The Burgess Boys

  7

  By the middle of August, in spite of the heat, the tops of a few maple trees had already turned orange. One could be seen across the street from where Susan and Mrs. Drinkwater were sitting in lawn chairs on the back porch. There was no breeze, and a faint mulchy smell of earth hung in the humid air. The old lady had rolled her stockings down to her ankles, and she sat with her skinny pale legs slightly apart, her dress hitched up past her knees. “Funny how when you’re a kid, the heat doesn’t seem to bother a bit.” Mrs. Drinkwater fanned herself with a magazine.

  Susan said that was true, and sipped from her glass of iced tea. Since her trip to New York—since finding out Zachary’s charges were filed—Susan had spoken to her son once a week on the telephone. Each time there was the same afterglow of happiness at the sound of his deep, full voice, and then a seizing sadness set in. It was over—the frantic worry after his arrest, the buildup to the demonstration (it seemed so long ago), the catastrophic thought that Zach might go to prison—it was over. Her mind could not get hold of this. She said, picking up the water-beaded glass by her feet, “Zach’s working in a hospital. Volunteering.”

  “My word.” Mrs. Drinkwater pushed up her eyeglasses with the back of her hand.

  “Not bedpans. He’s stocking storage closets with bandages, things like that. I guess.”

  “But he’s with people.”

  “He is.”

  From down the street came the sound of a lawn mower starting up. When the sound diminished, as if the mower had gone behind a house, Susan added, “I spoke with Steve today for the first time in years. I told him I was sorry about all the ways I’d been a bad wife. He was awful nice.” As she feared would happen, a tear sprang to her eye, slipped out. She wiped it with her wrist.

  “That’s wonderful, dear. That he was nice.” Mrs. Drinkwater removed her glasses and cleaned them with a tissue. “Regrets are no fun. Not at all.”

  The release of the tear loosened Susan’s sadness, and she said, “But you can’t have regrets about being a bad wife? Sounds to me like you were the perfect wife. You gave up your family for him.”

  Mrs. Drinkwater nodded just slightly. “Regrets about my girls. I was a good wife. I think I loved Carl more than my girls and I don’t think that’s natural. I think they felt lonely. Angry.” The old lady slipped her glasses back on and was silent for a while, gazing toward the grass. She said, “It’s not uncommon, dear, to have one child turn out with difficulties. But to have two children turn out that way.”

  From the shady soil beneath the Norway maple, the dog whimpered in a dream. Her tail thumped once and then she slept peacefully again.

  Susan held her cool glass against her neck for a moment. She said, “The Somalians think you should have a dozen children. That’s what I heard. They feel sorry for you if you only have two kids.” She added, “So having just one must be bizarre, like giving birth to a goat.”

  “I always thought the point of the Catholic Church was to keep turning out little Catholics. Maybe the Somalians want to keep turning out Somalians.” Mrs. Drinkwater turned her huge glasses toward Susan. “But neither of my girls had children, and it makes me feel very bad.” She cupped her hand to her cheek. “Both of them not wanting to be a mother. My word.”

  Susan gazed down at the toe of her sneaker. She still wore the flat simple sneakers of her youth. She said kindly, “I think there is no perfect way to live,” glancing up at the old lady. “If they don’t have children, they don’t have children.”

  “No,” Mrs. Drinkwater agreed, “there’s no perfect way to live.”

  Susan said, musingly, “When I was in New York, it went through my mind, maybe this is how the Somalians feel. I’m sure it’s not, well, maybe a little. But coming here where everything’s completely confusing. I didn’t know how to use a subway, and everyone was rushing past, because they knew. All the things people take for granted, because they’re used to it. I felt confused every minute. It wasn’t nice, I’ll tell you.”

  Mrs. Drinkwater cocked her head, birdlike.

  “My brothers seemed the strangest of all,” Susan added. “Maybe when Somalian family members make it over here, the family that’s been here awhile—maybe they seem strange too.” Susan scratched her ankle. “It’s just something I thought.”

  Steve had said he was more to blame than she was. You’re a decent, hardworking person, he’d said. Zach is crazy about you.

  Mrs. Drinkwater said, “I wish things never changed from the old days.” She looked at Susan. “I just had a memory of Peck’s.”

  “Tell me the memory of Peck’s.” Susan sipped from her glass of iced tea, not listening. She had seldom gone into Peck’s. The boys got their school clothes there, but her own clothes were made by her mother. Susan, standing on a chair in the kitchen for the hem to be done. “Stand still,” her mother would say. “For God’s sake.”

  We did the best we could, Steve said on the phone this morning. Neither of us had an easy time as kids, Susan. Neither of us knew what we were doing. I wouldn’t want you blaming yourself, he said.

  Mrs. Drinkwater was concluding, “They’d be dressed nicely, the ladies at Peck’s. You didn’t do your shopping without looking nice. Back then.”

  Steve’s mother, as a child, had been found barefoot and filthy, walking through that small town so far north. Relatives took her in, starting a feud that lasted years, families casting aspersions. Obese, by the time Susan met her, and divorced.

  “I have a story,” Susan said.

  Mrs. Drinkwater turned her chair partly toward Susan. “Oh, I love stories.”

  “Remember a few years ago in that town up north when the deacon of the church poisoned the coffee at coffee hour and killed a couple people? Remember that? Well, that was in New Sweden, Steve’s hometown.”

  Mrs. Drinkwater fixed her wobbly gaze on Susan. “That was your husband’s hometown?”

  Susan nodded. “I never thought they were very nice up there. They brought the Swedes over to work in the mills back in the 1800s, you know, because they wanted white people there.”

  “Not Canucks like me,” Mrs. Drinkwater said, cheerfully, shaking her head. “People are funny. I’d forgotten about that. The deacon poisoning the coffee. My word.”

  “Well, the town’s practically gone now. The mills are shut down. And people leave. Like Steve, going over to Sweden.”

  “Better to leave than stay and poison each other,” Mrs. Drinkwater said. “What happened to the deacon? I forget.”

  “Killed himself.”

  They sat in comfortable silence, the sun moving behind trees, and the air getting just a little bit cooler. The dog, still asleep, thumped her tail lazily.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Susan said. “Gerry O’Hare’s wife—the police chief I went to high school with—his wife called and asked if I wanted to join her knitting group.”

  “I hope you said yes, dear.”

  “I did. I’m a little nervous.”

  “Oh, phooey,” the old lady said.

  8

  It was the day after Labor Day when Helen came upon Dorothy in a greengrocer’s. Helen was at the cash register, purchasing three stalks of sunflowers. The man was wrapping them in paper, and Helen was holding her wallet open when she turned and saw Dorothy. “Hi!” said Helen, for the sight of Dorothy made her miss their old friendship. “How are you? Did you just get back from the Berkshires? We spent August in the city, which we haven’t done for years, but of course—Jim wanted to get things started.” Helen finished paying for the flowers, took them in her arms. “It’s exciting for us, but it does seem the end to an era.”

  “What’s exciting for you, Helen?”

  Later, Helen would not be able to remember what Dorothy had been buying that day, only that she stood behind Helen in line while Helen said with enthusiasm, “That Jim’s going out on his own.”

  Dorothy said, “What pretty sunflowers, Helen.”

  Helen would recall in Dorothy’s
face a combination of suppressed surprise and some pity. That is how Helen remembered it, later (and for the rest of her life), after she discovered that Jim had been asked by Alan to leave the law firm, that a sexual harassment lawsuit had been threatened, alleging that he had partaken in an intimate physical relationship with his employee, used his power and influence to make this employee uncomfortable— It had been covered up quickly, the young woman given a sum of money, the papers not getting hold of it. For five weeks Jim Burgess had gotten dressed each morning, taken his briefcase, kissed Helen at the door, and gone to the Public Library in Manhattan. He told Helen a new policy at the firm required personal calls be taken on their cell phones, so it was important she not call him through the receptionist, and she had naturally agreed. Jim spoke more frequently about not being happy at the firm, and Helen said, “So why not finally go out on your own? With your reputation and skills, you can pick and choose as you like.”

  He was worried about the expense of running an office. “But we have the money. Let’s use some of mine,” Helen exclaimed, and she sat with him in the evenings, computing rent and billing services and malpractice and secretarial costs. She called a friend of a friend who was in commercial real estate in Manhattan. An office space on the twenty-fourth floor of a building in downtown Manhattan was available to look at, and if he didn’t like that, there were other options. It’s true Helen thought Jim was not as excited about his freedom as he should be, given the freedom he said he wanted. She would remember this. And it’s true that earlier that spring she had found a long pale hair on his shirt when she was getting the laundry ready for the dry cleaner, that is true too, but what would Helen Farber Burgess think of a long pale hair found on the sleeve of her husband’s shirt? She was not a forensic scientist.

  In his pants pocket one morning, a few days after meeting Dorothy in the greengrocer’s (Jim was out of town, taking a deposition in Atlanta), Helen found the business card of someone advertising herself as a “life coach.” Your life is my job. Helen sat on the bed. She didn’t like the word “job.” She didn’t like the whole thing. She called her husband on his cell phone. “Oh, she’s an idiot,” he said. “Some woman looking at the same office space. Handed out her card to the realtor, to anyone.”

  “A life coach was looking at the same office space you were looking at? How much office space does a life coach need? What is a life coach, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Hellie, I don’t know. Sweetheart, let it go.”

  Helen stayed sitting on the bed for a long while. She thought how Jim had not been sleeping well, she thought how he had lost weight. She thought that Bob’s poor behavior—he seemed to have just stepped away from Jim, the way Zach unpeeled himself from Susan—must have something to do with this. She almost called Bob, but she was insulted by his absence. Finally she picked up the telephone and called the friend-of-a-friend realtor to say she’d like to see the office spaces that Jim had been seeing, and the realtor sounded confused and said, “Mrs. Burgess, your husband hasn’t been looking at any office space.”

  When she called Jim on his cell phone, she was trembling. She heard Jim pause and then say quietly, “We have to talk.” In another moment he said more quietly, “I’ll be home tomorrow. We’ll talk then.”

  “I’d like you to fly home now. I’d like to talk now,” Helen said.

  “Tomorrow, Hellie. I have to finish this deposition.”

  Helen’s heart was beating like a bird’s, her nose and chin tingling as she hung up. She had the odd sensation that she ought to go and buy bottled water and flashlights and batteries and milk and eggs, as she did when there were hurricane warnings. But she stayed home. She ate a piece of cold chicken while watching television. Waiting for her husband to come through the door.

  9

  In Maine, more maple trees were turning red, the birch trees showed patches of yellow. The days were warm, but evenings the air became chilly, and as daylight receded people pulled out their wool sweaters. Tonight Abdikarim had pulled on his loose-fitting quilted vest; he was leaning forward, listening to Haweeya and her husband speak; the children were asleep. Their eldest child was in middle school now, and she was a good girl, graceful and obedient. But she brought home descriptions of twelve-year-old girls wearing tank tops with their bosoms showing almost completely, kissing boys in the hallway, or behind the school. Haweeya had understood this day would come, but she had not foreseen her feelings, which were deep and anxious and glum.

  “He’ll take care of us until we’re settled,” she kept repeating. Her brother lived in Nairobi, where there was a community of Somalis.

  Omad did not want to live in Nairobi. “They hate us there too,” he said.

  Haweeya nodded. “But you know Rashid and Noda Oya, and many cousins, and our children can remain Somali. Here they can remain Muslim. But they can’t remain Somali. They will be Somali-Americans, and I do not want that.”

  Abdikarim knew he would not go with them. He had moved as many times now as was possible for him. He had his café, his daughter in Nashville, his grandchildren could soon come to Shirley Falls to visit, or even to live. Abdikarim privately dreamed of this: his grandsons coming and working with him. As for his young wife Asha and their son, pictures were sometimes sent to him, and his heart remained closed. The boy’s expression was always elusive, this last time he appeared to be sneering in a way that some of the adano boys on Gratham Street sneered, as if they had no one who cared for them, or taught them, and Abdikarim understood Haweeya’s fears. He had seen himself how her children were speaking English to their parents, using American expressions to each other. You are mad cool. You are the hot diggity bomb. And of course the longer they stayed the more American they would become. They would be hyphenated people. Somali-American. What a strange thing, Abdikarim thought, to become hyphenated to a country now gratifying itself with the impression that all Somalis were pirates. In the spring, Somali pirates had killed a Chinese boat captain in the Gulf of Aden. This caused pain in the community in Shirley Falls: No one could condone that. But the news reporters had no wish, perhaps no ability, to understand that the fishermen’s coastline had been spoiled with toxic waste, that they could not fish as they once had—Americans really did not understand desperation. It was easier, and certainly more pleasing, to view the Gulf of Aden as a lawless place where Somali pirates reigned. A crazy parent, America was. Good and openhearted one way, dismissive and cruel in others. Thinking this, Abdikarim pressed his fingers to his forehead; one could say he treated his living son, Asha’s son, the same way. Seeing this, briefly, caused him to feel more benevolent, not to the son but to America. Life was difficult, decisions were made—

  “I’ll see Margaret Estaver tomorrow,” Haweeya was saying. She looked toward Abdikarim, who nodded.

  Margaret Estaver’s office looked like Margaret. Unorganized, and gentle, and welcoming. Haweeya sat watching this woman, whom she had grown to love, whose messy hair was slipping from its clip. Margaret had been looking out the window ever since Haweeya told her the plans. “I thought you liked the stoplights,” Margaret finally said.

  “I do. I love the stoplights. People obey them. I love the Constitution. But my children—” Haweeya moved her hands. “I want them to be African. They won’t be, if we stay here.” Haweeya was repeating what she had said for the last half hour. Her brother had a business in Kenya, her husband was agreeing. Repeat and repeat.

  Margaret nodded. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  The breeze caused the leaves outside the window to suddenly rustle, and the partly opened window slammed shut. Haweeya sat up straight, waiting for her heart to slow. Then she said, “I’ll miss you too.” She had a keen sense of the pain this conversation was causing. “Other people need your help, Margaret. Your work is very important.”

  Margaret Estaver smiled at her tiredly, leaned over to the window to open it once again. “Sorry about that noise,” she said, and propped a book between the sill and the windo
w frame, then turned back to face Haweeya, who was quietly shocked to see that the book used was a Holy Bible.

  Haweeya said, “In America, it is about the individual. Self-realization. Go to the grocery store, the doctor’s office, open any magazine, and it is self, self, self. But in my culture it is about community and family.”

  Margaret said, “I know that, Haweeya. You don’t need to explain.”

  “I want to explain. I want my children not to feel—what is the word?—entitled. People here raise their children to feel entitled. If the child feels something, he says what he feels, even if it’s rude to his elders. And the parents say, Oh, good, he is expressing himself. They say, I want my child to feel entitled.”

  “I don’t think that’s entirely true.” Margaret took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I work with many families in this town, and believe me, lots of kids here, American kids, don’t feel entitled or even wanted.” When Haweeya did not answer, Margaret conceded, “But I know what you mean.”

  Haweeya tried to make a joke. “Yes, I am entitled to my opinion.” But she saw that Margaret was not in a mood to joke. “Thank you,” Haweeya said.

  Margaret stood. She looked older than Haweeya thought she was. Margaret said, “You are absolutely right to think of your children.”

  Haweeya stood as well. She wanted to say, but did not, You would not be alone if you were Somali, Margaret. You would have brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles everywhere with you. You would not go home to your empty rooms each night. But perhaps Margaret did not mind the empty rooms. Haweeya had never been able to figure out exactly what Americans wanted. (Everything, she sometimes thought. They wanted everything.)

  10

  Oh, Helen, Helen, Helen!