Fallen Land (37 page)

T
WO YOUNG MEN
FROM THE
yard service move their machines over the wet lawn during the first lull in the weather Nathaniel can remember for weeks. It will be the last mowing before winter. The cut grass clumps and clogs the mowers, the men struggle with their equipment and one of them, the younger of the two, keeps glancing at the flood on the other side of the street, at the rushing torrent between the house of his employer and his employer’s neighbor, as if he believes the water will rise fast enough to take all of them with it. The men are both tall, blond, muscular in a way Nathaniel never has been, and because it is an unseasonably warm October day, both are wearing baggy basketball shorts and oversized red jerseys whose sleeves have been cut off. What remains of the shirts has the quality of a loose smock or tunic, the sides of the men’s upper bodies all but uncovered and looking oddly vulnerable in spite of the muscular armor they bear. It takes the two men an hour to mow the front and back, to edge the lawn around the paths and driveway, to suck up the stray trimmings and the accumulations of fallen leaves into their agri-industrial vacuum bags, and shave the shrubs with electric hedge-trimmers. They skirt the northern edge of the property, leaving a swath of long grass closest to the stream. Watching them, Nathaniel thinks of his own father cutting the grass, Arthur Noailles in baseball shorts and tank top, making a brow-fixed assault on the lawn and the hedges, and then the stench of gasoline and cut grass and adult male sweat when his father came back in the house and sat, wide-stanced in the kitchen, flecks of dirt and grass on his tanned arms, blue shorts cutting into his groin, testicles sheathed in cotton boxers protruding from the cuffs as he drank a beer. Unlike some of their friends and neighbors, Nathaniel and Matthew were never allowed to mow their own lawn as a way of earning an allowance. Maintenance of the yard was exclusively their father’s domain, as so much of life seemed to be. With the odor of Arthur’s filthy body in his nostrils, he cranes his neck down to his armpits, hoping to find that he smells nothing like the man whose memory brings a shiver of nausea. Under his own arms he finds nothing but the smells of deodorant, fabric softener, myriad individual and conflicting perfumes, all of them, he thinks, poisoning his body while making it fragrant. He is sure his father would say he smelled like a woman.

They are going next door for a barbecue, he and Julia and Copley, while Louise has driven downtown to see a friend or cousin or some other shirttail relative, the kind of person, he suspects, whose association ought to be avoided.

The neighbor, Brandon Edwards, apologized for taking so long to introduce himself and “his partner and child.”

“Do you think he means the man is his partner?” Nathaniel asks Julia.

“Have you seen a woman? I’ve only seen the two men, and the little girl.”

“No, I haven’t seen any women.”

“What’s the partner called?”

“I don’t know, and I’m not sure how I feel about this.”

“Don’t be a bigot,” Julia says, slipping on a black linen sheath that makes her look even more like a wraith.

“I’m not being a bigot. I’m voicing reasonable speculations. We don’t know anything about them and I think it’s reasonable to ask questions about the people we’re choosing to associate with.”

“What would Matthew say if he heard you?”

The longer he looks at it the more Julia’s dress seems too metropolitan for a suburban barbecue; she should be in floral prints, or at least bold blocks of color, but he doesn’t know how to say any of these things. He has dressed himself in jeans and a navy blue polo shirt and deck shoes. “I think you should change.”

“I’m not going to change. I like this dress.”

“You look foreign. You should wear more color.”

“What’s happening to you? What do you mean I look foreign? I’ve always dressed like this. And what do you care if they’re two men living together?”

“That’s not at all what I’m talking about, Julia. I don’t give a damn if they’re a couple. If you’ll let me explain, what I meant was that the partner, if that’s who he really is, he looks like a terrorist. And if that dress had sleeves, a hood, and a veil, then
you
could pass for a terrorist too.”

“Are you kidding me? A man looks like a terrorist just because his skin is brown? What about your brother-in-law?”

“Baldur is half German. And this man, this ‘partner’ next door, has a beard.”

“And apparently, like Matthew and Baldur, he has a partner who’s a man. And he has a child. I think that automatically makes him an unlikely candidate for the potential-terrorist category, but then who am I to judge, since I myself appear to fit that category as far as you’re concerned.”

“You can’t assume anything these days.”

“What the hell is happening to you, Nathaniel?”

“I don’t like the dress. If your husband doesn’t like the dress you’re wearing you should change. You’re going to embarrass me. You look like a vampire.”

“Honestly, Nathaniel, I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

B
RANDON AND HIS PARTNER,
AZAR,
have a brick oven on their terrace, around which the adults have gathered, taking warmth against a sudden midday chill that has blown down from the northwest, while the children play on the lawn, throwing armfuls of leaves at each other, chasing themselves through a disorderly game of tag. Azar is making vegetarian pizzas in the oven while Brandon grills burgers and salmon on the adjacent barbecue. There are salads, homemade rolls, and in the kitchen a table of desserts, a full bar, wine, beer, soft drinks and juice for the kids and teetotalers. The other neighbors are friendly but Nathaniel feels unmoved to make an effort with these people: Cathy and Rob and Janet and Peter and Devon and Dermot and Zach and Molly and Mike and Denise, all of them white, bland, mass-produced Styrofoam slices of life, some thinner, most thicker, globular, pear-shaped and shining with perspiration. There are promises of dinner invitations and Christmas parties and sledding on the “empty lot,” which is what the others call the acres of undeveloped land to the north. The food, when it comes, is delicious, the pizza as good as anything Nathaniel ever ate on the East Coast. Denise tells him that Azar is a trained chef.

“I’m guessing he
can’t
work,” she whispers, “which is why he’s playing stay-at-home dad.”

“But he lives here.”

“Don’t ask me,” Denise says, raising her hands, rolling her eyes, “but I think he leaves the country every few months, comes back in as a tourist. Between you and me, I overheard him and Brandon in the kitchen, and it sounds like his time is already up. I mean they didn’t say anything specific, but I got the idea he should’ve left by now. I don’t know how they do it. I feel for them, you know, what with the kid and everything—you know Brandon is the father and Azar’s sister is the mother. My husband has some ripe words, but I tell him just to shut up. I go by ‘live and let live,’ ‘each to his own.’ I don’t have a problem with it myself, and they seem to know how to look after the little girl. She always looks real neat, real pretty. Although you have to wonder how they’ll manage when she hits puberty.” Fat fingers raise a chip to her mouth. Denise, Nathaniel learned a moment ago, is a dental hygienist, while Mike works in the middle rungs of IT management at EKK, though Nathaniel has never seen him at the office. Between them they just afford to keep up their lifestyle: mortgage, insurance and utilities on a three-thousand-square-foot house (one of the smaller ones in the development), two cars, a snowmobile, annual vacation, birthdays, shopping, gifts, and all the costs involved in raising two children, one of whom is “on the autistic spectrum.” While Denise talks, regaling Nathaniel with the catalog of injustices and difficulties that have plagued her mostly comfortable life, the nightmare that was their experience of dealing with Paul Krovik—“a real amateur, a total nut job”—he finds himself staring at Azar, at the man’s chestnut-colored skin and carefully trimmed but full black beard, the paunch at his waist, the loose ethnic shirt embroidered along the hem that falls to his upper thigh, the waft of exotic scents coming from the man’s armpits and the unusual spices that flavor the pizza, which is not, in fact, pizza but something less European, flatter and spicier and resolutely foreign. He looks at those steady hands and thinks they would be good for fine, skillful work: assembling circuit boards, cameras, advanced weaponry, bombs, flying planes.

“Where is he from?”

Denise shakes her head, chews a mouthful of burger, swallows, and says, food still secreted in her cheeks, “No idea. Somewhere over there or down there”; she flaps her free hand to the east and then to the south. “I’ve never asked. I don’t like to pry. He’s a
nice
guy. They’re both real
nice
guys, and good neighbors. They looked after the kids earlier this year when I had to go to the emergency room. And Sofia’s a sweetie. But, you know, it’s a big risk what they’re doing, I mean, if that
is
what they’re doing. I could be wrong.”

As well as the memo directing employees how to vote, there had been another one on Friday reminding them that, as a contractor with the federal government, and as one of the corporations involved in the provision and maintenance of Homeland Security, EKK’s employees are expected to report any unlawful behavior about which they may be aware, including the presence of illegal immigrants in their communities, suspected terrorists, and anyone else working against the interests of the country. A phone number was provided for
anonymous reporting of suspicious activity and/or individuals
. Technically, Nathaniel knows, he should waste no time in phoning the number and reporting the suspected presence of an undocumented migrant in his community; looking at the man, the un-American body language, talking with his hands, and hearing the loud voice and raucous laughter, the heavily accented English, it is possible to imagine that Azar whatever-his-name-is should be feared, or at the very least suspected, if not of terrorism, then certainly of breaking state and federal laws—laws meant to protect American citizens, to defend the homeland and secure the borders and ensure the country does not find itself susceptible to attack from within. A man like Azar could be from anywhere, sent by a foreign government to infiltrate American society, to be the least likely looking terrorist or agent possible by a performance of—Nathaniel thinks it before he has a moment to correct his language—
aberrant
sexuality, so that American officialdom will look at him, see a homosexual father with a daughter when, in fact, he is a cold-blooded plotter and schemer, who would, no doubt, sacrifice a child’s life, even a child for whom he appears to be a loving parent, in order to bring new horrors raining down on the peaceful acres of neighborhoods just like Dolores Woods.

“What grade is Copley in?” Denise asks.

“Second.”

“Same as Austin. What school?”

“The Pinwheel Academy.”

“
Same as Austin!
What teacher?”

“Mrs. Pitt.”

“Isn’t that weird? I haven’t heard Austin talk about him.”

“No. And Copley—.” Nathaniel tries to remember if his son has mentioned the names of any of his new classmates.

“He’s sure skinny.”

“You think?” Nathaniel looks at his son, pacing his usual grid on the lawn, staring at his feet, kicking every leaf he encounters, while the other children have organized themselves into a game of Duck, Duck, Goose.

“What’s he doing? Pretending he’s in
Dawn of the Dead
?”

“My wife says he’s still adjusting to the move.” He stops himself from lurching into the kind of excessive sharing that this neighborhood gathering seems to engender. He does not want everyone to know that his son is seeing a psychiatrist, is medicated, and is in all likelihood terrorizing his own family.

“I know a good counselor if you need one. She works in the same building as me. We took Austin to her when he started pulling down his pants at school and she put a stop to that in no time.”

“We don’t need a counselor,” Nathaniel snaps, getting up to refill his plate. “There’s nothing wrong with my son.” He knows as soon as he walks away from Denise that the other adults have heard what he said and are looking at him and at Copley, who is walking toward the circle of laughing children, romping through piles of fallen maple and cottonwood leaves. Of course there is something wrong with Copley, which is why the boy sees a psychiatrist, why he is taking a cocktail of medication that would give even Nathaniel’s pill-happy mother pause. At the granite counter next to the oven he puts several more slices of the pizza or flatbread or tostada or whatever it is on his plate (they don’t do paper plates, these two men, but an assortment of colorful crockery). He turns, finding himself nose to nose with Azar.

“Can I get you anything else, Nathaniel?” the man asks.

“No, thank you, Azar. I’m good.”

“Another beer? A soft drink? You understand I’m culturally pre-conditioned to make sure that, as my guest, all your needs are satisfied,” Azar says, his accent thickening. Nathaniel is unsure how to respond and then Azar’s face cracks into a smile, his accent modulates, becomes more American. “I’m only joking, man. Now what else can I get you?”

“Nothing, really.
I’m good
.” As Nathaniel says it a second time, this inane shorthand phrase Americans have adopted to mean,
thanks, I have everything I could possibly need, I don’t need anything else at the moment, you can leave me the fuck alone
, screams erupt from the lawn. He turns to see Copley marching into the circle of other children, advancing in a fixed, unwavering course that has him kicking and stepping on small legs and feet and torsos. The other children fall away as Copley continues to the fence, turns, and comes back to pass through what remains of the circle. Julia is already halfway across the lawn and redoubles her speed, intercepting Copley before he can do more damage. Other parents have jogged over to attend to their own children while Julia draws Copley aside, speaking to him, Nathaniel can see, in a firm but kind voice. It is time to dispense with the kindness; surely they have now reached the point where physical discipline is necessary for the boy to understand he can’t simply do whatever he wants, oblivious to the happiness and wellbeing of others, without repercussions. The first chapter in a lifetime of criminality, that is what is unfolding in the actions and mind of his child: delinquency, petty theft, arrest, incarceration, drug addiction, release, theft, arrest, incarceration. He does not want his son to stumble blindly into a system never intended for people like him.