A Marriage in Four Seasons

by Kathryn Abdul-baki

  He didn’t know how long it was before faces began to hover over him and he heard loud shouting in Arabic. Joy was repeating his name. She was cradling his head in her arms as more faces peered down at him and more voices shouted in loud, guttural spurts, a jumble of tones he couldn’t comprehend.

  Joy was drying the sweat from his brow with a napkin. He looked up at her, surprised by her frightened scowl, and reached up to touch her cheek. He shut his eyes and felt time tick by in a sharp blade of panic.

  “Joy,” he whispered.

  “Hold on, Rich, honey,” she pleaded. “They’re getting an ambulance. Just hold on!”

  He nodded, wanting to obey her, but it was so comfortable to simply close his eyes and let himself be enveloped in her jasmine-scented lap, her soft thighs that seemed to cradle him and gently coax his fear out of him.

  “Joy?”

  “Honey?” She frantically stroked his cheek, her hand trembling.

  He reached up and tried to lift the hair off her neck. “Am I Gerald Ford?”

  She looked confused. “What?”

  “Ford. Plain Joe.”

  “No, never! Oh, honey, don’t talk now. Just breathe slow and deep. Just rest easy.”

  “Joy?”

  “Yes?” she practically wailed.

  “I’ll always love you.”

  She fastened her eyes on him as if to keep him from slipping away. “I love you, too, Rich.”

  Through the pain in his chest, Richard felt himself smile. “Joy, life’s a hotel. You know that?”

  Joy nodded absently, still looking frantic.

  Isn’t that what Belinda had once said? It’s all just temporary. We’re all waiting in this hotel, waiting for our lives to start, waiting to be with the one we love, waiting for our children to be born. Life is meaningless. A game to play.

  Nothing is real unless we make it real. That was Joy just a while ago. God, these women knew everything! They’d worked their magic on him.

  He felt his sweat under her cool fingers. “Joy, we’re all here for just a while. Just staying in this damn hotel. One big fucking hotel.”

  He realized more than ever just how true this was. No wonder Joy loved to travel. This was the real truth of life, fluttering from place to place like birds, exploring, in constant search of sustenance, of love, of value to their short, flimsy lives.

  But Joy only stared at him as if not comprehending what he said, or else in total denial of it. “I don’t know what you mean, Rich. Now, just look at me, honey. That’s it. Help is coming.”

  “A hotel,” he said again. “Life’s all—” he stopped a second from the pressure in his chest, “temporary.”

  She stared into his eyes, narrowing her gaze. Then she shook her head. “No, Rich, no it’s not temporary. Listen. Life is for a long time. You’re going to be here for a long time. Remember what you said? We’re in this together for the long haul. Isn’t that what we’re planning? Our little family? But I can’t do it alone, honey. You have to help me.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Oh, God!” Joy stroked his head. “Rich . . . we’re going to get you to a doctor.”

  The pain shot through him again. Life is all temporary, Belinda once said. Nothing to get too serious about.

  Suddenly, another name thundered in his ears. Karma. Karma! Damn! What was going to happen now?

  The child’s face from the photograph planted itself more forcefully in his mind. Damn! Joy was right. For Karma, life wasn’t short or temporary. Her entire life lay ahead of her, and he would be a major part of it—Joy, too. They had to get damn serious, and right away. They had to find a school, a bigger home . . . they had so much to learn.

  He tried to lift his head. “Joy, we have to—need to do something about the girl. We need to tell Belinda.”

  Joy put her fingers gently on his lips. “Honey,” she said, her lips quivering, “we’ll take her next week.”

  He stared up at her.

  She nodded rapidly. “You’ve got to hang in here. For me. For your daughter.”

  “Joy.”

  He shut his eyes. What was she saying? How are we going to take the child if I—

  A dull ache throbbed above his stomach. He wanted to ask Joy more, but somehow he couldn’t think. He tried instead to feel the space between her thighs under his head, a place so soft he never wanted to move.

  “Come on, Rich,” she whimpered. “Don’t do this, now. Don’t do this to me, honey. I need you. We need you. Where are they? Oh God, hurry!”

  He tried to smile up at her through the tightening grip on his gut. He wanted her not to worry. He wasn’t going to leave her. Ever. How could he? He couldn’t imagine not being with her, couldn’t now imagine all three of them not together.

  He opened his mouth and took a breath, barely able to stand the pain. This was love. It had to be. They were in this together. For the long haul. We are going to be just fine, he thought.

  Other faces were around him now, other voices shouting again.

  “Joy, our passports—”

  “Shh,” she whispered through her tears. “They’re in my purse. Don’t talk.”

  Now a man was peering into his face, an old man. Richard stared up at him. He said something Richard didn’t understand, something that sounded like German. Cool fingers intruded into Richard’s mouth, forcing something under his tongue.

  He heard Joy start to protest, then change her mind. “Thank you! Oh, thank you,” she sobbed.

  “Joy, is that the German—” he managed to say.

  Joy placed her palm over his mouth. “Keep it under your tongue, honey! It’s medicine from this nice man.”

  He craned his neck to see who she was looking at.

  Words were flying above him again, giving advice, giving directions. French? German? Arabic?

  He stared up at Joy, not wanting to lose sight of her face in the commotion.

  A dense, marshmallow calm began to cascade over him, cradling each part of his body as gently as if he were a newborn. He shut his eyes. Through the numbness in his face he sensed her patting his cheek, repeating his name as though to keep him awake.

  He opened his eyes. Several men in blue coats were bending over him, placing their hands under his armpits and knees.

  “Honey,” Joy said anxiously. “Let them lift you. We’re on our way.”

  “Joy,” he mumbled.

  “Just keep the medicine under your tongue,” she implored.

  There were loud orders by the men in blue coats to one another. Cool hands were opening his shirt, pressing his chest. More orders.

  He tried to surrender to the gentle contentment enveloping him. There was nothing but this warm flow ministering to him with such care, this current of bliss washing over him. He remembered that he was in the holy city, although he couldn’t think of its name.

  “I’m going to be okay?” he asked.

  A hotel. It had taken him half his life to realize just how fleeting life was.

  First and foremost, they had to arrange to see Belinda and pick up Karma. After that, they’d figure out the other details.

  Where was Joy? He had to get out of this place! There was no time to lose.

  The bleeping of the machine above him startled him. He vaguely remembered the voices talking loudly above him, reviving him from the sleep he’d so craved and was beginning to enjoy, his head in Joy’s lap. There had been the clamoring of the paramedics moving him onto something cold and hard and transporting him. Even before that, the slipping of the tablet under his tongue had freed his chest of the awful pain that had gripped him just after he’d eaten. The next thing he knew he was fully alert and looking up into Joy’s eyes as she spoke his name.

  “You’ve had a heart attack, Rich,” she’d said, sounding reassured now that they were surrounded by experts. “But you’re going to be all right. The doctors here in the hospital used those pads on your chest to revive you. You’re in the intensive care unit. They’ve put you on m
edication and an IV, so you need to sleep, now. I have to wait outside in the waiting room.”

  He looked at her, saw the relief in her eyes, and whispered, “Don’t go. I love you.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I love you, too. I’ll be right here. Just let them take care of you. I’ll check in on you soon.”

  “Really?” he asked her. “You’ll be here?” He had the feeling that time had stopped, that he was in a dream and when he woke up she would have faded, none of this real at all.

  She looked at him strangely, and then smiled. “Yes, I’ll be here. Always.”

  Now, finally, he heard her steps, hesitant and treading softly, but clearly hers. He saw her face in the doorway, and he knew they were going to be just fine.

  Epilogue

  This was the first night Karma had slept straight through without waking up from the hacking cough she had caught in preschool. It was normal for kids to pass it around, their pediatrician had assured them, especially at the start of winter.

  Richard and Joy had tried to take heart at it not being unusual for children to sound as if they were coughing up their lungs at night, but every time they heard her, they couldn’t help tiptoeing into her room to adjust her blanket, switch the direction of the humidifier to bring more moist air her way, or bend down and listen to her breathing. Joy had rubbed Vicks into Karma’s chest, and Richard had suggested they put a warm washcloth on top for added steam, something his mother had done for him when he was a child and suffering from a cough. Although Joy was skeptical it would help, she had gone ahead and done it, probably more to ease Richard’s worry than anything else.

  “I’ll take the next shift,” she said to him. “I don’t have an early class tomorrow. You need to sleep.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but wake me up if you need me or if she gets worse.”

  “She won’t. The cough just flares up at night. You can tell it’s almost gone because she’s not wheezing now.”

  “You’re the best,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “You sure have a knack.”

  “It’s just common sense.”

  “Mother’s intuition,” he said. “I like that.” He dragged the cover over his shoulder and fluffed up the pillow on either side of his head. She’d been teasing him these past few nights that his habit of sleeping with the pillow blocking out sound was a man’s natural instinct of tuning out a baby’s cries. But she was wrong. He wanted to hear every cry the child made.

  He glanced at her, “We’re doing good?”

  She smiled and tilted her head in either direction as if to say so-so. “We’re learning. Now, go to sleep.”

  He turned over a few times, but his natural habit of falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow now seemed to be a thing of the past. “Joy, I can’t thank you enough.”

  “For what?”

  “For doing this. For taking care of Karma—”

  “She’s our child,” she quietly cut in.

  He nodded. “Yes, she is.”

  “I don’t think of her any other way.”

  “I know you don’t,” he said, “and that’s why you’re so special.”

  “I promised her mother, and I intend to keep that promise. She’s an amazing kid. And I love her.”

  He nodded. Joy was incredible.

  “And you enabled me to do something I wasn’t sure would be possible,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  He paused. “To tell her mother goodbye.”

  She was silent for a moment. “You needed it, and she did, too. And I needed it. We all did.”

  “Yeah,” he said, remembering his half-hour meeting alone with Belinda in her home that Joy had arranged after he got out of the hospital, how he had held in his initial shock at Belinda’s paleness and frailty, their brief time together with Karma when she had come in to meet him, leaving him both breathless and speechless, and then Belinda’s insistence that he and Joy come back the following day to take Karma. She wouldn’t see them off tomorrow, she said, but Aysha, her caretaker, would be with Karma.

  There had been a bittersweet moment when he instinctively stepped forward and embraced her, not as a lover, but as an incredible, elusive presence and memory he never wanted to lose. She felt unbearably light, like an empty casing, and for a moment he forgot himself and held her tighter as if he could will her to materialize into the woman he had held in those hotel rooms in New York. She seemed uncomfortable in his arms, however. She stiffened, as if to keep from hugging him back or allowing him to say anything more, and softly asked that he leave. Then, as he stepped away, she seemed to think better of it and smiled, almost becoming her old self. “Be happy,” she said. “Life is meaningless without being happy. Make a happy life for all three of you, and that will make me happy.”

  He had nodded, aware that his lips were quivering from the emotion he was trying not to show.

  “And please take care of yourself,” she had said. “Get stronger. Karma needs you.”

  He had left in the taxi waiting outside.

  When he and Joy had arrived the next morning, they were told that Belinda had been taken to the hospital. Karma was with Aysha, who gave them her suitcase. The old woman had drawn her shawl over her mouth to hide her distress as the three of them had left, the child sitting quietly between Joy and him in the taxi, looking happy enough to go with them.

  In the three months they had been in New York, Karma had surprised them by adapting extremely well to her new school and environment. They had visited Disney World in Florida as Belinda had told Karma they would. She’d made friends at school and seemed to take to Joy as naturally as if she had always known her. Although she had asked several times about her other “mama,” she didn’t seem worried when they told her that Belinda was with Aysha in her other home far away.

  He would see Belinda’s bright sparkle in Karma’s eyes whenever the child laughed, and he would feel his gut contract. Then he would remember Belinda’s last words to him: Be happy.

  “Be happy,” Richard mumbled now, as he drifted into sleep.

  “I am happy,” Joy said, her hand resting softly on his shoulder.

  Acknowledgments

  I owe a ton of gratitude to all my excellent readers, editors, friends, and family who have helped me hone this manuscript from its first inception to its final form. Without you this book would not have been possible.

  Thanks to my beloved ‘Group’ who have encouraged and helped me over the years and who read the manuscript along the way. Your friendship means the world. A particular thanks to Barbara Esstman and Ginnie Hartman for their invaluable input.

  Thank you to Toni Werbell, Ann Patty, Margaret Herdeck, Caroline Upcher, Sandi Gelles-Cole, Steve Parolini, Michael McIrvin, Beth Bruno, and Sarah Aschenback who each helped steer this book forward.

  A special thanks to Mary Claire Mahaney for her keen eye, invaluable input, and wonderful friendship. Your faith in this book bolstered me at a much needed time.

  A warm thanks to Brooke Warner, Lauren Wise, and everyone at SWP for doing all that you do and for enabling this book to come to light. It has been a joy to work with you.

  As always, my amazing family has been there to inspire me and offer their love and support over the years. You are special and amazing.

  About the Author

  Kathryn K. Abdul-Baki was born in Washington DC to an Arab father and an American mother. She grew up in Iran, Kuwait, Beirut, and Jerusalem, where she attended Arabic, British, and American schools. She attended the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, has a BA in journalism from George Washington University in Washington DC, and an MA in creative writing from George Mason University, Virginia. She has published four books of fiction, some of which have been taught at universities in multicultural literature, women’s studies, and Arab studies departments, and is the recipient of the Mary Roberts Rinehart award for short fiction. Abdul-Baki has three grown children and currently resides with her husband in McLean, Virginia.
www.kathrynabdulbaki.com.

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