by Bob Proehl
“I saw pictures of it in a book,” Fahima’s father told her. “It’s as if it’s never seen a hint of war. If I had to go anywhere, I’d go there.”
He was wrong, not that Fahima could ever tell her father he was wrong. The city was razed by Allied bombers in World War II and, like many German cities, rebuilt itself as its own prewar replica. All the things her father perceived about it from books and magazines—“It has authenticity,” he said—were false, except that it was beautiful. The sunlight has a quality as if sunlight everywhere else passes through gauze and only here touches the earth in true form, and the air, which her father had no way of anticipating, is charged with the smell of incipient snow.
Her mother had shrugged. “There must be a gas stove,” she said. “I’m never cooking on one of those coils again. And separate bathrooms.”
This was an encapsulation of her mother, so hardened against hardships that she thought of her second forced emigration in terms of amenities. In the early days of the war, Fahima hid her parents at the Phoenix school—not that anyone was looking for them, but Fahima had so little sense of what shape the conflict might take, the only place she considered any baseliner safe was in her pocket. When it was over, their appreciation at being kept safe turned to discontent, not as sharply as Alyssa’s had but with a creeping increase of disapproval Fahima remembered from childhood, when a behavior would be smiled at indulgently one day, tsk-tsk-ed the next, and abruptly punished, the course among the three a rising curve Fahima could never plot correctly. As they were clearly unhappy, she offered to put her parents anywhere on the planet. Anywhere other than America.
“You could go home,” she offered. “Back to Lebanon.”
“There is no home there,” her father said. That shut down the first attempt at conversation, and it was a week before she could coax other options out of them, each one dismissed for reasons that seemed minor to Fahima but were deal breakers for one or both of her parents.
Her father raised the possibility of Innsbruck, musing about it one evening when Fahima slipped through the Gate in her apartment to have dinner with them in what her mother called their “shabby little dorm room.” Nothing was decided that night, but at the next dinner conversation turned to Innsbruck again, and her mother gave her a short list of conditions. Fahima bought them a house, and Ruth carried out her first big favor for Fahima: the trans-Pacific expatriation of Khalil and Rima Deeb from the Phoenix desert to the Austrian Tyrol.
“We should move fast,” Ruth says. “I don’t completely understand what we’re dealing with, but I don’t want to be racing it.”
“Sure,” says Fahima, overwhelmed by the beauty of the place she’s standing. Her father chose well: this is a good place. She’s a terrible daughter for coming to steal them away from it.
They hike down into the city, neither one sure-footed on the hills and the dew-slick grass. On the street they’re greeted with nods, smiles, and hat tips befitting a possessed town in a horror movie, made all the more unsettling by being genuine. Each cheery utterance of schön dich zu sehen confirms that yes, it is nice to see them, too, and nice to be seen. The prevailing niceness of Innsbruck is over and over restated, reaffirmed until it is an overwhelming fact about the place, the day, and extends into Fahima and Ruth themselves.
The quaint edifice of her parents’ house belies its cost. Purchasing it was the first time Fahima realized the Bishop Foundation’s accounts were limitless—the price tag that seemed ridiculous to Fahima was barely a blip on the Bishop ledgers, disappeared under the “Additional Facilities Expenses” line in the budget. Fahima lets the brass knocker strike its plate three times before she hears the bustle of her mother within, arguing with her father before the door’s open. There is no chain, no sound of a dead bolt retracting: Who would lock their doors in a place where everyone is so nice?
“Habibat,” her mother says with more of a sense of relief than excitement. She thinks of Fahima as constantly at risk, in some perpetual war zone. Every call and visit is greeted with a sound like a held breath released. “Khalil,” she calls back into the house. “Fahima is here.”
“No warning,” her father shouts from the other room. “Never any warning with this one.”
“We’ve just had breakfast,” her mother says by way of explanation.
“Bring her in; I’ll put the kettle on,” says her father.
Her mother sucks her teeth. “The kettle will wait. Come kiss your daughter.”
Her father’s glacial speed and gray hair are the only signs of his age. His skin is taut and healthy looking and his eyes bright, all things Fahima attributes to the Alpine air rather than the antioxidant nanites she peppered his food with while he was in Phoenix. When they left, she gave a bottle of pills packed with them to her mother. “For his blood pressure,” Fahima said, knowing her father would accept Fahima’s medications as long as there was plausible deniability but her mother would insist she was fine with her own unguents and elixirs, suspiciously eyeing anything Fahima tried to feed her. It’s hard to argue with her: Rima Deeb looks nowhere near her seventy-five years, and it seems possible she’ll outlive her husband, whose blood teems with machines designed by his daughter to defy old age.
He kisses her on both cheeks, then turns to Ruth, who, on closer inspection, he realizes he doesn’t recognize.
“This is Ruth,” Fahima says. Her father extends his hand, looking formal with a hint of regality.
“A white girl,” her mother says in Arabic.
“Alyssa was a white girl, and you loved her,” Fahima responds in Arabic.
“Alyssa was a doctor,” says her mother. “Is this one a doctor?”
“A pilot,” Ruth says, smiling uncomfortably. She turns sheepishly to Fahima. “The translator bots I took are still working.”
Fahima’s father claps his hands as he barks out a single laugh. “We said there was no breakfast, and now there’s egg on your mother’s face,” he says. His laughter fades into fake coughs and throat clearing as her mother glares at him and walks back to the kitchen to put water on for tea.
“We should go,” Ruth says.
“Now you must stay or my wife will stare daggers at me for the rest of the day,” says Fahima’s father. “I’m afraid we’ve damned each other to tea. Come.”
Ruth holds Fahima in the doorway by her arm. “I wasn’t joking,” she says. “We’re going to be in a blind sprint in the direction of away with no real idea of the range. I need as much of a head start as I can get.”
“She’s making tea,” Fahima says. “It’s rude to refuse.” It’s a trick she used to use on Alyssa, claiming traditional mores that could not be violated. She’s thinking of what Babisch said about sitting with his family and watching the Pulse come, going all in together on this final bet. She’s thinking of her mother’s staunch refusal of “unnatural” assistance, how much her father loves this place, and the fact she has nowhere else to take them, not anywhere this beautiful. Her parents have lived into their seventies. They’ve survived evacuation from two countries they called home. They deserve not to have to run anymore.
She threads her hand into Ruth’s and pulls her into the parlor. The kettle takes forever to come to a boil, and with each second Ruth’s grip torques incrementally tighter. Fahima’s father describes a recent mushroom hunt he went on with some of the locals, detailing the ugly ones that had turned out the most delectable, the beauties that stank of unclean feet when sautéed in butter, and the biggest tease of all, a majestic angel he nearly added to his basket before his friend warned him it would leave him shitting himself to death. Fahima smells the sweetness of sesame seeds toasting and knows her mother has hastily thrown together lavash, which will take even longer to bake. We couldn’t escape it now at a full gallop, Fahima thinks. As if reading her mind, Ruth leans over, whispering in the middle of Fahima’s father’s monologue. “We can cal
l Kimani,” she says. “Open a door and be gone.”
“We’re not going,” Fahima says. “The tea will be ready soon, and there’s bread.” Her eyes well up with tears. All this time and where was my skin in the game? she thinks. Tucking my dearest ones away and pretending I understood the stakes. Here, she thinks, addressing herself to the absence left behind when the religious faith of her childhood faded. Here’s my bet on the table. Here’s me. I’m all in.
It comes as Fahima’s mother is bringing in the tray, which is so broad she has to turn to the side to come through the kitchen door. Ruth feels it first, and it slams her back into her chair, the opalescent envelope of the Craft emerging from the center of her chest without warning and hanging suspended in the air over the coffee table. For Fahima, it’s a rolling tide that douses her with solutions to problems that have dogged her for years. She wants to grab one of the books from her father’s shelves and begin writing things down—if even a third of the things in her head in that moment could be translated into actual inventions, the lives she saved would be countless—but she steadies herself, watching her parents, imagining the ball on a roulette wheel bouncing the last time before coming to rest.
Fahima’s mother glows—it starts in the center of her chest, and she doesn’t notice it until it reaches her forearms, at which point she drops the tray onto the carpet, the teapot spilling its contents onto the fresh bread. She holds her hands up in front of her face for a moment, wondering at their luminescence, then drops to her knees to pick up the mess.
Fahima’s father’s eyes go entirely white, the irises and pupils drowned in a milky sea. “Karima,” he says, an endearment he hasn’t used since the FBI took him away from her when she was ten. “I can see your bones. I can see the skull beneath your skin.”
“I know, Aba,” says Fahima, her voice hitched with a joy that sears and burns. “It’s going to be all right.”
Clay invites Carrie and Hayden back to “the house,” and Carrie wonders if he knows how badly she dreads returning to her apartment since Miquel left. It makes no sense—she lived there without him for years, much longer than they’d lived there together—but now for the first time it feels empty.
Rogers Park is so far out of the city it might as well be Deerfield, and as they arrive on Jarvis Avenue, Carrie feels like she’s somewhere familiar, a variation on the theme of the American suburb. The house plays many of the same notes as the one she grew up in, and its sense of being lived in, a home rather than simply a house, makes it hard to believe Clay and his family have been there only a couple of weeks.
Dinner conversation is awkward as they talk around what happened. Carrie and Clay reminisce, careful not to give any of the gorier details of who they used to be. Rai conducts an amateur interview of Hayden, as if he’s profiling them for a magazine piece. Dom busies himself in a way that reminds Carrie of how her father became a servant at family gatherings, trying to avoid conversation with constant motion. Dom gives her looks as if she’s the other woman, here to steal his man away.
The family goes to bed before the sun has fully disappeared, and Carrie wonders if this is normal or if they’re trying to put distance between themselves and today. Dom suggests it, saying they could all use some rest. Rai sulks, then acquiesces. She thinks Clay might stay up to discuss strategy, but his eyes drift toward the stairs and the quiet that awaits him up there.
“There’s beer in the fridge,” he says. “The couch pulls out, and there’s a love seat up in the attic if you don’t mind a mess.”
“Thanks,” Hayden says.
“Let’s let all this be over for the night,” Clay says. Carrie nods, all three of them knowing that it’s barely started.
“You want the foldout?” Hayden asks.
“I want a beer,” Carrie says. She doesn’t need one, but she deserves one, and having it will put off discussions of who sleeps where. Hayden goes to the kitchen and comes back with two open beers, leading Carrie to the couch.
“You want to tell me about the bug in your head?” Hayden asks. Carrie knew this talk was coming, but she’d hoped it would wait until tomorrow.
“You knew I went out again after Topaz Lake,” Carrie says.
“I didn’t know you joined up with the Hitler Youth,” Hayden says.
“They came and found me,” Carrie says. “Patrick from Bishop and Ji Yeon Kim. They came and told me they needed me. They told me I was good. I was having dreams. I was seeing what I did to Warden Pitt when I thought Miquel was dead. Miquel was falling apart, and it was because of me. It meant so much for someone to tell me I was good.”
“I would have told you that you were good,” Hayden says, moving closer.
“You and Waylon and Bryce were building things,” Carrie says. “I didn’t want you to have to baby-sit.”
“You were gone for months, and none of us saw it,” Hayden says. “How did we miss that?”
“It’s what I do,” Carrie says. “I disappear.”
“I should have found you,” Hayden says. They touch Carrie’s face, and she is too tired to know what she wants. She wants to dream of Hayden kissing her. She wants it to happen. She wants it to stop. None of the thoughts hold; nothing in her head will sit still. Hayden doesn’t come in for a kiss. They take Carrie’s beer and set it on the coffee table next to their own. They hold her and lay her down, curl up next to her on the couch that barely has room for one of them. They rest their head on Carrie’s shoulder, drape their arm over her. She can feel Hayden’s heart beating against her arm, and although she knows there’s no message encoded in its rhythm, she ascribes language to it. You’re good, it says. You’re good.
“There’s something I want to show you,” Carrie says. She reaches into her back pocket, into the space between the two of them, and retrieves the Polaroid she found on the fridge the night before she left to find Emmeline. She holds it so Hayden can see it over her shoulder.
“Who are those kids?” Hayden asks. “What happened to your face?”
“I don’t know,” Carrie says. “I’ve had it for a while. I have some ideas about where it came from, but…I think they’re our kids.”
Hayden’s body shifts away from her. “I know this isn’t something we’ve talked about, but I can’t—”
“Look at the girl,” Carrie says. “Her eyes.” She hands Hayden the photo, and Hayden rolls onto their back, nearly knocking Carrie off the couch.
“She’s Miquel’s,” Hayden says.
Carrie nods. “You can see little things about him in their faces.”
Hayden sighs but doesn’t hand the photo back. “We fooled around with it being all of us, and it didn’t work,” they say.
“Miquel and I are done,” Carrie says. “I see that now. I’ve known for a while.”
“Then I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,” Hayden says.
Carrie takes the photo and holds it where she and Hayden can see it. “I keep pulling it out of my pocket and wondering what it means,” she says. “I pull it out of my pocket and think of it as the place I want to go. When this is all over, this is where I’ll be. Before Emmeline took the thing out of my head, I’d look at this picture and I knew that that Carrie didn’t have it in her anymore. She found something I haven’t.”
“So is that this?” Hayden says. Their arm tightens around Carrie for a moment and then releases, unsure. “I keep thinking you’re going to stay with me while we’re fighting and then run off once we win.”
“Do they look like they won?” Carrie asks, moving the picture closer to Hayden. Carrie hasn’t decided. Maybe it’s possible to live that way: to be okay and never stop. “I’m not running off,” she says. She rolls over and presses herself against Hayden, exhausted but completely awake, feeling like she’s in the air but on the ground for the first time she can remember.
When Emmeline comes back into the worl
d, she’s in the dark with nothing for her senses to attend to but the panicked sound of her own breathing and the measured sleeping breath of someone else. The space feels familiar, the way her body sometimes wakes confident of where it is.
The light next to the bed clicks on. Rai sits up in Emmeline’s old bed, staring at her with the same lack of surprise he showed the first time she met him, the second time he’d met her.
“You came back,” he says.
“How long has it been for you?” Emmeline asks.
“Two weeks,” he says.
Emmeline nods. “A year,” she says. They absorb the strangeness of this: that their meetings begin with these conversations.
“Hayden Cohen is sleeping on our couch,” Rai blurts out. “Their girlfriend knows my dad.” Emmeline’s puzzled about why he’s bursting to tell her this rather than ask her where she disappeared to until she realizes she isn’t the focus of Rai’s story, only an occasional guest. Having a pop star on his couch is his biggest news.
“There was an attack today at your school.” Emmeline says. It isn’t a question. She’s looking for confirmation of something she already knows.
Rai nods. “They were going to kill us.” He puts on his brave face, more resolved than the last time he tried it. “My dads kept me safe.”
“I need to talk to Hayden’s girlfriend,” Emmeline says. “You and I will talk again soon.”
“Cool,” Rai says as he turns off the light. He’s banged up from shock and has decided his best option is to accept all this. There’s a power in simply saying yes.
Emmeline quietly opens the door and goes downstairs, careful to avoid steps she remembers creaking when she was little. She was a talented sneak back then, not as good as Carrie but good enough to spy on her parents countless times. She finds Carrie asleep on the couch, wrapped in Hayden’s arms. How many things start today? she wonders. Everything is always beginning—Carrie and Hayden started years ago, before Emmeline knew them. It makes sense until she tries to break it down into moments and points. Everything is moving and fluid, and although there’s something beautiful about that, it’s terrifying at the same time.
