Three Daughters: A Novel by Consuelo Saah Baehr

Author:Consuelo Saah Baehr [Baehr, Consuelo Saah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2014-11-25T07:00:00+00:00

She fell deeply in love—that old knocking behind the ribs and breathless surprise—after she began living with Samir. He was tolerant and thoughtful, traits she hadn’t expected from a man who had been the center of attention all of his life.

The miracle was they were uncannily alike. Both preferred to be out of doors, even in bad weather, over anything else. They still read difficult classics like students preparing for placement exams. He liked to tease her over the way she held the book up to her nose and sat favoring one haunch, as if still sentenced to the cramped prison of the Friends’ middle school desks. “Too vain to get glasses?”

“My eyes are perfect.”

She teased him about his wardrobe—actually, she was awed by the quality and quantity of his clothes, which far outnumbered hers. She was stunned by the revelation that his mother had had a dressmaker’s dummy made to his adult measurements and it was stored at a London haberdashery where they could make up anything from underwear to three-piece suits and have them fit perfectly.

Her cooking was awful, but he considered that amusing and hired Mary Thomas’s daughter to prepare the main meal. “You’ll be doing her a favor,” he told Nadia. “She wants to repay me because her mother lives in one of the farm cottages rent-free.”

“What will I do?”

“Miss Smythe told me the girls’ tennis team needs a coach. And they can always use an extra pair of hands in the science laboratory.”

There was a more visceral side to their relationship. Nadia was so tempted by sex that, often, it took over her will. Some days, whatever touched her body—her underpants, her brassiere, the edge of a table innocently meeting her crotch—aroused her. Riding a horse made her so wildly excited she rubbed herself against the animal until she came. During lovemaking she wasn’t above maneuvering her body or grabbing him to satisfy a greedy throbbing spot. She would have died if Samir commented on her style, because when she wasn’t aroused, she was chagrined. She would catch him smiling down at her as if he were amused by a charming weakness. He never said, “Wow. I didn’t expect you to be so hungry.” Yet that’s what it felt like. Hunger.

After lovemaking they liked to relive their shared past while sprawled on their bed. “Remember the time . . .” he would begin, and then they vied to recall school day catastrophes. The day they had gone to Jerusalem with Mr. Knudsen to see Henry V and Hanna Taban had dropped his camera from the balcony, hitting a woman below and knocking her out. The spring Margaret mistook a can of potpourri for Darjeeling tea and served it to the British chief secretary who was judging the English speaking contests. The afternoon that Pudgy Watson had slipped on the slick soles of his new shoes, unwillingly skating into the headmaster’s wife from St. Luke’s School in Haifa, who was visiting. “She went down like a bird,” said Samir, laughing so hard it sounded like choking.

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