Embassy Wife

by Katie Crouch

  “Tell her it’s very important. It’s about International Day. It’s just … too much work, and so I wanted to ask her to be chairwoman again.”

  Libertina disappeared again.

  “Mandi, this is weird.”

  “You said you’d come. Now go with it.”

  The speaker outside the window crackled.

  “She will come out. Yes. Please drive in.”

  Mark and Amanda exchanged glances. The gate rumbled open, and Amanda navigated up the circuitous drive.

  “Won’t she recognize your car?” Mark said.

  “Too late now,” Amanda said. “We’re in!” She pulled directly in front of the front door. “Stay here,” she said, getting out. “It’ll go better if I talk first.”

  Mark obeyed, slumping down in his seat with the newspaper. The door opened, and Mila stepped into the sunlight. As usual, she was dressed to the nines, in a black sheath dress and heels. The moment she saw Amanda, she froze in her tracks.

  “Mila,” Amanda said. “I’m sorry, but I had to figure out a way to talk to you. I know you’re mad at me, for some reason. And I don’t care even about that … truly—I’m sorry for whatever I did. This is more important than that. I’m concerned about our daughters.”

  Amanda could have sworn that in that moment her friend’s face softened. Was she finally going to talk to her? She could almost hear what Mila would say. A baboon and a baby elephant, they make their own mischief. Or, hard is the baobab that only drinks wine. And Amanda would stare at her, and Mila would give some brilliant insight, and they would laugh and be friends again.

  But instead, the very opposite happened. Mila glanced at the car, then back at Amanda, then turned and stepped back into the house, slamming the door.

  Amanda stood, stunned, in the doorway. Brushing an angry tear off her cheek, she descended the steps and slowly got into the car.

  “She didn’t even give me a chance,” Amanda said.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Mark said. “I couldn’t see from here. Did she even look at you?”

  “It’s just so strange,” she said. “What do you think is going on?”

  Mark rubbed her shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry too much. Look at Meg. Look at everyone. You never can really know what’s going on in someone’s head, can you?”

  Amanda bit her lip, looking away from her husband. Did he know what she had been thinking earlier? That they would be better off without each other?

  “No,” she said. “You really can’t.”

  / 20 /

  Mila stood on the balcony, watching the Evanses’ station wagon retreat down the white gravel drive. So it had happened. She had seen the American. And it had been every bit as bad as she had feared. Her only consolation was that she was fairly sure he hadn’t seen her. He’d been gazing downward, either at his phone or the car radio, and she had stepped back out of his sight before he had time to look up.

  Yet it was unmistakably him. Her Mark, her meneer. He was older now, wizened, even, but he had the same shaggy hair and the same glasses. He even still wore the same sort of plaid, rumpled button-down shirt.

  The rest of the world had grown up, but not Amanda Evans’s husband. He had seen no consequences. He had found another woman to take care of him, a woman who, because God was a joker, had become Mila’s friend. It had been so long, but the old hate rose, white-hot and metallic, as soon as she’d glimpsed him.

  Amanda was lucky all Mila had done was slam the door.

  * * *

  Esther’s eyes opened slowly, blinking away at the unfamiliar, milky morning light that seemed particular to the sea. She sat up, rubbing her head, which felt full of cotton. Last night’s alcohol rang in her mouth.

  The man on the floor nearby was still sleeping. She sat up in bed, looking at him more closely. His head rested on his arm, which was flung out in front of him. His hair was long for Namibia; it fell in a silky curtain across his forehead. His skin was tanned brown, and his cheeks looked as if they’d been rubbed lightly with strawberry jam. His glasses rested by his wrist.

  He didn’t look like any other man she’d seen up close for a long time. The Afrikaans men who came into JoJo’s were usually purple from drinking and sun, and the English South Africans were often quite handsome, but they were so proud of their looks Esther had always found them repellent. She had avoided looking at Mark as well until now, but he was something different, according to his behavior last night. Or if he wasn’t, at least he was asleep, affording her the privilege of close observation.

  She leaned over, taking in the details as she would those of an object. The color of his hair was complicated—a very shiny brown, but with other strands, lightened by the sun, shot through, giving the effect of burned gold. His lips were pink like a little boy’s and crusted with drool. His lashes were dark but not long, resting on the top of his cheek. His bare shoulder, freed from the sheet, was a round, beautiful thing, sculpted by whatever gyming he was doing in his spare time. His body was tall and strong, with all the same indentations and shadows as the men in the donated book of Greek myths she and Saara would pore over in school. Overall, he was very fine, she decided. And his beauty was more useful than hers, in that it was approachable, and would never cause him trouble.

  Esther drew up her knees and gazed out the window. Being paid money for sex, that would have been crushing. Yet she wasn’t against having sex for recreational purposes. The politics of giving one’s body over in Ovamboland were so complicated, there seemed to be no joy in such things. But she couldn’t say she wasn’t curious.

  When she came out of the shower, Mark was up, dressed, and moving back and forth on the balls of his feet.

  “Good morning!” he said a bit too loudly.

  “Good morning.”

  “I was wondering if you’d like to go to the beach today.”

  Esther did want to go to the beach again, as yesterday had been very nice. But it struck her that this was, actually, what he had paid for. Going to the beach with this American was the job, which meant she would derive no pleasure from it, no matter how hard she tried.

  “If you want.”

  “‘If you want’?” Mark frowned. “Still nervous, then, about swimming?”

  She could only bring herself to shrug.

  “I’ll help you. I was actually a lifeguard for a couple of summers.”

  “I’m not going to swim. I don’t have a bathing suit.”

  “We can buy you one. In the store downstairs.”

  “Stop buying me things,” Esther said crossly. “That was the whole problem in the first place. You paying me.”

  “We’ve been over this, Esther,” Mark said. “Your friend had me give you money. She said you guys couldn’t afford it. Listen, you can pay me back if you want.”

  Esther couldn’t help laughing at his American sense of how money worked. “Do you have any idea how long that would take?”

  “Look,” Mark said. “I said I’d help you. Can we just have fun today? When was the last time you had fun?”

  Esther looked at him, considering. Fun was another thing tourists in JoJo’s were always talking about. Safaris are so fun!… That drum circle place near Vic Falls—have you been? So fun! Esther did not know much about that sort of fun. She was too worried about how to feed herself and not having to resort to selling herself for sex. But here it was. Fun. Shouldn’t she try it, for once?

  “All right,” she said.

  Once she had given herself over to it, the commitment to fun, which, she now knew, equated to not caring, she found it very easy. She let Mark take her to the shop downstairs for a bathing suit. He waited shyly outside while she fingered the material of the different garments, and she even considered buying one that came in two pieces, but she knew that would be too much, even for the new, fun Esther. Finally she settled on a black and red one; the shopgirl, who was Ovambo, let her slip it on in the dressing room.

  “All set?” Mark asked when she came out.

/>   “I have it on,” she said, turning away at the strange, frustrated look on his face. She was used to men desiring her, but she wasn’t accustomed to them trying to hide it.

  He bought fruit and sodas, and they arranged themselves side by side on the Mole. The sand was searing hot, so she kept her feet on the blanket. They didn’t talk much; Mark seemed tired. After a while, he asked if she wanted to go in the water.

  “Ovambos don’t swim,” Esther said. “I told you.”

  “Just your toes, Esther. Come on.” He jumped up and held out his hand. He looked so lovely there, above her, so tall and friendly. She found that she couldn’t say no. She took his hand and let him pull her up; together they walked to where the water licked the sand. Heart beating fast, she let him lead her to where the water reached her ankles.

  “Now you don’t have to be afraid of the water,” he said, smiling. “See?”

  “Not afraid of the water,” she said, fighting back the panic as the sea rose above her knees and thighs. “Yes, all right.”

  My feet cannot breathe, she thought. My knees, they are drowning.

  But something happened as she went out deeper. She was up to her waist when Mark put his hands on both sides of her waist and held her up. Esther had never been held from any danger before; not as a child, not as a baby. As an infant she learned the hard way not to go near a fire, or not to toddle in front of a bakkie. Now someone was protecting her from anything bad that could happen in that moment, and it was as if a lifetime of worrying slipped away. Relief coursed through her so strongly she started to cry, and turned her head away so the meneer couldn’t see.

  Everything had gone so well the night before, they did the same again: same walk, same restaurant. Though Esther didn’t drink tonight, and there was no fuss tonight from the others, perhaps because the staff remembered them from the night before. As they walked back, they were silent; she didn’t know if he knew she’d made the decision, but she guessed that he did, as he took her hand as they climbed the back stairs, and didn’t flip on the lights when they walked into the room. She closed the door behind her and he came so close she could feel the day’s sun radiating off his body.

  “Is this okay?” he asked.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  He put his arms around her and pulled her so close, she felt that he could hold up every part of her body were they somehow to fall. They stayed that way for what seemed like a long time before he kissed her slowly and moved her to the bed. After each thing he did, he’d look up at her to see if she liked it. When he was finally inside her, he went deep, moving back and forth at half the speed of a slow heartbeat. He wouldn’t speed up, even when she was clutching the cheap metal bedframe and clutching the limp pillow with her hand.

  “I’ll never leave you, Esther,” he whispered. She could barely hear him for all that was happening in her body. He promised her again and again, as she rode away on a wave of something that was the opposite of water.

  / 21 /

  After weeks of scheduling conflicts, the Big A. had decided the best location for the rhino lunch would be the Official Residence itself. Persephone tried not to be irritated. Half the fun of having lunch with the ambassador was other people seeing you. It was an unspoken rule that if you saw the Big A. out and about at a meal or in a conversation, you didn’t interrupt, as she was likely to be engaging in some sort of foreign policy. Persephone nearly salivated at the thought of Kayla or Shoshana being kept at bay from the window of the linen shop, paralyzed by protocol. But no, the email from the assistant summoned Persephone and Amanda to the OR, at 1:00 on a Tuesday for some “cold salads.” Anything to get an audience, but it was disappointing.

  “I’m not sure the ambassador even cares about rhinos,” Persephone had grumbled to Adam one evening as they brushed their teeth side by side.

  “She does,” he said. “She mentioned your club the other day, actually.”

  “It’s not a club. So were you getting an assignment?” she asked, searching his face for clues.

  “Never mind that, honey cunt.”

  “Adam!” She drew away. “You’re disgusting.”

  “This is the trust tree, sugar! Anyway, she said she was looking forward to it. Now, speaking of assignments, I’m missing dinner again and can’t tell you why.” He kissed her cheek noisily. “Cover for me with the kids, will you? I’m so glad you know now, sweet ass. It really is helping my work, because I don’t have to spend valuable brain effort, you know, dissimulating.”

  “Good,” Persephone mumbled, disappointed with the lack of information he was dropping. “Only, I’d rather be helping in a more … meaningful way. Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “Just your little rhino meeting. Focus on that, darling.”

  “Little meeting?” Persephone repeated. She really was impressed that her husband had turned out to be an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, but today everything he said made her want to stab him in the eye. “By the way, can you tell me if anyone else is working with you on your missions?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Because the girls saw you out the other night with a brunette. Ainsley, perhaps?”

  Ainsley was a little slip of a thing whose official title was “Assistant to Procurement,” flown in all the way from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Every time Persephone had been at the embassy, she’d observed that Ainsley was: (A) never at her desk; (B) always talking inappropriately intensely to male officials more highly ranked than her—as in, Shoshana’s husband, Kayla’s husband, or Adam; and (C) allergic to bras and skirts bigger than postage stamps.

  “Dear heart, if the girls saw me with Ainsley, it could have been any sort of embassy task, secret or not.” He straightened his tie. “Though I’ll give you a little dribble and tell you I can neither confirm nor deny that she is a fellow agent. But, really, that is all you get. Now scram!” He slapped her, a bit too hard, on the bottom.

  “You know I hate that.”

  “Back to the salt mines, sugar,” he crowed, pressing his key fob to elicit a loud chirp from his BMW.

  After Adam left, Persephone found herself uncharacteristically indecisive about her outfit. She started out in a white pantsuit that any other day would have been perfect, but today made her feel like Elvis. Her white crochet dress was too short. (Ainsley!) Boots over white jeans made her look like a pirate. Finally she settled on a knee-length flared snowy dress with a silver pendant around her neck shaped like—what else?—a rhino.

  “Too on the nose?” she asked when Amanda pulled up in front of her house to pick her up.

  “You pull it off,” Amanda said. Her friend was considerably less dressed up, in one of those “sporty” dresses of nylon that could, in Persephone’s opinion, double as bathing suit material. But then, Persephone had never been drawn to California fashion.

  The Official Residence was meant to intimidate, and as they parked in the guarded lot, sifted through the layers of security, and rang the gongy bell, Persephone had to admit that she did, indeed, feel quite small. The walls were even taller than any other fortresses on the block, which was nothing compared to the armed guards. An attendant opened the door and ushered them inside.

  “Greetings!” the Big A. called out, emerging from the depths of the mansion. Persephone looked around thoughtfully. At parties, the OR looked cheerful and opulent, but in the daylight, empty of guests, the place looked like a rather uninspired hotel event space. Why, the furniture was the same as in all the State Department houses, now that she looked at it, just covered in fabric that was maybe a little more expensive.

  “Hello, Miss Ambassador,” Persephone said dutifully.

  “Thank you for having us, Julia,” Amanda said. Persephone felt her eye twitch slightly. Julia? Though now that she knew Adam’s real role, she could see why the Big A. chose to keep her at a distance. She gave her a small wink to let her know she understood.

  “I hope you don’t mind chicken salad,” she said, noddin
g blankly back at Persephone. “I adore it.” She gestured at the table, which, Persephone was heartened to see, was set properly with diplomatic china and silver. “Do you know its origin?”

  “No,” Persephone said, trying to sound interested.

  “It’s from your town, Amanda. You’re from Charleston, yes? The first mention of it appeared in a housewife’s cookbook in 1840-something. A Miss Sarah Rutledge. Her recipe suggested adding oysters, which even I am not adventurous enough to try. Particularly in the desert! And then another recipe became quite famous up in Rhode Island at a certain butcher’s shop in 1863. That might have been one of the few things the North and the South agreed on. Chicken salad!” The Big A. looked at them brightly, waiting for a reaction.

  “I knew that, actually,” Amanda said, looking at the platter a bit glumly.

  “I had my assistant look it up. She has the time, and I just love these little factoids, don’t you? Every time she plans a menu, she sends me a briefing with the historical origin of the food. It’s especially handy before long dinners with diplomats from other countries I have nothing in common with. Which doesn’t mean you, of course! Still, now we all know all about chicken salad. It’s a win!”

  Persephone sat delicately in her chair, waited for Amanda and the ambassador to serve themselves, then put some lettuce and the driest bit of chicken on her own plate. She abhorred chicken salad, whatever its historical backstory. Though the ambassador did seem to adore it, as she was already tucking into a pile of it that reached up toward her chin.

  “So I looked into this organization of yours,” said the Big A. “This rhino society.”

  “It’s a conservation effort, really,” Amanda said.

  “An action group,” Persephone added.

  “Whatever it is, it’s very impressive. Fifteen thousand Instagram followers, no less! However did you do that?”

  “It just grew,” Persephone said.