Holly laughs as he pretzels his legs inside her Mustang, his knees pressing against the glove compartment. “You can push the seat back, you know,” she says as she adjusts the scarves wrapped tightly around her meticulously tended hair. Even though others have admired her smooth complexion, and her eyes, the color of green olives, she considers her hair her best asset. Before leaving home, she’d slipped on her father’s sweater and touched the folded piece of paper in the pocket, making sure it was still there. Today’s the day she will open it.
She whips the car into traffic and thinks again of Penndel’s caution—make sure the next person who accompanies you to Joe can handle what spontaneously pours forth from your soul. Or something like that. She’s considered it. Over and over, she’s considered it. And she’s decided John Harold Veranda can handle it.
John watches Holly shift into fourth and merge onto the highway. He is consumed by his feelings for the woman behind the wheel. His boyish grin feels as permanent as the landscape, and every half mile or so of traveled road, he tosses knowing grins at her. Today’s the day he’s going to tell her. Today’s the day he’s going to make her dream come true.
“What?” Holly finally insists.
“I have something to tell you.”
“So, tell me, already. And wipe that shit-eating grin off your face.”
John presses his lips together and pretends to zip them.
“You are such a cornball, John Veranda.”
She accelerates, changes lanes, and shifts into fifth. John raises his arms high in the air. It may be November, but the sun is shining and, even with the top down, it feels like September. “This is as wild as my first roller coaster ride!” He pauses a moment, then turns toward her, studying her profile. Holly glances sideways at him. His grin disappears and he turns back and stares straight ahead as if suddenly in a trance, mesmerized by the gray pavement and white lines disappearing beneath them. He has only examined the exposed part of his secret about Holly’s father, a majestic iceberg sticking up from the water’s surface. He has not fully considered the vast underbelly, the opaque world below, the mass of ice growing more solid, dense in its isolation. He knows her father is among the Gitmo detainees coming to Saluki, but he still doesn’t know whether he is coming as terrorist, an enemy combatant, criminal, or the most unfortunate victim ever of geopolitical machinations.
As the Arch comes into view, John realizes—for the umpteenth time—that he never tires of seeing this monument. He’d tried to convince Stuart that the Arch is as iconic a national symbol as Manhattan’s skyline. Stuart’s look of disdain had been one for the record books.
“You imply equivalency between the Gateway to the West and the skyline of the capital of the free world?” Stuart had retorted.
“I’m saying New York isn’t the center of the freakin’ country, is what I’m saying.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s the center of the universe.”
Now John asks Holly her opinion on the subject.
“From the outside, I agree with you. From the top of that thing, I agree with Stuart. The view is beyond disappointing. There’s probably more to see from a grain elevator.”
As they take the exit for the arts district, John remembers that, for a few days after 9/11, even the iconic Arch was thought to be a potential target of a terrorist attack. And that takes his thoughts back to that majestic iceberg and the opaque world below the water’s surface.
Holly parks in the small lot behind the museum. As she peels the scarves from her head, she regards John as if re-evaluating Penndel’s admonition. Will he be ready for this experience, the spiritual moulting that occurs in her when she’s inside Joe?
As they enter the lobby, Holly laces her arm through John’s and guides him to the outside gallery. “This place is one huge concrete vault,” he whispers. “It feels like a tomb.”
She pushes through the glass doors to the enclosed outer exhibit area and stops him before descending the steps. “There it is!”
He had been willing to take her word for Joe’s magnificence, but now…. “Hmm. I think need a boom box playing Metallica.”
“Ever so clever. Come on!”
Like always, a docent sits on a fold-up chair at the entrance. Another couple exits as they approach.
“Hang on,” John says. “I’m going in to get a brochure about this thing so my poor country bumpkin brain can understand it.”
Holly hesitates, then hurries down to the docent. “Look, I know it’s your job to monitor us inside, but—” She presses a twenty dollar bill into the young man’s hand. “Could you just see your way to leave us alone in there?”
The docent shakes his head and stands up. “Ma’am, I am sorry, but I could lose my job if I make an exception.” He shoves the money back at her, but slowly.
Holly ignores it. “I know, but I think he’s going to propose once we’re inside,” she says in a low, pouty voice.
The docent drops his head in exasperation. Holly presses another twenty into his hand. “Take someone special out for dinner … on me.” She grins. This time the docent relents, folds the money, and puts it in his pocket.
“Okay, but I have to come at least part way in, so the guard over there doesn’t see me allowing patrons in unescorted.”
John returns and Holly leads them past the docent and into the narrow passageway. As they walk the curved path toward the center of the enclosure, disorientation overtakes them both. The leaning, uneven steel plates throw Holly off balance and she bumps into John, who is stopped a step ahead of her, his nose shoved up close to the plates in the chamber, inspecting them as if they were made of an unknown element.
They reach the center. John looks at her quizzically.
“Look up!” Holly demands.
John leans his head back as a large puff of cumulus clouds drifts over the observable part of the sky.
“I see a cloud. Can’t tell if it’s a ducky or a horsey.”
“Oh, c’mon, it’s not what you see. It’s what you can’t see. Is this enclosure a prison or a womb? I can never make up my mind. I seem to have just enough air to breathe in here. In summer, the heat radiates off the steel like a furnace. In the winter, it’s an icebox.” She pauses. “This is where I truly feel the absence of my father, like a missing limb.”
John almost chokes as he turns toward her, his mind in overdrive, nearly hyperventilating at the prospect of telling her the truth and at the uncertainty of what lies ahead for her and her father when he returns.
She points toward the opening above them. “But then I feel his presence out there, in the sky. This, this opening to everything out there, it makes something as infinite as the heavens comprehensible. You stand here, and you own the part of the sky you can see. It’s yours.”
Holly leans her head back and begins to dance. She twirls round and round, her scarves trailing behind her, a dizzying array of colors streaming like undulating Northern Lights. Curls bounce around her face. Gravel crunches beneath her shoes. Her heart leaps skyward. Her father’s apparition is something she can now see only from this point on the face of the earth, and it never fails to fill her with the joy that has been missing from her life because her father has been missing from her life.
“Holly, your father’s alive,” John blurts out.
Holly doesn’t stop moving. She answers John as if he’s everywhere and nowhere. “I’ve never doubted my father is alive, John. I’ve doubted whether I’d ever see him again, but not that he’s alive.”
“But surely … you must have doubted. It’s been so long. He’s almost seventy years old.”
“If I’d ever imagined him dead, I wouldn’t have felt his presence when I gazed up at the sky, and I wouldn’t have returned here again and again to be with him.” Holly raises her arms toward the crystalline blue, where the infinite connects and covers all the countries on the face of the earth. “Besides,” she adds light-heartedly, “I didn’t fill dozens of journals writing to him over the years thinking he would never read them.”
John remains anchored to the center of the graveled area, while Holly moves circles around him, filling the space between him and the steel walls with waves of color.
“He’s not only alive, Holly. He’s coming home. To America. To Saluki.”
Holly stops and turns toward him. “What? How? How do you know this?” The words erupt in labored fragments.
“Stuart. After he tracked down Moody, he was able to put the pieces together. Or at least most of them. For years, your father has been at Guantanamo. He’s going to be among the first to arrive in Saluki.”
Holly drops the scarves. “You mean, as a …?”
“We don’t know, Holly. We just don’t know. That’s why I’ve been reluctant to tell you. Since I figured out who you really were, I’ve had Stuart trying to do what I couldn’t all those years ago. He’s been combing through classified files and calling in favors, and yet he hasn’t been able to find any evidence that your father is—or ever was—a terrorist, or even a criminal. He says the paper trail on your father stretches from the first to the ninth level of geopolitical hell.”
Holly looks up, chest heaving, trying take in John’s words, trying to imagine her father here with her now. The cloud passes. The November sun is bright, imparting light and warmth to the space. Her cheeks glow from the dancing. She continues to survey the muted, rusted carbon steel, shrinking and swelling, absorbing and emitting warmth and cold, whatever has been made available to it. She steps forward and focuses on one particular spot where the seams gently curve and the plates meet and occasional streaks of silvery gray shine. Prison and womb. Womb and prison. The infinite sky above both.
Then she remembers the note.
“Excuse me, John. I wanted to introduce you to Joe, but there’s something else I came here to do.” Her voice is unsure and John takes a step toward her, but she turns away. She faces the wall, then takes the note out of her pocket and slits the faded tape with her fingernail. She’d waited until she was safe inside Joe to face whatever is written on the paper. She unfolds it slowly.
Womb or prison. Prison or womb. There’s no escaping this moment.
Cheryl,
I could not confess this to you in person, so I wrote it down. I am to blame for your father’s return to Syria. I had no idea how permanent his absence would become. It was the only way out that I could see at the time. I was assured that I may be losing a husband, but that you would not be losing your father. I never thought through the effect on you, I didn’t understand how close you were to him. It was the most selfish thing a person could ever do. But one thing I must tell you. There are two sides to this story—our story; your father’s and mine. You have to know that something horrible happened which caused me to take the action I did. It doesn’t justify what I did, but I hope knowing that helps explain it.
Your mother
Holly’s hand falls to her side. No wonder her mother never looked for her father. She knew he wasn’t coming back because she’s the one who sent him away. Holly desperately wants to run into John’s arms. Bury her face. Let him soothe her. Take away her pain. But, her feet won’t move. When she looks up, he takes three steps towards her, and with his fists still inside his pockets, he raises his jacket and envelopes her fully in his arms, holding her close against his chest.
She does not want to cry. She refuses to cry. She will not cry.
“It’s okay, Holly … if there ever was an okay time to cry, it’s now.” How long they spend in one another’s arms, she doesn’t know. Eventually, she pulls away from him and wraps her arms around herself. Then she leans her head back and cries out to the opening above her. Minutes later they walk slowly through the passageway towards the exit, leaning into one another, the docent still guarding the entrance. A smile lights up his face.
“Congratulations! When’s the wedding?”
On their way back to Saluki, John drives and Holly stares out the window and talks. She needs to fill the time and space with anything but thoughts of her father. Or her mother.
“Did I tell you Penndel is moving to Saluki?”
“You’re kidding.”
“He’s been known to say such things before. But, this time I think he’ll do it. He’ll says he’ll keep his place in the city, but now that he’s supervised the construction of The Halfway House, he’s attached to it.
He’s grown fonder of your town than he ever thought possible. I told him he could be the chief operating officer.”
“Holly, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. I mean, you don’t have permits, easements, electricity, running water. All you have is my permission. It’s a small piece of land with disputed ownership.”
“Facts on the ground, John, we have facts on the ground. It already exists. The chances are lower that someone’s going to ask us to remove it.”
“It’s beginning to make me nervous. I’m not sure I can explain it away if someone asks.”
“Then don’t.”
Holly grows quiet. The golden brown of the corn fields remind her of the surface of the baklava and of Maya’s paintings. Her father is alive. Her father is coming home. They’ll have so much to catch up on. Music. Her journal writings. Her piano. What will he look like? She knows, even though her memory of him hasn’t changed since he left, he will look different. Be different. Perhaps unrecognizably different.
Darker thoughts infiltrate. Was he a terrorist? She couldn’t imagine. And what did her mother mean about her complicity in her father’s absence? And what horrible thing happened to make her send him away? Then even darker thoughts. Can he even function normally? She’d heard horror stories of soldiers and prisoners with post-traumatic stress. What of his health? Had he been well taken care of? She couldn’t put her father in the same context with what she’d read about the Gitmo detainees over the years, the torture the US decided was appropriate for enemy combatants.
Nothing could displace her longing to have her father trace the outline of her ear, feel the roughness of his beard when he had kissed her goodnight. But she was no longer a little girl. She was a grown woman, and her father was an old man.
John breaks her long period of reflection. “Holly?” She continues staring out the window. “I’d be glad to serve as your father’s attorney. I’ll do everything I can to unravel the paper trail, fight for restitution.” When she doesn’t say anything, he continues. “Stuart has pledged to do what he can to help, too. He’s taking early retirement. If the case of Elias Haddad is as complicated as he suspects, no amount of government resources will right this wrong. But together, we can try. We both want to try.”
“I believe you, John, but fortune doesn’t change at a moment’s notice.”
“No, Holly. It can, and it does.”
She turns toward him, leaning against the door. “I’ve spent most of my adult life making sure my emotions never get ahead of the significance of an event. And now is no time to start.”
“I guess I’m the opposite.” He laughs, weakly. “I should warn you, I don’t have a great track record.”
“What does that mean?”
“Years ago I tried to change the world, but was dissuaded by a bomb that blew up a building in DC along with the girl I was to have a first date with the next day.”
“John, that’s horrible! I had no idea.”
“You’re not the only one with secrets.”
“No, and I admit I often act like I am.”
“I lost my job when Wamsler lost his election. I came home and eventually ran for state-wide office. I lost. Then I tried to save Saluki with my medical center. I failed at that, too.”
“No, you didn’t fail to save Saluki, John. You succeeded, only in a way different from your original intentions.”
John looks over at her. He wants to smile in agreement, but can’t. “I’m going to put everything I have left towards freeing your father.”
“I appreciate that, but tell me about the bombing, about the girl—”
“Long story.”
“We still have an hour in the car.”
John turns back to face the road. “Her name was Jami.” He takes a deep breath and begins again. “I met a young woman. I fell in love, love at first sight. It really does happen, you know. She worked in the offices of this Arab-American civil rights organization. We’d been introduced briefly by the director that afternoon when I had a meeting representing the senator.” John laughs bitterly. “No sooner had I left the office than I called her and asked her for a date. From the corner phone booth. That’s how smitten I was. We were to have lunch the next day.” He hesitates. “That night, she was murdered. A pipe bomb. Set by a group of domestic Jewish extremists. Back then the word ‘terrorist’ hadn’t even entered the popular lexicon, unless you were Palestinian.” John grips the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white. “The fucking assholes were never brought to justice, never apprehended.”
Holly instinctively grasps John’s arm and squeezes. “I’m sorry, John. So sorry.” All those meetings with the Chicago chapter of that group blur together in her memory, her impatience with them, her singular focus on her father’s disappearance, the years living with Dalton.
They ride in silence, content to let the miles roll by. Finally, John speaks up again. “I remember that series of attempted bombings and arsons on AAAI offices around the country. The volunteers in the Chicago office, when I met with them in DC, wondered when it would be their turn.” He turns to look at her. “You know I contacted that teacher, Dalton, about you connecting with the Chicago office. This was before the bombing. I thought maybe someone in the community there would know something about your father. Did he ever tell you?”
“Yeah. I volunteered for a while. But it wasn’t for me. And no one knew anything. It was like my father just poof, disappeared.”
“Until now.”
Approaching Saluki, Holly watches from her window as John maneuvers onto the interstate heading south. They overtake an old school bus painted blue. The vehicle’s windows are painted black, like the non-descript vehicles used to move prisoners from one place to another. Is that the kind of bus they’d transport her father in? She remembers riding the lumbering yellow bus to school, all the kids loud, talking over one another. Girls scheming about what they’d do at recess. Boys horsing around or teasing girls. Every day, for so many years, she missed her father. The not knowing was torture. Yet, even then, somehow, despite the phantom sense of his presence, or because of it, she woke each day thinking it’s another day in paradise because that’s what her father would have wanted.
“There,” Holly points out the window. “That’s where I want to put the sign. The Halfway House.”
“A sign as bright as your Holly Chicago sign in Cairo?”
“Well, more in keeping with federal highway standards,” she says with a laugh.
“You know, you don’t just plop a sign on a federal highway.”
“Oh? How come those memorials for people killed in car wrecks are never taken away?”
“The woman has an answer for everything,” John mutters.
Holly points at the detention facility in the distance. “I still can’t get used to seeing it from the highway,”
John sighs. “One day, I’ll be responsible for something in this town besides a prison.”
She reaches out and touches his arm again. “If you had built the medical center, my father would be lost to me forever.”
What does one say to that? he wonders. He puts on the blinker and takes the first exit. “Almost home.”
“I could use a pick-me-up,” Holly says.
“There’s a tricked out Mayan Mocha at Egyptian Grounds with my name written all over the cup.”
“Don’t you have to get back to your wife, your family obligations?”
John winces. “I told you. She practically lives at her parents now.”
“That’s not what I asked. You know it’s not what I meant.”
“I told her we were going to the arts district to see some economic development ideas in St. Louis that might work for Saluki.”
“We, as in me and you? How honest of you.”
“If I was trying to hide something, would I show up at Egyptian Grounds, of all places, with another woman?”
“OK, you can buy me a coffee. But then I want to stop by the Halfway House. Penndel is supposed to be there today.
After they order their coffees to go, John cuts through the grid of streets to the south end of town. Across from the park, the tall fence of the detention center looms next to the road. Holly looks over at the federal facility trying to imagine her father there, waiting for her. And she thinks of her mother and the confession tucked in her pocket. A lone bus is parked in the facility’s parking lot. It’s blue. Identical to the bus they passed on the interstate. Even from here, Holly sees men lined up along one side of it. Trembling, she grabs John’s arm and points.
“John … do you think—?”
He slows down and squints. “Could be. Stuart said they might start arriving as early as this week. He said he would notify me the minute your father arrives, but no word yet.”
They park behind Penndel’s van, as close to the Halfway House as they can, and walk along boards resting on top of ground muddied by recent November rains.
Penndel greets them at the door. “Heard you guys drive up. So, John, what did you think of Joe?”
“Actually, I’m still digesting it all.”
“What the hell?” Holly says suddenly, turning to Penndel as she becomes aware of the music filling the space.
“You like it?”
“How did you get a recording of my music?”
“Remember when I asked you to play one of your compositions on that electronic keyboard?”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. You’d be amazed by what you can do with software today. I used a program that essentially writes out the notes on staff paper, then I had a keyboardist friend play it and record it in his studio.
Holly was dumbfounded.
Penndel winks at John. “What better background music for The Halfway House than a composition from the founder, right?”
Holly wants to rush Penndel and pummel him, but she doesn’t. Besides, you can’t beat up someone in a wheelchair. Instead, she makes her way over to the window with the view through the trees to the detention facility. In the distance, she can make out a man in an overcoat standing off to the side, away from the guards, and a line of men marching slowly towards the building. She wants to run out the door toward the barbed fencing. Maybe, if she gets closer, she just might see him.
My father is alive!
A smile spreads across her face. A smile just like the irrepressible one she knows he has on his face at this moment.
He is home.
She knows that no matter how old he is now, there is a bounce to his step, he is weightless at this moment, the moment at which all the other moments of his life no longer matter. And soon, all those past moments will cease even to exist. And that moment will be the only moment that counts. Because that will be the moment they hold each other again. The moment before the rest of their lives.