Three Daughters: A Novel (65 page)

She shook her head. “No.” She took a deep breath and looked around the crowded room. “Let’s go get a drink. I need a good stiff drink.”

“You bet.”

Her father had bought her a stroller and had Muffi remove the skinny wheels and attach rubber tires so she could wheel the baby through the orchards. The unpredictable weather of late winter was over. The days would start out with a thin sun that soon became strong and direct. The tiny purple crocuses had bloomed and wilted and the sweet narcissus and hardy cyclamen took their place, filling in both rocky cracks and fertile beds in their eagerness to multiply.

“Fahwah?” Cassie would ask, pointing down.

“Flower,” her mother would respond. The baby had never been so petted and fussed over as during these weeks, and she seemed relieved to be alone with her mother. Samir had driven them to the orchard cottage to stay overnight. “This is where Mama liked it best,” Nijmeh said when he prepared to leave. “I want to be alone here for a few days to think things out.”

“Stay as long as you like. Julia and Miriam will fight over taking Cassie.” He looked uncomfortable. Something was on the tip of his tongue and he was looking for the right time to speak. He had on a business suit but no tie and the sight of his bare pink neck made him look vulnerable.

“Tell me about Mother,” she said, choking down the word.

His eyes darted around the room as if seeking to escape, but after a moment his shoulders sank and he gave in to his fate. They sat down opposite each other and he held Cassie in the crook of his arm. “I knew her all my life,” he said as if that were the most important thing, and then all different images flew out as they entered his mind. “She was a very private person and not out of shyness either. Out of strength. She knew what she was and was content. She adored horses. From the beginning, when she was a very small girl, her father would lead her around on a horse they owned—an old dilapidated thing—and I remember Amo Nadeem saying that was the only time she smiled easily. She didn’t want to marry me, you know. I was a catch, believe me”—he widened his eyes and smiled shyly—“but of all the girls, she was the one who didn’t want me.”

“Are you sure? Maybe she was just afraid.”

“Perhaps. But she wasn’t the type to be demure. For whatever reason, she gave me a hard time. But not afterward, of course.”

“Was she always beautiful?”

He was surprised. “Did you think she was beautiful? Most people didn’t. She had something . . . I don’t know, it appealed to me immensely. She was the only woman for me up until the very last moment.” He couldn’t trust himself to say more and they sat silently for several minutes. Cassie had fallen asleep with her thumb in her mouth and Samir smoothed back her hair. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll work everything out.”

“I may not settle here, you know.” She hadn’t meant to say that. “Are you expecting that I will?” Two powerful emotions were working in her. This was the man who had made her lose James. This man . . . he wasn’t even her true father. He appeared far different to her than when she had left. Was it because she had grown up and was more on an equal footing? Was it because her mother’s death had made him seem fragile?

“I thought you would need family to support you. Our family. Some of them appear silly. Your aunt Diana—my God, I expect her to topple over any moment . . . but they’re part of the fabric of our life. The past is important just as much as the future.”

She nodded. What he was saying meant nothing to her. Who was there here who cared about her happiness?
Support
, she wanted to shout.
What kind of support did you give me when my happiness was at stake?
She couldn’t shout at him. He needed her sympathy.

“I went into business,” she said to change the subject. “You shouldn’t be surprised. You were always preparing me to run things. I still remember how much we had to charge for crated raisins to make a profit. Thirteen cents a pound. If you received fifteen, you said it was time to open the champagne. We have a house with three apartments—I even did some of the refurbishing myself—and we rent it out. It’s something I enjoy.”

“Really?” The news made him melancholy but then he remembered something. “Your grandfather left you a sum of money. He left bequests only to you and your mother. He loved you in a special way.”

She sighed. “I could have used that money last year. My partner and I had a difficult time getting a mortgage.”

“It’s waiting for you anytime you want it.” He rose so as not to wake the baby. “Take your time before making any decisions. You may find you like it here.”

“I’ll take my time,” she said and walked with him to the car. He placed Cassie in the back, using a cushion to brace her against the seat. Then he faced his daughter.

Sometimes the most naked moment sneaks in during a leave-taking, and that’s how it was for them. Samir blurted out the thing that was on his mind. “Do you blame me for your mother’s death? Do you think I could have done something to save her? Say it if you do. Say it.”

She was shocked by the outburst. She had been blaming him. Couldn’t he have done something? But her doubts were a failure of the spirit. He had never done anything second-rate. Never. She put her arms around him and spoke with certainty. “I don’t know why Mother died, but you couldn’t have stopped it. You loved her. She knew that so well. We all have our destinies to fulfill and she had hers.”

She had no idea where these words came from or how she could say them so calmly. Several times she had been on the verge of screaming at him that he had ruined her life by being so hard on James. He had been wrong to do it, but there was no good outcome to such a scene. None at all. It must have been her love for him that made her momentarily lucid. He didn’t know the most important thing about his life. Poor, poor Baba.

“Perfect love,” he had once said to her, “is what parents feel for a child. It’s love that wants nothing back.” She wanted to give him peace. And she wanted nothing back.

“I don’t blame you,” she said and kissed his face twice. He did look better. Wan, but out of relief, not worry. “I’ll call when I’m ready to come back.” He nodded, got in the car, and drove off.

For the next two days, she walked over every part of the farm. Only when her legs were moving and there were no barriers could she cope with her feelings of hopelessness. Memory was cruel. At night she said aloud, “Mother, help me understand. Help me see what made you do it. I’m so confused. I want to make peace with you, but it’s difficult.” She made an effort to concentrate only on her mother, but Delal’s words sprung out at her in infinite variations.
I’m married to James.
It was so irrefutable. If she had said,
I’m going to marry James
, or
I’m going to take James away from you
, she could have fought against it. But now there was only a muddy hopelessness. They were married. She was carrying his child.

The third and fourth day, her mind opened up. She was disgusted by her own obtuseness. Larraine had seen it right away. “If he loved you, he should have moved heaven and earth until you were together again. He wasn’t the most important man in your life. Daddy was.” She had been taught to be submissive and she had accepted whatever came. Thinking of the things she had accepted made her perspire and feel nauseated. She had been a docile, stupid child playing at love.

By the fifth day, her mind opened up totally and she realized with a devastating humiliation that Delal had done what was necessary to get what she wanted. She saw it all clearly and felt deeply ashamed to have been so easy to cheat. Retroactively, she despised all of her myopic goodness. How could James have loved her? She had been a vacant, silly fool. Delal deserved him.

She kept moving, going farther afield each day even when the fair weather was momentarily interrupted by rain. If she stopped moving, she couldn’t cope with her thoughts. The first day of the second week she asked for a gentle horse, mounted it, and went for a slow ride into the wilderness. How tame and flat it all appeared, not the frightening open wilderness she remembered. She returned to the cottage calmer than she had felt in many months. That night and most of the next day she cried. She would begin with tears rolling down her cheeks over some remembered sweetness from Cassie and then it would escalate. There were heaving sobs for her mother, punctuated by frightening shouts. “No. No. No.” There was steady keening over James. There were even silent tears for Paul.

Slowly her mind began to wind down and she felt detached. She thought about Larraine with affection. Larraine had the power of clear thinking and directness and friendship. She wasn’t afraid of the truth. They’d accomplished something miraculous together.

Her daughter, Cassie, was a strong tie to life and reality. She was happy to have something positive with which to remember Paul. Poor Paul. How burdened he must have felt with all those debts. Perhaps he had hated Rashid, too, but couldn’t afford to break the ties. She felt enormous sorrow for Paul and the life he had led. He never had the energy to enjoy any of his possessions. She couldn’t remember a time when he had spent more than a few minutes with his daughter. At the end, there had been a sense of desperation about him. He had been afraid.

Every succeeding day it was a game of peeling back layers of her own sensibilities. She had always been someone’s daughter or someone’s charge or someone’s wife and now there was no one left to define who she was.
But then who am I?
she asked.
From where do my thoughts and feelings spring? What makes me prefer one thing to another? Why do I welcome responsibility and feel comforted by it?

She was comforted by the hills that were seldom out of sight and she recognized her emotional tie to this familiar territory. She was rooted in these traditions just as those irrepressible flowers sprung through the calcined earth with barely a drop of moisture to encourage them. Her consciousness was uniquely molded and there was no changing it now. She was her father’s daughter.

The binding ties her father had in mind still bound, but they no longer constricted. She still grieved for her mother and felt compassion for Paul. As for James, what was to be made of so much pain? An inexplicable but evil retribution that had run its course. Surely there was nothing worse in store for her.

She had been planning to call her father to come and get her. Having made her decision to return to the States, she was eager to put her plans out in the open. Just one last ride up and around the olive groves where her mother had carved out a scenic path.
Mama, look at me, I’m using your road. I’m walking in your footsteps.
She was fixing all of it in her mind.

The early morning mist, like trailing gauze, masked the mountains until the sun silently burned it away. She wanted to catalog the fine details: the limestone dust that powdered the roads, the shocking contrast of green against blue and blue against the infinite variations of brown. It was more than the eye could enjoy at one time. Over many years it created a thrill of possession that enlarged the heart. That’s what her father had told her. The land—and everything on it—holds and nourishes, heals and comforts, melds one generation to the next. There is nothing more important on the earth than the earth itself. She stood perfectly still and opened herself to accept it. It was indelibly etched in the fabric of memory and would be hers forever.

When she returned to the cottage, it was past noon and she was surprised and annoyed to see a small red car in the driveway. Now she would have to be sociable. She prepared her face before she entered, putting on a stiff smile. Who could it be?

Oh, no! Her heart seemed to harden inside her and became a weight dragging her down. She’d created him so often in her mind, reached for him and held him close, but now James was no more than a dozen feet away and her legs were sunk deep in the ground. Her arms hung uselessly at her sides. The room was so quiet that her ears buzzed and she became aware of her own racing metabolism. Now her heart became a pendulum and it was rocking weightily inside her. Her blood rippled just under the surface of her skin, as if her pores had dilated to supply her with extra oxygen. Her vocal cords didn’t work at all. James was no better off. The two of them were locked in place, taking in and devouring the beloved.

“I hope I didn’t scare you.” James finally broke the spell. “Perhaps I should have waited outside.”

“No. It’s all right. I didn’t realize that was your car.” What a stupid thing to say. Her voice came from some deep and distant place.

This was not how she had imagined their meeting at all. She was supposed to run into his arms, coming to rest against him. She had never thought beyond their embrace.

“You must be weary after that long ride. I’ll make coffee.” Thank God for banal conversation. It was created to save people in moments such as this. In the kitchen she rushed to the sink and ran cool water along her wrists. Then she became very busy with the pot, filling it and carefully measuring the coffee and putting it, with trembling hands, on the fire. She placed several oranges on a plate, rushed inside to make sure he was still there, and was surprised to find him in exactly the same spot where she’d left him. “I’ve got to watch the coffee or it will boil over,” she said and he nodded. “Maybe you’d like to come with me.” The truth was she was afraid to leave him.

“All right.” He followed her and stood with arms crossed in front of him as she bounced the pot to keep it from boiling over.

She placed the brimming cups side by side, then, disappointed that her chores had ended, forced her eyes up and over to find his. “What are you thinking, James?”

“I’m thinking how the first thought you always have is to feed me. Is it so ingrained in you?”

Please don’t talk to me as if we have a future.
“And why not? People have to eat. And at the same time it implies friendship and love.” She sucked in her breath, embarrassed to have said the word. “Besides”—she tried to get hold of the moment—“it’s polite.”

“Does that mean you’re still my friend?” His voice cracked in a sickening way.