Three Daughters: A Novel (58 page)

“All right. I’ll go. I’ll probably have lunch out. Is that OK?”

“Yes. I only hope I don’t get a call to go back. Menden’s wife has a slipped disk and he can’t cover.”

“I hope not, too. I’ll call you later, OK?”

“Mmm. Is the baby kicking?”

“Constantly.”

“Good. Have fun. ’Bye.”

“ ’Bye.”

How her mother would enjoy this, she thought as the station wagon sped to the armory. There had been letters back and forth discussing a visit, but finally Nadia had decided against it.
I don’t want to leave your father just now
, she’d written in explanation.
There’s been a drought and he’s concerned for the grape crop.

“I’m going to sit with some trainers,” Mr. Risley said apologetically after he helped her up one of the aisles. This was an event he looked forward to all year and he wanted to enjoy it with his friends.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine here.”

The auction went quickly. Two horses were sold in the first twenty minutes for eleven thousand and eight thousand. She thought they were exorbitant sums, but the buyers had used very modest gestures and no one seemed overly excited.

She looked out across the large room and inspected the crowd. It was predominantly of one type—reserved and dressed in expensive, casual clothes. Their faces were tan but she would bet it wasn’t from lying out in the sun. Most likely they were out riding early in the morning and gardening all afternoon. They reminded her of her mother and she experienced a wave of homesickness that left her sad and desolate.

She leaned back and closed her eyes and, as always happened when she was quiet, felt the baby kick. Over the loudspeaker, the auctioneer read the biography—the sire and grandsire—of the next horse. She listened with closed eyes and even dozed off for several minutes, totally oblivious to the fact that her biological grandmother, Mary Walker, still a beauty at seventy-five, was seated not fifteen feet away.

By the end of September, Star was only comfortable standing up or sitting on the stairs and letting her legs stretch down. She couldn’t take the long ride to the farm, which was a real loss because she had come to love the peacefulness of the place.

The outside of the North Capitol Street house was still unpainted, but Larraine had managed to uproot all the scraggly bushes, beef up the soil with bags of fertilizer, and plant flowers and ground cover. The brick walks all around the house were sprouting weeds and needed repair. The outside trim paint was peeling. There was a bad water spot where a gutter had failed over the front windows and part of the frame had rotted away. They had splurged on one holly bush to cover part of the foundation and, after a month of advertising, managed to attract three tenants for the units. The rents they settled on were less than expected, but still eighty-nine dollars over expenses. Each month, a time payment of thirty dollars went to Mr. Heath and another thirty to the electrician. The other twenty-nine dollars went into a repair fund. Larraine was making a small weekly salary plus commission working as an agent for Fred McKay—and he was after Star, too.

“You think anyone’s going to buy a house from a pregnant woman?” she had asked.

“Yes, I do. You’ll get the sympathy business.”

“He’s joking, of course,” said Larraine firmly. “You cannot go traipsing around in the ninth month. Stay home.”

“But you’re doing everything. I feel I should help you.”

“Honey, this is the last free time you’re going to have. Babies get up in the middle of the night. They cry for no reason. They can’t tell you what’s wrong with them. Please! Enjoy these last few days.”

“There must be something nice about it.” Larraine adored babies and would stop carriage-pushing mothers in the street to ooh and ah over even the homeliest infant. Yet true to her word, after that first time she had never again mentioned her dead child.

“You get a lot of smiles and a lot of babbling that occasionally—accidentally, I’m sure—sounds like
mamamama
.”

“I wish it could have happened some other way. If I’d only known. I think sometimes . . . what an awful way to repay you for your friendship to me.” Nadia still brought it up when Julia asked for news from America. She hadn’t even known that Paul Halaby had been courting Delal before he married Nijmeh. Even now, she could feel Peter’s bitterness, but Julia had never blamed them.

Julia hunched her shoulders, resigned. “It was Paul’s decision. If he wasn’t one hundred percent certain of Delal, it wasn’t meant to be. Delal is very happy in Scotland. She’s determined to be a broadcaster, whatever that is. To please Peter, she’s also taking international politics. She wants to be a political commentator. Again, I’m only spouting words that she feeds me in her letters. I have no idea what she’ll actually work at. I can’t say that things worked out for the best, because who knows what’s in store for any of us, but Delal is all right. What about Nijmeh?”

“The baby should come within the next two weeks. She and Paul might come next summer.”

Julia played with a string of pearls around her neck and stuck out her lower lip. She wanted to bring up the subject. Nadia had planned to bring it up herself. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Even after all these years, it’s on my mind.”

“Right now it’s on my mind, too, because Samir and I are going to Beirut for our anniversary and I want to leave something with you. It’s the locket and ring I took from the parents. If someone comes in while I’m gone . . . I wouldn’t want them found.” She reached into her pocket and brought out a small velvet pouch. “Keep this for me until I come back.”

“Of course.” Julia opened the pouch. She took the ring in her hand and the locket, then put them back and drew the string. “What about your jewelry?”

“I’ll take it with me.”

“Where will you stay? At the Commodore?”

“No. There’s a wine growers’ convention at the Mediterranée. Did you think Samir would go for a simple vacation?”

“I suppose not.” Julia sighed as if the vagaries of human personality made her spiritually weary. “Both our daughters are across the ocean,” she said. “The way things turn out . . . it’s out of our hands.”

“Why don’t you come with us? Samir would love to have Peter along.”

“He can’t go. I know he won’t admit it, but he’s got gout. It’s almost impossible for him to walk some days. I won’t mention it. I’d hate to embarrass him and make him admit that he can’t walk comfortably.”

“Julia, I’m sorry. You’ve been such a good friend to me over the years. The best.”

“Oh . . . posh. I’ve done very little. Have a good time. Buy some expensive clothes, and if you’re thinking of bringing me something, I could use a nice piece of lingerie.”

“Oh . . . yes. Nightgowns? Slips?”

“Either would be fine.” Julia rose, smoothed her skirt, and dropped the velvet pouch into her pocketbook. “Have a lovely trip.”

Nadia went to her sister-in-law and embraced her. “I love you.”

“And I love you,” said Julia, somewhat surprised but with not the slightest premonition that it would be their last moment together.

She had never looked so beautiful to him. Lying there, with the welcome scalding warmth of the Mediterranean midday sun, he watched her test the blue-green water and felt a resurgence of his teenage longing. He had forgotten how appealing were her firm long legs. Her shoulders were broad and her back gently muscled and tapered with the hips flaring out just enough. He knew her skin would be sun warmed and smooth and he wanted to stand behind her and run his hand from her neck to the little hollow in her back and feel the thrill of a woman’s well-made body. The years had slipped by and he hadn’t really seen her.

There was another thought that he had pushed away for several weeks, the truth of which made him sad and uncomfortable. They were closer and happier since Nijmeh had left. Instead of watching each other warily over the child’s head, they relaxed. They laughed together. Often he held her hand or draped an arm over her shoulder. He was reconciled to the facts of his life and he still loved his wife. She had a permanent hold on his imagination just by being herself—the sum and substance of her existence.
I love her
, he admitted simply.
If she were gone from me, I couldn’t bear it.
She hadn’t given him the thing he had wanted most—a son and heir—but he couldn’t imagine life without her.

Was it prescience? News stories of those who had sudden tragic losses are fraught with agonized retelling of premonitions. “I dreamed of a giant fish swallowing up my little girl,” said a grief-stricken mother whose child had drowned in a well. “I called him back this morning and gave him his umbrella. I don’t know why,” said a young widow. “The sun was shining but I felt he needed protection.” The husband was struck by a falling brick from a building under construction. Samir had reason to remember his impromptu meditation on his wife as he watched her cavorting in the sea.

The second night of their stay in Beirut, they attended a dinner dance—the highlight of the grape growers’ convention. The hall, meant to hold, at most, a hundred and fifty, was overcrowded. By ten o’clock more than two hundred sun-reddened people, their inhibitions dissolved by too much of their own wine, decided to dance to the bouncy Latin tune played by the orchestra.

The man with graying temples was impressive in his tuxedo. The voluptuous bow tie and snow-white shirt dramatized his healthy, handsome face. His lovely wife wore a dress made of rose silk georgette, the hem of which was short enough to display her legs. On her feet were silver T-strap sandals. Her hair, still a shining burnished red-brown, was upswept with a soft fullness at the sides, giving her the dreamy look of adolescence.

“We could dance . . .”

“Oh, no, Samir . . . we need practice.”

“Let’s give it a try. Look!” He pointed to a grossly corpulent man leading his wife daintily as he angled for more space. “If he can do it, why can’t we? We’re athletic. Maybe it’s not difficult.”

“All right.”

He rose, took her hand, and spearheaded the walk to the center of the floor. She folded easily into his arms. With her high heels, they were precisely the same height and he brushed his lips against her cheek, pleased to be close to her. “You’re a tall woman,” he said.

“Didn’t you know?”

“Yes. I suppose it’s a hard thing to admit.”

“My mother was slightly taller than my father, but in his own way he managed her very well.”

“But Nijmeh isn’t as tall as Paul . . .” He was eager to be on another subject but she pressed on.

“Are you trying to find similarities—some thread of continuity in three generations of women?”

“No. I’m not trying to find meaning in it.” His special knowledge of her biological father and her ignorance of it made her vulnerable. He pressed her closer and spread his hand against her back to include the hollow above her hips. She stopped talking.

They were in each other’s arms, feeling all the emotions of rebirth—poignancy, longing, sweet ruefulness, a devastating concern for the beloved—while at the same time sharing the peculiar anticipation of lovers. It was a moment out of time. And then it happened.

At least two hundred dancers were shuffling and pounding their feet on the slick maple floor—unique in a land where wood was so scarce—to a dance called the mambo. They didn’t hear the warning creaks and faint rumbles or pay attention to the progressive sponginess of what should have been solid support. Forward . . . step . . . back . . . back . . . step . . . turn . . . chase . . . chase . . . forward—there was the sickening crack of wood tearing under unbearable weight. Whoosh . . . the floor dangled crazily. Men and women screaming—screaming!—were slipping down, down . . . twenty-four feet to the floor below . . . Eeeeeee! Everyone screaming . . . “Oh, God, help me!” . . . “Mama! Holy Mother of God, pray for us sinners” . . . “Joseph?” . . . “
Joseph!
Jesus is my savior. Oh, no! Oh,
no
” . . .

They were thrown together in one dizzying pile . . . the top ones crushed down the first with the deadly power of hurled weight.

The plaster dust rose like a giant cloud from an erupting volcano, making it impossible to see the fate of those who fell, but there was no mistaking the hellish screams and agonized yelps of pain and cries for help. “Help me . . . please help me. My chest . . . I can’t breathe.”

It was difficult to breathe. They gasped and tasted dust. Samir was being pushed, crushed by throngs scrambling to reach the sides. His lungs were squeezed of air. He still held Nadia’s hand, but he couldn’t see her. A burly man with his elbows held high and using them as weapons to knock his way out of the crowd gouged Samir’s eye and momentarily blinded him. In that second she was wrenched away from him. Nadia! The plaster dust grew dense. He pushed with all his strength and grasped at a wisp of rose silk. At the same time, another part of the floor gave way under him. The weight of her as she tore away pulled his shoulder out of its socket before he went down . . . down . . . down.
Oh . . . my God, no!
A scrap of fabric was in his hand and the echo of her scream . . . It was her scream. She had said his name.