Twelve #3
When Trump had been president, the op-ed writers liked to warn about authoritarianism, or how friendly he was to Putin, or how much he admired dictators, but the man had seemed like such a clown it was hard for her to take any of their warnings too seriously.
And the thing that Judd had said to her, which made her feel terrible when he said it, even though it was probably true, was that as aghast as they were that a reality show host with a golden toilet had somehow become president of the United States—and yes, it really was appalling—but the thing of it, Judd said, two years into Trump’s administration, the thing of it was that actually he hadn’t really changed their lives that much.
In fact their tax bill had gone down a little, so if you managed to tune out the tweets and the Muslim ban, if you managed not to think about the Supreme Court’s rightward turn or the withdrawal from the international climate agreements—if you managed to ignore the worst of it, the Trump presidency had actually been more or less the same as any other.
And even during the heart of the COVID crisis, those terrible months when they worried about the restaurant’s survival while they huddled at home, and sirens rang out day and night and New York governor Andrew Cuomo was briefly everyone’s crush—even then, Judd hadn’t seen it as Trump’s fault as much as an act of a vengeful God.
Yes, of course Trump managed the whole thing horrifically, Judd said, but people were dying even when their state governments were competent.
So could we blame the whole thing on one man?
Then Joe Biden won election in 2020, and Trump was suddenly in the past. They could look toward the future.
But it turned out that Trump was running for reelection in 2024 (he’d announced it over the winter, so very early, which everyone thought was a little sad).
And although it seemed crazy to imagine it, he could win again.
He had done it once already. And yes of course he was a buffoon, he was a clown—but also he had tried to blackmail Ukraine’s president, and he did seem to really love Putin, and he had sent those people to storm the capital, and who was to say—who was to say—
If what these Georgians knew was something that every American should know, too. That the beams of their house were so very fragile. That there were termites in some of them and dry rot in others. That the whole house was standing on little more than the habit of having stood for so many years.
The word, she remembered, was tavisupleba.
Literally it meant “self-rule.”
It was the house she had been born in. She had never lived in any other.
She signaled to the bartender to come over, but he was busy with other patrons, so she stood, went to the lobby, and combed through the books like she was in the world’s most outrageous library until she found a beat-up English copy of The Quiet American , which she’d always meant to read.
“Ah, that’s a good one,” the bartender said when she returned to her stool.
“I’ve always wanted to read it.”
“It’s about a journalist’s affair with a Vietnamese woman. And also colonialism and war and American power.”
“Isn’t that what everything’s about?” Amy asked, then smiled like she was making a joke.
The bartender topped up her glass. “Not quite everything,” he said.
“But many things.” Then he went to tend to other customers, and Amy stayed there, thumbing through the novel without really reading, until she decided she’d sat long enough, and it was once again time to search for a dog.
The other problems were too big for her to solve alone.
THE HILLS BEHIND Parliament Square were traversed by steep, winding streets, narrow and pitted and draped in shadow.
Along them Amy passed gardens, half-abandoned construction projects, secret staircases connecting one cul-de-sac to another.
She hiked up the streets, pausing every so often to catch her breath and look out at the city below her.
The climb wasn’t as easy as she wanted it to be.
One of her knees sometimes went tricky for no reason whatsoever.
And she could feel the pull in her back.
When she was younger she used to be able to climb all day, like a gazelle.
Well into her thirties, even. But now she looked around for a place to sit, found a ledge near an ice cream shop.
From here she assessed her vantage point toward the Kura River and the castles and fortresses of the valley beneath her.
There was a modern-looking steel bridge to the west, near a massive church that seemed, from this angle, to be built into the side of a mountain.
In the late afternoon light, the church glowed pinkly.
She hadn’t even brought a travel guide with her. On this side of the river, directly below, a dozen small domes emerged from the earth. What were they? People fluttering around them like ants, and to the west a gondola ferrying Georgians up and down the side of the hill.
If she were with Judd, he would tell her the story of the entire landscape.
He liked to do lots of research before any trip so he could present himself with expertise whenever they met someone new.
He hated the idea that people would think he was a tourist—or, worse, uncool—so he’d drop the names of the latest restaurants or museum exhibits to natives who were usually either impressed or gracious enough to pretend to be.
Ferry would often roll his eyes at his dad, but Amy always admired how at home Judd was in the world.
Still, in Georgia, Amy had the sense that no guidebook could lead her to the most crucial parts of the country.
And that, if Judd was here, he would notice all the wrong things.
Yes, the food was delicious, and yes, the buildings were beautiful, and she was sure the shopping was great, especially if you were in the market for Soviet trinkets or antique rugs.
But the real thing that this place could offer, if you were looking for it, was the chance to see a kind of future, and to learn what was necessary to prevent it.
To learn how to fight for your home. Judd would not understand that or want to look.
Up a winding street, Amy kept climbing, past kids playing soccer—a lost ball here could fall five hundred feet—a small church, a corner grocery, a series of narrow apartment buildings. She stopped at a bench and sat down once more, pondering the view, this time from an even higher remove.
All those lives below.
Talking to Lynne reminded her of the first time Judd had cheated on her, the first time she’d had incontrovertible proof.
Six years ago. She’d thought, after the crying and the wanting-but-not-quite-managing to throw up and the furious confrontation and the histrionic apologies—she’d thought, I will leave now. I can leave.
Six years ago, she was forty, but she knew she wasn’t too old to start over.
The question, then as ever, was where to go?
Despite her rage and desperation back then, she didn’t feel afraid or cut off from the world.
In fact, she felt an empowered, embittered ownership of it (or, if not the world, at least half Judd’s assets).
For an entire afternoon, through tears, she’d imagined her next steps: she’d build a new life in Paris (Paris?
Of course Paris!), find a studio in the Eleventh, somewhere near a park and a metro station, with a real washer-dryer and a dishwasher, nonnegotiable.
She’d sat at the kitchen table until her ass started going numb, blocking all electronic notifications, phone calls, or texts (she didn’t want to hear it, didn’t care what Judd was doing or what his excuses were) and planned out what she would need for the rest of her life.
They’d been married for eleven years, which was enough for a 50 percent settlement.
Would she really take 50 percent of everything he had?
No, in fact she wouldn’t need that much.
She would take only what she needed, and her dignity.
Enough money for a studio—fuck that, a one bedroom!
—somewhere with a café down the street where she could gather her thoughts in the morning, near a Franprix for groceries and a flower shop for beauty.
Her French was dustier than dust, basically nonexistent. After five seconds consideration she enrolled in an online French course. A lawyer to help her get citizenship would cost $3000 for an initial retainer. $3000 for a new life! A bargain!
And then, a little past four, Ferry schlumped into the house, dropped his bookbag by the door, went directly to the refrigerator to procure a bottle of Mexican Coke (god, they all were so precious in this house), and then sat down at the kitchen table across from her.
He was fourteen then, rangy but with the shaggy hair and doofy smile of a young boy. “’Sup, Dos.”
She began clicking down the open pages on her browser. “’Sup, Ferry.”
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”
“Just—researching a trip to Paris.” She rubbed her cheeks with the back of her wrist to make any errant tear streaks disappear.
“Paris?” He stood again to rummage through the pantry for snacks. “Sweet. Do we have any Doritos?”
“I don’t think we—”
“Oh, never mind, we have Cheetos. When are we going?”
“Going?”
“To Paris? Or is it like a romantic thing? I’m not invited?”
“Of course you’re invited,” she said. She shut down her laptop. “But I’m really just daydreaming about a trip. I don’t have anything concrete.”
He had no idea that anything was amiss between her and his father; the discovery of Judd’s indiscretion had happened the previous night, while Ferry was fast asleep, and the recriminations had taken place mostly after he’d left for school.
“We should totally go,” he said. “I’ve never been to Paris. I’ve always wanted to see the Mona Lisa.”
“She’s small,” Amy said.
“So what?” he said, sitting back down across from her.
He was eating Cheetos by the fistful from an industrial-sized bag, wearing a vintage Mets sweatshirt and basketball shorts, socks pulled up to his knees as per the mysterious fashion among fourteen-year-old boys that year.
He pointed the bag at her with orange-y fingers and she grabbed a handful. She knew she would never leave him.
She had never left him. Had only waited for him to leave her.
Amy stood, thought that she should probably check in to see how Uno was doing, probably make sure Uno was stable, probably see if Ferry was holding up okay.
But over the river flew a solitary hawk, circling, and Amy was transfixed by the way the hawk tilted in the air and then dipped, searching for a mouse, a rat, perhaps an untended litter of newborn puppies.
A city one thousand years old. A warrior queen. A bridge, a church, a mountain, a dome. A white dog somewhere in the distance, or just down the street, waiting to emerge when she was ready to be found.
Amy threaded her way back down the eastern hills of Tbilisi. She would not pick up the phone and check back in with the world. She was invisible, an ant on a hill.