Birds of Paradise: A Novel by Abu-Jaber Diana

Author:Abu-Jaber, Diana [Abu-Jaber, Diana]
Language: ara
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

BRIAN FINDS AVIS OUTSIDE, sitting in the backyard on a teak folding chair. He sits beside her and for a few minutes neither of them speaks. Finally he reaches for her hand. “You’re in shock. I know you’re in shock. We both are. It’s a lot to take in. For both of us. But—just imagine, sweetheart? A grandchild.”

Avis stares at the fluttering palms. “Not my grandchild. You can have her.”

“You don’t mean that! You’re just overwrought.” He attempts a new, lighter tone, “How do you even know it’s a her?”

“Don’t you see what he’s trying to do? He’s trying to replace Felice. He was cheated of his old family—we all were—so he’s trying to make a new one. Just like he was always running off to his gardening and his market.”

“Sweetheart.” Brian presses her palm between his fingers, his voice thin and trembling, as if running through a wire strainer. He sits unusually upright, his face so alert he seems almost frightened. “Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t everyone eventually want a family of their own?”

Avis frowns, smoothing back the short ends of her hair.

“Maybe we should just give them the money.”

“It’s too much!” She wraps her arms around her elbows. “Who is this girl he’s with anyway?”

“Well, the mother of our grandchild, at the very least.”

She is touched, briefly, by an awareness of her husband’s anxiety, but her own preoccupations are overpowering. She doesn’t respond. The late-afternoon sky is a green watercolor. Everything in the world seems bound to the screen of fronds; everything is breathing, subtly, quietly, barely moving.

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