The Lovers (15 page)

She realized she had nothing to offer him except companionship, and now she felt that was not enough. What interest could she hold for a boy of nine or ten? Her guilt—for leaving him the day before, for not knowing Turkish—prompted her to speak. “I’d like to commission you,” she said. She knew he wouldn’t understand, but she was still fashioning what it was she was offering.

“I pay you,” she said, using accompanying hand gestures, “to bring me shells. Pretty shells from the ocean. I will pay you for your time. For every shell you bring me, I will give you money.”

She explained her idea again, more slowly, and this time Ahmet appeared to understand. He smiled and extended his hand. She took it in her own—how cold his small fingers were—and lifted it up and down in an exaggerated handshake.

“Deal,” she said.

“Deal,” he repeated.

When Ahmet started walking to the water, she realized today was the first day she hadn’t worn her swimsuit to Knidos. She had come to see the boy, not to swim.

“Are you sure you want to swim today?” she said, and looked up at the sky. “We can start tomorrow.”

The boy stared at her, puzzled. Yvonne reminded herself that he wasn’t a tourist in pursuit of a warm-weather dip and a tan. It was shells he sought, and the commission she had offered him for these shells. Cloudy skies meant nothing. She followed him to the edge of the water. She didn’t want to be far from him.

Ahmet was intrepid. He walked only a few feet out into the ocean before hoisting the front of his body onto his bright white kickboard. The kickboard looked new, and because there were no stores in Knidos, and none Yvonne had seen in Yakaköy, she wondered if he had bought it in Datça. It was hard to picture him there, on the other side of the peninsula, in that other world.

She lifted her dress above her knees. The water was chilly but not as cold as she would have imagined. Ahmet would be warm enough, she thought, as she watched him kick his way out into the ocean.

He scooted himself forward on the kickboard so his head was over the front edge, and peered down into the water. Every few minutes he would leave the board and dive below.
He spent twenty seconds or so underwater before emerging for breath. If his dive had been successful, he would place a shell into a small net tied to the front of the board.

The water today was rougher than usual. As Ahmet moved farther out into the ocean, Yvonne instinctually stepped forward into the water, as though there existed a string between them of finite length, and she could not let more distance expand between the two of them. A nervous feeling grew inside her stomach and her mind.
Relax
, she told herself.

An hour later, Ahmet returned to her, the kickboard in front of him, his legs scissoring behind. When he arrived on shore, he reached into the net and extracted three shells. One was smooth and fan-shaped, violet-colored. The second was pale blue, with a row of protruding quills. The third reminded her of a belly button.

“Beautiful,” she said. She rummaged through her purse and found she had nothing to give him. Whatever money she had had, she’d handed to Captain Galip the evening before.

“Tomorrow I’ll pay you your commission,” she said. Guilt was balling up inside her again. “I promise.”

He gave her a blank look of either trust or disbelief.

Yvonne saw the sand starting to darken and, a moment later, she felt drops of rain on her head. She offered Ahmet a ride home.

He placed the kickboard, his net, and his sandy towel in the trunk, so as not to dirty the car’s interior—a polite ges
ture not everyone would have made, given the car’s appearance. He buckled himself into the passenger seat, his legs not long enough to reach the floor. Yvonne tried to remember when Matthew had been that young, that small, and could not. When she tried to picture Matthew, she saw Ahmet instead.

She drove more carefully with Ahmet in the car. Alone, Yvonne felt invincible, but with the boy in the car, she gripped the wheel tightly and kept her eyes fixed on the road.

When they approached the chateau, the boy pointed. Yvonne pulled into the driveway and stopped the car to let him out. Ahmet signaled to her to open the trunk, which she did, and then he came around to the driver’s side and pointed to her and then to the hotel. “You look,” he said.

“Sure,” she said. She felt oddly flattered that he wanted her to see his grandmother’s hotel.

She followed the boy up the cement steps that led to more steps. By the entrance to each guest room sat an array of small rocks, painted with a room number and a flower or a moon. The rain was heavy and she saw no one. Carol and Jimson had said they were checking out early.

By the time they reached an open door, Yvonne was out of breath from the stairs. Inside, the smell of cooking greeted them from a warm kitchen. In the adjacent dining area, a man and a woman in their late thirties were listening to the radio and folding paper napkins into triangles.

Ahmet greeted them and they returned the greeting without looking at him. Yvonne stood next to Ahmet for a moment in silence, watching the man and the woman fold the napkins, until the boy spoke again. She heard him say her name, the way he pronounced it. Eve-on. The man and the woman looked up from their work.

“Merhaba,”
said the man.

“Hello,” the woman said, and stood. “You are staying here?”

“Merhaba,”
said Yvonne. “No, I’m just here with Ahmet.”

“Oh,” the woman said, and turned away, finished with Yvonne. In a glass case massage products were on display next to a price list. Yvonne guessed the woman served many roles at the hotel—cook, maid, masseuse. And she guessed the man, her boyfriend, most likely did maintenance.

On the walls, dozens of framed photos showed another couple: a handsome, white-haired man next to a dark-haired beauty. The boy’s grandparents, Yvonne assumed.

“Is your grandmother here?” Yvonne asked Ahmet. She pointed to the woman in the picture.

He nodded, and she followed him to another room, an office. Inside, a woman was seated at a tidy desk with a glass of what looked like Scotch. The office seemed remarkably uncluttered, and it occurred to Yvonne that business at the chateau was probably not good.

The woman stood when Ahmet entered but she did not hug him, nor did he run to her. The medicinal smell of hard liquor hung in the room above them and between them.

“Hello,” the grandmother said to Yvonne. She looked decades older than she had in the photos, though it was possible only a few years had passed. In her hand she held a pen with a large fake red flower on its cap. The glass before her, a finger of Scotch left, had been kissed many times—little lipstick was left on the grandmother’s mouth.

Yvonne introduced herself.

“You are the one,” the woman said. She had a thick accent.

“Excuse me?” said Yvonne.

“His good friend,” said the grandmother.

“Yes,” Yvonne said. She finally caught on that the woman did not seem to like her. “What has he said about me?” Yvonne was suddenly suspicious.

“Not him,” the grandmother said, the flower on the pen shaking in her unsteady hand. “He says nothing. The waiter,” the grandmother said. “In Knidos.”

“Oh, I see,” said Yvonne.

She wanted to leave. This was not the encounter she’d been expecting with Ahmet’s grandmother. She had hoped they would exchange smiles over a cup of coffee, talk about the boy, how affable and enterprising he was. Instead, Yvonne now understood why he left the hotel each day for Knidos. The chateau was like a museum devoted to another, happier time. There was nothing here but sour regret.

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you,” Yvonne said. “I gave Ahmet a ride home, and I thought I’d say hello.”

“And now you have,” said the woman.

“Yes,” said Yvonne. She wondered if it was the woman’s unfamiliarity with English that was causing a tonal problem. It wasn’t, she decided, looking at the woman’s unsmiling face.

“I’m a teacher back home,” Yvonne said. “I have two children. They’re coming this week.”

“And before they get here you pretend he is your son.”

Yvonne stood in silence. She forced a brief smile, said good-bye, and turned to the door. The grandmother said nothing.

Ahmet followed Yvonne down the stairs, a pleading look on his face.
Don’t leave me here,
his eyes seemed to say.
Take me with you.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, as cheerfully as she could.

The rain had lightened to a drizzle. Still, Yvonne drove back to Datça, with her body leaning close to the windshield, as though she were navigating her way through a torrential storm.

A woman was sitting on the covered patio of the Datça house, picking at a bug bite on her leg. It took Yvonne a moment to realize who it was.

“Özlem?” Yvonne said.

Özlem sat up, and instantly reconfigured her face into its usual presentable form. She seemed to exist as a beautiful creature only when viewed by someone else.

“How long have you been waiting out here?” Yvonne asked, hearing the sound of rain hitting the patio roof.

She looked at the ambivalent gray sky and shrugged.

Yvonne unlocked the front door.

“Come in,” she said. “Let’s get you dry.”

Özlem stepped inside, tentatively, and then gave up any air of hesitance and walked to the red spiral stairway. “Are her clothes still here?” she asked.

It took Yvonne a moment to understand.

“I think so,” Yvonne said. “But you can borrow something of mine if you need to change.” Now that they were inside, Yvonne saw Özlem’s thin blouse was transparent with rain. She was shivering. “Let me help you. I’ll bring you a towel. Do you want tea?”

“I need to see her things.” Özlem placed her hand on the red railing and started up the stairs with a surge of energy that surprised Yvonne. She skipped a stair with each step.

When Yvonne caught up, Özlem was standing in front of the closet in the master bedroom. She had quickly figured out which side of the closet was Yvonne’s and which side was the mistress’s, and was examining each item of clothing before tugging it off the hanger, dropping it to the floor.

“Please stop,” said Yvonne.

But Özlem continued to pull down all the clothes until there was nothing left on the mistress’s side. Then she collapsed onto the floor, sobbing.

“I told him I was leaving,” she said. “And he doesn’t care.
He almost seemed pleased. ‘Now I can be with Manon,’ he said.”

“Manon?” Yvonne said.

Özlem sobbed again, as though the word
Manon
was the insult. “The French slut. Do you see her ugly prostitute clothes?”

Yvonne hadn’t noticed anything unusual about the clothes in the closet. They appeared to be tasteful items in muted colors. If anything, they were the antithesis of the see-through blouses and short dresses Özlem preferred.

“Liar—he is a liar,” Özlem said. “It’s because she’s French that he loves her, you know that, right?”

“I know nothing,” Yvonne said. The truth of this statement hit her a moment after she’d said it.

“He makes fun of the French, but his whole life he has been secretly embarrassed to be Turkish. He wants to be European. He would deny it but—”

“Why don’t we go downstairs?” Yvonne said. She wanted Özlem back on the ground floor. On the couch or the porch. Not here.

“I want to see the rest of the house,” Özlem said. Her face was swollen, her mouth pouting. She looked like a little girl recovering from a tantrum.

Yvonne led the way, walking into the hallway. When she didn’t hear footsteps behind her, she turned. Özlem was at the foot of the bed in the master bedroom, staring up at the ceiling. The hook. She was shaking her head, disgusted.

“Come on, Özlem,” Yvonne said. “Why don’t I draw you a bath? It will warm you, calm you down.”

Özlem was still staring at the hook. She was sputtering words in Turkish.

“I’m going to get a bath ready for you,” Yvonne said again. She wanted Özlem contained.

She moved into the bathroom and was adjusting the water’s temperature when Özlem came in. Her eyes were intense, focused. “Have you seen anything hanging from the ceiling in there?” asked Özlem.

Yvonne looked her in the eye, and said, “No.”

“No?”

“You mean like a plant?”

Özlem shook her head, and a moment later she looked relieved. “Never mind. Do not regard what I say. I’m very fatigued.”

Yvonne searched the cabinet beneath the sink and discovered liquid bath soap, which she poured into the tub. As she put the top back on, she held the bottle out to Özlem. “Look, it’s Dove!”

Özlem’s mouth was still for a moment. Then she burst into grateful laughter.

While Özlem bathed, Yvonne checked her e-mail downstairs. She cocked her head to listen for sounds that Özlem was done with her bath. If Özlem were to find the swing, or any of the photos, Yvonne didn’t know what sort of state she might devolve into.

There was an e-mail from Aurelia. The subject header asked,
“Where are you?”

Yvonne hesitated before clicking. She read the note from Aurelia the way she had grown accustomed to reading every correspondence from her: with one eye turned away, in fear of what she might learn.

Yvonne tried to figure out what day it was. Saturday? Despite Aurelia’s assurance that she was fine, Yvonne didn’t believe it. At best, the
okay
stage would last a day or two. She pictured Aurelia’s face—her eyes, her mouth. No one had prepared her for this pull, strong as an undertow, between
mother and daughter. It didn’t matter what Aurelia had done or was going through—there was never a time when Yvonne didn’t want to see her daughter, didn’t want to lie next to her, whispering and wondering aloud.