Audrey gawks, like, You come here a sobbing mess, but Janie’s who you’re concerned with?
She recovers, arranging her features into an expression like tranquility. “Napping.”
“I’m sorry to show up like this.”
“I’m sorry you’re upset.” She folds her hands, studying me. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I sink back into the cushions, droopy, like a sail that’s lost its wind. I take a breath, but … I have no idea where to start. I don’t even know what happened. An hour ago, I loved Mati and he loved me. Despite our imminent end, being with him filled me to bursting.
Now, I’m just … empty.
“What you said, all of it … You were right,” I tell Audrey.
Her shoulders fall in a sigh. “The boy.”
“Mati.” Even now, I can’t accept her slighting him.
“I thought you weren’t seeing him anymore.”
I shrug weakly.
She grimaces. “What’d he do?”
“He lied. Everything … It was all a lie.”
I told you—now’s the perfect time for her say it, and she’d be right. But she doesn’t; she pats my hand and says, “Oh, Lissy, I’m sorry.”
I tell her everything. Our surreptitious visits, the attack he endured, Hala’s disapproval coupled with my mom’s, the I love you’s we traded, the way he made me feel whole and spirited and special. I tell her about Ghazni and the opposing tribes. The words feuding, and duty, and peace drop from my mouth like stones. I tell her about Panra, the faceless girl who’s earned my envy, my fury, my hatred, just by existing. I tell her about the arrangement—the engagement.
“He says it doesn’t matter,” I add, monotone. I blow my nose again with one of the many tissues she’s supplied. “He says there are no feelings, that she’s just a girl.”
Aud arches an eyebrow. “Just a girl? Damn, Lissy. Whoever she is, I feel terrible for her.”
I narrow my eyes, tossing my wadded tissue on the coffee table, where it finds a place among its friends. “You should feel terrible for me. I’m the scorned mistress in this scenario.”
She cracks a smile. “That’s something your mom would say. But think about it.… This girl is going to be stuck in a presumably unwanted marriage with a liar who’s got feelings for someone else. Sucks to be her.”
I lack the emotional capacity required to feel any sort of sympathy for Panra. She’s going to gain what I’ve lost, and anyway, I can’t stop thinking of Mati, of the wishes we’ve made, the endless conversations we’ve had, the way he’s touched my face, the way he’s kissed me. He loves me—I don’t doubt that—but I doubt his motives. I doubt his integrity.
“I wish I’d never met him,” I tell Audrey.
“Me, too,” she says softly.
I’ll never see him again.
I think, maybe, that’s for the best.
Aud collects my tissues, making a neater pile of them on the coffee table, casting worried sidelong glances my way. I watch her handle my snotty mess without flinching, until a question occurs to me, one I can’t help but voice. “Audrey, are you glad?”
Her head snaps up. “Am I glad? Why would you ask me that?”
“Because you hate Mati.”
“Elise, I never, ever want to see you hurt. I could kill him for what he’s putting you through.”
I shake my head. “It’s my fault. I should’ve listened to you. To my mom.”
“Do you think Nick and I always listened to your mom?”
“I mean, basically.”
“No. She didn’t want him to get serious with me—not at first.”
“He told you that?”
“Nicky and I didn’t have secrets. Your mom was unwavering on the issues of college and career—priorities, she used to say. She thought I was holding him back.”
I recall family dinners, the four of us laughing around the kitchen table. I recall Audrey and Nick wrapped around each other on the couch, watching movies while my mom tapped away at her keyboard in the next room. I recall the two of them closing themselves behind his bedroom door for hours at a time, Mom passing by with a boys will be boys raise of her shoulders. She was upset about Nick’s enlistment, the quick engagement, and the lackluster City Hall wedding, but when it came to Audrey …
“My mom loves you, Aud.”
“Now.”
“But if you’d run away in the beginning, when she didn’t want Nick to get serious, there’d be no Janie.”
“Exactly. Your brother and I did what felt right for us. It was hard, but all the challenges, all the pain? Worth it. I guess that’s my point: Sometimes you have to trudge through heartache to figure out which path to take. This boy is not the right path for you, Lissy. Now you know for sure.”
Before today, in the deepest, darkest cavern of my heart, I nursed a tiny ember of hope. Mati’s departure … maybe, somehow, it would be postponed. And even if it wasn’t, someday, we might find our way back to each other. After Rasoul is healthy, after I earn my degree, after Mati’s fulfilled his duties in Afghanistan, we could be together, him and me. But now, with the awareness of Panra and marriage and tribal peace …
“Knowing hurts,” I mumble. “I don’t ever want to think about him again.” It’s the truth—the childish, self-serving, unimaginable truth.
“When Janie wakes up, we’ll go to the park,” Aud says, smoothing my hair. “Then we’ll swing by Van Dough’s and get coffees and tons of cookies, a table full of them, and we’ll eat and drink and talk and cry until you feel better. Okay?”
The park, Van Dough’s, infinite cookies … Reminders of Mati. Sacramento, the Cypress Beach Cemetery, the sidewalk outside my cottage, our stretch of sand … All colored by memories of him. More than anything, I want to go home and bury myself in bed with my dog and a playlist loaded with angsty torch songs. But I nod.
I’ll go to the park and I’ll go to Van Dough’s, and I’ll forget about my splintered heart and the boy who took a mallet to it.
elise
He calls, he calls, and then he calls some more. For the rest of the day, and most of the night. He leaves countless voice mails. I listen to them all, because I’m a masochist.
He texts in the morning. No pretense, no fluff, just …
I am so sorry.
For the first time since my visit with Audrey, the urge to cry overwhelms me.
I skip the beach in favor of hanging out in the front yard with Bambi, where I build a wall around my heart, stones and mortar, indestructible. My dog seems to understand my suffering.
Midmorning, Iris comes outside to commence her daily pruning session. I hear her shucking dead buds from her many plants and nestle deeper into the grass, where I’ve been for a while, staring up at the gray sky, feeling very small and very insignificant in this tremendous world.
From where I sit today, Afghanistan might as well be another planet in a different galaxy, but someday, after the San Francisco Art Institute, when I’m a photojournalist seeking stories of truth … maybe I’ll make my way there. I’d like to see the places Mati’s described: the Minaret of Jam, the Sultan Masood Palace, Bala Hissar, the Gardens of Babur. The Kabul Zoo, even.
But I won’t go looking for him.
Iris says my name, startling me. She’s peering over the hedge and I wonder, not for the first time, how often she spies on our yard. She looks at me, supine in the grass, and clucks her tongue. “Are you all right, sweetie?”
I heave myself off the lawn. “I’ve been better, actually.”
She adjusts the sun visor tamping down her salt-and-pepper curls. “You look tired.”
“I am tired.”
“Me, too,” she says, lopping a branch from the Japanese maple standing beside her. It’s an aggressive cut—unnecessary, from what I can tell—and I wonder if she’s paying attention to her task.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Last night was rough at the Higgins cottage.”
“What happened?”
“Well,” she says, severing another branch. “I found out Ryan is in a relationship … with Xavier.”