Tinderbox (24 page)

By Thanksgiving, she had gained twenty-two pounds, a full suit of armor on her small
frame. Her mother blessedly did not comment, but at Christmas, when her father was
in New York, he poked her stomach, more hard than affectionately. “Pizza and beer,
hey?” By Valentine’s Day, she had settled into a pattern of nighttime binges and daytime
starvation, which stopped the scale’s ascent but left her locked in a cycle of disgust.

For months, there had been letters from Yosefa, forwarded by Anne-Marie, pleading
that Caro let him visit. Then, in the spring, Anne-Marie called. Yosefa’s brother
Abdu had come to see her in Paris, begging, then threatening her for Caro’s address.

“Do not give it to him.”

“He says that Yosefa will not eat, that Yosefa will kill himself if he cannot see
you.”

“Do you hear me, Anne-Marie? Do not give him my address. If you do, I will move and
never speak to you again.”

Anne-Marie began to cry. Caro could picture her flat stomach, her skinny shoulders,
the big buttocks where Abdu had cupped his hands. She wondered if Anne-Marie had let
him fuck her again when he’d come to Paris. “Don’t blame me if he jumps out of a window,”
Anne-Marie said.

The letters stopped. In the fall, she marked the anniversary of the abortion with
weeks of preliminary dread and not leaving her bed on the day.

At first, she had thought of her celibacy as expiation. By the time she settled into
her job at the school and her apartment on West End Avenue, it was a way of life,
a necessity between the nights of gluttony and the mornings with her stomach bloated
with congealed greed. In August, it would be fifteen years. Fifteen years with a tire
around her middle, like a bumper on a bumper car. Longer than Penelope sat at her
loom, weaving by day, unraveling by night. Stalling the suitors.

She picks up a knife to spread butter on more toast, then puts it down. Enough. She
has had enough.

25

Christmas Day, Myra wakes with a sense of apprehension, an achy nervousness, a premonition,
she worries, of physical ailment or disaster. The present she bought for Eva sits
wrapped at the end of the farm table. She eats a bowl of cereal while she thumbs through
the holiday’s skeletal newspaper.

When Eva comes downstairs, Myra points at the wrapped box.

“For me?”

“Yes, for you.”

Eva gingerly touches the wrapping paper. She fingers the ribbon. “I never had anything
before that came like this.”

“You just rip off the paper.”

Eva tears at the paper carefully, then lifts the box lid. Inside is a yellow ski jacket
with a matching black-and-yellow-striped scarf. Eva puts the jacket on over her nightgown
and drapes the scarf over her neck. She twirls around. “It fit me perfect. I love
it!”

At noon, Myra leaves for her walk. With the holiday, the day has lost its shape. If
Eva were not at the house, she would go back to bed with a cup of tea and a novel.
Instead, on her return she decides to play the piano.

The door to the music room is closed, which is strange, since only Adam ever closes
it. She pushes it open. At first, she doesn’t see Eva. Then she sees her kneeling
by the closet, the black-and-yellow scarf still wrapped around her neck.

Eva turns, an odd expression on her face that reminds Myra of Eva’s night terror her
second week in the house.

“You scare me.” She stands, waving the dust cloth in her hand. “The boxes are very
dusty.” She picks up the trash basket and leaves the room.

Myra opens the closet door. Piled inside are Adam’s file boxes. She leans over to
read the words written on the lid of the top box:
Moishe in the Amazon
. She lifts the lid. Inside, there are files, each with a white label bordered in
blue.

She feels tempted to take out one of the files, to read the papers inside. So many
of her patients have talked about searching their kids’ pockets and backpacks, reading
their journals. With her own children, though, she’s never gone through their things.
Nothing she might find, she’s always thought, would justify the damage that snooping
would occasion.

The files are in alphabetical order: Amazon, Boats, Dogs, Herzog, Marrakesh, Rabat,
Research Iquitos. Myra closes the lid.

She plays the Bach Prelude in B-flat Major. She plays the Schubert Impromptu in G-flat
Major. She plays three Chopin mazurkas. But still, she cannot rid herself of the thought
that Eva was looking at something inside Adam’s file boxes.

26

Adam wakes with a start, unable to place where he is, confused as to why his legs
are so cramped, what all the noise is around him.

Caro is shaking his arm. “We’ve landed.” She hands him a bottle of water. There is
something different about her, something unfamiliar. When she stands to get their
carry-on bags from the overhead luggage rack, he realizes that she has lost weight.

“What happened to you? You’re thin.”

“That’s what happens when you can’t eat for three days.”

In the van back to the city, Omar and Rachida sit in the rear, with Caro and Adam
in the middle seat. Adam opens the vent and drinks in the cold air. Tomorrow is New
Year’s Eve. He twists around so he can see Rachida.

“Do you want to give Eva the amulet tonight?”

“Fine.”

Rachida is staring out the window. Omar has fallen back asleep with his head on her
shoulder. Caro has her eyes closed. Difficult as the time away had been, Adam feels
a dread of returning descending on him.

“Did you want to give it to her or do you want me to do it?”

“It doesn’t matter to me.”

They drop Caro at her apartment first. When they reach the house on Ninety-fifth Street,
his mother comes outside to greet them. She hugs Rachida, then Omar and Adam.

“Where’s Eva?” Omar asks.

“She’s out. There’s a lecture at her synagogue.”

“Daddy brought her something. That hand thing you wear around your neck. Grandpa Uri
made it for her.”

Omar yawns.

“I made some tortellini and fruit salad,” Myra says. “You can all have a quick bite
and then get to sleep.”

Jet-lagged, Adam wakes at four in the morning. He is alone in the bed. He goes downstairs,
where Rachida is already dressed in her hospital scrubs, drinking coffee at the farm
table.

“I’m going in early. Your mom has no patients in the afternoon because it’s New Year’s
Eve. She wants to take Omar to Rockefeller Center to see the tree.”

“What are we going to do for New Year’s?” Seeing Rachida’s strained expression, Adam
regrets his question, which he fears Rachida has experienced as a slap in the face
of her grief. What, after all, do they ever do on New Year’s Eve?

“Your mother wants to make a holiday dinner for us and Caro. She bought a leg of lamb.
She put Omar’s Hanukkah presents under the Christmas tree.”

“So what do you think? Should I give the hamsa to Eva today? Or wait for tonight when
you are here?”

Adam can feel Rachida’s annoyance—the effort it takes her not to snap at him to stop
asking her the same question over and over.

“I don’t care.”

More than anything, Adam wants to put his arms around his wife, to say, Please, for
the new year, let’s start fresh, let’s be kind and good to each other, but the gesture
feels impossible, his arms inert, his tongue trapped in his mouth.

27

After Rachida leaves, Adam takes the newspaper and lies down on the couch. His eyes
feel heavy. The paper drops onto his chest.

When he wakes, Eva is in the kitchen sorting laundry. Adam stretches, then swings
his legs to the ground.

“Hi, Eva,” he calls out.

Eva doesn’t turn. She bends over to load clothes into the washer. Did she not hear
him?

Adam stands. He’ll shower first and then give Eva the amulet. Under the stream of
hot water, he rehearses what he will say.

When he comes back downstairs, Eva is at the sink, washing the dishes he and Rachida
left there last night. Adam holds out the envelope with the amulet inside.

Eva keeps her gaze on the running water.

“This is the hamsa Rachida’s father made for you. I know it’s not the same as the
original, but he inscribed the same words.”

Eva turns up the water.

“We went to Marrakesh. We stayed at La Mamounia. It was Winston Churchill’s favorite
place.” He feels ridiculous, this foolish attempt to fill the silence. Why would Eva
care about Winston Churchill? Would she even know who he is? “Many of the rubber traders
who came to Iquitos were from Marrakesh.”

Eva leans down to get the cleanser from under the sink. She scours the white porcelain.
She scours until the basin is covered in gritty circles.

Not knowing what else to do, Adam sets the envelope next to the drain board.

He climbs the stairs to the music room. He unpacks his papers and opens his notebook.
The photo of the two men embracing falls onto the desk. He can hear Omar moving around
down the hall. He locks the door and pulls the top file box out of the closet. He
takes the brown envelope from the folder labeled
Research Iquitos.

His stomach clenches. He has never kept the photos in a particular order, but he has
always kept the most important ones, the ones he responds to most strongly, at the
back of the envelope. Now the photo of a man licking another man is at the front.

Adam flips through the photos. Two of them are stuck together.

His mouth tastes like sawdust. He peels the photos apart, then adds the photograph
from the notebook to the envelope. He puts the file box in the closet and goes back
downstairs.

Omar and Eva are sitting with their arms touching at the farm table. They are both
eating bowls of cereal and giggling over a copy of
Tintin
that Omar bought in the Casablanca airport.

“Look at Snowy,” Omar says. “He’s biting the bad guy on the butt.”

Adam sits across from Eva. He can see a chain peeking out from the neckline of her
sweater, but if there is anything hanging from it, it is hidden beneath her clothes.
He hopes she is wearing the amulet Uri made.

Eva pushes back her chair. She stands and leaves the room.

28

Rachida comes home early. Eva is peeling potatoes. “Omar went out with Dr. M.,” Eva
tells her.

“And Adam? Do you know where he is?”

Eva shrugs her shoulders.

On the second floor, the door to the music room is closed. In her room, the suitcases
are open, still unpacked—as though there was any chance Adam would have unpacked.

She lies down on the bed and closes her eyes. Layla is angry with her. She claims
that Rachida hung up on her and did not return her call.

“I left ten, twenty messages for you and you cannot be bothered to call me back.”

“I left my cell phone in Essaouira. I didn’t get it back until we returned from Marrakesh.”
They were in the cafeteria, at a table in the center of the room.

“Liar. You let me do what I did in that closet and then you hung up on me.” Layla
covered her face. “I never did that with anyone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play Missy Innocent with me. You got off on what I said to you and now you’re
getting off on humiliating me.”

“I left my phone at the pool where Caro and Adam were staying. Caro found it. By the
time I got it back, the battery was dead, and then I couldn’t find my charger.”

“Don’t insult me. I’m not your deadbeat husband who you can tell anything and he’ll
believe you.” Layla’s voice had risen in volume, and Rachida glanced around to see
if anyone was watching them.

The table jerked as Layla stood. Rachida reached out to steady her coffee cup.

“Layla, I had other things on my mind. I was there to bury my father. I had Omar to
take care of and my mother, and then Adam was useless and Caro got sick.”

“Fuck off, you control-freak pervert. Go fuck your ugly little husband. Go tell him
your stupid lies.”

Now Rachida can hear Adam climbing the stairs. The bed reels as he sits down. He takes
her hand and begins stroking it in a way she knows he intends to be comforting but
only feels irritating.

“I gave Eva the amulet.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t open the envelope. She seems not to want to talk to me.”

Adam pulls off her clogs and begins massaging her feet. She can see the fine black
hair in Layla’s armpits, soft like a baby bird’s feathers, Layla’s nipples, small
and brown, like fine buttons sewn onto her flawless skin.

“Did she say anything to you about it?” Adam asks.

“What?”

“Eva. Did she say anything to you about the amulet?”

Rachida turns her head and looks at the wall. She is afraid that she might cry, and
even though she knows it must be about her father, it feels as if it is about Layla.
She knows there are good reasons why she married Adam. She just cannot recall any
of them now.

“Can we talk about this another time?” She turns onto her side and curls her knees
into her body so her foot moves out of Adam’s reach.

29

Another time to talk with Rachida about Eva, Adam thinks the following week, seems
never to arrive, the days passing with Rachida either too tired or testy or gone.
It is strange how quickly he has become acclimated to Eva not speaking to him. In
an odd way, it is as if they are now more intimately involved—a secret collaboration
in which they both endeavor to not draw attention to the silence between them. On
Adam’s part, he takes care not to ask Eva anything in front of Omar. If he needs to
know something from Eva, he asks someone else to ask her. On her part, whenever possible,
she slips from the room if Adam enters. Once, she actually caught his eye before she
left, and although she immediately averted her gaze, Adam had been left with the sensation
of their having, like certain pairs of children, a shared wordless language.

Omar returns to school on Monday. On Wednesday, as usual, Myra does pickup. She leans
against the door frame, already bundled into her long coat and scarf as she steps
into her winter boots.