A Measure of Blood (26 page)

Nadal studies him as he tries to get his hands to hold still. “What? You frowned.”

“Just … she said you're not my father.”

“Why would she lie about that?”

“Who wrote to … my other parents from the music school?”

“Somebody. Somebody lying. Look. After … I have something to eat, we should go into the woods, see what we can see. It's beautiful here. People come up here to study the animals.”

“Are there bears?”

“We'll be careful.”

“Can I use your computer later?”

He thinks about this, wanting to get the balance right between rules and generosity. “Okay.”

THE COFFEE IS COLD NOW.
Earlier, Kate turned off the pot without thinking—she's vague and thrown off course, too. He's never seen her like this. She sat alone for a while. She went out for an early walk. Now she's in the shower. She was supposed to work early today, but she called and arranged to go in later. He does not have to go into Peabody because it's Saturday—he was supposed to sit at home and face his dissertation, not that that is going to happen now.

He pours himself a cup of coffee and heats it in the microwave. It took him seven years to get used to American coffee. Even his mother, who had been American born, had stopped being able to drink it. Now he actually likes it, finds himself craving it. There are practical reasons for Arabic coffee, as there are for espresso. A daintiness, yes, a fit in a crowded place, yes, a punch of vitality all at once—and, best of all, no need to find a bathroom ten minutes later.

He looks about the place he shares with Kate—a condo in a large building, hardly a stick of furniture that is his. Before this, before her residence assignment, she lived in an apartment, which was small, cramped, and smelled like other people's food. She drove him by it once. He wasn't used to anything better, either, only surprised that she'd been so poor. But the bank thought her a good risk; every city needs its doctors and she's at the top of her class.

He remembers, as if it happened last night, the way he found her. He was playing in a club in DC—a group that's disbanded now, but one made up of compatible cronies. He was on piano and two of the other three members were trained in Arabic melodies and rhythms. They took in a gringo on guitar, but he was okay, a nice kid, except when he goofed off in rehearsal, adding vocals that mimicked Middle Eastern singers who, to this kid, sounded woeful and whiny.

“That's our sound,” Ziad told him. “It's not meant to be whiny. It's a series of progressions we grew up with. The singers are singing about buying houses and falling in love.”

“Not, ‘We are lost in the desert and everybody hates us'?”

He'd had to walk away from the kid. Albert. Very blond, Swedish the family was, he thinks. But Albert went off to Juilliard, and Charles, whose real name is Marwan, went to be with his wife, who did not want him out nights in the clubs. That left him with John Aboud, who could add drums to his piano, not very exciting. However, John was ambitious—always looking to pull other musicians, strangers, in for a gig.

Then, just when they needed them, two brothers arrived in town. Word went out that they were good. They'd been living in California. A certain ripple of excitement went through the four of them the first time they started playing together. They had found one another as if they had all been looking.

He was with the old group the night she came into the club. When he looked up from the keyboard, Kate, sitting with a big group of friends, totally distracted him. She seemed so … confident, so American, so tall, healthy looking, happy.

At one point, she got up to go to the ladies' room. She had curly light hair. He watched her move around the small tables. Marwan was watching him and laughing as he started the riff that suggested a break. It was a few minutes early for a break.

He turned from her to give the piano all his concentration. He closed his eyes to feel the music.

“So you are normal after all,” Marwan said when the applause died down and they began to move.

“What do you mean?”

“You never look at anything except your piano. Go meet her.”

He shook his head. He had been seeing a woman named Theresa for the last six months, a new grad student at Peabody. “Do you want a beer?” he asked Marwan.

“Sure.”

“I'll get them.”

He stood at the bar. And there she was beside him.

“Hello,” she said.

A light fragrance of some sort wafted his way.

“I like the music.”

“Thank you.”

“I've never been here before. I almost never get out for things like this. It's really fun.”

“You seem to be having a good time. With your friends.”

“Friends and family. It's my birthday. They dragged me out.”

He guessed she must be a runner or a tennis player. She stood straight. Her eyes were blue.

“I mean I saw you laughing,” he said lamely.

“Laughter. The cure-all.” She smiled. “When does the next set begin?”

“We take fifteen minutes. I'm getting a beer for my friend. May I get you something?”

“A water? I've had enough of the other. Do you have a card? For your group?”

“I don't. But my friend does. He's the business head.”

The two beers arrived. He asked for a bottle of water for her. He slid a twenty across the bar, and waited for change. The water arrived, a bottle, then a glass with lime. She tipped the bottle to her lips before pouring some into the glass. He couldn't make himself move away.

“Do you have a day job?” she asked.

“I teach music.”

“Full time?”

“No. Part time. Peabody.”

“Oh. Peabody.”

“You know it?”

“Yes, yes, I know of it. Very well respected. You're faculty?”

“In a sense. Graduate student. I'm finishing a degree.”

“Which?”

“Doctor of music.”

She beamed. “I like that. Doctor of music. I'm a mere doctor of bodies.”

Ziad got distracted by the galumphing approach of Marwan, who said cheerily, “I will never get my beer.”

“Sorry. Here it is.”

“Hello,” Marwan said to the woman. “Is he talking your ear off?”

“Hardly. He's very modest.”

“Not inside. Not where the ego grows.”

“Marwan, do you have a business card? She would like to have one.”

“Yes. Just a minute.” Marwan put his beer on the bar to dig in his wallet. The move established him as a part of a conversational triangle.

“Doctor of the body?” Ziad asked her. He wondered if it would turn out to be something new age and flimsy. “Do you mean a medical doctor?”

She nodded soberly, then opened a small black purse he had hardly noticed hanging from her shoulder. Both men paused as she searched it. “I didn't put any cards in this little thing,” she said.

Marwan said, “I have two. Write your name on the back of this and give it back to our boy.”

She shuffled the two cards, studied the one on top, and accepted a pen from the bartender, who stood nearby. “I'll try to catch the group again,” she said as she wrote. When she finished writing, she handed the card to Ziad. “If I don't make it through the second set, please don't be insulted. My friends are already talking about going, and I almost never stay up this late.”

She walked away. He looked at her card. Marwan took a long drink of beer and watched him.

“Why didn't you give her your phone number?”

“It seemed too bold. And besides …”

“But you're in love. It's already happened.”

And that was true. He knew only these things about her: Her name was Kate McCauley. She gave two phone numbers, one with
cell
before it and the other with
hosp
before it. So she truly was a doctor of the body.

The next day he worked harder on his thesis than he had in a long time. Theresa came over to his place with a cooked meal—he can't remember what it was. She was a guitarist. Classical. And smart. He told himself to stick with her even as he knew for sure he would not be able to.

She put an arm around his waist as she brought him to the table. “I'm so glad you're working again. I've been … so afraid you'd let it go.”

“Everybody lets it go. It's the doctorate disease.”

“
I
won't.”

“Your head starts to do tricks.”

“What tricks?”

“If I finish this, I will never make it as a musician. I will be all head, all theory, and I will lose the … physical part of myself.”

“The gut connection?”

“Okay. Gut connection. Yes. A fear that the cerebral will take over.”

She looked at him. “I understand.”

She was terrific, but he couldn't pretend. He told her he had become interested in another woman last night, even though he wasn't sure Kate would so much as remember who he was.

Theresa was devastated. He felt awful.

Then, the next day, he called Kate and there was no disguising her joy when she heard his voice.

Now the shower stops. He's turned Kate, who's near perfect, into a mess. It's already ten o'clock and she's still home. He wishes he could erase what he did eight years ago, almost nine, when he sold his sperm for spending money.

He carries his coffee outside to the deck. The sun is good today, the air is dry, but it's a bit brisk. Even though his feet are cold he doesn't want to go back inside, to face her and whatever she's been thinking during the shower.

He makes a deal. If I work today, concentrate on my work, act in good faith, my son will be found. He will be okay.

Kate comes out to the deck and touches his arm. “If you don't want to wait, some people at work told me it's possible to drive to a place in Virginia where you need only a pulse. Nothing else. They marry you on the spot.”

He turns to her, confused. “Why now? I don't understand.”

“I've been too obsessed with work.” She pauses. “And also making a show of my independence. Pregnant and proud. Don't need a wedding band. All that. Stupid.”

Is that what it was? She's never stupid.

“It's a two-, three-hour drive to this town in Virginia. Winchester. I could take off Tuesday.”

“YOU SHOULD MOVE
BACK HERE,”
Violetta tells Nadal's mother. They are drinking fresh orange juice and sitting on her small balcony, one of some eight hundred tiny balconies in the apartment complex. “The good life, don't you think?”

“It's possible I might.” Mala Brown looks out over the concrete jungle—the jutting balconies, each with plastic chairs and a grill, the parking lot below, cars baking in the sun. She's lived so many places in her life, each different. There is everything to recommend the small town of State College—she has a house and a yard big enough to garden in; the shops are all only a short drive away; food and clothing products are of good quality, though she can't always find the foods she grew up with. But for the first time in her life, she's desperately lonely. There was family, for better or worse, in the early days in Puerto Rico. There were fellow countrymen in the years in Florida—plus she was working then and made friends easily with the other cleaning women. And then, because her life tended to be run by others and their needs, when Arnett Brown called her to tell her he was widowed, she thought perhaps he would come to see her more often. And he did—but only for a few months before he announced two things. He wanted to marry her and take her with him to his place of work. He wanted to be a father to Nadal, who he thought was badly in need of
something
. The boy was odd, he said. Too
inner
. He needed help. He needed a father. For Nadal's sake, she had agreed to move. It tore her away from her friends and from familiarity. Because Arne didn't want her working, certainly not cleaning houses, she got to State College and for a while had no contacts other than Arne and Nadal. It was hard. She applied for various jobs in spite of her husband (they had married) and she worked at the Target for almost two years, but when Arne needed her, when he was really ill, she gave the job up. The timing was bad for being rehired. People were out of work everywhere and desperate. She didn't so much need the money—she had enough to live on—but she needed people around her.

Now, being with Violetta, she remembers the comforts of work and friendship. “I've got to get a job,” she says.

Violetta laughs. “Didn't we always say if we had enough to live on, we wouldn't be at some terrible job?”

“We don't always know ourselves.”

Hardly a tree anywhere, but the birds don't appear to care; they hop along the balcony walls no doubt looking for crumbs. “Not here,” Mala tells the birds. “Violetta is very clean.”

They laugh.

“How's the boy?”

“I don't know.”

Violetta raises her eyebrows. “He's not a boy anymore. I forget. You said not married yet. Do you see him?”

Not married yet. The least of her worries. He's not right, not calm, her son. He chose that strange small room at their house when he had a choice of a better room; he put a lock on the door. Why? Always keeping himself apart from others. Arne didn't know what to do with him. He tried everything. Except of course being a father for the first nineteen years. But did that account for her son's strangeness? Plenty of boys didn't have fathers. Mala was rock solid—other people became calm around her. So, no, it was something else, something from birth, a curse, a dent to the head, a punishment for some ancestor's sins.

“He visited me one Sunday, not even two weeks ago, and he drove me to the airport. So I saw him.”

“Good boy, then.”

Good. She's not sure. She got an idea a while back that froze her blood, but it was a crazy idea, and she doesn't know why it keeps coming back to her in the form of fear, a small underlying daytime version of a bad dream.

MATT HAS TROUBLE
KEEPING HIS BALANCE
over the bumpy ground. He keeps turning around hoping to see the red car. “Should we be marking trees?” he asks.

“Marking? I don't know what you mean.”

“To find our way back.”

The man stops and looks about. “I guess we're getting kind of far. I think I have it, though, what we've done.”

“I don't want to get lost. People mark trees.”

The man smiles at him, but the smile is tight, almost angry-looking. “Would you like to do that?”