Old Sport is now stretched out on his back, blissfully enjoying the rubdown Rose is giving him, wagging his tail against my foot,
whack, whack, whack
. I move my foot out of the way.
“Want to see the guesthouse?” I ask Ike.
“Absolutely.” He puts his arm around my shoulders and I put mine around his waist, and together we walk to the guesthouse. I love this—this simple moment—that we can have our arms around each other out in public and nobody cares. Nobody even notices. This is exactly how it should be everywhere, a world full of people minding their own business.
Ike’s glance around the guesthouse takes all of maybe three seconds. “You’re kidding, right? This is beyond tiny. It’s as small as my place.” His eyes skim the patio, and then he looks back to the main house. Through a kitchen window, we see Rose inside, filling a watering can at the sink. She sees us and smiles. “It’s not very private, either. How am I supposed to ravish you with her right there?”
At his use of the word
ravish
, I blush. At the idea of it, actually.
To be ravished by Ike.
I wonder what that would feel like. He’s been very gentle so far, on our one night together, as I suppose is necessary with someone of my experience. But one day, I vow—one day soon—I will be ready and worthy of being ravished.
“Come on, Ike.” I tug on his shirtsleeve. “It is too bigger than your place, and there are curtains on the windows. I love it here. And also, we don’t want to spend much money on housing right now so you can use your savings for the coffee shop. This isn’t so much money. Only four hundred and fifty dollars per month, and that includes utilities. Rose is giving us a very good deal.”
“That
is
a good deal. Frankly, it’s an unbeatable deal, unless—” He gives me a mischievous look. “Unless you want to move into my guesthouse with me.”
“Oh, right!” I laugh. “Like your parents would allow that!”
He looks around the backyard again. “This is fine, I guess. It’s cute. Colorful, certainly. And Old Sport seems to like it.”
Old Sport is sitting at the edge of the goldfish pond, entranced by the fat fish swimming idly in circles. I wonder if he’ll try to eat them.
Ike gets an amused look on his face. “Do you like my dog?”
“Sure, I like your dog.”
“Rose’s cats don’t seem to mind him.”
“This is true.” And since Rose spent about five minutes telling Old Sport what a good dog he is—
Oh, yes, you are. You’re such a good dog. Did you know what a good dog you are? Well, you are. Yes, you are!
—I suspect she’d be fine with him living here. I know exactly where Ike is going with this. “The cats seem fine with him,” I say.
“So?” Ike gives me his most irresistible look. “Could we give it a try?”
I take a big, worried breath. I feel the same concern about Old Sport that Maryam feels about her baby: I have no idea what to
do
with it. How to take care of it. Make sure it’s okay. Make sure it has what it needs. Keep the house clean with it shedding all over the place. Keep the house
smelling
good with it . . .
“How many times a day does a dog use the bathroom?” I ask.
Ike bursts out laughing. “A dog
doesn’t
use the bathroom.”
I poke him in the arm. “I know
that.
I mean, who cleans up after him if you’re at work all day?”
“I’ll take care of all dog issues,” he says. “I’ll feed him, bathe him, clean up his crap. Everything.”
Okay, but . . . “What does he
do
all day?”
“Oh, you know. He reads the
Wall Street Journal
. Makes a few phone calls. I’m sure he’d do the grocery shopping if you asked him nicely.”
Fighting my smile, I narrow my eyes. “Will you say yes to the guesthouse even if I say no to the dog?”
“Of course I will,” he says. “I’d do anything to make you happy.”
I groan. “That’s very clever, Ike. How can I say no to the dog after you’ve said something as sweet as that?”
He grins. “I’m betting you can’t.”
He’s right. And so reluctantly, I agree we can give it a try.
“All right!” He swings me around. “You’re going to love him. He’ll be your best friend. I just know it.”
“Maryam’s going to hate this. She probably won’t even visit if there’s a dog here.”
“Now that would be such a shame.”
My mouth drops open. “You really don’t mind having people mad at you, do you?”
“It’s our path, remember?”
“That’s right,” I say. “Yours, mine, and the dog’s.”
We go into the guesthouse and have a good look at it. It’s basically one small room that makes up both the kitchen and the living room, plus a small separate bedroom and, inside that, a bathroom with a shower, no bathtub. But it’s
so cute.
It’s so
non-Persian.
So nothing like my house in Iran, so nothing like Maryam’s house here. This casita is young. Fresh. Lively. Most of the walls are painted yellow, and each window frame is a different color—one orange, one purple, one green. Tissue-paper flowers spring from tall blue pottery. The French doors that lead to the patio are turquoise, and when Ike props both doors open, it makes the space seem twice as large.
A sombrero hangs on a wall for decoration. “I feel like I’m at a Mexican restaurant,” Ike says, taking the hat off the wall and putting it on my head.
“¡Hola!” I say. “Would you like some tortilla chips?”
“That depends.” He grins. “Do you have any nacho cheese sauce?”
Funny husband! I move to swat him in the arm, but before I can, he sweeps me off my feet. “Ready to be carried over the threshold?”
“Over the what?”
“The threshold,” he says. “The doorway.”
“I’m already inside, Ike!”
“I guess it’s not a Persian tradition.” As he carries me outside, he explains. “Crossing the threshold means, symbolically, starting something new—crossing over into a new life or a new adventure. And when you get
married
, the groom carries the bride over the threshold—the doorway—of their new home.”
Okay, the thing is—I feel the same way about this as I did about Ike getting down on one knee to propose. It’s sweet, but uneven. If it’s symbolic, it’s somehow symbolic in a way I don’t like. “Isn’t the bride capable of crossing the threshold on her own two feet, at her husband’s side, maybe holding his hand instead of being carried by him?”
“Look at you. Ms. Feminist. Come on,” he says. “Let me have my moment. I’m trying to be romantic here.”
That’s right—I forgot that for Ike, life is like a movie.
As he carries me across the threshold, my sombrero bumps against the doorway and gets knocked off my head.
“Oops.” Ike tries to correct that mistake, but in doing so he swings me around so my feet knock into the other side of the narrow doorway.
See, we should have walked through it together.
“Not very graceful,” he says. “Sorry.”
But I love that he tries so hard.
“Don’t be sorry.” I kiss his cheek. “Who needs grace when we have love?”
We go to the main house and tell Rose the good news that yes, we will rent the guesthouse. She, in turn, tells us that of course Old Sport is welcome, too. Along with the lease for us to sign, which she says is unnecessary for her but will help us with the immigration officials, she gives us a gift basket that contains a bottle of champagne, two glasses, and a box of chocolates. We thank her for the gift, sign the lease, Ike writes her a check for the first month’s rent, and within minutes, he and I are officially living together as husband and wife.
Now what?
“Now the fun begins,” Ike says when I ask him this question. We’re back in the guesthouse, standing in the kitchen, holding hands, and—I don’t know how Ike feels, but I feel very awkward. “Should we unpack? That’ll take all of about two minutes.”
It does take all of about two minutes to move our clothes to the dresser (Ike gets the top two dresser drawers, while I get the bottom three). He only brought a few things, and I don’t have much more. We take longer with my special items that I brought from Iran. They’re not many, but they are meaningful. My favorite headscarf, given to me by my students on my last day as their teacher. A book of poetry by Ferdowsi, given to me by my dear friend Nima. My Googoosh CDs. My candle. And my world map.
“My sister gave me this,” I say as I pull it out from its cylindrical tube. It was bothersome taking it as a carry-on all the way from Iran, but I couldn’t have left it behind. “She gave it to me as a going-away gift when she married Ardishir and moved to America.”
Maryam circled Tehran in black marker and wrote
You Are Here.
She circled Tucson, too, and wrote
Maryam Is Here.
Then she drew a thick black line that connected us across the miles, across the ocean, and wrote above it,
Together again someday.
“And now you are,” Ike says when I explain about the map.
Yes, thanks to you.
“But my parents aren’t.”
Ike gets a hammer and nails from the tool compartment in the back of his truck and puts the map on the bedroom wall for me. Once it’s up, he steps back and puts his arm around me and we stand together, looking at it.
“The map’s outdated now.” With his finger, he traces a path from my name in Iran all the way over to Maryam’s in Tucson. “We’ll have to change that.”
“Do you have a marker in your truck? We could change it now.”
“I probably do.” While he’s looking for it, I stare and stare at the map until all the borders become blurry, like I used to do back home. It’s prettier that way. When he comes back with a thick red marker, I write my name next to Maryam’s and cross out my name in Tehran. Instead, I write in
Maman
and
Baba.
The distance between us is considerable.
They are there
, I think as I put my finger on Tehran.
They are there when they don’t have to be.
How to get them to come?
“I’m so mad at my mother,” I confess softly, for this is a new emotion for me, and it makes me feel ungrateful. “All my life, they’ve talked only of their desire to see their daughters living in America. More than twenty years of this talk I’ve heard! How much of it was necessary, if we all could have left long ago?”
Ike wraps his arms around me. “I’m starting to realize that mothers are strange people.”
“Maryam is keeping her pregnancy a secret from them,” I say. “Don’t you think that’s wrong?”
“I’m not going to get in the middle of that,” he says. “Although I think in general, secrets do more harm than good.”
“I just . . . I have to believe that if they could be here in time for when she has her baby, they would be.”
“Well, they certainly can’t if they don’t even know about it.”
“Right.” I agree. “And Maryam’s not going to tell them.”
I want him to say,
Tell them, Tami.
I want him to give me permission, to tell me it’s the right thing to do.
He doesn’t, exactly. Although he does, sort of.
“I find it’s helpful to visualize the outcome I want for something,” he says. “Like my coffee shop, in that perfect, ideal location. Open soon, filled with customers, cool music playing, you and me there together, side by side. I
see
it. It’s
going
to happen. And how I get there is far less important than
that
I get there. Does that make any sense?”
“You’re telling me I should tell my parents about the baby?”
He shakes his head. “Focus on the outcome. What’s the outcome you want? Visualize it. Verbalize it.”
“I want them here,” I say. “That’s the outcome I want.”
“Go on,” he says. He encourages me—Ike, who has so much more experience than I do when it comes to working toward a dream. “What exactly do you see when you see them here?”
Dare I? To put a dream in specifics is a very scary thing. To visualize it is to make it real, and when it’s real and doesn’t happen, then it’s a dream denied. Then, it’s crushing. Soul-destroying. It’s far easier emotionally to keep my dreams half formed. But it’s probably not very effective. I look deep into Ike’s eyes—we face each other and hold hands the same way we did when he proposed—and the purity in his gaze, the absolute faith he has in me, gives me the courage I need. And so I tell him my most secret dream.
“I see Maryam in the hospital, after she’s had the baby. And she did great, and the baby’s healthy and so, so beautiful. And she’s holding it in her arms, and Ardishir’s standing by her side, and everyone’s so happy. It’s already a perfect moment.” My eyes tear up, for I’m actually seeing this happen, and I don’t think my heart has ever been so happy. “I’m there, too, and the door opens, and my mother steps inside, and Maryam didn’t know she was coming, but I did. My mother steps through the doorway and my father’s right behind her, and my sister looks at them, and then she looks at me, and
I did this.
” Tears overflowing, I’m giddy with the image. “Me, Tami! The one everyone hides things from. The one they all think is so fragile, she can’t even be told the truth. I brought everyone together. This is my gift, for my sister and my parents and for myself, too. Can you see it, Ike? Can you ever see it happening?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “You can do anything you put your mind to.”
Chapter 10
H
e inspires me, Ike does.
Soon after he leaves for work, with my new resolve I tap on Rose’s back door. She says of course I can use her telephone to call Iran and of course I can reimburse her later. She’s cooking soup on the stove, but offers to leave the kitchen so I can have privacy. I assure her it’s not necessary, as I’ll be speaking in Farsi and she won’t be able to understand anyway.
I dial the international code for Iran and then my parents’ number, and even as I hold my breath while the phone rings, my heart races with nerves. So much has happened since I last spoke with them.