Close Your Eyes (9 page)

She hadn’t known how wealthy Izaan’s family was, by Egyptian standards, until they’d arrived. It helped explain his arrogance. Izaan
took my mother boating on the Nile with his friends. They motored past weary women washing clothes and naked children bathing near the muddy banks. My mother asked one of Izaan’s friends if he felt uncomfortable in the fancy boat, blaring music from the stereo, but the man shrugged, smiling under his sunglasses
. “In shalla,”
he said. He told my mother this meant it was God’s wish. She found out later that it actually meant
if God wills it so.

On their last day in Cairo, Izaan finally acquiesced to my mother’s pleas and took her to Khan el-Khalili, the giant market, which sold glassware, spices, mother-of-pearl backgammon boards, sandals, clothes, leather goods, and water pipes. Izaan’s brother dropped them off, snapping the photo that would end up in our house on Ocean Avenue, and then they walked into the teeming marketplace
.

My mother loved the dim stalls, the smell of incense. When she walked by other tourists, she felt superior, with gorgeous Izaan at her side. She bought a chess set for her father, Mort, and a leather bag for her mother, Merilee. Izaan wanted to barter, telling my mother the vendors didn’t respect someone who didn’t haggle, but she shook her head and paid the first price. Izaan told her she was a softie
.

At one stall, knives were laid out in a row, glinting. “These are beautiful,” said my mother, putting her hand near them but not daring to touch. The vendor came from shadows, speaking in Arabic to Izaan. Switching to English, he said, “These are the best knives in the world. Very special. A special price for you.”

“How much?” said my mother. She looked at Izaan, who shook his head. The man named a price, and she reached for her wallet
.

“No,” said Izaan. “These knives do not belong in our kitchen.”

“Our kitchen?” my mother said playfully. Though they were engaged, they did not yet share an apartment in New York. Grabbing her hand, Izaan tugged my mother out of the stall and down a
passageway. It seemed they were going toward the center of the market; the stalls were less tidy, darker. Inexplicably, my mother felt scared. “Izaan,” she said, “I want to go back.”

My mother’s face would change as she told the rest of the story. It would take on a faraway look, as if she had forgotten she was speaking to me. She seemed to be trying to make sense of the story herself.

“Your father told me to follow him,” she’d say. “And so I did.”

Izaan led her to a ruined building. Inside a crumbling doorway, my mother heard the chanting of prayer. “I have made mistakes, some very big mistakes, but that time is over,” he said. He kissed her—

She would shake her head. “Anyway, that’s the story of the knives. He told me he would buy me the best knives in the world when it was time,” she said. As my mother took out her chef’s knife, she always said, “See? Your father was right after all.”

My father had been true to his word—after he had sold his first poem to the literary journal
The Cottonwood Review
, he had gone to the Stamford mall and bought my mother the most expensive Wüsthofs.
The Cottonwood Review
paid Izaan thirty dollars and five free copies of the magazine; the set of knives had cost four hundred fifty dollars. But it was the thought that counted—Izaan had arrived and could buy his wife the best.

I always felt that she was leaving something out. What “big mistakes” had my father made? When I asked, my mother said that it had taken my father a while to figure out who he wanted to be.

“What do you suppose she meant by that?” asked Jane.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess that’s why I remembered the story. It never really made sense.”

“Did anyone else ever talk about your father making big mistakes?”

“I don’t … No,” I said. As I spoke, the room grew hazy. I knew there wasn’t really any smoke, so I tried to stay calm. But what if the building
were
on fire? I felt my lungs, too large, in my rib cage. I wheezed, trying to get enough oxygen.

“Lauren? Our session is almost over. Are you feeling all right?”

I sat up straight, the smoke dissipating. “I’m fine,” I said. “I just … I can’t think of what to say next.”

“You don’t have to say anything. You can use this space to be with your thoughts, if you like.”

I shuddered. With my thoughts was the last place I wanted to be.

“What do you mean by that?” said Jane.

“What?” I said.

“Being with your thoughts, you said. You said it was the last place you wanted to be. What did you mean by that?”

“Oh, jeez,” I said. “My thoughts! They’re so …”

Jane cocked her head, giving me the interested-sparrow look.

“They’re so … They hurt,” I said.

“Your thoughts hurt you?” said Jane.

“I think if I let myself feel it all,” I said, “I’d be in so much … It would hurt so much. Too much. So I just … I go on. I make plans and watch TV.”

Jane looked down. She seemed sad. She looked back up and said, “Are you feeling all right to leave?”

“Yes, sure,” I said. “I’m fine.”

11

That night, after work, I headed to the Elephant Room to meet Gerry and listen to some jazz. I found a spot outside Manuel’s, and as I locked the car, I peered into the dim restaurant, watching a man lift a nacho to his mouth. Up Congress Avenue, the capitol building was illuminated, glowing against the evening sky.

I crossed the street and opened the door to a staircase. I could hear horns as I descended, and I breathed in the smells of whiskey and floor wax. Sitting in front of the stage, sipping a drink, was Gerry. He wore jeans and the blue sweater I’d bought him for his birthday. He leaned across a candle toward a very pretty woman. The woman told a joke, wrapping wheat-colored curls around her finger, and Gerry laughed. He looked happier than he’d looked in some time.

“Hey,” I said, approaching the table.

“Lauren,” said Gerry, standing, “this is Rose.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Rose.

“Likewise,” I said. “What are you guys drinking?”

“Scotch,” they said in unison. I ordered a beer. Rose, it turned out, was a jazz singer. When the set began, she sat on the edge of a wooden stool, leaning toward the microphone. Her voice was low and sultry.

“Maybe you’d be happier with someone like Rose,” I said to Gerry after I’d had a few beers.

Gerry put his arm around me, but said, “Maybe.”

That night, when I thought he was asleep, I whispered, “Gerry, why do you stay with me?”

He tightened his hold on me and whispered back, “You make life more interesting. And you love me.”

I was silent, letting his kindness settle over me like a blanket.

12

There is a deep blue place between wakefulness and sleep. I have always been afraid of that place—it’s where bad memories reside, I believe, or thoughts that have no purpose. Lusty desires for old boyfriends. Things I’m mad at myself about. Fears, worries about bombs and gunshots and what happened to Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
happening to me, leaving me in a creepy mansion with a maze garden jabbing away at an old-fashioned typewriter. Images of all my teeth falling out, or all my hair, or my fingernails.

What I love about sleeping pills is that they let you avoid that place. You go from wide awake to zonked in one fell swoop. I had almost forgotten about the deep blue. And then, around the middle of October, the pills stopped working.

I began walking Handsome to the Capitol Building and back, which took up much of the night. I picked up breakfast tacos on the way home and warmed them up for Gerry, who said he’d rather have me in bed than a bacon, egg, and cheese with salsa. Nonetheless, he took the tacos, and I climbed under the sheets for an hour or so.

I was unmoored without my brother. It was as if a bandage of some kind had been removed, and I was raw and exposed. When I met with my therapist, I told her I was afraid of the deep blue. “Instead of sleeping,” I said, “I lie there remembering things.”

“What sort of things?” Jane asked.

“Things from when I was little,” I said. “But I don’t want to think about that stuff.”

“What do you remember?” said Jane.

“Oh, jeez, like my walk to kindergarten.”

“Tell me,” she said.

I couldn’t see what the point was, but I told her about strolling through Holt’s small downtown. There was a crossing guard in front of the library, a heavy man with a ruddy face. He wore a bright blue uniform complete with a hat. I could see him as I spoke to Jane Stafford: the brass buttons, the shiny black shoes. He held an octagonal sign, flashed it straight when he wanted us to halt at the corner of Oak Street.

“I haven’t thought about Holt in years,” I said. “Why would all this come back to me now?”

“Sometimes your mind waits until you’re ready,” said Jane.

“I can’t seem to turn it off,” I said. “I remember the whole freaking town.”

“Go on,” said Jane.

I told her about the apartment building where divorced families ended up, puzzles with missing pieces. I was taught that living there was somehow disgraceful.
Real
families—families like ours—lived in houses with yards. “My father must have been the one who gave me that idea,” I said. “I think he wanted us to know that we were better than other people, even though he was unemployed. Well, he said he was an artist, but … there he was, an Egyptian man in the white-bread suburbs. It must have been … hard for him.”

“Why do you think it was hard for him?”

The room started filling with smoke again, and Jane was looking at me. “I feel like the room is filling with smoke,” I said.

“Smoke?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s like … I can’t see.”

“Take a deep breath, Lauren.”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” I said weakly.

“Lauren,” said Jane. “You’re fine. You’re safe.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’m really not feeling very well.”

“Tell me,” said Jane.

“It’s still all smoky. I can’t breathe in here,” I said. “I’m so hot.”

“You feel warm?”

“This isn’t working for me,” I said.

Jane was silent.

I sat up straight. “This couch, it’s so big. You know what I mean?”

She furrowed her brow.

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I said. “But I think this couch is just too big. And all this talking, it’s just making me feel kind of nauseated.”

“I see,” said Jane Stafford.

“I think I’m going to take a break,” I said. “From all this …” I waved my hands around, trying to clear the smoke. “The more I dredge up all this old … I appreciate all you’ve done for me. Honestly, this isn’t your fault.”

“Lauren—” said Jane, but I was already halfway to the exit.

“I’ll mail you the co-pay,” I said, and then I walked quickly to the kitchen, which was also smoky, wheeled around, and found the correct door, which let me out.

13

As I drove away from my therapist, I felt terrible. A black hole seemed to be yawning open in me, something I knew I needed to seal again, and fast. “Black hole?” I said to myself in the rearview mirror. “What are you, Mr. Spock? What is this, the starship
Enterprise
? Redirect to starbase!” I laughed, and the sound was high-pitched and hysterical.

I needed to pull myself together. I didn’t want to feel whatever was coursing through me—I just wanted it to stop. I thought about booze and how it helped to transport you, even as you sat still on the bar stool. Drinking did for me what old age seemed to do for Gramma: it made me less present in a world I wasn’t so crazy about anymore. I could be elsewhere, numb.

I drove to the Elks Lodge off Barton Springs Road, which was one of the last places in Austin where you could actually smoke cigarettes indoors, so my vision problem would not be as pronounced. I had sold a ramshackle 1/1 to the bartender, so when I pressed the intercom and said, “I’m here for Jerzy,” the Elk-in-Charge let me in.

“Well, well, well,” said Jerzy as I entered. He was in his mid-sixties, a muscular Vietnam vet. I had shown him apartments and carriage houses for six years before he went for his Zilker fixer-upper. “It’s Lauren the Realtor! What can I do for you, honey?”

“How about a drink?” I said.

He slapped the top of the bar. “That’s my girl,” he said. He lit a cigarette and offered me one. I accepted, and the unfiltered Marlboro almost made me gag. An elderly man at the bar said, “You know what
BPOE
stands for, sweetheart?”

“Best people on earth,” I exclaimed, the nicotine making me feel both giddy and ill. Jerzy had asked me this every time I took him house-hunting.

“Damn right,” said the man. “I’ll have a Jim Beam,” he added.

“Make it two,” I said. “And maybe a cheeseburger with onion rings?”

“Burger and a Beam,” said Jerzy. “Coming right up.”

After a few drinks and half a cheeseburger, I went back to my car. The good thing about a Dodge Neon with tinted windows is that you can lie down in the backseat, if you’re so inclined, which I was.