Three Daughters: A Novel (36 page)

No one could know the things he loved about her. He loved her back. She was slim and the bones made a sculpture that felt sumptuous under his hands. He liked the exaggerated bones and muscles and the warmth. When she lay on her stomach, he liked resting his cheek on one of the mounds created by the cleft that swooped down to her buttocks. He liked the feel of the sturdy, grainier skin, so different from the velvety softness of her belly. He liked her height. He liked standing next to her and being able to look into her eyes and to kiss her without bending over. He even liked what appeared to be a scowl but was more a look of inquiry or a habit of protecting her eyes from the sun. She had a private smile—not broad in any sense—just a little folding in of her lips. For him it was a substitute for feelings not easily expressed. It said—or he imagined it said—
I’m yours
, and that vulnerability defined and uplifted his manliness. He felt very strongly that he belonged with her.

Only once had he briefly regretted his marriage. He had been sitting outdoors, sharing breakfast and a newspaper with his brother-in-law. “I want to hold the bird.” Ambrose had tugged repeatedly on his father’s arm, dislodging it from the armrest and causing Peter to grunt with annoyance. “They’re afraid of you,” Peter had answered absently, determined to continue reading.

“Why?”

“Because you’re not another bird.”

“I’m nice.”

“Of course you’re nice.”

“I want to hold it.” Again Ambrose had yanked his father’s arm and this time the paper went flying.

“Ambrose,” Peter said wearily, “let me finish this paragraph.”

“All right.” The little boy had taken a shiny green olive off a plate and begun to scrape the meat from the pit with his tiny front teeth. Samir had watched with fascination.
My father chews in exactly that manner
, he realized with amazement.
It’s my father’s mouth. The same setting of the teeth, the same jaw. The clear, invincible link of one generation to another.
The strength of the past became so precious that his heart ached with disappointment.

Nadia had begun to clear the table, but he took the dishes out of her hands and put them down. “Why are you so desperate to have this baby?” He was thinking that perhaps it would help her to talk in simple terms.

“Why? You’re asking me why? You expected to have a son. It’s the most important thing in your life. And not just one son, but several. Why are you asking me a question like that?”

“Because I want to tell you that you’re putting too much emphasis on what I want. I made the choice to marry you, remember? If you’ve had failed pregnancies, it’s not your fault. Did you connive to marry me under false pretenses?” He had started out to say something different. Something kind and reassuring but far less generous. Suppose she thanked him and forgot about having children altogether?

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“Oh, Samir.” Tears appeared. “It’s not that simple. I want to give you children. You deserve them.”

“I don’t know about that.” He felt relieved. “I don’t know who deserves them.” The room had a terrazzo floor and his voice sounded unexpectedly resonant and poignant. “You know something? You cry like a brave woman. Your voice gets stronger.”

“That’s because I despise tears.”

He cocked his head, thinking things over. “My father had a brother, Jacoub, who never had children. He was a wonderful man with a lovely wife. He always played with everyone’s children. Don’t you think he deserved them?” Right then the idea of his wonderful uncle Jacoub’s childless life disturbed him. You could be a decent man and still not get what you wanted.

“I remember him,” said Nadia. She wiped her eyes and ran her hand under her nose. “Yes, you’re right. He brought me presents at Christmas and I always felt puzzled and guilty.” She blew her nose. “And what about Uncle Nicola? Remember him? No wife or children.”

“But he had tuberculosis as a child. They were afraid he would infect any woman he slept with. Poor man. It turned out he was really cured. He lived to be ninety.”

She picked up the dishes again. “It’s not the same.” She shook her head in a desolate way. “You expected children.”

“Since the children are for me, I’m telling you to relax.” He took the dishes out of her hand and put them back on the table. “Let me see you smile. Come on.” He poked at her chin and she smiled stiffly. “Does that mean you feel better?”

“I suppose.”

“Fine. Now let’s go to bed. I’m tired.”

“Samir?”

“What?”

“Could we still try?”

He turned around, shook his head and smiled. He still felt the stirrings of an erection. “Certainly.” He began to unbutton her blouse. Her face became alert and quizzical and she pulled her blouse together. “What’s wrong?”

“I just realized how stupid I’ve been.”

“Stupid? About what?”

“To believe what you just said.” She looked astounded at her own naïveté. “How could it be all right? Your entire life has been a preparation to pass on your heritage to your children. Your very upbringing . . . the sheik sent you to the desert to make you fall in love with your heritage. Samir”—she backed away from him to make her point—
“
children are everything to you. Why would you lie to me about that?”

He wasn’t the least bit sheepish. “I feel certain you will have children. It’s too bad that it’s not easy for you. You have to be more careful than most women, but I know that in the end we’ll have a child. I can’t tell you how I know”—he smiled innocently—“but I know.”

“And that’s it?” She looked disappointed.

“That’s it.” He tried to unbutton her blouse, but she pulled it together again.

“Sometimes I have the feeling that our marriage was inevitable. My mother never let up about you, even when it seemed hopeless.”

“She wanted the best for her daughter.” He reached for her, but she stepped back.

“It wasn’t your high standing that captured her. I think she had made up her mind that our marriage was fitting. It wasn’t your money. She likes you. She wanted someone constant for me the way my father has been constant with her. Maybe she thinks we’re the kind of women who need someone to love us until we understand what’s good for us.” Wistfulness overtook her face, as if her heart’s desire was out of reach, just over a ravine that kept growing wider.
But she wouldn’t want you stuck with a wife who can’t bear children.

He stood in front of her and began to unbutton her blouse for the third time.

“Samir, not here . . .”

“Yes, here.” He had already made up his mind.

“Wait till we go inside.”

“I can’t . . .” He trapped her between the table and the door, dug out her breasts from the unopened brassiere and brought them out to be framed by her partly opened blouse. “Look at that. They look like a pair of newborn animals.” He bent down and rubbed his face between them, letting each nipple rake against his cheek and become hard. He used his lips above her waist while his hands undid her skirt and pulled down her panties. “Ah,” he sighed when he finally cupped her bare buttocks. “Sit on the table.” She remained rigid. “Sit on the table and open your legs.”

She was staring at him stonily, not certain he was serious and unwilling to look foolish. “Come on.” He prodded her backward until she was against the table and then lifted her up, unable to resist tracing the crease between her buttocks and digging his fingers into the damp opening while his hand was momentarily trapped under her. She squirmed.

“Wait,” he whispered. He crouched down, brought her to the edge of the table, smoothed back the silken inner thighs, and pressed them open. She made a funny noise and shrank back.

“Yes,” he said. Her pubic hair was springy, a healthy reddish triangle of fuzz that was dramatic in its neatness. He searched through it with his tongue and she almost leaped off the table. He started to say,
See
, but kept quiet. He hadn’t expected to find the act of tonguing his wife so wildly pleasurable. Her skin was hot and she was rotating upward to give him better access.

Her hands were on the back of his head, pushing—timidly at first but then more boldly. “Don’t turn back now,” she pleaded—words he found remarkably novel. Within seconds that simple sentence catapulted him into the far reaches of desire. He pushed her down on the uncleared table. A few pieces of china clattered to the floor, but he climbed on top of her and gripped the edge, anxious that one or both might fall. He did a quick, careful push-up and entered her again.

The spiked sharp noise of a glass shattering against the unforgiving polished stone didn’t stop him. He kept thrusting. He had a flashing vision of her former haughtiness and his brain called out with the sweet satisfaction of adolescence:
I’m all the way in Nadia Mishwe.

When Nadia became pregnant a third time, she returned to the midwife, Helene, who told her that if she had any chance of making it through nine months she had to stay off her feet, preferably on her back.

27.

HIDE THE BABY. MARY THOMAS IS COMING UP THE HILL.

T
he twenty-ninth verse of the Gospel according to Matthew depicts a God who is capriciously cruel. “For to everyone who has will more be given,” it begins, “but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” From the Saleh family, who was so unsuccessful in producing children, he took away the one they had. He took Ambrose, who toddled out of his parents’ tent during a seaside vacation and drowned.

Julia, dazed with grief, tried to make sense of the tragedy. Why would God want to break her heart? What purpose did it serve to have her beautiful boy lying swollen and lifeless amid a tangle of weeds? Yet she owed it to the new baby to go on with her life as best she could. For Peter, the death of his beloved son changed everything. He stopped expanding his importing business and bought a hundred prime acres of vineyards adjacent to the sheik’s land. He urged Samir to begin the fledgling wine business that he had spoken about since returning from London. “I’ve got enough money. Now I want to do something that will live after me.”

When Julia gave birth to a little girl in February, Peter had already planted a thousand cuttings and enjoyed the life of a gentleman farmer. Julia was afraid he would resent the fact that this little stranger was alive and Ambrose was dead. She wasn’t prepared for the dedicated slave who hung over their new daughter’s crib, cooing and babbling to coax a smile out of those pursed, sober lips.

Amelia Sa’d, who ran the counter at the dry goods store, put into words what everyone else was thinking. “God scavenged the entire family to make the handsome Ambrose, leaving no decent feature for the rest of Julia’s brood.”

Ambrose had had his mother’s nose and chin, his father’s eyes and broad brow, the sheik’s mouth and robustness, and Julia’s dead mother’s fine bone structure. He was cheerful and outgoing. Delal was a different story. She had her mother’s close-set eyes and Peter’s broad nose, her paternal grandmother’s weak chin, and no cheekbones of note.

To her parents she was perfect. Julia doted on her infant daughter, squealing when she smiled (at seven weeks), bragging when she rolled over (at three months).

It wasn’t only a mother’s pride; Delal was extraordinarily precocious and willful. “You’re a lucky girl,” Julia often told her. “You can always know that your father will buy the moon to make you smile.” It crossed her mind that Delal, through circumstance, held a place of unique importance. She was the crown princess with no competition. Julia would look down at the determined look in Delal’s watchful eyes and have the uneasy image of her diaper-clad infant standing triumphant amid a field strewn with all of the Saleh family’s dead infants—the lone survivor. Woe to any child who came to displace her.

“Imagine how it would be if we couldn’t have had another child,” Julia said to Peter more than once. “Imagine how desperate Nadia must feel.” Having lived through what seemed a senseless tragedy, she empathized all the more with Nadia’s predicament. If there had been a way for her to carry her sister-in-law’s unborn child, she would have done it.

In the summer of 1935, she had the opportunity to do the next best thing: to act as Nadia’s arms and legs while Nadia remained safely horizontal waiting out the final crucial eight weeks.

While their sturdy hybrid vines took root and grew, Peter and Samir prepared for a long-planned trip to the San Joaquin Valley in California, an area that closely resembled theirs in climate and soil, to study the techniques of long-established vintners. Their wives moved to the relative coolness of the orchard cottage and set up housekeeping until their husbands returned in the fall.

Nadia wasn’t taking any chances. She allowed herself only five or ten minutes of being upright each day and spent most of her time half reclining on a lawn chair with her legs slightly elevated. In desperation for some activity, she learned to knit, though none of the garments she turned out had sleeves of equal length.

The summer—sparkling mountain days with cool, star-filled nights—passed quietly. Miriam came twice—riding the jitney as far as the main road and then traveling the last three miles on foot while carrying a bagful of anise cakes and spinach pies—and spent the night. She was the rare visitor, for everyone else was busy with farming. After bringing in the wheat, the estate workers took their vacation prior to the grueling work of the grape and olive harvests. Farid and a helper came for a few hours at dawn and dusk to place the older foals with the gazelles for racing and then return them to their own paddock. The sheep were much farther north, looking for better pasture.

The main distraction during the day was Delal’s constant babbling. It was both amusing and disconcerting. When her mother placed her small hand over Nadia’s belly to feel a kick, Delal would become very alert and reach to do it again. She slapped her hand exuberantly at the place she had felt the movement.

“Not so hard, darling.” Julia would rein in her daughter’s arm. “She does seem interested,” said Julia. “They’ll be good friends.” But Nadia would wish—guiltily—that Delal wasn’t so excitable. Secretly she didn’t think her baby would benefit from Delal’s hyperactivity. “It looks as if we’re bound together now with the vineyard. I’m happy it worked out this way. Let me take you inside now to lie down. I’m going to Mary Thomas for some fresh bread. I think this is the day she makes the sweets, too. Shall I bring back a tray or just two pieces?”

“How about four? Two for you and two for me. Do we have to share them with Delal?”

“I don’t see why?” Julia giggled, put the baby in a sling, and got her purse. “Come on, you’re going with Mama while your aunt rests.” She went and stood by Nadia’s bed and saw her grimace. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing much. It’s my back. It’s going ping, ping, ping. Did yours do that? It feels dull and tender way down below.”

“My back hurt from time to time, especially near the end. Maybe I shouldn’t leave you.”

“Of course you should. I’m going to nap. Julia, don’t look so worried. It’s just a little backache.”

Nadia awakened with the oddest feeling. Usually the baby’s kicks nudged her from sleep, but she hadn’t felt any movement all day. She monitored herself all evening, but there wasn’t even the slightest tremor. She wanted to talk about it, but even generous Julia was sick to death of hearing about this pregnancy. If she didn’t feel anything by morning, she’d have Julia drive her back to town.

That night she had been asleep about two hours when the first serious contraction jolted her awake. It was a sudden vicious pain that rose swiftly to full potential and turned her stomach to rock. What was it? “Oh, my God, Julia. Julia!”

The muscles unknotted and she threw back the covers, preparing to get up, but another more devastating contraction arrived and peaked. “Julia!” She felt warmth and stickiness between her legs, followed by a third contraction and then an unmistakable movement of mass. She knew what it was. “Oh, no! Dear God, no! Julia, please help me!”

“What is it?” The bed was a bloodied mess. “Oh, lie down quickly. Just lie down. The baby’s come. It’s born. Oh, no . . . I’m so sorry. Look!”

It was no more than twelve inches long and it was a dusky purplish blue. There was no movement, no struggle to breathe. Nothing at all.

Julia pressed on Nadia’s abdomen and urged her to bear down to expel all of the placenta. “I don’t want you dying, too. Bear down. Come on, we’ve got to get everything out. Samir wouldn’t forgive me. I wouldn’t forgive myself. Bear down now . . . now! That’s good. That’s good. Here it comes . . . oh, thank God. This looks like the whole thing. Wait. I’ll get some towels to pack you. Look at this. Oh, my God . . . all this blood.”

She returned with soft linen rags and when they soaked through she went for more. To her relief, the bleeding subsided. It was almost dawn and Nadia, who hadn’t spoken, tried to sit up.

“Julia, listen to me. I’m all right. I mean I’m not demented. Please don’t think I’m demented because of what I’m going to ask you.”

“Shh. Lie down. I don’t think you’re demented. You’re a brave, brave woman. The closest friend I’ve ever had. You’re like my sister, Nadia. I love you. If there was a way I could give you back your baby, I’d do it. I’m so sorry. It’s as if it happened to me, too.” She talked in quick short sentences. Tears streaked down her cheeks. “It’s still there. A little boy.”

“You must not mention him again. Promise. You must help me bury him and not tell anyone what’s happened. Not yet. I can’t bear any more condolences. I don’t want any more pitying looks or advice. Please, Julia. For now, just help me bury him. That’s what you can do for me.”

“You mean just you and me? Just dig a hole in the ground? What about . . . what about a . . . casket?”

“I have a wooden jewelry box . . .” Nadia’s face was as white as the unused linens in Julia’s hands. Her hair appeared too red by comparison and the contrast was unsettling. “He’s so tiny. It’s my fault, you know. I couldn’t keep him in long enough. I couldn’t give him the time he needed.”

“Don’t blame yourself. You did everything you could.”

“I want to get up and help you. I can make it. I’m hardly bleeding now. I want to bury him tonight.”

“I’m not sure it’s right to do this . . . not to let anyone know.” Julia felt peculiar. Maybe Nadia had gone temporarily mad. She looked so ghostly with that burning halo.

“It’s what I want. Please. It’s what I have to do. I’ll baptize him myself. I’ll just do it.” She took water from a glass and anointed the wrinkled blue forehead with her thumb. “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. God be with you, little one.”

They dug a hole next to a patch of wildflowers in an isolated part of the grounds. Nadia insisted on doing her share of the digging, even though Julia warned her repeatedly that it might make her hemorrhage. There was a lovely wild almond tree that had grown nearby to mark the spot. Julia looked uncertainly at the small wooden box. “The other two miscarriages were lost,” said Nadia reassuringly. “The midwife took one away and the other . . . half of it was left in the bathroom at home and the rest”—she shrugged—“I don’t know where it went. This one is just a bit further along. No one will even think to ask. It was a miscarriage, that’s all.”

She stayed in bed for three days and healed quickly. On the fourth day, she sat in the garden and on the fifth day, she walked to the near paddock and sat in a canvas chair and watched the horses nuzzling each other and cantering about. On the sixth day, she saw a little bird try to fly out of a nest and fall to the ground. When the mother bird looked for her injured baby, Nadia’s heart broke open and she began to cry. She sat in the garden keening and rocking on the dusty ground. She walked home, gathered herself in bed, and cried for the better part of the night. From time to time, Julia came and placed her arms around those heaving shoulders and kissed the tangled hair, but she was relieved that her sister-in-law was finally grieving.

“Don’t you think we might tell someone? It’s been two weeks, although you wouldn’t know it. Nadia, you look wonderful! Look, darling, be optimistic. We can find another doctor in Beirut and perhaps he’ll help you. I just feel you should let your mother know. She would want to be with you.”

“I’m being unfair, putting you through this. I know what.” Panic filled Nadia’s eyes. “Just give me two more days. Then we can drive back and I’ll tell them all. And Julia . . . I’ll never forget what you did for me.”

Toward evening, they were sitting under the large walnut tree on the side of the cottage. Delal was playing at their feet. They all heard the loud humming noise overhead. Both women reared back to search the sky and caught sight of a small plane momentarily set afire by the last few rays of sun. The plane dipped and rose erratically and in one heart-stopping instant fell several hundred feet as if it were a puppet on a string. They jumped to their feet. “Is that right?” asked Nadia, still gazing upward. “Shouldn’t it fly more smoothly than that?”

“He must be an imbecile trying to show his derring-do. A young imbecile. There it goes now. I shouldn’t think he’d try that farther inland. Fool!” Julia’s voice shook with anger, but when she saw her sister-in-law staring in surprise, she stopped. “I’m too vehement. Is that what you’re thinking? Look how careful you were and still you lost the baby. But that mindless fool up there is tempting death for amusement. Well, anyway, he’s gone.” No sooner did they sit down than they heard a tremendous roar and another noise. A thud. Did the earth tremble?

“Is that a quake?” Julia jumped up, alarmed, and grabbed her daughter.

“Sounded more like thunder. Wouldn’t that be something? To have a thunderstorm in July?” She paused, unwilling to say what both were thinking.

“You don’t think—?”

“The plane?”

“Maybe we should go and have a look.”

“It must be miles away. They travel quite far in the space of minutes. We can’t go out now. It’s almost dark.”

“Whatever it was, it’s gone away. Listen. It’s so quiet now. I’ll ride out tomorrow and have a look. It’s a good excuse for me to get some exercise.”

That night Nadia had the first refreshing sleep in weeks. Her dreams were kinder. She dreamed of being in a field thick with flowers and suddenly a little path opened up and she was able to walk through. At dawn she was wide-awake and the first thing she thought of was that she wanted to take a long ride out to the wilderness where the little shepherd girl had tended her sheep. She crept out silently so as not to wake Julia and Delal. She mounted her horse with care—she hadn’t bled at all for ten days—and rode off slowly, enjoying the freshness of the air and the first whiff of optimism.

She rode for an hour, amazed at how far the irrigation ditches kept the earth green even now. Nothing appeared disturbed. But there had been a noise. Could it have been a piece of a meteor? She stopped to rest before turning back, but then felt an urge to continue farther. Here, the summer drought had taken its toll. The earth was parched and cracked. Bleached animal bones appeared from time to time and she wondered if she should have brought the gun Samir had given her.