A Marriage in Four Seasons

by Kathryn Abdul-baki

  He still couldn’t believe that someone as plucky and alive as Belinda could ever get sick. Sickness and death were for others. He wanted to pull that damn tumor right out of her and fling it to hell, but he couldn’t do a damn thing. He couldn’t even show his deep sadness and horror at the possibility—now, apparently, the inevitability—of her death. He couldn’t hurt Joy any more than he already had. Although she’d pretend to understand and sympathize, she’d be pained beyond belief to see the extent of his grief; so he kept his feelings for Belinda private, mourned the cruel cutting-short of her life in silence.

  Although both were waiting frantically for Belinda to contact them, for a while he had managed to keep his mind detached long enough to appreciate the sights of this North African town where the cerulean windows and doors of the whitewashed houses rivaled the blue of the sea. But then it had all come rushing back like a tidal wave crashing down on him, filling his head and lungs with a torrent strong enough to suffocate him. Especially this morning. He’d woken up feeling depressed and sluggish, as if a huge tarpaulin had been slung over him during the night and he needed to claw his way out for air.

  “Rich!” Joy abruptly squealed.

  He jerked up from under the covers.

  “I can’t believe this! Look.”

  “Honey, don’t yell like that.”

  “Well,” she said. “See for yourself.” She took off her glasses and handed him the guidebook.

  The print was small, and he had to hold it farther back to bring it into focus.

  “It says right there. Rich, he was fooling us.”

  “Who?”

  “That guide—our waiter—or whatever he was.”

  After reading a few lines he understood. Son of a bitch! It was a common ruse in the bazaar, apparently, to approach tourists and claim to be the waiter at their hotel to gain their trust, then trail them through the bazaar and make a commission on anything they bought.

  “And we tipped him,” she said, bursting into laughter.

  He continued to read. The rooftop terrace depicted in the warning was the very spot they’d photographed from, and it was a fake, a recent addition to the store below that was often used to deceive gullible foreigners into thinking it was once the extravagant residence of a local notable. He stared at the picture. Those were the very columns he and Joy had sat on, the so-called chairs of the four wives of the Pasha of Hammamet. Damn fakes.

  He handed her back the book. “Fuck the bastard.”

  She shook her head, smiling. “You’d think we could spot a con, by now. I did think it strange that a pasha’s wife would sit on a backless seat, and I don’t really remember the man ever having served us breakfast. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “But I don’t pay attention in the morning. He could have.”

  “He didn’t,” Richard said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Forget it. We’ll be more careful from now on. No wonder he didn’t want his picture taken.”

  She giggled, snuggling closer to him under the sheet as if their shared ignorance delighted her, made them accomplices in their own duping.

  He closed his eyes, unable to see the humor in it. How stupid could he get? He could normally pick up on a con job, and it was out of character for him to accept that sort of offer. He’d been too preoccupied with Belinda for his normally sensitive antennae to be operating at peak form, he told himself, but he should have been more careful about succumbing to out-of-work predators. Despite the sights, he was beginning to want to get out of here.

  “I guess we can’t blame him for trying to make a buck,” Joy said.

  She scooted even closer to him and started to stroke his back as though to soften the blow, then reached around his belly. He thought he heard her giggle again and felt her breasts against his back.

  “I thought you hated being swindled,” he said, although he felt his anger subsiding. Whereas prior to this she might have worried herself sick about being cheated, she seemed to not be offended by it now.

  She continued to chuckle. “I just can’t believe we were so taken in.”

  “It’s not that funny.”

  Obviously sensing his irritation, she asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I will be if you keep rubbing my back like that.”

  To his delight, her arm ventured out again and encircled his waist, and this time he caught her hand and guided it back to where it had started to go before he’d frightened it away. Being swindled together had apparently excited Joy, and he wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip by. He would not make two mistakes in one day.

  The pain in his jaw was finally gone. He started to hum “Sexual Healing.” Marvin Gaye sure had it right.

  He looked at his watch. Time to get some dinner. He glanced over at Joy, who was now huddled under the covers. She tended to do this after sex, even in the heat, to shut out the world and withdraw into her cocoon to fall asleep. Although he couldn’t hear her breaths, he could detect the rise and fall of her shoulders in the darkened room.

  He’d been confounded by how radiant she’d been since the start of the trip, though he knew that she too must be tied in infinite knots by Belinda’s silence and what lay ahead.

  They’d discussed it endlessly, even seen a therapist to make certain that, should the need arise, Joy was ready to take on the responsibility of raising his child from another woman. He wanted to make sure that she wasn’t doing this solely for him, that there would be no lingering grudges that would poison them all. Would she forever see Belinda in the child and harbor some latent ill will toward her? Surely there had been times in the past months when Joy must have doubted her ability to do this, but she never let on. Ultimately, he had to take her word that she knew herself well enough to actually be able to handle something when she said she could.

  Perhaps, despite the ambivalence, the anticipation of approaching “motherhood” was the cause of her current glow. He wanted to believe that, but he couldn’t help wondering whether it was something else. Perhaps being back at Hunter and in the company of all those professors had prompted some secret attraction to someone else. It was an irrational thought, but he couldn’t help it. He’d seen those expressions before, brief but definitely there, but this time he had no patience for her floating away.

  25

  The stooped old German beamed his eager smile as he patrolled the hotel’s beach, diligently scooping up the stringy cylindrical jellyfish in a wire kitchen strainer.

  The jellyfish were bobbing like a swarm of corks along the sparkling shore this morning, coming a full two months early this year, according to the concierge. These weren’t the variety of jellyfish they’d encountered in Mexico once, the malicious pink spheres with translucent tentacles that lashed at their limbs and left welts that burned for days. These resembled harmless scraps of brown seaweed, and their touch irritated only slightly more than a mosquito bite. Still, they were a nuisance, spurring swimmers to the concessions stand for pats of soothing ammonia. After being stung a few times, Richard avoided the water, enjoying the beach from the safe shade of the umbrella.

  “I haven’t been bitten once,” Joy said, obviously baffled that he could resist such glorious water because of something as trifling as these jellyfish.

  “So you keep telling me.”

  “Isn’t that old man gallant to fish them out? He’s been busy all morning trying to make swimming pleasant for everybody.”

  Richard glanced up from his book. He’d seen the man but was less impressed by the old-timer’s chivalry. “It’s a ploy to attract women. See them gather around him to look at his catch?”

  “Well, if it’s a ploy, it’s a nice one.”

  “What choice does he have? He’s not exactly Don Juan anymore.”

  Joy dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “He just keeps depositing them on shore and going back in, over and over. I haven’t seen him actually swim at all. And he has such a sweet smile.”

  “He m
ust not have anything else to worry about.”

  She shrugged. “We can’t worry about what we can’t control. We agreed to give her a few more days, so we just have to be patient. Meanwhile, enjoy the view.”

  He nodded. She was right. They had to sit tight. This was Belinda’s call, and they had to let her do things at her own pace.

  At least there was a serenity to the beach that was absent in the frantic mood of the street where the anxious hustlers were bent on flogging their wares. He and Joy had avoided the medina since that first day. Since vendors were barred from the hotel’s beach, there were, thankfully, none trekking here in search of tourists.

  He observed the German again as the frail fellow held out his strainer to the scrutiny of two middle-aged women pausing in their walk. Both women peered at his catch and nodded approvingly. They appeared to be German, too, with their cropped light hair and sunny demeanors. One had a square face that reminded Richard of his mother, who’d died two years earlier.

  He’d been to Los Angeles to visit his mother after her stroke, and once she recovered, he had helped move her back into her assisted living facility. Two weeks later, after he got home, she’d passed in her sleep. No warning. Nothing. It was, according to all, the best way to go, but he’d agonized for months that he’d spent so much of his life away from her.

  His younger brother, Carl, had died several years earlier from melanoma. Barely forty, Carl had never married and had struggled to make it as a movie producer, like countless others in LA. He’d gone to live near their mother and gotten to know her better than Richard ever had. Richard hadn’t been there for Carl much either in those later years. Although they’d both been absorbed in work and personal lives, it was something he still hadn’t forgiven himself for.

  “Why do you think we marry the people we do?” Joy asked abruptly. She’d just come from the water and was rubbing her wet hair with the beach towel.

  “Ouch! Honey, you’re getting sand everywhere with that towel.”

  She continued rubbing her hair, giving no sign that she’d heard him.

  “Joy!” He shut his eyes.

  She stopped drying her hair and spread the towel back on the sand as he dusted off his book.

  She lay belly-down on her towel and unhooked the back of her swimsuit top. “Can you put some sunscreen on my back?”

  He unscrewed the tube she handed him and rubbed her back, down to the top of her swimsuit bottom. Her skin was already warm from the sun, and he marveled at the pretty curve of her back that he’d always liked, the way it dipped in and then out like a pear and displayed those two little dimples.

  “I asked, why people marry—”

  “I heard you,” he said, still gazing at her back.

  “Well?”

  “Different reasons. How should I know?” He blinked and rubbed his eyelid to dislodge sand crystals.

  “I’ve been looking around the beach,” she said. “The couples seem to be the weirdest mix. There’s a funny-looking short man over there with a gorgeous young woman.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re married.”

  “She’s carrying a baby and he has his arm around her. He looks twice her age. It’s just odd.”

  Richard sat upright. “Where?”

  “Wading in the water.”

  He spotted a slender woman with a blond ponytail as she handed a short, older man an infant before carefully sliding into an approaching wave, holding her head high to avoid wetting her hair. Although he didn’t get a clear look at the woman, she appeared to be young and pretty. The man could be mistaken for her father, but they certainly acted married.

  “Maybe he’s got money,” Richard offered. “Maybe he’s a Russian oligarch. Maybe he’s brilliant. Or maybe he’s just a nice guy.”

  Joy continued to watch them, looking amused but unconvinced.

  “Why do you think?” he asked, deciding to let her take this where she wanted.

  She shrugged. “She’s so lovely. She could obviously have someone more dashing. It’s just surprising.”

  He felt compelled to come to the maligned husband’s defense. “Not really. Some women like older men.”

  “Security.”

  “What?”

  “She wants stability and security for her child.”

  He watched the man, who was now trudging up the sand with the child snuggled in his arms. The man went to the umbrella, placed the baby in a bassinet in the shade, and carefully spread mosquito netting over it.

  Richard felt a twinge of jealousy at the satisfaction that being a loving father must yield. A fading memory of Stephen flowed through him, followed by a vision of Belinda and her daughter. What kind of father would he have been to Stephen? What kind would he be to the girl? To Karma. Would he find his true calling in being a parent as Belinda said she had? What about Joy? Would she secretly resent Belinda’s child although she’d assured him she was totally free of any ill feelings?

  Joy interrupted his contemplations. “Women in childbearing years are blind to all but security, financial and emotional.”

  He caught his breath. Belinda had once called him dependable, but he’d assumed it was an added quality in him she liked, not the main reason for her attraction to him. Was Joy saying these things now to dispel any notion he might have that Belinda had truly loved—or might still love—him? Might she be wondering whether he still harbored feelings for Belinda?

  “For most young women, security’s a downright aphrodisiac,” Joy continued. “It overshadows everything else.”

  He glanced at her, again wondering whether she was insinuating that this was the main reason Belinda had been attracted to him. “If you say so,” he said.

  She smiled. “You’ve never been a woman. We may dream of Che Guevara on his motorcycle, but we marry Gerald Ford.”

  He started to laugh.

  She nodded knowingly. “Most women will settle for Plain Joe when looking for a mate.”

  Plain Joe? He looked back at the man settling into a beach chair under the umbrella, beside the baby’s cot. Okay, he was a Plain Joe.

  “And how about us men? How do we choose our mates?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Well, you dream of screwing Marilyn Monroe, but most of you marry your mothers.”

  He glanced at her, eyebrows raised.

  “You need the Virgin Mary,” she explained.

  He grinned. “I married a very sexy Madonna.”

  She shrugged this off. “Men, in general. It’s that same longing for security. You may want great, raw sex—”

  “Ah, Marilyn Monroe,” he said, unable to push the thought of Belinda aside now, her ebony hair, olive skin, those steamy afternoons and evenings. . . . He stopped himself. He could have chosen that, could have followed her to the far reaches of Africa, but he hadn’t. He had chosen to stay, chosen Joy. He, too, had picked security in a sense.

  “—but you’re terrified the nympho will leave you,” Joy went on, “and so you settle for the nurturer. Few men take on a challenge in marriage. You don’t have the stomach for it.”

  He was starting to get exasperated. At one time, she would have criticized him for making such generalizations. If anything, he felt he was the opposite from the men she described.

  “So, where does that leave us?” he asked.

  She looked as though she’d been waiting for this question. “I think I married the first time in large part for emotional security.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “And now?”

  “Now I’m with you for love.”

  “Whoa, I’m flattered,” he said, although he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed at those missed years before.

  She reached over and patted his slight paunch as though to temper his sarcasm. She used to be on him whenever he gained weight. Now, she seemed not to mind. Or perhaps she’d given up, Richard thought. Perhaps she’d decided to leave his health issues to him. Maybe she had married him for love this time and was blind to whatever had
bothered her the first time. He wished to hell he could believe that.

  “Joy?”

  “Hmm?”

  He wanted to ask if she really loved him, but instead he asked, “What kind of parents will we make?”

  She looked at him. “Good parents.”

  “I mean, will we be permissive or strict, hyper-protective, overbearing—”

  “We’ll be good, loving parents. The rest doesn’t matter.”

  “She’s almost four. I have so much to learn.” He looked at her. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you, Joy.”

  She smiled. “You’d do fine.”

  “Maybe we should move out of Manhattan, move back to Westchester or to Connecticut for the schools.”

  She sighed. “Let’s not worry about that, now.”

  He sat in silence, staring out to sea. He knew he had to start making some serious decisions soon. Whether Joy admitted it or not, their lives would change, and dramatically.

  Joy said matter-of-factly, “You, on the other hand, married your mother both times.”

  “What?” He looked at her then, realizing she was back to their earlier discussion, he feigned shock. “Never Marilyn Monroe?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even on the second round?”

  “Uh-uh,” she said without the slightest doubt in her voice. “But that’s good. That’s why you’re happy.”

  “Who says I’m happy?” he said, enjoying the uneasy arch this put in her brow.

  “At least you’re content, aren’t you?”

  He tilted his head as though unsure then smiled, indicating with a nod the fellow peacefully reading his book. “So, that schmuck with the baby married Marilyn Monroe, and I didn’t?”

  She glanced at the man under the tree. “Oh, he married his mother, too.”

  “And just how do you figure that?”

  “She’s a nurturer. Not just because of the baby, but because of her stance, the way she stood with him earlier, almost cradling him like he was the baby.”

  “You’ve been reading too many novels,” he said.

  She paused, thoughtful for a moment, and then smiled back at him as she picked up her book. “It comes with the job. It’s what literature is all about. Sorting out life’s absurdity.”