Breakable You (38 page)

Maud was going to have to push Ralph up the hill. His wheelchair was motorized, but the hill was steep, and the motor was only good for flat surfaces and slight inclines. Eleanor wouldn't have the strength to push it herself.

"It's not a problem, Mom." Maud settled David snugly in his carrier, picked it up, and shrugged her arms through the straps. She usually wore it so that David was in front of her, but now she put it on her back, like a backpack. "He's good ballast." She took the handles of Ralph's wheelchair.

"My daughter the Amazon," Eleanor said.

"Are you sure this isn't too much for you?" Ralph said.

"It's fine," Maud said. "I'm an Amazon."

"You're sure?" Ralph said.

"We must imagine Sisyphus happy," Maud said, and started pushing.

"If you say so," Ralph said.

Eleanor walked a step or two behind them. Maud pushed her friend's wheelchair steadily and without apparent effort. She seemed a sturdy and formidable creature.

David, riding on Maud's back, was intently hitting his rattle against the side of his carrier.

The odd little party made its way slowly up the hill.

This was Maud's first look at the gravestone. It bore Samir's name, the year of his birth, and the year of his death. Nothing more. This reserve seemed more faithful to his temperament than an inscription would have been.

Her mother and Ralph stayed with her for a few minutes, and then, at her mother's suggestion, they went back down the hill. Ralph said he'd be able to wheel himself down.

Maud spread a blanket on the soil and put David down on his stomach.

She was glad that her mother hadn't objected to her wish to have some time here alone with David. She'd been afraid that her mother would think it was morbid.

It wasn't morbid. It was the opposite of morbid, in her mind.

David was starting to gain control over his limbs. He was flapping his arms and legs, as if he were trying to swim.

One of the many things she had never known about infants is how hard they
work
. David never rested. It was fascinating to watch him struggling to master the world. He spent every waking moment absorbed in the monumental effort to become more human. With every effort to move his arms or lift his head, he was coming closer to the human world.

The law of life, she thought, was striving. David striving to learn, striving in every moment to become more human. Ralph striving to stay alive. Her mother striving to remake her life after the blows she had received.

She picked David up and nursed him for a few minutes. His mouth was working hard, but he was gazing up at her calmly.

I don't want the world to get its triumph over you, little man. Over us.

He had dark eyes, like his father's.

I wish you could have felt your father's love.

She knew that Samir would have loved this boy. She knew that his love for this boy would have changed his life.

The thing about Samir, she thought, was that he wanted to live. Whether he'd fallen asleep at the wheel or gotten forced off the road by a drunk driver or whether something had gone wrong with his car, it didn't matter: she knew that he'd wanted to live.

She wanted to call out to him. She wanted to shout his name out as loud as she could.

She cried a little, and she held David close. A foe of sentimentality, evidently, he inserted two fingers into her nostril.

His lips were parted, as if he were about to speak. Tiny, wet, shining.

The world is waiting for what you have to say, boy.

In Jewish tradition, a mourner visiting a grave will find a small stone and place it on the grave or the tombstone. Maud had read about the custom and found that its origins and its meanings were unclear. But something about it had always struck her as right. It was a gesture that was tender, solemn, and illusionless.

Holding David in the crook of her arm, she bent down and found two stones, one for Zahra and one for Samir.

They were visiting the graves of a man she had known for only five months and a girl she had never met. The graves of a father and sister whom David would never know. But that didn't seem like the truth of the matter. The truth, she thought, as she carefully placed a stone on each grave, was that the four of them, somehow, were a family.

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