Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

* * *

That night we went to Bishop’s Collar for a drink. I remembered to take the multicolored pen to give back to the rude bartender. Before turning away I informed him that the woman he had mistaken for my mother was actually my wife. The bartender was so surprised by my statement that he straightened up and extended his hand. “I never caught your name.”

“They call me M.”

“Just M.?”

“Yeah.”

“What does it stand for?”

“Whatever you want,” I said. “M. is for man. M. is for menace. M. could be my name. M. is for madness. M. starts the name of my wife.”

The bartender grumbled, crinkled his noise, and took to attending other patrons.

When I came back Marie-Anne wore a smile. She held my stool as I jumped on it, my feet dangling.

“You’re so good to me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You seem to think that when you walk a few feet away from me I can’t hear you anymore. But I’m like a bird. I see and hear everything you do.” She raised her chin in the bartender’s direction.

After two Long Island iced teas each, which Marie-Anne pointed out was reminiscent of our honeymoon, we teetered our way home. It was hard to remember, in our mind-altered state, exactly what path we took back, whether up Pennsylvania, or through the alley next to Figs restaurant. But I remembered clearly what happened when we got inside.

Marie-Anne kept hold of my arm and took me to the bathroom. She had me sit down on the edge of the tub and lifted up the toilet seat. With a nervous nod she walked toward the medicine cabinet and took out the bottles of vitamins that had, at last, ended up in their appropriate place. She unscrewed their tops and one by one started plunking the pills into the toilet. Every time I asked why she was throwing perfectly good vitamins away, she shushed me and returned to the project.

Once finished with the bottle she opened the cover of the toilet and pulled out two more bottles that she had hidden, dumping the contents away with each hand, a fistful at a time. With a deep breath she sat down on the toilet seat and turned my way.

“Those aren’t vitamins. They are steroid pills. I’ve been artificially spiking my cortisol levels.”

“I don’t understand.”

The condition Marie-Anne actually had was called Munchausen syndrome, something she had been carrying around since she was a child. It caused her to fake injuries and illnesses in order to garner sympathy. It wasn’t genetic, it was psychiatric. Often the victim of Munchausen became extremely adept at mimicking the most far-fetched of diseases. This was the case with Marie-Anne and the cortisol imbalance. She had engineered it. All of it. The hirsuitism; the painful periods; the weight gain.

“It started when I was five,” she sobbed. “I went to the bathroom and cut myself. I remember it was with my Minnie Mouse scissors. That was how I got my mom’s attention. When I was injured was the only time she would really talk to me kindly. You know how kids are. I just kept doing it. Anytime she was mad, anytime she was busy with her friends, anytime she made up new rules, I gave myself something. A cut. A fall. A twist of the ankle. I even let a boy slap me once so I could go home with a bloody lip. By college I figured out I had a problem. The counselors put me in therapy. My way of controlling it was by writing stories. Something therapeutic about making up other things besides illness. That’s when I met you. That’s why I turned to you — because you encouraged me to write. My mom wasn’t enough to make me stop from hurting myself. Only you were.”

I reached out for her. “But you relapsed. You relapsed hard. Why?”

“I relapsed when I found out I couldn’t have children. Three years ago. I went to the doctor and learned I was broken. Inexplicable infertility, they called it. I should have told you. I should have let you hate me. I should have let you leave me. Instead I manipulated you for love. For pity.”

She was a crying mess. I stood up and gathered her. The shower curtain got pulled into the embrace. We stayed silent for a long time. The drops of the water ran down the curtain and onto the floor by way of the bones of our feet.

My mind reeled at the vicious circularity of it all. The vitamins to conceal the cortisol. The Munchausen to conceal the infertility. One lie built on another, an orchestra of dissimulation. The world regarded me and saw a practitioner of subterfuge. In fact, it was my wife who was dormant, latent, mysterious. All my opportunities to abscond were gone. All the opportunities to create a new life were gone.

Marie-Anne was the one to whom I belonged and to whom I returned.

* * *

The party was to be held at Figs. The small restaurant tucked into Meredith Street on the other side of the art museum annex. We rented out an entire section. Marie-Anne wanted take over the whole establishment, but the hostess insisted on keeping a few tables open for walk-in customers.

The day of the party came quickly. Marie-Anne had charted the weather well in advance and picked an exquisite day. Not a cloud in the sky. Moderate temperatures and, because she had paid the security guards to serve as valets, there were no parking troubles. But at the last moment, heavy clouds moved in and a steady snow started accumulating.

Marie-Anne wore tan leggings with a beige dress and a sapphire rope necklace with a matching bracelet around her left wrist. I remembered the necklace. We had bought it a few years ago, but she had never worn it before because she’d been afraid it would get damaged or lost. Now she was more confident about our earning potential.

Saqib and Leila and The Ism were the first to arrive. Leila brought two other activist friends with whom she was launching a feminist think tank. They wore designer hats and red-soled boots.

Mahmoud was not far behind them. He wore a brown skullcap with a flag pin on the side. He came alone, gave me a big hug, and slipped my retention letter in my pocket. I patted it and smiled. The rest of the evening we made conspiratorial faces at each other, waiting for the best moment to surprise Marie-Anne with the news.

Marie-Anne’s teammates were next in. Mike Wu and P.P. Sharma needled each other about finally getting into Marie-Anne’s “private places,” and Amos Jones came with a redheaded girlfriend who seemed to know of Marie-Anne from the stories Amos had shared. Karsten King, the former marine, was next with his wife, Rebecca, an adjunct professor who traveled through Muslim countries to report on the mistreatment of women under Islamic law. She’d come down from Boston where she was teaching a university course called “Giving Voice to the Voiceless.” She joked that if Karsten taught a course it would be called “Giving Eyes to the Eyeless.” He replied that his course would be called “Giving Spine to the Spineless.” Marie-Anne said she didn’t care what it was called as long as it ended with, “Giving Bonuses to the Bonusless.”

I studied the room. The laughter tended to rise and fall in a collective manner, a democratic din, two cups of rice boiling permanently in an open pot, always a stew, never a spill. It struck me how revealing the little gathering was. In this get-together one could find both the handshake and the fist of American dominance. The convex and the concave. The pulley and the winch. The wine and the iron. The American eagle gave love as it took life, it smiled as it drove the stake, it invoked law as it invaded, it screamed “We are humane!” as it muffled the cries of the murdered with bombs. Sajjad and Leila and Mahmoud and Rebecca King and I had one role: to soften and to cajole, to claim friendship and give out gifts. Marie-Anne and Mike Wu and P.P. Sharma and Amos Jones and Karsten King had another role: to flatten and to crush, to accuse and give out death. It was the beautiful symmetry of a system that aimed at nothing less than permanence.