“You know Mary Belvins? She writes that column, Mary’s Parlor. She calls around sometimes and asks people their plans so she can fill up space. I suggested she call James’s parents. I thought maybe I could find out something.”
“And . . . ?”
“And they’ve rented a villa in Italy from the first of May through the summer. They’re going to Livorno. It’s a little resort town on the Ligurian Sea. James is supposed to join them there when he’s finished for the term. Very wise of him, I’d say. And cowardly.”
Nijmeh’s eyes filled with tears. She looked down and rearranged the condiment tray with shaking hands. “I can’t believe he just disposed of me like this,” she said. “He never even sent his address. He didn’t think that much of me.”
“That’s right.” She was silent a moment. “By the way, did you ever sleep with him?” Nijmeh nodded. “Too bad. Now you’ll never know if easy virtue is what turned him off.”
There were so many things to recommend Paul. Her father looked so hopeful. Her mother walked around as if she had eggs in her shoes. They didn’t want to ask her any questions for fear of interfering. Paul was more than any girl could hope for and too good to dismiss. Maybe it was for the best. She would please so many people. Her head went round and round. Oh, James, why did you forget me? Why did you make me love you and then leave me? There seemed no hope.
As if sensing that she was weakening, Paul made his opening plea. He was tactically brilliant. To avoid any dramatics, he brought it up casually while they were driving. The more matter-of-fact he acted, the less threatened she’d feel. “Nijmeh,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “More than anything, I’d like you to marry me. I know you don’t feel as strongly as I, but I want you to think about it. Just think about it, OK?”
“I’m not going to think about it. It isn’t possible.”
“How do you know that unless you think about it? Just give it a little space in your head. I just want to beg a tiny bit of space from whatever else is taking up your thoughts. That’s not asking too much, is it?”
“No.”
She wrestled with it for several days. One morning she stopped her father before he went to work and they went out for a walk along the path. It was the first time they’d had an intimate talk since their fight over James. “Paul has asked me to marry him.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Samir. “He’s been around quite a bit. How do you feel about it?”
“I respect him. It’s difficult to do what he does. And he’s very matter-of-fact about it, too. That’s appealing.”
“I think he’s a good man,” said Samir. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s a good man, too . . .”
“But?”
“No buts. He’s smart. Very concerned. Very serious about his profession.”
“What was your answer to him?”
“He told me to think about it and that’s what I’m doing.”
Samir took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I have only one thing to say to you. Don’t take the offer lightly just because it seems to have come easily. Paul is unique, do you understand? There’s not going to be another like him very soon.”
“I know.”
In the end that’s what did it. How could she refuse such an eligible man? Paul played it just right and Samir played it right, too. They had brought her around to see that it was unthinkable to refuse. Part of it also was recovering her pride. It was a rebound reaction. Part of it was the unexpected comfort and relief of pleasing her father again. She had missed being close to him. He had two new creases originating at the inner corners of his eyes. Her mother’s eyes, lips, and skin had been one pale color, as if someone had leached the exuberance out of her, but now her healthy flush had returned. Even her grandmother, who was still despondent over Sidi’s death, managed a smile. Nijmeh felt numb but grateful that she had stopped causing pain to those she loved. Still, at the very core, she knew she didn’t love Paul at all. Her heart was now and would always be elsewhere. She had been foolish to think that happiness came so easily. Happiness didn’t come at all.
“You look so morose, Nijmeh. Those lovely eyes are shadowed. The lower lip . . . droops. No joy.” Paul spoke slowly and deliberately, and she couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or sympathetic.
“I’m sorry.” While Delal had felt light and bouncy as a thistle on the wind with Paul at her side, Nijmeh felt sodden, as if she’d drunk too much water or her periods had accumulated and wouldn’t release.
“Why should you be sorry? You feel what you feel. Perhaps you could tell me what it is you do feel.”
He was being sarcastic and this disturbed her. “I feel grateful, of course.”
“Grateful?” That surprised him.
“I expressed it poorly.”
“You expressed it honestly.”
“But Paul, I . . .”
He broke out in a smile. “I love to hear you say my name.”
There. Now his tone seemed nicer. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a dress she’d worn on a day James had packed a picnic lunch and driven south. They’d sat on a plaid blanket in a field of wildflowers, thousands of them as high as their arms. Walls of daisies hid them and the yellow centers cast a golden shadow over his skin. It had been a moment of perfect happiness. “Lie down,” he’d commanded, pretending gruffness.
“No,” she had giggled. “Someone might come.”
“Lie down. No one will see us.”
She’d lain down and he’d stretched out on top of her, but each time the wind blew the flowers would sway and she’d begin giggling again, certain they were visible to passing cars. This dress was tied up with love, with James, with laughter. It made her sad to be wearing it with Paul. It was unfair to blame him for her misery, but she had a lifetime to make it up to him.
“Nijmeh—” Paul bent to be closer to her and spoke seriously. “This stage . . . right now we’re in a very unsettled atmosphere. We’re neither here nor there. But once we get to the States, our life together will be more predictable. We’ll have a chance to get to know each other and . . . you’ll see. I’ll make you happy.” He cupped her face in one of his hands as if to capture it. She stayed perfectly still, lowering her eyes until he forced her to look at him by pressing her jaw. “Is it so difficult to imagine being happy with me?” She remained silent. “Answer this, then. Why are you marrying me? Why have you compromised yourself?”
“It’s not a compromise. I want to marry you. I won’t insult you by telling you I love you now. I respect you and I’m honored that you want me for your wife. I won’t disappoint you, Paul. Just be patient with me.”
He stood and raised her up, pressing himself against her briefly in a loose embrace. “I won’t rush you. It’s enough that I have you.”
She cried herself to sleep that night and all the nights before the wedding. Paul was aware of the daily puffiness around her eyes. He was obsessively aware of everything about her. A woman cries herself to sleep only over love gone awry, he thought with bitterness. She loves someone else. He experienced the first wrenching pangs of jealousy. Whoever he was, the joke was on him, poor bastard. She was his now and forever.
On her wedding day (they were taking a flight to Beirut that afternoon) she awoke at dawn, thoroughly alarmed and unprepared. Time had just been swallowed up and now there were only a few hours left. She had wanted to take photographs of the farm, of their house, of Aunt Julia and Uncle Peter. Maybe she should have gone out and taken pictures of the orchards and the vineyards. Most precious would have been a picture of the land beyond the cultivated fields. She wanted to have a replica of the bare brown hills with worn ledges and edges banded round and round with the sediment of centuries, some looking like clamshells set down, others made long and sloping by the deluging rains, still others with vaulted halls harboring unreachabl
e, chilling secrets. These somber tones—more poignant than the most beautiful field of flowers—were the colors that pierced and picked apart her heart. Today, this morning, she would have done anything, anything, not to leave.
Unexpectedly, her mother was also up and they met on the path that led to the old tennis court, now overgrown. Nadia remembered that this was the place where Samir had first kissed her. “I didn’t think I’d have to part with you so soon,” she said in a husky, trembling voice. “Perhaps it was inevitable.” She wanted to say, Perhaps it’s my punishment for stealing you, but such a catharsis was unthinkable.
“I’m afraid,” said Nijmeh unexpectedly. “I don’t know what’s waiting for me there.”
Her mother agreed and her heart felt as if it was flying apart, but she composed her face and took a deep breath. “It’ll all turn out well, because you’re strong and generous. Things might be hard in the beginning, but they’ll soon work out. Remember that your father and I will be thinking of you every day. You will never leave our hearts.”
35.
YOU ROTTEN BASTARD! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
You rotten bastard! Where have you been? Somebody says you’re married. Is it true?” She was an olive-skinned brunette with coarse features and a voluptuous body. She worked in the pathology department and he had been sleeping with her for months. She was the best technician the hospital had and, as she often reminded him, knew more about medicine than half the doctors, which was probably true. She had grown up in New York and had a certain brashness that excited him physically but made him cringe socially. Although he had told himself many times that she meant nothing to him—she was simply “lay” insurance—it upset him when she was busy and couldn’t see him.
Two months before he left to find his bride, he had asked Rita to stop seeing other men. “It upsets me,” he said honestly. “I know it’s unfair to ask it, but I’m asking anyway.”
“Well, in my book, if you don’t want me to see other men, you have to tell me I’m your one and only. After that usually comes more serious stuff.” She was trying to be offhand, but her eyes were hopeful and he knew that if he told her he was serious she would be pathetically happy. Tough, streetwise Rita would have cried. He had no more serious stuff in mind and now she knew for sure.
“I didn’t plan it this way,” he said.
“Plan it what way, you rotten pig? To use me as a goddamn parking space until you found someone good enough to marry? Of course you planned it this way, but you’re too much of a prick to admit it.” She picked up a folder holding patients’ records and threw it at him. She did the same with a delicate shell ashtray and a cup holding pencils.
“Hey, cut it out! What are you doing?”
“I’ll cut it out when I’m damn good and ready.” She was crying and shouting. “What I really hate is the hypocrisy. If you had said all along, ‘Rita, I love fucking you but you’re not the girl I’ll marry—be warned,’ I would still have done exactly what I did. You wouldn’t have come out such a pig and I wouldn’t feel so filthy.”
He was massaging the back of her neck to quiet her down. “Hey, Rita, sweetheart, don’t cry. I’m sorry. You were a big part of my life.” His hand went around her back and he brought her close to him. He kissed her forehead. She lifted her face and found his mouth. “Oh, God, I’ve missed you,” she said. “We were so good together.” Her hand was on his crotch. “Open it right now.”
He didn’t waste time accepting the invitation and she began to work on him. He stood there with a sheepish grin and then he felt as if the top of his head would open up. He pushed the back of her head but she struggled free and looked up at him. How ridiculous he looked with his green knit Ivy League tie, his button-down shirt, his slicked “good boy” side-parted hair. All that for the establishment and nothing for her. “Are you really hard, lover?” she asked.
“Are you kidding?”
“Good. Now go shove it into your wife.” She got up, cleared the rest of his desk with a sweep of her arm, and marched out.
“Hello, darling.” He found Nijmeh in the kitchen wearing capri pants and a ribbed black turtleneck sweater that made her coloring more astounding. She was meticulously pouring oil in a measuring spoon. Several bowls containing the ingredients for her dish waited in a row to be combined. He lifted her hair and kissed the back of her neck.
“Paul, wait, I’ll spill the oil.”
“Forget the oil. Let’s go inside.”
“But what about dinner? You’ll be hungry.”
“I’m hungry for you.”
He thought she would follow immediately, but she stopped to close the bottle of oil and to find a dish on which to place the oily spoon. He decided that if he had not been waiting she would have completed her measuring and maybe even washed out the spoon. It annoyed him.
It wasn’t the love story of the century. Paul, beneath the superficial thrill of bagging such a breathtaking girl, expected her to be dispassionate and punished her in advance. He was chronically tardy, often silent, and sloppy at lovemaking. Statistically, he was among the majority of middle-class husbands (according to the Kinsey Report that had recently come out), fifty-five percent of whom had affairs and never brought their wives to orgasm.
He made no provisions for the crushing changes in her life. There was no more country acreage or sports. No stepping out into the welcoming arms of quiet lanes and trees. No extended family. No horses to ride. But worse, for a girl whose life had always had structure and precise goals, there was no central focus to guide her.
They lived on upper Connecticut Avenue in eight hundred square feet painted a muddy beige with too much pink. When Paul left for work, sometimes as early as six, Nijmeh got up, took a shower, vacuumed, and washed the two breakfast cups and saucers. Sunlight streamed into the apartment at midmorning and seeing the dust swirling in the air made her realize how pointless it was to think anything was clean. The Sun-Brite Laundry came once a week to take his shirts and the sheets and towels. The other stuff she washed in the basement of the building with coins from his dresser.
On Sundays they had a late breakfast of bacon and eggs that Paul cooked. While they ate, he read the real estate section, circled several ads, and then let it drop to the floor. “I’m going to make a lot of money,” he would tell her with grave conviction. “My practice is growing and if I manage it right, it can be very lucrative.” Every weekend he would condense their future into the simplest terms. “We’re going to buy a nice house and furnish it to the teeth. This is what men work hard for. To have a really nice house and invite successful people. This may sound too simple, but if you strip aside all the froufrou, that’s the American Dream in a nutshell.”
He persuaded her to stop calling herself Nijmeh because “You’ll save yourself a lot of explanations. No one is going to pronounce it properly and besides, people are suspicious of foreign names. Nijmeh means Star . . . from now on I’ll introduce you as Star.”
“It’s so theatrical. Won’t people laugh?”
“Believe me, no one’s going to laugh.”
She went along with it because it was harmless and there were things that disturbed her more. He was always either exhausted from work or a night delivery or groggy from sleep, which made him unapproachable. She wanted to be companionable, but how could she engage a person who was desperately in need of sleep? Often he was too tired for sex.
Most troubling was his drinking. When he ordered a double Scotch, it sounded reckless, as if he couldn’t get drunk fast enough. Yet he never did anything silly, so she had to assume the liquor didn’t affect him.
“Fix me a drink, honey,” he would ask with the weariness of someone who needed oblivion. Once she’d suggested a cup of tea instead. He had looked up from his slumped position and told her, “My afternoon delivery today gave birth to a blue-eyed little girl, seven pounds, three ounces. She had ten fingers, ten toes, a turned-up
nose, and a hole the size of my fist at the base of her spine. Within a week, fluid will build up in her head and it will swell to twice its normal size. We’ll have to drill a hole in her skull to drain it. I had to face the mother, the father, the grandmother, and the parish priest. I don’t want tea. I want a double Scotch.” After his first gulp, he had added philosophically, “All doctors drink.”
He was a doctor and the importance of his work overshadowed her needs and her feelings. She saw very quickly that she’d have to seek out whatever would fill her life on her own. The nurses and patients treated him as if he were precious, and on the days she met him for lunch, he did look glamorous in his baggy sterile uniform, the operating room mask dangling from his neck. It helped her to see him in that setting. He’d take her on the cafeteria line and explain the food with good humor. “Here’s meatloaf . . . it’s like kibbeh, but not as tasty. And potatoes. They mash them up here, I don’t know why. Carrots, you already know. String beans, you know. But not this, I bet. Not Jell-O. The texture is repulsive, but a lot of people must buy it. It’s out every day.” As they ate he’d watch her reaction to the food, as if he were anxious to please her. He was one of those people whose energy level shot up in public but not at home.
Walking became her salvation. Out of the apartment and up Connecticut Avenue she passed a dry cleaner, florist, beauty salon, and three restaurants. Farther north there was the zoo, where she would sometimes stop to watch the seals swoop and rocket through the water. When the sun became fierce, she went into the monkey house to visit the gray gibbons that swung recklessly across the cage with increasing speed, as if recent good news had made them crazy with joy.
When the weather cooled, she walked south on Connecticut, past the Shoreham Hotel and the Calvert Street Bridge, eating up the miles with a long stride until she reached Lafayette Park and the White House. If she turned west onto K and walked along the letter streets, F, G, H—lined with narrow-frame houses painted in sweet colors and collared with patches of lawn and flowers—she reached George Washington University. The look of the carefree students made her feel . . . unfinished. She had been trained all her life to take charge of a complicated enterprise, but she didn’t have the training for any of the simple jobs of daily life in America.
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