Dervishes

by Beth Helms

  And when she rings Paige, thinking to hear some explanation that is reasonable, she hears merely an echo of Ahmet’s words on the train. What did you expect? said Paige, everyone’s safe and sound. A minor misadventure. And thanks, she added as an afterthought, for your help. I didn’t relish going there myself, I’ll tell you.

  “But why in the world,” said Grace, “did Catherine call you to fetch her? Why not Simone?”

  “Why not Simone indeed?” said Paige. “In any case, it wasn’t Catherine who called me.”

  Grace hung up the phone entirely puzzled. When she had said, finally, in a tone that felt commensurate with the situation, “Shouldn’t that young man be in jail or something?” Paige had only laughed.

  “For what? Simone thinks he’s a national treasure, in case you hadn’t noticed. Anyway, don’t you forgive Firdis a great deal?”

  WHEN THE call from Germany comes at last Grace snatches the phone from the cradle and stands on her tiptoes in the hallway. Firdis is instantly underfoot; she begins to polish the legs of the small telephone table, muttering apologies, wedging herself beneath Grace’s knees. It is Edie on the line, and then Grace can hear Bahar in the background, her lilting syllables, the noise she makes on a cigarette. She is right at Edie’s side; they must have the phone between them.

  “Oh, Grace,” says Edie, and her words spill into Grace’s ear. “Oh, it’s wonderful. I’m so happy. So grateful.”

  “So sick of strudel,” Grace hears Bahar say, and then the two of them laugh together for an irritating and overlong moment.

  But all’s well, they tell her. It has gone off just as Bahar promised. (Didn’t I say so? she purrs.) Their mingled breath on the line is noisy and Grace cannot catch all of what they are saying. But she intuits that her predictions were not so off the mark: they are getting along beautifully. They talk in shared sentences of museums and sights, of the zoo and the park and a day trip by train to Cologne.

  When Grace puts the phone down, she does not feel much relieved, and Firdis, naturally, is still there, hunched at her feet, paying excessive attention to the beveled legs of the telephone table. Grace squeezes out of the tight space and pats Firdis’s back gingerly. “Everything’s fine,” she says to her. “Tamam. All is okay.” And Firdis, as she should have expected, bursts immediately into tears and runs away wailing to the kitchen.

  19

  WE RARELY SPOKE OF MY FATHER, OR WONDERED ABOUT HIS RETURN, but we were likely no different from anyone else in those circles: too accustomed to our lives without husbands and fathers, too used to filling the days, too self-sufficient and devoted to ourselves. It seemed he left not so much a hole in our lives as a faint impression, no more noticeable than a dent in the couch or a fading bruise.

  Some evenings my mother could be found alone at our dinner table, which she’d set for an intimate meal, with flowers between the silver candlesticks and a little silver bell to the left of her place setting. She used the bell to signal the next course, to summon Firdis—an affectation she’d picked up from Simone and from formal dinners at the American Residence. She would sit with her legs crossed, overdressed for an evening at home, smoking cigarettes and drinking a sweet Rhine wine from a crystal goblet. Some part of a meal would remain on the plate in front of her—a few bites of lamb, a brussels sprout, a forkful of whipped potato. Perhaps she wanted to give the impression that she always dined in this fashion, alone and surrounded by silver and cut crystal, like an aging stage actress or a nightclub chanteuse. Coming in, I would watch her from the doorway, listening to the romantic music she was playing, wondering if there was anything for me to eat. I might walk into the kitchen, looking for Firdis or leftovers, but I would steer quite clear of my mother. Even her shoulders had the posture of a person you did not particularly wish to engage.

  There were phone calls. She would whisper into the clunky black receiver in the hallway. Then dialogue that included the words, if not the tone, of a disagreement, of a woman trying very hard not to sound dismayed but still in search of an explanation she could swallow. I knew it was Ahmet she was talking to, and I knew that he was throwing her over.

  Once, when Firdis’s husband came to the house to retrieve her, I saw my mother attempt to engage him in conversation. It went badly. She was complimenting Firdis, moving her hands in a pantomime of gratitude and appreciation. I just couldn’t live without her, she was saying, and she brought her clasped hands up to her heart. He stood unsmiling in the stairwell, his thick brows beetled, and when she’d finished he made a motion past her with his hand and then the kind of noise one might make toward an animal or a child, telling it to get cracking. “Well,” my mother said shakily, when they had gone, Firdis trailing him obediently down the stairs, “isn’t he charming?”

  Whatever was between those two women by then crackled in the air of our apartment, clear in the way they stepped wide around each other. Firdis became, if not neglectful, a bit slack in her duties: the things in our apartment lost their burnished gleam and a thin film of dust settled across everything.

  My mother even screamed at Firdis once, for misarranging pillows on the sofa. While Firdis stood by with no expression on her face, my mother snatched up the pillows and clutched them to her chest, then plunked them back angrily in the order she preferred. “Like this,” she said to Firdis. “Like this! Understand?”

  And then just as quickly, Firdis disappeared. A week passed, maybe more. My mother refused to discuss it. She would open the refrigerator door and study, with seeming bewilderment, the empty interior. When the kapıcı rang the bell, my mother ignored it. I saw her once, drifting furtively away from the door as the bell shrilled, almost on tiptoe.

  Suddenly, I missed my father.

  I grew bold, wearing the jewelry Catherine gave me to hide, the things that came from John—the Maşallah pendant, the evil eye bracelet—and I didn’t bother to conceal them from my mother.

  Without Firdis, the apartment fell into melancholy disarray. The dust accumulated, and fruit spoiled, springing tiny flies. Laundry piled up. Everywhere was the thick, unpleasant odor of powdered milk and the unswept ashes, accumulating in a soft, volcanic heap in the fireplace.

  ONE MORNING after my mother returned from Istanbul, she insisted on driving to the barn early. She woke me impatiently, hustled me through toothbrushing and dressing, rushed me into the car and drove through traffic with a new and purely Turkish recklessness, her hands gripping the leather cover of the steering wheel, which was unraveling slowly, bits of caramel braiding coming apart one piece at a time. Parking, she checked and reapplied her lipstick in the rearview mirror, patted down her hair, adjusted her bra straps and ran her tongue over her teeth. She seemed just slightly overdressed, one accessory too many; shoes a bit too high of heel, trousers too pale and too tight, a coat you wouldn’t think should come in contact with horse slime.

  It was very cold and I was annoyed; she’d rushed me and I’d forgotten my gloves. As we came down the hill to the stable entrance we found a car sideways near the gate, where people were discouraged from parking: a big gleaming sedan, silver colored, of German make with dark-tinted windows. It oozed affluence; it was Bahar’s car. My mother slowed her steps looking at it and then, in the next moment, quickened them, teetering down the gravel path, touching her hair and nearly breaking a heel on the stones. I slowed down, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my coat and kicking at the ground.

  “Hurry up,” she said, turning. “Come on.”

  “Why?” I said. “What’s the darn rush?”

  The trailer door was closed but you could see there was life inside—a light showed beneath the curtains. My mother seemed unsure what to do next.

  Then something came to her. “Go see if you left some gloves in there,” she said. “Or borrow a pair.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I started to walk away, down the path toward the stalls. I meant to leave her there to work it out herself.

  “I said,” she said then, in
a tone that did not brook disobedience, “go see.”

  I stopped and turned around. She was shifting from one foot to the other, the collar of her coat was pulled up around her neck and her lips, despite the touch-up, were pressed thin, suddenly pale.

  “Do it yourself,” I said. “You go see.”

  We looked at each other. In the distance, horses nickered; I heard the grooms arguing over their duties.

  She stepped up to the trailer door—it was metal framed, with a torn screen—and raised her fist. She hesitated, then rapped on it lightly. I walked back then, slowly, away from the horses. The door opened after a moment and Bahar stood there, her fur coat taking up most of the small doorway. She looked like a model in a framed picture. She laughed and stepped outside, kissing my mother on both cheeks and exclaiming in both Turkish and English. She came down and I moved forward to let her kiss me as well. I caught her scent of warm flowers, felt her cool powdery cheek. How happy I was to see her.

  “Nasilsın?” she said. “What a nice surprise. Hello, Canada!”

  It seemed as though we had been the ones absent from the stable, not she. As if she’d been waiting, and we were irresponsibly overdue. You could not have mistaken her tone. Under the coat, which she shrugged off and tossed back inside the trailer, she was wearing riding clothes: black britches and high boots, an impossibly soft-looking sweater.

  Ahmet came out behind her holding a mug of something hot: steam swirled prettily in the air. He didn’t look flustered or caught out. He was as composed as always.

  He glanced at his watch. “You’re early,” he said. “But go tack up. Bahar is going to jump and you can join us.”

  He came forward and kissed my mother in the same manner Bahar had just done—politely, casually. Then he wandered off toward the stalls with his tea and Bahar fell in step beside him. They were built similarly, long-legged and slim, not tall people but exceptionally well made; their hips touched from time to time and they were speaking rapidly in Turkish, laughing in low tones that advertised familiarity.

  My mother stood stock-still for what seemed an eternity. Until I socked her in the arm and said, “Pull yourself together.”

  “You’re right,” she said, but mostly to herself. “Quite right.” She tugged her collar up and headed off after them, her shoes clattering on the cement strip that ran along the stall fronts.

  I watched from the gravel courtyard and when my mother reached them, to my surprise it was Bahar’s arm she took and held, and it was Bahar she pulled to the side under the corrugated metal awning of the stalls and she with whom my mother began to speak, rapidly, her face shifting between dismay and consternation. Bahar stood with her arms folded and her chin tucked inside the ribbed neck of her sweater. She kicked a little with her riding boots at the stones near her feet. Her face was placid, serene. And then the two women were lost to sight for a moment; a groom led a great gelding past them, he danced in the chill, tossing his head, dappled flanks gleaming, hooves sliding on the ground.

  For many days after that Ahmet bey and Bahar took long rides alone across the frostbitten fields; you could hear their hoofbeats coming and going, punching the ground, snapping the frozen scrub. An occasional snowfall would leave the ground strangely patterned, white and wind-marbled. Cold rimed the black mare’s nostrils and our breath came out like cartoon bubbles; in her stall I pressed up against her neck for warmth, burying my hands in her mane, stealing extra straw for her bedding. When he was around Ahmet spent more time with me, seeing to my horsemanship, complimenting my riding; he became warmer and kinder, more solicitous than ever. I found I did not begrudge Bahar his company, and even found vicarious pleasure in it, in the attention Ahmet paid her, and what it did to my mother.

  A WEEK or so after the Christmas break I was called to the headmaster’s office and found my mother waiting there. On the scarred desk were arrayed the little things of Simone’s that I had given Kate to hide. Spread on the desk, what they’d taken made a bizarre display. Most of them I’d forgotten, a saltcellar, for instance, a cheap earring, an abstract figurine.

  “I’m afraid Kate couldn’t keep your secret any longer,” said Kate’s father. He was hunched behind the desk, smoking. He looked put-upon, grave and dismayed. Kate’s father was a big, weary man with a rough beard and a parade of shabby tweed jackets. On Saturday nights, in the basement of the church up the hill, the British transformed the grim room into the Red Lion pub, complete with a ratty embroidered flag. All night Kate’s father pulled pints, acting the part of the jolly innkeeper. Sunday mornings he looked as if he’d been dragged by horses.

  Now he rubbed his beard vigorously, as if trying to remove it with his hand. “It was wrong of you to involve Kate in this,” he said.

  My mother sat impassively in a wooden chair with her hands on her lap. She crossed and recrossed her legs.

  “Stealing is something we take very seriously. Normally we would expel you as a matter of course, without asking further questions.”

  The headmaster cleared his throat. Still no reaction from my mother.

  “But your mother has asked us to reconsider.”

  And now my mother looked at me, her eyes sliding over to the doorway where I stood, my knees locked, hands gripping my thighs. The room was bright and cold, a haze of smoke drifted, an undulating white ribbon, over its upper atmosphere.

  “She’s explained the difficulties with your father having been away, and the recent loss of your grandmother at home. Mrs. Tremblay has agreed not to pursue this—provided you return the remainder of her missing belongings. There is a list here which she has put together.” He inhaled deeply on a cigarette and regarded my mother. A piece of paper, folded, passed between them across the desk. “I’m sure you’ll understand why my wife and I can no longer allow Canada and Kate to socialize outside of school. You won’t be surprised to learn that Mrs. Tremblay feels the same way about Canada’s friendship with Catherine.”

  My mother indicated that she understood this; her expression suggested that she would not much want a child of hers associating with me either. She collected Simone’s belongings from the desk and stuffed them inside her handbag. We left the building together and walked up the long hill in silence, accompanied by the puffs of pinkish dust our shoes stirred up on the powdery ground.

  When we got into the car she glanced at me, saying, “I don’t want to know. I thought I would but it turns out I don’t.”

  “I didn’t take those things. I didn’t touch them. John did.” Why did it matter what she thought of me? She herself took whatever she wanted; she could never see herself, never, not at all.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Not interested.”

  “What grandmother?”

  She didn’t answer, just gripped the wheel with her hands and merged carelessly into the stream of traffic headed up the hill.

  “When’s Daddy coming home?”

  She glanced at me. “I have absolutely no idea. Maybe next week, the one after.”

  I didn’t believe her; she didn’t even believe her.

  Turkey had changed my mother; it had turned her into a woman who would do the most convenient thing, who would choose expediency over principles. Before we reached the stables, she pulled over on the side of the winding dirt road and dumped those things of Simone’s onto the ground, shaking her purse violently free of them. Bits of paper drifted out, tobacco lint, a small pink tablet. She cursed, retrieved her wallet from the ground, her cigarette case, a few papers and a lipstick. Then she snapped the door shut and cut the wheel hard to the left, she gunned the engine and drove on.

  20

  ONE AFTERNOON IN JANUARY, GRACE DECIDES TO TRY RAISING Greg on the telephone and braces herself for an ordeal: navigating the international operators and the military protocols required no small amount of patience. But when she finally does locate him—long moments while the call is patched, while desk sergeants hunt him up, while the line clicks ominously—his voice is cold and his manner
abrupt.

  “Listen, Grace,” he says, after a few moments of clumsy talk (the line echoes and she hears their voices layered over each other’s, punctuated with static), “I’m afraid all this is going to cause me big trouble over here. I’ve spoken to Edie. Why on earth would you get involved in something like this?”

  Grace cannot think of one reasonable thing to say. The silence lengthens.

  “Well, never mind,” he says, after a moment. “I’m probably cooked anyway—with all Edie’s goings-on. Past and present. I’ll end up in a basement somewhere Stateside, filing requisitions.”

  “I’m sure not,” she says, though of course he would, there was no other likely scenario. Perhaps Rand had been right after all.

  “I don’t know how you managed this, frankly, the two of you. Didn’t you know her history? And don’t you know they look very dimly on baby-selling in this part of the world?”

  “Adoption. It’s an adoption and I thought you knew. Edie said you were thrilled. I’m so sorry, Greg, I wish there was something I could do.

  “Greg,” she adds, after a pause, “I wanted to ask you something. Did Rand know about this—about this business with Edie? About whatever happened in Cairo?”

  Greg laughs unhappily. “Well, we certainly spoke about it often enough. I bent his ear mercilessly.”

  Grace shakes her head back and forth. Finally she says, “He never breathed a word of it to me.”

  The silence on the line seems to indicate his astonishment—not at her words, but at the thought that she might have anticipated anything different.

  His voice, when it comes, contains this and more. “Well, Rand’s the original sphinx, isn’t he? You’d know that better than I.”

  “It’s what you talked about that weekend at the beach,” Grace says. “All that walking.”

  “Mmm,” he says. “I thought it would help her, getting out. Rand was concerned about you too—all that time inside, like a couple of mushrooms. Tell me, do you ever swim in the ocean these days?”