The Brevity of Roses Read online

  “What do you think?” Judith gestured toward the Mercedes. As always, when driving a convertible, she wore her classic sunglasses and a silk headscarf, Grace Kelly style.

  “Nice, but where’s your BMW?”

  Judith laughed. “You know me; I needed a new accessory for fall. You should get one. Retire that old Cadillac.”

  “Old! I’ve owned it less than a year.”

  Judith ignored her. “I’ve been calling you for days. I wish you’d get a cell phone like the rest of us. Where have you been?”

  “I went down to L.A. to do some shopping.” Oh, lord, wrong answer.

  “Without my help?” Incensed, Judith headed for the front door, her Prada stilettos clicking on the cobblestone walk. “Show me what you bought!”

  “No!”

  Judith stopped and pivoted toward her, eyes wide.

  “I mean, I can’t right now. I have to run some errands.”

  “Oh?” Judith teetered toward her car. “Where do you have to go? I’ll drive you. We can talk on the way.”

  “Well …” She cursed Jalal’s dry cleaning as her mind zipped through its Rolodex of excuses in search of a feasible one. When Judith’s cell phone rang, Meredith nearly laughed with relief.

  Judith lunged for her purse on the front passenger’s seat. She paced while she listened to the caller. Meredith considered making a break for it while Judith was preoccupied, but what good would that do? The woman was like a terrier; she would keep at it until she got what she was after. Their circle of friends was not large. No one kept a relationship secret for long. Judith knew about Jalal and wanted the details. But Meredith was not playing her friends’ game of picking up men like carryout food to nibble at and throw away. An angry shout broke into her reverie.

  “Son of a bitch!” screamed Judith. She tossed her phone onto the passenger seat, slid in behind the wheel of the Mercedes, and slammed the door. Without so much as a backward glance, she started the engine and roared down the drive, screeching to a halt to wait while the gate opened.

  Thrilled at the reprieve, Meredith stood watching the convertible drive out of view. She had known Judith long enough to interpret the situation. The phone call had been from the private detective who had trailed her husband, Gary, for weeks. Now, Judith would be headed to divorce court for the third time—but not before she spent as much of Gary’s money as she could.

  Jalal sat on the floor writing in his journal while Meredith worked through her yoga routine. Having ended with the corpse pose, she sat up. “Are you writing verse?”

  He marked his place and closed the book. “Are you not supposed to keep your mind focused while you do that?”

  She sighed. “I find it impossible to ignore your presence. Now, answer my question.”

  “Yes, I was writing verse.”

  “Do you ever write on the computer?”

  “Only when I have to,” he said.

  “Why do you write poetry?”

  For a moment, he sat still, his eyes downcast, a study in repose. Then he burst into motion, raking his hair off his face, folding his legs into semi-lotus, and leaning forward. “I love words,” he said. “I love the sounds and shapes and rhythms of them.”

  “But why poetry, not prose?”

  He grimaced. “You will think me sexist if I tell you that.”

  “Ha! Now you have to tell me.”

  He took a deep breath, then forced it out as if resigned to his fate. “I am the youngest of three sons,” he began, “born between two sets of sisters. My brothers were eight and ten years older, and wanted little to do with me. My schooling was delayed because of my health, and since I spent most of my time at home with my mother and four sisters, I heard a lot of … uh … chatter, so I played a game to see how silent I could be. Sometimes—if my father did not directly address me—I found it possible to get through a whole day without a single utterance. And even when I had to speak, I used as few words as possible to get my meaning across.”

  She shook her head. “That might be how you developed the conciseness necessary to write poetry, but that’s not why you write it.”

  Jalal leaned back against the wall, pulling at his lower lip while he studied the ceiling. He looked at her. “Poetry best allows me to express my emotion.”

  “Not good enough.”

  He frowned at her. “It forces me to express what I want to keep hidden? It bares my wounds?”

  “Yes!” said Meredith.

  Jalal studied her for a moment before giving a knowing nod. “You are a poet also.”

  “Yes.” She rose and started toward the hall. “And I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”

  He laughed. “Are we still talking about poetry?”

  “Jalal!” She stopped and gave him a stern look, but smiled when she turned away. “This is a big step for me. Only one other person has ever read these poems.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I have trust issues.” In the living room, she pulled the binder of her poetry off the shelf and handed it to Jalal.

  “Wait here,” he said and laid it on the sofa. “I will make tea.”

  Tea seemed to be his touchstone, as though life itself was genuine only when shared over a fragrant cup. Meredith stood, absently gazing out the windows, and waited. Ravi had read some of her poems. Not all. Not the ones she had cried while writing. Not the ones she would have kept from Stephen, even if he had been interested.

  In some ways, Stephen had been too practical a man. Completely absorbed in the scientific side of his work, he had little interest in any other. She, on the other hand, preferred the cultural aspect of their research, but though her focus complemented Stephen’s, she almost always deferred to his expertise. This pattern of acquiescence was set early in their relationship. Often, it was to her advantage—Stephen kept her grounded—but she regretted they had not shared that one particular interest so important to her. When they first met, she talked about poetry and he indulged her, but after a month or so, he became dismissive.

  “Meredith, honey,” said Stephen, “you have to take your studies more seriously. This isn’t high school, or even post-grad, you have a lot of hard work ahead of you. These frivolous interests of yours are too big a distraction.”

  “I earned both my BA and MA in five years,” she shot back. “I think I know how to get my work done.”

  “Sweetie, I’m proud of you for that. You’re an intelligent woman, but you’re also a little dreamy, and this poetry stuff feeds into that. Poetry is irrational; science is the antithesis of that. We are scientists, Mere.”

  “But my specialty is linguistics, and in the cultures we’ll be studying, much of our knowledge of their languages comes from their poetry.”

  Stephen sighed. With a smile, he took her hand and led her over toward the bed. “Speaking of languages … how about you come whisper one of yours in my ear.”

  They never discussed poetry again. Throughout the next fourteen years, she had kept her own writing attempts secret. Stephen had never read a word of her verse.

  Now, as she sat on the floor across the table from Jalal, she held a teacup in her hands, inhaling the spicy scent she knew would forever evoke him. He sat on the sofa reading intently. She loved to watch him, openly now, not furtively as she had that first day. It made no sense, but she felt as though she had always known him. Maybe, it was only that she had always wanted to know him. She had been waiting for him.

  As though he knew her thoughts, Jalal looked up at her to smile before he returned to reading. She tried to discern his reactions as he read. There, did his eyebrows rise in surprise? And now, are they creased in confusion? At what line did his mouth purse in thought? Which one just made him smile?

  With a glance at the bottom of the last page, he finished reading and closed the binder. “Thank you for sharing these with me,” he said. “You have confessed to me a Meredith I could not have known otherwise.”

  She laughed. “Yes. I was a different per
son then.”

  “Was that ‘different person’ honest with herself?”

  “Are you saying I’m not honest now?”

  He shrugged. “Show me your recent work.”

  “That’s all I’ve written.”

  Jalal frowned and rechecked the last page. “But the date on this last one is 1983. Have you not written since then?”

  Meredith shook her head. “When I came home—” She bit her lip, breathed, and started again. “After …” She swallowed hard, trying to ease the sudden constriction in her throat.

  “After your husband died,” Jalal offered.

  Eyes stinging, she only nodded. Ridiculous. She had not cried over Stephen’s death in years, so why did she find it so hard to talk about with Jalal? She took a deep, shuddery breath. “After that, I didn’t seem to have any need to write. Not poetry, anyway.”

  He leaned forward, took the cup from her hands, and set it aside. “But surely, you would have had even more reason to write then.”

  “I wasn’t—” She closed her eyes and raised her hands to her mouth, pressing her fingertips against her lips for a moment before lowering them back to the table. She glanced up at Jalal, then focused on her hands. When she spoke next, her words came from a distant place and time. “It’s unbelievably strange when your life changes so quickly. One day you’re in Africa, caught up in the excitement of working a dig, and the next,” she waved a hand vaguely, “that’s all gone.”

  In her mind’s eye, it was the day she moved here for good, and she stood just inside the front door, bewildered. A stranger in her own house. “A completely different life stretched out before me.” Slowly, she shook her head. “I was so … lost.”

  His fingertips brushed against hers. “And that is when you ‘retired’?”

  Again, she could only nod and blink away tears. Jalal cupped his hands around hers, his dusky skin contrasting her pale. His gesture seemed an act of rescue.

  Four

  JALAL ACCOMPANIED MEREDITH on her errands. One afternoon, she introduced him to the garden center. In return, he coerced her into a store devoted entirely to kitchenware. Together they shopped the bookstores. But though, from time to time, she sighted friends and acquaintances on the street or in the mall, she made a point of avoiding them. For ten days, she kept Jalal to herself.

  Due to his expertise in the kitchen, she hadn’t eaten a meal out since they met, and because she had no clue how to select the choicest plum or perfectly marbled steak, he also did all the grocery shopping—two chores she gladly relinquished. Having returned from another such trip, he set the bags on the counter and began to put things away.

  “It seems I am an object of curiosity at the market,” he told her.

  “How so?”

  “One woman followed me through several aisles.”

  She laughed. “Could it be you’re just vain … or maybe paranoid?”

  He closed the refrigerator and turned to her. “I am not vain.”

  “Paranoia it is, then.”

  “Another woman joined the first,” he told her, “and they both stared at me. I did not imagine it.”

  “Did they say anything to you?” She took a peach from the bowl he placed on the counter.

  “No, but I am certain they know you. They talked in stage whispers. I heard your name.”

  She was making a mess of rubbing the fuzz off the peach. “Describe them.”

  Jalal took the fruit from her and cleaned it before taking up a knife. “The first woman was a short blonde who appears to be too well acquainted with her plastic surgeon. The second was much too thin, and carried one of those tiny dogs in a bag.”

  “Carol and Donna,” she said, nodding. “They’re friends of mine.”

  “Then your friends were rude.” He handed the plate of peach slices to her. “Why did they not introduce themselves?”

  She laughed. “If Judith had been with them, not only would they have introduced themselves, they would probably know more about you than I do.” She reached for a napkin to catch the juice running down her chin. “And I’m sure they’ll demand I give them a full account of you soon.”

  “Invite them to dinner,” he said. “I will cook.”

  She gasped, feigning shock. “That, my dear, would be a breach of the strict social code here in Coelho.” She shook her head at his bewildered look. “Don’t try to figure it out. It took me years.”

  Seventeen years earlier, Meredith and Stephen had moved to Coelho. Just the year before, and only seven months apart, her parents had died. She was their only child, their sole heir. After months of searching, she and Stephen splurged some of her inheritance on her dream house, a half-timber with leaded glass windows and an iron dragon-shaped gate. They filled it with treasures gathered during their travels, but spending so much of their time either in the classroom or in the field, they lived more often in the small apartment they kept in the Bay Area near the university. Two years later, after Stephen’s death, after she gave up her work, Meredith found herself living alone in a huge house, in a town where she had no friends.

  One early spring morning, she stood at an upstairs window in the back of her house, looking out at the green hills behind the green Italian cypress ringing her green lawn, and the desire for another color overcame her. She decided to grow roses. That decision led her to the nursery, and then the Coelho Gardening Club. From there she progressed to the Oak River Country Club where she met the three women who adopted her as the fourth member of what they gleefully called the Wanton Women and Wine Society.

  Today, anyone who glanced at their table would assume they were four middle-aged friends having lunch, but they would be only half right. Meredith’s friends finally got around to the interrogation over dessert.

  Carol spoke first. “So, Meredith, have you finally broken down and joined the nip and tuck club?”

  “Absolutely not. Why would you ask?”

  “Because,” said Donna, “you look even more disgustingly young than usual, all … aglow.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes, you do,” said Carol, “so what’s going on?

  She sipped her coffee before answering. “Nothing.”

  “Oh, for christsake!” said Judith. “What these little mice are too timid to come right out and say is that for two weeks you’ve been avoiding us and now we demand you tell us about this new man we’ve seen you with all over town. Aren’t we still your best friends?”

  Just the thought of Jalal made Meredith smile. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been busy—”

  “I’ll bet you have,” said the trio, practically in unison.

  “It’s about time you loosened up and had a little fun,” said Judith.

  Meredith blushed. She was not embarrassed, but oddly proud that she couldn’t deny having been plenty busy doing what they implied.

  “So, who is this gorgeous young man?” asked Donna.

  “His name is Jalal Vaziri, and he’s a writer, a poet.”

  “Oh my god,” said Donna, “you’re actually living a fairy tale in that castle of yours.”

  “An x-rated one,” Judith pointed out.

  “What I want to know,” said Carol, “is where you snagged him, because the men I run into certainly don’t look like that.”

  “I met him at Pain sur la Table. He walked up and asked if he could join me.”

  Her friends exchanged a glance, and then Judith said, “You mean … he was a complete stranger?”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Meredith, “but I’m not a fool. I checked him out. He worked on Wall Street for several years, and he’s had modest success with his writing since then. And besides … he’s old money.”

  “Ah-h,” they said, as she knew they would. They approved of Jalal now; he was socially acceptable. Even though her own blood ran blue, that sort of bias always sickened her.

  “Well then,” said Judith, “we want a closer look, so how about introducing him at a dinner party at my house this Friday?
”

  When Meredith arrived home, she found Jalal browsing through her CDs.

  “You have an eclectic taste in music,” he said.

  “What did you expect to find?”

  “Classical … smooth jazz …”

  “I have classical,” she said, “and I have real jazz.”

  “Yes, but … Pearl Jam?”

  “You don’t like them?”

  “I do, but I find it hard to picture you—” He had just pulled a CD from the rack and now, with his brows arched high in disbelief, held it up facing her.

  “What’s wrong with Nirvana?” she asked.

  Jalal shook his head. “You are absolutely the most intriguing woman I have ever known.” He returned the CD to its slot and ran his finger down another row, stopping at a Beatles CD. “Now this I expected.”

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, “but when I was fifteen, my goal was to be John Lennon’s wife.”

  “I am not laughing. I wanted to be Eddie Van Halen.”

  “You play guitar?”

  “Not a lick.”

  They laughed. “So much for fantasies,” she said.

  Jalal slipped the CD back in place. “You seem to have stopped buying music when you retired.”

  “I … I’m sure that’s not true.” Her voice sounded less convincing than she intended. “I pick up something from time to time.”

  Jalal nodded absently. “What was your husband like?”

  The abruptness of his question caught her off guard. She didn’t want to answer. She couldn’t. Instead, she reached up to another shelf and selected a photo album, leafing through until she found a particular photo of her and Stephen, taken a few months after their wedding. When she started to lift it out, Jalal reached out and stopped her.

  He took the album from her and led her to the sofa, pulling her down to sit beside him. With the book lying open across their laps, Jalal pointed to the photo she had started to show him. “He was older than you,” he said.