31 Hours (17 page)

Vic did not consider her viewpoint extreme. She’d drawn her conclusions by watching her mother and her father. For months on end, the two of them would leave for work in the morning, laughing over something, and he’d be home on time for dinner, and they’d wash the dishes together and go out to movies. Then her father would start mentioning a particular female author or an editor, and then he’d stop mentioning her altogether—the giveaway—and work would begin to preoccupy him more than usual, and then he would come home late with a face made rosy by joy and guilt, and it was all so clear. Vic would have known what was happening even if she hadn’t caught him on the phone, or in his office the afternoon when she’d walked in unannounced, and even if he hadn’t finally moved out. He was a good man, her father. She admired him in many ways. She was even like him, partly. This was simply the way it went and the way it always would go between men and women. Time without end.

Mara was still too young to have figured all this out, and certainly too young to have made peace with it. Thinking of this made Vic deeply indignant, for her mother, for herself, but mostly for Mara. Vic still remembered seeing her sister for the first time in the hospital—a miracle, she’d thought, as she’d inhaled the scent of newness that still clung to the infant, overpowering the antiseptic hospital smell. Their mother had gone back to work quickly, which had increased Vic’s sense of responsibility for this infant with prematurely wise eyes. She spent long hours rocking the baby. She grew as anxious as she imagined any mother would when Mara, at eight months, became sick with a wheezing
cough. Every night until Mara got better, she crept into the baby’s room and slept on the floor, and nothing her parents said could dissuade her. When she was sixteen and desperate for independence, Mara was the one who kept her tied to family.

One night about a week after their parakeet died, Mara came to Vic. “What does that mean, to die?”

Where the hell
, thought Vic,
are Mom and Dad when you need them
?

“Will it happen to me?” Mara asked.

Vic sighed. “It’s a long way off.”

“Will I have to leave all of you behind?”

“Hey, we’ll probably go first. Age-wise, it’s Dad, then Mom, then me. You’re last, angel.”

“You’ll die?” Mara’s eyes were dry but very wide.

“Oh, damn. Crawl into bed,” Vic said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Only they never did. Vic picked up the phone and called what she still considered, on some level, to be her home number. Mara answered on the second ring.

“Angel, where are you?”

“In bed.”

“And where’s Mom?”

“In her room. You want me to get her?”

“No, I’m calling for you. I’m calling to make sure you’re almost asleep,” Vic said. “You’ve got school tomorrow.”

“I know.”

Her voice sounded odd. Strained. “You okay?” Vic asked.

“I’m all right.” But she didn’t sound all right.

“Are you sad, sweetheart?” Vic asked.

“I’m okay,” Mara said. “I’m just—I don’t know, Vic. I turned out the lights, and I felt so scared I turned them back on again.”

“What scared you?” Vic said.

“It felt like air was blowing past my face. A hard, hot wind. I felt it even when I went under the covers.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s gone.”

“Maybe a heating vent is aimed at your bed?”

“No,” Mara said.

“Okay, then maybe you should sleep with a light on. How about the one over your desk?”

“Sure.” Mara’s voice sounded very quiet and far away.

“I wish I were there right now.”

“I wish so, too,” said Mara.

Vic felt deeply guilty then. She hadn’t been paying enough attention to Mara. She hadn’t done enough to help her adjust to the new home situation. “I’m coming over tomorrow for dinner,” she said. “If I possibly can, that is. If Alex doesn’t make the rehearsal go on forever. Which I don’t think he will. He’s usually pretty mellow about our last night. So I’m coming over and we’ll make enchiladas, okay?” The line was quiet. “Okay, Mara?” Vic said.

“Okay,” Mara said

“Good-night, baby.”

As soon as she was off, Vic called her father’s number. “Dad,” she said.

“Vic. I’m so glad to hear from you.” The enthusiasm in his voice felt like hype. Either someone was in the room with him—which she didn’t want to know about—or he was ridiculously hopeful that a phone call from Vic meant his life without Mom was falling into place and that the change was being accepted by his family.

“I’m worried about Mara,” she said.

Her father didn’t respond immediately. “Go ahead,” he said after a moment.

“She’s having bad dreams. She isn’t eating well. Mom is too upset to feed her. She’s under a lot of stress.”

Her father sighed. “I’m sorry, Vic.”

“Yeah, we’re both sorry,” Vic said. “But right now she needs a little more than that. Remember, she’s only eleven. You forget that because Mara is so—well, so
Mara
. I know she tests off the charts and even in first grade, she was like this baby adult, but this—this thing—it’s beyond her.”
And you’re responsible for it
, Vic wanted to say, but she stopped herself, adding instead, “I think you should go there—tomorrow morning. Have breakfast with her. Or something. Listen to her. Find out what’s going on for yourself.”

Again the line fell silent for a beat. “You’re right,” her father said. “I’ll go. I’ll go before school. I’ll let your mom know tonight.”

Vic felt gratified by the response, but she was unwilling to sound too pleased. “It can’t just be a one-shot deal, either, Dad. You can dump Mom, but you can’t dump Mara.” Normally she wouldn’t talk like that to her dad, but she knew he wouldn’t say anything.

“I’ve only been staying away out of respect to your mother, who needs her space right now.”

“I’m unconvinced that it’s Mom who needs the space but—” Her father started to respond, so she just spoke over him, “but it’s not my business, and I don’t even really care. I just don’t want Mara feeling bad. Beyond that, I leave it to you and Mom. Beyond that, you can call me when the shooting’s over.”

“All right, Vic,” her father said. “Okay. I respect that.”

Vic hung up and lay back on the couch, flexing her feet. The emptiness of her apartment seemed large and forceful, so when she heard
someone come into the building, she jumped to her feet and flung open her front door, thinking it might be Jonas.

It was her upstairs neighbor. Jackie, who worked for the MTA, was undereducated but smart and saw the funny side of everything. She invariably had comic subway stories to tell. She had a daughter in middle school and another in high school, and every Thanksgiving, the oldest girl brought Vic a homemade loaf of the most moist, tasty pumpkin bread she’d ever had.

“Hi, Vic, how you doing?” Jackie called.

Vic leaned against the doorframe. “Long day?”

“The longest. And I got to be back in at seven o’clock in the morning.”

“Anything interesting happen today?” Vic asked, because she wasn’t ready to go back into her room and lose all direct human contact again.

“Some man asked me how to get to the Sears Tower. Can you imagine? I said, ‘Take a plane to Chicago.’ ”

“You’re making this up.”

“And two teenaged boys were stopped trying to jump over the turnstile directly in front of three cops. Where were their heads?”

Vic laughed.

“The station was crawlin’ with them today. Cops, I mean. When’s your show open, hon?”

“Tuesday,” Vic said. “I’ll snag you three tickets for next weekend if you want them.”

“We’d love ’em. Watching you dance makes me feel hope for the world.”

Vic’s phone began ringing and she turned to it quickly. “See you,
Jackie.” This had to finally be Jonas, but she wasn’t going to jinx it by looking at caller ID.

“Hello?” she said.

“Victoria.”

“Yes?”

“This is Masoud. Masoud al-Zufak.”

“Oh, yes. Jonas’s . . .”

“I just wanted to let you know I’ll be mailing you something. Please keep your eye out for it.”

Vic had begun pacing as Masoud spoke. “An invitation or something?” she asked.

“It should arrive in three days.”

“Do you need my address?’

“Jonas gave it to me.”

“Jonas?” Her voice rose. “Is Jonas—”

“May the night watch over you, Victoria.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, but Masoud hung up as she was speaking.

She went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. She unexpectedly felt like crying. “What the hell is this?” she said aloud as she filled a mug from the sink. Then she inhaled deeply.
Get a grip. Jonas doesn’t return a couple calls and you start imagining all sorts of nonsense. After all, you didn’t call him for days, either
.

She sipped her water, looking out the window. The moon, so often hidden by neighboring buildings, was clearly visible, a half-moon that made her think of what she had. She was a professional dancer, and that had always been her dream, ever since elementary school, and although she was not rich she could pay her rent, and she’d tasted this amazing
flavor with Jonas, this flavor of profound love, even if it had turned out to be brief, and she had a whole life ahead of her with all kinds of unexpected pleasures, and she was still young and healthy and essentially hopeful, living in this amazing city filled with remarkable people, at the center of the earth.

NEW YORK: 1:22 A.M.
MECCA: 9:22 A.M.

Carol refrained from flipping on the lights in the kitchen, both out of courtesy to Jake, who she could hear softly snoring in the living room, and because she liked working in the semi-dark, by the light of the refrigerator as she removed the milk and then by the light of the stove as she warmed the milk and stirred in a spoonful of honey. After her mug was ready, she slipped into the living room, steering wide of the couch, where she could see his form under the blanket, and moved to a small armchair she kept near the window. Below, she could see the lights of the passing cars and hear their murmur. It was soothing, a citified way of watching the ocean, feeling its timelessness.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Jake’s voice startled her. It was tender with grogginess. She hadn’t heard that voice in a long time. “Sorry,” she said. “I woke you.”

He sat up, wrapping the blanket around him. “I wasn’t really sleeping,” he said.

She laughed softly. “You were snoring.”

“That’s what I do when I’m not sleeping,” he said. He scooted over to one end of the couch and patted the spot next to him. “Sit here. I won’t bite.”

She looked down toward the street for another moment, then decided
that to refuse would be churlish. “Want some warm milk?” she asked.

“I’ll have a sip of yours.”

She sat on the couch and held her mug out to him. “You know, Jake,” she said as he was drinking, “sometimes I wonder if we made a mistake.”

“Splitting up?”

“Raising Jonas outside any spiritual tradition.”

“We decided those spiritual traditions left a lot to be desired, and we were right.”

“And then we let him take that year and just wander around Europe.”

“To recharge his batteries. Help him get re-motivated for school.”

“And then I . . .”

“He’s a grown man, Carol.”

“Did I somehow fail to give him enough . . . structure?”

“Don’t torture yourself,” he said softly.

“He’s always been probing, as though there’s one right answer and if he just searches long enough, he’ll find it. I think the search has been torturous for him. I think he’s felt alone, and lost. I think he hasn’t been able to turn to us because he feels we don’t understand—and in a way, he’s right.”

“The young are always searching,” Jake said. “That’s their job. We searched, remember?”

“Did we?”

He handed her the mug. “We weren’t happy with the lives our parents led. What children are? We thought them stilted, boring, corrupt. That was before we recognized the fragility of human judgments.”

“But there’s something more desperate about what Jonas seems to feel,” Carol said. “And I don’t remember us being so depressed.”

“It’s all more serious now,” Jake said. “We had a certain innocence; we had that gift. This is the end of the empire. Innocence has already been killed off.”

Carol sighed and leaned back into the couch. “You remember Jenny?”

“Your old roommate Jenny?” Yes, he remembered. Jenny had had a son, three years older than Jonas. The summer he was thirteen, they were vacationing somewhere in the Midwest, and he dove into a quarry full of water, hit his head, and drowned.

“I saw her a couple years ago,” Carol said. “She told me there’s no recovery when you lose a kid. There’s only a before and an after.”

“Carol.” Jake reached over and touched the back of her neck.

“And blame. She talked about blaming herself, that she should have discussed quarries with him, warned him somehow. That she was, in the end, a bad mother, because she failed at the really only important job. She couldn’t keep her child safe. And I understand. If something were ever to go wrong with Jonas—”

“Don’t. Don’t talk about this now.”

She turned to him. “He was the first thing, Jake. That little baby: the first thing besides ourselves we were ever responsible for.”

“I’m just,” he hesitated, “I’m just going to rub your neck. Okay?”

Carol willed her shoulders to soften; nothing could be done tonight. And in the end, everything would be fine, wouldn’t it? Kids scare their parents, but it would all be fine. She dropped her head and felt herself breathe. Jake massaged the back of her neck for a few minutes and then began moving his fingers into her scalp.

“Feel good?”

“Hmmm,” she murmured.

Jake’s hands. Carol remembered many things about those hands. Maybe she remembered everything about them—although he’d be a little too self-satisfied if he knew that. She used to love to massage his hands, seek out pressure points, tug gently on his fingers. She loved, too, watching those hands when he painted. And he’d taken up carpentry at one point—she still had in her bedroom a little table he’d made. He had capable hands—capable in every way.