Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Nothing but a sharp intake of breath revealed that he even saw it.

“His father is too easy with him,” Ifi said.

Jamal turned away, knelt at the floor, and produced some measuring tape.

“How can a boy play all the time?” she implored.

“Shouldn’t take too long,” he said. “Sheetrock, spackle. Not as bad as it looks.”

“It is not fun and games every time,” she insisted.

“No,” Jamal said, turning to her, “but it should be, right?” He grinned a smile that was so generous that it spilled across his face.

The dare was to answer that smile with a glare. Ifi succeeded. “My son would still be alive if his father behaved like a father.”

Jamal’s smile fell away like broken glass. Now he was ugly, very ugly. His was a face meant only for smiling. Somehow, he must have known this. Immediately, the edges of the smile broadened his face once more. Without it weakening, he said, “We get some sheetrock, cut it around, put some backing in there, and it be fixed.”

“A father should behave like a father, eh? ” Ifi asked, refusing to let it die.

A zipping sound as the measuring tape retracted. Jamal placed it back in the metallic box. “I can come back later.”

“No.” Various metal tools clinked against one another. Ifi’s fingers closed over the tape measure. She could not be alone now in this house without her Victor, even without Job. “Please, I will leave you. Just fix it.” Tears spilled down her face. She rolled forward on her haunches. “We must fix the hole, or this house will fall.”

Jamal hooked a finger into a belt loop. His eyes rested on the hole. He couldn’t look at her. “Come on,” he said gently. “It won’t fall. It’s just a little hole.” He picked at a spot on his face, the smile returning uneasily.

“I did this,” Ifi said. “I should’ve watched him more closely.”

Still staring into the hole, he talked to himself. “These holes are easy to fix. Just spackle, paint, a cutout of sheetrock just the right size.” A pause. “Where is he anyway?” Jamal asked. “Your man.”

“Nigeria.” And suddenly she was seeing Job, his potbelly, the thick eyebrows, his perplexed smile. She had already considered the ways that she had seduced him. But how had he seduced her? Yes, there must have been seduction somewhere. After all, he was ugly to her then. Now, his face was neither ugly nor handsome. She had seen his eyes encrusted with flakes, the skin around his face marked from the nicks of a shave. But none of this had deterred the familiarity of his closeness as they lay in bed.

His seduction, she decided, began with the first stories Aunty had told her, the promises of a future. Nearly thirty and unmarried. Practically unheard of on her road. Before Job, Ifi had been wasting with age. She cooked, cleaned, rinsed the feces, and wiped the noses of each of her cousins as they came into the world. And then she went to bed and did it all over again the next day. Each night, she prayed that her actions, her labor without complaint, would unburden Aunty, secretly knowing that her hard work would never be enough. At first, Ifi realized, Job had seduced her through the dreams he made possible.

Still, in his face, she thought, even in her anger or sadness, she would always see her son, his large face, soft lips, and the roundness of his features. This is why, Ifi realized just then, I will not leave Job. She could not leave Job. She could not leave this house. To leave him would be to leave Victor, and then there would truly be nothing.

The phone rang.

Ifi answered it.

An articulate puff of breath, a forced exhalation of air.

“Job,” Ifi said in response, “come home.” She hung up without another word.

Tears began to quake her shoulders. “I did this,” she said again.

Jamal looked away. He waited until this second round of tears had subsided. “It’ll be fixed in no time.” He unfurled the tape measure again and handed one end of it to Ifi. Firmly, he said, “Take this.”

Tears made their way past her eyelids. Gradually, she straightened up. With the other end, he measured out the length and width of the hole and wrote down some numbers on a scrap of paper. Carefully, he cut out a pattern on a block of cardboard paper. He pointed out a sheetrock saw and a glue gun to Ifi, and she obliged, lifting each object out of the toolbox and handing them to him. He instructed her on the necessity of taking precise measurements and cutting even lines.

Together they worked, squatting low in front of the hole, their backs to the empty room. Together they paused to the scrape of the saw biting through the drywall. They worked with such intensity, such intimacy, that when the phone rang, the sound was merely an embodied whisper in the room.

“PLAY SOMETHING FROM AFRICA.” CHERYL BENT BEFORE THE RECORD player — a treasure from one of Job’s garage sale expeditions. In fact, she saw it first. She asked the owner to plug it in and show them how it worked. Now, in one hand, she gripped a can of Budweiser. In the other, she clasped a record, yet another yard sale find. It wobbled and rippled under her shaky hand. She was drunk, or maybe pretending. Job wouldn’t put it past her. There are worse things she’s done, he thought. She’s a bad pretender, like me. A Catholic schoolgirl with parents in the grave, a deaf-mute criminal brother. What will she be tomorrow? he wondered.

When Job and Ifi said nothing, stood there instead, clutching the empty suitcases that Job had returned with after sharing his shirts and shoes with his various relatives, Cheryl shrugged her shoulders and placed the record on the player.

Fela. “Zombie.” Perfect. First the racing bass line with the low hum of the drums and then the horns. She didn’t know how to move to it. She tried anyway, a stiff, forced jerking right then left. She rocked forward and backwards on her toes. Snapping her fingers was difficult with the beer in her hand, so she set it down. Can sweat left a wet print on the edge of the player. Job resisted the impulse to rush to the kitchen, find a coaster, and place it beneath the beer. At the garage sale, the man had said the record player was one of a kind. They don’t make ’em like this anymore. It’s got the real sound. Not that fake digital shit.

Not that fake digital shit. That’s what he had said to Ifi when he brought it home, when he moved the eight-track player, another find, to make room for it on the table. All the while Ifi had stood with her arms crossed in front of her chest. When the Fela record came, she gave in. He could hear her playing the record in the morning, in the evening while Victor wailed for hours. As soon as he woke, Victor began the wail with the horns. After a while, they couldn’t tell if he was crying or simply singing along.

A long song. Ten minutes, maybe twelve. Will she tire before the song has ended? Or will someone intervene? Someone had to. He looked to Ifi, but there was nothing but a pitying expression on her face, the same look she had when he first walked through the glassy doors at Eppley Airfield. He had been looking for the shuttle, his eyes squinting out past the median dividing the cabs from the cars coming and going. He hadn’t expected to see her there, twirling the car keys. She rarely drove — only to work, the grocery store, and the hardware store. And when she did, she came and went straight to her destination, no stops along the way. Every day in America she had complained about driving. It would’ve been easier for a doctor’s wife in Nigeria, she always said, where she could find some boy to drive her places. Still, there she was, looking thinner, ashier, in a printed skirt that came to her ankles like a wrapper, dangling the car keys. Her hair was neat, the flyaways in her plaits brushed from her face. She had put herself together. For him.