21. Standstill

Once the Superior Court orders Blanco to turn over his phone, he files another motion in the appellate court. Rik says this will accomplish nothing except buying Blanco a little time, but because we have no idea if the P&F hearing will continue, we pretty much go into standstill on the Chief’s case. I get a chance to do a bunch of interviews on Rik’s new matters, and also to take Gomer on long walks. I even manage to play both softball games for two consecutive weeks, which I haven’t done since April.

But with time on my hands, I find myself dwelling on Koob, not in a gushy junior-high-school way but trying to put the guy together in my head. It’s kind of ironic, because he has been occupying space in my imagination for months now. But he has gone from a one-dimensional mystery man to a three-dimensional person, known and intensely real in some ways, but with a life that’s a complete blank, except when he’s in my apartment.

“So what else are we going to talk about during the recovery period?” I ask one night, after he shuts down another attempt to get him to tell me about his work.

“What would you like to talk about?” Koob asks.

After a second, I answer. “Tell me about how you grew up. You know, living around the Hmong.”

“Ah,” he says. “I’m not sure I know how to talk about that.”

But over his next couple visits, that is more or less the subject, when we’re having conversations. I have already been looking at pictures online, and I bring my laptop to bed and show him the photographs. He hunches down next to my shoulder to see the screen, so I’m conscious of his size and the heat of his body, as I thumb through the images of the Hmong in their ritual dress.

“The traditional clothing looks to me like some of the native people in Peru,” I say. I backpacked through Peru and Brazil one of the times I dropped out of college. He seems struck by my observation.

“Actually, I had a good friend in the service,” he says, “another Ranger, who was Lakota, and a lot of what I was raised with and he was raised with—it was very similar. He told me a story about his grandmother coming to see him the night she died in the body of a wolf. And I had heard Hmong tells stories like that a thousand times. A lot of the myths and legends sound alike, too.”

“What kind of myths? Tell me one.”

He stares at the ceiling a second.

“Okay, this is a good one. This is how the Hmong explain why some people are left-handed: There was an enormous eagle who was eating all the people—all except the king’s daughter, who had been sealed in a drum to hide. Far away, a great warrior heard about this and came to the village, where he could see no one alive. Eventually he tapped on the king’s drum, and the princess spoke. And together they worked up a trap for the great eagle.

“At the first light, the princess broke free of the drum. The eagle swooped in and the warrior shot him through the heart with an arrow, and the eagle fell to the ground dead. The warrior opened the belly of the eagle and it was full of human bones. He worked all day and all night to put the bones together so that the people could return to life. But as he grew weary, he sometimes mixed up one side for the other. So that is why some people are left-handed and some are right-handed.”

“Wow. That’s a whole lot of story to explain something basic.”

“Yeah. That’s the Hmong way. Everything is connected. You do not ask a Hmong person how to get to the store, if you prefer not to know how the world was created first.”

“Was it a strange upbringing?”

“It was not strange because my mom was Hmong but because it felt like we were not really anything. We lived in Minneapolis near my mother’s parents. But they never accepted my father. There are whole Hmong clans descended from intermarriage between the Han Chinese and the Hmong. But those men always entered Hmong society. And my dad had no interest. He could not understand them, frankly. And I never blamed him. There are things about the Hmong that seem to have no parallels in any other culture.”

“Like?”

“Like the Hmong Green and the Hmong White, for instance.”

“Green and white?”

“Clans with different languages, different clothing, many different traditions. My mom’s family are Hmong White, and most of them cannot even talk to the Hmong Green. But they do not live in separate villages. Hmong Green and Hmong White dwell among one another in Asia. And Minneapolis.”

“And what about your mom? Was she on the outside like your dad?”

“Half and half. The other Hmong women were suspicious of her because she could read and write, and speak English well. And was Christian, like my dad—they were actually Catholic, which was important to both of them.”

“So did you do the whole Catholic trip? Schools and everything?”

“Until junior high. I hated it. But about my mother, even though a lot of Hmong were wary of her, she never wanted to break away from Hmong life completely.”

“Like how?”

“Well, say she became seriously ill. She might go to a western doctor, but she could never believe she was going to get well unless she was also attended by a Hmong shaman.”

“And how was that for your father, if they wouldn’t accept him?”

“My parents were generally okay with that. But they had a strange deal.”

I assume he means that his parents had a strange deal the way every marriage has its unique arrangements, but the next time we talk about it, a couple nights later, I learn that his parents got off to a very odd start. His mother was an interpreter in Laos, having been educated in a convent school run by American nuns from the Dominican order. She, and a couple of her classmates, were recruited by the US forces during the Vietnam War, to facilitate communication between the American soldiers and the Hmong who were helping them.

“Forty thousand Hmong fought for the US in Laos. Even though they were illiterate, they had a talent for operating electrical equipment and were skilled at calling in bombing raids.” Koob’s mother translated for a US captain. They fell for each other and got engaged. And then he was killed as the North Vietnamese were storming through the area.

“The Army moved her to South Vietnam for her own protection, but she knew the Pathet Lao or the Vietcong would kill her as soon as the US left.” Her fiancé, the dead guy, was Koob’s uncle, his father’s brother. And as the war was winding down, Koob’s father, who’d also served in Vietnam, flew to Saigon and married Koob’s mom so he could bring her back to the US. They’d barely known each other for an hour when the ceremony was performed by a priest Koob’s father found.

“It sounds like something in the Bible, right?” Koob asks. “Marrying your brother’s wife when he dies. I’m not sure what either of them expected. But it worked out. My mother says she felt like she’d known him a hundred years when they stepped off the plane in the US.”

“They were happy?”

“I cannot say happy. Not that they were unhappy. But they were both too old-school to think about happy. Not like my kids, who demand happiness as a right. But they respected each other. They treated one another with respect. So if she needed to be sure there were Hmong shamans around, he understood that we could not leave Minneapolis. There are not many Hmong shamans anywhere else.”

I ask him a couple nights later how he ended up in Pittsburgh, and he explains that he went to grad school there after the service.

“And that’s where you met your wife?”

He nods.

“Is she Hmong?”

“No, she’s white.”

“Hmong White?” I laugh and he pokes me in the side.

“No, white. Like you. Caucasian. Which meant neither of my parents liked her. Of course, I was not about to let them tell me what to do, so I married her.” He ticks his head in disapproval of himself. “I had the idea in the back of my mind, because of the way my parents got together, that any two people could make a good marriage.” He wobbles his head again, for much longer this time.

His marriage, his family, is like a shadow always glued to him. Tonight it feels safe to ask him if he has pictures of his kids. He gets his phone and thumbs through, careful not to let me see the other images, until he turns the device around.

Both take after him, tall and good-looking.

“Your daughter’s beautiful.”

“She thinks so.” He laughs. “She’s going to college next year. She cannot wait and neither can I.”

The story he told about how his parents met has sparked something strange in me tonight. The idea that things between people could be that haphazard, that you marry somebody because your brother was supposed to, has brought on the creepy déjà vu–type notion that our destiny, Koob’s and mine, might be similar. How entirely random and amusing would it be if I ended up with Koob because I was stalking him? Could we be equally respectful despite all our differences?

But I know that isn’t going to happen. For one thing, there’s an obvious obstacle.

“You’re not really divorced, are you?” I ask him, while he’s still holding up the picture of his kids.

“No,” he says finally, “but I’m not in Pittsburgh.”

“But are you still thinking it over? Or just waiting for the lawyers to do their thing? I mean, have you ever taken off like this before?”

“I guess. A couple times.”

“Which means you came back.”

He smiles fleetingly, just because of how quickly I picked that up.

“She’s not right. Seriously not right.”

“You keep saying that. What is there to think over then?”

He lays there like a mummy for a second, utterly still, with his hands folded over his heart.

“I knew she was troubled. When we got married? That is what bothers me. I mean, maybe I lied to myself a little. But I knew something was wrong. I guess I thought I could fix her.”

“But you couldn’t.”

“Of course not.”

“Did you have sex like this with your wife?”

His head snaps around and he stares. It’s a Pinky moment where I just say what seems logical to me with no clue how it will strike the other person. I attempt to explain.

“I’m just trying to understand. You know that saying: ‘Batshit crazy makes my dick hard.’ Maybe it was great between you that way, and you thought you could ignore the rest.”

My reasoning appears to pacify him. He nods a few times and then stops to reflect.

“The truth is I do not remember. It is hard to believe there was nothing good, but it’s all been overwhelmed by how crazy she is. After I married her, when I began to see how disturbed she was, I felt like she had tricked me by acting more stable than she is. But over time, I realized that in those early days she was just holding on. And then she lost her grip. For years now, she has had no control over herself. She’s either quietly bitter or raging. And it changes as quickly as flipping a switch. I look away from her, like just to see what is on the TV, and when I turn back a monster is across the room. Once she gets worked up, she can seem almost homicidal. She veers around the house screaming, literally foaming at the mouth.”

“What is she screaming about? You?”

“Me. Her parents. Our kids. People she knew twenty years ago. She makes threats. She’s going to kill herself. Hurt our children. There have been decades of this. So I cannot remember what existed before.”

I wonder if Koob is kind of dressing up his wife’s problems. I’ve noticed that whenever couples stop getting along, they start saying the other person is crazy, exaggerating any odd behavior. Maybe it’s what he needs to say, or believe, so he’s comfortable lying here with me. And I’m okay letting that be the tale we’re telling between us, since even shared lies can knit people together. But I’m not forgetting what he just admitted, that he’s always gone back in the end. Deep down, I won’t let myself believe that the story will be any different this time.

“And are your kids okay with you splitting?”

“Not a bit. My son always says, ‘I’m not the one who told you to marry her.’ They do not want to get stuck taking care of her, and they will have to.”

“Divorce is tough, though. My parents split up when I was seventeen, and it set me back for years.” I smile. “You don’t want your kids to end up like me.”

“They won’t.”

I’m a little hurt by his confidence, as if not many people could turn out this strange.

“Teenagers?” I say. “Don’t be so sure.”

“No, they grew up with a crazy woman. After that, normal seems really special. To both of them. Sometimes, frankly, I am frightened by how conventional they are. All they want is a house in the suburbs and enough money to go to the mall whenever they like.” He rolls to his side to face me. “So what about you?” he says. “You’re such a good investigator, you ask all the questions. But what about your family?”

“Me? It was just what your kids think they want. My parents were pretty conventional. Prom queen marries football star. Nice suburbs. Good schools. I mean, my mom was never real happy with him. But that was nothing compared to how she felt about me.” I stop there and realize I’m going to tell him something as personal as what he has confided to me the last few nights, which is basically what he is asking for.

“Okay.” I sit up. “You won’t hear many people say this: My mother never loved me. Not the way she loved my brother and my sister. I mean, she thought she was being nice to me, and she was, like the way a lot of people are nice to their dogs. But that intense you’re-me-and-I’m-you thing people have with their parents, that my dad has with me, that big central connection I can tell you have with your parents and with your kids? Nope. It just wasn’t there. It was like the way absolute zero is the complete absence of heat. And, you know, I knew it from the time that I was little, and it really messed me up.”

This is about the most courageous thing I can say about myself, and I haven’t said it to many people—for obvious reasons, because they’ll think, Wow, a kid even a mother couldn’t love, better summon the fucking exorcist. Koob is listening with his familiar intent look and little visible expression beyond that.

“My parents forced me to go to all kinds of therapy,” I say. “I’ll bet you’ve never done anything like that?”

“No. That is how I live in between. I do not believe in the Hmong shamans. Or the American ones.”

“Well, you know. A lot of it is just bullshit. Therapy is about the therapist. Period. They’re always working out their own crap through you, and most of them have no clue they’re doing it. But anyway, I saw one person, a kind of elderly German lady, she sounded like Dr. Ruth, and she said to me one day, ‘I belief your mot’er never bonded wit’ you.’” I’m pretty good at imitating accents. “Ze loss of her own mot’er was so traumatic for her zat she could not be a mot’er to you. She was still ze child in her own mind, still suffering ze child’s loss.’

“I was so pissed off at this woman,” I say. “I mean. She said it like, you know, ‘Oh, today is Tuesday.’ Like it was a meaningless detail. And it felt like the worst thing anyone had ever said to me. I would have said it myself, of course, my mother never loved me, but this lady was supposed to be an expert, and she was saying, ‘Oh yeah, by the way, you’re right.’ I wanted to get up and throw her and her Eames chair through the window.

“But when I thought it over, I gave her credit. Because it’s the truth. And because she was telling me that it was not my fault. Even though I lived my whole life feeling like it was. Maybe it isn’t even my mom’s.”

I realize that Koob is holding my hand. And when I look over to him, he’s fallen into a sober expression that I take as both amazement and respect. I actually lean down and kiss him, which doesn’t happen much if we’re not in action. He kind of hugs me for a second. And I find that I’m happier than I expect to be. My head is on his chest and we’re almost nose to nose.

“I’m tellin you, dude, you don’t know anybody else like me.”