The Submission - Amy Waldman [83]
In an editorial, The New York Times called Sean representative of “a new, ominous strain of intolerance in the land.” Reporters called him to ask how it felt to represent a new strain of intolerance. The atmosphere in his parents’ house chilled. “It’s Muslims that are supposed to mistreat women,” Eileen said to him when he came into the kitchen before dinner one night. Her hands were full with a tray of roast chicken, but before he could get the swinging door to the dining room for her, she turned around and backed it open with her rear end.
When the FBI called to say they had tracked hostile references to Sean in jihadist chat rooms online, he brushed off the threat but welcomed the excuse to vacate his parents’ house for a while. “I don’t want to put my parents in danger,” he told Debbie Dawson, knowing, somehow, that she would find him a place to stay. He didn’t expect it to be in her apartment.
It was a sprawling aerie on the Upper East Side, two units her husband had conjoined before he split. She lived with her three daughters: Trisha, eighteen, flouncy, fond of flashing Sean the straps of her bra, when she wore one; Alison, sixteen and flitty; and Orly, at thirteen the baby, a pout. All three had signs saying NO ISLAM ZONE on their doors: Debbie wasn’t allowed to talk about “the cause,” as they disdainfully referred to it, in their rooms. When they didn’t get their way, they threatened to marry Muslims.
Sean felt like he had come upon the Wizard of Oz in his bathrobe, since Debbie spent most of the day in hers. Once the girls went off to school, she entered her virtual world, obsessively updating her blog, rallying supporters and volunteers (two of whom acted, on occasion, as her bodyguards), flaming opponents across the Web. She made sure to shower and dress before the girls came home in the afternoon.
They were on the eighteenth floor, and at first the height elevated Sean’s sense of his own worth. It was his first time living in Manhattan, and his days were his, since he had temporarily delegated Joe Mullaney, his lieutenant, to run the committee. He walked the blocks around Debbie’s apartment trying to look like he belonged. But he didn’t; he was the only man not in a hurry. Not even the children idled here. One afternoon he trailed a man who, with his slick affect and Middle Eastern complexion, reminded him of Mohammad Khan. The man went into a museum whose brutal gray concrete exterior put Sean off not just because he found it ugly but because he suspected it was meant to be beautiful in a way he didn’t get—and he winced to realize that it was the architect Khan who would better fit here.
When he came back to the apartment, Debbie was out, and he glanced at her blog. Debbie’s burka-bikinied body—the focus, he knew now, had been soft—had shrunk to make way for a new item. THE AMERICAN WAY IS CURRENTLY GIVING ASYLUM TO A REFUGEE FROM ISLAMIST POLITICAL VIOLENCE, it said in huge letters. DONATE NOW! This man has been threatened for being brave enough to speak up against the Islamist threat and against Mohammad Khan. Now he has had to flee his home. We are feeding and housing him. DONATE NOW!
“Is this me?” he asked when Debbie returned with the girls.
“I am housing you,” she said. “And someone’s got to put these girls through college.”
“Daddy’s going to put us through college,” Trisha said.
Debbie cut her eyes at her eldest. “Women need to be financially independent.”
“That blog,” Trisha said, wrinkling her pert nose, “is not going to make you independent.”
On a temperate fall day, Paul summoned Claire to Manhattan for lunch and a reprimand.