Forgiving Ararat by Gita Nazareth Read Free Book Online Page A

nature in rebellion against time. The apple tree I’d climbed as a child extended its limbs through all four seasons at once: some branches in blossom, some leafy, others tipped with ripe green apples and still others bare, like an unfinished painting. I reached from spring into winter, scooped up a handful of snow, and watched in amazement as the summer sun melted it into water that evaporated and began falling as rain on the other side of the lawn. Even more wondrous than this was the light produced by the coupling seasons: the rays of four suns, describing four distinct arcs across the sky, fusing into a shimmering aurora that passed through the objects it touched like an X-ray, exposing every darkness and allowing no possibility of shadow. The light was a feeling more than a physical phenomenon—a pervasive sentiment of brightness, uninhibited by the laws of physics and obedient only to the lawlessness of joyful emotion. I rose to my feet and twirled with my head back, dissolving into the light like my handful of snow, drinking in its warmth, allowing it to flush away my fears.
    When I stopped spinning I saw my car, for the first time, parked behind the rhododendrons. The magical light retreated, taking with it the idea that this was all a dream, as if reason itself had been a passenger trapped in the car, waiting to be released by my glance. Hot and cold, night terrors, hallucinations.
A fever? Yes, of course. A fever would explain everything that had been happening to me!
I even remembered not feeling well on Friday and wondering whether I was catching a cold, that my skin had felt cool and damp. I gazed around the lawn again and up at the house; I looked down at my legs and feet and flexed my left hand. Everything was right where it was supposed to be, and everything worked as it was supposed to work. Only the seasons were out of place, and that surely could be the result of a fever.
I must have driven to my grandparents’ house in some sort of delirium and collapsed.
    Nana was gone when I went back inside. The dishes in the sink were put away, the counter cleaned. A thin film of dust coated everything, as though it hadn’t been used in weeks. The oven was cool. Not even the aroma of the muffins lingered in the air.
I had made it all up after all. I really was at my grandparents’ house in Delaware.
    I ran upstairs to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. There was my black hair, intact but disheveled, and ashen skin and bloodshot eyes. Carefully, I pulled open my robe. The holes in my chest and the red stains were gone. I laughed ruefully for having even looked. I took the mercury thermometer from the medicine cabinet and slipped it under my tongue: it read one hundred and six, confirming my self-diagnosis. I obviously needed to get to a doctor, but equally obvious:
I was alive
.
    I went into my grandparents’ room and phoned home but got the answering machine: “Bo, it’s me,” I said, “are you there? Bo? I don’t know what’s happened...I think I’m really sick. I’ve got a fever and I guess I blacked out; I’m all the way down in Delaware at my grandparents’ house. I don’t know how I got here, I can’t remember anything after picking up Sarah at the daycare yesterday; oh, my God, I hope she’s all right. She’s not here with me, nobody’s here...I’m so sorry. She must be starving, there’s formula in the cupboard.... I don’t know whether to come home or try to see a doctor here.... I think I’m feeling a little better so maybe I’ll try to make it home and see how I do. I can always turn around. Ok...I’ll be there in a few hours. Give Sarah a kiss for me.... I love you. Bye.”
    My clothes were piled beside the guest room bed—my black silk suit with formula stains—no blood—on the lapel and sleeve, my blouse, stockings, underwear, and shoes. I dressed quickly and left a note for my grandparents that I’d been there and would explain later.

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    T he fall