The Radiant City (38 page)

“What are you doing coming here by yourself?” Saida says to her father as soon as she sees him in the door of the restaurant. “Come and sit down.”

His coat is wet and his hair sticks to his head. There is blue around his lips and bright patches of red around his eyes.

“I do not want to sit down,” Elias says.

He trembles; she can feel it when she takes his arm.

“Are you ill? Do you want me to call a doctor?”

He shakes her off. “No. I have to tell you.”

“Where is Ramzi?”

“I woke up to an empty house.” There are scabs on the back of her father’s hand. He does not heal well anymore.

“He didn’t come home last night?” He has turned into a tomcat, she thinks.

“He came home. Like a thief in the night he came, and then he went again.”

“What are you talking about?” Saida stands in front of her father, her right hand pressed to her stomach, her left hand rubbing her right. The hard-boiled eggs she ate for breakfast churn in her belly.

“I am telling you. Ramzi has gone to Nice.” Her father slumps against the counter and she helps him to a chair.

“Anthony, get my father some water, please.”

“Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know. He says Ramzi’s gone to Nice.” She pulls a chair close to her father. “How can he just take a vacation when he feels like it? When did he say he was coming back?”

“He left this.” Elias hands her a sheet of paper. “I found it taped to the refrigerator.”

I am sorry it has to be like this. I tried to tell you I could not stay in Paris. It will never be my home. I am moving. I know this will be difficult for you, and for Saida, but you will manage, and Joseph can begin to work now. You must know that I have been unhappy and I will never be happy in Paris. Celine has family in Nice. I will be in touch when we’re settled. I love you, Abba. Your son, Ramzi

“What does he mean, ‘when he’s settled’? Who is this Celine?”

Anthony puts the glass of water on the table.

“Is everything all right?” he asks again.

“I don’t think he’s coming back, Daughter.” Elias’s lower lip begins to quiver. “I have failed as a father. My family is scattered.”

“How could he do this? Are you sure?”

“He took all his clothes. I woke up. He was gone. And this is what he leaves me. A note. Not even a kiss. I will never see him again, not even his wedding. I’ll be dead and I won’t see his face again.”

“Morning!”

Saida looks up and sees Matthew in the doorway, shaking the rain off his jacket.

“How’s everybody?” he says and then stops. “Saida?”

“Oh, that selfish bastard! He has run away from home!”

“Who? Joseph?”

“No, Ramzi, I am telling you! He has run off and left us for some girl!”

Matthew looks at her. His mouth opens and then closes. He looks terrible, and although Saida registers this, she has no time for his troubles today.

“Oh, I know what you are going to say.” She grips her father’s shoulder and he puts his hand over hers and pats, trying to calm her down, but what is the point of calming down? Why should she not scream and yell since she is left with everything to do and no one to help her? “You are going to say that he is young and he is restless and has never wanted to be here. Well, who gets to be where they want to be? Who gets to do what they want to do? That is too damn bad, I tell you. He is a selfish little playboy and he can go to hell, for all I care.”

“Saida,” says Elias, and he begins to cough.

“
Abba, Abba,
drink this.” She holds the water to his mouth and rubs circles on his back. She feels the ribs through his sweater. This will kill him,
she
thinks
.
She sits down and puts her head in her hands. “I cannot do this. There is not enough of me.”

“I can help,” says Anthony.

“You’ll be all right,” says Matthew. “Look, he’ll probably be back. Just gone off on an adventure, right?”

“He’s gone. All those maps. All those want ads.” Oh, how her head throbs.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Anthony crosses his arms and stands in front of her as though trying to block anything harmful.

Saida wishes it were that simple. “I could sell the place,” she says.

“I do not want to sell, Daughter. Where would we go?” Elias looks like a frightened, wizened child, his lower lip trembling. “The restaurant is in my name, isn’t it? It is all we have now. The only thing we have. I do not want to sell.”

“No,
Abba,
don’t mind me. I am talking nonsense is all. We will be all right.”

“Listen, Saida,” says Matthew, rubbing his hands, looking at Anthony out of the corner of his eyes. “I hate to say it, but you’ve been pulling the lion’s share of the work around here anyway, haven’t you? I mean, Ramzi had sort of drifted away before now, hadn’t he?”

This was true. He has been useless for the past few months. What would change?

Anthony squats down in front of her. “And I’ll help,” he says.

Saida looks at these three men. Mutilated, each of them in their own ways. Misfits. The three un-wise men. She looks down at her hand. She is also a member of their tribe. She puts her hands on either side of Anthony’s face and kisses him on either cheek. “You are a great help, Anthony. I could not do it without you. In fact, I’m going to start paying you.”

“You don’t have to. I’ve got my pension.”

“We don’t pay Ramzi anymore. We pay you.” Saida picks up her father’s cold hands and rubs them between hers. “We’ll be all right,
Abba.

“I’m very tired, Daughter.”

“Do you want to go home? Shall Anthony take you home? Anthony, would you?”

“Sure. I’ll get a cab.”

“The metro is fine for me,” says Elias.

“I’ll get a cab,” says Anthony.

“Hang on, Anthony,” says Matthew. “I’ll come with you. I need to talk to you.”

They leave and after a few minutes, Matthew comes back. He looks different. As though he has heard something he did not expect. The whole world is awash in bad news. There is no cure for it. She says, “I made some
ghoraybeh
. Do you want some?”

“I’ve never turned down one of your cookies before, have I?”

She is halfway to the kitchen when she stops and starts to cry. She stands in the middle of the restaurant and covers her face with her hands. Matthew comes up behind her, starts to put his arm around her and then stops. “It’ll be okay,” he says.

Saida puts her scarred hand behind her back and stops crying. “Sit down. I’ll bring you a coffee,” she says.

Matthew had gone looking for Anthony, prepared to hear the worst. Prepared to go to funerals, to take whatever punishment Jack wished to deal out. He deserved it. After leaving the courtyard, after leaving Suzi lying on the wet cardboard with her tights around her ankles and the sound of sirens on the wind, Matthew had walked aimlessly, walked and walked until there was nothing to do but stop walking, take a pill and sleep. The coward’s oblivion. Pull the blanket of shame up over his head. He had done nothing for the woman he had fucked, whose lips had been put to use for his pleasure. He had betrayed his friend, and if he could fool himself into thinking it had not felt like it at the time he was surrendering to Suzi’s somewhat professional ministrations, there was no denying it when he looked into Jack’s face. Had he told himself Jack didn’t care much about Suzi? Yes. Had he told himself Jack wasn’t capable of caring? Yes.

But she wasn’t dead.

Anthony had told him, however, she was done with Jack. Done with them all, in fact. She was done with the Bok-Bok, with the life and the drugs. God willing. She was waiting to get into a treatment centre. Doing out-patient until then. It might be six weeks or more before she could get in anywhere, for of course she couldn’t afford a private clinic. Until then, Anthony said, she was at St. Rita’s.

And what, Matthew had asked, is St. Rita’s? And then, “Ah,” when he was told.

“If you want to talk to her,” Anthony had said without prompting, “You’ll find her there most afternoons. Morning I think she’s at the walk-in clinic. Evenings she’s got meetings, you know, recovery—twelve step.”

“You think I should? I mean, would she want to see me?” Matthew had said as Anthony got into the cab with Elias.

“I think that’s kind of up to you,” said Anthony. “But you need to talk to Jack, too, don’t you think?”

First things first. St. Rita, patron saint of desperate cases and prostitutes. Her chapel is on the boulevard de Clichy. Henry Miller used to hang out there. It is nearly five-thirty and dark by the time Matthew finds it. It is a strange little storefront chapel. On one side of the door is a display window with a painting of the saint. A large thorn sticks out of her forehead. On the other side of the door are two large modern, rather lurid, stained-glass windows, murky with street grime. Matthew goes in. To the right is an office, to the left, the chapel itself.

Inside the chapel a nondescript brown-haired girl in a navy pea jacket stands in front of a bank of yellow, red and green votive candles, in the middle of which St. Rita’s wooden statue rests against a blue wall. As Matthew passes behind the girl, she places a scrap of paper in a small basket at the statue’s feet.

The room is small and no one else is in it. Matthew admits relief to himself. He has made the effort. What more is required?
You must make sure. Wait a while, it won’t kill you.
And so he prepares himself to stay, not long, but long enough to walk out clean.

To the left are the stained-glass windows Matthew saw from the street and, to his right is a confessional; before him rows of plain wooden chairs are set up in front of a modest, slightly raised altar with another statue of St. Rita and a gold-painted icon hanging above it. Farther along the confessional wall, he notices a small statue placed on a piece of wood above eye level, behind a piece of protective glass. Upon closer inspection he sees that it is a Black Madonna wearing a blue dress, the kind little girls would dress a Barbie doll in, the space around her feet cluttered with bits of paper that have been tucked over the top of the glass.

The room, he realizes as he walks farther in, is actually an
L
shape. In the back of the far angle a twig of a figure perches in the last row of chairs. She leans forward onto the back of the seat in front of her. Her head rests on her folded hands. There is no mistaking that tousled head of dark hair. Matthew cannot tell if she is praying or crying. He does not want to disturb her, he tells himself, as his heart hammers.
I am afraid of her.
He backs away and takes a seat near the altar. He tries to focus on the gold-painted icon of mother and child. Tries to think about what to say to Suzi, since all the words he had have disappeared now that she confronts him.

He tries to pray. It does not take long before he realizes that he has no idea how to go about it. The prayers of his childhood hardly seem appropriate.
Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Or maybe it is appropriate. Snippets come to him from other places, places not his own. . . .
Hail Mary, full of grace . . . God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. . . . Our Father, who art in heaven.
He settles on the Our Father and closes his eyes, thinking the words while he keeps a picture of Suzi in his mind.

The images that rise in his mind, of breasts and thighs in black tights and soft wet places, are not suitable. He shakes his head and tries again. Gets needle marks and sores around her mouth. He starts again, this time with,
This is for Suzi . . .
but of course that’s not her real name and he doesn’t know her real name.

He hears a sound, like a laugh, and opens his eyes.

Suzi looks at him, and the expression on her face is of such terrible need that his breath sucks out of him. He rises and walks to her, taking a seat, but leaving an empty one between them. Her eyes never leave his face.

“I’m glad to see you,” he says. “I wanted . . . I wanted to say I was sorry.”

“What for?” Her voice sounds rough, like her mouth is very dry.

“I left you.” Her brows knit and her mouth opens. “I left you, when you OD’ed. I didn’t stay.”

She shuts her eyes. “Oh. That doesn’t matter.”