Holiday Country by İnci Atrek

Author:İnci Atrek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

* * *

By the time I arrive home with the pastries, it’s well into the late afternoon, but no one’s set up the table in the garden yet. I walk inside to find my mother twirling the cord on the landline, her face beaming as she speaks into the phone.

“Of course,” she says in her accented English. My body blocks the sun, and her eyes flicker toward the source of the shadow. “Sorry—sorry—I have to go now. Bye.” She hangs up but misses the hold, and the receiver topples to the ground. After she picks it up and places it properly, she slowly spreads out her fingers, as if faulting some undiagnosed rheumatism instead of the interruption of my presence for her clumsiness. “Did the baker have the cinnamon buns today?” she asks.

In my mind, I wind back the clock. It’s seven a.m. on a Monday in California, and on Mondays my father has his briefing with the London office. He always leaves the house an hour earlier on those days, has done so as long as he’s been with his company. There is no way she could have been talking to my father.

“I was talking to your father,” my mother says.

I pause, giving her a chance to correct herself.

“He says hi and kisses you on the nose.” She heaves her body from the chair and takes the pastry bags from me, going to the kitchen to plate them.

You’re not making any sense, I say, following her. It couldn’t have been him, you’re lying to me. My mother’s shoulders drop, and she’s crestfallen at the counter for reasons unknown.

“Ada,” she sighs. “These aren’t cinnamon. You got tahini. Did you tell him tarçın? I wanted the spiral rolls that he made the other day.”

Oh, whoops. I told him tahin.

“Okay. You do understand that they’re not the same thing?”

Well, you somehow manage to mix up Dad with—

“Look, Ada,” says my mother, and she stands in the doorway arms akimbo, staring me down. “Call your dad back if you want to, go ahead, ask him if you don’t believe me. Just please, don’t tell your grandmother. As if she doesn’t already have enough insults to hurl at me, now she’s going to shove it in my face that I’ve raised a daughter who doesn’t trust her own mother.” She bites the inside of her cheek and arches her eyebrows as she considers her failings. Then she wheels around and goes to the garden to set the table.

There is a dance-like step down the stairs. “This is so exciting, isn’t it?” chirps my grandmother. She stops in her tracks as soon as she notices me. “Oh, it’s you. Sorry, I thought you were Meltem. Where’s Meltem?”

“What’s so exciting?” I ask.

“The news,” my grandmother says, stretching out the last word like a guilty toddler.

“What,” I say, doing my best to keep my tone measured, “is THE NEWS?”

“Oh, it’ll arrive when it arrives.” My grandmother hums a little tune and bobs her head from side to side, amusing herself.

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