Me and Mom drank our tea. I dropped a spoonful of honey in. She didn’t see me, didn’t know what a sacrifice it was, what a great concession I had made to her.
But it didn’t matter. I knew it.
RULE #41
A wounded animal can only hide its damage from others for so long. Sooner or later, someone will see.
DAYS: 32–33
AVERAGE DAILY CALORIES, APPROX.: 2100 150
“Got you a present,” Tariq said, picking me up to take me to school Monday morning. His hair, scooped up into a fauxhawk, still glistened with gel. His truck smelled like Dunkin’ Donuts and gasoline and his sweet spicy aftershave. He handed me a book-shaped rectangle wrapped in an Arabic newspaper.
“Can you read this?” I asked.
“I barely know the alphabet,” he said. “There’s no place around here that does Arabic education or even Islamic religious schooling. Mom tried to teach me for a while, but I hated it. This newspaper is from Syria. My father subscribes.”
He tapped a grainy photo showing tanks in a street.
“News from home is rarely good.”
“Holy shit,” I said when I unwrapped it and found the Hudson High School library’s copy of On the Road. “What are you doing? You can’t give this to me. It’s not yours!”
“I checked it out, it’s under my name,” he said. “I will accept the consequences.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I said. I looked at his forehead and wanted to kiss it but didn’t. “And anyway, aren’t you rich? Couldn’t you just buy me a new copy?”
“Sure,” he said. “But where’s the sentimental value in that? Anyway, it’s a great book. I know you’ve been waiting for me to finish it.”
“Did you?”
“Only five times. It’s very helpful for planning our Great Escape Road Trip Across the Country.”
“Shut up,” I said, not daring to hope for such a thing.
“So. Speaking of pride and confidence, I need to tap into some of that. Wednesday is Christmas, and since we don’t celebrate it, we have a family tradition of going out for Chinese food. I figured since you guys don’t celebrate it either, you might not have plans, so you might be able to . . . come out to dinner with us. The book is not a bribe.”
I laughed out loud. “You want me to sit down with your mom and dad and somehow keep from jumping your adorable bones right in front of them?”
“It’s asking a lot, I know. And actually I know it sounds perfectly dreadful. But I need you there. Dad’s been coming down hard on me lately. About my soccer performances—unacceptably weak—college and my future—I’m not taking it seriously enough—what he wants me to be—him. But he’ll behave himself if there’s an outsider present.”
“It totally does sound dreadful,” I said. “But you know I can’t say no to you.”
“Yeah, you can,” he said. “You say no to me all the time.” It was clear, his meaning.
“A pleasure postponed is a pleasure magnified. Or so a fortune cookie told me once.” Thinking about fortune cookies woke my stomach up. It was not happy.
“So you’ll do it?”
“The dinner, yes. The other thing . . . maybe.”
Tariq beamed. He was the sun. “If you did both, it would be the best Christmas present a Jew ever gave a Muslim.”
Which is how it happened that my mom dropped me off at the Spring Garden on Christmas and then went to ShopRite to pick up challah and tuna fish. Which is how I took a deep breath and walked inside to a restaurant empty except for a couple of Jewish families and some lone lonely diners for whom Hudson’s only halfway classy Chinese restaurant, with its red decor and fading ornate felt wallpaper, was the most festive spot they could find.
I’d been there a billion times before. Everything was familiar, down to the man behind the bar waving at me when I walked in. But now I was terrified. The giant fish tank was still there, packed with dozens of ageless koi I’d been tapping the glass to annoy since I was five years old. Through it, distorted by the glass and the water, were stretched-out, shrunk, warped fun-house-mirror versions of the boy I loved and the people who gave him life. Being with my mother always made me feel like a child, but seeing Tariq beside his parents I saw that he was an adult.
“Hi!” Tariq said, rising when he saw me, with a joy that made me swoon with happiness but also fear that his parents would know from that one syllable everything that was between us.
Introductions were made. Hands were shaken. Mr. Murat’s grip was tight and almost painful. Mrs. Murat’s was delicate, ladylike. I sat down knowing exactly what a criminal feels, sitting in the courtroom before the judge and jury who will decide his fate.
“Matt’s mom works at the slaughterhouse,” Tariq said.
“Ah,” his father said. “I know many men who work there. Terrible thing what is happening now. So many people losing jobs. But what can you do. It is the way of business.” His voice was terse, tight, controlled, accented. He was a man uncomfortable with language, I realized—not English specifically, as an immigrant, but language in general. Trees, chainsaws, trucks, business, money, books, and balances—these were where Mr. Murat felt most comfortable.
“But it shouldn’t be that way,” Tariq said. “Aren’t there more important things in life than the bottom line? Doesn’t a business have a responsibility to its workers?”
“No one owes anyone anything in this world,” he said and smiled apologetically at me. “An ugly truth, perhaps, but one you are better off knowing. We are all on our own. We work hard, or we perish. Look at me. I came here with nothing. I worked hard. And in time I was able to save money, make smart decisions, own my own business.” He was Tariq. The same height, the same nose, the same overall sense of mingled pride and humility. The same dense lovely beard, though Mr. Murat’s was much longer and more grizzled. But where Tariq was strong and handsome his father was fat and frayed, looking like life had hit him hard, and he’d put up a good long fight.
“You got lucky,” Tariq said. “Didn’t you? Plenty of people come here and work their fingers to the bone and never get a pot to piss in. And anyway, capitalism doesn’t actually reward hard work. The guy who picks the tomatoes for Taco Bell makes twenty cents an hour sweating in the hot sun, and he works a hell of a lot harder than the CEO, who sits in an office and makes four million a year—about two thousand dollars an hour. Or am I wrong about that?”
His father rolled his eyes. They really were the same person. “Matt, do you pick fights with your mother in front of other people?”
“No,” I said. “But that’s just because we’re never around other people.”