Behind the Curtain

by BETH KERY

  “Laila?” Tahi prompted. Laila glanced at her cousin, who was giving her a puzzled look. For a few seconds, she nearly quashed the urge to tell Tahi. But somehow, she just knew if she didn’t speak now, she never would. She’d grown too accomplished at the skill of denial. The pain would slowly fade, as it always did. Tonight there was little relief in the idea of being numb, however.

  “You said earlier I looked like I’d seen a ghost,” Laila said, busying herself with pulling some cookies out of the cupboard. She handed the cookies to Tahi while she retrieved a plate.

  “Yeah. So did you see one?” Tahi joked, putting a few cookies on the plate to have with their tea.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Laila said slowly. “I saw Asher tonight. Asher Gaites-Granville.”

  One of the cookies slid off the plate. Tahi gave her a wide-eyed, startled glance.

  “Asher?”

  Laila smiled wistfully. “It feels weird, to say his name, doesn’t it?”

  “You haven’t talked about him for years. . . practically since that night,” Tahi said significantly, picking up the cookie and putting it back on the plate.

  “You haven’t either,” Laila reminded her.

  “I thought you didn’t want me to bring him up, so I didn’t. Things between you and my brother have never been the same since that night when he hit Asher.”

  “I’m always polite to Zarif,” Laila defended.

  “Yeah. Politely cold,” Tahi said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I knew why your mom and dad wouldn’t mention Asher, and Zara’s parents. . . why everyone avoided the topic, my parents included.”

  “You mean because my deep, dark shame might spread to you, the innocent one, if someone so much as said his name?” Laila muttered dryly.

  Tahi laughed. “Maybe that is what they thought, in some weird way. You have to admit, with everything that’s happened to Zara in the past few years, anything that was related to that summer in Crescent Bay has become even more hush-hush and charged with our family. I mean, you and I both know Asher had nothing to do with Zara or the train wreck of her life, but—”

  “But Eric did. Asher and Eric might as well have been the same man, in our parents’ eyes . . . both of them interfering with their daughters. Corrupting them.” Laila sighed, regret and sadness filling her, as it always did, at the mention of Zara. They weren’t even sure of Zara’s exact address at this point. Last Laila had heard was from a high school friend from Detroit. He’d seen Zara working at a “gentlemen’s club” downtown. When her friend had noticed Laila’s expression at the news, he’d hastily explained that Zara had been cocktail waitressing, not stripping. The additional information helped ease Laila’s worry a little, but not much.

  After Laila told Tahi about it, the two of them had ventured into the club one night, determined to confront Zara since she’d left home when she was twenty-one—and hopefully haul her away from that seedy place. They’d gotten tips on Zara’s whereabouts and gone out to find her on four other occasions before this one. Each time, they’d failed. Zara always seemed to keep one step ahead of them. The news at the strip club had been that Zara Barek hadn’t shown up for the past five nights she was scheduled to work. According to the rude club manager, she definitely didn’t have a job anymore.

  So Tahi and Laila lost the trail of Zara again.

  “Do you think Zara could have really loved him? Eric?” Tahi asked, and Laila knew Tahi had been thinking about Zara too. Zara could be a handful at times, willful and insensitive. But she also could be fun, warm and loyal. She’d been at Tahi’s and her sides their whole lives. She was both sister and friend. You didn’t just wash your hands of someone like that . . . even if Zara’s parents tried to every day. Laila knew they never succeeded. Reda and Nadine had thought they’d been heartbroken by Zara’s promiscuity with a white guy. But they hadn’t known true anguish until Zara had left and never come back.

  “I think she thought she loved him,” Laila said softly.

  Tahi seemed to hesitate.

  “What?” Laila prompted.

  “It’s just . . . I didn’t not say Asher’s name in front of you because I was going along with everyone else in our family. I wouldn’t want you thinking that. I didn’t mention Asher after a while because I could see how much it hurt you.”

  “Thanks,” Laila said, watching Tahi bite into the cookie. “I appreciate that.”

  “So you saw him? Actually saw Asher? Tonight?”

  She shook her head slightly, for a second wondering if, indeed, it had all been a dream. But then she remembered his eyes as he’d pinned her with his stare. The full beard. She’d seen him all right. And he’d seen her.

  “I really did.”

  “What’d he say?” Tahi whispered.

  “My name. Just my name.” She saw Tahi’s puzzled look and quickly told her about their brief encounter down in the subway, and how the train closing between them had interrupted their meeting.

  “Wow,” Tahi said after she’d finished. “Asher Gaites-Granville. It seems like so long ago, doesn’t it? That summer in Crescent Bay? But also like—”

  “It happened yesterday?”

  Tahi swallowed and tossed down the remainder of her cookie onto the plate. “I know he became a persona non grata with our family . . . kind of a he-who-shall-not-be-named?” Laila gave a bark of bitter laughter in agreement. “Even though you never talked about him much after that night, I want you to know that I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That it wasn’t a teenage infatuation. It wasn’t like Zara and Eric. It was special. You really loved him. Once.”

  “How can you know that?” she asked Tahi, smiling to cover her unease and opening a drawer to get a spoon.

  “For one thing, I know you followed his career. Closely.”

  She gave her cousin a surprised glance. Tahi shrugged.

  “We shared a computer for the first two years of college. I wasn’t being nosy, but I noticed a few times that you were searching his name. His articles. His bio. Tracking his progress as he moved around in the Middle East, working as a correspondent.” Tahi paused and Laila gave her a questioning look. “Did you know he’s been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the piece he did, following that family in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war? They say he was able to get it past censorship by never mentioning the government. Instead, he just focused on the family’s everyday experience, their struggles, the horrors they experienced and their little victories. He let the story about what was happening there tell itself.”

  Laila placed her hands on the counter. She had to remind herself to breathe.

  “I knew about it,” she admitted after a pause. “I’ve read the piece. It was brilliant.”

  “It really was. Hey.”

  Laila realized Tahi was gripping her arm. She stood close. Her brown eyes were filled with compassion. Anxiety. Understanding.

  “Don’t tell me,” Tahi whispered. “After all these years?”

  “No, don’t be ridiculous. I was nineteen years old,” Laila said, laughing through the blockage in her throat. But then she thought of all his stories she’d read over the years, his fierce honesty, the compassion he somehow injected into his lean, concise prose. She wiped away a tear from her cheek. “Of course not. Right? That wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “It didn’t make any sense to you back then either. That’s one thing that always stood out to me. How confused you were, like you couldn’t understand this . . . this force that had come over you, but how you couldn’t deny it. Asher was just as caught up in it. He was nuts about you. It was like watching something epic, seeing you two together.” Laila gave her a startled glance. “Everyone said so, not just me. Rudy. Jimmy. Even Zara, when she wasn’t too busy glowing green from envy about you two. Personally, I think Eric saw it too. He knew by betraying Asher that night, by cre
ating the possibility of you two being ripped apart, that it was the purest, meanest way to get back at Asher.”

  Laila shook her head. “It’s so strange, talking about it . . . hearing all their names again.”

  “Yeah. Laila?” Tahi asked quietly.

  She looked up and met her cousin’s stare.

  “I’ve always wanted to ask you, but I didn’t. Because I knew how much it hurt you, to think about him. But seeing as we’re on a roll tonight, maybe now’s the time.”

  That old, too-familiar mixture of dread, helplessness and longing rose in her belly. Oh God, I was just a kid then. How could those old feelings still be inside me? She’d known that pain many times in the past eight years. Most recently, she’d experienced that rise of emotion when she’d followed his story about the Syrian family, the one for which he’d been nominated for a Pulitzer. But even then, the pain had been muted to a dull ache. Presently, it felt sharp. Piercing. It alarmed her, knowing the loss of him still lived in her . . . that it had been burned somewhere deeper than flesh.

  She was a successful twenty-seven-year-old woman with her whole future in front of her. She might not have known at nineteen how to balance the demands of family, culture and her own desires and goals, but she’d learned that hard lesson now.

  “What did you want to ask me?” she asked Tahi, determined to ignore the anxiety rising in her.

  “You regretted it, didn’t you? That summer . . . you regretted letting them all talk you into not seeing Asher or talking to him ever again?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to deny it. But denial wasn’t what came out of her mouth.

  “Yes,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’ve regretted it.”

  “You would have done things differently if you’d known what you know now?”

  Laila shut her eyes. They burned. “What difference does it make?” she asked, feeling trapped by Tahi’s question.

  “It does matter, I think,” Tahi said slowly. Laila opened her eyes at something she heard in her cousin’s tone of voice. “If you wish you’d done things differently, then maybe it’s not too late for you and Asher. He’s here in Chicago. Why not try and find him?”

  “Because things are different, Tahi,” Laila insisted. “I broke things off with him. I hurt him. Even if I did decide I wanted to be with him, it’d never happen.” She saw the question and confusion in Tahi’s eyes. “Because he’d never want to be with me, given what I did.”

  The teapot started to hiss. She pushed herself away from the counter and busied herself preparing their teas, trying to reign in her chaotic emotions. Tahi didn’t say anything when she placed their delicate tea glasses and the cookies on the cozy table surrounded by an upholstered booth, but Laila sensed her waiting patiently.

  “I wrote to him,” Laila admitted after they’d sat, and she took several sips of atay.

  “You did?” Tahi asked.

  She nodded. “Six months or so after Crescent Bay. By that time, I realized it had been a mistake to cut all ties to him. I still didn’t think I should sneak around seeing him, when Mamma and Baba had expressly forbidden it and I still lived in their house. But I regretted breaking all contact with him. That had been wrong of me. I understand why I did it back then. I was young, and I was scared. I hated hurting everyone. But I hated hurting him too. It hurt so much more than I thought it would, living with that pain day in and day out,” she said quietly, setting down her cup. “It ended up being a worse hell than I’d ever imagined. And it only seemed to get worse as time went on. I tried to phone and text him. He never replied. So I found his e-mail at the L.A. Times, and I wrote to him. I told him I knew I’d hurt him badly. But would he consider at least talking to me again?”

  “What did he say?” Tahi asked.

  Laila tried to blink away the memories. “Say? Nothing. He never said anything. He never responded to any of my messages.”

  “Ever?”

  Laila shook her head. “I don’t blame him. He’d moved on. He was young. Driven. Extremely talented. He’d gotten promoted to a foreign post in Istanbul less than a year after starting at the Times. His dreams were coming true. Even if he did still think of me, it was probably with anger. Why would he want to risk being hurt again? Who was to say I wouldn’t reject him again, when backed against a wall?”

  Tahi frowned. “But you changed so much in that time period. You seemed like you got ten years older overnight. It’s weird, I never really thought about it before . . . but your relationship with Asher changed you so much, but in a positive way, you know? While Eric had the opposite effect on Zara. When Eric cut all ties with her after that summer, she got bitter, like she was pissed off at the world and determined to flip it off at every turn. You got a backbone too, but in a completely different way. You were as respectful as ever to your parents, but you still found your own voice. You started working more hours at the restaurant, even though your mom hated it. You took those extra courses in poetry and music at the junior college, paying your own tuition. And you never told your parents about it, just like you’ve never told them you started singing. Even though you got your degree in business from Wayne State, just like Khal-ti Amira and Amu Anass wanted you to, you were different when it came to their demands. You tried to give them what they wanted when you could, but you didn’t let their preferences for your life get to you as much. Khal-ti Amira stopped having the power to push your buttons, a fact that I know bugs the crap out of her to this day,” Tahi said with a weary, but fond laugh. “When we graduated, they gave you such a hard time about moving to Chicago with me, but you wouldn’t bend. You started singing at O’Rourke’s a couple months after we got here. Even though you didn’t want to hurt your mom and dad by having them find out from someone else about you singing in public, you didn’t let it stop you from following your dreams. Our family doesn’t know about your career—true—but you haven’t let the fear of their disapproval stop you. Not this time, you haven’t.”

  Laila smiled sadly. “It was because of him I’ve been able to do it . . . try to make things work in different areas of my life.”

  “Asher?”

  “Yeah,” she said, sipping her tea. “Somehow, as horrible as giving him up was, it made things clearer to me. I still live in two worlds, in a way. But I stopped feeling guilty about not sharing things with Mamma and Baba that I know they’ll make me feel bad about . . . that I know we’ll fight about. I wish they’d be part of my professional life, but I’ve accepted that they wouldn’t want to be. My lyrics and my performances would be just too . . . difficult for them. They’d never accept what I do. I do my best to respect them, but I know what I want now . . . what I’m willing to sacrifice. What I’m not. Or, at least I know better. I sacrificed what felt like everything for them, once. That’s enough for a lifetime.”

  • • •

  They continued to talk for hours. Both of them seemed liberated and energized by the idea of talking about topics they’d considered taboo for years.

  “He was there,” Laila said suddenly at one point at around three in the morning, the realization hitting just before she said the words.

  “What?” Tahi asked, turning from the stove where she’d been checking the kettle.

  “Asher,” Laila said, amazement tingeing her tone. “Tonight. At the club. He was there. I just realized . . .”

  “In the audience, you mean?”

  She nodded. “You know how I’ve told you I can’t see the audience really well through the veil?”

  “Yeah,” Tahi said, stepping toward the booth. “You’ve said the veil works both ways. People can’t identify you. Since you’re becoming so big, and nobody in our family knows you perform but me, that’s a good thing. But since you’re sort of shy, it works the other way too. Not being able to make out people’s individual faces helps you to lose yourself in the music . . . escape your self-consciousness about performing
in front of all those people.”

  “Right,” Laila said, thinking. “But tonight, my attention kept going to this one man . . . he was sitting at a table up front, all by himself. I could only see his outline, but he was big. Imposing . . .”

  “Asher.” The kettle started to wail. Tahi turned back to prepare their tea. “If he was waiting for you in the underground tunnel that leads from the State Room, then he must have known it was you, right?” Tahi asked, setting their tea down on the table and sliding into the booth.

  “How could he know that?” Laila wondered.

  “You were aware of him in the audience, even though he was just a shadow to you. You haven’t laid eyes on him in years, and you said he was wearing a thick beard. But you also said you recognized him in an instant when you saw him. Don’t you think there’s a possibility he could have recognized you, as well? Even through the veil?” Tahi speculated.

  Laila cleared her throat and took a sip of her tea, made very uneasy by the suggestion behind Tahi’s question.

  “Well?” Tahi prompted.

  “I don’t know. Maybe, I guess. He heard me sing once, a long time ago. I’m not sure what else makes sense. It’s pretty unlikely he just happened to be in that tunnel at the exact moment I was passing, and that he somehow recognized me, even with my hood up.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Tahi said. “I meant, well . . . what are you going to do about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About the fact that fate has thrown you two together again.”

  Laila made a scoffing sound, irritated and anxious that Tahi was pressing the subject again. She glanced around the large kitchen. “Do you see him here? Asher and I aren’t together.”

  “Fate can’t do everything. It expects some sweat.” Tahi gave her a significant glance over her delicate tea glass as she sipped.

  “No,” Laila said emphatically after a pause, shaking her head. “Time moves on. Crescent Bay was a long time ago. I’m a different person. So is he.”

  “So how come you both recognized each other through the veil, without even seeing each other’s faces?”