I refuse to believe this man. He is not welcome here, he does not speak any truth I understand.
“Where was your husband in the last few days?”
“Offshore. On a rig, an oil rig. It’s his job.”
“When was the last time you spoke with him?”
“Yesterday.”
“Do you know if your husband was associating with Islamic radicals?”
“What? What are you insinuating? Just because someone is a Muslim doesn’t mean he’s a terrorist.”
I look again at the ring in my palm and see the gold shop where I bought it, remember writing down on a piece of paper Beneath the Same Heaven. I think I am going to vomit. “Excuse me,” I say to the man who has thankfully stopped talking. I leave the ring on the arm of the sofa. I barely make it to the bathroom before the heaving starts. Tears are running down my face from the effort. He knocks on the door.
“Mrs. Siddique, are you all right?”
My God, what a question.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Siddique, but I’ll need to bring you in for questioning.”
“Give me a minute.” I rinse my mouth, wash my face. I don’t even recognize the contorted face in the mirror, the trembling hand opening the door.
The man is sitting again on the edge of the couch. “I’ll go with you,” I tell him. “But I have to get something from the kitchen first.” I return to the baby bottles in the sink, carefully rinsing off every tiny bubble, trying to buy myself some time to think. I return to the living room, a bottle in each hand. The man, he is really very ugly with his pasty skin and balding head, looks at me strangely. “I have a baby,” I explain. “He’ll need his milk.”
Hours later, in the afternoon light, I close the car door and scream, not the scream of childbirth, not the scream of nightclub frenzy; but the scream of a woman becoming a widow.
The bomb has exploded in my life. The buildings I see are intact, the traffic still stops and starts on the streets around me, my skin and bones are unharmed, but the very fibers that held my life together—the threads of love and trust that bound me—have all been rent today.
The shrill ring of the phone rattles the charged silence in the car. I can see my mother’s number on the screen. I am paralyzed, cannot possibly speak to her now. I will have to hurry to pick up the children in time. Michael’s school will cancel his afterschool enrollment if I’m late three times.
I take a deep breath, blow my nose and wipe my eyes, and turn the key in the ignition. The radio blares to life. “…at this point, we cannot be certain that the bombers are affiliated with Al-Qaeda, or if they are homegrown terrorists. But we do know that both men, identified as Ali Al-Hassam and Rashid Siddique were both Muslim immigrants…” I slam my fist into the radio, turn it off. I power down the phone before I shift the car into gear.
Clutching Michael’s hand, we walk down the hall of the daycare and a couple of mothers greet me warmly, balancing babies and diaper bags. The late-shift caregivers in the infant room are wiping the counter clear and straightening up the empty play area. I see no babies.
“Don’t worry, Andrew’s sleeping in the crib room,” one of the caregivers responds to my alarmed look. “Hi Michael,” she rustles his hair. She doesn’t know yet. She still sees me as the woman I was yesterday. I take off my shoes and pad across the carpet to retrieve my beloved sleeping baby from his assigned crib.
I inhale his smell and resist my tears. The caregivers are waiting for me so they can go home. I return and retrieve from my purse the single bottle I was able to pump today. I take two empty bottles from Andrew’s designated space in the refrigerator. “Stressful day,” I explain to the caregiver. She nods kindly.
Back at home, I move ceaselessly. As long as I can keep moving, as long as the children are happy and the food is on the table and the laundry is in the dryer and the bottles are washed and my hair is washed and the diaper bag is emptied and the bills are opened and sorted…the day didn’t really happen. Just before I sleep, I turn the phone back on and check my messages. I sit down with a pen and paper. The first is from my managing editor wondering if I will be able to make the call we had scheduled for ten minutes prior to his message, then another suggesting a time tomorrow to reschedule. I write down the time he suggests as a reminder.
The next is from my mother. “Kathryn?” I can hear the concern in her voice. “I’m just calling to see how you’re doing, and the children. We haven’t heard from you this week. Please give me a call as soon as you’re able.”
With each new message, I hope that it will be Rashid’s voice, I hope that somehow, some digital representation of my husband will come through this little plastic device and restore my world to me.
Next is a friend I have known for more than a decade, but have hardly had a chance to speak to since Andrew was born. She asks how I am doing, trying to sound interested but not alarmed. She knows.
The next message is a reminder from the car dealership to schedule an oil change.
Then my mother again, “Kathryn, please call. We, uh, we’ve seen the news, and we’re worried about you. Please call as soon as you can. We love you.”
I don’t need to turn on the news to know where I fit in the 24-hour news channels and the conflict-fuelled talk shows. The misguided victim wife, the naïve innocent abroad who was deceived into marriage and unwittingly helped facilitate this monstrous act.
And a final message, “Kathryn, your father and I would feel better if we know you’re not alone. We’ve booked the first flight in the morning. We’ll take a taxi from the airport. Please call as soon as you can.”
I check the clock, past midnight. I pour myself a scotch trying to calm my nerves. I pour myself a second and then unplug the television and turn off the lights. I pull back the covers and am overwhelmed with feeling for my two sons who will grow up into men in this complicated, critical, cryptic world. I wiggle in between them, feeling their bodies on both sides of me. I hold their tiny hands for protection—whether for their protection or my own I am not sure.
The phone alarm trills again in the morning at the usual hour. I wake, and for one delicious moment, I experience the hope and freshness that accompany new beginnings the world over. I look at the boys, curled up against me, their skin radiant, their expressions peaceful. The bed is so spacious when Rashid is away on a job. And then I remember. The memory of the previous day’s events comes crashing down like a guillotine, severing my future from my past.
I hear the birds outside the window, I hear the cars on the street. The world outside remains unchanged, but for the life of my husband. And the lives of the others who were killed. The thought of the others is too much for me to bear. I don’t know them, I have not seen their faces, have not loved them, have not built a family with them.
Andrew stirs. His eyes open and I see them so clearly. They turn immediately to me and seem to reflect some deep understanding. This disturbs me, as if this baby, who has no language, no knowledge of how the world works, of how we deceive ourselves, has comprehended what has happened in our lives. His lips quiver and before the cry comes I move to him so he can nurse. I feel the milk come in, the relief that always comes with this transaction. But the relief reaches only to my stomach where it confronts a mass, a hardness, tightness in the muscles, pain. I resist the pain, try to divert my attention by thinking ahead. I have a lot to do today, I will get up and make my list even before I go to the office, so I won’t forget anything. I wish Andrew would hurry up and finish.
The phone rings, triggering a surge of adrenaline. I pick it up, hoping for some good news. An unfamiliar number appears on the screen. Without pausing, I answer, thinking maybe, by some miracle, Rashid is calling me from a payphone somewhere. “Hello?” I say quietly, so I won’t wake Michael.
“Hello, is this Mrs. Siddique?” a man says. The man is not Rashid.
“Who is this?”
“My name is John Carter, I’m a reporter with the New York Times, and I’m trying to reach the wife of Rashid Siddique.”
My heart beats furiously. My mind races for an answer.
“Hello? Is this Mrs. Siddique?”
“It…you…this…you have the wrong number.” I hang up the phone. My eyes scan the room. The phone rings again. The same number appears on the screen. I do not answer it. I realize with a sinking feeling that after enough rings my recorded voice will confidently confirm he has reached the line of Kathryn Siddique and I would like him to please leave a message. Silence. Andrew tugs at his toes and his sleeves. Michael groans and stretches his legs long. The phone rings again. I power down the phone. I lay there, imagining how many other reporters, law enforcement officials, gawkers will hunt me down, will press me for information, vent their outrage and confusion and grief at me.
Someone knocks on the door. Finally, I leave the bed. Pulling back the kitchen blinds, I see three television news vans parked on the street, neighbors talking into reporters’ microphones. I shut the blinds. I check both door locks are turned, the shades are pulled. And then I pretend. I wash the baby’s face and bottom, I dress him in clean clothes. The knocking continues. “Just ignore it,” I tell Michael, hugging him and helping him dress himself. He chatters away about the lives of his toys, the shoes he wants that light up when you jump.
I set Michael in front of a bowl of Cheerios, Andrew into his swing with an assortment of toys before I shower. With only the usual interruptions of spilled juice and frustrated cries over dropped toys, I dress myself as if we were preparing for any other day. The knocking continues.
“Kathryn?” a woman’s voice calls. “Kathryn, it’s your parents.”
Michael jumps down from his chair, turns the knobs and dead-bolts in the incorrect order, hopping with excitement. “It sounds like Grandma. Did you know Grandma was coming?”
“Go back,” I command him. I slowly turn the locks, open the door just wide enough to allow my parents in. I hide from the cameras pointed in my direction.
Michael jumps at my father, who stoically hugs my son. Andrew squeals from the swing for attention. And I burst into tears. How fragile are my defenses. How ill equipped I am to handle any of this.
My mother reaches her arms round me, worry wrinkles her face, ages her. And I am a child again, wishing that she could cure all of this with a band aid and a kiss. She holds me for a long time, practically holds me up as I sink my weight against her. She says quietly into my ear, “What have you told Michael?”
“Nothing,” I whisper. “He thinks Rashid is away on a long job.” I pull back and wipe my tears. Michael, at my side, looks perplexed, seeks clues from the three of us adults about how he should feel.
“OK Michael, let’s brush your teeth,” I say. “We don’t want to be late for school.”
“But Mom, Grandma and Grandpa just got here.”
“They’ll be here when you get home from school. Don’t worry,” I say for my benefit as much as his.
My mother takes his hand. “I will help you,” his face lights up. “You show me which toothbrush is yours.”
My father kneels down to kiss Andrew on the head. Habitually, I push the swing back and forth and wonder what to say. My father puts his arms around me, quickly hugs me as if to confirm he is in my corner, and immediately launches into questions over the baby’s head with a businesslike efficiency.
“Do you have a lawyer?”
“No, what for? Do I need a lawyer?”
“OK, I have a friend I’ll contact. Make sure you don’t say anything to those news reporters gathering outside. What’s your financial situation? Did Rashid have a life insurance policy?”
“Uh, I think so, maybe through his company.” I am off guard. “Dad, I’m still not sure he is dead.”
“Really, why do you say that? What do you know? What did you know?”
“I didn’t know, I don’t know anything. I haven’t seen a body. Only his wedding ring that the FBI showed me.”
“What did you say to the FBI? What kinds of questions did they ask you?”
For a moment I feel something like pride. “I didn’t tell them anything they couldn’t have found out from public records. I told them how we met, that I visited his family in Pakistan. I told them that we had a wedding in Lahore and that you and Mom and Ted were there. They insisted that…”
“You told them I was in Pakistan?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
He looks down and runs his fingers through his hair, letting out a long exhale. “People in certain policy circles might think it not so wise that I was in Pakistan at that time in our relationship with them.”
“Dad,” my voice rises, suddenly defensive, “they would be able to see that in your passport. The American Chamber ran a little blurb in their newsletter. It was hardly confidential.”
The baby’s swing has stilled.
“All right, never mind about that. What about your finances, do you have enough to live on for a while?”
“Rashid is always very careful about the money, so I think I have enough for about six months, longer if I keep working.”
Michael returns with a big smile, my mother’s hand protectively on his shoulder. “Are you ready to take Michael to school?” she asks.
“Yes, thanks for helping with his teeth.” I gather up the children’s bags, grateful for a mundane task.
“I’ll go with you,” my father says decisively. “Margaret, you stay here.”
“Can’t Grandma come with us too?” Michael complains.
“No beta…no Michael,” I tell him, the Urdu word suddenly foreign in my mouth, “it will be too crowded with all of us in the car.”
In the car, my father, eerily reserved, responds only occasionally to the questions Michael asks. We all walk together into the day care center, me, a woman sandwiched between two generations of family. Once I point down the hall to direct my father, he takes the lead, walking at a dignified pace, chin up, the hard leather of his heels clicking precisely on the linoleum floor. I don’t look at the other mother who passes me, she hardly notices me behind the unfamiliar man. He opens the door to the infant room for me, bright tissue paper flowers rustle against his shoulder as he makes way for me. The caregiver looks up, I see a smile flicker over her face before she recognizes me, and her expression goes cold. She makes no conversation as she takes the baby. I introduce the man behind me as my father. They nod at each other, but do not speak. She looks in the baby’s eyes so she need not face me again. She has seen the news. I am now the woman from the news, a woman to be feared or pitied, but not a woman to talk with or joke with, not the woman I was before.
I walk back the way I came in, protected by my father. In the car my father still does not speak. I pretend again. I cheerfully walk Michael to the door of the school, kneel down to give him a hug. He smiles, turns to join his classmates. Will they know? Will his teachers know? Will they see him differently as well? I have to tell him something. What? By tonight.
My father has moved to the drivers’ seat. He waits until he has pulled away from the school, the car seats both empty behind us, before he speaks. “You do understand how serious this is, don’t you?”
I only nod.
“The FBI may give you a day or so of freedom, may seem to be leaving you alone. But they will be watching your every move, they will tap every call, they will monitor every email. You are now a terrorist’s wife.”
My throat constricts, my breathing nearly stops.
He looks in the rearview mirror, quickly turns down a side street and pulls up alongside a bank with a courtyard. The fountain in the center perpetually spouts a great column of water that falls back on itself in predictably chaotic forms. He parks the car.
“Come and sit with me.”
I sit stunned, my father politely opens the door for me, helps me out. I am embarrassed by his chivalry. We walk and he motions for me to sit on a public bench with a view of the fountain.
He smoothes his hair, then sits with his hands in his lap. “Perhaps they have already placed a microphone in your car. I want to be sure we won’t be overheard.”
I look back at the car, pull my purse protectively onto my lap.
“Listen Kathryn, you know how much we love you. I’ll do whatever’s in my power to help you. I’ll call in every favor, contact any person I know, go to any lengths to protect you. But I need to know exactly how you’re involved. I need to know exactly what you know. You need to tell me anything Rashid said to you in the last weeks and months.”
I clench my fists to hold the tears back. The water splashes, sounding like flesh hitting flesh. I let my breath out silently.
“Now don’t cry, we’re just having a conversation here. Just look at the fountain if you need to, and tell me what you know.”
“Rashid had talked about revenge,” I say slowly, wondering if I am betraying him. “He talked about the way a country takes revenge when its people are killed.”
“When did he talk about that?”
“After his father was killed. He’d been quiet for weeks, been visiting the mosque in the mornings. I thought it was his process of mourning.”
“Which mosque?”
“I didn’t ask. I assumed the Pakistani mosque in Artesia. Michael went with him once.”
My father presses his palms together. He almost looks like he is going to pray. “Did he have any new friends he spoke of, any people he went to see in the mosque?”
I feel my muscles tighten at this second interrogation.
“I need to understand how they’ll accuse him, how you’ll be implicated.”
“He never mentioned anyone. Only Michael told me he saw Rashid speaking angrily with another man when he went with his father.” I look at my father, alarmed. “Don’t let them question Michael. He doesn’t know anything. He’s just a child.”
“Don’t worry. No one can talk to Michael without your permission. And how did Rashid treat you and the children? Did he act strangely? Was he gone at unusual times?”
“He’s always gone at unusual times. That’s the nature of his job.” My voice grows shrill.
“And how was he around you and the children?”
I am silent remembering warmth, the feel of his skin, the heft of his limbs, the darkness of his hair. And then a stone cold numbness.
My father holds my hand. “I’m so sorry,” he says offering me a handkerchief from his breast pocket.
I can’t match my father’s stoicism. I bury my face against his chest. He places an arm around me in a rigid gesture of comfort. He smells like wool and starched cotton. “How could he do something like this?” I sob, then catch myself, pull away, smooth the handkerchief in my hands. “Perhaps he has done nothing.”
“Kathryn, unfortunately, this is not an unusual story for a Pakistani man.”
I look away.
“I lived around these kinds of cultures long enough to know about revenge. When a man’s family member is killed, he’s obligated. The events that can unfold from that death are inexorable. What’s unusual, he was a Pakistani man in America, with an American wife. But he was Muslim, went to the mosque, it will be understood here as Islamic terrorism. Plays right into the story that we understand… Islamic cultures are barbaric. Muslims are heartless. They’re not like us, we’re justified in invading and bombing their countries.”
I look at my watch. “I have to call my editor,” I’m suddenly rushing. “I have a meeting.” My father sits quietly while I dial the number. I fish a notebook and my pen out of my bag.
“Hi Jerome, it’s Kathryn. Sorry I wasn’t able to make our call yesterday…Yes, I’m fine,” I say stiffly. “…But Rashid has no role with the journal. I work for the journal... What do you mean, problematic?... Administrative leave?”
I let the phone drop to my lap. It remains illuminated for a few seconds before going dark.
My father looks at me. “The journal is letting you go?”
I shake my head, looking down at my feet. Then slowly, queasily, I flip my notebook shut, slide my pen into the spiral binding and return it to my purse. “No one will assume I am innocent, will they, Dad?”
“You don’t need me to tell you terrorism has united us as Americans.”
Terrorism. The word. I hate it. I hear it come from my father’s mouth, I know it is somehow linked to my husband’s actions, I feel it beginning to shred the fibers of my heart.
“And I’m afraid, Kathryn, you cannot expect that anyone will treat you generously in this situation.”
I am sitting next to this man, but he is completely separate from me. I am alone, an island, no longer connected to the people and things that once held me in place. Only my children will anchor me now. What do I call them now? If I am widowed, are they orphaned? Half-orphaned?
“What should I do? What about the children?” I ask.
He looks past the fountain as if trying to divine a path to safety. Two starlings dive past each other, darting back up at the last minute, startling a few sparrows that have come to dip their beaks in the edge of the fountain.
He helps me stand, a protective arm around my shoulder. He has no answer.
My father navigates through the thicket of reporters that have gathered outside the parking garage. My mother opens the door before we even reach it as if pulling us to safety. She has found the one apron I own—she must have looked through every cupboard. She looks up and down the hall.
“I thought you might be Ted.” My mother smiles at me as if I were just coming home from school and she had been expecting me with an afternoon snack.
“Ted?” I haven’t thought of my older brother since my world capsized.
“I called him,” my mother says gathering three coffee cups. “I asked him to come up from San Diego, because I thought we should all be together.” She pours the coffee, the milk, and the sugar, remembering the exact proportions my father and I prefer.
I wrap my hands around the mug, trying to absorb some comfort through the ceramic. She rests her hand on mine, looks into my eyes. “Michael needs to know, Kathy.”
I nod, I know that this is as important as the legal and logistical questions my father has asked, maybe even more so. I swirl the coffee in the cup.
“No good can come from keeping this from them.”
“But what can I say? Michael won’t understand what’s happened, why his father’s done this. If he’s done this.”
“You need to explain why his father’s not coming home. Better he hears something from you than something from his classmates or his teachers.”
There is a knock on the door. My mother calmly moves to the door, and calls out before opening it. “Who’s there?” as if a neighbor might be coming asking to borrow a cup of sugar.
“It’s Ted.”
I exhale as the door opens.
My brother now has a few grey hairs in his goatee, a few more pounds around his middle than when I last saw him. Why do I feel disappointed when others age? Why do I wish for some impossible immortal stability?
He hugs my mother and then my father perfunctorily before taking three strides with his long legs and sitting down opposite me. “So…what kind of clusterfuck do we have going on here?”
He is so without angst, so-matter-of-fact that I let out a guffaw, part laugh, part sob.
“So, I know that Rashid went back to Pakistan to bury his old man. Thank you, American-military-industrial complex. And then, what, he decides to repay the favor? Avenging hero? And in the process my little sister and their kids are gonna get screwed.”
My parents know Ted’s irreverence well enough not to contradict him. Our mother speaks first, “We were talking about what she should tell Michael.”
“Oh man,” Ted says, accepting a cup of coffee from our mother. “I’m so sorry. This is such a shitty situation for you. Your husband tries to blow up a freeway—wouldn’t we all love to do that sometimes—but it’s not only really stupid, but by the way illegal and morally reprehensible, and now you get to figure out how to explain that to a kid.”
He takes a sip of coffee and nods at our mother. “Where does Michael think he is now?”
“Rashid told us he had a big offshore job inVentura. I expected he’d be gone about a week,” I say.
“And Michael’s cool with that? He doesn’t think anything’s up?”
I sip my coffee. “Maybe.”
Ted pauses. “Just tell him there was an accident on the oil platform and his father’s been blasted to smithereens.” He narrates my situation as if it were a cartoon.
I see my mother glance to my father for his reaction.
“I can’t do that. I can’t make up such a lie,” I protest.
“Why not? It’s not so far fetched, oil is dangerous business. Explosives, pressure, radioactive tools, poisonous sulfur gas in the wells. Tell the story so it has shades of truth. Maybe say he was coming back from a job and he made a mistake, got into a car accident and the explosives in the truck blew up and killed him and his co-worker.”
I look from my brother to my parents—who taught me never to lie—to gauge their reaction.
“That’s not such a bad idea,” my mother says.
“Really?”
“Think about how Michael will grow up,” she says. “It’ll be hard enough that his father’s been killed suddenly. But to grow up knowing that his father was a terrorist and killed other people.”
Again, I flinch at the word. Terrorist. Hearing it from my mother feels like a betrayal.
“And how can he possibly understand that some culture might think this logical, justified. Better to disconnect him from that, to protect the good memories he has of his father,” she says.
“But even if I tell him that, the whole world knows a different story. How do I maintain my story in the face of that?” I gesture toward the news vans gathered outside.
We are all silent.
Ted slides his hand across the table, as if turning the page in an imaginary comic book. “A whole new life for you,” he concentrates, teasing out each word, each new thought as he goes. “You should move, leave your job, go back to your maiden name, for the children also. They can’t stay at their school, the day care. You’ll need to start fresh.”
“How do I do that? You mean like a witness protection plan?”
My father raises an eyebrow, “Maybe the FBI would be willing to help you make those kinds of arrangements. I could call some friends at the Bureau.”
“Fuck the FBI, Dad. Sorry, I just mean Kathy doesn’t need the government to give her permission to start over. She can just do what she needs to do. She can move with the boys to San Diego, they can even crash in our guest house until she finds a place. She can find a new job, using her references that knew her with her maiden name. When people try to talk to the boys about Rashid Siddique, you can all just say he was not their father, they’ll have different last names.”
I turn his words over in my mind, feeling the hope they offer, a path forward out of this morass. I simply shed this life, like a snake shedding its skin, there is no shame in that change for the snake, it is simply growth, regeneration. I look up at Ted, who sits almost smugly waiting for an answer from me. All I want is to be alone, to sit with myself, with this absence, examine the gaping wound I feel. I leave the table and lock myself in the bathroom.
I use the toilet, wash my hands, look at myself in the mirror. I see the woman reflected there, and wonder who she is. I remember the younger me, the woman laughing and dancing in the nightclub, the woman who fell in love, the woman who went to Pakistan, who embraced, trusted, loved. I see myself rounded, glowing with the prospect of a new baby. I see the woman at a desk, making calls, questioning intellectuals, politicians, businessmen. What other woman is waiting inside this body? I run my fingers through my long hair. What is it worth to me now? I follow the lines of my eyebrows, the wrinkles that spread out from the corners of my eyes, proof of abundant past happiness in my life. I watch my lips, draw them up in a smile, down in a frown. I run my hand down my chin, and over my neck, my sternum. I slide my fingers down between my breasts, over the softness of my belly and continuing past my pelvis, to my pubis. I pause, almost holding myself up, supporting this place, the locus of my family. Rashid entered me here and from here the boys emerged into the world. Who will know it now? What will it mean? How could the man who knew this place have abandoned this marriage, his children, me? I open my mouth and scream. I draw my hands up to cover my face. I feel a void spreading out from my center and then everything goes dark and silent.
“Mommy?” I hear a tiny voice, sad, frightened. “Mommy?” I feel a tiny hand stroke my forehead.
I open my eyes to silhouettes. Michael stands beside my bed, his little shoulders so straight, so perfectly proportioned. Behind him my mother, light suffusing through the grey hairs coiffed above her head. She holds Andrew in her arms.
I am disoriented. The room seems too dark. A line of pale light seeps in at the edge of the drawn curtains. I reach out for Michael’s shoulder and draw him to me. He comes closer and rests his head on my chest, while I stroke his hair. My head throbs dully with every beat of my heart.
“What happened?” I question my mother over his head.
“You fainted in the bathroom.” She sits on the edge of my bed. “Ted managed to walk you in here, we figured if you could sleep…”
Michael climbs to the inside of the bed, holding my hand. “Are you feeling better, Mommy? Grandma said you were sick, that’s why you couldn’t come to pick me up from school.”
I push myself up to sitting, feeling the milk pressing in my breasts. “Mom, give me the baby, he must be hungry.”
“I gave him a bottle about a half hour ago,” she says.
Guilt. I have failed both of my children.
“Mommy, where is Daddyji? Grandma said I should talk to you about it.”
I look from my mother to my father to Ted. I draw in a deep breath. And I lie. “Your father was in a terrible accident,” I repeat the story my brother has told me. “He had been offshore on a job and there was a terrible explosion in the vehicle he was driving.” A small lie, a sin of omission really, I did not actually utter any false statements.
Michael looks up at me, eyebrows raised in alarm. “Is he all right? When will I see him?”
I shut my eyes tight, seeing Rashid in my mind’s eye as I last saw him, the night before he left on the job. I open my eyes and look at my son, this beautiful creature who carries Rashid’s DNA. And I tell him the truth. “Michael, your father has been killed.” His eyebrows rise even higher. “I’m so sorry my child.” Yet more pressure, tears behind my eyes. “We will not see him again.”
“You mean he’s gone forever? Like Babu?”
He has no idea just how the two events are linked, only that the outcome is the same. A man we loved will never appear before us again in the flesh. “Oh Michael,” I hold him against me, reach for the baby from my mother, “I’m afraid he is gone. Gone like Babu.”
His tears come at first as little sniffles, then open up into giant gaping sobs. Andrew wakes, disturbed, and adds his own cries. I question my mother with my eyes. Have I done the right thing? Have I lied in a way that will protect my son? She nods at me, gently reaches out to hold Michael. I loosen my embrace and he lurches into his grandmother’s arms. “I want my Daddy, I want my Daddy,” he repeats over and over as she strokes his hair.
Andrew flails his arms back and forth as if he is beating me. I lift my shirt. He angrily latches on my breast and soon quiets. I lean back and feel the pressure easing. The words have been said, the milk is flowing, the tears are running down my cheeks.
The next few days pass in a blur. Ted returns to San Diego and tells his wife, Janet, we will be moving in with them. My father takes charge of reviewing all of our documents, talking to the bank, the landlord, the insurance companies. My mother takes charge of the children, who do not return to school and daycare. She takes them out to the park, the library, the ice cream store when the FBI officials come to the house every day. They ask again and again the same questions: who did Rashid associate with, where did he go, who called him? My father guards the door, my mother guards the telephone. At the center of this flurry of activity, I participate only as a source of information, intelligence, milk. I want to stop something, to exert some influence that will reverse these events, return me to my previous life. But I am mute, as in a dream when you are threatened or attacked, but incapable of letting out a scream that might save you.
The people around me reveal surprising facts in this process. My father finds Rashid had purchased an expensive life insurance policy, just after he returned from Pakistan, that covered almost every conceivable event. The FBI shows me phone records displaying calls Rashid had made and received with a young Palestinian man who had begun frequenting the mosque in Artesia—the man who was also in the truck when it blew up. Rashid’s company sends letters detailing a series of small discrepancies in the inventories of their tools; electrical connections, small quantities of explosives, even a radioactive source that had gone missing for a couple of days and then mysteriously reappeared.
Every night after the children sleep, my parents sit with me. They attempt to construct a story, a new iteration each day as we learn more.
I feel as if I am developing a relationship with a different man, a man who only speaks to me from the past and through others. I want to hate him. But I see in every bit of information a meticulous devotion to his family, both his Pakistani family and us. Every time he spoke with the Palestinian, he then texted me asking about us, or the children, expressing his love, asking me if he could pick up something I needed on his way home.
Tonight my father seizes on this point, speculating. “The Palestinian,” my father says, as he might have chosen the butler from a cast of characters in the murder detective board game we played when I was a child, “he no doubt felt some sympathy with Rashid. Both their fathers had been killed by powerful militaries. The Homeland Security analysts couch this as a political action, inspired by a fanatical Islam. But Rashid reached out to his family after each call…this was much more personal.”
I think about their fathers, Rashid’s I knew, Ali’s I imagine. I watch my own father, here on my couch, loving me.
“We should ask about the Palestinian’s phone records,” my mother says, “see if he also texted his family after their conversations.” She writes this down on the everpresent yellow legal pad that records our evolving to do list: provide a death certificate for the insurance company, provide the FBI hair samples from the boys to confirm Rashid’s DNA in the wreckage so I can receive a death certificate, take new passport photos of the boys so I can request a legal name change, revise my resume to eliminate any international work. The list grows more complex than I can comprehend.
Nowhere on the list, however, is any funeral. Without a body, of course, there is no need to call a mortician, decide on cremation or burial, choose a casket or call about plots. Muslims would have made sure to bury the body in a simple wooden box and say the ritual prayers as soon as possible after his death. But we are not Muslims, my parents are not equipped to orchestrate such a ceremony—I tell myself—we have very practical reasons preventing us from observing the usual death rituals.
But there is not even any mention of a memorial. The writing on the pad shows my parents straining to be helpful, even-handed. In my father’s hurried, almost self-important block letters, I see a proud man, careful about his actions. In my mother’s classic flowing cursive, I see a desire to return to a pleasant order. But I know between those lines, they are so deeply disappointed in Rashid, and perhaps even in me for my choices, that I cannot possibly ask them to produce or cooperate with some ceremony that would eulogize the man I loved.
So I am left; a sentence without a period, an envelope with an open flap, a door swinging without a latch, a departure without a goodbye.
“Kathryn,” my father says, “I think we’ve done about all we can from here. We also have to get back to our own lives, check our mail, the house, the garden.”
I pull in my lower lip, bite hard.
He reaches out for my hand. “Everything is in motion with the insurance, with your move. Ted and Janet will be here next week to help you bring the children down. The movers are scheduled to come the same day. Janet has enrolled Michael in the same school as his cousins and arranged a spot for Andrew in a very good day care.”
“We know it won’t be easy for you, Kathy.” My mother sets her hands on her knees, very properly. “You’re a strong woman, you’ve shown that you can handle anything, anyone. This will be no different, but you’ll have to grieve, there’s no shortcut, and that’s not something we can do for you.”
I have a moment to make it different, ask them to help me say goodbye with some ritual. I look into my lap. “Do you think… could you maybe…?”
My mother rushes into my pause. “We can come back down as soon as you need us. And we will call you as soon as we land, and as often as you need. We will always be here for you.” I can see her saying all the right things. “We just need to check back in on our responsibilities at home, it’s been three weeks.”
I understand. This is a nightmare for them too, and they need to escape. My mother glances at my father. He tilts his head ever so slightly in approval. Age has eroded the firm line of his jaw, a few whiskers remain just below his lip, eluding the razor in his now less-steady hand.
“We’re planning to leave the day after tomorrow.” A reediness creeps into my father’s voice. “Will that be all right for you?”
I will have failed my parents, denied them the ease they deserve at this point in their lives, I will have failed to honor my husband in his death with a memorial service, and I will have failed to provide for my sons the one man they will need most in their lives. A trilogy of little tragedies, one for each generation I touch, tattooed across my heart.
“Of course.” I sigh. “Of course.”
In the morning, I take charge. I prepare the coffee. I set the yellow legal pad at my place on the table. I make a round through the rooms, gathering up the things they have forgotten to pack. My parents seem relieved, my mother hugs me and praises my new persona as if it were the prodigal son. I can see the tension ebbing from their faces, I see my father focus intently on Michael, alternately pulling and tickling his ears. Michael laughs with delight. My mother holds Andrew on her lap, his little feet kneading her middle as she traces the features of his face with her fingers.
The window has closed, I can ask them for no more. They have given me all they are capable of. I maintain my charade for a full day, occasionally believing my own performance, before shepherding everyone into the car. And before I can stop them, I am waving them off at the airport.
On the way home I make a point of seeking out an unfamiliar grocery store. I don’t want to be recognized as I purchase eggs and milk and apple juice. Michael chatters up and down the aisles, asking me when Grandma and Grandpa will be back, how far is San Diego, what will his new teacher’s name be. I don’t take off my sunglasses, he can’t see as I squeeze my eyes shut, suppressing both tears and uncertainty.
We pull into the parking garage, I ignore the reporter who tries to flag me down, and take the elevator up. As I slide the key into the lock, I notice a triangle of white paper sticking out from under the door. I usher children and groceries inside before I pick up the paper—an envelope that has been slid under the door.
In a simple, almost childish script, six words written on the envelope cause my heart to skip a beat. To the family of Rashid Siddique. I turn the envelope over repeatedly, seeking out some additional information, some evidence of the sender. Nothing. I sit at the table and take a deep breath before slowly tearing open one corner. I slide my finger in and tear the crease along the short side of the envelope. I feel several sheets of paper, softened, worn. I tip the envelope. A sheaf of hundred dollar bills spills out into my hand.
I peer inside the envelope looking for a note, an explanation. Nothing but emptiness remains inside the paper. I carefully set the envelope on the table, thinking I shouldn’t alter it, shouldn’t contaminate it with too many of my own fingerprints—a trick I must believe from some long ago observed crime show. I count out the bills, stare at them. A mistake? The envelope so clearly states that the money is intended for me and the boys, although neglecting to mention us by name. A bribe? Nothing indicates the sender wants anything in return. A debt returned? Rashid often lent his countrymen money when they were returning to Pakistan for a wedding and would need extra cash. A payment? For a martyr’s wife.
I push my chair back, take a step away from the bills, repulsed.
“Mommy! You promised me juice when we got back. Can I have some apple juice?”
When Michael notices the bills on the table, he reaches out for them. Instinctively, I slap his hand. “No!” I command. “Don’t touch that.”
Until now, I have made a point of never hitting my child, prided myself on my even-tempered parenting. His tears come reflexively. I have hurt him, crossed some seemingly inviolable line. I collapse to kneel next to him, immediately gather him in my arms. “Oh beta, oh Michael,” I correct myself, “I’m so sorry. I just don’t want you to touch that money. It isn’t ours. Someone made a mistake leaving it here.”
“Really?” he whimpers. “So much money? When did they leave it?”
I wipe his tears away with my thumb. He tries to pull away from me, but I hold tightly, will not let him slip away from me. “I don’t know. But we have to make sure we don’t touch the money, so we can return it just as we found it.”
“But you already touched it.”
He’s right. I find a paper towel, gingerly use it to pick up the bills as if they are a wild animal that might bite. With my other hand I hold the envelope open again—this I have already touched when turning it over and over—and slide the money, this filthy blood money back from where it came.
Michael watches.
“Let me get you some apple juice. Do you want a snack as well?”
Still sullen, Michael nods.
“Yogurt? Crackers? Dried fruit?”
“Crackers.”
I retrieve cups and bowls, juice and crackers. I open the wrong cupboards, accidentally pour the juice in the bowl before Michael giggles and I pour it into the cup. As I put everything on the table, I realize I have prepared two sets of snacks. I shrug and sit next to Michael wishing my own mother were still here to make me a cup of coffee.
My parents. Should I tell them about the money? I glance at the clock in the kitchen, they might still be on the plane. And what could they do? I have no other information, they would just worry. Who else might I tell? Ted? Homeland Security? A friend? Each time I think about explaining this money, I imagine my interlocutor’s reaction, a mix of pity and accusation. An assumption that I am somehow complicit, have withheld some piece of intelligence, one more twist in the story.
I will tell no one.
The crackers are gone, a few crumbs are scattered around Michael’s bowl. He looks at me expectantly. “Now what?”
There is no job, no school, no planned interview, no immediate deadline, only the looming to do list, the yellow legal pad outlining the assignment to reinvent my life, our lives.
“Can we watch a video?” He waits, expecting my standard disapproval. “Sesame Street? Just a short one?”
“Yes. Yes. Let’s watch Sesame Street.”
“Yes, let’s!” Michael leaps out of his chair and chooses an episode from the bookcase. I gather Andrew who fusses on his blanket. I load the shiny silver disc into the player.
We all sit on the couch together, two boys and their mother, our whole family. A hole in our family. And the television rewards us with cheerful singing, animals and humans, grouches and big birds. I listen, desperately, to a song I know by heart. “Sunny day, everything’s A-OK…”