The Wish Maker (44 page)

“Zaki, pack your bags. We’re going away.”

“Where?”

“To Spain.”

“Who all?”

“Just us.”

“You and me?”

“Yes,” she said, and only now looked up from the program, where the fighting between the panelists had peaked. “Is that a problem?”

“Samar Api,” I said. “We’re going to Spain.”

It was early in the evening. She had returned from the tuition center and, according to the pattern, had gone into her room and played sad songs on the stereo. “Spain,” she said. “Wow.”

Her eyes were lost. I said, “Will you be fine?”

“Of course I’ll be fine.” She tried to make a surprised face, and failed; she looked confused instead. “Of course I’ll be fine, Zaki.” And now she sat up and nodded energetically, trying to show that she had been listening.

She thought of something and it made her want to cry.

She said, “So when are you leaving?” It was posed with enthusiasm.

“Two weeks,” I said.

She appeared to make a calculation.

“And when are you coming back?”

“Two weeks after that.”

She made another calculation.

“So that’s a month,” she said.

“A month from now.”

“You’ll be back in a month.”

“No. We’ll be back in two weeks. But we’re leaving in two weeks too, so the total is a month.”

It was difficult and unnecessary.

“Will you be all right?” I said, and jokily, to make it light.

“Of course!” she said. “I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.”

But even in those two remaining weeks she was difficult to reach. She didn’t talk of school, didn’t talk of things she had done in the day or hoped to do in the next. She didn’t talk of new friends or of old ones. She came home and did her assignments, then listened to the songs on the stereo. She had sold all the magazines, and the shoeboxes lay empty under her bed, the shelves on the wall carrying only books.

She went outside at dusk. And she was thinking the same thoughts, walking in the darkened driveway, alone with the sky and the black trees and the birds fleeing the night, and her thoughts had become the world.

She returned to her room and thought of improvement, rescue, miracles.

She was tempted by the phone and resisted it.

But sometimes she succumbed, and dialed his number and heard his voice on the answering machine, knowing that it would lead to the bathroom, to the shutting and locking of the door and the sound of running water to drown out the sound of her crying.

Afterward she stood before the mirror and held the plump white bottle of eye-drop solution above her eyes, which were then less swollen.

She went into Daadi’s room and made an effort.

“Eat,” said Daadi. “Diets are good only for some of the time.”

And she was seen eating her food.

Our plane landed in the morning, a hot morning, a surprise in October; we waited in the empty blaze of the tarmac until a bus came and carried us to the inside of the airport. Our suitcase appeared on the conveyor belt ahead of the others, and we took it through customs and out again into the sun. We took a taxi now, toward what my mother had described to the taxi driver as the Arab Quarter.

“Look,” she said, and motioned past her window at the dark, pointed trees, at the rushing hills and the dust. “Granada.”

The taxi took us through winding towns, then up into a small neighborhood in the hills. The houses here stood on a sloping stone street that narrowed at the turns and broadened out as it fell away to either side. The windows, painted blue or green or pink, were closed against the heat of the day and the terraces were decorated with flowers. Ours was the only house with a plain exterior.

“This is the one,” said my mother. She was trying to find the bell.

“We should just go in,” I said.

“Really? You think so? Isn’t it rude?”

But she couldn’t find the bell, and we pushed past the heavy door and went in.

And now plants, a garden, a winding thatch roof that led from the entrance all the way to the patio and carried vines with clusters of a dark little fruit.

“Grapes,” said my mother, and plucked one.

“Ah, yes,” said the woman. “Welcome.”

She was tending to the plants at the edge of her garden, a wild, unplanned patch of fluff and fur and bright pods that stood unhatched on the ends of tall stems. She dropped her spade and began to wade through the uneven grass, at times brushing her knees, her kaftan hitched at her broad, loose waist. A large woman, she swayed as she moved.

“Astrid,” she said, and gave an august nod that seemed both to grant and to accept a greeting.

“Hello, Astrid,” said my mother. She dropped the suitcase to the floor and shook the woman’s hand.

“And this is young Zacky?”

“Zucky,” I said. “Rhymes with Lucky.”

My mother was smiling nervously.

But Astrid was pleased; her laugh opened up her mouth and pushed back her head. “Oh my,” she said, sighing and settling a hand on her heart. “That’s quite an introduction. I hope you like the company of adults?”

“He doesn’t mind,” said my mother. “He’s very tolerant.”

“Do you?” said Astrid.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and clasped her hands jovially, “because right now we only have adults in this house. In the summer we had two beautiful children, girl and boy, lovely kids, lovely parents, but they are gone now, back to America.” Her hand became a gliding airplane.

“Oh no,” said my mother regrettingly.

“Yes,” said Astrid. “But never mind. We will have our fun.” She frowned admonishingly and raised a rallying fist. “Come inside. Let me show you the rooms.”

We had the honeymoon suite. The room contained two small beds, each swollen at one end with pillows, a table on the side, an awkward empty chair in a corner, a watercolor painting of the sea at high tide on one wall and a long, slim mirror on another. The curtains were thick and floral; my mother tugged at the rope and they lifted, revealing a wide view of the valley across.

“Astrid, this is lovely!”

“Yes,” said Astrid. “The Alhambra is on the other side. One of the rooms has got a view but it’s taken. American couple. Very charming. You will meet them.” It was assumed.

My mother was still standing at the window with a hand at her waist and another on her throat, and was taking in the view, which had altered the room, the narrow beds and the chair and the mirror, all swept up now in the charm.

“Oh,” said Astrid, remembering, “let me show you the bathroom. There is a problem”—she stopped herself—“actually it is not a problem, it’s more of a trick.” She winked, opened the bathroom door and parted the shower curtain. “You turn it like this, and then like this”—she had worked two separate knobs and brought them into alignment—“and it is cold. Then like this, and like this, and it is hot. You have to mix and match. And don’t leave it running for too long”—her eyes narrowed pleadingly—“or the hot water will run out and the others will complain.” Her sheepish laugh was less embarrassed than explanatory.

“Okay now,” she said, busily smacking the sides of her thighs, “I will go downstairs and work. You come down whenever. No hurries. We take supper early, around six.”

She closed the door behind her with a practiced click.

The room became ours.

“What’s our plan?”

“There’s no plan,” said my mother; she pressed her hands into the mattress. It was firm. She took off her shoes and drew aside the bedcover. “I’m just going to lie down here for a little while.” She was testing the pillows behind her head. “You can go downstairs and ask Astrid to guide you.”

“For what?”

“For doing things. You can ask her to show you a map of this place.” She was preparing to sleep. “Or you can stay here and take a nap. It’s up to you.”

Astrid didn’t have a map. She said she used to have one but had lost it. “Stay in,” she said, making it sound like a prospect. “You can sit here and draw pictures.” She gestured upward at the vines, crawling out in their intricate multitudes with the grapes hanging in tight, unripe bunches. “You like to draw?”

I hadn’t considered it.

“Wait,” she said, and went in, and returned with a writing pad. “Here”—she smacked it on the table and placed a pen on top—“draw. Make a still life. Or make a portrait of me if you like. I won’t mind it.”

My mother came down in the evening. She was dressed in a cotton nightgown that touched the floor and followed her in a frothy trail. She came over to the table and settled languidly in a chair. The table was long and rough, and lacked a varnish, the working table of a carpenter.

“Rested?” said Astrid. She stood in the doorway with a large tray in her hands.

“Oh, yes,” said my mother, who was pleased with everything, pleased to the point of self-saturation; the pleasure had become a process, a way of breathing the air and responding to inquiries. “Very well rested, thank you.”

“Good,” said Astrid, and landed the tray on the table. It displayed a long kind of bread, settled diagonally, and two different paste-like concoctions, one in beige and the other in a pale pink, inside large white bowls.

“Baguette!” cried my mother, and broke the hard bread. She returned one half to the tray and broke the other half into three small pieces, dipped one piece into the beige paste, tore it off with her teeth and chewed. “And hummus!”

“It’s nothing,” said Astrid with a wave of the hand. “There is leek soup after this; would you like me to bring it out or will you wait for the others?”

“Oh, we’ll wait,” said my mother, chewing and nodding, “we’ll wait.”

Astrid went into the kitchen.

“Did you make this?” said my mother. She was looking at the drawing of the grapes. “Zaki, this is wonderful. You really can draw. You should draw more pictures. You really should. I should get you coloring books.” There were too many thoughts at once, and they opened up the chasm of parental knowledge, of how much she didn’t know and should have but didn’t.