by Sonja Yoerg
As a boy, I despised the Appletons. Indifferent to everything—except their indifference, which they prized—they stood for nothing. If some of them worked in serious professions, it was with great irony. I observed how my father lubricated himself from head to toe so he might insert himself into their uptight assholes, and that made me despise him, too.
Even after my father won the Nobel, he stood outside the Appleton clan. In fact, the prize only made things worse, evidence, as it was, of a seriousness the Appletons found distasteful. Ambition was unseemly unless it was applied to something whose outcome mattered not at all, like a game of croquet.
Winning the Nobel made my father insufferable, as if it conferred celebrity status. What rubbish. A Nobel is not an Oscar. The winners are mostly dull, graying men, indistinguishable from the VP of a bank or a first-rate accountant, and their expressions are not imbued with brilliance. I know; I’ve studied them. While their headshots were being taken, they were thinking about an experiment or an equation or about the mortgage on their lake cabin two hours’ drive from the university.
Except my father. After he received the call from Sweden, he shoehorned a mention of the prize into every conversation, reminding everyone that it was one thing to be smart and quite another to produce success, reward, and a brief mention in every major newspaper in the world. I was twelve at the time and wanted to kick him. Instead, I sneaked into his office, lifted the medal from the glass-fronted case, and spat on it. I did rub it off. A year or so later, after my father said something particularly insulting to me, I jerked off on Alfred’s face and left it there. Perhaps the maid dealt with it.
Back to football. My father’s view of the sophisticated life did not include it (did he not see the Kennedys tossing the pigskin in their loafers?), so, naturally, nothing else would do for me. We battled over football, over many things, but my mother sided with me. For all her money, she was ordinary. She believed in happiness and fresh air and family get-togethers with gin and sailing. If I wanted to play football, what harm? She saw only the good in me and sought to counterbalance my father, who, for all his intelligence and striving, liked to backhand his son like the good old Midwestern trash he was. I was taller than he was by the time I reached my teens and stronger and faster. He was outmatched and, being a coward and lacking financial control, could only sputter.
Tall, broad, and quick, I played tight end. I could’ve played in college, but by that time my father didn’t care and neither did I. If I could’ve tolerated the pomposity of English or a similarly pointless major, I would’ve pursued it just to rankle him. Psychology was the compromise that became the perfect choice: scientific, if one chose the right specialty, but no possibility of a Nobel. And I have always had an interest in what makes people tick.
Some are complex, with a network of motivations not easily untangled. Jackie, for example. Perhaps Nasira, too, although I don’t know her well enough yet. They are driven by more than one concern and, as a consequence, are pulled in different directions, making their behavior harder to predict. Others are more Cartesian: as in a game of billiards, the vectors are obvious, and one can predict how the balls will break. Ha!
Miles is simple like that. He is weak and will always avoid conflict. Although he’s happier when the harmonious choice is also the morally correct one, harmony will win out. Don’t get me wrong, I like Miles; he’s my friend. We share interests (football, Jackie), he’s reasonably intelligent, and, as I am arguing, easygoing. Not lazy—allergic to friction. His son is the same. Take him to a football game, offer him some beer, pretend you don’t know what he’s doing at halftime . . . eight ball in the corner pocket.
Poor Miles. Burdened by a defective son and, now, a wife obsessed with someone else’s sex life. I wonder what Miles will do about that? Probably very little. He needs someone to give him a push, apply some steering.
And me? From the outside—which is to say, according to others—I am complex. I do hold myself back somewhat, creating a certain mystique, as Nasira does. I am charming when the situation calls for it and I’m in the mood and more businesslike at other times. Typically, I am positive and engaged, but also exacting; I think you’ve seen that. But that’s on the outside.
On the inside? Well, let’s just say I like a bit of friction.
Nasira’s Story
Jordan, 2012
I didn’t sleep on the five-hour flight from London to Amman despite my exhaustion. I was too nervous. My father, on the other hand, shoved a pillow between his head and the window and dropped off before the landing gear was stored. He can sleep anywhere, anytime, a necessity, I suppose, for a doctor regularly working eighteen-hour shifts.
A driver met us in Amman, took our bags, and drove us out of the city into the deepening night. It was like driving off the face of the earth, the way the light bled from the sky until the horizon failed. The stars winked on, as did the smattering of lights from towns, making it even less clear where the surface met the sky. The windows had been open a crack for ventilation, but now the driver closed them, against either dust or cold or both. The sealed car did nothing to help my feelings of being in neither one place nor another, only hovering between.
We stayed the night at a simple hotel in Mafraq, a room for each of us. The next morning we rose at four and had tea and an abbreviated version of Syrian breakfast: pita, labneh, apricot jam, stuffed eggplant, olives, tomatoes, and cucumber. It was too early for me to eat, but it would’ve been rude to refuse. After breakfast, we climbed inside the car again. We drove west (I would only realize this later, as it was too dark to know then), and shortly I could see the white tents of the refugee camp glowing faintly in the dark.
“Zaatari,” my father said, although I knew the name already. “We will return to Mafraq shortly, but I wanted you to see where the injured refugees will return to live.” I knew this, too, as it had been discussed. My father likes to draw the lines around the day several times.
We passed through the administrative post and stopped at the clinic, which was only a larger tent. It was October, but the air was bitter, and I zipped my jacket to my neck. Inside the nurses’ tent, we were given tea. My father asked about conditions, supplies, births, deaths, complications, and as he spoke the tent grew brighter, as if someone had a hand on a dial.
“Come now.” The head nurse waved me to the door, ushered me through. “I’ll show you around. Ten minutes.” She’d obviously been given this job and was not enthusiastic. She’d also been told my Arabic was weak, because she spoke as if I had limited intelligence. In this place, it was true.
I won’t describe everything I saw; you can imagine most of it since refugee camps are much the same. One white tent after another, row upon row upon row, each stamped with UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. Aside from water stations and the like, the entire camp was nothing more than a sea of white spreading to shelter the thousands who arrived each day.
“About forty thousand are here now,” the nurse explained. “Eighty thousand is all we can take, so a new camp is already planned.”
Where the tents ended, the desert began. Here was nothing. That was what I felt right away, that the refugees had fled war into nothingness. Who would not do the same? And yet I felt it was an evil bargain.
The camp was awakening. Children scampered out of tents. They wore clothes and shoes and were not obviously starving.
The nurse read my gaze. “They come mostly from Deraa, and their parents were shopkeepers, teachers, clerks, that sort of thing. They left with nothing, but they are not poor—or they hadn’t been.” She said it as if reading from a manual. I didn’t judge her; she wanted to get to work, not be a tour guide for some doctor’s daughter.
We circled back to the clinic. My father and I returned to Mafraq, to the hospital. No more scene setting—just work. He checked in at the office, put on his coat, washed his hands, and reminded me to follow him without comment. That, I thought at the time, was what he expected of me in general and
why he had taken me on this trip. He wanted me to follow him into medicine, into caring for other Syrians. He wanted me to follow him into his life. My brother, Ramal, had been killed a year before. Since then, my father had devoted himself to saving Syrian lives in the most practical and direct way, and he made it clear that because I loved my brother and my family, I would do the same. The mantle was meant for my shoulders.
I already knew from my father that arriving refugees who were very ill or injured were brought directly to this hospital, then returned to the camp as soon as possible. The first patient my father saw was a boy of about seven. He was draped across the lap of a young woman who was introduced as his sister. The boy was awake and stared listlessly at the ceiling. One arm was missing; the stump was bound inches from the shoulder. The boy was coated with blood and dirt. The sister’s expression held determination, but it was thin. She seemed a moment away from collapse.
My father spoke softly, reassuring them, promising to do his best with the arm, with the boy. The sister cried then and held her brother closer. The nurse soothed her, and after a moment she allowed my father to carry her brother away.
“Please. He’s all I have. My parents, my aunts . . .”
Her sobs hung in the air. I trailed after my father, who was headed for a treatment room or surgery. I wasn’t sure because I left the hospital through the first door I could find.
Much later my father found me on a bench in front of the building. The lines around his eyes had deepened and his shoulders sagged. He smelled of ointment, antiseptic, and sweat.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. What he expected of me was right and noble. I was honored to be seen as someone who could do what he did: not simply as a doctor, but a doctor who helped his own people in a time of extreme need, at great sacrifice to himself. He had been earning top dollar in the United States before signing up with Medicines Sans Frontiers.
“Don’t be, Nasira, habibti. It takes getting used to.”
I nodded then. I don’t know why. I suppose I was a coward. I was absolutely certain I could not work there, or in any other place where families and children had been tossed into a void—broken, bleeding, bereft—but it wasn’t until we were back in the States that I admitted it to my father. I could not tell him I could not work there—would not, in fact, become a doctor at all—not when, in the next moment, I’d be confronted with the misery of those camps, and feel the bright burn of shame.
I was ashamed of my decision, but I nurtured it in private. My father argued with me for a while, but I didn’t budge, refused to even explain, and he stopped bringing it up. He treated me differently, though. He didn’t call or text as much, and when we were together, the light that had always shone for me had left his eyes. Late one night in Evanston, a few years after my visit to Syria, I overheard my mother argue that he should be satisfied that I was getting my PhD, and would be using it to study children with disabilities and disorders.
As nice as it was of my mother to lobby on my behalf, especially given my refusal to do so, my father’s response was entirely predictable: “Is she saving Syrian lives?”
When we said goodbye the next day, his embrace made it clear we had, in the most important ways, already parted. I stayed away more.
Ridiculous, isn’t it, the words we carry inside us, how we allow them to shape how we feel about ourselves and the direction our lives take? I’m working on getting my father’s words out of my head so I can feel good about the work I’m doing instead of ashamed about the work I’m not. Work defines us, whatever it entails, and I want to be defined by something important, something good, something that’s mine.
It all goes back to my brother, I think, to his death, which none of us have spoken of in the years that have passed. We shared him when he was alive, but we carried our grief separately, protecting it as if it were a living thing we divided in three. I need to find a way to say to my parents that I cannot make up for his loss, because I have my own dreams and my own fears. But when I am with them, all I see are their broken hearts—for Ramal, for me—and words die on my tongue.
CHAPTER 9
The air has teeth, but Jackie is snug in her insulated jacket, and the double layer of blankets she’s sitting on stops the cold rising from the ground. The sky is the cloudless electric blue peculiar to chilly autumn days and sets off the golden sycamores, orange sassafras, and purple sweetgum interspersed with the dark-green feathery branches of red cedar. Whoever designed this cemetery must have had autumn in mind.
The imposing, ornate statues and obelisks are arrayed behind her on the broad hill that slopes north toward the entrance. Here the markers are modest; her father’s is a pale granite slab, three feet wide and two feet tall. She didn’t have a hand in choosing it. Her father’s brother, Jeremy, took care of it, albeit grudgingly. At the time his attitude barely registered with Jackie, as she was simply grateful not to have to cope with it herself. Her mother was deeply uninterested, and Samuel Strelitz had no other family nearby.
Jackie visits the grave every year on her father’s birthday, November 3. Grace began joining her on the fourth visit, when Grace was twenty-two, the same age Jackie had been when their father died. Jackie never asked her sister if this was the reason; they never discussed the visits at all except to comment that every year, without fail, the weather was fine, like today. Jackie always brings blankets, a thermos of tea, and lunch. Grace brings as few of her children as possible.
A caretaker drives a small tractor along a nearby path. Jackie considers that she has been honoring this ritual for almost as long as she had a father. If she doesn’t always find it comforting, it nevertheless feels right.
“Hey there, Jacks.” Grace walks up, arms spread wide. She’s wearing an enormous coat—probably belonging to her husband, Hector—which makes her appear smaller than she is. She’s only a little shorter than Jackie, but finer-boned and packed with energy like a terrier.
Jackie scrambles to her feet and embraces her sister. She smells of almonds, as she has since she was a newborn, and banana, a consequence of having five children between the ages of one and seven. “No babies. How did you manage that?”
Grace tucks a windblown lock of auburn hair behind her ear. “Hector’s sister to the rescue. I feel positively naked.” She spins in a carefree circle, then frowns. “Probably shouldn’t do that in a cemetery, huh?”
Jackie gestures to the headstones. “Lots of moms here who understand. Tea?”
“Please.”
They sit cross-legged, drinking tea and eating ham sandwiches, their father’s favorite. That tradition began after Grace asked, during their third annual visit, what their father liked to eat. The sisters did see their father after he left, but no more than two or three times a year, and never overnight. Their mother, Cheryl, remained in control, helped along by Samuel Strelitz’s descent into alcoholism. Jackie is the repository of their father’s memory, which she doles out to Grace, piece by piece, at his grave. They rarely speak of him outside these visits, either because their interest in him cannot be sustained or because they both tacitly acknowledge that Jackie’s repository is not very deep and they would soon run out of stories. What then?
“I remembered something,” Grace said, as she finished the last of her sandwich.
“Yeah?”
“Or I think I did.”
Jackie nodded. Memories were slippery, but especially Grace’s, since she’d been only five years old when their father moved out.
“The night he left, did he come into our room? To say goodbye? Because I think I remember that.”
Jackie gives her sister a weak smile. They could not have known he wouldn’t be coming back, so it was just another night to them, one like many others during which they listened at their bedroom door to their mother’s serrated accusations and their father’s unintelligible replies. If they had understood the importance of that night, the details would be cemented in their memories.
“Maybe,” Jackie sa
ys. “I don’t remember that, but maybe.”
“I think he was looking for something, or said something.” Grace pulls her knees to her chest and sips her tea. “Probably a dream, huh?”
“It makes sense, though. I imagine he wanted to say a lot of things he never did.”
“Like what?”
They had this conversation during a previous visit. Jackie can’t recall when, nor can she recall her answer. When your father is a ghost, it’s hard to pin anything down, even the simplest things. “That he loved us. That he was sorry.” Grace nods. “He probably didn’t see the point in saying it because from his point of view he’d failed us already. He’d lost us and probably thought what he said or didn’t say didn’t matter.”
Grace’s eyes fill with tears. “That’s too sad, Jacks.”
“I know.” Her throat tightens.
“He hadn’t lost us at all.”
“I know, Gracie.” She pulls her sister into her arms. “That’s why we’re here.”
They hold each other for a long while.
Jackie pulls back and adjusts her hat. “I remember when he walked me to the school bus, you rode on his shoulders every day.”
“I remember that. Or maybe it’s just from you telling me.”
She shrugs. “Is there a difference?”
Grace’s nose scrunches as it always does when she’s thinking. “A little? But I think of it every time Hector gives a ride to one of ours. In the end, that’s what matters.”
