Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel (9 page)

Tim smiled and gave him a soft slap on the cheek. “Maxie, I want you to take good care of yourself,” he said, and walked away.

Max badly wanted to say something lively and natural before closing the door. He eventually called out, “I will, Coach. I’ll make tandoori chicken.”

“What?”

“You should come over for dinner tonight. I’ll make tandoori.”

“That’d be real nice.” Then, for some reason, he spoke like they do in old Westerns. “Maybe some other time, kid.” He walked on. “Maybe some other time.”

Kelly was out of the house all day. In the evening, Rasheed had insisted on taking her and Max out to the Olive Garden, saying he had very big news to share. At the restaurant, Max only glanced up at Kelly when he was sure it wouldn’t lead to eye contact. He couldn’t stop thinking about their transgression. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a week, her eyes cupped by slate and violet bags. It didn’t take long before she unleashed her new and mysterious animosity on Rasheed, calling him an asshole under her breath when he bought a round of drinks for another table after they’d chuckled at one of his jokes: something about the Mafia eating spaghetti and meatballs. Rasheed either didn’t hear her insult or pretended not to and ignored it when she scoffed at him for ordering more food, which in truth was more than they could possibly eat.

“Flashing money around like a kingpin. It’s disgusting,” she said.

Max held his breath, letting his head get hot, something that had begun happening when he was extremely nervous. It confounded him to see his father treated this way. He didn’t believe Rasheed could have done anything reproachable enough to deserve this drastic change in attitude. This was because of some stubborn allegiance he had to his father but also because he understood that Kelly was wise and sensitive only when it came to large groups of people or subjects—like wars, class and race, governments, nations—but proved handicapped when it came to assessing the nature of individuals, and how best to interact with them.

Rasheed dipped a breadstick in his smoked mozzarella fonduta. “Darling. I am not a kingpin. A kingpin never eats at the Olive Garden.”

“Forty-five million people are hungry in this country,” she muttered, “not to mention those starving all over the world. Makes me kind of sick, is all.” Goose bumps breezed up Max’s thighs. An image of a famished Laotian girl, lying in street garbage, from the documentary
My Laos’s Infamy
hijacked his thoughts. Then he remembered the shrapneled face of a Palestinian boy from the Lebanese civil war film. The boy’s little brother had to dig the pieces out of his cheek with a needle and then sew him up. The stitches were black and thorny and wet as a sea urchin. The thought spoiled the strips of eggplant on Max’s pizza, and he picked them off.

His father had brought them here tonight to announce that the warehouse he worked at had filed for bankruptcy. They’d given their employees two options: to get laid off with no benefits, or to work for six months without pay in a cost-saving drive until the warehouse could afford to compensate them again, hopefully with a raise. Rasheed stayed optimistic. He saw this as a big opportunity to make advancements. With all the people leaving, if he stuck around, he’d be sure to get the promotion.

“They can’t do that,” she said.

“Yes, they can. They did.”

“I don’t even think it’s legal.”

“It is legal, yes, as long as we agree to it. We become like volunteers. And I think it will be hard for the six months, but afterward it will be better. I really think so.”

“I worked there too, Reed, remember? There’s no way Don is converting it into a volunteers-only workforce.”

“He is.”

“Fine,” she challenged him. “I’ll come in and talk to Don myself.”

“Not a very good plan for me. He fired you.”

Kelly’s shoulders shuddered with disparaging laughter. “Reed. This cannot be for real.”

He looked at Max and then back at her. “It is real.”

“So this was the big news. This is why you took us out to dinner. To tell us you’re not getting paychecks anymore.” She snorted. “Bottom line. How does this affect that thing we were talking about?”

“What thing?” Max wanted to know, trembling at the thought of them having discussed what he and Kelly had done.

“Well,” she continued staring at Rasheed, “your father and I were talking about starting a nonprofit. You know, contribute some good to this world?”

“Yes. This is still a very nice idea,” said Rasheed, looking for the waiter to ask for another soda.

“It’s not just a very nice idea, Reed. It’s what we talked about. Remember?” Dread overcast Rasheed’s face. “When are you going to give back? Don’t you think you’ve taken enough?”

Why didn’t his father stick up for himself? He’d lost his cool for much less in the past. He flipped out when he’d learned that Max’s school requested, on Flag Day, that Max stand by the flag of his country of origin. At the time, Max didn’t know he was Lebanese and couldn’t decipher what Mr. Jobson meant when he slowly repeated, “No, Max, your country of OR-igin. Do you understand OR-I-GIN?” When Max came home asking what his country of origin was, explaining why he wanted to know, Rasheed called the school and shouted into the phone that it was none of their goddamn business. Rasheed also had no qualms about shushing intimidating people in movie theaters, yelling at other drivers on the road, or calling people out for cutting in line, and he gave far too honest feedback to waiters when they asked him how he was enjoying his food. But here, nothing. Total surrender.

And Kelly, who had sided with the underpaid laborers in the documentary
Unionize or Starve
, remained untouched by Rasheed’s struggle. But again, the film surveyed a mass of people and an ideology she strongly supported. Rasheed was only one person.

The table was poorly centered, and a lamp hung directly over Rasheed’s seat, casting a cone of blond light around him alone. A man under interrogation. His skin looked ashy. “You are right,” he said. “There are so many causes for the human race, but money is a little bit tight at the moment, and perhaps it is not the best time.”

“How about refugee camps in Beirut, Reed?” she baited. “Maybe we can help out over there? What do you think about that?”

Rasheed’s face crumpled, and he shook his head from side to side,
Please, let’s not do this here
. What was Max missing exactly? His father had lost his job and said he couldn’t afford to start a nonprofit organization yet. This made him a bad guy? Prioritizing himself and his family over an undefined cause in the interest of an undefined population?

Then Rasheed told them the second reason for this occasion at the Olive Garden. He hadn’t been able to make rent payments, his bank accounts were in the red, and his credit cards all but maxed out. They’d received their first eviction notice the day before. The bank had rejected his application for another extension on a loan, and though Mr. Yang said they could probably ride out the legal process for up to two years, Rasheed didn’t want to live somewhere he wasn’t welcome.

Max remembered the account with the Ziad Jabbir deposits. He had no real sense of how long $620,000 lasted and didn’t know if Ziad Jabbir still made monthly payments, but it crushed him to think of his father working so much and still failing to afford the lifestyle he’d set out to provide. Max’s fretfulness had
nothing to do with the idea of getting evicted or being poor. The immediate anxiety was the thought of his father considering himself a loser. Max did not ask about the Ziad Jabbir deposits now. It was none of Kelly’s business. It wasn’t any of Max’s business either, really. He didn’t even want it to be. He just wanted Rasheed to go back to commanding the ship like he always had. Max trusted him completely. Rasheed had never been one of those cryptic dads that children in movies think of as either heroes or monsters, vague and impressive, impossible to read, and living some kind of double life. He knew about those fathers, but his, Reed Boulos, was anything but inexplicable. Max knew him well, knew his habits and preferences, could virtually read his mind, and knew that he wasn’t even capable of lying for the wrong reasons.

Kelly’s laughter changed pitches as Rasheed explained the new conditions. It was the helpless laughter of a person submitting to the absurdity of not having any control or semblance of purpose. She caught her breath. “So your story is this: You get told you won’t make any money, that you’re going to lose your house, and you decide, Let’s go to the Olive Garden!” Her laugh broke into a hoarseness that seemed to tear at her lungs. She slapped at the table with startling power.

Max had been holding his breath again. A pressure formed in his skull, and he could hear little pops, like soda water. “Hey!” he heard himself blurt.

It seemed as if all the people in the restaurant whipped their heads around to look at Max. He made eye contact with Kelly for the first time. Anger flowed over her face. This woman could destroy him in a single sentence, at the mere allusion of the orgasm he’d had against her body. His gaze fell to her fettuccine plate, and her stare burned the top of his head.

Finally Rasheed said to her, “Darling, tell us more about your nonprofit idea.” He smiled sadly. His reasonableness incensed
Max. Max couldn’t say anything, but why wouldn’t
he
? Max put his hand up his shirt and jammed his pinkie into the back of his belly button, giving himself a surge of dull pain.

“Oh, the nonprofit I’ve wanted to start my whole life? That I keep getting sidetracked from by men like you? Then what? I tell you about my dreams, and you tell me about yours, and then what? You get your end of the deal, and what do I get?”

“What deal?” asked Max without lifting his eyes back up to her.

“What do I get?” she repeated louder.

His father looked scared. “I don’t know, darling, I must think a little bit about these things, okay? Please, maybe we can enjoy the meal now, and talk about this later.” He reached for her shoulder, but she yanked it away.

She finished her drink. “I don’t want to talk about this later. I’m done talking.”

While Rasheed was at work the next day, Kelly stayed in the bedroom and wept. Max had never heard a woman cry in real life before. She sounded like an ensnared animal. Every whimper made the bones in his arms and shoulders shake like a tuning fork. He knocked lightly on the door. “Kelly?”

She went silent. He heard her sniffle and then get off the bed. She took a deep breath, locked the door, and spoke more gently to him than she ever had. “Go away, Max.”

By nightfall, the coldness of her silent treatment blew through the house, dividing Max and Rasheed. Everyone stood apart. Max couldn’t imagine how to address whatever was going on with either of them. Kelly was too unapproachable and powerful, and his father had become too sheepish.

Their home turned into a quiet, suffocating space, and when Max and his father did talk—never about the mysterious scorn
breathing through the house—it felt playacted and awkward. Rocket became even lazier, looking dispirited. The cactus Mr. Yang gave Max wasted away, the tree house stunk of yeast and raccoon urine, and Max no longer took pleasure in cooking, for no one looked forward to eating together.

His father, for the first time in their relationship, started complaining to him about money problems, but the strangest part about it was that he only did this when Kelly was in earshot. Everything he said seemed to be a reminder that he worked like a brute and didn’t have the cash to invest in any kind of new business, which was, as far as Max understood, precisely what had upset her at the restaurant. For example, as Rasheed was zipping up his bag in the kitchen, preparing to go to the second job he’d gotten at an all-night diner where they actually paid him, it was only when Kelly came in to pour herself a glass of water that Rasheed told Max that the diner was not the great change he’d hoped for, but he would do it until his other job started remunerating him again. Max could actually see Rasheed’s words aggravating Kelly’s pale skin. Plus, Rasheed continued, if he did his job well enough they might promote him from dishwasher to busboy, and that was a step in the right direction. Kelly compressed her lips so that rays of wrinkles fenced in her pink mouth, marched out of the kitchen, and locked herself in the bathroom until Rasheed left. Why did she hate him so much? And what was she still doing here if she hated him?

She began spending time with the neighbors, not the Yangs or Coach Tim, but virtually all the other families on Marion Street, especially Nadine and Rodney. She didn’t watch documentaries anymore. Max overheard her saying to Nadine on the phone that she needed to get more involved with the community to understand the system and its workings on the actual people. She sought to study the local underprivileged population, to
better sculpt her nonprofit vision and decide what form her help would take. She volunteered at the homeless shelter, taught GED prep courses at the county jail, and involved herself with the neighborhood watch, which consisted of her and Mr. Jenkins. They put together neighborhood safety tracts, reminding people to call the police if they witnessed anything criminal going on. She also joined a gospel choir at the church a few blocks from Marion Street, along with an awareness group downtown that combated racism.

In an unexpected moment of enthusiasm, Kelly gave Max a short speech like in the documentary days, maybe rehearsing for an upcoming meeting with her antiracism group. “The results of the Mamie and Kenneth Clark doll experiments haven’t changed since they first did them in ’fifty-four. It’s still the same percentage of black kids who call the white dolls pretty and the black dolls ugly. How horrendous is that?” She then talked about racist remarks made by politicians today, and what institutionalized racism had done to black people, listing statistics for unemployment rates, alcohol and drug and spousal abuse, prison rates, schizophrenia in young black men, and neglected school systems in predominantly black neighborhoods.

Rasheed walked into the kitchen just as Kelly was describing the racist hurdles their very own neighbors faced. He was visibly pleased by her chattiness and asked lightheartedly, “Racism from what people? We and Tim are the only white ones on the street!”