Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots (15 page)

Finally, she found what she was looking for. She stopped everything. I thought I heard her gasp.

“Now what?” Blot started. I touched his arm. Shush.

The woman picked up a sweater and then, as if remembering herself, turned around and looked up toward Victoria’s dark window, dropping it to her side.

She made her way up the stairs, stuffing the sweater into the belt of her robe at the back. It moved side to side with her hips, and one sleeve dangled down, sinister, like the tail of a fickle cat.

“Well, all right, then,” Blot said, as if something definitely wasn’t all right but he didn’t know what. Neither did I.

When we were sure that she wasn’t coming back, we started walking again.

Later, I looked up Joseph Shohet online to see if there was anything about his death. There wasn’t. Earlier, I had done an image search and found a photo of Victoria and Joseph at a Middle Eastern food festival in Brooklyn ten years ago. Now I looked at it again. Of course it was her, the woman we’d seen. Maybe she seemed older now, but it was still her.

In the photo, they looked content, holding hands and with bent elbows so that the knot of their fingers was by their faces. If it’s possible to see conflict in a photo, you couldn’t see it in this one.

I printed it out, folded it, and put it into my wallet. The truth was, I’d done things like this before: cut out the saddest article I’d ever read about children getting raped or about animals being skinned just for money. I could use that as an excuse when I didn’t have one. I told myself I was hurting so they could hurt less.

F
IVE YEARS BEFORE,
I would have bet my life that I would never work again. We’d closed the restaurant. My feet hurt. I had no more small talk in me. That’s what being a hostess is. It’s walking and talking. I would have said, had anyone asked, that I wanted to do nothing but catch up. Gather my rosebuds. That I’d like to never ask another person how he was doing, if he needed anything. An extra napkin, perhaps? The check? All the little things I needed to take care of, I’d finally have the time to do: clean out the junk drawer, glue a broken turtle sculpture, throw out ripped stockings, edit our cabinet of spices. The coriander had no flavor. It had been there for years. Chipped dishes needed weeding out.

But Joseph got sick. I told myself that the catching up would have to be put on hold. There wasn’t time for it. No room for it. All I wanted to do was wait for him to get better. I hate to be superstitious, because what’s the point? You know what they say about a watched pot. I watched him. In Baghdad, they’d say, “A fog cannot be dispelled with a fan.” Still, I waited. I would sit for so long my knees went numb. I began delaying my coffee until ten. I found that it was best not to start reading until noon. That way, there was all afternoon to do it. The nurses began to make me lunch. I would sometimes notice that I hadn’t changed clothes in a week. I had been waiting. I waited. I thought I’d never have the energy to work again. And yet, when Dottie left with the photo of me, threatening to see the graphics whiz kid upstairs, I didn’t run after her. I didn’t wrestle her to the floor and yank the picture from her hands. But now, the class held so much weight. Our daughter might come through the door. I wanted to capture the image. I wanted to hold it down in my head and examine it. I wanted to see her face. Of course she wouldn’t come. I knew she wouldn’t. It was self-indulgent for me to think this way. Foolish too.

But what would she think? I wondered. If she did come. I knew what:
Remind me to kill myself before I end up like her
is what.
Look at her clothes. The moth holes. Everything needs airing out. She must sit in here with the windows shut so tight that she inhales in the evening what she exhaled that morning.
That’s what she’d think—and that it smelled old in here. Like someone had been napping with an open mouth. She’d feel trapped. I couldn’t blame her.

I opened the windows. I lit a candle. I ran a dishtowel over the hanging pots so they didn’t look so dull. I tinkered around with the silverware so that there was sound in the kitchen again. I poured soap all over the sink. There.

Monday morning, less than twenty-four hours before the first class, I woke up at two, anxious to check on Joseph. I turned on the lamp, put on my robe, and got to the doorway before I remembered. It took that long.

It had been just three nights since Joseph died, and there had been much of the same: the same concern shaking me in my sleep, hurling me into a state of groggy paranoia. And then—disappointment. I stood at the doorway, aware of a certain quality about the air. It felt fluid—more than before—and unpunctuated, as if everything swished around between the walls, unchecked. I was alone. I was the only breathing thing. I thought of our daughter. Imagined her somehow here too. She was everywhere now, a fast-moving shadow attached to every one of our things. I thought about Joseph’s body, not alive but— No, I wouldn’t say it. Not alive. The remains would come soon and then I’d put him in his study, in his urn, next to a photograph of his mother. She was wide-shouldered and stern, almost manly. Her smile was a short, straight line. He would be ashes beside her. Lighter than feathers. She could strew him all over with a snort, a too-brusque turn on her square heel to grab a fleeing chicken.

I wished I could have kept his body, his actual body, for a little while longer. It’s morbid but I read about a lady who kept her husband in her garage. She liked to pay the bills with him present. It was something they used to do together. And so, once he was dead, she brought her manila envelopes, her pens, stamps, and calculator to the garage. She sat on a chair and reminded him that the late fee for the electric bill was exorbitant, that they really should switch cable companies. I thought of her when I decided to put the urn on the shelf, where I knew it would get the morning sun. Joseph believed there were two kinds of people: morning-sun people, and the others.

I went into the kitchen and turned on the light. It made the hallway look darker, denser. All of the ingredients were here. I’d ordered them over the phone yesterday and had them delivered to our door. Even flowers. Now I rearranged the flowers in their vase. I cut up some lemons and put them in a Mason jar with olive oil, sugar, and salt. It felt good to be doing this. The lemons were now the brightest part of this house. It was already tomorrow. Seventeen hours until class. The thought made me want to lock the door. If someone rang, I’d just not answer.

And yet, for a moment, I was proud. The citrus slices were floating in their jar in perfect, consistent rounds. Later, I’d tell the students to do this very thing.
They’re great to have on hand,
I’d say. Simply throw one in the pan with your chicken or fish.

Our child might think of me as the kind of woman who prepared, who kept heaps of little meat pies,
sfiha,
wrapped in tin foil in the freezer, who was ready at a moment’s notice to whip up a feast. I should have made some
turshee,
or some other pickled goodie that would last. I used to do that all the time. I used to be that kind of woman. Maybe our daughter would feel less sad knowing that I hadn’t given her up because I was incapable, a drug addict, a loser. It was because I was smart and deliberate, a planner, a woman who stuck to her guns. Right? Wouldn’t it seem like that? I knew what was best for her. The truth was, I hid Pop-Tarts behind the vinegar. Broken bits of wheat crackers lined the couch like a random sprouting of tiny mushrooms.

A wave of tiredness came over me and I started back to the bedroom. I wasn’t afraid of being alone until I thought about it. I tiptoed. I checked that the door was locked. I jumped when I noticed the Chinese takeout menu on the floor, forcibly stuffed halfway under the door. I wasn’t sure if I was afraid of an intruder or if I felt like one myself. Joseph’s father, a great believer in proverbs, used to say something like “At the end of the night, all ghostly cries can be heard.” Haunted.

I crawled back into bed. It occurred to me that I might not have enough almonds, that the chickpeas wouldn’t have sufficient time to soak, that everyone would be bored, that I wouldn’t remember how to remove the lamb from the bone and I’d mangle the thing. I’d had it delivered from the best butcher in town. The extra eighty cents per pound to have it filleted wouldn’t have killed me. I should have splurged.
And what if someone asks about chicken liver foam?
I wondered. I was behind the times. I didn’t make foam. I didn’t want them to whisper. That, I couldn’t take.

And yet, I was hopeful.

Four people had called to confirm yesterday. Four people with four different voices, using four different phones, four different pairs of socks on their feet. Actual people, I thought, including Robert. No relation to Dottie. One of them was a woman, the right age. When she said “Hello,” my hands began to quiver. Her voice was tugged just slightly by French and I wondered, Had our daughter gone to boarding school in the Alps? Did she ski? I couldn’t. I’d never learned.

I didn’t dream every night. But that night I did, and I remembered it. There were rows of chickens lined up along our counter. And there was a knife. I sharpened it. I got that far. I lifted up a chicken and turned it over like I was just about to fillet it. I pulled its legs apart. I was in a red apron. But then. Nothing. I couldn’t for the life of me recall what to do then.

I started getting dressed four hours before class. And a good thing too. It didn’t go well. I was an old lady. A deflation. My knees sagged into rotten peaches. Even my ankles were orbits of skin above my feet. Let us not discuss my neck or chest. God forbid. The clothes looked horrid.

I tried on every hostess outfit I had. They were all too big. Worse, they were highly inappropriate. Worse. In the calculated light of our restaurant, with Arabic music and high heels and stockings, they’d worked because they were ethnic and part of the whole thing. But now they were absurd: shimmery and sounding like crunching lettuce when I walked. I tried on a black dress. Too fancy. A pair of purple slacks and white blouse. I put on my orange corduroys. Old Faithfuls. I’d worn them on the Friday that John F. Kennedy was shot. I was shining Joseph’s shoes in front of the television and he was rubbing my shoulders. I dropped the shoe right onto my finger when we heard it. I pinched it so badly that a blood blister formed.

Now I called Dottie.

“Dottie,” I said, “I have nothing to wear. I can’t even find an apron.”

I knew this would thrill her. She’d be flattered to the point of tears.

Sure enough, she waltzed through the door seconds later in a red chenille robe. I made a face and then began to laugh. Her smile disappeared. She looked away.

“If you feel I have so little fashion sense,” she said, nose up, turning around, “you shouldn’t have phoned.”

“I have no choice,” I said. “Who else can I call?”

I used to be easy to talk to. I used to say the right things. I was a hostess, for crying out loud. Now I was hateful. And to Dottie? She didn’t deserve this. She was all I really had—actually had. Again, it occurred to me to tell her about the note, about our daughter, but I couldn’t. All these years, Dottie had wanted to be part of our relationship—Joseph and mine. We were so solid. And it was only because of that that we could tolerate her. My admitting to Joseph’s secret, our secret, would unravel too much.

I looked down. I was in a towel. There were two hours until the class.

“Dottie, please,” I said. “Look at me. I need you.”

She smelled like a cosmetics shop. It made my nose itch.

“You do,” she said. “Of course you do. What’s happened to you?”

What had happened to me? I looked terrible. I was an utter disappointment.

Dottie realized what she’d done, how she’d affected me. Her face got smaller with embarrassment.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

She took a deep breath and waited for me to follow suit. Inhale. Exhale.

“Go wash your face,” she said, quieter, gentler now. “I’ll be back.”

As she walked out, I noticed toilet paper stuck to the heel of her shoe. I began to say something but stopped myself. Sometimes, enough is enough.

I threw cold water on my face and believed that I smelled, in the threads that dripped off my nose, notes of cinnamon and leather. Joseph’s after-shave. I held my breath, willing the smell back. I’d forgotten he was gone. How long did that last? When would it sink in, I wondered, and stop surprising me? When would it be everywhere all the time, like a season in full? I walked out of the bathroom, sat down on the bed, steeling my body against lying down.

I looked again at the only traces I had of my daughter. Here were papers from the adoption agency in New Jersey, unfolded now but with deep, determined lines all through. The phone number of the doctor I’d seen. Here was a little cloth, yellowed and flimsy now. I’d tried to leave it at the hospital. I left my clothes. I left my comb. I left the book I’d been reading with the bookmark inside. I didn’t care. I left the cloth I used to wipe my face—or so I thought. Earlier, I’d been looking for my pearl bracelet and found the cloth shoved to the back of a drawer in our guest bathroom. It was among junk—hair clips, broken blow dryers, unused hostess gifts; everything that had no place. Joseph must have retrieved it. I’d gasped. What had I done to him? He’d tried so hard to hold on. Had I ever said I was sorry? That I couldn’t remember made me hate him less for his secret.

The papers and cloth were all I had of her. Everything and nothing. Everything important ends up in a tiny space. A drawer, a safe, an envelope, a small jar with a lid.

It was pathetic, I realized, for me to go looking for her now, after all these years. After she’d known Joseph and she’d never wanted to know me. But without me, she’d never know that he’d passed. Or would she? Had he had a plan for this: that the nurse would call her, or our lawyer? Was everyone in on the secret but me?

I went into the living room and waited for Dottie. She came back, her arms weighed down with outfits that I’d never even seen. She put one thing against me and held the hanger above my head, accidentally whacking me with it. Then another. Another. “Yuck,” she said, and I was embarrassed. I was awful. That was the truth of it. There was a lump in my throat, like all my organs had been gathered and knotted there. I was weak. This was too much.