Joy stared at her. “What on earth are you talking about? Why would you have even thought of me?”
“Because having this child involved you.”
There was a brusque noise at the doorway, and both of them turned to where the woman who’d brought Joy upstairs had reappeared, carrying a tray with a silver teapot and glasses.
The woman padded barefoot into the room and set the tray on the table between the sofas. The current threatening to ignite the air a moment ago dissipated with the elder woman’s quiet presence. The woman lifted the ornate, round silver pot high from its handle and, holding two small glasses low in her other hand, poured the steaming liquid into each glass in a precise arc. The scent of the fresh mint punctured the air as the familiar little pine nuts floated to the surface of the tea. She replaced the pot on the tray next to a brown cake on a china platter and a bowl of white candied almonds. Using silver tongs, she plucked a sugar cube from a silver bowl and glanced at Joy.
“No sugar, thank you,” Joy said.
The woman looked at her questioningly but handed her the glass. She then placed two cubes into the other glass, stirred it, and handed it to Belinda.
“I’ve given up resisting,” Belinda said. “Tea without sugar is practically unheard of here. It’s bad for me, even bad for the cancer, they say. But one of the advantages of having been colonized by the French is that Tunisian pastries are as good as in Paris.” She smiled. “They’re to die for.”
Joy was struck by the irony of the idiom that now seemed patently sinister: to die for. She tried not to show her renewed shock at the stark reality of Belinda’s illness.
Belinda started to sip her tea, making little slurping sounds, then she looked at Joy. “I’m sorry. My manners have deteriorated, too. We slurp all hot drinks here. It’s not considered rude.”
“It’s not rude,” Joy said, although it always grated on her when Richard slurped his coffee. Had he learned from her?
Belinda pushed herself up off the sofa with effort, leaned over the coffee table, and sliced a thick piece of the dark cake. She put it on a plate and offered it to Joy. “It’s date cake. Aysha just baked it.” She glanced affectionately at the older woman standing slightly away from the table.
The woman, Aysha, now immediately clucked her tongue and rushed to take over, gesturing for Belinda to retake her seat on the sofa. She said a few words in Arabic, and Belinda sighed as she settled back and allowed herself to be served.
“Aysha doesn’t realize that moving does me good,” she explained. “She also doesn’t know that I’m never getting better. She just concocts her village herbal drinks for me as if I have a cold and need a few days of rest.”
“It’s good that she takes such good care of you,” Joy said, almost envying the way the older woman hovered protectively above her charge.
“It sure is. Alhamdullilah.”
Joy recognized the words. Thanks to God. Everyone here seemed to say it.
Joy took a bite of the cake, sweet and dense and unexpectedly scented with cardamom. “It’s delicious,” she said, nodding first at Belinda, then at Aysha.
“Thank you,” Belinda said. She touched the yellow scarf on her head. “I don’t usually wear a scarf. But I’ve lost most of my hair now, and the scarf is a lot more comfortable than a scratchy wig.”
“The yellow is pretty,” Joy said.
Belinda smiled wearily. “I never imagined myself without hair. Scarves help.” She took a few more slurps of her tea, then added, “I was saying that I knew even before having Karma that you’d be a great mother.”
Joy bridled again. “Richard had no right to discuss me with you.”
Belinda went on as though she hadn’t heard her. “If I didn’t believe you’d be a great mother, I wouldn’t have had the baby for you.”
Joy blinked at her. “What?”
Avoiding direct eye contact, Belinda said, “I wanted you and Richard to have a child.”
Joy wondered whether she’d heard her correctly.
Belinda sat up straighter, as though she had rehearsed her next words. “I know how much you wanted one.”
Joy stared at her in horror. “And just how did you know that?”
Belinda seemed to be struggling to keep her gaze level. “I knew your inability to have a baby had strained your marriage.”
“Strained my marriage? My life was none of your business!”
“I wanted to help—”
“Help?” Joy blurted out in disbelief. “Is that how you were going to help? After destroying our marriage? The minute you took that first step into our lives our marriage was over.”
Belinda lowered her eyes and bit her lip. After a moment, still looking down, she said, “I wish you could forgive me. I’m so sorry for—for the pain I must have caused you. I never knew if he’d told you about me, but I assumed you eventually knew.”
Joy continued to stare at her. “You’re sorry?”
Belinda was silent.
“Too late for being sorry.”
Belinda sucked in her breath.
Joy glanced at the ceiling. She’d planned to stay unemotional. She looked outside the window to the swath of blue sea and imagined Richard sitting on the beach right now. A sourness frothed inside her. Damn him!
She looked back at Belinda. “Whoever said I wanted a child that much?”
“It seemed to be what drove you apart,” Belinda said, her voice low.
“Is that what he told you?”
Belinda emphatically shook her head. “No.”
Joy exhaled. “You don’t know anything about it. It was much more than that. It doesn’t matter now.”
Belinda looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t just not being able to have a baby,” Joy said flatly. She briefly closed her eyes, as if she could make everything before her just disappear, make the entire past evaporate. Why was she even here?
When she opened her eyes, she looked straight at Belinda. “I did get pregnant. I suppose he told you about that, too? We had a son, a stillbirth. We couldn’t have another. Being told you can’t have . . .” She stopped, and then went on, her voice shaking, “The pain is there forever, but eventually it fades to the point that you can stand it.”
“But you deserved a child,” Belinda said softly. “You went through so much.”
“Yes, I did deserve a child. But I wanted my own child!”
Belinda winced.
Although Joy instantly regretted her outburst, she was fed up with pleasantries. She owed it to herself to say what she felt: I don’t want your child!
She glared at Belinda. “Did Richard want you to have his baby?”
Belinda vigorously shook her head. “He didn’t know. It was me. I thought I could be—like a surrogate.”
“A surrogate?” Joy exclaimed in disbelief. “We never wanted a surrogate. And in case you don’t know, surrogates don’t fuck the husband!”
There it was. She’d wanted to remain cool and above it all, but the old rage surged up and out of her like a shark.
Belinda shrank back into the sofa.
Joy shook her head in disbelief. “It’s completely nuts! You had a baby for us? So you could—could get rid of your own guilt maybe?” She started to laugh at the craziness of it. “Just what, exactly, did you have in mind? A ménage a trois, all of us living together?”
Belinda looked away again. She looked exhausted.
Though still in shock, the piercing inside Joy dulled somewhat. She shook her head slowly. “You just don’t decide to do something like this. It’s downright crazy.”
“I know that, now,” Belinda said.
“And you came all the way out here? Why not just stay in New York?”
“I—I saw that I couldn’t have the baby there. Richard might have misunderstood and felt obligated to help me out of some sense of duty—”
“That would have been just dandy,” Joy cut in.
“No! I never wanted that. I had to l
eave. I couldn’t tell him.” Joy flinched at the insinuation that Richard might have left her if he’d found out about Belinda’s pregnancy. She brought her hands up to her face. They were cold, despite the heat. She had no idea what to make of this odd naïf who’d just informed her that she’d had a baby for her—to save her marriage.
“But,” Belinda went on, her voice low, “I also saw that I hadn’t been truthful, not with myself. I realized I couldn’t give my baby up. Not even to him. Once I felt her growing inside me, everything changed.” Her face turned pale as a sheet of paper. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Maybe it was Richard you didn’t want to give up,” Joy said coldly. “Keeping his baby was like keeping him.”
“No,” Belinda said hoarsely.
Joy felt she was like a spectator viewing somebody else’s illogical, tragic life play out. She glanced out the window from which now drifted the faint sound of the call to prayer from a mosque. Outside, the world was going about its business, going to pray, to offices, to schools, everyone unaware of the madness infesting this room.
She looked at Belinda. “Do you still love him?” The words hung on her tongue like a barb.
“I wanted the baby for both of you,” Belinda said.
“Do you still love him?” Joy repeated, coldly.
There was a pause. “Not in that way.”
Although she didn’t believe her, Joy let this go. “Did you ever stop to consider what it would actually be like to give up your child, consider the impact it would have on her life? On our lives?” She exhaled in exasperation. “Don’t you see what you’re imposing on us? You’re asking me to relive this—this horrible part of my life over and over again . . .”
“I wanted to help out.”
“God! Do you really think you were helping? What about your child? Do you think she’d have chosen to be separated from her own mother?”
“I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t think of it as a separation. The baby would always be a part of me even if she was with you. But when I began to feel her moving and I started to have emotions I never could have imagined, I was terrified. I couldn’t give her up. Not then.”
Joy looked for some clue that Belinda might be lying or making up this entire story. What sort of woman planned something like this and then chose to believe she wasn’t actually abandoning her child? What crap. But Belinda looked utterly serious, her face betraying no hint of deception.
Joy thought she saw what must have so enticed Richard, that look of defiance accompanied by a strangely sweet sincerity. It wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks, to see how the combination could be the lure of a siren. But she’d be damned if she was going to be taken in.
She leaned forward and rested her forehead on her fists, and then looked at Belinda over her still-clenched hands. “I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know whether you expect me to sympathize, to tell you everything is okay. I don’t even know how I feel about Richard, right now. Your bizarre ideas may excuse you, but they don’t excuse him.”
“Please don’t blame him,” Belinda said quickly. “He would never have agreed to become a father this way.”
Joy glared at her, resenting her coming to Richard’s defense. “At that point, our marriage was over. We were headed for divorce. You might as well have dragged him off with you.”
Belinda emphatically shook her head. “He wouldn’t have left you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” Belinda said. “I saw how much he loved you.”
Joy was too upset to take satisfaction in the suggestion that Richard would have chosen to stay with her over Belinda and their unborn child.
She thought of Richard, now. She’d always assumed they’d have this meeting with Belinda together. She now felt stupid that she’d left him to come here, honoring the request to come alone by telling him she was going to photograph some things close by.
Finally, she asked, “Don’t you want to see him at all?”
“No,” Belinda said, her voice almost brutal.
“What if he wants to see you?” Joy asked, surprised to find herself more disappointed than relieved by this response. “Doesn’t what he wants matter?”
Belinda’s features suddenly looked distorted as if they didn’t know where to settle on her face. “It’s better that he doesn’t see me. He won’t understand.”
For the first time this afternoon, Joy thought, what this woman had just said made sense. “Nobody would understand,” she said flatly.
Yet Joy knew that she wanted Richard to see Belinda, see her in this new reality, see the woman she was rather than some glorified image he might still have enshrined in his mind. Whatever emotional price she herself had to pay, he had to close the book.
Belinda looked at her and said quietly, “There’s just one thing. You must take her next week.”
“Next week?” Joy knew this was a stupid question, but she also couldn’t actually believe that they would finalize this process in a mere few days. She wasn’t prepared. Belinda looked okay, after all. Maybe in a few more months. Maybe they could go home and come back to take the girl, then. Maybe Belinda would improve, and they wouldn’t have to take the child at all. It was possible that the doctors were wrong.
“Yes,” Belinda said. “Next week.”
“Why so soon?”
Belinda didn’t answer but reached for something behind her on the sofa and pulled out a small manila envelope that she placed on the coffee table. “Her birth certificate and her passport,” she said. “The passport is new. She’s never needed one before. She’s never traveled out of the country. Richard is listed as the father on the birth certificate. Everything is in order.”
Joy stared at her, desperately groping for some way to respond. She found herself resenting Richard being listed as the father, and yet that’s what he was. How else to do what they were heading so inevitably toward doing?
She took a deep breath and paused for a moment. When she spoke, she heard her voice as if it were coming from outside of herself. “Then I must ask you for a favor. Richard needs to see you. I won’t come with him, but you need to see the father of your child.”
Belinda sighed, slow and deep. Her eyes were misty now, her cheeks seemingly more sunken. She nodded, slowly. “I’ll see him. Only Karma mustn’t be here when I go. I’m—I’m struggling each day. I don’t have long but I can’t let her see me—”
Joy broke in, “But it may not come to that.”
Belinda closed her eyes. “It will come to that.” She stayed quiet for a bit. Then she said, without opening her eyes but with a faint smile, “There’s no such thing as death. It’s an illusion.”
There was the abrupt sound of a door opening downstairs and a shrill yelp. This time it was the unmistakable voice of a child.
Belinda’s eyes shone. “She’s home.”
Joy froze. She wasn’t ready. Too much had just been thrown at her. She’d give anything to be sucked out of this room into oblivion, but it was too late.
There was the sound of a child’s protesting whine downstairs and a muffled response from Aysha.
Belinda started to chuckle as if none of their previous conversation had taken place. “Aysha makes her drink a glass of warm milk as soon as she gets home from school and before having any sweets. I’m way too lenient in that regard.”
Joy barely heard Belinda because her heart was pumping so fast. She’d imagined this moment countless times: how it would be to see Richard’s daughter for the first time, how she, Joy, would welcome the child into their lives. As much as she’d tried to prepare herself, she was now practically crumpling at the thought of the girl.
“I’m not sure . . .” she stammered. “I’m not sure I can do this. I’m sorry. I’m just . . .”
Belinda had gotten up and was now standing beside her, taking her hand which had started to tremble.
Joy pushed herself up from the sofa. Next to her, Belinda seemed small and fragile, bu
t Joy felt she was the one who would topple over if Belinda let go.
Belinda placed her other hand over Joy’s. “She’s only a child,” she said gently. “And she already loves you. You are Mama Joy to her. I’ve talked to her about you. I’ve told her that you’ll take her to some special places, the skyscrapers in New York and the rides at Disneyland. That’s why she’s arguing with Aysha downstairs. She wants to come right up to see you.”
Joy felt utterly inept as she hung on to the hand of this frail woman who was practically pleading with her, bequeathing her most cherished love to her. What did she, Joy, know about motherhood? Not a damn thing. She fought back tears, trying to look strong and standing as straight and rigid as she could to support the sick mother.
“How?” Joy stammered. “How can you just give her up like this?”
Belinda’s eyes reddened. “I don’t have a choice,” she whispered. Underneath that serene smile that Joy found so confounding was finally the devastating truth.
“I feel we’re stealing her from you—”
“No,” Belinda cut her off. “You are her parents. She only came through me.”
Joy stared at her. Was she actually supposed to believe this? Did Belinda believe this?
“There’s no such thing as separation or even death,” Belinda said calmly. “It’s an illusion. I’m not leaving her. I’ll always be with her—just differently.” She sighed aloud as if unable to contain her sadness. “It’s the end for me but a new beginning for you.” She smiled weakly. “I hope you’ll find it in your heart to love her. Only, will you make sure she doesn’t forget me?”
Joy’s tears were streaming freely now. She stifled a sob. She thought of her anger a moment ago and of the past few years, how she’d have gladly strangled her husband’s former lover with her own hands when Richard had first confessed their relationship. Now, she’d give anything to reverse Belinda’s trajectory, to breathe life into her as she’d breathed it into the dummy years ago in a CPR class. Now, all she could do was shake her head. “We’ll never let her forget you,” she said. “Never.”
A Marriage in Four Seasons Page 23
