Three Daughters: A Novel

by Consuelo Saah Baehr

  He had a lot on his mind and he didn’t want to think about his health. One of his patients had developed toxemia during the last trimester and he had to induce labor. There was a good likelihood that the baby would die, but he had no alternative. The mother was critical. The day she walked into his office he had known her fate before she spoke—the upper torso was gruesomely bloated, the head so full of water that even her retinas were ready to hemorrhage. “Doctor, I’m dizzy and my head aches all the time.”

  He broke out in a sweat. “How long has this been going on?”

  “I don’t know. A few days . . . a week.”

  For this he didn’t wait behind his desk. He got up quickly, tilted her head to inspect her eyes. “Any blurred vision?”

  “Yes. Is it serious?” Tears began. “Will it hurt the baby?”

  “It’s very serious,” he shouted. “Why didn’t you come immediately?”

  “I didn’t think it was anything. This is my first . . .” Whimpers and tears.

  “I’m going to have to put you in the hospital.”

  Inducing labor prematurely always made him feel sad and clumsy. The image was of a senseless hand wreaking havoc on a courageous little soldier who was hard at work, racing against the clock to make eyebrows and fingernails, perfect lungs, put some meat on the bones. The drive to flourish and survive could surmount many odds, but seldom the insidious effect of toxemia. The slow poisoning tripled the heartbeat and exhausted the fetus until it literally died of fatigue.

  All those feelings—the helplessness he felt, the knowledge that when he encountered it again he would be equally powerless to stop it—weighed on him. He felt the weight against his entire chest as an oppressive, crushing heaviness that came and went of its own volition. Throughout the next few days, the episodes of pain and breathlessness came more frequently. He had only to walk briskly to bring on an attack, yet he still ignored the symptoms.

  On the last Friday of October, he was short of breath throughout the morning. His face was ashen even after seven hours of restful sleep. Reluctantly he made an appointment with Spenser Hodding, the cardiologist, for the following Monday so he wouldn’t miss any of the weekend business.

  About eight o’clock on Saturday evening he was waiting for Rachel Caldecott to dilate four additional centimeters. Anticipating the slowness of a first labor, he went to rest in the doctors’ room. He sat on the side of a cot but found himself unable to lift his legs onto the bed so he could lie down. Excruciating pain radiated across his chest and swept over his back, cutting deep into every muscle. The feeling was of a crushing heaviness pinning his entire chest against an unyielding surface. Breathing was impossible.

  He fell to the floor and crawled to the heavy fireproof metal door to shout for help. He couldn’t raise himself enough to reach the knob. Had he reached the knob, it was doubtful he would have had the strength to turn it. Had he opened the door, he would not have been able to even whisper his predicament. And if, by some miracle, help had arrived, it was doubtful they could have saved him from the massive coronary that brought his heart to a thundering halt.

  It was unbelievable. The first word on everyone’s lips was “No.” It couldn’t be. A thirty-five-year-old man doesn’t just drop dead. Two of the wives hastily convened and, accompanied by Tom Haywood, came to tell the young widow. Star couldn’t account for the entourage that appeared at her door at ten o’clock and momentarily she thought it might be some idiotic surprise party. But for what occasion? Then Penny Haywood said, “We didn’t want you to be alone when you heard. Oh, dear, I’m sorry, but Paul is dead.”

  The words didn’t register. It was so ludicrous to have these strangers in her foyer at this time of night. For a moment she considered telling them to leave. What she said was, “If you’re looking for Paul, he’s at the hospital.”

  “Oh, God,” said Penny, “she doesn’t understand. Tom, you tell her.”

  There was none of the obsessive reenacting that had come after Nadia’s death. This was simple grief and a need to understand what it meant to be dead. She had often thought that death must be like those moments in life when she was lost in thought and lost to self-awareness. Yes! That’s it, she thought triumphantly. Death is being unaware of yourself. It’s just plain being. Maybe Paul was happy now. But then she had to assume that her mother was happy, too, but that was too painful to contemplate. Good Lord! People should learn how to think of death before they need to. All those useless things she had learned at school. She tried to be very still so she could capture her true feeling. Was it despair? Or sadness? Fear or anger? Hysteria? She felt nothing. Her mind was as empty as space.

  Two days after she buried Paul, the bank called to say they had to foreclose on the Bradley Boulevard house. The mortgage payments were three months in arrears and, while this was just cause for fore-closure, they had been lenient because of Dr. Halaby’s profession. They knew he was good for the money. Now, of course, since there was no working head of the household, they had no choice. They hoped she understood. Banks weren’t in the real-estate business. Foreclosure was the last possible choice, but what was there to do?

  “What about Mr. Rashid? He’s the cosignee. He told us it was all right if we didn’t pay right away. He’ll make the late payments until I catch up.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Halaby, but it’s Mr. Rashid who is foreclosing.”

  “I see.” I’m so stupid. I deserve no better than this. He must be furious that his plan didn’t work out.

  “Who was that?” Larraine was sitting on the floor helping Cassie put plastic shapes into a plastic ball. “Now, sugar,” she cooed, guiding the little hand, “you’re holding a triangle; let’s find the triangle hole . . . there it is! Star, look how she looks at me. Doesn’t crack a smile. She’s thinking I’m a raving idiot and you know what? She’s right. Who cares if the damn triangle goes in the triangle hole? Who was that on the phone?”

  “The bank.”

  “The bank? About your accounts? Were they joint?”

  She stared at the wall directly ahead and answered in a hollow voice. “They’re going to foreclose. He hasn’t been making the payments.”

  “But the payments were to go to Rashid, weren’t they?”

  “He’s the one who’s foreclosing.”

  “Holy God, what a son of a bitch!”

  They were silent a moment and then Larraine got a queer look on her face. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Will he pull something with us, too? We should see a lawyer.”

  “How can he do anything to us? I have the deed.” Her voice was unsteady. “You think there are hidden things we don’t know about?”

  “I know if a man like that wants to be vindictive he has things up his sleeve we’ve never heard of. This is awful.”

  As unbelievable as his death were the aftershocks of Paul’s financial affairs. He was in debt to Rashid to the tune of forty-eight thousand dollars over and above the house. He had been steadily losing money in the market and had received three margin calls in the preceding two weeks. Even with all the accounts receivable that were outstanding from the medical practice, she couldn’t have satisfied his margin debt. The broker made a personal call, bringing records to her house. “Mrs. Halaby, at this point I would lend you the money myself if I had it.” He was a decent man with a crew cut and highly polished shoes. Cassie’s wistful smile wasn’t lost on him, or her mother’s youth. “Fortunately everything was in his name, so you won’t be responsible. We’ll just have to sell the stock we have on hand and eat the rest.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s just an expression. We use it to describe funds that are irretrievable and we have to assume. We eat the losses.” She nodded. He watched her warily, expecting some show of fear and anguish, but she only bit her lip and stretched a handkerchief between her fingers. “Things must look pretty dismal right now but I bet you’ll com
e out of it just fine. You’ll marry again . . . a beautiful woman like you.” He cleared his throat. “Call me if you have any more questions.”

  “I have no more questions,” she said and led him to the door.

  His clumsy attempt to console her had turned her mind in a new direction and she was anxious to be alone and think it through. Until today, her head had been encased in gauze. She kept congratulating herself for doing simple things: putting on her nylons and buckling her shoes. When she bathed the baby and buttoned her up in her pajamas and made a supper of scrambled eggs, she felt triumphant. Any coherent action had been a miracle, but now this quiet sympathetic stranger had cleared one pathway in her brain and she saw what she was going to do. She was going to see her father again. And Aunt Julia and Uncle Peter. Her grandmother. Her great-aunt Zareefa. Cousin Delal. She was going to take Cassie and go home.

  “I don’t want any more coffee, Delal. And I don’t want you to heat the bread either. Stop . . . coddling me.” He had been ready to use a more damaging word than coddling. What? Stop smothering me? Bothering me? “We’re married . . .” he added and then got up and left the table.

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  “What does ‘we’re married’ mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know. It means I’m fine. I’ve got to go now, I’m late . . .” He kissed her cheek and hurried out the door.

  She had all day to finish his thought. We’re married now; you’ve already caught me. The language of marriage was the language of imprisonment. You landed or caught or hooked your man as if he were a fish. Still, when she thought about it—how it began and how it had ended—her marriage was a source of wonder.

  They had been home four months, living in a rented cottage behind the King David Hotel. Her father had offered to build a home for the newlyweds but James was appalled. “We don’t need a home,” he had said enigmatically and no one had the nerve to ask what he meant. James kept the family at bay and set the tone for all encounters. They were somewhat afraid of him, although he was polite and undemanding. They just weren’t used to his reserve or perhaps his physical difference—he was tall, rugged, silken haired—made them timid.

  Her father was unsettled around James and her mother became talkative and too cheerful. The gayer the George family became and the more they tried to please the cool, composed, inscrutable James, the less he wanted or needed from them.

  Delal had envisioned James and herself at the dazzling core of a stylish life filled with lighthearted merriment. James would rely on her for everything—not out of weakness but out of passionate preference for her taste and resourcefulness. She had expected him to be greedy for sex, to wake up wanting her and to go to sleep with his arms and legs wound around her, his lips against her back or shoulder, his hands aggressively on her buttocks or her breasts, his constant demands a testimony to the ardor she provoked in him. He didn’t demand anything. Not elaborate dinners or elaborate sex or even a button sewn on a shirt. It seemed to her that he didn’t want to enlarge their relationship. Instead, he was minimizing it. Often he answered her with just one word.

  Her appearance didn’t help. There was a strange, dusky overlay to her skin—the mask of pregnancy, the doctor said. Her hair was limp.

  He hadn’t touched her in two weeks, except for wispy kisses on the cheek to mark his arrivals and departures. He became the master of the unfinished sentence. “Sorry, I’ve got to dash.” “Some work . . .” or “some man” or “some last-minute plans” kept him from lingering in bed or at meals. What had been sophisticated and provocative love play in Edinburgh for two unattached people without responsibilities was self-conscious and distasteful in Jerusalem. He was still gracious and attentive, but there was a longing in his eyes that tore her apart. Was it seeing the places where he and Nijmeh had been together that made him long for what might have been? Suppose he broke down and confessed, “I can’t live without her, Delal. What am I going to do?”

  There were few who missed the irony of Delal’s marriage and almost all experienced that moment of confused inquiry. Nijmeh had married the man Delal wanted and now Delal had turned the tables. Everyone—including Julia and Peter—was slightly embarrassed. Even ignorant of the facts, James seemed to be ill-gotten goods. The first instinct was to protect Nijmeh, who already had had a terrible blow. What good would it do to mention it? Poor thing. She’d find out soon enough. Zareefa left the news out of her letter of condolence. Miriam, who had a mild case of pneumonia all summer, was still too grief stricken to think or care about whom Delal had married. Samir, for the first time, was glad his daughter was far away and wouldn’t be put through what had to be an awkward situation. That left Delal and Julia.

  When the newlyweds came home, Julia had addressed and stamped two hundred silver-lined, cream-colored envelopes and stuffed them with an engraved announcement, a silken square of tissue and the at-home card.

  Delal inspected the list and complained that James wanted as little done as possible. “He doesn’t want anyone feeling they must send a gift.”

  “And if they do?” Julia challenged. She had been cheated out of making a wedding and she wasn’t inclined now to be cowered by secondhand pronouncements.

  Delal shrugged and dug through the envelopes that were alphabetized. “Is there one here for Nijmeh?” As she asked the question, she came to the envelope and pulled it out.

  “Isn’t it ironic?” said Julia. “Nijmeh married Paul and you ended up with James.”

  Delal’s face went a shade paler. She was a girl who had never been afraid of anything, but she didn’t want to hear those names. “Don’t send this.”

  “Why not?”

  She turned away from her mother’s questioning eyes. “She was very much in love with James.”

  Julia sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose where her glasses left a mark. “Delal, that was a long time ago. She’s married and has a child. How can we not tell her?”

  “Oh, send it if you want to. I just don’t see what difference it’s going to make. She’s so far away. It doesn’t matter one way or the other whether she knows right away or not. It’s not going to make her feel great.”

  “She’ll be happy for you,” said Julia, but she felt less sure of herself.

  “I doubt it, but do whatever you want.”

  Julia lost some confidence and when she realigned the stack of envelopes the one for Nijmeh and Paul was left out. “She’ll have to know eventually.”

  “Mmm. But I’d give her more time . . . that’s all.”

  Julia put the invitation in one of the cubbyholes of her beautiful pecan desk where she sat each day and did paperwork. It was situated to overlook the narrow private mews where the Sisters of the Holy Cross had an elementary school. She looked forward to being interrupted by the sounds of little girls at recess. But now her serenity was marred by the daily sight of the envelope. It was a reminder that Nijmeh’s troubles had not ended. She’d seen something in her daughter’s face that troubled her. Was it too coincidental that Delal suddenly had to go to school in Edinburgh? Oh, Lord, not another mystery. She had just rid herself of one burdensome secret and didn’t want to discover another. Maybe Delal was right. Nijmeh didn’t need more disturbing news right now.

  As her pregnancy progressed, Delal felt grotesque and less confident of her power to hold on to James. She became paranoid, looking at him for signs of unhappiness. She thanked God that Nijmeh—her mother said she called herself Star now—was in America, safely away, safely married, already a mother. But then, out of the blue, like a horrible spidery hand coming out of the darkness to snatch her happiness, came the worst possible news. Paul was dead and Nijmeh was coming home.

  45.

  OH, SAMIR . . . YOU CAN’T THINK OF HER AS YOUR LITTLE BURDEN ANYMORE.

  He sat fidgeting for an hour before the plane lan
ded. Several times he rose and walked rapidly, as if going to a destination, then realized he had nothing to do but wait. Over and over he rubbed his palms on his trousers. He couldn’t seem to get warm.

  When he thought about greeting her, the only thing that came to mind was, I loved your mother very much. Would she blame him? He pictured her face flushed with resentment. You killed my mother. I hate you. After all, he had taken her to her place of doom. Uppermost in his mind was the thought that time had been rolled back. “I’m right back where I began with Nijmeh,” he said to Julia. “Except it will be harder.”

  “Oh, Samir.” Julia had been exasperated and answered crossly, “She’s coming home for some comfort. She’s lost her mother and her husband. She’s a grown woman with a child and you can’t think of her as your little burden anymore. Just be kind and accepting and play with your granddaughter. For heaven’s sake, don’t start planning what to do with the rest of her life. That’s her business.”

  Julia had hidden her fears behind impatience and a mission to charge her brother with a new attitude. She had no idea how the visit would end up. Suppose Nijmeh had a second, delayed reaction to the news of her birth? If that were true, what Samir said or didn’t say wouldn’t mean a thing.

  “She’s coming home for protection and guidance,” he had said.

  “Don’t be too sure. Why don’t you let her tell you why she’s home? What she needs is a sincere welcome.”

  The sound of the arriving plane brought him to his feet and he paced restlessly until the first passengers straggled off. He saw her first. She was taking each stair carefully, hampered by the child in her arms and a bulky bag dangling from her shoulder. Only the top of her head was visible, but when she reached the ground she raised her beautiful face and looked uncertainly toward the far side of the field, squinting and searching. There was a moment when their eyes met and both stood perfectly still. His heart shrank into a compact mass and fell away. All he could think of was how she had looked years ago, searching his eyes for approval with all the vulnerability of a little girl who wanted to please her father.