Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots (34 page)

As I told her the story, her eyes closed and she nodded only slightly, enough for me to recall that was something she did, had always done, since I was a child. She disappeared to me. It occurred to me that Victoria wasn’t the kind of person who disappeared like that.

A little while later, I called the bookstore, wanting to talk to Blot. I had no idea what I was going to say and hoped that he’d know who it was when I said my name. I hoped he wouldn’t say,
Who? Laura?

No, Lorca,
I’d have to explain.

But when they transferred me to his section, the phone just kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing. I tried only one more time and then I took it personally. He was avoiding me. Of course, I thought. I imagined my mother saying that she’d told me so—though I wasn’t sure about what, exactly—and of course.

I
HAD NO IDEA
how a grandmother might act. But stew seemed like a grandmotherly thing to make. So I decided we’d make
kubba
with squash. What I wouldn’t make—I’d made a very serious promise to myself—was a big fuss about anything.

Lorca arrived on time on Sunday. She took off her coat, and I held out my hands for her thick brown scarf, which she had wrapped around her neck, but she didn’t remove it. Instead, she stuffed her hands inside of it, popping her fingers out the top as if to keep her wrists warm. She was so endearing that way, always trying to make herself smaller, more compact.

Only then did I notice how very tired her eyes were, glassy, and as if they’d been rolled around in rose sugar.

“Are you all—” I began but Lorca’s heavy nodding cut me off before I could finish. I was overwhelming her. I was doing it again.    To keep myself in check, I started talking and walking. I explained the mechanics of
kubba.
I told her more than she ever wanted to know.

“I came from a good family,” I began. “Not
good
like ‘nice,’ but
good
in terms of status, and so we used only a bit of semolina flour around the meatball, or
kubba,
rather than stuffing a small amount of meat into a doughy dumpling.”

I turned around only to make hand motions to show the dumplings. Lorca nodded and smiled slightly. Her lip caught on the side of her tooth.

“Today,” I said, “we will make a
kubba humudh,
which is a tangy sort of stew and with citrus. Sweet, or
hulou, kubba
isn’t my favorite.”

I wanted to ask her if that was all right, but I kept walking, stopped fussing.

Lorca was following me into the kitchen, her only noise the tiny sweep of her socks against the wood floor. I was afraid to look back at her again, to see her exhausted with boredom. I’d told myself that I wouldn’t ask about her mother, wouldn’t ask to see her or anything of the sort. If she wanted me to see her, she would tell me. There was a reason that Lorca was the only one here.

“When I say
tangy,
I don’t mean like candy,” I said. “I mean we use some citrus. For
kubba humudh,
we make an oblong
kubba,
like an American football. Sweet stews incorporate baseball-shaped
kubba.
”

I wanted her to be proud of my American analogy but realized that now wasn’t the time to be asking for reassurance.

“Yes,” Lorca said.

“Hm?” I said and she just shook her hands in front of her face and nodded. I noticed now that it wasn’t just her eyes that lacked color but her entire face.

I stopped in my tracks. We must have been quite a long time with me looking at her because finally she said to me, “I’m fine. Really.”

I took a deep breath.

“You must be hungry,” I said.

In the kitchen, I poured her a glass of almond milk and filled a bowl with nuts and raisins.

“Eat,” I said. She sat on her stool. She ate.

I wondered if I’d done something to upset her but didn’t quite know how to ask, so I kept on about the
kubba.
On and on and on, like I was recounting some stupid, nonsensical dream.

“It’s not traditional,” I said, “but Joseph and I like to make our
kubba
with chunks of meat as well as the dumplings, so as to flavor the stew with its own stock—” I cut myself off. Joseph and I
liked,
I said to myself. Not
like.
Liked
and no more. But now was no time for fits of sadness. Lorca was here.

“Liked,”
I said. “Excuse me.”

Lorca was holding the milk close to her mouth.

“
Kubba
can be frozen,” I said. And then: “If you make them for your mother, you can freeze them.”

That’s when she looked up. She had a piece of walnut just above her lip. I’d said something very wrong, very inappropriate, and I knew it. I’d invaded a sacred area. Her mother was hers. I had no right.

“That’s a good—” Lorca said, but I didn’t let her finish.

“Never mind,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Let’s just focus on these
kubba
now. And the squash. You and me,
kubba
and squash.”

Finally, the girl smiled.
Inshallah,
I nearly said out loud.
Inshallah!

All the ingredients were ready. I’d done some chopping and measuring ahead of time in case Lorca had other plans. I couldn’t ask her to stay with me forever.

“At our restaurant,” I said, “our customers loved
kubba
with pumpkin. We served that in the autumn, but it was a little sweet for me.”

“I prefer savory too,” Lorca said.

I had to remind myself that we knew we were related. I didn’t need to constantly look for clues to prove it anymore.

“How about this?” I asked. It was as if we were doing crafts. “I will begin, and you join whenever you’re ready. Finish that milk. It’s good, isn’t it?”

I’d done it again.

“Yes,” she said.

I put oil into a pot and as I waited for it to sizzle, I poured Lorca more milk. I uncovered the meat. I dumped it in with the onions and peppers and cayenne. I kept myself very busy. Cutting things smaller than they needed to be, washing my hands repeatedly. I didn’t want her telling her mother that I was unclean, that my cooking technique was lax.

“We add beef stock instead of water,” I said. “I have some prepared.”

Lorca looked at me like she was about to say something. I stopped stirring. Her mouth was poised. Then she looked past me.

“Hm?” I said but as quietly as I could.

“Well,” she began, but I could see her changing her mind. I didn’t move. I wanted her to tell me. But then she was getting off the stool. She came and stood next to me, very close. “Let me help,” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

We went along, stirring, browning, adding stock, and so on. Lorca kneaded the dough and put the filling inside. She made the most perfect dumplings and I wasted no time in telling her so.

We were having a very lovely evening. There was quiet and not quiet. We danced around each other without the least bit of awkwardness, which I know for certain because when she bumped me, taking the tray of
kubba
from one side of the sink to the other, I shifted more than she had expected. I really moved, and she said “Whoops!” so sweetly and then apologized, laughing a little.

“Osteoporosis-schmosis,” I said to her. “I think my end will be when I can no longer keep my feet on the ground. I’ll lift off like a balloon.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “That wouldn’t be so bad.”

We were happy.

She washed a bowl.

“Oh,” I said. “I nearly forgot. Will you dissolve some tomato paste in water?”

She went to the pantry shelf. I turned on the sink. It sputtered and then nothing. I tried again. A dribble, if that.

“That’s strange,” I said.

“Let me try,” Lorca said. But our luck didn’t turn.

We shook the faucet. Lorca got under the sink and must have looked at the pipe. Finally, when we were all out of options and beef stock, I knew that I had no choice.

I took the broom and banged up to Dottie. I wanted to see if she had water. I knew from experience that we were on different water lines. She’d come right down. For a moment, I wondered if she’d been the one to sabotage our faucet, hoping for this very thing—that I’d call her, need her help, for anything. And then she’d stay forever, asking Lorca one thousand inappropriate questions, ruining our whole evening.

“She has nothing better to do,” I said to Lorca, banging again.

I imagined Dottie upstairs with her ear to the floor, her satin-covered tush high in the air, her slippered feet curled under. She’d been waiting for this moment. I banged again.

“She’s never doing anything important,” I said. “She leaves the door half open, hoping that someone will stumble in.”

Again. Nothing. We waited.

And then my heart sank. Not Dottie too, I thought. I imagined her open-mouthed in her chair, smelling of sleep, and worse. I imagined her freckled bosom stilled. Oh, Dottie. I realized that I’d never thought about losing her. Lorca tensed too. She understood my fear immediately.

“Want me to go up?” she asked, but she’d already turned around. My, she could move. She breezed out the door.

“Be right back,” she called.

I stood with one hand on the faucet, the other cupped beneath, waiting for water that wouldn’t come. The pipes made the breathy noise of lack. I saw my reflection in the window across from me. When one reaches a certain age, seeing oneself becomes an exercise in disbelief. It’s like waking up from oral surgery, distorted and full, and then looking in the mirror. It takes a moment to compute that you are who you are. Maybe, I thought then, it’s because of everything that isn’t. My reflection was no longer an image of what was—cheekbones, lips, a husband, hope—but of what wasn’t anymore. And yet, I was still here. I had to leap over a gaping mental chasm just to live.

It felt like hours before I heard Lorca upstairs, and then Dottie’s voice—high and defensive as ever. She was alive. Both my arms collapsed into the sink. How much more could I take? I thought. I began fanning my heart with my hand. Joseph had died. It occurred to me that if I was ever going to be happy again, it would have to be despite that. He’d died.

The tables had turned again, Joseph. I was Dottie now, listening for more, wanting to hear exactly what she was saying to Lorca, Lorca to her. For the first time, I hoped Dottie was being Dottie. That she was being a ridiculous fool, telling Lorca some stupid story, showing her an album of prom photos from 10
BC.

I couldn’t just stand here, alone, not celebrating life. I wanted to wrap my arms around Dottie, tell her that we were going to be all right now. I raced up the stairs. What they say about adrenaline is true.

Her door was only halfway open and I kicked it with my foot, ready to exclaim. Then I stopped. Dottie’s face was white. It wasn’t a normal white, but a very ugly white—a shallow, greenish, bloodless kind of white. Dead-bone white. The kind of white that you see only under something fluorescent, a policeman’s flashlight, for example. She was sitting on her thick, woolly yellow chair smack in front of the door, watching TV with her feet up. The smell of popcorn hung heavy. She didn’t move. She always moved. Her eyes flicked from me to Lorca to her lap to me. For a second, I thought Dottie was cradling a baby. She was leaning back slightly and her right shoulder rose tight to her chin. A smile was stilled on her face. But of course, it wasn’t a baby. It was a sweater—Joseph’s sweater. One that I had left out on the street. One that she’d folded. One that she’d apparently stolen. She was holding it dearly, as though it had just fallen off to sleep. She sat there for just a second longer, and I wondered if maybe she’d gone blind or deaf.

“That’s Joseph’s sweater,” Lorca whispered, not looking at me. A granddaughter, I thought, protecting her kin. A sudden feeling of pride slipped into my confusion.

“What are you doing?” I shouted at Dottie, grabbing the sweater as if I were taking it from a naughty child. Nervous laughter slipped out of me. I was embarrassed. Lorca wouldn’t understand what kind of woman Dottie was, that her cradling a man’s sweater—Joseph’s, no less—like it was a living, breathing being was just Dottie. She was needy and lonely and ridiculous. She did things like this. She was half senile, for crying out loud, older than a dinosaur’s great-aunt. She’d probably pretended the sweater belonged to some sailor who’d died years ago at sea while missing her desperately. But Lorca didn’t know that. And Dottie didn’t say anything. She just sat there, not de- fending herself.

Lorca hadn’t lifted her eyes from the floor. I could tell she was growing more disappointed in me by the second. I couldn’t find vanilla in my own kitchen. I couldn’t use the faucet properly. I sent her into the apartments of kooky old bats. But that wasn’t it. I realized that Dottie didn’t look so stupid. She looked like a person who’d just lost her friend, who was heartbroken, who was mourning. And me: I looked cruel, unloving, unsentimental, prancing around the kitchen just after my husband’s death. Lorca’s grandfather’s death.
Thanks a lot, Dottie,
I wanted to say. I didn’t.

“This is normal behavior for Dottie,” I began to explain into the chaos of quietness. “Joseph was very kind to her.”

Lorca nodded without moving.

The longer I stood there, the more enraged I became with Dottie. What did she think she was doing, embarrassing me like this? And keeping mum? When had she ever been mum in her entire life? I wanted to shock her out of it. I wanted to be so much better than her. So much better than her stale apartment with the peeling wallpaper, the bleached-out velvet couch, the color of decay. She’d embarrassed me. She’d made me into a fool. But I had something she didn’t, couldn’t ever have.

“Dottie, this is Lorca,” I said suddenly, full of meaning. “This is my granddaughter.”

It’s not what I’d meant to say. My voice quivered, failed at the end into breath.

Lorca looked at me. Dottie looked at me. They had the very same expression on their faces, like it was something about my identity I was revealing, not Lorca’s.