House of Sand and Fog (14 page)

N
ADEREH HAS LIGHTED TEN CANDLES THROUGHOUT THE ROOM AND
our family and guests have sat for many hours upon the floor at the sofreh, eating and drinking, talking and laughing. Now we lean back on large crimson cushions from Tabriz, sipping hot tea and sampling pistachios and mints as Googoosh’s music plays from the tape machine. Soraya is telling stories of our old life in Tehran when she was a young girl, of our driver Bahman and how he would allow her and her playmates to sit in the rear of the limousine as he drove throughout the neighborhood and they pretended to drink tea and speak of palace affairs. Nadi has brought into the room our leather-bound photo albums and I watch my daughter’s new family as Soraya shows to them picture after picture. My son-in-law is a quiet, respectful young man. Dressed in a gray pinstripe suit, all the evening long he has stayed at Soraya’s side but he has not once touched her, which is proper. With his eyeglasses and very short hair, he appears older than his thirty years. Both his mother and sister are large women, though they have dressed very tastefully in the latest colorful fashions, and they are quite warm, laughing with ease at the smallest opportunity. The girl’s husband I find more difficult to bear; he is young, with barely twenty-five or-six years, and he owns a jewelry shop in San Francisco. His suit is elegant, but on two fingers of both hands he wears gold, diamond, and ruby rings. And throughout our dinner of chelo kebab, khoresh badamjan, and obgoosht, whenever he reached for his Coca-Cola glass his shirt cuff pulled back to reveal gold chain bracelets on both thin wrists. And when he addressed me it was as Genob Sarhang, Honorable Colonel, but with a tone of such exaggerated respect I did not believe his sincerity. So now it is a relief he has gone into Esmail’s bedroom with my son to play computer video games.

But still, I cannot become fully relaxed. I watch Soraya’s face in the candlelight. She has become such a lovely young woman, now wife. She wears a conservative white blouse with jacket and a skirt that matches, her legs folded like a lady’s beneath her. Her black hair is held up on her head. Around her neck she wears the pearl necklace her mother and I gave her as a wedding gift, and her eyes are alive with flame, her teeth white, but her talk and laughter leave me unable to relax; as soon as she stepped out of her husband’s automobile, she regarded the bungalow and her eyes lost something before she rushed to meet us on the grass. The Dom Pérignon upon the widow’s walk, the fresh flowers and new furniture, the view of the sea, seemed to help relieve her of appearing from a lower station in life. But all the evening long she has been talking of our summer home in Chālūs, our home in the most fashionable section of the capital city, the parties at all the homes of all the high officials of Shahanshah Pahlavi. Our guests have listened politely, and Nadi—who has been a wonderful hostess all evening—has interrupted Soraya to ask her new mother-in-law questions of their family, their health. And now, of course, the photos have Soraya reminiscing all over again. Earlier, as Nadi was serving the tadiq and mastvakhiar, my son-in-law asked me how I was enjoying retirement. Did I have any hobbies? I had anticipated this question even before our guests had arrived and I had prepared myself to speak of my activity in the real estate markets, but at the time of the question Soraya was telling her new mother and sister-in-law of the night our home received a telephone call from the Shah himself, and I felt such an embarrassment I was not able to tell of my buying and selling bungalows without appearing to apologize for the manner in which we find ourselves living at the moment. I told my daughter in a warm voice to please change the subject, beekhoreem, let us eat.

And now, as I sip Persian tea through the sugar cube between my teeth, I am anxious for them all to leave, Soraya as well, but not before I take her aside and scold her for all her grandstanding, not before I hold her to me and tell her not to worry, this little bungalow is only temporary, your mother and I are expecting quite a profit, please do not worry about us.

And I am worried about my son. Nadi’s list of chores was long and the time was short, so I was not able to speak with him about this American woman Kathy Nicolo before the evening began. Esmail is an honest boy, and he sometimes speaks before thinking. I imagine him sitting at his video game he is able to win with closed eyes, perhaps talking out of boredom to the young jeweler, telling to him of the crazy woman who visited today. Nadi and my daughter’s mother-in-law talk now of our home country, how they miss the flowers of Isfahan, the mosques of Qom, how the price of saffron here is not to be believed. Soraya is leaning close to her husband as she smiles and shows him a girlhood photograph of herself, the candlelight reflecting in his eyeglasses. I excuse myself and go to Esmail’s room. The only light comes from the computer screen and they are both sitting at the monitor, their eyes and faces hard with concentration. My son is taller than the jeweler, I notice. I stand in the doorway and listen to the beep beeps of the electronic game. I listen to the voices of the women in the other room, Googoosh singing one of our three-thousand-year-old love songs on the Japanese tape machine, and I suddenly feel I am a mardeh peer, a very old man. Soon it will be Esmail’s new wife we will invite to dinner. But where will Nadi and I be living then? Will we still be in this country? Tonight, I am longing to be back in Chālūs, the Caspian Sea stretched out before us, Pourat and his family alive again and visiting us in our home. Earlier this evening, when the sun was setting into the Pacific and we drank French champagne amongst flowers and family, toasting our health, I began to feel the old ways once again in my blood. But then there was the loud sound of an automobile engine and I turned to see this woman Kathy Nicolo staring at me from the passenger’s seat, a man at the steering wheel, although I could not see him clearly before they drove away and I was left feeling accused of a crime I did not commit.

I feel quite tired and hope our guests will leave very soon. For days I have been looking forward to this dinner, to seeing my only daughter again, but like so many things in this life it is never as you dream it. And it is clear to me my daughter does not respect me as she once did; throughout the evening, in between all of her talking, I would sometimes catch her viewing me with a distant sadness, the fashion in which people regard the blind or very ill. And it is perhaps this more than anything else that leaves my arms and legs so heavy with fatigue. Because Soraya is right: how far it is we have fallen if everything we have is invested in a small bungalow on a hill in California.

Nadereh laughs quite loudly at the sofreh, but it is not a genuine laugh, and I want to sleep now. I want to sleep, and dream of kings.

L
AST NIGHT WE STOPPED AT A GROCERY STORE IN HALF MOON BAY,
Lester and I walking down the food aisles under all that fluorescent light, stopping to pick out Wheat Thins, steaks, and coffee as quiet and relaxed as if we’d been living together for years. But I wasn’t relaxed and I don’t think he was either. The trip to my house had pissed him off, and he talked about it as we left Corona and drove south through all the beach towns on Highway 1, the sky a bloody mess out over the water. He kept asking me who the hell those people thought they were. What were they celebrating with their pricey cars and clothes? Taking a woman’s house? I kept quiet and we shared a beer while he drove. I teased him about a cop drinking and driving and Lester seemed to calm down and told me how up until a few years ago it was legal in Texas to drink while you drove as long as you weren’t drunk. At the store he acted cheerful again, asking me if I liked this or would I prefer that before he dropped it in our cart. But I still heard a drag in his voice, like he was holding something heavy in his arms. I was hungry and the beer had gone to my head and I didn’t like it. I was tired of feeling like my feet weren’t all the way on the ground, like the real me was waiting for me somewhere outside my body, and I made a vow I wouldn’t drink anymore for the rest of the night.

Five or so miles south of Half Moon Bay Lester turned off the coast highway and we drove along what he said was the Purisima River, a dry bed of stones with a thin ribbon of water moving through the middle, making whitecaps over small boulders as it flowed west for the Pacific. There was a pale green light left in the sky, and I looked out my window at low fields of artichoke plant, then woods and an occasional house or trailer. There were lights on inside, so I guess I expected electricity when we got to where we were going. I had turned on the radio on the highway but now, maybe because of all the trees and the mountain I knew was somewhere ahead of us, not much was coming in, so Les turned it off. He was being very quiet and I wanted him to talk more.

We left the main road for a much more narrow one, the pavement worn to dirt in places. Then Les turned the car onto a trail of flat rocks and pine needles, the woods dense on both sides of us, and he drove slowly and we rocked in and out of shallow ruts in the ground. A couple of times the bottom of the car grated against rock and Les said shit under his breath. When the trail got even more narrow and low pine branches started scraping the top of the roof, Lester stopped the car and we locked it and I followed him along a path as he carried two bags of groceries and I carried one. It was almost too dark to see without a flashlight and the air had gotten cooler and smelled like pine and dried eucalyptus. I could hear the Purisima River through the woods on my left, then Lester walked up three wooden steps and onto a porch with me right behind him. Mosquitoes started to light on my face and hands, and one got his stinger in my back through my blouse. Les put his groceries down, unlocked the door, then felt his way along a wall and struck a match to one of those camping lanterns that hiss and give off the light of a bare bulb. He took the lamp and hung it by its handle from a ceiling hook in the middle of the room, the walls and floors made of pine planks that were weathered or stained a dark brown. I smelled something a little rotten.

Lester took my grocery bag and put it on a three-foot-thick chopping block beneath the hanging lamp. On his way to get the groceries from the porch he stopped and kissed me, hugged me to him. “You hungry?”

“I could eat,” I said into his chest. I could smell his aftershave, and I hugged him tight before he went outside.

Under a wooden staircase against the wall was a black iron woodstove. Les got a fire going in it in no time, and even though it made the room a little too warm, it was nice seeing the flames and smelling the smoke. Next to an army cot in the corner was a plastic ice chest, and Les opened it and found an old chicken carcass floating in the water. “Shit.”

“Nope, I think it’s a chicken, Lester.”

He let out a laugh, carried the cooler down to the river, taking the gas lantern with him. In the firelight I unloaded the groceries onto the chopping block, then looked around for something to cook with. On a crate underneath the stairwell was a short stack of pots and pans, and I dusted off a black iron skillet, put it on the stove above the flames, then unwrapped the steaks and laid them in.

When Les came back he opened a bottle of red wine he’d bought and I poured some over the cooking meat. He handed me a paper cup of it and stood with me in front of the stove, drinking. I drank too, swallowing my vow not to, feeding the enemy voice in my head. I thought he might put his arm around me or something, but he didn’t. He just stood there beside me looking down at the wood fire in the stove, the steaks cooking. So I put my arm around him.

After a very quiet supper we ate off paper plates on our laps in front of the flames, we went upstairs to the loft, undressed in the light from the gas lantern, and got into bed, a queen-size mattress on the floor. The sheets felt cool and a little gritty against my skin and I wondered when they were last washed, who slept here before. I wanted to wash my face and brush my teeth but there wasn’t a bathroom, even a sink. I curled up to Les and rested my hand and cheek on his bare chest. I could hear the gas hiss from the lantern. It made a kind of shadowed light, and I saw how low the ceiling was, the bare rafters running at a steep angle to short walls, just two half-windows on each side, mosquitoes and moths flying at the screens, Lester’s heart beating against my hand. Without lifting my head, I asked him if he was all right.

“Yes. I’m all right.” His voice was tired, and sounded weak.

“All right but
sad,
huh?”

He took a long breath and let it out his nose. I could feel it move my hair. “I just keep seeing my father drive off in his packed station wagon. I swore I’d never do that to my own, Kathy.”

Something fluttered inside me. “Do you want to go home?”

“That’s not home.”

I thought I knew what he meant, but I didn’t want to press him. I moved my hand down just to let let my fingers nestle in the coarse hair there, but he grew hard right away and our conversation seemed to continue though neither of us spoke again.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
Sunday, was just that, full of sun. I had to pee first thing, so Lester handed me a roll of toilet paper, kissed me, and told me to find a spot in the woods. After, he told me to bring my toothbrush and he showed me a trail behind the camp that led through the pine trees to a clearing at the river. In the soft ground was an upside-down aluminum rowboat resting on a tree stump. The river was calm and wide here and seemed to end in the trees. It looked more like a pond, surrounded on three sides with woods, which was strange because I could still hear its water running back down through the stone bed.

“Won’t it drain itself?”

Lester put his arm around my shoulders. “It’s fed by an underground river. How often do you get to see that in life? The
source
of something?” Three dragonflies ticked along the surface to tall grass at the edge of the water. Les squatted and began to brush his teeth. I did too, spitting on the ground behind me, rinsing my mouth with cool water from my cupped hand. Lester filled a tin pot, and back at the cabin we drank scalding coffee on the small front porch and ate bread we’d toasted on the stove. Lester’s hair stuck out a little in places and he hadn’t shaved. He was leaning back in his chair, his sneakered feet up on the railing, drinking his coffee, and he looked good, like the pain he’d felt last night was only from his dreams. I lit a cigarette. “We gonna clean this place up or what?”

“How’s your foot?”

“I can put all my weight on it.”

“We should get damages for that too, the bastards.”

“Who you going to call about that?”

“A bunch of people. Tomorrow’s lawyer day.” He looked at me and smiled, then stood and tossed the last of his coffee over the railing. “Let’s do it.”

We spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning the whole cabin. And it was filthy. Under the dust on the floor around the chopping block were fish scales stuck to the planks. I got down on my hands and knees and scraped them off with a spoon. In the corners were dust webs four and five feet long, and all around the card table by the window were cigarette and cigar butts. While I was sweeping Les heated two small pots of river water on the woodstove, then he mopped the floor after me. He didn’t have any detergent to use so I poured in some glass cleaner I’d found under the pots-and-pans crate. There was a ripped T-shirt there too, and I went to work cleaning the windows and screens. At first, I’d wanted my Walkman, some fast beat in my head to keep me going, but after a while I didn’t miss the music. It was nice just hearing the squeak of the rag on cleaner against glass, the gurgling of the Purisima River through the trees, Lester working with me.

In the corner of the porch next to a rusted-out barbecue grill was a dirty blanket and under it was a long ax, a yellow chain saw, and a plastic gallon jug half full of what looked like oil and gas. Les found a pair of pliers and a screwdriver and he tightened the chain blade, then got the thing started. It spewed out blue smoke and was as loud as a dirt bike and he carried it off into the trees and I heard him cutting for a long time. I was glad when he stopped. I walked out there, still limping a bit, and helped him carry logs back to the camp. He had cut up some kind of smooth-barked tree, maple, he thought, a hardwood that would burn well in the stove. We made three trips each. He’d load my arms up, then grab two armfuls and follow me to the house. On the way back for more logs we held hands and Lester pointed out different kinds of wildflowers in the trees, or else we’d just walk through the heat of the woods together, sweating and breathing a little hard from the work, the sun on us in places, nothing but the sound of the river and a few birds.

Once we got all the logs in a pile in front of the porch, Lester took off his shirt and started splitting them with the ax. I went down to the Purisima with a plastic cup and filled and drank three times, then brought Lester some. The sweat was dripping off his nose and mustache and he smiled and thanked me, drank the water, then leaned over and gave me a short wet kiss. I smoked a cigarette on the porch step and watched him split wood awhile. His shoulders and back were gleaming with sweat, and veins were starting to come out in his long arms. Sometimes he would let out a little grunt as he swung the ax down onto the end of a log, then he’d kick the split wood aside, bend over to prop up another full log, and swing again. A fly landed on his face and walked across his cheek to his ear, but Lester didn’t even seem to notice it. I thought at first it was because he was concentrating so hard on what he was doing, but then I began to wonder if it wasn’t something else, if Lester was maybe thinking about his family, his wife and kids. And I hoped he wasn’t.

I left the porch and went inside to make tuna fish sandwiches. After a few more logs, Lester stopped and walked back through the trees towards his car. Then I saw him walking back to the camp, carrying his suitcase, his dry-cleaned uniform and clothes on hangers draped over his shoulder. He was still bare-chested, the sunlight on him as he stepped into the clearing whistling some tune through his teeth. I was relieved to hear it; I really liked being with Lester Burdon. I thought how this morning I’d felt more like myself than I had in a long time, maybe since the first days with Nick. And I wanted it to be good for Les too, and when I heard him whistling, I hurried to the door to take his clothes on hangers from him, and he kissed me deep, pulling me to his slick chest.

Up in the hot loft we took off our clothes and lay down together on the mattress. The room smelled almost like an attic, like dry wood and old furniture stuffing. But I could smell the woods outside the open screen windows too, the pine and eucalyptus, the hardwood tree Lester had cut up. And I could smell my own wetness as I lay on my back and Les licked me and I reached down and held his head in both my hands, my eyes on the rafters above me. I thought of Nicky the morning he left, the way he sat on the edge of the bed and just looked at me. Just that. Looked at me. Then I thought of my house, mine and Frank’s, of that Arab family living there, having parties there. What Les was doing felt good, warm and slightly electric, but I was thinking too much to let go into the orgasm I knew he was trying to give me. I pulled away and took him in my mouth, until he came against the back of my throat and I swallowed. I moved up and kissed him while he tried to push himself back inside me but he’d gone soft and so we lay there awhile, holding each other, our skin sticking.

I wanted a cigarette, but I didn’t want to move.

“My wife never did that to me.”

“Did you like it?”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“What if I didn’t like it, though?”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I did. But what if I didn’t?”

He kissed my upper cheek. “Then I wouldn’t like it either.”

“Bull
shit.”

“Well it’s true, Kathy.” He got up on one elbow and looked me long in the face, his mustache and eyes calling dark attention to themselves. “It’s true.”

I kissed him, opening my mouth, and he slid back on top of me. “Man, I’m in trouble, Les. I believe everything you say.” He began to move and my mouth tasted sour and I wanted one of those tall Budweisers in the ice chest downstairs. I raised my legs up and held his back and I wanted him to let go inside me, deep inside, where everything I say has another side to it, like telling him to wear a condom when I know I don’t want him to do anything like that at all. Not at all.