The Nakeds (25 page)

“I know,” Hannah said. She paused. “You’ll tell Mustafa eventually, right?”

“Sure, yes,” Azeem said.

“You don’t sound so sure,” Hannah said.

“Let’s play,” he said.

“I don’t know how long I can sit here. I’m restless,” Nina admitted.

Azeem smiled at his cards.

“Not that kind of restless,” she said.

“What kind?” Hannah chimed in.

She ignored them both then, slid the menu out of its wooden pocket at the edge of the table, and pretended to read from it.

“I hope my brother is OK,” Azeem said.

Nina imagined Mustafa sitting between two irritated strangers, a man trying to read a magazine, a woman with a fitful baby on her lap, both of them unhappy with Mustafa’s thighs, which were surely spreading into their seats. Their own thighs were reasonable. They pushed their plates away when they’d had enough. And now they’d paid for that little seat that was so much smaller because the boy was so big. She imagined an anxious, hungry Mustafa in the middle seat with a tranquilizer melting under his tongue and felt sympathetic, yes, but also repulsed. The last thing she wanted to do was take the boy to the nudist camp and see his sad body naked.

She wondered if she’d like him and if he’d like her and if Azeem would ever confess that he was married. She wondered if he’d brought pictures of the neighbor girl his parents had picked out for Azeem, if Mustafa would show them to his brother in front of her and Hannah, or if he’d wait until she left the house to break them out. She wondered if Azeem would admit to the boy that they were a family, that this wasn’t something casual and temporary, or worse, convenient, but something permanent and based on love. Perhaps the boy would eventually tell his mother and the charade would be over. She wondered what Mustafa felt about his first big trip, his first time on a plane, going to a land he’d only seen in movies and on the postcards Azeem sent. Perhaps he was thinking about Azeem’s promises: Disneyland, the mall, beaches and buildings, and a doctor who would finally cure him.

Nina had insisted that Azeem wait a few days before telling his brother about the nudist camp. She wanted him to be sure to stress that clothing was optional. Tell him he can sit on the hill with Hannah, both of them bundled up in winter coats and hats, if he’d prefer. He didn’t have to go with them if he didn’t want to. He could go to the movies or he could stay home and read. “Don’t tell him it’s what everyone does here,” she had said. “That’s misleading. If you don’t stress that it’s unusual, he’ll think everyone in America prefers to be naked.”

“Maybe they do,” Azeem had said.

“You know what I mean. Let him know that we’re different.”

Now she finished off the wine and decided on a second. She stood up to get another and Azeem pulled on her skirt. “Easy, Nina,” he said. “Get some water.”

“I’m thirty-nine years old,” she said, shaking free, staring down at him.

“Didn’t you tell me once that Jews aren’t big drinkers?” he said.

“Asher said that, not me.”

Azeem looked at his cards.

Asher
did
used to say, “Jews rarely drink because we make terribly nervous drunks. We leave that to the goyim.” When she thought about Asher these days, it was usually about Christy’s mental health, but sometimes she’d hear his ridiculous generalizations in her head. “Jewish men don’t beat their wives. That’s for the goyim,” he used to say. “Jewish men can’t swim. The goyim? They’re like fish.” Or “Jewish women are awkward, even when they’re beautiful.” Or “Jewish women are best when they’re not too skinny.” And finally, he said, “Jewish men don’t cheat,” and then he left her for a tall, skinny shiksa he’d been cheating with for years.

When Asher picked up Hannah for a visit, when he stood on the porch and reached out to Nina for Hannah’s overnight bag, she’d say hello, how are you, all the perfunctory polite phrases, but if she was in a bad mood, she might zoom in on him, focus, and ask about church or Jesus, and he’d answer her without the slightest bit of irony:
Jesus is terrific, life-changing, I’m full of love now.

Full of love, huh?
she’d say.

Not that kind of love, Nina. Not anymore. You know what I mean. Loving Jesus ensures that I’ll have a happy afterlife.

I want to be happy
now.

Now? What’s now?

And she’d be stunned and baffled by the way one man had completely changed into another man. And by then, Hannah would be standing behind her, ready to go.

People change, it was true. They’d convinced Hannah to join them at the nudist camp. And, sure, it wasn’t a perfect day for her, maybe something she’d never do again. She stayed in her clothes and said she’d felt like a leper. On the way home she claimed that she’d rather visit her crazy stepmother in the hospital than suffer through another afternoon avoiding the stoner twins, and Nina had reminded her that she had also played cards with Azeem and seemed to relax, and in the late afternoon, the two of them had sat under a tree together and watched Azeem lose three games of tennis in a row.

The wine was tasty and going down easily, and even though Nina preferred antianxiety pills to liquor—medicine prescribed by a doctor, always prescribed—she could understand why people drank so much of it. She’d been taking her
tablets,
as she called them, on and off, mostly on, since Hannah’s accident. Now, though, she was
off
, out of pills and feeling everything: irritation that Azeem had quit his job to study full-time, anxiety about her daughter’s leg, anger that he’d described her dream about the hamburger meat to Hannah, and anger at herself for not doing enough to stop him.

She sipped the wine and listened while Azeem made excuses, his brow furrowed in mock concentration. “It’s because English is my second language. That’s why I’m losing,” he said.

Hannah laughed. “It’s not Scrabble. It’s not about words. It’s cards,” she reminded him.

He mumbled something in Arabic, but smiled at her.

Hannah looked at him mischievously. “Get ready,” she said.

“No. Oh no. Please, no,” Azeem whined.

“Yes,”
Hannah said, dropping down a jack, queen, and king of clubs.

Nina felt a little jolt of parental pride.

“Gin,”
Hannah said gleefully. “You’re no match for me. I need some competition.” She looked around the nearly empty bar as if she might find some there. A man and a woman, oblivious to the three of them, sat on a couple of stools, sipping drinks, talking to each other in low voices that barely carried across the room. Every now and then the woman let out a loud and startling laugh.

“One more game,” Azeem said.

“You’re no better at gin than you are at tennis.”

“One more, please, please.”

Hannah shook her head, playing hard to get. Nina watched her daughter use her fingers to fish around in her glass for a maraschino cherry. Earlier Hannah’s face had lit up when she saw the bowl of those bright red cherries at the bar, and the bartender, a cheerful, smiling man with pink cheeks, noticed her crutches and dropped a couple in her soda. Now Hannah popped one in her mouth, held the stem between her lips and twirled it with a sensuousness that surprised Nina. Nina took a big drink of her wine and wondered if Hannah was still a virgin.

HANNAH HAD
seen Azeem’s pictures where his brother’s face was as huge as a stop sign, all folds and skin, so she was surprised that Mustafa was no longer heavy. She had fantasized about the two of them becoming as close as siblings. She’d hoped that Mustafa would be the older brother she never had. She hoped that his illness would inspire a kinship and give them something in common. More than once she’d imagined him stepping off the plane, very round, yes, but with a sincere smile and a hug just for her. He’d wrap her in his big, soft arms and they’d be fast friends. She’d told herself that he’d want a younger American sister. She’d hoped that his weight, which probably made him feel self-conscious and embarrassed, and his limited use of English, and the three years between them, were only minor obstacles.

She could tell from Azeem’s eyes that even he didn’t recognize the young man walking toward them. He looked nothing like the pictures. He’d lost half of himself. Still, he looked older than his seventeen years, with a high forehead and stubble all over his face, in slacks that were bunched up at the waist and a sweater many sizes too big that hung from his shoulders.

Despite Hannah’s hopes, she felt her smile fade and her muscles tighten. She didn’t like that he’d lost all that weight and kept it a secret. People should know whom to expect. She didn’t like his plaid shirt or old-man slacks or the way he just stood there letting her stepfather gush and cry and kiss him. He wasn’t kissing back and there was something standoffish about the rigid way he held himself. Hannah suddenly felt very shy and, worse, left out. With each kiss and Arabic word, she felt Azeem leaving them and going home.

Azeem’s eyes spilled over and he was kissing Mustafa on the face, each cheek, the top of his head, where Hannah had just spied a bald spot the size of a half dollar. What seventeen-year-old boy has a high forehead and a bald spot? she wondered. This new teenage brother looked twenty-five.

“These are your friends, yes?” Mustafa said in what appeared to be his best English.

“What did he say?” Hannah said.

“Shh,” Azeem said. “Say it again, Mustafa.”

“These are your friends, yes?” he repeated, each word very slowly, and looked right at her.

“Hi,” she said.

“We’re very
good
friends,” Nina said, looking at Azeem.

Her stepfather held his brother by his shoulders and spoke quickly in Arabic, kissing his face, pulling him to his chest for a hug, and then pushing Mustafa away to look at his face again. Azeem was crying, but Mustafa’s face revealed little about his feelings. This went on for several minutes, with Nina and Hannah standing and watching. It was uncomfortable for them. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. Hannah felt gawky and graceless, like any face she made was the wrong face, like she didn’t know what to do with her arms. Her cast felt even heavier than it was and her toes seemed to be going numb.

It was obvious that Azeem and Mustafa wanted to be alone.

“Well . . .” her mom said, but no one seemed to hear her or respond.

•  •  •

It was a long, awkward wait at the luggage carousel, the brothers talking excitedly while Hannah and her mom stood to the side, talking to each other with only their eyes. At one point, her mom looked at the brothers and tried to interject, which only made it even more uncomfortable, both of them looking at her like she was a fly or a gnat.

Most people were carefully watching the metal chute spitting out the suitcases, and Nina and Hannah were watching it too even though they had no idea which bag belonged to Mustafa.

“Oh dear,” her mom whispered. “This is going to be a long visit.” Maybe Azeem overheard the comment or maybe he felt bad, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t including them, because he turned to them and tried to translate the last fifteen minutes of their conversation into a few words. “Mustafa’s telling me about school and about how he lost so much weight,” he said.

“You look great,” Nina said.

“Talk slowly,” Azeem instructed. “He knows a lot of English, but you can’t talk quickly.”

“You . . . look . . . great,” Nina repeated.

“Shows something about his character—what my brother’s made of.” Azeem said. “Shows what he’s capable of doing when he sets his mind to something positive.”

Nina looked at Azeem. What was he talking about? He didn’t even sound like himself.

“Not that people have to be thin,” he added.

Nina and Hannah were nodding in unison, feeling foolish, when Mustafa’s huge suitcase went moving right past the four of them. Mustafa pointed at it and muttered something under his breath without moving to follow his bag.

“Oh, let me,” Azeem said, bolting after it, leaving the three of them alone to nod and smile some more.

Everyone except Mustafa carried something. Azeem dragged the big suitcase and Nina slung the stuffed overnight bag over her shoulder. She was struggling, leaning to one side as they walked through the airport. Azeem had strapped Mustafa’s camera around Hannah’s neck and arm.

“Don’t do that,” Nina said.

“I’m fine,” Hannah said, offering her neck.

“She likes to help out,” Azeem said.

Nina looked at Mustafa, thinking he would offer to take the camera, but he didn’t say a word. “Hmm,” she said. “You sure you’re OK, Hannah?”

Hannah nodded and Nina let it go.

It wasn’t the camera’s weight that bothered Hannah, but the intense smell of Mustafa’s overly sweet cologne on the strap. She’d told her mom she was OK, but truthfully she was relieved when they arrived at the car and handed the camera back to him.

Hastily, Azeem moved things around in the trunk: a notebook, a bottle of water, and the picnic basket they used at The Elysium. Azeem handed Nina a plastic bag that she held open while he dropped trash inside of it. He was shaking his head, seemingly embarrassed by the way they lived.

Nina’s wine buzz had morphed into a headache, and she was in no mood for Azeem’s impatience. She gave him a look that told him as much.

“You should probably let him ride in front,” Azeem said, softening.

“What? Oh,” Nina said.

“He just arrived. It was a long flight.”

“Fine,” she said begrudgingly. It was
her
car. She didn’t belong in the backseat of her own damn car.

Hannah and Mustafa stood behind them. She was thinking that his head was kind of square and his chin jutted out too much and his wool sweater was even more old-man-like than his slacks, little balls dangling from the fabric like earrings, and he needed a shave. She was thinking that he didn’t like the way she looked either, that she was as much of a disappointment to him as he was to her. She was thinking that getting through the next six weeks was going to be an uncomfortable hell, when Mustafa leaned in and uttered his first full English sentence just to her. “Where can I buy hashish?” he said.