She had told Mark once, years after it had happened: she was eighteen, bumming around in Florida, and saw an ad for a cook on a yacht that was going sailing in the Caribbean. She inquired, got the job. Two days out, it became clear the captain wanted sex more than he wanted cooking. And he got it. “I wasn’t raped,” Susan said. “Or at least, not violently. I finally went along just to stop the hassle. It seemed easier. I was disgusted with myself for being so naive about the job. We got to some island and I jumped ship. And ever since I’ve been disgusted with myself for giving in to him like that. But look at this sick shit: he forced himself on me, and I’m mad at myself.”
“Are you okay?” Goran asked again.
“I just want to lie here a little longer, if that’s okay,” Mark said.
“Sure.”
Mark could hear Goran going back up the slope. Every now and then a crawling insect bit him. On a scale of one to ten it was less than .01. Goran had wanted to hit the man from the UN. Perhaps he’d liked Susan. Maybe Susan sat in the front seat not only because she disliked the UN man, but because she liked Goran. He seemed a good man. She was older than him, taller. Maybe the sniper shot her instead of Goran because she was the biggest target in the car. Or maybe he shot her because, even with all the hatred he reserved for Muslims (if he was a Croat), or for Croats (if he was a Muslim), he had a little extra hatred to spare for the only woman in the car, this meddling foreign bitch.
Had it comforted Susan that Goran was with her? She was so far from home. But then, Mark wasn’t sure if she thought of a “home,” the way he did. Goran no doubt felt terrible about what happened. Being human, he probably irrationally felt responsible. Maybe that’s why he wanted to remember that she was still alive when they reached the hospital. Maybe she was still alive, but moribund, and the hospital listed her as DOA to make the paperwork simpler. Or maybe someone in the hospital didn’t like meddling foreign bitches, either.
Mark knew what a Fiat 128 looked like because when he was eleven years old it was one of the last Matchbox cars he bought. He’d never paid much attention to real cars. His Fiat 128 was painted a color he’d always thought of as raspberry chocolate. No other car in his collection had a color like it. By the time he bought it, he was too old to play the game in which he dropped a blanket and then drove his cars around the folds. But lying now among the bushes, enduring the absurdly small pain of the stones in his back and the insects biting him and the heat of the sun, he closed his eyes and saw his delicious Fiat 128 turning right to ascend laterally the slope of the hill, then left at the first switchback, and he could see the whole terrain below him, and the sniper’s hiding place, and all the possible trajectories, and he couldn’t help himself, he imagined taking hold of the Fiat and swerving it right and left, avoiding the shot, then scooting it safely down into the bushes made of modeler’s moss, admiring how realistic it all was.
2013
7:16 p.m., July 8, 2013
Dear Mette,
I hope you’re well. Please say hello to your mother for me. I wrote a “data set” about my sister, who died many years ago.
Data Set: Cabin Fever
For our two-week family vacation in the summer of 1971 my parents rented a cabin on a lake in New Hampshire.
It rained for two weeks.
I was eleven and my sister was sixteen.
My sister and I played as many card games as we could stand, then we got bored.
My sister fought with my parents.
My parents fought with each other.
My mother proposed we all go see a movie.
She had noticed that Song of Norway was playing in a nearby town.
My sister and I didn’t want to see Song of Norway, we wanted to see the other movie playing at that theater, The Anderson Tapes.
That movie is too violent, my mother said.
Song of Norway is too stupid, my sister said.
It’s about the composer Edvard Grieg, my mother said.
Jesus, who cares? my sister said.
It has beautiful photography of Norway, my mother said.
Man, I can’t wait, my sister said.
I loved classical music, and even I didn’t want to see Song of Norway.
But my mother wouldn’t let it go.
Don’t you want to see it, Mark? she kept asking me.
This was strange, because she usually didn’t care about movies.
We went to see Song of Norway.
It was terrible.
Even my mother hated it.
She called the actor who played Grieg “a whiny little twerp with a weak chin.”
She said every time his lower lip trembled she wanted to punch him in the face.
My sister was good at recognizing leverage when she had it.
Two days later we went to see The Anderson Tapes.
It was violent and sexy.
My sister and I loved it.
On the merits of the movie my mother made no comment.
She confined herself to expressing the hope that maybe now my sister would shut up.
And my sister did, in a way.
Going to see The Anderson Tapes was the last thing she ever did with our family.
I can’t tell whether I’m burdening you with these things. Whenever I write one, I don’t know what to do with it.
Love,
Your Father
8:05 p.m., July 8, 2013
well they’re kind of depressing
11:10 p.m., July 8, 2013
I’m sorry to hear
