Reunion Page 7

  They had been young—or she had; too young for the complexities of his life at the time. He should’ve known better than to keep dropping by his mother’s office over that first winter, ostensibly to lend a hand with some rearranging and remodeling of the office space. There was something innately compelling about Blue, though, even back then. She was somehow both tough and vulnerable, somehow experienced and innocent, and lord, she was pretty. Their nine-year age difference was not so huge. He was not Lolita’s Humbert Humbert, for God’s sake.

  If he’d been teaching during the summer session, that year after she finished high school, or if Renee, his first wife, hadn’t hauled Julian off to Maine for two months, he’d have been too busy to notice her. As it was, he’d gone from the intensity—or more like the insanity—of juggling a teaching load of three classes, his research, Renee’s demands and fits of jealousy, and erratic fatherhood, to the yawning expanse of days as wide open as the rolling farmland outside the suburbs, where he sometimes rode his bike. Harmony Blue Kucharski, with her love of reading and Scrabble, had been a welcome distraction that summer. She was the subject of pleasant daydreams during the little downtime he had in fall. By winter, he’d convinced himself that she was old enough to become something more.

  He didn’t want to discuss, with Brenda or anyone, how he’d led Blue on—with respectable intentions, but still—and then broken her heart. And he didn’t want to discuss the domestic drama that led him to break things off. He didn’t want to talk about how he’d waited until his U-Haul was packed and he was leaving for North Carolina before he stopped by Blue’s house, to apologize for being so harsh with her at the end. His coldness had been an act, to discourage any hope that they would get back together. He felt awful when her mother reported that she was gone. “She needed her own space,” Nancy Kucharski had said, shrugging. He knew this was right; she did need her own space, some separation from everyone who had relied on her too much.

  So he’d moved on. That’s what you do when you’re powerless to fix what’s broken. You bury yourself in your work. You focus on your goals. You eventually find another woman who you think is right for you, and try not to be conflicted when the one you let get away shows up several years later on your living room television every afternoon, transfixing your second wife—along with almost every other life-form free at that hour. You move on, because if you don’t, you end up like Renee: tormented, pessimistic, alone. You end up with no career, dependent on others to give you your worth.

  He’d had things to do with his life then, and still did. A wise man would right now put aside all thoughts of that girl of the past in favor of thinking about the woman of his present. With any luck, they’d be able to get his Lions business accomplished without further reminders of that past. The island might be small, but a celebrity and her entourage should be enough of a spectacle that he could see them coming and avoid them entirely.

  6

  ulian Forrester’s BlackBerry buzzed in his pocket, reminding him he was due to phone his grandparents, but he ignored it and kept his attention on his two good friends who stood, hands joined, at the center of what was ordinarily the mess tent. Through his camera’s viewer, he studied the pair. They looked something alike: both had short black hair, both were lean, both had skin darkened by a sun that seemed to shine more harshly on the kinds of people they served—except on this evening, when that same sun, heavy now on the western horizon, was lighting their faces so beautifully it was as if their marriage really was being sanctioned by God. They gazed at each other as though they shared a delightful secret. He pressed the shutter release, capturing their look if not their thoughts.

  “Wow,” Brandy whispered, close to Julian’s ear. Her warm breath gave him a shiver. “They are so in love.”

  Love. He’d seen the look on other faces: mothers in Darfur whose children were finally getting a nutritious meal; fathers, as they watched a child finally grown strong enough to kick a soccer ball across a dusty yard … That made sense to him. What Alec and Noor had, though, was for the most part beyond him. If not for his grandparents’ enduring, happy marriage of fifty-four years, he wasn’t sure he would buy it at all.

  A minister, his camouflage uniform somehow neatly pressed despite the heat, spoke sincerely about the obligations Julian’s friends now faced. Trust, intimacy, and devotion, every day, forever. What an incredible ideal. Who could meet such obligations, especially these days? He approved of trying—ask anyone, they’d say he was willing to give most things a try. Fried caterpillar. Lamb’s brains. Cliff diving in Croatia in the dark. Marriage, however, was almost certain to have a much worse and more enduring outcome than any of those stunts; he would leave that to the truly courageous.

  He focused the Nikon, pressed the button as Alec pulled Noor close, pressed it as Noor tipped her face upward, pressed it as Alec’s lips met hers, pressed it as the kiss became two wide smiles and the couple turned to face the crowd.

  The forty or so guests inside the tent applauded. It was done. Noor and Alec were now a single entity where before they had just been a great guy and a smart woman who did the kind of stuff he did: ramble around the planet trying, in their meager ways, to undo the damages of fate and luck. What little they did manage to accomplish—provide water and food and medical care and sanitation, give the people a presence, a face, a voice—had to be enough.

  Today his efforts were being made in Afghanistan, just as they had been for the last seven months, while tent camps for refugees continued to multiply and spread across the south desert like a plague. Before here he’d worked in Bangladesh, Malawi, Croatia, Darfur, Mississippi, Indonesia, Bosnia … all beginning with Chechnya in early 1995. His history was a blur of turbulent flights and iffy food, desperate children and chaos. He felt like thirty-two going on sixty.

  His collection of photos and video and the documentaries he’d shot all preserved the stories that had begun to merge in his memory. One tent camp after another. One starving family, one mother dead of AIDS, one village torched, one empty-eyed girl working as a sex slave, one boy with hands lost to machetes—his memory was overflowing with the atrocities he’d documented with a succession of cameras that had, so far, seemed to protect him from any serious harm. He’d gone to sleep hungry countless nights. He’d been shot at, he’d been cursed—literally, if not effectively. In Bosnia three years back, a disgruntled Mafia type had cut off his left hand’s little finger and threatened his thumb if he didn’t leave Sarajevo that day (which, as soon as he was bandaged, he did). That was the worst of it for him, though. He was lucky.

  Interspersed with all that were moments like the ones now unfolding in this tent. Weddings, and births; lives begun and lives saved; hope restored. Events like these kept him going. A person could be only so skeptical when they’d witnessed the expressions he was seeing on his friends’ faces right now. He didn’t, however, hold out much hope of wearing such expressions himself. Just before he’d packed out from his previous assignment, in Kabul, his now-ex-girlfriend announced that he was “congenitally incapable of permanent connection.” He hadn’t told her much about his parents, so she had no idea how accurate a statement that was.

  The wind kicked up, flapping the tent’s walls and roof, blowing in the fine grit no one much noticed anymore, though it was murder on his camera equipment. He spent nearly as much time huddled over his stuff, cleaning it with tiny brushes and ear swabs, as he did putting it to use.

  Alec walked over and clapped him on the shoulder. “Can you believe she actually went through with the wedding?”

  “Hell, if I was a woman, I would’ve locked you down myself a long time ago—so yeah, I can believe it.”

  “I’m not sure Ican,” Alec said. “What does she see in me?”

  “A lot of what you see in her, but with a mustache.”

  Alec laughed. “And speaking of facial hair …”

  “I know,” Julian said, rubbing his beard. “I needed to shave three months ago.”


  “And a haircut wouldn’t have hurt, in honor of your best friend’s wedding day.”

  “Love me or leave me,” Julian said.

  As Noor joined them Alec said, “I’m afraid it’s gonna be both.”

  “What will be both?”

  “Loving Julian, and leaving him—it’s what we have to do as soon as the sun comes up again.” He kissed Noor, looking at her in a way that made Julian’s belly feel empty. Alec turned back to Julian and said, “But you’re still planning to ship out soon, right?”

  Julian nodded. “Back to Chicago for a couple weeks, then I’m doing that troop embed in Iraq—should be interesting,” he said, “assuming they don’t stick me with a bunch of paper-pushers.” He sighed. “It’s hard to get good access, you know? I was born in the wrong era—I should’ve been working in ’Nam.”

  Alec said, “With that hair and the way you worship Hendrix, you’d fit right in. Hey, so maybe you’ll join us again after Iraq?”

  “Not that I wouldn’t like to, but I’m doing the thing with my dad.” Noor tilted her head, a question. He explained, “Shooting the pilot episode of a biopic series, which he hopes he can sell for television. He wants to be a TV star.”

  “Me too,” she said, smiling.

  “Nah, you’re too beautiful for that,” he told her. “And too smart.”

  “And you’re too sweet. But seriously, if I could get on TV and get people motivated to sacrifice a little of their Starbucks money for the greater good, trust me, I would.”

  Alec said, “So hurry up and become a star, what are you waiting for?”

  They were joined by more friends, and then the dancing started, with music coming from an old boom box they’d bought at a Gereshk market. Julian stood off to the side and snapped more photographs while couples stood pressed together, shuffling their feet on the gritty plywood floor. For this first dance, Alec and Noor had chosen the Nickel-back ballad, “If Everyone Cared.”

  Julian hummed along as he aimed his camera at one swaying couple, then the next, then the next.

  If they could love like you and me

  Imagine what the world could be

  A theme song for the bunch of them, wasn’t it? A little somber, maybe—better, though, than the usual Shania Twain selection you often got at this kind of thing.

  The minister walked over and put a beer in Julian’s hand. “Good party,” he said. He was not much older than Julian—mid-thirties, an Army officer assigned to the camp nearby. “Did I hear right, they’re honeymooning in Africa someplace?”

  Julian nodded. “Noor’s going to save some elephants for a change.”

  “Me, I’d head for someplace wet. Hawaii would be good, but I’ll take anything with a coastline.”

  “I hear you. My grandparents, they live in Key West. It’s great. I’ll be there in September.” The thought was a trigger, reminding him that he was due to call.

  He and his grandparents had an unusual relationship. He’d seen little of them when he was very young; his mother had been possessive of him, and bitter about the divorce. Often he’d overheard her talking about Daniel and Lynn, her tone derisive or wounded, depending. When he’d thought of them, it was in her manner—they were either your grandparents, very formal, not at all the familiar Grandma and Grandpa his mother’s parents were to him—or they were Daniel and Lynn. He’d been imprinted like a duckling, so that, even as he got older and his father wrested back some control, when he saw them they were still Daniel and Lynn.

  Over the past several years, his contact with everyone outside his daily circle had become sporadic. That is, until his grandfather had a stroke. It was eerie how in the space of a few words (Honey, listen, I don’t want to alarm you, but Daniel’s in ICU …) his world had been frozen in place. With different, unluckier words, it would have been altered forever. Funny how he’d witnessed just these kinds of disruptions to other people’s lives for so many years, never fully appreciating how impactful they could be until he’d gotten that call. Now he made sure to talk with his grandparents regularly, and with his mother. She had nightmares if she didn’t hear from him, she said. She had nightmares anyway.

  He took his BlackBerry from his pocket, saying, “Excuse me just a minute,” before stepping out into the cooling night. With laughter and music spilling out behind him, he called his grandparents.

  “Hi, it’s Julian,” he said when his grandfather answered.

  “Oh, you just caught me on my way out—good timing! How’s our boy? Steering clear of scorpions, I hope?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Let me get your grandmother. Lynn!” he called. “She’s chopping … something. We’ve got your dad here, and Brenda. And the neighbors coming over for dinner later. A regular fiesta.”

  Julian imagined his grandfather was dressed for one. “Is Brenda the woman from his department?”

  “Yep. They’re definitely simpatico now.”

  “Oh? That’s good. I guess.”

  “I guess too. He’ll get it right sooner or later. Maybe sooner. Here’s something interesting: An old flame of his is in town this week.”

  “That so?” Julian had no idea who this might refer to. The specifics of his father’s life and his father’s history were even now hardly real to him. They were reports, they were anecdotes about a man whose identity had once been so confusing to him that he’d had to stop caring. Was Dr. Mitch Forrester, PhD, the callous skirt-chasing liar of his mother Renee’s recollection? Was he the ardent tries-too-hard sometime-father of his own? Maybe he really was the well-meaning but overwhelmed nice guy his grandparents had spoken of in voices thick with sympathy. Back then, he’d had no way of telling who was right.

  The reports and anecdotes he’d heard in more recent years had for a very long time been sufficient. Was his dad alive, healthy, still teaching literature? Good enough. Remarried, divorced again, what difference? He, Julian, had gotten busy living life while his dad was apparently treading water. He, Julian, had been experiencing the world his father accessed only through TV and books and newspapers. Who had time to read when there were lives to be saved? Or if not saved, documented, and that was something.

  Admittedly, this had been a skewed attitude, aggressive, defensive, and he’d gotten his upbraiding for it one night while in Bangladesh, after he’d just spent eighteen hours documenting the Cyclone Sidr damage for Newsweek.

  Image after image, hundreds of frames of devastation, a few of which would be used so that the folks at home could say, Aw, that’s awful, then turn on the TV and cry over some lost-dog story. After he finally finished, he’d tried to sleep, but the day replayed in his mind in a continuous loop. He was aware, not for the first time, that it was getting harder to believe in the value of his work. There was no end to suffering, no end to disaster. His efforts were the equivalent of spitting on a forest fire.

  He’d gotten up and gone in search of rum. Rounding the corner of the mess tent, he stumbled when a hand tried to grasp his leg.

  “Please,” he heard from the shadows. He turned to see a thin man struggling to stand, arms wrapped around his middle—broken ribs, most likely. The man stepped into the security light’s circle and Julian saw a gash in his cheekbone, blood and dirt thick on his skin and in his hair.

  “Please,” the man said again, this time pointing.

  “What is it?” Julian asked. No comprehension. He tried one of the few Bengali expressions he knew. “Kemom achhen?” How are you. A feeble effort when the answer was apparent.

  “Please,” the man urged.

  Julian went for an interpreter, a flashlight, and a medic. The man’s father, he soon learned, had gone missing in the storm, and the son had just located him after days of searching through soggy rubble. The injured pair had made it to a spot about a half-mile from the Red Cross camp, where Julian and the medic found the father missing most of one leg and surely half his blood supply as a result. The man was propped against a log, barely breathing, pulse thready—but he
was savable, thanks to his son’s lamp-cord tourniquet and willingness to carry him who knew how far to get help.

  The son had searched, found, saved, and carried, and then when he could carry no more, crawled for help. Julian had heard the words in the rhythm of his footsteps as the group made their way back to camp in the too-still night: Searched, found, saved, carried, crawled… searched, found, saved, carried, crawled… Would he have done as much for his own father? He wasn’t sure.

  After getting back, he’d gone to the medical tent with his camera and taken photos of the son sitting at the father’s bedside, giving blood, and having his cheek stitched on the spot because he wouldn’t leave his father again.

  When Julian finally got his rum, he used it to ease his shame.

  When several months later his father asked if he was interested in shooting the Literary Lions pilot—maybe the entire series, depending—he saw the opportunity for what it was: a bridge.

  He agreed to work for expenses only, to have his pay deferred until Lions sold, if it did; not an ideal set-up, but in this case, the working conditions were stellar: he’d get to spend time in Key West, rooming, as he’d done in his high school years, in Lynn and Daniel’s guesthouse. He’d get to do a different kind of filmmaking, stretch his professional muscles a bit. And see what waited across that bridge. He was nearly thirty-three; it was time.

  About the “old flame” Daniel had just mentioned, Julian said, “So who is it?” just as his grandmother got on the phone.

  “Hello, sweetheart! I expected to hear from you earlier. Isn’t it getting awfully late there?”

  “I’m at a wedding reception. I just stepped outside for a minute to let you know I haven’t been eaten by sandworms.”