How to Read the Air

by Dinaw Mengestu

  It seems to have taken hours for evening to finally settle in; the sunsets in the Midwest tend to linger, drawing the last moments of the day out much longer than one would expect. For the past twenty minutes I’ve stood on the side of the road watching the standard colors that come with it, until now, finally, there are none left. In the meantime I’ve caught a number of strange glances from passing cars surprised to see a man standing on the road’s narrow shoulder with his hands in his pockets as he takes turns staring out in all four directions. I can see them wondering as they drive by a few miles an hour slower than usual if I’m lost or perhaps even injured, or in a worst-case scenario completely mad. I don’t doubt that I give off that impression, especially since I seem to have appeared from nowhere. I’m miles away from my car, so it’s difficult to tell, and yet because we’re at a point in our history where almost anyone driving along this road would be hesitant to stop and ask, the mystery behind my presence here seems inevitably more unsettling. No one, for the past two hours, has bothered to try to find out what I’m doing here, and nor would I have expected them to.

  I suppose I could say my parents were unfortunate in that regard. Theirs was not a gentler age, only a less nervous one, everyone not quite yet on the lookout, perhaps simply because no one had told them to be. Hitchhikers were common back then, and even as a child I remember often seeing one or two on roads exactly like this, although I don’t ever remember stopping to pick any up even though my father always insisted that it was safe and proper to do so.

  The state police who stopped my mother near here were inclined to see things in the simplest possible light. They came in with their sirens blaring, but once they saw her, a small, even fragile figure standing on the side of the road, they cut the horns and gently eased their car onto the shoulder a few feet ahead of her so as not to alarm her. I doubt they approached her cautiously or even skeptically, and more likely than not, they exited their cars completely unguarded with their hands safely at their sides or pulling at the rims of their wide state-trooper hats. They waved her toward them and she complied. When she was close enough, they saw the swelling on her forehead and took it as proof of trauma induced by an accident and the suitcase by her side as part of the confusion that came with it.

  Armed with their good intentions, they loaded her and her belongings into their car and drove her back to the site of the accident. They might have noticed that she seemed nervous about returning, and that when one of them asked her if that was her husband who was driving the car, she seemed to hesitate, as if she wasn’t exactly sure as to what the right answer was, even though there were only two possible choices, but again, this could be assigned to the general fear and confusion that anyone would face after an accident. The troopers had undoubtedly seen far worse, with plenty of death included, and so by their esteem all of this was far from extraordinary.

  In a few minutes they arrived where the red Monte Carlo had spilled off the side of the road. That surprised my mother. She would have thought that it would have taken at least three or four times longer at the very least, but in fact, the distance that she assumed she had traveled had been nothing, just barely more than a mile, while in her head it had felt as if a whole vast terrain had been conquered. She wanted to ask the troopers if they would go back to where they found her so they could do the journey all over again, this time slower, at a pace that matched the distance she felt she had traveled in her heart. How fast that would have been would have been incalculable. They would have had to travel at a fraction of a mile an hour, so that hours, if not a day, would have had to pass in order to get it right.

  Under the glaring headlights of two squad cars, a tow truck, and a pair of ambulances, the entire scene seemed more deliberate and plotted than it had before. She spent several minutes reassuring herself that she wasn’t responsible for what had happened. “I am good,” she told herself. Good, good, good, until she finally half believed it. She had been staring out the window when it happened, and only God knew how long it had been since either of them had spoken to the other. She had done nothing wrong, she told herself, and she was prepared to say the same to anyone who asked.

  They had arrived just in time to see two paramedics pulling my father out of the car and loading him onto a stretcher. He was half conscious and had been so more or less since my mother left him.

  Before they drove away, a second pair of paramedics examined my mother. They flashed a light into her eyes and felt the swelling on her forehead. At least one of them might have noticed that there were signs of earlier bruises, one at least a few days old, under her right eye, and that there were other, even older bruises along her arm, including one on each wrist. One of the paramedics asked her, repeatedly, if she was feeling okay. If she had any medical conditions that he should be aware of? If she was pregnant, or thought she might be pregnant, and if she didn’t, perhaps, want to talk to someone else? And how did she respond? Appropriately, of course; her sense of decorum never failing her, least of all when other people were involved. Say everything is fine and people will believe you, and so it’s my turn to say it for her.

  “Thank you. I’m fine,” she responded.

  And when asked again if she was certain.

  “Yes. Everything is okay.”

  The car was towed out of its ditch. Both headlights were missing and the windshield was badly cracked. The hood of the car had recently popped open; my mother thought there was something almost embarrassing about seeing its engine exposed and briefly turned her head in the other direction. When it was finally hooked on to the tow truck, one of the officers who had found her on the side of the road leaned over and told her, “You’re incredibly lucky to have walked out of this alive.” It took her several seconds before she was certain that she understood what he meant by that.

  He led her gently by the elbow back to his car. He promised her they would follow the ambulance all the way to the hospital, and in fact, he said, he’d try to catch up to it so she could see its lights. “You’ll feel better once you can see them,” he told her. “And that way you’ll know exactly where your husband is.”

  Once they reached the hospital she knew that if she wanted to she could eventually get up and leave on her own. After an hour or two, no one, not even the policemen driving her, would be there to stop her. She could leave her husband’s wallet at the reception desk, just as she had found it, along with a note addressed to him that said “Take care,” or “I’m sorry for what happened,” or better yet “Please leave me alone.” She pictured herself walking out afterward through a pair of double glass doors with a small bandage affixed to her head and a prescription for painkillers in her pocket. From there she saw herself shuffling across the street in her own blue hospital slippers carrying nothing, not even a purse under her arm, toward a large field of wheat that seemed to have been erected solely to receive her. The sun would be rising but still below the horizon; large flocks of black-winged birds would be flying overhead, and everywhere there would be the sound of cicadas. She would slowly part the field with her hands as she entered; the stalks would quickly bend and then fold around her so that within seconds it would look to anyone watching as if she had never been there at all. Eventually, she was certain, if she walked in that field far and long enough, for years, perhaps even decades, there wouldn’t be a trace of her, not even a footprint that could be found.

  One of the last things Angela told me once we had agreed to a divorce was that she was afraid of disappearing.

  “If we’re not together,” she said, “then I wonder what’s left. I’m afraid to find someday that there’s no one who knows me anymore. I could disappear and who would care.”

  Once I would have had a hard time finding fault in that. I would have thought that there was little else that one could look forward to in life other than being set free from others’ demands and the obligations they placed on both your time and heart. The invisibility that came with that freedom was a small price to pay for all t
he damage and pain that could be avoided as a result. By the time I had packed my bags and was preparing to leave Angela, I was grateful I no longer believed that. I hope that when I settle into someplace for the evening that I will have the courage to call her and tell her that while the legal terms of our marriage may end soon enough, we are still not finished, and won’t be I hope for many years yet to come. Our marriage, for all its shortcomings and failures, has taught me as much. I tried to explain this to Angela while we sat one last time on our bench, worrying about our fates once we were separated.

  “You will never disappear,” I said. “Even if it may feel like you have at some point. We’re going to remain a part of each other’s lives for much longer than we think. There’s nothing we can say or do to change that.”

  And while at the time a part of me may have questioned the veracity of that statement, I no longer do. We do persist, whether we care to or not, with all our flaws and glory. If Angela, my mother, or even my father were here I would gather them close to me so I could tell them that despite what we’ve gone through, and despite our best attempts to escape one another, I’m certain beyond the slightest doubt that if there is one thing that has to be true, it’s this.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my parents, Hirut and Tesfaye Mengestu; my sister, Bezawit; my family in D.C. and in Ethiopia, thank you, as always, for your love and support. To Jonathan Ringen, Mark Binelli, Jonathan Hickman, and Aamer Madhani for always being there, regardless of distance. To Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Kalpana Narayanan, Shawn McGibboney, Pervaiz Shallwani, Pru Rowlandson, Julia Holmes, Jessica Lamb-Shapiro, Marcela Valdez, Steve Toltz, and Julian Chatelin for your steady, unwavering friendship. To Gerard and Nicole Robicquet for everything you’ve done for us. To my agent, PJ Mark, for your guidance, advice, and friendship. To my editor, Megan Lynch, for once again helping to make this a better book, and to Sarah Bowlin, Mih-Ho Cha, and the staff at Riverhead for all of your efforts. To the Lannan Foundation, whose generous support helped make this book possible. For Gabriel.