Everyone was there—the Zblowskis; Paul Epstein and his wife and their little girl; Jack Boyd (with wife number one, who lasted only long enough to have a baby and secure some pretty serious alimony); Chuck and his then-fiancée Peg Whitney; Trey Stephens with one of the nurses from Peg and Chuck’s newly minted psychiatric practice; Minka (whose position at Dinnerman Mercedes meant she pulled up to every pool party in the most current luxury sedan, something we noticed our wives noticing every time); even Danny Hatchet, whose unpredictable construction schedule meant he wasn’t always around, was there for a little bit of the party. And, of course, our parents were there for that party, too. They came early, had a few gin and tonics, and left just after the sun went down, just as our children started to complain about going to bed, about not getting more ice cream, about getting in the pool one last time. Complaining children always seemed our parents’ cue to leave. “We’ve done this before,” they’d say, not even attempting to make excuses or apologies as they moved towards the driveway and their cars. “We’re too old to listen to babies howl. It’s your turn.”

  At some point, after our parents left, a few of us slipped inside to switch from beer to something stronger. Though our parents drank gin and tonics at noon, it still felt strange to drink liquor in front of them. Funny that even as we were so high on life, so fully in control, we still deferred to their status as our former leaders. Senility would strip them of that title altogether soon enough. But for a while still, even as we sensed the shift, even as we felt our flow, their ebb, we still respected the memory of their youths. It’s as if, somewhere far back, we were cognizant of the fact that the ebb would one day come for us—one day—but not then, definitely not then. Because, just then, we were sneaking inside, drunk already from the sun, ready to get drunker still off the strong stuff, the good stuff.

  But really, those were the days: going home with our families, the bedroom windows opened high; the breeze coming in, lifting the smell of chlorine off the pool; the faint whiff of linden from the trees we’d only just planted around the pool; the babies humming in the adjacent room; our wives moving their bodies steadily over us, beneath us, their hands still deft, still young, still willing. What didn’t we have then? What could we possibly have fantasized about other than what was in our hands, in our homes? Forget Nora Lindell. No, never fully forget Nora Lindell. But, for a moment, pretend that she is still with us, has always been with us. Isn’t what we have still good? Isn’t this life still perfectly adequate? Would she really have provided us anything our wives haven’t? Perhaps. Yes, perhaps. But that night, after the Prices’ last pool party of the summer, everything felt wonderful; we were whole, complete, content. We had drunk like fish, we had tanned like hides, and now we were ready to sleep like kings. Summer was almost over and we were, I do believe this, happy that night, happy that year.

  18

  This sky could be an Arizona sky,” said Nora.

  “What does that mean?” asked Abja.

  “Arizona? It’s a state in America,” said Nora. “Home of the Grand Canyon, skiing, deserts, cacti. There are mountain lions there. Did you know that? ‘Good oak,’ that’s what the name means. Aritz Ona. You probably like that, because it has a meaning. The state bird is a phoenix. No. That doesn’t make sense. The state capital is Phoenix. I don’t know what the state bird is. I could make one up. A cardinal, maybe. Like the football team.”

  There was silence.

  “Are you done?”

  “Yes,” said Nora. She slid her hand up Abja’s shirt and twisted a nipple until it hardened. Abja pulled Nora’s hand away.

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “I do know that’s not what you meant. Yes.”

  “Then explain how this sky could be an Arizona sky.”

  They were lying on their backs on the roof of Nora’s hotel. Abja had put down a blanket. She seemed always prepared for the dirtiness. Nora was always surprised.

  “Turquoise, red, orange,” said Nora, pointing to the layers of the sky. “Do you understand the word garish?”

  “Are you trying to teach me?”

  “I would not presume to teach you anything,” said Nora.

  “Then maybe, yes, explain that to me too. The word garish.”

  “Not quite ugly. Tacky.”

  “Tacky?”

  “Like garish.”

  “You are no teacher.”

  They were holding hands. Despite the heat of the city, of the roof itself, there was a breeze glancing the tops of their bodies that night.

  “In Arizona, I grew eucalyptus. I swam almost every day. There was a pool in the backyard.”

  “I have been swimming four times in my life,” said Abja.

  “Including the day you were born.”

  “Yes,” said Abja. “Including the day I was born. I like your memory.”

  They were quiet awhile. Abja squeezed Nora’s hand and Nora squeezed back.

  “I have three babies in Arizona,” Nora said finally.

  There was more silence.

  “What do you think of that?”

  “I think that I knew you had babies, but I did not know how many.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Your breasts,” said Abja. “You have the breasts of a mother.”

  A beetle brushed against Nora’s thigh, she shook it away.

  “They aren’t babies anymore. But I can’t imagine them as anything else. I’m stilted that way. I can only think of what is or what has been. I can’t see anything else. There’s no creativity up here.” She knocked on her head with a fist.

  “Do you want to tell me about the babies?”

  Car horns now, children yelling and laughing from the streets below, cans being kicked. A caricature of a city, but the caricature came from somewhere. Mumbai spreading beneath them, people everywhere, it was too much for Nora even to think about, much less to try to imagine.

  “No,” she said at last. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Look at me,” said Abja. She did, and they kissed. “Now look again at the sky.” Nora did as she was told, and Abja kissed her neck.

  “There is something,” said Nora.

  “There is something?”

  “I think I’m sick.”

  “Because of the drinking,” said Abja. When she spoke, she spoke the words wetly, softly into Nora’s neck. “This is something you know I agree with. I would not mind if the drinking were less.”

  “Yes,” said Nora. “But no, that’s not what I mean. I think I’m dying.”

  “Now, see, there is that imagination you think you do not have.”

  “No,” said Nora. “Not imagination.” She took Abja’s hand and placed it on her left breast. Abja caressed it. “Here,” said Nora, directing Abja’s fingers. “Feel.” Abja touched the lump, moved it back and forth between her fingers. “Do you feel it?”

  Abja sat up. “What is that?” She was angry.

  “Please lay back down. I don’t like it down here without you.”

  Abja did as she was told, but she did not look at Nora. The orange was fading into the red. The turquoise was nearly black. The sky was almost any other night sky.

  “What I think is cancer,” said Nora finally. “It’s in my family. Cancer all over. We’re unlucky like that.”

  “Do not make this a joke,” said Abja.

  “This is not a joke.” There were tears in the corners of Nora’s eyes. “Not a joke at all. I can feel my body disappearing. Like it isn’t always here. I can feel it. Do you believe me? Does that make sense?”

  “It is time for you to go home maybe,” said Abja.

  “I like it out here. It’s not too late yet,” said Nora.

  “That is not what I mean. You have gotten too good at misunderstanding me. I don’t like it.”

  “You do like it,” said Nora. “I’m sure of that.”

  “Then I do not like you very much right now.”

  “I’m sure of that too,” said Nora.

  “Listen, little American girl,” Abja said, holding her hand again finally. There was sweetness in her voice again, almost something maternal. “I think it is time you go back to your family. I think it is time you go back from wherever you came. And I think those people who you have left behind, I think they will find you a good hospital and I think you will live to become an adult.”

  Nora cupped one of Abja’s breasts in her hand. She moved her body so that she was speaking into the cupped breast, which, though covered, was moist with sweat.

  “I’m not a child,” said Nora. But she was a child. She would always be a child. How could she ever be anything more than a child to us?

  “Yes, I remember you telling me that. And no, you are not a child. But do this for me, yes?”

  “No,” said Nora. “I like it here. This is where I want to be. For the first time, this is exactly where I want to be. Can you understand that? I like the noise. It will be a good place for me to die. You’ll see. I’m going to be good at it. Just wait.” Nora put a hand on Abja’s face. “I’ll make you very proud.” Nora was full-out crying now, but she was also laughing, and the laughter, for the first time, frightened Abja. For the first time, she saw there was a very good chance that Nora truly was sick.

  But, more likely, what ended up happening was this. Before Abja could help Nora die, before they could watch together as her body ate away at itself in a way very similar to how Mr. Lindell’s own body must have eaten away at itself, Abja died in the bombings. Nora would have been there that day, just as Stu Zblowski and Marty Metcalfe swore she was, at one of the cafés. She was drinking beer. Abja was drinking milk and tea. A British tourist had asked to take their photograph. “Do you mind?” He motioned to his camera. Nora leaned into Abja, they locked their arms around one another. Their tattoos blurred together then, the designs becoming a seamless series of lines continuing from one woman’s arm onto the other’s. “Beautiful,” he said, before moving away from them. “Beautiful.”

  The flattery of the photographer had put them both in a good mood. “I’ll get you another beer if you ask me nicely,” said Abja. There were days when they pretended the cancer didn’t exist. When they behaved as if they’d never even discussed it.

  “Kiss me,” said Nora, and she did.

  Abja was gone thirty, maybe forty seconds, when the first blast went off. It was loud—no—deafening. The sound came from all over, but the dust was across the street. The screaming was across the street. The next blast was closer, heavier. The dust was thicker, the screaming was more immediate. Nora turned to look inside, to see if she could still see Abja, but the café was gone. The people inside were gone. Or maybe it was a trick of the chaos. Maybe it was only the dust disguising the café.

  There was more screaming, another blast. There might have been more after that, but she wouldn’t remember. Nobody who was there would remember every blast. The stories were conflicting. Some would insist the first blast had come from Nora’s café. Others would say that, no, the first blast had come from the café across the street from where Nora and Abja had been.

  It took hours for the dust to settle, for the people to be hushed, calmed, treated. There was a bandage on Nora’s arm when the news cameras started filming. She didn’t know how the bandage got there. It’s impossible to say whether or not Nora saw the news anchor from her—our—hometown. If she had seen her, she definitely would have recognized her. It’s strange, either way, to think that Nora would linger there in the background. Shock, probably, nothing more than that. Though there is the chance it was deliberate, as small a cry for help as you can imagine. She’d thought, perhaps, something like this: If they see it, if they find me, okay. If not, okay. Or maybe not. Maybe there were no thoughts at all anymore. Maybe her brain had been reduced once again to images only, no words. A bottle of beer, a cup of tea, a hennaed arm, a camera, a British accent, a kiss, a scream, dust.

  There is only that brief footage. We’ve all seen it by now, one by one, at work, our office doors closed behind us as if we were doing something dirty. We found the footage online, used our work computers to watch it over and over to confirm or contest what Marty Metcalfe and Stu Zblowski had seen.

  The footage, honestly, isn’t completely convincing. The image of the would-be Nora Lindell is tiny, blurry at best. The woman is red-haired. She is both full-figured and slight, just as Nora would have been by then. The face appears freckled, though perhaps it’s merely sunburned or dirtied from the blasts. There is a bandage on her right arm and throughout the forty or fifty seconds of footage, she stands, rather dazed, her left hand spread open across her chest, which appears to be hennaed, though it might just be the soot and our eyes turning the randomness of filth into the intricacy of design.

  What is convincing, though, is this: Both Marty and Stu, in two different living rooms, on two different television sets, in two different cities—Stu at the side of his newly pregnant wife on a soft leather sofa in New England, and Marty on the fabric love seat his grandmother had given him in a two-story Craftsman three streets over from the house where he grew up—both these men saw the image of this wounded redhead in Mumbai, and both believed it was Nora Lindell. All the more compelling that Marty would have noticed the figure at all since the news anchor, his lady love, should have been the only thing occupying his interest.

  But for the cynics—for the nonbelievers, for those who require something more tactile and less spiritual than a simple thought shared by two dissimilar men—we offer this: the photograph. We have all seen it. It was Winston Rutherford who saw it first, and without even meaning to. For the rest of us, it was less accidental. We went where he told us to find it. The southwest wing of the newly built media and news museum in D.C. Enlarged, mounted, full color, the photograph hangs amid the permanent collection of the now-famous photographer Eli Brown.

  The photograph is titled, simply, Mumbai, Four Minutes to the First Blast. The women in the picture are stunning, though it is true that the Westerner seems sickly, skinnier than she ought to be. The Indian, on the other hand, is something out of National Geographic. She is brown, with even browner tattoos that, it’s also true, appear to jump from the skin of her dark arm onto the skin of the white and freckled Westerner’s arm. Is it a tourist with her guide? Is it a teacher and her student? Are the women a couple? Are they lovers? Are they in love? These things are impossible to tell. But yes, they have to be. Is it Nora Lindell? Well, this, too, is impossible to tell.

  But doesn’t it have to be? Because haven’t we all made this decision, all come to this common conclusion. All but Winston Rutherford, who will tell you, quietly and respectfully, that the woman in the photograph is not Nora Lindell. He will tell you this and he will tell you to let the whole thing go already, and you will almost want to believe him. And yet, and yet isn’t it funny he felt compelled to tell you about the photograph in the first place? Isn’t it strange that he gave you specific directions in order to find the photograph more easily so you could see it for yourself?

  19

  Winston Rutherford’s wife lost the first baby, and the second. It doesn’t seem right to quantify lost babies, to say one was harder than the other to lose. But the first baby was its own brand of torture since she took it fully to term. They found out the week before the due date that the baby’s heart had stopped, and the next day Maggie Rutherford was forced to deliver a stillborn baby. Imagine that. Because we do. We imagine it all the time and we hate ourselves when we feel relieved, grateful, that our own wives have never fallen victim to the same tragedy.

  It’s a relief that comes over us during solitary moments—brushing our teeth at night at the bathroom window, walking the dog alone in the morning fog—suddenly being indescribably thankful. The feeling fills our stomachs, wells up into our throats, and it’s hard not to let out a laugh. It’s hard not to want to let out a full-on yell, something primal and guttural, as if an untamed sound alone could describe the simple relief that we are here, that we are alive. Standing at the edge of the ocean, watching a sinking ship in a storm, we wipe our brow and wonder, in disbelief, at our own good fortune.

  We went to the baby’s funeral. The box was so small we couldn’t tell if they’d had the body cremated after all. We felt guilty just wondering.

  It wasn’t our first funeral. Our first funeral was Danny Hatchet’s mom’s. We didn’t know it then, of course, but our next funeral would be Mr. Lindell’s. And after that, Minka Dinnerman’s. Maggie’s second baby never made it past the first term, and they didn’t have a funeral.

  You’re not supposed to tell people you’re pregnant. We learned that from our wives. You’re not supposed to tell anybody until you’re out of harm’s way. Maggie and Winston told everyone when they were pregnant with that second baby. You should have seen them. They threw a party—a small one, but most of us were there. We checked with our mothers before going, confirming that the right thing to do was leave our own children at home in the care of babysitters or, better yet—if there’s nothing else going on, as long as we have you on the phone?—in the care of their grandparents. Funny that we thought to not bring our kids even before we knew the party was to announce that second pregnancy.

  Maggie glowed. She really did. She looked healthy in a bygone way. She looked healthy like we imagine our mothers must have looked when they were her age. Oh and when they told us, we were so happy for them. Winston Rutherford demanded we drink the good scotch in the kitchen while our wives talked in the living room and sipped Champagne. We didn’t understand it at the time—the way, one at a time, our wives gave us these sad, puppy-dog eyes, as we walked into the kitchen—sad, like they were sorry we were so stupid all the time or like they were just sorry for people in general—but we understood later.

 

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