The Believers (29 page)

"You could get more involved in politics," Jean said. "You could get a job. Or write a book. You might even decide you want to go back and live in England."

Audrey covered her eyes with her hand. "Are you
trying
to depress me?"

"All I'm saying is that your life is not over. You've given up a great deal to be Joel's wife--you've said so yourself, many times--and now you have a chance to do some of the things you've always wanted to do."

Audrey shook her head forlornly. It was true: she had often spoken of the accomplishments that might have been hers had she not dedicated her life to Joel. But she had never really
believed
what she was saying. Deep down, she had always known these aggrieved remarks for what they were--self-flattering delusions, face-saving fantasies. The truth was, Joel had held her back from nothing. He had saved her. Without Joel, she would still be typing in Camden Town, or living in some hellish suburb, married to a man like her sister's husband, Colin.

She looked down at the brochures splayed on the floor. "No, Jean," she murmured. "It's no good. I'm done."

CHAPTER
20

"Welcome," Berenice said, standing in the middle of her living room and extending her heavily braceleted arms toward Rosa and Karla. She was wearing a long scarlet dress--a robe, really--and golden sneakers, cloven at the toe, like camel's feet. She shook her head, "This is wild, isn't it?"

Karla laughed nervously. None of her imaginings had prepared her for the exotic reality of her father's mistress. She wondered whether Berenice had dressed up for the occasion, or if she looked this extraordinary all the time.

"Wow," Berenice said, shaking her head. "It's pretty weird to meet you guys at last."

Sensing that Berenice could not go on mining the theme of her amazement indefinitely, Karla struggled to think of something to say that might carry the conversation forward. She glanced at her sister, hoping for assistance, but Rosa, who appeared to have absented herself from all responsibility for this encounter, was staring glassily at the floor. "You...have a lovely apartment," she stuttered.

Berenice nodded serenely. "Isn't it great?

The three women looked around them. The walls of Berenice's living room were busy with framed black-and-white photographs and cryptic bits of text torn out from newspapers and magazines. WE ARE ALL UNDER FIRE NOW, one of the cuttings said; LOCALS HATE US, said another. An old chair, upholstered in cracked pink vinyl, stood in one corner of the room, and a bookshelf fashioned out of milk crates and planks stood in another. The center of the room was completely empty, as if in readiness for a performance of some kind.

"Joel was responsible for getting me this place, you know," Berenice said.

Karla started at the mention of her father. "Oh, yes?"

"Yeah, these apartments are rent-controlled, so they're really tough to get into. Joel did a deal for me with the super." She made a rubbing gesture with her thumb and forefinger. "Gave him a little baksheesh."

Karla's eyes widened.

"Hey, can I get you guys something to drink?"

"Sure," Karla said.

Rosa shook her head. "I'm good."

Berenice disappeared into the kitchen, and Rosa knelt down to examine the books on her bookshelf. Karla watched her scanning the gerund-heavy nonfiction titles:
Mindful Eating, Writing the Body, Understanding Gynocritical Theory, Reading Tarot
. After a while, she wandered over to the window. Berenice's apartment was on the fifteenth floor of a building overlooking the FDR Drive. In fine weather, you could probably have seen clear across to JFK Airport from here, but today it was overcast and drizzling. As Karla stood staring out at the ruined watercolor of slate sky and rain-dimpled river, a tear fattened in her eye and fell.

Ten days ago, at a noisy bar in Midtown (her cowardly choice of venue) with the evening news blasting from a television overhead, she had ended her affair with Khaled. "I can't see you anymore," she had told him.

"What do you mean?" Khaled had asked. "What are you saying?"

"I can't do this." It was embarrassing, and at the same time oddly thrilling, to find herself using the time-honored locutions.

"What do you mean, 'this'?"

"You know,
this
. Us."

"I don't understand. Aren't you happy with me?"

She felt a stab of irritation at his guilelessness. "This isn't what I
want
to do."

"Why then?"

"Because--oh, you know why."

He smacked his hand on the table. "Christ!"

The two of them gazed miserably at the television over the bar. The president was on, giving a speech at a Labor Day picnic in Pittsburgh.
"My most important job is to keep our families safe. That's my most important job now. I want you to know that there's still a enemy out there that hates America. I'm sure your kids, they're wondering, why would you hate America? We didn't do anything to anybody. Well, they hate America because we love freedom. We cherish our freedoms. We value our freedoms. We love the fact that people can worship an almighty God in a free land, any way they choose to worship
...
"

"When did you decide this?" Khaled asked.

"I don't know. A couple of days ago."

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened. I've just been seeing what my mother is going through, and I--you know, I just don't want to lie any more."

"So don't lie! Tell your husband you love someone else and leave him."

Karla lowered her head. "I--I couldn't. I--"

"You're not brave enough."

"It's not about being
brave
, Khaled. I'm trying to do what's right."

"No, you're not.
This
is the right thing. You know it. You're just scared."

"Well, yes, okay, I am. I'm scared of hurting Mike--"

"No, you're scared of what he and everyone else will say about you if you do what you really want."

Karla was astounded by the unfairness of this. And yet she was glad of Khaled's anger. Now, at least, they were both being unkind.

"You don't love your husband," Khaled said. "He doesn't love you. You said so."

"That's not...why are you being like this?"

"How should I be, then? You want me to smile, be nice, tell you it's all right? Okay, you are a great saint. You are going to spend the rest of your life with your shitty little union man. Congratulations."

It was hard to believe now, but when she left the bar that night, she had felt almost euphoric with relief. Her thrilling day at the fair was over, she had told herself: now she was back on solid ground, ready to resume the plain, nutritious diet of real life. The high had not lasted long. By the time she arrived back in the Bronx and found Mike online ordering household fire extinguishers in preparation for the adoption agency's home study inspection, it was already beginning to fade. Mike was in a foul mood. He wanted to know why he was doing all the work for the home study, and she was contributing nothing. Pitying him his unknowing ingratitude, Karla did not attempt to defend herself. She endured the complaint in silence and then retired to bed.

Depression, in Karla's experience, was a dull, inert thing--a toad that squatted wetly on your head until it finally gathered the energy to slither off. The unhappiness she had been living with for the last ten days was a quite different creature. It was frantic and aggressive. It had fists and fangs and hobnailed boots. It didn't sit, it assailed. It
hurt
her. In the mornings, it slapped her so hard in the face that she reeled as she walked to the bathroom. At night, as she lay next to Mike, with a filthy film loop of the things she and Khaled had done together running through her head, it bit her in the neck and kicked her in the groin.

She wiped her eyes now and turned around to face the room. Rosa had abandoned the bookshelf and was standing in front of one of Berenice's black-and-white photographs. Karla went over and joined her. Clasping her hands behind her in the reverent manner of a museum visitor, she peered closely at the picture. It was a blurry, tenebrous close-up of something--what exactly, she was unsure.

"Was this taken underwater?" she asked, pointing at a mass of coiled, springy-looking matter that looked as if it might be seaweed.

Rosa shook her head. "Look at the title, Karla."

Karla leaned in to examine the pale, penciled cursive on the right-hand corner of the mount. "
Black Cunt # 3
," she read.

"I see you're admiring my dirty picture," Berenice said. She had returned, holding a tray. "Here's your tea."

"Thanks very much," Karla said, taking a mug. "Is...is that one of yours?" she asked, gesturing at the photograph.

Berenice smiled. "Yes. My photograph, my vagina."

Karla felt her face grow hot.

Berenice turned to Rosa. "Are you sure you won't have anything?"

"No, thanks," Rosa said curtly.

Berenice put her tray down on the floor and sank down elegantly beside it in a cross-legged position. "Please," she said. "Sit."

After a moment's hesitation, Karla and Rosa joined her on the floor.

"Would you like to see a picture of Jamil?" Berenice asked them.

"Oh, yes! Sure," Karla said, still dizzy from her encounter with Berenice's genitalia.

Berenice stood up again and went out to the hallway. "This was taken six months ago," she said as she came back in. "He's already changed a lot since then."

Karla and Rosa looked at the gap-toothed, fluffy-haired little boy in the school photograph that Berenice held out. "He's beautiful," Karla said. "Where is he now?"

"At a play date." Berenice sat down again. "I wasn't sure what to expect from this meeting, and I didn't want to risk exposing him to any, you know, bad energy..."

"Ah, right." Karla nodded.

"I mean, I really hope that the two of you will want to have a relationship with Jamil. But things have gotten so ugly...I just felt like I needed to find out from you how you felt about all of this, before I..."

"Sure, no, we understand," Karla said.

"How does your mom feel about your coming to see me?" Berenice asked.

Karla blushed. "We didn't...she doesn't know we're here."

"Oh." Berenice smiled. "Don't worry, I'll never tell."

Karla looked away, offended by the idea of being in league with Berenice against her mother.

"Listen, you guys," Berenice said, "you mentioned on the phone that you had questions you wanted to ask me."

Karla and Rosa looked at each other.

Berenice laughed. "It's okay. You needn't be shy. I'm happy to talk about whatever. Just shoot."

"How...how did you meet him?" Karla asked. "Our father, I mean?"

Berenice cocked her head in sentimental recollection. "I met him at a party in Chelsea. It was a book party for a poet friend of mine. Your dad and I got into this funny argument because he was eating cocktail sausages, and I told him he shouldn't eat meat. He teased me for that."

"When was this?"

"Let me think. We met in ninety-six. Do you know the Italian expression, rapporto di pelle? It means, like, rapport of the skin? Well, that's kind of what me and your dad had. It was a very instant, chemical thing."

"How long did it last?"

"Well, we stopped being romantically involved about three years ago. But you know, we've stayed friends. I mean, I'll always love your dad."

"And why did it end? If you don't mind saying."

"I don't mind. It's just kind of a hard question to answer. I mean, it's always complicated, isn't it? Trying to figure out why something ends. I guess with your dad and me, there was a point when the joy of it went away for both of us. It got very hard to take, after a while--the sneaking around and everything. Joel always had a lot of guilt."

"Did you...want him to leave my mother?"

Berenice wagged her head from side to side, musingly. "No...no, I never really pushed for that. In the beginning we certainly talked about it. But I knew he really valued his life with you guys. And I'm not the kind of woman who's ever been, like, desperate for a husband or anything."

"No," Rosa said suddenly. They turned to look at her. "Why would you bother with a full-time husband, when you can borrow another woman's?"

Berenice gazed at her compassionately. "May I say something, Rosa? I can see that you're in a lot of pain right now, but I'd like to give you some advice. Whatever anger you're feeling, you mustn't let it harden your heart against your father."

"Oh, right--"

"Wait." Berenice raised her hand. "I haven't finished. Your dad was--is--an amazing person with a very, very special spirit. He is not a bad person. He didn't choose to fall in love with me, any more than I chose to fall in love with him. It was something that happened. The truth is, we all do some hurtful shit in our lives from time to time, but it doesn't, you know, make us evil. It's part of what makes us human."

"Ah yes," Rosa said, flashing a terrifying incisor-filled smile, "I can see that must be a very convenient philosophy for you. Adultery as a humanist gesture." She stood up now and turned to Karla. "I'm going. Will you come, or do you want to stay?"

Karla hesitated. Rosa was behaving unforgivably, she thought. It was not right to invite yourself into someone's home and then treat them like this. Still family was family. She stood up. "I'll come."

At the front door, Berenice calmly handed them their coats and umbrellas. "I know this was hard for you," she said to Rosa. "I want you to know that I value the honesty and passion you showed me today." She turned to Karla and kissed her on the cheek. "You're a special lady, Karla."

When they reached the elevator bank, Berenice was still standing at the door, watching them. She held up a palm. "Peace."

As soon as the elevator doors closed, Rosa's indignation began to pour forth. "Can you believe it? The whole thing was even more squalid and pathetic than I thought. 'Rapporto di pelle!' She was awful! Awful! Not a bit of remorse! Not an apology! She actually tried to justify it.... How could he? A ridiculous woman like that with her revolting photographs and her...her
peach tea
."

Karla listened uneasily. She could not say that she had liked Berenice, exactly. But she had not found her ridiculous. "You didn't have to be so rude, you know, Rosa," she said. "It was a very awkward situation for her, and she--"

"It was not awkward for her! She was having a
wonderful
time. She's one of the most self-satisfied, narcissistic people I've ever met. Did you take a look at her idiotic books?"

"No," Karla lied.

"Oh, God! It was all
How to Read Palms
and diet books."

"Well, you don't love someone because of the books they read--"

"Don't you?"

Karla thought of Khaled and his astrology charts and enneagram tests. She shrugged.

In the street outside Berenice's apartment building, roadwork was under way. The sisters paused beneath their umbrellas to look. Behind a crude fence veiled in bright orange plastic netting and dotted with round orange hazard lights, two great holes, each fifty feet wide and a hundred and fifty feet long, had been gouged in the road, exposing ancient-looking rust-barnacled pipes. In the middle of the site, a fat concrete funnel was steadily spewing bright white steam. The excavation had been hurriedly abandoned when it started to rain: a Coca-Cola can was standing on a carpenter's horse, and on the little rickety plywood bridges that spanned the gaping cavities, plastic buckets attached to long pieces of string lay flung on their sides.