Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel (28 page)

A neediness crept through him, a hunger to break their distance, to get another glimpse of her emotions. “I’m sure.”

“I did not plan to see you again. I have long grieved you as my child.”

Max’s body craved her more than ever.

“But you are welcome to visit the school at the camp if you like, in Beirut.”

His voice warbled. “You’re not in Jordan?”

“No. I’m in Shatila, in Lebanon. You were told this so we would all meet here.” She glanced at Téta. “She wanted to unite us all here. She lies to get what she wants.”

A prickle of heat started in Max’s lower back, and then another, and then a whole desert of them crawled up to his neck, crossing paths with cold droplets of sweat. His voice got shakier. “I thought you were—I mean—you knew I thought you were dead?”

“Yes.”

He looked at Téta again. Because it was easier to talk at her than to his mom. “And you all just decided that was best. Let me believe I had no mother.” Téta stared back at him with the alarm of a deer feeling an arrow stick in its side.

His mother said, “You would have come looking for me, and then I would be getting in the way of you and Rasheed. He holds me responsible for the murder of his family. I could never force myself back into his life.”

“What he told you is better than this truth,” insisted Téta to Max.

“Which is what?” he said, even though it had been made perfectly clear.

They didn’t speak for nearly a full minute. He focused on the grandfather clock to his mother’s left.

At 8:09 she said, “The truth is, we are strangers to each other.”

At 8:09 and ten seconds he responded, “Did you want me in the first place?”

“I was happy when I found out I was pregnant. At that time I had the vision of both fighting and being a fully committed mother. But because I knew Rasheed would take care of you, I allowed myself to be away for long periods. He loved you better than anyone, much better than I did, or your real father. I took advantage of this and was gone often. I promised myself I’d make it up to you, that I’d be a good mother later.” She smoothed back some loose strands in her ponytail. “But I was failing you, and it extinguished something inside of me. Then Rasheed’s family was killed, and I had to hide. The SLA caught and imprisoned me. I learned that I am not so strong. They broke me. I told them everything I knew. Nine years of hell, only to give it all up. I could not go back to fighting with my brothers and sisters in the resistance because I had betrayed them, and also because I didn’t want to fight in that way anymore. My father would not have me in his family, and I could not come to you and Rasheed. His hate for me was too strong, and this hate would take you away from him. I found his address a few years ago and wrote him the letter that explained I was out but would not come bothering you two. I had already taken too much. We couldn’t share you. And by then I understood that one either is or is not a mother. There is no telling yourself, I will be a mother later.”

“And now you work with children,” he said.

“Yes. I did live in Jordan for a while, but years ago I received the message that it would be safe for me to come back to Beirut. I met philanthropists in Amman, and we raised some funds.
The people I had betrayed were not so angry with me anymore, and they agreed to let me move into the refugee camp and build the school—”

“Khalas,”
Téta interrupted. “We need a break from this kind of depressing talk. I will make some tea now, and we can sit in the living room with Jiddo and tell some of the nice stories to Hakeem for a while. Samira, tell him about your kitten when you were a little girl.” She put on a grandmotherly smile and turned to Max. “It only had three legs! Very cute. Very cute story. Samira loved this kitten too much. Tell him, Samira. Tell him.”

Before Téta could go to make tea, the front door of the apartment rang loudly, startling as an end-of-the-game buzzer. Someone from the street was asking to be let up.

“Who is that?” Samira said.

Téta stared her down for a beat and then went to answer. Max and his mother stayed glued to their respective stances in the study and listened to Téta open the door. They heard the surprise in her voice at who had come.

Max couldn’t look at his mother straight on. She was too beautiful, and too horrible. Rasheed’s voice traveled through the apartment, and then Nadine’s followed. It was them. They were here. Nadine had told Rasheed, and now they had come to find him.

His mother said, “You told me Rasheed was not coming.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, on the verge of dropping to his knees and begging for her forgiveness, as if everything would have gone well had Rasheed not shown up.

She came toward Max, and now he tensed up, as if she was about to strike him. But she hugged him. With all the might he felt in her arms, he could have let his legs go and she would
have continued to hold him up without difficulty. Her hair smelled like warm bread, and her abaya like a new cardboard box. It was a wonderful blindness to be so close to her that he couldn’t see, only feel her. Their breaths harmonized, he relaxed, and her warmth crossed over into his body. It was exactly what he’d come for, and with Rasheed and Nadine’s footsteps approaching, he understood it would now be taken away.

He hugged his mother tighter. She abruptly pushed him off and held him by the shoulders. “I promised myself I would not touch you,” she said, “and now look at me.”

He heard Nadine, from the living room, ask, “Where’s Max?”

“Who?” Téta said. “The boy?” It echoed like in a cathedral.

His mother looked over his shoulder, and her eyes shot wide open at whoever lurked in the doorway. That was when she said, “Good-bye, Hakeem. Visit Shatila if you want. Anytime.”

He turned and saw Rasheed creeping into the room. This man who had pretended to be his father and scared away his mother. Samira took one large side step away from Max, the three of them in a triangle now. She kept her head down, transforming into an icon, a statue—no longer alive. Rasheed didn’t need to so much as glance at her to sap her life. His eyes never averted from Max’s face. He looked sick, yellowish, sweaty, and determined. He lugged himself closer. Samira spoke another soft good-bye as she walked out of the room.

“Wait,” Max said, watching his mother’s back as Rasheed reached him.

And then Nadine appeared in the doorway. Out of context, these people were appallingly dreamlike. Nadine got out of his mother’s way to let her pass.

Rasheed was hugging him. His heart beat up against Max’s chest, banging on a wall. Behind Nadine, and into the living room, Max’s mother got a little bit smaller. Jiddo was still on the couch, scowling at his wristwatch. Téta stood behind him,
washing her hands in the air while her daughter crossed the wood floor to leave.

Max heard the locks unclick, the shrill of the hinges yawning open and then closing, but before it did, Jiddo blurted, “Samira!”

She must have turned around. There was complete silence.

Jiddo said, “Do not waste any more time with Ali. He is beneath you. Obey me and go to your room now.”

Then came the clap of the door.

Rasheed pushed down on the tops of Max’s shoulders and got so close it made for a fish-eye view of his great sad face. Max hadn’t gotten fifteen minutes with his mother before Rasheed scared her off all over again. He’d waited seventeen years for those fifteen minutes. Max imagined her riding the elevator to the ground floor. He pictured her stepping out onto the sidewalk, then walking toward the Métro. She was already on that plane. She’d landed in Beirut. She was in a cab toward the refugee camp. She was holding an orphan. Giving a class. Eating with people she cared about. She was in her own bed. And Max was standing here doing nothing, staring into this sick man’s face.

Hanging off him, and out of breath, Rasheed said, “You should not leave home this way.”

Max wanted to throw him. He had an overwhelming urge to throw him.

“Max,” Nadine said, “be fair.”

The ludicrousness of the situation tightened its grip on him. While taking Rasheed’s hands off him, he asked Nadine, “What did you two talk about on the plane?”

“What?”

“You’ve lived across the street from each other for years, and suddenly you’re traveling to Paris together. That’s funny to me. I’d just love to know what you all chatted about.” His heartbeat throbbed up into his cheeks. “You two have become a little
team, huh? Rasheed, good for you for tolerating ‘those people,’” he said, pointing at Nadine. “And Nadine, thanks for telling him where I was. It was the one thing I asked you not to do. It may even be the one thing I’ve ever asked you not to do.”

“We came together for you, Max,” Rasheed said in an unbearably suppliant way, bending to the side a little as though he had a stomach cramp. “You killed us by disappearing like that.”

“Us?” Max said. His anger swelled into a power he would soon have to release. “Let me guess,” he said to Rasheed, “you two have fallen in love and now you’re getting married. Oh, no, I’m being silly. You don’t like women in that way, Rasheed. You’re more of a man’s man, aren’t you?”

Rasheed looked away from Max.

“Max,” Nadine said.

“Hakeem,” said Max. “Funniest thing. My name, as it turns out, is Hakeem.”

Rasheed put his hands back on Max’s shoulders. “I need to explain many things.”

“Get your hands off me.”

Rasheed clenched his teeth and twisted up his face as he took one hand off Max’s shoulder to clutch at his chest like he was having heart pains. “Max,” he said, “calm it down. Please, calm it down and listen.”

“Calm it down? No.”

Rasheed stared at the ground like he was about to vomit. Nadine came to Rasheed’s side and put her hand on his back, saying, “He’s not well, Max.”

“I can see that, Doctor, thank you.”

Rasheed defended her with a grumble. “You do not need to speak to her like this, Max.”

What the fuck was this allegiance between them? He grabbed the top of his head and felt his mind slipping.

“Calm it down,” Rasheed whispered to the floor. “Please, calm it down.” Nadine told Rasheed he needed to be sitting.

Max said, “It’d kill me if I calmed it down any more than I have. You are a liar.”

Nadine said, “Stop it. Do not do this right now.”

When he looked down at Rasheed, it maddened him. All he saw was a pitiful sagging man. A man who appeared to be saying,
She is gone for good, and you are my son again. You are my son, and you will come home with me and live like me and become me.
Max’s tears narrowed Rasheed’s body, turning him into a pin-man. He said, “You’re weak. You disgust me, do you know that?”

“Hakeem,” Téta said.

And at the same time Nadine shouted, “Max!”

“I have grown out of you, do you understand? I don’t want to know you.” Then he whispered, so as not to let the lump in his throat win his voice, “I hate you so much.”

Rasheed straightened his back. Panic scribbled his lips as he reached out to put his hands on Max’s shoulders again. Max shoved him as hard as he could. Rasheed caught his fall ten feet away. He took yet a few more steps back until he bumped into a small table. A phone on top of it plunged to the ground and made a lasting ding sound followed by the dial tone. He slowly sat down on the carpet and leaned against the leg of the table.

“What are you doing?” Max said.

Rasheed slumped to his side. Invisible hands throttled him, and his head trembled. His mouth tipped open into a muted lion’s roar. It looked like theater, like bad acting. But he wasn’t acting. His face purpled. The tendons in his neck became pronounced tree roots. A blood vessel popped in one eye and bled across the white.

“Dad.” Max’s tears cleared, his eyes becoming brand new, and Rasheed was human-size again. Nadine dropped down and
put her hand under his head as she shouted for Téta to call an ambulance. As if high voltages ran through him, Rasheed lay both stiff and vibrating at once.

“Dad, what are you doing? Stop it. What are you doing? Get up.”

The fright on Rasheed’s face—that absolute shivering fear—was the sole thing Max hated so much now.

Nadine put her ear up to Rasheed’s chest. He stopped moving shortly after that.

“Dad, get up. Stop it, Dad. Get up.”

In the hospital, at around ten that evening, a doctor came out to tell Nadine what was going on. She translated for Max, explaining that Rasheed had suffered some kind of attack that led to a devastating stroke.

“A heart attack?” Max said. He had felt he was dreaming when he shoved Rasheed across the room and watched him sit down. The dream had since crumbled only to reveal another, even more impossible reality.

Nadine said, “It mimics a heart attack. It’s called transient apical ballooning syndrome.” She tried to embrace him, but he put his hand up to stop her.

“No,” he said. “No, no. This is wrong. This is a mistake.”

A clot had formed in the left ventricle, the main pumping chamber, where the clot embolized to the brain, causing the major stroke.

They said to expect significant change in Rasheed’s behavior when he woke up. He might not remember people. There’d been brain damage, but they didn’t know how limited his motor skills would be quite yet. He’d probably need intense physical and occupational therapy. Other than that, there were only blood thinners to take, to prevent another clot, and lots of vitamins.

Rasheed was not connected to any machines. The doctors had even removed the IV drip. It created swelling in his brain because his water retention was too high.

When Rasheed came to, muscle seemed to be clinging to his right cheekbone with a last bit of strength, moments away from dripping off his face. His eye on that same side was slanted, the heaviness of his brow too much to support. Half of his mouth dragged to a frown, like a dead fish being held up in the middle. They warned Max that Rasheed might have lost a fair amount of lucidity.

“Hi, Dad, it’s me.” Max sat at his side. Everyone else left the room.

Rasheed’s voice crackled. “Who else would you be?”

Max scanned his face a long time, still unsure if Rasheed recognized him. He saw his nose hair poking out like little witch brooms. His nails were curled and yellowish. “Do you remember my name?”