Via Dolorosa (30 page)

“I’m thinking about going back to school,” she said after some time.

“For real? Since when?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about it.”

“What would you study?”

“History,” she said. “Some type of history. Maybe European history. Maybe art history.”

“All right.”

“I like the idea of someone writing all that history down. I like the idea of learning about what happened before we were ever here, and how it continues to change us. I want to learn about it, I think.”

“All right,” he said again.

“Or maybe poetry.”

“You’d be good at that.”

“Do you think so?”

“Sure,” he said. “You’re always reading it.”

“That’s true.”

“You used to love writing poems.”

“Do you think I should start writing them again?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Well, I’ve been writing a little, you know,” she said, watching her salmon. It was as if she feared it would flip right off the plate and somehow make its way back to the sea if she removed her eyes from it for even a second. “A little, anyway. Just recently.”

“Oh, yeah? When?”

“Sometimes when you go off to paint. Thinking of you being an artist makes me want to be one, too. Or to try, at least.”

“I’m sure you could do it,” he said. “I remember when you used to do it.”

“I like being an artist,” she said. “I like pretending it, anyway.”

“You’re not pretending it if you’re really doing it.”

“How do you know when you’re really doing it?”

“When you lie,” he said. “You know you’re an artist when you lie for the sake of your art.” He’d gotten it from Isabella Rosales. While he hadn’t fully agreed with her on this at the time, here, now, it made the most sense to him in the world.

“I’m not a good liar.”

“It’s a different kind of lying,” he said.

“Is it?”

“It’s the only good kind.”

“Can I ask you about the painting?” she said. “The mural?”

“All right.”

She said, “Is it difficult for you?”

“You mean because it’s taking me so long?”

“I suppose,” she said. She seemed embarrassed to have brought any of it up now.

“It’s all right,” he told her.

“I didn’t want it to sound insulting.”

He nodded with compassion, almost smiling himself now, and said, “It’s the first thing I’ve painted since coming back from Iraq. I didn’t know how hard it would be. I wasn’t prepared, I guess.”

“What is it?”

“I just can’t seem to fully focus. It keeps going off in different directions and I can’t seem to paint it straight, if that makes any sense. But it’s getting better, getting easier. I had a good day with it today.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I just meant—I mean, I thought it was difficult for you because of your hand.”

“Oh.” It hadn’t even occurred to him.

“I thought it was taking so long because it hurt you to do it.”

“Oh.”

“Does it? Does it hurt you to do it?”

He almost felt himself say it, but then concentrated on keeping his mouth shut. He looked at his own plate—beef
domburi
, rice, diced avocado cubes, the cloudy yellow
miso
broth—then, inevitably, felt his eyes shift to his right hand, his right arm. Holding chopsticks. In shirtsleeves, he could only make out the gnarled twist of scar tissue that navigated his palm, up over his thumb, around the back of his hand. He could not see it, but he was all too familiar with the way it trailed up his arm,
spiderwebbing
along his flesh. The visual was ingrained in him. Still, now, even in the cool (or maybe because of it), he could feel its faint, ghostly throb. There would never be an escape from the throb.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said quickly. She swallowed her words with a sip of plum wine. “I know you don’t like talking about it.”

“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”

This is like a feat, a dangerous balancing act. We can both feel it. Are
we destined to live like this forever?
he wondered.

“You’ve been different,” she said to him, knowing that she was treading now, treading carefully but nonetheless. Perhaps the tedium of the balancing act had gotten to her, too. “Since you came back, and even before we came here, Nick, to the island, you’ve been different. Is that normal? Is that what war does to people?”

“Some,” he said. “Some people.”

“You never say anything about what happened over there.”

“It’s not something you’d want to hear.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Well, it’s not something I like to talk about.”

“Was it so terrible?”

“Some of it.”

“But it’s over now,” she said.

“No,” he reminded her, “it’s not.”

“All right, no, it’s not. Not for everyone. Some are still there fighting, of course. But for you it’s over. Now, here, it is for you. Except for your hand, Nick, it’s over now for you.”

She would never understand, he thought. Not in a million years would she ever understand. Even when the war itself was finished and the last American soldier was either back home or buried in some mass grave on the other side of the world, it would never truly be over.

The too-young waitress returned with her automatic smile.

“Is good?”

“It’s very good,” Emma told the girl.

“Could we get some sake, please?” he said.

The waitress half-bowed, half-nodded, and slipped back into the restaurant.

Had he possessed the words, he would have attempted to relay to his wife what it had all been like, and how his own actions overseas had led him to his current state. He would have told her, too, of his recent delusions—the way the world seemed, on occasion, to twist spitefully out from under him, angry at him, laughing at him—and how it was becoming increasingly arduous to discriminate between the waking world and his own morbid dreams. Dreams—nothing more than an inventory of misplaced sensations. Dreams were reality and reality was nothing but a nightmare, a mocking nightmare. Not unreasonably, his days and weeks following his return from Iraq were plagued by a creeping sense of unease, and of an ill-defined breed of disillusionment. It was all new to him. He was a child, coughed from the womb and thrust into new life. Things had changed. Something from the war had trickled over into the real world, the working world. Somehow it had crossed the separation, traversed it like a physical causeway. He had brought it back with him. Was he prisoner to the past? It certainly seemed that way. Reality impeded, there was no truth to anything. Emma’s recent disclosure as a prime example, nothing fit and all was out of whack. Dreams?
Dreams?
Increasingly, he became more and more confused. Was this even real? Was the painting, the mural? What about the hotel? Was that even real, did it even exist on this plane?

And what was this plane?

No; he would never leave Iraq. He had died in Iraq.

As if summoned, breathed, ghostlike, Isabella’s face and shoulders appeared over the hedgerow of azaleas. Behind her like a halo, the moon hung fat and glorious. The sky had melted to a deep purple-black.

“My friends,” Isabella said.

“Well, hello,” said Emma, turning to look. “You look so beautiful!”

“Nicholas,” Isabella said, nodding at him. She came around the stone walk and paused at a dip in the hedgerow.

“Hello.”

Emma invited Isabella to eat with them. When Nick’s sake came, they all took a shot, toasting the cool weather and the beautiful island. The
sake
was warm and it was overly strong going down. Nick shot it and tried to keep his eyes closed for the ultimate experience. But with his eyes closed he found he could smell nothing but the scent of Isabella, and that made him quickly open his eyes.

Indeed, she was beautiful—darkly and dangerously beautiful. Looking at her, he suddenly felt like a child. With obvious deliberateness, he glanced away, but did not think either woman noticed his haste.

“Your meals,” commented Isabella, “they always appear so civilized. I love watching the both of you eat!”

Emma poured herself some more plum wine. She poured Isabella a glass, too.

“There have been people talking about your painting, Nicholas, back at the hotel,” Isabella said. Lifting the wine glass to her lips, she held it there, not tasting it, as if in a taunt. Her eyes were very dark and very large. Her black, luxurious hair was draped around her face, and she had a magnolia blossom propped behind one ear. He could not stop smelling her; she had become infused with the air.

“Well I guess I’m famous,” he said.

“We were just talking about the painting,” said Emma.

“Everyone is talking,” said Isabella. “It has become a topic of conversation at the hotel.”

“What have they been saying?” Emma asked.

“It’s been curious,” admitted Isabella. “Apparently it has left some of the staff confused.”

“Confused?” said Emma—who looked it.

“Something like a controversy,” Isabella added.

“Oh, that’s just silly,” Emma said. To Nick, she said, “Isn’t that silly?”

“I can’t seem to keep it straight,” Nick confessed. “Any of it.”

Isabella shook her head. “I do not know what that means.”

Placing one of his chopsticks flat on the table, he traced it with his finger. Said, “Straight.”

“How do you keep a painting straight?” Isabella asked. “I do not understand. This is artist talk?”

“Straight,” he said, turning away from her and looking out into the street. A number of people were moving across the boulevard toward the water. They all seemed to be laughing and talking loudly, having a good time. “Keeping with the line. It’s seeing the vision and following it through till the end. Walking the line.” He repeated, “Straight.”

“Straight-straight-straight,” said Isabella. “This is too much for me.”

It suddenly occurred to Nick that, in Emma’s presence, Isabella quite deliberately took on the role of the ignorant foreigner which, in reality, she was anything but. For her, it seemed the donning of a guise—a clever part to play. Nick knew Isabella understood more about the aura of art than he did, and he did not need to explain the straight-straight-straight to her. When alone with her, and without Emma, Isabella Rosales was a different woman. Thinking this now, though, made him feel that he was somehow boring a hole into Isabella’s façade which, for whatever convoluted reason, he did not wish to do, and so he hurriedly chased the thought away.