The Lovers
Page 18
“Hello,” a voice behind her said. It was Aylin, dressed in a silk blouse and a black skirt. Aurelia would have approved of the silk.
“Are you okay to take a walk? I don’t want your clothes to get dirty.”
“There’s a café in one of the chimneys,” Aylin said. “We can go there.”
They walked down the narrow path of sand.
“I feel I should apologize for just showing up at your work yesterday,” Yvonne said. “I shouldn’t have shocked you like that.”
“I was not prepared,” Aylin said. “But I didn’t need to be so rude. I don’t blame you for what happened to my brother. But I wanted to ask you how you recovered from death.”
“From Ahmet’s death?”
“No,” Aylin said. “You said yesterday that your husband died. I am curious what you did to make it easier. My family, you see, they are all devoted Muslims. They have the mosque, and my father will cleanse my brother’s body there before the burial. And Ahmet will be dressed as though for his circumcision. He will wear a suit and a hat, and have a baton. And across his body there will be a sash that says Masallah. It means, ‘May God Protect.’ But I am not religious. I don’t believe what they believe—I decided that long ago. But their faith is giving them structure now. Answers. A way to go through this. I feel different. I have no answers.”
Aylin was sweating in the heat, and small wet circles appeared down the back of her blouse, where her spine touched the silk.
“Should we sit?” Yvonne said. Even this early in the morning, the sun was punishing.
“Yes, good idea,” Aylin said. “The café is in there.” She pointed to the fairy chimney to their left and they walked inside the main archway. Immediately it was cooler. Yvonne followed Aylin up a staircase, carved into the stone, and they emerged into a shallow room lined with books. At the end of the room was a balcony, where they sat on a cushioned bench.
A young boy approached them, and he and Aylin exchanged a few words. “Coffee?” Aylin said to Yvonne, who nodded. Aylin said something else to the boy, and he walked away.
“I don’t know how to answer your question,” Yvonne said. “I had a lot of help when my husband died.” As soon as she said it, it sounded false. She had not had a lot of help. She had only had Aurelia. “It was my daughter,” Yvonne said, working out the thought as she spoke. “It was her. She brought order to things. She was…miraculous.”
And suddenly it was clear. It had been Aurelia. In the aftermath of Peter’s death, Yvonne and Matthew had braced themselves for Aurelia’s reaction: most of her life, she would have used even a parking ticket as an excuse to drink, to steal, and accuse, and throw tantrums. When Peter died, Yvonne and Matthew had made sure Aurelia was not alone. With a real excuse, she seemed capable of anything.
And yet it was Aurelia who had been calm. Who could have known that in the face of real tragedy Aurelia would thrive? It was as though now that everyone else was finally living in the realm of passion and intensity with which she had conducted her life, she was at peace. Matthew and Yvonne turned to Aurelia for solace. It was Aurelia who washed the dishes and made the beds and stocked the kitchen with tea and milk and starches (that was all they could stomach then: bread and rice, the diet of sick children). It was Aurelia who had dealt with the life insurance company, with the questions from the police, the details of the funeral. It was Aurelia who had opened the windows to let in fresh air, and calmly told off the telemarketers who called and asked for Peter.
Yvonne finished telling Aylin all this, and the young woman nodded reverently, as if she had been told the story of a magnificent hero of history. “She is strong, your daughter,” she said.
“No,” Yvonne said. “Actually, I guess yes. She never used to be. But something changed.” It was only now that Yvonne understood this to be true. Her daughter had changed a long time ago—even before Peter’s death. It was only Yvonne’s idea of her that had remained unaltered. She had not opened her eyes to her daughter in years. Aurelia was no longer a broken thing to be tinkered with. She was a woman, a person, and Yvonne needed her.
The boy brought them their coffee in small teacups. Yvonne looked toward the other fairy chimneys, at other tourists sitting on other balconies, being served by the very people who had once called these bizarre structures their homes.
“You just need to wait for the days to go by,” Yvonne said. “It might be hundreds of days, a thousand, but one day, you find that the pain has dulled. That it no longer clouds everything you see.”
“It was like that for you?” Aylin said.
“Yes,” Yvonne said. She was lying. That day had not come yet but she hoped that it was not far off.
When they finished their coffee, Aylin had to go. Yvonne said she would stay in the café a little longer. Aylin reached for her purse to pay, but Yvonne stopped her.
“You know the path back?” Aylin asked.
“I’m fine,” Yvonne said. “I know the way.”
They parted with kisses on each cheek. Aylin smelled like Yvonne’s daughter: a simple scent, like dried flowers. Yvonne inhaled it, filling her lungs before they parted. From the balcony, she watched as Aylin appeared on the path below and made her way to the road, to her small car parked at the trailhead, near a stand where a young girl was selling fruit.
Yvonne paid the boy for the coffee and went out to the path once again. She hadn’t decided whether to walk back to the hotel yet. She wound her way between the stone towers, touching them, looking for people in their hidden windows. She wondered idly if they had always lived here, if the mothers and sons and fathers and daughters watched from within as their homes were scoured by the swirling gusts of wind. She touched the walls, felt the scars of the years, the centuries.
As she wandered, the breeze picked up, making a whistling sound as it wove around the rocks. The air grew coarse with sand. She lost the path in front of her. It happened quickly. Yvonne’s vision blurred. She rubbed her eyes. She was in the middle of a sandstorm and could not see more than a few feet in front of her. She tried to walk back in the direction of the café, but saw nothing of the way she’d come. The squall spun itself into frenzies.
She ran to the base of a fairy chimney and sunk to the ground. She would wait out the storm. She breathed into the cavity created between her lap and her knees. Whenever she lifted her head, she saw only dust. What in god’s name had happened to her? She could not be trusted to walk alone in a landscape like this. It occurred to her that even if she were to stand and run, she would not know which way to go. She sat for an hour or more, the storm unrelenting. Would she die here? She could be swallowed in this place, she realized. She could be lost here because she thought she knew the way back—that she, always the teacher, always the mother, could never need the help of another. This had been her way for too long. She could not listen. It had been so long since she listened, since she allowed those close to her to show her anything new. Everything had been written long ago. Her children! She had treated them as facts, as figures in an unchangeable story—a lesson she knew and could teach.
Finally, the whistling stopped. The wind died. When she raised her head, the dust caked her face, covering her tears. She needed to find someone who would help guide her to shelter. But who would she find? Who would help her, and how? She was alone here, and would remain alone. She opened her eyes. Sand stuck to her lips. In the distance she saw a figure walking toward her. She was unsure, at first, whether it was someone coming to help or someone who also had been caught in the storm. She stood and tried to breathe. Was it a man or a woman? A boy or a girl? The figure came closer. It was a woman. Her shape was familiar. Yvonne recognized her walk. It was a woman who had come to rescue her. She knew this woman. She had made this woman.
“Mom,” Aurelia said, her arms outstretched. “Oh, Mom.”
Acknowledgments
Books make their way to publication through the vast generosity of dozens of people, from editors to production staff to fr
iends who agree to read the manuscript in its earliest and most awkward stages.
I had many friends willing to gaze upon, and suggest improvements to, this novel in its early and inelegant forms: Ann Cummins, Nancy Johnson, Andrew Leland, Lisa Michaels, Cornelia Nixon, Ron Nyren, Ann Packer, Ed Park, Angela Pneuman, Michelle Quint, Sarah Stone, Ayelet Waldman, Amanda Eyre Ward, and Sally Willcox. Thanks also to Jenny Moore and Soumeya Bendimerad.
While I was in Turkey, I had wonderful companions, Linda Saetre and Heidi Julavits, who traveled with me on boats and buses and in cars, and put up with my many detours.
Thanks also to Rabih Alameddine, Alev Lytle Croutier, Sevim Karabiyik, and the friends I made in Turkey, all of whom answered questions technical and cultural.
I’m grateful to my agent, Mary Evans; and to all at Ecco: Dan Halpern, Virginia Smith, Allison Saltzman, and everyone else at this serious and vigorous house. Thank you also to my UK editor, Karen Duffy.
My family was patient and supportive during the years of research and writing that this novel required. Thank you especially to my husband, Dave; my sister, Vanessa; and my parents, Paul and Inger Vida.
About the Author
VENDELA VIDA is the author of And Now You Can Go and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She received the 2007 Kate Chopin Writing Award and is a founding coeditor of The Believer magazine and the editor of The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and children.
www.harpercollins.com/vendelavida
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Also by Vendela Vida
FICTION
Let the Northern Lights
Erase Your Name
And Now You Can Go
NONFICTION
The Believer Book of Writers
Talking to Writers
Girls on the Verge
Credits
Jacket design by Misa Erder
Jacket photographs by De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images (carpet) and Betsie Van Der Meer/GalleryStock (boy in sea)
Copyright
THE LOVERS. Copyright © 2010 by Vendela Vida. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
EPub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200022-4
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