The Submission - Amy Waldman [68]
“No!” Asma said. Again the vehemence. This time it surprised her. Maybe she would have opposed Mrs. Mahmoud on any issue today. “He shouldn’t stop doing anything! They can’t just take this achievement away from him. It’s like Pakistan taking away our election.”
“You’ve been listening to the men talk again,” Mrs. Mahmoud said, clucking in disapproval.
Her condescension infuriated Asma, who shifted a foot away from her on the couch. “Even if we say we don’t support him they won’t believe us, because they think we lie,” Asma said.
“And if I do support him, what do I gain? What has he done for us, this Mohammad Khan? Let them have their memorial.”
Asma gritted her teeth. “It’s my memorial, too, auntie.”
“I know, I know.” Mrs. Mahmoud patted her knee. “But it’s not worth so much trouble.”
“It is!” Asma said, but before she could find the words to say why, Mrs. Mahmoud rose, even she not immune to the demands of nature imposed by four cups of tea, and trundled off down the hall like an overloaded truck. “If we do have to leave,” she said over her shoulder, “Salima Ahmed had better not try to get in front of me in the line.”
Paul wanted Khan to drop out. This notion came to him, again, after yet another incensed call from a juror over the governor’s attacks on their elitism. At every turn, Geraldine played up the importance of the public hearing and her right to veto the jury’s choice. Paul, who saw himself as the patriarch of this oversized, cantankerous brood, didn’t want his jurors quashed. But nor did he want to cross Geraldine, to whom he owed his position. The best outcome for the jury, for the country, for himself, for all, if not necessarily for Khan, was for him to withdraw.
He hit upon his strategy at a cocktail fund-raiser for his son Samuel’s gay rights organization. Having already written the check, Paul didn’t see why he needed to attend the party, but Edith had insisted, and two Scotches and three mini—lobster rolls in, he was starting to find it palatable. They were in one of those enormous downtown lofts whose style and art collection made Paul feel a century or two behind. The hosts, a pair of prominent gay philanthropists who sat on Samuel’s board, were great champions of his and therefore took an interest in Paul. They escorted him into the bedroom to show off a Richard Prince painting for which they had paid a record price at a Sotheby’s auction. Paul studied the painting—a cowboy riding a horse against the backdrop of a cloud-filled sky—for a long time, unsure whether the price made it seem more ordinary or extraordinary.
When he returned from his private tour, he joined a group that was standing around a windbag who was telling a long story about an incompetent employee. Not wanting to fire the laggard—“his old man was a major donor,” words that made Paul, as Samuel’s father, wince—the windbag had handed him ever more petty, mindless tasks: report collating, phone-list updating, and so on. “Place enough unreasonable demands on someone and eventually they’ll throw their hands up and walk away,” he said, to knowing laughter. Who hadn’t tried the same type of thing with an incompetent underling or even just an irritating maid? Firing was messy, often costly. Offending pride came cheap.
Edith interpreted Paul’s silence on the way home as a judgmental one. “Sometimes I wish you would be more open-minded,” she said. “It would mean a lot to the boys. It was a lovely affair and they said such nice things about Samuel—”
“Edith, it was a very nice party,” he said, putting his palms to her powdery-soft cheeks, not caring that Vladimir was watching in the rearview. “I mean it. I’m so glad we went.”
The next day Paul informed Mo that he would have to partner with a landscape architect because he was too inexperienced to handle such a large project on his own. The partner would have to come from a short list that would