The Loss of What We Never Had

by Carolyn Thorman

  “Your shirt’s buttoned wrong,” he said.

  She glanced down as if wondering what a shirt was.

  “Had breakfast?” he asked.

  She raised her head and studied Tony as if he were from Mars, and said in a hoarse voice, “A walk to the corner grocery and Hamid’s howling in his stroller and Mozart’s straining on the leash and I’m juggling a six-pack of Coke, and since the damn dog won’t use the elevator, I’m dragging a baby, a stroller, a bag, and a dog up three flights.”

  “Why go out at all?”

  “Ever been cooped up in hell?”

  Tony hesitated, then reached over and stroked her hair. “Mustn’t grumble. What my grandmother said to get her through the Blitz.”

  “She hadn’t met Hamid,” Paige said with a weak smile.

  Tony lay the Corte Ingles bag on the table. “You’re still gung-ho on keeping him?”

  She took a deep breath. “I meant every single word I said on the phone. You’re not giving him to Zak until I know there’s a permanent placement. End of conversation.”

  “Have it your way,” he said after a minute of silence. “Meanwhile let’s get cracking. Mozart’s off to the kennel, and you’re off to your Dad’s.”

  “A jihadist might spot us leaving the building.”

  “Aha. Thought of that.” Tony brightened. Dealing with logistics so much easier than dealing with feelings. “He won’t be looking for a Mid-East twosome. We fit you out in whatever long black things you have and act like I’m the Brit who married a Turk, or a Jordanian. Hamid’s the family kid.”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  He looked from the crib to Mozart. “I’ll manage these fellows while you turn yourself into a Muslim housewife.”

  She went to the bedroom, and he heard the thrum of the shower. He opened a can of Lavazza and filled the coffee holder of the espresso machine. He groped for the button on the back panel. “Why do manufactures resist putting controls in plain sight?” he grumbled aloud. Aesthetics? Hostility? Hamid wiggled and tossed in the crib, tiny bubbles ballooning on his lips and bursting, the saliva running down his chin. He let out a short cry. “Don’t you dare tell me nappy.” Hamid quieted, and Tony sighed with relief. Forget her reasons, what a good sport Paige was to take him in. The polar opposite of Marcy, God bless her, his first wife.

  First and only wife: he corrected himself. One Marcy was more than enough. He married her the year before he signed on with Doctors without Borders. After the welcoming get-acquainted tour of the refugee camp in South Sudan, Marcy booked the next flight home to Detroit. The divorce settled; Tony drifted into a lack-luster alliance with a French nurse in Cairo. The affair over, Tony wondered if any woman was worth the aggravation of conflict and the pain of loss. Aside from spiritual loneliness, celibacy had much to recommend it.

  That was life before Paige. Maybe it was time to modify his policy on relationships. Paige was astoundingly super-sensible, not to mention drop-dead good looking. Not gorgeous, mind you. Rather, the strong features of a woman who rolled up her sleeves to clean up the world. The way Tony thought of his own commitment.

  A bit troublesome, though, the lilt in her voice when she referred to Zacharias De Leon, one of the Knights, those hot-heads with their brains in the Sixteenth Century. Knights my arse. Was the bloke shagging her? A nutter, if he didn’t try.

  But before you go off half-cocked, Tony warned himself, wait for a signal from her. A protective maneuver when you’re looking down the barrel of fifty with bits ‘n bobs of mush around the middle. No cash to speak of, the capital locked in bonds with maturation dates into the next century. And as soon as he was up to it, he’d promised himself he would return to another one of Medecins’ shit holes.

  Paige’s voice carried through the door.

  “Sorry?” he called.

  The door opened a crack. “Would a Muslim wear a yellow skirt?”

  “Under a burka.”

  “I don’t do burkas.” The door closed.

  A burka an excellent cover if he knew where to buy one.

  She emerged wearing black slacks and a baggy black shirt meant for the beach.

  “Spot on. Bunch the top, so it looks like you’re fat, and put a coat over the whole shebang.”

  “Are you serious? It’s eighty degrees.”

  “That’s the point, love. Keep ladies too miserable to rebel. The Turks wear ankle-length coats. Got one?”

  “Let me think. My Burberry’s sort of longish.”

  “Black?”

  “Brown.”

  “Go get it.”

  Tony held Hamid while in the foyer, Paige faced the mirror and arranged the new silk scarf. Tony went up behind her, and she spoke to his reflection. “I can’t fix it like they do.”

  “Lower the fold at the top almost to your eyebrows, or else we men will go mad at the sight of a naked forehead.”

  She wound the tails of the scarf around her throat. “Such beautiful silk. You shouldn’t have—”

  “Done it? But I did. You’ve been to Corte Ingles? Not Harrods, but close.” His eyes caught hers in the mirror. “We best get going.” Hamid turned his head from right to left, back again before he howled in protest. “When we hit the street walk a bit behind me,” he said, “For authenticity.”

  “A Muslim woman would carry the baby.” She held out her arms.

  It was midafternoon by the time they got back from the kennel, lunch in the car at McAuto, and a stop at Carrefour’s to stock up on nappies. Paige unwound the scarf and with an exaggerated sigh, slipped off the coat.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Tony said. “As soon as the baby gets a square meal, it’s off to your Dad’s.” Tony carried Hamid to the kitchen and with his free hand, drew out the high chair.

  “Did you forget to turn off the pole lamp?” Paige called from the living room.

  “It wasn’t on. We left in broad daylight.”

  “Strange.”

  Tony took the milk from the refrigerator while Hamid whimpered. His terry cloth onesie absorbed the thin stream of drool leaking from the side of his mouth. At the counter, Paige said, “I could swear I left Mozart’s empty water bowl right here.” She looked at the bowl on the floor. “Now it’s full.”

  Tony’s eyes met hers. “Someone has been here.”

  “Who else but Casey would fill the water bowl?”

  “Would he steal?”

  “Hard to imagine,” she replied on her way to the bedroom. Tony heard a drawer slam. “My emergency euros are still in the envelope,” she said, returning to the kitchen.

  “Over here. He studied a sandy footprint on the white marble floor. “From a trainer.”

  “A what?”

  “I forget you don’t speak English. Those soft canvas lace-ups with rubber soles and—”

  “Tennis shoes.”

  “I suppose you could wear them for tennis.”

  “That’s Casey’s, all right,” she said. “He knows I take Mozart to McAuto’s for snacks.” She glanced at the Gerber jars, infant vitamin supplements, and the array of miniature plates and spoons on the counter. A copy of Baby-Scene: The First Twelve Months lay beside a pile of clean onesies. “He must have noticed all this and the crib, of course.”

  Hamid was licking the tray of the highchair. Tony held up his car keys as a distraction. The baby continued working his tongue across the wood. “You said you didn’t trust Casey.”

  At the counter, Paige slid a jar of pureed carrots into the microwave. “Think back when the kidnappers snatched Hamid from the church.”

 
“And?”

  “Strike you how Casey stood there, not moving a muscle. Like he expected those guys to show up.” Paige lifted a teaspoon. “Maybe because the day before when I asked Casey to come with us to translate—from that moment on he knew where the baby was and had plenty of time to do—I don’t know what. Yes, I do. He could have sold the location to the jihadists.” She passed the half-filled spoon under Hamid’s nose. He waved his fists in the air. “When Casey sees the baby stuff, he’ll know he’s here.”

  Hamid slapped at the spoon. “Down the tummy,” Paige said. The baby chocked. “Whoops. Wrong pipe.” An orange stream hit the bib. “Meaning the jihadists know where I am, too,” she said over Hamid’s sobs. She tore off a sheet of paper towel. “What if I call Casey and mention, casually, I’m babysitting a friend’s kid.”

  Finished wiping Hamid’s chin, she reached for her phone, Tony grabbed her arm. “Wait. In case it wasn’t Casey, don’t stir up suspicion.”

  Hamid lifted his head and let out a fierce shriek. Tony backed away and turned to Paige. “Stuff the rest down his trap, and we’re out of here.”

  22

  Tony was at the wheel while I sat in the back with Hamid beside me in his car seat. No moon, only the lights from the strip malls. Malls not even on the drawing board when Dad found the summer house. He bought before the European Union when Spain was still on the peseta, and rural real estate went for bargain-basement prices. One look at the lawn of the Alhambra Club next door and the view of Gibraltar, and he said, “wrap it up.” To incite the envy of his colleagues, Dad bragged about his villa smack against a golf course on the Spanish Riviera he picked up for peanuts on the dollar.

  Tony accelerated to climb the hills of the National Forest. Following my directions, he crossed the bridge and turned onto the road winding past the ruined church. At the entrance to the building, I asked, “Recognize it?”

  “Don’t go there,”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s too dark and—”

  “I meant being so uptight. Think love. How would an Arabic speaker track you down out here?

  “Casey?”

  “You said he doesn’t know your dad’s name or where the place is. You think jihadists comb tax records looking for property they don’t know you own? You’re safe.”

  The villa couldn’t be seen from the road, but the driveway was in full view. Tony pulled up in front of the garage and kept the motor running while I lifted the door—only to lower it after one look at the shingles stacked ceiling to floor. “Tony?”

  The driver’s side window went down.

  “So no one sees your car, park behind those bushes. I’ll go in ahead and get the lights.”

  Carrying Hamid, a minute later, Tony entered the house and swung the door closed with his foot. “Here. Take the little bloke while I unload.”

  Hamid’s face went scarlet, and he howled. “Pampers, quick,” I called to Tony. He returned from the car and dropped the king-sized box beside the desk that was now a changing station. No matter how many times I’d done it, the diaper routine it still made me queasy. It did not help to remind myself body fluids were just another disagreeable aspect of the human condition. While Hamid squirmed and shrieked, I stuffed the wet—fortunately only wet—diaper in its packet, flipped Hamid on his stomach and dusted his bottom with a Spanish baby powder that smelled of vanilla. Lifting him from the desk, I sang to him on our way to the sofa, “As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,”

  Hamid reached for my lapel and hung on. I sat on the edge of the couch, careful to not slide forward on the slippery leather as I often had as a child. “If you liked that song, wait ‘till you hear this one. ‘The stars at night/Are big and bright—’ My singing voice gave out. “In the heart of Texas,” I whispered. In case Hamid sensed oncoming abandonment—he wasn’t my kid—I added, “You’ll be able to see me from Spain because Texas is as big, bigger than the universe. When I was your age I lived in a house as big as an elephant that looked exactly like—” I glanced at Mom’s leather armchairs trimmed with brass studs, the Navajo rug and the Remington bronze reproduction—”exactly like this one.”

  Tony was back with the crib he had to jockey sideways through the door. “This goes in the bedroom, right?”

  “Thanks,” I said, and tapped Hamid’s nose. “Let’s be sure these stars are behaving themselves.” I went to the glass wall and lifted Hamid to the view of Gibraltar. Across the Straits yellow lights upon the water reflected the lit shops along the rock’s thin strip of coastline. To the west, the sky glowed from the infamous port of Algeciras; the rag-tag hostels, the hole-in-the-wall tapas bars, and the street-front hotels owned by Russian pimps and staffed by Moldavian ladies of the evening. A port where jihadists mingled with Syrians, Somalians, and Moroccans streaming through British immigration. Overwhelmed by the volume of refugee traffic, the harried officers probably admitted dozens of terrorists on their way to join the Emir’s Army, soldiers coming for Hamid. The thought contracted every muscle I owned. “Look how the sea’s a great big bathtub,” I said.

  Instead, of looking at the water, Hamid turned his head to the bookcase to watch Tony, who had emerged from the bedroom and was now scanning dad’s books.

  “An absolutely brilliant collection. He’s an archaeologist?”

  “As a hobby. I told you he’s a surgeon.”

  Tony read the title “Paleolithic Iberia, Pre-Phoenician Cadiz, The Mysterious Caves of Anacondrai.” Tony turned to me. “He had a proper private practice.”

  “Let’s say he got off on breakage.”

  Hamid, sucking the drawstring on his onesie choked. Saliva oozed down his chin. I wiped it with the edge of his flannel top and once more turned him to the glass door.

  A speck on the horizon became the ferry from North Africa. A cold wave tightened my spine as if the ship churned fear in its wake. “Don’t be afraid,” I told Hamid. “The bad men can’t hurt us.”

  Hamid yawned.

  I forced myself to look away from Gibraltar and picture the oilfields and wild meadows of Texas. The grand plains. The long-legged egrets in flight like silver confetti tossed up to the sun. The buffalo grass hell-bent against the wind. Here and there a live oak, its sprawling lower branches and round top making it a giant head of broccoli. No people. Few cars. Only wrought iron arches over dusty roads that led to ranches of a thousand-acres or more.

  Dad owned more. Plus, a tiled-roof house, a mini airstrip with two wind-socks, and a day-sailor on his shallow lake. He liked to shoot prairie dogs from the all-terrain-vehicle he tore around in on weekends. From the kitchen window, I’d see him mount his ATV and disappear into the desert. “Target practice is all ground-life is good for,” he said. I assumed ground-life included me.

  Hamid gurgled in my arms.

  Tony came up to the window. “From here you can almost make out Africa.”

  “Of course you can. There’s Lagos, lower east, Johannesburg.”

  He gave me a strange look. “If you say so. Meanwhile—” He turned to the kitchen, “where should I plug in the bottle-warmer?”

  . . . . .

  An hour later, I lay beside Tony in the backyard on the blanket-sized flat stone. The humidity brought out the spicy scent of lantana mixed with the sweet smell of the weed Tony bought at the gas station behind the Supermercado. Carefully he sprinkled shreds onto cigarette paper and rolled it up.

  I checked on Hamid next to us, asleep safely tucked into his carry-a-kid. “Just a small hit,” I said. Marijuana did nothing except make me dizzy, but so what? I inhaled and hoped for the tangled wires in my brain to uncoil.

  Tony tipped his head to the sky. “Listen, love, keeping that baby’s not a done deal. Let’s say tonight I t
ake him back with me, and tomorrow he goes straight to Zachariah DeLeon. I come back for you, and we’re off to Madrid and the Embassy.”

  “And Hamid goes to the jihadists and becomes one more suicide bomber.”

  “He’s not your kid.”

  “Neither were the kids you rescued in the Sudan. Why did you do it?”

  Tony turned his head and stared at me, then turned away. “The same reason people write music.” Another pause and he said, “Some innate longing to improve the world, I suppose. “

  “If you believe a better world’s possible.”

  His eyes focused on the single star. “Not a chance.”

  We have protection. There’s a prayer. Listen. “Saint Michael the Archangel, save us from the evil that roams the world seeking the ruin of souls.” My memory lost steam. “Something like that.”

  The weed kicked in. The world slowed. The breeze loitered in the low-growing cactus, and a gecko dozed on a dracaena leaf. Tony’s eyes were closed. “You need to be protected?” he asked.

  My own voice came from miles away from my own ears. “Absolutely.”

  “What from?”

  “The Emir’s soldiers, to name one.”

  The gecko raised on its spindly bowed legs.

  “Name one more.”

  The sweet smoke answered without my permission. “My father, the doctor. The model doctor, husband, and father? Don’t believe it.”

  Hamid made a sound that could have been a laugh and cradled his penguin. Tony examined what was left of the joint and offered it to me.

  “You finish it,” I said.

  “Are you telling me the old pater got physical? I mean, hit you or—”

  “Amputations were his specialty.” My thoughts slowly gathered momentum. “I think he was only mildly curious in the difference an arm, leg, whatever, made to someone’s life. Like a jihadist wonders how a crook without hands will feed his kids. I mean, the crook after his hands were chopped off.”