Australia, since he does have an Australian passport. After that, he won’t be able to come back to America again.”
My first reaction was physical. I felt as if all the blood in my body had instantly evaporated, and my eyes refused to focus for a moment. Then, in the next instant, my mind kicked into action. I revved through a fast summation of this sudden, grave crisis. Starting long before we had met, Felipe had made his living in the United States, visiting several times a year for short stays, legally importing gemstones and jewelry from Brazil and Indonesia for sale in American markets. America has always welcomed international businessmen like him; they bring merchandise and money and commerce into the country. In return, Felipe had prospered in America. He’d put his kids (who were now adults) through the finest private schools in Australia with income that he’d made in America over the decades. America was the center of his professional life, even though he’d never lived here until very recently. But his inventory was here and all his contacts were here. If he could never come back to America again, his livelihood was effectively destroyed. Not to mention the fact that I lived here in the United States, and that Felipe wanted to be with me, and that-because of my family and my work-I would always want to remain based in America. And Felipe had become part of my family, too. He’d been fully embraced by my parents, my sister, my friends, my world. So how would we continue our life together if he were forever banned? What would we do? (”Where will you and I sleep?” go the lyrics to a mournful Wintu love song. “At the down-?turned jagged rim of the sky? Where will you and
I sleep?”)
“On what grounds are you deporting him?” I asked the Homeland Security officer, trying to sound authoritative.
“Strictly speaking, ma’am, it’s not a deportation.” Unlike me, the officer didn’t have to try sounding authoritative; it came naturally. “We’re just refusing him entrance to the United States on the grounds that he’s been visiting America too frequently in the last year. He’s never overstayed his visa limits, but it does appear from all his comings and goings that he’s been living with you in Philadelphia for three-?month periods and then leaving the country, only to return to the United States again immediately after.”
This was difficult to argue, since that was precisely what Felipe had been doing.
“Is that a crime?” I asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly, or no?”
“No, ma’am, it’s not a crime. That’s why we won’t be arresting him.
But the three-?month visa waiver that the United States government offers to citizens of friendly countries is not intended for indefinite consecutive visits.”
“But we didn’t know that,” I said.
Felipe stepped in now. “In fact, sir, we were once told by an immigration officer in New York that I could visit the United States as often as I liked, as long as I never overstayed my ninety-?day visa.”
“I don’t know who told you that, but it isn’t true.”
Hearing the officer say this reminded me of a warning Felipe had given me once about international border crossings: “Never take it lightly, darling. Always remember that on any given day, for any given reason whatsoever, any given border guard in the world can decide that he does not want to let you in.”
“What would you do now, if you were in our situation?” I asked. This is a technique I’ve learned to use over the years whenever I find myself at an impasse with a dispassionate customer service operator or an apathetic bureaucrat. Phrasing the sentence in such a manner invites the person who has all the power to pause for a moment and put himself in the shoes of the person who is powerless. It’s a subtle appeal to empathy. Sometimes it helps. Most of the time, to be honest, it doesn’t help at all. But I was willing to try anything here.
“Well, if your boyfriend ever wants to come back into the United States again, he’s going to need to secure himself a better, more permanent visa. If I were you, I would go about securing him one.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “What’s the fastest way for us to secure him a better, more permanent visa?”
The Homeland Security officer looked at Felipe, then at me, then back at Felipe. “Honestly?” he said. “The two of you need to get married.”
My heart sank, almost audibly. Across the tiny room, I could sense Felipe’s heart sinking along with mine, in complete hollow tandem.
In retrospect, it does seem unbelievable that this proposition could possibly have taken me by surprise. Had I never heard of a green card marriage before, for heaven’s sake? Maybe it also seems unbelievable that-given the urgent nature of our circumstances-the suggestion of matrimony brought me distress instead of relief. I mean, at least we’d been given an option, right? Yet the proposition did take me by surprise. And it did hurt. So thoroughly had I barred the very notion of marriage from my psyche that hearing the idea spoken aloud now felt shocking. I felt mournful and sucker punched and heavy and banished from some fundamental aspect of my being, but most of all I felt caught. I felt we had both been caught. The flying fish and the diving bird had been netted. And my naivete, not for the first time in my life, I’m afraid, struck me across the face like a wet slap: Why had I been so foolish as to imagine that we could get away with living our lives as we pleased forever?
Nobody spoke for a while, until the Homeland Security interrogation officer, regarding our silent faces of doom, asked, “Sorry, folks. What seems to be the problem with this idea?”
Felipe took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes-a sign, I knew from long experience, of utter exhaustion. He sighed, and said, “Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom…”
I had not yet realized that these two were on a first-?name basis, though I suppose that’s bound to happen during a six-?hour interrogation session. Especially when the interrogatee is Felipe.
“No, seriously-what’s the problem?” asked Officer Tom. “You two have obviously been cohabiting already. You obviously care about each other, you’re not married to anyone else…”
“What you have to understand, Tom,” explained Felipe, leaning forward and speaking with an intimacy which belied our institutional surroundings, “is that Liz and I have both been through really, really bad divorces in the past.”
Officer Tom made a small noise-a sort of soft, sympathetic “Oh…” Then he took off his own glasses and rubbed his own eyes. Instinctively, I glanced at the third finger of his left hand. No wedding ring. From that bare left hand and from his reflexive reaction of tired commiseration I made a quick diagnosis: divorced.
It was here that our interview turned surreal.
“Well, you could always sign a prenuptial agreement,” Officer Tom suggested. “I mean, if you’re worried about going through all the financial mess of a divorce again. Or if it’s the relationship issues that scare you, maybe some counseling would be a good idea.”
I listened in wonder. Was a deputy of the United States Department of Homeland Security giving us marital advice? In an interrogation room? In the bowels of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport?
Finding my voice, I offered this brilliant solution: “Officer Tom, what if I just found a way to somehow hire Felipe, instead of marrying him? Couldn’t I bring him to America as my employee, instead of my husband?”
Felipe sat up straight and exclaimed, “Darling! What a terrific idea!”
Officer Tom gave us each an odd look. He asked Felipe, “You would honestly rather have this woman as your boss than your wife?”
“Dear God, yes!”
I could sense Officer Tom almost physically restraining himself from asking, “What the hell kind of people are you?” But he was far too professional for anything like that. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “Unfortunately, what you have just proposed here is not legal in this country.”
Felipe and I both slumped again, once more in complete tandem, into a depressed silence.
After a long spell of this, I spoke again. “All right,” I said, defeated. “Let’s get this over with. If I marry Felipe right now, right here in your office, will you let him into the country today? Maybe you have a chaplain here at the airport who could do that?”
There are moments in life when the face of an ordinary man can take on a quality of near-?divinity, and this is just what happened now. Tom-a weary, badge-?wearing, Texan Homeland Security officer with a paunch-smiled at me with a sadness, a kindness, a luminous compassion that was utterly out of place in this stale, dehumanizing room. Suddenly, he looked like a chaplain himself.
“Oh no-?o-?o…,” he said gently. “I’m afraid things don’t work that way.”
Looking back on it all now, of course I realize that Officer Tom already knew what was facing Felipe and me,
