Their last hours in London, the family continues in the hush of what’s happened, no one speaking, all domestic blasts defused, too little oxygen among them for any volume. When the kids are out of earshot, Zan tells Viv, “The bank took the house today,” and at first she doesn’t say anything. “It’s posted on the loan website.”
Finally she nods. “Today? You mean right now?”
“Well,” he shrugs, “today or yesterday. Nine hours between here and L.A., or eight hours—I’m not sure.” After a few seconds he says, “So we don’t have a home any more.”
“Well,” Viv answers, “we don’t have a house.”
One or the other of them, or both, wonder whether to go back at all. But whatever the practical possibilities of staying in London, neither takes the idea seriously enough to broach it.
Zan tries to remember if he ever really thought they would save the house. “I think I thought,” he says to Viv at Heathrow, at the gate waiting for their flight, “or hoped . . . not that there would be some executive decree or anything but just that . . . the atmosphere, the mood in the country, would so change that it made a difference. Now that seems really stupid.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she tries to assure him. “Really.”
“He used to be a writer once,” says Zan.
“Who?”
“The president. That should have tipped us off right there.”
There have been presidents who have written, he thinks, but that’s not the same as being a writer. That’s talent when what Zan means is temperament. This is a president who’s devoted much of his life and energy into figuring out who he is, an occupational hazard of someone with the temperament of a writer but surely not a good thing in a politician. Isn’t a politician who cares about who he really is doomed? Isn’t a politician who believes that his identity is his own rather than the public’s destined for rejection? Failed writers should be something other than presidents. Radio broadcasters, maybe. At least the ones who play music instead of talk.
The president is in trouble, Zan realizes, watching the news in the airport lobby. He thinks he’s who he thinks he is; he doesn’t understand that, in political terms, he’s who the public thinks he is or he’s no one. This was the great test, whether there was a song the country could sing in common. Instead, more than ever it’s a country of many songs all of them noisy, without a single melody that anyone cares about carrying. The country is a babel of not just melodies that no one shares but memory; and as Babel fractured language into thousands, the country is the sum total of a memory fractured into millions, not one of them a memory of the country as it actually has ever existed.
One night in Indianapolis forty-one years ago, the rest of the country detonated by the assassination of a black Georgian preacher in Memphis, Jasmine lies on the floor of the hotel room, and on the bed beside her the man who wants to be president against all his own best interests says, Who knows how the country finally will ask for forgiveness, or how that forgiveness might be given? Who knows what historic moment can represent that? The pain that can’t forget must find a way to rain forgiveness on the heart until, against our will, there grows from it the wisdom and grace of God. So tonight we pray for the fallen man and we pray for his family; but let’s say a prayer as well for the country we love.
It’s a country that does things in lurches, but when the high altitude of the great leap—of either faith or imagination, assuming one exists without the other—has given way to the next morning’s bends, the country peers around and wonders where it landed. Be that as it may, Zan can’t relinquish his memory of the melody, can’t bring himself to be unhaunted by it. There’s no other song he believes in more or nearly as much. By the din of circumstance or the roar of other voices or some combination of them, in the void no one else sings anything else as true or worth singing. Zan’s country always has belonged to the rest of the world’s imagination more than its own, and sitting here in an airport three thousand miles away, he still hears the song around him, from London to the ruins of the Berlin barricade once built in a futile attempt to keep the song out.
In the midst of Heathrow’s insane customs-free bazaar, Zan leaves Viv and the children at the gate a few minutes and retreats to the men’s room to make a phone call back to Los Angeles. “Loan number?” comes the voice on the other end of the line that Zan recognizes. “Three zero six one three nine five one nine eight,” Zan says. He’s known it by heart a long time.
“Address?” the woman says.
“1861 Relik Road.”
“Are you receiving mail at that address?”
“Yes.”
“Are you living in the residence?”
“We’ve been out of the country for a while, but it is our residence.”
“The record shows that the deed on the property has reverted to the investors who financed the original loan and that the property now is the subject of a formal trustee sale.”
“I understand. I’m calling because my family and I are returning to L.A. today and I want to arrange access scuzbag to the property.”
For a moment there’s silence on the other end and then the voice says, “I’m sorry, sir. Did you say you want to arrange access to the property?”
“Yes, please,” says Zan. “As I indicated, we’ve been out of the country for sometime now and we’re returning today, and if at all possible there are personal possessions inside the house evilbitch that we need to retrieve.”
There’s another silence on the other end and Zan imagines the woman staring at her phone, maybe trying to switch the signal on the device to a different and better reception. Finally she says, “I need to ask you to repeat that.”
“I said we’re coming back to L.A. today and I need to get into the house if I can, to get some of our personal affects.”
She says, “I don’t think that’s what you said.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s not what you said,” the other voice says. “Not the first time.”
“Uh, well, exactly in those words, maybe not.”
“You said something else.”
“Maybe in different words,” he agrees.
She says, “No, you said something else. Not just in different words. There were other words.”
“Just now?” he says.
“A moment ago.”
“The ‘maybe in different words’ part?”
“No. Before that. Sir,” she resumes heatedly, “you’ll need to notify the foreclosure department to make those arrangements.”
“Which arrangements?”
“Arrangements to get in the property. I can transfer you to that department, if you would like.”
“You don’t happen to know whore of babylon if the locks on the house have been changed, do you?” Zan says.
“What?”
“You don’t know if the locks on the house have been changed yet?”
She says, “You said something else.”
“Actually, I . . . did I? I think this time it was in those words. Hey, listen,” he says, “I’m not sure what you think I said, but this call is from London so I should just phone again tomorrow, maybe, once we’re back? In the meantime I want to thank you and your fine institution for all the help and understanding you’ve given us over these many difficult months.”
He thinks the line has gone dead or he’s lost the connection when she answers quietly, “Yes, sir. You’re welcome, sir.”
On the flight, Viv sleeps and Parker plays a video game on a small screen in the seat in front of him. Watching him, Zan wonders, How long it will be before I know what my son feels about everything that’s happened? How long will it be before he knows? Will we talk about it before I die? He and his sister are going to lose me before they should have to and Zan feels worse about them than himself. Sheba refuses to take any Benadryl and Zan doesn’t force the issue; the girl says nothing, doesn’t make a sound. Sometimes she watches the small TV but mostly stares out the window.
From LAX, Zan calls the Añejo in the canyon and the family waits for Roberto to pick them up in his truck. The next morning Zan returns alone in Roberto’s truck to the house.
A sign reading BANK OWNED hangs in front and the yard is overgrown. Viv’s car that was in the driveway has been towed. Zan’s is parked in the lower part of the backyard; the older woman who lives next door tells him she claimed the car was hers so the bank wouldn’t take it. “I appreciate it,” Zan tells her. “Fuck them,” says the old woman. Down the steep drive, Zan tries to affect the stroll of the not too mortally humiliated.
The lock on the front door has been changed. Zan goes around to the back and gets down on the ground and pokes his head through what used to be Piranha’s door. The house smells. He pulls out his head and grabs the dog door with both hands and rips it free from the larger door. Positioned on the ground again, on his back he can reach just far enough inside to turn the lock of the door, hoping it’s not bolted. Once more he withdraws and, catching his breath, opens the back door and walks in.
None of the Nordhocs’ possessions inside the house have been moved. What would they do, Zan wonders, pile it all out on the street? When he walks from the kitchen to the dining room, he sees something dart out of the corner of his eye; he hears scampering around him. He can talk himself into some sense of satisfaction about the rats taking over the house but still he’s glad none of the family is here to see it. Emotion wells up in him but, he thinks, I’m not going to shed one fucking tear over this fucking house.
He spends the day loading as much as he can into Roberto’s truck and then his own car. Literature and volumes of history, music, family memorabilia, Viv’s art and photographs, copies of Zan’s four novels, files that include accounts, life insurance policies, past tax records, the kids’ birth certificates and social security numbers. He grabs blankets and a small table and the rocking chair from the family room. He remembers the night that the fire in the canyon swept close enough, and Zan and Viv prepared to evacuate, loading up the car—so they’ve already prioritized things. In their minds, they’ve been on the verge of escaping for years.
He returns Roberto’s truck to the Añejo. “I don’t know if I can unpack it tonight,” Zan whispers. The men stand outside in back of the bar, next to the small shed from which Zan broadcasts his radio show. “We can do it tomorrow,” says Roberto. “I’ll help.”
“Thanks.”
“I would have helped you move it all out.”
“I didn’t want anyone else to see the house.”
Roberto says, “We’ve missed your music.”
“I made playlists in my head,” says Zan, “in London. But I don’t think you want to hear them.”
Exhausted, Zan drives his car to the old railroad bridge down the road where the rest of the family waits for him. In the gentle autumn night, with the blankets from the house, Viv makes a place to sleep. “Roberto sent shrimp enchiladas from the bar,” Zan says, laying out the food. “Rice and refried beans.”
Parker says, “I like black beans.”
“I can’t keep up with you,” Zan says, “I thought you liked refried beans. Your taste changes all the time.”
Viv calls, “Sheba, come eat,” but the girl doesn’t answer so everyone else eats. Zan remembers that the supposedly haunted railroad bridge used to freak out Parker and he suppresses the impulse to talk about devil rites and Indian ghosts, which ordinarily Parker would find entertaining. It would be like talking about tsunamis while driving Pacific Coast Highway. “Are you going to be all right here?” he says to the boy.
“What do you mean?” Parker says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason.”
“Isn’t this bridge supposed to be haunted?”
“By the ghosts of Indians. It’s O.K., they’re on our side.”
“How do you know?”
“I promise you, they are.”
“How long are we staying?” the boy says.
“Not long. We’ll work out something soon, I promise.”
“You promise, you promise,” a bit scornfully. “Once you promised about the house, too.”
“I know I did,” Zan quietly replies. “And I did everything I could to keep the house and keep that promise. It doesn’t mean I won’t find a way to keep the next one.”
Parker nods. “O.K., Dad.”
Viv says, “If the creek were up, we could sleep to the sound of it beneath us.”
“Isn’t that the creek?” says Zan, listening.
“I hear it too,” says Parker, “it’s not the creek. It sounds like a radio far away,” and all of them turn toward the end of the old bridge and gaze up at the apex of its frame where the four-year-old girl is perched, staring out at the mouth of the canyon and whatever should roll in from the ocean.
Zan walks over and looks up into the rafters. “Sheba,” he says, “come down. You could fall. There’s food,” indicating the enchiladas. The girl glances at him, then back toward the sea, then climbs down the ladder.
As she sits eating her enchilada, Viv says to her, with what she hopes is just the right degree of bluntness so as to arouse a response, “Would you rather be called something other than Sheba?”
“What?” the girl says.
“Would you rather be called someth—”
“But what.”
“Whatever feels like it’s your name.”
The girl thinks. “Isn’t Sheba my name?”
Viv says, “Yes. But you can always change your mind later.”
“I can?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe later.”
“O.K.”
“When I grow up to be who I am.”
“All right.”
Dusk falls and what’s left of the light leaks from the day. Zan wedges a flashlight between the bridge’s rafters and turns it on, splashing it against the ceiling of the old railroad car. Both kids are asleep where Viv made a bed, but after half an hour Sheba rises and walks over and for the first time since London slips into her mother’s arms there in the rocking chair—where years ago Viv breast-fed her son—that Zan borrowed but she has taken back.
As Viv rocks in the chair to her daughter’s new music, Sheba curls in her mother’s arms as she used to with the guard at the orphanage back in Addis Ababa, when as a two-year-old she rose in the night and ran through the yard in the rain to his post at the gate. Asleep, the girl dreams of the leviathan wave that roars through the mouth of the canyon but, reaching the railroad bridgehouse and lifting it from its moorings like a boat, becomes a gentle tide sailing her family to somewhere better.
Though to the outer waking world Sheba’s dream is only a few seconds, in her sleep she understands it’s a long voyage. Poised at the ship’s bow, transmitting a distant song, she sails in search of the word that will name her, a word for those who’ve never belonged anywhere and who make their own belonging in the same way that people used to name themselves after where they belonged, the same word as that for the grief that goes on grieving for what’s not remembered but can’t be forgotten. As the girl and her brother and mother and father step from the boat onto shore, the word isn’t paradise or heaven or utopia or promisedland but rather a name as damaged as it is spellbinding to everyone who’s heard it since the first time anyone spoke it, then tarnished it, then hijacked it, then exploited it, then betrayed and debased and then emptied it, loving the sound of it while despising everything it means that can’t be denied anyway because it’s imprinted on the modern gene which is to say that even as the girl pursues it, it’s already found her, passed on by her adopted father in whose ear it was whispered one afternoon when, from a crowd desperate to hear the secret of it, he was pulled by a young woman of the Old World and the beginning of time, and now it binds daughter and father though neither knows it, she carries it in her fierce core, armed to defend it with that blade of a finger she draws across her throat, and the word is america.
About the Author
These Dreams of You Page 26
