“Maryam!” I race to sit beside her. “What’s wrong?” I slip into Farsi, where when I speak I don’t have to think so hard. I’ve been told that one day I’ll begin to dream in English, but as yet my dreams are in the language of home, and I’m glad for this. My dreams sometimes are more real than my reality. “Please, are you okay? Is the baby okay? Are you hurting? What can I do, please? What is it?”
Maryam gestures to the large-screen television against the wall. “Sammy just left her baby at the convent! Can you believe it? She gave away her baby!” She also speaks in Farsi, which leaves Ike unsure of what’s going on.
I follow her eyes to the television, incredulous. I’ve been living here for three months, and I’ve never known my sister to watch or talk about a television program and become upset. I’ve never known her to watch TV in the daytime. And yet here she sits, curled up with her legs under her on the couch, wearing no makeup, with her hair uncombed. Still in her pajamas, she looks pale and tired.
Ike stands back near the door. “Is she okay?”
“She seems to be upset about the show.”
Ike starts to laugh. “Hormones.”
“But . . .” Maryam shifts to English. “It’s not even her baby! It was switched at the hospital!”
“Gee,” Ike says, “I wonder if she’ll ever learn
that
piece of information?”
Maryam’s eyes widen at the thought. “I’m sure she will! Don’t you think?”
Ike laughs. “That was a joke. Of course she will. And then she’ll get amnesia and forget, and then she’ll remember again, but then she’ll forget again, and this’ll happen about twenty times in the next twenty years.”
“It’s stupid, I know.” Maryam says this sheepishly, but she turns back to the show. I look at her in wonder. Her behavior is very, very strange.
“What show
is
this?” I ask.
“
Days of our Lives
,” Ike says as he comes to join us in the seating area, taking Ardishir’s favorite armchair.
“It’s a soap opera,” Maryam says. “You should watch it with me. It’ll help you learn English.”
I say to Ike, “
You
watch
Days of our Lives
?”
He grins and shakes his head, no. “My sisters do, and my mom, too. It’s kind of a family thing, but only in the summer. There’s not a heck of a lot to do in this town outdoors when it’s so hot, so they stay inside and eat ice cream and watch
Days of our Lives
. They’ve been doing it for years. Even Camille watches. Then they update me and my dad at dinner every night.”
His brightness falters. I’m sure we’re thinking the same thing—that he probably won’t be having fun family dinners with them for a while. I reach for his hand and squeeze it in sympathy.
“Since when have
you
watched it?” I ask Maryam, wondering if she’s planning to shower today, or at least change from her pajamas before Ardishir gets home.
Maryam is usually so snap-snap with her days, going from here to there, filling them with manicures and shoe shopping and getting her hair done and her weekly massages—not to mention her part-time job as a manager at Macy’s, which she has simply to have something structured to do. I find it nearly impossible to understand when she has the time to watch a daily soap opera, and it just doesn’t suit her personality. I, on the other hand, am completely the sort to watch shows like this. In Iran, I was addicted to
Madare sefr darajeh
and tuned in every Friday night to see the very sexy Shahab Hosseini.
“Since you went on your trip last week,” she says. “I was so tired from everything that I took a few days off work. And then I got hooked on this show.” She presses the remote control to turn up the volume, and her eyes are riveted on the screen. “There’s another good one on right after this.”
Ike must think my sister is so weird. He’s seen only these extreme emotional sides of her, either yelling or crying, nothing in between—which is
not
Maryam. She’s professional and polite, but her pregnancy is really changing her. I would have expected her to be a better hostess to Ike, to offer him tea and fruit and nuts and sweets and to ask after his family and to inquire as to how we’re settling into our new living arrangements. But none of this happens! The show is clearly more important to her than we are.
“If it’s not too much trouble, Maryam, could you give us the form Ike needs to file for my residency?” I say. “We want to mail it today.”
She doesn’t take her eyes off the television. “There’s no rush. Why today?”
“Why not today?” I keep my tone light. “The sooner it’s filed, the sooner I can get a job.”
“You have a job.”
This is true, as Ardishir has offered to have me work as a receptionist and billing clerk in his orthopedic surgery office a few mornings a week, filling in for an employee who is on maternity leave.
“I mean a real full-time job. Not a family job.”
“You should work at Macy’s with me,” she says.
“Maybe,” I say. “So . . . the papers, please?”
Maryam’s eyes are back on the television. “At the next commercial, okay?”
Ike and I fill out the forms, get them in the mail, and then pay a visit to Mr. Hanson, as Ike wants to know if his father played any role in his mother’s nasty visit to me this morning.
Mr. Hanson is doing an addition on a house in a neighborhood called Poets Corner, where the streets are named after poets. We drive there in Ike’s pickup truck. The framing is up and the roof is on, and inside we find Mr. Hanson putting up drywall in what is going to be an indoor-outdoor room, with a fireplace and screened windows that face the pool. Loud classical piano music plays from a radio beside him.
“Hey, Dad.” Ike leads the way over to him with me not too close, but not too far behind, and turns down the music. “How come you’re doing the drywall? Where are your subs?”
Mr. Hanson steps back from the wall and wipes his sweaty brow. He nods at me. “They couldn’t come, and I didn’t want to lose a day.”
“You should have called me,” Ike says.
His father matches Ike’s level gaze. I’m very nervous as I wait for him to respond, because whatever he says next could determine how pleasant or unpleasant the conversation will be. “I figured you’re busy,” he says.
“I’m never too busy for you, Dad.”
There’s yearning along with maturity in Ike’s voice, and I want to cry for him. He tries so hard for people, and he loves his family so much. They’d make a good Persian family—they’re that close. The first week I met him, he told me his father was his best friend, his truest confidant. I know how hard the past days must have been for him, to lose his father’s support.
His father must know it, too. “I guess I could use some help around here,” he says. “I’ve got another job waiting and the market seems to be slowing, so I’d like to get it going before they decide to cancel. If you could take over as contractor here, I could start work on that one. There’s not all that much left, just the walls and the floors . . .”
“And the cabinetry and all the finishing touches.” Ike grins. “That’s a lot of hours.”
“And some decent money,” Mr. Hanson says.
When Ike looks at me, I smile to let him know it’s okay with me. It’s a good way to strengthen his relationship with his father, and I know this is how Ike has made most of the money he’s saved for the coffee shop, by what he calls flipping houses with his father.
“Let me see if I can cut back my hours at work,” Ike says. “The semester’s ending, which means it’s slowing down for the summer, so maybe I can go down to twenty hours.”
“Don’t quit completely,” Mr. Hanson says. “After this next job, I’ve only got one more on the schedule—although I’m sure something will turn up.”
“I can’t quit, anyway.” Ike says. “I’m a married man now. I need the benefits.”
His dad smiles. Smiles! In that smile, I see how Ike will look twenty-five years from now. Kind. Handsome, with healthy, hard-earned smile wrinkles. Maybe he’ll even have a son, just a few years younger than Ike is now. And maybe they’ll be best friends, too.
Ike shifts the conversation to why we came. “Do you know what Mom’s up to?”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Hanson asks, somewhat warily.
“I mean, do you know what she did?”
“I know she saw a lawyer yesterday.” Mr. Hanson keeps his eyes carefully averted from mine.
“Do you know what she did to Tami today?”
Mr. Hanson shakes his head.
“She dropped by unannounced and basically told Tami to abandon the marriage and leave the country.” Ike’s voice has hardened. “She threatened to have her deported. And I need to know, Dad: Were you part of that?”
Ike’s chest rises and falls as he waits for his father to answer. Mr. Hanson, for his part, turns to me with a troubled expression, and then goes back to his drywall supplies and starts putting them away. “Things might not go as well as the two of you hope.” He doesn’t look at either of us, but rather cleans off his scraper. “There’s some sense to the idea of locking in your losses early. I think that’s what your mother’s trying to get at.”
I’m a bad investment. That’s the point he wants to make.
“Were you part of it, Dad? Part of her threat?”
Mr. Hanson looks at me. “Are you sure it was really a threat and not just a suggestion?”
See this?
she’d said, holding up the business card.
This is the phone number to Immigration Enforcement. This is the number I call to have you deported.
“It was a threat,” I say.
He looks at me for a long moment.
“Dad.”
“I didn’t know your mother was going to do that,” Mr. Hanson says. “Although, in fairness, I don’t know that I would have stopped her if I had.”
Ike gives him a serious, imploring look. “I swear to God, there are probably going to be five, maybe ten times
in my life
when I come to you and say, ‘Hey, Dad, I really need you to be here for me. Right now, in this moment.’ This is one of those times. It’s that old deathbed argument again, and I’m sorry to throw it at you, but thirty years from now, forty years from now—”
“Or tomorrow,” Mr. Hanson says. “I could die tomorrow.”
I gasp. This is not something that should be said out loud!
“Or tomorrow,” Ike agrees. “Although let’s hope to hell not.”
“You’re right,” Mr. Hanson says, not needing him to continue. “I don’t want to regret my behavior here, and I already do.” He faces me directly and says, “You were a guest in our home the other night, and I acted badly, and I apologize. Sincerely. I was caught off guard, and I wasn’t at my best.”
My forgiveness is instant. “That’s okay. I know you’re worried for Ike. You acted this way out of your love for him.”
“The thing is, I trust him,” he says. “I trust his judgment. He’s a good kid and a better man. It’s just . . . you never stop worrying about your children. You’d always—” He clears his throat. “You’d always go to your grave for them, to spare them any real suffering.”
Mr. Hanson’s eyes are pained as he looks at me, almost imploringly, seeking my understanding. I nod to let him know I do understand, even though I’m not yet a parent myself.
“My son loves deep and he loves hard,” he says. “So if you’re scamming him, taking advantage of him—I’m not saying you are, but I just have to say—”
“I’m not.” I say this quickly so he doesn’t have to continue. “I promise, I’m not.”
“You see, Ike still thinks the world is good.” Mr. Hanson’s voice is strained with emotion.
“The world
is
good,” Ike says.
His father swallows hard. “Sometimes it takes just one thing, one very bad, horrible experience, to make a person question that, and I don’t want this”—he looks at me—“I don’t want
you
to be that thing.”
What
, I wonder,
was his horrible thing?
“I love your son with all my heart,” I say. “And I know what you mean about one bad experience changing how you see the world—I know this from my mother—and I’m not going to be the person, or the
thing
, that changes Ike in this way. I love him too much.”
“Good.” Mr. Hanson nods, his voice thick. “That’s good.”
To Ike, he says, “I’ll work on your mother. I make no promises, but I’ll speak with her.” He flashes a sudden grin that’s startlingly like Ike’s. “I’ll remind her how it is to be young and in love.”
Chapter 14
T
he next several weeks pass very pleasantly. Ike and I have great fun living together and quickly establish our routines. He gets up early and takes Old Sport for a run, and then we have a breakfast of fruit and bagels on the patio before he goes to work. He’s cut his hours at Starbucks and divides his time between there and working for his dad. I spend my mornings either helping Ardishir in his office or joining Rose as she runs errands and works on projects around the house. In the afternoons, I attend English class.
As Maryam ends her fourth month of pregnancy, her mood swings even out, and I’m very glad for this. I go along with her as she shops for a crib and maternity clothes and a car seat and baby clothes—there is so much to do to get ready for a baby! Especially if the woman already has some money and already likes to shop. Ike begins to roll his eyes when she calls to tell me the least little things—how she has indigestion and keeps having to use the bathroom and how her fingernails grow so fast—but I love to share every moment of my sister’s pregnancy. Ardishir and I paint the baby’s room a pretty light green. Maryam makes us use nontoxic paint and even so, she leaves the house while we paint, although she checks in by phone every half hour to see how it’s going. After I agree to throw a baby shower for her, she talks about it every day, several times each day. She registers at five different stores and buys books for me about the different games and activities we can do. It’s fun to see her this way, as our growing-up years weren’t very festive.