Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

“Where are we going to, sir?” Jende asked on the last Thursday of August, holding the car door open in front of the Chelsea Hotel. Clark’s appointment that day had lasted exactly an hour, but he had returned to the car still seeming weary, his face tightly bound by perpetual exhaustion. It was as if his appointment had been only half-effective.

“Hudson River Park,” Clark said.

“Hudson River Park, sir?” Jende asked, surprised the answer wasn’t the office.

“Yes.”

“Anywhere in the park, sir?”

“Go close to Eleventh and Tenth. Or somewhere near the piers.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jende dropped Clark off at the end of Christopher Street and watched as he crossed the West Side Highway to the pier, his already slender shoulders sagging under the weight of the heat and the sun.

“Where are you?” he called to ask Jende ten minutes later.

“Around the same area, sir,” Jende replied. “I backed up into a good spot that opened up behind me.”

“Listen, why don’t you come join me? There’s no need for you to sit in the car.”

“At the pier, sir?”

“Yes, I’m sitting all the way at the front. Come and meet me here.”

Jende locked up the car and dashed across the highway toward the pier, where Clark was sitting on a bench, his jacket off, his face turned toward the sky. When Jende got to the bench, he realized Clark’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be finding respite in the bountiful breeze blowing toward them; for the first time in months, he looked relaxed as the wind tousled his hair and wiped his brow. Jende looked up at the empty sky, which bore no resemblance to the thick air below. In a couple of days, August would be over, and yet the humidity was still dense, though it felt good to him, the sultriness mingled with the wind blowing over the Atlantic-bound river.

On the bench, Clark breathed in. And out. And in, and out. Again, and again. For five minutes. Jende stood next to him and waited, careful not to move and disturb him.

“You’re here,” Clark said when he finally opened his eyes. “Have a seat.”

Jende sat down beside him, took off his jacket, too.

“Beautiful, huh?” Clark said as they watched the Hudson, nowhere as long, but every inch as purposeful and assured, as the Nile and the Niger and the Limpopo and the Zambezi.

Jende nodded, though confused as to why he was there, sitting on a bench at a pier, gazing at a river with his boss. “It is very nice, sir.”

“Thought you might enjoy it, instead of just waiting on the street.”

“Thank you, sir, I am enjoying the fresh breeze. I did not even know there was a place like this in New York.”

“It’s a great park. If I could, I’d come here more often to watch the sunset.”

“You watch sunsets, sir?”

“Nothing relaxes me more.”

Jende nodded and said nothing, though he thought about how funny it was that both Clark and Vince loved sunsets — the only people he’d ever met who went out of their way to sit by a body of water and stare at the horizon. He wondered if Vince knew this about his father, and what difference it would make if he didn’t know and then discovered it by chance; how differently Vince would feel about his father if he realized that they shared a great love for something only a sliver of humans make a deliberate effort to see.

For a few minutes the men sat in silence, watching the river flowing leisurely, in no rush for its meeting with the ocean.

“I’m sure you know by now that Vince will be moving to India in two weeks,” Clark said.

“No, sir, I did not know. India?”

Clark nodded. “No more law school for him. He wants to wander the earth.”

“He is a good boy, sir. He will come back safely to America when he is ready.”

“Or he may not, for a long time. That’s fine. I’m not the first father to have a son who defied him and decided he wanted to live his life in an unorthodox manner.”

“I hope you are not too angry with him, sir.”

“Actually, Cindy thinks I’m not angry enough. And that makes her angry, like somehow I’m giving up on him because I don’t love him enough. But the thing is, I almost admire him.”

“He is not afraid.”

“No, and there’s something to be said for that. At his age, all I wanted was the life that I have right now. This exact life, this was what I wanted.”

“It is a good life, sir. A very good life.”

“Sometimes. But I can understand why Vince doesn’t want it. Because these days I don’t want it, either. All this shit going on at Lehman, all this stuff we would never have done twenty years ago because we stood for something more, and now really dirty shit is becoming the norm. All over the Street. But try to show good sense, talk of consequences, have a far-long-term outlook, and they look at you as if you’ve lost your marbles.”

Jende nodded.

“And I know Vince has got a point, but the problem is not some system. It is us. Each of us. We’ve got to fix ourselves before we can fix a whole damn country. That’s not happening on the Street. It’s not happening in Washington. It’s not happening anywhere! It’s not like what I’m saying is new, but it’s only getting worse, and one man or two men or three men cannot fix it.”

“No, sir.”

“But everything I have, I worked hard for, and I’m proud of, and I’ll fight to the end to preserve it. Because when this life’s good, it’s very good, and the price I pay, that’s just part of it.”

“Very true, sir,” Jende said, nodding. “When you become a husband and father, you pay a lot of prices.”

“It’s more than your duty as a husband and father. It’s your duty to your parents, too. Your siblings. When I went to Stanford I was going to study physics, become a professor like my dad. Then I saw what was possible on a professor’s salary and what was possible on an investment banker’s salary and I chose this path. I’m not going to sit here and be one of those self-righteous assholes, because my original reason for choosing this career was never noble. I can’t say I didn’t fantasize about the sports car and private jets. But it’s different now. Now it means the world to me how well I’m taking care of my family. No matter how bad it gets at work I know that at the end of the day I can send my parents on vacations to see the world, pay for every medical bill that comes up, make sure my sister doesn’t suffer because her husband’s dead, make sure my wife and sons have far more than what they need. That’s what Vince doesn’t understand. That you don’t only do what makes you happy. You think about your parents, too.”

“Vince doesn’t see this side of you, sir. He sees a father who works at a bank and makes money but I tell him, I say, your parents have other sides you do not see because you are their child. It is only now that I am old that I look at some things that my father did and I understand.”

“I told him. I said, I’m not asking you to stay in law school and become a lawyer so you can be like me. I’m asking you because I know what it takes to be successful in this country. You’ve got to separate yourself from the pack with a good education, a good-paying career. I read about folks who thought it was all fun and games when they were younger and look at them now, barely getting by, because unless you make a certain kind of money in this country, life can be brutal. And I don’t ever want that for him, you know? I don’t ever want that for my son.”

Jende nodded, looking afar.

For several minutes the men were silent, just as the sun was one third of the way below the low-rises of New Jersey. They watched as it went down ever so slowly, bidding them adieu, bidding the city adieu, until it rose again from behind the East River to bring a new day with its promises and heartbreaks.