Take What You Can Carry

breaking the moment. So she went back to the counter, knelt on the linoleum, and without him noticing, lined up her shot with the window to his right. She inched over to exclude a stain on the wall but then moved back, liking the way it looked in the frame, then made sure there was more space before him than behind. The curtain on the other wall was drawn closed but thin, and light fell in diffused chunks, broken by the windowpanes. She waited till he looked up from the paper that was still in his hands, and when he did, his face shone just enough to catch those silent, gleaming tears, and she pressed the button. He must have heard, but he never acknowledged it. Just sat back and let the paper fall onto the table.
That night they had the party, and she had to stand outside with a blanket on her shoulders and grill because he was asleep. She’d known he would be the second she came home and found him grinning loosely in his chair. So she stood in the biting air and was mad. Mad that he’d arrange for this whole thing and invite all these people over and then check out and leave her in the cold. Mad that everyone had shown up hungry. Mad that he had so much to cry about, and she couldn’t help with any of it. And when at last she went to wake him up, the spatula still in hand and the blanket around her shoulders, she found him on the couch, his fingers skimming the rug. His breathing was steady even while the Eagles sang about a hotel in California and the people in the room caught the beginning and sang along loudly, relishing in location and fame and their luck to live in such a lovely place. His chest rose and fell. Without waking him, she reached down and lifted his hand so it was by his side, so no one would step on his fingers. Then she let him sleep, gone from wherever he’d wished to leave.
And now they are there.
She’s washed her hair, but the smell still lingers, clinging like a campfire. A sickly scent. With every turn, she catches it. What she’d been wearing got dumped into an enamel tub in the backyard, and tomorrow they’ll wash everything and watch the dust of buildings and tables and people and fish disappear into a drain, then hang it all to dry in the sun, to be held in a new day.
Alone, she’s barefoot under the grape trellis. It’s infuriating, that smell, that it won’t be left behind. Another breath in and she realizes it’s inside her. In her nose, her lungs. Reaching from her pores.
She hears him behind her. “The smell,” she says, not turning.
“It’ll be gone soon. We’ll wash the sheets too.” There is a pause, during which he waits for her to turn to him. “Hey,” he says when she does not.
But now she’s thinking of the times he stayed silent. The times they’ve edged around his past, circling it like something unwilling to be approached. And she understands that his silence was because there was too much that lacked proper words. There was no real way to tell her what he’d been through and nothing much she could do even if there was.
Now he says her name, and at last she turns. Her linen pants legs are long and wide and have dragged against the dirt, making it appear as if she’s left no footprints. He watches her take this in, her strange absence of proof, and then reaches for her.
“You want to forget what causes you pain,” he says, lifting her hand and studying her skin, tracing his index finger along the crease of her wrist. “Life. The faster you forget, the better you are.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
He nods, as if he’d both known and feared the answer. “I had to go to the United States, you know. To act, sure, but it was everything. I felt myself there from the beginning. Film, I thought. Movies. It was all anyone talked about. But I went because I wanted to be there, not because I wanted to leave.”
“You don’t have to defend yourself. I understand. After tonight, I get it.”
When he looks up, she sees she’s said the wrong thing. “I’m not defending myself,” he says. “I’m explaining. It was hard to leave, but it was worse to be gone. The guilt that I was giving myself what people called a better life. Why me? Why not them? Why not anyone here?”
By the wall, there is a long, loose grapevine, trailing without support. Aimless. He reaches for it, letting its end, the small leaves, rest in his palm. Then, patiently, he winds its tendrils around another for support. “At first I thought about it all the time. Where I left them. Beautiful in so many ways—I mean it; I’m proud of where I’m from. I’m proud of being a Kurd. I never left because I wanted to be gone and that, I know, is hard to understand after tonight.” He touches a leaf, angling it in the blare of moon. “You asked me before why I didn’t come home much.”
“Delan, it’s okay. You don’t have to.”
“No, you want me to talk; this is what I’m saying. It’s because I wanted to forget. I wanted to forget them. I wanted to love them a little less.” He turns to her. “What son says that? What son wants that?”
At last, he’s let her in. And yet there is no joy, no feeling of there, now we will work, our secrets are falling. Instead, she feels pain. His pain—the pain of leaving his parents, the pain of wanting to forget, of having reasons to forget. And a pain from the realization that his letting her in was only the first step, and with it comes the question of whether she’s strong enough for