The Ambassador's Wife (48 page)

Squatting, he slid his arms under her naked body and carried her to the bath like a baby, like Cressie. She closed her eyes as her skin touched the warm water, turning it almost instantly gray and rusty. Finn lathered what was left of her hair, soaped her body, gently ran a flannel over her bites and sores. Afraid to touch her hand, he swished water past the wound. When he had rinsed her once, he let the water drain away and filled the tub again. Miranda lay still. As he shut off the taps, Negasi knocked, the strange child in her arms, Cressie holding on to her skirt. Miranda sat up with a jerk. “Give her here,” she said.

Finn helped her to wash the baby, with Cressie leaning over the bath to watch, fascinated. “Cressie, this is Luloah,” said Miranda. “She has had a hard time. Can you be especially nice to her?”

“Why she has hard time? Why?” It didn't strike Cressida as odd that her mother—or this woman purporting to be her mother—spoke to her in Arabic. Everyone except her father spoke to her in Arabic, or Amharic.

Miranda leaned out of the bath to kiss her daughter's cheek. “I missed you so much,
habibti
,” she said. “I missed you more than anything in the whole world.”

More than you missed me? Finn can't help but wonder. But he doesn't say it out loud.

Luloah was reaching up for Miranda, puckering her mouth like a guppy.

“Finn,” said Miranda. “I need to nurse her. But I don't think Cressie…?” Bewildered and yet understanding, Finn led his daughter out of the bathroom. Celia had left a stack of fluffy white towels on the bed, along with a terry-cloth robe and cotton sundress and panties. “We've sent the guys to the Old City for your things,” she told Finn through the closed door. “They should be here in an hour or so.”

When Miranda was dry and wrapped in a robe, she held out an arm to Cressida. “Sniff me now,” she said. Her daughter cautiously sniffed near Miranda's arm but didn't move closer. “My mummy doesn't talk like you,” she said. Finn saw a flicker of pain cross Miranda's face.

“She just needs time,” he said.

Miranda nodded, blinking back tears.

Dr. Jay returned to examine both Luloah and Miranda, disinfecting and bandaging their various wounds, wrapping a splint around Miranda's ankle. “You will need to see a surgeon about your hand,” she said. “As soon as possible and preferably not here. When you are back in London. There is damage to both muscle and ligaments, and possibly some of the smaller bones. You need a specialist if you want to regain the use of this hand. I'm also putting you on antibiotics.”

Miranda shook her head emphatically. “I can't go to London. I have the children.”

“And you'll need help with them, until we can get this fixed.”

But Finn's mind had traveled elsewhere. “It's her painting hand,” he said. “We have to fix it.”

“I can't leave.” Miranda looked at him pleadingly.

“Sweetheart, we'll talk about this later. We'll figure everything out, I promise.”

“As for the child,” the doctor continued, “she probably has a vitamin D deficiency. Which is easy enough to treat. We may need to take blood to see if there is anything further. I don't suppose you know if she has had any vaccinations?”

“I'm pretty sure she hasn't had any.”

“We'll do that too, as soon as you both get a few days' rest and some warm meals.”

Desta dragged a box of Cressida's outgrown clothing from her old room, and Miranda pulled a flannel sleep suit dotted with planets over Luloah's frail limbs. Once everyone was dressed, Negasi arrived with carrot-lentil soup and some bread on a tray. Halfway through her bowl, Miranda began to slide down the wooden headboard, like one of the spineless dolls Cressie rejected in favor of furry animals. Finn removed the bowl, helped Negasi finish feeding Luloah, and not knowing what else to do with her, tucked her in next to Miranda. He had expected Cressida to protest Luloah's claim to her mother, but his daughter was still cautious, unsure. Not in the least bit interested in climbing into bed with this stranger who was allegedly her missing mother, Cressie was happy for Finn to tuck her into her own familiar cot, which embassy staff had brought over along with the rest of their
things. As she lay still, surrounded by a sleuth of bears, Finn read her the original Corduroy book, her favorite, read it over all three of them, like a benediction.

Hours later, he climbed in next to his wife, reaching out an arm to pull her into him. He wanted desperately to curl around her, to make her feel protected and secure. But the instant he touched her she had bolted upright, crying out, and it took him half an hour to talk her back into herself again. The child did not wake.

“I can't sleep,” Miranda whispered to him around 2:00 a.m., when she woke for the second time. “The bed is too soft.” And she slipped down, taking the top blanket with her. A moment later Luloah began to wail and was inconsolable until Finn set her down next to Miranda.

N
OW
L
ULOAH IS
stretched out on the floor beside her, the glowing Saturn on her stomach expanding and contracting with each breath. In a corner of the room, Cressida softly snores in her cot. Finn can't sleep either, but it isn't the softness of the bed keeping him from the arms of Morpheus. Why is Miranda nursing this child, and who are her parents? Where will they all go now? The Office will want to talk with her tomorrow, to convince her to get on a plane to London. It occurs to him that this is going to be harder than he thought. Much, much harder.

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Miranda

She cannot sleep. On her back on the cool stone of their bedroom floor, she listens to the jazz symphony of her heartbeat as pain burns its way from her palm up through her forearm and triceps and the back of her shoulder.
Please, let there not be nerve damage. Let my hand emerge from this prison
. The ghost of that spike remains in her palm. Tentatively she flexes her fingers, sending sparks of agony up her arm. She rolls to her right side, propping her left arm up with a pillow, as Dr.
Jay had shown her, but it doesn't help. She should have taken the sedatives offered to her, but she hadn't wanted to dull her mind. Not now, when she needed more than ever to be present. Sitting up, she glances over at Finn, curled like a child on his side, mouth drifting open, breathing quietly.

There he is, so miraculously close. And yet, she is still trying to find her way back to him. For months she had dreamed of throwing herself into his arms and now she recoils from his touch. His unfamiliar scent. She doesn't understand it. Where is the physical ease they had always shared? Even talking feels difficult, sometimes impossible. So much seems to lie between them; the thought of trying to tell him everything that has happened, that she has thought and felt since she last kissed him good-bye, is overwhelming. She doesn't know how to begin. He is patient with her, undemanding, but she senses his loneliness. He wants his wife back—his real wife, lively and laughing, not the anesthetized ghost she has become. Luloah lies between them, close to rolling under the bed but unmoving for the moment. How can she explain Luloah?

A crush of thoughts crowds her brain. She had hardly arrived home, had hardly taken a long look at her husband and daughter, when the Brits began thrusting crisis counselors in her face and talking about getting her to England. Security staff want to debrief her, friends want to come see for themselves that she has survived, and Dr. Jay wants her hand treated in London. Decisions are being forced on her from every direction. If only she could pause everything until her mind has caught up with it all. For now, she wants nothing but Finn and Cressida, to sit with them relearning their faces and listening to their voices. She isn't ready to get on a plane. She isn't ready to be psychoanalyzed. She wants stillness and space. She wants to press her unfamiliar family against her skin until she relearns their shapes. Couldn't they just be left alone?

Shifting her weight onto her right palm, Miranda pushes herself to her feet and walks down the hallway to Cressida's room. Since Miranda's return, Cressida has not allowed her to pick her up or even touch her, backing away toward her father or a bear. Fearful of scaring her, Miranda resists doing the one thing she has dreamed of more
than anything else for six months. Now, she stands over her alien daughter, still sleeping on her back, still surrendering in her sleep. Carefully, using her right arm and her left forearm, she hefts Cressida toward her. She is heavy, her weight unrecognizable. It takes the last dram of Miranda's strength to heave her up, but the reward is inestimable. Leaning on the end of the crib, sweating from the pain, she slides to the floor, cradling the still sleeping child. Miranda bends her head to inhale Cressie's scent, sunshine-baked earth with undertones of Finn's aftershave. She has hair now, most of her head covered with Finn's curls. Miranda kisses her eyebrows and her still-chubby cheeks and her nose and fingers and belly. She opens her mouth to sing to her, but nothing comes out. Her mouth is dry, empty. Still, she sits there soaking in her daughter, her greatest love, even while her arm burns.

She lacks the energy and motivation to rise. Only toward dawn, when Cressida awakes and cries to find herself in unfamiliar arms, does Miranda release her. A sleep-creased Finn appears in the doorway, cradling an equally distraught Luloah, and silently, they trade children.

MARCH 11, 2011

Miranda

The island air clings to their skin like damp silk, the relentless sun painting their bodies with sweat, but Miranda refuses to wear a hat. “I've missed out on a lot of UV poisoning,” she said. “I have to catch up.” She does, however, concede to wear sunblock, and slathered both girls with it so that they now resemble iced gingerbread people. They are playing at the edge of the water, Luloah sitting in a soggy diaper arranging pebbles in straight lines, Cressida in a long-sleeved UV-protecting suit, flinging gleeful arcs of sand into the sea.

Miranda sits on the sand a few yards away, watching them with her knees drawn up to her chest. She still isn't allowed in the water; her bandaged hand is recovering from surgery. “What I don't understand,” she says, “is what they were hoping to accomplish. Even if
they killed me, what would it accomplish? Did they really think that would stop the drones? Or have any effect whatsoever? I'm a completely unimportant person.” They have already been over this, countless times, but she is still uncomprehending. Something is wrong with her memory; she hears things and they fail to stick, slipping away from the frictionless fingers of her mind when she tries to retrieve them.

“It's hard to know for sure.” Finn sits several feet away from her, in a long-sleeved T-shirt, khaki shorts, and a panama hat. “We're thinking that it was a combination of things. Mukhtar was probably offered good money for delivering you. More than he would earn in a lifetime with the embassy. It's possible that the people who took you from him didn't initially realize they wouldn't get a ransom for you. Or they simply wanted to spread fear. If they can get an ambassador's wife with a bodyguard, they can get almost anyone. And then of course you were perfect—in their minds—for trying to make a statement. About the drones, US foreign policy in general. The usual. American civilians will be kidnapped and killed until the US withdraws from all Arab lands…That sort of thing.”

“And it was just luck they got the other two women?”

“That was opportunistic, we think.” Miranda can tell he is unsure how much to tell her. She is to be treated like a ticking time bomb with an elusive detonator, the therapists have probably instructed him. No telling what might explode her fragile equilibrium.

She is silent for a moment, thinking. Cressida scoops up two handfuls of Luloah's pebbles in her chubby fingers and tosses them into the sea. The little girl gazes in horror at the ragged disruption of her orderly line and begins to wail. Miranda scrapes up a handful of pebbles from the sand beside her and takes them to Luloah. “Here,
habibti
. Cressie, don't take things from the baby. She doesn't understand.” Ignoring her, Cressida grabs another handful. “Sweetheart…No more, okay?” No answer. Her daughter no longer responds to her as an authority. Sighing, Miranda picks up Luloah, moves her a few feet farther down the beach, and turns back to Finn.

“And Tazzy's paintings? Who would take those?”

“I have an idea about that. I need to think it through.”

“You mean you think you
know
? Finn, you realize there are paintings of me too, don't you? Did Tazzy tell you?”

Finn stares at her, the pupils of his hazel eyes shrinking to pinpoints in the sunlight. Apparently Tazkia had left that part out. “Finn, find those paintings. Please, as soon as we get back. I can't take on any new enemies right now. The last thing I need is the modesty police after me.”

He nods slowly, still calculating what it all means. They aren't supposed to be back in Arnabiya for another two weeks. Miranda had, after a prolonged battle, miraculously convinced the Office to let them both stay in the country until the end of Finn's posting in June, on the condition that she accept trauma counseling and draconian security precautions. She and Finn haven't had very much time alone together since her escape. The Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) assessors showed up about seventy-two hours after her arrival, to debrief and assess her. Apparently they hadn't found her too irrevocably damaged, or they wouldn't be letting her stay. “Some people find revisiting the scene of traumatic events helps them recover,” one counselor said to Finn. “It is possible she needs to be here for a little while, to somehow defuse or neutralize her memories of her experiences here.”

Miranda had a simpler explanation. “I don't want to be afraid of Mazrooq, of my life here. This is not how I want to leave the place that has been my home for so many years. And won't the terrorists be impressed that I haven't run straight home to the cushy West?”