Rabih Alameddine - I, The Divine

Oh, sorry, she tells him.

She opens a can of turkey and giblets, pours it into his bowl, puts it on the mat. His head goes into the bowl. It will not reemerge until the dish is wiped clean. She changes the water, cleans the litter box.

I do all this for you, but are you grateful? Fuck, no.

She pets him, but he doesn’t stop eating. She decides she needs a cup of coffee, decaf, doesn’t want caffeine, which might bring out her anxiety. Turns on Mr. Coffee and waits.

It’s almost six, four in the afternoon in Beirut. She can call her son. She’ll worry him if she calls. She’ll send him an email telling him she’ll call and then call. She goes into the room to get her laptop. Comes back into the kitchen, sits at the breakfast table, and turns on the machine. Mr. Coffee announces he’s ready. She pours herself a cup. Pascal, just finished eating, jumps on the counter to be petted.

No, no, no, she says. I told you not on the counter. Get off. Get off. How come you don’t listen to me? I should trade you in for a dog.

She takes her cup back to the table and writes.

Dear Kamal,

It’s early in the morning here and it’s the Fourth of July. I wanted to call, but I thought you might worry that something is wrong if I called now. So I am writing to tell you I am about to call. And I hope you get this before I call. Well, maybe I will wait a little before calling. How are you doing? Look forward to your coming here. Is Saniya doi

Pascal walks across the keyboard.

No, no. Get off. Why are you being a bad boy today?

He doesn’t budge. She lifts him onto her lap and begins to pet him. She sips her coffee.

You’re such a spoiled boy, you know that.

She looks at the television. More commercials. She gets up, still carrying her cat.

Let’s go into the room. Dina will call soon.

She walks down the corridor and, as she passes the bathroom, drops Pascal.

My bath, she exclaims.

She walks in and tests the water. It’s barely tepid. She shakes her hand dry and walks into the bedroom. Gets under the covers. Pascal follows, jumping on her stomach. She should leave town, rent a room in Sonoma or Napa, some out-of-the-way place. She doesn’t want to hear any explosions. She wants this day over with already.

This city is cold, slushy, and gray. It is only November, but the people have already journeyed inward. The never-quite-familiar labyrinths of city streets overflow with people going somewhere else, a sea of moving humanity. The trees are bare, forcibly divested of honor. Autumn carpets the ground in colors of decay. Ominous clouds dress the solemn pedestrians in gray-colored spectacles. With lonely eyes, she notes the subtle images of death and destruction. Here, she may be the only one with eyes to see.

In Beirut, death’s unremitting light shines bright for all to see, brighter than the Mediterranean sun, brighter than the night’s Russian missiles, brighter than a baby’s smile. An interminable war rages. The city is warm, fall still hesitating at the gates. The brutal winter winds are still dormant, but drafts of deadly violence permeate the air. The city braces for the upcoming winter without its heart and blood, no electricity, no water. She wonders how her child will endure.

She feels alone, experiences the solitude of a strange city where no one looks you straight in the eye. She does not feel part of this cool world, free for the first time. But at what price? How can she tell the difference between freedom and unburdening? Is freedom anything more than ignoring responsibilities, than denying duty? She walks the morose streets, circular peregrinations that leave her soul troubled. Lost afternoons. Yet she cannot go back there. She does not feel part of that world either. She never did. The family she abandoned is there. Her husband. Her child. She will put it behind her. There will always be there.

In New York, she can disappear. What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity? Beirut offered no refuge from unwavering gazes, no respite from pernicious tongues. But her heart remains there. To survive here, she must hack off a part of herself, chop, chop, chop.

In America, a colorful national newspaper is born in time to report President Reagan’s declaration of the war on drugs, while the war in Lebanon is shown in prettily colored pie charts. Snipers shoot innocents with cyanide-laced bullets, while here they lace Tylenol capsules with cyanide. She walks to class confused, tugged on by both worlds.

Can there be any here? No. She understands there. Whenever she is in Beirut, home is New York. Whenever she is in New York, home is Beirut. Home is never where she is, but where she is not.

These [Asian] paintings I could get into and they made me wonder who I was. By contrast, Western painters tried to tell me who they were.

— JOHN MCLAUGHLIN

DAVID AND I

I can almost see David, calm and inscrutable, disconnected, getting into his car, a gray older-model Nissan, and driving away. He arrives at his home somewhere in the city, some place I do not know, is greeted by someone I do not know, a woman most probably. His car may be modest, but not his home. It is where he entertains. The house has beautiful views of the Bay and the Bridge, floor-to-ceiling windows through which he and his woman can watch the sailboats.

I can almost see David at the Museum of Modern Art looking at the newly acquired Mondrian, thinking the master must have copied McLaughlin, the California painter whose work I taught him to recognize.

“Look,” he will say to the woman. “This painting is by someone trying to imitate John McLaughlin. Why, look here. He left the masking tape on the painting.”

“Who’s this McLaughlin guy?” she will most probably ask, unconcerned with the answer, but, having been indoctrinated with inane politeness since her youth, she feels obliged to ask.

“A California painter who was the obsession of a woman I went out with once.”

David left me before I could teach him Mondrian.

I can almost see David having a picnic in his backyard when his sisters come to visit. He may have a barbecue going. The woman entertains the sisters with stories of how she and David met, how she knew they were just perfect for each other. A laugh here, a giggle there.

The brother-in-law whispers in David’s ear, “She’s quite a catch.”

“She sure is.”

“Are you going to reel her in?”

“I’m seriously thinking about it.” David smiles with his brother-in-law, two conspirators in the game of life.

I can almost see David everywhere I go. He has been an indecent obsession. I was always told time is the great healer, obliterates memory, sublimates passion. Not true. I was never a plaything of time. David left me over two years ago and I have not seen him since, yet I still feel for him as if it were yesterday. There are certain things that transcend time. Nothing seems to have changed with regard to my feelings for him. I am stuck in quicksand.

DAVID AND MCLAUGHLIN

I met David at a low point in my life and he gave me direction, became both my compass and my anchor. I was flailing and he gave me focus. For the first few times we were together, we did nothing but spend time in bed, exploring each other, literally and figuratively. I did not see him enough, since he was constantly busy, which meant that the minute he showed up at my doorstep, I dragged him into bed. I did not realize at first that he felt most comfortable in my bed, when we were alone, no one to see us together. It was in my bed, with me naked, irrespective of whether he was nude or not, that he felt the least threatened.