Boundaries Read Online Free Page B

all come together to stay in her small apartment? She tries reminding herself that she has made a good life, a decent life in America. She does not live in a sprawling house like the one her parents own; she does not have a helper or a cook, just a cleaning woman whose services she can barely afford twice a month. She does not have a garden or a gardener. She must water the house plants herself. In her neighborhood music blares from boom boxes held on the shoulders of hooded young men; sirens screech at unpredictable hours. But she has a good job, a well-paying job that has made it possible for her to purchase her apartment, small though it is. She has never had to borrow money from friends; she has never had to ask her parents for a loan. Still her fears remain. Will her mother be pleased? Will she disapprove of the way she lives her life?
    She has shut herself in her room pretending she has work to do, a manuscript she has to finish editing for her boss before she leaves for New York. But she has already e-mailed the manuscript to her boss with her editorial notes; she has nothing more left to do. She picks up a magazine on the table near her bed. She cannot concentrate. She reads a page and has to reread it, forgetting in a second what she has just processed. She cannot still the throbbing behind her eyes. She tries lying down and placing a wet towel on her forehead; nothing helps. She had feigned sleep when her mother knocked on the door calling her for four o’clock tea.
    When Dr. Bishop rings the bell she is already dressed, sitting on her bed, waiting for him.
    “I hope I’m not too early.” Paul Bishop has brought her a box of chocolates and a bouquet of white daisies with bright yellow centers. She loves chocolates. When she was a child, there was little her mother could do or say to stop her from eating too many. It occurs to her that her mother might have told Paul about her love for chocolates, orchestrating her future behind her back. Irritated by her mother’s interference, she puts the chocolates on the coffee table and is about to call Lydia to take the flowers away when Paul Bishop says, “I bet you miss them. They don’t seem to grow daisies here. Most of the flowers on the island are big and tall. Anthuriums, ginger lilies, birds-of-paradise. I wanted to bring you something that grows in my garden in New Jersey. A little bit of America. Our home, you know …”
    Instantly, she is ashamed of her petty thoughts. She has accused her mother when her mother had nothing to do with the chocolates Paul has brought her. It’s the daisies he wants her to notice. She takes them from him and brings them close to her nose to conceal her embarrassment. “They are beautiful,” she says.
    “Sorry, they don’t have much of a perfume,” he says.
    She is glad he has stayed an extra day on the island, even if he has stayed for his own parents. He misses them, he had told her. He misses the scents of the island. But she saw the way his eyes lit up when she walked toward him and knows he has stayed for her too. Minutes ago her spirits were so low, but now she feels refreshed, energized, ready to spend a pleasant evening with him and put her worries at the back of her mind. She leads him toward the sliding glass door and out of the living room. Her parents are in their room, their absence, she is certain, conveniently staged by her mother.
    In the restaurant Paul Bishop tells her how much he admired the palm trees and the stone wall at her parents’ house, and how the mountains facing them seem to him like a curtain.
    “I used to think if I could draw them open, I would glimpse eternity,” she says.
    His smile sends tiny soft waves across his cheeks. “Just what I thought, standing there waiting for someone to answer the bell.” He tilts his head to one side and stares at her. “How on earth did someone let you slip out of their hands?”
    Did her mother tell him that she is divorced? It does not matter; she is