31 Hours

by Masha Hamilton

  “Well,” said their mother, and then she stopped, but she looked pleased. “How are rehearsals coming?”

  “Good.” Vic brightened. “Want to come opening night? It’s Tuesday, remember.”

  “Is your father . . .?”

  Vic sighed audibly. “No, Mom.” She turned on the kitchen faucet and began rinsing the strawberries.

  “Just—just asking,” their mother said. Then she closed her eyes and leaned her head back a little into Mara’s brushing. She seemed to relax, and that allowed Mara to relax, too. Mara thought about the sense of peace that came from listening to Vic busy herself at the kitchen sink, and she thought about what it would be like to be grown-up and to be the one who brought that comfort to someone else. She tried to imagine herself Vic’s age, but it seemed too far away to envision. When she was very little, five or six, after a family road trip to California, Mara told her parents she’d decided to grow up to be a billboard painter and paint new billboards every day that would make drivers feel peaceful instead of wanting to honk their horns. She was too young to understand her parents’ amused reaction. A few years later, she announced she would write a book that her parents would edit, though what kind of book remained uncertain since her mother worked on nonfiction and her father edited poetry. A poetic book about pretzel baking, or maybe mountain climbing? That plan, too, drew indulgent smiles. Now, when she closed her eyes and thought about the future, it seemed fuzzy, full of sharp edges and dark holes and no colors at all. Was this only since her father had left? She couldn’t remember.

  Vic turned off the faucet as their mother murmured.

  “What?” Vic turned.

  “Oh. Oh, nothing. He just takes himself too seriously, your father.” She cleared her throat. “Do you see him much?” Her voice was affected. She was trying to pretend the question was casual.

  “Mom,” said Vic, “I don’t want to talk about Dad, or you and Dad. If I get involved, I’m going to end up having to pay two hundred bucks a week for three years of therapy. As a dancer, I can’t afford it.”

  Their mother waved her hand, her eyes still closed. The gesture was unclear: Did she accept Vic’s refusal, or was she waiting for a chance to ask again? Vic seemed concentrated on cutting the ends off the strawberries, and for a few minutes the only sound was the brush pulling through their mother’s hair.

  “Don’t hold close to anything, girls,” their mother said at last. “That’s my best piece of maternal advice. Don’t count on anything because everything changes and that’s all you can count on.”

  Mara looked up from her mother’s hair to exchange a glance with Vic. When their mom began talking to them like that, making pronouncements and saying “girls,” it meant nothing good. It meant she was feeling morose. That had been true even before their dad had moved out.

  “Isn’t that kind of a cliché, Mom?” Mara said, not unkindly. In fact, she sounded like her mother herself, who used to point out clichés when looking over Vic’s or Mara’s school papers. Their mother ignored her.

  “Some changes are for the best. Sure, they are,” their mother said. “Learning how to make rice pudding. Consummating my relationship with your father. Earning more money. Those were good changes.”

  Vic grabbed a dishtowel, held it under the colander, and brought the strawberries to the table. “Eat,” she said to Mara.

  “But the rest—well, the bottom line is, cling to nothing. Even when I was your age, Vic, and I could feel men watching me as I walked down the street, and even when my energy was boosted by every breath I took, I knew what was coming. That eventually my hair would lose its sheen, my skin would turn fragile, and I wouldn’t bounce up a set of stairs.”

  “Mom,” Vic said, “you look great. Besides, everything doesn’t change.”

  “What? What doesn’t change?” Their mother’s voice had grown loud and a bit harsh, the way she had spoken to their father at the end, in the days before he’d left.

  “Mom,” Vic said soothingly, “we’re always going to be your daughters.”

  Her mother shook her head as though to shrug Mara off, so Mara stopped brushing. “No more cribs, no more wet wipes or playgrounds. You live in your own apartment, and Mara will be next,” their mother said, not pausing to allow Mara to protest that she wasn’t yet in high school. “It changes. It already has. So. Name one thing that doesn’t.”

  Vic shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Memories,” she said after a minute, grinning like she’d called out the right answer on a game show. “Memories don’t change.”

  “Are you kidding?” their mother said. “Whatever happens in the future makes whatever happened in the past look different. Sometimes completely different. Try again.”

  Vic sat at the table and leaned forward. She hesitated, her expression searching and determined. Mara was rooting for her older sister, although in much the way one would root for an underdog—full of doubt and trepidation. And then Vic smiled. “The stones.”

  The stones. Yes. Vic was brilliant to remember them. Everywhere they went over the years, the four of them collected everything from large pebbles to small rocks and brought them home. The stones were rich with memories—their own family memories and those that predated them, their mother said. The stones were their family’s version of a photo album. Sometimes for special meals, they put four or five in a pile on the table, a centerpiece. Generally they were kept in two bowls on the bookcase. Vic and Mara had spent many hours sorting through them. Their dad sometimes carried one in his pocket, and after a hard day, their mother would sit in a chair by the window and rub one.

  Their mother stared at the palm of her right hand as though she could see her future there. “Even stones change,” she said. “Smoothed by waves. Pitted by sand.” But her voice sounded less certain. “And wind . . .” She trailed off.

  “Those stones are exactly the same as the first time we brought them into the house, Mom.” Vic handed Mara another strawberry before she moved to the living room and then returned, bringing a bowl of stones with her.

  Mara’s mother glanced at them, then turned her face to the wall.

  “Look at the quartz streaks in this one,” Vic said, holding one out and waiting until their mom took it. “Remember how we found it on that trip to the Southwest?”

  “And this orange one with a smooth spot in the middle of all the rough,” Mara said, emboldened by Vic’s success. “Remember how Vic used to say it was the stone with a stomach?”

  “And this one, Mara, you said looked like a peach with a bite missing,” said Vic.

  Their mother looked at both of them. “You girls,” she said, and finally, shaking her head, she laughed. She actually laughed. It sounded gentle, like a real laugh, and it filled Mara with hope, and with a sharp longing she’d been denying—a yearning for those old days when twice as many people lived in this apartment, and it felt alive, and she’d never felt scared, like she did sometimes now, of shadows that stood in corners.

  Their mother reached for the bowl, letting her fingers skim over several stones before she selected one. “This is the one that fits in your eye,” she said to Vic. “Remember?”

  “And this one,” said Vic, “I used to be able to balance it on the bridge of my nose.” She tried, but it fell to the table and all three of them laughed. Mara loved the way laughter made her chest feel lighter. She’d never noticed that before, in the old days. Still laughing, she reached up and pulled another stone out of the bowl.

  “Look at this one,” she said, giggling. “The lopsided heart.”

  As soon as she said it, she knew she’d made a mistake. Her father had collected the heart stone along a Scottish beach where her parents had spent a week alone together when she’d been a toddler. She still vaguely remembered staying with Vic at their grandmother’s house in Virginia. Her father had hidden the stone in his luggage until Valentine’s Day, and then, sitting at this very table, he’d given it to their mother and recited some silly rhyming poe
m he’d written himself on the 1-train on the way home from work the night before. Mara didn’t remember actually witnessing that part, but she’d been told over the years. A favorite Valentine’s Day memory.

  Their mother looked at Mara, her gaze accusing, and then got up.

  “Mom?” Vic said.

  “Be right back,” their mother said, her voice sounding labored. They heard the bedroom door close. Vic looked at Mara.

  “She won’t be right back,” Mara said quietly.

  “How long will she stay in there?” Vic asked.

  Mara shrugged, feeling loyalty toward her mother surge up from somewhere unexpected. She wondered how much she should reveal. “A long time,” she said noncommittally, hoping Vic could read between those words.

  “Well, I guess it’s better than screaming,” Vic said. “With Jonas’s parents, there was screaming.”

  Mara would have preferred screaming to the apartment’s eerie, constant silence, but she didn’t say that. “How is Jonas?” Mara asked. It was an adult-sounding question, a question their mother or father might have asked at a different time.

  Vic smiled. “Fine.” She ruffled Mara’s hair. Then she picked up a strawberry from the colander and rotated it between her fingers. “I’m going to make you a sandwich,” she said. “Do we have cheese?” She put down the strawberry, opened the refrigerator, and began moving food around, scrounging.

  “Vic, I’m sorry,” Mara said after a minute.

  “For what?” Vic pulled some Dijon mustard from the refrigerator door.

  “You know. Saying that about the heart stone.” Her carelessness made her feel so guilty that her stomach actually hurt, and she rubbed it gently.

  “Oh, angel.” Vic paused to give her a hug. “Mom’s got to stop being so damn sensitive. Maybe she needs to take antidepressants.”

  “She won’t do that. You remember that book she edited about overmedicated America.”

  Vic sliced some cheese, placed it on the bread, and added lettuce. She set the sandwich before Mara. “Eat,” she said.

  Mara took a big bite. The cheese was a little dry and the bread a bit stale, but she didn’t mind much. Vic brought her a big glass of orange juice, and she drank some of that, too. “You know, Vic,” she said after a minute, “I have an idea about what we can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How we’re going to make Dad come back.”

  Vic sat down, her slender form suddenly seeming heavy. “Sweetie,” she began, but Mara decided to ignore her.

  “If Dad knew how sad Mom really was—” Mara began.

  “I think he knows, sweetie.”

  Mara shook her head. “Every time he calls, you should hear her—she sounds really happy, like she’s just gotten home from a party or something. And then they start fighting. So he probably thinks she’s doing fine until he calls. But, Vic, she’s like some zombie.” That was the most explicit Mara had ever permitted herself to be to anyone about her mother over this past month.

  Vic stood up, moved behind Mara, and began massaging her shoulders. “They’re so tight,” she said, but Mara shrugged her off. She didn’t want to be pacified, not now.

  “You know how softhearted Dad is,” Mara said. “Whenever we got hurt, remember? Mom told us to buck up, but Dad came running with the bandages and the worried expression. He wouldn’t want Mom to feel this way. So we’ll take him the stones, get him remembering, and then we’ll tell him how bad it is, how much she misses him.”

  Vic sighed. “Look, sweetie—”

  “He loves these stones. He used to say they held magic, remember?”

  “But you heard Mom. Memories do change.”

  “We can’t take them all on the subway, but we don’t need all. Just this one,” Mara lifted a black-and-white speckled rock, “and this,” choosing the one that looked like the partly eaten peach, “and this,” picking up the lopsided heart, cradling it in the palm of her hand.

  “Baby, I think it’s more complicated than that.”

  Mara knew it was complicated; of course she knew that. She thought about mentioning their mother’s reference to a Caribbean author to prove it. “There’s always a way to simplify,” Mara said. “Like the answer to a math problem. Right down to the prime numbers.”

  Vic smiled. She took Mara’s hand, and this time Mara let her. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you, still being at home.” Vic shook her head and added, almost as an aside, “Why couldn’t he wait, damnit?”

  “Mom can’t go on like this,” Mara said. She wanted to add, “I can’t,” but she didn’t.

  Vic rose and released a deep, sighing breath. “So talk to Dad if you want. Just don’t blame yourself if it doesn’t work, okay?”

  “But I thought—” Mara stopped. What she’d thought was that Vic would help her; she’d counted on it, assumed it didn’t even need to be said. She wouldn’t act like a baby about it, though. Lots of things she used to depend on were changing, and maybe that was what it meant to grow up.

  “You okay, angel?” Vic said

  “Hmm.” Mara nodded.

  Vic lifted one foot, grabbed her ankle behind her back, and stretched out her leg. “Already getting stiff,” she said, laughing softly. “It was one long rehearsal. I’m going home to take a shower and a rest. I’ll call, okay?”

  So, fine. Mara would do it alone. She could go tomorrow morning. She’d take the subway to Brooklyn early so she could be there before her dad went to work. If all went well, maybe he would drive her home and they could go into the apartment together. Her mom wouldn’t be happy that Mara had cut school, but she’d understand once it was all explained.

  “Hey, you in the fog. Plotting away, are you? Give me a hug good-bye, okay?” Vic pulled her close and bent so their heads were touching. “It’ll be all right,” she murmured.

  “I know.” Mara straightened, feeling the responsibility that came with seeing what had to be done. Vic was like their mom, wanting everyone to buck up, so Mara would have to be like their dad, bearing the Band-Aids. “I know.”

  Vic pulled away and ruffled her hair again. Mara hated the gesture for its implied meaning. But they would know, soon enough, that she was not a kid. She followed her sister into the living room and watched as Vic, with one last wave, closed the door firmly behind her, leaving Mara and her mother inside.

  NEW YORK: 11:43 A.M.

  MECCA: 7:43 P.M.

  Jonas supposed he was meant to just keep praying, pray all day as if he were in Mecca on the hajj, dip his forehead to the ground and pray to the hurricane-god of subways roaring, sirens wailing, whores and stockbrokers shouting numbers, matrons grasping, vacationers exclaiming in a mix of tongues, this animal of a city issuing its collective hungry growl, but he had wearied, finally, of the mixed CD of prayers Masoud had burned for him, and he was finding it hard to come up with a prayer—a fresh prayer that would mean something—on an empty stomach. He should have brought groceries for the kitchenette, but no one had mentioned it in the list of directives, so he’d brought only tea bags and bottled water. Anyway, he’d thought food wouldn’t interest him, since it hadn’t much for weeks. But he’d been wrong. He wanted, almost desperately, something warm in his mouth. Something fieryspicy that would titillate as it satisfied. Tomorrow Jonas’s day belonged to a greater cause. Tomorrow he would be pure energy, a spark and a flash, a name on a million lips. But today he was still just Jonas, Manhattan Jonas, Upper West Side Jonas, young man Jonas, with a young man’s appetite, with dreams, in fact, of a hot sandwich made from lamb. Today Jonas wanted a gyro.

  After the last 120 hours of intensive training during which Jonas had slept very little and hadn’t been able to slip away even to call Vic, Masoud had dropped him off at this apartment with strict instructions that he should have no further contact with anyone. Masoud didn’t elaborate, and Jonas decided now that he would interpret that to mean no one he knew. Mothers and girlfriends might be one thing, but surely Masoud hadn’t meant to
rule out contact with average people on the street, people who wouldn’t remember him if they saw him again fifteen minutes later. He needed more razors to finish the shaving job, and besides that, if he went out, if he stayed in, who would know? He was in a void, a space intended to allow deeper connection to Allah. The only human visitor he expected was Masoud, and that wouldn’t be until this evening.

  He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took a photograph of his own hand reaching into its emptiness. He was already sick of this ground-floor studio apartment with its anorexic bed, its yawning gray walls, its floor naked save for the prayer rug Masoud had placed in a corner. It seemed that once he was gone, they wanted nothing to show he’d ever been here. The result, though, was that nothing proved he was here right now. That felt like an erasure come too soon.

  He wondered what Deirdre had done the day before she’d driven that bomb-laden car to Armagh, in Ireland. He imagined her calm, focused, sleeping normally, her wavy auburn hair fanned out over her pillow. He doubted she’d needed rituals to calm her; she’d had a boyfriend nearly a decade older than she who, she told Jonas, had simply been using her. She could live with being used, though, she said, because she believed what she did at the tail end of the Troubles helped to resolve them. She believed in the rightness of her actions. He’d been crazy about her—her sexual appetite, her milky skin and green eyes, her grasp of European history, even the ways in which she was messy, with piles of dirty clothes next to plates of half-eaten food. But he knew now he must have seemed like a child to her. He was nineteen; she was thirty-one. He was briefly exotic to her—this intense blond traveling boy from America who found himself in Belfast—and then she wearied of him.

  But when she heard about this, she’d think more of him. She might even admire him.

  He tugged up his jeans—he’d lost twelve pounds in the last three weeks—and pulled on his water-resistant, down-filled parka. Before leaving, he held the camera away from his face and took another picture, this one of his head and shoulders reflected in the bathroom mirror. In his mind, he titled the photograph Jonas, hungry for gyro.