Kashua Sayed - Second Person Singular

When he called his wife he hoped to hear the ring of her phone from just outside, but no one answered. She must be driving, he thought, or maybe she was really close to home. She never answered when she was nearby. Instead, she’d park and come into the house and say, “I was right outside when you called.” He looked out through the living room window. First toward the garage and then down the block, but saw no approaching lights. He decided to call again after he smoked a cigarette, but he called after two drags and got her answering machine again. This time he didn’t even put the phone down, just immediately redialed. Why wouldn’t she answer the phone, the whore. He exhaled in bursts and kept the telephone in his hand. He punched her number in again and again and kept getting her voicemail. The lawyer slammed his hand down on the table. He inhaled sharply on his cigarette and his chest began to constrict. Again he saw his wife frolicking in bed like one of those sluts in the movies, casting a sideways glance at her phone and ignoring his calls without any remorse. Or maybe she was sitting in the car he had bought her, and her lover, who now seemed to be the most manly of men, with wide shoulders and a chiseled face, was slipping his tongue into her willing mouth, and she playfully bit his lips and then licked her own. Her lover’s lips moved down to her neck and she stretched up toward him, arching her back and moaning as his lips reached her chest. He could see this lover sliding his hands under her dress. When the hell did she start wearing dresses anyway?

The lawyer knew he had to do something. He thought he might take the car and go out and look for her and beat the two of them to death. He was capable of that, he knew he was. No man, no matter how strong, could stop him now. But the lawyer couldn’t leave the kids alone.

He raced up the stairs, his heart pounding, hands balled up into a fists, fingernails digging into the skin of his palms. He knew she was late, knew there was no way she had stayed at her friend’s this long. Where could she have gone? And why wasn’t she answering the phone? He knew the answer. The lawyer went into the bedroom and opened her side of the closet. She had taken the better side, the one with more shelves and bigger drawers, the one with more space, and still she always complained that she didn’t have enough room for all her things. He shoved both hands into the closet and starting clearing the shelves, flinging her clothes to the floor. Pants, shirts, nightgowns, gym clothes, underwear, all of it landing in a pile on the floor. He pulled dresses and jackets off their hangers, yanked open drawers and shook them free of their contents but making sure to do it in silence so as not to wake up the baby in the crib. He stomped down to the kitchen to find scissors, there had to be scissors! The lawyer whipped open the kitchen drawers, which opened with a smooth European efficiency, and rifled through the implements, settling on the kitchen knife.

“What are you doing?” he heard her ask, and spun around.

“Where were you?”

“What’s wrong? What are you doing?”

The lawyer wanted to pummel her and yell at the top of his lungs, but he would not raise his voice, not if it meant the neighbors would know what was happening inside his house. So he shrieked softly, tightening every muscle in his body, “Where were you? Where?”

“What do you mean where was I? I was at Diana’s. What’s wrong? Is something wrong? You’re scaring me. Are the kids okay?”

“You’re a liar.”

“What? Why are you talking to me this way?” She’d never seen him act like this before. “What did I do?”

“You’re a liar. Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

“What? When did you call?” she said, bending down toward the bag she had already tossed on the floor. She pulled out the phone. “You called? I didn’t hear a thing. Look, my battery’s dead,” she said, showing him the phone.

“Stop lying and tell me where you were.”

“What do you want from me?” she said, bursting into tears. “I told you I was at Diana’s.” She covered her face with her hands and ran to the bedroom. The lawyer wasn’t buying her act. He ran after her. The pile of clothes on the floor added a decibel to her crying and the lawyer saw true fear in her face, the fear of a cornered animal.

“What is this? What happened?” she started backing away toward the wall, looking for shelter, fearing her husband as if he were some unknown creature.

“Why are you pretending to be scared? Just tell me where you were,” he said, and she just sobbed. She curled into herself and raised her hands to shield her face from an expected blow, even though the lawyer had never hit her. He looked over at the crib to make sure that his son was sleeping through this. Not being able to punch her in the face, to crack the cartilage of her nose, made him feel weak and lowly. Someone like her could interpret his behavior as helplessness.

“Who were you with? I want you to tell me who you were with.”

“What do you want from me?” And then more sobs.

“I know that you weren’t at your friend’s house,” the lawyer said, shifting tactics. For some reason he felt at ease and in charge. “So tell me where you were.”

She sobbed. “I swear I was at her house. Ask her.”

“I did,” the lawyer said coolly. “I called her and she said you left over an hour ago.” The lawyer turned to her, full of confidence. He hoped to see true bewilderment in her face, for her to accuse him, or Diana, of lying and for her to insist that he call her back this instant. But his wife did not react in that manner and a listless, melancholy feeling began to spread through him, replacing the rage of earlier, when she said, “I went out with Faten for coffee at Iskandinia. She wanted to discuss something about work. So what? So what?”

The lawyer saw her fear morph into defensiveness and he knew that he had lost. He walked slowly down to the study and lit a cigarette, but he couldn’t focus. He should have restrained himself, and now he hated himself for his impulsiveness. He had lost this battle, perhaps the war, but that wasn’t what was on his mind just then. Actually nothing was on his mind, because what did it matter if he got half their property or custody over the kids. He smoked leisurely and felt his heart rate relax. He did not respond when she knocked on the study door. She opened it and stood there with eyes swollen from crying. There was no trace of the earlier fear. He looked her way and then turned to watch the cigarette smoke curl out of the open window.

“Can you please tell me what all of that was about?” she asked. He kept his head down so that she wouldn’t see the failure on his face. “I’m sorry,” the lawyer said softly, then reached into his briefcase and handed her the note. He did not look at her and he did not expect an adequate response.

“What is this?” she asked after reading the note. “What is this thing?”

“I thought that was your handwriting.”

“Mine? No,” she said, shoving the note away, the way children do, thinking that once you’ve hidden the evidence it ceases to exist.

For the first few weeks after quitting the outpatient clinic, I hardly ever got out of bed before noon. After the night shift with Yonatan I’d take the bus to Musrara and get hummus with fava beans at Akramawi’s hole in the wall and then take a share-taxi back to the apartment in Beit Hanina and crawl straight into bed. Majdi and Wassim were already at work so the place was empty and quiet. Sometimes I’d go straight to sleep and sometimes I’d read one of the books I’d borrowed from Yonatan’s library until my eyes closed. I’d wake up at some point, drink some water, go to the bathroom, and then crawl back into bed.