We Cast a Shadow

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  “What do I do?” I asked. I wanted to grab her up and run to the hospital. But I knew I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t straighten her ruined leg. I couldn’t cradle her head against me. What could I do for her?

  “Baby, I—” she said. She clenched her eyes.

  25

  The toaster dings. Good. Two wedges of waffle, hot and ready. Yes, they’re processed. Yes, they were probably in cold storage for a decade before purchase. But I didn’t burn them this time, at least, and create a new catastrophe. Don’t want a replay of when I tried to make Nigel French toast. Sticky raw egg and bubbling burned butter everywhere. Scalded my skin. But that was weeks and months and weeks ago.

  Now is different. I’ve snipped away the deckled edges of breakfast preparation for a more modest process. Compartmentalized the routine into something I can handle efficiently, in few movements. Undercounter to sink to microwave in five easy steps. Squat, lift, shift, shake, and drop. An interpretive dance for the morning munch.

  Organic syrup. Pulsing in the microwave. Half minute to the correct temperature. Cantaloupe, sliced anonymously before purchase and hermetically sealed in cellophane. No muss or fuss. One less thing to trouble the heart. Fissure the package with the tine of a fork. Voilà. Easiest thing in the world. I would do better if I could. French toast. Soy bacon. Hand-juiced juice. More than just a slice of cantaloupe but blueberries, too, strawberries, raspberries, and snozzberries. I’d have farmers come to us, riding atop their tractors. They would schlep the produce into our kitchen, trailing mud from the fields. This I would do for Nigel.

  Fold a paper napkin just so. Paper, because a spreading, berry-colored stain on a cloth napkin is too much to bear on mornings like these. Set out saucers, forks, and knives for two. Just for two. Only two. Do not set a third placement. Do not dwell.

  Light cuts in through the slit window as if it were the end of the day. A guillotine for dust and shadow. But it’s barely seven A.M. Soon all the shadows will perish—blown away—like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Oslo, and Perth. Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t bloviate. The Japanese cities, at least, are fine today.

  Grab glass mugs from the freezer. Two ice cubes per mug. Just two. Only two. Forget that recurrent dream where you kiss your son’s forehead and your lips stick, so you push away with your hands, but they, too, stick. Soon you are suffocating. And then a faceless, fingerless corpse.

  People argue on the radio. Last month’s attacks by ADZE by a dreaded man wearing a creepy wooden mask and white linen suit. Killing the killers is the only way to peace. It’s what Jesus would do. Shoot them in the nads. Deport the rest, children included. But first sterilize the lot—from babies to grandparents—and implant tracking devices in their bellies that detonate if they set foot on American soil again. Pike the heads. Pike the—

  Boop. Radio to classical station playing Barber’s adagio. Boop. To station bumping Tchaikovsky. Boy, that cat sure can swing. It’s all arithmetic. Exhale unhappy thoughts. Out with the minuses. In with the pluses. Kittens, puppies, and whiskers on both. Bright copper kettle. Use oven mitt to pick it up. Pour steaming water over instant coffee crystals and appreciate all the good things I’ve been doing for myself. Exercising at the Sky Tower gym on the treadmill overlooking downtown. Three days a week, or four if I can manage. Looking both ways before crossing the street. Greeting strangers in the elevators. Under no circumstances screaming at rude drivers or pale short people in rain slickers gawking at me from great distances. Pragmatism before teenage wasteland emotions.

  I take my place at the table and stare into my coffee water, a foot-brown pond. I lower Nigel’s waffle onto his plate. And the fruit.

  There’s an absence of noise from Nigel’s room. No squeaks from his bed. No puff of cool air from his ceiling fan. Finding his door closed, I call his name. The door to my bedroom shifts, but Nigel’s not in my bedroom. No one is in my bedroom when I’m not in it, even though that familiar red-haired scent still drifts on the house currents like a melody. My bedroom is empty. My life—

  This is logic. The present. The here and now. Don’t. Think. A. Bout. The. Past. Pull your ring finger back too far, and let the pain stake you to the ground as though you were a witch.

  Nigel appears in the kitchen and says hey. I say hello and good morning. We sit at the table, faking consumption. I pour syrup onto my squares. I cut my squares into cubes. I dissect my cubes into abstract shapes. What is food even for? And whose idea was it anyway? I pour syrup over the mess until my plate is a sluice of yellow and brown, like a spring-thaw mudslide. Nigel has sipped his juice two or three times. But his glass is still nearly overflowing.

  He let his hair grow out, to my surprise, for which I’m thankful. One less thing to fight over. But he still resists spot countermeasures. So I’ve established a market-based system to overcome his reticence. He’s almost a teenager and wants things. New shoes. New shirts. Things that go beep. Things that light up. I provide a small amount of money when he uses the toning cream. A larger amount of money when he takes the antimelanin tincture. The stuff finally came in from Eritrea. It arrived one day in a box lined with white down. Tincture’s active ingredient: albino turtle shell. It was said the fishermen used to throw the albinos back. They wanted fish, after all. But now they go searching for the white turtles. They have to net a couple hundred dark ones to make the harvest economically feasible. But one white hit makes a day, apparently.

  Nigel doesn’t wear hats anymore. I can’t pay him enough to.

  The tincture came in a bottle like the kind that holds cough syrup. I pour a shivering tablespoon’s worth. Open the hangar, there goes the plane. He rolls his eyes when I check under his tongue with a depressor. Have to make sure he isn’t holding the stuff in a pocket of his mouth. Trust but verify. I lay a small amount of cash on the table.

  This is to say nothing of the puckered wound on the inside of his elbow. Once a week there is injected for a startling sum a supposedly highly effective compound of things I cannot pronounce that disperse into Nigel’s young body and collect melanin in much the same way garbage men collect trash. I’ve noticed some change in Nigel’s complexion, but I no longer trust my perception.

  “It’s what your mother wanted.”

  Nigel doesn’t react for a moment. He lifts an eyebrow. “That’s right, Dad. She said so herself.” He grabs the cash. He grabs his bag and goes outside. He’s sitting in the car, waiting for me. I’m sitting in here, waiting. I take my hat from the chair next to me.

  We drive the route to the School Without Walls. No music. Too many cars drifting like angry manatees. An airless commute.

  The Centurial Compilation plays through the stereo, a playlist of my favorite music from long ago, given by Sir. Nigel has earbuds in his ears, a portable game—a new purchase—in his hands, and an egg-shaped wrist device that pulses green at random intervals. Where is he? How do I find my son?

  We pass a billboard atop a restaurant down one of the cross streets. It had been an ad for PHH. Then it was tagged by ADZE. Then it was painted blank. Now there’s half of an A on the canvas, like the graffiti is redrawing itself.

  I park across the street from the entrance to the School Without Walls because dozens of other cars clog the reverse lane. Nigel gets out. I shout for him to look both ways, but he doesn’t. He pulls up his hoodie.

  A few other students fall in behind him. The other students are a dark conclave. It’s as if Nigel has collected into his sphere of influence all the kids who are anything but white. Although there is one blond girl. I get out of the car, not exactly sure why I’m following. I fail to note a city bus railroading from my left. The driver leans on the horn, which is curiously high-pitched. My hat flies off, but I catch it and press backward into the side of the car. Nigel and the others, at the top of the steps, watch me before entering the school together. I fall into the Bug and hold my hat against my chest.

  26


  In the Sky Tower mezzanine, people I don’t know flank me on the elevator. Their bland faces I never really see. My golden reflection grimaces from the polished doors. My felt fedora is evenly pitched. My gray suit is creased to military specifications. Even the little divot in the knot of my tie is perfect. But I’m thin as a drying rack.

  The receptionist greets me with hangdog eyes. It’s the same every morning. What is she looking for in me? She won’t get it, whatever it is. I hate a snoop. Once she tried to strike up a conversation, in friendly tones, about a father or cousin left trapped on the distant shore of eternity. I straightened my back and stepped determinedly past her. Just like now. Same as tomorrow.

  I stop at Octavia’s office, and she’s not in. But my abacus row is nearly complete. Just a couple of more beads. Praise Theophilus. It’s the one thing I have going my way. I’ll make goal. I’ll get that promotion. I’ll help Nigel. Something good will come of all this, of my life, it will.

  I keep having flashes of the first time we met, my wife and me. I was leaving the law school library after leading a class as a teaching assistant. A cold front had overtaken the City, but that didn’t stop a group of activists from camping out on the portico. They were protesting a policy that kept the children of felons out of school. I picked my way through the throng. I was down the steps. I was almost to my car when Penny slammed into me. Knocked me over. My satchel full of index cards and multicolored highlighters spilled into a puddle. The same puddle I had been knocked into. My bottom was soaked with freezing water. I was ready to curse my assailant. But her bright face in relief against the gray clouds stopped me. She helped me up.

  My phone chimes in my pocket. Jo Jo wants me to call him. He’s been sending me messages for weeks, but I’ve ignored them all. I slip the phone back into my pocket. He was nice enough to give me something for my nerves and a few refills. How many months ago? He’s just checking up on me. Making sure my doses are okay. I’m fine. No need for chitchat.

  In my office, I hang up my hat and coat. I tell myself that I’ll sit at my desk and work. I tell myself that this is a simple thing, something that I’ve done for about a decade. But I open the flat drawer above my lap and spend a quarter hour creating objets d’art out of paper clips: a flower, a winged thing, a very large paper clip.

  Strummer, my newish secretary, enters and hands me my to-do list. There are briefing deadlines to meet, video conferences to attend, correspondence to compose. Correspondence that will be—once completed—as terse and brittle as a two-line poem.

  Strummer keeps staring at me. He knows the drill. I don’t much work in my office anymore. Instead, I occupy one of the smaller interior conference rooms near the kitchen. I say conference room, but it’s really more of a large storage closet. No windows except for the glazed panels that open onto the hallway. He follows me in. I find his suspenders an annoying affectation. Belts work just as good.

  My work—file folders and milk crates full of more file folders—is neatly arranged along the wall and table. All the technology we have these days, but we lawyers are conservative creatures. Fly me a sheet of paper over an electrical current. Watch me convert it to paper.

  A legal pad sits on the table a few inches from the lip. A single blue pen waits next to the pad perpendicularly. I begin sketching notes to myself: an argument I’ll need to make in section seven subsection G to overcome an opponent’s prescription counterargument. Strummer fiddles with a stack of documents, fiddles with his cuff links, fiddles with his wire frame glasses, but there’s nothing for him to do here. He’s already made sure that my workspace is immaculate, as always. He wants me to talk. And maybe I should, but this is a professional environment, and I’ve important work to do.

  I go to the door with the intention of telling Strummer to beat it. He must have other tasks to complete. He’s answerable to other attorneys, after all, not just me. But Armbruster walks by. He pauses to put a hand on my shoulder. For a change, he seems completely tuned in to the moment. His face is unmuddled, clear, hawkish. He doesn’t talk. He just stares into my eyes with a look I can’t place. He could be thinking you poor bastard or just you bastard. But who knows? Who can read the minds of other people in this world?

  Armbruster squeezes my shoulder and continues down the hallway. I tell Strummer to beat it.

  After lunch, I’m on the floor of the Labyrinth Room flipping through client files in a bucket folder. Footsteps approach from the next aisle. Dinah’s feet enter my field of vision. Still can’t get used to the flats she’s been wearing lately.

  “Don’t get up,” Dinah says.

  “Well, have a seat then.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Dinah places a hand on her hip. “I’m not ten years old, and I’m not at my grandma’s eating a bowl of pho. Who do you think I am?” At least some things are the same.

  I stand and squint. Something’s changed about her. Has she had another procedure? It’s possible, as I haven’t seen her around much lately. Not since she revealed she and Paul Pavor had fallen for each other a while back. What else could she have done? Her eyes are one thing. What else is there? I lean in for a better look.

  Dinah smiles and takes off her glasses. “What do you think?”

  “What did you—”

  “You can’t tell?”

  I can. Her jaw and her nose. She’s done something to both. She looks like a different person. Still Vietnamese but whiter. As if someone hopped in a time machine and swapped out one of her parents for a Swedish person. I tap the bridge of her nose. I pinch her jaw. What a miraculous era where you can fall into a vat of sleep as a caterpillar and emerge a butterfly.

  She swats my hand away, gentler than I would figure. “Does it look natural?”

  I nod. I’m not sure what I should say. I can’t quite lock onto the emotions bubbling up from my gut. They’re just glimmers of emotions. Shadows on the wall of my psyche. I can’t feel them directly.

  “Paul thinks I look like that British actress,” she says. “The one from those stupid end-of-the-world movies with the talking puppies. I think that’s his way of saying he doesn’t like it, that I should get more done.” Her eyebrows furrow. “You think I look stupid, too.”

  I tell her not at all.

  “Why does it matter what Paul—” I stop myself.

  “When you put it that way, you make me sound like an airheaded schoolgirl. But yeah. I guess it did matter.”

  “How does it feel?”

  Dinah touches her own cheek. “Like falling down an elevator shaft, but I’m not afraid of hitting bottom anymore. Well, what is it?” she asks. “Spit it out. We’ve known each other most of our lives. I expected more of a reaction from you, of all people. Not just a weak smile like everyone else around this joint. Except for Armbruster. Armbruster says I look like one of his nieces.”

  Truth to tell, I’m surprised I’m not happier for her. Trapped in my esophagus, there’s a swirly colored marble of joy, disappointment, and something else. If I can’t feel it all, then maybe I can interpret the swirls like reading Braille after the notches have been rubbed off. What remains?

  Am I happy for her? Yes, I’m happy because Dinah is my friend. And my friend seems happier these days. Happiness is too rare a commodity not to count for something. Still, my happy is the caustic yellow of a safety vest.

  “I know you think I did this for Pavor,” she says. “But I didn’t. Everyone always thinks I do everything to please other people. Like I make all these sacrifices to be a good Asian girl. Don’t you get it even now? That’s not me. It never was. That’s a stereotype. And that’s the only thing I’ve ever been afraid of—being pulled into some shitty stereotype. I don’t need people to assume I’m some kind of math genius or willing to go along with whatever everyone else wants. I just want to walk to my apartment without random guys catcalling that they want to tie me up. I bet that ne
ver happened to Penny.” She sighs. “I didn’t mean to bring her up.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m sure P—” I can’t get her name out of my mouth. “She always liked you.”

  “Listen up, dum-dum.” She points at her face. “My face, my career, my life, has always been about what I want.” She glances down at her shoulder. “And then Pavor showed up and made all this easier. My ex-boyfriends would have broken up with me for ruining their fantasies.” Dinah leans back onto a file shelf. “It’s still my world. But I don’t mind sharing. We don’t believe all the same things, but we’re together where it counts. We’re engaged now.” She holds up her hand. The ring is ornate and loopy. More metal than jewel. “The stones are synthetic. I couldn’t talk him into getting one with real diamonds. Something about not supporting savages.” She wipes her eye with the side of a finger.

  I ask her when will they marry.

  “In the new year.” She hugs me. It’s the first human contact I’ve had in a long time that wasn’t entirely about someone feeling sorry for me. Makes me feel like an empty bag in a breeze. She pauses. “I want to thank you for being my friend.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Hush,” she says. “You know it’s not easy for me to say that. So don’t cut me off, okay? I did some things. I made a mess that’s going to get messier. But remember I’m your girl.”

  A gong rings inside me, a thousand miles down. Something isn’t right. This is more than about her face or her new soulmate Paul Pavor.

  “Things are about to change,” she says.

  I ask how.

  “She means she sold out.” Octavia is at the door. “Sold me out. Sold you out. Meet Little Lady Judas.”

  Fear flashes across Dinah’s face, as if she thinks Octavia might haul off and punch her.

  “I don’t have to talk to you.” Dinah turns to walk away.