The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (67 page)

“Horrible. Poor guy.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if that’s the whole reason for him being so peculiar, but it’s gotta contribute.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I asked, “But what does that have to do with the silent child?”

“One of the things Lamiya told me was that I’m part of a curse.”

I slowly uncrossed my arms and then didn’t know what to do with them. “What do you mean, you’re
cursed
?” My voice sounded both skeptical and desperate at the same time. How useless your hands and voice are at moments like that. They’re all just in the way; none of them know what to do or how to behave in a crisis that’s suddenly dropped on you in the form of one word—like “cursed,” or “dead,” or “cancer.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m
part
of a curse. But I guess in some ways I am cursed because of the role I play in this.

“Lamiya said that after I returned to America I’d get pregnant, which I
have.
But my child will be cursed to live exactly the same life as its father whether it wants to or not. Only some unimportant details will be different.” Ava stopped and said nothing else but continued staring straight at me. I think she was letting her words sink in.

“She didn’t tell you who the father would be?”

“No, she wouldn’t. She said whoever made me pregnant, they’d be the one carrying the curse.”

“So that could be me too, Ava.”

“Yes it could, you’re right. We’ll find out with a DNA test, but I wanted to talk to you first before I did it. You’re obviously a big part of this.”

“Yeah, I
guess.
” I said it cynically and meanly, although I didn’t want to. I never wanted to be mean to her, but why was she telling me this now? Why not before?

More silence.

“I love you Ava, but this is nuts, absolutely nuts. It sounds like one of the Arabian Nights—the silent child, a djelloum, and a curse ... How can you know it’s true?”

“Because of the things that have happened since I saw her. Things Lamiya said
would
happen. Every single one of them has taken place: the pregnancy, my affair with Eamon, and most of all
you
.”

“What do you mean, me?”

At that moment the washing machine that had been chugging along in the background chose to ping and stop. Ava went silent and didn’t look like she was going to answer my question any time soon.

I made a face and walked across the room to get the laundry. Opening the door to the machine, I bent down to pull the wet wash out. “Ava?”

“What?”

“Your washing machine is full of letters.” I pulled out a large white wet “K” and laid it across my palm. After looking at it, I held it up for her to see. About ten inches long, it appeared to be made of cloth. I looked in the machine again and saw that instead of clothes, it was full of a droopy pile of wet capital block letters.

Ava did not seem surprised. In fact she nodded when I held up the K. “I put them in there.”

“You
put
them—where’s our laundry?”

“In the bathroom.”

“But why? Why did you do that? What are these things? What are they for?”

“Take out four more. Don’t look which ones—just reach in and take out four. I’ll tell you why when you’re done.”

I wanted to say something but didn’t. Reaching into the washing machine, I plunged my hand into the soft wet heap of cloth letters like I was choosing numbers for Bingo. When I had four, Ava told me to lay them out together on the floor so that they spelled something. The letters were K, V, Q, R, and O.

“They can’t spell anything because there’s only one vowel.”

She was far enough away so she couldn’t see what they were. “Tell me which ones you chose.”

“K, V, Q, R, and O.”

She slapped both hands down on her lap. “Those were the same letters Eamon chose!”

“
What?
Eamon did this too? You also had him take wet letters out of the washing machine?” I realized my voice was way up there close to shouting.

“Yes, it was a test for both of you. I knew what the answer was going to be, but I had to do it anyway.” The tone of her voice said this was no big deal—why was I making such a fuss?

A test using wet letters from the washing machine? Eamon had done it too? The silent child. A Yit. A curse. For the first time in all the years that I had known her, I looked at Ava now like she might be the enemy.

“Do you think Ava’s crazy?”

“Of course she’s crazy. Why do you think I left her?”

“
You
left her? She said it was just the opposite—she left you.”

Eamon snorted and pulled his earlobe. “Do you know the saying—never fall in love with a psychiatrist because they’re the craziest people of all? Well, let me amend that to add war correspondents too. Never fall in love with one of them either. They’ve just seen too many really
bad things.
All that pain and death gets into their bones and screws up their heads. Ava’s gyroscope is bent, Man.

“Did she tell you her story about the Silent Child? Is that why you’re here?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. Picking up his vodka, he took a sip as if he already knew what I would say. “That was all right, actually. It was a mad thing, but at least it was entertaining. It was a really good story. But then came those letters in the washing machine, and then the frozen animals—”

“What frozen animals?”

He slapped my shoulder. “She hasn’t done that to you yet? Ah, more surprises await, pal! The longer you hang out with Ava, the funner the girl gets, believe me. I left after the frozen animals. That was it for me. Phew!”

“But what if her child really
is
yours?”

Eamon put his chin in his hand and looked at the floor. “Then I’ll do everything I can to make sure Ava and that baby are comfortable and well cared for. But I won’t live with the woman. No way. She’s certifiable.” He spoke calmly and with resolution. He’d obviously thought all this through and was now at peace with his decisions.

“But wait, Eamon. Just for a minute imagine that what she said was true;
is
true. What if you are the father and the kid is cursed to live your life?”

“Nothing’s wrong with my life. I have a good one.”

“What about when you were young? Your father and the things he did to your family?”

“Yes that stuff was terrible, but I don’t plan on doing that to my family if I end up having one someday.” He smiled at me. “I also don’t have a pilot’s license, so you don’t have to worry that I’m going to fly over Ava’s house and dive bomb it.

“And by the way, what about
your
Dad? Was he a good man? What if you’re the father of her kid? Does she have anything to worry about with you?”

“I never knew my father. He left my mother when I was two.”

“Well there you go! I’m sorry to hear that, but in a way it means you’re potentially more dangerous than me, if there really is a curse. Because you don’t know what kind of guy your father was, or is. He could be much worse than my old man.”

We looked at each other and our silence said we agreed on what he had just said.

Eamon sniggered and shook his head. “Poor Ava—in a worse case scenario if that curse
is
true, she may be doomed either way: Me with my monster Dad, or you with your Mystery Dad who could be Jack the Ripper.”

I said weakly, “Maybe my father’s a great guy.”

“Great guys don’t abandon their families.”

“You abandoned Ava.”

His voice dropped to a low grumble. “She’s not my family. I never said I wanted to be a father.”

Sometimes people say things, often inadvertently, that make up your mind for you. The moment after Eamon said he didn’t want to be a father, it clicked that I
did
want to be the father to Ava’s child—more than anything in the world. It was as simple as that. I loved her and yearned to be her partner for the rest of my life if she would have me. I honestly didn’t care if her child was Eamon’s. I didn’t care if there was a curse. Most importantly I didn’t even care if Ava Malcolm was as crazy as a fly in a jar. I wanted to be with her and would do anything to make it happen.

When I told Eamon that, he raised one arm and crossed the air with it, as if he were a priest giving me a blessing. “I don’t know if you’re an idiot, a masochist, or the greatest guy on earth. People don’t get better as they get older—they just get more of who they are. If Ava’s crazy now, she’s only going to get crazier.”

“I know. But maybe she’s not.”

He had some more vodka. “True, maybe she’s not. But the alternative to her being crazy is there really
is
a curse. Then you’re going to have to face a whole different bunch of crap after that baby grows up. Either way, you’re in the hot seat.”

“Maybe but maybe not. You know she’s going to the hospital today to get the results of the paternity test?”

Eamon took a deep breath and let it out in one hard
hush.
“Call me and let me know the results as soon as you get them, all right?”

“I will.” I put out my right hand and we shook for a long time.

He grinned. “You’re a good guy, you really are. Sticking by Ava like that, no matter what. That’s stand up stuff.”

“Eamon before we go, tell me about these frozen animals you mentioned before.”

“No, you don’t need to hear about that now. Maybe it was just a thing she did to me. Forget I even told you.” He patted me on the shoulder again and walked out of the bar.

When I got back to Ava’s apartment she wasn’t there so I let myself in. On a table in the hallway, impossible to miss, was a sheaf of papers with a yellow note on top. In large black letters it said “PLEASE READ.” I picked up the papers and saw there was more written in Ava’s handwriting on the note in smaller letters.

“This is the paternity report. It says that neither you nor Eamon are the father of my child. I’m a coward and don’t have the nerve to be here when you learn that. I’m going to spend the afternoon with my sister and will be back later. Please be here then so we can at least talk about it. I’m so sorry that I lied to you about not being with other men. There obviously have been others since you and I got together.

“Whether it makes a difference to you now or not, I wasn’t lying about Lamiya and the curse. I don’t know who my baby’s father is, although until today I was absolutely certain that it was either you or Eamon. But Lamiya
was
real. The curse is real. My deepest love and affection for you is real. Please be here later. I don’t deserve that, but I can ask.”

Stunned, I tried to look at the other papers in the sheaf but everything was numbers and graphs and at the end a summary I couldn’t understand because my brain was flying south fast and had no more room in it at the moment.

Still in my coat, I walked into the living room with the papers in hand and sat down on the couch. The couch where we’d had so many good talks and sex and silent contented times sitting together and reading or just being. I tried to look at the papers again but it was not possible, so I leaned forward and tossed them on the coffee table in front of the couch.

A large format book of photographs I had never seen before was there. The title of the book was “Freeze Frame.” Every picture inside it was a striking image of a wide variety of dead animals, fish, and reptiles ... the whole animal kingdom, frozen. Every single picture was of dead frozen creatures—on their backs, their sides, on ice in markets, on empty snowy roads where they’d evidently been hit and killed by passing cars. The book was gorgeous, poignant and macabre all at the same time. As I leafed through it, I kept thinking of Eamon’s question about whether I had encountered Ava’s frozen animals yet. Was this what he was talking about, this book? Or was there more?

I’d looked at perhaps ten of the photos before I came to the marked page. A green Post-it note was at the top, bent over onto the page by constant use. The photograph was unlike any of the others in the book. It was of a woman dressed in black, holding an infant in her arms. It is snowing—the world around her is all white. She and the child are the only color there. But the child, or what little we can see of it because the woman is holding it so that it looks like she is hiding the baby from the photographer, looks dead and so white in her arms that it could be frozen too, like all of the other subjects in the book.

But what is most arresting about the photograph is the look on the woman’s face. She is totally serene. If she
is
holding a dead child, then she has risen beyond her grief into something either holy or inhuman. She is clearly at peace, or a kind of transcendent madness that has given her peace.

The image was so hypnotic and beautiful—there is no other word for it—that I stared at it for what must have been a solid minute. Only after the powerful first impression passed did I look at the bottom of the page where the picture credits were. The photographer’s name was not listed, but the location where it had been taken was Sabunchu, Baku, Azerbaijan.

H
OW COULD SHE EVER
tell him
that
? How could she ever look him in the eye and say I’m sorry, but sex with you doesn’t work. I don’t like how you touch me. I don’t like the way you kiss, and worst of all is your smell. She’d read once that if you don’t like another person’s smell it’s because your genes are wrong for each other. An early warning system from the body, it’s saying that if you get together with this person and have children, they’ll likely be damaged—so don’t do it. Maybe she could tell him
that
and make it sound like a biological problem: I like you, but our physical chemistry is wrong for each other, etcetera.

But he had so many good qualities too—funny and generous, thoughtful and patient. What more can you expect from a partner?

“I’ve been seriously thinking about calling in a Hate Writer.”

Ramona closed her eyes and shook her head. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Is it really that bad? Isn’t there any way of saving things?”