Ro nods. Even his headshake is foreign. “You are undoubtedly correct, Brent,” he says. “I am deferring to your judgment because currently I have not familiarized myself with these practices.”
Ro loves squash, but none of my relatives have ever picked up a racket. I want to tell Brent that Ro’s skied in St. Moritz, lost a thousand dollars in a casino in Beirut, knows where to buy Havana cigars without getting hijacked. He’s sophisticated, he could make monkeys out of us all, but they think he’s a retard.
Brent drinks three Scotches to Dad’s two; then all three men go down to the basement. Ro and Brent do the carrying, negotiating sharp turns in the stairwell. Dad supervises. There are two trestles and a wide, splintery plywood top. “Try not to take the wall down!” Dad yells.
When they make it back in, the men take off their jackets to assemble the table. Brent’s wearing a red lamb’s wool turtleneck under his camel hair blazer. Ro unfastens his cuff links — they are 24-karat gold and his father’s told him to sell them if funds run low — and pushes up his very white shirt sleeves. There are scars on both arms, scars that bubble against his dark skin, scars like lightning flashes under his thick black hair. Scar tissue on Ro is the color of freshwater pearls. I want to kiss it.
Cindi checks the turkey one more time. “You guys better hurry. We’ll be ready to eat in fifteen minutes.”
Ro, the future engineer, adjusts the trestles. He’s at his best now. He’s become quite chatty. From under the plywood top, he’s holding forth on the Soviet menace in Kabul. Brent may actually have an idea where Afghanistan is, in a general way, but Dad is lost. He’s talking of being arrested for handing out pro-American pamphlets on his campus. Dad stiffens at “arrest” and blanks out the rest. He talks of this “so-called leader,” this “criminal” named Babrak Karmal and I hear other buzz-words like Kandahār and Pamir, words that might have been Polish to me a month ago, and I can see even Brent is slightly embarrassed. It’s his first exposure to Third World passion. He thought only Americans had informed political opinion — other people staged coups out of spite and misery. It’s an unwelcome revelation to him that a reasonably educated and rational man like Ro would die for things that he, Brent, has never heard of and would rather laugh about. Ro was tortured in jail. Franny has taken off her earphones. Electrodes, canes, freezing tanks. He leaves nothing out. Something’s gotten into Ro.
Dad looks sick. The meaning of Thanksgiving should not be so explicit. But Ro’s in a daze. He goes on about how—inshallah—his father, once a rich landlord, had stashed away enough to bribe a guard, sneak him out of this cell and hide him for four months in a tunnel dug under a servant’s adobe hut until a forged American visa could be bought. Franny’s eyes are wide, Dad joins Mom on the sofa bed, shaking his head. Jail, bribes, forged, what is this? I can read his mind. “For six days I must orbit one international airport to another,” Ro is saying. “The main trick is having a valid ticket, that way the airline has to carry you, even if the country won’t take you in. Colombo, Seoul, Bombay, Geneva, Frankfurt, I know too too well the transit lounges of many airports. We travel the world with our gym bags and prayer rugs, unrolling them in the transit lounges. The better airports have special rooms.”
Brent tries to ease Dad’s pain. “Say, buddy,” he jokes, “you wouldn’t be ripping us off, would you?”
Ro snakes his slender body from under the makeshift table. He hasn’t been watching the effect of his monologue. “I am a working man,” he says stiffly. I have seen his special permit. He’s one of the lucky ones, though it might not last. He’s saving for NJIT. Meantime he’s gutting chickens to pay for room and board in Little Kabul. He describes the gutting process. His face is transformed as he sticks his fist into imaginary roasters and grabs for gizzards, pulls out the squishy stuff. He takes an Afghan dagger out of the pocket of his pants. You’d never guess, he looks like such a victim. “This,” he says, eyes glinting. “This is all I need.”
“Cool,” Franny says.
“Time to eat,” Mom shouts. “I made the gravy with the nutmeg as you said, Renata.”
I lead Dad to the head of the table. “Everyone else sit where you want to.”
Franny picks out the chair next to Ro before I can put Cindi there. I want Cindi to know him, I want her as an ally.
Dad tests the blade of the carving knife. Mom put the knife where Dad always sits when she set the table. He takes his thumb off the blade and pushes the switch. “That noise makes me feel good.”
But I carry in the platter with the turkey and place it in front of Ro. “I want you to carve,” I say.
He brings out his dagger all over again. Franny is practically licking his fingers. “You mean this is a professional job?”
We stare fascinated as my lover slashes and slices, swiftly, confidently, at the huge, browned, juicy breast. The dagger scoops out flesh.
Now I am the one in a daze. I am seeing Ro’s naked body as though for the first time, his nicked, scarred, burned body. In his body, the blemishes seem embedded, more beautiful, like wood. I am seeing character made manifest. I am seeing Brent and Dad for the first time, too. They have their little scars, things they’re proud of, football injuries and bowling elbows they brag about. Our scars are so innocent; they are invisible and come to us from rough-housing gone too far. Ro hates to talk about his scars. If I trace the puckered tissue on his left thigh and ask “How, Ro?” he becomes shy, dismissive: a pack of dogs attacked him when he was a boy. The skin on his back is speckled and lumpy from burns, but when I ask he laughs. A crazy villager whacked him with a burning stick for cheekiness, he explains. He’s ashamed that he comes from a culture of pain.
The turkey is reduced to a drying, whitened skeleton. On our plates, the slices are symmetrical, elegant. I realize all in a rush how much I love this man with his blemished, tortured body. I will give him citizenship if he asks. Vic was beautiful, but Vic was self-sufficient. Ro’s my chance to heal the world.
I shall teach him how to walk like an American, how to dress like Brent but better, how to fill up a room as Dad does instead of melting and blending but sticking out in the Afghan way. In spite of the funny way he holds himself and the funny way he moves his head from side to side when he wants to say yes, Ro is Clint Eastwood, scarred hero and survivor. Dad and Brent are children. I realize Ro’s the only circumcised man I’ve slept with.
Mom asks, “Why are you grinning like that, Renata?”
FIGHTING FOR THE REBOUND
I’M in bed watching the Vanilla Gorilla stick it to the Abilene Christians on some really obscure cable channel when Blanquita comes through the door wearing lavender sweats, and over them a frilly see-through apron. It’s a November Thursday, a chilly fifty-three, but she’s hibachiing butterfly lamb on the balcony.
“Face it, Griff,” Blanquita says, wielding the barbecue fork the way empresses wield scepters.