bed, watching a spider climb the window screen, the sky behind it a brilliant blue. The spider moved with elegance and without hurry, unconcerned about the past or the future, one as immaterial as the other. Time was passing—nine days now—but I felt stuck, as if I’d only just heard that my father had died. In the Muslim tradition, the period of mourning lasts forty days. Why forty? Moses spent forty days without bread or water before receiving the covenant on Mount Sinai. Between his baptism and his return to Galilee, Jesus was forty days in the wilderness, resisting temptation. Muhammad was forty years old when he secluded himself in the cave at Hira, and Gabriel appeared to him. Forty was a potent number, a promise that ease would come after hardship, that good tidings would follow bad. But my grief would not end in forty days. Or forty weeks. Or ever, it seemed. All I had left of my father were memories, each as fragile as a wisp of smoke.
I thought about his last visit to me, the previous spring, when he’d come to watch me perform at the Botanical Gardens. He’d worn a pin-striped suit and a black tie and, looking at his reflection in the full-length mirror in the hallway of my apartment, he had said, “Nor-eini, wait.” I was already at the door, the folder with my music tucked under my arm, my hand halfway to the light switch. “Wait, Nor-eini.” My father took off his jacket and, sitting on my piano bench, brushed his shoes until they shone. He wanted to look his best for the performance. Come to think of it, he always wanted to look his best when he ventured out of his work clothes, as if any trip into the wider world—the whiter world—was a test he might not pass someday, if he wasn’t careful. At the Botanical Gardens, he’d asked a passerby for a photo of us standing by the marquee with my name on it. Where was that picture now? In the drawer under my bedroom window? Or somewhere on the desk I shared with Margo? I’d have to look for it when I got back. I needed to get back to my new piece, too; I wanted to finish it in time for fall fellowship deadlines.
Then the cabin phone rang, startling me. It was an old-fashioned landline phone and its sound was urgent and bothersome. I dragged myself out of bed to pick it up, holding the receiver close with one hand, and working with the other to untangle the cord. The line crackled. “Can I speak to Mr. Guerrari?” a man asked. His voice was high-pitched, almost feminine in tone, and he spoke with a European accent I couldn’t place.
“Guerraoui,” I corrected, my heart skipping a beat.
“Sorry, it’s hard to make out the handwriting on this order. I only have the carbon copy in front of me. Is Mr. Guerraoui home?”
“No, he’s not here. He passed away.”
There was a moment of shocked silence on the other end of the line. In that time, I relived my disbelief at the news of my father’s death, the sight of him in his burial shroud, how cold his skin had been when I’d touched it, the grief and anger that took turns inside my heart.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” the man said. “I didn’t know. I called the cell phone number he left me, but it went to voicemail, and no one ever answered this one until today.”
“He didn’t give you the house number?”
“No. Just this one.” After a moment, the man drew his breath again. “Who should I talk to about getting paid for the balance?”
“What balance? I’m sorry, who did you say you were?”
“The balance on the engagement ring he ordered in April. This is Maurice from Maurice and Dana’s Designs.”
I had trouble parsing the phrase engagement ring. It didn’t seem to belong to a language I could speak or understand, and that feeling persisted even after I wrote down the address for the jewelry shop, drove to Palm Springs to find it, and was buzzed inside by Maurice. I was clinging to the possibility that there was some kind of misunderstanding, that my father had meant “anniversary ring,” even though my