Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

Fernanda’s eyes darken with laughter. “Ice cream?”

He feels the back of his neck grow hot and wonders if he should pretend to be making a joke. But she’s already pushing open the passenger door.

Fernanda orders a small cup of vanilla and Brian asks for a black coffee. They walk down the block to the small park and settle on a wooden bench She smiles and faces him. “I’m flattered that you’ve been worried for me. Really. But things are good. I don’t want to change any of it. And I don’t want to leave my job.”

“Oh, I don’t think that you—”

Fernanda sighs, a subtle lilt, instantly raising apprehension in Brian. “Do you remember Vicky Asafi? She used to work in H.R.? Really cute blonde, late twenties?”

Brian watches her a moment, nods slowly. “Her husband got transferred someplace. To Atlanta?”

“Did you ever meet Vicky’s husband?”

Brian doesn’t answer. He studies Fernanda’s eyes.

“Because, you know what, she didn’t have a husband,” Fernanda continues. “That was just a story they cooked up. She was having an affair with Jack and when she decided to break things off, she was ‘let go.’ ”

He lowers his eyes. Of course. “She could’ve brought charges against him.”

Fernanda shifts back on the bench and gazes into her ice cream. “Yes, gone through an ugly, protracted sexual harassment trial, the full legal weight of PI&B, leading to uncertain results: no job references, that’s for sure. Or she could just start her life over somewhere.” She tucks the spoon in her cup. “Be done with it.” Her voice, in trying to sound untroubled, seems to trip. “Thanks but no thanks, Brian. I need my job. More than that, I like my job.”

Brian takes a sip of coffee but it’s sour. He walks to the wire trash container and tosses the Styrofoam cup. His head is filled with coppery echoes. He gazes at her as he returns to the bench: her eyes seem heavier, like a sleepy child’s, her lips are plum-colored, sulky. She places one hand on the elbow of his jacket, an infinitesimally delicate touch. He inhales strands of perfume and vanilla ice cream and recalls the Regaleses’ yard — the white adobe house, its front lawn filled with waxy starfruits, their sweet, sweat-ish funk, and the nodding gardenia blooms. She frowns and looks patient and sympathetic. “Brian, if it makes you feel any better — I do think you care about me and are trying to protect me.”

There’s a flicker of warmth at the base of his chest as he watches her. “But you see — you understand—” He opens his hands. “That story you just told me? That’s exactly why all of this — with Jack — it has to end. It just — it isn’t right for you.”

Her smile is almost transparent. She looks different out in the natural light — younger and plainer and more lovely. “How exactly do you know what is good for me? What do you suppose you know about me?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I know what isn’t good for you.” Brian lowers his gaze.

She sits back against the bench, a honeycomb of tree-filtered light illuminating her hair, the dot of silver sparkling at the center of her clavicle. “My father says, To know the person you have to know the tribe.”

“So he’d say I have to know your family? To give you advice?”

“Something like that.” She lifts her face: the day is mild. Overhead, white smudges of cloud drift past, bits of steam from a teakettle. “My grandparents and my mother left Cuba with nearly their whole synagogue. My mother — for years, she told me — she used to cry over the little group that stayed behind — always worrying would they ever survive. Afraid Castro would just—” She lifted the flat of one hand, her fingers straightened, nearly curved backwards, her head slowly shaking in a kind of denial. “Mother used to think in ten or twenty years that there wouldn’t be any of us — any Jews at all left in Cuba.”

Emboldened by this bit of personal information, Brian asks, “And your father? Did he come with them?”

She drops her hand. “ Papi? He’s just Catholic. That’s what he liked to say, just-Catholic. He came here before my mother did — with his family. My parents made a big scandal when they fell in love — mixing religions. Papi said — first my mother’s people survive the Pharaoh, then Hitler, then they have to go out and find Castro — that’s professional suffering.” She smiles at her scraped-out cup of ice cream. “The truth is — my parents went through so much just to be together, I think it burned most of the religious feeling out of them. We didn’t go to any services when I was growing up. There were just a few things — the silver candlestick holders. Sometimes my mother lit them and said the Friday blessing. Sometimes, braided bread — challah. A pewter mezuzah by the door — I thought it had special powers. That’s all. Oh, and Papi said he gave me his Catholic guilt.”

“So if you weren’t raised in a traditionally—”

She’s already shaking her head. “There are some things that — go deeper. More than prayers. There’s a way of seeing who you are that remains — after everything else.” She says this delicately, like a doctor delivering complicated news.

Her clean hair falling forward and her back so straight and brave, Fernanda looks to Brian as if she could be twelve years old. He feels another twist of protectiveness toward her. Leaning closer… Ah yes. The silver sparkle is a tiny Star of David on a short silver chain. It rests there like an amulet, investing her with layers of private history. He should, he thinks, be able to draw on his education and experience — all those years of helping others in their restless goals, years of observing ambition and power — in order to help Fernanda. Did he learn nothing from losing his daughter? “I’m not like him,” he blurts. “I’d never try to take anything from you.”

“I know that!” Fernanda presses his hand between both of hers. “And I’m grateful for your friendship. Honestly, you have no idea. But, Brian, you know what? I’m happy .” An indentation forms on the verge of her left jaw. She smiles, brushing away a wisp of hair. “I love adventures. I love men. All kinds,” she says with a little laugh that stabs him to the quick. “I’ve learned from my parents that this world — well — amazing, impossible things can happen out of the clear blue sky. Dictators, pogroms. I don’t want to marry Jaime Roth, who took me to my high school prom, and lead a pure, holy, traditional life keeping house and producing babies — as my mother would like. Oh, it doesn’t matter that she didn’t do it — that only makes her want it all the more for me … I want to have another kind of life. A life like my mother’s.” She pauses, scrutinizing him: Brian notices the lilac tint of her lids and looks down at his lap, subtle emotion moving in him, a roll of smoke inside a glass bottle. “It’s very basic,” she says. “Don’t expect your kids to want the things that you didn’t want.”

AVIS PRESSES THE PHONE AGAINST HER EAR HARD enough to leave an impression. The sun is barely up, but Stanley has always been an early riser like his father. He answers on the fifth ring, “Yes, Mother?” He responds to her questions with one-word snippets — terse, but unable even now to cut her off entirely. So she learns: the baby is due late November, they don’t and won’t know the gender (Nieves doesn’t want to know), Nieves feels hurt and disappointed in Avis. Stanley feels whatever .

She walks through the house with the phone as she humbly receives these tiny, wounding words. She fingers her chopped hair; peers through the French doors to the back. As Stanley confirms that, yes, they need the money, yes, the market really is in danger, Avis flicks on the TV, volume low. On the Weather Channel, a fleecy mass hovers due east of the Turks and Caicos, about to head for South Florida; an announcer mutters predictions in a dire tone: wind speeds, organized system, making landfall … Avis sits heavily on the couch only half hearing her son, imagining the food- and water-hoarding scene at Publix. It’s been several years since the last real hurricane came through, but she remembers it well: the shuddering “outer bands” of rain, the hollow clap of the silver palms, the susurration of the fronds, archways of blowing branches.