The Ambassador's Wife

by Jennifer Steil

  “You don’t trust me, do you? You think I’ll come back with something in patchwork!”

  “Well, sweetheart, as much as I love you, I wouldn’t say fashion sense is one of your finer points.”

  Miranda sighed. “No, you’re right. I basically resent the fact that fashion exists at all.”

  Finn picked up the pen. “Okay, so now that that’s settled…word with ‘bum’ or ‘bunny’?”

  “Ski,” said Miranda, scooping up a mouthful of her porridge.

  “Right. And—”

  “Grisélidis? Bacchus? Cendrillon?”

  Finn looked up at her. “What?”

  “The opera. Do any of those fit?”

  He counted the squares. “No.”

  She pulled the page toward her. “Oh,” she said. “It’s Ariane.”

  Finn leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Didn’t you just say, ‘Who the hell is Massenet?’ A few moments ago?”

  Miranda sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I dated an opera singer.”

  “I should have guessed. So that makes an opera singer, a fireman, a burlesque dancer, an artist, a saxophonist, a composer, a poet, and a choreographer.”

  “Look, I told you. When I said I have slept with half the planet, I meant it. I just want you to know everything. You know, before we’re married. So you don’t feel I’ve misrepresented myself in any way.”

  He laughed. “And I appreciate your honesty. It’s quite refreshing.”

  “How would I know who to marry if I didn’t try everybody first? But you, you are special. You are the only person for whom I am willing to brave the bridal boutiques.”

  “And your only civil servant?”

  “Of course! Repetition is so boring.”

  “Is there any profession you haven’t slept with?”

  Miranda thought for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I have never, to my knowledge, slept with a banker.”

  Finn

  February 21, their wedding day, much like the other 364 days a year, dawned sunny. The guests, duly checked off security’s list at the gate, milled around the spongy lawn, sipping mango juice or champagne. Miranda was still locked up in their bedroom, where she’d spent the night alone, suddenly superstitious. “You’re not supposed to see the bride on the wedding day,” she’d told Finn. “You can have the Minister’s Suite.” He hadn’t argued. What was one night apart before a lifetime of a shared bed?

  Now he stood in front of the rows of chairs (tilting on the uneven grass), nervously exchanging inanities with the consul, Sally, Miranda’s one close friend within the embassy. She chose wisely, thought Finn. Everyone loved Sally, a tall, striking woman who laughed easily, spoke beautiful Arabic, and adored entertaining. She was also one of the two people in the country who could legally marry them. Finn and Miranda had written their own vows and selected several short poems and readings, none of which were from the Bible. He worried a bit about the reaction to an utterly secular ceremony. Muslims could relate to Christians and even Jews, who shared with them a monotheistic tradition, but they struggled to wrap their minds around a life devoid of any religion. “You must be something,” they would say on the rare occasions Finn confessed that he was neither Christian nor Jew. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t anything. And his wedding was no time to pretend.

  Nervously, Finn adjusted his cuff links, tiny silver daggers Miranda had given him for his birthday the year they met. He had discarded his well-worn dinner jacket in favor of a morning suit with blue waistcoat and pinstriped trousers. The pinstripes wouldn’t have been his choice, but Miranda liked them.

  “Is this part of your unfulfilled desire to date a banker?” he’d asked.

  “I just like how they look. You look so pretty in stripes. Why should we let the conservatives have all the good clothing?”

  He had chosen the tie, patterned after The Hunt of the Unicorn. It was one of the few ties he had actually purchased himself, at the Cloisters during a business trip to New York. The unicorn’s refusal to stay dead appealed to him, as did the persistence of the tapestries over some five hundred years.

  Negasi came bustling down the aisle. “Ambassador, Madame she almost ready. Do you want I should ask guests to the chairs?”

  “Yes, please, Negasi. Wonderful. Is Teru okay in there?”

  “Yes, Teru she is fine. Everything is ready.” The circular tables had miraculously appeared throughout the first floor sometime during the night, and by the time he descended for breakfast, they were set with silver and crystal and scattered with jasmine petals. Finn had eaten quickly at the small table in the kitchen and sent a tray of tea, pomegranate seeds, and porridge up to Miranda.

  He wondered if he should be more worried. He, a lifelong bachelor, was about to marry a woman many men might consider a bad bet. But for some reason nothing in Miranda’s past gave him pause. The fact that she had had relationships with so many others before him was oddly comforting as well as intriguing. He didn’t have to worry that she would spend her remaining years wondering if she should have sown a few more wild oats. And he didn’t have to worry that she would obsess over his own past, though it has been far tamer than hers. Other than the series of unfulfilling or lopsided relationships, there has been only the one serious miscalculation.

  He sensed that Miranda was almost disappointed in the lack of passionate complications in his past. Someday, he would tell her about Afghanistan. Someday, but not just yet. He could not risk losing her now. A ring would not be enough to irrevocably bind her to him, but that plus time, and perhaps someday a child…then he might feel safe enough to confess.

  The next time he turned toward the house, she was there, cautiously teetering down the slippery front steps in ivory lace shoes. Heels, even. He felt honored. A strapless gown of sea-green silk clung to her torso before spinning out to just below her knees. In a slight concession to local custom, she had covered her shoulders with an ivory lace bolero. Her hair fell in ringlets down her narrow back. Aside from a circlet of jasmine flowers in her hair, she was unadorned. “A wedding ring,” she had told him, “is jewelry enough.” Finn stood staring at her, as though she were a mirage, until she waved her small bouquet of jasmine in his direction. “Come help me!” she called, “before I sink into this lawn!”

  They walked each other down the grassy aisle, Miranda thinking it silly to have her father give her away when she had been living apart from her parents for more than twenty years. She didn’t like the idea of being delivered into the keeping of one man by another. Better she and Finn process as equals, mutually submitting themselves to each other’s keeping. Not that her father would have come anyway. He was terrified of flying. Which Miranda always thought was an odd fear for an astronomer. “You’re a man of science,” she told him. “You know it’s the safest way to travel. And the closest to your favorite stars.” He simply agreed with her and stayed behind his telescope. Miranda worried about him living alone. Her mother had disappeared years ago, fed up with her dreamy, absent husband. As soon as Miranda was off to art school, her mother had packed her paints and paintings and gone south, first to Mexico and then to Costa Rica. She had no phone, but Miranda had sent her a wedding invitation pasted to a postcard of the Old City at twilight. In the margins, she had penciled in, “spectacular place to paint.” But she hadn’t heard anything back. Either her mother had moved again or she was too wrapped up in her own work to respond.

  Miranda hadn’t seemed to take this personally. “Weddings aren’t really her thing,” she’d said and shrugged when Finn attempted to console her. “It’s okay. She’s been a good mother most of my life, I don’t mind if she does her own thing now.” Finn could not fathom this. His mother had died of cancer when he was seventeen, and his father had died of a heart attack just a few years ago, and not one day went by when he did not long to hear their voices. Because Finn was an only child, his parents had always been his best friends. Among his favorite memories were reading The Wind in the Willows with his father w
hen he got home from school and helping his mother with her translations in the evenings. She was Quebecoise and worked translating poetry from French to English or vice versa. She was the reason Finn had a head start with languages. His English father bartended in a pub close to their house in Acton, always dressed in a clean white shirt and bow tie, even as his clientele grew shabbier over the years. He would have liked Miranda, Finn thought with a pang. Like all the best bartenders, he was a terrible flirt, but the harmless sort, the sort that came home every night to the same woman. He especially appreciated intelligent women, women willing to argue with him. Like Finn’s mother.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me,” Miranda had warned. “I’m not a neglected child. My mother made my lunches and picked me up after school every day. She went to PTA meetings. My father helped me with my math homework. Ultimately though, we’re three people without much in common.” Finn had never met Miranda’s parents, but he was curious. Someday he would surprise her with a trip to Costa Rica. He wondered if she would like that, or if it would just annoy her. It was hard to tell.

  As they stood behind their guests, awaiting their cue, Finn squeezed her fingers. “Sure you want to be an ambassador’s wife?”

  Miranda turned to him and smiled. “I have a feeling I should have asked you earlier more about what this involves…”

  “The FCO gives lessons. If I had met you before I came out here, you could have had classes.”

  “And now I have to wing it.”

  “You’ll be fine. As long as you learn to suppress your strident, feminist political opinions.” Miranda swatted him with her bouquet, sending jasmine petals showering to the ground.

  “Do I have to learn how to play bridge or garden or anything?”

  “Mah-jongg. And I’m afraid you’ll be required to host coffee mornings.”

  “As long as they don’t interfere with my gym routine.”

  “One of the sacrifices I am sure you’ll gladly make for love.”

  The music changed and Sally began plucking out the initial notes of “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” on a guitar. Finn reached over and brushed a petal from Miranda’s hair. “Last chance to make a run for it.”

  She sighed. “You had better be worth it,” she whispered, as they took their first unsteady steps across the springy turf of the garden that was only ephemerally their own.

  Miranda

  And now here she was, modestly attired in an ankle-length dress and linen blazer, buckled into the backseat of her own car, heading to the home of the Mauritanian ambassador for her first HOMSA meeting. She had her own driver now, a slender nineteen-year-old who was the son of one of the guards. Altaf was polite, courtly, and like few others in this country, a cautious driver. This was the crucial quality for Miranda, given that traffic laws were mere suggestions and most drivers plowed through intersections without a glance to either side. There were no child car seats, a fact that alarmed Miranda even though she did not yet have a use for one. But when she saw a mother driving with an infant in one arm, or a small boy kneeling on the front seat with his face pressed to the windshield, she wanted to chase down the drivers and thrust the statistics on child fatalities on the road into their reckless hands.

  Miranda had told the staff she would be back in time for lunch, just in case she was ejected from the meeting before anything had been served. But why was she expecting unkindness? These women were diplomatic spouses. At the very least they would fake kindness. She wished Marguerite could be there, but Marguerite had to host a lunch for some visiting French dignitaries. Miranda wondered how many of the wives knew about Vícenta, knew about her former life. The Western ones probably wouldn’t care, but would the Arab ambassadors’ wives? Or would they secretly be plotting to have her burned at the stake for perversion? Suddenly, she realized she didn’t care. Wasn’t there enough in the world to worry about without fretting about the approval of ambassadors’ wives? Besides, chances were that any Westerner who knew about Vícenta would be discreet with that knowledge. The stakes were too high.

  She had barely reached the top of the steps when the front door swung open to admit her. A smiling Filipina woman showed her down the vast, carpeted front hall and into a gilded diwan. Almost everything—mirrors, framed paintings, pillows, sofas, plates propped up on little gold stands, ceramic jugs, glass coffee tables—was trimmed with gold. Miranda was surprised that the enormous flat-screen television didn’t have a golden frame. Olamide, the Mauritanian ambassador’s wife, a woman nearly as wide as she was tall, rose to greet her in a rustle of rayon, kissing her cheeks. Miranda tried to remember if they had met before. A few others were already settled on the cushions. Miranda recognized Chrysantha, the wife of the Egyptian ambassador, and was introduced to Adinda, the wife of the Indonesian ambassador, and Alena, the wife of the Palestinian ambassador. They smiled and greeted her warmly. “We haven’t had a wife of the UK ambassador in a while,” said Chrysantha. “We weren’t sure you were getting the invitations. We are happy to have you, Madame Fenwick.”

  “I’m happy to be here!” Miranda smiled brightly as she tucked her bare feet underneath her on the cushion. She resisted the urge to correct her name. She hadn’t changed her surname when she married Finn, and she had no intention of doing so. Nor would she ever claim the title Mrs. Besides the fact that it made her feel middle-aged, she felt strongly that a title should not betray marital status. Ms. would do nicely, as it had done for most of her life. Finn had no objection, but envelopes still regularly arrived addressed to Mrs. Finn Fenwick. No sign of Miranda at all in that name; it erased her utterly. It was maddening, but there were battles more worthy of her time.

  Before she had time to say anything else, another group of women arrived: Algerian, Malaysian, Omani, Kuwaiti, Lebanese, Cuban, and Russian. The women kissed each other and chattered away in a variety of languages, mostly Arabic. Miranda felt small and a bit lost, but she didn’t mind. It underscored what she already sensed, that she was a spectator more than a participant. The Spanish ambassador’s wife arrived last, impeccably dressed in a Calvin Klein pantsuit and chiffon scarf. She sat next to the bottle-blond Russian wife, and the two immediately began complimenting each other’s outfits and complaining about their respective staffs. “I asked Fana to make deviled eggs stuffed with salmon filling for the party last week,” the Spanish wife said. “And instead of mixing the salmon in with the yolks and the rest of the filling, she stuck a chunk of it on top! I mean, the cookbook has photos. She could see that the salmon should have been pureed with the rest of the filling. I was mortified when she brought around the tray.”

  “Well, our Kayla puts my stockings away in a different drawer every time she washes them. I can never find anything when I’m hurrying to dress for dinner,” answered the Russian. “And why does it take a week for clothing to return from the laundry to the dresser? The washing machine only takes forty minutes!” Both women sighed. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”

  “You can’t ever relax, not for a minute. Now I don’t just hand Fana recipes, I explain them to her and then try to check on her every few minutes to make sure she hasn’t done something idiotic. Like stick canned tuna on top of the salads instead of fresh tuna steaks. Which she has done.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it? People think, ambassadors’ wives, we have it so easy.”

  “I know—my friends back home think we live like royalty.”

  Miranda listened incredulously. “But we do live like royalty,” she interrupted. “Other people wash our clothing, make our meals, polish our shoes, mix our drinks, serve our guests. It’s true that we have to pick menus, host a few teas, tell a few people what to do—but then, so do queens, no?”

  The Spaniard and the Russian turned to stare at her with hardening eyes. So much for making new friends. Miranda wondered if over time she would develop the same sense of entitlement, the same nitpicking complaints about the people who worked to make her life as effortless as possible. W
ould a lifetime of privilege soften her body and sharpen her tongue? Silently, she vowed vigilance against this peril.

  To her great relief, further conversation was forestalled when Chrysantha clapped her hands to call the meeting to order. She began by passing around sheets of paper—in Arabic and English—detailing where the proceeds from a charity luncheon would go. The money would support two organizations. One was a home for children with cerebral palsy, the other was a home for blind women. “Many children, they are forced to lie on the ground because they have nowhere to sit,” said Chrysantha. “The money will buy for them things they need.” Miranda was instantly queasy with concern for the children and chastised herself once again for not having come to a meeting earlier. She would visit this home for children with cerebral palsy, she promised herself. She would find a way to help.

  She was distracted from her self-flagellation by the angry voice of the Omani, Alya. In a torrent of Arabic, she was chastising Chrysantha for something. Or so Miranda gathered from the few words she understood. It seemed a bizarrely outsized response to an announcement of charitable intentions. Several others joined the fray, and soon everyone was shouting. Amazed, Miranda tried to follow what was happening, but the Arabic was too fast for her. She looked helplessly at Adinda, whom she knew spoke English.

  “Stop! Khalas, you are making me frightened,” Adinda told the women. “And switch to English; not everyone understands Arabic.”

  “Yes, English please,” said Stefania the Russian, who spoke no Arabic. While Miranda also wanted to understand what was going on, she noted that the majority of the women in the room spoke Arabic. It was hardly fair to expect everyone to use English when there were only a handful of people who spoke it. Not to mention the fact that they were, after all, in an Arabic-speaking country.