The Abstinence Teacher (22 page)

Ruth was about to ask the boy’s name when a violent bout of wheezing made the woman bend forward at the waist. She had just straightened up and taken a couple of deep ragged breaths when a nurse poked her head into the waiting area.

“Mrs. Ramsey? We’re ready for you.”

Ruth stood up, smiling regretfully at her companion.

“It was good talking to you.”

The woman squeezed out an uncomfortable smile as she massaged her collarbone.

“Tomorrow’s going to be sunny,” she said. “Much nicer than today.”

THE NURSE
led Ruth into an examination room, told her the doctor would be right with her, then promptly departed. After a moment’s
hesitation—there was a chair by the computer, but it seemed presumptuous to sit in it—Ruth hoisted herself up on the exam table, wondering if Dr. Kamal had somehow misunderstood the purpose of her visit.

Her first impulse was to be amused by this possibility, but it got less and less funny the longer she waited in that cramped, antiseptic space, with nothing to look at but a couple of badly illustrated pamphlets on managing diabetes and hypertension. Her own doctor at least kept a stack of ancient magazines lying around in case of emergency.

The worst part of it was that Ruth hadn’t even wanted to talk to Dr. Kamal on the phone, let alone visit him here. He was clearly a very busy man—Ruth had somehow managed never to meet or even lay eyes on him, despite the fact that their daughters had been friends since first grade—and she would have been much happier just to work everything out with his wife.

All she’d been doing on Sunday afternoon was calling the parents of Maggie’s teammates to discuss what had happened at the game and feel them out about the possibility of cosigning the letter of complaint she planned on drafting to Bill Derzarian, the Director of the Stonewood Heights Youth Soccer Association. Like the Zabels and the Friedmans, the Kamals seemed like natural allies in this particular fight.

As she expected, Nafisa Kamal answered the phone. Ruth didn’t consider her a friend, exactly, but they were on good terms. They’d shared dozens of perfectly pleasant front-door chats while picking up or dropping off their daughters at each other’s houses over the years, as well as the occasional cup of tea, and Ruth had always found her to be excellent company—warm and friendly, with a sweet accent and a quick laugh. But something happened when Ruth mentioned the prayer at the soccer game.

“I’m sorry.” Nafisa’s voice turned suddenly formal, a bit chilly. “On this matter, you must talk to my husband.”

Ruth was startled. Nafisa was a sophisticated, highly educated
woman—she’d come to America as a graduate student in Biology—who drove a Mercedes and always dressed like she’d just returned from a shopping spree in Paris. She drank wine, wore lots of makeup, and told funny stories at her husband’s expense. She’d never said anything to suggest that she was in the habit of deferring to him in any traditional way.

“Uh, okay,” said Ruth. “Is he there?”

“I’m afraid Hussein is working this weekend.”

“Can you give me his number?”

Nafisa hesitated. “I’ll let him know you called.”

Ruth went for a run late in the day, and when she returned, there was a message on her machine from “Heidi at the Medical Associates,” telling her that Dr. Kamal would be happy to see her at his office at 4:30 on Monday afternoon.

“MRS. RAMSEY.”
The doctor’s smile was cool and guarded as he stepped into the examination room at five minutes to five. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He was lanky and unexpectedly boyish, not at all what Ruth had expected from Maggie’s descriptions of Nadima’s strict father, the humorless taskmaster who drilled his children on their math and spelling homework at the dinner table and timed their piano practice with a stopwatch.

“It’s nice to finally meet you.” Ruth slid off the table to shake his just washed and imperfectly dried hand. “I’m sorry to bother you at work.”

“No need to apologize.” Dr. Kamal’s accent was less pronounced than his wife’s, but he spoke rapidly, running the phrase together as if it were a single word. “It was at my suggestion. Now tell me what I can do for you.”

Ruth hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. She felt herself at a subtle disadvantage, and had to make a conscious effort not to assume the
attitude of a supplicant, a patient, or a saleswoman who had only the most tenuous claim on the important man’s time.
I’m a friend of the family
, she reminded herself.
I’m doing him a favor
.

“I’m very fond of Nadima,” she told him. “She’s such a lovely girl. I’m sure you’re very proud of her.”

“We’re proud of both our daughters,” the doctor allowed.

“She’s such a good athlete, too. All the girls are. I hadn’t seen them play this season, but I was at the game on Saturday, and I was amazed at how good they’ve gotten.”

Dr. Kamal smiled uncomfortably. “So I’m told. Unfortunately, I have an unbreakable tennis date on Saturday mornings.” The doctor turned sideways—he had remarkably slender hips for a grown man—and performed a graceful forehand smash with an imaginary racquet in support of this assertion. “But I’m told that next year the girls will play in the afternoon, so I’ll finally get a chance to see if the hype is justified.”

“It’s no hype,” Ruth assured him. “I really envy them. When I was growing up, girls didn’t play sports the way they do now.”

Dr. Kamal pondered Ruth for a moment. He had the same bruised eyes and delicate features as Nadima, the same expression of gentle, slightly wary intelligence.

“Where I grew up, girls couldn’t wear short pants.”

Ruth nodded, doing her best to maintain a politely neutral expression. It wasn’t easy; very few things pissed her off more than the treatment of women in the Muslim world, the drapes and the veils, the pathological fear of their sexuality, the way they were considered property by their fathers, brothers, and husbands, who in certain places would prefer that they die rather than be examined and treated by a male doctor.

“Did you come here for college?” she asked.

“Twenty years ago,” he said. “The University of Pennsylvania. The coed bathrooms came as quite a shock. I still haven’t fully recovered.”

Ruth laughed, though she had a feeling the doctor wasn’t really
joking. An awkward silence followed, and she knew that the time had come to make her plea. Before she could formulate an opening statement, though, Dr. Kamal fixed her with a reproachful look.

“I must tell you, Mrs. Ramsey, that you upset my wife a great deal with your phone call yesterday.”

“Upset her? What do you mean?”

“You have to understand. We come from a place where religion is taken very seriously. We made a choice to get away from that.”

“That’s why I thought you’d want to know what happened at the game,” Ruth explained. “Fanatics are fanatics. It doesn’t matter what religion they follow.”

Dr. Kamal shook his head. “If what I’m told is correct, all this man did was say a brief prayer. I don’t think it warrants a big hullabaloo.”

“He’s a soccer coach. He has no right to force the girls to say a Christian prayer.”

“Nadima assures me she wasn’t forced to say anything against her will.”

“Maybe not directly,” Ruth conceded. “But Coach Tim’s an adult they respect, and he’s taking advantage of his position to proselytize these impressionable kids. I don’t think it’s right.”

“I don’t like it, either,” Dr. Kamal told her. “But it seems like an isolated episode that didn’t do any harm.”

“The one thing it’s not,” Ruth assured him, “is isolated. The Christian Right is taking over this entire country. Pretty soon our kids are going to be praying in school and reading the book of Genesis in Biology class.”

Dr. Kamal didn’t argue with her. Instead, he turned and walked to the sink, where he washed his hands with a thoroughness that struck Ruth as excessive, and possibly even a bit ostentatious.

“Do you know what my name is?” he inquired, pulling a paper towel from the dispenser. “My first name?”

“It’s Hussein, isn’t it?”

The doctor smiled sadly. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Ramsey, I think my family and I will sit this one out.”

THE SIGHT
of the chicken breasts in the refrigerator made Ruth unexpectedly angry. Sometimes it seemed like that was all they ever ate anymore. Maggie hated fish and every vegetable except lettuce and frozen peas, Eliza objected to red meat on ethical grounds (Ruth wasn’t sure why her moral qualms didn’t extend to poultry, and she didn’t plan on asking), and both girls objected bitterly if their mother tried to make a main course out of soup or chili. So aside from the occasional lasagna or take-out pizza, that pretty much left chicken. And since the girls didn’t like dark meat or any inconvenient reminders that their dinner had once been a living thing, “chicken” actually meant skinless, boneless breasts, which Ruth served with rice or potatoes or pasta on the side, followed by a green salad with Paul Newman dressing. Even Paul Newman was starting to get on her nerves, the smug way he grinned at her from the bottle, as if he knew all too well that he was the only man at the dinner table.

Tonight was lemon-pepper marinade, a recipe she got from a book called
500 More Ways to Cook Chicken
, which might more accurately have been entitled
It Doesn’t Matter How You Dress It Up, It’s Still the Same Crap as Last Night
, or
Eat Chicken Till You Die
. Because there were nights when that was what it felt like, like you were just some stupid animal, put on earth to eat a few hundred—a few thousand?—animals who were even stupider than you were, then disappear without a trace.

If nothing else, she did enjoy pounding the chicken with a wooden mallet, taking some of her frustration with Dr. Kamal out on the innocent cutlets. And it wasn’t just the doctor who’d let her down. None of the other parents whose support she’d been banking on had stepped up and offered to sign her letter of protest, not even Hannah Friedman’s father, Matt, an environmental lawyer who had a Darwin Fish
and a “Don’t Blame Me—I Voted for Kerry” sticker on his Audi. By way of an excuse, he told Ruth that he didn’t want to make any trouble for Tim Mason, whom he described, to her surprise, as a recovering addict who’d done an amazing job getting his life back together in the past couple of years.

“I’m telling you, Ruth. You gotta give credit where credit’s due. These Christians turn a lot of lives around. From what I hear, Tim was a complete wreck before he found Jesus. His ex-wife wouldn’t even allow their daughter to get in the car with him.”

“How do you know all this?”

“A partner in my firm married the ex-wife. He told me the whole saga.”

“That’s great,” Ruth said. “I’m glad he’s cleaned up his act. But that doesn’t give him the right to do what he did.”

Matt sighed. “I know. And I’m gonna send him an e-mail about the praying business. But this whole official letter of complaint thing sounds pretty harsh. There’s only a couple of weeks left in the season. It might not be such a bad idea to just let it slide.”

“I’m not gonna let it slide, Matt. I’ve let too much slide already.”

“Come on, Ruth. They say ‘under God’ every day in the Pledge of Allegiance, and I don’t hear you screaming about that.”

“Maybe I should start,” she shot back. “Maybe you should, too.”

“Maybe,” Matt conceded. “But I still think you should give the guy a break.”

At least Matt Friedman had a decent humanitarian reason for turning Ruth down; Mel Zabel was just being a self-serving coward. Despite the fact that Arlene was a hundred percent on Ruth’s side, Mel had convinced his wife to keep their name off the letter out of fear that it would jeopardize their daughter’s position on the top team.

“He doesn’t want us to be involved,” Arlene reported sheepishly. “He says the bigwigs in the Soccer Association have long memories.

If we rock the boat this year, we shouldn’t be surprised if Louisa’s back on the B team next year.”

“Louisa’s too good,” Ruth said. “They wouldn’t drop her to the B team.”

“I know,” Arlene said, “but everything’s so competitive these days. I’m sure there are a lot of girls on the B team just as good as she is.”

Ruth tried to argue that there were more important things than a spot on the A team, and Arlene agreed in principle.

“I’m with you in spirit. But I promised Mel I wouldn’t sign the letter.”

“I guess I’m on my own then.”

“I’m sorry, Ruth. I wish I could help.”

Fine
, Ruth thought, as her mallet thudded into the rubbery meat, which she’d wrapped in plastic to prevent any salmonella-laden flecks from splattering around her kitchen.
If that’s how it’s gonna be, then so be it
.

It didn’t help that Maggie was out in the yard in her Stars jersey, kicking the ball against the side of the garage. Ruth could see her out the window, a skinny girl standing out in the rain, her legs bare, her hair straggling down across her angry, determined face as she blasted one kick after another off the clapboards, trapping the ball on the rebound, then booting it again, alternating legs the way they’d taught her at All-Star Soccer Camp last summer. She usually kicked into a net, but today it seemed like she wanted to make as much noise as possible, to remind her mother of how much she loved the game and how hard she worked at it.

You’re gonna hate me
, Ruth thought, listening to the ball thunk against the wall a split second after her mallet thudded into the chicken, the two sounds creating a strangely conversational rhythm, as if she and Maggie were talking to each other through the glass.

Thunk!

Thud!

Thunk!

Thud!

Thunk!

She must have gotten a little carried away, because there was a strange expression on Eliza’s face as she entered the kitchen, carrying the paperback Bible that Ruth hadn’t even known she owned until yesterday. She must have kept it hidden in a drawer or under a mattress, the way Ruth and Mandy had hidden books like
The Godfather
and
The Happy Hooker
.