large room. She sat on a comfortable Louis Seize-style chair and began to look at the large oil paintings on the wall. After a little while an old lady came in and welcomed her tepidly. She sat in front of her and began a disconnected conversation about the weather and public transit in Chicago. This vacuous dialogue went on until Carol interrupted it by asking in an affected, miserable merriment, “Where’s the dog I’ll walk? I looove dogs.”
The old lady fell silent. She had been taken aback a little and avoided looking at her face. “Well, I am going to be frank with you. I don’t think the job suits you. Leave your telephone number and I’ll find another job for you as soon as possible.”
Carol’s sad days continued. She became so frustrated that she totally lost her enthusiasm. She no longer read the newspapers looking for jobs. She spent the morning sprawled on the bed, drinking several cups of coffee and looking at the ceiling, thinking about her life. She was thirty-six years old, but she had never lived life as she had wanted to. No one treated her fairly. She recalled the faces that had shaped her destiny: her kind, peaceful mother; her drunken stepfather, who beat her up cruelly, and when she grew up, wanted to sleep with her (she sought her mother’s help several times, but her mother was so sexually dependent on him that she was not much help); her boyfriend Thomas, with whom she lived for ten years and with whom she had little Mark and who ran off, leaving her to shoulder everything alone. She also recalled the face of good old Graham, whom she loved, but instead of making him happy, she’d brought him hardship. She had always been treated harshly, that was a fact. She had always been hardworking, organized, and ambitious, and what had been the result? Total misery. She had lost her job at the mall because she was black and now she couldn’t find another job. The old lady even thought dog walking was too good for her; maybe she didn’t want her beloved dog to be exposed to a black face.
That morning Carol was lying in bed drowned in her sorrows when the telephone rang. She was surprised that anyone would call at such an hour. She turned over and decided to ignore the call, but the ringing continued. She finally got up to answer and it was the voice of her friend Emily, a black friend from her high school days who finished college because her father, a lawyer, could afford to pay the tuition. Carol had not seen her friend in months, so she was happy she called and welcomed her invitation to grab a bite at the French restaurant Lafayette in downtown Chicago. From her high school days Emily loved fancy restaurants and had taken Carol along. Carol was always happy to go because she couldn’t afford to go on her own. The Lafayette was truly magnificent, with elegant tables and Vivaldi playing in the background, adding to the luxurious ambience. Carol ordered a spinach croissant and pate and cafe au lait. She looked at her friend’s face for a while then teased her, “I can tell from your rosy complexion that your love life is going very well.”
They laughed from the heart and Emily told her about her new love. Carol tried to keep up with her in her happiness but something heavy was weighing on her. Emily noticed that, and as soon as she asked her, Carol started sobbing and told her everything. She needed to vent with an old friend like Emily. Looking far into the distance, Emily said, “If there were any jobs available in Dad’s office I could’ve got you one. But I’ll try somewhere else.”
It was a beautiful outing and Carol came back ready to resume the struggle. The following morning she started looking for a job again. For a week it was the same old story: the telephone calls, interviews, apologies, and a few brazen racist remarks. It was getting close to one in the afternoon when she received an unexpected call from Emily. As soon as she said hello, Emily asked her in an earnest voice, “What are you doing now?”
“I’m cooking.”
“Leave everything and come right away.”
“I can’t. John and Mark will come and find nothing to eat.”
“Leave them a message.”
“Can I come later on?”
“It can’t wait.”
She asked persistently, but Emily would not tell her why. Carol guessed it had to do with a job. She wrote a few words and posted them on the refrigerator door, put on her clothes in a hurry, and went out. Emily lived half an hour away by train. She opened the door immediately as though she had been waiting behind it. She permitted Carol to say hello to her mother, then pulled her by the hand to her room and locked the door from the inside.
“Emily, what’s come over you?” Carol asked, still panting. Emily smiled mysteriously then gave her a strange, scrutinizing look and said, “Show me your chest.”
“What?”
“Take off your shirt so I can see your chest.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Do what I tell you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain to you after you take this off.”
She reached for the buttons on Carol’s blouse, but Carol restrained her hand and said somewhat angrily, “No, you won’t.”
Emily sighed hard, as if her patience had run out. Then she looked at her for a long time and said, “Listen. I didn’t ask you to come here to play. I have to see your chest.”
Chapter 22
After Dr. Salah told his wife that he wanted a separation, he felt relief and said to himself that it was a step that he should have taken a long time ago. From now on he wouldn’t have to face her chasing him, her physical demands, the humiliating, exhausting moments of his impotence, the expectations and disappointments. He was done with that fierce tension, which was always lying in wait just beneath their quiet conversations and their living together under the same roof while avoiding looking at each other. After today he wouldn’t have to pretend or lie. Their relationship was over. That was the truth. There was no doubt that he had loved her at a certain time in his life. She had helped him a lot. He was grateful to her and felt toward her that deep, calm appreciation that one has for a colleague that one has worked with for years. They would separate quietly and he was willing to meet all her demands. He would pay her any sum she wanted. She could have the furniture and the car, even the house if she wanted it. He would rent a small place for himself. All he wanted was to be alone, to enjoy a calm, comfortable old age, to be able to relive his life over and over, nonstop. Oh God, how did he get to be sixty? How quickly the years had passed! His whole life had passed before he realized it, before he began. He hadn’t lived. What had he done in his life? What had he achieved? Could he measure his happy times? How much? How many? Several days, a few months at best? It was not fair to advance in years without realizing the value of time, not fair that no one drew our attention to the time that was slipping through our fingers by the moment. It was a clever trick: to realize the value of life only just before it ended.
Salah went out, leaving his wife alone in the bedroom. He closed the door gently and thought that, from now on, he would live in the living room until the separation was complete. He had no desire to sleep. He said to himself that he was going to have a quiet drink and read a little of Isabelle Allende’s new novel. He strode to the door as he did every night, but as soon as he crossed the hallway, exactly before he entered the short corridor leading to the living room, he stopped suddenly, bent over, and looked at the floor as if looking for one thing or another. He was overcome by a strange sensation, quick and sharp like a blade: a distant, mysterious vision as if it were a dream that had been revealed to him. No one would believe him if he were to relate it, but it was quite real. He was possessed by a feeling such as that which overcomes us when we enter a place or see a person for the first time and know, in no uncertain terms, that we have been there before, that what we are living now is something that we had lived before in an earlier time. He found himself turning to the left and going toward the door to the basement. He descended the stairs as if hypnotized, as if he were being carried, as if it were someone else moving his feet while he contented himself with looking at them as they carried him forward. He opened the door and entered the basement and was immediately greeted by the dampness. The air was heavy and stagnant and he had difficulty breathing. He felt for the light switch and turned on the light. The basement was empty except for a few things that Chris had stored to dispose of later: an old television set, a dishwasher that didn’t work, and a few chairs that had been used in the garden for years before she bought a new set that previous summer. Salah stood examining the place with a distant look. What brought him here? What did he want? What were those vague feelings raging inside him? The questions kept droning in his ears without an answer until he found himself moving again. He was now
