The Ambassador's Wife (27 page)

The Mazrooqis, of course, assumed they were already married. As soon as Miranda had moved in with Finn, he began referring to her as his wife. Given that marriage contracts and wedding celebrations were normally separate events in Mazrooq, it wouldn't surprise anyone that Miranda and Finn were throwing a party long after they were legally wed.

“S
O HOW MODEST
do I have to be?” Miranda asked Finn. They were sitting over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and porridge—they lingered in bed so late on weekends (and not because they were sleeping) that they were ravenous by the time they made it downstairs—at the small round table in a sunny corner of the kitchen, which during the weekdays was monopolized by the staff, working on the Sunday
New York Times
crossword puzzle. A friend of Miranda's in Seattle mailed a collection of them each month. Finn had pointed out that they could probably print them off the website, but Miranda had looked at him reproachfully. “It's not the
same
.”

Pouring cold milk over her porridge, she continued, “I mean, there'll be an awful lot of Muslims in attendance. Wondering, no doubt, why we're allowing men and women in the same room. Or same yard. Whatever.”

Finn looked up from the puzzle. “Massenet opera?”

“Who the hell is Massenet?”

“It's your wedding,” said Finn. “This once, I think, you can wear whatever takes your fancy.”

“Nothing you can buy in this country. I don't
fancy
getting wrapped up in polyester. Dear god, Finn, you realize what this means, don't you? I am going to have to
go shopping
.”

“I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I'm afraid there's no way around that one. Unless you want to wear one of your sundresses?”

She gave him a hopeless look. “I just don't want to be one of those
bride
people.”

“Um, have we not gone over the definition of wedding? Big party, bride, groom, sometimes bridesmaids?”

“Bridesmaids.”
She looked horrified. “All in look-alike taffeta. I couldn't bear it.”

Finn reached for her hand. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Of course!” She squeezed his fingers. “If taffeta means that much to you, I will suffer it.”

“We can skip the taffeta. Do you think you want bridesmaids at all? Or maybe just one attendant? Maid of honor type of person?”

Miranda thought for a moment. “I want Tazkia,” she said. “Can I have her? Though she'll have to be all covered up, of course, with all those men around.”

“Of course. Look, do you want to give Marguerite a call?”

“Are you going to have any—what are they called? Ushers? Groomspeople?”

Finn thought for a moment. “I don't think so.” He had no siblings, his parents were both dead, and he hadn't been the world's finest correspondent with his friends. He had always had plenty of great mates wherever he had been posted, but he somehow never managed to maintain those relationships once one or both of them had moved on. Claire remained his closest friend in the UK, doggedly continuing to write him at least once a month even in the face of his long silences. There was little chance, however, that she and Charlie would drag their family over here for the festivities.

“If I have Tazkia, won't we be lopsided?”

“Could we both have Tazkia? She could be our maid of groomsman. Our usher of honor.”

“I'm sure she'd be flattered.”

“Look, I'm going to be doing the accounts solidly through next weekend. Why don't you go to Istanbul or Dubai or somewhere and pick up a dress?”

Miranda looked at him in surprise. “Seriously?”

“You'll want something nice, or at least something you like.”

“We can afford it?”

“We have a travel package, love. Among the great perks of hardship postings are all the free airfares.”

“Maybe I'll ask Marguerite to come with me.”

Finn smiled. “I recommend it.” He had been relieved when she and Marguerite began spending time together. While Miranda seemed happy with her merry band of expats and Mazrooqi women, he had fretted about her integration into diplomatic life. Marguerite managed to engage Miranda on an intellectual level—they traded books and argued about postmodernism—while also gently coaching her in the diplomatic arts of managing staff, planning menus, and dressing appropriately. He was careful, however, never to openly express gratitude for this.

“You don't trust me, do you? You think I'll come back with something in patchwork!”

“Well, sweetheart, as much as I love you, I wouldn't say fashion sense is one of your finer points.”

Miranda sighed. “No, you're right. I basically resent the fact that fashion exists at all.”

Finn picked up the pen. “Okay, so now that that's settled…word with ‘bum' or ‘bunny'?”

“Ski,” said Miranda, scooping up a mouthful of her porridge.

“Right. And—”

“Grisélidis? Bacchus? Cendrillon?”

Finn looked up at her. “What?”

“The opera. Do any of those fit?”

He counted the squares. “No.”

She pulled the page toward her. “Oh,” she said. “It's
Ariane
.”

Finn leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Didn't you just say, ‘Who the hell is Massenet?' A few moments ago?”

Miranda sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I dated an opera singer.”

“I should have guessed. So that makes an opera singer, a fireman, a burlesque dancer, an artist, a saxophonist, a composer, a poet, and a choreographer.”

“Look, I told you. When I said I have slept with half the planet, I meant it. I just want you to know everything. You know, before we're married. So you don't feel I've misrepresented myself in any way.”

He laughed. “And I appreciate your honesty. It's quite refreshing.”

“How would I know who to marry if I didn't try everybody first?
But you, you are special. You are the only person for whom I am willing to brave the bridal boutiques.”

“And your only civil servant?”

“Of course! Repetition is so boring.”

“Is there any profession you haven't slept with?”

Miranda thought for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I have never, to my knowledge, slept with a banker.”

Finn

February 21, their wedding day, much like the other 364 days a year, dawned sunny. The guests, duly checked off security's list at the gate, milled around the spongy lawn, sipping mango juice or champagne. Miranda was still locked up in their bedroom, where she'd spent the night alone, suddenly superstitious. “You're not supposed to see the bride on the wedding day,” she'd told Finn. “You can have the Minister's Suite.” He hadn't argued. What was one night apart before a lifetime of a shared bed?

Now he stood in front of the rows of chairs (tilting on the uneven grass), nervously exchanging inanities with the consul, Sally, Miranda's one close friend within the embassy. She chose wisely, thought Finn. Everyone loved Sally, a tall, striking woman who laughed easily, spoke beautiful Arabic, and adored entertaining. She was also one of the two people in the country who could legally marry them. Finn and Miranda had written their own vows and selected several short poems and readings, none of which were from the Bible. He worried a bit about the reaction to an utterly secular ceremony. Muslims could relate to Christians and even Jews, who shared with them a monotheistic tradition, but they struggled to wrap their minds around a life devoid of any religion. “You must be
something
,” they would say on the rare occasions Finn confessed that he was neither Christian nor Jew. But he wasn't. He wasn't anything. And his wedding was no time to pretend.

Nervously, Finn adjusted his cuff links, tiny silver daggers Miranda had given him for his birthday the year they met. He had
discarded his well-worn dinner jacket in favor of a morning suit with blue waistcoat and pinstriped trousers. The pinstripes wouldn't have been his choice, but Miranda liked them.

“Is this part of your unfulfilled desire to date a banker?” he'd asked.

“I just like how they look. You look so pretty in stripes. Why should we let the conservatives have all the good clothing?”

He had chosen the tie, patterned after
The Hunt of the Unicorn
. It was one of the few ties he had actually purchased himself, at the Cloisters during a business trip to New York. The unicorn's refusal to stay dead appealed to him, as did the persistence of the tapestries over some five hundred years.

Negasi came bustling down the aisle. “Ambassador, Madame she almost ready. Do you want I should ask guests to the chairs?”

“Yes, please, Negasi. Wonderful. Is Teru okay in there?”

“Yes, Teru she is fine. Everything is ready.” The circular tables had miraculously appeared throughout the first floor sometime during the night, and by the time he descended for breakfast, they were set with silver and crystal and scattered with jasmine petals. Finn had eaten quickly at the small table in the kitchen and sent a tray of tea, pomegranate seeds, and porridge up to Miranda.

He wondered if he should be more worried. He, a lifelong bachelor, was about to marry a woman many men might consider a bad bet. But for some reason nothing in Miranda's past gave him pause. The fact that she had had relationships with so many others before him was oddly comforting as well as intriguing. He didn't have to worry that she would spend her remaining years wondering if she should have sown a few more wild oats. And he didn't have to worry that she would obsess over his own past, though it has been far tamer than hers. Other than the series of unfulfilling or lopsided relationships, there has been only the one serious miscalculation.

He sensed that Miranda was almost disappointed in the lack of passionate complications in his past. Someday, he would tell her about Afghanistan. Someday, but not just yet. He could not risk losing her now. A ring would not be enough to irrevocably bind her to him, but
that plus time, and perhaps someday a child…then he might feel safe enough to confess.

The next time he turned toward the house, she was there, cautiously teetering down the slippery front steps in ivory lace shoes. Heels, even. He felt honored. A strapless gown of sea-green silk clung to her torso before spinning out to just below her knees. In a slight concession to local custom, she had covered her shoulders with an ivory lace bolero. Her hair fell in ringlets down her narrow back. Aside from a circlet of jasmine flowers in her hair, she was unadorned. “A wedding ring,” she had told him, “is jewelry enough.” Finn stood staring at her, as though she were a mirage, until she waved her small bouquet of jasmine in his direction. “Come help me!” she called, “before I sink into this lawn!”

They walked each other down the grassy aisle, Miranda thinking it silly to have her father give her away when she had been living apart from her parents for more than twenty years. She didn't like the idea of being delivered into the keeping of one man by another. Better she and Finn process as equals, mutually submitting themselves to each other's keeping. Not that her father would have come anyway. He was terrified of flying. Which Miranda always thought was an odd fear for an astronomer. “You're a man of science,” she told him. “You know it's the safest way to travel. And the closest to your favorite stars.” He simply agreed with her and stayed behind his telescope. Miranda worried about him living alone. Her mother had disappeared years ago, fed up with her dreamy, absent husband. As soon as Miranda was off to art school, her mother had packed her paints and paintings and gone south, first to Mexico and then to Costa Rica. She had no phone, but Miranda had sent her a wedding invitation pasted to a postcard of the Old City at twilight. In the margins, she had penciled in, “spectacular place to paint.” But she hadn't heard anything back. Either her mother had moved again or she was too wrapped up in her own work to respond.

Miranda hadn't seemed to take this personally. “Weddings aren't really her thing,” she'd said and shrugged when Finn attempted to console her. “It's okay. She's been a good mother most of my life, I
don't mind if she does her own thing now.” Finn could not fathom this. His mother had died of cancer when he was seventeen, and his father had died of a heart attack just a few years ago, and not one day went by when he did not long to hear their voices. Because Finn was an only child, his parents had always been his best friends. Among his favorite memories were reading
The Wind in the Willows
with his father when he got home from school and helping his mother with her translations in the evenings. She was Quebecoise and worked translating poetry from French to English or vice versa. She was the reason Finn had a head start with languages. His English father bartended in a pub close to their house in Acton, always dressed in a clean white shirt and bow tie, even as his clientele grew shabbier over the years. He would have liked Miranda, Finn thought with a pang. Like all the best bartenders, he was a terrible flirt, but the harmless sort, the sort that came home every night to the same woman. He especially appreciated intelligent women, women willing to argue with him. Like Finn's mother.

“Don't feel sorry for me,” Miranda had warned. “I'm not a neglected child. My mother made my lunches and picked me up after school every day. She went to PTA meetings. My father helped me with my math homework. Ultimately though, we're three people without much in common.” Finn had never met Miranda's parents, but he was curious. Someday he would surprise her with a trip to Costa Rica. He wondered if she would like that, or if it would just annoy her. It was hard to tell.

As they stood behind their guests, awaiting their cue, Finn squeezed her fingers. “Sure you want to be an ambassador's wife?”