In Between Days Page 12

  “I am a pacifist,” he said.

  “Except when you’re beating up guys in bars, right?”

  She winked at him, but she could tell he didn’t like the joke.

  “That was a mistake,” he said finally, and then he turned around, and that was the last time they ever talked about it.

  In fact, from that point on, she never mentioned it again. Instead, they talked about other things. They talked about the people in Raja’s dorm who were hooking up, the various dramas on his hall. They talked about the shortcomings of the new administration, about the hypocrisy of certain professors, about the latest articles they’d been reading in the Huffington Post. They talked about everything, it seemed, but Raja’s run-in at the bar and her parents’ divorce. Chloe had told him one night, after venting for nearly an hour, that she didn’t want to talk about the divorce anymore, that it was too painful for her, that it was easier for her to just forget about it, to ignore it, to put it out of her mind, and Raja, in his own indirect way, had respected this. Whatever’s going to make you feel better, he’d said, and then she’d told him that the only thing that was going to make her feel better was to be with him.

  Meanwhile, at home, the drama was unfolding: the hiring of divorce lawyers, the reallocation of assets, the dividing up of property, the negotiations over ownership. Chloe found out about these things only in bits and pieces, through Richard, or occasionally through her father, who would call her up every few days to complain about her mother and how she was “raping” him.

  It was strange, but during this entire time she rarely thought about her father. Their relationship had been so strained for so long now. It had been so long since she could even remember having a normal conversation with him, a conversation that didn’t end in a fight or involve a disagreement of some sort. Gone were those days when she used to stay up late at night waiting for him to come home from work. Gone were the days when she used to sit around the kitchen table, talking with him about current events, arguing about this thing or that. The U.S. involvement in Iraq, the energy crisis, the latest indiscretion of the Bush administration. Arguing about political events had been their way of bonding for so long. It had been a thing that they’d done together all through high school, and yet somewhere along the way something had changed. Their friendly disagreements had turned into something else, a full-on war that had nothing at all to do with politics and had everything instead to do with her mother and the way her father was treating her. The way he had disappeared emotionally. The way he had stopped coming home for dinner. The way he had started spending his weekends out in the yard, working on the garden for hours on end, ignoring everyone else, and stopping only at the end of the day to read the newspaper, by himself, at the edge of the pool.

  One night, after class, she was trying to explain all of this to Raja as they sat over drinks at the Cove. Raja had nodded at her as she told him the story, but she couldn’t help noticing something different in his face, his eyes. He seemed preoccupied, distant, and when she finally asked him if anything was wrong, he’d been evasive.

  “I’m just tired,” he’d said. “Too much chemistry, you know.” Then he’d patted her on the hand and winked.

  Later that night, they were joined by Seung and his girlfriend, Bae. Chloe had only met Bae once before and had never really liked her, but that night she seemed different. More animated perhaps, lively. She and Seung had been drinking since noon, Seung announced when they first arrived, and perhaps that was part of the reason. They had been making the rounds of almost every bar in town, he’d said, and then he’d proceeded to recount their journey in exhaustive detail. Bar by bar, drink by drink.

  Later, he and Raja had gotten into an argument about the latest president of the Asian Student Alliance. Seung seemed to think that this latest president was too relaxed, too complacent, too easy to please. He didn’t have enough fire in him, he said. But Raja pointed out that the previous president, Samantha Cho, had done little more than alienate the entire administration with her constant protests and complaints.

  “But at least she wasn’t afraid,” Seung had said. “At least she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.”

  “Oh, no.” Raja had laughed. “I’ll give you that. She definitely spoke her mind.”

  Raja and Seung often had fights like this—Seung accusing Raja of being too restrained, Raja accusing Seung of being too extreme—but usually Raja backed off after a couple of minutes, realizing that he could never win an argument with Seung, especially when he was drunk.

  But that night something was different. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the lateness of the evening, but Raja didn’t back down, and after a while Seung grew frustrated and started to brood. At one point, a full minute passed in silence, and then Seung finally looked up at Raja and said, “Look, Raj, it’s like that thing with that sign on your door, you know. You’re not going to do anything about that, fine, but that’s the type of thing we should be bringing to the administration, you know. People need to know about that. People should be getting expelled over that shit.”

  Chloe looked over at Raja, but he was looking down.

  “What sign?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “He didn’t tell you about it?” Seung said. Then he looked at Bae. “Unbelievable.”

  “Can we please talk about something else,” Raja said, shooting Seung a glare that seemed to silence him.

  “Whatever,” Seung said, throwing up his arms.

  Chloe looked around the table, confused, certain that she was being left out of something, but no one spoke.

  Finally, Bae said, “You know, I have to agree. I mean, you don’t want to talk about it, Raj. That’s fine. Whatever. But someone higher up needs to know about it.”

  Raja looked at Chloe then and pulled out his wallet. “You ready to go?” he said, putting down a couple of twenties on the table.

  Chloe looked at Seung, who was shaking his head.

  “Okay,” she said.

  On the walk home, she tried to ask him more about it, but he was evasive and clearly annoyed. It was nothing, he said. It was stupid. A stupid prank. The same type of thing he’d been dealing with all his life. They were walking very quickly now along the narrow, tree-lined streets that surrounded the campus, and Chloe could tell he was pissed.

  “When did this happen anyway?” she said at one point.

  Raja looked at her. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe a few days ago.”

  “A few days ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, do you know who put it up,” she said, “this sign?”

  He shook his head, but she could tell he was lying.

  “Well, will you tell me what it said, at least?”

  He stopped then in the middle of the street and looked at her. “Look,” he said, quietly now, calmly. “When you tell me you don’t want to talk about your parents, I don’t ask you about them, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, this is the same type of thing. This is something I just don’t want to talk about right now, okay?”

  She nodded again, and this time he smiled.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then he put his arm around her. “If it was something for you to worry about, I’d tell you. I promise.”

  And so they didn’t talk about it, and life went on as normal for the next couple of days. Chloe had a paper due at the end of the week in her French Enlightenment seminar and spent the better part of that Wednesday and Thursday holed up in her room. When Friday rolled around, she handed in her paper and then went immediately to the Cove, where Fatima and Raja were already drinking. In retrospect, this was one of her best nights at Stratham, a night of endless booze and flowing conversation, a night when people kept coming up to their table and talking to them, a night when the crowd kept growing, the music kept booming, and nobody wanted to leave. In the dark, smoky haze of the bar, she had slid her hand underneath Raja’s T-shirt and kissed him drunkenl
y. She had told him she loved him.

  Later, she would want to freeze-frame this moment in time, make it permanent. She would find herself wishing that they had gone back to her room, instead of his, that they had found a way to give a perfect ending to the perfect night. But of course this hadn’t happened, though, even now, Chloe had trouble remembering what had.

  What she did remember was stumbling home drunkenly from the Cove, then practically crawling up the back staircase of Raja’s dorm, using the handrail for balance, laughing all the way. She remembered stopping at one point in the second-floor alcove and kissing Raja for a very long time, then following him as he started down the hallway toward his room. What she remembered after that, though, was still a blur. All she knew was that at one point Raja starting running, running very quickly toward his door, and when he got there, he ripped something off, a piece of paper, a sign, and started cursing. When she finally caught up to him, he was visibly shaken, the crumpled-up piece of paper hidden in his hand.

  “Let me see it,” she said.

  But he shook his head.

  “Let me fucking see it,” she said, and this time she clawed at his hand, pried open his fingers, until he finally released it.

  “Who the hell wrote this?” she said after she’d read the sign.

  But he didn’t answer. He just stood there. He did nothing at all. And he’d continue to do nothing at all, even when the signs kept appearing, day after day, for almost a month, even when his tires were slashed, even when he feared for his life, even when everyone he knew kept begging him to do something, to tell the police, to file a complaint, to inform the dean of students. Even then, he’d continue to do nothing at all.

  At least not for a very long time.

  Part Four

  1

  THE CAFÉ TONIGHT is dimly lit.

  All around him people are sitting in pairs, or small groups, discussing the problems of the world, sipping their espressos, lighting each other’s cigarettes. In the corner, a young Asian girl from Rice, who does a weekly set of acoustic Radiohead songs, is setting up her mike, and just out of view, on the other side of the room, he can hear Brandon talking to a customer from his post behind the counter.

  Since his shift ended at six, Richard has been trying to work on his poem, but every time he looks at the paper, his mind returns to his parents and what he said to them. He remembers the way they looked when they showed up at his apartment the previous day, unannounced, his father wearing a polo shirt and khakis, his mother in a sundress. It was the first time he’d seen them together since his father moved out, and it suddenly struck him how normal it seemed, how much it seemed like normal life. They’d come under false pretenses, of course, to see if Chloe was now staying with him, if she was now living there, though they’d claimed that they’d simply come by to take him to lunch. Before they left, his father had asked him if he could use the bathroom, and as he walked down the hall, Richard had spotted him looking suspiciously into each of his roommates’ rooms. She’s not in there, Dad, he’d shouted at one point, to which his father said nothing.

  Later, as they sat over steaming plates of chicken enchiladas at an upscale Mexican restaurant downtown, his father began his interrogation. Had he seen Chloe at all? Had he heard from her? Did he know where she might be staying? Was she staying in town? And what about her friends? Did he know who she still kept in touch with from high school? Could he give them their names?

  To each of these questions, Richard had responded obliquely, evasively, trying his best not to give away what he knew. He said that he hadn’t seen her, that he hadn’t heard from her, and that he didn’t think that she still kept in touch with anyone from high school. Then he said that if he had to guess, he’d assume that she’d probably left Houston by now. This last part had been unnecessary, a lie, and he wasn’t sure, even now, why he said it. He could tell it had frightened them, especially his mother. Why would you say something like that? she’d asked at one point, and then, when he’d shrugged, she’d stood up suddenly and run to the bathroom. When she came back a few minutes later, her eyes red and puffy from crying, he’d tried to backtrack, tried to explain to her that this was only speculation, a guess, but it was no use. The damage was already done.

  Later, as he sat by himself in his apartment, he’d felt the full extent of his guilt. He’d called Chloe shortly after he returned and told her what he’d said to them, and she had thanked him and then apologized for putting him in such a weird position. He told her that it wasn’t a problem, though the truth was it had bothered him much more than he let on. He couldn’t stop thinking about his mother and the way she’d run off to the bathroom, or his father and the way he’d kept asking him the same questions over and over, ad nauseam, like an aging lawyer trying to win a case.

  But still, he’d wondered then, what other choice did he have?

  Ever since the divorce, he had found it difficult to be in his parents’ presence. It was hard to describe, but it had something to do with the way they spoke to him now. Everything they said seemed to be couched in hidden meanings, secret codes. He resented the way they tried to extract certain information from him, the way they tried to play him against the other. For so long, he had sympathized with his mother, had taken her side, and yet even his mother had begun to act this way. He didn’t know what to make of it. All he knew now was that the allegiances were set. His mother and father were a team, and he and Chloe were a team. If he were to betray someone, it would never be her. But, even so, he still felt a slight tinge of resentment for having to lie for his sister, for being put in this position. As much as he sympathized with his sister’s situation, as much as he feared for her future, he still couldn’t help thinking that a part of her had brought this situation upon herself by getting involved with this boy Raja. When he first spoke to them that night at the Taco Cabana, he’d wanted to tell his sister to cut her losses, to sever ties with this boy and move on. But he could tell, even then, that whatever he said to her would be falling on deaf ears, that she’d made up her mind, and that, for better or worse, she was sticking it out. I’m so in love, she’d written him in an e-mail that past fall, you have no fucking idea. And he could see that night as they stood outside the Taco Cabana that she was.

  Still, it seemed strange to him now how much they’d both changed. Growing up, she had always been three years behind him, close enough in age that they had shared many of the same interests and friends, but far enough behind that he had always felt strangely protective of her. When she’d first entered high school he had immediately taken her under his wing, invited her to come sit with him and his friends during lunch, told her which teachers to avoid, taken her to parties where there were mostly upperclassmen. He had been the one who had first introduced her to beer, and later to pot, the one who had shown her the fine art of rolling a joint. He had explained to her in great detail the various tricks for getting out of class without her teachers noticing, had shown her how to forge a note from their parents, how to cover for herself when she came home drunk from a party. At the time he had told himself that he was simply initiating her into a world that she would have otherwise discovered herself, and at the same time looking over her, protecting her, making sure she didn’t do anything too crazy. Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. Sometimes he wondered if he hadn’t exposed her to too much too soon, corrupted her in a way she wouldn’t have been corrupted otherwise. He sometimes underestimated the power he had over her, the extent to which she trusted him, the extent to which she looked up to him. And it occurred to him, too, that maybe none of this stuff with Raja would have ever happened had he simply looked out for her more, had he not shown her the path of his own bad behavior.

  Returning to his poem now, he starts to scribble down a few of these disconnected thoughts, but before he can arrive at anything meaningful, the music starts up in the corner, the girl singing, and then a moment later Brandon appears at his table with a fresh cup of coffee.

  “Got a
cigarette?” he asks.

  Richard looks up, smiles, slides him the pack.

  “How’s the poem going?” Brandon asks, lighting his cigarette.

  “It’s not,” he says.

  Brandon sits down, picks up the poem, and starts to read before Richard snatches it back.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” he says.

  Brandon smiles at him. “What’s with you tonight?”

  “I don’t know.” Richard shrugs, looking over at the other side of the room. “Nothing. Everything.” He puts down his pen. “It’s just all this shit with Chloe, you know. It’s just totally freaking me out.”

  “Tell me about it,” Brandon says. “At least you’re not living with her.”

  Richard looks at him and suddenly feels bad for complaining. What Brandon is doing for them, for both of them, is beyond accommodating. Since Chloe and Raja moved in, he’s been letting them use his car, giving them food, letting them go on the Internet whenever they want. From what Brandon has told him, they’ve been very appreciative, very nice, but he’s also heard them talking late at night in hushed whispers, he says, sometimes crying, sometimes even fighting. Earlier that day, he had told him how he’d come out of his bedroom the night before and found Chloe lying on the couch in a ball, crying. When he’d asked her what was wrong, though, she’d said nothing. She’d just looked at him, then shaken her head and walked out of the room.

  “How’s she doing, anyway?” Richard asks.

  “I don’t know,” Brandon says. “I mean, I don’t see them that much. They go out of the house a lot, you know, or else they’re just kind of hiding away in their room, talking, I guess.”

  “All the time?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know. At least when I’m there.” Brandon drags on his cigarette. “Yesterday she asked me if they could stay with me for a few more days, and I was like, sure, but after that, you know, you guys are gonna have to find another place to crash.”