Unaccustomed Earth Read online

  When they crossed paths again, she didn’t apologize for the outburst. She didn’t appear angry, only indifferent. He noticed that a copy of the Phoenix, which she’d left on top of the microwave, was folded to the real estate section, and that a few of the listings were circled. She came and went from Farouk’s. She looked up at Paul briefly when she happened to see him, with a mechanical little smile, and then she looked away, as if he were invisible.

  The next time Sang worked at the bookstore, Paul stayed up in his room until he heard her leave the house. Once she was gone, he went to the kitchen, emptying out the recycling bin, which had not been taken out all winter. He flipped though each magazine, unfolded every newspaper, searching for the sheet of paper with Deirdre’s number. It would be like Sang, he thought, to look for it and not find it. But Paul couldn’t find it, either. He pulled out the White Pages and opened it at random, searching for a Deirdre, not caring how ridiculous he was being. Then he remembered it. Her last name. It swam effortlessly back to his memory, accompanied by the sound of Deirdre’s voice as she introduced herself to him that night on the telephone months ago. He turned to the “F’s,” saw it there, a D. Frain, an address in Belmont. He dragged the nail of his index finger beneath the listing, leaving a faint dent in the paper.

  He called the next day. He left a message on her machine, asking her to call him back. He felt giddy, having done it. In a way, it was his fear that Deirdre would not call him back, knowing that she, too, was now keeping her distance, that emboldened him to keep calling, to keep leaving messages. “Deirdre, this is Paul. Please call me,” he said each time.

  And then one day she picked up the phone.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  She recognized his voice. “I know. Listen, Paul—”

  He cut her off. “It’s not right,” he said. He was sitting in a booth in the lobby of the library, watching as students flashed their ID cards to the security guard. He fished in his pocket for extra quarters.

  “I listened to you. I was kind to you. I didn’t have to talk to you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It was wrong of me.” She no longer sounded drunk or flirtatious or desperate or upset in any way. She was perfectly ordinary, polite but removed.

  “I didn’t even tell her the other stuff you told me.” He saw that a student was standing outside the booth, waiting for him to finish. Paul lowered his voice. He felt mildly hysterical. “Remember all that stuff?”

  “Look, please, I said I’m sorry. Can you hold on a second?” Paul heard a doorbell ring. After a minute, she came back to the phone. “I have to go now. I’ll call you back.”

  “When?” Paul demanded, afraid that she was lying to him, that it was a ploy to be rid of him. In January, when Paul had wanted to get off the phone with Deirdre, she had pleaded with him to stay on the line.

  “Later. Tonight,” she said.

  “I want to know when.”

  She told him she’d call at ten.

  The idea came to him immediately after getting off the phone, the receiver still in his hand. He left the library, went to the nearest RadioShack. “I need a phone,” he told the salesman. “And an adapter with two jacks.”

  It was a night Sang worked at the bookstore; as usual, she was home by nine. She said nothing to Paul when she came into the kitchen to get her mail.

  “I called Deirdre,” Paul said.

  “Why don’t you stop involving yourself this way?” Sang said evenly, leafing through a catalogue.

  “She’s calling me at ten o’clock,” Paul said. “If you want, you can listen in without her knowing. I got another phone and hooked it up to our line.”

  She dropped the catalogue, noticing the second phone. “Jesus, Paul,” she hissed. “I can’t fucking believe you.”

  She went into her room; at five to ten she came out and sat next to Paul. He’d set the phones together on the table. At exactly one minute past ten, both phones rang. Paul picked up one. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Deirdre said.

  He nodded, motioning to Sang, and slowly, carefully, Sang picked up the other phone and put it to her ear without allowing it to touch her. She held it unnaturally, the bottom of the receiver turned away from her mouth, pointed toward her shoulder.

  “Like I said, Paul, I’m sorry for calling you. I shouldn’t have,” Deirdre said.

  She seemed relaxed, willing to talk, in no apparent rush. Paul relaxed a little, too. “But you did.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you cried about Farouk.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you made me into a liar.”

  She was silent.

  “You denied the whole thing.”

  “It was Freddy’s idea.”

  “And you went along with it,” Paul said. He was looking at Sang. She was pressing her top teeth into her lower lip in a way that looked painful.

  “What was I supposed to do, Paul?” Deirdre said. “He was furious when he found out I’d called you. He refused to see me. He unplugged his phone. He wouldn’t answer the door.”

  Sang put a palm against the table’s edge, as if to push it away, but she ended up pushing herself back in her chair, scraping the linoleum. Paul put a finger to his lips, but then he realized that, to Deirdre, it was he who’d made the sound. She kept talking.

  “Listen, Paul, I’m sorry you’re in the middle of all this. I really am sorry I called. It was just that Freddy kept telling me Sang was his cousin, and when I asked him to introduce me to her he refused. I didn’t care at first. I figured I wasn’t the only woman in his life. But then I fell in love with him.” She wanted to believe him, she explained. She was a thirty-five-year-old woman, already married and divorced. She didn’t have time for this.

  “But I’ve ended it,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You know, there was a point when I actually believed he couldn’t live without me. That’s what he does to women. He depends on them. He asks them to do a hundred things, makes them believe his life won’t function without them. That was him this afternoon when you called, still wanting to see me, still wanting to keep me on the side. He doesn’t have any friends, you see. Only lovers. I think he needs them, the way other people need a family or friends.” She sounded reasonable and reflective now, as if she were describing an affair she’d had years before. Sang’s eyes were closed and she was shaking her head slowly from side to side. The dog was barking.

  “That’s my dog,” Deirdre said. “He’s always hated Freddy. He’s the size of a football, but every time Freddy comes over he makes me put a guardrail across the stairs.”

  Sang inhaled sharply. She put the receiver down quietly on the table, then she picked it up again.

  “I should go,” Paul said.

  “Me, too,” Deirdre agreed. “I think you need to tell her now.”

  He was startled, afraid Deirdre had discovered his trick, that she knew that Sang was listening in. “Tell her what?”

  “Tell her about me and Farouk. She deserves to know. It sounds like you’re a good friend of hers.”

  Deirdre hung up, and for a long time Paul and Sang sat there, listening to the silence. He had cleared himself with Sang, and yet he felt no relief, no vindication. Eventually, Sang hung up her phone and stood up, slowly, but made no further movements. She looked sealed off from things, holding herself as if she still needed to be perfectly stealthy, as if the slightest sound or gesture would betray her presence.

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said finally.

  She nodded and went to her room, shutting the door. After a while he followed her, stood outside. “Sang? Do you need anything?”

  He remained there, waiting for her to reply. He heard her moving around the room. When the door opened, he saw that she had changed, into a black top with long tight-fitting sleeves. Her pink raincoat was draped over her arm, her purse hanging over her shoulder. “I need a ride.”

  In the car, she directed him, saying what to do and where to turn only
at the last possible minute. They drove through Allston and down Storrow Drive. “There,” she said, pointing. It was an ugly high-rise, bereft of charm and yet clearly exclusive, on the Cambridge side of the river. She got out of the car and started walking.

  Paul followed her. “What are you doing?”

  She speeded up. “I need to talk to him.” She spoke in a monotone.

  “I don’t know, Sang.”

  She walked even faster, her shoes clicking on the pavement.

  The lobby was filled with beige sofas and potted trees. There was an African doorman sitting at the desk who smiled at them, recognizing Sang. He was listening to a radio tuned to the news in French.

  “Evening, Miss.”

  “Hello, Raymond.”

  “Getting cold again, Miss. Maybe rain later.”

  “Maybe.”

  She kept her finger pressed on the elevator button until it came, while she fixed her hair in the mirror opposite. On the tenth floor, they stopped, then walked to the end of the hallway. The doors were dark brown, thickly varnished. She tapped the door knocker, which was like a small brass picture frame hinged to the surface. Inside, there was the sound of a television. Then there was silence.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  She tapped it again. Five consecutive taps. Ten. She pressed the top of her head against the door. “I heard her, Farouk. I heard Deirdre. She called Paul, and I heard her.” Sang’s voice was quavering.

  “Please open the door.” She tried the knob, a strong metal knob, which would not budge.

  There were footsteps, a chain being undone. Farouk opened the door, a day’s stubble on his face. He wore a flecked fisherman’s sweater, corduroy pants, black espadrilles on bare feet. He looked nothing like a philanderer, just bookish and slight. “I did not invite you here,” he said acidly when he saw Paul.

  In spite of all he knew, Paul was stung by the words, unable to speak in his own defense.

  “Please leave,” Farouk said. “Please, for once, try to respect our privacy.”

  “She asked me,” Paul said.

  Farouk lurched forward, arms extended rigidly in front of him, pushing Paul away as if he were a large piece of furniture. Paul took a step back, then resisted, grabbing Farouk’s wrists. The two men fell to the floor of the hallway, Paul’s glasses flying onto the carpet. It was easy for Paul to pin Farouk to the ground, to dig his fingers into his shoulders. Paul squeezed them tightly, through the thick wool of the sweater, feeling the give of the tendons, aware that Farouk was no longer resisting. For a moment, Paul lay on top of him fully, subduing him like a lover. He looked up, searching for Sang, but she was nowhere. He looked back at the man beneath him, a man he barely knew, a man he hated. “All she wants is for you to admit it,” Paul said. “I think you owe her that.”

  Farouk spat at Paul’s face, a cold spray that made Paul recoil. Farouk pushed him off, went into his apartment, and slammed the door. Other doors along the hallway began to open. Paul could hear Farouk fastening the chain. He found his glasses and stood up, pressed his ear to the varnished wood. He heard crying, then a series of objects falling. At one point he could hear Farouk saying, “Stop it, please, please, it’s not as bad as you think.” And then Sang saying, “How many times? How many times did you do it? Did you do it here on the bed?”

  A minute later, the elevator opened and a man walked toward Farouk’s apartment. He was a lean man with gray hair and a big bunch of keys in his hand. “I’m the super in this building. Who are you?” he asked Paul.

  “I live with the woman inside,” he said, pointing at Farouk’s door.

  “You her husband?”

  “No.”

  The super knocked on the door, saying neighbors had complained. He continued to knock, rapping the wood with his knuckles until the door opened.

  Inside was a hallway illuminated by track lights. Paul glimpsed a bright white kitchen without windows, a stack of cookbooks on the counter. To the right was a dining room, painted the same sage-green as Sang’s room. Paul followed the super into the living room. There was an off-white sofa, a coffee table, a sliding glass door that led to a balcony. In the distance was a view of the Citgo sign, draining and filling with color. There was a bookcase along one wall which had fallen to the floor, its books in a heap. The receiver of a telephone on a side table hung from a cord, beeping faintly, repeatedly. In spite of these things, the room had a barren quality, as if someone were in the process of moving out of it.

  Sang was kneeling on an Oriental carpet, picking up the pieces of what appeared to have been a clear glass vase. She was shivering. Her hair was undone, hanging toward the floor, partly shielding her face. There was water everywhere, and the ruins of a bouquet of flowers, irises and tiger lilies and daffodils. She worked carefully with the glass, creating a pile of shards on the coffee table. There were petals in her hair and stuck to her face and neck, and plastered to the skin exposed above her black scoop-necked top, as if she had smeared them on herself like a cream. There were welts emerging above her neckline, fresh and bright.

  The men stood there, looking at her, none of them saying anything. A policeman arrived, his black boots and his gun and his radio filling up the room, static from his radio replacing the silence. Someone in the building had called the station to complain, he said. He asked Sang, who was still on the floor, if Farouk had struck her. Sang shook her head.

  “Do you live here?” he asked.

  “I painted the walls,” Sang said, as if that would explain everything. Paul remembered her painting her own room, barefoot, listening to Billie Holiday.

  The policeman leaned over, inspecting the broken glass and flower debris on the carpet, noticing the welts on her skin. “What happened?”

  “I bought them,” she said, tears streaming quickly down her cheeks. Her voice was thick, ashamed. “I did this to myself.”

  After that, everything proceeded in an orderly way, with people moving in separate directions, not reacting to anyone else. The policeman filled out a form, then lent an arm and took Sang to the bathroom. The super left, saying something to Farouk about a fine. Farouk went to the kitchen, returning with a roll of paper towels and a garbage bag, and knelt by the carpet, cleaning up the mess Sang had made. The policeman looked at Paul, as if assessing him for the first time. He asked if Paul was an involved party.

  “I’m her housemate,” Paul replied. “I just gave her a ride.”

  The next morning, Paul was awakened by the noise of a car door closing. He went to the window and saw the trunk of a taxi being pressed down by the driver’s hand. Sang had left a note on the kitchen table: she was going to London to visit her sister. “Paul, thanks for yesterday,” it said. Along with this was a signed check for her portion of the rent.

  For a few days, nothing happened. He collected her mail. The bookstore called to ask where she was. Paul told them she had the flu. Two weeks later, the bookstore called again. This time it was to fire her. The third week, Farouk began to call, asking to speak to her. He didn’t identify himself, didn’t press Paul when he said, night after night, “Sang’s not in.” He was polite to Paul, in a way he had never been before, saying, thank you, that he’d try later. Paul relished these calls. He liked depriving Farouk of the knowledge of where Sang was. But then, one day when he called, Heather, holed up in the house that week to study for an exam, happened to answer and said, “She’s left the country,” putting an end to Farouk’s calls.

  At the end of the month, the rent was due. Paul and Heather didn’t have enough to cover it. Instead of contacting Sang’s parents, he looked up her sister’s phone number in London on an old telephone bill. A woman answered, who sounded just like her.

  “Sang?”

  The phone switched hands, and a man came on the line. “Who is this?”

  “This is her housemate in America, in Brookline. Paul. I’m trying to reach Sang.”

  There was a long pause. After some minutes had passed, he wondered if he
ought to hang up and try again. But then the man picked up the phone. He didn’t apologize for the delay. “She’s indisposed at the moment. I’m sure she’ll appreciate your call.”

  Charles came that weekend to pack up Sang’s things. He tossed her clothes into garbage bags, stripped the futon of its sheets, and asked Paul to help him put it out on the sidewalk. Wrapping the framed Indian miniatures in newspaper at the kitchen table, he told Paul he’d talked to Sang on the phone, said that she’d be living in London with her sister through the summer. “You know, I kept telling her to leave him. Can you believe, I never even met the guy?”

  Charles loaded up the back of his truck, until all that was left of Sang in the house was the sage and mole paint on the walls of her room, and the hanging plant over the dish drainer. “I guess that’s everything,” Charles said.

  The truck disappeared, but Paul stood a while longer, looking at the houses lining the street. Though Charles was her friend, she had not told him. She had not told Charles that Paul had known for months about Deirdre. That night at Farouk’s apartment, after washing up in the bathroom, Sang had got down on all fours and crawled into Farouk’s coat closet, weeping uncontrollably, at one point hitting herself with a shoe. She’d refused to emerge from the closet until the policeman lifted her by the armpits and dragged her forcefully from the apartment, telling Paul to see her home. Tiny pieces of flower petals and leaves were still stuck in her hair. She had taken Paul’s hand in the elevator, and all the way back to the house. In the car, she had cried continuously with her head between her knees, not letting go of Paul’s hand, gripping it even as he shifted gears. He had put the seatbelt on her; her body had been stiff, unyielding. She seemed to know, without looking up, when they turned in to their road. By then, she had stopped crying. Her nose was running. She wiped it with the back of her hand. A light rain had begun to fall, and within seconds the windows and the windshield seemed covered with scratches, similar to the ones she’d inflicted on herself, the drops beading up in small diagonal lines.