by Kaylie Jones
Her husband still has to relent to the one force stronger than he—his mother. She moves in to help with the rearing of his progeny, efficiently making them hers. Though Anjali’s brood grows in numbers, the children only add to her isolation. Her mother-in-law runs the home, a queen in her durbar, supervising from the sofa as though holding court from a Maharani’s Divan. In her joyless empire, even her grandchildren cannot evoke her love. That is jealously guarded for her only son, the object of her passion. Anjali both hates and depends on her, and her mother-in-law thrives in her knowledge of this painful truth.
Anjali never learns to drive and is not confident of her spoken English, even though she is fluent in her reading. Instead, she practices speaking with the illiterate migrant maid whose English is even worse than hers. They enjoy a pure connection devoid of complex words; somehow this dismantles the worst of her mounting desolation.
In time, her husband grows wealthier, his practice bigger, his hours longer and more erratic. His addictions deepen; his language coarsens. He no longer bothers concealing his increasing binges of beer, which become bourbon, then Librium, which later becomes high-dose Valium. Some mornings, he snorts cocaine, saying, “It helps me focus,” in a thickened voice. Anjali’s despair magnifies, variegates, and slowly burnishes over her spirit. Soon her soul is shellacked shut under shiny layers of silence.
Mechanical beeping, murmurs in a language unknown to her, and again she is sinking, falling into the blackness. Please let me die, she prays. The finality, the freedom of death, has become impossibly desirable. Something inside her rattles until there is a strange pause, a long silence before an epic detonation. Then: shrapnel, aftershock, automated gunfire shuddering her frame. Cold gel; hot current; burning hair; searing skin. Something profound aches. And then, nothing. A sinking, curtailed at the edge of the abyss. A precarious pause. The brisk sound of a blossoming parachute.
Why am I not dead? she wonders, wishing for the release, hoping perhaps today will be the day that Allah will finally retrieve her.
It was June. Time for me to hand over the unit to a new team. Interns arrived for their orientations, full of nervous enthusiasm. It was the same every year. I guessed my weariness was giving away my age. I looked at the coltish pack, restlessly trying to conceal their fears and the gaps in their knowledge, and the newly promoted residents terrified at being responsible for such novices. Only the seasoned nurses remained unmoved. It was already almost ten years since I was in their shoes. Medicine had an astonishing way of making time vanish.
Making rounds with the young team, I came to the final patient, Mrs. Osmaan, and outside her door I summarized her course to the residents. They urgently scribbled down everything I said. Like new detectives at a first bloody crime scene, they barely met my gaze, bowed over notepads and clipboards, as if they thought so long they just kept writing, everything would be all right. Endorsement complete, I entered the patient’s room, leaving the youngsters behind.
Anjali was staring out the window. Now strong enough to sit up, her frail arms rested quietly on the arms of the chair. Anjali was so regal the recliner could have been the throne of a vanished kingdom. The silence was broken only by the slow hiss of the pneumatic stockings that kept the blood in her legs from clotting. The henna had long since faded, her pale forearms were now hirsute from long courses of steroids. The baby she had never seen, a stillborn son, lay buried by others, months earlier. After we’d told her the news, she praised Allah, Alhamdulillah, that her prayers had been heard and her baby had not been a girl. She never spoke to us again.
In the months I had attended her, she’d had very few visitors. No notes, no phone calls. The husband never returned after that first night. We hadn’t been able to contact her family overseas. Social services had ensured the children were living with their grandmother, with their father’s permission, while their mother recovered. Predictably, the grandmother also never visited. Nothing isolates like abuse.
In the past weeks the medical team had been evaluating her home care needs. I wondered how she would manage. Soon, she would leave the ICU and transfer to a regular ward. I wouldn’t be her doctor anymore—there would be others to take my place. I’d miss her.
Touching her arm, I followed her gaze out the window but could not tell where she was looking.
We would never meet again.
The waves crashed in the lazy July afternoon. Lido Beach was beautiful this time of year; Sunday afternoons lush and vibrant. I stretched out on my chaise lounge, returning to the newspaper. Once in a while, I read a section out loud to my cousin, visiting from Lebanon. Long Beach reminded her of Beirut, she had explained that morning as we walked past the high-rises looking out to sea. As I got to the Metro page, I sat suddenly upright. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Hana put down her book.
“What is it, Yasmine?”
A fine-featured woman stared up at me from a black-andwhite photo. I scanned it in disbelief. Her brows, her nose— unmistakable: it was Anjali. For the first time I saw in her face the defiance and pride of her Punjabi forebears. Her tiny nose stud caught the flash just as the photographer snapped the image. She was being bustled into a waiting police car. In the background, a majestic house with a manicured lawn was being sealed in crime scene tape, the same elegant house I had passed on my drives home from the hospital. An ambulance was reversed into the circular drive, a covered body carried into the back. As usual the shades on the house were down, giving nothing away. I could tell: this was no emergency. He was already dead.
“This woman was my patient, Hana. Five years ago. I never forgot it. She almost died of a ruptured uterus. We suspected she was abused in her marriage. I never knew what happened to her.”
Hana put her magazine down and together we read the story. We raced over the paragraphs, interrupting each other. A custody battle. Divorce lawyers. Suspicious neighbors. The doctor husband, drunk and belligerent in public. Rumors of a cocaine habit, a suspended medical license. A practice in ruins. A crumpled Lexus slumped into a tree. A New Jersey woman, hysterical at the death of her Pakistani lover. Anjali had given a statement to the police and plead to manslaughter.
He had been demanding a divorce, seeking an annulment so he could marry his lover, a lapsed Catholic who longed for a church wedding. Anjali could never agree to that. Her children could never be illegitimate in the eyes of the law. She just couldn’t accept it. The embattled couple had been fighting on the landing, she retreating toward the stairs, he pursuing. He held the legal papers in his hand. It was not difficult for me to imagine his words:
“I never wanted you, Anjali. I never loved you. I was your salvation, you ungrateful bitch. I married you to honor your father. Without me, you would be rotting in Gulberg instead of living here in Amreekah. You are nothing without me, but I have had enough. There is still time for me to finally have happiness. I am leaving you, Anjali. That’s final. You have to sign the papers. You have no choice. Talaq! Talaq! Talaq!”
She sees his mouth moving but hears no words. Suddenly all the rage he has silenced inside her rises to a foamy crest and, gathering fury, arrives in her arms. She grabs his lapels. The suits are still expensive, despite his insolvency. With all her might she leans into him, her acrylic nails snapping off under the pressure. Her wedding bangles, shackles to her sorry fate, clatter toward her thin elbows and somehow she lifts him off his feet. The rage pours from an unknown locus. The silenced lamb has become a lion.
Neighbors hear the screaming: “No! I will never divorce you. I would rather die! Ya Allah, I would rather die!” She pushes him and his papers away. His thick arms, trapped in the too-tight jacket, fly backward, grasping at the air. Gabardine and silk tumble through the air. His mouth opens, tobacco-stained teeth surprised at the sudden shaft of daylight. His gold-ringed fingers clutch at the balustrades, snapping first one, then many. Tumbling under his own weight, he snaps first his arms, then his lean legs, on the marble stairs. With a sickening thump, the mound of fabric a
nd flesh comes to a halt, landing on a broken neck. His acne-scarred cheek lies smooth against the travertine. A single molar dislodges from his jaw and tumbles out, skittering across the floor. A brief sputter, a silent drool. And then blood, still warm, spills from his ear and puddles on the marble floor. Looking on the scene from above, Anjali feels the sudden, shocking throttle of euphoria. An alien roar surges within her, deadening all other senses. In the astonishing stillness, the divorce papers flutter in a current of icy air-conditioning, the unpleasant chill the one trembling remnant of their shared life.
Anjali looks at her bleeding nails, then again at the body. Trembling yet calm, she picks her way down the broken stairs. Sidestepping the body, she walks across the marble floor where as a young proxy bride she once slipped in cheap, girlish sandals. She finally turns off the air-conditioning and begins at last to thaw. She reaches for the phone and calmly dials 911 and finds her voice. In a clipped accent, she tells the police, “There has been an accident. My husband is dead. Please come.”
And so, they do.
I looked at the photo, meeting Anjali’s eyes, marveling that my frail patient had survived on the wiry web we’d once built for her. A death in the delivery room, the destruction of a worn-out womb, the sustained theft of her motherhood, and at the root of it all, the beauty which had sealed her fate. Through it all she had been alone. Everyone had failed her. Yet still she lived, destined to be her own solitary savior.
I put down the paper and stared at the Atlantic. Distant laughter bounced on the foaming surf. Somewhere across these currents I had left my own fate behind, choosing something better. I thought of Anjali’s tenacious recovery. There had indeed been a purpose to our work, and I understood now why she had survived.
Anjali had finally arrived in her America. The America that was also mine.
PART II
HITTING IT BIG
A STARR BURNS BRIGHT
BY CHARLES SALZBERG
Long Beach
Goldblatt, you gonna tell me what the hell you wanted to see me about?” I said, as I watched him shovel another forkful of pasta into his mouth, or at least in the general vicinity of his mouth.
“Yeah. Sure. After we finish the meal.”
“I don’t know if I can wait that long. Watching you eat is making me sick.”
“You got a problem with the way I eat?” he said, as a few drops of red sauce shot through the air and landed on a glass I’d moved in front of my plate for protection.
“Exhibit number one.” I pointed to the glass.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said, looking at my watch. “Look, I’ve got things to do, places to go, people to see.”
“Yeah. Right. Swann, as long as I’ve known you that ain’t been the truth.”
“Time passes. Things change.”
He sucked the last tubes of penne into his face, dragged a piece of Italian bread across his plate, stuffed it into his mouth, wiped his entire face with the napkin that had been tucked into his collar, and leaned back. “Good meal, huh?”
“Excellent,” I said, not even bothering to hide my sarcasm. I doubted he’d get it anyway. My plate of soggy spaghetti nestled in a pool of oil sat practically untouched in front of me, but I guess he didn’t notice that. Quantity was always better than quality when it came to Goldblatt. “Now maybe we can discuss the business you said you had for me.”
“I haven’t had dessert yet.”
“Screw dessert. If I don’t hear the reason you got me here, I’m leaving.”
“Okay, okay. I need you to do a solid for me.”
“I don’t do solids. I have rent to pay, food to buy, drinks to pay for. I learned a long time ago that favors never turn out to be favors. They turn out to be work. For work, I get paid. And I doubt that’s going to happen with you. How much have you brought in since you got disbarred?”
“That’s personal.”
“I rest my case.”
“Hey, I’m no deadbeat. You wanna get paid, I’ll see to it you get paid.” He pulled a wad of money out of his pocket and waved it in my face.
“What’d you do, mug an old lady for her life’s savings?”
“Very funny. You may not believe this, Swann, but I provide valuable services to people and for those services I get paid.”
“What kind of services?”
“They vary. I may not be able to practice law anymore, but I know how the law works. I’m a consultant. I’m a facilitator. I get things done.”
“I’m sure you do. How do I fit in?”
“I want you to pick up a package for me.”
“Do I look like the FedEx guy? I’m a skip tracer. I find people. I don’t make deliveries.”
“FedEx don’t pick up packages where I need them to.”
“Where’s that?”
“Long Beach.”
“As in California?”
“As in Long Island.”
“I’m pretty sure FedEx services Long Beach.”
“Not when and where I want them to. You familiar with the town?”
“Yeah. My father grew up there. He’d take us back there to visit my grandmother and grandfather. It used to be a dump, now it’s a poor man’s Hamptons, overrun with weekenders and religious Jews.”
He slapped the table. “I knew you were the man for me.”
“Not so fast, Goldblatt. Truth is, it turns my stomach to go out there. I’m not a man who likes change. No more family to visit …”
“Do I detect the beating of a heart, Swann?”
“Not unless you’ve got a stethoscope hidden under the napkin covering that belly of yours. I need to know what I’m getting into and for how much.”
“What’s the difference? You take the train out there, because I know you don’t have a car …”
“… and you’re not about to spring for a rental.”
“You pick up the package, you take the train back and give it to me. Simple as that.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Why would I think that?”
“Because you didn’t think I’d ask why you can’t do it? A man like you, Goldblatt, four years of college, three years of law school, knows how to figure out a train schedule.”
“There are reasons.”
“Give ’em to me,” I said, knowing that whatever he said would be a lie or at the very least a souped-up version of the truth. Goldblatt was an operator. And he knew that I knew he was an operator.
“I got a bad knee. You saw me limp in here.”
“That’s not enough.”
“Okay, I’ve got a little problem with some people who live in Long Beach, so if I show my face out there I might find myself in a little trouble.”
“That’s almost believable, so you know what, I’m not even going to ask what kind of trouble, because I don’t give a shit. What’s in the package?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Find someone else to be your errand boy,” I said, as I pushed myself away from the table and stood up.
“Wait. What about dessert?”
I had to smile. There was no way to deal with Goldblatt other than to treat him as a joke. But he was a friend. The kind of friend you can’t trust but you know it so you still make like he’s a friend. So I sat back down.
“You think you can stuff dessert into that fat gut of yours after what you just ate?”
“I left some room,” he said, patting his stomach which seemed to have expanded at least a couple of inches from when we walked into the joint.
“Jesus, Goldblatt, you never cease to amaze me.”
“Stick around, Swann, there’s more where that came from.”
He couldn’t make up his mind between the apple pie and the chocolate cake, so he ordered both. Me, I had nothing. Trying to watch my weight while Goldblatt increased his.
The deal was simple, or so he said. The next night, I’d go out to Long Beach and meet someone on the boardwalk at precisely nine p
.m., in front of one of the little huts that during the summer months issues beach passes. The person, he didn’t know if it would be a he or she, would hand me a package. In return, I’d hand over an envelope, which he’d give me when I agreed. Then I’d hop back on the train and deliver the package to him the next morning in his office.
“I can trust you not to open the package or the envelope, right?” he said, as he dug into the last bite of apple pie, then pushed that plate away and started in on the enormous slab of chocolate layer cake.
“I don’t like the sound of this, Goldblatt,” I answered, doing my best to look away from the epicurean spectacle going on in front of me.
“What’s not to like?”
“You want me to go to the deserted boardwalk, in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, with no one else around, carrying God knows what, meeting God knows who, for God knows what reason.”
“Well, if you put it that way …”
“What the fuck other way is there to put it? And the kicker is, you’re not even paying me for this. Do I look like a moron to you?”
“You owe me, Swann.”
“How do you figure?”
“How many times have you asked me to dig up information for you?”
“Three.”
“What’re you, keeping count? I thought it was more.”
“Three.”
“So I’m asking you for one favor and then I’ll call it even.”
I laughed. Because he was entertaining. And because he was persistent. Would it kill me to do a favor for him? No. Was I going to do one for him? In the end, I probably would. Not because it was Goldblatt, but because I hate owing anyone anything. And the truth is, I’d probably need him again. But I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“Five hundred, plus expenses,” I said, waiting to see him choke on his chocolate cake.
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“You’re killing me, Swann. But I’ll tell you this: I pay you five hundred, which I’m not saying I will, and then you and me are finished.”
