The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(66)

But by the 1980s, Barbara was increasingly unhappy: about having to raise three children on her own, about the kind of work Aleph was doing, often for the darker reaches of the US government. During the 1980s governments toppled across the developing world in coups, and in almost every instance Aleph had submitted a detailed report on the country before the violence had erupted.

Yael watched a heron swoop low over the water before instantly changing direction and soaring skyward. Her mother’s smell, a mix of White Linen perfume and lemon-scented soap, was familiar, even comforting. She had once been very close to her mother. Her father traveled all around the world for Aleph, so much that she hardly saw him.

Barbara put her hand on Yael’s arm. “Your date?”

Yael started to talk, and then she couldn’t stop. She felt overwhelmed at the emotions welling up inside her. So many feelings, stopped up for so long. It all poured out, from Goma to Geneva, from Istanbul to Tompkins Square Park. The coltan scandal. The Sami disaster. Her friendships with Isis Franklin and Olivia de Souza and their terrible ends. Rina Hussein. The dark force that still drew her to Eli. But she did not mention Eli’s threat against Noa, or her agreement with him.

When she was finished, she wiped her eyes, stared at the lake. A young couple sat in a boat, going round and round in circles as the man ineptly tried to row. His girlfriend was laughing, the wind in her hair, filming his efforts on her camera. Yael felt suddenly, intensely jealous. She blew her nose, and turned to her mother. “Where were you?”

“I’m sorry. I thought you didn’t want to see me or talk to me anymore.”

As Yael got older, she slowly grew apart from her mother. Barbara focused on David, the eldest son, and Noa, the youngest daughter, leaving her middle child to her own devices. Yael felt that her mother resented her, even started to view her as a rival for her father’s attention and affection. In reaction, she reached out to her father, further alienating her mother and launching a self-perpetuating circle of mutual resentment. After David died, when Yael was sixteen, her parents separated. Her father returned to Israel, and she went with him; two years later she followed him to London. Yael stayed with her father in London until she moved back to Israel and did her military service.

“I did. I didn’t. It doesn’t matter what I wanted. You’re my mom.” Yael was almost shouting now. “You are supposed to come and find me. To make it better. That’s what moms do. Why didn’t you?”

Barbara swallowed, blinked, looked out over the park as she spoke. “You never picked up the phone when I called. You didn’t reply to my letters. You never called.”

Yael started coughing, laughing through her tears. “Now you really sound like a Jewish mother.”

Barbara’s face was tight. “It’s very … difficult for me, for all of us at this time of year. He would have been forty-four by now. And when I think how he … what happened there …”

She grasped her mother’s hand, the skin was warm to her touch. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t think about that. Remember him as he was.” Their fingers intertwined, locked solid. “I still miss him so much. I lost my brother. I’m permanently single. Nobody calls me. Every time I make a friend they end up dead. I’m the kiss of death.” She blew her nose again. “I’m so sick of being on my own. Eating alone. Sleeping alone. At least you have Nora.”

“Not anymore. We broke up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Why?”

“Everyone likes to experiment. My phase came a little late in life. But look at you. You are beautiful. There must be someone out there.”

Yael released her mother’s hand. She reached inside her purse, took out the postcard of the catamaran and handed it to Barbara.

“A boat with an Istanbul postmark,” she said, intrigued. She turned it over. “And it’s wordless. How mysterious. Who’s it from?”

“A friend.”

“Obviously. What kind of friend? A male friend?”

Yael looked out over the lake. The oarsman had control now, gliding along the surface of the water. His girlfriend leaned back, the sun on her face, looking contented.

*

She watches Yusuf finish his pide. His fingers are long and slender, his dark eyes, somewhere between brown and black, warm and intelligent. A lock of hair, so black it almost shines, falls over his forehead.

*

Her voice was almost wistful. “Male, yes, definitely. But he’s there and I am here.”

“Why don’t you go? Istanbul’s not that far. You must be owed weeks of vacation.”

Yael smiled. “Yes, I am. And I find myself thinking about him. More and more often. Maybe I will go. But not this weekend.”

She turned to look at her mother. “Mom, I’m really happy you’re here.”

“Me too.”

“But why now, all of a sudden?”

“Because …” Barbara paused. “Because there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Go on.”

Barbara took both of Yael’s hands in hers. “Your father.”

*

Najwa stepped back and checked the blue awning that reached from the front of the apartment block on East Sixty-Sixth Street to the curb. Number One Hundred and Twenty was written along the side in cursive. She was in the right place. It was a classic Manhattan building: gray granite on the outside, cream and brown marble foyer on the inside. A uniformed doorman stood at the entrance in matching livery, watching her.