One little girl clung to him each time, smiling up at him. She was missing two front teeth and had a wide, gappy smile. She wore a bright tiger-striped head scarf; her name was Leila. “Mr. Leftenant,” she would call, grinning.
Each time he thought of Leila, he thought of the others, the two small bodies in the back seat.
* * *
Pink Trunks weighed about a hundred and ninety, and Conrad could have taken him down with one sweep of his arm. The man stood right in front of him, his face tense and outraged. His feet were spread and his hands clenched, as though he was about to start boxing.
Conrad stepped back. He was still here—still here, on the beach, and still there, outside Ramadi. He could feel a pounding in his throat, rising waves inside his head.
But they had, actually, run over this kid. They’d knocked him down in the water. Conrad folded his arms over his chest and said nothing. He gave a little shake of his head, feeling sickened.
“Look,” Jenny said, “we’re sorry.”
* * *
In the evening they had drinks out on the splintery deck behind the house. The sun was setting behind the pine trees, turning the landscape scarlet. The tall grass glowed and the pine trees were soft and dark, the sun burning behind them.
They sat in a loose circle, Marshall and Conrad in chairs facing the sunset, Lydia and Jenny on a low bench, Ollie on a stool. Their faces gleamed, ruddy from the day at the beach. Marshall sat leaning back, his knees apart. He wore white pants, a striped Greek fisherman’s shirt, and thick-strapped leather sandals. Beside him on an old table was a bowl of peanuts. Marshall held his drink in his left hand and ate the peanuts steadily with his right. He picked a little cluster of them, put them one by one into his mouth, then took another little cluster.
Lydia sat beside him. Her hair was still damp. Her face glowed, her dangling earrings catching the light. Jenny was next to her, looking polished and glamorous in a green silky top and white pants. Ollie, hunched on the stool, was barefoot. He wore a faded T-shirt and khaki pants that dragged, fraying, at the heels.
“So, Con, what do you think?” Lydia asked. “How is it, coming back here after all this time?” She wore a loose blue blouse, and her neck and throat looked sunburned against the collar.
“Good,” he said, nodding. He sat in an unreliable canvas sling chair that swayed when he moved.
“Different?”
“A little,” he said.
“How?” asked Ollie.
“Everything’s smaller,” Conrad said. “The ceilings are lower. The rooms are, like, not big enough to stand up in.”
The others laughed.
“Maybe you’re bigger,” Lydia said.
“Maybe you’re older,” said Jenny.
“Maybe you’re a pod person,” said Ollie.
“I am a pod person,” said Conrad, nodding.
“Speaking of pod people, I thought that guy was going to clock you,” Jenny said. “That horrible dad, at the beach.” The sun burnished her hair, and she wore big earrings with a black-and-white checkerboard pattern.
“He was nuts,” Ollie said, shaking his head. “What was he thinking? You’re a Marine!”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Conrad said. “Marines get in trouble here every day for stuff like that. They think they can do anything.”
“They can,” Ollie said loyally.
“They can’t,” Conrad said.
“Sounds like a good move,” Marshall said, “walking away.”
Conrad said nothing.
“On the set we have a guy who’s a fixer,” said Ollie. He was changing the subject deliberately, Conrad saw. This touched him, his little brother offering protection.
Ollie was working for the summer as an intern on an independent movie production. The movie was being shot in a grand old decaying house in western Massachusetts. The plot involved a beautiful refugee from Kosovo, a drug runner, and a redneck libertarian. Other than that it was hard to explain, Ollie said, because the director kept rewriting it. “It’s a fast-paced, action-packed zombie love story,” he told them.
“We should have had this guy there on the beach. Anything that goes wrong, he fixes it.”
“Like what?” asked Jenny.
“Anything. If we don’t have a permit to park somewhere or to shoot at night, something like that. Or if someone has left a truck in someone’s driveway or opened a gate and let the dog out. Anything that goes wrong, they call Mick.”
“What’s he like?” asked Marshall. “His manner. Is he conciliatory? Brisk? Threatening?”
“He’s really friendly, but also kind of stern underneath. He apologizes, but he never says it was our fault. He just fixes it. He says, ‘Sorry that happened, we’re going to move the truck right now.’ ‘Tell me where to get that application for the permit.’ ‘What does your dog look like?’”
“Did he really find a runaway dog?” asked Jenny. She reached for some peanuts. “How?”
“He didn’t actually find it. He told me later that was something he didn’t know how to fix, he just hoped the dog would come home, and it did. But he was really nice to the owner.”
“And is he a Mick?” asked Lydia. “Is he Irish?”
Ollie shrugged. “I don’t even know his last name.”
“Blarney,” said Lydia.
“Stereotype alert,” Jenny said, holding up her fingers to make a cross. “You don’t even know if he’s Irish, and you’re branding him.”
“Those are not stereotypes,” Lydia said, “they’re cultural characteristics. Do you think everyone in the world is alike? Don’t you think the Spanish are different from the Norwegians? Of course they are. There’s nothing derogatory about that. You shouldn’t be derogatory or demeaning, but you can say there are such things as cultural characteristics.”
“No,” said Jenny, shaking her head, “you can’t. It’s stereotyping. It’s like racial profiling.”
“Hey,” Lydia said. “I’m not pulling someone’s car over. I’m commenting on the fact that the Irish are charming. Have you ever been to Ireland?”
“The point is—” said Jenny.
“The point is,” said Lydia, “that if you go to a foreign country, you find it’s different from your own, there are cultural differences. Why would you not want to admit that? That’s why you go other places! Because there are cultural differences!”
“Mom. Look,” said Jenny. “Any kind of categorization is demeaning. It depersonalizes everyone. ‘All black people have rhythm. All Italians can sing.’ Those are offensive because they deny individuation.”
“I’m not saying all Irish people use blarney. I just mean that it’s a cultural trait, being charming. There are national physical traits—being redheaded, for example. Why is that offensive?”
“Because those claims are used in offensive ways,” Marshall said. “It’s too easy to move into racism if you start out by saying, All so-and-sos do such and such. If you agree that everyone does one thing, then you can make that one thing demeaning, and no one can argue it. It’s a rhetorical issue.”
“Thank you, Dad,” Jenny said.
“Well, I’m not being remotely demeaning to anyone,” said Lydia. “And I’m talking in my own backyard, not on national television. I am fascinated by cultural differences. It’s what I like about people.” Lydia turned to Conrad. She sat very straight, her blouse polished by the setting sun. “Con, help me out,” she said. “Maybe you noticed some cultural differences between Iraqis and Americans.”
They all looked at him.
Was it his imagination or had his mother raised her voice slightly when she spoke to him? As though he were deaf? Or old, or slightly incompetent?
Conrad shrugged. “There are so many different kinds of Iraqis,” he said, “it’s hard to say.”
He knew he was meant to say something funny. He thought of Ali, and the grimy laborers lined up along the wall in the clearing room.
“The Iraqis I saw, the ones
I saw face-to-face and spent time with and talked to, were interesting and mostly good-hearted,” he said. “The ones I couldn’t see were mostly trying to kill me. Sometimes I did see them, and then I tried to kill them.”
He hadn’t meant to say that.
With the sunset, a light evening wind was picking up and the air was cooling. The grass in the meadow moved, rustling. The sun was dropping behind the darkening pines. The deck was now in a soft evening shadow, though the upper floor of the house was still illuminated, shimmering white. Why had he thought he could change this by clearing a field of brush? He was back where he’d started. Nothing had changed.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Lydia said. She looked stricken.
“This must be hard for you, Con,” Marshall said. “Being home. Trying to get back into the life here.”
Conrad nodded, not looking at him.
“We don’t mean to make it hard,” Marshall said.
“But you do make it hard,” Conrad said. There was a silence. “I know what you’re thinking.”
Marshall cocked his head. “I don’t think you do.”
Conrad could feel them not asking.
“If you want to know if I killed anyone, yes, I did,” he said.
“You don’t have to talk about any of it,” Marshall said. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“Did I fire my rifle? Yes,” Conrad said.
They were all silent. Ollie watched him nervously, and Jenny dropped her eyes, bobbing her foot, her sandal dangling from it.
“What do you want us to do, Con?” Lydia asked. “Do you want us to ask you questions? Are there things you want to tell us? What would make this easier?”
He shook his head. “That’s all I have to say.”
There was a long silence.
“Please don’t do this, Con,” Lydia said. “Don’t make us feel so shut out. We can’t help you if you keep us away.”
“You can’t help me,” Conrad said. He leaned forward in his chair.
“There must be something.” Lydia stood and came over to him.
Conrad jumped up and moved away. He didn’t want her to touch him.
The thing lay all around them, the black weight of it. Jenny stared hard into the dimming meadow. Ollie looked uneasily at Conrad. Lydia and Marshall looked at him, distraught.
Conrad stood up.
“Con,” Ollie said. He stood up, too, and his head and shoulders were suddenly bright, caught by the rays of the sun. His face looked stricken.
“You can’t help me,” Conrad said again, and turned to walk away.
“I’m coming with you,” Ollie said, and Conrad turned back to him.
“Get away from me,” he said, furious.
Olllie stopped, his face pale and shocked.
“Get away,” Conrad said again.
Conrad walked down the steps onto the wiry grass and along the side of the house, out of their sight. He walked down to the road, a dark ribbon in the twilight. There were no cars, there was no sound. Down the road was only one house, the lower windows glowing in the dimness. Nothing else, no other human presence in the landscape.
But he could sense the chem lights moving around in the meadow across the road. He could sense people over there, shadows sliding between the dark, upright shapes of junipers. He listened, straining for the subtle scrape of stone, the faint clink of metal. His heart had begun its crazed clatter again, his chest tight and swollen. He wanted an end to this. He looked back and forth in the darkness.
15
The irony of this, his staying in the guest room with its double bed, was that apparently Conrad no longer wanted sex. Not even with himself, his most skillful and practiced lover. He stayed limp and soft, no matter what secret whispers he summoned up to his inner ear, no matter what lurid images he paraded through his head. Nothing.
He was caught on the surface of his mind. He couldn’t let go, couldn’t sink down to that hot, private place, couldn’t leave the glaring surface of the world.
* * *
Claire arrived late on Friday evening.
Conrad was in the kitchen when he saw the headlights coming slowly up the road, then turning in. He went out to greet her, walking down the lawn through the darkness.
Claire had turned off the engine, but the interior light was still on. She was in a little illuminated capsule, unaware of her visibility. Her head was down, and the light fell on her glossy hair. She was doing something with her bag, and when Conrad opened the door, she looked up, startled.
“Hi.” He waited for her face to turn pleased.
“Hi,” she said, her voice tentative. Her face did not change.
Was this how he made her feel? Ashamed, Conrad squatted beside the open door.
“Hey,” he said softly.
She was rumpled and untidy from the drive. A few fine strands of hair were pasted to her cheek by sweat. Her pink linen blouse was wrinkled, and she looked tired and apprehensive.
“Clairey.” He was nearly whispering. “Do I frighten you?”
She shook her head. He reached out and smoothed her hair, gently pulling the strands away from her cheek. Her skin was hot and soft.
“Maybe a little,” she said.
“Sorry,” Conrad said. “Jesus.”
Her face was faintly silvered with sweat. Tiny freckles stood out, dark points along the ridge of her cheekbones. The column of her throat was straight and fine.
“I know you don’t mean to,” she said, and smiled at him.
“Jesus,” he said again, shamed. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me, too,” she said.
He carried her bag up. Inside, Lydia gave her a welcoming hug and sent her up to get settled. Claire went first up the steep stairs, Conrad behind her with the bag. His face was close to her legs and he could see her smooth bare calves, her ankles, with their mysterious bony knobs and tendons. He could smell her, warm and clean and slightly fruity.
In the room he said, “Here it is, the honeymoon suite.” He’d told her about the ban, Lydia lifting it.
“I’m honored,” she said, looking around. “It’s lovely.”
Claire stood in front of the bureau, with the fraying white cotton scarf over the top of it. She touched the silver luster jug, the soft-bristled hairbrush. She looked at herself in the heavy gilt-framed mirror and smoothed her hair abstractedly. She turned to the window and looked out into the darkness over the meadow. The lilac bushes brushed against the screen, and the curtains lifted in the evening breeze.
“It’s so quiet,” she said, turning back.
“Very,” Conrad said.
She pointed down at the painted floor, with its scattering of faded rag rugs.
“And they’re right there?” She mimed the words, barely whispering them. “Right below us?”
Conrad grinned and nodded.
“We’ll be very quiet.”
“Yes. And also, they’ll have their hands over their ears.”
Claire clamped her own hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud, snorting, the laughter getting out anyway. It was contagious. They both tried to hold it in, shuddering, bending over, trying not to make a sound. Ripples of laughter were traded back and forth, each setting the other off again. Finally Claire straightened, her face red, her eyes shining.
“It’s a lovely room. I’m sure we’ll have—” That set her off again, and Conrad, too.
So he was glad she was here.
They went down for dinner; everyone was in the kitchen. Marshall was pulling the spindle-backed chairs up to the table. Ollie was pouring ice water, and Lydia and Jenny had begun putting food on the plates.
“How was the drive?” Marshall asked.
“Horrible getting out of New York,” said Claire. “Not too bad after that.”
“Have you been here before?” Lydia asked, stopping suddenly, two loaded plates in her hands.
“Never,” Claire said.
“But why not?” Lydia set down the pl
ates on the table. “Sit here, next to Marshall. Why did you never come here when you were in college?”
Claire shook her head. “I went to India one summer, another I worked on an Indian reservation in Montana. I don’t know. One year Conrad didn’t come, anyway. He was at Quantico.” She looked at him.
“Ta-dum,” said Conrad forebodingly. “The beginning of it all.”
“Well, it was,” said Lydia. She put her own plate on the table and sat down. “Everyone please sit. It doesn’t matter where, except for Claire, I want you next to Marshall. Place of honor.” Lydia wore a silky striped shirt and fancy earrings, tiers of glitter that chimed faintly when she moved.
The table was covered with a festive tablecloth, bright red, with yellow stylized roses. The wineglasses were mismatched, and so were the water glasses. The plates matched—white, with blue flowers around the rims—but they were faded, with chipped edges. Lydia had put candles on the table. The flames fluttered in a faint breeze: both doors were open, and the scent of the summer night came in on the mild air.
“We’re so glad to have you here,” Lydia said to Claire, raising her wineglass, beaming.
“It’s so nice of you to ask me,” Claire said politely. She’d changed her clothes and looked pretty and glowing. She wore a black blouse and a string of red beads. Her thick hair was held back with a barrette.
“Oh, no, it’s nicer of you to come,” Conrad said. “It’s much nicer of you to come than it is of us to ask you.”
There was a moment’s pause. Jenny, lifting the wooden salad bowl, held it still, narrowing her eyes at her brother. Ollie, reaching for the salt, froze, his eyes flicking at Conrad’s face. Marshall, settling his napkin in his lap, looked up. Lydia turned to look at her son, her face filled with alarm.
Conrad grinned. “Joke,” he said.
Lydia frowned at him.
“Conrad,” she said. “Claire was nice enough to come all the way up here. Don’t tease your girlfriend. Isn’t that one of the cardinal rules of relationships they tell you on Car Talk?”
“I think theirs is about wives,” said Marshall. “It’s ‘No matter what your wife says, you say “Yes, dear.”’ I’ve memorized it.”
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