House of Sand and Fog

by Andre Dubus III

  After my sleep this afternoon I made for myself tea, and I ignored the sound of more melancholy Persian music coming from Nadereh’s room. I gathered the telephone book and telephone upon the floor, and I dialed six Realtors in the Corona–San Bruno–Daly City area. I described to each the home I owned, and I inquired as to a fair selling price. Each of them reminded me of the recession in which we live, Mr. Behrani; this is a buyer’s market, and still, unfortunately, hardly anyone is buying. Yes, I said, but are there many good three-bedroom homes selling for under one hundred thousand dollars? Each Realtor—four women and two gentlemen—said no, not usually, and they of course then asked me if I had anyone representing my interests in this matter. I had just terminated my final conversation when my son Esmail returned home from practicing skateboarding with his friends. Both his knees were skinned to the start of blood, and I told to him he must wash them before he thought of having a snack.

  “Mohamneest, Bawbaw-jahn.” No problem, Daddy, he said, and I followed him into the bathroom and I sat upon the toilet seat while he removed his Nike basketball shoes and stepped into the tub to run water over his knees. I remained silent as he washed himself, and I noticed once again the black hair he is growing on his legs like a man. In front of his ears is the shadow of hair that in only a year or so will become reesh, a beard. And for the very first time, I felt the difficult position I was in with him as well.

  “Esmail-joon?”

  “Yeah?” My son turned off the water and looked at me quickly in the face. I handed to him a towel and he began drying himself.

  In English I said: “I did not work today. Do you know why?”

  He shook his head, then stepped out of the bathtub and folded the towel.

  “I bought for us a house, Esmail. There is a beautiful hill for your skateboarding, and your friends can take the BART train to see you.”

  “Cojah?”

  “In Corona. You remember that beach village we have before driven through on Sundays?”

  My son of fourteen years looked at me then with Nadi’s beautiful face that becomes so ugly so easily with bad feeling, and he walked past me and said in our language: “I don’t want to move.”

  It is my practice halfway through this nightwork to purchase a Coca-Cola and drink it while I eat a package of peanut butter crackers. By nine-thirty or ten o’clock, the majority of my customers come only for gasoline or cigarettes, though many times a young husband or wife will arrive to buy milk and bread, ice cream perhaps. I sit upon the stool behind the counter and have my snack, and I am thankful of the long cigarettes display rack over me for keeping the bright fluorescent light from my eyes. Today has been a day of many decisions. After my son left the bathroom I stood quickly and felt the hot blood fill my hands and fingers, and I kicked my bare foot through Nadi’s clothes hamper basket, then rushed into Esmail’s room where he had turned on his television and I switched it off and stood over the bed where my son lay. I pointed at him, yelling in full voice, and I do not remember all I said except I know Esmail became hurt, perhaps frightened; I saw it in his eyes—though he lay there very relaxed-looking, his hands loose at his sides, and he would not show any of this to his father. I told to him he would do as I said without question, and then I heard the music stop in Nadereh’s room, the bedsprings squeak as though she were sitting up to listen, and I pushed her door open and I went directly for the cassette player and pulled it free of the wall and threw it to the other side of the room where it knocked over the bureau lamp and the lightbulb shattered and Nadi began screaming, but I shouted back and soon she became quiet, but I did not lower my voice; I yelled in our language that, yes, perhaps she did not come to America to live like a gypsy, but I did not come here to work like an Arab! To be treated like an Arab! And then I did lower my voice because even my son does not know the manner of jobs I have been working here. He has seen me leave dressed in a suit and he knows I work at two jobs, but that is all he knows, and many nights at this convenience store, even though it is situated two towns to the north of us, I have worried about his older schoolmates with driver’s licenses making this discovery. So I lowered my voice to almost a whisper, and I told to my wife that beginning tomorrow she will begin packing and there is no more to discuss, Mrs. Behrani. Do not open your lips.

  Once, before dinner at our home in the capital city, while Nadereh and Pourat’s wife were in another room and after I had just raised my voice at our daughter of seven years for something I do not now recall, Pourat said to me softly: “Behrani, every night you must leave your work behind you.”

  Pourat and I were of the same rank then, both captains, genob sarvans, and I did not at first understand him until he nodded at Soraya, at her brown eyes wet from my yelling, from my orders. My face became warm with embarrassment, and after that moment I have worked hard to discipline myself from viewing my wife only as a junior officer, my children as soldiers.

  But I am prepared now to give all the orders necessary until we are out of that pooldar apartment. The rent is paid through the month, two more weeks, but the Behrani family will be discharged this weekend, I promise that. I have a security deposit of three thousand dollars to claim. This leaves a total of six thousand dollars for us after I pay the remaining thirty-five on our new property. Tomorrow, Friday, I will receive my checks from this store and from the Highway Department, and I will leave these jobs with no notice. Torez and Mendez, and even Tran, can watch my backside as I go, as Genob Sarhang Behrani prepares for a new life, a life in the buying and selling of American real estate.

  MY HUSBAND GOT TO MISS ALL THIS, THAT’S WHAT I KEPT THINKING, that he didn’t have to be around for any of this, and I was stuck at the El Rancho Motel in San Bruno. It was a shitty little one-story L of rooms wedged between an electrical parts warehouse and a truck-stop bar near the 101 freeway ramp. The TV in my room got sound but nothing on the screen, and it was only a Wednesday night but there was a live country band playing at the truck stop and the management must have had all the windows open, so I turned the TV up and listened to an old movie with Humphrey Bogart and in the end he gets shot and his girlfriend weeps and says he’s free now, he’s free.

  But I was still so mad it had backed up on me and now I felt weak and a little sick. I was dying for a cigarette, which made me even madder because I hadn’t smoked one since a month after Nick left, and I hadn’t really craved one in five. So I chewed gum.

  I was getting out of my morning shower when they knocked on the front door of my house: a man in a suit, two cops, and a locksmith with a huge gut that hung over the tool belt at his waist. I answered in my robe, my hair wet and scraggly around my face. Parked out front was a van, a big LTD, and two police cruisers. The man in the suit did the talking. He handed me some kind of document and said he was from the civil division of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department. He had a crewcut and a double chin, the rest of him slim. The policemen had star badges on their light blue shirts, sheriff’s deputies. One was tall and skinny with black hair and a mustache he’d trimmed too much on one end, and he kept staring at me. I read over the court order, then handed it back to the man in the suit, my fingers shaking, and I told him the truth, that my husband and I had never operated any damn business out of our home and did not owe a business tax. I went to the county tax office myself and told them so, even signed a statement and had it notarized, and I thought that was the end of it. The man in the suit asked to be let in and when I stepped back, all four of them walked into my small living room while I stood there in my robe, still naked and damp underneath. The fat locksmith squatted at my door and started unscrewing the knob and lock.

  “What is he doing?”

  The man in the suit handed me back the court order. “The county has petitioned the court in its behalf, Mrs. Lazaro. This should come as no surprise to you. I’m sure you had ample warning; your house is up for auction starting tomorrow morning.”

  “Auction?”

  The pager on his belt went
off. He asked if he could use my phone on the kitchen counter, then went to it without waiting for an answer. I stared at the court order, but didn’t see any of the words; I was picturing all the county tax mail I’d been throwing away unopened since last winter, sure I’d done my part and they were now after the wrong person.

  “Is your husband home?” It was the tall deputy with the crooked mustache.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  The deputy looked like he was about to say more, but then just looked at me.

  “What? Why do you need to know that?”

  “We need to notify all residents of the house, Mrs. Lazaro.”

  “Well, he doesn’t live here anymore.”

  The tall deputy nodded at me, then folded his hands in front of him and looked down at my bare feet. I walked away from him, but I didn’t know where to go.

  The other deputy was short, chewing gum, watching the locksmith like he wanted to remember how to do that himself. The man in the suit finished his call and waved the tall deputy over, whispered something to him, then came back into the living room and said he had to leave but Deputy Sheriff Burdon will assist you in vacating the property. That was his exact word, vacating, and he said it in a low tone, like it was a skill not many people had. Then he was gone, and the tall deputy with the crooked mustache asked where I kept my coffee. He suggested I get dressed and he’d make up a pot. I hesitated a second, but I felt like all three of them could see through my robe. I went and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and when I came back out, the short deputy was using my phone, the locksmith was already going at the back-door knob, and Deputy Burdon was setting four of my cups on the counter. He glanced at me and said I might want to put on something cooler, there’s no fog today and it’s going to get hotter.

  “That’s all right ’cause I’m not leaving.” My throat felt dry and stiff.

  The locksmith looked up from his work on my back door.

  Deputy Burdon rested one hand on the countertop, and he had an understanding expression on his face, but I hated him anyway. “I’m afraid you have no choice, Mrs. Lazaro. All your things will be auctioned off with the property. Do you want that?”

  “Look, I inherited this house from my father, it’s paid for. You can’t evict me!” My eyes filled up and the men began to blur. “I never owed a fucking business tax. You have no right to do this.”

  The tall deputy handed me a napkin from the counter. “Do you have a lawyer?”

  I shook my head and wiped under my eyes. “I can’t afford a lawyer, I’m a house cleaner.”

  He took a notepad and pen from his front shirt pocket, wrote down the name of a Legal Aid office in San Francisco, then ripped out the page and handed it to me. “Nothing’s written in blood. You just have to clear out today. Who knows? You might be moving right back in next week. Do you want to phone some friends to come help you pack up?”

  “No.” I kept my eyes on my full coffee cup.

  “I’m afraid everything has to go today.”

  The locksmith was using a battery-powered drill on my back door. I could smell the sawdust spilling onto the linoleum. “There’s no one to call.”

  He looked at me, his brown eyes narrowed like he thought he knew me from a long time ago. I felt my cheeks get hot. He reached out his hand. “My name’s Lester.”

  I hesitated before I took it. He stood then used my phone to call the Golden State Movers, signed a slip of paper for the locksmith, took from him the new keys I wasn’t supposed to have, and stepped out onto the front stoop with the other deputy. They were standing close to the screen door and I heard Deputy Lester Burdon tell his partner to go back out on patrol, he was going to call in some personal time and help this lady clear out.

  The storage sheds across from the El Rancho Motel were his idea. It took only four hours to move my life from the only house I’ve ever owned to one of those steel shacks with the padlock I now have to pay for and can’t afford. The movers didn’t have any boxes to sell me, so the tall deputy went out for some while the moving men—three college kids—started hauling out my Colonial living-room set with the plaid upholstery, a wedding present from Nick’s mother and father. I was feeling kind of numb, stuffing the small things into plastic trash bags, each one thrown into a moving truck like this was all natural, part of some bigger plan that shouldn’t have surprised and upset me so much.

  AFTER A WHILE, the band quit for the night and I turned off the lamp and sat there against the headboard. I heard an eighteen-wheeler pull into the lot, and the last call noise inside the barroom. I was fighting the urge for a cigarette. I stretched out on the motel bed, rested my hands over my breasts, and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. I was wondering again where Nicky was, Los Angeles maybe, or Mexico, though nobody back East knew he’d even left me. So I lay there in the dark, remembering what Irish Jimmy Doran said to me. He was from Dublin, small and wiry with bad teeth, and he tended bar where I used to waitress at the Tip Top on old Route I. I saw him in the grocery store parking lot right after Nick got his job offer in Frisco. It was a gray day in April, but Jimmy was squinting his eyes like the sun was on him, and when he saw me he came over and gave me a big hug, smelling like Chesterfields and Schnapps. I told him we were off to California, the land of milk and honey.

  “Dat’s what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: ‘America, the Land of Milk and Honey.’ Bot they never tell you the milk’s gone sour and the honey’s stolen.”

  AT THE FIRST sign of daylight spreading over the cars in the El Rancho parking lot, I gave up trying to sleep and drove the Bonneville down the coast on Highway 1. The sun was still coming up from the east. The ocean to my right was maroon, the sky above it silver. There were sand trails through the thick purple ice plant that grew along the roadside. The few cars I passed had their headlights on, and I kept hearing Deputy Burdon’s voice in my head warning me to stay away from Bisgrove Street until I’d talked to a lawyer and straightened things out or else I’d be trespassing and up for arrest. This got my heart beating fast, and I kept the radio off and drove for twenty minutes, past the state beaches through the tourist-shop town of Montara to Moss Beach, where I stopped at a gas station/beach supply store and drank coffee at a table by the window. The morning was still quiet. The beach across the road was empty, and I watched a seagull dive into the water for a fish. At the front of the store was an old woman behind the register. I went to the cigarette machine, stuck in my coins, and pulled the knob hard: Who did they think they were evicting? And for what? A tax they billed to the wrong fucking house? My dead father’s house?

  I backed out the Bonneville and drove south along the water. I lit another cigarette and I kept seeing Nick’s face the morning he left, the way he looked in the shadowed room after he woke me with a nudge, sitting on the side of the bed. At first I thought I’d slept late and he was on his way out the door to work, but then I saw how early it was, and I could smell all the cigarettes on his breath, and I knew he’d been up a long time. I moved to switch on the bedside lamp but he touched my hand to stop me. Then he held it. In that dim light, I couldn’t make out his eyes.

  “What, honey? What?” I said. I was thinking of his father or his mother, a late-night phone call I’d missed. But as soon as he opened his mouth and said, “Kath,” I knew it was about us again, and I started to sit up, but he put his other hand on my chest and I stayed still and waited for him to say what he was going to say. But he never said another word; he sat there and stared in the direction of my face, and even when I asked him what, what’s the matter, Nicky, my heart jerking all confused under his hand, he only stared, and then, after another half minute of nothing, he squeezed my fingers and left the room, and I jumped out of bed in just a T-shirt and followed him through the house to the front door, saying, “Wait, wait.” I stopped and watched him get into the used Honda we’d just bought as a second car. Daylight was breaking out over the yard and the woods across the road. Then I saw the two sui
tcases and his bass guitar in the backseat, and I ran out into the driveway, the January air hitting me like a bat. He was already backing up and I rapped on the driver’s window and screamed his name and kept doing it until he shifted gears in the street and drove down the hill, not once looking back at me, even in the rearview mirror.

  I started to cry as I drove. The sun was lighting up the ocean, and the sand was getting bright.

  IT WAS CLOSE to ten when I drove into the parking lot of the motel. Most of the trailer trucks next door were gone, and the sun was starting to shine bright off the cars in the lot. As soon as I got into my room, I lit another cigarette and called the lawyer’s number Deputy Burdon had written on the back of his card. A man with a soft voice answered and I started to tell him how I’d been evicted from my own home yesterday. I almost cried again and I hated myself for it. The man said he was sorry to hear of my dilemma but you’ve reached the Walk-In Legal Aid Society and all you have to do is come in and explain all that to one of our attorneys. He gave me the address in the city and wished me luck. Before we hung up I asked him what it would cost and he told me all services were delivered on a sliding scale.

  I undressed and put on my robe and sat on the edge of the bed. I had about eight hundred in checking, fifty in savings, and this month the house insurance was due. Now I had the storage shed to pay for, and this new lawyer, and there was no way I could pull my shit together for my two cleaning customers today. One was a house over on the San Andreas Reservoir, the other a doctor’s office in town. I called and postponed both, leaving me three jobs to do tomorrow, then took a long shower. I dried myself with the motel’s thin green towel, thinking how even this place could sink me, though I knew there was nowhere else to go.

  I started to blow-dry my hair, which had grown out past my shoulders the way it hadn’t been since I was nineteen and married to Donnie, my first cokestorm, my period late, and we both told ourselves we weren’t ready and he drove me to the clinic in Brookline and the whole family found out. Dad had never really looked right at me anyway, but then he stopped doing it at all, would only give me his quiet profile, usually in his recliner in front of the TV. And Ma started giving me that look, her eyes locking in on me dark and flat, like I was something from her bad dreams that kept showing up in her day life, in her home, and just who did I think I was?