The man was a decoy. The boy had a bomb. And he was headed for Sam.
“LUIS. ARE YOU AWAKE? IT’S
Dr. Ghosh.”
I’m awake. I roll over. I’m not mad anymore. I don’t know why I was mad. But I am a little startled that he walked in right then. Just then. He can’t read my thoughts, but sometimes it feels like he can. It feels like they might just beam out of my head and straight into his. And that makes me nervous.
“Hi, Dr. Ghosh.”
“Luis, the nurse tells me your physical therapy is going well. You’re working hard. I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, well there’s not that much else to do. Did you notice?”
“Yeah, I noticed.” He smiles, as if I’ve said something funny. So it occurs to me that Dr. Ghosh’s job probably isn’t that much fun—talking to guys like me—and I give him credit for smiling when he gets the chance.
“Luis, I want to ask you about that kid again. The one you talked about when you were still unconscious. Have you remembered anything about him?”
Man, this guy does not give up.
That’s what I mean about him reading my thoughts. I must have yelled about a lot of things when I was knocked out. How does he know to focus on that kid?
Well, Dr. Ghosh may think that he’s smart, and maybe he even thinks I’m some dumb spic, but he isn’t smart enough to get that out of me.
AFTER I SHOT, NOTHING HAPPENED
like I thought it would. People started to scream, and Sam came out of his blissed-out yo-yo trance, and I yelled, “Get back! He’s got a bomb!” Then the kid’s mother ran right up to him, him and the bag, and collapsed over the top of him, and nothing blew. Nothing blew but my mind and that crowd and that mom.
And then some guy dropped down next to the two of them, holding the mom, trying to get to the kid. And he grabbed the bag. Held it up.
“This? This! Is a bomb?” He spoke English. He yelled right at me.
And he dumped the bag out.
And Sam, who hadn’t even seemed to react to the guy on fire, just like that, he had his gun out, and he was pointing it, at the man, at everyone, and yelling, “This didn’t happen! This didn’t happen! This did not happen!”
And then he was grabbing me, and we were running, and we were back in the Humvee. We didn’t go back to Kalsu, we didn’t go back until the last possible minute of our leave. We drove all the way around to another village. Got out. Bought something. Sam did his yo-yo thing. Made eyes at some girl, enough so that some guy—her brother, maybe—came out and gave Sam a shove. Sam said, “Hey!”
And the whole time, I was shaking like a madman. I was shaking so hard that my teeth banged together and hurt for days. We didn’t talk. We didn’t say a damn word about what had just happened. There was a minute where Sam touched my arm. Just touched it and held his fingers there, and I think I stopped shaking. But then he let go, and the shaking started again.
Sam didn’t react when the guy shoved him—the brother or uncle or whatever the hell he was. He didn’t react, but he looked at the girl again. And the guy shoved him again. Then Sam was done.
It took me a while to figure out why Sam took those two shoves. I’d never seen him eye a girl wearing a
hijab,
and I’d never seen him take two shoves.
Sam and I were smart. And we were careful. And we didn’t do anything without thinking about it first.
“LUIS. THERE’S ANOTHER BOY I
want to talk to you about.”
Boy. Dr. Ghosh had never used the word
boy
before. He used the word
kid,
which is the one I use, the one I must have used when I was unconscious. What does he know? What did I say?
“Yeah.” I say it slowly, like I don’t care, like I haven’t noticed he used the word
boy
. Dr. Ghosh is smart. He knows he used
boy
for the first time.
“This is a boy who wrote you a letter. Do you remember that?”
Now I am confused, because I don’t know anything about a boy and a letter. Dr. Ghosh must see this on my face, because he says, “You got the letter just before the accident. Just before you got hurt. Have you remembered anything about that day?”
I don’t remember that day. I remember the fact. I remember that I shot myself. But that’s it. Weird, huh? Like, why would I be sure I did that if I couldn’t remember anything about doing it?
But I don’t.
There was the time before I knew why I was in the hospital, when I was trying to figure out what Dr. Ghosh meant that someone had shot me, and then there was just the knowledge. I had shot myself. And I had done it with a .22. Which isn’t even an Army issue.
And Dr. Ghosh and I talked about that too. When I told him that I had remembered, I told him that I remembered the information but not the event. He said that was pretty typical, and that I might never remember, or I might, and I should just talk to him about it if I wanted. I could bring it up whenever it came up, so to speak.
And he didn’t seem to care about the gun. Where I got it. Why I used it. Dr. Ghosh didn’t seem to think that was part of the story.
“Yes, Luis, you got a letter. From a young boy in Las Vegas. It was a school project in his third-grade class, I believe. To write to soldiers from Nevada.”
I don’t remember.
I don’t remember anything about this letter. And I am wondering why Dr. Ghosh is bringing it up. What difference it makes. Last Christmas, we got boxes of stuff from people in Las Vegas. The Blue Ribbon Moms sent us stockings filled with coffee and licorice and socks.
“The thing is, Luis, you got a letter from this little boy. And you answered him. You wrote him a letter back, and you put it in the post. And then you shot yourself.”
So that’s why Dr. Ghosh is interested in that letter.
Because I wrote the boy back.
What did I write to him?
I can’t remember anything about this. What would I have written?
Did I send a suicide note to an eight-year-old kid? The thought makes me queasy real fast, and my head just starts pounding. I can’t stand it. I sort of gasp. And I look around for the button that calls the nurse. And then Dr. Ghosh is standing next to me, and he’s holding my hand, and he says, “Luis, it’s okay. It’s okay, Luis. We’re not going to talk about this right now. I am going to sit here, and you can rest. I’ll have the nurse give you more for the pain.”
And so I close my eyes. And my heart is beating. And my head feels like it has come off my body, it’s the size of this room, but I keep my eyes closed, and I don’t move, and I don’t think about anything. Because I might be about to die, right here. No .22 needed. That’s how much it hurts. That’s how crazy my body is going.
11
Avis
I SWING BY NATE
and Lauren’s house about two. They need some glasses for a party they are having, and I have promised to leave them on their doorstep. Jim and Nate biked the Red Rock loop over the weekend and stopped to hike into Icebox Canyon. We used to love to take Nate and his friends on this hike, when they were big enough to manage the boulders and to follow the stream of water into the narrowing rock walls, until the sky was just a sliver of azure and the world the width of a hallway. If we hiked long enough, we came to a waterfall crashing over the mottled sandstone above and into a stone basin. Nate and his friends would splash there, and sitting at that clear pool of water in the desert on Sunday, Nate had gotten upset, angry that Jim wanted to sell the house.
I have to admit, hearing that made me feel good. On the night we told Nate about the separation, I thought he blamed me. He said something to Jim about giving me another chance, a comment that was still burning in me, so to hear that he had stood up for me yesterday pleased me. It’s hard not to want Nate to be angry at Jim.
I AM SURPRISED TO SEE
Nate’s door standing open when I pull up. I get one of the boxes out of the trunk and call his name as I head up the walk. Nobody answers, but I hear a sound as if something has fallen.
Then I am in the doorway, shocked by the scene before me.
“Nate, what are you doing? Stop!”
Nate has Lauren in a vise grip. His hand is squeezed so tightly around her wrist that I wait to hear the snap. His other hand is in her hair, pulling her head sideways. She is oddly silent, intent on getting free, or on not antagonizing him further, or maybe even on not letting me know how much pain she is in.
“Stop it. Nate, stop it!”
My shouts make it worse. He begins to pull and squeeze harder, in rhythm to my voice.
I silence myself. Breathe deep.
“Let her go. I am calling 911.”
I set down the box and hold up my phone. I am too far away for him to hang on to her and reach for my phone. I know what Nate is thinking. He will lose any chance at the police force if I make this call. I can almost see him making the calculation:
she will not make the call, she will not risk me losing my job—or will she?
Lauren’s hair is pulled tight across her temple, and her eyes are creased in pain. I shake the phone at him, my mouth tight. I feel a little like I did when he was three, refusing to climb down from the monkey gym, or eleven, threatening to walk out the door. Which doesn’t make any sense. Because Nate grew up a long time ago.
Nate stares back at me. Something in his eyes makes me afraid. I am not sure he is going to let go. What is he thinking? Does he have control?
With a shake, he releases her. Lauren sinks to the couch, tears spurting out. Nate turns on me.
“Who the hell do you think you are, walking in our house without knocking? Don’t walk in my house again!”
It is an absurd response to the situation. His door was standing wide open. Anyone could have heard what was going on in here.
WHEN NATE WAS FOUR YEARS
old, Jim signed him up for a soccer team. I had never played soccer, and neither had Jim. The flyer said, “No special equipment. Wear tennis shoes and gym shorts. Shirt provided.” The shirt was a navy blue uniform with a white 6 and the words “Las Vegas Parks and Recreation” on the back. I think we must have ten photos of him in that first uniform shirt.
But the team was a disaster. After the first game, Nate wouldn’t kick the ball. He wouldn’t even get near the kids kicking the ball. I offered him a dime for every time he kicked it, but Nate, who was a pretty tough little four-year-old, stayed away. Of course, the coach was very nice about it. He said that some boys aren’t ready for team sports, may never be. Jim and I asked Nate why he didn’t kick the ball, but all he said was “I don’t want to.” He used to suck his thumb on the way home from games, which was a habit I thought he had dropped.
And it wasn’t that we hadn’t noticed that every other child had on special soccer shoes and shin guards. We did notice. But this equipment was optional, and Nate didn’t seem to like soccer, so we thought we were being moderate in not rushing out to buy professional equipment for a preschooler. And it wasn’t until the end-of-the-season picnic, when the coach had the parents play the children, and one of those four-year-olds kicked me in the leg with a tiny cleat, that I figured it out. That’s a true story. It never occurred to me that Nate needed those shin guards.
Nate never did tell us when he was hurt. Where did he get that idea? That he couldn’t tell us if something hurt?
I STEP OVER THE BOX
of glasses and make my way toward Lauren. Nate jerks forward, and for an instant, I think that he is going to grab me. Like that, I am a little girl—three? five?—and a man is holding my arm, digging his fingers into my skin, yanking my shoulder backward.
“Don’t you ever touch my coat again, you little shit. I better not catch you near my things.”
Then Sharlene is there, shrieking, and he is yelling at her. He lets me go, and I run, the opened pack of Life Savers from his coat pocket still in my hand.
Nate jerks, but he doesn’t touch me. He passes by on my right, and as he heads out the door, he says, “Dad was right to leave you” in a voice so filled with hate it makes me feel weak.
I SEE NATE. SEVEN OR
eight years old. A stocky child, wearing blue jeans and a brown football jersey. Bare feet. Jim is punting a football to him across a sun-filled park, and the ball sails up and up very fast, and Nate is at the other end of its arc, waiting to catch it, fairly dancing on those bare, fat toes, and trembling with delight and fear. Will he catch it? Will it hurt? And at first he doesn’t catch it. He fails valiantly. Throwing himself to the ground beneath the ball, stretching his arms out far. But I know Nate, and I know he is deliberately coming up short. He is afraid that it will hurt.
And then he does it. He dives down, arms extended, no hesitation, and he catches the punt. And up he pops, like a marionette, and yells over and over, “I caught it! I caught it!” The delight in his voice, in his body, as he races all the way back across the park with the ball, to dance into Jim’s chest, yelling, “I caught it, I caught it!” His arms lift the ball high, tugging his shirt up, exposing his belly. Everyone in the park can hear him. The absolute delight of a seven-year-old boy who has met his own hope.
“Mom, did you see it? Did you see me? I caught it! It went way in the air, and I had to fall to the ground, and I caught it!”
That’s Nate. That thrilled child is my son. That little boy lifted in the air by his father and calling to his mother, for all the world to hear.
I did it! I did it! See how happy life makes me.
I CROSS THE ROOM AND
sink down next to Lauren on the couch. My heart is pounding, but as I pull her into my arms, I feel oddly angry. I want to go after Nate, I want to know what is wrong with my son, and I am feeling something like rage at Lauren. Why was she so silent? Why is she still just weeping in my arms?
What is wrong with her?
It is crazy to be angry at Lauren in this moment. I know that. But anger is what I am feeling. When Margo’s husband told her that he sometimes had a one-night-stand when he was on a business trip, and that he thought talking about this might make their sex life hotter, she sat in my kitchen and sobbed for weeks. I wanted to shake her. I didn’t care if she took the bait and had hot sex with her husband or threw him out on his ear, but that she would sit and cry about it, day after day, drove me crazy.
“MOMMY, WHY DO YOU LET
him hit you? Why don’t you hit him? Why don’t you make him go away?”
“Shut up, Avis. I don’t need your shit right now.”
“Mommy, Rodney and I can help you. Mark has a gun. Rodney found it. You could use that gun.”
“Avis, shut up. What are you doing going through Mark’s things? Do you want to get us killed? Do you?”
I DON’T LET LAUREN KNOW
I am angry. I sit and hold her. I stroke her hair, and I tell her I am sorry. I am good at comforting people, no matter what I am thinking. I could comfort Rodney, when he was such a little boy, and I could comfort Sharlene. I just take them in my arms, and I do not talk.
JIM AND I LET NATE
get away with too much. I didn’t have the slightest idea what a mother should do with a son. My basic idea was not to be Sharlene and not to have Nate turn out like Rodney. It wasn’t much to go on. Compared to the other kids in the neighborhood, Nate did get in a lot of trouble. He got detention after school, had to run laps after practice, had to be grounded on the weekend. It all seemed mild to me. By the time it occurred to me that maybe Nate’s small rebellions were more significant than I thought, things had already gone too far.
I HEAR NATE KICK SOMETHING
in the side yard, and I hear the iron fence squeal open, and I hear the sound of his boot against the motorcycle stand. The motor chokes, then catches, and the bike roars onto the street.
“Mom?” Lauren says. “He was really upset today. He’s been upset since he and Jim went biking on Sunday. And he’s drinking. Just beer, but when he drinks, he . . .”
I can guess what she is going to say, but I wonder if she will be able to say it.
“ . . . he scares me when he drinks.”
Her voice catches. I stroke her hair. I think about Sharlene, holding clumps of hair in her hand, and crying,
he pulled out my hair, he pulled out my fucking hair.
I think that I would have killed Jim if he had ever pulled my hair, I think that Jim would never have pulled my hair, I think that Jim now loves Darcy.
IT MATTERED TO ME THAT
Nate had so many friends in high school. I didn’t have friends in high school. I started working at the Four Queens when I was fourteen. I carried sacks of change to the cashier and wrapped up keno tickets in rubber bands. I got tips from the regulars, and the tips were bigger at night, so by fifteen, I would usually work until one or two in the morning. It might have been Vegas, but nobody I knew in school worked in a casino. I suppose the ones that did dropped out pretty early. But I loved school. I just tried to keep my two lives separate: there was Sharlene and Rodney and the casino, the drunk men, the tips, my mother’s affairs. And there was school. Where the PE teachers wanted me to try out for a team. And the US history teacher wrote me a college recommendation letter I hadn’t even asked for. Where nobody knew.
Nate’s high school years were different, of course. He and his friends scaled rock walls at Valley of Fire, skied off-run at Mount Charleston, played Fugitive along the train tracks, held midnight volleyball tournaments at the park down the road. When they went to a dance, they went in a big group, in a party bus, and someone’s dad always figured out how to get them cheap prices for
Mystère
or
Blue Man Group
, and someone’s mom always offered her basement for the party after. These things meant so much to me. I used to list Nate’s activities in my head—all these normal high school things that my son did—like a nursery rhyme.
Of course, Nate was drinking at those parties. We never even talked about it. Beer seemed like a tame sort of rebellion to me. I had a son who was having an all-American childhood; I had won.
“HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN
happening, Lauren?”
She makes a sort of moan and pushes away from me. She doesn’t look at me as she speaks.
“He’s been different since he came back. Since last December.”
December? This has been going on for a year?
Of course, I know what she means by different. I knew the instant I hugged him in the airport that time, that little course of energy through his body, that slight shiver. I knew the last deployment had been bad.
“Since December?”
“Well, not this. Not what happened today. This . . . this hasn’t happened for very long.”
I think about the bruise I saw on her shoulder the night Nate was sworn in. Why didn’t I ask her then?
“I mean . . . he just, he’s just nervous. A lot of times, he’s really nervous. And I feel like I have to tiptoe around. I thought he was sad, but lately he gets angry. He gets angry so fast.”
I look at Lauren’s slight frame. I think about my son’s fit body. It’s frightening to me; what must it be like for her?
THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED THE SUNDAY
night after one of those high school dances. The story was that there was some alcohol left. That might have been true. Or Nate and his friends might have been drinking every day by then. I wouldn’t have been looking for any signs of this. Nate’s world just seemed so safe to me.
Jeremy was driving. Speeding. Drunk. He wound up with seven months in juvenile detention. Paul was paralyzed. When it was all over, Paul could use his thumb and forefinger. I remember that. What a break it was that he had those two digits. Nate was in the backseat. Nothing but a concussion. Jim knew somebody, so it never came out that Nate provided the alcohol. It never came out that he had a guy who regularly bought alcohol for him and that Nate made a business out of reselling alcohol to teenage kids.
If it had, I wonder if they would have let him enlist. I know they wouldn’t have let him join the police academy.
“HAVE YOU TOLD ANYONE?”
“No.”
“There must be someone on the base. Someone through VA services?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“They won’t put him on the force if they find out. He won’t get through probation.”
“I know.”
What am I saying? Do I want my daughter-in-law to get professional help or not?
I don’t know what I am saying. I am wondering if Jim knows someone, if Jim could persuade Nate to talk to someone. I am wondering if Jim can be persuaded to take time off from Darcy for this.
“I’ll talk to Nate. And I’ll talk to Jim. We’ll figure this out. We’ll figure it out, Lauren.”
She curls back into my shoulder then. I keep stroking her hair, wondering what I am saying. Can we figure this out? Do we have time? Should I be calling the police?