What Changes Everything (13 page)

       One foot jammed into the opening between the bars of the rusting gate, Danil shoved aside a vine to tighten his grip. He hoisted himself, hovered in midair for a tremulous inhale and pushed over, managing to clear the barbed wire as well as the pointed ends of the iron posts. An angel flight, he called it, both risky and exhilarating. He was not as agile as he‟d been in his 20s, and he‟d torn his shirt more than once doing this exact maneuver.

       Landing on the ivy-coated ground, he moved quickly away from the street. If he were spotted in the wrecked grace of Admiral‟s Row, once the jewel of Brooklyn Navy Yard housing, he could face a trespassing charge and a fine he couldn‟t afford to pay. Yet there was something so symbolically right about what he did here that he continued to chance it. He wasn‟t the only one: urban explorers, photographers and the occasional graffiti writer made their way in too. He‟d never seen anyone, but sometimes spotted what they left behind: a discarded water bottle or film box, a tag.

       Heading for the third house in the row, he climbed up decomposing steps covered with dried leaves and bark. He passed through the vine-claimed front door and headed cautiously up to the second floor. Admiral‟s Row, once an oasis of stately entryways and arched windows for high-ranking military officers, was built in the late 1800s complete with a skating rink, greenhouse, parade grounds and a sense of exclusivity. The homes were occupied up until the 1970s, but once they were abandoned, the environment immediately began its reclamation work, both destroying and, in Danil‟s view, enhancing. He‟d passed the walled group of crumbling homes several times while biking into the City for work, and it aroused his curiosity. Finally, about a year and a half ago, he‟d decided to check it out himself. Despite the no trespassing signs, he‟d been visiting regularly ever since.

       A hole in the roof of the second floor invited a single stream of light into the room. He reached behind a crumbled wall board and brought out a stack of envelopes. His mother‟s letters, unopened, about 70 of them. A remarkable collection already. From his back pocket, he extracted the three more Joni had given him and added them to the pile. He‟d stopped reading them a long while ago and didn‟t want them in his apartment, but he felt it would be wrong to throw them away. He hadn‟t known what to do with them until he saw the inside of Admiral‟s Row. He‟d returned a week after his initial visit with the first thick set of letters to deposit.

       He also stored here a favorite picture of Piotr, sporting the beginnings of his first

mustache. His hair straight and long, he leaned into the camera, his lips parted in what wasn‟t exactly a smile, but a friendly look of acknowledgment. Danil had taken the photo himself, right before Piotr went to get his head shaved. "Dumbass," he said aloud to his brother. "For fuck‟s sake. Why?" He asked the same thing every time he looked at the photo, although sometimes the underlying question varied. He‟d refused from the start to visit the lie of his brother‟s grave, but he‟d begun talking to Piotr here.

       Danil propped up the photo and leaned back on the heels of his hands, rolling his neck to loosen the muscles. "Sometimes, you know, you shit," he said aloud, "I feel like a war casualty myself. That‟s why …" He shook his head, squeezing his lips together as if to stop the words, stop the thoughts themselves. "Is it wrong if I end up benefiting from it somehow? I mean, maybe Joni‟s right; I might as well meet the guy. But I also might have to say stuff that will make Mom sadder, or angry, or…" He rested his forehead in the palm of his hand a minute. "I really gotta get something together here, bro, or I might as well be buried next to you right now."

       He paused, half expecting a sign, something he could interpret as a reply, but nothing came. He laughed, then, a little harshly. "Talking to a picture, yeah?" He lifted the photo and tucked it carefully behind the wallboard, next to the pile of letters. "Later," he said, rising.

       He hesitated for a moment in front of a ragged opening where a window once had been, looking out into a ruined garden where nothing remained to recall more lively times. Maybe he should open one of his mother‟s letters, just one. Maybe the most recent. But he hesitated. What could he hope to find there? Certainly not the permission he wanted. He missed his mom, and the way they used to be together. He figured part of her had died with Piotr, just like a version of him had died too, leaving in its place someone who hung out in deserted buildings listening for signs. "Shit," he said, and he turned and headed down the crumbling stairs.

"Hello. Is this Mr. Todd‟s wife?"

The voice sounded muted and distant; she wondered if a poor connection could be

blamed, or if the speaker simply used a hushed tone. "Yes," she said, tightening her grip on the receiver, pressing it more closely to her ear. "It is."

       "I am very sorry for what has happened," he said. His English was only slightly accented. And he did, in fact, sound crestfallen.

       "Amin?" she said. "Is that you?"

       "Yes."

       "Oh. I‟m so glad to hear from you."

       "My people, they are good," he said. "They are generous and welcoming. They will offer a passing stranger dinner and a bed. But Afghans have endured loss and violence and fear. The culture of war has corrupted souls."

       "I understand, of course I do," she said. "My husband loved—he loves—your country. And also working with you."

       "I was happy to hear Mr. Todd was marrying again, after so many years as a widower. He showed me your picture once," Amin said.

       "And I‟ve seen yours." Clarissa remembered Todd telling her that business in Afghanistan, even urgent business, had to be prefaced with a certain amount of complimentary small talk undertaken in an unconcerned tone, as though one had no worries at all. She had to manage, she told herself, to restrain a spill of questions and fears.

       "I wish we could have met under better conditions."

       "We will, one day," she said. "So. Amin. Bill Snyder says you know who to talk to in order to obtain Todd‟s release."

       "I am sorry it has taken me so long."

       "So you know who is holding him?" She felt a surge of hope.

       "Not specifically, no. But I believe I know where to go now, who to ask. I will try."

       As suddenly as it had lightened, her heart sunk at his reply. He sounded so tentative. "Yes, thank you. But do you think…." She let her question trail off.

       "We will be successful," he said after a moment. "I
nshallah
."

       Todd had said that word always gave him the comforting sense that the best effort would be made. To Clarissa, if seemed a ready-made excuse: oh well, God didn‟t will it. Just at the moment when she needed to concentrate on everything, on the tone and the words and the meaning beneath them, she felt dizzy. "Amin, what do you think about a rescue attempt?" she asked. "I mean, a military rescue. If they can figure out where Todd is."

       He made a sound, something like "Oh."

       "The Americans want permission from me and so far, I haven‟t given it," she said. "Is it your sense that we should negotiate first? Or do you think Todd might be in such danger that …"

       The line was silent for a minute. "Are you there?" she asked at last.

       "Mrs. Todd," he said, "I understand how worried you must be. I have a wife too. I

imagine her in this situation. I imagine other wives of good and generous men who have been in

your situation. History has shown some of my countrymen to have a cruel streak."

"So you think…"

"But Mrs. Todd, it is early." His voice sounded louder now.

"What do you mean?"

       "With a rescue attempt, of course, people will die. Which people, we cannot be certain. I have not yet tried words like honor and justice, to see if they will work."

       "So you think…?"

       "I think,
inshallah," he sai
d, "that we will succeed with the
jirga. We are a society of
relationships, Mrs. Todd; our connections are more powerful than our laws. Inshallah, I will bring your husband back."

"Do you think we should offer money? I mean, we don‟t have a lot but…"

       "Let me see what can be done first by talking. Your husband should not have been kidnapped."

       "But he‟s American and I know—"

       "Try not to worry too much, Mrs. Todd," Amin said.

       His voice definitely sounded more solid now, though she couldn‟t believe she was attempting to make decisions based on intonation carried over a long-distance line and from the lips of someone she‟d never spoken to before. Gripping the receiver, she paced the room. "My husband told me once that he knew he could count on you," she said, reminding herself as much as telling him. "He said you were the man he would want beside him in a crisis."

       "He said that?"

       "He did."

       The line went silent again. "I will very soon call you or Mr. Bill," Amin said after a

moment.

       "Yes, please. I hope to hear good news, but I will want to know even if the negotiations begin to look impossible."

       "We will believe in success," he said.

       "Yes. Todd‟s daughter and I, we both appreciate…" she paused, suddenly overcome with a poorly timed rush of emotion. "We appreciate what you are doing. I know Todd would too. I do believe in you. I think you can get him home." She paused, but heard no response. "Are you still there?" she asked.

       Then he spoke; now, again, his voice sounded far away, but she could make out the words. "I will do better than my best, Mrs. Todd," he said, repeating it: "better than my best."

       And that, she told herself as she hung up, was the closest thing to a promise that she could hope for.

       Awakening in the dark, he found his upper chest knotted like a storm cloud, his cheeks damp as if after rainfall. He touched to feel the moisture, then wept even more in disappointment. Not once so far had he cried, not once. But now his tears had tricked him; since he‟d successfully held them at bay, they‟d found a way out while he slept. It seemed, in fact, that he‟d been crying for a while; the corner of the sheet he hugged also felt moist. And once begun, they showed no sign of abating, though from somewhere he found the self-discipline to weep silently.

       Every inhale hurt, too; the tall guard who had vanished, the one full of rage, had returned the day before, and had kicked Todd in the right side when he‟d been sitting down. Why was beyond Todd‟s grasp; perhaps he hadn‟t liked something about how Todd looked, or who Todd was. Another had pulled the hostile guard away, but no one had offered to help Todd. At first, he had been nauseous and dizzy; then he spit up blood, now he feared broken ribs. The pain felt sharpest about six inches below his underarm. He touched there gingerly and bit his lip to keep from crying out. The guards sleeping in the next room still breathed steadily; Todd hadn‟t awakened anyone yet, and he didn‟t want to. While they slept, he was free. Relatively speaking.

       Because of that, nights were the best, but they were also the hardest. They were so black here that he felt plunged into nothingness. His sole companion was a ravenous one: guilt. Look what he‟d done to his wife and his daughter. He could only imagine what Clarissa and Ruby were feeling; he knew neither one had truly healed from old wounds, Ruby the loss of her mother, Clari of her parents. He knew those wounds had to have reopened now. He hoped Ruby was supporting Clarissa; though younger, Ruby had more brash confidence than his wife. Clarissa hadn‟t wanted to fall for him; she‟d been clear about that. She had to be regretting it now.

       He wept for them, and for himself: he didn‟t want to die here. In the middle of the night, he had lost all possibility of magical thinking, all hope for escape or rescue or negotiation; he understood little by little the violence against him would increase and he‟d never get out. Seen on the canvas of history, in light of karma, it made sense; it was even fair. How many noncombatants had been injured or died at the hands of American troops? The numbers would never be determined but they were large enough, he knew, to justify his own death in return, a small down-payment on eventual payback.

       He cried, too, for Afghanistan. No one would ever believe that, if he could tell them. He loved this country‟s people, whose faces were etched by want and loss and fear and who still opened their lips to laughter. But he wondered how they could have ceded so much power to young, ignorant men and their leaders, often from outside the country, most of them not simply uneducated but actively disavowing education as if they sensed—and they had to, didn‟t they?— that knowing more would inevitably disrupt their perfectly constructed, largely false world views. It sounded esoteric next to his tears for his family, his freedom, his life, but still he felt it: the loss of this country.

       He was fully awake now, and very aware of the pain in his side. After several minutes‟ focus, he managed to transport himself to Brooklyn, where he saw himself walking down the street with Clarissa, headed for the subway. They stopped at the place on the corner for coffee, and they split an Everything Bagel. He tried to bring specificity to the way the bagel tasted, the heat of the coffee on his tongue. In his mind, he took Clari‟s hand and said, "Let‟s skip work. Let‟s be teenagers today." In his mind, she laughed and they turned back to home. Feeling all this almost as if it were truly happening, Todd, lying somewhere in Afghanistan not far from the Pakistan border, smiled.

       There was still so much ahead. In some ways, it had all just begun. A new beginning, at his age: how had he failed to appreciate that? This constantly running after something new, it had become a trap. If he somehow could get home, he vowed, he would stay there. He would stop running. He would embellish the contours of his own life, instead of trying to color outside the lines. If he had the chance, he would remember something he‟d forgotten after the death of his first wife. He would remember how to love what he had.