The Nakeds Page 14

  Nina nodded, uncomfortably.

  “He acts like they’re apples,” she said, laughing at herself, placing a now full bag of onions into her cart.

  Azeem laughed with her, too loudly, with too much enthusiasm, Nina thought, and the woman seemed to agree. She glanced at Azeem for an uncomfortable second before turning back to Nina. “I like him to be happy, so what do I do?”

  “You buy them,” Nina said.

  “Good for you. Keep him satisfied,” Azeem said, but no one was listening to him.

  “That’s right, I buy them.” The woman was talking directly to Nina. “I’m Susan,” she said.

  “I’m Nina. She turned to Azeem. “And this is—”

  But the woman interrupted her. “I buy a lot of them too. James will sit there watching the football game and eat them, one after the other. ‘Those aren’t apples,’ I tell him. Men—what are you going to do?” She laughed again, and then patted her bag of onions before turning away and steering her cart over to the peppers.

  Azeem watched her walk away. He was still holding his own onions in his palm when he turned back to Nina. He seemed shorter to her. Rejected. And worse, the two of them together seemed suddenly mismatched and ridiculous.

  “She was a lesbian,” he said, definitively.

  “Please,” Nina said.

  “She liked you. Didn’t you see the way she looked at you? Up and down.”

  Nina laughed and shook her head.

  He took a step back. “Talking about having a boyfriend—that was pretend. How you say, a front,” he said.

  “I think you just creeped her out,” she said.

  “I did not,” he said. “Lesbian.”

  “She was creeped out.”

  “Lesbian.”

  “Creeped out.”

  “Maybe she was a creeped-out lesbian,” he said.

  Nina looked at the onions and thought that Azeem was selfish, a bad loser, a womanizer disguised as a student of science. She thought that perhaps their eleven-year age difference was a big deal and that he was too immature for her. She thought that his hair was thinning on top and the elaborate twirl he’d recently mastered was doing little to keep his secret. She thought the more hair he lost the more serious his need to fuck other women would become. She imagined him completely bald, hopping from one woman to the next, unable to stop himself.

  Perhaps she was partly to blame for joining the nudist camp and reading those books. Maybe she was a masquerader, playing a part. Maybe she shouldn’t have agreed to visit that commune up north and maybe sex with others was the natural outgrowth of seeing them naked. She thought of course it would come to this. She thought he was wrong and she thought he was right. Maybe she was an oxymoron, an uptight nudist, an old-fashioned free thinker; perhaps monogamy was ridiculous, or maybe he was. She thought that the onions in his palm looked like a set of mismatched testicles with their skins flaking off.

  “I want the yellow ones,” she said firmly, taking the bag from him.

  “Why not both? And a couple of the red ones too?” he said.

  “I’m the only one working now—we can’t buy all the onions we want to buy. There are things we just can’t have,” she said, sounding like a parent, hating her sharp voice, and feeling like she was about to cry.

  “They’re twenty-two cents a pound, Nina. They’re just onions,” he told her.

  “No, they’re not,” she said.

  He looked at her, confused.

  “I like the yellow ones, that’s all.” And then she was crying, plucking the onion from his palm, reaching into the bin for a couple more. And he was pulling her close. “It’s OK,” he said. “Whatever is bothering you, we’ll fix it. I promise,” he said.

  “When we get home, let’s buy your brother’s plane ticket,” she said.

  7

  HE WAS her sibling—or half sibling. A baby brother. After all this time of being an only child, Hannah knew she should feel excited, but she didn’t. She worried that the baby would be what finally separated her dad fully and completely from his former life. It was hard enough that he lived two cities away, ate bacon in the mornings, and slept with the New Testament on his nightstand, the satin bookmark and red tassels holding his place.

  Azeem and her mom were dropping her off at her dad’s new house on the way to the nudist camp. Actually, her dad’s house was in Irvine, south of Belmont Heights, and The Elysium was north, toward Los Angeles. That’s why they got an early start, waking Hannah up at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning.

  In the car, Azeem asked Hannah if she was excited to meet the baby and she told him the truth. She thought babies were boring.

  “He can’t talk to me or understand what I’m saying,” she said, leaning forward, popping her head between the two front seats.

  “How about if Mustafa comes to visit us and his English is limited?” Azeem said.

  “Is your brother coming?” Hannah said, surprised.

  “Nothing’s definite,” her mom said.

  But Hannah had the feeling that Mustafa’s visit had already been planned out without her knowledge.

  “I’m not so into babies either. They are sort of boring,” her mom said.

  “Were you bored with that baby?” Azeem asked, gesturing with his eyes in the rearview mirror, catching Hannah’s glance.

  “I’m afraid so,” Nina said, honestly. “There’s not a lot to do with an infant except take care of his or her needs. And despite what it looks like on television and the movies, a few of us women weren’t cut out for babies. I loved Hannah right away, of course, but I fell madly in love with her when she was about one and started to communicate.”

  Azeem shot Hannah another look in the rearview, raised his eyebrows.

  “Doesn’t bother me,” Hannah answered.

  Her mom looked out the window. Then she turned to Azeem. “Am I boring to you?”

  “No,” he said, quickly.

  “Hmm,” she said, turning back to the window.

  When they were off the freeway and a few miles away from her dad’s house, Azeem stopped at a red light and turned around to face Hannah. “Your mother and I have been having some problems, as you know, as you’ve probably been able to tell these last few weeks.”

  She looked at him, nodding.

  “Well,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” Nina said.

  He ignored her and continued. “I want your mother to think about opening her—”

  But Nina stopped him. “What are you doing?” she repeated, fiercely. “This is our business. Hannah doesn’t need to know these things.”

  “What things?” Hannah said.

  The light turned green and Azeem returned to the steering wheel. He stepped on the gas pedal a little too hard and the three of them lurched forward.

  “Be careful,” Nina snapped.

  Azeem grunted unhappily.

  “Some things are just between us, Azeem.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  Hannah hated it when they argued. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a book on insects that she’d picked up from the library last week. She began the chapter on the fruit fly, Drosophia melanogaster. Anticipating that her mom and Azeem’s squabbling could turn into a big fight, she found it hard to concentrate and had to keep rereading the first page. She thought that if they were in a different mood, feeling better and getting along, she would have liked to tell them about the fruit fly’s mating habits, what the author called the male fly’s “tiny, cheap sperm” and the female’s “large, expensive eggs,” but they were too quiet and tense up there to tell them anything.

  Finally, they pulled up to the curb in front of her father’s house.

  “Look at that big thing—and it’s two stories,” her mom said. “I knew it. How’s Hannah supposed to get up those stairs?” she was mumbling, talking more to herself than to anyone else.

  “She’ll do fine,” Azeem said. “She’s a champ.” He left the engine running, jump
ed out, and ran around the car to Hannah’s door to help her with her crutches. Nina stayed inside. She rolled down the window for a kiss. “Be good. Be nice to your father even though he bought this big two-story house,” she said.

  “I’m always nice.”

  “When he talks about Jesus, try to change the subject. But be gentle. Don’t insult him.”

  “That’s your mother’s job,” Azeem said.

  Nina shook her head.

  “I won’t insult him,” Hannah said. She was standing on one foot, keeping her balance by holding on to the top of the car. Azeem handed over one crutch at a time, slipping a crutch under one arm and then the other. He helped her with her backpack. “I’m sure you’ll love the baby,” he said.

  She struggled up the driveway and stood on the porch. A red welcome mat with white lettering said Jesus Welcomes You, which made it sound to Hannah like the son of God was sitting on her father’s couch in a robe and ropey sandals, waiting for her arrival.

  Her mom and Azeem were still at the curb, impatient and still angry at each other, she was sure. The front door was open, but the heavy metal screen was locked. She rang the doorbell. Nothing. She turned around and looked at her mom and Azeem, who she knew were in a rush. They’d explained all that. How they wanted a good spot on the lawn, how they needed to set up their chairs and unpack their lunches. They liked to get on the 405 freeway early before the traffic hit. The nudist camp was waiting. Their naked friends were waiting.

  Even from the porch, the house smelled brand-new, fake, like plastic and paint. She leaned forward and peered in. Everything was beige: the living room’s shag carpet and fat sofas, the octagonal wooden end tables, and a pair of director’s chairs.

  Hannah turned around and looked at her mom, who was not at all beige, who was actually very tan, with dark hair and red lipstick. She knocked on her dad’s screen door one more time. Still nothing. She turned around and shrugged helplessly, to which Azeem responded by revving the engine. He didn’t need to rev the engine. She could see her mom gesticulating, her hands in the air, and could tell she was screaming or at least talking loudly.

  She looked away from them and down at the welcome mat again. She looked at her cast and wished she were back in Long Beach, at home by herself. She wanted to call Megan and then Rebecca, talk to each of them for an hour. She wanted to call Pablo and listen to him say Hello, hello, who’s there? Who are you? before hanging up the phone.

  Country music droned from the stereo—something about lost love and a mule. Hannah peered in again. She could see past the living room and out to the backyard, where she finally spotted her father, wearing headphones and mowing the lawn, oblivious.

  She picked up her crutch and used its rubber end to bang against the screen until finally he looked up, startled and surprised, like she wasn’t supposed to arrive at just this time. He waved and kicked the mower off. Hannah turned to her mom and Azeem and nodded, but before her dad was even inside the kitchen, her mom and Azeem were speeding off down the street, probably still arguing or maybe stripping off those horribly confining garments along the way.

  As Hannah’s dad made his way to her, she thought about his beige house and beige face and beige baby boy, who would soon be spitting bubbles onto his mother’s beige arm.

  He wiped his brow with his wrist before opening the screen door. “Hannah,” he said. “Look at you. Let me take a look at you.”

  “I’ve been here for twenty minutes,” she said, exaggerating.

  “You’re so big,” he said.

  She grimaced.

  “Not big, that’s not what I mean. You’re so tall,” he corrected himself.

  “It’s only been two months, Dad.”

  “Two months is two months,” he said. “Too long is what it is. It’s a horrible thing for a father and daughter to let the days slip by.” He leaned forward so that half of his body was outside, and he looked around. “Where’s your mother?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “They were here and then they left.”

  “Oy,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s mishegas, that’s what it is. She takes off her clothes and runs around.”

  “There’s no running,” Hannah said.

  “It’s craziness. You tell her I said so.”

  “I’m not telling her anything.”

  “A mother should wait until her daughter makes it inside the house. A mother should keep her clothes on. A mother should—” He shook his finger in the air, scolding Hannah’s mother, who was long gone.

  “Can I come in?” she interrupted.

  “Silly me.” He stepped onto the porch, leaned over, and took her backpack. “So heavy,” he said. “What’s in here?”

  “My books,” she said.

  “Still with the insects?”

  She nodded.

  He leaned over again to pick up her overnight bag. He smelled like freshly cut grass and too much aftershave, the latter a scent Hannah remembered and once loved. Her stepmother, Christy, stood at the top of the stairs, holding a pink bassinet. Hannah wondered why the bassinet was pink and why Christy didn’t answer the door. She wondered what time it would be when her mom and Azeem reached the hills, and she wondered how that nudist boy and his twin sister could really take off their clothes and walk around.

  Christy was waving and smiling, all big white teeth, pale skin, and poofy blond hair. Hannah’s dad kissed her cheek, one cheek and then the other repeatedly. Sheyner ponim, sheyner ponim, he said, the cross bouncing on his white T-shirt and brushing against her ear.

  8

  WHILE HANNAH waited on the porch and rang the doorbell and banged on the screen, Nina scolded Azeem inside the car. “You can’t just tell Hannah that you want me to open my marriage. What were you thinking?”

  He agreed that perhaps he’d said too much, but even while admitting he was wrong, his voice rose, louder and louder in that very quiet neighborhood, so Nina said, Just go, just go, and he sped away before Hannah’s father even made it to the door.

  After they’d gotten back on the road, Nina corrected Azeem that it wasn’t just her marriage, it was theirs.

  “All your talk about opening my marriage,” she said, turning, looking at him. “It’s not my marriage, Azeem. It’s ours.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “You’ve been calling it mine and I’ve been letting you do so. You’ve been calling it mine for a month. You’ve been asking me to open my marriage and I haven’t said a thing.”

  “If you spoke Arabic, you’d make mistakes too,” he said.

  She nodded, giving him that. “I feel like it’s just mine, though,” she said. “The marriage—I’m in it alone.” She was looking out the window, feeling guilty for not insisting he wait until Asher answered the door. She thought about asking him to take her home. She felt a headache coming on. She could send him up to the nudist camp by himself and they could talk about things tonight. But she liked The Elysium and always felt rejuvenated after a day in the sun.

  He stopped at a 7-Eleven and went inside while Nina waited in the car. He brought back bottled water, a bag of cashews, and aspirin for Nina’s headache, which she hadn’t mentioned but which he somehow knew she had. He was good about things like that, knowing when her body hurt, knowing what she needed. “Thanks,” she said, taking the bottle from him.

  “I don’t want to fight,” he said. “I just want you to read the book and then tell me what you think. Just talk to me about it. I’m not going to do anything with anyone. We have a contract, like you said, and we haven’t rewritten it—and maybe we never will. That’s OK. I’ll live with it.”

  “Marriage isn’t a disease,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  She opened the pills and shook a couple into her palm.

  “Let’s think about something else for now. Let’s try to have a good day together.” He closed the c
ar door and put on his seat belt.

  When she popped the aspirin into her mouth, he reached into the bag and pulled out his bottled water. He hurried the cap off and offered it to her.

  “Let’s start the day over. It’s sunny. It’s beautiful,” he said, gesturing toward the sky. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, making his way to the 405 freeway. Nina leaned back in the seat and rested her head on the headrest and waited for the aspirin to kick in. Once Azeem had merged safely into the freeway’s fast lane, he ripped open the bag of nuts with his teeth and poured some into his mouth. She thought she could see a tiny bit of cashew in his beard but couldn’t be sure from where she sat.

  They made polite chitchat, like strangers, the uncomfortable spouses’ effort to smooth things over. They wondered out loud about leaving Hannah on the porch, both of them expressing guilt.

  “I hope Asher shows Hannah a nice time,” he said.

  She nodded. “I don’t know why he bought a two-story house. He’s got a daughter on crutches.”

  “She won’t always be on crutches.”

  “It’s been years. Who knows?”

  They were quiet for a few minutes before he said, “Mustafa’s excited to visit.”

  “How long do you want him to stay?”

  “Long enough for him to see a few doctors, some specialists while he’s here. We could take him to UCLA and up north to Stanford. There’s an epilepsy specialist in San Francisco.”

  Nina didn’t say anything. She was thinking about their finances. She was thinking about another family member, another person to feed, another hungry mouth, and doctors’ bills. She was wishing Azeem hadn’t quit his job and that things were more equal between them. She was wishing he didn’t want to fuck other women or she was wishing that she wanted to fuck other men. She didn’t know anymore—things were getting blurry. She was tired of all of it.

  “They don’t know shit about epilepsy back home,” he continued.