Billie’s smile stretched from ear to ear. “Definitely not.”
***
“Mr. and Mrs. Lennon?”
Two days later, a man with a handlebar mustache called our names. We’d been waiting for the better part of an hour in uncomfortable plastic seats. I stood and held my hand out for Maya to walk first, and we followed the guy down a dimly lit hall toward a conference room with no windows.
“I’m Officer Richard Weber.” He slid a business card across the table to us. “I’m the officer assigned to your immigration application. Can I have some picture ID from both of you, please?”
I dug into my wallet and pulled out my driver’s license, while Maya took out an expired passport from Ecuador. The officer examined them both carefully, looking between the photo IDs and our faces a few times before handing them back and taking his seat.
“You should have received some papers that contain a notice of your rights during this hearing,” he said. “Twice actually. Once in the mail with your appointment letter, and again today from the receptionist when you signed in. Have you received these notices?”
Maya and I looked at each other and nodded. “We have,” she said.
“Any questions about your rights?”
We both shook our heads.
“Good. Then let’s get started.” The officer picked up a pen and clicked the top, then looked directly at me. “Mr. Lennon, how do you normally greet your wife when you see her?”
My forehead wrinkled. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“It’s pretty straightforward. When you see your wife, perhaps when you get home from work or whatever, do you give her a hug, a kiss on the lips, kiss on the cheek, maybe? Shake her hand?” He shrugged. “Or perhaps no physical greeting is exchanged?”
Fuck. That definitely hadn’t been a question on the sheets Maya made me fill out. But I decided to stick to the method Billie and I had used to come up with thirty pages of answers and responded as if the question applied to my relationship with her. “I kiss her on the lips.”
He held my eyes. “Yet when you arrived today, you didn’t kiss your wife hello. Is that correct?”
My face must’ve asked the question I was thinking because the officer shrugged. “I happened to be coming in from my break when you walked up, and I saw you greet Mrs. Lennon.”
Maya jumped in. “We…had a bit of an argument last night.”
The officer kept his focus solely on me. “What was the fight about, Mr. Lennon?”
I was suddenly nervous as shit and drawing a complete blank. So I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Maya ran up the cell phone bill, and I was upset about it.”
“How much was the bill?”
“Uh, I think about three-hundred dollars.”
“And what is it normally?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a hundred.”
“Do you two have the same cell phone provider?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He jotted something down on his yellow notepad. “As a follow up, after this hearing, I’d like a copy of both of your cell phone bills for the last sixty days.”
Fuck.
Maya flashed a plastic smile. Even I could tell it was fake. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll make sure you receive that.”
“Mr. Lennon, which hand does your wife write with?”
Jesus Christ. None of these questions were in the papers we’d filled out. Since I had no goddamn clue if she was a righty or lefty, my first reaction was to stay consistent and answer as if it applied to Billie. But Billie was a lefty, and there were definitely more righties than lefties in the world, so I decided at the last second to go with the odds. “She writes with her right hand,” I said.
The officer set his pen down on top of the pad he’d been writing on and slid them both over to the other side of the table in front of Maya. “Can you please print your name and then sign in script, Mrs. Lennon?”
Maya looked at me. “Sure. But I think my husband might be a little nervous today. He knows I’m a lefty. Right, sweetheart?”
Things didn’t get much better after that. Even when our answers were in sync, I couldn’t stop sweating. I had to blot my forehead several times just to keep droplets from falling on the damn table. My attorney had said the average interview lasted about twenty minutes, but it was well over an hour before Officer Weber put us out of our misery. By then, I had to be careful not to lift my arms because I was pretty sure if I did, I’d have giant sweat rings in my suit jacket.
We left with a lackluster goodbye after being told we’d receive a letter in the mail in a few weeks.
Maya was silent the entire elevator ride down to the street level, even though it was only the two of us in the car. But the minute we stepped out onto the street, her hands flew to her hips and she got in my face. “You did that on purpose!”