Dreaming in English (23 page)

“Is it?” she says. “Really?”

“Well, no,” I say, feeling very stupid. “Of course not.”

Smiling, Jenna gives Old Sport one last pat on the head, but she remains in the chair. “Could you sit for a minute?” She gestures to the second lounge chair and shifts so we will be face-to-face instead of side by side. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

I remain standing as it comes to me in a rush: If Ike was with her last night,
I don’t want to know.
I just want my chance with him, the chance to be the wife he needs. To be the wife, the friend, the partner, the lover that he needs. I want the chance to get it right.

“I don’t want to hear what you have to say,” I tell her shakily. “I really don’t think I do.”

“You need to.” She looks at me steadily. “For your own good, you need to.”

She’s right. I know this, even as I don’t want to accept it.

With huge amounts of dread pulling me down, I sit. As we look at each other face-to-face, woman-to-woman, something like empathy fills her eyes. “You really love him, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t have married him if I didn’t.”

She nods, accepting my answer, and looks at me for another long moment. “When I went to Starbucks the other day, I already knew that you and Ike were married.”

“Okay,” I say slowly, confused. It’s not much of a response, but I can’t think of anything better, and besides, I know what she’s said is only the first part of what she’s going to tell me. So, okay. Get on with it.

“I know,” she says, “because his mother told me. Elizabeth told me what happened.”

I flinch. All of a sudden, it feels like a little bit of evil has joined us on the patio. “How? When?”

“She called my parents and got my contact information,” Jenna says. “I was in England at the time. I’d just gotten back from India, actually. I stayed at an ashram. You know what an ashram is?”

I shake my head, no.

“No? It’s a—well, never mind. Suffice it to say that when I got her call, I felt like it was a sign that this is what I was supposed to do.”

“To come back and ruin my marriage?”

“I know, right?” Jenna says this wryly. “Of course it wasn’t a sign. It was a test. I was supposed to
resist
, not succumb.”

At this point, I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“She’s convinced you married Ike just for your green card,” she says next.

Ah. Now we’re back on familiar ground.

“Yes, I’m aware of this.” It’s my tone that’s wry now. “But she’s wrong.”

“I know she is.” Jenna nods her agreement. “I watched you for the better part of an hour before Ike caught sight of me. You’re on cloud nine together, the two of you. I don’t think I even would have gone over to your table if he hadn’t seen me. I thought maybe that, too, was a sign. That he’d seen me.”

“I’m sorry,
cloud nine
?”

“I have no idea what that refers to, actually,” she says. “Cloud nine versus cloud eight or cloud seven or cloud one.” She laughs adorably. “But my point is: It’s obvious you two are in love. You can tell just by how you look at each other. Did you know, for instance, that you have the habit of tucking your hair behind your ear whenever you lean forward to hear something he’s saying to you? It’s very flirtatious, in its way.”

I blush to be caught at what I’d thought was an enticingly subtle gesture.

“It’s very sweet,” she says. “It suits you. Everything about you is sweet. You love him, I know. The thing is”—here Jenna pauses and looks at me pointedly—“the thing is, I love him, too.”

I
ke’s mother called his ex-girlfriend all the way in England and encouraged her to come back and claim him for herself. This is just great. It had really seemed for a while now that once Mr. Hanson talked with her after she’d threatened to call Immigration and report me, Mrs. Hanson was leaving us alone, and perhaps even coming to accept me—but I see now that she had just changed her strategy and instead looked for a way to ruin what we have without directing the blame at herself.

Not nice.

And now Jenna’s telling me she loves my husband. Also not nice.

“I’ll fight.” I resolve this in my mind at the exact moment I say it. “I won’t let Ike go without a fight.”

“I’d hope not.” In the cool, level look Jenna gives me, I see confidence and massive amounts of strength. She’s capable of beating me in any fight that requires those qualities, of that I’m sure. “But you don’t need to,” she says. “I’m leaving.”

“You are?” A broad smile erupts on my face; I can’t help it. “Really, you’re leaving?”

Jenna nods. “It wouldn’t be a healthy situation for any of us if I stayed. You love Ike, I love Ike, Ike loves . . .” She gives me a grim look. “Well.”

And here we are, at the heart of the matter. I say the words she had the decency to hold back. “Ike loves us both.”

Jenna clears her throat. “That’s probably right.”

It’s definitely right.

“Please,” I say quickly. “Were you with him last night?” I don’t want to know, but I have to find out. It would crush me, would kill me, but I need to know. Jenna’s look of confusion seems genuine, but I don’t know her well enough to say if it is. “We had a fight and he left,” I tell her. “It was our first big fight.”

“About . . . me?” She’s kind of cringing, like this would be a bad thing—but again, I don’t know her very well. She could be hiding her hopefulness.

“It started out about you,” I say. “But really, it was more about me.”

She leans forward and her eyes spark. She wants me to go on, but there’s no way I will. If I tell her how weak Ike thinks I am, how he doesn’t think I’ll fight for our marriage, Jenna might change her mind about leaving.

“Were you with him?” I ask again. “Please tell me.”

“No, we weren’t together.”

Her eyes are honest. They’re not the eyes of an enemy.

“Thank you for leaving,” I say. “This is an honorable thing you’re doing.”

“Yeah, well”—Jenna gives a little quarter-laugh—“honorable would have been not coming back in the first place, right?”

I won’t argue with that! “Do you wish you’d never left?”

“Left what, Ike? Or Tucson in general?”

“Ike, I suppose.” (Ike, definitely!)

“I’m not sure I know how to answer that.” She looks around Rose’s backyard. “This is a pretty yard. Do you know the lady who lives here?”

“How do you know it’s a lady?”

“You can just tell,” Jenna says. “It’s the colors, I suppose. A man wouldn’t paint his flowerpots purple and pink, or put polka dots on them, right? And also the tables—they’re feminine.”

She’s right. The chairs are curvy-backed, like a musical treble clef.

“My friend Rose lives here,” I say. “And you’re trying to change the subject, yes?”

Jenna gives me a level look. “In answer to your question, I think I would have regretted not going on my trip more than I regret having gone.” She shakes her head, correcting herself. “What am I saying? I don’t regret going at all! Not for a minute!”

“Even though . . . ?”

“Even though I lost Ike as a result?”

Well, yes. I nod.

She shrugs. “I don’t believe we have just one true love. I mean, I’ve been around the world now, and I can say for a fact that Ike’s a truly great guy, and yet other guys are great, too. Not better than Ike, but . . . just as good—for me, anyway. Probably. And he
is
such a homebody. . . . You just . . . I don’t know. I had to go, or else I would have wondered for the rest of my life what I’d missed. You can’t be afraid to do big things in life, whatever your version of a big thing is. You just have to have faith that everything will work out for the best.”

Ah, that word
faith
again. It taunts me. How do you
do
it—how do you lose that fear? How do you develop that faith? “You weren’t scared, traveling alone?”

“Well, I’m never alone for very long.” Jenna’s smile comes again, so naturally, so enticingly. Of course she’s never alone for long—she’s irresistible! “What’s that saying? ‘A stranger is only a friend you have yet to meet.’ ”

She obviously didn’t go to Iran on her travels. The Revolutionary Guards are
not
the sort of strangers who’d ever become your friends—although the Iranian people are. But no wonder Ike was so surprised I didn’t consider going to Canada when my U.S. visa expired: Jenna would have. I need to be more like Jenna and less like me.

“Does Ike know you’re leaving?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I just decided a few hours ago, actually. A friend of mine called and offered me a job as a river rafting guide in Colorado.”

“Oh!” So she’s not leaving only because she’s nice. She’s also being flighty, like Ike said she was. “You leave when?”

“Today,” she says. “I’m just going to hook up with some friends for lunch first, and then I’m off. But I came here for a reason. There’s something else you should know.” Jenna gives me a look that makes my stomach drop. “You know the money I said I had for the coffee shop?”

“Your inheritance from your grandmother.”

“Right,” she says. “That was the story, but it’s not the truth. I don’t have nearly that much money left. It’s Elizabeth’s money.”

I gasp. “No! It can’t be.”

“I’m sorry, but it is,” Jenna says. “She was going to give me the money on the condition that I partner up with Ike. That’s really why I came here today—to warn you. She’s out to get you, Tami. She wants you gone, and she’ll do anything—absolutely anything—to make that happen.”

Sometimes when you’re down, you think your heart can’t sink any lower. But it always can. I look away from Jenna, to the pretty little fountain in the pretty little patio garden as it trickles peacefully. I’m so happy here.
I’ve been so happy here.

“Why does she hate me so much, do you think?” I avert my eyes. “Is it because of where I’m from?”

“It’s just . . . they have a special relationship, Ike and his mom.” Jenna sighs. “I think it goes back to . . . well, for a while—maybe Ike’s already told you this, but he was an only child until he was about five. Then his mom got pregnant again, when he was in kindergarten.”

I look at her, curious. The math doesn’t come out right. His oldest sister is only eighteen, and Ike’s twenty-eight.

“She lost the baby, right near the end,” Jenna says. “The cord was wrapped around its neck—it was a boy. Charles B. Hanson, if I remember correctly. They were going to call him Charlie. Charlie Bongo Hanson. From the way Ike tells it, he was phenomenally excited about having a brother. Bought stuffed animals for him. Chose the safari wallpaper for his bedroom. He even picked out the middle name, Bongo.” She laughs. “What parent would let their kid be named Bongo? Well, Ike’s parents would, because they so badly wanted Ike to be happy about the baby. And he was. And then, there was just . . .” Jenna’s eyes flatten. “Well, bad things happen sometimes when you’re pregnant. Sometimes babies just don’t make it.”

My heart clutches with this reminder.
Maryam’s baby will make it. Maryam’s baby will thrive
.

“What Ike remembers most is the feeling of how overnight they went from being a happy family to being a sad one,” Jenna says. “That’s hard for a kid to process. No more baby brother, and the whole vibe of the house changed. And just imagine poor Elizabeth. She was a labor and delivery nurse at the time—not since; she couldn’t do it afterward—and she totally blamed herself. She thought she should’ve known something was wrong in time to save the baby. Thank God for sweet little Ike. You know? There was no reason to go on, otherwise. That’s what she told me once, that Ike was the only thing that got her through, the need to be there for him. And of course, all Ike wanted to do was make his mama smile again.”

I yearn to be with him suddenly, to hold him close and mourn for the little boy he was, who lost his happy mother. I know exactly how that little boy felt; I lost my mother, too.

“Ike’s good at saving people,” I say.

I should know. He saved me.

“Yes,” Jenna agrees. “And now she’s trying to save him. Not that he needs saving,” she adds quickly. “But she’s fierce in her love for him. Even when she eventually went on to have the girls—I mean, she’s great with them, no doubt, but she’s got a special place in her heart for Ike. She’d do anything to keep him from getting hurt. Majorly hurt, I mean.”

The kind of hurt I’m apparently capable of inflicting.

“You hurt Ike, too,” I remind her. “And she seems to like you just fine.”

Jenna shrugs. “I’m a known quantity, I guess. And she is capable of forgiveness. It just doesn’t come as easily when the offense—alleged offense, I should say—is committed against Ike. She was a nightmare when we broke up.” She shudders. “I basically had to break up with the whole family. It was all a little unhealthy, to be quite frank. In the end, I was glad to get away. She gets so . . . mother-bearish. And Ike just kind of went along with it.”

“That surprises me,” I say. “I see him stand up to her all the time.”

“Then he’s changed and grown.” She grins. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been in therapy.”

“Does Mrs. Hanson know you’re leaving?”

“Oh, yeah. She had a few choice words for me.” Jenna’s eyes are dark emeralds. “And she somehow coerced me into promising I wouldn’t tell Ike about her role in getting me back here. I still don’t know how she managed that.”

“She’s a . . . what’s the word . . . ?”

“Bitch?” Jenna suggests.

I smile. I can’t help it. This is something Eva would say. “A persuasive woman.”

“Yes, she is.” Jenna gives me a conspiratorial smile. “But I never promised not to tell you.”

It takes me a moment to understand what she’s suggesting. “You want me to tell Ike?”