The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [19]
Sandoz barked a laugh and ran a hand through his hair. "Is it that obvious?"
"No," she assured him, gentle now. "It’s just that I’ve seen you with a gorgeous young woman at the coffee shop on campus a few times, and I put two and two together. So. Tell me!"
He did. About Mendes’s adamantine single-mindedness. Her accent, which he could mimic to perfection but could not identify. The hidalgo remark, so out of proportion to his mild attempt to soften the relationship. The antagonism he sensed but could not understand. And finally, ending at the beginning, the almost physical jolt of meeting her. Not just an appreciation of her beauty or a plain glandular reaction but a sense of ... knowing her already, somehow.
At the end of all this, Anne said, "Well, it’s just a guess, but what occurs to me is that she’s Sephardic."
He came abruptly to a halt and stood still, eyes closed. "Of course. A Jew, of Spanish ancestry." He looked at Anne. "She thinks my ancestors threw her ancestors out of Spain in 1492."
"It would explain a lot." She shrugged and they began to walk again. "Personally, I love the beard, darling, but it does make you look like central casting’s idea of the Grand Inquisitor. You may be pushing a lot of her buttons."
Jungian archetypes work both ways, he realized. "Balkan," he said, after a while. "The accent could be Balkan."
Anne nodded. "Maybe. A lot of Sephardim ended up in the Balkans after the expulsion. She might be from Romania or Turkey. Or Bulgaria. Someplace like that." She whistled, remembering Bosnia. "I’ll tell you something about the Balkans. If people there think they’re going to forget a grudge, they write an epic poem and make the children recite it before bed. You’re up against five hundred years of carefully preserved and very bad memories about imperial Catholic Spain."
The silence lasted a little too long to give credence to his next remark. "I only wanted to understand her better." Anne made a face that said, Oh, sure. Emilio went on doggedly. "The work we are doing is difficult enough. Hostility simply makes it harder."
Anne thought of an off-color comment. She didn’t say it, but Emilio read it on her face and snorted, "Oh, grow up," and she giggled like a twelve-year-old who’s just discovered smutty jokes. Anne took his arm then and they started back toward the house, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood buttoning up for the night. Dogs barked at them, the leaves rattled and whispered. A mother called out, "Heather! Bedtime! I’m not going to tell you again!"
"Heather. Haven’t heard that one in years. Probably named after a grandmother." Anne suddenly stopped and Emilio turned back to look at her. "Shit, Emilio, I don’t know—maybe God is as real for you as George and I are for each other ... We were barely twenty when we got married, back before the Earth’s crust cooled. And believe me, nobody gets through forty years together without noticing a few attractive alternatives along the way." He started to say something, but she held up her hand. "Wait. I intend to bestow upon you unsolicited advice, my darling. I know this will sound glib, but don’t pretend you aren’t feeling what you feel. That’s how things slide into hell. Feelings are facts," she said, her voice a little hard, as she began to walk again. "Look straight at ’em and deal with ’em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If God is anything like a middle-class white chick from the suburbs, which I admit is a long shot, it’s what you do about what you feel that matters." They could see George now, sitting on the front stoop in a pool of light, waiting for them. Her voice was very soft. "Maybe God will love you more if you come back to Him with your whole heart later."
Emilio kissed Anne good-night, waved to George, and started back to John Carroll with a great deal to think about. Anne joined George on the porch, but before Emilio got beyond earshot, she called out, "Hey! What did I get on the midterm?"
"Eighty-six. You messed up the