Rosewater and Soda Bread

by Marsha Mehran

  June nodded. “Keeled over nearly she did. Who does he think he is, talking about Frank Sinatra's mistresses? And what of the virtues of volleyball? I've never heard of such filth!” June paused. “What's this volleyball, anyhow?”

  Dervla placed her teacup firmly on the counter and shook her curly gray head. “It won't do, I tell you. It just won't do,” she said. “Something has to be done about all this—before it's too late.”

  June moaned. “But what can we say of it, Dervla? What's there to be done about the whole mess?”

  The Bible group awaited their leader's decision.

  Dervla Quigley thumbed her rosary, smacked her lips decisively. “You just leave that to me. There's only one way of sorting this hole of decrepitude we've fallen in.”

  She paused, squinting at the women seated before her. “Judgment Day could be upon us and we'd have no mind of it. It's time to put an end to all this shame.”

  SHE COULD NOT BELIEVE the beauty of the place, the grand mansion surrounded by the deep forest.

  As Julian took her through its many rooms, most of them filled with scaffolds and covered in sheets, Marjan felt herself transported back to a time when dances were held in its velvetwalled ballroom and horse-drawn carriages, complete with plumed footmen, took their water breaks at an adjoining ivy-covered cottage. There were parlors after parlors, each grander than the next, and an entire ground floor for what would eventually be the restored kitchen.

  They had taken a detour around the burnt-out southern wing and made their way to the dining room, a generous room with a vaulted ceiling. The fresco on one large wall was indeed the marvel Julian had promised. It was a Pre-Raphaelite portrayal of the Children of Lir, those four siblings cursed to remain swans for nine hundred years. Despite a ragged crack that was making its way down the plaster, the fresco was as pulsing with life as though one was actually looking out on a placid freshwater lake.

  When Marjan turned away from the painted wall, she saw its real-life inspiration outside the window. There, through floor-length panes, stood a pond complete with a flock of those gracious birds, the white-necked swans. There was even a maze on the property, the kind shaped like a Rubik's cube of greenery. They had only stopped at its opening, for, as Julian had pointed out, people had been known to get lost in its fifteen-foot hedges for days.

  It was then that he had leaned in for a kiss.

  Running his hands down her arms, he gently skimmed his lips over hers, so taking her by surprise that she didn't have the time to turn away. It was only his lips, but to Marjan it felt as though she was crossing a great divide, traversing boundaries she had not realized existed deep within her.

  She closed her eyes, taking in that gloriously manly scent of his, of leather and the pinecones crushed beneath their feet. She was sure he could hear her heart pounding, bursting against her jacket, wanting release, wanting to feel his. She allowed herself that moment, ignoring even the scar on her shoulder, which pulsed in counterpoint to her myriad, kaleidoscope-like emotions. And then it ended, just as simply as it had begun. He pulled back, taking a step away.

  “You need to say yes to me.” He looked at her intently, those green eyes taking on the color of the forest.

  “Yes?” She felt so dizzy. For a moment it seemed as though they had been walking the maze for days.

  “Yes to dinner. This Friday night. Yes to seeing me again. And again.”

  Yes, she said. Yes.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE ARBOR OF ROWAN TREES curtsied along the curve, masking the inlet from view. It shimmied demurely as Marjan steered the van onto a leafy road, following Estelle Delmonico's directions toward Clew Bay.

  “You think you are lost,” Estelle had said on Tuesday, “but suddenly you turn and there is the tree and you are found again.”

  And just as her dear friend had described, the next gullied corner led straight into the dome of a majestic valonia oak. Like the arms of an aged and grand doyenne, its silvered limbs reached up and over the hillock, casting berry patterns that Layla's boyfriend, Malachy, would have likened to far-reaching constellations. As Marjan maneuvered the van around the tufted crest, an Atlantic breeze coaxed a handful of its mistletoe onto the lime green roof. The next instant brought into view the shimmering waters of Clew Bay.

  Estelle's voice rang in her ear once more: “We have to help her, Marjan. Nobody is alone in this world. Someone knows this girl. Someone cares very much for her. We have to find this someone.”

  The widow had been sitting on her linen couch when she said this, cradling the cup of warm milk Marjan had made for her. The young woman was asleep in the bedroom, away from their hushed voices.

  “Tomorrow,” Marjan promised. “I will go to that beach tomorrow. I'll see what I can find there.” She paused, turned to the widow. “I still think you need someone else here to help you with things full-time. You can't take care of yourself and her as well,” Marjan pointed out. “Do you remember what Dr. Par-shaw said?”

  Estelle shook her head. “What is there to do anyway? A little sewing, a little talking, some eating—I do this for myself all the time. No, we will be okay.”

  Despite her exhaustion, Marjan could tell that the widow was happy to have the new responsibility. Still, she felt it important to ask: “But what about your arthritis? What if you get a bad spell again? Are you sure sleeping on the sofa won't be bad for your back?”

  “Pfft! That is nothing. You should see the skinny hammocks we sleep in during the war in Napoli. We were lucky we didn't break our heads, we fell like melons in the night!” Estelle chirped, waving her hands around her head. “Don't worry so much, darling. The doctor is coming here every day. If I have any pains, I tell him.” She hoisted herself up from the cushiony sofa, the empty mug in her hand. “Anyway my hands, they are much better today. See?” Estelle wriggled her chubby fingers happily.

  They did look less puffy, thought Marjan as she helped Estelle into a straighter stance. “Then you'll let me make all your meals,” she conceded. “I've got the barberry rice for today. I'll bring you lunches and dinners for as long as you need them.”

  Estelle's face brightened even more. “Well, that I cannot say no to,” she exclaimed. “Energy for all of us! Energy for living!”

  SHE HADN'T BEEN ABLE to keep her promise to explore Clew Bay until Thursday morning. On Wednesday the café was packed with tricolored revelers making pit stops from the pub during what turned out to be a rousing success in the world of mullet haircuts, testosterone, and fancy footwork: football's coveted Cup. Football, as the inhabitants of Ballinacroagh were prone to say, was as true an Irish venture as the telling of tall tales and that black stuff called Guinness. For what other sport in history gone required such grace from grown men, every travel and kick taken from the reels and jigs of this craggy little island? Not as far a leap of the imagination as once scoffed, for on Wednesday, Ireland at long last managed to qualify for the Cup.

  As a consequence, Marjan had not stopped rolling out sangak sandwich bread and turned off the stove until well after sunset. She would go to the Bay as early as possible the next morning, she told herself. Thursday was one of their slower breakfasts of the week anyway, giving her plenty of time to investigate.

  At least she no longer needed to hide her reasons for taking the morning off. Both her sisters had seen her drive away from the back alley, Bahar with a sour and disapproving face, Layla with waves of encouragement.

  Those two, thought Marjan. Sometimes, they just didn't see how hard it was to keep everything running so smoothly. Not just in the café but in every other area of their lives as well. Her sisters never had to worry about anything beyond their everyday duties. She was the one, for example, who had to take care of the bills, make sure their business licenses were in order, and sort through the mess that was the Irish tax system. She was the one who had applied for their residency, ensuring that they were all on their way to becoming citizens of this land of endless green acres.

&n
bsp; Neither Bahar nor Layla had ever questioned her about any of these matters, taking it for granted that Marjan would fix everything. Part of it was her fault, Marjan admitted to herself. She knew she often strove to protect them, to shelter them from upset. She had been taking care of everything since she was seventeen and didn't know how to be any other way. Maybe she should start, thought Marjan, staring out the van window. Start a different way of being.

  The sky was overcast, sifting pensive gray onto the surface of the inlet. There had been a pub on the road a half mile back, but there were no houses around this part of the Bay.

  She drove up a narrow lane to the secluded spot, just off the main Beach road. She could clearly see the large dune Estelle had described: it resembled a small hill, covered with pebble trails and pin-tucked coves. It was a place that bore no witnesses, thought Marjan, no one to stop you from your determined mind. A determined mind, Baba Pirooz used to say, was a prerogative as well as a burden.

  Most things in life were, thought Marjan.

  Noticing a clearing up ahead, she turned in to it and parked the van. The communal parking spot was surrounded by clusters of more oaks, ancient specimens whose branches Druids once slept under. According to Danny Fadden, who in addition to owning the mini-mart on Main Mall was a connoisseur of Celtic lore, the oaks were not merely places for Druids to doze. In those moments of hibernation, known to last days or even weeks, the Irish seers would command the realms of the dead, commune with the forces beyond, and ask the questions posed by the High Kings of Connaught. Waking to a shower of mistletoe, they would relate the visions they had seen, messages from the underworld and beyond.

  She could use a Druid's help, thought Marjan. Someone who could reveal some clues to the girl's origins.

  She locked the van, more from habit than from necessity, as the back was empty of its usual load of precious spices, and walked to the edge of the dune. Crossing over patches of stinging nettle, she stepped onto the sand. Directly behind stood Croagh Patrick, a mile away but looming as large as ever.

  Marjan had never been this far out on the Bay, so she would be relying entirely on Estelle's directions to guide her forward.

  “She curl like a ball beside a bush of grass,” Estelle had said. “I think to myself, My God, una angela, she is dead. But she was only fainted. Her breathing so small, almost like nothing.”

  Marjan stared up ahead. A choir of darkening sea grass shuddered in the breeze. The bushes jutted out from one side of the dune, which sloped right into the water. All along the dune, clusters of prickly saltwort were asleep to the ardor of carder bees. She glanced back at the clearing where the van sat snug on the gravel before stepping gingerly down the slope.

  Chances favored some clues, she told herself; somewhere along this dune there could be a purse or some sort of personal belonging the girl left before stepping into the water. Maybe some keys, a ring, a wallet; less than two weeks had passed since Estelle had found the girl, lying nearly blue with a piece of dark fabric up around her throat; if anything had been left beyond the reach of the waves, it could still be there.

  Their only clue to date—the piece of sodden fabric—had turned out to be a crepe dress, a simple shape with pearl clasp buttons and lilies printed on black in repeating patterns. Washed and dried, and hanging from a hanger in Estelle's living room, the dress gave no more hints than when wet. There were no tags inside to indicate a brand or place of purchase, and were it not for the tiny, regimental stitching along its bodice and hem, Mar-jan would have thought it handmade.

  Marjan shivered, thinking of what Dr. Parshaw had said that first night in the hospital: “It was an act of desperation, that is my solemn opinion. The manner in which she tried to terminate indicates this, you understand.”

  When Marjan had asked him to explain, the doctor had looked at her with his sad, dark eyes. “It is my opinion that she used a thin, sharp, and very unsanitary instrument. Clothes hangers or similar metal objects have been used before for such actions. Desperation would have driven it, yes?”

  Marjan sighed. A clothes hanger. It seemed a horrible choice to have to make.

  She looked out on the Bay again, her arms folded. According to Avicenna, there were only two options in the matter of surprise pregnancies, both involving carefully chosen recipes. A woman could either consume ingredients that would strengthen the womb, giving the growing seed the right soil to bloom; or, digesting the philosophy of less being more, she could opt to burn the bud out from its very roots.

  Marjan had scoured the Canon early that morning, before opening the café. With a cup of bergamot tea in hand, she had gone through the section titled “The Universal Pregnancy Diet.” On the one hand, according to the Persian doctor, eating raisins, sweet quinces, pears, and pomegranates would keep the womb properly bolstered, feeding directly from the mother's intentions to the baby's growing limbs. On the other hand, a steady diet of fried chickpeas, green beans, and capers, as in a plate of green bean narcissus, was bound to induce a shedding of motherly responsibilities.

  The Canons advice set in motion Marjan's own tumbling conscience.

  She had been delivering fortifying stews to the hospital and then to Estelle's cottage every day for the last two weeks, with the idea that they would strengthen the girl and her growing baby. It was the right thing to do, helping the girl toward better health. Anyone would do the same in her position.

  Yet, Marjan told herself after reading through the Canon, she had not considered the other side of the picture: what if the girl did not want to be fed fortifying stews? What if she did not want her baby and was being forced to eat for two anyway? Marjan hadn't really stopped to think about the hand she was playing in all of this; after all, she could be contributing to a decision that wasn't really hers to make. What would Avicenna say about this situation? she wondered. What choice did she really have in the end?

  She reached the other side of the inlet. The water lapped at her shoes and sped away. The dune towered overhead, creating a little cave where the tide could not reach. This was the spot Es-telle had described; this was where she had found the girl, lying facedown in the sand. Yet there was nothing unusual here, nothing left behind. Just water and more sand. Nothing to point to who the girl was, where she had come from. If only she would talk.

  Marjan watched as the water foamed and frothed toward her. A girl had come here to kill a part of herself, she told herself. Alone, with no one to help her through her thoughts. Where would she and her sisters be today if there had been no one to help them along? No Gloria or Estelle, no Ballinacroagh to come home to? Would she even have the luxury of wondering? Or would she be too busy struggling to survive? Marjan thought with a sigh. She would definitely not have the privilege of thinking about her needs, her feelings, had they stayed in Tehran. She would be too busy trying to make ends meet, trying to keep them all alive.

  She sighed again, this time louder. From above, the sea grass shook in solemn response. She never wanted to forget how truly lucky they all were, Marjan told herself. To have one another, to have people to love.

  THE PUB SAT DIRECTLY across a small dock, on a section of the Bay that was littered with large boulders. There was only one small blue boat tethered to the dock, bobbing in the splashing water. Marjan nosed the van beside the thatched pub and turned off the ignition. She stared at the sign swinging in the wind. The Aulde Shebeen, Inn Keeping with the Sea. It couldn't hurt to ask a few questions, she thought.

  The bar seemed empty but for one customer, a man in rain gear conversing with the bartender, but as Marjan made her way up to the counter, she noticed a familiar face in a musty corner: Old Lady Lennon, coddling a large pint of gin and lemonade. A female equivalent to the Cat if ever there was one, the old woman had not been seen in Ballinacroagh since the summer season. Having fallen out with Margaret McGuire in June over the price of a packet of honey-roasted peanuts, she had been banned in all the town's pubs for an indefinite period of rehabilitation. So this was
where she had been hiding out, thought Marjan, noticing that the old woman was wearing her customary navy peacoat and green skullcap, pulled tight over her ears and graying eyebrows.

  Marjan approached the bar. The bartender was in the middle of an impassioned discourse, holding a remote control and pointing up to a television on a shelf above the liquor wall.

  “Here's the thing, Horse, here's the magic,” he said, turning up the volume on the screen. John Wayne had just pulled Maureen O'Hara kicking and screaming across their cottage yard by her long red hair. A classic scene from the movie The Quiet Man, also one of Marjan's favorites.

  “Going soft, now, John? A bit of a romantic, eh?” the man at the bar said with a wry smile. “Sure, wouldn't catch you saying so in front of your Maureen, I'd bet.”

  The bartender reached up and smoothed his large gingery mustache. “Wouldn't I now? How do you think we spent our wedding night, eh, Horse? That”—he pointed to the television again—“that there is the surest way to get a filly into your bed. Number one aphrodisiac next to a hit up the backside. Mind you, it was my Maureen took a swing to me and not the other way around.”

  The other man laughed.

  “Excuse me,” Marjan said. Both men turned slowly to face her. The bartender smoothed his mustache once again. “Well, hello there, little lady. What's tickling your palate today?”

  “I was wondering if you could help me. I'm looking for someone.”

  “Say it's John Neddy and you'd be making my day.” A sound of clicking heels came from behind the bar. Marjan couldn't help but notice the bartender's barrel of a chest: hairy and spangled with several gold medallions, it was held in by a half-buttoned shirt and a tight leather vest.

  “I'm looking for someone who may have been a customer. Maybe in the last few weeks?” Marjan described the girl to them. The man on her right kept staring intently at her face, though Marjan only glanced at him once as she spoke.