Fleur
MOTHER WAS CONVINCED that a weekend together at Two Bunch Palms was just what I needed to conquer my unyielding blues. Built by gangster Al Capone in the 1920s (and with bullet holes in its walls to prove it) and memorialized in the Hollywood send-up film The Player, the resort was everything the rest of the country derided and envied about SoCal. During our two hour and forty-one minute drive there, we saw more freeways than any human should be subjected to, opening thankfully into vast expanses of desert dotted with sagebrush, arrestingly shaped cacti, and dazzling splashes of orange ezperanza, purple lupins, and sweet-faced monkeyflowers.
Nearing our destination on Two Bunch Trail, we passed a woman with way too much make-up walking a calico cat on a leash. The animal looked terrified. When I shared my observation with Mother, she nodded. “I don’t doubt it. I’m all too familiar myself with the terror of being saddled with something, or”—her eyes raked over the woman with the too-plump lips—“someone you can’t bear.” With Mother, the purgatory of her years in a miserable marriage was never far from her mind.
Over the next few days, we kept ourselves occupied perusing copious quantities of mindless magazines, taking Tai Chi classes in the Yoga Dome, chatting about nothing and everything during long walks amid the spectacular rock piles of Joshua Tree, and tracing a path in Big Morongo Canyon alongside a creek created by a major earthquake fault. Mother was sensitive enough to let me fall into long, meditative silences as we floated in the resort’s mineral water grotto. On our last night, we splurged on an unbelievably yummy dinner at Tinto’s in Palm Springs.
But a life avoided is a life unlived. I returned to the Fiskes’ with relaxed muscles, pampered pores, and an actual suntan, determined to pour my energies into quantum entanglement. Even a particularly unsettling phone conversation with Assefa didn’t deter me from my resolve. On Monday morning, I leapt out bed, cooked up an omelet seasoned with fresh basil and thyme gifted to me by Two Bunch’s friendly head chef, and sped off to Caltech, eager to dive in.
But my heart sank as soon as I arrived. It would have to be Bob Ballantine who was there to greet me. The room was empty but for him, the sun shooting a shaft of light through the window blinds, which someone had opened at enough of a skewed angle to be annoying. He looked up with a surprised smile, which he quickly adjusted into an expression of sympathy.
There was nothing for it. I had to approach and be subjected to what I made sure was a brief hug, pulling away with an embarrassed little laugh. In recent bouts of torturing myself over my shameful lack of interest in Assefa’s original Ethiopian incarnation, the void had used the face of Bob to punish me for the faithlessness of my desire. Now, with the actual man right before me—and despite the fact that he’d shown me nothing but kindness (well, that and a rather determined concupiscence)—I struggled to understand how I’d gotten myself into bed with him. I couldn’t help but notice that he had the usual glob of lox fat between his teeth, this time between the two front ones. Did he never breakfast on anything but smoked fish? Or brush his teeth? I saw, as well, that he’d evidently given up on the gel he’d been using in his hair. It was longer now, edging toward the shoulders of his navy pullover, upon which his ubiquitous dusting of dandruff was hitching a ride.
“I’m so sorry, Fleur,” he murmured, his eye tic seconding the motion. But my ears were attuned to what sounded like Stanley and the gang coming up the hall.
I turned to see my mentor burst into the room with his old verve, moving forward with something just short of a serious hop. I’d returned from Two Bunch to discover that Stanley had secretly been conspiring to arrange Assefa’s transfer from UCLA to New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell. The favor had clearly gone at least a little way in assuaging my mentor’s gargantuan guilt. According to Stanley, Assefa had submitted to sitting down with him this past weekend and, while he hadn’t exactly forgiven him for his atrocious lapse of decency, he’d heard him out, eking out in return a terse acknowledgment of Stanley’s sincere regret.
I’d called Assefa as soon as I heard, gingerly broaching the topic and getting a reply that pretty much skirted his encounter with Stanley. He delivered the relieving news that his doctor had removed his cervical collar, and he actually sounded a little enthusiastic about moving to Manhattan, where his parents had a few friends among the city’s large Ethiopian contingent. He’d stressed how grateful he was to be able to continue his training at one of the top-rated cardiac wards in the country. “Even better than UCLA, Fleur,” he’d said, and I told myself it was an awfully good sign that such things were starting to matter to him again.
I had no idea how Abeba and Achamyalesh were going to bear letting him go. Mother had speculated that the fact that Achamyalesh had actually been hired to teach two classes at Pasadena City College would go some ways in filling the empty nest. But this was from the same woman who’d moved halfway across the country to live near a daughter she’d never been terribly close with. I worried about them. I’d said as much to Assefa.
Which led to a surprising outburst. “They’re not saints, you know!”
“I didn’t think they were.”
“I mean, really.”
“I don’t ... Assefa, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you should probably let your pal Stanley off the hook.”
I’d sat heavily onto my bed then, displacing Jillily, who quickly rearranged herself by my side, kneading the bedclothes and purring ecstatically. Given my sense of dread, her pleasure felt discordant. I nudged her off the bed, and she set herself hunched in the middle of the room with her back to me, her tail angrily slapping the floor.
“The truth is that if anything sent me over the edge, it was my father telling me that Makeda was conceived from him fucking her mother.”
I think my heart actually skipped a few beats. “What!”
“You heard me. I came back from Ethiopia to learn that she is my sister, Fleur. My fucking sister.”
“Half sister,” I’d murmured.
“Does it really matter?”
I had to admit that it didn’t. And I have to admit now that I simply could not take in his disclosure. The pain he had to have felt was unfathomable.
Then he’d cried out, “Oh, God, I should not have told you this! I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It is a private family matter. You have to swear to me that you will never tell another soul.”
“Assefa, I promise. But listen, you’ve been through way too much. I hope you can meet this new incarnation with an open heart.”
“Is there such a thing, Fleur?”
“I used to think so,” I’d replied.
I could have sworn he was crying, too, when we ended our call.
I’d rolled over and lain across my bed, pressing the edge of my pillow against my mouth as I sobbed over what felt like a particularly dark instance of the Butterfly Effect. To think that the event of an Ethiopian anthropologist having sex with another man’s wife would ripple across continents and time to prompt a moral crisis for a froggish American Nobelist and settle a secret weight inside another Nobelist’s soul.
How could Assefa and I live separate destinies when we knew so much about each other? Could he ever find relief from his obsession with Makeda? His passion for me seemed to have evaporated entirely. I have to confess that it hurt.
Had I lost mine for him? If it was there, it had gone into hiding. But the beautiful god who’d chosen me and me alone to love, whose naked skin was satin and whose voice a velvet whisper (“Come, dukula, let me see you”), who’d teased me with his humor and his hands and his quicksilver mind, offering endless avenues of surprise? I knew the strains of “Aydenegetem Lebie” would haunt me forever, reminding me of something exceedingly precious that I would never know again.
Meanwhile, here was my team, looking at me with so much love and worry that I choked on my own spittle. Fighting for breath, tears rolling down my cheeks, I gestured that I was okay. Katrina put a hand on my arm, and Amir proffered a handkerchief. It definitely helped to blow my nose. I offered his hanky back to him. Eyeing it distastefully, he refused to take it. Everyone laughed.
“She’ll be fine,” Stanley pronounced, and for some reason, I started to choke all over again.
Never one for tact, Gunther rolled his good eye, muttering, “This is the one who’s going to convince Congress to fund our work?”
At that, my choking morphed into giggles. Stanley gave a few silly hops, and I started waving the handkerchief in Amir’s direction. He backed away, and I went after him, weaving around desks and chairs. When we came to a breathless stop, he panted, “Reminds me of Lord Hanuman,” which got everyone jabbering over the time the chimp had thrown volleys of turd balls in this very room, with us scurrying frantically for cover.
“Wait,” I said, still breathing hard.
“What?” asked Amir.
“I can’t believe I forgot. Serena McKenna’s invited me to come visit Lord Hanuman at Gombe. Jane Goodall’s actually going to be there.”
Amir’s eyes widened. He grabbed me and demanded, “When?”
I did a quick mental computation, realizing that in the midst of Assefa’s crisis, I’d not gotten back to Serena. “Oh, God, soon. Like maybe next week.”
“Call her,” Amir said urgently. “I’ll come with you.” His expression was intense. I could sense everyone watching us. Amir was usually the happy-go-lucky one of our team, wearing a peace sign bindi when the mood struck him, teaching Katrina Bollywood dance routines, cheering madly for Naduparambil Pappachen Pradeep, no matter which Indian football team he was playing for. But about two things he was always serious: our work on P.D. and his love for Lord Hanuman. The chimp, that is. He’d cared for Lord Hanuman ever since a friend had liberated him from a lab that no longer needed him, and he’d relinquished him with great sadness to Jane Goodall’s Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve when it was clear the creature needed more wilderness for his wildness than could be provided by the environs of Pasadena.
I mentally kicked myself. It should have occurred to me that Amir would give half a leg to see his simian friend again.
Stanley H. Fiske caught my eye. He nodded slightly, silently mouthing the words, “Say yes.”
Gunther looked lost in thought. I knew he was aching to get back to our work on dematerialization. I also knew that Congress was in no mood to hear testimony from me while they were busy shutting down the government for the umpteenth time.
Katrina and Tom were holding hands and grinning at me encouragingly. They were the physics team members Amir was closest to, besides Adam and myself, of course. Which I suppose is a roundabout way of saying that Gunther, our team Eeyore, had a rather hard time getting close to anyone.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll email her as soon as I get home.”
But when I got back to the Fiskes’, things were in disarray, throw pillows littering the living room floor as if Lord Hanuman himself had tossed them. It turned out that Gwen had gone to her ENT Dr. Nastarti, who’d confirmed what she’d secretly been suspecting. She was slowly going deaf in her good ear. It wasn’t too bad yet, but it would likely be in the not too distant future. Needless to say, she was pretty distraught, sobbing on my shoulder, “Fleur! I don’t want to get old! I hate this!” I couldn’t imagine what it was like to feel your body failing, piece by piece, but I did know I was terrified of losing either of the Fiskes. I was relieved to hear Stanley’s keys rattling at the front door. Sensing my distress as soon as he entered the room—it might have been the moans coming out of my mouth and the little mini-flaps of my hands—he took hold of the situation, telling his sister in a gruff tone (which I knew belied a deep filial devotion), “Gwen, get a grip; there are such things as hearing aids.” And then he turned to me. “You’d better get online quick and see if you can find a flight for yourself and Amir.”
At which point Gwennie shifted gears, demanding, “Flight? With Amir? What’s going on?”
I let them sort it out and retreated to my bedroom, grabbing my laptop before flopping onto the old Liberty fabric covered armchair that Mother had bought during our New York incarnation and which Jillily had managed over the years to shred into a tattered version of its previous glory. But just as I located a website detailing which airlines flew to Tanzania, I heard my meowing cat ringtone. I got up from my desk chair and frantically fished around in my purse for my cell. As soon as I answered, Assefa burst out excitedly that he’d firmed up his own travel plans. In four days, he’d be leaving for a two-week seminar offered by the American College of Cardiology in D.C. before flying directly to New York to begin his new incarnation.
Four days. I dropped heavily onto my bed and stared bleakly at the Einstein poster on the opposite wall, for once unamused at one of our species’ most brilliant men sticking out a tongue that had to be longer than Miley Cyrus’. Scratch any delusion I’d had that I was even partially over Assefa.
I tried to sound enthusiastic. A few months ago, he might have picked up my distress. But now he was full of details of the apartment he’d be sharing with a couple of med students and a U.N. staff member—one from the U.S., one from Addis Ababa, and another born in the Omo Valley. I knew about the Omo tribes, had seen videos of how they celebrated themselves with ornate body and face decorations. They were an unusually beautiful people. I resisted the temptation to ask Assefa what gender his roommates were.
Assefa deserved a little unfettered happiness. I’d actually caught sight of him the previous Wednesday seated at the Starbucks near his parents’ home and he’d looked like a man with a Do Not Disturb sign on his face. It would be stupid and selfish for me to spoil his pleasure.
Instead, I told him about my intention to visit Gombe. I could hear the catch in his voice. “Ah. Africa.” Oh dear. I just couldn’t seem to cure myself of foot-in-mouth disease.
A beep signaled that another call was coming in. “Assefa, can I call you right back? I hate that damned call waiting feature.”
With an abrupt, “No worries,” he was gone.
It was Adam on the other line. “Hey.”
I took a deep breath. “Hey.”
Unlike Assefa, he noticed immediately that my voice sounded strained. “What is it, Fleur?”
“Oh, God—I was just telling Assefa that Amir and I are going to visit Serena at the Reserve, and—”
“What!”
“She invited me for when Jane Goodall will be there. I’ll have a chance to meet her, and Amir will get to see Lord Hanuman again after all these years.”
I sensed his mental gears whirring. “Fleur, do you really want to do this?”
“Yes. Jane Goodall comes right after Einstein and Feynman and Stanley and Frank Wilczek in my list of living heroes.”
Adam chuckled. “You and your lists.”
He wouldn’t let me off the phone until I promised about a hundred times to take good care of myself.
Four days later, I didn’t know if it was taking good care of myself or not that I persuaded Stanley to drive me to the Berhanus for the closest thing I could get to seeing Assefa off. Stanley told me that (a) I was nuts and (b) there was no way he’d expose himself to Assefa’s parents after all the misery he’d caused.
Cringing with the knowledge of what I knew that he didn’t, I’d replied that (a) it was about time he pushed back against his shaming inner bully, and (b) since I hadn’t been able to take Assefa to the airport the last time he left me, the least Stanley could do was help me get some sort of closure now. Watching my mentor struggle with my request, I tucked away inside my Sly Soldier cupboard the discovery that guilt could be a marvelous motivator. But once we got to the Berhanus’ neighborhood, Stanley insisted on parking halfway up the block on Yolo Street so he couldn’t be spotted. The most I managed to persuade him to do was inch his car forward so I could watch Assefa follow his parents out of their house carrying a couple of suitcases. We were too far away to discern any of their facial expressions—actually, Stanley could see nothing at all, as he’d compressed his tall frame downward and buried his head into his neck like a tortoise below the bottom of the windshied. But refusing to shrink Uncle Bobishly myself, I watched Abeba and Achamyalesh bump along like rag dolls whose stuffing had been stripped. I thought I detected in their slumped shoulders their sadness at having to say goodbye. As for Assefa, once he’d deposited his bags and an overcoat in the trunk of his father’s yellow cab, he walked around the car with the deliberate grace of a panther, not pausing once to look back at the house he’d lived in before opening the rear passenger door and disappearing inside.
Stanley and I ended up back at the house, sprawling on the living room sofa, his newly bald head up against his grease spot, though he kept sitting forward to throw another handful of sunflower seeds into his mouth. I’d brought them out from the kitchen at his request, noticing for the first time that the package of David’s Original Sunflower Seeds actually read, “Eat. Spit. Be Happy!” Which I pointed out to Stanley, who gave a comic croak, “I like it. The atheist’s answer to Eat, Pray, Love.”
But his mood darkened just as quickly. He ate and spat as he conveyed its cause. “It seems I’ve turned into a Class-A Asshole lately. I can’t help but observe that I’ve been giving Gwen a hard time over her deafness. Well, more accurately, over her fear of it.” He gave a quick, froggish lick of what must have been pretty salty lips and slid me a sideways glance.
I waited. I’d noticed the phenomenon he was describing and had wondered about it.
“The thing is, I’m bone tired. I’ve been sleeping poorly ever since ... well, the whole damned thing. You have to admit it’s been an awful year. That horrible accident on New Year’s Day, our God damned know-nothing excuse for a Congress tying up our work, Achamyalesh going missing, the Kangs, the crap with your ... with me ... oh, you know what I mean. Seeing my sister suffer on top of that.” He leaned forward to clank his stainless steel bowl of shells onto the glass coffee table, then commenced picking little pieces of shell off the sofa, his pants and shirt. “I remember her when she was a little pipsqueak. You know, one of those irritating younger sisters who trailed after you wherever you go. Probably why I started burying myself in books. Somewhere she couldn’t follow me. Cute as a button, but I never would’ve admitted it. Didn’t even notice it till much later. Not too many guys her age did, either, as I recall. And the ones who did—well, they treated her pretty badly. Poor Gwen.” He gave a strangled sort of laugh. “Turns out we were both pretty hopeless at relationships.”
“Are you referring to Doris?”
He looked surprised and gave a grudging nod. “You remembered. A good-looking woman, and she knew her science. But she was inconsistent in other ways.” Then he made a face. “And yes, she was black. I suppose Gwennie told you. And if she’s been feeding you some armchair psychology about how my feelings about her transferred over to Assefa, then all I can tell you is phooey! The truth is, I’ll probably never understand why those words came out of me, besides the fact that we all probably soak in some of that crap from the world around us. I don’t know about your Sammie’s Jung, but I think the human mind seems pretty capable of keeping secrets from itself. And others, of course.” My belly rumbled in voidish agreement. “I remember when our father died, my first thought was good riddance, but I never voiced it to another soul. Didn’t even remember it until now. Maybe I shoved it into some parallel universe.” He grinned. “See what sleep starvation does to you?” He paused and scratched his head. “The thing is, at my age, going to sleep isn’t the simple thing it used to be. It’s a practice run for the big one. The hours leading up to bedtime are as melancholy as a Sunday night for a school kid. The party’s about to be over.”
“Over? Don’t say that! You won’t even be sixty-five until June.”
“Yeah, and my doc tells me I’d better start exercising or I won’t get a hell of a lot older.”
“Well, then, let’s take a walk. It’ll do us both good.”
After locking up, I purposely led us to the left so we wouldn’t have to look at the mega-renovation taking place at the Kang’s. I wondered if we’d always call it the Kang’s, even if for the rest of our lives it would stay in the hands of its new residents: a family of red-heads named—don’t laugh—Daniel, Dara, Dylan, Darren and Daisey Delahaney.
Actually, the first thing I did when we hit the sidewalk was laugh. Besides their ludicrous attachment to the letter “D,” the Delahaneys shared a penchant for political proselytization and had chosen to celebrate their moving-in day by passing out flyers headed, “Stop the Invasion! Illegal Immigrants are Invaders of the U.S.A.!” The fact that Fidel had only become a citizen thanks to a previous amnesty for illegal immigrants probably accounted for Chin-Hwa’s killer’s markedly low profile these days.
Neither Stanley nor I felt like skipping. If anything, the continued unseasonal heat was enervating. As we drifted past a neighbor’s Tudor-style house with a front yard full of drought-resistant yellow yarrow, curly onion, chamomile, and several varieties of manzanita, Stanley heaved a sigh.
“What?”
“They call these years the age of wisdom, but I’ve turned out to be an old jackass. Spent my whole life trying to forward the cause of human progress and in a split second I’m channeling Rush Limbaugh.”
I squinted up at him. “Now you know how I felt after talking about Grandfather’s balls in my Nobel speech.”
“Yeah, but yours wasn’t cruel.”
“Maybe not, but only because he wasn’t alive. It was still a betrayal.”
I was relieved that he didn’t try to rebut me. “What can I tell you, Fleur? Look at it like this: life is very fair; it breaks everyone’s heart.” He gave me a bleak excuse for a grin, but oddly, his words were actually comforting.
