The Nakeds Read online

  “Jesus,” he said, looking to Nina for backup.

  “What?” Nina said, reaching for the saltshaker. “She hasn’t told her friends. She tells them we like going to the beach—that’s why we’re tan, right?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “I thought Rebecca might know,” Azeem said.

  “No way,” Hannah said.

  “We embarrass her,” her mom said. “You’re not embarrassed of your father, are you?”

  “I am too,” Hannah said, and they all laughed.

  • • •

  Rebecca, Megan, and Hannah were mostly a trio, but she knew there were times when she was a burden. She could see it in their eyes, the looks they exchanged when one of them had to hold her crutches at the bowling alley while she hopped up to the green line of tape on the floor, that ridiculously heavy ball in her arms. Then there was the spectacle the three of them made at the shopping center. Hannah did her best to keep up, but her crutches were cumbersome, especially in crowds, and she knew that she took up more than her allotted space in the world. It was difficult to carry her own bags, although she tried, swinging whatever it was down the side of one crutch until Megan or Rebecca grew tired of watching her struggle. Sometimes she’d just call her mom or Azeem from a payphone, feign a stomachache, and ask one of them to pick her up.

  “Maybe you should tell the girls about the camp,” her mother said on a Monday night. The two of them were on their way to pick up Chinese food for dinner. “We’re not ashamed, you know?” They were stopped at a red light and Nina was looking at Hannah. “The human body is a beautiful thing.”

  Hannah rolled her eyes.

  “We’re not ashamed,” she said again.

  “It’s not about you,” Hannah said, angrily.

  At home, it was hard for Hannah to listen to them talk about their weekend plans and even harder for her to enjoy her spicy beef. Her mom and stepdad were eating mu shu chicken and planning their weekend visit to The Elysium. They were talking about Azeem’s brother and his epilepsy, Azeem saying that a trip to the States might be just what the boy needs. Hannah looked at her mom’s face, which seemed to tighten up at the mention of a visitor. “I don’t know,” she said. “You don’t want Mustafa to even know that we’re married. Seems like a big secret to keep.”

  “What? Why?” Hannah said, surprised.

  “It’s not him. It’s my parents.” Azeem dipped his egg roll into the sweet-and-sour sauce, and sighed.

  “Why don’t they know you’re married?” Hannah wanted to know.

  “They have other plans for me,” he said.

  • • •

  She went to her room and thought about her secrets. Her mom and Azeem’s marriage was a secret. Her leg was a secret, even to herself; it was something she couldn’t see or understand. The nudist camp was a secret. Her feelings about Pablo, which were growing every time she saw him struggling around on those crutches, carrying his art notebook under his arm, were a secret.

  She thought about calling her dad, but decided against it. Her mom and Azeem were supposed to drop her off at his house this weekend. She’d wait until then to talk to him. She hadn’t seen him in two months, since her last operation, which was a record for them. When they did talk on the phone, he was reserved and aloof. She could almost see him looking out the window into his backyard, watching the trees standing still. The conversations were stilted, and despite missing him, she felt the urge to put down the receiver right after the hello, how are you left her lips. She tried, though. She told him about going to the mall with Rebecca and Megan, and about bowling on Saturday night. She told him that for a girl on crutches her score was pretty good. She asked her dad about her new baby brother and her stepmom, Christy, but he was uncommunicative and answered mostly with grunts. Sometimes she’d tell a whole story and he wouldn’t respond at all and she’d wonder if the phone line had been disconnected. She’d sit in the silence that followed and wait until he sprung to life with a What, Hannah, what were you saying? I’m sorry, honey. I’ve got a lot on my mind.

  Hannah blamed his remoteness on the argument her parents had the day of her last surgery. She was coming in and out of consciousness, drugged up on anesthesia and pain medicine, but she remembered the two of them standing by her bedside, whisper-screaming at each other. Apparently her father didn’t trust Dr. Russo and her mother believed every word the doctor said. Her dad was tired, he said, of the doctors’ lies and promises, angry that Hannah’s ankle was bleeding so heavily that a big red circle had soaked through the plaster. Hearing that, Hannah forced herself up, leaned forward, craned her neck, and tried to get a glimpse of the bloodstain, but she was too weak and fell against the pillow.

  “Horrible,” he said. “How much does she have to go through? Years and years of this. Seven years of this,” he said.

  “You’re hardly around to witness it. It’s Azeem who parents her.”

  “Where’s Azeem today?”

  “He’s at school.”

  “I bet. I know what he studies. And he’s been studying it for years, it seems to me. He should be an expert.”

  “Azeem’s going to help a lot of people when he’s a therapist.”

  “Help them, sure,” Asher said sarcastically. “I saw what you were reading.”

  “What?”

  “I saw your book. I saw it sitting on top of your purse. Open Marriage. Mishegas,” he said. “It’s horrible, Nina. What kind of example are you setting? You marry an Arab. You join a nudist camp. And now this.”

  “Who are you to judge?”

  “I’m Hannah’s father. I’m a good man now.”

  “Now?” her mother said, laughing.

  “I say my prayers,” he continued. “I’ve been praying. I want Hannah to walk. What I wouldn’t give …” He paused. He said something Hannah couldn’t make out, and then said something she heard perfectly. “You should have driven her to school that day,” he said.

  “It’s not my fault. Don’t you dare,” her mom said, her voice rising.

  “You’re the mother,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” she repeated, even louder this time.

  “Very nice. Ladylike. My ex-wife, the mother of my child, uses the f-word. She’s a wife and she wants to sleep around. What do you people call it—swinging?”

  “The f-word?” she said, laughing. “You silly little man. You silly little Jew for Jesus.”

  “Enough,” he said.

  “You’re no Jew, Asher. You’re an anti-Jew. You shouldn’t call yourself a Jew for Jesus—it’s absurd.”

  “What do you swingers know about Jesus?”

  “I’m not a …” she began. “Oh, forget it.”

  “What do you know about Jesus?” he said again.

  “I know that if you think he’s the son of God, if you think—never mind,” she said. “I want to be with Hannah.”

  And within seconds the two of them were focused on her, one patting her right hand and one her left, the two of them looking down at her with exaggerated concern and sympathy one moment, but quickly looking up and glaring at each other the next.

  Now, in her bedroom, Hannah left her crutches on the floor, hopped to her dresser, and turned on the little black-and-white television. She put on her pajamas and got in bed, propped pillows behind her back and also put one at the foot of the bed for her cast. She could hear her mom and Azeem still talking about his brother, Mustafa. Their voices were getting louder. Azeem was saying something about the doctors in America being miracle workers.

  “Ask Hannah if they’re miracle workers,” her mom said.

  “They know plenty,” he said, and Hannah was thinking that they didn’t know plenty about her leg.

  She hopped back to the TV and turned up the volume to drown out their voices. On the news, there was footage of the Birmingham tornado. Two dump trucks tossed into the air like toys, trees snapping and debarked, and tw
enty-two deaths.

  Hannah imagined being picked up by a black tunnel of air and being carried to another town.

  She imagined the twenty-two bodies flying through the dark sky.

  She imagined those trees stripped bare. She thought about Pablo’s lips. She thought about his smile, how his teeth were nearly perfect, except for the one in front that barely overlapped the one next to it. She loved that overlapping tooth.

  When she heard her mom and Azeem’s bedroom door close, Hannah got up, hopped over to the television again, and turned down the volume. She stared at the phone a few seconds before picking it up to call her dad.

  4

  AZEEM WANTED Nina to open her marriage. It was their marriage, obviously, but when he said it the first few times, he called it hers, which made it sound like she was in it alone. Usually she was quick to correct his English, but this particular mistake was appropriate and private, something he was unlikely to say in front of strangers—Will you open your marriage, Nina?—so for more than a month she let him continue calling it hers.

  At first it came out of his mouth reluctantly, with the tiniest apology embedded in its tone. It came out of his mouth as a question directed at her, which implied that there was a decision to make, an answer to give. And then it came out as a suggestion, easy and lightweight, tossed at her in the car or over dinner or at the grocery store.

  Maybe make a left at the light.

  Please hand me that gallon of milk.

  You might want to grab a sweater.

  You might want to grab a man who you might want to sleep with.

  I might want to touch you tonight.

  I might want to touch a woman who isn’t you.

  I might want to touch her again tomorrow.

  Nina knew what was coming, how the words would eventually morph and twist, becoming what they’d been since the idea’s inception: an ultimatum. And she was just waiting.

  Azeem had quit his job waiting tables to study full-time, and a week later, his human sexuality professor, Dr. Winter, assigned the book Open Marriage, which Azeem was able to read and reread with all of his extra time. Halfway into the book, Azeem converted—Nina saw it in his posture and heard it in his excited grunts of agreement. There was a visible tensing of his muscles. He nodded, squinted, deep in thought. He wanted someone on the side, a woman or two or three of them. He was ready for flight, his shoulders sharpening into wings. He pulled on his short beard and looked over at Nina, wondering about her limits, she could tell.

  In the past, when he was through with them, Azeem had offered her his textbooks: Human Sexual Response, Anatomy of an Orgasm, The Joyous Couple, Feel Him, Feel Her, and Feel Good, and usually she read them quickly and with enthusiasm. Nina taught high school English and spent her days talking to teenagers about love and betrayal in the most euphemistic language, and she liked to sit next to Azeem on the couch after dinner and talk, really talk, about what one body did with another body. It felt good in her mouth to say clitoral stimulation and penile response. She felt smart and sexy knowing the physiological words for things: the filmy sheen that covered her chest and neck after she came was a perspiratory reaction, the grimace she made during orgasm a result of myotonic tension. She felt enlightened and complicated, reading those books and having those talks, like she was more than just a good Jewish girl from Philadelphia. She was grading papers, reading through her twelfth-graders’ responses to Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Jane Austen, while Azeem read from Open Marriage. She had spent many nights just like this, in bed next to him, flipping through a magazine or doing her schoolwork. Sometimes she’d glance over his shoulder and see a particularly interesting diagram or photograph—and she’d want to do right then what the creative couple was doing on the page. Now, as he read the book, she looked at the authors’ photo on the back—the smiling O’Neills, a married couple, who seemed to be mocking her with their challenge—and felt a horrible queasiness.

  Nina wore lightweight pajamas, her long dark hair twisted on top of her head with a clip shaped like a seashell. Her glasses were halfway down her nose. Azeem wore dark sweatpants, white socks, and no shirt. Every now and then he’d sigh and rest his palm on his flat, hairy stomach.

  “Nina?” It was the same voice he used when he wanted to choose what movie they’d see or decide where they’d go for dinner.

  “Hang on.” She held up a finger. “Give me a minute. Let me finish this last paragraph.” As a compromise, she inched her free hand closer to his thigh, until the tips of her fingers were warmed just under his leg.

  He stopped reading, placed the book between them on the bed, and looked at her. She didn’t look back. Not yet. She knew what this particular book was called. It didn’t take an expert to imagine what Open Marriage espoused: the limitations of monogamy, the unnaturalness of lifelong partnerships, how sex with others could only enhance a marriage. Selfish, self-serving delusional bullshit, as far as she was concerned.

  She finished the last few lines of her student’s paper and closed the folder before looking at him. “OK,” she finally said.

  “Do you think you might … ? Would you ever …” he began, hesitant, and then stopped himself.

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re busy. Finish your schoolwork.”

  Nina noticed that her arms were tightly folded against her chest and uncrossed them. She tried to smile. “Come on,” she said.

  He picked up the book. “It says here … ,” he began. He adjusted himself, turning to her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Well, they say that a couple might want to, that a couple should …” He paused. “There’s a chapter on rewriting the contract. There’s one on living for now.”

  She said nothing.

  She stared at him and let him talk.

  “There’s a group of people from Trinidad and they have an expression.” He opened the book and flipped through its pages until he found what he was looking for. “Here, here,” he said, excited, pointing at the words. “These Trinidadians, they say it’s ‘now for now.’ ”

  “Hmm,” she said.

  “And what it means is that the immediate moment is all a man has—or a woman. It’s all we have. These sixty seconds in front of you.” He said those last words slowly. He gestured with his forefinger and thumb as if he were measuring a very small penis.

  She laughed, sadly. “I’ve been through this before, you know. Asher wanted an open marriage too. He just didn’t call it that.”

  “There was nothing open about it. He was secretive—he lied—and wanted someone else full-time.”

  Despite what she knew was coming, she encouraged him to continue. It was only talking. She was only listening. “Keep going,” she said.

  “If you don’t make the very most out of those sixty seconds, then you’re dead.”

  “You’re not dead.”

  “Well, you’re almost dead, as good as dead. That’s their point.” He looked at her face and studied her eyes.

  “It’s not very profound. Or even new, Azeem.”

  “Forget it. I knew you wouldn’t want to talk about this—at least not yet. You’re not ready. I should have known. I should have waited. In a few months it could be your idea. Who knows?” He turned away a second, but then turned back to her. “Nina, you like the nudist camp.”

  “So?”

  “You can’t say it’s not sexual.”

  “I can say that, actually.”

  “Come on.”

  “It isn’t sexual to me, Azeem. After a couple weekends of looking at them, it seems … normal. And it’s relaxing. There’s certainly nothing relaxing about having sex with other people.”

  “Well, the book says … ,” he began again.

  “I don’t want to know what the book says. Just ask the question. Your question—not theirs.” She looked down at the O’Neills and hated them, hated that she shared a first name with Nena O’Neill, and hated the staged photograph. George O’Neill in all black, his s
hirt unbuttoned, those ridiculous sideburns, and his wife in a red turtleneck and white blazer—the two of them looking into each other’s eyes and smiling. They could be anyone. He could be a real estate agent, she could be a housewife, or, like Nina, a high school teacher. They were frauds, she knew it. They were like those famous marriage counselors she’d seen on Phil Donohue, Dr. and Dr. So-and-So, who spewed out their advice to sad or frustrated couples, and then got a divorce themselves after just one year. All that talk about conciliation—and what had it done for them?

  Azeem took a deep breath. He leaned closer. She could smell the garlic they’d had for dinner. “Would you ever consider opening your marriage?” he said.

  “I knew this was coming. Of course this was coming,” she said.

  “Well?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re married.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have a contract. We’re married,” she said again. “Look, Azeem, we’re not dating. It’s not like we just met and need to make sure. I thought we were sure—that’s why a couple gets married. That and your green card, maybe.”

  “It wasn’t my green card, Nina.” His voice was stern, adamant. “It was you. I want to be with you. It’s our little family. It’s you and Hannah,” he said, insulted.

  “A man gets married because he’s positive. He doesn’t want anyone else.”

  She thought of her first husband and the secret girlfriend he’d had for years and felt angry at Asher all over again. “Look, Azeem, if you’re not happy or satisfied—” She paused. She tried not to cry. “When a couple gets married, they’ve made a decision about exclusion. And loyalty. That’s what we did when we stood up there in front of those people and promised each other.”

  “I am loyal,” he said. “I don’t want to marry anyone but you.”

  “Great,” she said. “Thanks for that.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest again, not giving a fuck if it made her look uptight and bitchy, and the student folders fell to the floor. “Damn it,” she said, leaning over the bed to gather them up.