Dervishes

by Beth Helms

  Simone laughs. “Oh well, I probably shouldn’t ask you. You’ve so much on your plate these days, and I know how you like to be mysterious.”

  “I do?”

  “So I hear.” Her tone is languid, distant, disembodied. “But what do I know? Catherine seems to be the one who knows everything these days—who goes where with whom, who doesn’t go anywhere at all. She’s such a dreadful, precocious girl.”

  Grace hefts the tool, she leans forward, aiming it in the direction Paige indicates. Paige is holding the tire where it is meant to go, Simone is fumbling for the lug nuts in the pocket of her coat. Then Simone’s long fingers are on her shoulder and Grace reaches back with her hand. But reflexively, it is the hand with the tire iron that she moves, and the cold off-balance weight of it carries her hand back farther and with more force than she intends, and then there is the horrible noise of metal striking Simone’s face, which is just there above Grace’s shoulder, though she did really not know it. You could never say she knew it for certain.

  February 1976

  21

  I THOUGHT I SAW JOHN FROM TIME TO TIME THAT WINTER. BUT there might have been a thousand young men just like him prowling the Ankara streets: foxy and effete, their humdrum bundles and packages at odds with an aristocratic demeanor that was too studied, perhaps, and too put-on, but credible nonetheless—quite good enough for girls. Maybe they moved in mirrors, in apartments all over that city, places shining with chrome and glass, with jagged art and blond wood, and there bowed and scraped to their own Simones, and took quiet revenge on their daughters.

  Sometimes I imagined meeting him in the garden, and played out these fantasies hunched on the stone bench, surrounded by the winter-seared earth, the empty house, the naked trees. If he came through the gate, I thought, he might seem suddenly more ordinary than he had in Simone’s home, an average young man, stripped of mystique, and accordingly, of his chancy appeal. With the traffic a rumor in the distance we could speak of new banalities, of my schoolwork, his squabbling aunts and sisters, the predictably terrible weather. Or maybe not: after all, what had ever been between us but Catherine?

  In time I learned more about the trip to Istanbul. And I was wrong, she told me. John had not taken her; on the contrary, he had sent her home. She must have followed him: caught up with him at the station, or on the street outside the apartment building as he hailed a taxi. I imagine her begging him to take her along, using all his own words about Simone to make him agree. He was hurried and distracted, and allowing her to come with him may have seemed, in the moment, like the simplest thing.

  But above all, John was a practical and even-minded young man. At some point, having accomplished his private errand, he would have been horrified to find himself in Istanbul, with the runaway daughter of a diplomat, and so he’d quickly arranged to return her, unharmed to the naked eye, the way any small stolen thing can be slipped back secretly to where it belongs.

  Perhaps they found some solace in each other, my mother and Catherine, watching the miles of brown and jagged country flow by outside the train’s grimy windows. I picture them locked in their reveries, beside each other on the vinyl seats, their hopes for a grand finale fading with every passing curiosity of landscape. Ahmet, buried inside his paper, was already back in Ankara, vanished from that compartment in all the important ways, and John, having rid himself of Catherine and made his delivery, toured the fleshpots of the city and returned, after some small time, to Ankara, trusting that anything unpleasant would by then have passed.

  And my mother and Catherine, for whom everything had changed, found, of course, that little of importance had.

  I think Catherine and my mother had both wanted, above all, only to be asked. But Simone and I were stubborn and silent. Neither of us ever brought up Istanbul; we could not, would not, give them the satisfaction. My mother returned to the apartment with a look of expectation about her. I imagine Catherine’s face, opening her own door, wearing the very same expression. Simone and I met them, in those different yet suddenly similar rooms, with blank and disinterested countenances, and not a single question, no trace of shock. We turned our heads away, and our embittered hearts, and would not indulge them.

  That long-ago day on the Antalya coast, when they’d argued and my mother had stepped from the car, I’d leaned forward over the seat and whispered into my father’s sun-scorched ear, “Let’s just leave her here. Let’s drive away.” Yes, I was that careless with her, willing to abandon her by the side of a bright, stony road. Had she been any less cavalier with me? He’d turned to face me, saying, with only a trace of amusement, “Not today. Perhaps another time.”

  Often, at the barn, inside the mare’s warm stall, or walking the windy streets of my neighborhood, I imagined my father’s return. But I no longer really believed in it. When I’d put those letters in his suitcase, when I’d hinted to him about her trip to Istanbul, I’d certainly imagined consequences, but only as they pertained to her—not to me.

  More than once that winter, I had the feeling, the suspicion, and the dread, that soon there would be no one left for my mother and me to blame, not a single soul, but each other.

  22

  SITTING IN THE WAITING ROOM OF THE TURKISH HOSPITAL, while Simone can be heard screaming from an examining room, Grace sits stunned alongside Paige and the other women, all of them still in evening clothes, extravagantly smeared with blood and oil.

  They do not speak, only look at one another from time to time with expressions of shock and wonderment. A headache creeps up on Grace, a remnant of the liquor, a little drumbeat behind her eyes, and she folds and refolds her one remaining glove, shaking her head at the floor. The drive back to the city was chaotic, and without the benefit of good lighting it’s unclear whether Simone’s injuries are minor or traumatic. Somewhere in between, it turns out. When they arrive in the bare-bulb brightness of the hospital, Paige goes immediately to call Ali from a pay phone, so that he can come down and bully the on-duty doctors.

  They make quite a picture—Paige points this out as she comes back down the hallway—all of them standing around in their ruined gowns. Like refugees, she says, from a fancy dress ball in a horror film.

  In time Ali arrives in his usual manner, sweeping in with his luxurious bag, wearing a cashmere coat over crisp, striped pajamas. He leaves his car running outside and throws his keys to the doctor in charge, who scrambles like a lackey to park it, with no indication of having been insulted.

  Ali comes out from behind the curtained partition within a few moments of having gone in, his expression a little wry. Grace has not laid eyes on him in some time, not since she’d visited him with Firdis in tow and Firdis had refused to let him examine her, because she considered it improper. “These women,” he’d said to Grace that day in his waiting room, “they are like children. They do not know up from not.”

  He nods gravely in Grace’s direction and addresses himself to Paige. He speaks quietly and uses his hands to touch his face gently, indicating here, and here. The two consult inaudibly, until Grace rises from her seat and walks over, whereupon Ali turns to her and says, “I am saying that your friend is very excitable and will not let the doctors very close to her. But there is some damage, mainly to the teeth, which will have to be dealt with by a specialist. Something else may be fractured as well, but she will not agree to let us use the machinery.” His voice is deep and smooth, like the sound of mahogany. “Mrs. Tremblay is very upset. Distraught, I think, is the word I want in English. I’ve given her a tablet and will drive her home myself.”

  He bows a little at the waist. “It is quite an evening you ladies have had. I’m very appreciative my own wife was not included in your plans.”

  Grace takes his arm before he leaves, drawing him aside, suddenly aware of the bright, unflattering light and the disreputable state of her clothes. She hears herself speak urgently: “I feel just awful. It was a dreadful accident. Is she very angry?”

  Ali regards he
r curiously. “I hear Rand is traveling again. I am glad he is feeling better. You must be relieved.”

  Grace nods absently. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us. You’ve been very kind. She’ll be all right, won’t she? Simone.”

  “Fine, I think,” he says. “May I give you a piece of advice?”

  “Certainly.” She folds her arms.

  He hesitates before speaking. “Bahar has told me about your friendship with the riding instructor. I know it is not my concern, but…in either case, I think you should be careful with this man. Bahar herself feels that perhaps she is responsible for this matter. That she has facilitated this situation by her introductions, by saying to him how fond she is of you, how you have been lonely here and in need of companionship. She has been very distressed about it.”

  Grace stares at him stupidly. In the hall where they stand, some orderlies are making a racket; they push an empty gurney between them, arguing. The blue sheets catch in the wheels. Grace and Ali step back, automatically, as if synchronized. “There is nothing to be concerned about,” she says. “Nothing at all.”

  Ali inclines his head. “As you say. But I thought I would mention it.”

  When he turns to go, she puts a hand on his arm. “What has happened to Firdis’s baby?” she asks. “Why didn’t he go to Germany with Bahar? That was our arrangement.”

  Ali shakes his head at her and presses his lips together. “Your friend has a baby now, yes?”

  “It’s very strange, Ali. Is this baby you’ve given her…is it healthy?”

  Ali seems to think for a moment. “There are many children. One is very like another. Your friend is pleased, I think?” Then he moves his hands, as if to indicate a shuffling of papers, some bureaucratic necessity. “There was some uproar in the family, I believe. You know this Kemal? The boy Simone calls John? A very angry young man. Very unpleasant. At the last moment there had to be some reorganization. Not to worry.”

  He turns then and goes, strangely elegant in his nighttime ensemble. Something about his carriage and dress suggests the nineteenth century, some dense and antiquated Russian novel. Grace remains standing where he’s left her, her eyes on the door, unseeing and unfocused. Simone comes out a few moments later, her face swathed in bandages up to the eyes, throwing off the arm of a male doctor who is trying to assist her. Paige steps forward and they disappear outside together. Simone does not look once at Grace, and truth be told, Grace is somewhat relieved.

  As they drive home together later through the quieted streets, Paige says, “I suppose this was not the best idea I’ve ever had.”

  “I don’t think this could have been anticipated,” Grace says, wearily.

  “Oh, I don’t know. No intelligent person goes handing out weapons with Simone around.”

  “Are you making a joke?” says Grace.

  “I suppose I am,” she replies. “Not in good taste, I know. Still. A little levity never hurts.”

  “Do you think Bahar handed Ahmet off to me when she was finished with him?”

  “The way Simone passes that houseboy around?” Paige says. “That’s more it, I think. I would like to know why you hit her, if you don’t mind.”

  Grace, staring out the window, cannot summon the energy to respond. The car begins to chug down into Gasi Osman Paşa; Grace feels the customary lurch in her stomach.

  “How did Simone end up with John anyway?”

  “I believe I arranged that. If I remember correctly. He’s related to your Firdis, you know. I believe she’s his mother.”

  Outside, the darkened windows shops go by, and traffic, in a blur of streaky yellowy light. Grace gathers her single glove and her bag on her lap. She says, “It’s a little Alice down the rabbit hole, living with all you people.”

  “I expect so,” says Paige. “I’d think it would be infuriating.”

  “That’s very much the case,” says Grace.

  They share a wintry silence for a few moments, then Paige looks up and says, “It’s not as bad as you think. That Catherine was never really his sort, you know. I really think much of it was her doing, terrible though it is to say. Encouraging him and so forth, making up stories to entertain Canada. I certainly know Simone thinks so.”

  The car eases to a halt and Grace opens the door and climbs out. She leans her head back inside before the car can pull away. “I’m wondering, is there anything you don’t have your hand in? Anything you don’t orchestrate? It’s funny; I used to think Rand was sneaky.”

  “Oh, Grace,” Paige says, “don’t be melodramatic. It doesn’t suit you at all.” And then with a noise of exasperation she reaches out her gloved hand to pull the door closed. “You’re letting in the cold,” she says. “And besides, hasn’t there been enough upset for one evening? Let’s call it a night.”

  Wholly unsatisfied, reeling a little from the accumulated horrors, Grace makes her way upstairs and lets herself into the apartment. In the living room she takes from her bag and rereads the letter she received from Edie that very morning—the contents have confirmed her nagging suspicions. Doctors have been consulted, Edie writes, and they all agree. Simply: the baby is not healthy, it is not perfect; it is not the child they were promised, or paid for. For this Edie and Greg blame her squarely. And what, they ask her, is she going to do about it?

  A WEEK later, purely by chance, Grace runs into John on Tunali Hilmi near a fruit seller. She hasn’t seen him since that day she’d passed him on the street walking to Simone’s, when she’d been so astonished to find everything going on just as usual.

  “I saw you in Istanbul,” she says without preamble. “Why?”

  He stands without shifting; his hands are empty of packages and he makes his body quite still. Though it’s broad daylight, he seems adequately menacing. A moment or two go by like this and then, surprisingly, he shrugs and the threat falls away. “I was watching,” he says.

  “What is it to you what I do?”

  Nearby, a woman dawdles over apricots; she turns them over in a broad, hefting hand. The merchant approaches, dark and suspicious. The honking and blare of traffic form a solid wall behind them; it’s difficult to hear and as always he speaks softly.

  “You treat my things with such disdain,” he says. “My family; coçukllarimiz; the things that belong to my country. This was no longer acceptable to me.”

  “What did you want?”

  “You think American dollars can buy anything—whiskey, cigarettes, our children. My family is not for sale. I would have told you this. Also, perhaps I wanted to frighten you.”

  “Ne için? You did frighten me. And what about the girl? Catherine. What did you do to her?”

  “That girl,” he says quietly. “That girl has too much imagination. Too much bad feeling. I do not think it is normal to hate a mother like this.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Grace says. But part of her, she can’t deny it, wants to believe him—to ascribe it all to Catherine, as Simone had so easily done: to think her too advanced, too calculating, too manipulative and ripe.

  He bends at the waist then, but minimally. “Tamam,” he says. “We are finished here, I think.”

  “Kemal?” she says as he turns. “Why don’t you tell your mother where her baby is?”

  He stares at her for a moment, as if the suggestion is quite extraordinary.

  “O kadın,” he says with disgust. “She does not deserve to know this. She has the money she wanted, your American money. She will have to suffer the consequences of her actions. This was not done for her.”

  Nearby, the argument over apricots grows heated. Grace steps aside to make room for it.

  “Perhaps I shall tell her.”

  “I do not think so,” he says. “It will make no difference to you. What do you people care for children? I have seen the way you treat your own. It is not a thing to admire.”

  “Would it have been different if the baby had been a girl? Would that have changed anything?”

&
nbsp; She has the impression that she’s boring him. “I do not wish to talk to you in ‘ifs,’” he says. And then, quickly, he is gone, swallowed up in the crowds.

  She would not see him again.

  OF COURSE, Grace learns, Catherine had never been part of John’s plan. No, he’d had other, more important business to attend to in Istanbul. It was John, of course, who’d called Paige about Catherine and she who had mentioned that Grace was in Istanbul. But that is really the least of it.

  “He went to the orphanage on the day Bahar was picking up the child,” Paige tells her later, reluctantly, when Grace finally has the courage to go over to her house and insist on some answers. Grace has found her in the kitchen, doing some baffling thing with raw chicken and pottery.

  “Who knows how he figured it out?” Paige says. She is chopping eggplant ferociously on the counter. “He’s a clever boy. Anyway, he made such a scene. He frightened everyone. Not Bahar, of course, but those other women. They operate on such a shoestring anyway and he was making all kinds of threats. He wanted the baby. My brother, he kept saying. Give me my brother. Bahar was very annoyed as you can imagine. Very annoyed indeed. Anyway, from what I understand, it got ugly—lots of shouting and yelling. Talk about the police, the authorities.”

  “So Bahar gave him the baby?”

  Paige looks at Grace over her shoulder. “Of course she did. She doesn’t need this kind of trouble. She needed a baby. Firdis’s baby or another one. It didn’t much matter.”

  “But why,” says Grace, “why…?” she trails off, unable to say the words aloud. Edie’s accusations still haunt her. We were all misled, Grace has protested in a final, desperate letter, we were all taken in. She’s received no reply.

  “That I don’t know,” Paige says. She waves a hand; the knife makes big, shining arcs in the air. “Perhaps it seemed to the women at the orphanage an easy way to get rid of one of them. Imperfect babies aren’t adoptable in the traditional sense. There was so much upset. She needed a baby, they gave her one. She didn’t ask a lot of questions.”