Megan, one of my co-workers, was thrilled when she tasted the soup. “Potato-and-leek,” she exclaimed. “My favorite.”
“Vichyssoise,” corrected Luis. “You know how the Eskimos have a million words for snow. Well, Joyce has a million words for potato-and-leek soup.”
“That’s an urban legend,” my mother said. “English probably has as many lexemes for the word ‘snow’ as Inuit. French has more.”
“Really?” said Luis. “I always thought it was true.”
“We all do, because it has a nice ring to it.” My mother put her soupspoon down. “The legend began in 1911, when the anthropologist Franz Boas — aren’t they always the troublemakers? — wrote that the Inuit had four words for snow. In each retelling, as with any good story, the number increased, until one newspaper mentioned four hundred.”
“Speaking of four hundred,” Clark said. “Now that I have you here, Mrs. Kharrat, I have to ask. Is it true that Osama has hundreds and hundreds of cousins? It’s always ‘my cousin did this’ or ‘my cousin said that.’ He’s always talking about some cousin or other.”
“I don’t think he has that many,” my mother said. “He certainly doesn’t have many on my side of the family.” She held my father’s hand. “He does have a few on his father’s side. But I can see why it can be confusing for you, because in English they’re all cousins. You can’t even differentiate by gender. In Lebanese we have different words for each kind of cousin, pinpointing each family relationship.” She chuckled. “This isn’t urban legend. You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit.”
Carol, another of my co-workers, had been quiet for a while, staring at my mother. Finally, she said, “I’m so envious. I don’t know how you European women do it. You’re always elegant without even trying.”
“I work hard at it,” my mother replied. “It only looks like I don’t.”
“No, please. Just look at you right now. I couldn’t carry that off in a million years, and neither could any of my friends.” She looked at Megan, who nodded in agreement. “You have very little makeup on. If I wore your blue dress, it would look silly on me. I think it’s the way you carry yourself. I wish I knew how. I’m just a fuddy-duddy.”
I could see my mother hesitate, surprised by the illusory intimacy. She glanced at my father and then at me, and I discreetly shook my head no. “You’re not a fuddy-duddy, darling, whatever that means,” my mother said. “You’re very pretty, very pretty.”
Carol lowered her head, as if talking to herself. The wine had infected both her diction and her loquacity. “I’m not talking about that. It’s class. It’s the look. It doesn’t matter how expensive a dress I wear or how I do my hair. I bet you look stylish and chic in a nightgown.” She paused, sank even lower in her chair, and whispered, “I want that.”
Her husband swallowed a bountiful gulp of Cabernet. “Well, how about if you stopped looking like a girl? She’s a woman, a lady.” His third glass of wine?
The look of horror on Carol’s face was no match for the ones on the hosts’. My father couldn’t mask his surprise.
“Now, now. That was rude.” My mother turned her full attention to Carol. “Now, dear, do you really want to hear some advice?” My mother must have had three glasses of wine, but her eyes were alert, and her gaze was ever devoted and fixed.
“Yes, definitely.” Carol slapped her husband’s hand.
“Do you want practical or philosophical suggestions?”
“Both.”
“Get your colors done. You have to know what looks good on you.”
“But I have,” whined Carol.
“Oh, heavens. That’s surprising.” My mother put her palms on her thighs. “Well, get them done again, dear, and not at a department store this time. The Versace sweater doesn’t suit you. You only wear him if you want the greasy gutter boys of Milano to hoot and whistle when you walk by. The color is wrong, wrong, wrong. You can’t carry off that orange; few people could. Frankly, I don’t see why anyone would want to. It’s such a repulsive color, so Dutch. Get your colors done, darling. Promise me.”
I knew what was coming next and could probably have repeated it verbatim.
“Now, when my son was younger — when was it, darling, ten years ago?”
“Twelve.” I closed my eyes.
“Well, we got together in Paris. He was still at university and he arrived looking so bedraggled and shabby. I wanted to buy him something nice, so I took him to Boss. He loved a lot of the things, but he refused to try on most of them. I kept pestering him, and finally he said, ‘It doesn’t matter what I wear, I’ll never look like him,’ and he pointed to the delicious blond Boss model. So I told him, ‘Big deal. I don’t look like Catherine Deneuve, either, but that doesn’t mean I have to look like that dead singer’—what’s her name?”
“Janis Joplin,” I said.
“Yes, her. So my boy comes up with the wisest thing. He said, ‘Everything here is too big for me. I couldn’t grow into it.’ At first, I thought he was talking about his physical size, so I tried to reassure him — it can’t be easy being small. But then I realized he was talking about something else. He really couldn’t make those clothes fit him. In his mind, the Boss suit was made for that blond model, not him. And that’s the secret. Never wear clothes that are bigger than you are unless you intend to grow into them. If you want to wear a great suit, either you believe it belongs to you or you’ll look like you’re thirteen and wearing your mother’s clothes. Doesn’t that make sense? It’s the same in life. Never live a life too big for you. You either grow bigger to encompass it or shrink it to fit you. I wonder which country invented shrink-to-fit. Oh boy, I’m not making sense, waxing philosophical. Just call me Nietzsche — no, not him. Who’s the one who wrote about aesthetics?”
“Hegel,” I said, knowing full well that she knew the answer to every question she had asked me.
“Yes, call me him.”
The emir’s wife poured a cup of tea for Fatima, who was leery of her hostess’s intentions. “Why am I here?” Fatima asked.
“I thought we should start afresh,” replied the emir’s wife. “I know we have not always seen eye to eye, but I was hoping we could work on our issues, woman to woman.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“By being civil first. We get to know each other as friends, no longer mistress and slave, but equals.”
“But I have not been your slave for years.”
“See?” The emir’s wife poured herself a cup. “Our relationship is already improving. We can do what civilized women everywhere do, drink tea, chat, gossip, discuss important topics.”
“If you are trying to make peace, there is no need to work so hard. I have nothing against you. I am willing to give you what you want without having to drink tea.”
“I want us to be friends. We can talk about what friends talk about, the weather, fashion.”
“But you only wear one thing.”
“I can compromise. I can also admire beautiful things. You wear the nicest robes, and that amulet on your neck is utterly wonderful. May I see it?”
Fatima hesitated and tried to gauge what the emir’s wife was up to, but she figured she was aboveground and indoors. She unclasped the necklace and handed it to the emir’s wife. And the room rocked and filled with smoke and the stench of rotted flesh. A giant blue monster with three red eyes and four arms held a sword, a cudgel, a cup, and the head of a man by its hair. A necklace of skulls was her naked body’s only adornment. “Fool, what have you done?” Fatima screamed at the emir’s wife. “You invited a demon into your home?” She reached out to grab her talisman but was too slow. The monster unleashed a fire upon her, and she disappeared.