All the Houses (9 page)

“Your mother thought it was a pretty big deal at the time.”

Until then, I'd considered Courtney's mousetrap story to be a story, nothing more. I hadn't seen it as implicating him. I hadn't considered him negligent. “I'm sure Mom was upset, but it's not like it was your fault. You didn't know she had a mousetrap on her hand. You couldn't have—”

“I don't want to discuss it!”

“Sorry.”

He contemplated the screen.

“What is this?” I asked. “A movie?”

He continued to watch or at least look in the direction of the TV as he said, “I could ask you where you were the other night. I could ask you that.”

“I was out.”

“I gathered as much.”

“With a friend. I had a little too much to drink and so I crashed at their place.” Even as I said it I was asking myself why I had to lie about it, or at least bend the truth. What was the point? Why
their
instead of
his
? “I'm sorry I didn't let you know, it was so late by the time I realized I wasn't coming home—”

“So is that what you do, you ‘crash'?”

“That's what I did.”

He sat there as though there were a heavy cloud right above him, pushing down.

“Next time I'll call,” I said.

“Or how about next time, just come home?”

“I'm an adult, Dad!” I was too loud.

“Behave like one, then. Have some dignity.”

“Oh please.
Please
—”

How had this happened? It had come on so suddenly. My throat had gone tight, and I could feel myself canceling my own claim to adulthood and becoming exactly the sixteen-year-old he imagined was standing there. I wanted to yell like a teenager,
It's my life! It's none of your business!

“Are you going to just … just sleepwalk your way through life?” he asked.

“I can if I want.”

“Don't be pathetic.”

“
I'm
pathetic?”

I'd just been parroting him, but even so I'd hit a tender spot, I saw it in his eyes in the instant before we both looked away.

What was I doing? I remembered something, an important principle that I'd flouted when I moved back: I couldn't live with my dad, in the same house, not for long. I told him with a controlled quiver that I was going to bed and then I did.

 

 

I can picture Dick Mitchell's rangy legs lying on the rubber slats of one of our poolside loungers, his white polo shirt hanging from the side of the chair. His forehead was broad and lined by old troubles, but he obscured those with bangs and carried himself easily, even elegantly. He had the bearing of a man in an old movie. Yet at one of those summer parties he showed up in Jams, the flamboyant surfer shorts: a gag, but he pulled it off. I remember hearing his deep voice as it traveled across the yard. I also remember the way he would kiss my mother on the cheek and then squeeze her hand while he told her how great she looked. He came over regularly, and he was present (though not wearing Jams) for the unlikeliest of my parents' parties, the one to which they invited the Saudi ambassador's right-hand man. According to my father's later testimony at the joint committee hearings, it was Dick Mitchell who'd met this man at a reception and then told my father about him. The party might well have been Mitchell's idea.

(
From the testimony of Timothy Atherton, June 24, 1987
)

 …
MR. COHEN.
And did you tell the national security advisor about your contact with Mr. Abdullah?

MR. ATHERTON.
Abdulaziz, sir. I believe that I mentioned it to Mr. McFarlane, yes.

MR. COHEN.
And what did he say?

MR. ATHERTON.
He said it sounded like a good person to know.

MR. COHEN.
Anything else?

MR. ATHERTON.
I offered to arrange a meeting between them. Mr. Abdulaziz had expressed an interest in that. But he was otherwise occupied at the time—

MR. COHEN.
By “he” you mean Mr. McFarlane?

MR. ATHERTON.
Yes, Mr. McFarlane. He didn't feel, you know, that he could fit it into his schedule.

MR. COHEN.
So you decided to pursue this “contact” on your own hook.

MR. ATHERTON.
Basically, yes, I did.

MR. COHEN.
And did you inform Mr. McFarlane that you were doing that?

MR. ATHERTON.
I don't believe I did. No.

MR. COHEN.
This was your own operation.

MR. ATHERTON.
I don't know that I would call it an operation, Senator.

MR. COHEN.
What would you call it?

MR. ATHERTON.
Making connections.

MR. COHEN.
And Mr. Mitchell was helping you make connections.

MR. ATHERTON.
(pause)

In the conversation that my parents might've had before the party, Mom would have been anxious to get things right. What was she supposed to say to them? What would they eat?

Just don't get a ham, he told her. No pork.

Of course I'm not going to get a ham. I wouldn't get a ham.

No BLTs. No cocktail franks.

No Spam?

No Spam.

They were talking in the kitchen as she put brownies on a plate and he turned pages of the newspaper.

But how do we greet them? Are they allowed to shake hands? she asked.

Why wouldn't they be?

If they consider us unclean or something.

He picked up an ice cube that had fallen on the floor and tossed it into the sink.

You don't normally shake hands with our guests, do you?

If I don't know them I do, she said. Am I supposed to kiss them? And what about Boris? I thought they didn't like dogs.

They don't?

I read it someplace, she said.

Put him in the basement.

He won't last down there.

Then after they get here we can tie him up out front.

Are they going to swim? Are they bringing their bathing suits?

I doubt it, he said.

*   *   *

It was the same summer that Dick Mitchell and his wife brought Rob over, but this was a different party, and Dick and Martha came without him. They had shown up first, Dick talking loudly and steering Martha around with his hand at the middle of her back.

Just as my parents were beginning to fret that their special guests weren't coming, the Abdulaziz family arrived in a chauffeured black sedan and filed up the steps in order of seniority: Mr. Abdulaziz, his wife, an older girl, a boy, and a younger girl. The man had a funny mustache—all mustaches were funny to me when I was that age—yet I could see that he was handsome, like an Arab Tom Selleck. His plump wife wore a shimmery silk tunic over white pants, and gold earrings and bangles that sparkled when she moved. The older daughter seemed a little older than me, Courtney's age, and she had a sullen face, weighted by thick eyebrows. I noticed her jeans were the very light-wash Guess! jeans I'd coveted, which our mother had declared too expensive. When she was introduced by her father—my daughter Jamila—she said nothing and did not smile. Only the two younger ones, who'd worn their bathing suits under their shorts and T-shirts, seemed glad to have come.

Dick and Martha tried to give their lounge chairs to the newcomers. My father vigorously shook everyone's hands, even the children's little hands. Then Jamila and her mother sat down on the edge of one of the loungers, while Mr. Abdulaziz remained near Dad and the little kids peeled off their clothes and jumped in the pool. Three heavy souls and two light, bouncing ones. Jamila asked my mother, “Is there anything to drink?”

“Would you like a lemonade?”

“Yes,” Jamila answered. Then she went over to the table where Mom had put the food and picked out a brownie.

Maggie had joined the two kids in the pool, and they were playing Marco Polo, then doing handstands and flips, while the adults watched. I was sitting at the pool with my feet in the water, but then my mother told me to “go be polite to our guests,” which meant I was supposed to talk to Jamila, who was now by herself with the brownie and the lemonade. “Where's Courtney?” I asked, but Mom didn't answer.

I struggled with my assignment. “I love chocolate, don't you?” I asked Jamila after I'd joined her.

“Yes.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“The Islamic Academy,” Jamila said. “It's in Alexandria.”

“I think we played you once in basketball. You can't wear shorts, right?”

Jamila nodded. “Our sports teams are really bad. Though not as bad as they would be if I played on them.”

“You don't play anything?”

“I play the flute.”

“I took piano, but I never practiced.”

“Oh.”

We turned to watch our siblings in the pool. “Do you like to swim?” I asked.

“I'm not really into it.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” she said indifferently.

“Where are you guys from?”

“My father is from Saudi Arabia and my mother is from Egypt. I grew up all over, different countries. For my first year of high school I went to boarding school, but I got kicked out.”

“Kicked out?” I was impressed.

Jamila nodded. “Switzerland—it was fucking freezing cold every day and everyone was mean. I didn't want to leave my room. So I didn't, I didn't leave the room except to go to the bathroom or get food. Honestly I think that place would have been happy to keep taking my father's money if I'd just gone to class, like, once in a while? And agreed to see the school psychologist, which I refused to do anymore after I talked to him one time. He was this perv from Austria. It was classic.”

“Wow.”

“I was failing everything.”

“Did you have a TV in your room?”

“I wish. I listened to music, mostly.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Hardcore.”

“Cool.”

On the patio, my father had likewise engaged Mr. Abdulaziz in conversation, about lord knows what—it was something he did with enthusiasm: talk to men, men of every stripe. He did it by feeling his way to the other man's interests and then expounding on some tangentially related topic. If Mr. Abdulaziz loved race cars or horticulture, then Dad would recall, in detail, an article he'd read three years ago about fuel shortages or agribusiness.

“You should think about joining a sports team,” Courtney said. I hadn't realized she'd come outside, but there she was behind me. She picked up a plastic fork and speared a bite of chicken salad out of the bowl and ate it.

Jamila raised one of her dense eyebrows, and then Courtney added, “It's what keeps me sane.”

Their eyes met: it might have been a look of recognition or one of antagonism. And what was Courtney talking about? She was the sanest person in our family, or so I thought at the time.

I saw Dick Mitchell, on the other side of the pool, watching my sister. That summer she had a regimen. She'd studied women's magazines with the same tenacity she studied everything else, and from them had learned all about feminine maintenance. She shaved her legs every other day. She squirted Sun-In highlighting spray in her hair and stashed lip gloss in the downstairs bathroom. She wrote down everything she ate in a food diary (
1 NF yogurt 5 carrots 1 Eng muffin w FF cream cheese 1 med apple
) in which alcoholic drinks were given pseudonyms (
3 ginger ales
). Sporadically I would imitate my sister's rituals (
1 juice 3 pickles 3 slices pepperoni pizza OOPS 2 cookies OOPS!!!
) with poor results.

I stood up, then launched myself into the deep end of the pool. I was again wearing my
RELAX
shirt. When I came up with a gasp, my shirt billowing around my body, no one was looking at me. I swam the length of the pool underwater, surfaced, and glanced back to where I'd come from. Just Courtney was there, picking at the chicken salad, and then Dick Mitchell was there too, putting some food on a little plate and chatting with her. Jamila had gone back to her mother, who was still perched on the edge of a lounger. The two of them sat with their soft arms intertwined.

Our mother no longer touched us. The hugging and tickling and sitting on laps, the sprawling on the bed together, the kisses on the cheek and the nose, had gradually dried up. We'd all forgotten one another's smells.

The sky was hazy, crossed every once in a while by slow birds. With my eyes I was saying to Courtney, “Jump in!” and she was saying, “No way,” until I dunked myself and rose from the water with a mouth full of T-shirt. The kids saw me, and I pretended that I'd meant to do it, for laughs.

*   *   *

Mom stood close to the house and took stock, squeezing her own finger, her hands all too idle now that she'd made the lemonade, wiped down the chairs, put out the forks. Her hands were biding their time. Shyly, dutifully, she approached the lounger where Mrs. Abdulaziz and Jamila were stationed and spoke to them from above, as though she were their nervous teacher, the sleeves of her cotton blouse fluttering along with her gestures.

She spoke loudly: “It must be very hot in Saudi Arabia this time of year!” They nodded.

“Mom,” I said as I approached her from behind, dripping wet, and touched her arm, an experiment. The arm stiffened. “Hello there,” she said.

“Can I go inside?”

“Why don't you stay out here and talk to our guests?”

“I want to change. I want to put clothes on.”

“Maybe Jamila wants to go inside too.”

Jamila didn't give a shit, I knew that much. I showed her where the television was and left her there. Then I slunk past Dick Mitchell and Mr. Abdulaziz, who were standing in the kitchen talking—about the weather in the desert? About the freedom fighters of Nicaragua? Dick might have questioned Mr. Abdulaziz about his view of the current policy.