The Submission - Amy Waldman [114]
“This isn’t QVC,” Paul said. “And time.”
“R,” Alyssa wrote. “CR.”
“Sean and Frank Gallagher.” Alyssa, flagging now, revived. Sean had proved to be full of surprises—apologizing for pulling the woman’s headscarf, then undercutting his own apology by telling a roomful of Muslims that he still didn’t want a Muslim memorial … and now came another one. He leaned into the microphone, said “I’m going to let my father speak for both of us,” touched a startled Frank on the shoulder, and walked off the stage. Alyssa had no code for this. She starred their names.
The spotlight made a halo of Frank’s white hair. His blue eyes were undiluted by age, his bearing pugnacious. He watched his son make his way down the stairs, then put on his glasses and began to read from a prepared text: “This garden is insufficiently”—he stumbled a bit—“heroic to commemorate the lives lost. We would like a more powerful memorial, one that does not suggest America lay down like lambs in the clover, instead of fighting back. We want, we want—”
He lowered his reading glasses and looked at the audience. “I have nothing against anyone personally,” Frank Gallagher said. Then his face crumpled, and Alyssa thought, against her will, of the buildings falling in on themselves. He paused. “But … all I want to say is … I lost my son. I lost my son.”
Alyssa heard sniffles, saw people weeping. The audience seemed to retract from Khan as if he conducted an electric current.
“Murderer!” The voice rent the air.
“It looks like there are no more speakers,” Rubin said blandly, as if he hadn’t heard that shout. But he had to have heard: everyone did. The governor wanted catharsis; Rubin was carrying her water without spilling a drop.
“We will continue accepting input in the form of written statements for another week, and I promise they will be read. Otherwise, we’re finished.”
“Unless there are family members who haven’t spoken but were supposed to,” Winnie reprimanded gently. “Any family members who should have been on my list? Last chance.”
A murmur rolled through the spectators and grew so pronounced that Alyssa turned to see the cause. At the back of the room she saw a brown-skinned woman in a headscarf raising her hand, then the older man next to her tugging it down. The arm shot back up, was tugged down, up, down, up, down—heated whispering passed between them, until the woman twisted herself free, stood, and said in a voice strong enough for the whole chamber to hear, “Me.”
19
Asma had awoken that morning, as she often did, around the time Inam used to say goodbye. Her body, of its own will, had put a marker there. For many months, in the quiet she would think, in her first moment of wakefulness, that he was still alive. Now she knew better.
No one had called to invite her to the public hearing. If any invitation had been mailed, she couldn’t read it. She didn’t know what would happen at the hearing—would there be a vote?—but she wanted to be there. She was a family member as much as the white women she saw on the news. She had the fatherless child and empty bed to prove it.
She prayed, and at seven-fifteen, knowing he would be awake, wanting to catch him before he began his work for the day, she called Nasruddin.
Tiny sequins sparkling from yellow flowers on a hot-pink background: this had been Inam’s favorite among her salwar kameez, which was why today she chose it. She begged Mrs. Mahmoud to watch Abdul for the day, offering, to her landlady’s obvious apoplexy, no explanation, and walked over to Nasruddin’s house. His van, trapped in his small driveway by a low gate with frilly metalwork, looked like an oversize animal in a cage. Nasruddin looked a little like a trapped animal himself. When she told him she wanted to attend the hearing, he balked. If she did anything