“How’re you doing?” he finally asks.
“I’m doing great.”
“I was at my family’s cabin on Mount Lemmon last night,” he says. “I should have told you. I don’t know why I didn’t. I just found myself—I don’t know . . .”
Annoyed with my lack of faith in you?
But if there’s anyone I have faith in, it’s Ike. “It’s okay,” I say. “Last night was rough for both of us.”
“I was having a bit of a crisis,” he says. “I don’t ever want to have another night like last night.”
That makes two of us. “Jenna came to see me a little while ago.”
Ike’s eyes widen with what looks to me like alarm. “What did she say?”
Crush, the world is crushing me. What do you think she said? What are you afraid she said?
“Ike?”
He sighs from something that could be exhaustion or could be dread. “We need to have a very direct conversation, Tami.”
Oh, no. Jenna lied—he
was
with her last night!
“Okay,” I say shakily.
He takes my hand. “I’ve thought through what I need to say to you today, what I need for you to hear, and some of it might hurt you, and that’s not my intention, Tami, but—” He searches my eyes—for permission, it seems.
“Go ahead,” I tell him. “I can take it. I’m tough.”
He smiles at my claim, which we both know isn’t exactly (okay, at all!) true, but still, his eyes hold pain. “All right. Here goes.” His eyes bore into mine. “You’re making it easy for me to leave you.”
His words stab my heart. I grip his hand. “No, Ike. I’m not.”
“You are,” he insists. “You’re making it easy for me to leave you.”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry if that’s what you took from what I said yesterday, but it’s really not what I meant. I
don’t
want you to leave me. I would die if you left me.”
“You wouldn’t.” He brushes a strand of hair from my forehead. “And I know that by telling me I could be with Jenna if that’s what I wanted, you were being kind and generous and loving, in your own, special Tamila Soroush way. But you’ve got to realize”—his eyes darken—“I did love her. I loved her a lot. And despite what you may have heard or misheard or presumed from my mother about how it ended, it wasn’t easy, certainly, but it was a mature breakup. It was two people who had different—” He stops, smiles. “I’m not going to say different
paths
here, but we had two different—” He laughs. “I keep reaching for the road analogies, I guess. Two different roads, or paths, or what have you. She had her own things she wanted to do in life to . . . honor her soul, or whatever . . . and I didn’t feel the same need to do those things, to travel the world at that particular point in time. But I didn’t
not
love her. And we weren’t not good together.”
His eyes implore me not to be offended, and I’m not. I don’t think who you love is something you can help. Sometimes it’s just something you have to
deal with.
“It’s okay, Ike.”
“If you think in movie terms, Jenna and I had different plotlines. But we didn’t have conflict. And, Tami, here’s the part I’ve got to say, the part you should know: If you weren’t in the picture—if you’d gone back to Iran or if I’d never met you at all—and she showed up like she did, well . . .”
“You’d be with her. I know this, Ike. I
know
.”
“She did flat-out tell me I was the reason she came back,” he says. “She told me yesterday, when we were at the coffee shop. She made it very clear—” He stops and his face takes on a shamed look.
“You don’t need to say it,” I say. “I know. I felt it. When you were at the coffee shop, I was at Trader Joe’s, and I saw her car. I knew you were inside together. I knew she was—I knew you were—”
“Nothing happened,” he says. “Absolutely nothing happened. There was an attempt made on her part, but . . .” He’s trying to see if I believe him, and I nod that I do. “Tami, to come home from something like that, which required a lot of willpower on my part, and then have you basically say I could have—” Another heavy exhale on his part. “Well, like I said . . .”
Jenna tried something at the coffee shop, to kiss him or maybe even more, and Ike wouldn’t let her. He pulled away while part of him wanted her. I know this; I feel it in my bones. And then he came home, with her perfume probably still lingering in his memory, and I, dumb girl that I am, offered that he could be with her if he wanted to.
“You’re right,” I say. “I
was
making it easy for you to leave me. I’m sorry. I was a . . . what’s the word? An
idiot.
”
He smiles. “Well, your intentions were good.”
“But that’s not enough, is it?”
He shakes his head. “We’ve got to
commit
, Tami. That’s what marriage is, or should be. It’s what mine
has
to be—an unbreakable commitment. We’ve got to cling to each other like we’re the other person’s life preserver and our boat’s toppled in the ocean.
It’s you and me out there.
You’ve got to hold my hand like you’re never going to let it go. That’s what I need to see from you that I’m not seeing.”
Tears fill my eyes as I grip his hand tighter than I ever have before. “I won’t let go, Ike. I promise. I won’t let you go.”
He nods and clears his throat. “I demand that of you, Tami. And it’s what I’ll give you in return. I thought we’d already covered this ground. I think that’s why I was so frustrated yesterday, so angry. Didn’t we already have this discussion? Didn’t we already make this commitment?”
“Fighting, making demands—this is all new to me,” I say. “My family has tried to protect me my whole life. Any fighting that needed to be done, my father and Maryam did it for me. Anything unpleasant, they kept from me. They . . . what’s the word? . . . they
conspired
to protect me.” I look at him earnestly. “I’m not making excuses, Ike, but I think this is maybe why I’m so weak. I want to be strong, though. I really, really do. It’s just . . . people can’t grow strong overnight.”
“Sure they can,” he says. “People become strong by refusing to be weak.”
Oh, my God, his confidence! “You really think it’s that easy?”
“I’m not saying it’s easy,” he says. “But it
can
happen overnight. It can happen in an instant. We are who we are because of the choices we make, and we always have a choice.”
“How do you
know
these things, Ike? How can you be so sure?”
“I know myself,” he says. “And what’s true for me is true for everyone. If one person in the world can be strong . . . if there’s one Gandhi, one Martin Luther King, Jr., one guy who refuses to move out of the path of the military tank in Tiananmen Square . . . or, you know the best example I can think of? In the Civil War, at the Battle of Gettysburg, there was this one guy, a college professor from Maine—I can’t remember his name . . . Chamberlain? I think that was it. Chamberlain and his men, at the Battle of Little Round Top. They’d fought all day. They were out of ammunition, they’d suffered lots of casualties, and they were about to be attacked again, and if they lost—if they lost the hill they were defending—the entire Union Army would have been surrounded and this country as we know it might very well not exist. There was so much at stake. And there was
no way
Chamberlain’s men could win . . . and yet they won, because they summoned the strength they had within themselves. You’ve
got
to see that movie, Tami.
Gettysburg
, we’ll watch it sometime.
‘Bayonets!’
” Ike raises an arm like he himself is going into a bayonet battle and he enjoys a moment of imaginary glory before peering at me. “My point is, we have all these great stories to pull from—stories of strength—and therefore, we know we can be strong in our smaller, everyday ways. Right? Deep down, we all have the same capacities.”
Sitting here in this peaceful chapel, with its pretty marble floors and its many flickering candles, it feels like Ike is delivering to me a message from God. I do believe in the power of stories. What he’s saying feels good and true and right in a larger-than-myself way, and I know there are so many things in this world we can’t control—where we’re born, what family we’re born into, when and where floods and earthquakes and wars occur, or what they might do to us in prison—but we do own our hearts and our minds. Everything inside of us, we own, and
that’s
where we find freedom.
That’s
where we find God’s glory, in our choices to be strong, or kind, or brave. My heart pounds at the realization that in order to have true faith in God, I have to have faith in myself. And I
want
this faith. I
want
to have faith in God.
I’ll get there
, I vow. I don’t think I’ll get there overnight, like Ike is suggesting I can, but I will get there one day.
“For now, at least, I’m strong enough to hold your hand,” I say to Ike. “I’m strong enough to hold on and not let go.”
“I know you are,” he says. “And that’s all I ask.” He raises my hand to his lips and kisses it—so, so gently. “That’s all I’ll ever ask of you, Tami. Hold my hand. Don’t let go. Don’t give up.”
Chapter 22
T
hree days later, I clutch his hand underneath the table. I’m terrified.
We’re in the lounge at the Lodge on the Desert, waiting for his parents to arrive. They requested this meeting after Ike told them I’d be providing the money he needs for his coffee shop. I’ve asked Ike probably close to a thousand times why they want to meet with us, but he refuses to speculate and doesn’t seem too concerned. He’s certainly not terrified like me, but then again, he doesn’t know what his mother did concerning Jenna. I do—I’ll never forget—which is why I asked Maryam and Ardishir to join us.
But so far we’re the only ones here and it’s one o’clock, the time our meeting is supposed to start.
Please hurry, Maryam,
I call to her in my head. I need my sister’s fierce loyalty, and my brother-in-law’s even-keeled wisdom. Maryam is passionate, and Ardishir is rational. I’m just scared.
Ike’s parents arrive right on time. Mr. Hanson holds open the door to the lounge for Mrs. Hanson. Behind her, he looks around until he spots us. His blue eyes look tentative. Mrs. Hanson is the one who’s smiling as she approaches, but I know better than to trust this.
Where is my sister?
Ike and I, seated next to each other, stand as his parents approach. Ike kisses his mother’s cheek, while Mr. Hanson kisses mine. We exchange pleasantries and then we all sit. When a waiter offers to get us drinks, Ike and his father order draft beers. I ask for a Diet Coke, and Mrs. Hanson chooses iced tea.
“Tami invited her sister and brother-in-law to join us,” Ike says after the waiter leaves. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”
“Oh, that wasn’t necessary,” Mrs. Hanson says. If Eva were here, she’d say it damn well
is
necessary. I only smile. I’m still resolved to kill her with kindness.
“They’re looking forward to meeting you,” I say. “They’ve both heard so much about you. My sister’s going to love your earrings!”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Hanson says, touching one of her dangling silver-and-turquoise earrings. “They were a Christmas gift from my kids.”
“Speaking of, how are the midgets?” Ike asks.
Mrs. Hanson updates us: Camille has tested into the gifted program at her school for next year; Izzy, about to graduate from high school, accepted a job for the summer as a lifeguard at a camp in Oregon; Kat is begging her parents for her own car, which isn’t going to happen; and fourteen-year-old Paige has fallen in love.
At the news about Paige, Ike’s neck veins tense. “She’s too young.”
“I agree,” says Mr. Hanson.
Mrs. Hanson smiles. “I don’t think she’s actually even spoken to this boy yet. She’s just swooning from afar. She’s on the phone with her friend Molly incessantly:
Did he have product in his hair today? Isn’t it just so sexy how he sort of snarls his upper lip when he talks to teachers? Isn’t it
so cool
he’s in a band?
”
“Don’t let her date until she goes off to college,” Ike says. “Please. I’m serious about this.”
“Kat and Izzy were both dating by her age,” his mom says. “I can’t very well forbid it with her.”
I’m enjoying this conversation—I love how teenage romances don’t need to be kept secret from parents in America, but I can hardly focus for glancing out the window to the parking lot, willing Maryam and Ardishir to show up. They know this is important to me, and I can’t imagine what’s caused them to be late.
“Kat and Izzy could punch a guy’s lights out if they needed to,” Ike says. “But Paige, she’s—” Ike stops, his jaw tight. He has a soft spot in his heart for Paige. She’s what he calls
the sensitive one
in the family. I don’t know her well, but she seems shy, maybe uncertain of herself. “Well, Paige is Paige, and I’ll kill the guy who hurts her.”
“You and me both,” Mr. Hanson says. He and Ike raise their glasses of beer to this idea.
Mrs. Hanson turns to me. “When do you expect your family to arrive?”
“I’m sorry.” I give her my most apologetic look. “They should have been here by now. Maybe I should call . . .”
“Let’s just get started, why don’t we,” Mrs. Hanson says. “And then we’ll share with them the good news once they arrive.”
Good news? I’d like the sound of that, if only I trusted her.
“News?” I say.
She sits up straight and announces, “We’ve decided to give Ike the money for the coffee shop as we initially agreed. Our emotions got the best of us for a time, but we’re calmer now, and we know it’s the right thing to do.”
“Really?” Ike smiles a huge smile. “That would be . . . that’s just—well, it’s
huge
.” He stands, moves around the table, and gives each parent a kiss and hug. “Thank you, Mom. Dad.
Thank you.
I can’t tell you how much this means to me.” He sits back down and covers my hand with his, beaming. “Wow. This is amazing. Fantastic, isn’t it, Tami?”