A Marriage in Four Seasons

by Kathryn Abdul-baki

  Meanwhile he’d held on to the hope that nothing more would become of Belinda’s illness. By a stroke of luck, like a meteor veering off its deadly course, the cancer would miss its mark and she would recover and resume her former life. He would still insist on meeting the child, of course, and lending support. He had contacted Belinda and said as much. Even Joy would want that, ultimately. He could be, if not a father, a sort of uncle to the child. “Whatever you want, Belinda,” he had told her. Deep down, however, he suspected that Belinda’s recovery was a farfetched fantasy. When she had sent word some eight months later that her condition had worsened and that he should come to Tunisia for the child, he’d realized that he’d been preparing himself despite his denial.

  “What do you feel like eating?” Joy asked now, browsing through the guidebook as if she hadn’t heard the guide’s earlier recommendation for couscous across the street.

  He didn’t answer as he sat next to her on an adjacent pedestal chair for the pasha’s wives. He closed his eyes and angled his face up to the sun. The flat heat on his skin felt good. He opened and shut his mouth several times, trying to ease the mild pain in his jaw that he’d had since waking up that morning.

  Joy’s voice pierced his drift. “There’s a nice place on the water just a ten-minute walk from here.”

  “He said the place across the street has good couscous,” he reminded her.

  “It’s so much prettier on the water,” she said, having obviously made up her mind.

  He sensed her leaning over him, peering down at his face and closing off the sun. Her breath swept across his cheek, coating him with a sweet balm of lipstick and peppermint.

  “Rich?” she said softly.

  He forced open his eyes, wanting to hold in her smell and the comforting feeling it brought, a feeling from the long-ago day when he’d first kissed her. Her pale eyes look worried despite the hint of a smile playing about her mouth.

  Her behavior these past few days had been erratic. She fluctuated, at times looking sad and almost regretful, then in the blink of an eye looking irrationally cheerful and solicitous, as though trying to cheer him up. Maybe, he thought, her moodiness was all his imagination, brought on by his own angst. He couldn’t stop thinking how his past actions had now come full circle, how something that should have been relegated to the safety of the past had resurfaced and forced Joy to confront her pain all over again, head-on. She was being made to accept a situation that was none of her doing, to open her heart and life to a child she would obviously prefer didn’t exist. It whittled away at him inside that she’d been dealing with this pain, although she’d been extraordinary at concealing any upset from him, her features shrouded in a veil of calm. She’d held up like a bulwark so far, and so she was entitled to plummet now and then, he had decided. Still, this new wistfulness he was witnessing right now felt different.

  “I don’t want to wander, Joy. Why can’t we just go across the street?”

  “But it’s too nice a day to miss the water.”

  He forced himself up. “Let’s go then.”

  She turned, and he followed her across the roof and down the steps, through the spice shop and out to the street. To the amused bewilderment of the spice vendor, she’d earlier taken dozens of photographs of the hefty burlap bags, their powdery contents stacked into tall, shimmering cones of ground scarlet pepper, powdery cinnamon, and jade oregano. Back home, she’d enhance these photographs with paint and paper, creating handsome collages for their walls.

  She paused now to examine some large sacks of dried herbs in the street.

  “No more pictures,” he said gruffly. “I’m hungry.”

  She turned and looked at him, again that fleeting look of concern in her eyes. “Sure. Let’s go. It’s on the main boulevard. It won’t take long.”

  “I must not have had enough for breakfast,” he said.

  “Well, I’m famished, too. I’d love a salade Niçoise. I can’t get enough of their tuna.”

  “He said the other place has good couscous,” Richard repeated, more in the mood for the earthy local specialty of grain-like pasta smothered in stewed vegetables and meat than for a salad or a seaside grill.

  She smiled and started walking again. “We can have couscous tonight.”

  He followed grudgingly, aware that despite her earlier claims, walking to the seaside boulevard took at least twenty minutes. However, ambiance was everything to Joy, and Richard wanted to give her the sea view, especially because of all he was putting her through.

  He had to admit that dining by the water was refreshing. Last night they’d strolled along the lively seaside boulevard to throbbing Arabic music blaring from loudspeakers, the aroma of candy-roasted peanuts and jasmine in the air. In a waterfront cafe, they had drunk hot mint tea garnished with pine nuts from small, gold-rimmed glasses. Enticed by the smell of freshly fried pastry, they had each bought a brik a l’oeuf from a stall, finding that the square pastry held a delicious surprise inside: a soft egg yolk that seeped out when they bit into the warm dough. The vendor had smiled at their shock, handing out several more napkins to wipe their mouths and hands.

  The jasmine vendors, elderly elfin men in red fezzes, had held out sweet-smelling necklaces and posies made from fresh blossoms. Richard had bought a jasmine necklace for Joy and a posy to tuck behind his own ear, copying the vendor. The old guy had winked slyly and warned Richard that a flower behind a man’s ear was an invitation for romance to passing females.

  “What the heck,” Richard had said, and he’d kept the jasmine sprig behind his ear for all to see.

  24

  Back in their hotel room after lunch, Richard felt better, the ache in his jaw gone. Tension, he thought. For their mission, but also because he knew that the office problems he’d left behind weren’t going to simply disappear. This personal challenge couldn’t have come at a worse time for his work.

  He’d been wanting to resign from the bank for several years. For some time, he’d sensed a conspiracy afoot in top management. Younger, less-experienced vice presidents were being promoted over him, guys without his knowledge or contacts, “yes” men willing to toe the line for lower pay. Or else they were part of the Princeton frat club. In the end, the Irish Princetonians always won out in that bank. After everything Richard had done for them over the years, it all boiled down to politics; kids came along who thought nothing of putting anybody over forty-five out to pasture.

  He’d held on to the hope that the opportunity to resign would present itself before too long. He’d long toyed with the idea of running an exporting operation: food, machine parts, computer software. Russia was gulping down American products in an effort to modernize factories and dilapidated machinery; and just like there was a demand for computers and software throughout the Middle East and Africa, Russia was an insatiable market for American wheat, corn, and meat.

  His work at the bank had introduced him to several overseas importers as well as American suppliers and shippers. He was confident he could get representational agreements. He wouldn’t have much overhead, and he wouldn’t need but an assistant and a secretary at first. He was aware, however, that the stress would be tremendous, worse than what he experienced as a bank officer. Working solo, he’d have only pigheaded determination to sustain him.

  Joy had been shocked when he told her of his thoughts of resigning, however. Although she was back at Hunter, safely ensconced as an associate professor in the English department, she’d never expected him to resign. After they left Turkey, she’d made plans to end her contract in Virginia at the end of the school year in June. A month later they’d moved back in together, and she’d started back at Hunter in August. When he’d explained his bank problems to her and told her that they might be a blessing in disguise, freeing him to move on to do what he’d always wanted to do, which was to start up his own import-export company, she was adamant that now was not the time. They still faced an uncertain and possibly rocky path ahead, she’d stressed
, not only in starting a new life together, but also in opening up their lives to the presence and needs of a small child.

  So he’d agreed to put his dreams on hold for now. He had to admit that Joy’s practical approach to their immediate future was the right one.

  The air conditioner breathed wafts of cool air onto the bed, like angels teasing him with tender puffs. The bed was comfortable, despite being a single mattress on a simple wooden frame. It seemed a challenge to get real luxury in Hammamet, anyway, which appeared to cater to modestly priced British and German tour groups content with basic amenities. But as long as it was cool and clean, Richard thought, it was fine.

  There was a time when a cheap hotel room would actually drive him wild, when he purposely sought them out for those feverish interludes with her. Belinda. He only occasionally said her name to himself these days. Although it seemed like yesterday, it had been five years since those moments had started to fill his life. His eyes shut at her memory, that most lively of saviors during the hellish period filled with enough loss and despair to bury him alive.

  He glanced over at Joy, now, and was jolted by a shudder of remorse at the pain he’d caused her. She’d always been the love of his life, and yet, aside from his sorrow for having hurt her so, he couldn’t bring himself to regret his time with Belinda. How could he have forgone that nirvana? His biggest regret was that he hadn’t achieved that nirvana with Joy.

  The uncanny irony was that the very person who had enticed him away from his marriage to begin with had been the one to draw him back in.

  These past months he and Joy had spent back together had been quite wonderful for the most part, and yet, despite both their efforts to instill a new spark into the marriage, at times it did feel more like a resigned partnership than one of passion.

  While tentative about moving back to New York at first, Joy seemed to settle into his apartment and cohabitation as if she’d never left. Like a pet reclaiming its favorite chair, she’d taken possession of his kitchen, inspired to create for him some of the recipes she’d discovered since she’d gone to Virginia. Then she streamlined the living room of his gadgets and what she deemed “a mess,” which she replaced with cheerful ceramics and paintings.

  Although she’d invaded half of his study, filling one bookshelf with endless stacks of student papers, he had to admit that she had turned his sloppy bachelor abode back into a tasteful, cozy home. She’d left only his terrace intact, admiring the planters he’d filled with flowers, his experiment in balcony horticulture.

  Amused but guarded, he’d shifted from one side of the apartment to the other, ceding territory as he tried to both lovingly welcome her and at the same time preserve some vestige of the independence he’d come to value after the shock of divorce. He realized he had become a different man in her absence. The search to redefine just who he was and who he wanted to be in this new arrangement for the foreseeable future became a struggle in those first months of their new life together.

  If Joy was going through something similar to his confusion, she never let on.

  Then there was the sex. That mysterious and delicate and yet most vital bond. Both floundered in the beginning, alternately baffled and aroused by each other’s feel and rhythms after so long. Joy had grown both fuller and leaner over the past three years, more muscular in her thighs and arms, probably because of her passion for rock-climbing. She was almost a different woman to him. This newness was undeniably exciting, the way her body seemed taut yet tender, giving yet withholding, and he delighted in observing her anew: her skin’s supple radiance in a certain light, her hair’s silkiness.

  While she still mesmerized him, however, he wasn’t sure how she perceived him after their time apart. Had she grown new feelings for him, like new cells? He didn’t know and didn’t dare ask.

  Although he knew it was unrealistic to expect to resurrect the same amorous feelings of their earlier years, he was touched at how solicitous she now seemed of him, asking how he slept, more curious than she’d ever been about his work at the bank and the internal pressures he rarely talked about. She seemed to want to be near him a lot more than she had before, laying her head in his lap when they watched television, threading her fingers through his when they were out walking or driving. She was, however, unpredictable in bed, at times eager for his advances, at others drawing back, as she had the other night.

  “Is something wrong?” he’d asked.

  After a pause she’d said, almost reluctantly, “Rich, do you mind if we skip the foreplay?”

  He was taken aback. “Honey, if you’re not in the mood, we don’t have to—”

  “I am in the mood, but I’d prefer it not take so long.”

  He’d stared at her a moment, then backed off, lying beside her. She’d never been so blunt before.

  “I do want to make love,” she’d said softly. “Just, not all the other part.”

  “It’s all part of making love, honey,” he’d said simply.

  “I know it is, but I’m not up for it these days.”

  He’d waited a few minutes. “You still enjoy sex with me?”

  “I do. . . .”

  “Then?”

  She sighed. “I enjoy the closeness more. The cuddling and affection.”

  She mostly wanted communion rather than physical love, it seemed, and it saddened him. He’d also sensed that she was less focused on her own physical release, as if orgasms were no longer important. Although he felt guilty enjoying his own orgasms with her, he knew he couldn’t make her want something she didn’t. The ignition key to spark that volcano beneath Joy’s cool surface often seemed just out of his reach, and he suspected that on some level she was holding back as a way of punishing him for the past. After a few frustrating attempts at mutual pleasure, he realized that for the time being it was best to simply enjoy the amiable encounters between them, at least until she was ready for something more. It seemed that in this aspect, too, there was no fairytale ending for them yet.

  Joy now had the guidebook propped up on her raised knees in bed, her reading glasses resting midway down her nose. She met his gaze from above her glasses. “Have a nice nap?”

  He smiled. “I was just thinking you look like the Big Bad Wolf with your glasses like that.”

  “The Red Riding Hood wolf?” she said.

  “A sexy wolf,” he said, and he whistled, his erection grounding him as the sleep lifted from the rest of his body.

  She smiled distractedly.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Four-thirty.”

  He yawned. “I’m still exhausted.”

  “You’re just restless, honey. Try to relax.”

  He sighed. “I just can’t process this whole thing. It’s like it’s happening to somebody else, and I’m just an observer. Only I’m not.” He sighed again, trying to free his lungs from the relentlessly oppressive anxiety. “I just need for things to fall into place. Right now, I feel like such a hypocrite.”

  She looked surprised. “Why would you feel that?”

  “For what I’ve caused you to go through. I don’t feel good about myself. I’d have ridiculed someone else in my shoes.”

  She looked at him. “Well, don’t do that to yourself, Rich. We’re all hypocrites to some extent. None of us lives our truths fully.” She smiled gently. “Maybe that’s why people write, so they can get it right at least on paper.” She paused. “And don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  When they were first living together again, Joy had made it clear that she’d be able to handle the situation of raising the child, but by the time the news came from Belinda, he’d sensed that she was growing anxious despite her assertions to the contrary. They’d been through this before, talked at length about undertaking the life-changing task of raising an unknown child, albeit his own, and assuming parenthood in such an abnormal situation. He’d told himself to be patient, to allow himself to adjust one step at a time. Just as Joy kept telling him to do. After al
l, once she’d agreed to get back into the relationship and be a mother to his child, she’d never once complained about the challenge ahead, although he assumed that she was worried sick at times. He was more grateful for her support than anything.

  He found her hand now and squeezed it, but her claims of feeling fine did little to reassure him. He wished he could truly make all of this up to her somehow.

  He also promised himself that he would be calm about Belinda and her failure to reach out to them since they had arrived here. He couldn’t do anything until she contacted them, he told himself, and so, difficult as it was, Joy had the right idea in suggesting they should distract themselves with some sightseeing.

  He grew aware now that he’d been observing her, watching her chest rise and drop as she read, noting the minute twitches in her face as her eyes progressed down the page. She seemed fascinated by what she was reading, and she looked more youthful than he’d seen her in a while.

  How had he reached his forties so fast? What had been going on in those intervening years between young adulthood and now? He failed to remember the details. Those years were more a jumble of montages—business travel, commutes to the office, trips with Joy—than tangible images. He could scarcely remember specifics except for the terrible loss of Stephen, his dizzying time with Belinda, and the wrenching divorce.

  His own mortality had been weighing on him for a while, and he wondered whether it was a midlife crisis or something else. Belinda’s illness suddenly made him feel more vulnerable than ever. He’d had a death dream a few nights ago. He didn’t remember the details, only how it turned out—with him dead. Now that he was going to be a father to a very young child, he worried he might not last to see the job done, that his dream had been a portent that he was nearing the end.