An Illusion of Trust (Sequel to The Brevity of Roses) (10 page)

Adam holds his spoon out to me. "Eat?"

"Not right now, little man."

"Baba Daddy say vuk."

"Oh,
really
."

Jalal holds up one finger, but he avoids my eye.

"Well, Adam you have my permission to give Daddy a time out if he says vuk again."

Adam giggles and points at Jalal, "Time out, misser."

Jalal pretends to bite his finger, which makes Adam laugh again. Mia Grace joins in, putting her fingers up to Jalal's mouth, so he can bite her too. I'm so in love with them all. How lucky I am to have this beautiful family.

"Looks like you have it all under control this morning, Daddy. Did you give her a bottle?"

Jalal holds up one of Adam's outgrown tippy cups. "She drank from this."

"Mee-Grays big girl," Adam says, proudly.

"What did she drink?"

"Your milk, of course, from the stash in the freezer."

A protest flies to my lips, but I let it go. One cup is not weaning. "Is she too full to nurse?"

"Sorry," he says and turns the cup upside down, "she emptied it."

"Then I guess I'm going back upstairs to pump and then shower, so I should be ready to eat my omelet in about thirty minutes. I mean, since you're on breakfast duty and all."

"You are welcome," he calls after me.

I reverse a few steps and poke my head back into the kitchen. "I'll thank you later, Mr. Vaziri."

Adam is fascinated with the elephants at the zoo, and today, like most days, he begs to visit them after his morning nap. Azadeh and Kristen volunteer to take both the kids, and I, like a normal mother would, agree to let them. I trust Aza. I'm not going to worry about letting them out of my sight. I'm not. I trust Aza.

The quiet house looms around me as soon as they drive out of sight. I don't think I can stand it for the next couple of hours. Jalal puts his arm around my shoulder and walks me back into the house. "What shall we do now?" he asks. The look he gives me leaves no doubt he's referring to the promise I made him this morning.

It's not until I'm leading him up to our bed that I wonder whether he engineered the zoo trip. I get my answer when he helps me undress but only kicks off his sandals. Delay tactics. He's planned what I call his soul treatment. Sex with Jalal is always great. I mean … My God great. I'd been with plenty of guys before Jalal. I knew the physical part of sex, but what I didn't know—what I didn't even know I didn't know—was the spiritual part.

Jalal taught me to feel. He insisted I lie still and feel his breath on my skin, feel the flick of his tongue, feel the trail of his fingertips. To feel—to experience—his touch until my body, humming in tune with all there was and is and will be, abandons all barriers and opens to the power in surrender. That's Jalal talking. I balked when he got to the surrender part until he explained I needed to surrender to myself, not to him. That made sense. I'm good at walling off feelings. I allow myself little bites, an emotional diet. Only it's not fat I'm avoiding, it's hurt.

He begins with whispery kisses on my closed eyelids.

We both fell asleep afterward. I woke a few minutes ago when I heard voices downstairs, but thanks to Mr. Vaziri and his fabulous talents, I'm too mellow to get up yet. He's lying on his stomach. I trace my finger along one of the scratches I made on his back. He opens one eye, then rolls over and rubs his face.

"I'm sorry about my sob fest last night," I say. "I know I'm too intense about the kids."

"I only wish you could relax and enjoy them more. Maybe you should practice yoga."

Like Meredith, he means. "I don't think that's for me." I miss the ocean. I miss our little house too, but I won't tell him that. How ungrateful would that sound? I can adjust. I will adjust. "I'm working on it. I let them go without me today."

"Only because you wanted to get me up here to vuk." He squeezes my thigh and then gets out of bed, calling over his shoulder as he heads to the bathroom, "Maybe a getaway would help." When he comes back, he picks up his clothes and continues his thought. "You could go to Bahía for a couple of days—or we can both go. With or without Adam and Mia Grace." He huffs a laugh. "
With
." He finishes dressing, then looks at me. "So?"

"What?"

"Bahía?"

"Yes, we should go. It's been a while."

He cocks his head toward the door, listening. "They are home."

"I know."

"And you stayed up here?" He gives me a thumbs up. "Excellent. Mia Grace is probably hungry, though. Do you want me to bring her up to you?"

"I'll be down as soon as I get dressed." Jalal is out the door before it occurs to me we're going to Bahía because he read my mind again.

J
alal barely gets the restaurant door open before Adam runs in crying, "Granny."

"My babies!" Jennie sets her serving tray on an empty table and opens her arms. She scoops up Adam, kisses him all over his face, and then settles him on one hip. "Now bring my baby girl here."

I hand Mia Grace to Jennie and pick up the full tray. Jennie tells me the table number and I serve the customers. It's like I never left. It feels so good I grab Jennie's order pad and keep working. She gives me a wink and carries the kids into the kitchen so Adam can see his Dardo. Jalal looks from me to Jennie and back, then shrugs and follows her.

Don and Eduardo's old table tugs at my heart when I pass it. They were best friends and spent every day here together for years, playing chess while Eduardo tried to convince Jennie to marry him. Two months after Jennie said yes to Eduardo, Don passed in his sleep. Now, Eduardo spends most of his time here in the kitchen, helping his brother cook. Life keeps a balance sheet. You win one. You lose one.

When the lunch crowd has dwindled to two tables, I leave Jennie's new girl to it and join my family in the kitchen. Adam is licking his bowl. I act angry. "Adam James Vaziri, did you just eat ice cream before lunch?"

I can't fool him. He grins. "Baba Daddy say yes."

Eduardo squeezes an arm around my shoulders. "Hey, pretty girl, we miss you around here." That chokes me up, but Jalal saves the day by handing me Mia Grace, who pulls at my shirt to let me know she's hungry. I carry her out back to the picnic table where I spent many breaks when I worked for Jennie.

Just as I finish feeding the baby, the door opens and Adam climbs up on the bench beside me. Jalal is right behind him. "Lunch will be ready in a minute," he says.

"How did you know what I wanted?"

"Hmmm, maybe because you have eaten about a billion meals here, and ninety-percent of those times you ordered …"

"Tuna salad on white toast."

"Yuck," Adam says.

"With fries," I tell him.

"Yum."

"I agree," Jalal says. "Granny makes good fries." He lifts Adam onto his shoulders. "Come on, Mama, you have my permission to have a Coke."

"Your
permission
?" I backhand his stomach and run for the door.

"You will pay for that."

"Name your price."

"I will, Mrs. Vaziri. During their naptime."

Jennie shoos us out of the kitchen. In the dining room, Jalal settles Adam in a booster seat beside him, and I sit Mia Grace in a highchair next to my place. He waits with the kids while I get our drinks.

When Jennie and Eduardo carry in the food, Adam points to the empty chair on his and Jalal's side of the table. "Dardo, sit."

"Say please," Jalal says and then explains that Adam is into gender identification.

"Ah," Jennie says, "so it's boys against girls already, is it?" She gives Jalal a look.

"I had nothing to do with it."

"You're a man. That has everything to do with it."

Eduardo laughs at Jalal's frown. "Have you been gone so long you forget she's all bark and no bite?"

Jennie bares her teeth at Eduardo. He winks at her.

"Where's your new girl?" I ask her.

"She's gone for the day. I close for a couple of hours every afternoon now."

"Good for you," Jalal says.

Jennie points at Eduardo, "I only got in the habit of staying open sixteen hours a day so this fool would stick around."

"You could have had me day and night long ago if you'd married me."

"Well, I did marry you, and now I have to close this place and get out of here just to get away from you."

"No fight," Adam cries.

Jennie gasps. "Oh, baby boy, we're not fighting."

Eduardo ruffles Adam's curls. "We love each other, buddy. We're just pretending to fight, like a game."

"We won't play that game anymore, Adam," Jennie says.

She's really upset, so I kiss her cheek. "It's okay."

Jalal tilts Adam's face up to his. "You know how you like me to growl and chase you?" Adam nods. "It's a game like that."

Adam beams. "Baba Daddy a tiger."

Jennie laughs and wipes her eyes. I feel terrible that we're not visiting her as often as I'd promised.

"Do you still close earlier at night?" Jalal asks.

"We do," Eduardo says, "and sometimes she doesn't even come back for the dinner service.

"How many times has that happened?" Jennie asks. "Count them on one hand."

Eduardo gives her a look. "Me and Victor cook, and I serve. We have a night girl for summer, but the two of us handled it ourselves
many
nights this past winter."

Jennie sighs. "Too many changes around here. Don left us, I married that one, and you two turned into responsible parents and then moved away. All my night owls—pftt."

It makes me sad to hear her say that, but Jalal is looking at Jennie more concerned than sad, and I wonder what he's thinking. "You deserve to have a life outside this restaurant," I say.

"That's what I tell her every day,"Eduardo says.

"Listen," I tell Jalal. "I miss that, the sound of the surf." We're lying in the bedroom with the windows open. He's twisting a lock of my hair around his finger and I get a flash of the first time we had sex. Afterward, we were lying here exactly like this, and then he ruined it by calling me by her name.

"Meredith," he says.

What the hell? I rise up, ready to slap him. He starts laughing. I do slap him then. "That wasn't funny."

"I couldn't resist." He can barely get the words out between his laughter and my slapping, and then he pins me down and kisses me until I stop fighting him.

"You read my mind," I say.

"It was easy to know what you were thinking. Same place, same hair, same woman who makes me crazed with desire." He looks in my eyes, the way he used to when it was just the two of us, each lost and needing love more than life. For a moment, our minds really are one. "That seems so long ago," he says. "I would die without you in my life."

Once, I would have laughed if a man said that to me, but not now. Jalal is not like any other man I've known. He means it when he says things like that, and I want him to mean it. I need him to mean it. I'm about to cry, and he knows it, so he lies back and wraps his arms around me. I'm crying and happy and never want to lose this moment. Ever.

We have a history in Bahía, and that makes it home. The familiarity of sitting on this swing, beside Jalal, drinking wine and watching the moonlight flickering on the sea comforts like the afghan he's wrapped around me. The memories I've formed in the last three years are the only ones of mine not tinged with pain or shame.

He breaks the silence. "I think Jennie is depressed."

"We need to come back here more often."

"Do you think she would stay with us a few days after Adam's birthday party?"

"Come on, Jalal. You know she'd never close the restaurant during the height of tourist season."

"If she had more help—"

"She can't afford more help; she's barely making a living off the place as it is."

"Let me talk to her about it."

Something in the way he says that reminds me of a suspicion I had before we married. Jalal owns several properties here, including Vincenza, and I wondered if that wasn't the only restaurant. It will probably spoil the mood, but I have to ask. "Do you own Jennie's?" He combs his fingers back through his hair, a sure sign he's thinking how to answer. I feel, more than hear, him sigh.

"I had an interest in it, yes."

"What do you mean, you
had
?" He doesn't answer right away. I wait. Either he'll tell me more or he's not ready to discuss it. I'm learning there's no use pushing him.

"Jennie worked there for the previous owner. He was old and not in good health. For all practical purposes, she ran the place for years, and after the man died, she learned he had willed it to her. But he had let things deteriorate for quite a while, so before long she needed money to replace some kitchen equipment and make other repairs. At the time, my chef at Vincenza was a friend of hers, and when he mentioned it to me, I invested."

"When was this?"

"About two years after I bought this house."

"Jennie never told me that. I mean, I knew she'd inherited the restaurant, but I didn't know you became her partner."

"Well … there is a reason for that."

"She didn't know it was you?"