Izaan was meeting her at the Carlyle Hotel at six. She had told him it was very important, and he had raised his eyebrows and said couldn’t she tell him important things right there, in his bed? He was brash, proud of his body, unashamed of sex, though he was betrothed to a woman in Egypt—an arranged marriage—one that would unite two powerful families.
Pauline and Izaan had met when Izaan had bought the girl—her name was Dalia—a diamond solitaire and had it sent to Cairo, Egypt, insured for the full value, nestled in a midnight-colored velvet box. Now that Pauline had triumphed, she felt sorry for Dalia. And she wanted to deliver the news to Izaan over cocktails at Bemelmans bar, her collarbones exposed in a green silk dress.
There was no time to return home to Brooklyn; Pauline waited nervously for everyone to leave so she could change her clothes in the employee bathroom. Usually, she left as soon as her shift was over, and a few girls glanced at her curiously as she read The Waves in the corner of the smoker, uncomfortable in a folding chair. Her heart was racing and she could barely concentrate on the words before her: “I love,” said Susan, “and I hate. I desire one thing only. My eyes are hard.”
Carole was the last to depart. “What are you doing here, Pauline?” she said rudely, her hand on a cocked hip. She had put on a new outfit, too: a miniskirt and a tight poorboy sweater.
“I’m reading,” said Pauline, staring at the page. Izaan was probably finishing up his last call of the day, stacking his papers, rising and taking his hat from the coat tree in his office. Was he thinking of her, anticipating their kiss?
“Bookworm,” said Carole jovially. “Want to join me for a drink at P. J. Clarke’s? Me and some of the girls.”
“No, thank you,” said Pauline. “I’d better get home.” She turned the page. “I just want to finish this chapter.” She thought of Izaan putting on his overcoat, wrapping a scarf around his neck. He was tall, with wiry brown hair. He dipped his comb in lotion in the mornings, slicking his hair back, pressing it into place with his palm. Like Pauline, he was a product of the fifties. He wasn’t growing a mustache or wearing bell-bottom pants. He wanted a wife in a bra, a wife who would happily stay home and cook for him. He’d complained about Dalia. “She wants to go to university, but what the hell for?” he’d said. Pauline had nodded mightily, sipping her root beer.
“Well,” said Carole at last, “see you.”
“Yes,” said Pauline, “see you.” But in her rib cage she held the hope, warm and fragile as a new-hatched bird, that this would be the last time she ever saw Carole, that after tonight she would move into Izaan’s apartment and he would not allow her to set foot in Tiffany & Co. again. He would buy her jewelry from somewhere else—Cartier, maybe, or Bulgari. (And what would her mother do without Pauline to care for her? She’d have to make the best of it, Pauline decided definitively, grimly.)
In the small employee bathroom, which reeked of hair spray and Bon Ami, Pauline took off her panty girdle and sensible shoes. The Saks bag was filled with tissue paper; it rustled as Pauline drew the silk from its trappings. The dress slid over her skin as it had in the store, settling perfectly into place. It was sleeveless, with a jewel neckline and a small bow at the center. The skirt flared out from her still-small waist, and there were two slanted pockets covered with fabric buttons. It had cost a month’s salary—an expensive bet, and the first real gamble of her life. Pauline reached behind to grasp the metal zipper. She tugged, but could get it only to her shoulder blades. “Damn it to hell!” she whispered, yanking, but the zipper did not rise.
In her stocking feet, Pauline pushed open the bathroom door a few inches. Maybe someone still remained, someone who could keep a secret. It would be a relief to confide in one of the girls, to have a friend. An only child, Pauline had always held her thoughts—and her suburban fantasies—secret. The world she read about in books, a sunlit world, clear, full of loving glances, fresh-cut flowers, and new appliances, seemed more real to her than her mother snoring a paper-thin wall away, the clank of their ancient heater, the musty blankets on her bed.
But the smoker was empty. Pauline gathered her things and jammed them in her locker. She put on her coat and opened the box that held the emerald shoes she’d bought to match the dress. She took a last look in the mirror (she wore hardly any makeup; Izaan had told her he liked “a fresh girl”) and shut her eyes, saying goodbye to the Pauline who stood barefoot on dilapidated tile, her beautiful future in front of her, a shining road to the Upper East Side or even Westchester.
The door banged open, and Pauline screamed. “Jesus!” said one of the cleaning crew, a heavyset man with wide brown eyes. He held a mop in one hand; the other he put to his chest. “You scared me,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” said Pauline. She bit her lip.
The man nodded warily. “I’ll come back,” he said.
“Is there any way …” said Pauline, taking her coat off. “I can’t zip this.”
“I don’t think so, miss,” said the man.
“Please.” Pauline grabbed his upper arm; it was firm and strong. He smelled of toothpaste. “Please,” she said. “I’m late. It’s very important. Please, just zip me up!” She let go and whirled around. She could hear him exhale, and she felt the cool touch of his fingers. Carefully—tenderly, even—he raised the zipper, then latched the clasp at the top. For a moment there was silence. Pauline could not bring herself to face him. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“You’re welcome,” said the man, not moving.
For the first time since the moment when the doctor first told her, his brow creased, his gray eyes both worried and sad, Pauline felt ashamed.
“There she is!” cried Izaan in his elegant accent, standing up but not relinquishing his drink. Pauline walked toward him, hoping she looked radiant. He embraced her, then set down his glass and put his cigarette in his mouth to help her remove her coat, which he handed to a passing waiter. “Let me look at you,” he said.
Pauline tilted her head as she had practiced in her childhood bedroom, peering at him sideways, letting her hair fall forward, a glossy curtain. “You’re beautiful,” said Izaan.
Still silent, she sat down, moving her shoulders back, exposing the hollow of her throat. A waiter appeared, and Izaan ordered a Dubonnet on the rocks for Pauline and another Manhattan for himself. Then he sat back in his seat. “So what’s the big occasion?” he said.
“Do you like my dress?” said Pauline.
“I already said,” said Izaan, lighting another Gauloises Brunes with a match, “you look beautiful.”
Pauline glanced around the bar, pierced with a sudden terror. It was too late, the doctor had told her, and she would have to go through with it, whatever happened.
“See the ceiling?” said Izaan. Pauline looked up. “Twenty-four-karat gold,” he said, exhaling smoke. “Can you believe it?”
Pauline nodded amiably. She was immune to gold, sick of the luxe and shiny. She just wanted to put her feet up and relax. Around the bar, Ludwig Bemelmans had painted playful scenes—bunnies smoking cigars, giraffes in Central Park, even a few portraits of his most famous creation (and Pauline’s favorite character), the impish Madeline.
Izaan followed her gaze to the row of Parisian schoolgirls painted on the wall. “They say he did all this to pay for his hotel tab.”
“I wish I were talented,” said Pauline.
“You are, honey,” said Izaan, but he did not elaborate.
The waiter brought their drinks, and Pauline took a small sip. “I bought this dress at Saks Fifth Avenue,” she said.
“Did you, now?” said Izaan.
She looked at him, his clean jawline, features sharp and distinct, unlike the melted features of her mother and their neighbors. At first his dark coloring had seemed dangerous to her, but now she thought he was perfect. “Something has happened,” she said. She took another mouthful of the Dubonnet, fortification. “Something wonderful,” she added.
“Hmm?” said Iz
aan, though Pauline was sure he had heard her. From the Café Carlyle, on the other side of the hotel, she could faintly hear Bobby Short playing Cole Porter songs on the piano. “Hmm?” repeated Izaan.
“I’m going to have a baby,” said Pauline. She tried to infuse the words with joy, and gripped his hand tightly. She heard the faint notes of “In the Still of the Night.”
Izaan stared at her. He stubbed out his cigarette. He appeared to gather his thoughts, and then he said in a honeyed tone, “No, Pauline. No, you’re not.”
“I am,” said Pauline, her voice quavering.
“It’s okay,” said Izaan soothingly. “Just stay calm. We can work this out, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. Of you. I’ll take care of you.”
Pauline felt the bird in her chest begin to stir. “Really?” she said. “Really, Izaan?”
“It’s a medical procedure,” said Izaan. “It’s very safe.”
At first, Pauline thought the sound in her ears was a drum, pounding out a beat. She looked around to find its location as it thudded too loud, causing her head to hurt, an impending migraine. But then she realized it was just her own slow heart.
“It’s too late,” said Pauline. “We’re having a baby.”
Izaan stood. “You’re having a baby,” he said. He patted her on the shoulder, turned his gaze from one side of the room to the other, coughed. “I’ll give you money,” he said quietly. “I’m a good man. But that’s all I can do.”
Pauline watched him as he walked to the bartender, handed him a fold of bills. She felt drugged, immobile, her head pounding. By the time the bartender turned back to give Izaan his change, he was gone.
Pauline stood up and ran to the hotel lobby. Through the glass windows, she saw Izaan hail a taxi. “Izaan, wait!” she cried, pushing open the heavy door.
The taxi was still for a moment, and Pauline thought that he would get back out, turn to her.
“I thought he would break off the engagement with Dalia,” Pauline would whisper. Sylvia’s mother stared into the Eleventh Street living room, but Sylvia knew she was seeing Madison Avenue as the cab pulled away.
Pauline watched until Izaan was out of sight, she told her daughter. “It was then,” she’d say to Sylvia sadly, “that I understood how it would be.”
Sylvia’s father had sent the antique jade earrings from Harry Winston the following week, along with a check. Pauline showed Sylvia the yellowed card: I wish I could be the kind of man you deserve, lovely Pauline. These are to match your green dress. Best wishes, Izaan.
The bus veered to the edge of the road, and the loud sound of the rumble strip woke Sylvia. She sat up, blinking. The bus headlights illuminated the Pennsylvania welcome station, but the driver did not stop. Sylvia put her hand on her stomach. As her baby grew, there was less and less room inside Sylvia for secrets.
Book Three
1
It was October 29, ten days since I’d gotten the call about Alex. Though I spoke with Laurent Janssen every day (he was Dutch, it turned out, the head of the operational arm of Médecins Sans Frontières in the Netherlands), he had no news for me.
There were at least a hundred burned bodies from the blast, said Laurent. They were “simply overwhelmed” trying to identify who was who in all the rubble. The disorder reminded me of September 11, when people had made posters of their loved ones and Scotch-taped them all over New York. I even thought about printing posters myself, flying with them to Baghdad. Have you seen my brother?
I was disheartened by how chaotic things were in Iraq. Though Mr. Janssen assured me that the Red Cross was in charge, and I received daily emails from the State Department, it was seeming increasingly possible that I would never know what had happened to Alex. After all, there were new bombings every week. Laurent Janssen told me wearily that sometimes bodies were “just blown to pieces” by a blast and were not identified at all. “Time, it will tell you,” said Laurent, meaning, I suppose, that after long enough, they’d stop trying to sift through the debris and would just assume Alex was dead. This thought was unbearable.
When I pressed a State Department employee, he admitted that Alex had already been classified as “missing, presumed dead.” Maybe they weren’t even looking for him anymore. But I had not given up hope. Until they showed me his body—with the mole on his shoulder and the stupid tattoo of the word love in Arabic on his right wrist—until I kissed his cold face, as far as I was concerned, he was alive.
What do you do while you wait to find out if your brother is dead? Nothing seemed like the right thing to do. I couldn’t bring myself to show houses. It felt impossible to get out of my chair to walk Handsome. Even hitting the South Austin trailer park for fried avocado tacos was unbearable: the sun too hot, the lemonade too weak, those fat pigeons who wouldn’t leave me alone. If I thought about anything other than Alex, if I shifted my attention for a second, I feared I would lose him. It was exhausting to believe with all my might that he was okay.
I sat in front of my computer every morning, closing my eyes as the browser window opened, trying to see a message from Alex in my mind’s eye. The subject line would be FLED TO PARIS! or Amnesia—can you believe it?
There was no email from Alex. There were no phone calls. He had not appeared in the middle of the night, tapping on my window. He had not surprised me at Central Market, his hair damp and curling along his forehead. Still, I waited for him to arrive, and to explain where he had been.
I didn’t know what I would do with Alex’s body. We had been brought up without religion, but our mother was buried in Beth Israel Cemetery in Houston, so I figured that was where Alex would be buried, too.
A drive to Houston seemed as good a thing to do as any, so I made an appointment at the funeral home. A rabbi named Rabbi Goldman met me in a maroon waiting room. The room reminded me of the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin, what with all the tasseled curtains.
As Rabbi Goldman led me to his office, I thought about the time Alex and I went to see Casablanca during the Paramount summer movie series. It had been a rainy summer night, hot as hell. This was during Alex’s Vespa phase, and he’d told me to wear a raincoat and “take it like a man.” I muttered insults as I climbed on his sopping-wet ride, but the air smelled like basil as we whizzed by the community gardens, and the drops on my face felt cool and wonderful. We drove downtown as the sun broke through, and I watched my city light up—dazzling—and I held on to my brother.
I looked around the waiting room in the funeral parlor. This is a place for dead bodies, I told myself, but Alex is not here.
Rabbi Goldman cupped his hand around my shoulder as I looked at caskets with holes bored into them, “to let the worms in,” as the rabbi said. “The body will return to the earth,” said Rabbi Goldman. He said lots more, but I wasn’t really listening. We went to the graveyard, and I stared at my mother’s gravestone. Alex’s body will not return to the earth, I told myself. Not yet. Not if it is up to me.
Of course—heartbreakingly—it wasn’t up to me.
I had not attended my mother’s funeral, but a year afterward, my grandparents brought us to her stone setting. Alex and I stood in the muggy Houston afternoon, surrounded by our grandparents’ friends. I’d wanted to bring hydrangeas, my mother’s favorite flower, but my grandmother told us that flowers counted as ostentation, and I could bring a rock instead to place on the gravestone. I didn’t want to bring a rock. I held my right hand as if carrying a bunch of invisible hydrangeas, and I bent down and placed the secret flowers on the grave. I knew my mom would understand what I was doing.
That night Merilee told us we could no longer mourn our mother. She stood in front of the television and spoke in her important voice, her hands on her hips. Alex and I poked each other in the ribs as Merilee explained that the stone setting was all about closure. We were not to move back, we were to go forward. “The stone is now set,” she said grandly, and then she went to wash the supper dishes.
Alex whispered to
me about our father getting out of jail, even on the day of our mother’s funeral. Our father would “come to claim us,” Alex told me—he would “take us away from all this,” Alex said, waggling his fingers at our grandparents’ matching furniture, the sound of Gramma crying softly in the kitchen. Alex and I had already started down different paths—while he thought our days in Houston were temporary, I knew we were never going back to Ocean Avenue. I wanted to believe his promises, but even at age eight, I was pragmatic, logical—and without hope.
After saying goodbye to Rabbi Goldman, I drove to Cypress Grove Retirement Village. I found my grandmother in the hallway, looking at a purple orchid. “Hi, Gramma,” I said. She glanced up, her eyes clear, but she did not speak. “So, Alex might be dead,” I said.
“Alex might be dead?” said Gramma, finally turning to me. “It was Izaan,” she said, nodding.
“No,” I said. “It was an Iraqi suicide bomber. It was two Iraqi suicide bombers, actually.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I hear you,” I said.
“He killed my girl,” she said. “He killed my baby.”
“Gramma,” I said, leaning in so close that I could smell her baby powder, “how do you know?”
Merilee shook her head, the prim certainty in her features softening in befuddlement. “I don’t know.”
I felt very cold. “What do you mean?”
“He’s a bad man,” she said. But all I saw on her face was uncertainty.
I stood up, dizzy. Gramma was senile, but was it possible she had never been sure what had happened on the night of my mother’s murder? If my father hadn’t killed my mother, then there was no explanation for her death, no lesson, no story. If this—my one truth—was not constant, then there was no ground underneath me.
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