Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots Read Online Free PDF Page B

was rooting for him. We were going to make it.
    “Damn it,” he said.
    “What?”
    I smelled it before I saw it. Urine blooming like an ink stain on his sweatpants. I was suddenly exhausted. I wanted to be home. I hated myself for having been so selfish, for making him walk just for me. The wind had picked up. I hailed a cab. He collapsed into it, mouth gaping, chest heaving. I patted at the wet patch with a tissue.
    “No, Victoria,” he said. “Let it be.”
    We had to loop four blocks to get back. I passed a twenty to the driver as we got out. The meter hadn’t even been started.
    “Keep it,” he said in Arabic. His face was angular and dark, like a strong-jawed animal’s, like Joseph’s when he was young. I had the urge to ask him if he’d ever been to Iraq. He was Egyptian, I could tell, but still. Joseph’s father was alive when I left, and in hiding. For a moment, I imagined that he was living in the beautiful house in Sal-hee-yah where I’d grown up. That when he came downstairs our maid, Daisy, was rolling out
shakrlama
dough in the kitchen. She’d become his caretaker. I imagined we’d left him in good hands. Joseph never tried to contact him from America. He didn’t have to. He said, “A son just knows.”
    Back on the sidewalk, Joseph put his arm around my shoulders.
    “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I was going to buy you a FrozFruit.”
    He took a five-dollar bill out of his pocket, God knows where it was from, and handed it to me. I wanted to ask him, as if it mattered, what kind he would have bought for me. Lime or cantaloupe. If he still remembered.
    I put my head down, let the tears mass behind my eyes.
    “Come,” he said, nudging me toward our building with his weight.
    We took the elevator up. It clicked along, slower than ever, smelling of steak.
    On our landing stood Dottie, our upstairs neighbor of more than thirty years. She posed, her hands on her hips, and she wore one of her ridiculous robes, a hideous purple thing with giant velvet flowers like tarantulas around her neck. What was left of her orange hair was wrapped around tiny curlers. Seeing Joseph, she covered her head with her hands.
    “Oh!” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you to be up and about. For a handsome young man, I would have dressed.”
    She winked. I rolled my eyes and pretended to gag. It drove me mad, the way she swooped in with her sense of humor, making me look somber, un-fun, a killjoy. And Joseph reacted to it. He straightened up, really smiled. I wanted to tell her that she hadn’t touched his catheter.
Do that,
I wanted to say,
and then let’s see you chipper.
    “You were indisposed,” Dottie said. “I stopped in for your
TV Guide.
” She shook it in the air. “Thank you.”
    I narrowed my eyes, trying to vanish her. I wanted to be home, just the two of us. Over the years, Joseph had been kind to Dottie, making it impossible for me to shut her out entirely—and I’d grown to tolerate her. And because in her whole life, she’d probably never been more than tolerated, she considered me her all and everything. Still, we couldn’t have been more different. Her cosmetics, her Southern mannerisms, her taste in television. Sometimes I’d tell Joseph to imagine her in Baghdad, imagine her with no microwave or shimmering body lotion. “Don’t be mean,” he’d say, laughing. “She wouldn’t hurt a fly.” But there was something about her—a kind of entitlement to be anywhere, say anything—that I had yet to get over. We’d never felt powerful like her. This country wasn’t set up like that for us. Decades later, and the only reason I continued to mind my manners around her was so Joseph wouldn’t find me cruel. Again.
    His weight was getting heavier and heavier on me. My legs had begun to shake.
    “Onward,” I said. I grabbed around his body to get a better grip and sort of hoisted him, preparing for the final stretch. “Almost there.”
    “So,” Dottie said, stalling us. “If