Chapter 26 Kal
26
KAL
“Is there anything I should or shouldn’t do?” I pause at the entrance of Miz’s clinic, one gloved hand on the door, the other balancing a party platter of sushi, our potluck offering for her work Christmas party. I want to get this, our first social engagement as a couple, right.
Miz shuffles closer to me in her moonboots, a bottle of wine cradled in her giant goalie-like mittens. My childhood trauma is winter is her retort whenever I tease her about how vigilant she is with staying warm. She prefaces her answer with a moist, minty kiss to my lips. “Just go easy on the eggnog. I’m gonna need you functional later,” she says with a smirk, eyes dancing like the tiny Christmas lights that frame the window. I wish it was later now.
“Got it.” I pull the door open and usher her in ahead of me. She sheds her mitts and reaches for my hand behind her. We interlock our fingers, and a flash of joy, hot as a straight shot of liquor, spreads through my body. We take off our coats and add them to the pile on the reception sofa.
“Well, bon soir ,” Omar says, coming up to us and laughing approvingly at our obligatory reindeer headbands and Christmas sweaters— Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal and Black Santas Matter . Our hands find their way to each other again. Omar takes in our silent announcement with a triumphant smile. “Well, well! I like it,” he says. “I do like it. Mashallah !” He holds out his hand to the side just as Eve comes up behind him. “Put it here. Fifty bucks.”
“You guys placed bets on us?” Miz says incredulously, as we hug all around. Between the clinic staff and their guests, about two dozen people, and the added food table, the space is almost at capacity.
“Just fifty?” I say.
“It started out much higher,” Eve says. “You guys took so long we almost gave up.”
“Wait, what exactly did you bet on?” Miz says as we squeeze our way through the crowd, murmuring quick hellos.
“Whether you two would hook up. What else?” they say between them.
As we find space for our sushi tray on the food table, Miz gives me a private look that says Good, no one suspects anything . Even though we have become intimate, it remains important to her that we maintain our privacy about being married. You never know who has it in for you, just for spite , she said. So I’m respecting that, reminding myself it’s for my own good, even though I’d love to shout it from the rooftops. One thing at a time. Like, perhaps, hearing I love you back. Maybe she’s thinking that I only said it that first night we slept together in the heat of the moment. The solution to that, of course, is to say plainly what’s going on in my heart, as Abay had advised me to. But what am I afraid of? We’re together now, we’re a couple. More and more of my belongings have ended up at her place. Silvio has been joking about subletting my room. I haven’t seen any signs from her that she minds, not even when my bike got permanent parking on her balcony for the winter, another broken rule Everest has overlooked. He too seems very happy to have me around more, although he doesn’t ask or even insinuate anything, which I appreciate. Yes, everything looks and feels like love now, but I crave hearing those three words from her.
“So, what’s your situation with the papers?” Omar asks me while we’re mixing our drinks in the kitchen. Seeing my surprise, he adds, “Oh please, we talk about everything here. How do you not know that after all this time?”
I laugh. That’s very true. I take a big gulp of my rum and ginger ale. “I’m all sorted out. Thanks for asking.”
“You found a sponsor?” Omar asks. I nod. “Oh good!” I keep nodding and grinning, bursting to tell him more but literally biting my tongue to stop myself.
So much for that. At my overnodding, Omar’s face begins to stretch with a gleeful realization. “I see,” he says, pointedly looking over at Miz, who is talking to a couple of co-op students down the hall.
I force myself to focus on my plate of assorted mini quiches, silently begging God to help me stop nodding.
“A kind of…saviour angel came along.” My traitorous eyes wander over to Miz, like a wanderer seeking the North Star.
“This is marvellous!” Omar exclaims. I shush him. He clinks glasses with me. “I know. I know.” He zips his mouth and turns us both to face the bar table, our backs to the room. “So that’s why she’s been so tra-la-la since last summer.”
“Tra-la-la?” Since last summer? My interest is piqued.
Omar waves his hand. “Like Cinderella at the ball. And those songs,” he says, dropping his palm dramatically on his forehead. “I can’t tell you how many breaks I had to sit through listening to her rhapsodize about the power of love like I don’t have Celine, thank you very much.”
I perk up. My songs? The “old people songs” she’s been poking fun at all this time? Just to be absolutely certain, I pull up my wedding-anniversary playlist, now complete, on my phone. “You mean these?”
Omar watches as I scroll through the covers, frowning and shaking his head, my spirit sinking. Then suddenly he says, “That one! I’ll never forget that face. Reminds me of Billie Holiday.” It’s the cover of Asni’s éthiopiques: The Lady with the Krar album. I smile knowingly to myself, as I piece together why Miz never responded to that link to “Ende Iyerusalem” with one of her witty takes. One of these old people songs finally got through. And from as far back as this past August. Everything comes into sharper focus.
“Wow, your wife’s slick,” Omar is saying. Heat spreads up my spine at hearing the word, a surge of pride that makes me stand up straighter. I am a married man. “When I suggested the idea of marriage to her, she swore up and down to me that you would never do that and that she would be the last person to pair up with you, even if you were to. Talk about acting, eh?! Well”—he taps my drink with his again—“I wish you both the best luck.” I’m not sure whether he means for our new relationship status or our case, but I’ll take either. “It’s about time. And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you,” I say. “And I appreciate your discretion.”
“What are you two looking at?” Miz says, suddenly behind us. I jump a little and then hug her close, mostly as a distraction, though I’m also moved by an intense happiness at what Omar has just told me.
“Oh, talking holiday plans,” Omar says, thinking fast, and raves about his planned ski vacation to Mont Tremblant. I mention that we’re going to Ethiopia together. “Oh. I didn’t know it’s together you’re going. My. So this new development between you two is serious, eh?” he says, overplaying his innocence in such a way that he reminds me of my harrowing self-tapes for on-camera acting class.
I stiffen, fearing that Miz will see through his act. “It’s just a coincidence,” Miz says, not batting an eye. “We have different reasons for needing to be there around the same time.” This, unfortunately, is true. She expects to spend the majority of her time with her parents. As is only right, especially considering her mother has not been home in decades. But I am already dreading our impending apartness for the better part of two weeks.
“Is now a good time for you two to be travelling there though?” Omar says, and again, my body goes rigid. “With the political situation,” he adds, covering a smile with a sip.
“Things have never been better, in fact,” I say, relaxing and interlocking my hand with Miz’s. “Right, nefse?”
She blushes, as she does every time I call her this. “Better than ever, yene keremela .”
I almost hit the ceiling. I am her candy, a lifetime supply of it.
—
Later that night, as we’re spent and intertwined in bed, whispering in the dark as has become our habit before falling asleep, I ask, as casually as I can muster, “You know what you never told me?”
“Mm?”
That you love me. “What you thought of the last song I sent you.”
“Which one was that?”
Oh, Miz. “The Asni. ‘Ende Iyerusalem’?”
She hedges. Just tell me, nefse, I beg her silently. “Honestly? The krar is a bit much. She plucks at those strings like they owe her money, but I loved her voice, so I did a bit of digging around online and figured out the song is about her man that she never gets to see. Or she can see him only once a year , like a…pilgrimage? It’s like I sensed that that could be me someday. It just made me so…sad.”
I can barely stop myself from groaning in frustration. Stopping so short of telling me she loves me. Why can’t she say it, that she started to fall in love with me then? In retrospect, was that not what I was doing, sending her all those songs? Though I was as oblivious then as she is now. It’s taking her longer to catch up, I suppose.
Wanting to give Miz all the time she needs, I allow my personal deadline of New Year’s Eve to come and go without making any grand declaration. But I do pick up on additional signs that my instincts are right that night. We spend it on a double date with James and Aimé, where Miz is a good sport about their constant teasing about our marriage. It’s quite a change from the old Miz, who would have immediately turned hostile.
But I decide to help things along the night before we fly to Ethiopia. Outside of the apartment, having just returned with my packed suitcase in tow, I slide my wedding ring back on. Neither of us has worn ours since the ceremony, but I can use the guise of appeasing any suspicions from border security, if she says anything. With a deep breath, I walk in and announce that I’m back.
“Long time no see!” Aimé says, waving from the couch, though it’s only five days into the new year. “We almost ate without you.”
I get a kiss from Miz while she opens the takeout boxes. “You’d have been eating alone. My wife and I always eat together,” I say. “Off the same plate, like the OGs do. Right, nefse?”
“Mm? Yeah,” Miz coos. I catch her eyeing my ring, but she shows no reaction. As we eat, Aimé does most of the talking about how much she wishes she could accompany us so she could train at that altitude, like the pros do, how she’s trying to walk less and run more, how she’ll miss training with Miz. But she’s borrowing our apartment key so that she can continue to have access to the kitted gym and sauna while we are gone. As a plus, she’ll also keep an eye on our mailbox for my Open Work Permit, which will probably arrive while we are still in Ethiopia.
“First she tells me to go slow. Now she’s telling me I have to haul ass.” She switches gears to complaining about her coach.
Miz, picking at her noodles, takes her time responding. “Well, the distances are getting longer, so unless you want to be out for six hours on race day…” she says absently.
“Is something wrong, Miz?” I ask, rubbing her back gently.
“Oh, me? Nothing,” she says, nibbling at her food.
“She gets like this every time right before she flies home,” Aimé says. “Ethiopia PTSD. From all that drama the first time she went back.”
Miz smiles faintly. “It’s true. I’m better once I’m there.”
“And this time, you’re not alone,” I say, taking her hand. She runs her thumb along my knuckles appreciatively, again not showing any reaction when she grazes over my wedding ring. Post dinner, after Aimé has left and I’ve checked us in to our flights online, I crack. While Miz is laying out her suitcases to begin packing, I hear myself asking, “Are you going to wear yours?” I lift my left hand.
“I don’t like it,” she says bluntly.
“Oh.” I look at my ring. It was just a prop then and still looks like it. So plain, I admit. I remember the intricacy of her mom’s ring, which she had shown me so long ago. “I guess we didn’t put any real thought into it at the time, huh?”
“Nope.” She tosses a pair of sandals into her suitcase.
“Maybe carry it, just in case? Especially when we come back, it might be good to wear it.”
She nods curtly. “Rings are not proof of anything, but sure.”
An agreement, followed by a dismissal. I don’t know what to make of it, so I let it go for now. Perhaps by the time we return, we’ll have chosen better ones that really symbolize our marriage. There’s nothing to be done about it now, so I focus on helping Miz pack. I fold and roll clothes as instructed and step on and off a scale with her suitcase endless times so that she can calculate the weight. There are a lot of moving things between bags and reweighing, since she’s also bringing the extra stuff her mom couldn’t take, plus her old running shoes for donation.
During a brief respite from my mule duties, recovering on the couch, I check my email to see whether our boarding passes have turned up yet. Instead, the message at the top of my inbox makes me sit bolt upright.
“What?” Miz says, sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of me, a pile of running socks in front of her that she is stuffing into every available cranny of her full suitcase.
“There is an update on our file.”
“There is?” She crawls over to me. We log on to the portal. An interview notification. “Wow, that was fast. Either they really like us, or they really don’t like us,” Miz says.
“I like us,” I say, hoping for the best, though I fear it is the latter, considering that we got married and submitted the application so close to my work permit expiry date.
She gives me a kiss and regards me with the first real smile I’ve seen her crack all night. “I like us too.” Relief floods me.
“It’s just a formality,” I say, trying to reassure her as much as myself. But I remember reading in my research that fewer than 10 percent of sponsorship applicants get called in for an interview. “Anyway, we have even more proof of our relationship now,” I say, to appease myself further. “Every memento of our life we’ve been collecting since Thanksgiving.” All of it is organized into a red four-inch three-ring binder. And this time, it’s all real.
“Exactly,” she says. “We’re so ready. We were born ready,” she boasts. I pull her to me, and soon everything gets forgotten—the socks, the rings, the notification. And above all, we have each other. How could any officer, trained to discern true love from false, doubt us?