Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots (26 page)

Masgouf merely scratched the surface of all that never would be again. Life: never again.

“Everything is changed,” I said, staving off sappiness. “Not just the food. We use red snapper here.”

“Have you been back to Baghdad?” she asked. She was sitting at her place at the bar now, her head propped up on her hands.

“No,” I said. “We never went back. We never could, legally or safely. We had to give up everything to come to the United States. And the Jews have no place there now. We were once the majority, the intellectuals, the sophisticates. But that changed quickly because of the Nazis. And when Joseph and I came to America, we promised to make this our home.”

I realized how strange it must sound to anyone, much less a young girl, to abandon a life, to move forward with such determination.
Leaving is the easy part,
I wanted to tell her. It’s moving on that one gets mired in. It takes years. Decades, actually. It takes tragedy and drama and the most painful part: the haunting feeling of what’s lost when it finally starts hurting less. And yet to this day, if I close my eyes I can smell where I grew up. Burning vegetable skin and floral tea. It pulls the tears out of me, as if it’s the scent itself coming through my nose and rushing down my face.

“We had to love America more than we yearned for Baghdad,” I said, wanting to defend myself, “or we couldn’t have loved America at all. I don’t know if that makes much sense.”

“It makes sense to me,” Lorca said. It was obvious: she too knew what it felt like not to be understood.

I unwrapped the fish, which was still in its brown paper. I did it slowly and noticed that Lorca had lifted herself just slightly off her seat to watch. This seemed like a good thing.

“The monger has butterflied the snapper for me, you see,” I said. “But it is not so complicated to do it yourself. My hands shake,” I offered as an explanation, and then wished I hadn’t. “I bet you have a very steady hand.”

Lorca blushed and shrugged. She pulled her sleeves all the way over her fingers and sat on them.

“No, no, no,” I said. “Your turn. Come.”

Lorca came around to where I was, delicately revealed her hands, and began washing them in the sink.

“We oil the fish first, and then season it,” I said. “So the spices will stick.”

I took out some new salt I’d bought, fancy flakes that seemed impressive at the time but now appeared overwhelming and rough. As subtly as I could, I shoved it to the back of the cabinet, taking out my trusty sea salt instead.

“Olive oil?” Lorca asked.

I feigned shock.

“Of course olive oil,” she said. “Stupid me.”

“No.” I laughed. “Not stupid.”

I would have to be better with my behavior, I told myself. I would have to be so careful with this little girl.
She’s as sensitive as I am.
Instinctively, I looked toward the study, as if Joseph would be standing in the doorway in a thick cardigan, cordu- roys, and slippers, on the same page as me, nodding. But of course, he wasn’t. Not standing there. Not on the couch. Not anywhere yet. His remains had been ready since yesterday. They’d taken only five days to “process” is what they told me over the phone, and I could come by to get them. But I couldn’t bring myself to go out the door and do it. What would I carry him home in? I wondered. A shopping bag? A cashmere shawl? What could bear the weight of him, of everything he ever did? Nothing felt right. For the first time, elaborate funeral processions made perfect sense to me. Without one, without the fanfare, there was life and then dust. And I couldn’t bear the thought of him like that—like almond meal, cake flour, or sand. He was the love of my life. The world to me. But until I went to the funeral home, I had no idea where he was, really. I had no idea where he went. I’d come home from my walk that night and all that was left was the shell of him. The rest had slipped away somewhere. Would you believe I checked under the bed? I considered lifting his head, the pillow, as if it might have been trapped beneath there. Until then, even when he was sleeping, despondent, nearly catatonic from a morphine drip, there had been something between us, sustaining us. What is inside a person is unknowable as anything. That’s not life. Life is the dynamic, silent buzz humming around us, like static. And when it’s over, there’s none of that. All I could feel, as I stayed with him before Dottie helped me away, was the lonely echo of my own life, myself. A vacant, one-pitch hum. It was worse than feeling alone. It was being alone.

Lorca salted the fish. The word
remains
played over and over in my head and took shape as something else: a glass container of leftovers in the fridge. I shuddered and kept my eyes on the study again, as if willing him there.
Did you see that?
I wished to say. This child
was
as sensitive as me.

“And now?” Lorca said. She was talking about the fish but it felt like she was ushering me along.

For her, and for me, I kept on.

As it turned out, the assembling of the masgouf took much less time than I’d imagined, and hoped. So before putting it in the oven, we pickled some onions, made mango chutney with a rock-hard mango, and I let her in on the secrets of making Iraqi flatbread. Perhaps it was Lorca’s nimble fingers, or maybe her excitement, which seemed to fuel her motions, but she was brisk and confident today. Purposeful. That, ever so slightly, broke my heart. I thought,
We might make the masgouf and then I’ll be obsolete.
I was giving her the secret to living without me. And yet, how could I not?

For some reason, it occurred to me that that might be the key to parenting: rendering oneself obsolete. It was something I rarely thought of, parenting. It was something I had no business considering. But here I was. I hardly knew her. I had to remind myself that I hardly knew her at all.

I wasted time doing some dishes. I was distracted, thinking of Joseph, of Lorca never coming back. As I wiped down the countertop, circle after circle after circle, it was as though I was trying to wipe my mind clean of worrying. It didn’t work.

“Shall we put this in the oven?” Lorca said. My heart sank. When she started fiddling with the lemons, I was bolstered. More time. More time. The relief went as quickly as it came.

“I did such a poor job with these,” she said.

“They are perfect,” I said.

“They’re not,” she said.

“No regrets” is what came out of my mouth. It wasn’t what I meant to say—the phrase being nothing I lived by, or even thought very much about.

Lorca glanced at me. You could tell just by looking at her that she knew too much about the world. Something in her eyes—perhaps the depth and sheen of them, how they seemed to summon the world around her and refract it like an artifact window—aged her in a way that had nothing to do with years. She was a gorgeous combination of ancient and brand-new.

“It seems like that for you,” she said. “It seems like you live a life you don’t regret.”

I had to take a moment to swallow back sadness. She wasn’t altogether wrong. Joseph liked to bask in the feeling of how far we’d come. I never made time for that. I never made time for anything, and yet it was the regrets, not the pride, that snuck through regardless.

“Oh, heart,” I said. “There are so many things I’m not proud of: things I did, or didn’t do, and sometimes the person I was. And worst of all, the person I wasn’t and hoped to be. Also, I wish I’d learned to tie-dye and run long distances and play the piano.”

“You could still learn,” she said. “Why not?”

“I’d have no one to play for,” I said. I realized then how very much I’d done for Joseph. How much of what a person becomes is because of the person she loves. If I’d ever taken up piano, which I hadn’t, it would have been to show him. That I didn’t learn, and wanted to, in some way weighed on our relationship too. It kept dawning on me that Joseph’s life would no longer punctuate mine. Or mine his. His life, our life, was a series of notes until his death, which shocked those notes into a song, full of symmetry, full of meaning. Something to behold unto itself. To behold it now was the most I could hope to do. We’d never reach for each other again.

“I gave up a child for adoption,” I said suddenly. “It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

I expected Lorca’s face to fall in some way, for her to be disappointed by this person who’d revealed her deepest secrets to a somewhat stranger, and a child at that. I expected that nothing nice could be said about what I’d done. Instead, she became altogether still.

“My mother is adopted,” Lorca said.

“Your mother?” I said. It felt like I’d just jumped into a frozen lake. My breath was very shallow.
Calm down,
I told myself.
Take it easy. She’s not suggesting anything.
I took a glass from the cupboard, filled it with tap water, and chugged it down. All the while, I kept my eyes on Lorca, trying catch a glimmer of something covert.

“But it’s not because she’s adopted that she is who she is,” Lorca said. She was talking casually, drying her hands on a towel. I had the distinct feeling that this was a subject she’d talked through at length, perhaps with someone older, perhaps with a professional. “If her biological mother had kept her, that woman’s life would have been ruined like my grandmother’s, and my aunt’s, and my father’s. My mother does that. She’s kind of like a tornado but people don’t know to run when they see her coming.”

The word
biological
ran and ran and ran through my head.

“How do you know so many things?” I asked.

“I mean—” she said. The question made her self-conscious, but I wasn’t sure why. She shoved her hands into her pockets. “I guess I’ve thought a lot about it. About my mother.”

“That’s nice,” I said. So stupid. As if it were a good thing.

“Sort of,” she said. “I just mean that you never know. Your child could have an amazing life and so do you and maybe that’s because you’re apart.”

It wasn’t clear if Lorca was getting at something or just stating the facts. The questions I wanted to ask vibrated in my mouth, but I told myself to be patient. Be smart.

“I understand,” I said. “And if her life isn’t amazing—”

“You can’t think that way,” Lorca said, cutting me off.

“Is she ruining your life?” I said.

“Oh,” Lorca said, and she straightened up suddenly, shaking her head as if I’d misunderstood, though I was sure I hadn’t. “It’s not like that,” she said.

I looked out the window and noticed that it had begun to snow a gorgeous, slow-motion snow, like something showing off. Every now and then, a flake would stick to the window and then drip down.

If there was something Lorca wanted to tell me, it wasn’t going to be told now. She had shut down and I couldn’t blame her. My body felt heavy, as though some protective mechanism had cut off my nerves to keep them from overheating, and everything was weighted, stagnant inside.

I put the fish in the oven. “Want to go see it?” I asked Lorca and motioned to the window, surprising even myself. Spontaneity shows its face less and less as the years go by. But for the first time in a very long time, the thought of standing in the snow didn’t seem like a horrific assault on my joints. I needed some fresh air too.

“Come on,” I said. “The fish will be a little while.”

We took the elevator and then the stairs to the roof. When we opened the door, the wind charged at us and I tottered on the top step. But then here was Lorca’s hand on my back, prepared to catch me. I was wearing mittens, a hat, two sweaters, and two scarves and feeling a bit like I’d been stuffed into a sausage casing. Still, I was thankful for every layer. The cold chilled me right to the bone, and fast.

Lorca’s coat looked expensive, all diagonal pockets and reflective patches, something a lot of technology had gone into—but it was too big for her. The flakes snuck into the neck.

“Can I give you a scarf?” I asked and pulled out an extra one—the cleanest and least handmade-looking that I could find—from my pocket, hoping to be a hero.

She laughed. “I’m okay,” she said.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Your circulation still works.”

Our building was higher than most and we could have seen for at least a mile in every direction if it weren’t for the weather. Tonight the city was purplish, washed out, fuzzy but for the flares of streetlights and traffic lights.

“The first time I saw snow,” I said, “I was older than you. I was afraid of it, thinking it might sting, like a spark.”

Lorca was holding her hand out in front of her, her palm open and flat. Her cheeks had taken on a sudden glow not unlike something cooking in an oven.

“It doesn’t,” I said, teasing out a small laugh.

“My mother hates the snow,” she said. The slightest mention of her mother seemed to suck the air out of her. She shrank, tightened in the face and shoulders.

“And you?” I asked, though the answer was obvious.

“Well, I love it,” she said softly.

“That’s very brave,” I said.

Lorca’s face wasn’t giving any clues as to how she was feeling, what all this talk about her mother meant to her. So I looked up at the sky, thinking that perhaps something would come to me—some morsel of wisdom from Joseph, some appropriate words that might make more sense of our conversation than our conversation was making to me. Instead, phlegm dripped down the back of my throat and I had a minor coughing fit.

“I’m fine,” I kept saying as Lorca tapped her hand gently against my back. “Just fine!”

We stood on the roof long enough for Lorca to point to the general vicinity of where she lived, went to school, had taken ballet lessons, shopped for groceries. And then me: where I’d found a hundred-dollar bill, seen the Clintons, witnessed an armed robbery, been hit by a cab. With her foot, Lorca drew the formation of her apartment: living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom. With mine, I drew the house where I’d grown up. Both floors. Lorca drew her childhood home in New Hampshire. I drew the countries of the Middle East. Together, they looked like a deformed mushroom. I pointed to Israel.

“Most people went there,” I said. “The great majority of the Iraqi Jews. But not us. Not Joseph. He had his heart set on the United States.”