He picked it out himself, said Joe. I asked if I could help him choose something but he said this was what he wanted. He said he knew you'd like it because it's simple, and you like simple things. And then he talked a lot about the little house by the sea in Piraeus, where you used to live. He has such a good memory for some things. And he insisted on paying for the bracelet out of a little money he'd earned. He says he's already learned enough to get paid for it sometimes. Of course it must be something they do at the school to encourage them, paying them a little now and then, but he is doing well, Maudie. I went to the workshop and watched them repairing watches and he's getting on with it all right. It's not going to make the least bit of difference, the things he can't do, they're not going to hold him up at all. In other ways he's just marvelous, the way he thinks is just marvelous. Oh he's a jewel, little Bernini is.
Maud took the bracelet and held it, gazing down at it. She wondered whether Joe knew that Stern had once given her a bracelet like that in Piraeus, although one made of gold. And of course Bernini had remembered that other bracelet, and now with this simple gift he was saying to her that he too. . But of course Joe must have known all of that. . and understood it.
Joe felt a quiver pass through her shoulders as he held her. All at once she seemed smaller than ever to him, her shoulders thinner than he remembered.
Here now, Maudie, what's this you're doing?
Tears were welling up in her eyes. She shook her head, as if to send the feeling away.
I get so frightened sometimes, she whispered. He's not little anymore, not just a child, and sometimes I get so frightened when I think about it. The world's not made for people like him, it's not. It's hard enough to get by when you start with all the regular things. .
Joe held her tightly. She was crying and shaking her head, unable to shake herself free from the echoes she didn't want to hear.
Ah Maudie, I know how you feel and it's right for you to feel that way, you're his mother and nothing else would be right. But it's also true that people succeed in all kinds of ways. It's just breathtaking how they do it and Bernini's a fine lad, that's all, and he's going to do just fine. It doesn't matter that he can't read and write the way others can, or that he doesn't have a head for figures particularly. All the one means is that he'll never be an accountant hidden away in the back of some dusty office. And as for the other, well Homer was blind and he couldn't read or write, but he still saw everything there was to see and read the world much better than most of us. What I mean is, Bernini has other gifts and it's a rich world he has, just teeming with beauty. And it's going to be a rich life he finds for himself, I know it.
Maud had stopped her tears. Suddenly she looked up and smiled.
My God you're beautiful, thought Joe. Just trying so hard to take in all of life and make the best of it, and never hiding to be safe. It's the difficult way but it's also where the riches are, God bless.
She raised her hand. Joe smiled.
In the old days, he thought, you would have put your finger on my nose when you said whatever it is you're going to say. It's your way of getting close to people, the best thing God ever made.
Maud dropped her hand self-consciously. She looked confused.
The lemonade, she said. What happened to the lemonade?
I don't believe we've had the pleasure yet.
She laughed.
Poor Joe. You come to visit on a hot afternoon and you don't even get something cool to drink. I'm sorry, I'll just be a minute.
***
While she was gone he wandered around the room looking at her little treasures, the simple things that spoke of years of trying to find a place. Mementos he remembered from Jerusalem and Jericho, even a seashell from a tiny oasis on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. And mementos from Smyrna and Istanbul and Crete and the islands and Attica, and now from Cairo, from Egypt.
Once more, then, Joe found his thoughts slipping back through the years. To Jerusalem where they had met, and to Jericho where they had gone in the autumn when the nights had turned cold, because it was always summer in Jericho and Maud was going to have their child. A little house with flowers around it and lemon trees not far from the Jordan, a heady lemon scent near the river of promise and hope.
But it hadn't worked out for them in Jericho. Joe had been away running guns for a mythical man named Stern and Maud had grown desperate, afraid that one day he might not return and love would be taken from her again, as it always had been before. Joe too young to understand her fears and Maud too young to explain them, the two of them wrenched apart because they loved each other so deeply, until finally Maud in her anguish had abandoned Joe without even leaving a note, because words were too painful for what was being lost. . Maud overwhelmed with sadness as she trudged up the path away from the little house and its flowers, carrying the infant son she had named Bernini in the secret hope that someday he at least might build beautiful fountains and stairways in life. . Bernini at least.
And so to Smyrna, and to the islands and Istanbul and Greece, more restless years of uncertainty as her wanderings stretched on and on and seemed as if they would never end. Stern entering her life then through one of those mysterious turnings of fate so common in the ancient lands of the Eastern Mediterranean where everyone seemed to meet sooner or later, perhaps because they were all secret wanderers and it was a place for that, for seeking.
Stern and Maud meeting for the first time on a bleak afternoon beside the Bosporus where Maud had gone to stare at the swirling waters, feeling too weak to go on, too tired to pick herself up and try again, too beaten and alone for that. The darkness falling and a stranger coming out of the rain who was thinking exactly what she was thinking, who came up to the railing beside her and began talking quietly about suicide, speaking simply because he understood so well that sad solution, that haunting companion of the lonely. . So Stern had saved her life that afternoon and eventually Maud had been able to try again.
Once more there had been a little house with flowers, by the sea this time in Piraeus, where she and Bernini were happy together and Stern had come to visit.
And those had been the best years really, the happiest years for Maud when she looked back. Bernini still young enough so it didn't matter if he wasn't quite like other children, but then all too quickly that had ended. . War was coming.
Stern there to help as always, finding a job for Maud in Cairo and suggesting a school for Bernini in America, now that he was too old to sit daydreaming by the sea. A special school where Bernini could live and learn a trade, so that someday he would be able to support himself and make his way, in America where it was safe. Stern offering to pay for the school since Maud didn't have the money.
In the end she had agreed because it was the best thing for Bernini. And she had always thanked Stern, even though she had known from the beginning that the money must really have come from Joe. Because Stern didn't have money like that, despite what he told her, and Joe was the kind of man who would find it. Joe trying to make it easier for her by sending the money to Stern, and asking Stern to make the offer in his place. . And thus Bernini had come to have two fathers who cared for him, two men whose lives had been inextricably entwined with Maud's through the years. .
Echoes, thought Joe. Echoes of the sun and the sand and the sea and a glorious spring on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. . echoes from the brief span of a moon above the Sinai so long ago. .
Joe held the seashell to his ear, listening and listening, then replaced Maud's little treasure.
***
She was distracted when she came back from the kitchen. She sat down beside him and pushed back her hair.