A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  You are passing through a rough time. That is normal for your age.

  The hill tilted and his father slowed to catch his breath and Rez turned off the desire to jog up the hill and get to the top and kept himself quietly behind, in his father’s wake.

  I was a boy once, and my father was strict. Much more strict than I am and all I wanted was to get away.

  They reached a vista that showed the curve of the beach up against the land and Rez saw where the waves came in strong and high and he let himself imagine the cool water on his hot skin and the wind of surfing, the fantastic wind of it that reached them all the way up on this high hill. His father went on.

  I wanted to leave Iran, move to America, become my own person. I cannot tell you how impossible that was. I had no money. No plane ticket. No passport even. Just thinking about it was like dreaming. Sometimes, this is how it is for men.

  Rez looked at his father and wondered how many selves he carried within him. There was the self that stood on the arid trail and looked toward the Pacific, and another self left behind a boyhood in a rocky place where he had mountain dogs and loved his rifle and wanted nothing more than what was. There must be one more, the one between, the one who left it and made a journey without return, without looking back. Rez thought of his mother, and her selves and the way they all came to the teak dinner table and said nothing of their halves and quarters and ate the food and stared at the still water in the blue pool. He looked back down at the coast. The waves would be fantastic today, he could tell by the breeze.

  I am not a perfect man. I should not have hit you. That was not right. Not in a good family. I apologize.

  His voice was soft with an unfamiliar tenderness and Rez took a step away from his father and faced the ocean and the breeze that moved through his short hair and tickled his sore face. He waited for the mistrust to fill him but nothing came, and Rez let the wind blow onto and through him.

  Those boys, the ones you think are your friends, will always think of you as an outsider, the foreign kid. If you go with them, try to be as they are, I will not be able to help you in that life.

  His father looked to the horizon and Rez waited and watched to see what other new tone he would set, what else the old man knew that Rez did not. But his father was silent and the two stood side by side as a pair of turkey vultures spiraled up a thermal far above them and the ocean twinkled, gold across the surface of its blue. For a moment nothing felt wrong.

  In this life, I can help you. That is what I am supposed to do. Help my son become a man. I will promise to respect you. To keep my temper calm. And in return you promise honesty. That is all I ask.

  Fifty-six years old and still, when his father asked for something, his face took on the pleading look of a three-year-old. Fifty-six. If Rez made it to fifty-six and told himself the story of this day, he would say that he was tired, his body was tired from sickness and his head from confusion, but on this day his father changed. Rez could not say what exactly changed, or why he wanted so badly to trust it, or why he wasn’t full of suspicion that a fist would fly at his face again. Maybe at fifty-six years old he would understand these unknowns, but on that morning he knew only that he was tired, that the wind was warm and the ocean blue and ruffled, that the earth was under his feet and the sky above, and that he stood beside his father as a man with another man, maybe a father, maybe a friend, maybe even a stranger, on a walk across a dry land. The sensation invigorated him and he breathed in the windy air again and again, as if it were food, and nodded and the two men took up their walking, moving up into the hills until another direction was necessary.

  9

  He moved back to the front row, open notebook, ready pen. The teachers noticed but said nothing. In the hallways Rez kept his head down and didn’t answer the Whassups or Hey, bros that came his way. He spent lunches in a window seat of the library study tower and tried to read and tried to eat but just looked out the window, down and over the quad, where clumps of students talked and laughed, pushed or draped arms around each other. He watched Sophia walk the brick paths from class to class, her shiny black hair sliding from side to side, ear tilted into her phone, plaid skirt rolled up at the waistband, her legs thin and pale, always alone. In chemistry lab Lila told Rez, without his asking, that Sophia had a new boyfriend.

  A basketball player from Anaheim High. Varsity. He’s got his own apartment behind his parents’ house.

  That’s cool.

  She told me she still really wants to be friends with you.

  That’s cool.

  No one called. No one invited him over. He went to school, soccer practice, home for the quiet meal with his mother and father, the hour of television, the two hours of homework, the long shower and the long sleep that ended just after dawn when he woke to do it all again. The drone and habit of this life calmed him and after a few weeks gossip about the trip and the theft died down and when the spring storms finally ended, he thought he had a chance at normal, at forgetting the mess he’d made. The stolen credit cards were maxed out and then reimbursed. The boards were replaced by Matthews’s dad’s insurance company, and the car got a new paint job and window replacement courtesy of Rez’s father, who offered it to the Matthews family. Rez listened to his dad on the phone with Mr. Matthews.

  Let us be grateful they all came home safe.

  His father repeated it again and then shook his head slowly.

  Yes. Yes. Not at all. Sons at this age, well … we’ve all been there.

  And after the rains had long dried up and the end of the school year was a few months away and all everyone talked about was prom and graduation and summer, Kelly still wouldn’t let it go. He told anyone who would listen that Rez Courdee was a poser who didn’t know shit. He said Rez weaseled his way into going on the trip and then made them camp on an empty beach even though they knew it was dangerous. Kelly wanted a public feud, and every time they passed in the hall, Rez felt a knock at his shoulder and heard, What’s up, faker? If Rez raised his hand in class, Kelly started laughing or sighing, loud enough and long enough that the teachers asked him to leave the room and he’d say, loud enough for everyone to hear, I’d be skeptical of what Mr. Courdee might say. He’s been known to tell a few lies. And just like that the class and the teacher would stare at Rez as Rez’s hand slid down back onto the desk and he forget what exactly he was going to say. In the locker room after soccer Kelly followed Rez pinching his nose and shaking his head and shouting, Has anyone ever noticed how Persians smell? They have this stinky sort of stink to them … Rez pretended not to hear and quickly covered his body with clothes and tried to think of other things—equations, historic dates in the Nez Perce war, his SAT prep book—to keep himself from hearing Kelly and keep himself from crying or fighting or something worse.

  For a while Kelly had a small crew, Johnson and a few other preppie guys with dads from old OC families who did not mix with the new OC families like Rez’s. They gave him shit for a month or two and Rez kept a low profile and after a while most people stopped caring. Everyone knew Kelly could be a dick and Rez had no friends now anyway, so what was the point?

  Matthews, with the shittiest deal, stayed close. After all it was his brother’s truck that was scratched and his brother’s license that was stolen and he had to tell Freddy and so suffer the punishments assigned through some internal system of brother justice. For a while Matthews came to school with long-sleeve shirts and buttoned his collars all the way up and Rez knew underneath the clothes were bruises from punches and pushes but Matthews never mentioned it. When the other apostles weren’t around, Matthews asked Rez out to the car to smoke and they’d sit together in the haze and get retro and listen to Pink Floyd or Red Hot Chili Peppers and talk about USC football or the Angels or anything that wasn’t surfing or Mexico or otherwise laced with shame.

  10

  The year ended. Term papers, assemblies, awards, signatures on the inside covers of the yearbook. Smellyalateralligator. Have a gr
eat summer. Seniors rule. Keep it stoked. Rez didn’t take his out of his backpack, and when someone asked him to sign theirs, he’d write his initials and a smiley face and nothing more. In his photo, taken last fall, he had just smoked with the apostles in Kelly’s car, and there he was, a black-and-white head and shoulders amid a sea of black-and-white heads and shoulders, a goofy fuck-it-all smile and wild ocean-stiff hair. On a dare from Kelly he wore his tie crooked and tried to cross his eyes. The photographer wouldn’t have it and asked him to straighten up. He looked at the photo and tried to recognize himself and saw only a moment, an expression, a collection of feelings and ways, now passed and far from reach.

  On the last day of eleventh grade Rez and a handful of other students sat on the stage of the auditorium and waited as the headmaster called out the names of the best and most promising and honorable and other words that made parents smile and clap and pull out their cameras. Rez wore a new pair of shoes and a pressed shirt and let the boredom settle over him. He stared out at the audience, the first ten or twelve rows full of parents, some old and some not old. There were parents who were happy and parents who appeared otherwise. Rez found the face of Joseph Peterson’s dad, Old Peterson they called him, tan and fit and well into his sixties, a known stoner who’d inherited money from old OC land holdings and lived in a house that took up an entire ridgetop above Laguna. He flew a little airplane to L.A. every time he wanted to, surfed Mavericks, had courtside tickets for the Lakers, and didn’t go to work. His son, Joey, a straight C student and mediocre jock, had taken a photograph in art class that won a prize and now he sat two rows behind Rez. Old Peterson. He held the left hand of a small Asian woman who looked fifteen years old, his third wife, a woman from China who spoke no English and wore short shorts all the time and covered her mouth when she smiled. She was not smiling now, and her face looked ashy and sullen as it stared into a phone. Beside her, Old Peterson, a man big enough, blond enough, and tan and pleased enough to seem from another species altogether, smiled directly at Rez and winked. Rez sat up straight and shifted his gaze and found his own mother and father, a few rows back, their faces small and somber, empty of elation or surprise. Then he heard his name.

  Reza Courdee.

  He stood, smoothed out his pants, and walked to receive the certificate and shake the headmaster’s hand and take congratulations for proving that he knew more about AP chemistry than any other junior or senior in the state.

  A promising senior year lies ahead for that young man.

  The headmaster’s hand was warm and plump and Rez nodded and walked back to his seat. Next to him another eleventh grader, Arash Dobani, recipient of the presidential honor for academic achievement, the highest prize handed out all year, smiled and flipped his long inky hair back from his eyes.

  Nice work, brother, another certificate for the wall. Make Moms proud.

  Arash put out his fist and Rez bumped it and Rez smiled at the words and thought about his walls at home and the posters and the prizes and wondered how Arash knew.

  Arash leaned to Rez’s ear and whispered, You blaze?

  Rez looked at Arash, who looked ahead at the parents and teachers in front of them. He too wore a starched oxford shirt and clean shoes. His hair was as long as allowed and his skin was tan and smooth and even over the square bones of his face. He had rolled up his certificate just like Rez had and they sat onstage, homologues of a kind. Rez looked over the parents in the audience, catching the gaze of his mother, who smiled and dabbed at her eyes. His father, who stared at the headmaster with a dropped and flat brow, and then Old Peterson, now looking out the window with the same broad grin.

  Yeah. Sometimes.

  Sweet. Let’s celebrate.

  The assembly went on and Rez said no more and then the event was over and everyone stood and clapped and smiled and students walked offstage and Arash stopped Rez.

  Let me give you my digits. A few of us are meeting up later. Give a shout when you’re done with the family stuff.

  Yeah. Cool.

  That was the first of it. The seniors threw their huge graduation blowouts and Rez didn’t get invited to any of the parties he’d gone to last year, not Matthews’s or Kelly’s or any of the volleyball girls’, but ended up elsewhere, at parties with grandparents and babies and uncles who spoke no English and smoked cigarette after cigarette on lawn chairs out by the pool. The tables were covered in presents and fat envelopes that stayed sealed and Rez stood in family pictures next to people he’d just met who draped an arm around his shoulder, around his waist. DJs played music from all over the world and he danced with round old aunts who sweated through their silk blouses and smiled up at him coyly. The parties were catered and the families were delirious with pride and even though Rez had only just met these sons and daughters through Arash, in the last two weeks, he was taken in time after time, and he was kissed. At one house, Mila, a friend of Arash’s whose older sister was graduating and going to Harvard, he and a few other kids snuck out to a car and got drunk on a handle of vodka they passed around and around until it was empty. They went back to the party and talked to parents and laughed and danced with little cousins and Rez grabbed Elissa Vasquez by the hand and they walked around looking for a place to make out and ended up in a neat small room with a huge silk rug and a framed portrait of Mecca on the wall, just like the photo his mother kept, in miniature, in her coupon-and-bill drawer. He closed the door and they kept going until they found a guest bedroom and he and Elissa did everything he and Sophia had done and it was different and it was just as good.

  PART II

  To a Brother

  11

  Laguna Beach, Summer 2012

  That summer he was with Arash and his crew, Yuri, Omid, Cyrus, every day. They were guys Rez knew from class or sports or around but had never spoken to, and except for the different names and darker hair and that they preferred chlorinated pools to the ocean, hanging out with them was a lot like last summer with the apostles. Hip-hop all the time, long stoned mornings, fast-food lunches, naps, long stoned afternoons at someone’s country club or backyard, evenings at the movies, weekend trips to Vegas, all the same boast and dare and lust talk. No one had jobs and they sat around and smoked the same weed, joint after bong after vape until nothing mattered and everything was all good. Rez stood beside the body of himself as one world of high school male flesh eclipsed another and the revolution of days, nights, wet and dry, traffic and flow, stayed exactly the same.

  Except Arash. Arash was different. Before that summer Rez knew nerds and surfers, preppies and jocks. He’d seen goths and gang kids at the In-N-Out trying to get away from the Christian born-agains they’d hung out with last summer at the mall. This was high school; you started out as one thing and ended as something else. They all started out as boys together in the ninth grade and now they were all trying to turn into something like men, and Rez watched as every single kind, regardless of how tough or cool, stumbled before the leap, grew sour, slipped back into babies and cried for their mothers only to swear them off two minutes later. He saw it and knew he did the same and wasn’t proud of it but this was the way it was, becoming was a shitty business. And then he met Arash and saw someone not at all in the process of becoming, but who already and completely just was.

  The first few weeks everywhere Arash went, Rez went. He had more freedom now. Ever since he’d won the prize his dad didn’t press him about studying and tests, and his mom, glad he wasn’t sad anymore, let him come and go with his new friends. And it was easy to do. Arash kept the parties going, the pipes packed, and the friends in circulation, and when Rez walked in, no one stressed and no one gave him shit for being the new kid in the group. Girls were always around and everyone watched TV or swam and talked about college or the Kardashians or some smart gossip and Arash got everyone high and bought takeout and gave rides to whoever needed a ride. He never dipped into a mood, never left anyone out, never switched off the generosity, never talked smack. The one time Y
uri tried to cut down people who hung out with Kelly, called them OC neo-Nazis, Rez watched and waited to see what Arash would do, but all he said was Come on, man, why you gotta talk like that? There’s no need … And then he’d move the conversation away from the dark place and take the sulking friend for a ride and they’d come back happy and high. He lived in an open house, no questions asked, and always leaned down to kiss both his parents regardless of whether he was coming or going. He loved all parents, all families, and the first time he picked Rez up at his house he came with a large, many-bloomed orchid and a small smile on his smooth tan face.

  For the lady of the house.

  Rez and his mother both came to the door and she let out a little gasp. Rez rolled his eyes.

  That is not from Trader Joe’s.

  No, Mrs. Courdee. Our family friend has an orchid greenhouse. Rez told me you liked plants.

  I like plants? I said that, Reza?

  Rez stood behind his mother and shrugged. His mother stared at the tiny faces of the flowers.

  It is true. I do like plants. I didn’t realize my child noticed. Please come in.

  Rez elbowed Arash.

  Dude, you could have honked from the curb.

  Arash smiled and soon they all leaned up against the marble countertops and drank orange juice while Arash answered her questions about Syria and his family houses in Damascus and Aleppo as Rez’s mom listened and nodded and then told them things about her home in Isfahan and the garden with the blue fountain in the back filled with koi and other details Rez had never heard. All Rez wanted was to leave, to get out of the house. He hadn’t smoked all day, hadn’t done anything all day, was bored and fidgety and ready to split and go to the show. When he heard the sound of the garage door opening, he cleared his throat.

  A, it’s almost four, there will be traffic …