She looked up at Karim. "We haven't eaten yet," she said plaintively.
She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, but to her astonishment, Karim burst out laughing.
He led her by the hand back up the hall, past a small study she hadn't noticed on the way down, into the neat, smartly-appointed kitchenette. Still chuckling, he reached into a cupboard for a pair of wine glasses.
"On the transport that brought me home from 'Nam," he said, "a story went the rounds." He set the glasses on a small copper tray. "According to the story, a soldier leaning on the rail of another, earlier, transport sees his wife waving to him in the crowd below as the ship moves into the dock. He yells down at her, 'F.F.', and she screams back 'E.F.' And they keep screeching back and forth, 'F.F.' and 'E.F.', until an officer standing nearby demands to know what all the shouting's about." Karim wrapped a dishtowel around the icy bottle and began easing out the cork. "And the GI turns to him and says, 'Well, you see, sir, she wants to eat first...' "
The cork came out of the bottle with a satisfying pop, relieving Beth of the necessity for any comment. Karim put the bottle back in the ice bucket, and she followed him into the living room with the tray. He poured, smiled, and offered a Turkish toast.
"Serefe!"
Beth smiled and clinked his glass. The pale liquid hissed on her tongue. "Mmm-mm-mm. Sweet yet dry." Her mouth twisted wryly. "Like me."
Karim leaned towards her. "Beth, please don't—”
She gestured towards the bedroom. "I'd liked to have had a...what should I call it? A frolic? I truly would, Karim. But I'm just not the frolicking sort. You should have someone like Georgina here with you, not me. Her relationship with Reuben Gerber is proceeding at a gallop, and here you are, mincing along in a two-step with me."
Karim raised his eyebrows. "Two-step maybe, but mincing? I certainly hope not. Besides, judging from his appearance, Gerber doesn't have as much time as I do."
Beth laughed. Then, looking down into her glass, watching the bubbles rise to the surface and explode soundlessly, inexorably, one after the other into the air, she sobered. "Time," she murmured. "That's what it's all about, really. The passage of time."
"How do you mean, Beth?"
"Look, let's have our lunch first, that won't take long. Telling you what I mean—trying to tell you—might."
Karim apologized for the awkwardness of having to eat off their knees. "One of the things I like least about this new job of mine are the endless buffets I'm expected to attend. I'll get a table soon," he promised. He complimented Beth on the grape-garnished curried chicken salad.
"I can't take the credit for it. Mother always makes too much food for our Sunday suppers together, then insists I take the leftovers home. 'Too many calories, dear,' she always says, but she never stops to think that maybe she's keeping slim at my expense."
Karim eyed her trim figure critically. "Now that you mention it, I have noticed a tendency to waddle."
"Oh, Lord, did I sound as if I were carping?" She frowned. "Why are family relationships always so...so muddled? Why do we insist on trailing so much emotional baggage along behind us? We never seem to outgrow it—it just keeps piling up, mothers to daughters, fathers to sons. Some of it good, of course—the kind fond memories are made of—but some of it, too much of it, isn't."
She sighed. "That's part of what I was trying to say. It's not that they don't like you, Karim; they just don't want me to be different. They'd feel the same about Prince Charles."
"Is it because I'm married, Beth? Is that the problem?"
Beth flushed. "I chose a bad example. Besides, I told them you were getting a divorce. No, the problem is that I'm no longer the predictable and compliant little Beth everyone has come to expect." She laughed. "When my mother's annoyed with me she always uses my full name. Why, I bet she's called me Elizabeth more times since Ralph died than in my entire preceding life!" Her expression grew pained. "I'm not the noble, self-sacrificing widow Dana thinks her father's memory deserves, either."
"In other words, she expects you to be a living monument."
"Yes. Or, as an alternative, committing whatever it was Hindu widows did when they threw themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres."
"Suttee. It was supposed to be a willing gesture of loyalty and devotion, but I suspect most of them did it because their families expected it of them. It's still done, by the way, illegal or not."
Beth shuddered. "How ghastly!"
"Yes, indeed," Karim agreed, "but judging from what I saw last night, I don't think you need worry about your son boosting you up into the flames."
Beth fell silent.
Concerned, Karim leaned towards her and placed a hand on her knee. "Beth? Isn't that so?"
"Yes, of course, but—" She tried to smile. "Andy's given me my walking papers."
"Walking papers? I don't understand—"
"At the clinic. Remember my telling you about the counseling I've been doing there? Well, the state has decided I lack the proper qualifications, so it became a choice between me and the funding. What hurt was that Andy didn't get around to telling me until after the clinic began searching for my replacement."
Karim took her hands in his. "Oh, Beth, I'm so sorry. I know how much it has meant to you."
"Apparently Andy assumed I was doing the counseling to help him. Oh, I can't really blame him. Haven't I always been good old mom, ready to fill in at a moment's notice?"
She began ticking off the various functions she served her son and his family on her fingers. "Baby-sitter, chauffeur, pick-up service, hospice volunteer, shoulder to cry on—" She looked up at Karim. "It never occurred to him I might be doing it for me. And I'm good at it, Karim! The last thing Theresa and Nina and Gladys need is a bright young thing telling them what's best for them. Nine times out of ten they already know what's best. They just need help in achieving it."
"Surely you can talk to him about it."
"I can stay on as an aide, but I had to shame Andy into that, and I'm not sure it will work. I don't have the proper background, you see. You wouldn't believe how patronizing some of the consultants the clinic brings in can be."
"You do have options," Karim said briskly. "How many college credits have you got?"
She looked startled. "I don't really know. I was at Peabody for two and a half years, but that was a long time ago. Practically the ice age in Andy's view—not that he actually said as much, but I could tell."
"Andy's field is medical, not academic. He's probably unaware how much field experience is worth these days, especially in social work. Let me look up your record, and then I'll have a talk with the department head. You could start this fall, and—”
"Karim, please!" Beth put her empty plate on the low table next to her chair and got to her feet. She twisted her hands together. "You expect too much of me."
He rose, took her hands in his and gently unfurled her fingers. "No," he said gently. "You expect too little of yourself."
"I'm too old! Mother would think me ridiculous."
"Old? You're only forty-nine, and you look ten years younger! If qualifying yourself for counseling took two, three, even four years, you'd still have at least twelve active, useful working years to enjoy."
Beth's hopeful expression at hearing this was short-lived. "Mother would think me ridiculous," she repeated stubbornly. "As for Dana—" She shook her head.
Karim gripped her shoulders. "Damn it, Beth, you've got to learn to resist the tyranny of the weak!"
"Dana's anything but weak!" she cried.
"She's weak if she can't allow you a life other than the one she's defined for you. She'll end up crippling you, Beth—all for your own good, of course."
Bitterness harshened his voice. Beth suspected he was thinking as much of his own daughter as hers. She looked up into his eyes. "Do you really think I can?"
"I know you can." He reached out to trace the curve of her cheek. The broad pads of his strong fingers were
reassuringly warm; his smile quickened her breathing. He leaned to place a kiss on her forehead. "Besides," he said, easing his hands down her arms to grasp her hands in his, "you have a lot of influence in high places." His voice was deliberately insinuating.
"My God!" Beth said with mock despair, "it's Merrill Longyear all over again."
They grinned at each other.
Beth had never felt so at ease, so right, with another person. She knew he had shadowed corners in his life, but she accepted that. Her own life could, she supposed, be considered numbingly ordinary. She knew there was much she had never done, never known, never even imagined.
But whatever Karim's transgressions might be, she doubted they were on the order of those cheerily chatted about on daytime television talk shows. He was a serious man, a kind man, a good man...
Looking at him, suddenly conscious of the shared heat of their bodies, she felt a rush of desire. A sexy man. She eased her hands from his, turned away, and tried to collect herself.
She heard the scratch of a match. A coil of smoke from his cigarillo wafted over her shoulder to her nostrils, reminding her of the picnic they had shared on Lake Waramaug.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and turned back. "I love you, Karim.” In for a penny. "I know that now."
He moved swiftly toward her. His sherry-colored eyes glittered with green lights. "Oh, my darling girl—"
She threw up her hands. "No! Don't! I can't think straight when you hold me. It's taken me so long to be sure—oh, I knew you attracted me, I've known that from that first night at Polly's—but the love I feel for you..." She broke off; her trembling fingers plucked at her wide red collar. "You see, with Ralph, I was a girl. He was the first man I knew well; he's the only man I've ever known intimately. He protected me; in his way he cherished me." She paused and tilted her head thoughtfully. "Yes, cherished. Like a pretty little spaniel."
"Oh, Beth, surely—"
"No, I'm right about that, Karim. The fact is, most of the men I know look down on their wives. Not consciously, perhaps, but.…" She shrugged. "Tell me, have you ever attended a class in obedience training?"
Karim looked bewildered. "For wives?"
Beth laughed. "For dogs, silly. You know, where they're taught to sit and come and stay and heel and fetch? Well, that's how I felt a lot of the time. Fetch the dry-cleaning, come home in time to prepare a nutritious family meal, sit quietly at drink time to receive the events of his surgical day and, above all, stay in line. Dogs get rewarded with biscuits; I got taken out to dinner every couple of weeks. But with you…. Where Ralph saw only limitations, you see possibilities. I don't know if I have the courage to follow through on them, but I bless you for it."
She suddenly threw her arms wide. "Hey everybody, look at me!" she exulted. "I've got potential!"
Karim stubbed out his half-smoked cigarillo and reached for her. This time she didn't resist.
"You know I'm going to Turkey this summer."
She looked at him, crestfallen. She had forgotten.
"It was part of my deal with the trustees."
"Yes, now I remember. How long will you be gone?"
"Six weeks."
Six weeks. She had been thinking a month at most. She hid her face in his shirt front.
"Come with me, Beth."
She looked up at him. Did he really mean it? She searched his earnest eyes. "To Turkey?' It seemed an incredibly exotic and seductive notion.
"Yes!"
"But you and Val—your divorce.…"
"I know, the divorce won't be final until October, but we're adults, Beth. It's no one's business but ours."
His expression was stern. Beth tried to rise to the implied challenge. "It's not quite that easy, Karim. I have my job at the clinic, responsibilities at River Haven—”
"You're being replaced at the clinic: you've already expressed doubt about remaining as an aide, and if you're going to qualify yourself as a counselor you'll have to cut back on your other commitments to meet the demands of your course work. You'll just be doing it sooner rather than later."
"But my mother—"
"She's in good health and still driving, isn't she? Other family members are easily available in a crisis, and Andy's a doctor, remember."
She nodded. No one has the right to demand the sacrifice of another's life to meet their needs. One of the women she counseled had said that. Gladys Flexner? Magda Foley? Whoever it was, it applied as much to her situation as it had to Nina Balkin's.
She felt like the squirrel she had braked for on the way to Karim's condo. Faced with imminent disaster, it had turned first this way then that, addled by conflicting possibilities, escaping only by a last-minute twitch of its floaty tail. But surely no disaster threatened here.
Sensing her irresolution, Karim pressed his advantage. "You can't imagine how astonishing Istanbul's skyline is: we'll take a ferry up the Bosphorus at dusk and watch the roofs of the mosques float past, some flashing copper-green, some bright gold, and stop off at a waterside restaurant for grilled eggplant and stuffed mussels. We'll walk the narrow cobbled streets above the Golden Horn, and sip tea under the trees behind the Covered Bazaar."
"The Covered Bazaar," Beth breathed. "Rugs and spices and brass.…"
Karim nodded. "That, and more."
"And do Dervishes still whirl in those wide white skirts?"
"Oh, yes," he smiled, tilting his head to one side and spreading his arms wide. "But they're in Konya, across the Sea of Marmara, to the southeast. And east of Konya is the Ishak Pasa Sarayi, a carved stone palace built in the 1700's by feudal lords who controlled the lucrative caravan trade on the Silk Road from its high escarpments. My first sight of it was against a thunderous sky, rimmed with sunlight." He shook his head in remembered wonder. "My mother's people claim it as theirs."
"Kurdish palaces, mosques and Dervishes," Beth murmured. "It makes my head whirl just to think of it. Oh, Karim, do you suppose I really could go?"
He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. "You can if you want to."
His touch was dangerous. She pulled gently away to escape it. "My responsibilities.…" This time even she sensed a lack of conviction in her voice.
"A trip can't absolve you of your responsibilities but it may make them easier to take up again." He laughed. "The Kurds have a saying: a pint should not be found wanting because it is not a quart—it's doing the best it can.
"I never thought of it that way," she murmured. "I guess I was thinking in terms of that old Beatles album, the Magical Mystery Tour."
"Only children look for magic, Beth, and they end up disillusioned more often than not."
Beth studied Karim's somber face. "No one can accuse you of trying to sweep a girl off her feet," she said.
He looked stricken. "Oh, Beth, I didn't mean—"
"You did just right." She took a deep breath and smiled a tremulous smile. "Make the arrangements; I'll break the news to my family." She hesitated. "They won't like you any the better for it, you know."
"Yes, I know," he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Which reminds me of another Kurdish saying to the effect that a wolf remains a wolf even if it has not yet eaten your sheep."
"So?" Beth prompted.
He grinned and stuck his hands in his pockets. "So I guess they'll just have to take their chances with me, won't they?"
Chapter Fourteen
Clara rushed back from the window to the table where her adult family members were finishing their after-dinner coffee. "Grammy, you have to come out with me and see the party."
"The party?"
"The fairy queen's birthday party! It started last night, didn't it. Mommy?"
Beth was perplexed. "It only started last night? I never heard of a birthday party that didn't start and end all on the same day"
She looked at Housa and Andy, hoping for enlightenment, but they just grinned at her. Daisy's sigh of profound boredom earned a whispered rebuke from h
er mother. "You were three yourself once, Daze."
"The fairy queen is very, very old," Clara said, her brow puckering with earnestness, "so it takes a very long time to celibate."
"Celebrate, Clara," her father corrected solemnly.
Clara grabbed Beth's hand. "Come see!"
Smiling, Beth allowed herself to be tugged out into the evening dusk, along the flagstone path out behind the house to the fern garden.
"There!"
Beth followed the direction of Clara's chubby finger. Against the granite out-croppings she saw tiny points of flashing light. Fireflies. They were the first she'd seen that season. More than she'd seen in many a year.
"Oh, my. Look at all those birthday candles! Why do you suppose they go on and off like that, Clara?"
"Because if they didn't," she replied importantly, "they'd get too hot and burn the fairies' fingers."
"Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"
They stood hand and hand in the gathering darkness, enchanted by the twinkling display. "Don't you wish you could see them?" Beth whispered.
"Mommy can. She drew their pictures."
"Ouch!" Beth slapped at her arm. "The mosquitoes are here, too. I just felt a stinger."
"Not stingers, Grammy, swords! They're the queen's guards."
"Are they? Well, then, I think they're telling us we've overstayed our welcome. Why don't we go in so you can show me Mommy's drawings?"
At Clara's clamorous and Beth's more restrained urging, Housa produced a portfolio. "They're only sketches," she said as she opened it. "Ideas more than anything else...for a book someday." She gave a self-deprecating shrug. "Maybe."
"What do you mean 'maybe?' " Beth said as she leafed slowly through large sheets covered with fine penciled lines. Ethereal creatures clothed in gossamer gowns inhabited ferny dells patrolled by smartly uniformed strutting sentinels with monocles and incredibly long and pointy noses.
"These must be the mosquito guards Clara told me about!"
"Yes. I wasn't sure whether to make them sinister or self-important, so I decided on a mix of the two."
"Housa, the story idea is charming, and your drawings are wonderful. Look at the queen! She's so pleased with herself."
And Be My Love Page 18