Rabih Alameddine - I, The Divine

“Not everybody,” I said dejected. “Neither Lamia nor David called.”

“And neither one of those two will. Get dressed.”

“David might call.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “You two are breaking up,” she said.

“Well, my husbands called. Why not him?”

“Because they are decent human beings and they care about you, which he doesn’t. Get off your ass and get dressed.”

The phone rang on cue. I reached for it and gave Dina a raspberry. It was Margot, her lover. I could have died. Dina took the phone from me, snapped her fingers for me to get dressed.

At eleven o’clock we found ourselves walking across Central Park, a habitual walk. When I lived in New York, I had an apartment in the same neighborhood, the Upper West Side, and I used to cross the park once or twice a week to visit my mother, who lived on the East Side. I realized I wanted to confront her. I had not expected her to show up to the reception even though she had promised she would. Nonetheless, I found myself disappointed at her confirming my expectations.

We entered my mother’s building and Jonathan, the concierge, came running toward us, more like lumbering, since he was corpulent. “Ms. Sarah, I’ve been trying to find you,” he said anxiously. He had a look of concern, which was not uncommon for him since my mother was not an easy tenant. “I didn’t know where you were staying.”

“My mother does,” I said. “Is there something wrong?”

He looked unsure about what to do, which disquieted me. His expression went from afraid to nervous to sad to tragic to worried, trying to settle on an emotion. “I have some bad news,” he said. He paused, hesitated. “I don’t know how to say this. I’m so sorry. Your mother is dead.”

Before I could say anything, I felt Dina hold my hand. I wanted to say something, but my mouth seemed sewed shut. Different feelings welled up within me, yet the predominant one was shock.

“When? How? What happened?” That was Dina. I squeezed her hand to make sure it was still there.

“Yesterday. She called down at noon asking for a car in the evening. She wanted to go to Ms. Sarah’s opening. When the car came, she wouldn’t answer her phone. Clark went up to see if she was okay and found her dead in the bathtub. She had killed herself.”

I began to feel faint.

“I tried to find you, Ms. Sarah. The police have been here. So has her attorney. She left everything to an artist colony in Maine. I called her brother and he didn’t want anything to do with her. We’re wondering what do with her stuff, Ms. Sarah. I don’t think it’s right that strangers take her personal stuff. We had no one to call, Ms. Sarah. She had no one else.”

I heard the words he was saying, but did not exactly grasp them. They floated about, revolving around my head, it seemed. I was lost, dizzy.

“The attorney wishes to speak to you, Ms. Sarah,” he went on. “He says you can take all her personal material, but please don’t take anything expensive because, technically, it all belongs to the colony. They’ll sell everything. But you should go through her possessions.”

I must have nodded or given him some sign he interpreted as acquiescence because we were walking toward the elevator. I followed, terrified of what I might find upstairs. My mother could not still be up there. I wondered who would have dealt with the corpse. How did she kill herself? So many questions, but being mute, I could ask nothing.

“We cleaned everything once the police left,” Jonathan said as he let us in the apartment. “After they removed Mrs. Nour el-Din, we had to clean the bathroom.”

It took a minute to register. He was leaving, closing the door when I heard myself shout, much louder than I should have, “Jonathan!”

He reentered quickly, frightened.

“What did you call my mother?” I asked, quieter, but firm.

He looked confused. “Mrs. Nour el-Din.”

“She didn’t go by Janet Foster.”

“No, ma’am. Janet Nour el-Din.”

I plopped down on the couch. Dina sat next to me. Jonathan let himself out quietly. We sat silently on the couch for over an hour.

“Why would she keep her name?” I asked. “She hated our family.” I lay back on the sofa, looked up at the ceiling. “Why keep reminding yourself of past pains?”

“Sometimes you’re so naïve,” Dina replied. I looked at her, eyebrows raised. “She was as much a Nour el-Din as any of you. Just because she was ostracized doesn’t mean she’s not part of the equation. Think about it.”

“I don’t get it.”

I got up and walked to the desk in her office. I wanted to make sure. I went through her papers. All her bills were for Nour el-Din. I became increasingly frantic as I searched. I wanted to find something, but was not sure what.

“Help me look for her artwork,” I said excitedly. “I have never seen anything of hers.”

I opened the closets in the office. There was nothing there. We went to the bedroom. Nothing. I searched the closets and dressers. There was only one room left. I looked in and there was a drafting table. On the table were some brushes and tubes of gouache. I felt my face flush and a feeling of relief overcame me. My mother always talked about being a painter, yet no one had seen a single painting. In the back of my mind, I wondered whether she even owned any paints. I searched the room and found no paintings.

“Look here,” Dina said, pointing at some papers stacked underneath a heavy book of impressionist paintings. There were only ten of them, all of them seemed abandoned after a couple of strokes. Some were left in mid-stroke. So many false starts. I began to cry.

Dina pulled out a framed piece. It was a Time magazine cover. Saddam Hussein’s photographically darkened face dominated the cover. My mother had painted little hearts in red gouache all around his face. Some of the hearts had silver arrows running through them. It was signed Janet Nour-el Din in the bottom right-hand corner.

“What’s this about?” I asked.

“She had the hots for Saddam?”

“I don’t get it.”

“I know a woman up in Boston, a kindergarten teacher, who thinks Saddam is amazingly sexy.”

I rummaged through the papers. No more paintings. “We should go. I don’t want anything. I don’t think I can take this much longer.”

“Are you sure? You might regret it later.”

I looked around. “I don’t know what to take,” I said.

“Pictures,” Dina said. “There must be pictures.”

“Yes.” I ran to the bedroom. I had a feeling they would be next to her bed and I was right. In the drawer of her nightstand. Only four, but they were all of our family. With her in every picture. There was one of my father, in which he looked so joyful, full of life, holding my mother. She looked serene, but he was ecstatic, a man who had conquered the world. I was flabbergasted. In all the years I had known my father, I had never seen him look like that. I put the pictures in my handbag.

I walked back to the living room. The day before, my mother had sat on the chair in the corner. She had looked radiant, in a long, billowing green dress. Her red hair reflected the sun. She inhaled her cigarette voraciously. “Look at this,” she said to me, handing me an old kaleidoscope. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I looked though the lens. “It’s just a regular kaleidoscope,” I said.

“No, it isn’t. I bought it yesterday at an antique store. It’s beautiful. I love how it comes together.”

I looked again. I didn’t know what antique store she had bought it at, but I had a feeling she must have overpaid. “Yes,” I had said. “It’s lovely.”

On the table, next to the corner chair, lay the kaleidoscope.