The Blood Debt

Chapter 24

Roman

Manolya is diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma the year I turn 32. She thinks she's sick with a stomach bug initially. I've never known our mother to be sick as a kid; so when she can't seem to shake it after a few weeks, I question Lou about it. She tells me she's had it checked out and that her blood work has come back fine, but when I go to Brookville for an Eid breakfast two months later and she's as pale as a ghost, I get Nora onto it. She's diagnosed with a malignant stage four tumor soon after. The hospital tells her it's a rare kind of cancer that's hard to detect, and it's spread to other soft tissue. Nora tells me the symptoms are treatable but the cancer isn't; it's too far advanced and aggressive. It's a bitter pill to swallow. Confronting as fuck. I can't recall the amount of times I wished she'd drop dead as a kid and then here she is 20 years later doing exactly that. The prognosis is 4-6 months, nowhere near enough time to sort through the lifetime of mommy issues we've all got.

I move back home after the prognosis. Lou's a junior at NYU studying psychology that year and even though there's Emina's too, she's getting on in age. She's in her late sixties and long overdue for retirement, but Emina's never been married and with no real family of her own, she stays. I hire two others and a full-time nurse to tend to Manoyla's growing needs, telling Emina that my move back home means we need more people around. She looks quietly relieved when I tell her the extra help will mean she can slow down too.

With her death looming, mother battles her inner demons the only way she knows how. I imagine that a life lead as miserably as hers is hard to reckon with in reflection. A month after I move back home Rebaj follows. Manolya accepts our return begrudgingly, likening our arrival to grim reapers coming to claim her soul. She talks openly about her impending death, but for all her bravado, I know she's hurting and she's scared. Outwardly she's still classic Manolya; her dissatisfaction with the world is as vocal as ever. She complains that we're loud, that our presence has changed the way things are done, that we've upset the order of her home, that me working from home is bringing 'too many strangers' into the house, that the 'damn dogs' are constantly barking at the strangers, that the geese are back and setting off the dogs, the new staff are all incompetent and need to be fired... her dissatisfaction is endless. But as time wears on and her health deteriorates she draws comfort from the chaos she outwardly abhors. She seeks comfort in the activity that surrounds her, meddling in and offering her advice whether it's wanted or not, and she even begins visiting me upstairs under the pretence of family business matters. A lifetime of neglect is hard to forgive, but her effort to make amends in those last few months goes a long way in soothing old wounds. It's not enough to heal them, but it blurs some of my more tainted memories of her.

When she eventually passes, it's on one of those afternoons that she comes to visit me in my office. It's poignant I guess that it happens when she's with me, alone, just the two of us; it's God's way of allowing my final memory of her to be one that's so peacefully serene. I'm speaking to Gabe on the phone about increasing intercepts from the NY NJ Port Authority on our containers and where this sudden interest might be coming from, when I notice her head's slumped awkwardly. I think she's fallen asleep. She's on a junky's dose of pain meds in her final weeks and it's not unusual for her to fall asleep in a chair or even mid-sentence because of it, but I hang up on Gabe telling him I'll have to call him back, knowing even before I get out of my chair that she's gone. I watch her in the silence of the office, knowing this is the only time I'll have to farewell her privately before the chaos of the funeral and burial. In the end, my farewell is a simple one; one that comes easy in death, even if it never did in life. I pick her up out of the chair into my arms, carrying her to her bedroom where I lay her down, folding her arms neatly over her chest before leaning down to kiss her forehead. I recite a short prayer she'd be surprised to know I still remember from my days with Imam Besim, a Saturday morning ritual every Berisha kid experienced at the local mosque. She's buried with an Islamic funeral the next day.

I sell the Pulp the following year. It's something I've been thinking about since my move back to Oyster Bay. After eight years of 7 P.M. to 3 A.M. days, I'm tired. Mateo's been looking after the Pulp in my absence and the idea of going back to it feels like revisiting a chapter in my life that's over. Borne out of my restlessness when Esad had been around to take care of everything else - the Pulp feels like it's served its purpose. My arrangement with Gabe and Sicillans grows the Berisha Corporation two fold in just under three years, and with only Rejab and I left, it doesn't leave me with a lot of time for other things, so like all good things, it's time to bring the Pulp to an end.

I find a buyer quickly. The enigma surrounding me and whispers of my underworld connections have always been a drawcard for the Pulp, so when rumors of its impending sale hit the market, I receive some generous offers.

When I eventually sign the sales agreement, it's been four years since Ayla's walked out of my life. The gaping hole she left behind feels a lot less hollow that year, but the sale of the Pulp changes that. It feels like reopening an old wound and I'm left to confront the fact that my last existing connection to Ayla, is here inside the walls of this club, and it's about to end once and for all. It's something I think I'm ready for given the amount of time that's passed, but the sale reinforces what I've known all along - Ayla's someone I'm never going to forget.

A setback in the sale of the Pulp complicates things and takes me to City Hall one afternoon. The new buyer wants to modify the existing building, keeping the jazz club downstairs but transforming the loft and office into private function rooms, but there's a deed restriction on the title and City Hall is stonewalling him. When the sale drags out I tell him I might be able to figure something out with some of the contacts I have there and take matters into my own hands. It's an overcast fall afternoon when I head out to City Hall, and I'm mindful of trying to finish up before the rush hour hits the Williamsburg bridge on what's become a daily commute for me. By the time I've parked the car outside City Hall it starts to drizzle and the impending rain hastens my movements.

I'm crossing the car park when I catch a glimpse of a woman walking ahead, and I'm about to keep walking when my eyes unconsciously zero back on her. She's familiar in a way that I don't recognise at first, but something draws my attention back to her. My confusion in part is caused by the difference in her appearance. Four years is a long time and she's changed. Her long brown hair is much shorter than it used to be. It sits bluntly just above her shoulders now. She's wearing a short plaid skirt, a turtle neck sweater and a long camel coat with laced combat boots. She looks so different that I think I might be mistaken if not for the violin case she carries over her shoulder. The passing years have added to her natural poise and that elegance she always had; but now there's a confidence in her stride too - something she struggled with when I knew her. I watch her cross the paved thoroughfare walking a few feet ahead of me. She doesn't see me, distracted in part by a cyclist she attempts to dodge. A gust of wind sweeps a stray lock of hair across her face and she folds it behind her ear in a way that's instantly familiar.

My steps slow to a stop, unwilling to miss anything about this moment  I've waited four years for. In those fleeting seconds it almost feels like I'm seeing her for the first time and my mind goes back to the first time I met her in my office and how much she's changed since then; how much we've both changed since then. I watch as she weaves through the afternoon crowd in front of Old City Hall Station and comes to a stop in front of the fountain, staring at her watch like she's waiting for someone.

I imagine a hundred different scenarios in those mind numbing minutes she waits, hoping that after all this time fate hasn't brought me here to watch how she's happily moved on without me. It's a paralyzing  dread that I feel in the pit of my stomach; my joy at seeing her quickly turns to an anguish I know I deserve, but that nervous tension that has me frozen solid thaws instantly when Holly eventually weaves through the crowd and makes her way across the park. She's grown; probably a freshman at college at least, but while I'm looking at Holly, I don't notice the little boy whose hand she's holding until he breaks free from her grasp.

"Noah," she calls, and that's when I notice him.

He looks three, maybe four.

He sprints toward Ayla's open arms yelling Mommy.