THE UNEXPECTED GIFT
By
Karlene M. Kubat

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

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I



In shadow or sunlight, fear thrived in this place. Hurrying away from
a visit to a family in makeshift quarters, she spotted a fluttering hawk-like
bird and thought it must be a kite. Yes, a kite, settling high in the tattered
fronds of a thick-trunked date palm. The sun's intense light gilded the brown
feathers with a gold velvet too striking to disregard. She raised her camera,
clicking twice -- something caught undamaged amid the ruins. She watched
the kite rest a moment then shake itself and pull a long wing feather through
its beak. It was a wary bird, making vigilant pauses between each preening.
Still, it could look down on her foreshortened body without much concern.
She envied its unrivaled perspective, comparative safety. Allow no careless
distraction she reminded herself, even as she watched the kite give a startled
cry and rise into the blue Middle Eastern air.
She was caught wingless in bursts of machine gun fire. Rapid puffs

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of dust. Bodies scattering, falling, a random few struggling to rise.
Ahead, the protective wheels of a truck. She started forward,
glancing once over her shoulder to gauge the hazard at her back. In that
single glance came a vision she had always seen and would always see: a
weeping child standing in the targeted street. Here it comes, only one or the
other...life or death. Her body curled into a running crouch, not forward,
backward, the safety of the truck gone. Locking camera against chest with
one arm, reaching out and pulling the child in with the other, she went down,
rolled and came up beside an empty gasoline barrel. It whined with bullets.
One tore through the loose cuff of her jacket, another through the bottom
edge of her pants leg as she pulled in her foot. Her assaulted ears began to
smother and compress sound into a single tone of torment.
Was this it, the final moment? But to go with such anger. Rising
alongside the deafening salvos, an unsummoned nursery rhyme played its
silent counterpoint in her head: The monkey thought it was all in fun. Pop goes the
weasel.
The child gasped and went rigid. Dead? Paralyzed with fear? Alive.
She could feel warm life straining against her. In the next menacing silence
she lunged behind a low wall, held there, hunched and panting while bullets
ricocheted off the other side of the crumbling dun bricks.
Sporadic gunfire. Beyond in the white glare: crumpled bodies,
twitching movements of death, mostly stillness; pooling blood -- the amazing
smell of it in the dry air.
The child looked up at her with startled dilated eyes, but mimicking
her silence now, sound and reaction forestalled.
She closed her eyes tight, but the unconscious split open, spilling
submerged images: a car slamming into a concrete wall; a plane falling from
the sky. Then in slow motion: the car's front bumper touching the concrete
and rippling, peeling, folding back; the plane in thousands of pieces, rising up
into the air and spreading, floating, settling down upon a mountain. The
images accelerated, slipping backward and backward as her wayward mind
zigzagged through a maze of electric impulses: the red face of her first grade

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teacher, spit flying from her mouth as she shouted, “Hell is for liars, little
miss." -- Her curly towhead shook. “I didn't lie. I didn't."; Mama throwing
dinner plates at the wall, shards flying into her cereal. Run. Through the
holly hedge into the woods, among bird sounds. Small delicate birds. Death
only a vague notion then, a detached peculiarity as fabulous as a dark animal
imagined in moon shadow.
She would think of one more breath of life apiece. Then think of
another breath and then another. Do it that way, calm her racing mind with
useless entreaty as she had always done. Let this one smooth baby die old, die
sorting a few decent memories...old, old, wrinkled as a sun-dried apple. It was far too
much to ask in this place. No way to dicker here. There was nothing but
evasive action, and if that failed nothing but bad luck.
The morning air was heating up in the sharp light, a blinding sugar-
white light. She lifted her head for only a moment, glanced around and fell
back with her eyes shut.
Her lips were moving without sound. An unvoiced wail of invective:
Is this enough? There they were, gone now. Here you are, no less perishable. Close
enough? Damn this. Damn you. Damn it all! Luck is now an empty bladder.
Spasms of shaking. Laughter: a celebration of four lungs still filling
with air -- one flaunted inchmanship of triumph over madness. Laughter as
liquor, the relief of deliverance. She could feel but not hear herself laughing
amidst the whine and ack-ack of death. Then silence. Laughter as the silence
of guns, as the cheating of rigor mortis. She would not die laughing. She
would not die now. She had ahold of this baby.
Looking down at the child she saw wide brown eyes of innocence
glazed with terror. The mouth would neither smile nor cry.
Where have you begun, little one? What do you think of this? Will you live?
Will you remember? How can you understand a deranged woman clutching at you for her
own sanity? Poor lost beauty born to smile on mama's knee.
An explosion of dirt, bricks, and mortar. The smell of gasoline
fumes and a ripping blast pounding, shaking the earth, then fading into tap,
tap, tapping. Rain falling on the dry oak leaves outside her bedroom long

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ago. No, not so very long. All in an instant. Silence again. More silence.
Silence and laughter. I got you. I got you!
Head down against the child's soft crown of dark hair, she crooned,
“Just baby and me, we're going to be free and happy in our blue heaven."
She closed her eyes again and put her head back against the bricks.
There came the unmistakable swift clicks of a camera shutter eating up film.
Her eyes flew open, visualizing the caption of an A.P. photo: Journalist and
Rescued Child Take Cover. This was not a photograph, would never be a
cornered image, never the full dimension of here and now, mouth filled with
the filthy dust of a war-ravaged Beirut street, clutching a child who was now
very likely an orphan. She blinked with rage.
The black-bearded photographer clicked away with machine
precision. Was she this, too, this indifferent invasive machine? Her own
camera came into her hands, the child lying beneath it across her bent legs.
Up before her face the finely honed glass eye was a rebuttal of all accusation,
a shield. The moment the camera assumed purpose her self diminished, as
though she sat waiting at the back of a dark theater. Once again the curtains
opened. She focused and caught what was visible of the sober mouth above
the beard and beneath the tan hat. Now frozen in time and place: long legs
in well-worn Levis; scuffed boots; faded photographer's jacket with sleeves
just beginning to fray; sweat-darkened blue shirt; a virtual walking camera
rack; a self-possessed American news junkie. Behold the obvious East Coast
photographer. She of comparative Northwest Coast obscurity didn't move in
those circles. Go anyplace where there was a dark human-inspired hell and
this strange American breed would be found scrambling for the perfect shot
of death, the one that stank of it, the one that produced the supreme nausea.
She lowered her camera, tasted bile and shivered. Stupefied to the
point of incomprehension, her trembling fingertips rubbed at her forehead.
Had some vital organ burst and clotted working memory? It occurred to her
that she had come here just to save this one child. No other thought moved
her forward or backward. Her head buzzed as a stubborn practicality set in.
“Hey, you think you got enough there?"

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He let his camera swing free and shoved back his hat. "That
butchery is over. Christ, more bodies."
It was Paul Carl. The processing cool blue eyes leveled her anger
with surprise. She had met him nearly ten years ago in very different
circumstances, but even then with the three perennial Nikons hanging
around his neck, the very best model, each with a different millimeter lens.
She speculated that the weight might eventually cave his tall posture. Was
there recognition? She smiled to herself. No, there was not. She, older and
a little fuller in body now, had been a thin background shadow when they
met, unformed and mostly uninformed, even more confusing to herself than
now. Extraordinary. She had just become a lucky chance shot, the very kind
she herself sought. Nice provender for his larder -- a rich larder, she knew
that much about this single-minded New York prince. The memory of their
pathetic brief encounter brought a rush of irritation.
Bastard, photographing me coming unglued. So? So. So what? Who wouldn't
fold when a machine gun is parting hair? My slacks torn by a bullet and, Jesus! right
through my sleeve cuff. But the others...the others...warm blood gone to ground, fluid life
back to dry earth...just so much dross and stench now. And we're drawing breath here.
Hardly a scratch...probably a few bruises. Numbers moving up fast, moving up to the
front. But, little brown eyes, I got you.
She leaned forward, ruffling the quiet child's hair then listening.
Silence, its heavy threat. But a chance to move. Unwinding her hard-flexed
body too swiftly, she stumbled and hunched forward over the child. Her
shaking hand pulled the soft warm flesh against her, caressing the silky cheek.
The limpid brown eyes stared at her as she tried to stretch out her taut
muscles. No mother or father called for this sweet baby. She glanced back
at the lifeless bodies in the street, some already being carted away.
Somewhere among them was a face given to this tender flesh. The child had
not cried since she took it.
“Hey, little lemur." Her voice wavered. “Know you've got the
midnight eyes of a gorgeous little lemur?" She picked up the child, holding it
over her hip. “Have to find out where you belong."

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“Come on, my friend, let's get out of here," Paul said. “Where you
headed?"
“I was...Jesus! away from here.”
“Where to now?" his insistent voice demanded.
“In...under a rock. That's enough for today, for the rest of my
life...about to leave this hell zone." The scathing anger was on her tongue,
but her throat wanted to laugh the way she had as a defiant child, with a thrill
of daring: Can't catch me.
She set the child down a minute to brush the clinging dust from her
clothes, then picked him up again.
“Don't you have someone waiting...guard...driver? Got a car back
there." He pointed to an old station wagon.
“Where's your driver?" she asked.
“Helping with those." He jerked his head toward the street. “They
don't want us out there. We're trouble. Let's get moving before we end up
blindfolded."
“Have to find out where he belongs. Can't just take him away from
here...but I wish...I'd like to."
There was the single crack of a rifle. He yanked her back into the
shadows of a crumbling doorway.
“How'd you get here anyway?" He spoke while putting his head out
to glance around.
“What? You mean here or Beirut? I guess you mean... Caught a
ferry from Cyprus. Not so comfy, but the airport's no good. Hezbollah's
always hanging around...you must have noticed. Got a State Department
waiver, if that's what you mean. They made it clear if I was caught I was
nonexistent. Into the woodwork...of course. Said I'd been nonexistent
plenty of times, to myself I said that."
“Why here?"
“A lot of concerned refugees in L.A. An ethnic paper. Concern for
families here...children...medical care."
“Stringer? Freelance?"

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“Not contracted; paid on delivery. I like it that way.”
“But not this way."
She thought he was smirking beneath his elitist black beard, then
wondered if it was just her old paranoia riding high on shock. He was staring
at her free hand, which was still shaking. The aftershock surprised her with
its ungovernable insistence.
“Want a drink? There's a little dive where you can--"
“No thanks. Think I need a hot and cold bath...maybe shock me out
of...of insanity...like to stop...shaking."
They set off, she letting him lead.
“Still can't believe you did that. Jesus! I really cannot take that in. I'll
have to look at the pictures before I believe it. I thought you were a goner."
“That would have made some photograph."
He stopped, planted his arms akimbo and tried to look at her but she
kept walking, letting him catch up.
“You didn't come in here alone, did you?"
“No...I had someone." She looked around, remembering her so-
called bodyguard for the first time. “He's probably in the Shouf by now...up
there in those nice clean hills, having tea with the Druse. Well, just so he's
not dead."
“Sorry about the pictures. It's what I do."
A laugh, almost a sneer, escaped her. "What else would you be doing
here? You sure's hell aren't a tourist. Tourism is a little off this decade."
He grinned. "Well, it's...a...actually a little more involved than that.
But you...you've certainly got a right to let off steam. Looks like you're one
of us crazies. I'm Paul Carl...and you're?..."
“Yes, I know who you are. You probably don't need my name for
stuff like this."
She alerted herself that she was overenjoying her far too revealing
bitchiness, but knew it was not going to stop.
Again, he focused on her with annoying scrutiny, some kind of faint
recognition taking shape, all because of her inordinate behavior, for which

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she faulted herself but which, in her present condition, she did not bother to
control.
He slung his cameras behind him. “Let me take him."
She handed over the small body with reluctance, wanting to hold on
but sore and tired and clumsy.
The child's eyes remained fastened on her, and Paul said, “That's
right, little fellow, she's your good angel."
The word summoned a face and a voice that made her step falter, but
she regained her balance and looked away from Paul Carl's quick glance. No
meanderings into the past now. She was here in this damnable reality. The
child's parents were dead, certainly. How easily she knew this. She felt more
and more amazed. Death had been close in war zones before but not quite
like this, innocent noncombatants on their way for bread or tea hellishly cut
down and lying heaped in the street.
“Maybe you dislike competitors?" he said, clearly fishing for
something to explain her inflammatory mood.
“Not always...not all of them."
They had picked their way around a collapsed building and were now
walking down a rough street cluttered with rubble, as if they were a family
out for a Sunday stroll. She stopped, shading eyes schooled in caution, eyes
now moving over the rooftops and down along blasted window ledges.
Cavernous dark hiding places.
“We're okay here I think."
“I don't feel okay anywhere in this place," she answered, wiping the
sweat from her forehead.
“Better get used to it...or quit."
He stopped, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped
Lemur's running nose.
“If I ever got used to it I'd consider myself some kind of...of
subspecies. I wanted to come here," she offered.
“The old love-hate snare."
“Not you, of course."

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“Not anymore, but nobody who does this gets out from under or the
stuff's no good. I'm careful...have to accept what I can’t do anything
about...unhappily."
“Accept the unnecessary?"
“I'm forced to. We are forced to."
“I haven't come to that. Oh, once in a while, but not here...today.
This is...is totally absurd."
“You took yourself here...to this absurd hell...real and raw, a picture
hunter's aim...coup de chance. “Never succeed if you let it stop you down to
one frame. We--"
“I know what I'm doing as well as the next fringe case out here. I get
by. Success...God." She had muttered the last two words to herself, clicking
her tongue in anger and spreading out her arms. "You call this a stroke of
luck?"
“No. The luck is in being here. Don't often hit on your kind of
input: heroism...maybe some craziness."
She rubbed her sweaty forehead again, unwilling to respond. “Guess
I'm finally thirsty...think my hearing’s shot."
Both quiet, they walked on for a quarter of an hour and came at last
to a doorless bar, a dusty green-walled darkness with scarred red tables and
worn benches. The ubiquitous flies were circling. A portly bald German
gave them smudged glasses of slopping beer, warm. She took the child, who
clung to her as she drank.
“I sound strange to this little lemur." She patted the boy with gentle
fingers, caressing his back, and asked if it was possible to have water and
bread. “Wasser, Brot, bitte?"
The German brought water and an uneven bubble of thin, half-
charred dough dipped in olive oil. The boy reached for it with both hands,
tearing it with a few fragile new teeth.
“Good?” She smiled. A weak answering smile emerged for the first
time, then the eating went on with drooling mouth.
Waving flies off the child's face, she asked, “Why aren't you in

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Nicaragua or Honduras...snapping airfields? Isn't that where all of you big
guys are supposed to be now?"
���Big guys?" He chuckled, leaning on his hand and stroking his beard.
“Well, from one point of view."
He looked at her until she caught a shifting click of recognition. He
was seeing her, she decided, seeing her for the first time as something outside
his lens.
“We've met before...haven't we?"
She shrugged, turning away from his scrutiny. Her low voice was just
audible in the buzzing silence. “We're not the same as then...back
then...whoever we are...were."
The raised glass in his hand was returning untouched to the table.
She glanced at the doorway, thinking someone threatening had entered the
room. He leaned back and his eyes traveled over her in a way that tempted
her to begin shouting invective. She pressed her lips together and looked
away at a bony cat rubbing against the doorjamb, marking its vanishing
territory. How could a cat live here?
“That's a backhanded way of letting me know. Where was it? Not
one of my classes? Maybe one of my larger seminars. No, I don't think so.
But I know your face."
She grinned at his presumption that she had been one of his students.
He did teach her something. “You had no classes. You were sort of...on the
move."
“You remembered my name."
“Yes...well, it's known. I can't afford the gear you're hauling
around...although what I've got is pretty good."
“This is a little strange. Did I...?" He was silent a moment. "We
couldn't have..."
“If we did, I don't think I remember that either," she said, feeling a
little triumphant because that part was true. "This beer tastes wonderful and
yet I know it's terrible. My nerves are shot but the rest of me is intact.
Amazing. One minute you're alive and the next you're dead. Life is a cheap

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nuisance for warmongers. If they don't get you the uncertainty will." She
had almost laughed with a wild kind of joy, knew she was babbling, and
clenched her teeth.
He appeared to be considering her remarks but then passed over
them all without comment. There followed a long silence, and when she
glanced at him she knew that he was beginning to remember. He reached
out and took the cuff of her jacket between his index and middle finger, the
cuff torn by a bullet. "That didn't touch your wrist did it?"
"No," she answered, bending to examine the other hole in the hem
of her slacks.
"And your foot is okay?"
"Not a scratch."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Commodore. So far it hasn't taken a direct hit. Anyway, I'm
checking out soon. Did what I came to do."
"Well, I'm hanging out at a friend's in Rabiya. You could come--"
"Oh...nice up there. No thanks. I've got one more appointment with
some people."
She slid off the bench, rehung her camera and took the child's hand.
"Come on, Lemur. I'm with you and you're with me and it's off to some
kind of billet we go. All this makes us pals forever. Right?" She picked up
the child, and tossed a comment over her shoulder, "Interesting seeing you."
She had almost said again, but then she was already preoccupied with Lemur,
puzzling a little over the direction she needed to head, and didn't look back.
"Just a minute. Hey! Know where you're going? Wait! What's
the...just a minute. It's...a...Mathilda, isn't it? I remember you. Somehow
that name didn't fit because you were so damned naïve. Now you show up
tough as bear claws and it still doesn't. You cut your hair and--"
"Cut my hair?" It was just what someone from New York would say
after nearly ten years. "Oh God," her low voice was almost a lament as he
moved in close to push the dust-filled hair away from her eyes. Some of it
stuck to her forehead but she had her hands full of the child.

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"Mathilda something...something short. Help me out. I remember
those eyes. Yes." His rising laughter stalled, checked by deeper reflection.
"Those sad amber eyes."
"Sad? I don't think so...that's bombast. And my friends say Mahta --
it's good enough."
"Can't believe it...you here. You were working for the arts
commission, a kind of girl Friday, doing some scrub photography, press
conferences...trouble shooting. Out in the northern hinterlands of the West
Coast. I was using up a hell of a lot of film on a promo job for the
commission; couldn't afford it then, either. You took pity on me, shared
some of your film from the filing cabinet where those petty grudgers kept all
of it locked up. That was okay." He laughed, rubbing his beard, obviously
enjoying the recollection because things were easy now. "They didn't pay me
what my work was worth. How's my memory doing, Mahta? Mahta Lind,
that's it, isn't it? Pretty good, you think? Let's see...you were in charge of
getting City Ballet to do a short outdoor promo at the fountain. You kept
handing me rolls of film, stood there watching me shoot. Whenever I ran
out, a handful of film appeared under my nose. Every damned lens popper
in town was climbing all over the place...fouling up my space."
"Your space?"
"And that night...we ended up together at the ballet's premiere. I and
a long-haired little girl. How's that?"
"Uh-huh, great," she muttered, rolling her eyes.
"And in the lobby -- I was mightily surprised -- I ran into my old
next-door neighbor in New York, Francis La Breeve. Incredible. Francis K.
La Breeve, musical genius, strolling through the lobby of--"
"Boondock Center, right? You introduced me -- at the time, for a
few hours, you even knew my name --, and Mr. La Breeve looked at me as if
I'd just come in to change the linen. You laughed and said, 'This is my
assistant. She points and I shoot.' Then you both laughed with...with the
instinctual effusion of hyenas. Oh, it was jolly."
"My God, you remember all that? Is that why you're so defensive...all

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this hostility? Apparently, I was pretty bad, a jerk. It's happened. You
should've let me have it."
I did, she thought, then said aloud, "I was gaga green with envy and
sickeningly polite in those days."
"Yes, it seems to me you were very polite...but I don't think... No, it
didn't end there." His voice was amused.
"Oh, yes it did. The rest was just a little shimmer on the pond.
Excuse me, I've really got to talk to some people." She noticed that her
watch had stopped. "They'll think I'm dead. Around here it's a definite
consideration. It was kind of interesting...or something like that, running
into you again. And a...thanks for the...stale beer."
There. Regrettable that she had revealed her annoying
embarrassment, her discomfort. It would pass. A person ran into everyone
in the business sooner or later. She might never have thought of him again, a
brief minor incident stuck somewhere in between her badly ended marriage
and... Brehnt. Not now, for God's sake. Don't think about that now. Sometimes
the sudden image could steal all of her breath away. At first the memory had
precipitated manic acts of severe recklessness, time and again propelling her
to the edge of hazard, until going there became a habit.
She turned around and carried the child through the doorway into
the bright sunlight, a glorious afternoon of intense white light in a dark world
of bombed-out buildings and violent human dust.
Riding on her hip, the child looked up at her. She smiled into its
beautiful brown eyes, thinking for an instant that she had raised it to this
point, that for all of its short life it had been only with her.

II

In less than two weeks, she had delivered her story and photographs
to the editor of the Lebanese newspaper in Los Angeles, picked up her
remittance and gone north, far north to her temperate home beneath the fir
green hills of Seattle. There, thickly layered gray skies, often rainless sham,

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made the inconstant sun's appearance a celebrated event.
At first her slate clapboard houseboat smelled damp and musty
inside, but with the windows open and sea squalls blowing in it quickly
assumed a salty freshness. From time to time when the winds shifted, the
smell of early fall wood smoke drifted in on breezes sliding off the foothills
of the white-dusted North Cascades. Memories of autumn in the country.
Perhaps she should go there. She made no attempt to move from her
slouched, half-curled position in a favorite overstuffed chair. Now and then
her tired eyes moved to the pile of unopened mail she had carried in and
dumped on a corner of her scarred oak desk.
"Lemur, little fellow," she whispered into the filtered evening light.
"Tried to take you with me...did take you but you're still there. Damn it.
Damn." What would become of the child? Parents dead. No relations to be
found. The young Maronite mother and father having wandered in from
some godforsaken place -- desert, mountains, empty space only fought over -
- to start a new life. Life in a hell zone. The child all that was left of a dream,
a striving instinct. "Who'll care for you? You should have your chance. Not
like those in the street. God, don't come to that." Oh, was I talking out loud?
Never used to.
The favored bottle of Glenlivet beckoned from the bar shelf. Her
eyes fastened on it but in moving toward it she paused a moment, biting her
fingers, then went for her jacket. An evening out. Not to be alone was the
thing. Alone, the black mood could stalk and make its kill.

***
The Portage Bay Bar & Grill on Lake Union never changed. The
steadfast could check in there every two days or two years and find it the
same. That unvarying familiarity, Billy the proprietor, and the fact that it was
a short walking distance from her houseboat were its salient attractions. It
was, to say the most, unpretentious in a very comfortable way: stone fire pit,
scuffed black leather and scarred walnut, soft lighting, always musty with
liquor fumes and stale smoke. Altogether quite worn down but kept clean.

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"Hope you don't ever change this place, Billy," she said as he poured
her a double Scotch and water. "I'd get all mixed up if you did."
"Hell, I'm doin' just fine the way it is," Billy said, dropping a lemon
twist into her glass.
Billy was a night person, a pale stocky man with short-cropped hair
of sandy gray that always looked as if he'd just stepped out of a shower and
forgotten to comb it. His sympathetic hands were the cause, worrying his
hair with tipsy patrons' complaints: a constant bemoaning of aimless
muddles. Through comedy and pathos, he leaned on his elbow with his chin
in his palm, his free hand sweeping up his hair in little tilted shocks. Every
nonviolent oddity who came along was tended to as a duty, but not without
salty comment or a roll of the colorless eyes, which only seemed careless.
Billy had his favorites; it showed in the way his sleepy gaze narrowed to a
fine concentration.
"So where ya been this time?"
"Don't ask. Well, Beirut." She took a long swallow of her Scotch.
"Oh, yeah?" Billy said as he drew beer for an eager customer, then
gave it a deft push down the shiny black bar top and refocused on Mahta.
"That's a killer."
"An apt expression. It has its detractions. The constant fear of being
a target. Once I was afraid I'd get used to it. That would make you careless."
"Hey, the Army was enough for me. Careless is dead...and I know
what scared is."
"This time I had it bad. I've never been so scared. You go a little
crazy when you manage to live."
"Why take a chance? Jesus, if you want thrills why not just ski off a
glacier or rock climb or something?"
"No, it isn't thrills...God, no, it isn't. That's just a collateral effect
when you're left still breathing." Thirsty, she was already half finished with
her drink. "It's the kind of thing I do. It happens sometimes."
"But why, kid? Why do that stuff?"
"I have to...have to...at least that much. Sometimes it puts you right

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where they are...the innocent victims. You don't have to exaggerate or lie
about anything. You're a witness. You know. Except maybe for a few
seconds, they didn't and for some of them it's over. But you've got them and
in a way you're keeping them alive. Then you just leave. That's the hard part
because it's so easy."
"So why the hell go to that damn place? Freelance -- don't that mean
free to go where ya want?"
"Not entirely. Sometimes I go where I think I need to be. More
often, I go where they want. Go to talk to the living...end up reporting on the
dead."
"Always plenty of those," Billy said with a headshake.
She took another long swallow and felt the Scotch burn its way to her
stomach. "I don't know...somebody needs...I need to be in those wastelands,
but I always come away feeling so bad...a lot worse than being in the middle
of it...don't have to stay."
"So ya wanna share in everybody's friggin misery."
"No. Until I get there, I can never really believe it's going on. I can't
do much but I can go there. I can make others see it. But the relief at
leaving...God, it scuttles so much anxiety it's like a...like a hemorrhage. And
like committing a crime. Leaving is a crime. Frozen in the middle of it's
better. You haven't done anything wrong yet by walking away. Time dies."
She handed Billy her empty glass and knew what he was doing when
he turned his back and married the Scotch with a little too much water -- for
her own good. He tossed in a lemon twist, and said, "Somethin' really got ya
this time."
"There was a little boy, a baby of only two or three, an instant orphan
left in the street where his parents were machine-gunned. I tried to take him
with me. Impossible. I sent him food and clothes and toys. I sent him my
picture and a recording of my voice talking to him and reading children's
stories. I guess that seems pointless. He doesn't know what I'm
saying...children should be read stories, hear lullabies; so many wonderful
ones."

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17



"Christ, why don't ya have a kid."
"Oh God, Billy, that's such a wrong answer."
"You ain't gettin' any younger."
"Another shot, please, Billy. You put in too much water."
He shrugged and tipped the bottle into her glass. She gulped it down
and felt it burn a little more than usual. Her stomach was beginning to rebel
against strange diets, both the richness of the impulse food she ate at home
and the paucity and poor quality of the food she often ate on the run in
remote places.
"No, I'm not getting any younger, and in a way I'm not getting any
older. Anyway, that doesn't have a lot to do with what I'm saying."
"I ain't as dumb as I look. If you keep this up you won't get old at
all. You're droppin' one good apple into a whole rotten barrel. You'll loose
that shine, kid."
She sighed. "I'm not such a perfect apple, Billy dear. Am I talking
too much? Let me know if I am."
"Hell no, you ain't talkin' too much. Haven't seen ya in a whole long
time. So, you gonna try and get the kid?"
"I haven't given up yet. I've got a few contacts and some people in
children's organizations." She felt herself on a maniacal rise with the bite of
the Scotch. "Huge brown eyes, so sweet. Damn it, I tried to put him in the
care of a decent shelter but I can't stand the thought of what might be
happening to him. I know it's futile. I've tried calling there. Huh, like trying
to reach Pluto on the phone."
"Hell, it seems like the damn barbarians oughta let one little two-
year-old orphan outta there. Must be they want dough. Yeah sure, that's it."
"They're no more barbarian than a lot of us right here. They're
mostly innocent people caught up in destructive emotions: fear, greed, rabid
anger. We animals all have this at the base of our skulls, Billy. Throw in a
few evil fanatics with power and you've got another hell zone. But money,
I'm sure you're right. It's the conclusion everyone comes to in the
end...pretty easily actually, because if you have enough of it you can get

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

18



anything."
"Well, damn near...pretty damn near."
"You know what, Billy? I'm losing it. The world is full of
them...thousands and thousands of little hands tugging at me when I’m trying
to sleep. On and on it goes, masses of feeble and hungry treated like so
much dross. In my dreams, always a sea of hands...reaching out...reaching.
God, those beautiful eyes, pleading for a chance they'll never get. Why do
there have to be so damned many of them?"
"Well, have another shot of this, kid. Sometimes it's better to see
things that ain't there."

***
A motor launch putted by and Mahta raised her head, studying her
flowered sheets. Of all the hostile, galvanizing, utterly foul places she had
awakened. She could hit the deck with both feet, bound across a freezing
floor or a humid hole of stench without hesitation, a trace of dizziness. But
this was one of the other times. She sank back as the room gave a
shuddering twist.
Where am I? Red lily tulips with dark green leaves on a field of white. Think I
got these sheets on sale downtown. Must be home. Lift the head and see how it goes.
Ugh. God, what a headache. Aspirin...aspirin.
She stood up at a tilt and wrapped the loose top sheet around her
shivering body, dragging one end behind her to the bathroom sink. Her
hand shook as the aspirin spilled into her palm and over the counter,
bouncing across the floor.
Bitter. Hard to swallow. Lie down on your bed of tulips, tulips, tulips. It will
pass, my dear old thing. It will pass. Oh, let it pass. Take a deep breath. Dizzy.
Shouldn't have drunk all that damn booze and rattled on to poor Billy. Ahh, this is
awful. Swallow. Should have stayed home and nursed my Glenlivet...never gives me a
headache. Swallow. Good thing I don't do this often...like mother. Oh God, she's
gone...gone. Mother, I'm sorry...I will never-- No, don't start that. Dad's waiting. Have
to go over there. If only he hadn't sold the old place so early in his life...gave him something

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

19



to do. Guess he remembered too much. Mother gardening, waiting for the sun to angle
around for liquor in the lilacs. Dad tending his Jerusalem artichokes and carrying her to
bed. Must go see him. Sad, so sad. Damned Scotch. I'd almost rather go back to
Beirut. But not quite...not quite...except for Lemur. Can't think now. Just sleep. Then
put something harmless in the abused little tummy. Sad. Liquor-sad...and then some.

***
Scrambled eggs with freeze-dried chives mixed in, half an English
muffin with peach jam, a cup of Irish Breakfast tea with milk. She sat in her
little kitchen nook, making a quick evaluation of her breakfast. This
precipitated thoughts of Lemur. I wonder if he has anything decent to eat. Of course
they'll feed him, but not the way I could. Well, there goes my stomach.

III
Her father opened the door and stood squinting for a moment with a
puzzled look, even though she had called to say she was coming. Assessing
the damage, she thought. He stepped back in silence, making way for her to
enter.
She, too, was quiet, making assessments, those of his current state,
their influence upon one another, effects of the past: Still self-contained, a little
stooped; dark amber eyes clear and boyish in that bland, unrevealing face; worn leathery
skin; silver hair, beautiful in moonlight; as usual smelling of Roger Gallet cologne and your
one Jamaican cigar a week. But a plaid flannel shirt and corduroy pants? Lovely
blasphemy. So you do have an opinion about clothes. I like it. At first when we left the
old house to come here and be urbanites, it was still mother's way: a cashmere v-neck
sweater, a white shirt, and always neatly pressed sailcloth slacks. In time, a few subtle
changes. Now the reprieve of plaid and corduroy, dear old thing. Good for you.
She held out a white carton. "Here, dad, pickled herring. I know
how you like it with a little rye whiskey."
With a sweeping corner view, the modest eighteenth floor
condominium looked out over Puget Sound, Queen Anne Hill, and Lake
Union. It was kept up by a housekeeping service and smelled of a tidy old

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

20



man's nest: cigars, after shave, newspapers, worn leather, lemon furniture
polish, and cooking fumes. Like Billy's place, it had hardly changed since she
and her father moved here seventeen years ago: the tufted black leather sofa
and his big, studded black leather wing chair with ottoman; the familiar
ticking of the two-weight wall clock -- German movement, French mahogany
case; the mahogany-framed, beveled mirror, reflecting the cloud-filled sky
and at night the lights of Queen Anne Hill; the worn but still richly colored
Tabriz stuck over the beige wall-to-wall carpet; a few of Mahta's framed
photographs, his favorites, markers along a restless, carved-out path.
Her perspective of these photographs was quite unlike his; it included
herself seeking the right position and thinking about what each captured
image would mean: the Serengeti in Tanzania, where roamed amazing fauna
losing a battle with the virus Homo sapiens; the Mayan ruins of Tikal, cryptic
remnants of numerating stargazers with internecine habits; and
Chingkangshan Mountain, Well Ridge Mountain, in China's Kiangsi
Province, where dreamer Mao Tsetung hid out with his small band in 1927 --
that was the early, poetic, still unruined man. Had she really stood in those
places, taken those? Yes and thousands more. Before long it might be
possible to shrink the plundered world to a luncheon engagement anywhere
at all with sleep in one's own bed the same night. New Guinea's remote
cataracts had only a moment more to break and splash unheard.
"So you're back alive, Mathilda," Frank Lind said in a crackling voice.
"Didn't know if you'd make it."
"Oh, dad." She threw up a casual hand, pretending his remark was a
gross exaggeration, while her thoughts swelled and divided and spread. This
time I didn't know if I'd make it either, but I won't tell you that. You think I'm an odd
one, don't you, poor darling? If I'd made it home bagged for a coffin, you'd have buried me
without much emotion showing on your face, holding it all in, another deep intangible
wound.
In the early years, you and mother made love and fought with equal zeal; you,
always trying to get out from under her miserable pettiness. She couldn't stop herself. Then
you fought over her drinking. She couldn't stop that either, the grand periodic binges.

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

21



Even sober she could be coy and playful, with a droll, offbeat kind of humor, as if
everything were ridiculous, as it surely was. She had never intended to grow up or face
anything, would sing humorous songs to me while I tried to fix your breakfast, or wake us
up playing the piano fortissimo in the middle of the night. We let ourselves be duped,
hopeful, desirous of believing, duped again and again. She would take us in, seductive,
tease us until we were laughing with her, the short bliss of eating something she had baked -
- our favorite maraschino cherry cake. Suddenly plates would fly. We couldn't believe it,
but in time we learned to believe it. At last, in her sober periods, she used anger to keep
everyone away, then hated herself for it, hated her inability to fit anywhere, to be part of an
ever intimidating world. Back to the drinking. She would lock herself in her room,
pretending to rest, and drink until she couldn't stand. Once you sawed the lock off her
door. Poor old dear, kneeling there patiently sawing. It stayed that way for months, her
symbolic door missing a chunk. Whenever she came out, either in stealth or reeling, often
tripping on a few stairs, watchful little Mahta was there; the aging adolescent with a
terrible family secret, reaching for mama's hand. When she was tucked back in bed, off I
would go, searching out her hidden bottles and pouring them into the sink, hoping, hoping
she would believe she had drunk them all. My hands shook I was so afraid for, so afraid
of, so angry at her. What an old, tired, oft-repeated play it was. All that good whiskey
down mother and down the drain, until the day...my God, the day--
"What was it like there in Beirut?"
The merciful words carried her from a ruinous place she had not
meant to go. She thought about the question a minute. "Not good.
Unreal...or too real. Too real if we in this land of surfeit are really
anesthetized."
"Once it was a great port and banking center for the Middle East," he
said, sinking into his wing chair.
"Ah yes, a jewel on the Mediterranean, shimmering beneath the
eastern Lebanon Mountains. I love its history. Nearly two thousand years
ago the Phoenicians built ships from the cedars of Lebanon...the romantic
past." Even some of the present might become a romantic past for a few,
she reminded herself. It would take a while; everything would have to
become a whole lot worse than it already was.

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

22



"The Romans were there," he offered.
"Yes...a palm bedecked shore of learning and culture after they
colonized it in 14 B.C. Maybe its conquerors weren't so welcome...but now
it's rubble."
"Lunacy."
"Pretty much...but humans with so-called higher intelligence have
done this," she said, walking to the windows. "It'll have to rise again...again
and again. Population, economics demand it." She placed her hand on the
casement and leaned her chin against it.
"Oh, dad, look at that dazzle coming out of the clouds. The water's
all stippled with such a blinding light. I love this view. Wind's uncapping the
Olympics...coming out hazy blue and mysterious; already a dusting of snow.
Everything’s in flux, always changing."
"Yes...entertaining. Should have brought your camera."
"I did...but just for a picture of you."
"Why do you want so many pictures of this old carcass?"
"Dad, you're very photogenic," she reminded him one more time,
turning back to her favorite panorama. I want to keep you.
"I've taken a lot of pictures of this view: the islands in morning
mist...noon's drowning blue with white chop...a fiery peachblow sunset
behind the Olympics...and the Canada geese, always gaggling past these
windows in their goosey conversations, crossing to Lake Union -- back and
forth they go. I love the icy moon beside the Space Needle in winter...ferries
coming, going. There's one now...always plying the waters with those
faceless windows...friendly little squares of yellow at night. Sometimes, far
away, I dream of them...alive and grinning in the dark like sea dragons."
"When I go, move out of that floating shack and live here. It won't
be much longer."
"Dad? You look terrific."
"Doesn't mean a thing. It's the stuff inside that’s going haywire."
"What's wrong?" She tried to keep her voice light, glancing at him
and back at her view.

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

23



"Just age...wearing out."
He sat and she continued to stand, evaluating more the tenor of his
voice than the information it conveyed.
"By the way, you have enough security over at that sea level tub
you're never in? I remember the time you came home and found it trashed.
Lots of burglaries lately."
"Everything's fine," she quickly assured him, remembering the
depressing scene she had encountered. It was not long after she lost Brehnt.
She had crawled in half alive from another enervating horror -- yes, it was
Ethiopia --, shivering from the cold heavy fog outside and the grisly fog in
her mind, so tired, just longing for her old easy chair. Every closed space
had been wildly searched, drawers pulled out, files strewn, cabinets turned
upside down and her desk dismantled -- curiously enough, she later felt
certain nothing was missing. She was so tired she had stood in the middle of
the room and wept.
Silence again. She sensed that her father was fixedly staring at the
back of her head.
"Do you have any kind of a...well, a mate, Mathilda?"
She laughed. "No, and the feeling is mutual."
Mahta turned from the window and saw that her father looked a little
surprised at his own forwardness, provoked she now realized by the urgency
of a worn body.
She walked to the corner window and looked out at Lake Union, her
silent thoughts gathering critical momentum. As if that were the answer to
everything. At your age do you really believe that? I was married once. Maybe you've
forgotten the disaster that was Kenneth. I certainly won't remind you. Lucky no child
came from it to be torn between us. A man to demand that I subordinate myself to his
needs? It's too late. I'm wise now. You have to do that without thinking. There was
someone, someone you didn't know about. If I'd let you meet Brehnt... Why does it
matter? To help me verify his having existed? No, of course to keep him alive. How
many heads is he in? That would take some research. Stop this, this dream...memory?
Stop it now. A mate, you ask. Something like that...some time back, not of late. I'm

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

24



spoiled by ideals...or saved. They can't live up to my expectations and I can't live up to
theirs. You and Billy: a mate and babies, the answer to everything. And there's
contemptuous Aunt Grace, always mouthing that misleading old indoctrination: marital
bliss. How convenient to ignore reality. Apparently, we're destined to repeat this pitiful
stupidity, forever at the mercy of our comic chromosomes. Sensual June brides draped in
make-believe white, virile grooms sprigged with lily of the valley, never again so innocent or
well-intentioned. Specious. Deceptions necessary for posterity, but in fact so utterly absurd.
She remembered that Paul Carl had equated absurdity with the
working photographer's coup de chance, the lucky chance shot of the
extraordinary. But wasn't absurdity quite common, ubiquitous and hardly of
value? Wasn't it everything? Oh, but she must not be too cynical. It would
leave her nothing.
I had so little experience when I first ran into Paul Carl. He must have made
some kind of impression on me; I do remember that brief encounter. Rejection is easy to
remember. The hurt, I'm sure, the insult of being disregarded. After the ballet, we
wandered off to a new little watering hole, untainted with memories of Kenneth: fresh blond
wood, vivid yellow and orange colors, a narrow-roomed bar with pyramid stacks of
sparkling glasses. We drank beer poured from pitchers that looked like hospital urinals.
I laughed and drank and went to piss, and drank and laughed and drank until I was
numb, euphoric, a wasted smile frozen on my tender face. My long blond hair, tan legs,
short skirt...so slim and eager, expectant. I wanted to topple all those precariously stacked
glasses. I wanted not only excitement but a sudden deep recognition; adoration of course;
simply to conquer the world. Oh yes, everything! The impossible that innocence craves --
just liberated from a faithless husband but still small-world innocent. "Let's get close,"
was Paul's idiomatic seduction as he stopped us in an alley to embrace. We swayed down
the sidewalk...thence to my old apartment, thence to my narrow little bed -- too short for his
long body -- thence, thence. He was gone by late morning and had already forgotten me by
afternoon. For a few days I had a certain preoccupation with that self-important black-
bearded machine. I always fell for cold talent and the threat of intelligence. I embellished
with such hopefulness, then wondered why I wasn't loved back by a throbbing big red heart.
In the end memory pegged him as a huge deceitful ego, rife with designer labels attached to
ridiculous clothing, a one-track man tracking fast.

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

25



I've slipped through the monogamous cracks. There are others under the floor
boards in the dark, but I don't seem to hunt them or want them. Too exhausting. Too--
"Didn't mean to pry. Just thought you might get lonely, Mathilda."
She smiled and went on with her insistent stream of silent thoughts.
And you, dad, could you possibly be missing poor mother's locked door, thick tongue,
bruised limbs, long sullen hangovers? Of course you remember her as she was in her
twenties -- my memory fixed by photographs and vague half-dreams: an auburn-haired
beauty, mother and apple blossoms...sweet curly-headed naïf under an apple tree.
Beautiful, full of daydreams. Hopefully numbing her brain with fraudulent romance and
then futile alcohol. What I remember is the sound made by her flaying hands knocking the
needle across old Billie Holiday records while I viewed life's reversals from another angle --
trying to read Nathanael West with cotton in my ears. I wanted to understand why she
had to hurt us in trying to find her way. When she was in her cups it was never those
sudden unprovoked slaps I received that hurt so much; oh no, it was what she did to herself.
A few times she and I did almost connect, short fragile moments more painful to remember
than an inept slap or curse. Easier now to blame, but a distortion. She could always let
us sample the sweetest temper. She could always as soon withhold her love -- the most
devastating punishment. None of those abuses will ever compare to my own final atrocity.
Stay out of that memory. Stay out of that place. Better the assuaging knife of hate, clean
and swift...but a lie.
I recall a few small things: putting a box together, a cardboard storage box
purchased flat and attacked with a wild impatience. Moving too fast I had creased the
laughably simple construction incorrectly, the error followed by loud complaint. Mother
came and stood over her flummoxed teen-aged child kneeling above confusion. "Oh, that's
hilarious, Tilldy. Here, try it this way, honey." I watched and stored away everything but
the method of assembly. Her earnest red-lipsticked mouth twisted to the side, mama's
pretty fingers were for once of use, caressing a box that I thought was me. A vicarious
embrace, sweet words from that so often angry, so often childish being. A helpless, self-
effacing tortured soul who could not open an envelope without half destroying the contents in
a rage and fear of what she would find, who changed her mind from morning until evening
and never thoroughly considered much of anything. Kneeling down, her head bent to my
task, for an instant reversing our long exchanged roles, reassuring hands, comforting voice,

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

26



secretive eyes all tender, a minuscule granule of affection swelling over our barren lives -- for
me it was love. I'd have traded parts of me for a love from her that was curious. She was
never that.
And now solitariness is a habit...learned while growing up. You had each other,
the diversions of fighting and making up. I wandered off alone and found solace in nature
and books...a lethargic dreamy little creature with an imaginary horse for a friend, until,
that is, you got me a real one. Perhaps it was my thyroid -- those thyroid pills our
ponderous old country doctor prescribed. What did they really do? Too much? It seems a
long time I've been unstrung, the stuff of capricious chemistry. How does one get calm, get
ahold of a deliciously extravagant playfulness? Not by marrying: for me so ludicrous.
There’s my argument, no apology.
Is it good for you to be so often alone in this place, listening to music, reading,
watching skies...seasons? I suppose you doze and dream. There's television -- mostly crass
fantasy and gossip. I always wanted all kinds of things for you, dad, things you probably
didn't want at all. Do I mistake your peace for surrender? I can't ask. Why doesn't our
blood tell us more? Have the few clumsy words I once believed an impediment really
marked our understanding?
"Everyone gets lonely sometimes, dad." She spoke out at last with
induced lightness. "I’m pretty much of a loner, but I have friends...a few
acquaintances if I get desperate...a few good friends on the planet, from
whom I come and go...some very special ones...college pals." She thought of
dark trenchant Rafael, of soft loyal Frannie.
"I was proud of you in college...I guess you knew. My kid an honor
student. I thought you'd make a big success of yourself right here.” She
heard the chiding disappointment. "And you really don't get lonely out there
running around all the time? Years of it now."
"Oh, sometimes, yes. But I meet interesting people. You know...I
suppose it sounds strange, but my camera's like a friend...the words I write a
sort of ongoing conversation, alas, with a dwindling readership. But what are
you doing?"
"Same old thing. I read. Still play cards with the boys once a
week...gotta tell me all their damned aches and pains, comparing our

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

27



decrepitude. We made a pact we'd shut up about that but it creeps back in.
Ed's gone for good and we've got a new one now you don't know. Name's
Earl. Irish. All talk but damned funny sometimes. Gracie and her grandkids
come to see me. I don't mind playing uncle."
"Good. I'm glad."
Did he resent her for being unable to provide grandchildren, for not
extending him in this primal way?
She disliked the insinuations of her father's righteous sister: fine pale
hairs on a stiff very critical upper lip, the reproachful ice-blue eyes. Aunt
Grace disapproves of me. So be it. I'm completely out of her ken. It grates a little to
know that she complains to you about me, but I can live with it. To have an opinion that
isn't canned by one of the world's largest canneries is perilous defiance. Raw opinions are
disorienting for Aunt Graces. They suffer with terror of, therefore hatred of, the
nonconforming mind.
"Going somewhere soon?"
"You can always assume I'm going somewhere soon," she said,
striving for dismissive humor.
Yes, that's what I do. I keep going and going, as far and fast as I can. You
used to scold me for getting out of your sight when I played. Sometimes I did it to make
you call me, hiding in the hay loft, craving attention. I wanted you to miss me. I know
now you do...and I'm sorry.
"Where is it this time?"
"Not quite sure yet. Let you know when I am."
"Is it that bad? When are you going to run out of those lousy places?
Mathilda, my girl, I don't know if you'll outlive me or not."
He sighed and turned his face away from her to study the clouds
rushing by on a squally wind. His prodigal daughter so wasteful of his
extended flesh, she supposed him to be thinking. She snapped a few pictures
of him in that reflective pose.
"I could break my neck falling out of bed," she offered, dropping her
camera back into her shoulder bag.
"That old cliché isn't for you. It'll be some stinking mud hole a

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

28



million miles from here...and for what?"
"For the right reasons, I hope. If it happens you'll know, because I'm
telling you now, that I was doing what I wanted to be doing. That's all I can
say."
He got up and went to his desk, rustling through familiar clutter,
tossing pencils and scraps of paper off strewn magazines and newspapers
until he found what he wanted.
"I do read some of your stuff. I like the way you always seem to find
someone who stands for something. Here...what you wrote at the end of this
article on Latin America:
'She is thin but long inured to
defeat, this old matriarch, proud of
her child self that learned to go without
shoes. Out of necessity still barefoot,
she endures, by now fearing little.
The condition, she asserts, is preferable.
Shoes might obligate change, would be far
too great an unexpected gift.'
"I like that, Mathilda."
"I liked her." She must have died, but really won't until I do. "The way she
talked, urgent, up close, her hands grasping at life. Her plucky shrunken face,
the exuberance in those shining dark eyes, comes into my dreams
sometimes."
Frank Lind threw the article back on his desk. "Don't kill yourself
too soon, Mathilda, a smart young woman like you. I don't want to live to
see it."
"The moment of death doesn't thrill me, dad, but I'm not afraid of
not existing. Once I wasn't here and all too soon I won't be again. That's
natural, isn't it? You get this one chance and if you live right, receptive,
aware, death should be the fulfillment of life...almost sweet."
Perhaps he assumed she was trying to mollify his exit. She was not,
could not. There was a heavy silence. She regretted her directness. An

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

29



irretrievable dark finality hung in the air.
"I'm sorry. Guess I didn't turn out quite as you expected. I mean,
grandchildren...that sort of thing."
"I sure as hell didn't expect so much. Your old man's different now
too. The conventional world isn't so hot either: greed, bigotry, pollution...the
ones left out of it using guns and drugs, and the middle class on a downhill
treadmill, working to get relief at stadiums and shopping malls. No real
heroes anymore...just fantasy...movies. Too many of us...way too many."
His head shook with disapproval.
"Margie and I weren't the greatest parents. She never meant to hurt
us...suffered." Sighing and leaning forward with folded arms, he leveled his
amber eyes at his mysterious daughter. "I wonder where you learned all this
stuff...this attitude."
"You didn't dissuade me from learning it, dad. But I don't think it's
something you learn from being told. You have to feel it. You look around
you and sometimes you just feel so bad you want to run right at it...do
something...go and face the mess at least...maybe stick it in the faces of those
who can actually do more...shame them into it...if they still know what shame
is. My God, that's a little vain, isn't it?"
"I'm damned proud of you, Mathilda, you know that? You surely
have guts."
Mahta reached out, the rose-colored dress that her father had once
said he liked pulling tight at her back. Nothing serious yet; just a little too
much fat from areas in the world where people knew nothing of cholesterol
or the effects of excessive carbohydrates; it would come off in some starving
place. She patted his hands. His long knotted fingers were pressed against
his thighs. He was unused to touching his adult daughter, and she had found
that it was confusing, difficult for him, but he pecked at her cheek. She gave
him an answering squeeze of the hand and drew back in a silent rush of
thought.
I wish I could curl up in your lap, dad, and tell you how afraid I am
sometimes...not of the moment of my death, no, not that, but of dying without having done

THE UNEXPECTED GIFT

30



anything, without having been of any use. I wish you could give me that ivy-cottage warmth
that was mine when you read to the child in your lap, the child here now, the story of Rose
Red and Rose White and the bear who turned into a prince. I wonder if you ever recall
those winter nights by the fire. If only I could have carried that little contentment away
with me. Oh for a short journey into an imaginary tale with a pretty ending...escape from
horror and ugliness. Please, some childhood talisman for peaceful amnesia, instead of
poisonous quaffs for mindless relief.
She watched her father step into his neat white-tiled kitchen where he
turned the carton of pickled herring into a shallow bowl. He brought it out
on a tray, along with two cocktail forks and two blue and white Chinese
tidbit plates.
"You want a little rye or some of your damned burry Scotch? I just
keep it for you."
"No thanks. The dog bit a little too hard last night. But maybe I
could stand a beer...which I can get."
"No, sit." He went out again and returned with a glass and a bottle
of local ale. "They bre