Speak No Evil Read online

  Are you lost if you know where you are going—just not how to get there? There is still no Metrorail service to Georgetown and taking a bus, taxi or Uber during rush hour means conjuring a level of patience with this city that I have never possessed. I stand in place weighing options while the transit goddesses stare down their unwelcoming disapproval.

  But it’s early summer and the sun still shines in the evening so I decide to walk the three miles across town through a place I no longer consider home. The Capitol Building squats atop its hill and the Washington Monument remains singular and unmoved, enjoying its prominence only because of arcane regulations that have stunted the growth of surrounding buildings. I had a high school teacher who used to tell us that the game is rigged with winners and losers decided long before the players have any choices to make. Ms. McConnell lives in Los Angeles now and writes for television. I wonder if she’s happier there or just less oppressed.

  I have never really liked this city. It was forced on me against my will by ambitious parents in search of greater opportunities and better lives. That’s why everyone comes here, to this seductive monument to self-advancement or at the very least, self-preservation. It’s a city that doesn’t take risks. Men wear boxy suit jackets over golf shirts tucked into khakis. Women wear sensible skirts, pantsuits and pumps. They all pull roller backpacks behind them because of subway ads enumerating the signs and evils of scoliosis as they walk to big-box buildings made of similarly colored sandstone. You can’t get lost here because there’s nothing to lose yourself in. These avenues, at least downtown, are not built for wanderers, and these monuments are constructed to inspire awe not contemplation. But things have changed if only to protect the desire to remain the same. The streets have more barricades because the streets have more impromptu protesters, a dismal lot with their posterboard signs and hoarse-voiced chants against the monster in power and his minions. There are more armored vehicles now and more police officers in tactical gear and body armor wielding large black guns. It’s a brave new world wrapped around the old one to make it great again. I think about my boyfriend in New York and how he wraps his arms around me when I have my nightmares—they are less frequent now but no less intense—or in the mornings when we are both naked and vulnerable and that vulnerability arouses him. Sometimes it arouses me too, but sometimes it is easier not to resist. He wanted to come with me because he wants to know where I’m from. I’m here now with you, I told him, but he says with me it’s a case of the more you see the less you know. He wants to meet my parents, to see the house I grew up in, to smell the bedsheets of my youth. He’s a poet trapped in a banker’s body. He reads T. S. Eliot on the subway and slips index cards with lines from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock into my pockets before he goes to work. My parents are moving, I told him, there is only so much change they can handle.

  They are not home when I arrive. Mom has left a short note on the front door written in barely legible cursive that she insists makes sense: Dad and I waited as long as we could but we had to go to a dinner. I made some boxes for you and put them in your bedroom. Leftover salmon in the fridge. Love Mom. She could text but she doesn’t text when she wants to make a point.

  Inside there are boxes everywhere, in the living room and dining room, all open, some empty, some half-full. I drop my backpack on a couch and weave my way through the chaos to the kitchen, where the counters are covered in dishware sets that I never knew we had. A broom and mop lean against the refrigerator door. I try to hold both of them in place as I pull it open, but they slip from my grasp and fall to the floor with a clatter. The fridge is empty except for a box which contains the salmon. There is also some milk and a Brita of water. This must be heaven for Mom—she hates to cook. I warm the brown paper box in the microwave, fill a blue tinted glass tumbler on the counter full of water and stand with my back against the fridge feeling it vibrate and hum while I pick at the salmon with my fingers. The flesh is tough and rubbery. It needs salt, but Mom has already packed the condiments.

  Leaving must be difficult for them, for Mom especially. She is the one with extensive social ties, the friends she plays tennis with, the boards she sits on, the professional women’s groups she has started and grown. I wonder if my absence has anything to do with their willingness to move. Whenever we talk Dad says, this house is too large for two people, and since you never come home, what’s the point of keeping it. They will move to an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, courtesy of Dad’s new job—a professorship and head of institute. Mom says she has always wanted to live in a place overlooking the river, even if that river is frozen half the year. She wanted me to come back earlier. It takes longer than you think to pack up a life, she scolded on the phone. But that depends on how expansive the life. Ever since I left Washington, I have tried to contain my world in the smallest space possible. Don’t keep anything that can’t be packed into two suitcases. Don’t attach yourself too strongly to people or places. My boyfriend says I have commitment issues. When we argue, I tell him attachment and commitment are two very different things. Dogs are attached, humans are committed, I say. He wants to get a dog, but I’m not ready for that. Maybe that will change after they move and I’m really homeless.

  Mom has left packing tape on a stand outside my bedroom. There is also a box marked donate in the hallway. She has never been subtle in her suggestions. It’s not how she was raised, she reminds us. Her family is large and argumentative. They show and tell. Sometimes it drives Dad crazy. Otherwise my room remains untouched, the same framed posters—because Mom would only tolerate them if they were framed—the same creaky black office chair and a white desk with red drawers. Dad and I painted it when he still had time and I still had patience. It’s the kind of thing a person keeps if a person keeps things. Mom said, you’ll regret it, when I told her she should sell it on Craigslist or eBay. Maybe we’ll put it in storage, she said. My grandchildren will thank me. If you have them, I mumbled, which she chose to ignore. Mom has opened my closet and placed a wardrobe box in front of years of clothes hanging undisturbed. They smell vaguely of cedar. I have no need for more clothes in New York so I pull what’s in front of me from the bar without ceremony and prepare for a cathartic dump into the donate box. Then I see it hidden in the back of the closet where it could almost remain unnoticed, a blue-and-white windbreaker jacket with a little bit of shimmer. My breath stops as my stomach clenches and I am reminded in full force why I don’t come home. Niru wore that jacket on the last day I saw him, the last time he came over to my house.

  2

  I am eighteen and I sit on my front steps with my legs pressed together at the knees against the urge to use the bathroom. It’s silly to wait for him out here, bouncing puppy-like with anticipation for someone I have not really spoken to over the last two months but the idea of waiting fascinates me—these moments stacked upon moments to be traded for an experience that may never live up to the anticipation. I should go inside and relieve myself, shower and wash away the dried sweat and grime from today’s track meet, but I don’t.

  Niru appears suddenly at the intersection with its slowly moving traffic, walking with the slight limp of a man who has just run for his life. He wears his blue-and-white warm-ups and as he approaches, I run through all the possible ways to stage a greeting. We aren’t who we used to be. I can’t touch him the way I used to touch him. My hands can’t linger on his back. My head can’t rest on his shoulder. When he reaches me, he rasps a breathless hello. His face is still fresh but his movements are deliberate and old.

  I slide sideways towards the bed of ivy with leaves that cradle last night’s storm water and pat the warm bluestone beside me. I reach out, pull him down by his hands and throw my arm over his shoulder. This seems acceptable. He doesn’t tense or withdraw. We sit quietly and watch the sunlight slide across the houses towards the Georgetown University clock tower. It catches on the silver and chrome handles of cars parked against the curb. After a long while Niru says, I want
to disappear, I want to disappear completely, gone, nothing, no trace, forever. Stop, I say and place my free hand over his mouth. His lips are sticky but I don’t pull back. They’ll sweep the streets tomorrow, I say. I feel his shoulders relax and my fingers grow warm as he lets out a long breath. They’ll sweep the streets and everybody will park on the opposite side, no questions asked. What does that have to do with anything, he says. Nothing, I say, except that it helped you forget—for a second. I can’t help you disappear, I whisper into his ear, but I can help you forget. I say, I will help you, and press my lips to the short, prickly hairs of his recently shaved temple before I take his hand and lead him up the steps to my front door.

  The house is empty so it’s just us. My parents trust me enough to leave for a weekend in New York—work, Dad said. And opera, Mom said. The track team wanted me to host something, but I’ve never liked the idea of many other people in my space, on top of the things I know, touching them with their grubby fingers, leaving unfamiliar smudges and scents. Sometimes it is better to go to the world than to bring the world to you.

  We order a pizza and lie across the couches in the upstairs den as we wait for it to arrive. I make frustrated attempts to turn the thick pages of a coffee table book about Greece with my toes while Niru stares at the ceiling and pops his lips. He says nothing as his fingertips hang just above the fraying border of a faded blue Persian rug. The curtains glow with the sun and the room smells of the flowering trees outside. Dad’s roll-top desk refuses to close over unruly document stacks, magazines and business cards. It’s the only corner of this house where I feel like I’m allowed to be myself, he says sometimes, but mostly he ignores it and this room is totally mine. Riverrun, I say. That will be fun. It’s finally the end, finally. Niru isn’t interested in that line of conversation though he seems not altogether unmoved by the suggestion. His head rolls towards me. He puckers his lips and blows a sarcastic kiss before he turns away. He mumbles, all of those people, the same old people, the same old shenanigans, the same old jokes. But for the last time, I say, then never again if you don’t want. Or what do you want, I ask. Something different, he says, something more real, or maybe I just want to disappear. What gives, I say, rising to my feet too fast so the world swoons. I fall back to the couch overcome by a very real fatigue and dehydration from the meet. I search for my Nalgene bottle on the floor near my feet.

  Niru’s popping stops. He swings his feet around too quickly and unsettles Mom’s carefully arranged coffee table books. He doesn’t look at me. His eyes come to rest on the scaled replica of John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence that I hate, that Mom hates, that Dad considers part of his freedom corner. He is patriotic but not sentimental so Mom and I think the placement is ironic but it stays because Dad sometimes feels like a minority in his own home.

  Niru grinds his teeth, places both hands on his knees and sits up perfectly straight and lets out a wordless scream. Tears drip slowly from his eyes. I move toward him, drop to my knees and plant myself in front of him. The full blast of his breath hits my face and he refuses to look at me even when I place my palms on his cheeks, and then over his mouth. You’re scaring me, I say. Niru I’m here with you, I shout and I shout everything I have heard said by people to people with too much pain. It will be okay, you’ll get through this, this too shall pass, the last phrase being something a mom likes to mutter. The neighbors, I plead. His eyes say, fuck your neighbors, but then they say something much more terrifying, they say nothing at all. Can you see me, you need to stop, Niru please stop, I say from between his knees, please stop, you have to stop. I dig my nails into his forearms and thump a knee against the rug. Help me, tell me what to do, tell me how to make it stop, I say. This could just be one of his practical jokes, like that time he pretended to seize in front of me and gargled Sprite to make his mouth foam. I dialed nine and then one with sweaty fingers while I rubbed his chest and said, stay with me, before his arm flailed in just the right motion to knock my phone from my hand, before he laughed loud enough to fill the kitchen. I poured ice water on him for revenge, but his startled yelp couldn’t match my cold trembling fear that made it almost impossible to hit the right numbers to save his life.

  The doorbell rings. I say, I think the pizza’s here, are you going to be okay if I go down to get it? He replaces a lock of my hair that has slipped from my ponytail back behind my ear. I dash downstairs to the door and impatiently thrust a tip in the delivery man’s hand. I snatch the box from him. It’s okay Meredith, Niru says when I get back. Everything will be okay. I just need to be strong, you just need to be strong. We sit at the kitchen counter with the box of Papa John’s before us. I am still dumbfounded by his performance upstairs. I ask, are you okay? But of course, he responds in a silly imitation of a French accent, mais oui, certainement.

  I don’t press but he can see that I’m unsettled. I want to hug him, to hold him, but I also want to slap him until he can see that, objectively, his life is almost perfect. The world loves him; it takes him seriously; Harvard takes him seriously. I drag a pizza slice from the box to a plate and hand it to him. I was just letting off some steam, he says, sometimes there’s just too much pressure. Well you’re acting really weird, I say. Dude you’ve got to relax, the school year is over. All we have to do is literally stay alive long enough to graduate and then we get to go to college where life will be totally different. It’s not that far away. Not for you, he says, you never have any real pressure. Hey, I say, but I don’t say any more than that. I have always felt like he dismisses my problems because in his mind white people don’t have real problems, just issues. He picks a sausage from his pizza slice and places it on his tongue. The boy I was seeing doesn’t want to see me anymore and I just ran away from home, he says. Wait what, I say, slow down, there’s a boy, what boy? He wants to smile the bashful smile of a person who likes someone but his eyes are sad. You didn’t tell me about a boy. You didn’t speak to me for a long time, he says, things change, but it doesn’t matter, I have nothing now. Aren’t we being a little dramatic? I left my Dad on the GW Parkway, ran away from him, from all that, I can’t take it anymore, it’s crushing me, it’s too confusing for me to live all these lives when I only want one. I don’t know what to say so I ask him if he wants water. I want to see him. Who Damien? The guy? He nods. Tell him to come to Riverrun, I say, but Niru raises his eyebrow and I suddenly feel stupid. Join that fuckery? With Adam and your lover boy Rowan? No thank you. He’s in college. Oooh, sophisticated, I say with much more bite than I think I mean because something pinches inside my heart. I say, I can’t believe you have a boyfriend. He is quiet.

  Niru wants to go to a club or bar on Fourteenth Street because it’s close to where Damien lives. I can call him and maybe he’ll come, he says. I want to tell him he’s dreaming but I don’t because he’s hurting and I want to be a good friend. You have a fake ID, he says, and I have my brother’s license. Which you’ve never used, I say. He gives me the side-eye. He says, just help me with this, with eyes full of please and thank you all mixed together. But what about Riverrun? We’ll go after, he says, and I’ll buy you a drink if you come with me, something better than the cheap beer they’ll have by the river, he says. You’ll have to buy me more than one.

  Fourteenth Street is alive with bodies by the time we get there. The weather is nice so people linger on the streets. There are women in short sequined or pastel shorts and tight short skirts, revealing tops and made-up faces. There are surrounding men who all look the same, awkward with shirts tucked into jeans or khakis that fall over boxy black or brown shoes. Their pale skin turns orange in the streetlight. If this is real life, I want very little of it but Niru wants it all. He charges ahead towards the bouncers at the busiest place on the street where the chatter from multiple meaningless conversations competes with Top-40 pop that beats against the windows and spills into the street. My hand shakes when I produce a license that I got because everyone else was getting one. It says I’m from Maryl
and, that my name is Amy, and that I am twenty-three years old. I don’t look like I’m twenty-three yet because I don’t wear my clothes and makeup with the same confidence as the women around me. My jeans are the wrong choice in this heat and I am unsteady in my heels, but my tank top is loose and I like the latticed straps that show my back. Guys do too—I feel their fingertips in the space between my shoulder blades every time I wear it to a party. They touch me now when they say hello. They offer to buy me drinks.

  At first I say no because Niru stands next to me and even if he has his own agenda, part of me feels like it wouldn’t look right. He shouts in my ear that his calls to Damien won’t go through and he holds his old Nokia phone in a tense hand with flexed muscles that stretch the arms of the too-small golf shirt I produced for him from my father’s closet. The bouncer didn’t pay attention to his warm-up pants and sneakers; the track coaches are stylish enough to know that functionality doesn’t always trump form. You go and find reception, I tell him, I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine. I should be fine because this will soon be my life in New York, clubs with men my age and much older all circulating in search of something that I supposedly have to give, that I’m still supposed to guard furiously, that I tried to give to the boy who has just left me at the bar alone so he can give it to someone else I have never seen. And I am here to help him. It hurts even if nature always wins in the end. It hurts because loving someone is very often against your will at first and there is no amount of will that can change the situation before me. I have tried.