Lydia Kiesling - The Golden State

“Where’s Meltem?”

“She’s inside with a nice auntie I met here. Sleeping.”

“What auntie?”

“Just an old lady we met in the coffee shop. She’s a stranger here too. She’s my new friend, I guess.” “Great,” he says, and he sounds sour. “She’s been to Turkey,” I say brightly as he says, “Did you go to the doctor?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I think I’m just having a meltdown,” I say in English. I start crying. “I’m also sorry that every time we talk I start crying,” I say to him. “I don’t know why we thought this would be a good idea, to have you leave to take the course.” I realize how much of the time he’s been gone that I’ve been trying to assure him that everything is going really extremely well. I think I can feel him starting to ruffle, preparing to launch into “So I could get a better job and earn more money” but he stops and just says “Biliyorum.” I know.

I have the feeling which never fails to destabilize me, a sudden reminder of the faith I’ve placed in the strength of invisible bonds, ties stretching across the ocean like the fiber-optic cables or whatever it is that allow us to Skype. Spending the summer in Turkey, abandoning my Ph.D. program, marrying Engin, these were not so much decisions as they were realities that quietly but ecstatically asserted themselves at the time. Every so often this thought comes and knocks me on my ass, that we’re just building this whole castle on such a flimsy and hastily constructed premise that we love each other and want to be together raise our child together grow old together and how easy—how wrong but how easy nonetheless—it would be to walk away from it all, with nothing changing except I could stop worrying about the progress of a lot of expensive pieces of paper through a vast administrative machine, although I’m sure it would come with its own tortuous administrative processing. But then again I have Honey and if Engin feels even a tenth of what I feel about Honey he’ll never live without her.

Badness washes around my ankles on the deck, rising swiftly. I’m just crying into one hand and holding the phone with the other hand and Engin is silent on the other end. I have the distinct impression that we have entered a definitive moment, when Engin or I can say the thing that will snip apart the whole nest of skeins that tether us to each other. Now in this moment it seems incredible that such an apparatus, a child, all this paperwork, could have been born of something so careless as two people deciding to spend the night at the bar and never again be parted. But at the time all obstacles seemed to melt away with no resistance.

I wait for the word that will highlight what a disaster it’s all been. But he just says “I love you,” in English, and I say “I love you too” and I know it will carry us forward another day. “Listen,” I say, when I stop shuddering. “This is a Humanitarian thing, they have a category for it in Citizenship and Immigration. Maybe the lawyer can push it through on those grounds.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Are you mad at me?” I say in Turkish.

“No, my love. I’m not mad at you.” I want to ask what about your mother what about Pelin what about Savaş what about Gökay what about Özgür and Sema and everyone else you know but decide to stay with the answer that matters, the one that feels good. We stay on the line just listening to each other breathe and I take out a cigarette and light it and he says “Öfff” which is a sound expression that conveys all the frustration of the world and I say “Fucking hell” in English and he says “Fucking hell” too.

“I’m sorry that I made you do this,” I say.

“What are you saying? I’m the idiot who gave the immigration guys my card and signed that fucking paper.” While we talk I think suddenly of a thing I saw in a BabyCenter comment, a random flash of true insight imparted by a stranger. It was about the “culture” of your family, that only you and your partner can make and which dictates the things that you do and enjoy and the way you raise your kid. I think the remark was delivered in the context of making your baby go the fuck to sleep or something like that. But I think of how it is when Engin and I are in the Buick together or sitting on the couch each doing our own thing or when we talk throughout a TV show about where we should buy our stone shack or how much of an idiot Tolga is or the nature of Hugo’s essential being or what new bizarre baby behavior Honey is exhibiting. When Rodney and Helen visited when Honey was born she told me “Just remember that these are the good ole days” which seemed kind of sinister but now I understand. I have always just liked to be around Engin so much and it occurs to me that I am denying myself and Honey that opportunity, that I am robbing us of the good ole days, that I am stymying further opportunities to build our singular familial culture, and I get pissed all over again.

I remember too that I have been feeling very sorry for myself and not that sorry for Engin which is unfair because he is the one who had the god-awful demeaning interaction with the two men resulting in his being turned away from the United States and put back onto a plane and not being able to see his infant daughter and then discovering that his compliance with their demands, his signing of the dreaded fucking form I-407 meant that he is on record as voluntarily surrendering his green card and he like me must look back at that encounter and want to literally murder everyone involved, as I do, poke them with a knife, except that he can actually picture it and see the scene in his dreams whereas I rely on stock footage of various bland consular rooms I have known and every beefy male movie villain to fill in as the Homeland Security guys and every day I ask myself why I didn’t warn him to be careful why I assumed good faith on the part of these people why I pictured all the kind friendly consular officers of my childhood helping me renew my passport or giving my mother her terra-cotta urn, and not the people Engin had to see, people who took him away from his child because they vibrate with some higher mandate about securing our fucking borders. I feel so much hate and I wish I had somewhere to put it, that there was some decisive action to take.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat. “I’m so sorry we did this to you.”

We sign off and I light another cigarette smoke it down to the filter staring across the road at the scrub beyond the split-rail fence, where some quail are making their coordinated swarm through the sagebrush, and then I wipe my face off and go back inside. I feel clean, somehow. Or neutral. It’s like the hangover and the anguish of the morning has wrung out sentiment from me, I am a dishrag that has been squeezed and placed over the rack to dry. Alice is there on the couch, petting the head of Honey, whose eyes are heavy but open, her rosy little lips pursed into a kiss, her hand reaching up toward Alice’s face.

“Well, this one’s awake,” says Alice. “Probably needs a snack.”

“Hi baby!” I say to Honey. “Did you have a nice nap on Alice’s lap?” and she kicks and strains to roll off Alice saying “Amee-amee-amee.” I kneel down to meet her and need to put my hand back to steady myself from mild spins. Alice stands up with effort, I can almost hear her back clicking, and then briskly straightens her skirt.

“Well, then. I guess I’ll go and get my nap.”

“Are we still on for dinner,” I say rather than ask, feeling bereft at the prospect of her absence.

“Oh, sure, I guess,” says Alice.

“I’ll pick you up at five at the Arrowhead,” I say. “We’ll go have the prime rib.”