What We've Lost Is Nothing (19 page)

4:05 p.m.

D
ara and Sary struggled to get the birdhouse from the backseat of their Camry, then struggled to get it through their backyard and into the house. The box looked disproportionately large in the sparse living room. Sary turned on the floor lamp and heard the thumping of her nephews' music coming from their front yard. Then she took a six-pack of Coke from the refrigerator and went out to meet them.

Dara needed to get some tools from the basement to put the spirit house together, but he glanced out their living-room window and watched Sary walk toward Sofia and his nephews. Two yards over, Michael McPherson was standing on the sidewalk talking before a lone news camera, with some of their neighbors gathered around him. Dara wouldn't even have bothered to report Sary's lost cell phone if they hadn't been part of this larger problem on his street, and if anyone had asked, he'd have said, simply, that he wanted no part of the investigation. He didn't want his prints eternally filed away in a police station in America, in a country that had always felt temporary to him. Would he have a permanent file? What if someone misfiled it, from victim to perpetrator? What if, ten years from now, the government somehow used it against him, planted his fingerprints in some other crime scene? It wasn't unheard of, these kinds of things. Crooked cops. It happened in Cambodia all the time. And it happened in America, too. The only difference he believed was that Americans wouldn't admit it, while Cambodians had come to expect it.

So many things hadn't turned out the way he'd thought . . . America didn't offer him opportunity. In fact, it took away his chance to practice his profession as a pharmacist. It made his daughter a stranger to him. It robbed his wife of the last chance she had to live free of fear. He wondered what made his brother love the place so much. What made him stay year after year, decade after decade? Nimith hadn't been there in Phnom Penh, searching for their mad mother, watching the city get bigger and bigger and bigger, the foreign aid pouring in, the houses grander in scale. There was so much opportunity, it seemed to him now, in a city burgeoning with youth. When he'd begun work at a pharmacy, he manned the counter in a shop that didn't even have a working electric light. Pharmacy La Gare, the last place he'd worked before coming to America, had negotiated a contract with a Parisian pharmaceutical company a few years ago for the latest medicines to be airlifted to Cambodia. They'd gotten a refrigeration system with a generator, he'd heard.

He watched his daughter out the window, wearing jeans and a pale yellow sweater. How different would she be if they'd stayed in Cambodia? Would she become a pharmacist, too? Dispense medicines to foreigners and rich Khmers? Maybe now was not the time to leave, but Sofia was fifteen. Not a child anymore. Perhaps home was not so far as it felt. He realized he didn't want Sofia and his nephews hanging around outside in the front yard if there was a chance of even a single news camera still there, to take pictures, to publicize what had happened to them privately. He did not want to be visible. Not the kind of visible he felt himself to be now. He wanted to quietly go about taking care of his family, seen by them, but obscured from the rest of the world. And he knew—because he hadn't bought a house, because he hadn't acquired a piece of furniture, a utensil, a towel or a poster or a cell phone or a job or even a friend that he could not live without—he knew, because he hadn't done the things you do when you set down roots, that he would someday return to his real home.

Dara went into the kitchen and rinsed his face under the tap, then made his way out to the front yard, to gather his family and come back inside.

3:54 p.m.

T
hey walked outside wordlessly, soundlessly, Dan's arm slung over Alicia's shoulder. She had his shirt bunched up in her hand, white-knuckling the cotton as if it might run free. The day had gone cloudy, but the air was fresh, the bite of late winter gone and the smell of buds everywhere. Wood chips from last year's mulch littered the curbs at the police station, and Alicia and Dan leaned up against their pale-blue Prius, breathing together, not quite ready to drive home to Chester.

“All these years,” Dan said to her, “all these fucking years.”

Alicia nodded.

His fleece collar tickled her chin. He pulled her hair out of its ponytail and let it fall down to her shoulders. She hadn't washed it since Florida and he smelled the sea in it. Dry trails from her tears feathered down her cheeks.

“To never once even talk about moving away, to never have the thought cross our minds?” he asked her.

“I thought you loved it here. I thought you never wanted to leave.”

“Are you kidding? I thought it was you. I thought we needed to be close to your parents
for your sanity
or something.” He laughed when he said “sanity.”

Alicia laughed with him. “
My
sanity? Believe me, I'd be a lot more sane a thousand miles away from my parents.”

“What were we thinking?”

“It's like a trance.”

“How could it never dawn on us?”

“Doesn't it feel like a trance? Like we were in a trance?”

Dan didn't answer Alicia. Alicia didn't answer Dan. They had never even put forward the topic—leaving Oak Park and the long tether of her parents. They'd thought Oak Park was far enough away, a statement about their independence. Half an hour by car was the most they could muster, and they'd been proud of it. As if they were shaking off the shackles of their oppression by moving in to the house her parents had bought and furnished, and driving the car her parents got them.

“I went to Ann Arbor for the weekend once with my aunt and uncle,” Alicia said. “It was fall. I remember the trees.”

Dan noticed three or four gray hairs intermingled with her dishwater blond. He'd always been envious of how Alicia's blond was a sort of camouflage for gray, an unfair advantage against the collective inevitability of their aging.

“I'd never seen trees that color. The red wasn't just red, it was like
r-e-d
. Like someone had plugged in the trees.”

“Champaign-Urbana's pretty nice. Bloomington, Indiana.”

A sparrow landed near their feet, pecked at the cement, flew off in an instant. Dan watched a policeman emerge from the revolving door, climb into his squad car, and pull out slowly. Two older women, both black, came out arguing about parking tickets.

“Isn't there that famous deli in Ann Arbor? What's it called . . . Singers? Sangers?”

“Zingerman's,” Alicia said. “I think I went there.”

“Zingerman's.”

“My cousin was going to school there. That's why we went. I think her major was history or something. Who majors in history?”

Dan rubbed his hands up and down Alicia's arms as she pulled away from him slightly, to look at his face. “You got something against history?”

She smiled. He couldn't remember the last time she'd smiled
at
him, as a result of him. “Nothing. I love history. But think about it. You're looking for a job at a time when the whole world is moving in the opposite direction of history. And really fast, right, with technology . . .”

“The future.”

“Yes. The future. And you're talking about the past, your whole life is all about the past.”

“Aren't we doomed to repeat the past if we don't learn from it?” he said. “How's that saying go?”

She laughed, reached up to push his hair back behind his ear. “I think we're doomed to repeat the past anyway.”

“So why bother?”

“So why bother.”

She stepped back away from him and ran her hands down the front of her own fleece top, smoothing it. Dan stood up from leaning against the car, clicked the unlock button on his fob.

“It's funny,” Alicia said, “that thing about repeating the past.” The quiet thump of the doors unlocking interrupted the ambient stillness. “It's not us repeating it, right? It's not our past, it's the past of our parents, or grandparents, or great-great-great-great-great- . . .”

“Yes?” Dan walked around to the driver's side, looked up, and saw Michael McPherson, Arthur Gardenia, Paja Coen, and Helen Pappalardo come out of the station. They saw him, too. Michael lifted a hand toward Dan and he nodded.

“How can it truly be the past,” Alicia said, “if it's all new for us?”

4:07 p.m.

T
he sky above Étienne had turned thick and gray as the late-afternoon light began to surrender to evening. After his confrontation with Michael McPherson, he'd been shaken and didn't quite know what to do with himself. The thought of going home made his stomach churn; the thought of going to Frite was even less appealing. His life, he realized, had been whittled down to the marrow of just those two lonely spaces.

He found himself at McDonald's ordering a Big Mac and fries. He couldn't remember the last time a meal had been made
for
him, but he took no delight in this. The smell of oil and fried batter permeated every surface inside. The drive-through microphone screeched. Paradoxically, Étienne felt himself both ravenously hungry and strangely full, and he offered his order in a near whisper to the teenage boy behind the register. Carrying his tray to a Formica table, Étienne caught his reflection in the window, a slight stoop in his back, as if one of his customers might see him here, cavorting with the enemy. With Étienne's first bite, the middle bun slid out from the burger and fell onto his tray. Shredded lettuce and pickles began to spill out from the buns with his second and third bites, and Étienne watched as the warm, orange sauce oozed out onto his fingers. Why, he thought, with all the culinary advances of the twenty-first century, could not a soul in the world make a bun that didn't fall apart under the stress of a human mouth? He'd dropped the rest of the burger onto the tray and left it there, cleaning his hands off as he darted outside.

Étienne walked underneath the railroad tracks as the el thundered overhead, brimming with commuters. The sign in Frite's
window
announced a three-day closure so that he could organize his home, give himself some time off. But without the regular rhythm of work and home, Étienne found he had no idea where to go. He cut over to Taylor Street, to wander past one of his favorite houses. A gentle Victorian painted in plum hues with a turret and wraparound porch. A woman with dark curls was on the phone; he could see her wander from room to room, turning on soft-amber lights. Dressed in a dark suit, she must have just returned from work. The house was large, but not ostentatious; grand, but approachable. Years ago, perhaps before the dark-haired woman lived in the house, it had been painted white with gray trim, colors that obscured its real beauty. But then, he'd watched the house being repainted, a little more color each day. First the plum base went on. Then a darker plum on the patterned shingles around the turret. Goldenrod over the transom and on the window shutters accented with evergreen highlighted on the gutters and dormer. Étienne marveled as the house had come to life. In some sense, the house was like a thousand other houses in Oak Park. Not notable in size or in design, but he'd known it before its transformation, and that was the remarkable thing. This nothing into something.

And in that moment, Étienne suddenly knew exactly what he had to do.

He could sell off his two copper pots, certainly. The French café chairs and tables. Maybe the black-and-white reprints of Parisian scenes—the Seine at night, the Champs-Élysées in snowfall, the streets of Montparnasse. An estate sale for a restaurant. The death of a bad idea. Frite
.

He would use the insurance money to start again, to take some time and get the recipe down just right, the interior design perfectly welcoming and warm. Long wood tables, that's what he'd need, like butcher blocks. And long benches. The kind of seating arrangement that compelled strangers to talk with one another.

He reached out his arm and softly stroked each oak tree as he passed, the thick hide of their bark rough against his fingertips. Open to the breeze, his bomber jacket flapped as he walked, but he didn't feel the least bit chilled. He could get rid of the bar that was there now, build a secure place in the corner for kids to play, with half walls and a gate so the parents could relax just a tiny bit and the kids could have some fun. He'd have beer. No wine, no hard liquor. Only beer, but good beer, interesting beer.
Local
beer, from Milwaukee and Goose Island. He'd serve it in mason jars.

Étienne felt a giddy energy that he was not familiar with in himself. The burgers would be interesting, free-range meat if he could afford it, with toppings such as bleu cheese or Havarti, roasted peppers or caramelized mushrooms and onions, avocado and arugula and tamarind. Maybe he'd have buns with cornmeal in them, or buttermilk. A pale-brown cat darted across the street and disappeared into a tree-filled backyard. Étienne watched its trajectory. Maybe in his new restaurant he'd play hip-hop. He'd even host artsy events.
A poetry slam. Or an open-mic night. An exhibit of photography or art. Oak Parkers loved that kind of thing. And the key to it all? The bun. The ingredients for bread, he knew, simply had to be manipulated to make a bun that would work like pita bread, like conjoined Frisbees, keeping the hamburger and its ingredients firmly united. It wasn't a matter of engineering, the bun and the burger falling apart all the time. Not hardly. It was a matter of romance and chemistry. Why hadn't anyone ever done it before? Why hadn't
he?

And he'd call it . . .

Ed's: Our buns commit to your burgers
.

April 9, 2004

To: Jeanne Kirkpatrick, aka “Lola ‘LOL'”

From: Oak Park Apartment Doctor, Inc.

Memo Re:
Wordpress Blog
“The Truth of Diversity Hurts”

Dear Ms. Kirkpatrick:

Your employment as Resident Manager at XXX Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, Illinois 60302, is hereby terminated, and your services are no longer needed, effective immediately.

You will have until the end of the month to vacate the premises, or sign a lease and begin regular rental payments to OPAD, Inc. Please let us know your preference at your earliest convenience.

We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors; however, we will be unable to provide you with a reference, beyond verifying the dates of your employment.

Sincerely,

Allison Cantor

Allison Cantor

Office Manager

Oak Park Apartment Doctor, Inc.