Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel (7 page)

Surely Rasheed had the right to have social and cultural preferences; to distance himself from traditions and mores and a history he felt didn’t correspond with him anymore. “People still hate each other over there?” Max asked.

“They love too much also. When you love too much, it’s worse than hate. You do horrible things to make sure your love will not be harmed. Loving too much makes life very difficult. Makes you afraid. Makes you behave badly.”

“Did my mom hate people?”

“No, your mother had no hate inside her. That is not true. She hated artichokes very much. She said they tasted like seawater.” He smiled at one of the flattened cans.

“Was she funny like you?” said Max.

Kelly turned off the shower. Rasheed stared at the bathroom door and then back at Max. “I nearly forgot! I brought you something else. Something better than cans.” He left to get a book from his bedroom:
Robin Hood
. “Long ago you read me that fantastic story you pretended to write while I was under the weather, and I knew you needed to be reading more fantastic stories like this one.” Max swallowed, incredulous that his father had known he’d lied. Rasheed knocked on the cover. “This is a great one, but you know, always before reading a book you must count the pages.”

Max laughed and accepted the book.

“No, seriously. Make sure none of the pages have fallen out. There is nothing worse than when you are in the middle of a great story and you find there are pages gone. This makes the
story a kind of bad mystery. A very frustrating one.” Rasheed kissed the top of Max’s head and went to his room to change into his work clothes. Kelly followed in after him, wearing a towel. Max waited for his father to come back out before bringing his heels down on the two uncrushed cans at the same time.

Probably the most peculiar Kip and Man-Dog episode was the time they were killed. They’d found themselves hanging on to an enormous rope in a dark void. The Man-Dog couldn’t hold on any longer, his grip weakened, and he plummeted. He caught the very end of the rope with his teeth, pulling down on it in such a way that it clicked on a light—they had, in fact, been left to hang on the lightbulb string of an evil giant’s closet—but the Man-Dog’s sudden tug of the rope bucked Kip off and now caused him to fall. The Man-Dog instinctively jumped after Kip, and they both free-fell to their dooms. It was the first time they had ever died. Max was certain this meant an end to Kip and Man-Dog stories forever but, the following night, they were alive again.

Nadine and Rodney lived in the yellow house across the street. They were a good-looking young black couple. Max had watched them through the living room window as they moved in at the beginning of the summer. Nadine got out of the car first, and possessed his attention utterly. She walked with a slow and uncommon confidence, her gait wider than a woman her height normally had, cutting the air with her thick thighs and pulling everything she passed in her wake. Facing her new home, she put her palms on the top of her butt, which bowed out enough to make a little shelf. She had her tightly wound dreadlocks tied back, and wore dark jeans and a peach-cream tank top. Rodney got out next, dwarfing their car. He had a celery-green linen suit on that day, his rack of muscle sitting underneath his clothes like a bulletproof vest. He stood with the self-important posture of someone who had a military career, chewed enormous wads of gum, and coached Little League too aggressively.

Sometimes, when Max saw Rodney and Nadine outside, doing yard work, he made himself a vodka cranberry and settled into the living room to observe them. Rodney’s voice was loud and intrusive, and his immense body seemed capable of withstanding anything. Nadine’s breasts didn’t look cumbersome at all—full and big, but light for her. A layer of strong fat covered her body; she wore it sensually, and seriously. It shivered when she moved, making a queasy feeling in Max’s belly that reminded him of lying in a hot bath, where his eyelids weakened and he breathed from his mouth. His line of sight stayed tied to Nadine’s waist, waiting for the moments she bent over and her shirt rose so he could see a sliver of her cinnamon-brown stomach.

On weekends she dressed casually (T-shirts, jeans, sandals), and for work she had a funky-professional style: chocolate pants, a lion-colored sash, and a cream silk blouse; a thick turquoise beaded necklace draped over her all black skirt suit and a wide rhinestone belt; a vintage orange dress made of wool with a baby blue head wrap. When he learned from the Yangs that she was a doctor, he imagined she put on a white coat over all her cool clothes as soon as she got to work.

She had other admirers too. Mr. Jenkins, a light-skinned, mustachioed old man with a fedora, sat on his porch and watched her as if he beheld an angel in the natural world. When he saw her, he took off the fedora, pressing it to his heart, and showed off the pomade brilliance of his parted hair. And Mr. Jenkins’s granddaughter, whom he looked after some weekends, with her fuchsia beads adorning the tips of her dancing braids, regarded Nadine with the awe of having spotted a real-life princess. Nadine had been over to the Yangs’ a few times, and they were charmed by her knowledge of flowers and of Chinese literature.

Rasheed had never introduced himself to Nadine or Rodney, or any of the black neighbors. The only other houses on
Marion Street that Max had been inside of were Coach Tim’s and the Yangs’. He didn’t know what it looked like in any of the black homes, and they didn’t know what it looked like in his.

While Max watched Nadine working in her yard one day, a bee rammed up against the living room window from the inside. The bee wouldn’t accept not going through the glass; doing so would have acknowledged a wall at the end of the universe, where space froze into an impenetrable block, posing as a continuation; a moving picture. Refusing this discovery, the bee bashed its head against it, over and over.

Max got a cup and a piece of paper from the kitchen to catch the bee and throw it outside. He trapped it, opened the front door, murmured a couple of words to the cup about liberty that resembled a Coach Tim pregame speech, removed the piece of paper, and drove the cup forward like a dagger. The bee flew about five feet away, and then, as if connected to a string tied to Max’s front tooth, turned around and blitzed his face. Max actually shouted the word
No!
as it bombed down on him, its stinger curled under itself. When it plugged him right between the nose and lip, he barked in pain. The bee imbedded in his skin, its legs wriggling, fizzed like an electric charge. Max started head-banging and slapping at his mouth, his fight instincts convinced this was his demise. Nadine dropped her hose and ran over. Once he saw her approaching, he calmed down and looked at her in embarrassment, the dead bee now in his palm.

“I’m so sorry, I’m okay,” he told Nadine. “It’s okay, I’m sorry, I’m fine.”

Leaning her round face down into his, she said, “You sure?”

“Yes.”

She scrutinized the dead bee. “So weird how he’s willing to die just to hurt you a little, huh?” Her breath was hot and clean.

They both examined its coiled body. Max looked up at her. There’s something surreal about seeing someone up close you’ve only watched from afar. Everything about it is surprising, somehow less realistic. She was one of those people who, the closer you got to, the more sublime her face became. Her brown skin seemed to emit light. She had high cheekbones and large canoe-shaped lips.

His eyes were open too wide, and he closed them halfway. “Maybe this one wasn’t right in the head,” he said, then immediately regretted it, realizing it didn’t fit with what she’d said. The sting puffed up under his nostril.

She smiled her bright teeth at him, one of the front ones slightly overlapping another. Max thought of a pair of crossed legs. “We haven’t met yet. I’m Nadine.”

“I—Max,” said Max.

“I-Max?”

“I mean, I am Max.”

She laughed, and he felt himself levitating.

Kelly appeared at his side and introduced herself. Then she leaned stiffly against the doorframe, like a tipped vase. Looking nervous, she straightened out and put her arm around Max. How different these two women were. Nadine had a health and assuredness emanating from her that made Kelly seem anemic somehow, damaged. A gray lung sitting next to a pink one.

He’d noticed a few times before in the grocery store that Kelly treated black people like walking miracles. They were the ultimate minority in her hierarchy of subjugated peoples. She seemed to be simultaneously praising and pitying them. Speaking to Nadine quickly and with random gigglings, Kelly told her that she’d just moved here and also just got fired and also just escaped an abusive relationship and also just doesn’t get along with any of her family members and is also fresh out
of friends she can trust, ha-ha. When Nadine glanced down at Max, Kelly clasped his shoulder more tightly.

“Well, listen,” Nadine said, “you guys should come over for dinner sometime. I think it’s long overdue that we get to know each other.”

“Absolutely,” Kelly said, a little stridently, “we will definitely take you up on that. And you too, don’t you hesitate to come over anytime!”

“That’s great. It was nice meeting you two,” Nadine said. “I hope your lip feels better, I-Max.”

She turned to walk home, and when Rodney came out of the house, Kelly nearly bolted toward him, passing Nadine and extending her handshake well before she’d left the driveway, as though it towed her to him. Max returned to his observation point behind the living room window. Rodney changed his default bored and moderately offended expression into a broad, youthful smile. He stood straighter, chuckled a lot, and ended up inviting Kelly into their home. Nadine followed in after them. To distract himself from wondering what it was like in their house, Max took a shot of vodka, chased it with cranberry juice, and watched the Lebanese civil war documentary again.

Over dinner, Kelly told Rasheed she’d met the neighbors and how nice they were. She couldn’t stop talking about them: Nadine’s doing her residency at Bell Children’s Medical Center to become an internal doctor, she’s a Democrat, an avid reader of literature, a music lover, and so pretty. And she’s only twenty-six! Can you believe it? And besides becoming a doctor, she’s done everything you can think of. She lived in Nepal for five months, volunteering at a leper colony, and lived in this Buddhist monastery in Thailand after that, but didn’t really identify as Buddhist anymore, and before all that she went to high school in Paris because her dad was a diplomat from Cameroon. She can’t understand where Nadine found the time to do all she has
in so few years. And the boyfriend, Rodney, he’s ex-military, writes some kind of political column now, and wants to start a business that sells—she forgets, some kind of workout machine through a mail-order catalog or something.

While putting a forkful of spinach, arugula, tomato, and honey walnut salad in his mouth, Rasheed said, “And her father was a political person who committed suicide. A very corrupt man.”

Kelly and Max exchanged a look.

“What?” she said. “How do you know that?”

“Mr. Yang reads the international newspapers.”

After dinner, Max got Mr. Yang’s business card out and dialed the number he’d known by heart for seven years. He liked holding on to the card while he dialed. Mr. Yang explained that when he met Nadine and heard her last name, he asked if she was related to a diplomat he’d read an article about years ago. She said that diplomat was her father. A man caught up in all kinds of illegal activities. He came home one day, walked past his wife and children, stepped out onto the balcony of their Paris apartment, and dove into the street. Mr. Yang remembered a strange detail in the article: that before killing himself, he had gotten a haircut. Mr. Yang stopped on the word
haircut
like it was a small garden potato he was trying to swallow. Max had never heard Mr. Yang being so emotional and didn’t dare ask why the part about the haircut choked him up.

Max had just fallen asleep when Kelly came into his room, waking him up to say good night. She climbed into bed and spooned him. A new line was being crossed here—hugging in the dark. He had an erection, and loathed his body for it. Lying there with his eyes split wide open, he felt numb and invaded, as if awake during surgery.

She said, “Lucky boy, there’s so much pain in the world and you are so lucky to have a roof over your head and plenty to eat and people who love you so much.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, though he didn’t understand her regression. Hadn’t they exceeded this baby talk? Hadn’t she been discoursing on world politics and ethics just this morning, convincing him of a more socialized world where we take care of those born with a lesser lot in life? It was perplexing to admire her ideas but despise her physical company.

“He’s seen dead people before, you know? Women, children, you name it. He’s been there.”

“What?”

“Your dad. He knows about death. The things we see in those movies, he knows them firsthand. That’s why he doesn’t want to be reminded.”

“Oh.” He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah.” He wondered what his father could have told her thus far. It took Rasheed twelve years to impart any specifics to his own son, and Kelly hadn’t even been here a month.

“He knows about losing people. Close people.”

“Yeah.”

“His wife. And lots of others.”

“His wife.” The ceiling felt like it was slowly lowering. “My mom.” It wasn’t Max and his father’s private story anymore.

“I think so, honey. I think so. He told me about the time she invited a peasant into their home to teach him how to read and write. Sounds like a remarkable lady. Her dad was so pissed off when he came home to a street man sitting with his daughter.” She laughed.

Max didn’t know anything about that. His mind conjured up an image of a bathtub running over with blood and dirty dishes. “Did he say anything else about my mom?”

She wormed her body closer, clearly in the mood to feel needed. “Honey, I really don’t know much about the story. You know he doesn’t talk about that stuff. But I’ll ask him for you, okay, sweetie? I’ll tell you everything. I promise. I love you. I love you just for being you. You don’t have to do anything but be yourself to be completely loved by us. Isn’t that lucky? Wouldn’t it be beautiful if everyone could have that?”