Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

by Jessica Soffer

  And our daughter was dead. I hadn’t known that either. Damn Joseph for never telling me, but that wasn’t all. I was the worst mother in the world. To not know. To not have any sense at all that she was gone. It had never even crossed my mind. I’d never felt it in my gut.

  My hands were shaking. My back was sweating. I was freezing. I was broiling. My stomach made a horrible, wailing noise, the sound of death in the walls. I wanted to lie down on the floor and catch my breath. But the sadness would have to wait. All I could muster was anger.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t. I can’t.” The phrase fell like sneezes.

  “Can’t what, doll?” Dottie said, and she began to get up but I stopped her, looked her right in the face.

  “It smells horrible in here,” I said. “It’s making me sick.”

  The first thing I felt was not sadness, not even anger, but jealousy—not because of the affair but because of the closeness. Dottie, it occurred to me now, had been more reverent than me. She’d kept something of his because she’d cared for him, loved him. I was horrendous, paralyzed by affection, disgusted by grief. I had thrown him away.

  All these years, I’d thought Dottie had been the dense one, acting like a fool, being made fun of from all sides. The words subtle and Dottie belonged in different universes. And yet, she’d been a master of discretion, which somehow made sense too. Every person knows how to whisper. She was smart enough to get attention—why did it never occur to me that she’d be smart enough to sustain it too? I wanted to know what covert name they’d called me. And, worse still, what they had called each other.

  Loneliness. Their affair meant that both of them were total strangers—except to each other. I imagined secrets as silent illuminators, visible only to those who knew. When they saw each other, they saw the truth spark around them like fireflies. They glimpsed all the things that mattered. And I knew nothing. That night the photo was taken at the restaurant, I wondered, had she been outside too? Had she been hiding somewhere with her shoes off, the back of her hand against her mouth? Had she watched us from behind as we walked home? Had she hoped that he wouldn’t reach for my fingers? He reached first. He always reached first. Maybe she knew that as well—and she scoffed at the particular kind of thrill that it gave me. I wondered if he scoffed too.

  Maybe when I’d looked at him, I thought now, for years and years and years and years and years, all the things I saw were the unimportant, gray things: on the outside, a mere veil of skin, human hair and bones and teeth. And it was on the inside that he was a blushing, rocking, stained-glass thing, full and delicate as a peony, strong and vital as a lighthouse—and all that was them. It gave them joy, sustained them, matured and nurtured them. He was her secret light. She was his. I knew merely the casing of him, and never even knew to peel the damn thing off.

  I had no idea where their love began, where it ended. It was resignation I felt as it occurred to me that the details made absolutely no difference. What was was. Joseph was and was no more. It would do no good to fight about what he’d done, discuss it, move on. We couldn’t even try now.

  “Come on, Lorca,” I said, wanting to get her downstairs, to explain. I wouldn’t put all my stock in Dottie yet. But Lorca wouldn’t look at me. She knew something too. Somehow we were no longer in this together. That much I understood.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lorca said. “Victoria, I meant to tell you before. I believed we were too. But we can’t be. I just found out that my mother’s parents died. I just found out too.”

  “All right,” I breathed.

  I began to back myself out of Dottie’s apartment. I couldn’t look at Lorca. She was completely different to me now. If I’d recognized her from somewhere, it must have been from the bus stop. Or from the neighborhood. Or maybe she’d been one of those schoolgirls I’d been particularly appalled by, one who’d made a scene, flirting, carrying on, outside our bank. I wanted to like her, but what was left? Why should I? We were nothing. She had kept me in the dark. I was a fool. And I couldn’t take care of her, whatever she needed, whatever she needed me for, whatever reason she had come to find me. I didn’t understand it. Didn’t care to. Not now.

  “Would you like to sit?” Lorca asked and I shook my head. I was at the door. I just had to make it downstairs, but my legs had begun to shake. It felt as though I’d been swimming for days and days.

  “How about some water?” Lorca said. She disappeared into Dottie’s kitchen. I needed to rest.

  I don’t know how long we existed there, Dottie and I, saying nothing, but the room full of our static. Thoughts ran through my head faster than they had in years but felt distant—it was like being on a plane: the actual speed at which the aircraft moved had nothing to do with the woozy pace of things inside the cabin.

  Dottie started fidgeting with her hair, her clothes. She pretended to see something important under her fingernails, which were painted pink. Her robe was flag-colored silk. She had lipstick on her teeth. Cosmopolitan was on her coffee table. See, I wanted to say to Joseph, she never could have survived in Baghdad. And yet, she’d survived the loss of the man she loved. We both had. And that, it pained me to admit, was far more difficult.

  “He didn’t want to hurt you,” she said. And then: “Please believe me that neither did I.”

  I didn’t care if I fell down the stairs. I left.

  Soon, Lorca came down and collected her things. I didn’t even get up from my chair to say goodbye to her. I couldn’t bear to look her in the face. As lovely as she’d been, she was no one to me now. I’d put all my eggs in her basket. For a moment, I was sorry for her—that she too was so very, very lost—but then it struck me that it wasn’t my job to find her. She had her own mother, her own dead grandparents, and I had no idea of their story. There was nothing left for us. She’d be another girl on the bus. All girls from now on would be just girls on the bus.

  “Wait,” I said, just before she walked out the door. “I think you dropped that the other day.” I pointed to the photo of my not-daughter, which I’d tucked behind a throw pillow.

  “Oh,” she said, putting it in her pocket without examining it. She was waiting for me to say something else. When I didn’t, she said, “Thank you. I didn’t mean to leave that here for you to find. I didn’t even know I’d dropped it.”

  It only half broke my heart.

  “I just found out too,” she said.

  I put up my hand for her to stop.

  Three hours, two glasses of Shiraz, and one very emotional shower later, there was a knock on the door.

  “I’m not coming,” I shouted from the couch. The knocking stopped.

  Only when I heard her clanking back up the stairs did I manage to get up. I looked through the peephole first. There was no one there. I opened. The air was cold and still, and smelled like burned butter. I looked down. On the floor, folded like a flag on a soldier’s grave: Joseph’s sweater.

  Tears poured out like paint when I leaned down to pick it up.

  I put it on the couch in his study. I rolled it lengthwise, then folded it in half, tucked the fold into the crook of my arm. I sat down. I sniffed it. It did not smell of Dottie. It was my turn. I cradled it. I waited for emotion to flood in. I waited for a while.

  I’d never imagined I’d be left with so many questions, so many answers to questions I hadn’t asked.

  It was too late to feel excused for my faults, if that’s what I’d wanted. And the truth was that even when Joseph was alive, it was too late. I’d posed the challenge to him silently, constantly: Love me, despite. Despite my heart of mud, love me. Despite my distrust of New York, love me. Despite my anxiety, love me. Despite my anger. Despite my fear of losing you, love me. Despite what I do not say. Despite what I would not give you, what I wouldn’t do for you, what I stole from you, love me. Despite the way it was so easy for me to give to everything else, nothing to you, because nothing else mattered like you did until the end when I was so sure of you. You couldn’t get o
ut of bed, my love. Love me despite all that. Despite who I was, who I am, love me, Joseph. Let me see you try. Because if you love me hard enough, strong enough, I might just believe that you’ve forgiven me for who I am, the hideous, selfish thing I am. But the truth is, you did that years ago. You found Dottie and did what you had to do so you could love me. Does this mean I can forgive myself? I just want to catch up.

  Still, no decision is entire of itself. Swindling my husband of his greatest joy was only one part of it. There we were every day, waking up, going to sleep. I was who I was and I was what I’d done, with every living breath, no reprieve. That was the intolerable part. You are the decisions you make. You die with them. And the person you love the most is testament to that.

  But now.

  Of course, I thought. Of course. I asked him to let go of a child, but in order not to let go of me too, he needed something. He needed support from somewhere. I’d never been a sympathetic listener. I ended hugs too soon. I never liked to be picked up. I’m not sure I allowed myself to be lifted, ever. Not ever. Joseph—he’d been the opposite of that. He found love in the oddest places. And if he had to find love, at least he’d found love with someone who needed it. He was always giving people what they needed.

  And he’d done all that for me. He’d let me live with my decision, had saved me from the truth and more pain, the burden of trying to make sense of something that could never make sense, that I could only be sorry for. He didn’t punish me for it. He lived with it too. He loved me, despite me—which, actually, when you think about it, means because of me.

  Joseph

  NEW YORK, 1968

  It had been exactly ten years since they’d opened the restaurant. An important occasion, Joseph thought. Something to be proud of. Something to celebrate. Joseph planned a big night. He wanted to get things back on track. Ever since that day at the hospital, Joseph had expected a big shift. Victoria and Joseph. Joseph and Victoria. A pair. A couple. Two birds on a branch. He’d hoped for her to need him. Really need him. And she had, for a short time. But a few years later, they opened the restaurant. And it offered Victoria all the feelings that Joseph had wanted to give her: confidence, focus, happiness. All that he had wanted was funneled away from him and right into the restaurant. It made her giddy. It became everything; everything around them and everything between them. When they slept, he reached for her. She smelled of kitchen, of the burned bits dumped in the trash. She slept soundly, sealed in, heavy as tar. They’d married at City Hall and never made time for a honeymoon. Still, his father always said, “Life without a wife is like a kitchen without a knife.” And in many ways, it was true. Marriage had given Joseph confidence in Victoria—that he wouldn’t lose her and he wouldn’t lose himself, again.

  “Remember what tonight is,” he said to her in the morning as he spit toothpaste into the sink and reached for a towel.

  She put her hands to her face.

  “Oh no!” she said. “The restaurant is reserved for a private party. The Turk’s birthday! I completely forgot about the anniversary. Another night, we’ll celebrate it. We’ll just do it another night. I promise.”

  She went down to her hands and knees to look for a missing shoe. She kept huffing but it had nothing to do with what Joseph had just said. She was just trying to get dressed. Nothing else seemed to matter.

  That night at the restaurant, she was a firefly, bustling and twinkling and flitting around. Joseph felt he had never seen her so light. So carefree. He sat at the bar and watched her, proud but abandoned. He had a drink. He had three.

  An hour or so later a woman walked in. Her mouth was unmistakable. It was the shape of a heart. He clutched his chest. For a second, he was sure he’d stopped breathing. He had thought he’d never see her again. He’d counted on that. Mostly, he’d hoped.

  It had been nearly fifteen years, but he would have recognized her anywhere. Seeing her now, he noticed how bland she was, an untoasted hamburger bun. American women no longer thrilled him, or even made him pause. That he recognized her, he thought, was more a reflection of him than her. He’d obsessed over the affair for the years that he and Victoria had been deeply happy, hated himself for what he’d done. In the more tenuous years, he hated himself too, but not for the normal reasons. Not because of his actions, exactly, but because of what they stood for. Victoria had deprived him of such joy, and by getting back at her, he’d deprived himself of his upper hand, of his righteousness, and, most important, of the opportunity to hold against her what she’d done to him. They were even, he thought, for all practical purposes. And, for a while, that changed everything. He’d never gone back to Dr. Espy’s. Or met Dottie on a street corner. Or for drinks. He’d never called. Never seen her. Partly because he hadn’t wanted to, exactly, but mostly because he’d been determined to regain Victoria’s love and maintain the even playing field. He didn’t consider himself a saint.

  Now Joseph stood up. He held on to the bar. He started to make his way to the bathroom, sure that she hadn’t yet seen him. He could hide. Just then, Victoria called, “Dottie! Welcome!”

  He stopped. He tried to sit back down but nearly fell off the stool.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered. “Holy shit shit.”

  Victoria hurried over to Dottie, all generosity and charm. She wrapped one arm around her and guided her from the entrance to Joseph. He swallowed hard. For a moment, he wondered if this was some sort of trap.

  “This is Dottie,” Victoria said, stopping in front of him and pulling out a stool. “She’s our new neighbor.”

  “Our what?” Joseph said.

  “At the apartment,” Victoria said. “She moved in upstairs.”

  Dottie’s face was getting redder by the moment, and yet her mouth was wholly still. It was stunned into a rectangle, no long-er a pretty heart. Her chin quivered.

  “Pleasure,” Joseph said and went to kiss her on both cheeks, be normal, but she stepped back. He was left hovering.

  “This is Joseph,” Victoria said, not missing a beat as she took Dottie’s coat. She gave Joseph a look like Don’t mess with the customers.

  “Please, Dottie,” she said. “Have a seat, a drink.”

  Dottie sat down. Joseph couldn’t. He imagined he could hear the exhales, from the two of them, slam into each other, unmeshing, unalike.

  Holy shit, he said again, but this time only in his head.

  “My word,” Dottie said, finally. She took a deep breath and looked past him. “This restaurant is simply beautiful.”

  Victoria clapped her hands and turned around. “I have to get back to work,” she said. “Joseph will entertain you for a while. It’s a pleasure to have you as our guest.”

  Dottie laughed to herself. It broke the makeup on her cheek.

  Joseph was still attempting to reassemble himself onto his stool. He kept moving it back and forth, somehow unable to find solid ground.

  “Holy shit,” he said finally, and kept standing.

  He rubbed his eyes. The hysterical pulse in his throat was making it hard for him to focus. He touched his chest, to be sure of himself.

  “Breathe,” he said out loud. In, out. Out, in.

  Dottie wouldn’t look him in the face. She was making a production of noticing features of the room and nodding at them in approval. A painting, the gold-colored molding, the many glasses stacked into a pyramid behind the bar. Joseph nearly asked her if she’d become interested in interior design. He had the unfamiliar urge to be cruel.

  Finally, after many moments of aching silence, Joseph forced the words from his throat.

  “How did you find me?” he asked.

  She looked like she’d been smacked.

  “Find you?” she said and then lowered her voice. “You said you lived on MacDougal Street. I didn’t know you moved. This is as much of a shock to me as it is to you. You’re despicable.”

  It was obvious she didn’t mean it. Tears mobbed her eyes. And it was because of that, the fact that she seemed as ho
rrified as he did, that Joseph believed her when she said that she’d just moved in. She’d had no idea he lived beneath her. She’d gotten a deal on old Mr. Pinalta’s apartment. His walls were streaked with cigarette smoke. A suitcase full of Mexican dresses had been left in his closet.

  Joseph went silent. He found himself counting the seconds. With each, he imagined a raindrop pinning him between the eyes. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.

  “I’ll move out,” she said. “I’d be happy to. Believe me. I’ve hardly unpacked.”

  He almost said yes but then Victoria caught his eye. She was presenting a whole snapper to a table of German tourists. There were lemon slices all around the fish, and they didn’t budge, nothing did, in her careful, capable hands. She put it down, full of grace, slipped her hand from beneath, rested it on a customer’s shoulder. The customer looked at her, all trust. She pointed to the best piece and he nodded.

  Joseph touched his own shoulder. He had missed Victoria. Now he remembered those times he’d lain with Dottie, years ago, and how sometimes he’d missed Victoria to the point of tears. He’d seen her just hours before, but still, lying there, he found himself missing her woman smell, like something fresh from the ground, and the odd shininess of her fingers, delicate, like a just-watered plant. Sometimes, he didn’t miss her until later, when he was with her at their apartment on MacDougal Street. Really, that was when he missed her the most.

  He felt sick.

  Dottie kicked Joseph lightly in his shin.

  “Well?” she said. And then, angrily, “Pearls before swine.”

  “Move?” Joseph said. “No. Of course not.”