Homeland Elegies

by Ayad Akhtar

  SLAUGHTER

  Nothing further, Your Honor.

  …and heads back to his seat.)

  * * *

  In her cross-examination, Hannah, Father’s lawyer, would establish two important things: (1) Father wasn’t the first doctor to worry about the Hollander family using beta-blockers to treat their long QT syndrome; Corinne had attested to that fact herself. (2) He was certainly not a disengaged caregiver. On the latter point, Hannah was able to interpolate into the session an anecdote about Father’s troubles with the state years prior for insurance-only billing. Back in the ’90s, if one of his patients didn’t have coverage and couldn’t afford to pay, he didn’t even send them an invoice. The state found out and reprimanded him. Chip Slaughter objected vociferously to her clearly instrumental digression. The judge sustained his objections, and the jury was instructed to ignore what they’d just heard. Little matter. The point was made. Father was the sort of doctor in it for the right reasons. He cared…by definition.

  In the wake of Corinne’s powerful testimony on behalf of her daughter, these were the necessary rebuttals, and Hannah made them effectively, even forcefully. But as I watched her work, skillfully building her argument, pacing in her dark Mephisto wedges and long navy jacket, eyeing witness and jury through light, clear eyeglass frames that matched her pearls as well as the white highlights in her salt-and-pepper A-line bob—and in an accent that stood out for barely sounding like one; she was from Maryland—I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. There was no gentle, rippling laughter in the jury, no sounds of recognition—just silence. I’d never been in a courtroom before, and I was surprised at how similar it felt to sitting with an audience as it watched a play. Years of putting up plays in front of audiences left me with little mystery when it came to their shifts in collective mood. I was rarely unclear about an audience’s moment-to-moment interest—avid or riven; when its sympathies shifted; when the plot was lost. The jury’s mood seemed no less obvious. In this case, with Hannah, it was one of suspicion. To them, she was going after someone whom they now saw as one of their own. Hannah was another outsider who just didn’t get it.

  Some of this Hannah was aware of—or so she claimed over dinner that night. I met her alone; Father didn’t want to go out. The restaurant she suggested was a defunct paper mill now converted into a gourmet restaurant that served locally sourced food. Paper had once been the thing in these parts, until the early aughts, when it became cheaper to cut down local trees and pile them into containers to be sent to China, pulped into paper there, then packaged, shipped back across the ocean, and loaded onto American trucks for domestic delivery. It wasn’t just paper. This was the model for all the long-standing local industries: furniture, stamping, tool and die. Even lumber was having trouble keeping up with forests halfway across the planet, where gene-edited trees produced stronger, softer wood in larger quantities than the natural forests in Wisconsin ever would. And in so many of these erstwhile factories, mills, lofts, and warehouses—buildings that were often the very reason these towns even existed—antiques were now sold, candles made, Pilates taught, incense burned, and cavatelli served with venison ragù. The last was described on this La Crosse eatery’s menu as the chef’s homespun homage to his father, a hunter who loved few things more than his freshly hunted deer meat. I wasn’t tempted. I ordered a burger with Gruyère from Monroe. Hannah had a frisée Cobb salad with pork-belly bits from local pigs. She’d ordered Merlot, which sat idly in a stemless glass alongside her smartphone. She seemed to be making a show of not drinking it.

  “I’ve told your father this is not about winning the case on the merits,” she said after we’d spent some time trading details of our respective biographies—she’d gone to school at Yale, worked as a tall-ship captain on Lake Erie for three years, then as a chef in New Orleans for a half decade before going to law school in Madison, where she’d ended up marrying and raising a family—“it’s about making sure we don’t lose it on the optics. To them, your dad’s an outsider, a city doctor, an immigrant—”

  “Yeah, I was surprised how she kept mentioning that. Doctor from the city. Doctor from Milwaukee. I don’t even think she said his name.”

  “She didn’t. That was by design. There’s a lot of animosity out here for folks from the cities. Milwaukee. Madison. Minneapolis. The anger is real. And it’s not even as bad in a place like this as it is in some of the outlying counties. When we try a case in Jackson or Trempealeau, we don’t take our own cars anymore. We rent. Compact, economy. I’ve had colleagues get tires on a Lexus or Audi slashed in a court parking lot.”

  “In a court parking lot?”

  “People are really angry.” Her phone lit up with a text. She looked down and noted the message with irritation, then swiped and turned the phone over. “Look, you drive around the back roads through most of this state—and trust me, I’ve done a fair bit of that, meeting with clients and spending so much time at these small-town hospitals—the poverty out there is real. Houses are falling apart. Roads. Towns. People aren’t taking care of their things, their yards. Not taking care of themselves. Nothing’s cared for anymore. And it’s not just that folks don’t have the money to do it. They haven’t had that for thirty years, but now they don’t even have the will to make a show of it. When you lose that? We’re talking about a different order of despair. And when you’ve spent six or eight hours out here just driving past the broken-down farms and homes, the empty towns, the dying Main Streets—and then you drive into Madison or Milwaukee? It’s like something out of science fiction. I mean, the wealth is screaming out at you. Even just the fact of there being people out and about, with somewhere to go. Storefronts that actually have businesses inside. People going to buy stuff. These folks get to the cities once or twice a year. They see that. They see the difference. They don’t like it.”

  “Probably hard to blame them.”

  “I’ve got my own thoughts about it all. I feel like sometimes people are using the situation as an excuse not to do anything about their own lives. But who am I to judge? The point is, that gap between the cities and the rest of the state is a big part of what we’re up against with your dad. Especially now that a lot of that anger’s being directed not just at city folk but also at immigrants.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He’s brown. They can’t say his name. It’s just a matter of time before they find out he’s a Muslim…”

  “How would they find that out?”

  “Chip Slaughter is not going to lose a chance to make that an issue. Trust me. I tried a case against him not three years ago. Indian doctor. Pediatric oncologist. Wasn’t able to save the kid. Anyway, same as your dad. Tricky situation, but the science was behind him. On the merits, there was no real question. Went well in court. Then the day before closing arguments, San Bernardino.”

  “The attack?”

  She nodded. “This was not some high-profile case with sequestered jurors and whatnot. They come in that morning; they’ve been watching the news. You could see it in the way they were looking at him. And this defendant wasn’t Muslim. He’s a Hindu. Guy probably hates Muslims more than they do.”

  “So what ended up happening?”

  “Chip didn’t let them forget it. Hobbling around on that cane, mispronouncing the doctor’s name in his closing argument. Then apologizing. Then doing it again. Bringing up stuff that had nothing to do with the case. That the defendant had a foreign medical degree, how he’d worked in Dubai. It was a masterpiece of innuendo.”

  “I meant to ask, what’s up with his leg?”

  “Car accident when he was younger. High school or college, from what I gather. It was apparently pretty bad…Anyway, the innuendo worked. The case ended in a mistrial. Two jurors just couldn’t get over the trust hump. Two elderly ladies.”

  “White, I’m assuming.”

  “You know what? One of them was Hmong. When you’re dealing with something like terrorism, a juror’s race won’t tell you much.
That stuff scares the shit out of everyone. Whatever their color.” She finally reached for her wine and sipped. “What happens in the news, we can’t control. But what is in our control is how your father handles himself in court. Today? Was not acceptable. Not a good look for him or our cause. If he’s not willing to help himself, there’s only so much the rest of us can do.”

  “I’m talking to him.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do. But if he was my father? I wouldn’t just talk. I wouldn’t let him out of my sight. Not until we’re done with this thing.”

  4.

  After dinner, we walked back to the hotel together. I left her at the elevator to peek in at the bar. The stools along the countertop were empty. The only patrons inside were a young couple nestling on a love seat before the fireplace. Upstairs, as I passed his room on the way to my own, I stopped to listen at the door. I didn’t hear anything. I knocked lightly, but there was no answer. I checked my pocket for his key and remembered I’d left it on my dresser before going out to meet Hannah.

  Back in my room, I sat down at the desk and pulled out my computer. After my habitual twenty-minute distraction on Twitter and Facebook, I spent the next two hours making notes about the day. The technique I used for this sort of recall owed much to my years of noting dreams. I dispensed with chronology and stuck to detail. The more vivid the fragment, the sound, the image—and the more exhaustively elaborated through language—the richer the associated cluster of recollections it spawned. The process was counterintuitive, akin to restoring the incidental sedimentary layers on a piece of extracted ore. The mind recalled the essence and discarded the dross, but the dross was what swarmed with generative life. That night, as I wrote, wherever recollection alighted led me back to the teeming soil of Corinne Hollander on the witness stand.

  It was almost midnight when I stopped. I turned on the TV. Colbert was talking about Trump. So was Fallon. Trump was on Nightline, Fox, CNN, CNBC. We were a nation in thrall to our own stupidity. What passed for politics now was just dramaturgy. Sow conflict, promise consequence. Perhaps Plato wasn’t wrong to warn us about a city overrun with storytellers.

  I did what everyone else did. I watched. And kept watching.

  At some point, I decided to check in on my father. I found his key where I’d left it, on the dresser. Down the hall, I slipped it into the lock. As I nudged the door open, I saw that his lights were on. Both beds were empty. The bathroom door was ajar—empty, too. I tried calling his cell phone.

  It went straight to voice mail.

  Downstairs, he still wasn’t in the hotel bar. I described him to the bartender, a woman with two platinum pigtails and a rash of blue-green tattoos along her neck and arm. “Doesn’t ring a bell,” she said as she chopped at a block of congealed ice cubes. At the front desk, neither of the attendants had seen him.

  I wandered the halls downstairs that led to the meeting rooms. I checked the bathrooms. I checked the bar again, then loitered in the lobby and stared out the front window into the parking lot. Above a row of factory lofts lining the river was a billboard with an array of silly characters dressed up as a deck of cards.

  My heart sank with a dispiriting thought.

  I marched back to the front desk and asked one of the attendants how far it was to the casino on the billboard outside. “Oh, it’s only twenty-five minutes on the interstate,” she offered happily. “We have a shuttle, but…Brynne?” She turned to her coworker, who was already tapping at a keyboard.

  “Looks like it’s not back this way for another hour or so,” the other attendant said.

  “How late does it stay open?” I asked.

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered, provoking an offended look from the one called Brynne. “Sorry,” I said. She looked away, leaving me to her colleague. “Would you mind calling me a cab?” I asked.

  “Sure. Usually takes around three minutes,” the first attendant said, reaching for the phone. “You can wait out front,” she added blankly.

  The cab took longer than three minutes to show up (and would take longer than twenty-five to get to the casino). It was a mud-spattered orange minivan with a graying and surly driver. I got in; he tilted his head toward me to wait for my destination. “The casino,” I said. In the rearview mirror, I could barely make out his face; the brim of his dark cap was lowered, and a thick, yellowing walrus mustache covered much of his lower face. As we merged onto the highway along the Mississippi—whose wide, winding surface glimmered a calm, glassy black in the moonlight—he finally spoke: “What’s your game? Slots, cards, dice?”

  “I’m not a gambler, actually,” I said.

  After that, he didn’t say another word to me.

  It was 1:15 a.m. by the time we pulled into the parking lot of a warehouse-size prefab take on a timbered hunting lodge, and just beyond it, a four-story concrete hotel tower. HEADWATERS RESORT AND GAMES was the name on the flashing marquee. A staggering footprint, I thought, for a casino in these parts. I paid the driver and offered him an extra twenty to stick around and wait. “No need. Tons of rides out here,” he said.

  I gave him the twenty anyway.

  “Good luck!” he shouted through the open window as he drove off.

  Inside, slot machines blinked and chimed, beckoning with soft, cheery sounds. They lined the entry, defined a path through the main room, formed an enclosure around the gaming pit; the slots were everywhere, though most of the stools before them were empty at this late hour. I passed an elderly couple with two canes and a bucket of coins between them, their inert faces aglow with neon blue as they inserted and depressed, watched the whirring wheels. Farther on, a man in a hunting jacket was slouched at a machine with a slot handle in his grip, snoring.

  Down in the pit, the roulette and baccarat games were closed, but there were a handful of blackjack players at two tables; none was Father. Farther on, behind a worn velvet rope, four white men and a brown lady sat around a poker table, assessing the handful of flopped cards before them. Father wasn’t there, either. I checked the restrooms, then found another, smaller room filled with slots. No luck. I tried his cell phone again. Straight to voice mail.

  As I emerged back into the main room, I found a striking older man with sun-worn skin standing in the hallway, staring at me. His hair was long and black, gathered into a tail down his back; his hands—covered in clear plastic gloves—clutched the handles of a trash can on wheels. “You looking for someone?” he asked.

  “Actually, I am.”

  “Older guy? Brown, like you?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the couch under the mural,” he said, pointing at the part of the room opposite the poker nook. “He slipped me a few bucks not to tell anyone he was back there,” the man said. “But I think he needs you to take him home.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.” I pulled out my wallet to fish for a bill, but he waved it away. “I don’t have that coming, but thanks anyway.”

  He sauntered off, pulling the trash can along behind him as he went.

  The mural in question was a Northwoods landscape in silhouette against a garish sunset. Sure enough, there was Father, lying on a leather couch under the outline of an eagle soaring into the disappearing sun.

  “Dad,” I said, reaching down to nudge him. “Dad. You have to get up. Dad. Dad…”

  “I’m not sleeping,” he groaned; he didn’t sound particularly surprised that I’d found him.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  His eyelids crept open now to reveal a leering, suspicious gaze. “Thinking?” He was clearly drunk.

  “Well, you can do that back at the hotel.”

  “Don’t. Tell me. What to do.”

  “You have to be in court tomorrow.”

  “I said: You don’t tell me! You’re not the parent!” Across the way, one of the poker players looked up at us from her cards. I sat on the couch’s armrest and lowered my voice.

  “Dad. I don’t kno
w what you’re doing, but you have to be in court at eight thirty tomorrow morning. Can we please get back to La Crosse?”

  “Or else?”

  “Or else? You were hungover in court today. It didn’t look good. Keep that up and you will lose this thing.”

  “What do I care?”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Serve that Quaker bastard right.”

  “Who?”

  “Quaaker Ooats…” he blared. The irritation seemed to rouse him; he sat up.

  “Dad. I don’t know who that is.”

  “You want to know why I was nervous?” he asked suddenly. I had no idea what he was talking about and said as much. “Christine’s mother. What’s her name?”

  “Corinne.”

  “Right. Corinne. She said I looked nervous when they all came to see me. She was right. I was. That bastard Powell made me sit down with a lawyer before I went in to see them. Warned me not to say anything. Liability.”

  “Who’s Powell?”

  “Thom Powell. The big boss,” he said mockingly. “We call him Quaker Oats—he looks like that guy on the box. Like his evil twin.” I laughed. He smiled. After a moment, he said quietly: “Don’t judge me.”

  “For what?”

  Then not so quietly: “I said, Don’t. Judge me. For anything.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m just trying to help. I love you, and I’m worried. That’s all this is. Love.” As I spoke, I thought I saw something fall from his eyes. He looked at me now, pure and helpless, hopeful.

  “Okay,” he said. “Get me some coffee. Then we’ll go.”

  I leaned in, my hand to his face, and kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  * * *

  That night, I slept in his room. Sometime before 7:00 a.m., I heard him get up and start brewing coffee in the bathroom. The machine’s sputtering fully woke me. The shades were lifted; the room was filling with morning light. He emerged from the bathroom, two mugs in hand. I was surprised to see him looking as fresh as he did. “The coffee’s not very good,” he said handing me one of the mugs. “I’m sorry about last night,” he added after a moment.