The Last Life (34 page)

My mother was silent.

"Frankly, I could not imagine. I did not know," my grandmother continued. "How could I? This was all I'd ever wanted—not money, or luxury, but a husband I loved and respected, who, for all his ascent was slow, was himself respected. He took the collection in church, you know, the youngest member of the congregation to do so. Our apartment was small, to be sure, but we were just beginning, and I had faith in him, as we both had faith in our beautiful country, where it was a blessing in itself to stroll the streets at dusk, in the pink light, hand in hand. Our love was about that place, too, for me, and all that we might make of it, and of ourselves in it. I, pregnant for the second time, with my darling little boy at my side, floated in possibility. I believed in the future, whereas Jacques—he did too, of course, but he also had a sense of time, like a wind, and of the years that had already been lost; and each day he was steeped in the day itself, in its worries and disappointments. It is hard to be great, in constrained circumstances."

My mother's lips twitched at this familiar assertion of my grandfather's greatness, long a constraint on her own, and her husband's, circumstances.

"Besides, I had help. I wasn't alone, the way he was. In that world, even in modest households, we had help. Khalida was a young girl, a Berber from Kabyhe, so fair-skinned you wouldn't have known her for a native, freckled, with reddish hair and a broad, lopsided smile. A dead tooth, up front, but pretty nonetheless. Almost still a child herself, no more than nineteen, but looking less than that. She was the eldest in a large family, and very good with children. Alexandre adored her. Some of his first words were Arabic, words she taught him:
jameel,
which means pretty, and
shamsa,
the sun, and the colors, and the numbers. He could count in Arabic first. She was very clean, and a good cook, and it isn't too much to say we were friends. We would talk about our families—I knew all about the brother next to her in age, and his apprenticeship at the tannery, and I knew what hopes she had for the littlest one, who was about seven, and so bright. She hoped he'd get a scholarship, in time, to the Lycee Bugeaud, and I encouraged the hope. People think we were all racist, but it just isn't so. I wanted her to succeed. I bought her schoolbooks for the child."

My grandmother paused. Her eyes were still closed and her brow furrowed. "You know how it is, being a young mother. I had friends, many of them, and family, of course; but I was often at home, and in the kitchen, she would cook and I would sit with my mending, or knitting for Marie, and we would talk. We spent a lot of time together. I trusted her. So it was a shock—not long after Marie was born, and I was exhausted, or I would have noticed sooner—but I was forgetful myself, and Khalida's sudden clumsiness seemed part and parcel of what was happening to me, not something separate. She was apologetic when she put salt in the pudding instead of sugar, or when she broke a wing off my lovely china bluebird, but she didn't say anything, merely looked frightened, with those big, moon eyes of hers, always rimmed—the way they do, the Orientals—with kohl. But there came a time when she couldn't hide it anymore, even with her drapery, there was a distinct bulge. I confronted her, and she was indeed pregnant. When I asked who the father was—she wasn't married, although many girls, native girls, her age, were—her face shut up like a suitcase. It just closed. Snap. It was none of my business, of course, so I didn't press her, but I was well aware of the shame it brought on her, in her community, and her family, so I kept her on. Who, with a Christian conscience, wouldn't? It was, if I may say so, an act of charity, because in those days—well, many an employer would have shown her the door, because it spoke ill of her morals, didn't it? Not to mention the fact that as the months went on she could do less and less—no window cleaning, no furniture moving, so she couldn't mop the floors properly, and so on.

"It was Jacques who finally said to me—I was absolutely ragged, doing it all myself—that we should pay her off, and replace her, perhaps even with a younger sister, so as to continue to help the family, but..." My grandmother peered at my mother: "You know what's coming," her expression said, and then she shut her eyes again, as if they hurt. "I tried. It was a terrible day. Alexandre was in a very naughty phase; he'd tried to choke Marie in her crib during the siesta. And the kitchen sink had clogged, and Khalida just stood there, for a quarter of an hour, staring at the scummy dishwater and saying nothing, doing nothing, and I said—as kindly as I could, mind you—'My dear girl, we both know this can't go on.' She gave me such a look: a black look. Terrible. The
schkoumoun.
The evil eye. And I said, 'We want to help as much as we can, because you're quite clearly in difficulty, but it makes no sense to keep pretending that you can work here, because you can't. You need to go home to your family, now, and wait until this child is born. And then maybe we can help you find a new situation, somewhere with friends, nice people."

"She planted her feet; she crossed her arms over her belly, which was big, then. She was carrying high, up front, and the rest of her was still scrawny, her limbs like little freckled pipes. A little woman, but such a terrible expression. 'You can't let me go,' she said. 'My dear girl, I understand your worries, and we'll give you some money to tide you over—' 'No, no,' she said, 'You don't understand' Which is when—well, you can imagine."

"Jacques," my mother whispered.

My grandmother took a deep breath. "It was a terrible day. The worst—almost the worst—in my life. My faith was so shaken. But God doesn't abandon us, not even in our darkest hour."

"What happened to her? Surely, among her people, she would have been an outcast because of the child. Don't they kill women for it?"

"As far as I know, she was spared stoning at least. I don't know how she lived, and I don't care. From my life, she went. That was what mattered to me: she went. Alexandre cried for a week: 'Where's my Khalida? I want my Khalida.' And then forgot all about her, as little children do."

"And you?"

"I let him take care of it. He spoke to her, he paid her. For all I know, he kept on paying her. He's very moral, Jacques; he knows his duty. I didn't want to know about it. I got the slut out of my kitchen, out of our apartment, and that was my job done. I never saw her again and neither, he told me, did he. I believe him. And if he did, I don't want to know. I had my family to protect, and I did. And we survived. More than survived. And so will you."

"And the child?"

"A boy. That much I know. A healthy baby boy."

"But this is different," my mother began, sitting forward in her chair. "Alexandre is different."

"He hasn't saddled himself with illegitimate children, so far as we know. For that, at least, we can thank the women's liberation movement, if for nothing else. And he doesn't chase Arab servants. Be grateful, my girl. The rest depends on you."

"And live as if it didn't matter?"

"Don't be so American. You know better than that. Live as if your family mattered more—your children, your security. Which they do."

"But how can I ever have faith in him?"

"That's between you and God. It's your problem. Know that in the wider world it matters not a jot. You are my son's wife, and will remain so, in the eyes of the church, until you die."

My mother didn't need my grandmother to tell her this; she believed it anyway, in spite of the times, in spite of the current divorce rate and the stirrings in her heart at the fleeting prospect of freedom. There was me; more intransigent still, there was Etienne and, much as she loved my brother, she could never be free while he was alive. It was, indeed, a choice of beliefs, although not to Carol's eyes; and if it changed her perception of her marriage, it altered its actual contours only slightly. Now, at last, she had an excuse for her unhappiness—not in the outlying family, or in her blameless son, but in her husband himself. It was almost a relief. She made use of it.

And I? Once again, my side was chosen—in the
salon de thé,
among the potted figs—before I knew there was a choice. Only years later did I wonder what it was to be my father, stoked with self-loathing, to observe the world through the sheen of failure: born of a failed country, a mediocre businessman trailing in his father's footsteps, an unsatisfactory spouse, the father of a son who could never grow up, seeking always and again the moment of conquest when he might escape his history, himself, and soar unburdened for a stolen hour. But at almost fifteen, I could not look him in the eye, knowing what I knew; and, not looking, I could not see the flickering there of his wounded self. To me he was not a person, in all a person's fragile parts; he was my father, who had betrayed my mother, and me, and even Etienne, a malignant presence unconvincingly masked by his cheerful smiles and premeditated caresses.

My mother had done nothing wrong; my mother was alone and unsupported. That was how she saw it, and how, through her eyes, I came to see it also, and if he had been cognizant, Etienne too would have allied himself with us. We were a lonely trio, not living, it seemed, while my father sallied forth and stole a separate life, a life without us, in spite of us, which was unforgivable. The words he spoke meant nothing—my mother and I so little believed them that we hardly heard them, or heard them only to inspect and unpick them, to discard their apparent import like a fistful of broken threads. "I have to work late," "I have an early appointment," "I'll just stop off for a drink with Pierre on the way home"—we accepted none of it, although we nodded, noncommittally. We studied him the way you study a drunk who claims to have reformed, sniffing his neck for cologne, frowning and muttering if he took time over his appearance, daily battling the impulse to rifle his briefcase for clues to his movements.

He, in return, in his full energy, swung wildly from opaque kindness to tight-lipped rage, aware that he was being measured and judged, doomed again to fail. If he chatted after mass with a woman in the congregation, I scrutinized her from head to toe, beaming displeasure, certain she must count among his harem. If he turned to glance at a young girl in town, at the slim line of her back, I deemed it lechery. I did not want him to touch me, and felt sullied in touching him: kissing him good night, I tendered my cold cheek and osculated the air alongside his own. As my mother remained silent with him, and the evenings lay heavy with tension but empty of argument, I began to pick fights of my own, about anything—politics, my attire, homework, privileges (for which I had little use in that lonely spring), the hours I spent watching television—anything but the real thing, the suspicions born of knowledge that he did not know I had.

At suppertime, when he was there, I glared at his placid features, swollen with food, and beyond him at the Burmese torments of hell. I tried to will him into the picture, to force upon him the punishments that were his due. Once, in my willing, I screwed my eyes shut, muttering my hex beneath my breath. I must have remained some moments in that histrionic attitude, because my father silenced my mother's vague chat and asked, in a low, slow voice which at the time I took for anger, but which might simply have been concern, "Sagesse? Are you feeling sick?"

"No sicker than usual."

"Is it something you've eaten? Is it a migraine? Maybe, like your grandmother, you're susceptible to migraines?"

Eyes open now to a room that shimmered before me, slightly, I hissed, "I'm not like Grand'-mère. I'm not like the LaBasses. It's not a migraine."

"Then what is it?" My father put down his knife and fork. "Something must be wrong, because there is no other excuse for such extraordinary behavior."

My mother sighed. She turned to Etienne, who was at her elbow, and stroked his glistening hair.

"It's none of your business," I said, with a floundering fear of my incipient, as yet uninvented, lie.

"Don't use that tone with me," he said. "How much you hate your parents is your own affair, but as long as you live under my roof, you will show us the courtesy of respect."

"I don't hate my parents," I replied, looking at my mother and thereby absolving her.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Why don't you have to show us any respect, if respect is such a big deal?"

My father drew a deep breath. He seemed to be rising from his chair. "What is the matter with you? Do you think you can talk to me as if I were one of your little friends?"

"Let her be," my mother said. "Just ignore it, Alex."

"I will not ignore it. Night after night, day after day, this chit of a girl behaves as though we were trash, here only to finance her good times and get out of the way—as though we were nothing—"

"Don't get carried away," my mother warned.

"Shut up, Carol. I asked her a civil question—she's sitting there with her face contorted as though she's about to puke—and all I ask is why—and this? I'm treated to this?"

"Just tell your father what's wrong, dear. You're not feeling well, right?"

I glanced at her. She had her hand crooked at Etienne's nape, and he, my brother, was opening his eyes very wide. Their whites, like those of fried eggs, reflected the light. He was liable to pull his lips back over his teeth and screech, a piercing sound like an alarm. My mother was pleading with me. If Etienne lost his composure, the evening would catapult into hysteria.

I concocted my lie. It came to me like a gift. "You wouldn't understand, and you don't want to know."

"I've asked. So try me." My father was standing now. He tossed his napkin defiantly onto the table. He rolled his bulk threateningly on his toes. "Go on. What is it?"

"I'm bleeding," I hissed. "I have my period and I'm bleeding like a stuck pig, and it cramps up my insides as though a hundred knives were being jabbed into me. It kills. You have no idea."

Deflated, my father sat. He would not meet my gaze.

"Are you happy now? Did you really want to know that? Did you have to?"