Sweet Revenge (11 page)

When Phoebe joined them, Adrianne was sitting primly on Celeste’s couch watching her first soap opera.

“Lord, I don’t know when I’ve slept so long. Hello, baby.”

“Mama.” Adrianne sprang up immediately to wrap her arms around Phoebe.

Despite a pounding hangover, Phoebe gathered Adrianne close for a hug. “The best way to start a day.” Smiling, she drew back. “How did you start yours?”

“I had Rice Krispies and watched television.”

Celeste breezed in, trailing cigarette smoke behind her. “As you can see, Addy’s becoming Americanized already. How’s the head?”

“It’s been worse.”

“If anyone had a right to tie one on, you did.” She glanced at the TV, wondering if the program was suitable for an eight-year-old. Then again, from what Phoebe had told her, Adrianne would be more shocked by
Sesame Street
than the passions of
General Hospital.
“Well, now that you’re up, I’d suggest a cup of coffee and some breakfast before we go out.”

The light through the window hurt Phoebe’s eyes, so she turned her back to it. “We’re going out?”

“Darling, you know I’d share anything in my closet with you, but nothing I have is going to fit you anymore than it’s going to fit Adrianne. I know you have a lot to deal with, so I thought we’d take up first things first.”

Phoebe pressed her fingers to her eyes and fought the urge to run back to bed and toss the covers over her head. “You’re right. Addy, why don’t you go up and brush your hair, tidy up? Then we’ll go see New York.”

“You would like to?”

“Yes.” Phoebe kissed the tip of her nose. “Go on. I’ll call you when we’re ready to go.”

Celeste waited until Adrianne started upstairs. “The kid adores you.”

“I know.” Giving into her throbbing head, Phoebe sat. “Sometimes I’d think she was the reward for everything I went through.”

“Honey, if you don’t feel like going out—”

“No.” Phoebe cut Celeste off with a shake of her head. “No, you’re right, we’ve got to start with the basics. Besides, I don’t want to keep Addy cooped up in here. She’s been cooped up all her life. It’s money.”

“Oh, if that’s all.”

“Celeste, I’ve already taken enough from you. I don’t have much pride left, so I need to hang on to what I have.”

“Okay. I’ll make you a loan.”

“When I left, you and I were pretty much on equal terms.” On a sigh she looked around the penthouse. “You’ve gone up, and I’ve gone nowhere.”

Celeste sat on the arm of the sofa. “Phoebe, you took a wrong turn. People do.”

“Yeah.” She found she wanted a drink badly. To fight it off, she thought of Adrianne and the life she wanted to give her. “I have some jewelry. I had to leave most of it behind, but I did get some out. I’m going to sell it, then after I begin divorce proceedings, the settlement Abdu makes on me and on Addy will keep us well enough. Of course, I’m going back to work, so money won’t be a problem for long.” She turned to the window again to stare at the blank sky. “I’m going to give her everything, the best of everything. I have to.”

“Let’s worry about that later. Right now I think Addy could use a couple of pairs of jeans and some sneakers.”

Adrianne stood on the corner of Fifth and Fifty-second with one hand gripping her mother’s and the other fiddling restlessly with the buttons of her new fur-collared coat. If her brief glimpse of Paris had made that city seem like another world, then New York was another universe. And she was part of it.

There were people everywhere, millions of them, it
seemed to her, and none of them looked the same. There was no unity of dress here as there was in Jaquir. At a glance it was often difficult to tell men from women. Both sexes tended to wear their hair long. Some of the women chose to wear pants. New York had no law against it, nor against the other costume women wore—the tiny skirts that rose high above the knee. She saw men in beads and headbands, men in business suits and overcoats. There were women wrapped in mink and women in tight denim.

No matter what they wore, they moved fast. Adrianne crossed the street between her mother and Celeste and tried to see it all at once. They filled the city, every inch, every corner, and the noise of their existence rose off the pavement like a celebration. They traveled in packs, or they traveled alone. They dressed like beggars and like kings. Thousands of words in thousands of voices rang in her ears.

Then there were the buildings. They rose right into the sky, taller than any mosque, grander than any palace. She wondered if they had been built to honor Allah, but she had yet to hear a prayer call. People hurried into them, and out of them, yet she saw none that were restricted to women.

Some shopkeepers spread their goods on the pavement, but when Adrianne stopped to look at the wares, her mother pulled her away.

She went patiently into the shops, but for once buying didn’t interest her. She wanted to be outside, absorbing. There were smells to remember. The stink of exhaust from the hundreds of cars, trucks, and buses that crept along the streets, horns blaring. There was the smoky tang she learned was roasting chestnuts. And there was the rich fleshy scent of so much humanity.

It was a dirty, often unforgiving city, but Adrianne didn’t see the layers of grime or the jagged edges. She saw life, in a variety and with an excitement she’d never known existed. And she wanted more.

“Sneakers.” Pleasantly exhausted, Celeste dropped into a chair in the shoe department of Lord & Taylor. She grinned at Adrianne. The child’s face, she thought, told a thousand stories. All of wonder. She was glad they’d dismissed the driver and opted to walk, even though her feet were
killing her. “What do you think of our big, bad city so far, Addy?”

“We can see more?”

“Yes.” Already in love, Celeste tucked Adrianne’s hair behind her ear. “We can see all you like. How are you holding up, Phoebe?”

“Fine.” Phoebe forced a smile and unbuttoned her coat. Her nerves were raw. All the noise, the people, after so many years of silence and solitude. The decisions. There seemed to be hundreds of decisions to make when for so long she had none. She wanted a drink. God, she would kill for just one drink. Or a pill.

“Phoebe?”

“Yes, what?” On a long breath she brought herself back and smiled calmly at Celeste. “I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.”

“I was saying you look tired. Do you want to call it a day?”

She started to agree, gratefully, then caught the quick look of disappointment on Adrianne’s face. “No. I just need to catch my second wind.” She bent down to kiss Adrianne’s cheek. “Are you having fun?”

“It is better than a party.”

Celeste laughed and flexed her toes. “Honey, New York’s the biggest party this country has got.” Then she crossed her legs and smiled flirtatiously up at the salesman. “We want to see some sneakers suitable for a little girl. I noticed those pink ones over there, with the flowers? And maybe a pair in plain white.”

“Of course.” He crouched down to smile in Adrianne’s face. He smelled like the peppermint cream Jiddah sometimes ate, and had only a thin fringe of gray hair. “What size do you wear, young lady?”

He was speaking to her. Directly to her. Adrianne stared at him without the least idea what to do. He was not a member of her family. She looked helplessly toward her mother, but Phoebe was staring off at nothing.

“Why don’t you measure her?” Celeste suggested, reaching over to give Adrianne’s hand a quick squeeze. She saw, with a combination of amusement and distress, the way Adrianne’s eyes widened when he took her foot in his hand to remove
her shoe. “He’s going to measure your foot to see what size you wear.”

“That’s right.” Cheerful, he slid Adrianne’s foot onto the measuring board. “Stand up, sweetheart.”

Swallowing, Adrianne did so, looking straight over his head as her face filled with color. She wondered if the shoe person was like a doctor.

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll go see what I have in stock.”

“Why don’t you take off your other shoe, Addy? Then you can walk around in the new ones and see if you like them.”

Adrianne bent to unfasten the buckle. “It is permitted for the shoe person to touch?”

Celeste bit her lip to prevent a smile. “Yes. It’s his job to sell you shoes that fit well. To make sure, he has to measure your foot. As part of the service, he takes off your old shoes and puts on the new ones.”

“A ritual?”

At a loss, Celeste sat back. “In a way.”

Satisfied, Adrianne folded her hands and sat meekly when the clerk returned with boxes. She watched solemnly as he laced up the pink flowered sneakers and slipped them on her feet, tying them in a bow.

“There you go, sweetheart.” The clerk patted her foot. “Try them out.”

At Celeste’s gesture, Adrianne stood and took a few steps. “They are different.”

“Different good,” Celeste asked, “or different bad?”

“Different good.” She grinned at the idea of wearing flowers on her feet. She didn’t mind when the clerk pressed his thumb against her toe.

“It’s a good fit.”

Adrianne took a deep breath and smiled at him. “I like them very much. Thank you.” She let the breath out on a giggle. For the first time in her life, she had spoken to a man not of her family.

The three weeks Adrianne spent in New York were some of the happiest and the saddest days of her life. There was so much to learn, so much to see. Part of her, the part that had been raised with the strict, unwavering rules of behavior,
disapproved of the brashness of the city. Another part, the part that was opening, was thrilled by it. New York was America to Adrianne. It would remain America always, at its best and at its worst.

The rules had changed. She had a room of her own, but it was bigger and brighter than the room she had been given in her father’s palace. She wasn’t a princess here, but she was cherished. Still, she often slipped into her mother’s bed at night to comfort if Phoebe wept, to lay awake if Phoebe slept. She understood there were demons inside her mother, and it frightened her. Some days Phoebe seemed full of life and energy, of joy and optimism. There would be talk about past glories, and the glories of the future. Plans and promises were made in a whirl of laughing words. Then a day or two later the animation would be gone. Phoebe would complain of headaches or fatigue and spend hours alone in her room.

On those days Celeste would take Adrianne out to walk in the park or to go to the theater.

Even the food was different, and she was allowed to take what she wanted when she wanted. She became addicted quickly to the sharp, sparkling taste of Pepsi straight out of a cold bottle. She ate her first hot dog without any idea it was made of pork, forbidden to Muslims.

Television became both teacher and entertainment. She was both embarrassed and fascinated when she saw women embrace men—openly, even aggressively. The stories often had fairy-tale endings about falling in love or losing your heart. In the stories women chose what man they wanted to marry, and sometimes chose not to marry at all. She watched, silent and astonished. Bette Davis in
Jezebel
, Katharine Hepburn’s
Philadelphia Story
, and, wonderingly, Phoebe Spring in
Nights of Passion.
From that point grew an admiration for strong women who could win in a man’s world.

Yet it was the commercials, where the people dressed oddly and solved their problems in seconds, that delighted her more than the comedies and drama. Through them her American-style English was refined, fleshed out.

In those three weeks she learned more than she might have in three years of school. Her mind was like a willing sponge eager to absorb.

It was her spirit, so in tune with Phoebe’s, that suffered the highs and lows.

Then the letter came. Adrianne knew about the divorce. It was still her habit to creep down the stairs at night and listen to her mother and Celeste talk of the things neither would tell her. So she understood that her mother was going to divorce Abdu. And she was glad. If there was divorce, there would be no more beatings, no more rapes.

When the letter had come, the letter from Jaquir, Phoebe had gone to her room. She had stayed there all day, not coming out to eat, asking to be left alone whenever Celeste knocked on the door.

Now, as it neared midnight, Adrianne was awakened from a restless sleep by her mother’s laughter. Moving quickly, she climbed out of bed and ran on tiptoe to Phoebe’s door.

“I’ve been worried sick about you.” Celeste paced the room, her silk lounging pajamas whispering around her.

“I’m sorry, darling, really. I needed some time.” Adrianne pressed against the crack in the door. She could see Phoebe sprawled in a chair, her hair tumbled, her eyes bright, and her fingers drumming to some rapid inner tune. “Hearing from Abdu hit me hard. I knew it was going to happen, but I still wasn’t ready. Congratulate me, Celeste, I’m a free woman.”

“What are you talking about?”

Her movements jerky, Phoebe rose to refill her glass from a decanter. She smiled, toasted, then drank deeply. “Abdu has divorced me.”

“In three weeks?”

“He could do it in three seconds, and he has. Of course, I’m still going to go through the formalities on this end, but it’s as good as done.”

Celeste noted the level of whiskey in the decanter. “Why don’t we go down and have some coffee?”

“This is a celebration.” She pressed the glass against her brow and began to weep. “The bastard didn’t even give me the chance to end it in my own way. Not once in all these years have I had a choice, not even in this.”

“Let’s sit down.” Celeste reached out for her, but Phoebe shook her head and went back to the decanter.

“No, I’m all right. I needed to get drunk. The coward’s way.”

“No one who’s done what you’ve done could ever be called a coward, Phoebe.” Celeste took the glass from her hand, then drew Phoebe to the bed to sit. “I know it’s rough. Divorce makes you feel as though you’ve put your foot down, knowing just where you’re going only to find out there’s nothing there. Sooner or later you come to solid ground again, believe me.”

“There’s no one else for me.”