Three Daughters: A Novel (45 page)

“I don’t know.”

“I told Madame I would only be here for two days, so I can’t show my face again. How will I see you?”

“You can call. We receive calls between five and six in the evening. And I’ll find a way to meet you. Don’t you have to go back to school?”

“Not until late January. We have three months . . .” He kissed her again and then started the car. “We’d better start back.”

They were returning with the sun in front of them and it cast the famous golden glow over the bare reddish mountains and buildings. “I’ll find some way to see you.” The windows of the car were closed to keep out the dust and in that space his deep voice droned soothingly and then rose in righteousness. “After all, we’re not criminals. We can see each other. We’re grown people.”

Their meetings were necessarily short—an hour or two robbed from her ordinary activities. On Friday nights she usually took the three o’clock jitney home but now she waited until five. “I stayed to use the library,” she’d tell her mother, and her father didn’t get home until six so he didn’t know at all. She took a new interest in her clothes and once or twice asked Delal to go shopping with her. Delal was immediately suspicious. She sniffed out a difference in Nijmeh’s attitude. Her usual wide-eyed stare was gone. For once she looked like she had something up her sleeve. What could it be?

James and Nijmeh had become bolder and instead of skulking off in the car to some deserted vacant lot they sometimes went to a museum or to a movie. Once he took her to his home while his parents were out—she was shocked at how wealthy he was—and up to his room. She had lain on his bed with him on top of her, humming with happiness, kissing her mouth and her throat and—after she willingly opened her blouse—her breasts. When she realized how frenzied he was and how hard he had become, she moved her hand down. “Don’t touch me now,” he warned. “I’m . . . too excited.”

“James,” she whispered, “please. Do whatever you want to.”

“Are you crazy? Your father would kill us both. Look . . . just hearing you say that has cooled me off. Nijmeh”—he looked at her sternly—“you can’t be so trusting and willing.”

“Why not? I love you.”

“Is that it? Is it your wild love for me?”

He said it in a joking way, but she nodded and made no attempt to cover herself. She was lying on her back; her pupils were so dilated that the green was just a slim halo for the black center. Her breasts were jutting out enticingly and he closed his lips around them gently and allowed them to pop out before he enclosed them again. His hands went under her and he eased the fingers of both hands between her thighs while he still held onto her buttocks. She stirred and tried to pull her legs apart, but he kept them closed. She struggled to open her legs wider and started moving with him, butting herself against him rhythmically until he allowed her to open herself to him. “Oh, God . . . I’m going to come. Wait!” He pressed himself against her and buried his face in her breasts. Her legs went around him and she made so much noise he put his hand over her mouth just before he came all over his bedspread.

“I love you,” he said tenderly while buttoning up her blouse. “I was sure I wouldn’t fall in love like this, but I was wrong. I love you,” he said again and kissed each of her palms. “We’re going to go to your father.”

She jumped off the bed so fast the springs shuddered. “James, don’t say that. We’re not going to my father. You can’t even say that in jest. It’s not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny. I want to marry you. What’s wrong with that? I’m twenty-four years old. I’m not a criminal or destitute. This may come as a surprise to you, but I’ve been called . . . well”—he looked sheepish—“eligible.”

“It has nothing to do with you. It’s me. He’d never approve of anyone that he didn’t choose himself.”

“How do you know? Has he said so?”

“No, but I know.”

“We’ll have to tell him sometime.”

She slumped down on the bed again. “Why? You’ll be leaving in a few weeks. I’ll prepare him while you’re away.”

“Nijmeh, I think I could convince him. I don’t like you taking the brunt of it. Let’s tell him together.”

“James, no. You don’t know my father. I’ll prepare him during the spring and we can go to him when you come home in July.”

He dropped the subject, but the very next time they met it was on his mind. “I’m going to telephone your father and go to see him. ‘Hello, Mr. Saleh, you don’t know me but I’m in love with your daughter. Now wait, before you shoot that gun, hear me out . . .’ ”

“No,” she screamed, and he saw that she was terrified.

“Hey, I’m sorry. Relax. If you’re that upset, I take it back.” Her face was still tense. “Here,” he said, “have an apple.” She shook her head. “All right. I’ll eat it myself.” He took an enormous bite and made such a loud crack that she turned to look at him and then screamed.

“James, no! Wait! You’ve eaten part of a worm.”

He looked at his apple. “So I have,” he grinned. “Oh, well, I’ll just take the other half. Maybe the poor thing will connect inside. I seem to remember they regenerate.

“James, no!” She grabbed the apple. “Don’t eat it.” She screamed again as the worm fell into her lap. “I’ll have to find it.”

“Hey, here it is.” He held it up and she screamed again and put a hand over her eyes. “It’s all right. It’s not real. It was a joke.”

She didn’t hear him. “You ate it. Oh, my God.”

“No, no. It was a joke. See? It’s rubber. It’s painted rubber. I put it in the apple.”

“You . . .” She pressed her lips with her hand as if letting go would make her hysterical. “It’s painted? Oh!” She began to laugh. “I thought you ate it!” She laughed so hard tears formed in her eyes.

“You’re laughing.” He beamed. “That’s wonderful.”

She fell in love like an unsophisticated girl. With her mind, her heart, and her body. He made her laugh and held her hand and kissed her. He was so handsome. “I am desperately in love,” she would whisper to herself.
Desperation
was the accurate word for what she felt. An overwhelming physical greediness. An insistent desire to be touched. She would twirl her hair around her fingers and dream of his kisses and caresses. She would begin to perspire and become soaked lying in her bed and recreating his arousal, her own response—legs wide, skin flushed and burning, lips bruised, the feathery feel of fingertips, a breathless anxiety.
My beloved wants only me! This is what I was made for: to be a woman for him!
Finally, life made sense. How could she have lived before? How could she have been satisfied?

Her openness made James shake his head, as if something that would have been very dangerous with anyone else was safe with him. Still, it overwhelmed him and he would wince and look around for someone to share the novelty of finding a girl who was so breathtakingly, foolishly honest.

“You’re lucky it’s me you’re offering your body to,” he’d admonish. “At least I have the sense to save you from your wanton behavior. You’re supposed to play hard to get.”

“I love you. Why should I play hard to get?” she’d ask logically.

“There, you see! What sane girl would make such an incriminating statement? It sends a man running for cover.”

“Will you run?”

“That’s the other thing.” He looked perplexed. “I find it not threatening at all. I’m honor-bound to protect you from some other lout who would take advantage of your . . . I’ll call it generosity.”

She didn’t care what he called it. For her, it was the unexpected familiarity that made life exciting. She liked his proprietary arm thrown around her shoulders. He pushed back her hair and adjusted her sweater or yanked her across a street of traffic. She was his. “You want to make me happy,” she reminded him.

“That shouldn’t be such a novelty. Didn’t Mama and Papa want you to be happy?”

“My father wants me to be happy as long as I’m doing something he approves of.
Loyalty
is the word I hear most often.” She had never spoken or thought of her father in such harsh terms. The freedom of it made her overstate the case. “If I do exactly as he says, he smiles. If I don’t he becomes distant. And when my father’s distant, the people around him might as well be in Siberia. My mother . . . well, she’s another case altogether. She’s never recovered from having me, I guess. There were several miscarriages before and after me. She looks at me sometimes as if I’m going to disappear. She’s not a very relaxed person unless she’s out of doors or on a horse. Then she looks magnificent. I love to see her ride.”

James sighed. “That sounds about par for the course for mothers and fathers. Don’t feel you did any worse than the rest of us. My mum’s whole existence is playing bridge and making crepe paper roses for all her charity balls.”

Perhaps James was right. Perhaps her parents were no more strict or idiosyncratic than anyone else’s, but she felt differently about them. It was no longer her father’s smile and her mother’s eyes that danced before her prior to sleep. They were fuzzy figures compared to the clear visceral reaction to closeness with a man. She was drenched in the sweetness of it. Love swept her clean and broke the old connections. Her connection to her father snapped like a dry brittle twig.

32.

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU CAN TRUST ME?

D
elal knew something was up. Nijmeh wasn’t Nijmeh. She was twitchy. Her mouth was drooping and she played distractedly with a ring on her finger while she spoke. Where was that old placid goody girl? “You look as if your dog died.” It was titillating to watch that face all crumpled. “What’s wrong?”

“Why do you think there’s something wrong?”

“Are you kidding? You look glum. I’ve never seen this dark side of you,” Delal said sarcastically. “This may sound rotten, but I’m surprised that you can be emotional.”

“I wanted to go to the films,” said Nijmeh. “
Hamlet
is showing with Laurence Olivier.”

“That’s why you’re upset? Incredible! I didn’t know you were interested in films. You could probably be in films.” Delal enjoyed pointing out the larger picture in people’s lives.

“Don’t say that in front of my father. He’d have a heart attack.”

“Yeah, I know. So why can’t you go to the films?”

“There’s a meet and I’m supposed to participate. My mother’s counting on it.”

“You mean a horse thing?” She never understood all the passion over horses. She knew it was chic for girls to love horses. It was supposedly a sign of good breeding to go gaga over the beasts, but she didn’t like them at all. She didn’t like the smell and she was frightened of falling off. She was more than a little respectful of Nijmeh’s ability.

Nijmeh smiled briefly. “That ‘horse thing,’ as you call it, is the King’s Meet for the Art of Dressage.”

“Ugh. You go in for that sort of thing? Do you actually crave it?”

“No. I like the horses but I hate the silly posturing. My mother has this thing about it. It’s the only demand she makes of me so it’s hard to tell her it doesn’t appeal to me.”

It’s the only demand she makes because your father makes all the others, dummy.
“Why don’t you go to the flick anyway?”

“The what?”

“The flick, the film. So you’ll miss one lousy meet. Your mother will forget about it. Two hours later she’ll be her old self. Take it from me, mine is never as heated up as I predict she’ll be over anything. My father’s even worse. He hits the roof over something and then is so contrite he goes out and buys me a present. Parents are crazy. You just have to know how to manage them.”

“You make everything sound so simple, Delal. Your mind is very clear-cut and you don’t agonize over every move.”

“Well, some of us are like that. What do you say? Are you going to defy Mama and emancipate yourself? Take my advice. Don’t tell her in person. If you leave a message, she can’t argue with a piece of paper. You really like Shakespeare?”

Her eyes lowered until just the lashes were visible, splayed out—two near tears still clinging—like little stalactites against those pale contoured cheeks. “It isn’t only the film. I want to meet someone.”

“The plot thickens! Holy Moses, who is it? Wait. Don’t tell me. It’s a male, right?” This was unexpected and it made Delal uncomfortable. Nijmeh was holding out on her. This explained the sudden interest in clothes. Good God, if her father found out! She wished he would find out.

“His name’s James.”

“Oh, boy! He’s a foreigner. That will definitely give your father that heart attack. Is he crazy about you, this James?” Her tone was cold but Nijmeh was too upset to notice.

“I don’t know,” said Nijmeh. “I only know I’m crazy about him. Delal, you mustn’t mention this to your mother or anyone. If my father found out, it would be awful.”

“I’ll say! That would be the end of James.”

“Don’t say that,” Nijmeh hissed. “That would not be the end of James. It might be the end of me, but it wouldn’t be the end of James.”

“Why are you confiding in me?” asked Delal. “How do you know you can trust me?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, what’s it going to be? The horses?” Delal’s voice deepened dramatically. “Or danger?”

“Danger,” whispered Nijmeh. “I guess you’ve convinced me.”

“Good. Remember, you only live once.”

Once she knew what Nijmeh was up to, Delal could think of little else. Her skin changed temperature and she could feel her blood running along. There was a sense of outrage at being left behind. In her imagination she found the man of her dreams over and over. Someone handsome and distant and involved in important work. Perhaps she would work alongside him. Her body was all ready for love. She had read in a book about a heroine who ached to be kissed and had thought,
Yes! That’s it, exactly.
She ached to be kissed, too.

That Nijmeh already had a man drove her crazy. Her words went round and round:
It isn’t only the film. I want to meet someone.
Delal got the idea of spying on them (only for a moment did it make her squirm) and getting a look at the man who loved Nijmeh. It was important to see exactly what Nijmeh had found for herself, otherwise the idea was horribly threatening. People went to museums to see intimate paintings and that wasn’t considered voyeuristic. So why was it wrong to sneak into the Bijou to see her cousin with James?

They were in the last row. His arm was around her back and they were looking at each other, not at the screen. He was tall, and in the dimness it seemed he was older, too. A real man. Accidentally the light from the screen lit them and she saw his hand around Nijmeh’s upper arm. He was stroking her skin gently at first and then—oh, my—much more insistently. She could feel that masculine finger on her own skin and it made her feel hot and then cold, as if all the hair on her body were standing on end while a breeze blew through it. Did others evaluate her the way she was evaluating James? Did they secretly laugh at her for being cheerful? Did they think she was trying too hard? Did they feel sorry for her?

When the two walked out, Delal watched James’s face and knew instantly what kind of man he was. Good at sports. Good at most things. She recognized that unworried look of someone who made eyes light up when he appeared. Confident and full of vitality, he made his way through the crowd as if he deserved to go first. He was dressed in just the kind of clothes that appealed to Delal—rough, tweedy, and expensive. He was what she would have dreamed of for herself and that realization made her bitter. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, but he was oblivious to her. Resentment left her limp. She felt that Nijmeh, by having someone, was ruining her own chances of finding someone as nice.

“Mother—” It was after dinner and Julia was reading in the study. “What would you say if I told you Nijmeh is sneaking around meeting a man? A foreign man.”

Julia closed the book around her finger. “Delal, what are you talking about?”

“I asked my question first. What would you say if she was?”

“I’d say it would break her father’s heart.” Julia’s voice was circumspect.

“Why would it break his heart? I mean, as opposed to making him angry?”

“Samir has raised Nijmeh to take over his role in the community. She’s his spiritual heir, his personal production. If she were to be taken away by a man who wasn’t right—especially a foreigner—I don’t want to think about what would happen.”

“Well, she is.”

“She is what?”

“Sneaking around and meeting a foreign man.”

“Delal, are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’ve seen them. They go to the movies and neck.”

“Oh, no!” Julia rose.

“Oh, yes. Not that I blame her. He’s very cute. But if your brother wants Nijmeh to stay a virgin, you’d better tell him she’s on the way to crossing over the bridge.” Delal sighed and then grinned. “Poor Samir. All that work for nothing.”

“The father is Charles Saad,” said Nadia. She looked pale and stunned. The news that her daughter was deeply involved with a man made her panic. She couldn’t shake the idea that Nijmeh had inherited weakness of character from those other parents. Some sexual mania. If she were compelled by forces beyond her, she couldn’t obey. Nadia hadn’t wanted to think of the other parents, but now making life decisions for Nijmeh frightened her. Perhaps they should let her alone to do as she wanted. That was the least they could do. Oh, God, why was remorse coming now at this late date? It was different for Samir. For him, it was the simple need to protect his flesh and blood. “They have the Weber Electric.”

“I know what they have,” he said impatiently. “Every time a phonograph is sold, or a record or a radio or a toaster or any appliance, he gets a cut.”

Within a few days of his sister’s call, Samir found out what he had to about James Sheridan Saad and his parents. He had no strong feelings about the mother. But the father! The father was a dandy who had lost his own father during the cholera epidemic at the onset of the war. He wore cravats or whatever you call those things that Englishmen stuff into their shirtfronts to herald the idea that they are at their leisure. He smoked little dark-brown cigarettes inserted into a long holder that he used to punctuate his sentences. He had adopted the worst traits of British aristocracy and leached out his own nationality. An opportunist without roots. The sort of man Samir detested.

The mother was the daughter of an upper-class Whig who had left his seat in Parliament to become managing director of Weber Electrics, a large diversified appliance company. Lavinia Saad was elegant, well intentioned, and superficial. Her one daring act had been to marry the dashing
Méditerrané
she had met during a summer visit to Cape Cod. He had appeared in perfect white suits and wore his thick hair slicked back. The sun had turned his skin to gold. He’d had a new business degree, flashing dark eyes, and a devastating accent.

“You’re not mad because he has a successful business?” Nadia knew it had nothing to do with business. It was the English blood. Was he still bothered by her involvement with Victor?

“Of course not, but I hate the fact that he stays here simply to make money. If he could make a better living elsewhere, he’d leave forever.”

“Are you sure that’s the way it is?”

“Yes, I’m sure. He’s the kind of man who loves to be loved by other nationalities. They spend half the year in Europe with her family. They have no ties to Jerusalem other than his lucrative business.”

“The young man is going to law school in Edinburgh. Perhaps it’ll die a natural death.”

“No,” he said. “This is serious. Nijmeh’s not a glib, superficial girl. If she’s involved with this man, she’s given him her whole heart.”

That Friday afternoon, he went to bring his daughter home for the weekend. He waited for her in the parlor and when she saw his eyes, she knew he had found out.
Oh, God!
Her mouth went dry, her eyes burned, and her heart doubled its speed. Her body was preparing for defense.

“What’s wrong?” The stiff formal room made her whisper.

“I came to give you a ride home.”

“Oh?” She had been so eager to see James that her father’s presence, while it made her fearful, also made her resentful. “I can’t go home with you. I was planning to stay until the last minute to do some work. You should have given me some warning. What a shame, you’ve wasted a trip.” Her manner was strained and formal and she could see his surprise and hurt.

“I’ll wait for you.”

“Wait?” He continued to stare at her. “Why are you looking at me? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all,” he said. “You’re a beautiful young woman and I’m startled at how quickly you grew up.”

“Quickly?” she squealed. “Not quickly at all. Delal grew up quickly. I took forever.”

“But now it’s done.” He couldn’t keep the sadness out of his voice. “You’re a woman.”

“Baba, don’t wait. Please.”

“Of course I’ll wait.” He became diabolically calm. “I want to take you home myself.”

“There’s something wrong. I know it.” Her voice was shrill.

“What could be wrong?” he said stiffly, and she saw his mouth tighten. “You tell me.”

She couldn’t tell him anything. “I’ll get my things.”

They had dinner without mentioning James. She felt as if she could reach and grab the air and it would crackle from the tension, but her father carried on a conversation. He spoke about Charles de Gaulle as the only hope of France and he said that Eisenhower was exactly what America needed. He said that a friend of his had ordered a television set for them and it would come in a day or two. Before bed they sat like three stones listening to the radio. The parlor of the sheik’s house had a vaulted ceiling and terrazzo floors that made the broadcast sound ominous. The announcer said John Foster Dulles had visited Jerusalem on his way to Amman. He had stopped at the Mandelbaum Gate for barely twenty minutes, distracted and unapproachable. The Arabs who had expected a sincere and fruitful diplomatic exchange were bitterly disappointed, said the announcer.

The next morning Samir asked Nijmeh to accompany him to the farm. He had two horses saddled and they rode together around all of the acreage and out into the wilderness. He was silent. The desert had a curious effect on him, especially at this time of year when the first flowers were bringing the cracked earth to life. He couldn’t help but compare his predictable routine with the precarious days he had known as a youth with Marwan, and it made him introspective. Fledgling bustards chirped in the low grass. Soon the entire area would glow with green and the scent of the flowers would perfume the air. He saw that Nijmeh, too, was moved. As they reached the crest of the hill, a pack of wild gazelles came toward them at full speed, then dashed to their left without breaking rank and zigzagged wildly to the right. Their pacemaker was a white buck so dazzling that momentarily father and daughter were transfixed.