“You don’t think I can?”
“It’s not that. I just thought you wanted to write music.”
“I do want to write music, but I’m also not letting Baker get away with murder and I’m not giving up on Dad’s dream.”
“It was his dream, Nora, not yours. You don’t want to be living someone else’s dream, trust me.” Her voice brimmed with rage. She swiveled her legs off the ottoman and sat facing me, looking at me so intently that I thought she might grab me by the shoulders and shake me. “Look, if you’re going to do something as crazy as writing music, you might as well commit to it. Get rid of the diner and go write the best goddamn music you can.”
I was startled by her sudden passion. What could have caused it? And was it connected to the strain I had noticed earlier with her husband? These two made an ideal couple, or so I had always thought. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, bewildered by the turn our conversation had taken.
My sister gazed at me, as if deciding whether to trust me with whatever troubled her. A horned lizard skittered across the deck, finding some shade under the twins’ bicycles. The raven came back, taking a few hesitant steps toward the dining table. I waited. Salma seemed about to unburden herself, but the glass door slid open, and my mother appeared. She was out of widow’s white, and the cobalt blue of her dress made her look much younger. In her hands was a tray laden with summer dishes—vegetable kebabs and calamari salad and grilled eggplant and cut watermelon. The twins followed behind, arguing about who had won the game. Tareq came out, too, carrying a pot of coffee. And just like that, the moment of intimacy between my sister and me was over.
We moved to the table, where Tareq opened his gifts, commenting nicely about each one with a few nice words. From Aida, he received an unwearable silk tie, in a pattern of blue stripes on a bright yellow background. (“Thank you, habibti. Yellow is my favorite color.”) From Zaid, a fancy pen. (“I’ll use it to write my prescriptions.”) From Salma, a state-of-the-art audio system. (“I can’t wait to try it out.”) From my mother, a box of Belgian chocolates. (“These are my weakness.”) And from me, the card I had given him earlier. (“You’re so thoughtful.”)
But for the rest of the day, I found myself in the throes of a deep melancholy. How rare it was for my sister and me to talk about anything, let alone about something intimate. And just as we were about to, the moment had passed.
Jeremy
At the end of June, I had to go to a two-day training session on de-escalation techniques that Vasco had ordered a few weeks earlier, when the Bowden incident was still on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. The training was taking place in San Bernardino and, rather than drive the fifty miles back and forth, I’d decided to stay in town with one of the other deputies. For two days, we sat in a classroom and were told very different things from what we’d been told at the academy: attempt to defuse a tense situation with words, not weapons; if the suspect is agitated, demonstrate empathy by paraphrasing his statement; do not become emotionally involved in the encounter; assess the outcome before resorting to force. At the end of each unit, though, the trainer insisted that we had to do all this while putting our own safety first.
At dawn on the third day I drove back home, going straight to the police station for my regular shift and afterward to the community center, where I met Fierro for his support group. I was bone tired, and went for the coffee that sat at the table under the wall clock, pouring myself a giant cup and hoping it would be enough to keep me awake through the evening’s session. Fierro was in a foul mood. The promotion he’d been promised at the Walmart had not materialized, he told me, and he would remain sales associate for the foreseeable future. “Something else will come along,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I sounded convincing.
With a grunt, he leaned back in his chair, waiting for the moderator to arrive. But a few minutes before eight, we discovered that Rossi was out that night. His replacement was a frail-looking therapist named Dexter, who kept clicking and unclicking his ballpoint pen. “Who would like to start tonight?”
Doug, the bald-headed guy who always raised his hand first, talked about how agitated he was all the time, how he couldn’t eat anything, what a tough day he’d had. After twenty minutes of his aimless chatter, Adriana, the nurse, got frustrated and interrupted him. “There are other people here,” she said sharply.
“Now, now,” Dexter replied, his palms raised. “Let’s calm down.”
“I am calm,” she snapped.
Fierro was sitting with his arms crossed and his good ear cocked toward Adriana. “She didn’t say nothing,” he agreed. “She’s calm.”
Doug objected to being interrupted, Adriana asked what he thought would happen when he wouldn’t shut up, and Fierro agreed with her again. It took Dexter a long while to regain control of the room. But then he called on someone different to speak, and that upset Doug, Adriana, and Fierro all at once. I tilted my wrist discreetly to look at my watch. There was so much I still had to do that night. Fill up with gas. Write a check for my car insurance. Run a load of laundry, I was out of clean socks. Suddenly I felt ten pairs of eyes locked on me, and realized I had missed something. “Sorry. What was that?”
“Would you like to share something about your anger?” Dexter asked.
Me, angry? Well, since he asked. I was angry that Vasco had been using that abandoned baby for PR advantage. I was angry that he’d sent us to a training session in San Bernardino just to make himself look good. I was angry that people were afraid of my uniform. Inside it, I was just like them, but they only saw me as a political prop or some movie fantasy, nothing in between. I was angry about the war. God, was I angry about the war. People were being killed while Bush was painting still lifes and Rumsfeld was writing books and Cheney just wouldn’t fucking shut up. I was angry that I had to spend my evening here, listening to other angry people. “I’m just here for support,” I said.
“He’s with me,” Fierro said, raising his hand, seemingly relieved that he finally got a chance to speak. He talked about the usual: his wife. How she had moved on, how she had a new life with somebody else, how he’d been left behind. Adriana nodded thoughtfully while he spoke, as if she understood or agreed with him. It seemed that this support group was helping him open up about himself, and I was glad he had stuck with it, but I wondered how Mary was doing now, too, and I made a mental note to call or visit her at the hair salon. I needed a haircut anyway.
At the end of the session, as we were putting the folding chairs back in the utility closet, Fierro asked when Rossi would be back. “I’m not sure,” Dexter told him. “I think he might be moving out of state. But I’ll be here.”
It was dark when we stepped outside, and the air was muggy.
“I don’t like this new guy,” Fierro said as he pulled out his car keys.
“He’s just getting to know everyone. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“I guess,” Fierro said as we crossed the parking lot. “Wanna hit the bowling alley?”
“Not tonight.”
“Come on, dude. Just a couple of games.”
“No, I’m too tired.”
“You didn’t want to go last week, either.”
“I’ve got a lot going on.”
“How about a game of poker? My neighbors are playing tonight.”
“No, man. I feel like I’ve been driving for three days straight. I’m exhausted.”
“All right, then.” We shook hands, and I got into my Jeep and pulled out of the parking lot onto the 62. My windshield was dusty and in the yellow glare of my headlights the road seemed hazy. Never mind filling up with gas, I thought, or writing a check for the insurance, or running the laundry. All of that could wait. What I really needed now was some care, and some sleep. I turned on the radio, settling on a classic rock station, and headed for the cabin.