Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

Avis is pleased that Stanley would remember — they were on a sort of family vacation. While Brian attended a contract law conference in Frankfurt, Avis had taken the kids on a day trip to a medieval town in Bavaria, its narrow streets crowded with porcelain shops. The children helped Avis pick out the paper-fine china, its intricate webbing of cracked glaze, a sprinkling of rosebuds along the rim of the saucers. Now she smiles thinly at Nieves, thinking about the pieces she’d smashed on the patio after Felice had left for good. Avis had worked methodically, a piece or two a day, destroying her prized possessions, the satisfying crunch, like flinging robin’s eggs. Until Brian quietly suggested that Stanley might like to have them someday. She stopped in time to save the cups and saucers.

“I like old things,” Nieves says. She contemplates the cup again. “But these are lovely.”

“I’m so glad you approve,” Avis says.

Nieves looks up at her as Brian and Stanley rush to interrupt, Brian saying, “This tea is from—” just as Stanley says, “Mother made these meringues.” Mother —not Mom — Avis catches the remonstrance and she knots her hands together: Behave . Nieves puts the meringue in her mouth, as if to stop herself from speaking, and Avis knows what she’s tasting: a crisp folding air, then melting bits of shaved chocolate. Nieves’s mouth softens into a sigh. “Oh,” she says quietly, as if talking to herself. “Wonderful.”

Avis stands, her eyes hot, and hurries into the kitchen.

THE OTHER DAY, Avis had been in the kitchen preparing a batter when Stanley’s deliveryman had come to the door. Along with her usual baking supplies, Eduardo carried a cooler full of organic produce. She followed him back into the kitchen and watched him remove chilies, onions, garlic, and tomatoes from the cooler. A whole chicken. He opened the refrigerator and slid in cartons of milk and eggs, a wedge of lemon-colored cheese, bunches of lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower. He closed the fridge, then flipped the cooler shut. “Your son doesn’t approve of your eating habits.”

“No kidding.” Avis sighed as she filled a pastry bag. Once or twice a month a supply of unasked-for items.

“Risky, though — giving someone a bunch of food they don’t like.”

“He knows I won’t be able to let it go to waste.”

The mynah started its shrieking: a fierce, shattering braaaah . He swiveled toward the window. “Wow. What the hell.”

Avis piped tiny quenelles of tea cake dough onto a cookie tray. “He’ll settle down in a second.” She slipped the tray into the oven, then looked over Eduardo’s shoulder: they watched Solange walk down the steps, hair tied in a faded turquoise scarf, a teal dress fluttering with the air.

“What’s the deal with her?” Eduardo asked. “She the housekeeper?”

“Of course not.” Avis pulled out a tray of scallop-shaped molds for madeleines. “I don’t think,” she added quietly, pouring batter into her molds.

Eduardo didn’t speak for a long moment. “Haitians were the first ones — you know — to throw a revolution, kick out the colonizers.” He lifted his chin, apparently at the neighbor. “Those kidnapped Africans — they’d adapted to Haiti but they never forgot who they were — they knew they were free people.”

She slammed the cookie molds on the counter, settling the dough. “Huh.” She set those aside, then stooped to pull a ring of strawberry génoise from the lower oven.

“Though, of course, it’s kind of funny…”

She glanced over, took in the slight asymmetry to his face, flattened lower lip, shadowy outlines of the tear troughs beneath his eyes. “What?”

“Well. Just. Here you are, still a slave to the French.”

Avis straightened, hands on her hips. “I work for myself. That’s hardly slavery.”

“Hey, we all choose our own masters.” He turned to the window. “Have you seen anything magic going on over there yet?”

She laughed and placed the springform pans into the cooling rack, bits of parchment lining jutting up like feathers around the edges. On the top rack is a cooled and decorated seven-layered opéra cake. Her client — the Peruvian ambassador — had requested a “tropical” theme for a dinner party dessert. Avis had based the decoration on the view through the kitchen window, re-creating in lime, lemongrass, and mint frostings the curling backyard flora, curving foliage shaped like tongues and hearts, fat spines bisecting the leaves.

Eduardo edged closer. “You don’t believe it?”

She began pouring chocolate pastilles into the bowl of her double boiler. “I thought you said voodoo was just another type of religion.”

“It is. Religion with extenuating circumstances.” He leaned over the stove.

“Uh-huh.” Avis adjusted the flame.

Eduardo moved to another corner, trying to get out of the way. “Let me tell you something. About ten years ago? I was a production assistant for a crew that was filming on Haiti. It was supposed to be a documentary called Flowering Heaven —about home gardens in the Caribbean. I just went to hang out on the beach. Anyway, when we were there, we met all kinds of people who went to witches — like, instead of doctors? They had curses broken and got cured from all kinds of weird diseases and problems. We met people who used those little dolls, and spell-casters…”

Avis hummed and stirred the melting chocolate, watching it turn black and glossy as it liquefied, seeding it with bits of chopped pastilles . “Oh right,” she murmured. “And the people they cursed, they’d get weird aches and pains, right?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Hey, you really think there’s an explanation for everything?” His voice was intent and confiding. “You think the world is only what you can see and feel?”

Avis dipped the tip of her spatula into the melted chocolate and brought it close to her lips, checking the heat. “Our senses tell a lot more than we realize.”

“All I know is we saw things there…” He shakes his head. “All kinds of people said they’d attracted their husbands and wives with charms.”

“Sure, love potions.” She scraped a few more bits of chopped chocolate into the liquid to bring down the temperature. “Do you know what I do for a living?”

“One man told me he woke up in the morning with this woman’s face in his mind. He’d never seen her before in his life, but he became obsessed with finding her. It turned out she lived miles away, in another town. She’d seen him once, at a market, and made a love charm to call him to her. A few days later, he was knocking at her door.”

Avis looked up at the wobbly reflections in the stainless steel cabinets lining the walls. Sometimes when she baked, she thought she caught sight of some odd movement in the corner of her eyes — but it was always this reflection flashing from surface to surface. “So how did this guy feel about that? About the fact that she’d used a charm and tricked him into it?”

Eduardo shrugged. “They got married. He loved her. I don’t think anyone particularly cared how it happened.”

STANLEY IS GOING ON about work, how they might have to expand — the property developers circling Homestead like vultures — a reproachful look at his father. She observes the formal way he holds his cup on a saucer — letting everyone know that he too is a guest in this house. His voice has a buzzing tonality that irritates her. Makes it hard to listen to him: buzz, buzz, buzz. Whenever they visit him at the market, she’s noticed his customers and employees hang on his words as if he were some sort of saint or the head of a cult. People tell her: “Your son is amazing, Mrs. Muir. How did you do it?” She rubs her thumb over her knuckles, listening to Brian making chitchat, quizzing them gently. Nieves crosses her arms, lets her head tip back, watching Brian.