The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction) (11 page)

Euly was amazed at her aunt’s self-sufficiency, her independence, from the time she was only a young woman and at a time when the same expectations were more inclined to the opposite sex. She and Uncle Teddy divorced around the same time her parent’s had.

It made sense now knowing what she knew about Micaiah.

She couldn’t broach the subject immediately.

Euly had to ease into it smoothly.

“I made some baba especially for your visit.” Her aunt wrapped her arms around her neck and hugged her out on the porch.

“No way! I love your baba, auntie. It’s the best.”

“You always did love my cooking. You were such a good girl. It looks like some things never change.”

And, charming. She was the same charming woman she’d grown up around. Euly felt a pang rush through her. It was the first time she’d ever felt a longing to be back in Phoenix.

“Well, you haven’t seen me in ten years, auntie, maybe I’ve become a horrible, bitter woman.” She waved a dismissive hand at her and smiled.

“Life is hard. It wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve changed a little.”

Euly couldn’t gauge from her facial expression but she felt invisible. She felt as though Aunt Moon knew exactly why she’d come back to visit her. Euly lowered her eyes when her aunt looked at her.

“Would you like some Arak? I still have some.” Euly looked up fast and smiled. There was a glint in her eye and a curl at the side of her mouth.

“Good lord, you don’t.”

Her aunt beamed and shook her head furiously. She was giddy about the suggestion and got two cordials out before Euly could even respond.

“Well, if you insist.” Euly grinned a wide sweeping grin when she could see her aunt was acting like a kid. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had Arak?”

“I’m guessing it’s been a while. Probably not since your dad.” She turned and tipped her head in an apology. Her aunt’s mention of him flipped Euly head-over-heels to somewhere other than where she was right then and there. It was a time-warp.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

She remembered her dad with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was cool to smoke back when cigarettes weren’t killers, when they were filter-less and advertised on TV – Lucky Strikes,

Camels and Marlboros. Throughout her mother’s albums, Euly found photo after photo of him in his Army uniform with a cig dangling sloppily from his bottom lip and her dad saying something funny to the camera man. Another one: the cigarette, her sister still in diapers, and Ray holding Enaya up proudly with a smoke sandwiched in a tight wide grin looking like a small erection. That was her dad, Ray – available for any photo op, quick-witted, dashing in his youth – the smoker.

Belle drew him once, his face. Euly adored that portrait and confiscated it after her father’s death. People always commented to Euly about that drawing. They said how much her dad reminded them of Paul Newman when Newman was a young man but dad was darker, much darker, and Euly was sure Mr. Newman didn’t understand the word hummus the way her dad understood it, as a staple in his diet, a part of every meal from infant to adult.

He grew up in the Depression Years and fought in World War II and the Korean War, consecutively. He loved the Army and talked about it all the time. He carried the Army’s teachings into his civilian life by shining his shoes daily. And, she knew when was shining his shoes. The potent polish permeated the house and wafted into her bedroom.

The soft swishing as he buffed resonated through her door like a whisper or a glass against the wall.

He made a bed you could bounce a quarter off of, and kept his toiletries in a small satchel, just in case he had to leave quickly. He had his satchel stocked and ready the day he died. That day she opened a can of Ray’s shoe polish and let its leathery fragrance saturate her senses. And, Old Spice cologne – Old Spice and Ray went hand in hand. One was nothing without the other.

Ray told Enaya and Euly stories about the guys he spent time with during his service. Pride beamed from him when he spoke about his barrack- mates in Washington at Fort Lewis. He told the girls tales of camping in the woods and sleeping in his “fart sack” on Mount Rainier during weekend trainings. Many years after, when Euly was seventeen, he wrote and told her once about the experience. It was the first time she recalled ever hearing the story. He’d sent the letter when she and her sister were traveling the Pacific Northwest one summer. Enaya was twenty. And it was funny they were in the same stomping grounds their father had beat during boot camp and when he was around their same age.

Ray made his money when he opened Romano’s, an Italian restaurant. A few years afterward, he opened another one across town. Until, he had a chain of Romano’s around the valley. And, although the restaurants were extremely successful, Ray retained an unpretentious style and was a comedian at heart.

Ray was born in 1927 to Euly’s grandfather who left Lebanon and all his cash in a dash – at least that’s the way the story went. Even though Euly had not one photo of the man, she remembered her grandfather to be grim and reclusive.

Ray was the middle son and seemed to have an insatiable need to be in the spotlight. He made silly faces, cracked jokes, pushed cigarettes into one side of his nose like a magic trick and dragged them out the other, or stuck burned-out flashbulbs into one or both of his nostrils to make it look like he had bubbles of snot hanging out. The girls found his capers uproariously funny because he wanted to make people laugh. But, Ray’s father found little humor in his antics.

Ray grew up to be sweet and gentle. It was odd due to his upbringing by a hardened man with a mysterious past. When he died, Ray was crushed. He died before giving Ray the approval he so desperately hungered for, a hunger only his father could sate. And, to this day, Euly wondered if her grandfather was proud of Ray for serving in the Army. Ray died of congestive heart failure. The doctors attributed it to his smoking. The recollection of her family felt hard like sharp pebbles under bare feet.

Their family did normal middle-class family things together – went to Disneyland, Carlsbad Caverns, took road trips, sang in the car, fixed BBQs in the backyard, swam in a manufactured metal swimming pool, owned a dog and a cat, had training wheels on their bikes with flags of pink and yellow ribbon streamers from the handle bars. They grew up like Joe America. She had nothing to complain about and yet.

For her, it seemed the world was racing by and her legs were feeling leaden. Up to now she’d had nominal successes in life – was one of the lucky ones.

He left them once just before her eighteenth birthday. It was 1975. Belle forced him out. He’d let the family down with his “indiscretion.” When it happened, she lashed out, rebelled, cut off her jeans like a leftover hippy, smoked pot, and messed around with a boy in the costume room behind the school’s theatre all before her parent’s divorce settlement.

Back further, to the early 60’s, dust storms rolled into the desert basin like a tsunami over innocent beaches raping the land. The storms were some of her earliest childhood memories. She remembered lying on her back, her mother pumping the rocking chair under them and watching through a screen-door a brewing storm rage out past the tops of neighborhood houses, out past a low line bowl of sage scented mountains, out past the ends of earth for all she could see through the door, there on her mother’s lap. The vision crystallized in her mind.

Euly would lie on her back when afternoons dipped into evening, after dinner time when no one else was home – not dad, not Enaya. She drank chocolate milk out of a coke bottle made with Nestlé’s powdered chocolate and ice cold whole milk. Belle mixed it in green Coke bottles. She remembered her mother holding the bottle with one thumb pressed over the opening and shaking it to mix the ingredients. Belle would lick her thumb and hand the bottle over to Euly. It was their ritual. The earlier Euly could remember, the more pleasant the visions became however finite.

And, Belle, tortured with a fear of thunder storms, let her fear bleed out onto her girls. She was born at a time when the heat played tricks on people’s eyes – when mirages slid across the earth like ghosts, when stargazers could watch Leo prowl the evening sky. Her mother, sick and tired of the pregnancy, released Euly late one day in the middle of August.

That day, a coming storm played havoc on Belle’s nerves. That’s what she told her girls – Euly was born in the middle of a storm.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Euly's mind snapped back to Moon's words. “Oh, my God. Of course, I remember.” Aunt

Moon’s comment shook Euly out of her trance. She spoke in a quieter voice. “I remember those parties, Eu.” She seemed to detect Euly’s mood and nearly whispered after her first sip of Arak.

“Not those parties, auntie, that party, the last one. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh my, yes. It was horrible. That poor little girl.”

“Well, auntie, I’m trying to find out as much information about her as possible. I’m writing my memoir and wanted to start the story there, at that time in my life.”

“A memoir? Isn’t that fascinating?”

“Well, I hope so.” She looked hard at her aunt. “Mother told me some things about that party, other things, that I wanted to verify with you.”

“Well, I’m sure she remembers it well. It was a very sad day.” She shook her head as she remembered. “You know her brother died just before they moved out here.”

“That’s what you told me when I called. It’s awful.”

Aunt Moon shook her head as she suckled her drink.

“Have some baba.” She spooned the dip out onto a plate and loaded Euly up with pita bread. She slathered dip onto one of the pieces of bread and shoved half of it into her mouth. The lemon was first to hit her then the garlic. The salty flesh of the eggplant melted over her tongue and she rolled her eyes.

“Oh, auntie, it’s just like I remember.

Wonderful.”

“Well, we have lots. Eat. You need to eat.” She now understood how her body had gotten the curves it had today.

“What happened to them – the girl’s family?”

“Well, the father died of heart failure not long after, maybe a year, no, it was more like two or three years after the little girl drowned. And, the oldest brother fell to pieces. He became a drunk and I think he even did marijuana. So sad.”

“Is the mother still alive?”

“Oh, yes. I see her occasionally still at the Cedar Club. She is a strong woman. Had to be, I suppose. What else can you do? She only had one child left but you stay alive for that one, you know? Can’t take your own life. God doesn’t look happily on that.” She picked up a piece of bread and scooped up a dollop of baba, folded it into her pita and ate the whole thing in one bite.

“I can’t imagine. I know I haven’t had any children of my own but, still, I just can’t see how someone can live through that.” As she spoke it, she realized how her aunt must feel about the subject. “Oh, auntie. I’m sorry. I’m being so careless about your feelings.”

“No dear. No need to apologize. I love thinking about my darling Micaiah. He was a gentle boy.”

“It must be so painful.”

“It is. Even after this long. I cry every single day.” Her eyes began to well up and she stared straight at Euly, almost freezing in place.

“Mother told me some things, you know.”

She charged forward hoping to distract her aunt from crying.