We barely spoke on the drive to the cabin, but the silence between us was different now. Everything had changed. I took my time turning the Jeep around, watching until she went inside. How good it had felt, talking to her about the old days. How beautiful she had looked, sitting by the window at McLean’s with the last light of the day on her. And how warm her eyes had been, before she’d found out I’d fought in Iraq, before she’d been forced to ride with me, before she’d seen her mother waiting on the porch. Nothing would be the same again.
This was how it had felt, too, ten years ago, at the field trip to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Mr. Mitchell had organized it as a reward to the jazz band after our performance of “Coconut Champagne” at the district-wide concert. I was excited to go, mostly because it meant getting out of town and skipping the other classes. But the trip was scheduled for the day after my mother’s birthday. March 13. Though it had been three years since her passing, March 13 was still an agony. My father had started drinking at breakfast. I had my driver’s license by then, but he refused to give me the wheel when it was time to go to the cemetery to visit her grave, so I sat in the passenger seat, keeping a watchful eye on the road while Ashley sat in the back, picking at her nail polish. Afterward, we went to a taco joint my mother had once declared the only authentic Mexican restaurant in the Mojave. When we returned home, my father dropped us off at the door and said he needed to run to the Home Depot to get some electrical wire and a couple of light-switch plates. “Be back in an hour,” he said. But he didn’t come back in an hour. Or two. Or five. I made dinner, checked that Ashley had done her homework, and insisted that she go to bed by ten. Around midnight, I called the police, then the hospital, but no one had arrested a Mark Gorecki or admitted him to the emergency room. It was three in the morning when I finally heard the garage door open. I turned off my bedside lamp and tried to go to sleep, facing the wall. Sitting in the music room that Friday morning, waiting for Mr. Mitchell to take attendance and collect permission slips for the field trip, my only focus was to stay awake long enough to make it onto the school bus.
“Fanning,” Mr. Mitchell called. “Gorecki. Guerraoui. Henderson. Lorenzo.”
I rummaged through my backpack for the permission slip with the counterfeit signature. I routinely signed all my school paperwork as well as Ashley’s, but it was only when I walked up to the desk that I realized I didn’t have the $15 fee. At breakfast that morning, I’d been too angry to even look at my father, let alone ask him for anything. “Mr. Mitchell,” I mumbled, “I’m sorry, I forgot.”
Mr. Mitchell shuffled some papers and said he needed a minute to sort it out. I walked back to my seat, trying to suppress my embarrassment, while Jonathan Atkins repeated, in a boo-hoo-hoo voice, Mr. Mitchell, I’m sorry, I forgot. I was delirious with sleeplessness; I couldn’t think of a retort. And Atkins was on the wrestling team, his shoulders as lean and strong as one of those action figures I still kept in a storage bin in the garage. Not someone I could start a fight with. I was staring at my Chuck Taylors when Nora leaned across the space between our seats and whispered, “Ignore that guy, he’s an idiot.” I looked up, but she was already zipping her backpack. We were about to leave.
At the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, while my bandmates admired the bronze sculpture of a peace dove or played in the dancing water fountain, I started to worry about lunch; I didn’t have money for that, either. With utter lack of solidarity, my stomach started growling. I was famished. When the others went to order food, I stayed behind, walking along the side of the building, where the names of donors were etched on granite slabs. At the end of the walkway was a giant magnolia tree, and just below it, across the street, was the new Disney Hall. I stood there awhile, wondering who could have designed such a monstrosity. Then I heard my name.
“Do you want some lunch?” Nora asked. There were two sandwiches, two drinks, and two chocolate cups on her tray. My stomach replied for me. I felt embarrassed, but she acted like she hadn’t noticed. We sat with our legs crossed Indian style, with the tray on the ground between us. I had known her since we were kids, and yet I had never really seen her. Now I found myself looking at her, really looking at her. Her eyes were dark and willful. Her nose was graceful, her smile generous. She glanced over my shoulder at Disney Hall. “You like Frank Gehry?” she asked.
“That’s the architect? This thing looks like he smashed a can with his shoe. I could’ve done that for Disney and saved them millions.”
She laughed. I liked the sound of her laughter.
“I love it, actually,” she said after a moment. “It’s different from all the buildings around here. Gehry designed the Bilbao, too. I want to see that someday. Have you ever been to Spain?”
“I’ve never been out of the country. We went to Mexico once, but I was, like, nine months old. It doesn’t count.” I reached for the second half of my sandwich. “You probably travel a lot.”
“Not really. We couldn’t go to Morocco when I was little because my dad was afraid he’d get arrested, and then later when we finally went, all we did was go from house to house, visiting relatives. We didn’t go to museums or monuments or anything.” After a moment she said, “But I saw acrobats at the market in Marrakesh.”
She asked what books I read, what shows I watched, and she really listened when I answered. We didn’t have the same taste. I loved The Simpsons; she never watched it. I devoured the Harry Potter books; she’d given up on them after the first two. She raved about Zora Neale Hurston; I hadn’t read her. We agreed on Mark Twain and The Princess Bride, but about nothing else in between. She had long hair in which her earrings got tangled every time she shook her head. I had an urge to reach across the tray and untangle them for her.
Then Sonya Mukherjee came to find us; the matinee was about to start. “Come on, you guys. Everybody’s already inside.” Nora stood up and held out a hand to help me off the ground. That morning she had been just another girl, but by the time I’d raised myself off my knees she was the only girl. For weeks afterward, I felt tethered to her. It was her face I looked for first when I got to school, her smile I tried to draw when I made a joke, her body I hoped to brush against when we were in line. I spent my time waiting for first-period English and fifth-period music, bookends to endless days of boredom, but I could never find another moment with her. She was always rushing from one place to another, as though she couldn’t wait to leave this town forever.
Then we graduated and faded out of each other’s lives. When I saw the name Guerraoui on the case board at the police station, I felt as if I’d received a notice that had been lost in the mail. It reminded me of Nora’s kindness that day on the field trip, which was why I had gone to her house to offer condolences. But tonight at McLean’s was something else. This time she had looked at me differently. Something might have started between us. But then the war came up and she’d turned fierce. Righteous, even. In a way, I found it touching. No one had argued with me like this ten years ago. When I’d told my old man that I’d dropped out of college for the Marines, he’d struggled to get out of his chair, already drunk at four in the afternoon, and when he was steady on his feet he clapped an arm on my shoulder, and told me he was proud of me.
Anderson