Tinderbox

by Lisa Gornick

Rachida raises her eyebrows, surprised, Caro suspects, that she would suggest the park side of the street after dark.

  “It’s only six o’clock. There are dozens of people out. Two doormen standing here looking out.”

  They cross and sit. Sit for what feels like a long time, both of them facing the street, their legs stretched in front of them, while Caro’s thoughts go in circles: Does she really need to tell Rachida that she knows about Layla, is it truly necessary? But what about Adam, how can she keep this from him? Couldn’t she wait and tell Rachida some other time?

  “I know”—Rachida leans over her legs, gripping her knees—“that you know about Layla. She told me. About the call. It took me several days to convince her that it hadn’t been me on the line.”

  Caro hugs her arms, blinking in the dark.

  “I’m sorry you heard that,” Rachida says. “It must have been shocking.”

  “Layla seems to specialize in shocking.”

  Rachida looks up.

  “The stoning by her brothers. She told me about it the time I walked her to the bus.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “How her brothers almost killed her when she said she wanted to go to medical school.”

  Rachida hoists a foot onto the bench so she is sitting with her knee level with her chin. It is the way a teenager might sit, though there is nothing youthful in her expression.

  “I’m in love with her.”

  Caro nods.

  “She is very brilliant, the most brilliant woman I’ve ever known. But very vulnerable.”

  “I can imagine. After what she’s been through.”

  “That was a crock of shit. She has two older sisters, no brothers. One is a lawyer, the other’s an architect. Her father is a professor of surgery. He planned for her to be a doctor since she was in diapers.”

  Caro feels a flush spread over her cheeks, as though she has been slapped. “So how did she get the scar on her arm?”

  “She was in a motorbike accident a few years ago.”

  A bus pulls in front of them, exuding its belchy fumes. Two elderly women, one wearing a turban hat, the other wearing a hat with a pom-pom at the top, descend. They hold each other’s arm as they cross the street.

  Caro waits for the bus to leave. “Is she the first?”

  “First what?”

  “Woman you’ve been with? Infidelity with Adam?”

  “Yes. Yes to both. And I’m the first woman for her too. At the beginning we were like two kids, unsure even of how to make love.”

  Caro fights the impulse to snap at Rachida that she’s heard enough details already. “What are you going to do about Adam?”

  “I don’t know. He lives so much of the time in his own world, I don’t really even feel that guilty about him. I feel guilty at the thought of our separating and putting Omar through all of that.”

  “Does Adam have someone else?”

  “I wish. That would make things easier. But there’s so much going on all the time in his head, I don’t think he has the mental space.”

  Somehow the conversation has gone off track. Learning that Layla’s story about the stoning was made up, a lie, feels, in some ways, more of a violation than hearing her pathetic panting over the phone.

  “I don’t want to judge you. How you lead your life is up to you. But you can’t expect me to keep this kind of secret from my brother. Believe me, I wish I hadn’t answered your phone. But if you don’t tell Adam, I’ll have to.”

  Rachida lowers her leg. A second bus is pulling up to the stop in front of their bench. “I know,” she says, raising her voice over the bus’s whooshing halt. “But I need a little time.”

  They cross the street, hugging quickly at the corner as they say goodbye.

  Caro is unlocking her door before she realizes that Rachida, in fact, has told her nothing: does she intend to end it with Layla? To end it with Adam? And how much time is a little time?

  For the first time since their return from Uri’s funeral, Caro feels the urge to put something in her mouth, but now, her key still in hand, the awareness of how much worse food would make her feel overpowers the urge. Inside, she stretches out on her couch, the room still dark, wondering if her father had debated telling her mother about Cheryl or Shirley or whatever the woman’s name had been. Or had both phone calls—from Cheryl or Shirley or whatever her name had been and from Layla—been fated from the start, the impossibility, as her mother would say, of an equilibrium ever lasting, the inevitability of entropy, tumult, and decay.

  33

  Myra plays the Bach Invention Number 8 in F Major. It is the most difficult of the two-part inventions she has learned thus far and her favorite because the challenge of following the patterns between left and right hands, the alternations between legato and staccato, the way the melody moves across hands, does not allow her thoughts to wander. With the Schumann Kinderszenen she played at the beginning of her practice, the left hand by now automatic, she found herself wondering why Eva had disappeared when the lights were lowered and she carried the cake with the lit candles over to place in front of Omar’s sweet, excited face.

  Before Christmas, Myra had assumed that what has happened with Eva is a kind of regression: having lost her mother so young, having been left unprotected with a brutal father, the girl is starved for mothering. Watching Myra with Omar and, to some extent, with Caro and Adam too set off this ravenous wish to be mothered herself.

  Since Christmas, though, Myra has found herself feeling confused, feeling that behind her formulation, she understands nothing. She knows that she should go back to Dreis and try to sort it out, but she is in a state where she cannot even articulate what is bothering her. All she knows is that she has begun to worry that the girl’s troubles run deeper than she thought. When she told Eva that Adam would be taking over the Tuesday pickup so he could spend more time with Omar, Eva had looked at her suspiciously, with the immediate, unguarded perception of another’s intent that Myra has seen in her most disturbed patients, in vicious animals, and in the unhappiest of children.

  Myra turns off the piano light and heads downstairs. Eva is at the farm table eating a piece of the leftover birthday cake.

  “I put stain stick on the tablecloth where the children left marks.”

  “Thank you.” Myra points at Eva’s plate. “You missed the cake before.”

  Eva digs her fork into the butter cream icing and licks her lips. “It is so good. I cannot believe you make it!”

  Myra pulls out a chair and sits across from Eva. She folds her hands on the table. “Eva, we need to talk.”

  “I do something wrong?” Eva glances at the kitchen drawer where she told Myra she couldn’t find the matches Myra had sent her to get. When Myra went to look herself, the matches were, as always, at the front of the drawer.

  “I want to take you to a doctor who will give you some medicine to help you feel less nervous all the time.”

  “I am not nervous.”

  “Less bothered by thoughts of the past.”

  “I do not want to talk with anyone else. I go to synagogue Friday nights, I go to my class on Tuesday and Thursday. I never bother anyone.”

  “I’m not saying you’re bothering anyone. I want you to feel better.”

  “I bother you when I talk in your office. You cannot eat your lunch. It is very bad of me. But now I stop.”

  “I’ve made an appointment for you to see a doctor I often work with. The appointment is this Tuesday. He won’t ask you to tell him a lot of details about your past. Just how you are feeling now.”

  Myra looks at Eva’s empty plate. She wants to offer Eva another slice of cake. Maybe all the girl needs is another slice of cake, a glass of milk, and to be tucked into bed.

  “I have to insist.”

  Eva touches the chain around her neck. She goes to the sink and washes her plate.

  After Eva leaves, Myra putters around the kitchen, putting away the silver cake server and the
box of birthday candles. She feels terrible. Eva did not make her say it, which she’d been prepared to do if needed—that if she does not go to see Meyers, she will have to leave. Instead, Eva looked at Myra as though she’d been asked to gouge out an eye.

  Rachida unlocks the front door. Without saying a word, she goes upstairs.

  On the corkboard is the schedule Myra made last June for Eva. Myra takes it down. Behind it is the editorial about the misguided Smokey Bear policy she clipped from the paper the summer Adam and Rachida and Omar took the rafting trip down the burning Salmon River: the snuffing out of the small, natural fires without which the overgrown underbrush becomes perfect tinder for out-of-control burns. She had read the article at the table on her deck, nibbling her sandwich, a map of Idaho beside her. A lifetime ago, when she lived in this house by herself, without Adam and Rachida and Omar and Eva, not always tracking their enthusiasms and moods.

  34

  On Tuesday, Myra takes Eva to see Jim Meyers. She sits in the consultation room with Eva while Meyers gently asks Eva about troubling thoughts, sleep patterns, preoccupations, hearing voices that other people don’t hear, seeing things that other people can’t see. Eva stares past the doctor’s face, saying no to each question. Afterward, he asks Eva to sit for a moment in the waiting room while he talks with Myra.

  “Obviously, she’s very guarded. From what you’ve told me and the way she acted, I think there’s a lot going on that she’s not saying. I’d like to give her a low-dose antipsychotic and see how she does. We’ll give her one pill at night so she’s not too drowsy during the days. If she tolerates one pill, we can try doubling the dose.”

  “I think we’re going to have a compliance issue.”

  “So give it to her yourself. Just make sure you watch her swallow.”

  Myra gives Eva the first pill with a glass of water.

  “I don’t need water. I can swallow pills without water.” Eva puts the pill in her mouth and makes a swallowing motion. She smiles at Myra, keeping her mouth closed.

  The following evening, Myra goes to get the pill vial from the kitchen cupboard, but it is no longer there.

  “I put the pills on the table next to my bed,” Eva says when Myra asks what happened to the vial. “It is easier for me to take the pill after I get into bed.” Eva smiles sweetly. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget.”

  35

  Dressed in a blue kaftan and white flip-flops, Ursula is in the garden of the San Isidro house, inspecting the peonies the ugly, brooding gardener put in this year when her cell phone, on the table next to the coffee her husband left halfdrunk before leaving for his Saturday-morning golf game, rings.

  She stubs her toe as she rushes to get her phone, cursing under her breath and rubbing the China red nail while she listens to Myra’s concerns about the girl whose name had slipped Ursula’s mind until Myra says it now. Eva.

  “Sweetheart, how terrible for you. And I am entirely to blame.” The polish is chipped on a corner of the toenail. She doesn’t have the color herself. Now she will have to drive all the way to Miraflores to get it repaired.

  “Perhaps New York is too much for her,” Myra says. “Certainly our family is. I can’t think of anywhere she could go except back to you.”

  “Of course, if she is not a help to you, send her back.” Ursula mouths Goddamnit. Well, Alicia will have to figure it out, will have to manage her maid, Marina, who will undoubtedly be unhappy to find Eva returned. Over the last few months, Alicia has given Ursula an earful about this Marina: emboldened by her plan to marry her boyfriend, Marina has turned from sassy to brazen. Twice, Alicia has caught her washing the foyer tiles with a bucket of filthy water, too lazy to fetch clean water. When Alicia chastised her, Marina let her know who was boss by telephoning in sick the next morning for herself and the two other girls with whom she shares a room in a boardinghouse. “All three of you?” Alicia asked, certain she could hear the others laughing in the background. “We are so sorry,” Marina said. “We all ate spoiled anticuchos last night.”

  “Does she clean or is she one of those girls who just moves around the dirt?”

  With her cousin’s question, Myra realizes that Ursula has let herself absorb the outlines of what she’s been telling her without actually listening. And doesn’t Ursula recall that she herself recommended Eva as someone Alicia said was one of the most thorough cleaners she’d ever had? As she sometimes does with a distracted patient, Myra lowers the register of her voice and slows the pace. “The problem is not with her housekeeping. The problem is Eva herself. She’s a disturbed young lady.”

  “You mean cuckoo?”

  “Yes.”

  Her cousin, the psychologist, wants to send the cuckoo girl back to her? “You can’t take her to get some help?”

  “I have tried. Several times. She is not willing. I think the best course is to return her to a more familiar environment where she might do better.”

  Ursula looks at her watch. Her husband will be gone for another hour. Twice last month, she screwed the ugly gardener in the garden shed. Dirt under his fingernails, but an enormous prick. And he likes her tits. She is feeling fat this morning, which makes her less in the mood, but she might feel less like eating if she took him in there again.

  “Sweetheart,” Ursula says, “you can’t keep her just until May? What is there for her here? None of the synagogues here will welcome her. Alicia is going to Tel Aviv in April. She can look for something for the girl there. It is only three months. What can happen in three months?”

  36

  On the first day of March, a snowstorm blankets the city. Rachida wakes to see snow piled like meringue on her windowsill. She has, of course, seen snow before, here in New York and lots in Detroit, but it still leaves her filled with wonder that everything can be covered with something so clean and white. Then she remembers Layla and everything feels gray and sooty again.

  She goes down to the kitchen. Myra is on the phone, measuring coffee as she talks. After she hangs up, she turns to Rachida. “Schools everywhere are closed. Caro wants to take Omar sledding in the park. She thinks there are some old sleds in the basement.”

  The garden is entirely white. Snow is swirling in eddies. Nearly three weeks have passed since she and Caro had the talk about Layla. Although Caro had not set a deadline, Rachida can feel the clock ticking. Now, though, the deadline does not feel as much about telling Adam as about deciding what will come next, after the end of her fellowship in late June, when they return to Detroit in July.

  The problem is not Layla. Being in love with Layla has never blinded her to the awareness that a life with Layla would be more maddening than a life with Adam. Without the built-in limit of the fellowship, she probably would not have allowed things to go as far as they have. And if Layla were honest with herself, Rachida feels certain, she would admit the same. Layla has no intention of spending her life with a woman—especially someone as plebeian as Rachida. She’ll marry an Arab banker or a sheik. She’ll live somewhere with servants and a driver and round-the-clock nannies to bathe the children and entertain them during the long, hot afternoons.

  As has happened too frequently since her father’s death, Rachida feels herself on the verge of tears. No, the problem is not Layla.

  37

  Caro arrives as the snowfall is ending. As a kid, she and her friends had sledded all the hills in Riverside Park and Central Park—their favorite, the steep one at 116th Street, the Hudson River on the horizon, bales of hay arranged to prevent sledders from crashing into the trees.

  It has been years since she’s been in the basement of her mother’s house. Behind the stacked air conditioners and the bike she always intended to take, she and Omar find two wooden sleds, hers well-worn, Adam’s hardly used.

  “Would it be okay if I ask Eva to come along?” Caro whispers to her mother after she has carried the sleds onto the front stoop. “She’s probably never been sledding.”

  Myra glances at Eva, leaning ove
r the ironing board. Caro imagines her mother debating the pros and cons. Would inviting Eva to join them send a wrong message about Eva’s position in the family? It would be cruel, though, to deprive the girl of the fun.

  “Sure. Go right ahead.”

  Eva claps her hands when Caro asks her. “I saw that once in a movie. Children going down a hill on their sleds, with a dog running behind them.” She unplugs the iron and follows Omar and Caro up the stairs to change into warm clothes.

  On the third floor, Omar knocks on the closed door of the music room while Eva continues up to her room. “Daddy, Daddy, open up.”

  “Give me a minute,” Adam calls out.

  “Auntie Caro’s going to take Eva and me sledding. Please, can’t you come?”

  Eva stops midway up the stairs. She twists around to look at the music room door.

  “Okay, I’ll be right out.”

  Caro helps Omar find his snow pants and a heavy sweater. She adjusts the suspender straps, then heads downstairs to gather hats and gloves while Omar goes to tell Eva he is ready.

  When Omar comes back down, Caro and Adam are in the front hall pulling on their boots. “Eva’s not coming,” Omar says. “She’s feeling sick.”

  Adam catches Caro’s eye. He clears his throat, then turns back to his boots.

  Outside, there are children trooping toward the park, plastic saucers and red sleds and trash-can lids in tow. Caro looks up at the top-floor window of the room that is now Eva’s. The curtain is cracked.

  38

  Slowly, Winston Churchill at La Mamounia has crept into the screenplay. A rich man after his Iquitos ventures, Moishe, now middle-aged, has become a regular at the hotel for lunch. On several occasions, he has seen Churchill walking in the gardens. Then, in the winter of 1937, they meet on the terrace. Moishe invites Churchill for a drink, over which he tells him about the years he spent in the Amazon, while Churchill talks about his fear for the Jews of Germany and Austria, who are already escaping to England. The main story is now, in essence, a flashback that occurs during this conversation.

  Although Rachida does not roll her eyes when Adam tells her about Churchill, she might as well have. “I thought Frank Lloyd Wright was in the movie—that he and your Moishe guy were on the same boat.”