The Night Counter (31 page)

AFTER DRAINING
the bathtub and tossing out the wilted remains of half his garden, Amir sat down on the toilet and read Decimal’s letter. By the time he flushed, he knew that Fatima somehow had learned its contents.

He found Decimal sitting at the dining room table looking at his new head shots. “I blow-dried your beard for you,” she said. She handed it to him very warm. “I took all my allergy pills so I won’t bother her with my sneezing.”

Amir felt no biological connection to Decimal even though she had Fatima’s nose bump, but he felt that they had a vibe thing going, as Soraya would say. They were both far more intelligent than the life choices they had made would indicate, both taking care of people who should have been taking care of them. But even good people, he reasoned, have their limits, and he had reached his.

“Sorry, kid, you have to leave,” he told her.

“But I haven’t even gotten to talk to Mrs. Abdullah,” Decimal protested.

“Consider yourself blessed,” Amir advised. “Now, what’s your grandma’s number?”

“I’ll do it myself.” Decimal sighed and pulled out her cell phone. “So should I tell Gran I’m staying with my second cousin or my first cousin once removed?”

“I have no idea,” Amir said. “Jesus Christ, I’ve never even heard of you before.”

“They probably called me Aisha,” Decimal said, “even though less than 11 or so out of 251 people that I’ve met in my life so far would know that’s my real name. It’s African. My dad chose it.”

“Aisha is also Mohammad’s wife,” Amir said.

“Is he a cousin or an uncle?” Decimal asked. “I figured there had to be at least one Mohammad in the family, given that statistically it is the most common name in the world. I read that in
Time
at my dermatologist’s office.”

“Auntie Laila’s oldest is a Mohammad, but he doesn’t have a wife. I meant the Prophet Mohammad’s wife,” Amir said. Fatima had taught him a lot about a book she couldn’t even read.

“Interesting,” Decimal said, and continued to dial. “Gran kept forgetting to give me the address, so I ended up looking it up in her address book and sent it. I went to cross it off Gran’s to-do list, but she already had, and then I thought, Gran’s getting old and confused and stuff. But then I heard her talking to Dr. Wang downstairs and saying how Mrs. Abdullah would just die if she ever found out about me. I didn’t want to be a cause of death, so I came here in person so she could see that aside from this baby thing, I’m not so bad. First, I thought that because Mrs. Abdullah was alone and old, she might have a lot of cats and I would be allergic, but then I thought I wasn’t worth her dying over and I took my allergy pills and the cash my mom is supposed to use but doesn’t and came. I’m glad she has you instead of a cat. At least I got a road trip out of it, which my mom says is one of those things that will be hard to do once you have a kid.”

Amir lost Decimal’s train of thought early on and was glad to hear someone pick up on the other end.

“Hi, Gran,” Decimal said on the phone. “I’m fine. I’m in California visiting Mrs. Abdullah … you know, your mom. … I’m not being funny … she seems very nice, Gran, I see where you get it from.”

Amir slapped his beard back on and left the room with his script. Let the girl deal with her baggage on her own. He paused at the stairs, listening to Fatima yell at herself about the shame of this girl over a Perry Como record. A minute later, Decimal stood next to him at the stairs listening.

“Gran’s coming tomorrow,” Decimal told him. “She’ll fix everything.”

“You know what pisses me off?” Amir said. “In the thousand days and nights she’s been living with me, hardly a single one of you came to visit. But you get pregnant and Hala’s here on the next plane.”

“Nobody cares for the generation before them as much as the one that comes after,” Decimal explained. “Like Brenda puts Hala through hell and doesn’t even apologize. With me, Brenda at least apologizes and stuff.”

“I send out a weekly e-mail to all of Tayta’s kids and hardly hear anything from anyone,” Amir complained.

“I’m sure it could be a proven fact that 50 percent of people suck,” Decimal answered. “You just got a very large number of that 50 percent in your family. You want me to help you write the e-mail tonight? I’m in the top twelfth of my class in English and stuff.”

“Well, you do seem to write letters with quite an impact,” Amir admitted, and the two went back to the kitchen computer while upstairs the cursing of Decimal’s arrival continued.

Amir began typing, and Decimal looked over his shoulder.

“According to the
O
magazine at Dr. Patel’s office, some things you got to keep to yourself, like, say, being scared about having a baby, because that’ll scare the people around you,” Decimal said. “Other stuff you got to be honest about.”

Decimal shoved Amir out of the computer chair, hit “delete,” and began typing. Amir proofread over her shoulder.

“Whoa, that last bit is harsh,” he said.

“But it’s true,” Decimal replied. “My mom’s in health insurance, and I know how actuaries calculate things.”

“Tayta would hate it if she knew I was sending out an e-mail like this,” Amir said.

“You can always blame me,” Decimal said. “She can’t hate me more.”

“I’m sorry about that, kid,” Amir said. “Tayta’s just very methodical about the sequence of things. First comes birth, then lots of homework, followed by massive amounts of education at the best schools possible, then marriage, and then a baby You skipped a lot of steps, and I’m just listing the vital ones.”

“So did your mom and dad do it in the right order?” Decimal asked.

“Sort of,” he told her. “I’m one of the original sperm donor babies— direct from the Michigan Sperm Bank, one of the first in the country My mother sees the future in more ways than one. I was on a couple of medical magazine covers as a zygote and fetus.”

“That’s way cool,” Decimal said. “At least Mrs. Abdullah’s very open-minded about sperm and stuff.”

“Tayta prefers to think of me as immaculate,” he explained. “I’m just lucky that my mother reached menopause without falling in love with a man and having a child with him. I was always worried before then that she’d resent that she’d hadn’t waited it out for free sperm.”

“My mom’s pretty price-conscious, too,” Decimal said. “It’s her job. But I think you’re being way hard on yourself. I was a mistake, so my mom had no choice, but your mom chose you to be here.”

“My mom had me because she found out her ex-husband was having a kid,” Amir said, and rummaged in his desk drawer until he pulled out three postcard-size yellowing ultrasounds and handed them to her. “She was very competitive with the new wife, being as they had been best friends. But then she didn’t know how to support me—at least that’s what she told me—so she dumped me off with Tayta, and that was the best thing for all of us, according to my mom’s first therapist. He said going out on the road was how my mom found herself, and without her finding herself, I would have been lost.”

Decimal examined the ultrasounds, trying to find Amir in them. “Here I am,” he pointed out. “Pretty cute, huh? I was one of the first babies to get take-home photos from the doctors.”

“You kind of look like my baby looks,” Decimal said. “Except mine doesn’t have ‘Michigan Sperm Bank’ written at the bottom.”

“Sometimes I wish that Tayta believed I was a sperm baby so she could accept the gay thing, as she’d have some sperm to blame it on,” Amir sighed.

“You got to wonder about the sperm yourself,” Decimal said.

“One day, sure.” Amir nodded. “I mostly just bring it up in front of my mother to guilt-trip her, but I don’t want to do anything about it while Tayta’s here.”

“You’re a good man,” Decimal said, and hugged him.

“You’re very comforting, like what I’d imagine a mom would be like,” Amir said, patting her head. It had been a long time since he had had someone to dump on. “You’re going to do fine, you and your bun in the oven person.”

“I think so,” Decimal agreed. “So how do you say ‘great-grandmother’ in Arabic?”

“I don’t know,” Amir said. “Great-tayta, I guess.”

“Not that I’ll need to know that,” Decimal said. She sneezed and scratched her arms through the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt.

Then the stomping began upstairs, with emanating sounds that were a cross between singing and wailing. “Jesus Christ, I haven’t heard that since Detroit,” Amir said, staring at the ceiling. “I think she’s trying to do the
dabke.
”

“The what?” Decimal asked.

“The
dabke
, kid,” he said. “Don’t you know anything? At every wedding they dance the
dabke
and …” He stopped himself. He sounded like the crazy lady upstairs, and besides, this girl wouldn’t know anything about weddings, either.

KICK ONCE, STEP
back, and stomp. Repeat. The sight of herself in her new embroidered dress made Fatima want to
dabke
, made her almost forget the girl downstairs. She didn’t even notice her hair in the mirror.

“This music is terrible enough without you singing off key to it, too,” Scheherazade said as she watched Fatima’s old Frank Sinatra record spin on the turntable.

Scheherazade flipped through Fatima’s collection: more Perry Como, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney “You have no real music,” she decided. “I will have to sing for you.
Yallah.
”

Then Scheherazade hummed an old village song loudly enough to drown out the girl downstairs, and Fatima found a rhythm in her body she had not felt course through her in seven decades. She waved her head scarf in her hand while Scheherazade circled around her in bare feet,
gracefully waving her arms overhead and snapping her fingers, all of which were adorned in intricately woven silver rings.

“I have not worn such a fine dress since the day of my engagement to Marwan,” Fatima remarked. “It was in the garden in Deir Zeitoon. The band played until sunrise; everyone was so happy except me. I had never seen my mother and uncle eat without dividing the food into proportions to see how many days they could make a dish last.”

Then she heard Amir laugh outside at something the girl said, and she plopped down on the bed, exhausted.

“What, no more dancing?” Scheherazade inquired, disappointed. “Fine. I’ve got something else we can do.”

Scheherazade stepped out and a few minutes later returned with the Oster sixteen-speed blender box with the Avon samples. She dropped the box in front of Fatima, but Fatima did not even flinch from the dust it emitted.

“Why was I not told of this girl earlier so that such horrible thoughts would not be on my mind at death?” she said.

“You’re not dead yet,” Scheherazade reminded her. “So no, the shame will not kill you.”

Scheherazade dumped out the forty-year-old contents of the box and began arranging the tubes and compacts on the vanity. She opened a perfume bottle called Avon Occur! She grimaced and tossed it back in the box.

She beckoned Fatima to come sit at the vanity.

“Don’t you want to look extra-special for our final night tomorrow?” Scheherazade asked.

“It’s easy for you to be so casual about death. You’re immortal,” Fatima said, feeling a flutter in her stomach at the thought of tomorrow. “I only get one chance at it, and I don’t need makeup for it. No one in God’s name will care what I look like, especially if I failed to leave behind a good family.”

Scheherazade barely listened as she opened up tubes. She sniffed and then tossed most of them.

“Hey, don’t waste all that,” Fatima protested.

“When’s the last time you used this?” Scheherazade asked as a caked tube crumbled apart.

Fatima remembered when the colors had been so bright with names such as nude peach, pearl pansy, and ruby royal rouge. “I never used it,” she said. “I just sold it, but not very well.”

Scheherazade held up two shamrock-shaped glass serving trays. “Those I received as my Avon representative sales award.” Fatima beamed. “Even though I couldn’t sell the makeup, everyone in the neighborhood thought I knew what I was doing with kids because I had so many. So they would buy the Avon toys from me. Maybe from Marwan I also learned a little bit about peddling. It’s all in the listening, he said. He told me that when I asked him why he never talked. When I peddled the Avon, I didn’t feel good in English with the neighbors, except Millie. So I listened to the women tell me stories like you listen to me now. Then they would buy from me, and Avon gave me a lot of bonus toys to say thank you.”

Scheherazade dug farther into the box and pulled out a bottle of Avon Charlie Brown no-tears shampoo, an Avon Peanuts soap dish, an Avon Volcanic Repeating Pistol, and several Avon cat cars. Scheherazade pointed the Avon Volcanic Repeating Pistol at Fatima. “Come sit down and let’s put these cosmetics to use, partner,” she said, imitating one of the cowboy roles for which she’d seen Amir wishfully rehearsing.

Fatima pushed aside the gun. Scheherazade took her hand and forced her to sit down at the vanity.

“A swish of some kohl and a dash of cinnamon powder can give a girl cheeks like rosebuds, lips like jujubes, and a face round like a full moon,” Scheherazade said. She held a couple of powder compacts up against Fatima’s cheek for comparison. “Just listen to me on this. I have a lot more experience.”

“When you were helping Amir get me out of the tub—I know it was you—did you hear him talk in his head about the house in Lebanon?” Fatima questioned.

“No, sister, I cannot hear words that do not even exist as thoughts,” Scheherazade said.

Scheherazade’s truth numbed Fatima, and so she was able to apply the face powder without any flinching on Fatima’s part. Scheherazade feathered a generous amount of blush onto Fatima’s cheeks before Fatima pushed her hand away. “Is the girl still here?” she asked.

“No one is more dear than the child but the grandchild. She is your daughter’s grandchild,” Scheherazade told her. “How would you feel if one were to spit on Amir?”

Fatima would curse that person’s entire line of ancestors. But this was different.

“She is a disgrace,” Fatima said. “
Ya Allah
, Mama was the best person in the world, and I have no one worthy of her house, my grandfather’s house.”

“
Khallas
, stop,” Scheherazade said. “You were a child when you left your mother. You did not know her as an adult to know she was not perfect, as you have not been perfect. What do you really know about her life? She could have had many affairs herself.”

Fatima slapped Scheherazade. “I did deserve that,” Scheherazade conceded. “But no one should describe her own olive oil as crude. Paradise without people is not worth setting foot in, so leave the house to God and put its key in the underwear drawer and go talk to her instead.”

“The key.” Fatima remembered. A powerful wave of heat fired by sadness rippled through her body. She still trembled from it when she was finally able to form words again. “The key is still in the guest room. We did not find it yet.”

“Maybe it is not here,” Scheherazade said.

“
Allah yustur
,” Fatima said. “I know it is here. Do you think I imagined it being here? You think I’m crazy? Because you’re the only crazy thing in my life other than my children.
Yallah
, let us go.”

“Take that girl with you,” Scheherazade said. She dabbed what once had been coral peach lipstick onto Fatima’s lips before Fatima flicked her hand away.

“You go with me,” Fatima insisted.

“I’ve never been anyone’s servant,” Scheherazade reminded her.

“This is of urgency,” Fatima said. “Tomorrow is the 1001st night.”

“That’s your urgency,” Scheherazade replied. “I’ve got forever, so I can’t damage my hands with manual labor. You have a girl downstairs who can help you.”

“I’ll ask Amir,” Fatima decided.

“He’s going to tell you to wait until tomorrow,” Scheherazade said, “with this big audition he keeps talking about.”

“He will understand the urgency,” Fatima said. But Scheherazade’s face told what she already knew: He would not understand. Scheherazade pointed her manicured index finger downstairs.

Fatima shook her head. “I have never allowed anyone to dig through those boxes other than myself, and I will not let her be the exception.”

Then she screamed like a woman escaping a fire for her grandson. Amir in his
thowb
and beard was there in thirty seconds.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Tayta,” Amir panted, out of breath. “What happened? Why is your face so flushed? Let me call a doctor.”

“It’s called beauty,” Fatima answered, smiling broadly enough to crease some of the cocoa deluxe foundation.

“Oh,” Amir said, examining her more closely. “Huh, I’ve just never seen you, oh, I don’t know, so beautiful.”

“I need to go to the guest room,” Fatima said. “I have to find the key to the house.”

“What house?”

“Stop saying stupid things,” Fatima reprimanded him.

“Oh, Lebanon again,” Amir said. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

Fatima saw Scheherazade enjoying Amir’s predicted bad behavior from her perch on the windowsill.

“I have to get the key,” Fatima said.

“This is the biggest callback audition of my life,” he replied. “What could be so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow night?”

“I’ll be busy then,” Fatima insisted.

“Look, we’ll do it on the weekend,” Amir promised.

It was tragic that he did not know this was his last chance to be good to her.

“Fine,” Fatima said. “Send the girl up here.”

“Oh, Tayta, I knew you’d come around,” he said.

“The girl can still lift things,” Fatima said. “She’s young, and it’s early in her pregnancy. Get her.”

A few minutes later, Amir came back up with the girl, who still was clutching her Hello Kitty bag. He edged her toward Fatima.

“Go on, kid,” he said. “I’ll see you both later.”

“Wait,
habibi
,” Fatima begged. “Don’t come home too late tomorrow. I need you to be here tomorrow night.
Min shan rubna
, it’s the last time I’ll ask you to do anything for me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Amir said as he left.

There was only one best: that she would die in his arms. When Fatima looked at the windowsill, Scheherazade was not perched there. She had no choice but to look at the girl.

“Both you and Amir have such nice dresses and stuff,” Decimal said, looking over her shoulder as if she hoped Amir were still there.

“I can’t hear you,” Fatima said.

Decimal made her way toward Fatima. “You look very pretty,” she said more loudly. “My mom—that’s Brenda—she’s got your same goddess finesse with makeup.”

“God give me strength,” Fatima said. She stood up with her cane. “Take me to the guest bedroom. I’m sure that’s where the key is.”

“What key, Mrs. Abdullah?” Decimal asked.

“
Ya Allah
, you don’t know anything, that’s obvious, or your belly wouldn’t be about to stick out,” Fatima answered. “The key to the house in Lebanon. Take my arm and help me out. Turn left at the hallway.”

Fatima did her best not to flinch when the girl touched her. To get into the guest room door, Decimal had to shove aside a box filled with facial hair parts: beards and mustaches of various lengths and a few Styrofoam heads modeling long-haired and curly-haired wigs.

“He should have put about 3.5 feet of chrome from the living room in here to help with the lighting in this mess,” Decimal said.

Fatima thought that funny but pursed her lips tightly.

“Whereabouts is the key, Mrs. Abdullah, ma’am?” Decimal asked.

“Look for a box of old clothes,” Fatima told her. Fatima remembered the last time she had held the key: April 4, 1974.

Decimal clung to her Hello Kitty bag to work her way through clothes racks and boxes overflowing with board games, sports equipment, camping supplies, and
Boys’ Life
magazines and books. Decimal stopped in front of the cedar chest, unable to hold back a sneeze. She wiped her spittle off the chest.

“My grandfather built that,” Fatima said, and Decimal got her first sighting of Fatima as a proud rather than a defeated woman. “He made it when I was born so my mother would have somewhere to put the things for my wedding.”

“What’s inside, Mrs. Abdullah?” Decimal asked.

“You can’t have the wedding dress,” Fatima said. “In Lebanon, all babies are made after weddings.”

“How do you know?” Decimal said. “A lot of people are better at covering up things than me and Brenda. That’s what Brenda always says.”

“What are you talking about?” Fatima said. She was annoyed with the girl’s mumbling, although it was she herself who had purposely tried to silence her by lowering the volume on her hearing aid. “Please just look for a pair of blue pants. They are in one of the boxes in a blue backpack. They’re made of blue that looks like bad spaghetti.”

“You mean corduroy?” Decimal said. “What kind of box would they be in?”

“Yes, cordelias,” Fatima agreed. “Now look.”

Fatima could not bear to dwell on the Levi’s in the backpack.
Yukhrub beit deeni
, curses on my faith, she thought, for giving me no other distraction than talking to this girl. Maybe she could make her moral with a story, the way Scheherazade had taught her sister Dunyazad morality
through her stories to her king. But Scheherazade had had 1001 nights. Fatima only had one. Still …

“I was pregnant for my second wedding,” Fatima ventured. “You can get married without a dress, like I did, and take no pictures.”

Decimal scratched her arm. “They say in
Psychology Today
that divorce is almost as inevitable and complicated as sex and stuff,” she said. “I’d just rather skip a postdivorce stage because apparently it’s one of the most depressing times in a person’s life.”

Fatima was stuck on a child using the word
sex
so casually in front of her. Then again, this child had “done it,” as Fatima used to hear Millie and her kids refer to the bad girls at their school. It had shocked Fatima what Millie talked to her kids about. Now it shocked her what her own kids allowed to happen to their kids.