American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [68]
I had a family too.
I’m glad.
But I always wondered about you. It’s good to see you again.
It’s good to see you too, she said.
He held her hand and looked into her eyes for a long time. His eyes were green. Her daughter’s eyes were green. That was funny.
He squeezed her hand and stood up and shook the sand from his pants.
Well, he said, I have to go now.
I should be going too, she said. She did not move.
Thank you for everything, he said. And good luck with your family.
You too, she said. Thank you for saying hello.
When Anna came walking back over with Honor, Pearl was wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Her hand was thin and veined and trembling.
From the speeding car Honor watched herself walk across the desert with Anna and Pearl. Her hat fell off and stayed in the sand as they walked away. She thought: I know now who those people are. She didn’t feel anger or sadness or forgiveness or compassion. She just took in the scene and thought: That is the way it was.
She leaned down and kissed Milo and she felt a peace in not having to imagine anymore. Trouble starts, she thought, when we take the symbol for reality. It was a line she must have read in some book Sam had given her. She didn’t have to do that anymore, take the symbol for reality.
She saw the three figures walk into the desert and she watched them out the window and she knew for the first time that she had not been letting them go and then the car drove on and she let them go.
That night, in the motel, Honor fell asleep exhausted, still in her clothes, on the second bed. Her face a bright light against the dark maroon bedspread. Her mother marveled at the openness of the child: her mouth wide, her hands upturned, her splayed limbs like disheveled clothes.
Anna was still so young and yet she never slept with her palms open, always curled herself into a ball. If there was one thing she could give her daughter it would be this: to stay open. It would not be an inherited trait, she thought, putting down her toothbrush and turning off the light in the bathroom. Then she crawled into the other bed beside Pearl. It was dark now.
Hi, darling, Pearl said.
Hi, Grandma, she said.
They lay next to each other in the plain room. There was a humming from a generator and lights from the parking lot outside beamed through the drapes and swept across the walls every now and then. They lit up the blank TV screen, the low dresser, the beige wallpaper.
Do you ever regret coming east and leaving the movies? Anna asked.
No, I don’t, Pearl said. She was looking straight up with her eyes open. Anna, already falling asleep, couldn’t see the tears. If things hadn’t happened exactly the way they did, she said, I would never have been here with you.
Milo was also letting go. He could tell that he had given her something and in doing this for her he felt a pressure like the weight of a body, a dead weight, rising from his chest. She looked down on him and she saw the light coming from his face and she felt his ribs nearly burst apart and his arms spread out to receive her and she knew now that it had been she who was the soldier and she saw that he was the angel.
He talked to her in his sleep for the last time. He said they drowned him in the river. He said they came for him in the darkness and they didn’t look at him because they knew him.
Who, she said, who are you now?
My name is Parvin, he said.
He said they put a sack over her head and they tied the sack and then they lowered her into a boat. They took another boat and pulled the second boat along behind them and paddled out into the Bosphorous at night. Through a hole in the burlap she could see the stars wobbling on the surface of the water. When they reached far enough they stopped paddling and then they tilted the second boat. When she fell she fell fast and a million bubbles burst around her in an explosion of phosphorescent