Tinderbox

by Lisa Gornick

  “Liar. You let me do what I did in that closet and then you hung up on me.” Layla covered her face. “I never did that with anyone.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play Missy Innocent with me. You got off on what I said to you and now you’re getting off on humiliating me.”

  “I left my phone at the pool where Caro and Adam were staying. Caro found it. By the time I got it back, the battery was dead, and then I couldn’t find my charger.”

  “Don’t insult me. I’m not your deadbeat husband who you can tell anything and he’ll believe you.” Layla’s voice had risen in volume, and Rachida glanced around to see if anyone was watching them.

  The table jerked as Layla stood. Rachida reached out to steady her coffee cup.

  “Layla, I had other things on my mind. I was there to bury my father. I had Omar to take care of and my mother, and then Adam was useless and Caro got sick.”

  “Fuck off, you control-freak pervert. Go fuck your ugly little husband. Go tell him your stupid lies.”

  Now Rachida can hear Adam climbing the stairs. The bed reels as he sits down. He takes her hand and begins stroking it in a way she knows he intends to be comforting but only feels irritating.

  “I gave Eva the amulet.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t open the envelope. She seems not to want to talk to me.”

  Adam pulls off her clogs and begins massaging her feet. She can see the fine black hair in Layla’s armpits, soft like a baby bird’s feathers, Layla’s nipples, small and brown, like fine buttons sewn onto her flawless skin.

  “Did she say anything to you about it?” Adam asks.

  “What?”

  “Eva. Did she say anything to you about the amulet?”

  Rachida turns her head and looks at the wall. She is afraid that she might cry, and even though she knows it must be about her father, it feels as if it is about Layla. She knows there are good reasons why she married Adam. She just cannot recall any of them now.

  “Can we talk about this another time?” She turns onto her side and curls her knees into her body so her foot moves out of Adam’s reach.

  29

  Another time to talk with Rachida about Eva, Adam thinks the following week, seems never to arrive, the days passing with Rachida either too tired or testy or gone. It is strange how quickly he has become acclimated to Eva not speaking to him. In an odd way, it is as if they are now more intimately involved—a secret collaboration in which they both endeavor to not draw attention to the silence between them. On Adam’s part, he takes care not to ask Eva anything in front of Omar. If he needs to know something from Eva, he asks someone else to ask her. On her part, whenever possible, she slips from the room if Adam enters. Once, she actually caught his eye before she left, and although she immediately averted her gaze, Adam had been left with the sensation of their having, like certain pairs of children, a shared wordless language.

  Omar returns to school on Monday. On Wednesday, as usual, Myra does pickup. She leans against the door frame, already bundled into her long coat and scarf as she steps into her winter boots.

  “I’ll come with you,” Adam says. He grabs a jacket and his sneakers.

  Outside, it is cold but sunny, the air winter white, an hour left before the dusk chill descends. They walk east on Ninety-fifth Street, Myra refraining from motherly reprimands about Adam’s jacket, more appropriate for April than January. When Caro was six months old and they moved her from the bassinet next to their bed into a crib in the adjacent room, Myra had cried. “I feel like she’s going to college,” she told Larry as she settled the sleeping baby. Three years later, leaving Caro at nursery school had felt like leaving her own leg behind. By the time the same moment arrived with Adam, she could already see the chain of breaches by which her children would move from being part of her to their lives becoming entirely their own. Now, as adults, their need for her respect, she has come to understand, means that even her advice, unless invited, has to be withheld.

  She had been acutely aware of this on New Year’s Eve, when she saw Caro for the first time after the trip to Morocco. It was a shock to see her slender. Only once before, after Caro’s semester abroad, had she seen her daughter with visible hip and collarbones. Hugging Caro, Myra could feel the ribs in her daughter’s back and the sinew of her arms, and the same wave of alarm she’d felt fifteen years ago.

  “Darling, you look lovely, but are you okay?”

  “I had a vicious case of tourista in Essaouira. I lost twelve pounds. Usually, people just gain it back, but something clicked in me afterward and I thought, Why not make hay out of this? I’ve been eating carefully since then.”

  Myra has known for a long time that there is something amiss with Caro and food. Caro is too pointedly abstemious. Too often, at their Sunday dinners, she will order a salad and tea, begging off that she had a late lunch, the classic pattern of a secret eater: skimping in public and stuffing in private, so that food becomes a hidden torment.

  When Caro first moved back to New York, Myra had anguished about raising the subject with her. “I could encourage her to see someone, work on it,” she told Dreis.

  “Did she ask for your help?”

  With Dreis’s question, Myra felt the slap of shame—the precise feeling, she realized, she would cause in her daughter by uninvited inquiries. “No.”

  “You want to tell her that you, her mother, do not trust that she will find her way?”

  “I feel like I am putting my head in the sand, abandoning her.”

  “I do not see anyone abandoning anyone. I see a young woman who needs her mother to treat her with the dignity she deserves as an adult.”

  Adam stops to zip his flimsy jacket. Shivering, he turns up the collar. “Something is going on with Eva. She refuses to talk with me. I can’t figure out what I’ve done to offend her, but she seems very angry with me.”

  Myra unwraps her scarf and hands it to Adam, who takes it as though it were his own. She has been keeping at bay her concerns about Eva. For the first few days after the kids left for Morocco, it seemed that Eva was more stable. She was so happy Christmas morning, hugging the yellow parka before she put it back in the box, keeping on the scarf. By the afternoon, though, when Myra found Eva kneeling in front of the music room closet, dusting Adam’s file boxes, she claimed, Eva’s mood was entirely changed, her eyes locked in a squint that had left Myra worried that she was becoming unglued.

  “At first, I thought it was because I’d lost her amulet. But she didn’t seem so upset about that.”

  “What did you lose?”

  “She showed me this amulet, it’s called a hamsa, that had been passed down in her family for several generations. She wore it around her neck. I took it to show Rachida, so she could translate the Hebrew inscribed on it. And then, moron that I am, I lost it.”

  “You’re not a moron. When was this?”

  “A few months ago. Maybe November.”

  Myra feels a tilt of confusion, her thoughts misaligned: Didn’t Eva say someone was trying to take something from her? But wasn’t she playing with a chain around her neck when she told Myra about her father setting their house on fire?

  This week, with Myra’s patient schedule back to normal, Eva has resumed leaving Myra’s lunch tray on her ottoman, but she has not come back to retrieve it, as though avoiding the temptation to sit in the patient chair. Although Myra has been relieved, she has been troubled by bizarre thoughts about Eva.

  “I’ve been thinking that we should reorganize the schedule so Eva doesn’t watch Omar.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She’s going through a lot. She’s preoccupied. Let her stick with the housework. As it is, she only picks up Omar on Tuesdays. Maybe you should do Mondays and Tuesdays.”

  Adam refrains from saying, And Thursdays. How many Thursdays do you think Rachida really makes? He looks at his feet, not wanting his mother to see his face. The truth
is, he frequently goes back to sleep after he drops off Omar. By the time he gets up and eats, it is often past noon. How will he get anything done if he has to turn around three days a week to fetch Omar?

  They are nearing the school. A group of mothers dressed for their daily pickup with heeled boots and fur-trimmed parkas is gathered outside, the street clogged with the SUVs they drive, or in some cases are driven in by uniformed chauffeurs.

  If he could get to bed at a reasonable hour instead of wasting time at night looking at filth, instead of being such a disgusting turd, he wouldn’t have to sleep half the day and it wouldn’t be a problem to pick up his kid. In his screenplay, Moishe, nineteen years old, gets up every day before dawn to begin his river journeys, twelve, thirteen hours on the dark murky water to reach the Indian settlements where balls of rubber and nothing to eat other than piranha fish and an occasional banana await him. And Adam can’t take care of his child three afternoons a week?

  30

  On Friday, Caro walks from work to pick up Omar at his school. The day after New Year’s, she’d gone to Lord & Taylor and bought herself two pairs of pants, a cashmere turtleneck, and two tailored shirts. At work this week, everyone made a big fuss about how terrific she looks. Emboldened by the compliments, she went to a Tribeca hair salon where a stylist named Rolando examined her features, holding a sheet of cardboard first over her eyes and then under her chin. “Time, sweetie,” he instructed, “to lose the blow dryer and the Miss School Marm pageboy.” He cut Caro’s hair in long layers, smeared a gooey gel throughout, and then scrunched it up with his fingers so it curled wildly around Caro’s face in a way, he pronounced, that made her look fetchingly reckless.

  Without the nighttime eating, she sleeps deeply, then bounds out of bed. Instead of waking to a disturbing memory of the previous night’s debacle, her gut distended and gassy, she wakes hungry, looking forward to her morning cereal and fruit, to her day. With the extra time gained with her carefree hair, she has taken to walking to work, across Central Park and then north along Third Avenue to her school. Instead of averting her gaze and sucking in her gut, she walks with her eyes on the trees, the bare limbs delicate as dancers, the small patches of snow clutching the exposed roots, the birds who winter in the park darting from branch to branch.

  Caro stands outside Omar’s school, watching the children coming through the door, some of them racing toward their mothers or babysitters with backpacks half-fastened and clothes askew, others exiting slowly, their faces pale, their eyes narrowing at the winter light.

  Omar neither runs nor drags. His backpack is zippered, the catches fastened.

  Next month, he will turn seven. He touches her arm, and she leans down to kiss his forehead.

  “Pizza or ice cream, pal?” Caro asks.

  “No thank you, Auntie Caro. I’m not hungry. It’s Katie’s birthday, so we had cupcakes just before dismissal. Can we go straight to the museum?”

  At the museum, they go to the exhibit of miniature poison dart frogs. The button-sized creatures are so brilliantly colored—royal blue, Kelly green, sunflower yellow—it is hard to believe they were not painted. Transfixed, Caro and Omar stand for a long time, hand in hand, watching the tiny frogs in their terrarium universe.

  It is dark outside by the time they leave. Still hand in hand, they walk up Central Park West, passersby, Caro imagines, assuming they are mother and son. When they reach the house, it is already past six. Her mother is in the kitchen, a chef’s apron over her clothes, the sleeves of her white shirt rolled up to her elbows as she checks the roasting chickens.

  “Did Eva leave already?” Omar asks.

  “Yes. But there’s a surprise upstairs for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your mommy came home early. She’s in her room.”

  Omar goes upstairs to see Rachida. Myra sets the oven timer and hands Caro a glass of wine. They head into the parlor, Myra settling onto the couch and Caro onto one of the Corbusier chairs. “Did you two have a good time?”

  “We went to see the poison dart frogs. They’re so gorgeous. And then, of course, we had to see the dinosaurs on the fourth floor.”

  “Adam lived in that museum too. Do you remember? Until he moved, your father took him every weekend. It was one of the few things they enjoyed doing together.”

  “Where was I?”

  “You were busy all the time with soccer games and hockey practice and sleepovers.” Myra smiles. “I hope I’m not staring at you. I’m still getting used to this new you.”

  “Me too.” Caro swivels on the chair in quarter circles. She can sense her mother waiting to see if she wants to say anything about her new, thin self, and then registering that she does not.

  “Actually, there’s something else I’d like to talk with you about.” Myra pauses while Caro stills the chair. “It’s Eva. She’s been acting strangely. She’s developed this aversion to Adam. She refuses to speak with him. I can’t go into details, but she’s shared with me some things that have made me think she has the potential to be quite unhinged.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just don’t think she’s very stable. I talked with Adam, and we agreed that we’re not going to have Eva pick up Omar anymore, that we’re going to have her stick to the housekeeping.”

  Caro looks at her mother, at the worry in her eyes. She has seen her mother troubled before, mostly about Adam, on rare occasions following a late-night call from a patient, but she has never before questioned her mother’s judgment—worried that she is in over her head. It leaves her uneasy, and then filled with guilt to be doubting her mother’s reasoning.

  “I think the emotional intensity of our family is too much for her. With only the housekeeping, she’ll be a bit more buffered.” Myra curls her legs under her. “I’ve tried three times to take her to see a therapist, but each time she has missed the appointment. She says she doesn’t want to talk to a stranger.”

  The oven timer goes off and her mother stands. “Today, I made an appointment for her with Meyers. Sometimes a little medication can help a lot.”

  “And what if she doesn’t go to that appointment?”

  Omar and Rachida are coming down the stairs. Her mother puts a finger to her lips.

  31

  Caro waits until the first week of February before calling Rachida.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “What’s the matter? Is something the matter with your mother? Your father?”

  “They’re fine. But I want to talk with you alone.”

  Saturday will be Omar’s birthday party, which Myra has suggested they have at the house. Rachida has found a magician who will do gross seven-year-old-boy tricks in the garden: water and slime and crawling critters. Afterward, Adam will show Laurel and Hardy movie clips, and they will end with cake and ice cream. Caro has agreed to help out.

  “How about after Omar’s party?” Rachida suggests. “Omar will just want to play with his new toys.”

  The party goes without a hitch. No one gets hit or hurt, no one throws up or spills his juice or cries. Unlike some of the magicians Caro has seen at children’s events over the years, creepy guys with short fuses who are annoyed when the kids act like kids, crowding close to look and calling out their ideas about the tricks behind the magic, this magician seems to actually like the children.

  Watching the magician, Eva laughs along with the boys. Afterward, she helps Caro set the table for the cake and ice cream while Myra, Adam, and Rachida take the boys upstairs to watch the Laurel and Hardy clips. Eva studies the cake Myra has made for Omar, with a T. rex drawn in colored icing on top, jellybeans for eyes and shaved chocolate for scales.

  “I have never seen such a wonderful cake,” she tells Caro.

  Caro thinks back to her own birthday parties, the usual events at bowling alleys and gymnastic studios with bakery sheet cakes. It wasn’t until she returned to New York after college that her mother began baking Caro’s birthday cakes, wh
ich she has done every year since, making up for the lost time, she’s told Caro, when she lacked the confidence to do things herself.

  “What were your birthdays like?” Caro asks.

  Eva looks down at the dinosaur paper plates she is setting around the farm table. “Some of the girls at school have parties for their birthdays. But not my sister and me. My mother always make plantains on my birthday, because that is my favorite food, and she buy me new shoes, but I did not tell my father she buy them. I have to say they are from my grandmother.”

  The children troop down the stairs. Rachida and Adam herd them to the table while Myra lights the candles on the cake. Rachida lowers the lights and Adam starts the video camera. Rachida holds Omar’s shoulders as his grandmother places the cake before him, his face aglow in the candlelight as everyone sings “Happy Birthday.”

  Standing next to her brother, Caro looks for Eva, but she is nowhere to be seen.

  32

  After the children have left and Caro and Eva, who reappeared when the cake was over, have helped Myra clean up, Caro gathers her things to leave.

  “I’ll walk you,” Rachida says so matter-of-factly it alarms Caro to think how natural the habit of deception must be to her sister-in-law. “I could use some air.”

  Omar is seated at the farm table, building one of his new Legos with Eva. Caro leans over to kiss him. “See you Friday,” she says.

  They head south along Central Park West, past the doormen hailing taxis and ribbing one another, the bare trees in the park across the avenue ghostly in the falling dark. Caro waits in the quiet between her sister-in-law and herself—a silence that after so many years of knowing each other is usually comfortable but is now weighted with what must be said.

  At Ninetieth Street, Caro tells herself, she will begin. When they reach Eighty-eighth Street, she renegotiates with herself: Eighty-sixth Street, at Eighty-sixth Street, she’ll begin.

  At Eighty-sixth Street she points to the benches along the park wall. “Are you too cold to sit so we can talk?”