ve been here. Of course, she’s fixing it.
“Abuela?”
My voice is stronger than I expect it to be. For some reason, I don’t feel as upset as I did. I feel rested, and I feel like she’s not going to make me tell her anything.
“Luis, you’re awake. Are you hungry?”
I smile. If I don’t have to tell her anything, then having her makes everything better.
“No. They feed me a lot here. It’s part of my therapy. Using a fork. So I don’t ever get hungry.”
“How about some water? I just put ice in that pitcher.”
“Yes. I’ll have a drink. But let me do it.”
She watches me as I struggle to pull the tray over my bed and then to sip from the bent straw in the glass. When I was a kid, I liked the straws that bent, and that little strip of accordion pleating that allowed one to create just the right angle. Abuela didn’t buy straws, and if I’d asked for them, she would have bought the cheaper ones, made of paper, without any pleating.
There’s not enough water in the glass for me to get any, and I can’t manage the pitcher, so I sit back a little, and my abuela pauses, to see what I will do, and then pours me some water. I wonder if this is how all families are, if this is how it will be for me some day with a wife: that words are not necessary, that not using words is a kind of caress.
But I won’t have a wife. Why did that thought come in? All that’s gone for me. It’s impossible to imagine this future. And I shouldn’t have it.
Abuela adjusts the blankets near my feet and pulls the chair a little nearer my bed. She has found a pillow for the back, and I see that she can sit in it now with her feet on the ground. I wonder if a nurse brought her the pillow or if she simply went and found one. My abuela wouldn’t have bothered anyone with something she could do herself.
“I’m staying at Fisher House. It’s for the family of patients. They’re very nice.”
I want to nod, but these are the gestures I can’t always do when I think of them, so I’m not sure if my head moves or not.
“We were always going to go to DC, Luis. Now we are here.”
I smile.
“Abuela, you should go to the Smithsonian. You should see the monuments. I’m fine here. And you could tell me about them.”
“Hmmmm. Maybe.”
We sit for a while, and then she sees it in my eyes, and she leans forward and rests her cheek on mine. We just stay like that for a long time, and it must hurt her back to lean in so long. But for me, I just concentrate on taking it all in: the soft orb of her cheek and the smell of her skin and her strong hand pressing into my shoulder.
DR. GHOSH AND MY ABUELA
meet in my room. They must have spoken to each other on the phone, because Dr. Ghosh greets her when he comes in.
“Mrs. Reyes, you’re here. Welcome. I am Dr. Ghosh. How was your trip?”
“Dr. Ghosh. I am pleased to meet you. My trip was fine, and thank you for telling me about Fisher House. They’re very kind.”
“So how’s our patient? Luis, how are you today?”
I’m not sure what to think about having Dr. Ghosh and my abuela in the room at the same time. I’m not going to talk to Dr. Ghosh in front of her, and I wonder if he thinks I will. I nod my head—I think I’m nodding my head—warily.
“I just have a minute, but I knew your grandmother was coming in, and I wanted to say hello.”
Dr. Ghosh says this so that I’ll know he understands what I’m worried about. I should have known that. Dr. Ghosh and my abuela are actually sort of alike, if you think about it.
“I am going to visit the Lincoln monument,” says my abuela. “When do you plan to come in to talk to Luis?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow. About two.”
“I’ll go then,” says my abuela.
And it is done. My abuela isn’t going to make me speak of things while she’s here. That’s Dr. Ghosh’s job. It’s such a relief: to have her here but not to have to tell her why I’m here. She knows of course. If she didn’t know, she would ask. I wonder how much she knows. Does she know about Sam? About that day in the market? About the boy in Las Vegas?
Because the fact that I shot myself would be enough for her to know. I don’t know how she is bearing that, how much it took for her to bear that, so I hope that Dr. Ghosh hasn’t told her anything else. But he might have. Or he might still. And I can’t think about that. I let it go. Who knows what was said. At least as far as Abuela goes.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER ABUELA LEAVES,
I think about the letter I wrote to that third grader. It’s kind of a mystery how Dr. Ghosh could have read a letter I sent to some kid in Nevada. I mean, the kid got it, so how did Dr. Ghosh see it? I’m guessing it must have been a hell of a letter, and the kid’s parents probably complained about it. The Army hates stuff like that. Could I be court-martialed? It’s okay if I am. Because I ought to be sent to Leavenworth for something.
Dr. Ghosh said he would show me the letter, but when I asked him last week, he changed the conversation. Maybe there’s something in his books about not showing a guy his own suicide note. I mean, that must be what I wrote that kid. I shot myself right after. Poor kid. Damn. I can’t believe I sent something like that to a kid.
I don’t remember wanting to kill myself. I don’t remember having that thought once. I was sick about the boy in the market, really loco, but it was nothing like how I felt after Sam got hit. I can’t even explain that to you. I wanted to be dead. That’s true. I wanted to be the one that was dead and not the one that had screwed up. I was afraid, too. I couldn’t get Sam’s half-blown face out of my mind. It was always there; sometimes I could actually see it. Not like in a nightmare, but while I was just sitting around, eating something, or checking my equipment, or trying to actually do my job. I could see Sam’s head. Like I can see my hand right now.
And it scared the shit out of me.
I mean, all the stuff I’d been through. All the explosions. Guys down. And what scares me shitless is this floating head that I know perfectly well is in my imagination, but which seemed totally real. I’d leaned down and held that face. I’d even put my lips to that mouth and tried to resuscitate him. I mean, I couldn’t comprehend it, I couldn’t figure out what had happened; I was just trying to remember everything I needed to do in an emergency. Every way that I could give Sam a chance.
Even when I brought him back. Even when the sergeant said, “Luis, get out of here. You can’t help him now.” Even then, I couldn’t believe it. I kept going back over the day. We were in the Humvee, we were talking shit, and then, nothing, a big blank, and I’m leaning over Sam’s half a face. Why were we out of the Humvee? Why was I on the other side from Sam? What did I do? What was the mistake?
MY ABUELA LEAVES AT ONE
thirty for the Lincoln Memorial. I’m feeling relaxed, so I let my guard down and think about Sam, and that day. I try again to remember what happened just before the explosion. I have to go a little deeper; try to remember.
“Luis, you look troubled. Do you want to talk?”
I didn’t hear Dr. Ghosh come in.
I don’t answer for a bit, because it’s hard to get my brain to shift away from Sam, out of Iraq, and back into this hospital room.
“Were you thinking about Sam?”
I don’t want to talk about Sam, so I don’t say yes.
“I was thinking about the letter I wrote, and the kid. I’d really like to see it.”
“I brought it with me. I thought today might be a good day to talk about it.”
And then he pulls out the letter. Or a copy of it, actually. So that was easy. I thought I was going to have to fight to see the letter. I wonder why Dr. Ghosh thinks it’s okay to show me the letter now.
Dr. Ghosh says that the kid’s principal contacted the Army, and by the time they had sent the letter through all the different commands and gotten it to my sergeant, I was already in DC. Sergeant Reidy sent the letter to Dr. Ghosh. Sergeant said he wasn’t sure what the Army would do about it, but it might be a moot point if I didn’t get better. So that’s how Dr. Ghosh got it.
Now that I’m going to see the letter, I’m not so keen about it. My whole body starts trembling.
“There’s information in it that is startling to the Army, Luis. There may be consequences for it. I don’t know. But I think today is just about you and me and this letter, Luis. It’s not about anything else. Not today.”
Now I’m really shaking, but Dr. Ghosh gives it to me anyway. And it’s my handwriting. My signature. I don’t read so well yet, so I hold the page, and Dr. Ghosh reads the words to me.
Dear Bashkim:
Yes, I have killed people here. I even killed a boy, not much older than you. He was carrying a bag, and around here that means bomb. It wasn’t a bomb though. It was some charred wood that he was bringing home to burn again.
Everybody kills here. That’s what soldiers do. You might as well start killing mice with your baba, or whatever you call your dad, because with a name like yours, someone is going to try to kill you some day.
Luis
I hear these words, and the bed spins. It spins fast enough that I think I’m going to be thrown off of it, and I actually grasp the rails so I can hang on, like a damn roller coaster or something. I hear my breath chugging out of me. Dr. Ghosh just sits there, not saying a word. I look down at my legs, and I will the bed to stop spinning. It slows, hiccups, spins a bit faster, and then finally stops. I am sitting with my back raised off the bed, which is not that easy for me, and my fingers are purple around the bed rails, and I’m panting like a dog after a rabbit. I’m one fucked-up soldier. Dr. Ghosh has set the letter on the tray next to my bed, but I don’t want to touch it.
I don’t remember anything about that letter.
I don’t recognize the kid’s name. I don’t know what I was talking about with his name. I can’t believe I wrote down what happened in the market. I must have already known I was going to kill myself. I must have thought I was going to be dead. And what? I wanted to be sure my abuela knew the truth about me? I wanted to confess to some eight-year-old kid who probably still sleeps on the floor next to his mom’s bed?
I didn’t think things could get any worse, but the wave of repulsion that comes over me is more than I can bear. I hate everything I have ever done or ever thought. I hate that I exist. I hate that I have failed everyone who ever cared a damn about me. All I have ever done in my life is hurt people.