The Radiant City. Lauren B. Davis
we?” Fingers spread wide as though she would take hold of him.
“Saida, keep your voice down,” says Ramzi, and flicks his eyes again toward the Canadian, whose own gaze is fixed firmly on his coffee cup. “You’re embarrassing our customer.”
“Oh, forgive me! God forbid! Of course, that’s more important than your nephew. Fine. You deal with him, this tough man, who skips school and lies.”
“You didn’t call the school. You lied,” says Joseph.
“Joseph! You will not call your mother a liar. Apologize. Now,” says Elias.
For a moment it is not clear if he will or not and his uncle glares at him. “Joseph,” he cautions.
“I’m sorry.”
“Take your grandfather to the doctor, Joseph. We will talk at home. Go right back there. Your grandfather will call me and tell me. You will stay with him. Do your homework. Do some homework.”
“What’s going on?” says Elias. “Am I going to the doctor? Why so much shouting? Joseph, you are a good boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Jadd. Don’t worry,” says Joseph and he goes over to the old man and kisses him. Saida’s heart burns in her chest.
“Sorry,” says Ramzi to Matthew. “The boy, he misses his father.”
“You think he misses his father?” says Saida.
“Well, Anatole.”
“That man is not his father! His father is dead,” says Saida, in Arabic. If there was a pot within reach, Saida might very well have tossed it at her brother. “Anatole was never his father. Don’t you dare say such a thing!” She glances at the Canadian and thinks it is to his credit that he says nothing.
“Have some tea with me,” says Elias and motions to the boy to sit down.
“Do I have time?” he says to his mother, this time in English.
“If you’re fast,” she says and turns to boil the water. She shrugs. “Dr. Allouche always keeps you waiting at least forty-five minutes.”
“Joseph, come and meet our new guest,” says Ramzi. “This is Mr. Matthew. He is from Canada. A reporter.”
They shake hands and Joseph is full of smiles. “Have you been to New York?”
“New York is not in Canada, Joseph,” says Ramzi and slaps him lightly on the arm.
“I know that, but it is close. I love New York. I want to go there one day. Have you been?”
“Yes. Many times.”
“Cool. Brooklyn Bridge. Time Square. Best rappers in the world come from Bronx.”
“All that,” says Matthew, nodding. “A lot of good jazz, too.”
“Yes, jazz is good music. American Black music. So, you’re a reporter. What kind of reporter?”
“Good question. I go where they send me. I report on conflicts.”
“On wars, then. Les points chaudes.”
“Yes.”
“What wars?”
“Drink your tea, Joseph. You have to go in a minute,” says Saida. “Don’t be so nosy.”
“It’s all right,” says Matthew. “I guess I’ve been to most of the wars in the past twenty years.”
“Cool.” The word is long, drawn out, and accompanied by head nodding.
“You think so, eh?”
“Sure. You get to be where history is making. See the truth of things.”
“I guess.”
“You in Iraq during the Desert Storm?”
“Yup.”
Matthew begins to talk about being in the Rashid Hotel, about the bombs that fell, the whining thunder they made, about the great fires in the desert. Saida does not listen to the words which, being about war, sound like obscenities to her ears. Instead, she watches the two. Saida likes the way Matthew talks to her son. As though he were an adult, an equal. And she can see from the look on Joseph’s face, the way he leans in to talk to the man, and listens attentively to his tales, that Joseph is basking in the attention. He does miss his father, she thinks—or at least a father. Misses Anatole, does he? Misses the beatings. Misses the drunkenness. Misses being told he is good for nothing, useless, born only for the garbage dump. What is that to miss?
“Enough, Joseph,” she says at last. “It’s time.”
When her son and father have gone she goes into the open courtyard across which is the toilet. She scrubs the sink and mops the floor. The rain has stopped now and she takes a moment to pick weeds out of the potted plants. There are a few late roses on the vine and if she dead-heads the old, perhaps there will be a few more. She likes to be here, in the open, with the miniature garden. It is her thinking place.
Her father thinks she should marry again. A nice Lebanese man this time, not a foreigner he said, as though they were not the ones who were foreign, as though it was not her father’s idea that a Frenchman, albeit a Corsican, would make them less strange here. They would integrate, become family here, her father had thought. Well, she has had enough of that. Besides, who would want a woman like her now, a widow and a divorcee with skin melted into shapes like pale mud over which many feet had walked? No, her son would have to be content with conversations with strangers, with a grandfather, with an uncle. This was why she moved back to her father and brother and not gone off with her son, somewhere else, somewhere where a woman alone was not always tied to the belt of the men in her family.
That night, when at last she can sit and talk to Joseph alone, she means to talk to him as well about the school he has skipped, about the boys he runs the street with, but it is a good moment between them, and instead she talks about the Canadian.
“I liked his stories, didn’t you?” she says.
Joseph shrugs. “They’re okay.”
He admits nothing to her, his mother. He falls asleep watching the television and she does not have the heart to wake him again. Tomorrow, she says to herself, putting the duvet over him, and a pillow under his head. When she kisses him, he smells sharp, but sweet as well, like cinnamon and dates.
Chapter Eight
That night Matthew returns home after consuming a great deal of beer at the Bok-Bok. He lies in bed and considers the Ferhat family. Saida is a pretty woman. Her dark eyes are arresting, one might even say haunting, lit with sorrow, yes, but also with dignity and intelligence. Good bones, as they say, although it’s obvious from the way she shields her scars that whatever happened to Saida has left her feeling unlovely, which is such a shame.
Matthew likes the boy, too, who is growing into his skin, pushing out to see where the limits of things are. It is a tough age, sixteen. Matthew knows that only too well. So many things can change, some irrevocably, others only feel that way. So many things cannot be changed.
Matthew’s own family lives in a carefully guarded compartment in his mind. It has been a long time since he has seen his father and brother, Bill, Jr. Bill has built a house on the same farm and lives there with his wife and three children. Matthew has never met his brother’s wife, nor his children, God help them. He has not seen a picture of them; has never heard their voice on the phone.
Matthew’s mother died two years after the barn burning. All her dreams of going to Halifax and studying to be a vet went up in smoke in that barn, as did her hope of a new life, away from her drunken, violent husband. She would not go so long as Matthew was still at home, but she had been planning. Saving a little here and there. Putting something aside for years, all the while trying to protect Matthew as best she could from her husband’s