In the Language of Miracles (20 page)

Nagla sat in one of the patio chairs, lit a cigarette, and glanced toward the Bradstreets' house just in time to see the blinds on Cynthia's bedroom window fall. Minutes later, she heard her husband's car speed away, tires screeching.

She was alone.

ENGLISH
: God helps those who help themselves.

ARABIC
: The worshipper is to think and God is to find the means.

T
he
shoreik
sat heavy in Khaled's stomach as he walked out of Penn Station and headed downtown. Walking the New York streets, Khaled felt Ehsan's wad of money in his pocket, poking him with every step. He was grateful for one thing: the money gave him the pretense he needed to get out of the house—he told his grandmother he was going shopping for CDs, going to spend her money. He was not grateful for the way each step he took reminded him of Ehsan, as if the wad of money were her representative, an accidental chaperone.

He met Brittany at Claire's and walked with her to the park, as they always did. He could hardly speak, responding to Brittany's remarks with monosyllables or low hums. He knew that she was waiting for him to reveal the reason behind the urgency of his appeal to meet her; in his confusion the night before, he had practically implored her to meet with him, his language, he now realized, tinged with uncalled-for panic. Sitting next to her, a soft breeze blowing her scent his way and making him feel he sat in an open meadow instead of the city park teaming with walkers, he became speechless. How could he even broach the subject?
And was telling her about Hosaam truly necessary? She had not found out. She might never find out on her own.

“I met Sebastian again yesterday,” she told him. He nodded, grateful for the time her words bought him but reluctant to discuss Sebastian. Khaled still disliked him, and the mention of his name always reminded him of how Brittany would one day find a boyfriend and slip away from him, her free time devoted to a man she loved instead of the boy she had befriended.

Brittany looked at him, her eyes inquisitive. He had drifted away. Quickly, he asked, “What happened?”

“I told him to stay away.” She watched passersby, her eyes following a young jogger: tall, slim, with a blond ponytail, a pink tank top, and neon-yellow shorts. Khaled glanced toward the jogger then looked at Brittany, traced her short black hair with his eyes, counted her hoop earrings, and was seized with a terror that he might never see her again if he told her about his brother. She was going to hate him for having withheld this for so long. She was going to fear him.

“I think he got it, this time,” she sighed. “Or I hope he did. I'm just sick of the whole thing. He comes and goes all the time, and every time he shows up he messes up my day. I don't need this.” She looked at him, caught him staring at her ear, and smiled. He blushed, looking away.

“I'm sorry it didn't work out,” he lied.

“I'm not. Not anymore. It was eating me up. Every day I would obsess over whether or not he would contact me, what I would do if he did, whether or not I should go back to him. And I realized I was letting him control my life. He was doing everything, and I was just reacting. You don't know how hard it is, having one person dominate your life this way.” She came closer, resting her head on his shoulder, yawning. “God, I'm tired.”

He stayed motionless. The top of her head brushed against his cheek, and a wave of emotion rushed through him, reducing him to a disjointed
heap of sympathy, panic, and love, all dwarfed by an overwhelming desire to hold her tight, to bury his nose in her hair and sniff the aroma of flowers and grass. His words came out before he could think them over.

“Actually, I do. I know what it feels like to have someone control your life.”

She raised her head and looked at him, smiling. She had misunderstood him, and he blushed. “No, Brit. I didn't mean that.” She thought he was about to confess his love like the infatuated teenage boy that she knew he was. She looked away, blushing, too, and his embarrassment was replaced by his ache at having dismissed her.

“I have something I have to tell you,” he blurted out. There was no time to think this through and, he became convinced, no use in doing so. “I—my family—” How could he say this? He sighed. “I had a brother. He did something horrible.”

She looked at him, curious, no longer embarrassed. He went on. “Exactly one year ago, my older brother—he killed himself and his girlfriend.” He looked away, unable to bear her look of mixed horror and sympathy, terrified that she would inch away from him, get up and walk off. He waited for her to do so, and when she didn't, he went on. “They had been friends their entire lives.” His voice was breaking. He swallowed, paused. “She lived next door to us. They were in love for a long time, and then she broke up with him.” Just like Brittany broke up with Sebastian, he realized, and he turned to look at her, the association filling him with irrational fear for her safety. “He had her meet him at the park—” Just like he was meeting with Brittany. He sat back, groaned, covering his face with his hands. “Oh, God.”

“What happened?” Her hand, small and warm, held on to his wrist, not pulling it away from his face but holding it, supporting it. Her touch made him shudder—how come she was not scared of him?

“He shot her, and then he shot himself.” He was speaking through tears, mortified at his own weakness. He had not cried in public since he
was ten. Then again, he had never told anyone what had happened. This was his first time telling this story that everyone knew through the media, through Facebook and YouTube and the news stations and blogs. Everyone except Brittany. She let go of his hand. He dared not look her way, not even to see if her horror had overtaken her sympathy.

“I'm sorry I never told you.” He wiped his eyes on his sleeves. “It's just that—” She was the only person who knew him and not his brother. She made him feel untainted. “I was afraid.”

He darted a glance her way, expecting to see the familiar: a look of fear, of disdain, or maybe of curiosity, a head tilted to the side and examining the foreign creature that he was with his tainted blood that drove people to murder. Instead, he saw her hand covering her mouth, her eyes watering.

“I'm so sorry, Khaled.”

He took a deep breath and looked away. Ahead of them, three squirrels chased one another up a tree. He stared at them, collecting his thoughts. Was it too soon to assume she'd forgiven him for lying to her for so long, for concealing his brother the way people bandaged up an infected wound? He dared not look at her. Perhaps she would be angry with him for his dishonesty. Perhaps—his heart sank again—she would not be angry, because she did not value their relationship as he did. She would have taken offense if Sebastian had concealed something as monumental from her, but not if he did. He was nobody.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“About what?” He clung to her question, signaling interest in his story, elevating him from insignificance.

“Everything. How do you cope?”

No one had ever asked him that, not even Garrett. He looked at her again, finally able to meet her eyes. He could not believe that, after hearing his story, her first thoughts focused on him, not his brother.

“You just cope,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Actually, that's bullshit.
You don't. At least I never did.” She was still looking at him, listening, waiting. He went on, the words spilling out of him uncensored. “Everywhere I go, I think people are looking at me and thinking of what he did. Thinking I must be like him. It's almost like a branding or something—a scarlet letter of sorts.”

“But you didn't do it!”

“It doesn't really matter. It's a sort of weird association game, I guess. They see me, they think of him. They think of him, they think murder. And it works the other way around, too: I see people, I think they recognize me as his brother, and then I think of him. It's like he's gone but he really isn't—he's attached to me now.” He turned to look at her, held on to her wrist. “You know how you don't want Sebastian controlling your life? My brother has been controlling mine for the entire past year. And the worst part is—I can't shake him off. I can't drive him away, because he's not even here anymore.”

She was listening. He stared at her—and she was listening. Thoughts and feelings that had been spinning in his head for a year came rushing out, chasing one another. “The worst part is, half the time I'm angry with him, and the other half I feel guilty. Guilty because I don't miss him like my mom and sister do, and guilty because I can't even remember whether or not I ever loved him. Can you believe that?”

She tugged her hand away from him, gingerly, and he let go of her wrist, sliding away from her. He had been squeezing too hard. He looked at her, dizzy. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled.

“It's okay.”

She moved closer to him, put her arm around his shoulder. He hid his face in his hands. He had hurt her. “Oh, God,” he mumbled.

“It's okay.”

“No, it's not.”

“Yes, it is. You're being too hard on yourself. And, chances are, you did love him—you're just angry, right now. And I'm sure he loved you, too.”

He shook his head, both to dismiss her remark and to shake away the fear that had gotten hold of him. “He never loved me. We were never close. He even—” His throat tingled and ached, as if his words were shards of glass that wedged themselves in his flesh. “He hated me.”

“I'm sure he didn't—”

“He hated me,” he spat, feeling angrier with his brother than he ever had, the image of his hand squeezing Brittany's wrist making him wish he could purge his own blood of everything that tied him to Hosaam. “You know what he did before he died? You know what the last thing he told me was?” He turned to face her. “He tried to get me involved in what he did. He even—” He hesitated, stammering, his words refusing to acknowledge thoughts that he had tried hard to suppress for so long. “He even—I think he tried to frame me. I think he tried to make it look like I knew what he was going to do and I helped him do it.” His voice broke. “He had to drag me into this, and now I'll never be able to shake this thing off.”

Brittany stared at him, horrified, her eyes wide. She pulled her arm away and hugged herself, her shoulders hunched. She did not ask him to go on—but she did not need to. She was still sitting next to him. She was still listening.

 • • • 

Khaled had walked into his room in the evening to find his brother sitting on his bed. Hosaam, seeing him enter, grinned and patted Khaled's bed next to him, inviting his brother to sit by his side. Khaled became instantly suspicious. For the previous year, ever since Hosaam graduated high school, Khaled had hardly seen him, and never at bedtime, partly because Hosaam had been staying up all night and sleeping all day. Khaled would wake up in the morning and find him lying in his bed, fast asleep, but would never actually see him climb in. He had started suspecting Hosaam had developed powers that let him slide from the attic,
through the floor, and directly onto his own bed, without having to come by the door. Perhaps he'd found out how to turn himself into some sort of gas, Khaled would think, half in jest. Only half in jest.

“What do you want?” Khaled asked as he stood in front of his bed. He was tired. He wanted to go to sleep. He had a physics test the next day he had not prepared for, and he was nervous. He did not feel ready to indulge in one of Hosaam's games.

“What do you want? Is that how you talk to your big brother?” Hosaam's eyes were red and a bit hazy. Doubtless from spending so much time in that attic.

“I need to go to bed, Hosaam.” Khaled squeezed past his brother and onto his bed. Hosaam let him get under the covers before leaning sideways and hovering over him, one hand holding the covers in place on each side of Khaled, his face close to his brother's. He was smiling, but Khaled, the covers holding him tightly in place, had felt choked. Ever since they were little kids, Hosaam had scared him, and now that Khaled was taller than Hosaam, he was upset to find his brother could still intimidate him.

“Fuck off, Hosaam!”

“Do I scare you, bro?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you love me, Khaled?”

“What?” That was new.

“I'm your older brother, right? You're supposed to love me. And since you do everything you're supposed to do, then you must really love me, right?” Hosaam was smiling, and Khaled, accustomed to the
good brother
sarcasm, said nothing.

“Would you do me a favor?” Hosaam asked.

“What?”

“I need you to help me out.” Hosaam finally let go of the sheets and sat straight up. Khaled moved his legs away from his brother.

“I need you to get a message to Natalie.”

“Why don't you get it to her yourself?”

“I . . . I said something stupid, last time we spoke, and now she won't talk to me.” Hosaam was not grinning anymore, and Khaled could not quite understand the look on his face.

“Text her, then,” Khaled said. Hosaam shook his head.

“She won't answer that, either. I tried.”

“So maybe she doesn't want to talk to you.”

Hosaam grinned again. “Always the smart boy, aren't you?”

Khaled blushed. “What do you want, Hosaam?”

“I want you to send her a text message. I want you to tell her something, but don't mention my name.” Hosaam leaned forward again. He had started talking rapidly and Khaled felt his speech was a bit jumbled. “Tell her to come and meet you at the park tomorrow at three, after school, at that spot next to the Visitors' Center. She'll know which spot. We used to go there together. Tell her you have something to give her. Something that you can't bring to school. Tell her you can't do it at home because you don't want anyone to see you. Tell her you don't want
me
to see you. She'll like that.” He smirked again. Khaled felt his fear return.

“I won't do that! What would I want to go meet her for? Whatever you have to give her you can give her right here. Just walk up to her door.” Khaled nodded in the direction of the Bradstreets' house.