He stared at her. “Joy, I can’t help taking things seriously. That’s who I am. Otherwise, I’d give up.”
“Give up what?”
He wasn’t sure whether she was genuinely curious or playing with him. “Give up on us.”
“Why on earth would you give up on us, honey?” she asked. “Why can’t you just be kinder to yourself? Why not just recognize that we’re not perfect, not as people or as a couple, and just accept that? You’re way too hard on yourself these days, and it makes things harder on both of us.”
He sighed. “I’m obviously anxious. And I dread getting old, especially now.”
She laughed. “You’re not old. Anyway, isn’t that the point? To live into old age?”
He shrugged. “I worry about getting infirm.”
“Well, you’re not going to get infirm if you keep active.”
“Well, there’ll come a time when—I need to stay strong for the child. Damn, Joy, our entire lives are about to change. I’m having these existential struggles, fears for my health I never had before. I even read the obituaries in the paper, which I never used to do. I can’t believe you’re so calm about all this.”
She took a deep breath. “Rich, we’ll just face it like we do other things. This is going to be new for both of us. I’m anxious, too, but embrace the change. Become a better man for it. Embrace this new life we’ve been given.”
They sat in silence a few minutes, then Joy said, “Look at it this way. We constantly discard our old selves and give birth to the new people we become each day. Just think that you’re being reborn every day into a stronger, better you.”
He continued to stare at her, intrigued. He wasn’t used to hearing her expound so philosophically, and again he thought he heard traces of Belinda. He sure the hell hoped she wasn’t veering in that direction. Right now, he needed solidity, not airy whimsies.
She must have read his thoughts because she smiled. “Look, Rich. Let’s just focus on the good stuff. Let’s be kind to ourselves and to each other. If we don’t reach out and help each other, and help others in the process, our lives won’t mean a thing in the long run. Let’s try to be more content and less harsh.”
“Am I being harsh?”
“Oh, God,” she said with a laugh.
“I’m serious.”
“There you go again,” she said. “Drop the serious part and just be for a while. Enjoy all this.”
She spread her arms as though to embrace the vibrant garden and courtyard and the mosque’s jewel-like walls around them. “Just be, Rich. Close your eyes and enjoy this perfect moment while we have it.” She shut her own eyes and lifted her chin, a soft smile meandering across her lips. Like a succulent sponge, she seemed to be soaking in every ounce of their surroundings. He started to wish he’d taken her advice years ago and taken up yoga as she had, something to get him out of his damn head all the time.
“What if,” she continued softly, “there is no meaning to any of life other than sustaining our existence through kindness and love? I’ve spent my career trying to find meaning through stories, and I’ve concluded that we create stories to make the mystery of life less frightening.” She looked at him closely. “Remember, we’re going to be just fine. No matter what.”
Although what he really wanted to do now was lean over and kiss her moist lips in gratitude, he took a deep breath and tried to do as she said, to think of nothing, to let go and just be. He closed his eyes and listened to the echoes of the hallways, to the murmurings of those strolling and praying. He repeated Joy’s mantra to himself: We’re going to be just fine.
He remained totally still and tried to ride that warm breeze of contentment that seemed to float just below Joy’s body and carry her off.
He was aware of his feet on the ground but tried to concentrate on his breath instead, as she seemed to be doing. He steered himself to thoughts of how lucky he was to have her, to have an established, workable life. He thought of how lucky he was to have found love with her, imperfect though it might be, and also to have had his brief, intoxicating time with Belinda. How lucky he was to have a child he would soon get to see and hold and take into his life. It all seemed like a maddening dream to him, but Joy seemed to be accepting it much more readily.
Maybe that was it. Maybe love was simply about embracing the imperfect. To just be, as she said. Maybe life was just a series of gains and losses, like business, and you lost one account but got another. They’d lost one child but were gaining another. They’d lost one love but were now building another. Couldn’t he have faith that they were all going to be just fine at the end of the day? Wasn’t life, as Joy intimated, more about being content than achieving objectives?
He glanced at her, a tender ache welling in him at how her lower lip jutted out in a slightly pensive pout.
“Sweetheart, you’re damn sexy when you’re preaching,” he whispered, the desire to kiss her now overwhelming.
She opened her eyes wide and stifled a giggle. “We’re in a mosque, Rich!”
“Damn it all, you turn me on,” he whispered, fighting off the urge to slide his hand up her leg and under her loose skirt.
A coy smile played on her lips. “Later,” she said.
“I’m not sure I can wait,” he said, but he forced himself back into the quiet of her gentle assurances, soothed by her hint of excitement to come.
Then, as if in a dream, Joy’s voice came to him. “I’ve seen her, Rich.”
At first, he didn’t comprehend what she meant, and then he turned to look straight at her.
She nodded.
“Belinda?” he stared at her in disbelief.
She nodded again.
He felt his chest tighten. “When?”
She took a breath. “That woman who called our hotel a few nights ago to tell us Belinda would be in touch soon? Well, she did call. You were in the shower.”
“Belinda called?”
“She told me she wanted to see me. She was emphatic I not tell you.”
“Why the hell not?”
She ignored his question. “It was yesterday when I said I was going to the market. I went to her home, instead. She’d just come back from the hospital. She goes in every few weeks for blood transfusions.”
“Joy, why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to, but it wasn’t my decision.”
Belinda’s face, smeared in blood, flashed before him. He ran his hand through his hair, pushing the image away. “Well? How is she?”
“She’s . . .” she said, staring at him as if searching for his feelings in his eyes.
“Yes?”
“She’s very sick.”
“Can’t I see her? I mean, I just want to reassure her that we’ll take good care of her child.” He still couldn’t bear to say “our child” in front of Joy.
Her eyes clouded. “She wasn’t so sure—but I insisted—”
“I have to see her!”
Joy was silent, as if she’d been struck.
His pulse started to race. What if Belinda had changed her mind as they’d feared? “And the—child?” he asked.
She nodded.
“She’ll let us have her?”
“Yes.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, relieved that at least that hadn’t changed.
“You know what she said?” Joy’s voice now cracked.
He opened his eyes.
“She said she had the baby for us, for you and me. She wanted us to have a child.”
His mouth opened but no words would come out.
“Rich, she said she’d gotten pregnant for us. She’d always meant for us to have Karma and to raise her.” Joy’s words gushed quickly as if she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to complete what she wanted to say. “She said she was afraid you might leave me, and so she went away.”
He continued to stare at her, trying to make sense of her words.
“I was shocked and angry,” Joy said. “I thought she was some kind of lunatic. B
ut I couldn’t stay mad for long. She wanted us to have a baby.”
He exhaled in disbelief. Belinda had a baby for them? He felt a searing in his core. What on earth had she been thinking?
“And, Rich?” Joy said, her voice trembling.
He fought back his shock. “Yes?”
She swallowed. “She’s put all her faith in us. I never expected to feel how I did. I felt myself changing in that room. I was beside myself with rage and confusion, and I couldn’t imagine anybody doing this just out of the blue, but she was totally sincere. And then when I saw Karma and realized what Belinda must be feeling at the thought of leaving her, I just broke down. I just hope I—we—can live up to this.” She wiped away her tears. She shook her head and then whispered, “And Karma—Karma is beautiful.”
Richard took a deep breath, almost choking on his own shock.
They sat in silence as though the very memory of how to speak had left them both. He desperately wanted to reach out and hold Joy tight, to keep her close and safe, but he knew he must wait until they left the mosque.
It was Joy who placed her hand on his knee. “We should go.”
29
The taxi driver pulled up to a familiar, low building on the outskirts of Kairouan that they’d passed that morning as they entered the town. Richard remembered it from the baskets of garish plastic flowers flanking the entrance. Now, two huge tour buses were parked in front, the first they’d seen all day.
“No, no,” he abruptly told the driver, in no mood to be crammed into a hall with a gaggle of tourists. “We want a quiet restaurant. Tunisian.”
“This Tunisian,” the driver said, looking to him and then to Joy for approval.
Richard shook his head. “No shows, please. Just food.”
“Best couscous here,” the driver replied stubbornly.
“He probably knows what he’s talking about,” Joy intervened, obviously aware that Richard’s irritation at the driver had more to do with his anxiety about her recent revelation.
“It’s a tourist trap,” Richard protested. “Just look at the buses.”
“There may not be anything better around,” she said patiently. “It’ll take us a while to get back to Hammamet.”
He followed her out of the car, sending a warning frown the driver’s way. If it were up to him, they’d go straight back to Hammamet. In all the upheaval of the past hour, food was the last thing on his mind, anyway. He couldn’t bear the idea of sitting still long enough to finish a meal. He just wanted to find a way to call Belinda and then go to her home, whether she wanted to talk to him or not. He had never had a proper goodbye and had not been able to ask her about the child, or why she had run rather than tell him she was pregnant. Although he was happy with Joy now, he needed to hear Belinda’s voice. He wanted to hold her, to feel her warmth, her life, in his arms, to hold on to their past wild joy together one last time before she was gone forever.
Inside, a large room was set up with tables placed in a wide semi-circle. To one side was a group already being served. Germans most likely, he thought, to judge by the plentiful bottles of beer.
A waiter ushered the two of them to an empty table on a quieter side of the room. Colorful arabesque lanterns flooded patterns of blue and red onto white tablecloths. Richard managed to loosen up somewhat. The place was better than he had expected.
They each ordered a glass of Tunisian red wine and the special on the menu, salade Niçoise and couscous.
“Not bad,” Joy said, in that way of hers that meant, although she wasn’t gloating, that she had been right to insist they come in.
She went to the restroom to freshen up, and he closed his eyes, sinking into his chair and stretching his legs.
Karma. Belinda. He sighed. Could all this be happening to him? Joy and Belinda actually meeting? It was once what he had guiltily fantasized about, what he’d secretly wanted in a perverse way when he’d been torn between the two of them. Now things had changed. His obscene wish was being oddly played out in a quite unforeseeable and heartbreaking way.
Now that Joy had seen Belinda and was obviously smitten by Karma, it was as if, for the first time since learning of his daughter’s existence, he’d been given permission to feel his love for her, a father’s love for his child. My daughter, he thought. His chest lurched. He couldn’t wait to see her, his arms already feeling her softness as he imagined giving her a tender embrace. Even more, he wanted to see Belinda, wanted to reassure her of how good a father he’d be, assure her that all would be taken care of. Although he was still stupefied by her motivations for having the child, and at times almost wished he had never set eyes on her in the first place, he also wanted to thank her for this colossal, incomprehensible gift.
A man dressed in a traditional jellaba robe, a burgundy fez on his head, strode to the center of the dining room. He informed the guests in German, then in English, that there would be entertainment.
“What’d I tell you?” Richard said as Joy returned and sat back down. “A tourist trap.”
“Relax, honey,” Joy said, chuckling. Her face was fresh and glowing, and she smelled of the jasmine perfume she’d bought in the market that first day.
He folded his arms. “I hope this doesn’t take all night.”
The waiter brought their salads, and shortly thereafter more waiters emerged from a doorway carrying a huge tray with a large earthenware urn balanced on it. The waiters stood with the tray in the center of the room. The man in the fez, who Richard gathered was the master of ceremonies, began to announce something in German to the beer-drinking crowd, who laughed and clapped loudly.
“They’re so damned happy all the time,” Richard said. “Obviously overjoyed to get away from the cloudy Rhineland.”
Joy smiled. “At least they have a sense of humor. We can all use—”
A loud crash interrupted her.
Richard lunged forward to protect her and scanned the room, his first instinct being that it had been a gunshot or bomb, that the country had imploded as he’d feared it would. He’d watched footage on CNN that morning of extremists bursting into a shopping mall in Cairo. He could imagine this room being overrun by gunmen. As Americans, they might be targets.
Then he saw that it was the master of ceremonies who’d just swung down a wooden cane to smash the urn on the tray held by the waiters. A large crack in the pot was oozing something red. The German audience emitted a gasp of appreciation at the culinary explosion.
Growing impatient with the theatrics, Richard thought he saw the old German from their hotel beach sitting at one of the tables. It had to be him—the bald head and hunched shoulders, the foolish grin.
Presently, the waiters brought Richard and Joy each a plate of couscous along with bowls of a vegetable stew in a tomato sauce from the cracked pot. The enticing aroma of cumin pierced his nostrils, but having finished half of his salad, Richard felt full.
He looked at Joy, whose eyes were feasting on both couscous and the stew. He regarded his own dish of couscous without touching it.
Another young man, this one looking like a dervish in long hair, baggy trousers, and a belted tunic, now joined the master of ceremonies in the center of the room and immediately pulled something out of a bag tied to his waist. Although Richard couldn’t see what it was, he guessed it was something live from the way the man began to tilt his arm as if the thing were crawling on his skin.
“Oh,” Joy said, halting a spoonful of couscous before it reached her mouth. “It’s a scorpion, for God’s sake.”
Richard strained to see what the young man, who had his back to them, was doing. The Germans had the full view of whatever he was showing, and they seemed fascinated.
Richard, suddenly nauseated by the sight of food, pushed away his plate.
Joy looked surprised. “You don’t like it?”
“I can’t eat.”
“But you barely tasted—”
“I can’t.”
She stared at him as she
deposited her own spoonful of couscous into her mouth. “You’ve got to try this. It’s just delicious,” she said, a look of rapture on her face.
He took a breath but said nothing.
Then her demeanor changed, and she said, “Rich, what did you mean earlier when you said you wished things were different between us?”
He stared at her but didn’t answer. Although he heard her, he was feeling too uncomfortable to embark on their saga right now. He leaned back in his chair, trying to relieve the pressure in his gut. He felt stuffed. Maybe something in the salad had been bad.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking concerned.
He nodded, although he was aware that he was starting to sweat. He tried to stand to relieve the discomfort, but he slumped back down into his chair.
She gasped, scrambling to get to him. “Honey!”
He could hear noises coming from the other side of the room. He looked at the master of ceremonies, then at the man in the baggy clothes, dangling something into his mouth. “Jesus,” he muttered.
She was by his side now, her lips pale with panic. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
He tried to catch his breath. “Did he just eat that scorpion?”
“Honey, look at me,” she pleaded, grabbing his face and turning it toward her.
He glanced at her, obeying. His Joy. His Madonna. Or was she Marilyn Monroe?
“You know,” he heard himself say, and then he tried to take a slow, shallow breath but felt the pain squeeze his belly and his jaw. “I think I’m having a heart attack, Joy.”
“Oh, God! Rich, don’t!”
“Joy,” he said, taking another shallow breath. Rather than pain, an excruciating rush of love for her surged through him this time.
“Aspirin!” she cried out. “Honey, do you have any aspirin?” She was looking about frantically. “Does anyone have an aspirin?”
Her voice was coming from far away although he could see her right beside him. Her eyes flew about like crazed bees as she tried to get someone’s attention. She turned back to him. “Rich, don’t leave me here!”
He took another breath, “Joy—call—”
A Marriage in Four Seasons Page 25
