The Impossibility of Us Read online

  Audrey’s voice runs circles in my head: A person who can’t be trusted.

  The truth of it makes me ache.

  He’s striding toward me again. He rounds his shoulders and gets right in my face, jaw working, eyes flashing. “I cannot believe you would insinuate that my intentions are anything but honorable.”

  “And I can’t believe I’ve spent my summer with a liar.”

  “I have never lied to you. Not once.”

  “Only because I didn’t think to ask if you were engaged!”

  I move to push past him, but he grabs my hand and spins me around. Even as I wrench out of his hold, he’s talking, explaining, pleading, “Please, Elise. I love you. No arbitrary promise will change that.”

  I stare at him, rubbing away the prickles of recognition—the prickles of want—his touch left on my skin. “It’s hardly an arbitrary promise when you’re going home to her,” I say darkly. “Soon, it’ll be her hand you’re holding. Her lips you’re kissing. You’ll look into her eyes and spout beautiful, meaningless words. God, Mati! Are you going to write about her?”

  His gaze narrows. “Don’t diminish what you and I have.”

  “What you and I had. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  This time, my escape is quick.

  He doesn’t follow.

  I round the cottage to its front yard. Rasoul sits in his wicker chair. He’s bent over Bambi, petting her head with slow, methodical strokes as her gaze jumps around the yard. She’s panting like she hasn’t seen water in weeks. Hala stands on the porch, arms crossed, glaring as I march across the lawn. Just beneath her glare lies the suggestion of satisfaction.

  There, I think, aiming a beam of loathing in her direction. I’m out of his life, like you wanted.

  “Elise,” Rasoul says as I retrieve my dog’s leash. He gives his throat a rutty clear. “Please don’t go. This situation … It is not what you think.”

  I snap Bambi’s leash to her collar, then stand to look him square in the face. “It’s exactly what I think, and for you to say differently is insulting.”

  He cringes. “I mean no offense. Mati feels—”

  “I don’t care about what Mati feels.” I realize suddenly, and with acute embarrassment, that I’m crying. I wipe savagely at my face as I bend to meet his gaze. “I appreciate your being hospitable. I appreciate your inviting me over and pretending like I matter. I hope you get better and have a chance to enjoy the peace Mati’s marriage will bring, but right now, there’s nothing you can say that will make this okay. I just—I want to go.”

  He nods once, like he understands.

  I’m certain he doesn’t.

  I give Bambi’s leash a tug. She hops up and follows me over the path, through the gate, and down the sidewalk.

  Far, far away from Mati and the fairy tale he destroyed.

  elise

  I go to Audrey’s.

  I knock on the door of her cottage, then wait, and wait, before banging on the wood all over again. Bambi turns circles beside me, whining nervously.

  “It’s okay, girl,” I say, stooping to pet her. A tear rolls down my cheek, then free-falls, landing on her blond head. It’s quite possibly the most pathetic display I’ve ever exhibited—I’m crying with my dog over a boy.

  I knew Mati would ruin me, but I never thought it’d be like this.

  The cottage’s door swings open. Audrey stands over me. “God, Elise, what happened?”

  She appears blurry, watercolored. I shrug haplessly like, You were right.

  And then she’s wrapping an arm around me, pulling me inside, guiding me to the sofa. She sits beside me, hugs me, smoothing her hand over my hair while I cry into the gauzy fabric of her blouse.

  I have never loved her more.

  After buckets of tears, I pull away. I feel terrible—hot and wrung out and vaguely nauseated. My throat is sore and my middle hurts, like I’ve been run over by a truck. Still, I tuck my hair behind my ears and smooth my shirt, feigning composure, pretending I didn’t just shatter on my sister-in-law’s sofa.

  “Where’s Janie?” I ask.

  Audrey gawks, like, You come here a sobbing mess, but Janie’s who you’re concerned with?

  She recovers, arranging her features into an expression like tranquility. “Napping.”

  “I’m sorry to show up like this.”

  “I’m sorry you’re upset.” She folds her hands, studying me. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  I sink back into the cushions, droopy, like a sail that’s lost its wind. I take a breath, but … I have no idea where to start. I don’t even know what happened. An hour ago, I loved Mati and he loved me. Despite our imminent end, being with him filled me to bursting.

  Now, I’m just … empty.

  “What you said, all of it … You were right,” I tell Audrey.

  Her shoulders fall in a sigh. “The boy.”

  “Mati.” Even now, I can’t accept her slighting him.

  “I thought you weren’t seeing him anymore.”

  I shrug weakly.

  She grimaces. “What’d he do?”

  “He lied. Everything … It was all a lie.”

  I told you—now’s the perfect time for her say it, and she’d be right. But she doesn’t; she pats my hand and says, “Oh, Lissy, I’m sorry.”

  I tell her everything. Our surreptitious visits, the attack he endured, Hala’s disapproval coupled with my mom’s, the I love you’s we traded, the way he made me feel whole and spirited and special. I tell her about Ghazni and the opposing tribes. The words feuding, and duty, and peace drop from my mouth like stones. I tell her about Panra, the faceless girl who’s earned my envy, my fury, my hatred, just by existing. I tell her about the arrangement—the engagement.

  “He says it doesn’t matter,” I add, monotone. I blow my nose again with one of the many tissues she’s supplied. “He says there are no feelings, that she’s just a girl.”

  Aud arches an eyebrow. “Just a girl? Damn, Lissy. Whoever she is, I feel terrible for her.”

  I narrow my eyes, tossing my wadded tissue on the coffee table, where it finds a place among its friends. “You should feel terrible for me. I’m the scorned mistress in this scenario.”

  She cracks a smile. “That’s something your mom would say. But think about it.… This girl is going to be stuck in a presumably unwanted marriage with a liar who’s got feelings for someone else. Sucks to be her.”

  I lack the emotional capacity required to feel any sort of sympathy for Panra. She’s going to gain what I’ve lost, and anyway, I can’t stop thinking of Mati, of the wishes we’ve made, the endless conversations we’ve had, the way he’s touched my face, the way he’s kissed me. He loves me—I don’t doubt that—but I doubt his motives. I doubt his integrity.

  “I wish I’d never met him,” I tell Audrey.

  “Me, too,” she says softly.

  I’ll never see him again.

  I think, maybe, that’s for the best.

  Aud collects my tissues, making a neater pile of them on the coffee table, casting worried sidelong glances my way. I watch her handle my snotty mess without flinching, until a question occurs to me, one I can’t help but voice. “Audrey, are you glad?”

  Her head snaps up. “Am I glad? Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because you hate Mati.”

  “Elise, I never, ever want to see you hurt. I could kill him for what he’s putting you through.”

  I shake my head. “It’s my fault. I should’ve listened to you. To my mom.”

  “Do you think Nick and I always listened to your mom?”

  “I mean, basically.”

  “No. She didn’t want him to get serious with me—not at first.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Nicky and I didn’t have secrets. Your mom was unwavering on the issues of college and career—priorities, she used to say. She thought I was holding him back.”

  I recall family dinners, th
e four of us laughing around the kitchen table. I recall Audrey and Nick wrapped around each other on the couch, watching movies while my mom tapped away at her keyboard in the next room. I recall the two of them closing themselves behind his bedroom door for hours at a time, Mom passing by with a boys will be boys raise of her shoulders. She was upset about Nick’s enlistment, the quick engagement, and the lackluster City Hall wedding, but when it came to Audrey …

  “My mom loves you, Aud.”

  “Now.”

  “But if you’d run away in the beginning, when she didn’t want Nick to get serious, there’d be no Janie.”

  “Exactly. Your brother and I did what felt right for us. It was hard, but all the challenges, all the pain? Worth it. I guess that’s my point: Sometimes you have to trudge through heartache to figure out which path to take. This boy is not the right path for you, Lissy. Now you know for sure.”

  Before today, in the deepest, darkest cavern of my heart, I nursed a tiny ember of hope. Mati’s departure … maybe, somehow, it would be postponed. And even if it wasn’t, someday, we might find our way back to each other. After Rasoul is healthy, after I earn my degree, after Mati’s fulfilled his duties in Afghanistan, we could be together, him and me. But now, with the awareness of Panra and marriage and tribal peace …

  “Knowing hurts,” I mumble. “I don’t ever want to think about him again.” It’s the truth—the childish, self-serving, unimaginable truth.

  “When Janie wakes up, we’ll go to the park,” Aud says, smoothing my hair. “Then we’ll swing by Van Dough’s and get coffees and tons of cookies, a table full of them, and we’ll eat and drink and talk and cry until you feel better. Okay?”

  The park, Van Dough’s, infinite cookies … Reminders of Mati. Sacramento, the Cypress Beach Cemetery, the sidewalk outside my cottage, our stretch of sand … All colored by memories of him. More than anything, I want to go home and bury myself in bed with my dog and a playlist loaded with angsty torch songs. But I nod.

  I’ll go to the park and I’ll go to Van Dough’s, and I’ll forget about my splintered heart and the boy who took a mallet to it.

  elise

  He calls, he calls, and then he calls some more. For the rest of the day, and most of the night. He leaves countless voice mails. I listen to them all, because I’m a masochist.

  He texts in the morning. No pretense, no fluff, just …

  I am so sorry.

  For the first time since my visit with Audrey, the urge to cry overwhelms me.

  I skip the beach in favor of hanging out in the front yard with Bambi, where I build a wall around my heart, stones and mortar, indestructible. My dog seems to understand my suffering.

  Midmorning, Iris comes outside to commence her daily pruning session. I hear her shucking dead buds from her many plants and nestle deeper into the grass, where I’ve been for a while, staring up at the gray sky, feeling very small and very insignificant in this tremendous world.

  From where I sit today, Afghanistan might as well be another planet in a different galaxy, but someday, after the San Francisco Art Institute, when I’m a photojournalist seeking stories of truth … maybe I’ll make my way there. I’d like to see the places Mati’s described: the Minaret of Jam, the Sultan Masood Palace, Bala Hissar, the Gardens of Babur. The Kabul Zoo, even.

  But I won’t go looking for him.

  Iris says my name, startling me. She’s peering over the hedge and I wonder, not for the first time, how often she spies on our yard. She looks at me, supine in the grass, and clucks her tongue. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

  I heave myself off the lawn. “I’ve been better, actually.”

  She adjusts the sun visor tamping down her salt-and-pepper curls. “You look tired.”

  “I am tired.”

  “Me, too,” she says, lopping a branch from the Japanese maple standing beside her. It’s an aggressive cut—unnecessary, from what I can tell—and I wonder if she’s paying attention to her task.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “Last night was rough at the Higgins cottage.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well,” she says, severing another branch. “I found out Ryan is in a relationship … with Xavier.”

  “Oh.” Oh. Poor Ryan. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own trials, I’ve hardly thought about him. I fight the compulsion to cross into Iris’s yard to find him. But later. It’s pretty clear that at the moment, his gram needs to talk.

  “Yes, oh.” She tips her visor up to study me. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  I flush, remembering how I so charitably turned Ryan down shortly after we met. “I’ve known for a while.”

  “I don’t understand why he’d keep something so important from me.”

  I fiddle with my ponytail, trying to come up with a suitable answer, one that won’t put Ryan on the spot with her later. “You know how boys can be. They get scared and keep secrets from people they care about.” I’m talking about Mati, obviously, but my rationale applies here, too.

  “Hmm…,” Iris says. “I suppose that makes sense. But I’m his gram.”

  My skin’s itchy with empathy. “Maybe that’s why he held back. He wasn’t sure how you’d react and didn’t want you to be mad, or sad. He loves you.”

  “I love him, too—that hasn’t changed.” Her mouth puckers, downturned, like she’s reliving the unpleasantness of what went on last night.

  “When you found out, how’d you react?”

  Her frown deepens. “Unfavorably, in hindsight. But only because I was surprised. He’s disappointed in me. I’m disappointed in me.” She scales another branch from her tree. “I want him to feel comfortable coming to me, no matter the situation. I want him to trust me.”

  “You should talk to him.”

  She eyes me. “Will you speak to the person who’s responsible for your stewing in the grass all morning?”

  Touché.

  “My situation’s different, Iris.”

  “Still,” she says, nodding like some sort of guru. “You should talk to him.”

  * * *

  After dinner, I drag Ryan and Xavier to The Hamlet for milkshakes. We sit at the counter, three instead of two. Xavier asks for vanilla, Ryan orders peanut butter, and I stick with my tested-and-true coconut. When it arrives, I experience an unsettling sense of déjà vu at its tropical taste. Except, the last time I had a coconut shake, life was relatively good.

  I’m pushing my full glass away, suddenly without appetite when, in a tone unfittingly casual, Ryan says, “Mati called this afternoon.”

  His name shatters the air like a hammer to glass. “Can we … not talk about him?”

  “He’s a mess, Elise.”

  “I’m a mess,” I say, too loud. I take a breath and swiftly reinforce my wall.

  “He told me what happened. About the”—awkward throat clear—“engagement. He told me about the way his mother acted. She must really hate you, by the way.”

  Xavier elbows him. “Don’t be an ass.”

  Ryan plows ahead, undeterred. “He also told me he’s crazy in love with you.”

  “Did he tell you he lied by omission, over and over? Did he tell you he tried to justify it?”

  “He told me he misses you. You’re wasting your time with him. Six days and he’s gone. I know you’re hurt, but come on. You’re punishing him for something that’s not his fault.”

  I add stones to my wall, big ones, and bolsters for strength.

  Six days. God, it’s hard to breathe.

  “He’s a good guy, Elise.”

  I won’t argue that. He’s giving up his future, his life, to better his community. Short of my brother’s death, I can’t fathom a bigger sacrifice.

  Ryan leans in, resting his hand on my arm. “He’s a good guy.”

  “I know,” I whisper.

  “Then don’t give yourself room for regret.”

  “Even if this is it with Mati,” Xavier says, his tone indicating
a fresh perspective. “If you stick to your guns, decide you’re done, and that you never want to talk to him again, at least you got to know him. At least you had the experience, right?”

  Ryan nods. “Right. But seriously. If you want to give him a call, we wouldn’t stop you.”

  I smile for the first time in too long. “What am I going to do when you guys are gone?”

  “Make new friends,” Ryan says, like it’s easy. He nods at my full glass. “Now, finish your milkshake.” Glancing at his own, empty but for a few smears of peanut butter and whipped cream, then Xavier’s, practically licked clean, he adds, “Unless you only brought us here to fatten us up?”

  “Actually … I brought you here because I talked to your gram this morning.”

  His cheeks go pink. Xavier becomes suddenly fascinated with his straw.

  “You hurt her feelings, Ryan.”

  He draws a hand over his face. “I know.”

  “What happened? I mean, not exactly, but how did she, you know … figure it out?”

  “She went down the street to Ms. Pinque’s after dinner. Xavier came over and I guess we lost track of time. Gram came home and … kind of walked in on us.”

  I wince. “You were…?”

  “Kissing,” Xavier says with a sheepish, though not entirely repentant shrug. “On the sofa.”

  “She was shocked, to say the least,” Ryan adds.

  “She was like, ‘Oh!’” Xavier says, assuming a scandalized falsetto, “And then she dropped the plate of cookies she was holding.”

  For the first time in what feels like forever, I dissolve into genuine laughter.

  They stare at me with nearly identical expressions of disbelief.

  “What?” I say, fanning my face. “It’s funny. I’m envisioning it as it went down: you two, oblivious, and poor Iris, letting a dozen cookies fall to the floor. She’s an old lady, you guys. I’m pretty sure she’d be shocked to see her grandson frolicking with anyone on her floral sofa, but you,” I say, pointing at Xavier.

  He gives me another of his unruffled shrugs, like, What can I say?