Dervishes

by Beth Helms

  So, in hidden moments of the day, while ostensibly elsewhere, Bahar was closeted away on the top floor of the Buyuk Ankara hotel, or in Ahmet’s trailer at the stables. Often she told Ali she was with Grace—shopping, at the hamam, the zoo—some frivolous but plausible activity. It was Grace’s job merely to keep up this pretense at the rare social events where she crossed paths with Ali, to remember that they had been here one day, there the next. And Ali’s interest in his wife’s whereabouts was negligible, amounting to little more than conversational courtesy: did you have a nice time at this place, or that one? He’s a robber, that merchant. I hope you had the dolma, it’s very good there. Moving around the apartment in the stultifying daylight hours, without electricity, as Rand recuperated in the bedroom, was maddening, embittering. All day Grace pictured Bahar wrapped in cool linens, running ice cubes along her cheeks and collarbone, her limbs striped with shadow and muscle, while Grace hunted up powdered milk in the kitchen, ferreted out some vital kitchen implement that had grown legs, or wondered vaguely, if at all, where her daughter might be.

  But now it seems that Bahar has another favor to ask of Grace and she tucks her shining hair behind her ears. “That is absolutely correct and I do not mean to diminish it. It was very kind, what you did for me. You told Ali we had lunch, is that right? I am very appreciative. Thank you.”

  Grace looks around the darkening room. Outside the windows she sees lights splashing on; she senses the hum of the city starting up again. The cord of the lamp hangs within reach but she keeps her hands in her lap. On the table in front of her, the amber glass of scotch seems to lose its glimmer, its luster dulls and the light seems to leak away.

  “What do you need?” she says. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  “Tamam!” says Bahar. “Okay.” Her voice is bright with satisfaction but holds not a trace of gratitude—but after all, she is a not a woman accustomed to the word no. “Here is what we will do. You will remember what Ali said about the horses, and perhaps also you wish to take Canada off the streets—it is not altogether safe, this running around in Ankara….”

  Grace puts her scotch down, pulls her legs onto the sofa and girdles her body with her arms. She presses her cheek against her knee and watches Bahar speak with her hands; she nods in the right places but she has already stopped listening.

  SOMETIMES WHEN she is alone in the apartment, as Rand sleeps heavily in the other room, and Canada is off with Catherine, Grace leafs through the photo albums she has meticulously assembled over the years. Always she has the sensation of looking at photographs of strangers. Here she and Rand are leaning against the Rover at a beach in the States; her legs are slim and outstretched, her backside resting on the hood of the car, her hair tied in a scarf with the wind a nearly visible thing—the fabric fans out from her face like a cowl. She is smiling. Another picture has Canada standing between her legs, Grace’s hands putting weight on her shoulders, both their faces flushed and freckled. It must be Rand behind the camera.

  She remembers that trip well. Some months before orders had come, while they were living on Olson Loop, they took a weekend drive to Rehoboth Beach. The car wheezed over a great, cabled bridge, along endlessly flat roads until the sea came into view, announcing itself subtly, with just a change of light. Finally, the green gave way, revealing a pure glint in the distance. It was as though the world had leveled off, been smoothed by a spatula. There was something lively playing on the radio.

  Rand was in a good mood, banging his hands on the steering wheel, tamping a cigarette, his profile clean and slender: he smelled pleasingly of drugstore aftershave. In the backseat, Canada slept, fists balled, lengthening legs pulled to her chin. The Rover, red on the outside, caramel leather on the inside, was finned in the rear and the front, a cheerful little car they had shipped from Germany. Rand loved that car like some people love small dogs. He talked baby talk to the dashboard, and somehow coaxed from it an unnatural longevity.

  The place, when they arrived, was clearly army-issue: a long line of barracks, the quarters only nominally converted from their original purpose—a tiny kitchenette had been added, a room lined with bunk beds, a master bedroom the size of a closet. The beach was over a rise of dune and the water concealed a fierce, churning undertow. There was no television, no phone and a rusted shower-head around the back where Grace made Canada strip after the beach: she pushed her under the hard, stinging spray while Canada cowered, covering herself, hands everywhere, trying to fend off the water.

  The days became a long, pleasant blur, punctuated by small events: Canada sat on a wasp one afternoon while looking through the grass for four-leaf clovers and they waited the requisite period of time to determine whether she was allergic. Grace was caught in the undertow one morning and went ass over teacup into the surf, her thin white legs sticking up as though she were doing a handstand, for laughs. Rand had thought it hilarious, though Grace had been thoroughly shaken and become cautious of the water.

  At the waterline ghostly sand crabs scuttled at high speeds, surprised by the ebbing waves, and Canada chased them, first their little white bodies and then the trail of bubbles they left behind: her hands scrabbled through the wet sand after them with occasional success.

  There was a small store on the property, a short walk across the sandy compound, where a meager assortment of groceries could be found and a disproportionately large selection of beer; they carried cigarettes and squishy packages of bread, playing cards, bottles of suntan lotion. In the evenings Grace made meals of peanut butter sandwiches, hot dogs and potato chips. Rand drank steadily at the kitchen table, his hands shuffling cards, dealing out hands of blackjack for himself and Canada. A bare bulb over the table spotlighted ancient stains and spidery fissures in the Formica.

  Rand also did card tricks for Canada at the scarred table, her freckled legs pulled up on the chair, her forehead furrowed. He fanned out cards: passing his hands over them, shuffling them deftly, cutting the stack clean as a knife and then miraculously discovering hers in the deck. He also had a sleight in which a saltcellar disappeared right through the table, a napkin swirling over it in graceful folds. At the end, his hand came down with a crash, flattening the empty napkin onto the table, making the furniture, and the audience, jump. Where had it gone? He would never say. Grace, watching that trick more than a decade before, had been delighted. Canada adored it too.

  At night they slept under army blankets—stiff and green, smelling of mildew, the sheets coarse as sandpaper. If Grace rolled toward Rand he rolled away, either feigning sleep or lost in a drunken fugue. If his hand touched her hip it was accidental, or in the brush of a dream. Grace fell asleep to his sounds, his snoring, interrupted and confused, his wide nostrils and bare broad chest, stippled with hair. During those long nights she found him inexplicably repulsive and desirable, both.

  Edie and Greg had come along on that trip to the beach, though to look at the photograph album you would not know it. During the day Edie and Grace set up camp near the dunes, by the tall, waving beach grasses. They carried down a small cooler filled with Thermoses and sandwiches, then spread their blankets and paraphernalia around them in ever widening circles, taking over the nearly empty stretch of beach, inch by inch. They made jokes about soldierly conduct, about encroaching on neighboring territories, though there were no neighbors to speak of, no enemy camps to overtake. Far down the beach were the shimmering mirages of other little lands like their own, other bases and provinces, with figures that acted out their own miniature plays and maneuvers—running, splashing, roughhousing, all in slow motion.

  Edie and Grace had no umbrella and they lay mostly with their shirts across their faces, using their hands to anchor them against the wind. Still, the sand blew and infiltrated and formed a thin film on their bodies, a second, gritty skin that resisted water or scrubbing. The feeling accompanied them throughout the trip and even later; after they’d returned home and taken many hot baths, both women thought they still felt it on thei
r bodies and imagined that it lingered even in the weave and nap of clothing that had stayed behind, folded away in drawers on Olson Loop.

  Rand and Greg walked endlessly, restlessly, up and down the beach, fading in and out of sight, behind dunes and curves of coast, strangely unfamiliar in their civilian clothes, their casual short-sleeved shirts and rolled-up trousers, their bare feet. They returned from time to time with pockets full of beach treasure—green glass, bits of driftwood and shells, battered starfish and urchins. They emptied their pockets for Canada’s scrutiny and then left again, as though on the trail of something more significant.

  Edie and Grace spoke casually, loopingly, of inconsequential things—dinners and lunches and possible shopping trips they might take to nearby tourist towns. Saltwater taffy and shellfish, the famous migrating ponies. They drank from the shared red plastic cap of the Thermos, powdered lemonade with slivers of ice cubes swimming in it. The taste was stale and metallic, and as the day passed it grew watery and gritty with sand.

  Grace rose to her elbows from time to time and shaded her eyes to watch Canada playing at the shore. When Edie fell asleep, Grace would get up and begin some project with Canada, a sand castle or a catalog of her beach treasures. But before long Grace would grow bored and wander away, scuffing her feet in the surf, wading ankle-deep but not an inch more. The undertow had given her a good fright. She stared out at the flat gray-green water and waited for Edie to wake from her catnap. Edie grew darker by the day. The sand on her skin shimmered like a golden dust; on Grace’s arms it was nowhere near as sultry, it gathered aggressively, dirtily, in the creases of her elbows and at the hollow of her throat.

  “What do they talk about, I wonder,” Edie said one afternoon, propped up on her arms, watching Canada gather and mound sand in some mysterious design.

  The men were visible, but barely, in the distance. Rand’s sun hat moved down the beach jauntily; he bent to pick something up and resumed walking.

  “I can’t imagine,” Grace said. They seemed to have nothing in common, these men, yet they had spent the days together quite easily. Grace knew that Rand thought Greg weak and ineffectual, and if his career was stalled, Rand clearly felt it was entirely through some fault of his own. Though, of course, being Rand, he wouldn’t discuss it with her in any detail. It was Greg who had championed this trip, had needled and coaxed Edie until at last she’d packed a small bag and stood reluctantly in the sunlight beside the car, looking as if she might at any moment make a dash for the shadows, for the comforting gloom of her own house.

  “She’s very self-sufficient,” Edie said then, presumably referring to Canada. Grace felt a quick, skittering shiver of remorse.

  “She’s had to be, I guess.” Though really, Grace did not have to guess at this. It troubled her: Canada’s odd independence, her satisfaction with her own manufactured amusements.

  “You should have one,” Grace said then, thinking to change the subject.

  Edie was quiet. A seagull landed nearby and hopped gracelessly around their encampment. Grace sat up on the bright beach towel and drew her sandy knees up to her chin. “Sorry,” she said after a moment. “That was thoughtless.”

  Edie shook her head back and forth. “No,” she said. “It’s fine.”

  They sat there in the sand and pretended to watch Canada mucking near the waterline.

  “Well, why not?” said Grace, finally. “You want to, right?” She spoke slowly, feeling the distinct sensation of crossing a boundary.

  Edie laughed and it sounded quick and harsh, a little like the gulls crying overhead.

  “Two people have to be interested,” she said after a while. “At least that’s what I continue to tell Greg. Unless I’ve missed something important. Have I?”

  Edie stood abruptly and began to shake out her towel: sand flew wildly, a tiny storm of it blew in their faces, stung their eyes, stuck in their sunblock.

  “God,” said Edie, brushing her hands at her face, “I’m such a clod. Sorry.”

  She turned her face away and her hair fell across it: she stayed that way, her features, her expression, hidden.

  Grace rose and began to pick up their things. She replaced the cap on the Thermos, refolded a half-eaten sandwich in wax paper, shrugged her shirt on. She glanced down the beach, but the men were nowhere in sight. She called to Canada, who looked up at her strangely, her eyes taking in the packed bundles and rolled towels, their fully dressed bodies. It was hours before the time they usually went in.

  They walked back slowly. Canada trailed them, whining. The noise of her spade dragging in the sand seemed designed to make Grace angry, to register her unhappiness at the turn the day was taking. Grace thought about Greg, his unfailing pleasantness, his rather antiquated chivalry with both her and Edie. He was a man who rose from his seat when a woman entered a room and stood until she had situated herself. He had a habit of laughing with his mouth closed, as though he was ashamed of his teeth—for no reason Grace could discern. He treated Edie as though she were exceptionally brittle, not designed to withstand any but the gentlest handling. Beside him Rand seemed coarse and overlarge, too loud, a bit rough-edged.

  On their last night at the beach Edie had dropped a glass, it was plastic and merely bounced across the floor but Edie had burst alarmingly into tears and stood sobbing in the middle of the kitchen. After a moment she said, “You don’t know what I’m up against.”

  “No?” Grace said. “What?” She had not moved from the sink; her hands were deep in soapy water.

  The wind moved outside, banging the flimsy screen door. The men were still on the beach; they’d taken Canada to watch the sunset.

  “Tell me,” she said, but she kept her back to Edie and her eyes on the dishes.

  After a long moment, Edie said, “I mean do you really think we’ve been here cooling our heels for two years because they’ve forgotten about us? Hardly. They’re trying to think of somewhere to stash us, someplace remote and horrible. They just haven’t come up with anything suitably dreadful yet.”

  Grace finished wiping a plate and inserted it into the dish rack. She turned around. “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

  “Of course I want children, Grace. It’s killing me not to have a baby. Maybe I could live with it if I had one. Maybe this would be bearable.”

  “Then why not? Is there a problem?”

  Edie looked up at her, her face wet and angry. “He’s not interested in me,” she said. “That’s it. Not even slightly interested.”

  “Oh well,” Grace said. “I can’t say Rand is all that enthralled with me either.”

  Edie picked up the glass from the floor and set it carefully down on the counter. “And that’s not all,” she said. “He’ll never be promoted. He’ll never advance. His career is shot.”

  “Edie,” Grace said, “I am utterly lost.”

  They stood there in the kitchen and looked at each other. Grace heard the cheap clock keeping track on the wall behind her. A child, someone else’s, she hoped, screamed outside.

  “It’s all my fault,” Edie said. “I’m not the right kind of wife. They all think I’m completely unsuitable.”

  “That isn’t true,” Grace said. “I know it’s not.”

  Regardless of what Edie had meant, what Grace felt just then was almost maternal—maybe the closest thing to it she’d known. She felt the need to console or make right. The feeling would haunt her: so unexpected and foreign, so obviously misplaced. She held Edie’s small brown shoulders as she knelt weeping on the linoleum, stroking her hair and speaking nonsense, until Greg’s face appeared at the doorway—he saw them there and turned away without a sound, his expression suddenly weary but utterly without surprise.

  5

  CATHERINE AND I WERE DOWN THE HILL, PERCHED ON HER kitchen counter, daring each other to eat butter straight from the refrigerator. In the background, John hovered, muttering to himself, polishing an ornate silver tea service. The smell of chemicals was acrid and stron
g. Sunlight came through the kitchen in a wide aisle, like light through a church.

  We’d been shaving our arms with Simone’s razor—an act we would come to regret—and we both rubbed unconsciously at them, feeling the fresh smoothness of the skin. Our fingers kept returning there, the way a tongue will to an abscess or a cavity.

  I was flipping the pages of a book I’d nicked from my mother’s shelves called The Officer’s Wife, some thirty years old. Catherine and I had been having a lot of superior fun with it: the book advised young military brides on the nuances of proper conduct, on military etiquette and how to have parties:

  You are your husband’s ambassador, it said. Never underestimate your responsibility for his advancement! Your home, how you conduct yourself, the gracious way you entertain, the admirable deportment of your children—all these things are critical to his career. Let us not forget the example of one busy young wife who forgot to write a proper thank-you note to the wife of a superior officer—this gaffe would stymie her poor husband, and hinder his advancement, for years to come.

  “Listen,” I said. “‘Take a large polished pumpkin and fill it with blue morning glories. At the last moment, sprinkle the flowers with ice that has been crushed to a sparkling powder—the effect is one of glistening dew.’”

  Catherine was tentatively licking butter from a knife; she made a noise.

  “Or,” I said, “‘Crystal cocktail glasses filled with crushed ice, holding a small fruit cup, can be made very attractive by tinting the ice with a few drops of crème de menthe.’ Let’s do that.”

  We were bored. The heat was still fierce during the day but no one was offering to take us to the pool. At night, now, tired of tossing and turning, I often crept into my parents’ bedroom and watched my father sleep. I’d become obsessed with the idea of his death, and couldn’t seem to count on his ability to keep breathing. These thoughts gnawed at me, making sleep impossible. They drove me from bed, propelled me down the hallway—raised on tiptoes when I passed the den where my mother had taken to sleeping—and compelled me to stand beside the bed. I’m just checking, I told myself every night. Just checking.