What I’m thinking is: I just might get my happy ending after all.
Chapter 2
T
here are a few reasons I didn’t originally tell Ike about my visa situation. Perhaps the first reason, the simplest reason, was that I was embarrassed. Arranged marriages are not something Americans understand. They’re not burdened by their culture or history in this way. For them, it’s
first comes love, then comes marriage.
Or else it’s love, even living together, without the marriage. But it’s never marriage without the love—at least not at the beginning!
Also, as I mentioned, Ike is a man with a plan. He has his future precisely mapped out, and marriage was not in his plan. Someday, yes. Now, no, and I didn’t want to put him in a difficult position. If it hadn’t been for my sister, who went to see him yesterday without my knowledge, Ike still wouldn’t know of my dilemma. I’m so thankful she did! And I’m thankful Ike didn’t just let me go, even though our marriage will cause a change in his plan.
When we get to his scooter, which is sandwiched between two large motorcycles, Ike climbs on first. I hand him my travel bag, which he sets on the floorboard. He has no bags of his own, because he was in such a rush yesterday to get the last flight to Las Vegas that he didn’t even stop at home, instead going directly to the airport after his shift ended at Starbucks, which is where Maryam went to see him.
“Here.” He hands me the one helmet he’s brought. “We’ve got to make sure you stay alive long enough to file your immigration paperwork.”
As I climb on, I nudge him. “Very funny, mister.”
“Seriously,” he says. “No need to tempt fate.” As I’m putting on the helmet, he sings, “
I don’t mean to start any blasphemous rumors, but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor. And when I die, I expect to find him laughing.
“Depeche Mode,” he informs me. “An oldie but a goodie.”
As I listen to the laughing-God lyrics of this song, it occurs to me that I know very little (make that nothing!) about my husband’s religious views. “Ike, do you believe in God?”
“Let’s just say I try to live my life in such a way that if I learn after I die that there really is such a thing as heaven, I’ll be pleasantly surprised,” he says.
“If you ever go to Iran with me for a visit, this is not something you should say, okay? You could get in big trouble.”
“I highly doubt I’ll be going to Iran anytime soon,” he says.
“You could, you know,” I say. “My parents would love to meet you.”
“No offense to your parents, but I’d never willingly put myself in a situation where I’d give up any of my rights,” he says. “And wouldn’t I have to convert to Islam or something?”
Oh, that. I’d forgotten about that. “That’s mostly just a technicality.”
He laughs. “That’s one hell of a technicality, Tami.”
He backs the scooter out of its parking spot, and for a moment I’m so happy, reminded of our previous scooter rides—my body on fire from his nearness, my arms tightened around his waist, pretending it was necessary to keep my balance. Before, I was terrified of getting caught sneaking these rides, afraid it might ruin my chances of finding a husband. But now he
is
my husband.
As he makes the twenty-five-minute drive to his house, however, my happiness is replaced by nerves. Again and again, I chant to myself,
Please let them like me. Please let them like me.
Six miles of this!
His family lives in a neighborhood called Winterhaven, where every December all the residents are required by the homeowners’ association to decorate their yards with holiday lights and displays, and people come from all over the city to walk or take horse-drawn carriage rides through the streets. Ike turns off Tucson Boulevard onto a street called Kleindale and in less than a block, pulls over and parks in front of a quiet brick house that looks similar to all the other houses on the street. This neighborhood is different from Maryam’s in that the front yards have grass and the houses are brick, smaller and all one-story.
“Here we go,” he says, sliding off the scooter. “Home sweet home.”
I’m making him leave his childhood home. Dear God, what have I done?
I remain on the scooter, unable to face his family. “I’m too nervous, Ike.”
“My parents are going to love you, Tami,” he says. “They’re going to welcome you into the family with open arms. That’s the kind of parents they are. And you’re going to love my sisters, and they’re going to love you, too. Trust me, there will be a . . . plethora of love.”
“You’re sure? They won’t think I’m . . . ?”
“They won’t think you’re what?”
A thief . . . stealing away their most precious son?
“I don’t know,” I say, although this isn’t true. I do know. I just don’t want to say it. “Too . . . foreign?”
“Exotic, maybe.” Ike smiles. “And sexy. But foreign? No. That’s not how they’d ever—”
“I don’t want your parents to think I’m sexy, Ike!”
He laughs. “Tell you what. Just keep that helmet on, and there’s no fear of that.”
Laughing, I pull it off and shake out my long brown-black hair.
He gives me an appreciative look. “Ah, well, now. No denying it—you’re sexy,” he says. “My sisters are going to go nuts for your hair. I should warn you, they’re a touchy-feely bunch. They’re probably going to want to braid it.”
Touchy-feely
. This is a cute word.
“The first time they meet me?”
“Another thing about my family—we’re very casual.”
“Your parents know we’re coming, right?”
“I told my mom I’m bringing a friend to dinner.” He extends a hand to me. “Come on, friend.”
I slip my hand into his and climb off the scooter—and there we are, holding hands in public again. Take that, you government goons! The streets of Tehran are filled with many things, but affection is not one of them. “Do they know this friend you’re bringing is female?”
“Yes, dear, they know my friend is female,” he says. “They just don’t know she’s my wife.” His plan is for us to tell them after dinner, after they’ve had the chance to get to know me a little bit.
“I should have brought something,” I say. “Flowers, or sweets, or—”
“There’s no need for that,” he says.
But even if his family is casual, mine is not. We’d never go to someone’s house without an offering, and yet here I am
.
Am I changing already, as an American wife? But I’m
not
an American wife—I’m the wife of an American, and I should have insisted that we stop and get something. Yet before I know it, we’re at the front door, and we walk inside to what I can immediately tell is happy, half-organized chaos. Book bags are strewn by the front door. Shoes are everywhere. Plastic shopping bags from Target have been brought in and left lying in the middle of the living room. Spanish-sounding music plays in another room, and there’s a delicious smell coming from the kitchen.
“Ah, lasagna,” Ike says happily. “My favorite.”
Lah-zan-ya.
I practice the word in my head. I have not yet eaten this food.
Sitting together on the couch are two girls. One is dark-skinned and young enough that she must be the six-year-old adopted girl, Camille. The other I guess to be Paige, the fourteen-year-old. She’s reading to Camille from a book written by a doctor named Seuss,
Oh, the Places You’ll Go.
They glance at us and then continue on.
“It’s Squirt and Baby Squirt!” Ike says. Camille smiles, while Paige wrinkles her nose at him. Ike introduces me, and we exchange smiles, but before anyone can say anything, there’s shouting from another room.
“Who took my cell phone?”
Ike grins at me. “That would be my sister Kat. She’s the drama queen of the family. Come on—I’ll introduce you to my mom.”
He stoops to pick up the shopping bags and carries them to the kitchen. Paige continues reading to Camille, and as Ike walks by, he recites the story from memory.
“And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening, too.”
Ike’s mother, wearing denim Capri pants and a green linen blouse with a white camisole under it, is tall and a bit on the heavy side—not in a way that makes her seem weak or unhealthy, but in a way that makes her seem sturdy and competent. She has thick, shoulder-length brown hair with gray streaks in it, worn back in a barrette. She’s sitting on a stool by the counter, slicing red onion for a salad.
“Mom, I’d like to introduce you to someone,” Ike says from the doorway, “This is Tami. Tami, this is my mom.”
As we approach from the doorway, she points her chopping knife at me. “So
you’re
the one my son rushes off to Vegas to be with. The girl from Iran.”
Inwardly, I cringe. “Oh, I, uh—” I glance at Ike. He’s smiling. “Yes, ma’am. I am. I’m the one.”
“Please don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel so old!” she says. “Call me Elizabeth, why don’t you?”
“Thank you,” I say, at the same time thinking,
I can’t call her Elizabeth!
“Or maybe . . . Mrs. Hanson?”
“If you must.” She smiles. “I’ve certainly been called worse, especially by my sixteen-year-old lately!”
Ike unloads the bags, setting the items on the counter. Soap, shampoo, suntan lotion, toothpaste, hair clips. I’m embarrassed when he sets down a box of tampons, but he’s unfazed, and I’m suddenly glad he lives in a house with five females. It will make the womanly aspect of our relationship no big deal to him.
“Was Vegas fun?” Mrs. Hanson asks me.
I married your son!
“Yes, thank you,” I say. “I had a very good time.”
“I suppose gambling is illegal in Iran,” she says. “Did you have a chance to do any while you were in—”
“Who took my cell phone?”
A teenage girl storms into the kitchen. Her blond hair is very straight and falls all the way down her back. “Do
you
have my cell phone, by chance?” she asks me.
It warms my heart to see Ike’s teasing eyes on this younger, female version of him. I smile at her—she’s my sister now, too . . . my sister-by-marriage! “Sorry, no.”
“Kat, meet Tami,” Ike says. “Tami, meet my sister Kat.”
Kat stretches out her hand to shake mine. Her grip is that of an equal, and I marvel at how a sixteen-year-old can have the confidence and presence of someone much older. When she’s not yelling about her cell phone, that is.
“Why don’t you call yourself with the landline?” Mrs. Hanson suggests.
“I can’t find that, either!”
Ike pulls out his phone, dials hers, and within seconds, we hear,
I know what boys like. I know what guys want. They want to touch me. I never let them.
I laugh, as I have not heard this song before.
“The dryer!” Kat says, and heads to the laundry room to retrieve her phone.
“Girls and their cell phones.” Mrs. Hanson shakes her head. “Do they have cell phones in Iran? They must, I’m sure.”
“Yes, of course.” Tehran is a vibrant city of eight million—of course we have cell phones. (And no, we don’t ride camels!) We also have shopping malls and movie theaters and beautiful parks. Except for the many backward restrictions we’re forced to endure, we’re quite modern. We like to think so, anyway.
“Were you two planning to stay for dinner?” Mrs. Hanson looks at me to answer.
“Oh, I, uh . . . Didn’t Ike . . . ?” I look to him.
“I told you we were,” he says. “On the phone. Is Dad around?”
“Did you see his truck out front?” Mrs. Hanson says.
“No, I didn’t,” Ike says.
“Well, then, you know he’s not home.”
They grin at each other, and I envy this easy, teasing exchange. My father is funny, or likes to think he is, but my mother always seems so fragile, as if a deeply felt laugh or cry might cause her to crack open, to shatter. With her, we are smooth. Soft. Measured, in our emotions and our words. But Ike and his mother appear to be the opposite of this.
“Come on.” Ike reaches for my hand. “Let me show you my bachelor pad.”
“It’s very nice to meet you,” I say to Mrs. Hanson.
“You, too,” she says. “My son was right. You
are
beautiful.”
“Inside and out,” Ike says—so sweet!—and on the way out the back door, I breathe a sigh of relief. His mother seems to like me just fine, and so far, I like her very, very much.
Between the main house and Ike’s guesthouse is a green-grass backyard. Also in the yard is an in-ground pool with a diving board, and on the diving board is a tall, very thin teenage girl in a bikini, and also a tan, muscled, shirtless boy in swimming trunks that are called board shorts
.
He’s behind her, with his hands around her waist, cheerfully forcing her to the edge of the diving board. The girl shrieks happily as she readies herself to be pushed from it. Several other teenagers are either in the pool or sitting at its edge, their feet dangling in the water.
“That’s my sister Isabel,” Ike tells me and calls to her, “Hi, Izzy!” She waves as the boy forces her closer to the edge. “Izzy, this is Tami.”
Izzy starts to say hello, but before she can, the boy pushes her off the diving board amid laughter from the others. I laugh, too. How many years I have dreamed of moments such as this, with myself as the free-spirited girl, the center of attention, laughing in the sunshine and being touched by a boy as if it were no big deal. I left my backpack with my camera in Ike’s living room beside the front door, and it might not be proper to take pictures of people I just met, anyway, but I take a few in my mind: Of the loosely tied strings of Izzy’s bikini bottom. Of the boy’s weight-lifter muscles. Of the intertwined feet of another boy and girl who lounge in the pool on matching inner tubes. Of the splash of water, frozen in midair. Of Izzy, as she pops up from underneath the water with her hair slicked back like a model’s and with her smile showing her teeth so American-white.