In the Time of Our History

Chapter 7

Mitra let Libby wrap her in a hug as she came off the elevator into the apartment’s marble-tiled foyer. She felt the bulge of Libby’s abdomen and stepped back, incredulous. “You’re pregnant again?”

“Shit no,” Libby said, rubbing her palm over a significant paunch. “I’m still nursing.” She scratched at an orange stain on her raggedy sweatshirt. “Sorry, I’m kind of a mess.” Seeing that Mitra’s stunned expression hadn’t changed, she threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, Mitra, you are such a space cadet. I just had another kid. I sent you an email? About a month ago?”

“I . . . I—”

“Oh, shut up,” Libby said, giving Mitra’s sleeve a tug and grinning magnanimously. “This is me you’re talking to. Elizabeth the Putrid. Haven’t I always forgiven your weirdness?”

Mitra snorted. “Elizabeth the Putrid. That’s from, like, the last century.”

It was what Mitra had named Libby when she and Anahita were nine, when Libby had just discovered her love of running, when a swampy odor wafted from her armpits, her neck folds, and, most profoundly, from the gray-tinged tube socks she was forced to expose when Shireen made her remove her Keds before she and Ana sequestered themselves in the basement playroom to stretch, leap, strain, skip, roll, and contort their bodies into endlessly revised gymnastics routines, all performed to “Nadia’s Theme.”

Libby pushed her stick-straight blond bangs off her forehead. “Put your luggage down and come into the kitchen. I’m cooking.” The bangs fell back over her brow. “And wipe that stunned look off your face.”

As Libby turned, Mitra said, “I’m so sorry, Libs. I don’t remember getting the email. Shit. My mother didn’t say anything. Or maybe she did. I can’t remember. I’m so sorry. Um . . . what did you have?”

“A girl. Katy. Katayoon to your family. Thank God she’s finally napping. We can have some quiet time before my neighbor brings the twins back from the park. Lucky me, she’s got one their age who’s starved for playmates.”

Mitra followed Libby through the high-ceilinged living room with its hotel-size furniture the color of café au lait, and through the dining room with its fingerprint-smudged glass table. Just before reaching the kitchen, Libby said over her shoulder, “I know clutter insults your sensibility, Mitra, but with the kids, minimalism is not an option, so the place is a mess.”

It sure was. Spaghetti sauce gurgled like a lava pit on the stove; liquid orange missiles leapt up to splotch the white cabinets. The sink was full of dirty dishes. On the counters was a mishmash of incongruous items: cereal boxes, crayons, a bowl of peeled potatoes in water, six Matchbox cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic, several empty beer and wine bottles, an orchid plant devoid of blooms, a box of rigatoni, and the largest plastic container of dried basil leaves Mitra had ever seen. She scooted into the banquette behind the kitchen table, and when she lifted her palms off the cushion, they were dotted with crumbs. Libby covered the spaghetti sauce, put a trivet under it, and turned the heat down. “They say the longer it simmers, the better it tastes.”

“Who says?”

“I don’t know. Italian grandmothers.” She reached into the refrigerator and held up a bottle of wine. “White?”

“Sure.”

“Wish I could join you, but it’s apple juice for me. I swear, if I wasn’t nursing, I’d be on my second bottle of the day. As it is, I have fantasies about disappearing to a Caribbean island for the rest of my life.”

Libby said things like this, but she never meant them. In college, she had been an obsessively devoted mother’s helper every summer for a family with four kids, a job she kept after graduation while everyone else worked at Bloomingdale’s or Condé Nast—everyone except Ana, who was already married. No one had to ask Libby what she wanted in life. She and Ana were peas in a pod. But Libby’s boyfriend, Jonathan, a mild-mannered guy whom no one found offensive (or anything else, for that matter), wasn’t keen on tying the knot until he had a few years of work experience behind him. Sound logic, Mitra thought. Sadly, Jonathan was sucked into the hedonistic lifestyle of 1980s Wall Street. Libby broke up with him after finding a vial of cocaine in his briefcase, not two weeks before his boss was indicted for insider trading. At around the same time, Ana had to put off getting pregnant after suffering a rare ovarian cyst rupture, so the two friends were able to comfort and amuse one another through it all. That Libby had ended up marrying their cousin Nezam years later was a surprise to everyone except Olga, who wasn’t as myopic as most people when it came to “husband being younger than wife,” and said she’d known Nezam was “crazy ’bout Libby-joon” since before he grew tall enough to look her in the eye.

“Have you seen the Bryson Bulletin?” Libby asked, pointing to a pile of mail on the table.

“Mine goes right into the recycle bin,” Mitra said, sifting through the pile.

“I thought so. There’s a nice memorial dedication to Ana. Page fourteen.”

Mitra lifted an eyebrow. “Took them a while,” she said, extricating a glossy periodical with a cover photograph of several schoolgirls in preppy dress.

“It’s an annual publication,” Libby said as she unwrapped a wedge of Brie. “The one before this came out about a week before the accident. I remember because there was a photo in it of Blanche de la Babineaux wearing a hat made of at least ten dead chinchillas.”

Mitra rolled her eyes. “The fake French girl from Kentucky?”

“Yeah. Ana and I laughed about that for hours.” Libby reached high up into a cabinet for a box of water crackers.

Mitra flipped through the Bulletin slowly, as if each page contained something mildly interesting, which it didn’t. The usual kudos and photos of alumnae fund-raisers, elderly women in short silver haircuts and pearls. An article on the new Head of School, who used to be called the Headmistress or Headmaster. Pages twelve and thirteen were devoted to the Science Department’s annual ecological field trip to a remote Caribbean island, a badge of honor for girls who wanted to prove their ability to live for three weeks out in the open, washing their bodies in the sea, sleeping in tents, examining slimy creatures, and sometimes eating them. Finally, Mitra reached page fourteen.

In Memoriam

Anahita Jahani Markarian, Class of 1978, is fondly remembered for her dedication to Bryson’s 130-year-old tradition of academic excellence and its commitment to diversity. Anahita’s special devotion to the Art Department is exhibited in the Main Hall Mural, painted in 1976 by the Art Club, of which Anahita was President in her senior year. Anahita was also an outstanding Bryson gymnast and a fine mezzo soprano in the Bryson Chorus. We offer our deepest condolences to her parents and to her sister, Mitra Jahani, class of 1975.

Mitra hated it. They’d managed not to use the word death or even the phrase passed away. Reality was still too harsh for their sheltered community. And that word: diversity. A euphemism for non-WASP, for minority—a politically correct advertisement for the school. What a sham.

But she wouldn’t let it get to her. She wouldn’t give them that. With a shrug, she said, “I’m surprised the mural is still there.”

“Why?” Libby asked. “It was beautiful. A forest in honor of Earth Day. Ana’s birds were amazing. As if she’d pasted real feathers onto the wall. I wish she hadn’t stopped painting.”

“That’s all she ever painted: birds. I think she got sick of them. I sure did. Anyway, she said she didn’t miss it.” Mitra looked at the photograph the Bulletin had used—of all things, Ana’s graduation picture. “They couldn’t have contacted my parents for a more current photo?”

“You know how they are. Bryson girls are preserved in time.” Libby uncorked the wine with a flourish. “Like body parts in formaldehyde.”

“Gross,” Mitra said automatically, still staring at the photo of Ana at eighteen—her sweetheart neckline, a single pearl on a delicate chain resting in the hollow of her neck. And the white parasol. Mitra smiled. Olga had made it. Well, not exactly made it. Shireen had bought a white umbrella, and Olga had decorated it with lace on the handle and the spokes, and white organza flowers and butterflies on the outside of the canopy. The parasol had been inspired by Mitra, not because she meant it to be, but because of a sarcastic remark she made about how Bryson girls lived in the Dark Ages with their virginal white graduation gowns, and how they might as well wear corsets and carry parasols. Ana loved her parasol, not least because it helped her to keep her posture erect so that Baba couldn’t poke his finger into her backbone: Stand up es-traight!

That day, as Ana and Libby took their places in Bryson’s East Courtyard under the hot June sun to receive their diplomas, Mitra had briefly left her parents sitting primly in their white folding chairs on the grass and found Ana in the procession line. She pulled her aside. “You need some lip gloss.” Ana frowned. “Baba will kill me, Mitti.” Her frizzy hair was pulled back and sprayed into a stiff little bun, her eyelashes brushed with Vaseline, her eyebrows subtly and secretly tweezed by Olga over the previous few weeks. Mitra’s spine prickled as the ancient moment returned: Ana’s sweet bowed lips, her deceptively mischievous smile that boys often took for flirtation but that Mitra saw as her guilelessness. The damp feel of Ana’s dimpled cheek between her thumb and forefinger. “Hold still or it’ll smear onto your face.” A warm puff on her knuckles as Ana stifled a nervous giggle. The palest pink. Beautiful.

Mitra caught the tears in her throat and slowly covered the photo with her palm. She kept her head down to collect herself privately, but Libby had already come over to the table; she squeezed Mitra’s hand, then slid a glass of wine toward her. Mitra lifted the glass and met Libby’s watery eyes.

“To Ana,” Libby said, lifting her glass of apple juice.

“To Ana,” Mitra echoed hoarsely, touching her glass to Libby’s. They sipped. Mitra sipped again.

Libby placed a plate of cheese and crackers on the table and sat across from Mitra. “I’ll never forget what you wore for your graduation.”

Mitra managed a chuckle, remembering her rebellion. Throughout high school, she’d staged at least one rebellion a year. As a freshman, she circulated a petition to abolish the school uniform, an ensemble of gray flannel skirt, white blouse, navy blue blazer, and matching knee socks. As a sophomore, she brought a copy of the newly published Joy of Sex to health class with the suggestion that it be used as a textbook. Her junior year, she refused to attend morning chapel on the grounds that she was not a Christian, which prompted twenty-two Jewish classmates to follow suit. Her senior year, it was the implementation of the Metric Conversion Act, with Mitra relentlessly reminding teachers and students to convert miles into kilometers, pounds into kilograms, Fahrenheit into Celsius, and so on. This rebellion hadn’t earned her the same kind of admiration as the earlier ones, but she was unfazed. She made up for it at graduation.

“Yeah,” she said as Libby proffered her a cracker and cheese. “I wore pants.”

“Excuse me,” Libby said in mock admonition. “Not just pants. You wore a white pantsuit. A three-button jacket and bell bottoms. Sewn expertly by Olga from one of your mom’s white linen tablecloths.”

Mitra smiled and popped the cracker and cheese into her mouth. Buoyed by her change of mood, Libby continued. “Seventy-five girls filing out to that stone patio dressed like brides. Except, of course, for you, with that high-and-mighty walk of yours, as if nothing is out of the ordinary. I swear, every graduation program that was being used as a fan came to a halt in midair. The old lady alumnae contingent?” Libby struck a nose-in-the-air pose. “They were, like, who is this swarthy girl, this likely foreign student whose father might not even be a diplomat, but rather an upstart Third World merchant, barely civilized, who dares sully our alma mater’s traditions. It was like Gloria Steinem herself had crashed the party, or worse, that traitor Jane Fonda.”

Mitra was laughing hard now. Cracker crumbs spewed from her lips and she clamped a napkin over her mouth.

“And your parents!” Libby continued, thrilled that she was making Mitra laugh. “Your mom was mortified; she just looked down at her lap. Your dad—I was one seat away from him next to Ana—I swear I could see the tiny hairs of his mustache lift away from his skin. And you got away with it! Any other girl would’ve been picked off that patio by the scruff of her neck.”

It was true. Mitra had caused a bit of a scandal with the Bryson conservatives. But she was left to play out her rebellion, and she sat in her alphabetical seat and collected her diploma with the air of a suspect who’s been assured of immunity. After all, she was the class salutatorian, accepted at Barnard, daughter of a generous donor to the annual fund, and a favorite of the headmaster’s difficult wife, whose passion was the school theater, a place Mitra had transformed with her creative set designs, particularly the multi-tiered wooden stage for Hamlet.

“Speaking of necks,” Libby said, “the red ribbon chokers you and those other girls wore, now will you tell me what special meaning they had?”

Mitra’s eyes sparkled. She washed down the last of her cracker and cheese with a gulp of wine. “I told you and Ana a million times that it was a secret; we had a pact that we wouldn’t ever tell.”

“Come on, Mitra. It’s twenty-three years ago. Jeez.”

Mitra sighed, reached for the wine bottle. “You’re right. It’s no fun being coy without Ana around to do that hysterical doggie begging thing.” She paused. “The girls who wore the ribbon weren’t virgins. That’s all.”

“Oh my God,” Libby said, flinging her hands up to her cheeks. “That’s exactly what Ana thought.”

Mitra bridled. “I wouldn’t have put it past you, Libs, but Ana?”

“I know. But that’s what she whispered in my ear that very day. She knew you so well, Mitra.”

She did? It was a question Mitra had never asked herself. “I didn’t talk to her about my sexual adventures. I mean, you guys were such goody-goodies!”

“Give me a break, Mitra. You always underestimated our maturity; we weren’t so naïve.”

Libby was right again, Mitra realized. The proof of it was Ana’s affair. Did Libby know about that? And if she did, wouldn’t they find some comfort in talking about it? In deconstructing the day Ana died? Mitra studied Libby’s profile, as if her features could reveal the memories stored in her head. She knew that Libby didn’t know about what Kareem had done; Ana had told her that she wanted to pretend it never happened, and Mitra had accepted that. But the affair?

“So you guys had secrets too, huh?” Mitra made a point of lightening her tone. “Do tell.”

Libby got up to stir the spaghetti sauce. “Yeah, secrets like sneaking Oreos from the pantry and using your makeup. One time we put your bras on and stuffed them with scraped-out grapefruit halves.”

“You did what?”

“Well, they had a nice conical shape. We let them air-dry first, of course.” Libby put the lid back on the pot and began loading the dishwasher.

“What about later? Secrets you had later, when you were older?” Mitra prodded.

“Not me. You know I can’t keep my mouth shut. As for Ana . . .” Libby looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Huh. I can’t recall anything.” Mitra felt a pang; that Ana hadn’t confided in Libby saddened her. “I mean, there was Bijan, when she first met him and didn’t want your parents to know.”

“Besides that. That wasn’t really a secret. You just had to look at her rapturous expression to know she was in love.”

Libby’s face fell. “Shit,” she said. “I forgot to tell you. Bijan called this morning.”

“Is he here yet?”

Libby shook her head. “He’s in London. He’s not coming.”

Mitra ran her fingers through her hair. “I guess I don’t blame him. It’s not like he needs a reminder that his wife and kids are dead.” Libby stiffened at Mitra’s blunt language. “If it weren’t for my mom, I wouldn’t have come either.”

“It’s not such a bad thing, Mitra, people coming together for comfort. I mean, Americans have the funeral, the burial, and it’s over. If you need anything else, you’re supposed to go to a support group.”

“Americans? You’ve been hanging around my family too much. We’re all Americans now.”

The remark stung, and Libby stood still, looked down at her peeling nail polish. It was easy to fall into the Iranian banter, the self-segregation, when you were around it all the time, when you wanted to be accepted into the clan. But Mitra, despite her blood ties, didn’t approve of it. Even during the Hostage Crisis, she’d never lied about her heritage like so many others who called themselves “Persian,” as if the exoticized word weren’t a synonym for Iranian. And she could get belligerent sometimes, glaring at people with a steely look that said, We’re Americans, just like you.

Libby blew at a stray wisp of hair and looked at her watch. “The twins’ll be back from the park in a few minutes.”

“I can’t wait to see them,” Mitra said.

“Yes, you can. Believe me.”

“All right, I can, but tell me about my favorite cousin. Is he treating you right?”

“He’s been working late a lot, a residential community in upstate New York. I could strangle your father for putting him in charge of it. He comes home and complains about my bad housekeeping.”

“That’s not like Nezam. He’s supposed to be our token feminist.”

“Well, you know these Iranian men. They get more like their fathers as they get older.” Libby raised an eyebrow.

Mitra chuckled. “In that case, expect him to turn into a househusband.”

Libby nodded. “True. I do adore my father-in-law. Truth is, Mitra, Nezam’s just frustrated, wishes he could spend more time with the kids.”

Mitra shook her head slowly. “Not while he’s working for my father.”

“You know that won’t change. Duty to family and all that.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Mitra said, finishing off her wine.

Libby waved her hand dismissively and opened the dishwasher. “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Mitra. We’ll figure it out. We always do.” But Mitra knew she didn’t mean it.

“Eight and two don’t make eleven!”

“It was an eight and a three! And that makes eleven! Right, Auntie Mitra?”

“Right.”

Pedram stuck his popsicle-purple tongue out at his brother. Of the two, he was the tough one. Mitra rubbed at her foot, which had fallen asleep from her sitting cross-legged on the floor at the base of a bunk bed in the boys’ Lego-themed bedroom, playing a Persian card game called pasoor, which involved matching cards that added up to eleven. Nezam, like his father, was fond of using cards to teach the kids how to add and to strategize.

“But it was a two, Auntie Mitra,” Kian whined, giving her a puppy-innocent face.

“Was it?” she asked.

“She said I was right,” interjected Pedram.

“I said you were right about eight and three equaling eleven.” Mitra was certain that Kian was speaking the truth. “I didn’t see whether you picked up a two or a three, Pedram. You did it fast, and I’m not very quick. Why don’t you start this hand over?”

Pedram was sneaky, like Mitra had been. It wasn’t only about winning with him, it was about bothering his brother. Mitra wondered if this was the way it was with most siblings: one angel and one devil, one bully and one victim.

Pedram slapped his cards down in anger. Kian gathered the deck up and handed it to Mitra for shuffling. Although the decision was not in his favor, he showed no sign of dissatisfaction. Mitra knew what he wanted: no conflict at all, no winning or losing. Same as Anahita. This was what she had finally understood when the Kareem incident happened. She hoped for Kian’s sake that it wouldn’t take Pedram that long, or be that traumatizing. She gently squeezed Kian’s cheek between her knuckles, and he smiled; his joy came from approval.

Mitra dealt and watched as the boys tried to fan the four cards they each had. Pedram failed and dropped his facedown, but Kian kept trying with twisted fingers, the tip of his tongue fiddling at the corner of his mouth. Finally, Mitra said, “It’s your turn, buddy.” He looked from the cards in his hand to the four cards on the carpet and back again; he whispered numbers to himself.

“Go-o-o!” Pedram demanded. “You’re so slow, Kian.”

Finally, Kian’s face lit up and he pulled a six from his fingers and laid it beside a five on the carpet. “Six and five equals eleven!” he pronounced, then looked at Mitra for reassurance.

“Excellent,” she said. “Go on, take the cards. They’re yours.” He tucked them under a scraped knee, and Mitra thought of the childhood scars she could still make out on her own knees, the faded chronicles of falls from bikes and stairs and rocks, the memory of being fearless, of braving the blood-red iodine wick.

Pedram flopped over on his stomach and with a breath of irritation picked a card from the stacked pile, obviously having no card in his hand with which to make eleven. Mitra did the same. Then Kian, with a smile as wide as a sparkling river, made eleven with a two from his hand and nine on the carpet. Pedram dropped his forehead to the floor and let the cards in his hand fall. “This game is boring. I’m not playing anymore.” He rolled over, reached for two olive-green combat soldiers, and began making those throaty, saliva-bubbling fighting noises only boys’ mouths can make.

“That’s okay, Kian,” Mitra said. “We’ll play just the two of us.” This was unlike her. She was once a firm auntie. A no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is grown-up to whom a kid could pose any question, even, say, the meaning of fuck. An adult who wasn’t a mommy (and didn’t know all the mommy rules), who wouldn’t talk in a kid voice or ask dumb questions like “Can you spell your name?” or frown instead of giggle when somebody farted. That old Mitra would have taken a stern position with Pedram: Finish what you’ve started, buddy. You don’t quit in the middle of the game just because you’re not winning. She would’ve had just the right tone too. A little harsh, but not like a scolding adult’s; more like a big kid with the power to choose who got to belong in the gang. That was how she would have reacted. But she realized that she’d become a softy. She treated all kids as if they were on the edge of tragedy.

Kian and Mitra finished the game and he won. She kissed his forehead and he blushed. Pedram released a loud, wet explosion from his mouth and sent his soldiers flying to their plastic deaths.

Libby peeked into the room. “Dinner’s ready. Time to wash up, boys.” She managed to fold down the collars of their matching white polo shirts as they shuffled by her to the bathroom. Squatting to help Mitra collect the cards and put them back in the box, she said, “Only you would have the patience to play cards with my five-year-old brats.”

“Kids are easy when you don’t have them all the time.”

Libby shook her head. “Don’t be modest, Mitra. Ana had good reason to designate you guardian to her children.”

* * *

Libby had put Mitra in the baby’s room on the daybed. Katy still spent the night in the bassinet in Nezam and Libby’s bedroom, but her room smelled like everything baby: powder, Desi-tin, baby moisturizer, the slightly curdled scent of breast milk, and a faint mixture of urine and Lysol. A softly glowing night lamp on the dresser created wispy shadows on the faux-finished pink walls. Mitra felt like an oafish intruder.

At the crib, she caught her breath. In the corner, nestled against the daisy-patterned padded bumper, was a stuffed yellow dinosaur hardly bigger than a tea cup. She hesitated to pick it up, the thought coming to her that her hands weren’t clean enough even though she’d just washed them. But she reached for it, gently squished its fleece skin and felt the nubby grains inside, heard the quiet swish that sounded like windblown sand. So soft. So unlike the synthetically rough stuffed animals Ana used to place above her head on the pillow every night, among them a gray one-eared squirrel that she later kept snuggled in a basket by her bed along with paperback child-rearing books. Mitra wondered what had happened to it. Why had she told Bijan and her mother that she didn’t want any of Ana’s things? At the time, it had seemed almost traitorous to need something to remind her of her sister.

The baby dinosaur had red and blue felt triangles sewn into its spine; a brontosaurus, Mitra guessed. She’d bought Nina a Beanie Baby mouse that had floppy felt ears like this, one of those Beanie Babies that had sold out from most stores in all of five minutes. She’d discovered it in a shop in Noe Valley and had FedExed it to her niece. She remembered Nina’s scream of glee over the phone.

Thankyouthankyouthankyou, Auntie Mitra!

It was in her lap when the Verizon truck smashed head-on into the Range Rover’s left bumper and crushed Anahita’s legs, still in her lap when the Rover careened over the guardrail, still in her lap when the speed limit sign impaled her chest. The night before the funeral, Shireen had soaked the mouse in OxiClean over and over until the bloodstains looked more like stuffed animal eczema. Mitra had sat on the floor in Ana and Bijan’s laundry room for an hour blow-drying the little thing. They’d directed the mortician to tuck it in Nina’s casket.

A soft knock came at the door. She turned quickly, the dinosaur clasped to her neck as Nezam poked his head into the room. “Hey,” he said quietly. His smile disappeared when he realized her condition, and he strode forward to embrace her. She cried silently into his chest, inhaled his particular black tea and lemon scent. “Aw, Mitti,” he said, his voice swollen with a pity she wouldn’t have tolerated from anyone else. “I guess we didn’t think about how this room might upset you. Sweetie, I’m so sorry.” He kissed the side of her head, pressed his warm hand into her nape.

“It’s okay,” she finally said, wiping her tears on his shirt. “I’m fine.” She squirmed out of his grasp and put the dinosaur back in the crib, smoothing the sheet with her palm. “Now don’t go telling everyone that I’m a mess. No pity shit. You know I hate that.”

“Do you want to sleep in the living room?”

“Of course not. I just had a moment of weakness—”

“It’s not weakness, Mitti.”

“—and I’m happy to be near all these baby things. Aw, Nez, Katy is so cute. Congratulations.”

He grinned. “I know. It’s so different to have a girl; it’s really shireen,” he said, using the Farsi word for “sweet.” He sat on the bed. “Sorry I couldn’t make it home for dinner,” he added. “It’s a brutal commute.”

“I can imagine. And the job stinks.” She sat next to him.

He shrugged. “It’s not what I went to law school for.”

“For God’s sake, Nezam, quit already. Stop feeling like you owe my father. You don’t.”

“It’s not that simple, Mitti.” He squeezed her thigh and smiled, composed as always, even-keeled. “I don’t want to talk about it now. I’ve got to get some sleep.” He looked at his watch. “I need to drive back there in about nine hours.” His eyes lit up. “Hey, you want to come with me? See what your father’s up to these days? We can catch up.”

She hesitated.

“Don’t worry. There’s no chance he’ll be there. He hardly visits the sites anymore. Come on. We can hang out. I miss you.”

She’d never been good at saying no to him. And the distraction would be good; a brief respite, before the One Year gathering, from this painful reimmersion into all things Anahita. He left with a smile and soon the apartment took on the quality of a slumbering household—heavy, hushed, and lonely. Mitra swallowed an Ambien, changed into her night shirt, and slid under the quilt.

* * *

She dreamt a memory: of Nina as a baby, the meningitis scare. Nina’s feverish cry—a weak bleating that seared Mitra’s heart—the scald of Nina’s neck as it rested in the crook of Mitra’s arm. She and Ana sharing the vigil, walking the baby through the house, humming Persian and English lullabies until the fever broke. But when Ana turned around, Mitra’s memory spun away and the baby in Ana’s arms was pasty and lifeless. She gasped and opened her eyes. It wasn’t the first time since the accident that she’d had a nightmare like this. How many different ways could the children be killed in her dreams? It was always one of them, not Ana. Was this what Mitra would’ve wanted if given the choice? Ana suffering the death of her own children so that Mitra could still have her? Why did she contemplate such unfair moral dilemmas? Was it a kind of survivor’s guilt? She felt the weight of the darkness, the emptiness of the night, and the yearning for the childhood sound of her sister’s breathing. Would she ever be able to feel as if she could exist without Ana also existing?

She flung the covers off and left the room. A glass of milk, some television. But in the unlit living room she found Libby pacing with Katy in her arms, the two looking like ghosts of Madonna and Child in the dim amber glow of the city lights. “Can I help?” Mitra whispered.

“Sure,” Libby said. “She’s asleep, but I’ve got to pee.” She put the warm bundle in Mitra’s arms and adjusted her nursing bra.

Katy, all twenty inches of her, fit against Mitra like the proper jigsaw puzzle piece. It had been a long time since she’d held an infant. Nina. Katy’s eyes were closed, her lashes like wet feathers. Flakes of dry skin speckled her sparse silky hair, and her lips sucked at an imaginary nipple. Mitra brushed the side of her thumb against Katy’s cheek; the softness was electric, a zap of sheer pleasure that made her feel as if her heart would beat clear through her chest. Then Katy’s lips trembled, and she issued an exhausted, hoarse wail that sliced through Mitra like a drill. She wanted to pull Katy inside, under her skin, next to her organs, where she could be safe, and saved.