by Sharon Heath
I turned my head toward her so that we were nearly nose-to-nose. A long worry line was bisecting her forehead. Her breath on my face was like warm milk. God, I loved her. I tried to smile. “It’s a little redundant, isn’t it? ‘Darling dear’?”
We both sat up, and I kissed her forehead.
I heard Jacob’s voice as if from a long distance. “It makes me think about the wisdom of Solomon.”
Sammie looked as puzzled as I felt. “Huh?”
Jacob raised his eyebrows. “Hell-oh. Solomon, the Jewish epitome of wisdom?”
I knew the Book of Wisdom well, having read it on my own at the age of four. Instinctively, the words flew out of my mouth: “The breath in our nostrils is like smoke, and conversation sends out sparks from the stirring of our heart ....”
Jacob muttered, “Actually, I was thinking of ‘The Judgment of Solomon.’” Sammie and I stared at him. “You know, King Solomon being asked to judge which of two women claiming a certain baby was hers was actually its mother. Have you ever heard of the bat kol?” I shook my head. “It translates from Hebrew as ‘the daughter of the voice.’ It’s not quite ‘the voice of God,’ which we wouldn’t be able to hear, anyway, but of God’s wisdom. It’s what came to King Solomon when he was asked to rule in favor of one of the women. Jewish scholars agree it was bat kol that suggested he propose that a sword be brought to him so that he could divide the child in half. The true mother revealed herself when she begged Solomon to give the baby to the other woman rather than cut him in half.”
I knew it well, of course. “Pretty clever,” I commented.
“No,” objected Jacob, sliding off the bed to stand in the middle of the room, gesticulating. “It wasn’t just cleverness. In one of the few, but significant, dreams in the Old Testament, Solomon had already asked God to give him ‘a hearing heart.’ One that would listen to God.”
I frowned. “But what does that have to do with what we say to the Berhanus?”
“I’m not sure,” Jacob said, “but we all love Assefa.” I opened my mouth to respond, but Jacob waved a hand in the air. “I know, I know. He’s treated you like crap lately; Stanley called him something really shitty; Sammie was ready to kill him for breaking up with you—” The three of us exchanged a shocked glance. “Sorry. But no. Listen. Bascially, he’s a bright, decent guy. We all love him. Hell, I’m an asshole, and I love him.”
Did all assholes know they were assholes?
Jacob continued, “Whatever any of us say to the Berhanus, that’s really all that matters. We’re never going to fathom why he did what he did. Hell, for all we know, he has a brain tumor.”
You had to hand it to Jacob. He was absolutely right. He was an asshole.
I had to get out of there. I felt certain Sammie knew why I had to go. I also knew they were going to have a hell of a fight once I’d gone. But there was simply no more room in my head to worry about it.
I ran across the street and let myself in the front door to find Stanley sitting on the living room couch. The drapes were drawn. I sat down close to him, my eyes still adjusting to the lack of light. I could tell he’d barely registered my presence. “Stanley, I don’t care what you said, anymore. You weren’t in your right mind when you said those things, and Assefa wasn’t in his right mind when you came in. Honestly, I wasn’t in my right mind, either.” Was that true? “I keep hoping I’ll wake up and this will all have been a bad dream. There’s a part of me that still can’t believe that Assefa’s fighting for his life, or at least his beautiful mind. Well, I hope he’s fighting. It’s as if we’re all puppets in some play, manipulated by invisible strings.” And then, like some idiot, I added, “A new kind of string theory.” Stanley didn’t laugh. I didn’t blame him.
In the dim light emanating from the hallway, it looked as if Stanley was wearing an oddly positioned skull cap over the top right quadrant of his salt-and-pepper head. First the hoodie, now this? Was his guilt driving him to Judaism? I turned on the coffee table lamp and did a double take. What I’d assumed was a cap was actually an oddly-shaped, five-inch island of bare scalp where hair had most definitely been the day before.
I knew his hair had been thinning; just a few days earlier Gwen had complained that he was leaving it to her to clean out strands of his hair from the shower. But this? My first thought was that he’d pulled it out as some sort of penance, but then I remembered that stress could sometimes exacerbate an out of whack immune system condition called alopecia areata. This I knew from a bored moment at Mother’s, when I’d read a confession by Viola Davis in Elle magazine that she’d suffered from the disorder. “Oh, Stanley,” I whispered. I leaned over and pulled him to me.
Eventually he spoke, his voice muffled against my chest. “All my life I’ve wanted to help young people. I actually took pride that I did. Now, I’ve failed all of you. Especially Assefa, but you, too, Fleur. I’ve never loved anyone on this earth as much as you, and now—what must you think of me?”
That one stopped me in my tracks. I shoved it to the back of my mind for later contemplation. It was odd to be sitting with him like this, both of us blubbering, and his nose butted up sharply against my collarbone.
Only a few days ago, the bored-as-hell God with his immense void had spoken to Assefa through the fiercely protective lips of my mentor. Not as a calming “daughter of the voice” pronouncement from the lips of a bearded Jewish patriarch, but a smiting eruption of primitive rage from a man who looked like a frog.
As much as I wanted to reassure him, I had no words for Stanley. Instead, I rocked him, rocked myself, as we both continued to cry.
Chapter Twenty
Fleur
IT TOOK THREE days for the doctors to determine that Assefa had likely not incurred any serious brain damage. Mother phoned me with the news.
“Abeba just called. Isn’t it wonderful? A miracle, really.”
“How did she sound?”
“Exhausted. Teary. Relieved. And disturbingly apologetic.”
“Apologetic! For what?”
“For putting us through so much distress.”
“Mother!”
“I know.”
“Do you think I can call her?”
“I think that would be a lovely idea.”
Without allowing myself to think, I did.
Abeba answered the phone on the first ring, and I realized she must be on perpetual tenterhooks. “Yes?” Her voice cracked a little. I let my body down into a kitchen chair.
“Abeba, it’s Fleur.”
She started to cry. Which, needless to say, set me off, too.
“I’m so sorry,” she finally said.
“Abeba, please,” I remonstrated. Then, of all people, Jacob came to me. “We’re all in this with you. Me, Mother, Stanley, Gwennie, all of Assefa’s friends. Everyone loves him and has been praying for him.”
“Does he still have friends, Fleur?” Her voice had a slight edge, and for a second I thought, He’s told them. But then she went on, “I am so afraid he has lost everything by doing this. How could he, Fleur? How could he? I knew he was ... unsettled. But this?” She broke into sobbing again. I hated myself for having phoned her. “I am so glad you called,” she said.
“Abeba, I didn’t want to add to your burden. I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that he’s okay. Well, maybe okay is the wrong word. I know he’s got to be in a lot of pain. But at least he’s here, Abeba. At least he’s here.”
This was stupid. We were both sobbing now, speechless.
I heard the clatter of her phone being put down; in an obvious attempt to gather herself, Abeba was blowing her nose. She came on the line again. “He is sitting up and eating and even talking a little.” She gave a faint laugh. “Enough to tell us to go home. He is such a good boy, Fleur. Always thinking about others. You will visit him today? I know he will want to see you.”
“Of course,” I said, panicking.
Which is how I ended up entering the labyrinthine complex where
Assefa had morphed from healer to patient. The place was a zoo. Well, not really, but from the point of exiting the packed elevator at his floor it took me ten minutes to find Room 515.
The door to the room was open, but a nurse was blocking the threshold, her back to me as she peered inside. Tall and thin, she’d captured her fiery red hair in a tight rubber band. I tapped her shoulder. She wheeled around and flashed me a wide grin. “He’s asleep,” she said, stepping away from the door, presumably so as not to wake him. I followed suit. “No, no,” she said, “I was just looking in on him. I try to come by at least once a day. But, please. Go on in.”
“Are you a friend? Do you work with him?” I asked—anything to delay the moment of actually seeing Assefa.
She threw me a shrewd look. “Are you his fiancée Fleur?” I instinctually nodded, then decided not to correct myself as she went on, “His mother speaks so highly of you. What a sweet family,” she said, a doubtful look in her eyes. I could tell she would have liked to ask a million questions, but I certainly wasn’t going to encourage her. I had a few, myself.
Then she threw me for a loop, no awful pun intended. “Actually, I work in oncology. I’m Evelyn McDermott.” She held out a surprisingly strong hand. I shook it. “I was the one who found him. I can’t tell you what it’s meant to me that he’s survived.”
I stared at her. “You saved him.” I reached out to shake her hand again, this time with feeling.
We walked down the hall, distancing ourselves further from Assefa’s room. “Well, I suppose I did, but somehow I felt the whole time that something was moving through me, if you know what I mean.”
She clearly wanted to tell me. I nodded for her to go on. “I’d actually had a dream the night before. It was an awful dream, a real nightmare. Someone had to make a life or death decision. It was a man with his son—the kid was in terrible pain, and the father was about to spare him any more suffering by killing him. With an axe. I woke myself up screaming at one a.m., and I thought to myself, ‘Well, something’s not right.’ I actually texted my son in the middle of the night and scared him to death. The thing is, my son has no father.” Her speech had become increasingly rushed. Now she paused for breath. This woman had been traumatized, too, by what Assefa had done.
“I don’t know, when I saw this man—your fiancé—slumped over with that ... thing ... around his neck, his face grotesque—such a terrible shade of purple and a horrifying gurgle coming from his throat, I knew I had to get it off him. Thank God he had the knife he’d cut the rope with right there. It had fallen onto the floor. Still, it was almost impossible to cut through. It was a pulley rope, and they’re meant to bear hundreds of pounds of weight.” The expression in her eyes seemed both stunned and triumphant, like a runner who’d come from way behind to win the marathon.
When I told the story later to Sammie, she’d commented, “Good lord. How horrid. And how lucky. Just like stinging nettles, with the mugwort plant that heals their sting growing right next to them.”
My own body itched with invisible hives as I said yet another thank you to Evelyn McDermott and hesitantly entered Assefa’s hospital room. He was awake and struggled to sit up as I came in.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please. I’m just ....”
But he managed to pull himself into a quasi-seated position, his face ashy and gaunt above his white cervical collar, the arms that poked out of his flimsy, cornflower blue gown angular and listless. “Hello, Fleur.” His voice was unrecognizably hoarse.
Determined not to break down, I pulled a chair next to his bed. But not too close.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You can cry.”
But I daren’t. I barely managed a halting, “Assefa.”
“I’m here,” he whispered, giving what sounded like an attempted laugh. “Like it or not.”
“Oh, Assefa.” This was no time for real conversation. He was far too weak and there were too many elephants crowded into the room. “I’m glad you are,” I said.
“Are you?”
“I am,” I said, more emphatically.
“Well, that’s good,” he said, closing his eyes. At some point it dawned on me that he’d fallen asleep. I gave him a long look before leaving. His eyelashes were thick with gunk, the outer creases of his lips chalky with dried spittle. Staring at him without any semblance of desire, it occurred to me that I’d never loved him properly. I’d wanted him, yes. Madly. Who wouldn’t? I’d never seen a man more beautiful. And certainly, I’d admired him. But I had never felt the kind of sadness for him that I felt now. The kind of tenderness that his mother undoubtedly experienced every minute she sat here at his bedside.
I felt small and more than a little ugly as I tiptoed out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-one
Fleur
I MET WITH Assefa a few weeks after his release from the hospital. It had nothing to do with getting back together. Without either of us explicitly saying so, we knew we were beyond that. On my side, I’d concluded that I’d had enough of desire. My own was too dangerous. Ever since puberty it had been like some out-of-whack pinball machine, creating disasters at every flip and ping. I didn’t know which was worse—my contribution to the wreckage of Assefa’s life or what he’d done to my own trust in love.
I didn’t speak much about the latter, but surprisingly, it was Mother I most longed to confide in. Given Stanley’s moral lapse, the Fiskes were out of the question; Sammie’s hands were full with the inevitable return of Bad Jacob after a brief appearance of the nicer one; and Jillily didn’t count.
When I let spill that I’d actually met up with Assefa the previous morning at the Huntington Gardens, Mother gently asked me if we were patching things up. “Do you think you might still get married?” she asked hopefully.
I told her it was out of the question. “Mother, I can’t believe we were engaged when I knew him so little. I thought nothing could faze him. I had no idea he was so ... complicated.”
Mother eyed me oddly. “Most people are, Fleur.”
The two of us were sitting on her bed, the very same one where my tweeter had set Satan’s proclivity for disaster in motion. The bed covers were different, though, thanks to Mother’s weakness for shopping therapy. The silky duvet we spread ourselves across, propped up on our elbows, was a new find from Barney’s, appliquéd with satisfying patterns of butterflies, morning glories, and bees in dusty rose, sage, and a buttery yellow.
“Well, maybe working through what happened might be a prelude to a deeper love.”
“No,” I said firmly.
She sighed. “Well, I guess that’s why they call it first love. It’s because it’s usually followed by a second. At least a second.”
I didn’t dare tell her that Assefa had been the second. But perhaps she’d argue that Adam didn’t count, since he knew nothing about it.
Without warning, Mother pushed herself off the bed and began removing her black cashmere V-neck and honey-colored crepe slacks, groaning slightly with the pleasure of removing the constriction from her skin. I saw that her black lace bra barely contained her bulging breasts, and her belly and behind made cellulite moons around the elastic of her matching black bikini panties.
The only other time I’d seen Mother unclothed was when I’d stolen into her closet as a child for a pinch-fest and spied her through the crack in the closet door posing with her naked body in the mirror. Then, my eyes had fixed on her every-which-way pubic hair, which had contrasted so starkly with her alternating cool and fragile demeanor in the fearsome house of my father.
She’d always been a beauty, with classic features and a long, lean figure perfectly complimented by her signature sleek skirts and silk blouses, pearl necklaces and Chanel No. 5 perfume. But with the approach of middle age, she’d widened and sagged and grayed, and I’d ceased to think of her as particularly attractive, certainly not sexual. Until now. The matter-of-fact ease with which she’d flung off her clothes to get more comfortable in her royal blue sweat
suit, the earthy musk that wafted from her naked flesh, the frank smile she threw me when she saw me staring at her, all spoke of a mysterious comfort with her body that I suddenly envied.
Breaking the spell, she asked, “So, what did you two talk about?” before climbing back onto the bed, giving me a quick peck on the forehead, and plumping up a few large pillows to nestle against.
Her question took me by surprise. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share everything Assefa had confided in me. He was still so raw that it would feel like a betrayal. One of the harder things to hear had been his apology for hurting me. But the worst was his halting, but nonetheless detailed, description of his Hanging Man and his obsession with Makeda.
Assefa had confessed when I picked up the phone that he was calling on the spur of the moment. He was still staying at his parents’ house—“on suicide watch,” he’d muttered bitterly—and they were only too happy to relinquish him to my care. It had been a shock to see him, looking somehow smaller than before, and he seemed a bit wary to see me, but we’d resolutely pushed through the clusters of young families milling around the Huntington’s ticket kiosk and walked past a museum shop displaying posters of their collection of incunabula, including a rare vellum Gutenberg Bible that I promised myself to return to peruse properly one day. We made our way toward the vast Australian garden, where we settled ourselves under one of the taller eucalyptus trees. The air was thick with its honeyed, minty scent, and only the occasional chwirk of a Red-tailed Hawk or a lone Black Phoebe’s tee-hee too-hoo punctuated the stillness. Our exchange went like this:
Me: “How’s your neck? (He was still wearing his cervical collar, so it was a pretty natural question, but still loaded. My voice had been, accordingly, a bit wavery.)
Assefa: (With a rueful smile, his hand flowing up to inch two fingers under the bottom of the collar.) “Oh, not too bad, really. Considering.”