While my mom pays rent on our cottage, Audrey owns hers free and clear. Turns out there’s a big payout to army spouses whose soldiers are killed in action, plus, Nick took out a hefty life insurance policy before he enlisted. A long time passed before Aud touched that money—it sat in a savings account collecting pennies of interest the whole time she and Janie lived with Mom and me—but when her heart had scabbed over enough for her to face the windfall without anxiety attacks, she put a chunk of it aside for Janie and spent what was left on their home. I only know this because I am, for all intents and purposes, Aud’s closest friend.
When we’re done with dinner and the kitchen’s mostly tidy, I put Janie to bed so Audrey can study. We go through her elaborate bedtime routine (bath, teeth, song, books, music box, night-light), and then I pepper her face with kisses and flip off the lamp. When I return to the living room, I find Aud with her nose in a textbook.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” she asks, barely glancing up from the note she’s scribbling across a cluttered sheet of paper.
“I’ll hang out if you want.”
“Sure, but give me thirty to finish this study guide, okay?”
While I wait, I use her laptop to check my email. It’s spam, plus a notice from Cypress Valley High, reminding me, again, of the New Student Orientation.
God, no.
I sign out of my account and think of how lucky Mati is to be finished with school, free to live his life as he pleases. After his father’s treatments are over, he’ll probably head back to his country and … what? What do Afghan boys do when their schooling is done? There’s not a lot of industry in Afghanistan, as far as I know, and I can’t imagine commerce is anything to write home about. Maybe he’ll farm parched fields in a rural village. Or, maybe he’ll marry and reign like a lord. Or, he could join the Taliban and attack American soldiers—many of whom, like my brother, were deployed to Afghanistan to help.
But, no. Those are stereotypes propagated by surface-level journalism. With a jolt of shame, I realize that when it comes to Afghanistan, I don’t know anything but stereotypes.
I give Audrey a quick glance—she’s still wrapped up in her schoolwork—then type Afghanistan into an online search engine. A zillion links pop up, everything from war histories to harems, health care to housing. I dig deeper, scanning articles on poetry and proverbs, Islamic holidays, and popular Afghan cuisine—rice and soup, kebabs and lavash. I’m horrified to discover that the national infant mortality rate is dismal, and the literacy rate isn’t much better. I peruse paragraphs about the country’s complex tribal systems, the end of its monarchy, and the toll of the Soviet War. I learn about the subsequent civil war, the inception of the Taliban, made up in large part of Soviet War orphans, and the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
Since Nick’s death, I’ve pictured the arid South Asian country where he gasped for his last breath in monochrome shades of sinister and severe, but now, suddenly, Afghanistan is lit up in Technicolor. I’m not sure if my prejudice was ingrained in me by my mother, who’s feared Muslims since the Twin Towers fell—doubly after my brother was killed—or if I’ve chosen narrow-mindedness because it’s easier than acknowledging how utterly complex this world is, but I am certain of this: Nick would disapprove of complacent ignorance.
Once, when I was eleven, he took me to pick up groceries while our mom was in the weeds with edits. On our way home, laden with bags of food, he paused to fish a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket. He gave it to a homeless man—a war veteran, his sign declared—who loitered regularly a few blocks from our condo. I’d never seen my brother do such a thing, and I’d definitely never witnessed my mom giving money to the less fortunate; she always insisted we cross to the other side of the street when there were homeless people on the sidewalk. When I asked Nicky why he’d given his hard-earned cash to a stranger, he said, “Because he’s a person, Elise. Somebody’s son. Somebody’s father, maybe, and I see him. I see how we’re connected, him and me, to each other, to this great big world.” He bumped me affectionately as we continued to make our way home. “Don’t walk through life blind, okay?”
I’m thinking about connections when Audrey snaps her book shut. “Whatcha looking at?”
I close the website I’ve been studying and, nonchalantly, clear the computer’s search history, too. “Just a photography blog.”
“How’s your portfolio coming?”
I will the guilty staccato of my heart to slow; I hate lying to Aud. “Not bad. Should be ready by the time I need it for applications.”
“Sticking with the death theme?”
I wrinkle my nose and set her laptop on the coffee table. “The theme is life among death.”
She shudders. “Creepy.”
She doesn’t get my portfolio, and neither does my mom. I’m photographing cemeteries, yeah, but my goal is to capture the way lively subjects play off backgrounds of the grimmer variety. A black-and-orange butterfly perched atop a crumbling memorial, or a yellow pansy sprouting beside a marble headstone. Audrey and Mom think my work is morbid, but on good days, when the light’s just right and I’ve chosen the perfect aperture, capturing a blue bird roosting in the eaves of a centuries-old mausoleum, I think it might be brilliant.
“You’re creepy,” I say, nudging her foot with my own.
She laughs. “How’s the boy next door?”
“Hung up on his ex, which is fine by me.”
“Lissy, with that attitude, you’ll never find love.”
“I don’t want to find love—I want it to find me. I want it to crash into me. Knock me down. Seize me.”
“Spoken like a true Parker.” She twirls her hair between her fingers. She still wears her wedding band on her left hand, and its modest diamonds glint in the lamplight. “Your brother was a romantic, too, and we all know how obsessed your mom is with yearning and passion and devotion—fictional, of course.”
“Of course.” I nestle further into the couch cushions. “Audrey, how’d you know? With Nick, I mean? How’d you know it was real love?”
“It’s still real love,” she says, which makes my chest tighten. She places a hand over her heart. “I feel it here—a squeeze, a tenderness, a longing. It never goes away.”
“Do you think it’d be easier if you could stop loving him?”
“No. Would it be easier for you?”
“No,” I say, but my tone is unconvincing. Because honestly, sometimes I feel like a husk of a person, a milky-eyed zombie wandering a dark forest, capable only of missing my brother.
Audrey sighs, letting the curl she twisted into her hair fall to her shoulder. “Okay, maybe every once in a while, on particularly rough days, I toy with the idea of forgetting because, yeah, maybe it would be easier. But easier isn’t always better. I don’t ever want to not remember Nick or the way he made me feel, like I was something special—like I was everything special. Besides, Janie deserves two parents who love each other, even if one’s only here in spirit.”
I contemplate this, wishing I were as strong as my sister-in-law. “If you could go back and start over,” I say, “but with the knowledge that Nicky would die young … would you let yourself fall in love with him?”
She gives me a sad smile—the saddest smile. “A million times.”
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
—Rumi
elise
The following morning, Bambi and I make our walk to the beach. I’ve got my camera and she’s got her ball, and if I had to guess, I’d say she’s as eager as I am. As soon as we hear the sound of crashing waves, I sweep my surroundings for movement, a flash of color, a shock of dark hair.
I think, Please be here.
And then I see him, sitting at the picnic table I’ve started to think of as ours, writing in his notebook. Bambi’s spotted him, too, and she’s straining against her leash in an effort to get to him. She lets out an impatient whine, and he lifts his head, catching sight of us. His features go immediately slack, his eyes devastatingly impassive.
Indifference. It’s what I deserve.
I raise my hand in a lame little wave, and it’s as if a pail of warm relief splashes over him.
I feel it, too.
He stands, pockets his notebook and pen, and strides on long legs toward Bambi and me. As soon as he’s in her ambush zone, she drops her ball and lets out a yowl, pulling at her leash. Mati bends to pet her head, and her tail swishes accordingly.