Three Daughters: A Novel

by Consuelo Saah Baehr

  He stared at her midsection. “But you can’t do that. You’re pregnant. A young mama can’t go around bribing old men. But you can keep track of the building permits and read the public notices. They tell you who got a mortgage and how much. Read everything in the real-estate section. If the prices in a certain area begin to go up suddenly, that’s a clue. When you think a neighborhood is getting active, go there and walk the streets. You’ll see For Sale signs. The poor aren’t blessed with patience or foresight. If the next-door neighbor sells for twenty-one, they’re thrilled with twenty-two. They don’t think, Next year I’ll get thirty. Don’t be greedy. Offer a fair price and don’t make enemies. Get yourself a subscription to the Washington Construction News and Commercial Review. The little trade papers print more valuable information than the Herald and Star.”

  “You make it sound simple.”

  “It is simple. I told you so in the beginning. But you,” he added thoughtfully, “must be careful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You must deal only with a reputable bank—a bank can make or break you. My bank is First National. You must get yourself a lawyer who specializes in real estate. The right lawyer . . . very important. But the most important”—he smiled and tapped her belly—“is right here. That comes first.”

  “Of course. We don’t have any concrete plans. My partner and I have to find an owner willing to hold our mortgage. All the banks have turned us down. We have a down payment but even if we had jobs, women can’t get loans.”

  “Do you have a property in mind?”

  “Many. There is a row of frame houses on North Capitol Street . . . I’d buy them up one after the other if I could. The neighborhood has to change . . . that close to the Capitol Building. Prices are reasonable because the houses need work, but you can see the potential.”

  “Have the bank call me,” he said. “Perhaps I can help.”

  His big, slightly bulging eyes were in turn dreamy, zealous, intelligent, and childishly excited. His voice was comforting. He spoke with authority and her respect for him seesawed wildly. He made her want to please him, as if she were his favorite child, yet she also had the feeling that he had it in for her. All that nonsense about her not being Arab. All those pointed questions about her family.

  Larraine would swoon at the map in his office and swoon over Rashid, too. They shared the same directness of personality. They reduced everything to the simple truth.

  He shut off the overhead lights and led her back to the living room. Paul was still huddled with the same man he had been talking with all evening, a stockbroker. If Rashid presented her ideas as acceptable, Paul would be accepting. He would take her seriously or at least be neutral. It was so seductive to let Rashid do what he could for her. He could fix everything.

  “I want you to look down there. It feels funny.”

  Asha fiddled with the chain on a thin alligator bag. She wrapped it around her index finger over and over. (What could she possibly carry in such a thin bag, Paul wondered. Loose hundred-dollar bills?) He was wary of this one. Her eyes were odd. Combat eyes was the phrase that came to mind.

  “I know for a fact that you attended a very fancy school and a good university.” He tried to sound paternal. “You can be more articulate than that. What feels funny? Does it hurt when you urinate? Is it tender in any area? Any more bloody show? Is the discharge diminishing each day?”

  “I’m weepy all the time. I’m depressed.” She didn’t look in the least depressed.

  A white linen coat, the collar flipped up, was draped over her shoulders to create a tableau. The portrait of an indulged child. Her lips were outlined and it looked like a painted pout. The face had been worked on. It was poreless, hairless, and unmarred. She probably had had electrolysis—every little hair zapped away. The crease under her nose—had it been surgically shortened?—hiked up her pouty lips, making her look permanently petulant. Somebody hadn’t given her what she wanted. Well, Dr. Paul wasn’t going to give it to her either.

  He got up and went around the desk. “Are you taking your iron pills? Let’s see if you’ve got good color.” He pulled down the lower lid of her right eye. “Looks pretty good.” He leaned back against the desk and took one of her hands into his. It was an innocent gesture meant to reassure, but she jumped like a rabbit in heat. She had crossed and uncrossed her legs a dozen times. She had let her skirt ride up and she scratched her thigh. Probably if he sat far enough back in his chair and bothered to look, he’d see right up her legs. Is that what she wanted? Even if he were so inclined—the idea of Rashid finding out could keep his prick limp for a century—it was medically unsound.

  “Are you going to examine me today?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea. The less we disturb the healing process, the better. Any fever?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve had a remarkably quick recovery.”

  “I have a remarkable doctor.”

  “Asha, you’ve had a serious operation.” He made himself sound grim. “We can’t afford any more scares. What would be ideal now is for you to marry and start a family as soon as possible. Get everything operating properly.”

  “Do you have anyone in mind that I can marry?”

  “Very funny.” He raised an eyebrow and pursed his mouth. “You’re teasing me.” He went back to the other side of the desk. “You have to go very slowly. No douching or anything like that. And certainly no penetration for at least two months.”

  “Why would you tell me a thing like that?” She was daring him to spell it out.

  “Are we going to play a game? OK. Whatever you say. In case you’re thinking of using tampons, don’t.”

  She got up and he thought she was going to leave, but she came around and knelt at his side of the desk, swung his chair around, and wedged herself between his legs. “I’m here on a mission.” She smiled.

  “What mission?” He tried to twirl himself back, but she had a firm hold on his crotch and was tugging down his zipper. He could stay calm, couldn’t he? He was afraid—and this was hard to admit—of offending her. The pressure of her hand was already making it difficult to think, but he didn’t want to give in. This was not only wrong, it was dangerous. Maybe if he did nothing he’d call her bluff.

  “Now it’s your turn to play games,” she said sarcastically. “OK. Whatever you say. I want to play house and it’s time for dinner.” None too gently, she took out his penis, looked up, and smiled.

  Her hair—black and shiny and plentiful—was twisted in a voluptuous upswept bun and he wanted to tear it apart and grab it in his fingers, but she might not like that. He hadn’t wanted this. “Stop it,” he said in a mean, stern voice. Horny, spoiled bitch. Right then, right at the point where he felt as if someone had a tourniquet on his scalp and his skin was too small for his body, she stopped dead. He wanted to slam her head back down, but he didn’t dare.

  “That sounds mean”—she smiled—“and I’m sure you don’t mean it. Could you get up a minute, please?”

  He complied. Everything she said was potentially a keg of TNT when he thought of her father. She snaked her slim skirt up her body until it was at her waist, then she sat down and straddled her legs over the arms of the chair. “Make me come. If you can do it in one minute, I’ll finish you off.”

  “That’s blackmail,” he said.

  She was as cool as a cucumber. “It won’t take long. I’ve been thinking about you for so long I’ll probably come with the first touch.”

  “Your father wouldn’t like this,” he said soberly, then felt utterly stupid for bringing her father into it. Could she really want it? Was it a trap?

  “He’d like it less if you were unkind to me,” she answered sweetly. He knew she had him and knelt down.

  During the spring and early summer, everyone who knew him noticed Paul’s grayish look, but it wasn’t the
sort of thing you pointed out. You couldn’t say, “God, you look awful.” The telltale color first appeared as an unhealthy circle around his face but it was most obvious in fluorescent light, so Tom Haywood, who saw him daily, finally said something. “You feeling all right, buddy? Isn’t it about time you linked up with somebody so you can get a full night’s sleep?”

  “Menden takes over for me when I need him.”

  “What’s that, once a month? You need a regular partner. I’ve been with Gareth over a year and it makes all the difference in the world. What are you going to do with all that money anyway but give it to the government.”

  Tom’s patronizing attitude rankled. “I’ll decide when I need a partner,” Paul said sharply. He didn’t want people to think he worked too hard. It made him appear moneygrubbing and that wasn’t an image he wanted to cultivate. Every obstetrics case was two hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket. Every cesarean was four hundred dollars. A hysterectomy was also four hundred. If Menden did the delivery because Paul was unavailable, he got one hundred dollars, two-fifths of the money for catching the baby.

  He didn’t like giving up any of the money when he saw what it could do for his house. He’d had the front lawn completely torn out and resodded. Surrounding the evergreens—where the grass had never had enough sunlight—were new wide collars of pachysandra and impatiens. It was orderly and opulent and satisfying and he found himself going out at odd hours to stare at it. Fixing the lawn had led to replacing the plain white entry door with two hand-rubbed oak ones with etched-glass panels and ornate brass hardware. It had taken the carpenter an entire day to hang them properly, but now the entrance—connected to the street by a new brick walk in a herringbone pattern—looked stately. The new lawn and door made the inside look shabby. The house was sumptuous, but it needed refurbishing. The large living-drawing rooms deserved oversized Oriental rugs and that brought up another point. How could you furnish such graceful, exquisite rooms with ordinary manufactured furniture?

  At every step of the refurnishing process, he’d serendipitously discover something crucial about the next step. Just about the time the house was painted he went to an auction and with the help of the doctor who took him picked up a Biedermeier sofa upholstered in peach silk and a hand-painted, black-lacquered Oriental coffee table. The same doctor took him to a private sale of Cissy Patterson’s estate and he left with two delicate pecan end tables with inlaid leather tops. They were expensive but his friend assured him they could only increase in value. The restorer who cleaned the new purchases was expensive and the private trucker who moved them from place to place was expensive, too. Yet he became obsessed with finding ever more precious pieces to make his palace perfect. He was a regular at the Wednesday and Saturday morning auctions held in the Mayflower Hotel ballroom, even though frequently he’d been up working the previous night. It was cheaper to buy things at auction than to patronize the antique shops. He knew he was being selfish in always buying the things he liked, but Star didn’t have strong feelings and she was caught up in her own renovation of the house she had bought with Larraine. He had come to realize that her friendship with Larraine had its advantages. He could work as much as he wanted without feeling guilty that his wife was sitting home resentful and lonely. That was the main complaint of all the other doctors’ wives.

  Like everyone else, he had bad moments. A few times he got carried away and bid too much for something and afterward would become dejected. Momentarily he felt out of control because he wasn’t able to stop himself. He caught naps on the cot in the doctors’ dormitory and lived on sandwiches and coffee. Three of his colleagues mentioned that he looked pooped and Tom Haywood kept giving him pointed looks and shaking his head. “You’re burning the candle at both ends, buddy. Who’s keeping that pretty wife of yours company while you’re here slaving away?”

  “We make our time together count,” Paul answered. He was glad to be reminded that Tom’s wife had thick legs and a blunt, androgynous face. “Actually, Star’s busy, too. She’s working in real estate.”

  “No kidding? And after this pregnancy, no more children?” The question was a rebuke from a father of four.

  “There’ll be more children. My wife’s a determined woman. She’ll handle it all.” He was proud of Star, if a little surprised by her ambition. This desire to be in business was a wrinkle he hadn’t expected, but it made her more interesting. She wasn’t just an empty-headed beauty. Anyway, he liked playing the role of the expansive, modern-minded husband.

  Tom walked away with a rueful look and although he had bested him, Paul felt depressed and alienated. He had no real friend at the hospital to confide in. And what was there to confide, anyway? How could a man confess to being confused and obsessed at the same time? Many evenings, as he waited for a patient to dilate, he would look out the window at the string of cars on the busy avenue below and yearn to return to his own hometown and be a simple country doctor. He thought longingly of the large family gatherings, the generous quantities of food, the simple eagerness to please any guest. At home he would have prestige without qualification. He was astute enough to realize that without the demands of the clan he had drifted into an amoral life. He had stopped seeing Rita, but only because he lacked the time, not for any moral reason. He was in debt to Rashid for a staggering amount. Not only the mortgage for the house, but also a twenty-thousand-dollar loan for stocks he had purchased over the last few months. What was worse, if anything happened to him, Rashid, not Star or the coming baby, would get everything.

  What troubled him most of all was the fact that he was no longer invincible. He had begun experiencing debilitating headaches and was easily fatigued. He thought both could be cured by more sleep. What was the old saw? A doctor who diagnosed himself had a fool for a patient. If he admitted to feeling ill, he’d be told to slow down. He couldn’t slow down. He was in over his head.

  40.

  WE HAVE THE ONLY WROUGHT-IRON GARDEN GATE. I KNOW IT WON’T KEEP ANYONE OUT, BUT IT’S A NICE TOUCH.

  Here,” said Larraine, “I’m not going to let you help me unless you wear this.” She handed Star a paper filter mask that fit over the nose and mouth. “It says right here on the can that it’s not good to inhale this stuff. And don’t you dare climb that ladder. I’ll do the top. You do the bottom. You shouldn’t even be doing this, except I need your moral support.”

  “And I need yours. And I want to be here. Hand me that putty knife.”

  They arrived each morning at eight to let in the plumber and carpenter. They had—with great excitement and stomach-gripping anxiety—purchased a frame row house behind Capitol Hill in a neighborhood of lopsided sidewalks whose supposed renewal was still a deep secret.

  The house had cost twenty-three thousand five hundred dollars. They had put ten percent down and were using the balance of their five-thousand-dollar stake (after lawyer and bank fees, it had dwindled down to twenty-four hundred dollars) to begin renovation. The only hopeful news was that the government was giving them a tax break because they were revitalizing a hopeless section of the city. The house had four floors and, by adding kitchens and baths, they could (according to McKay) create two floor-through apartments and a duplex (really a triplex, if you included the basement, which was half out of the ground) to rent out at a possible monthly rent roll of four hundred ninety dollars, which was one hundred and eighty dollars more than their expenses (not counting money they would owe to tradesmen). On paper it sounded wonderful.

  There had been two good surprises (three if you counted the fact that a fifty-year-old wood house had no termites) and two bad ones. The bad ones were the condition of the furnace (dangerous) and water in the basement. But the floors (nice broad pine) and the roof (slate) were sound and viable for the foreseeable future.

  Fortunately for them, Mr. Heath, the plumber, was a chivalrous man nearing retirement. He took it upon himself to save two hapless women who were in over th
eir heads. The plumbing bill alone could have put them dangerously in the red. He sat down and worked out a budget. “You pay me in part. You pay the electrician in part. Get your basics in so you can rent right away and get some income. This area’s going to come up in time. You’re within walking distance of the Capitol Building, so your tenants save carfare. That’s a big plus.” He advised them to do all the raw plumbing and install just one new bathroom. On the upper floors, he offered to put in used fixtures left over from other jobs. “It’s your good fortune that everyone wants colored bathroom fixtures these days,” he said. “I have a backyard full of white sinks, tubs, and johnnies.” The used fixtures were in good condition and had many years of life in them. When Mr. Heath offered to wait for the balance of his money until they were on their feet, Larraine was certain that he had a crush on Star.

  Anything they could reasonably do themselves they were doing, including the inside painting. America was in a do-it-yourself craze and decorating advice for the layman was plentiful. Each morning, they spackled and taped a room to be painted the following day. They had learned a bitter lesson: preparation was the key to success and simple tricks—setting the cans upside down the night before—could save valuable time.

  Once Larraine was settled on the ladder with her tray of paint and her lamb’s-wool roller, she stopped fussing and relaxed. “This is the best part. Instant satisfaction. I love it. This is the best house on the block.”

  “That’s because it’s our house. You always love what’s yours.”

  “That’s not always true. I don’t love my nose or my nearsighted eyes. But I love this house. It has those extra carved doodads across the top that make the building look more distinguished. The garden is by far the nicest.”