Chapter 21
Vivian heard them yelling through the wall between her office and Mr. J’s. It was the third time in a month that her boss and Nezam had fought. She didn’t think Nezam had it in him to shout so loud. He was a mild-mannered fellow, her favorite among the Jahani clan, always polite and as modest as the others were arrogant. Vivian didn’t understand why he continued to work for his uncle; he could earn a lot more as counsel for a large company. Oh, she knew it had to do with loyalty to the family, but she wished Nezam would let go of that notion, at least where Mr. J was concerned. The loyalty, she knew, didn’t go both ways, though Mr. J, enamored of his own benevolence, believed it did.
Lately, Mr. J was getting on Vivian’s nerves more than usual. She chalked it up to hormones—her own; menopause was no better than puberty—but maybe she was wrong. Obviously, she wasn’t the only person having problems with the boss. She scooted her chair closer to the wall in hopes of making out a word or two of the argument, though her hearing wasn’t as keen as it used to be. She easily distinguished their voices by the inflection. Nezam had no accent when he spoke English; in fact, she rarely heard him speak Farsi. The words she heard—not right, lien on the property, underpaid, INS—were enough to tell her what the subject of contention was. Well, she thought, who didn’t hire illegals these days? Her Nicaraguan cleaning lady, Rosa. Her brother-in-law’s Guatemalan delivery boys. If the illegals didn’t exist, no one could afford to hire anyone at all, so what was the difference? Oh, she understood Nezam’s beef about the issue; he’d been through quite enough with the INS over the years, dealing with endless red tape and bigoted officials who thought every Iranian was a hostage-taker holding a burning American flag in his fist. He’d made all his clients, even family members, follow the rules, and now they were all safely citizens. Nezam wasn’t a risk-taker; he didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s deportation.
It had been hugely helpful to Mr. J that Vivian’s brother had been an employee of the INS. Mr. J thought Peter was retired, but that was a lie she created five years ago to put a halt to the favors for which Mr. J constantly badgered her. In truth, Peter had been transferred to a different office. She hadn’t been able to hide this fact from Nezam, but the boy, bless his soul, was sharp. He realized what she was trying to do and went along with the charade, never again trying to contact Peter. Not that he’d ever asked Peter to perform anything illegal. He simply “expedited” things in that convoluted bureaucracy. Peter still complained that the agency was more capable of losing aliens than finding them, and that included the legal ones.
Vivian started and pushed quickly away from the wall as she heard Mr. J’s office door open, then close with the force of a strong hand. Her intercom sounded with Mr. J’s gruff voice, summoning her. She picked up her pad and pencil, scolding herself for nosing at the wall and foregoing a trip to the ladies’ room. As she walked calmly around the corner, she remembered how quick her step used to be when Mr. J beckoned. It was a long time ago.
After two soft raps on the door, she glided into his office and cringed slightly at the portrait he’d recently hung behind his desk. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to its ethereal presence, the radiance of colors and tones; an incarnation, she felt, of Anahita and her children’s souls. It belonged somewhere else—a shrine, a temple, a church—not in a mundane place, and certainly not as a monument for the purpose of making a vengeful statement.
Because that’s what the portrait was. It was the absence of Mitra from it that meant the most to Mr. J. Even more, it was the absence of Mitra that had further elevated Anahita to a level of perfection no child could sustain even in death.
When Mr. J first brought the portrait to the office, Vivian was caught completely off guard. She prided herself on never being surprised by anything her boss did anymore. She knew him as well as his wife knew him, and while she and Mrs. J had never mentioned this aloud to each other, Vivian felt it was understood between them. For the past thirty years, she and Mrs. J had spoken on the phone at least five times a week (and often as many times in one day)—short conversations about schedules, travel arrangements, doctor’s appointments, or catering issues, and of course the ceaseless details involving the smooth settlement of foreigners of all ages. Between such particulars, there was always a bit of gossip, opinion, and commiseration for the quotidian difficulties of life. And plenty of tacit empathy. Vivian didn’t have to be told that the portrait of Ana and the children was in the office because Mrs. J wouldn’t have it at home. She’d seen the look on the poor woman’s face when Mr. J unveiled the painting at the memorial gathering. For the first time in all these years, Vivian thought with the kind of thrill she got at ball games when the underdog team pulled ahead, Mrs. J had put her foot down without slipping on a banana peel.
Vivian sat quietly in her chair as Mr. J studied a sheaf of papers. Sometimes she waited ten minutes before he acknowledged her presence. He leaned forward and tapped at his adding machine, looked at the printout, and muttered numbers in Farsi like he always did. He knew she was there, but it was her job to be there. That, she felt, was not a fault of his cultural difference, but one of class. People who’d been wealthy all their lives couldn’t imagine that their underlings might have anything more important to do than wait for instructions. Erroneously, they assumed the common man couldn’t make a move without their guidance. Vivian had a load of work on her desk, work that would have a negative impact on Mr. J’s life if left undone, but he couldn’t comprehend that because he’d never been in her shoes. There were, she admitted, some wealthy people who had a natural empathy, but they were rare, and always women. You could change a man’s thinking only by thrusting him into a situation. She couldn’t help a small smile from breaking through her stoic exterior. Recently, she’d developed an allergy to laundry detergent (angry hives on her hands and around her eyes), and Tom had had to do the washing—oh, such mistakes he made, turning his athletic socks and briefs pink and shrinking his golf shirts; he’d taken to displaying a puppy-dog expression in her presence, as if for the first time in all their decades together he understood the trials of domesticity. She’d been a fool not to realize he had this capacity for empathy sooner, but her example had been her own mother (wasn’t that the case for all of them?), and without question she’d assigned Tom and herself roles that could only breed resentment.
“Something funny, Vivian?”
Oh, he was a keen one, Mr. J was. “Not at all,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
She didn’t expect him to answer. He tapped again at the adding machine, his reading glasses perched just beneath the bump on his nose. The shadows under his eyes were darker than usual, and his color was off. He was an excessively healthy boss who hardly ever gave his workers a much-needed break by taking a sick day. Vivian was uncomfortable with any form of change, as are all fastidious people, and there had been a little too much of that lately. The possibility that her boss might be unhealthy caused a flutter of anxiety in her chest. After all, he wasn’t a terrible man; he’d grown on her. And he’d helped her cope with several crises—Tom’s operation, her own gall bladder issues, and a generous leave when her boy was struck with pleurisy. All illnesses. She knew he couldn’t bear their existence, avoiding them where possible, showering money over them for cures. Whenever Anahita’s children had their colds and other childhood diseases, he wouldn’t see them until they recovered, and if he contracted anything himself, he carried a sack full of vitamins and pharmaceuticals, had her book doctor’s appointments (never trusting one diagnostic opinion), and ran the office as if it were a military base. Mr. J was all about control. But there was more, she’d learned once from Mitra. It had to do with his mother, a woman who had been committed to an insane asylum for nothing more than the misfortune of having epilepsy. Vivian wasn’t as shocked by this as Mitra, who, like so many kids these days, had a skewed view that ignorance was principally a feature of the old countries. Vivian remembered the ignominy of epilepsy, how it was as misunderstood, feared, and reviled as leprosy or retardation.
Yes, Mr. J looked peaked, looked his age, which had never been the case. Vivian softened. Not for the first time, she thought about how difficult it must be to pretend strength when you didn’t feel it. She’d tried to raise her sons not to be like this, but they’d followed their father’s example. They weren’t as bad as Mr. J, but they weren’t like Nezam or her sister Lucy’s son, who had no qualms about asking for directions or weeping over a touching film or changing a poopy diaper. Well, she’d order a nice lunch for Mr. J from the Persian restaurant in Englewood; a bit of kebab and rice would cheer him up.
“Vivian,” he suddenly said, leaning back in his chair and clamping a stem of his reading glasses between his teeth. “I have let Nezam go.” A bubble of acid caught in her throat. “Give him two weeks’ severance and make sure to collect all of his keys: to the filing cabinets, safe room, front door, et cetera. And inspect his boxes; I don’t want him leaving with any documents.” He put his glasses back on and leaned forward, shuffled through some papers. She wanted to see his eyes. If she could just see his eyes, she might find a trace of regret there. She’d seen it before, fleetingly, like a spark. After that last argument with Mitra and when he fired Olga. Men like this—like her own father and brothers, like all of her bosses—they swallow their regret for the sake of their egos. The veneer remains while the interior rots.
He swiveled the chair to reach into a lower cabinet behind him. “Is there a problem, Vivian? Did you hear me?”
“No, Mr. J, no problem,” she managed to say, and got up and made her way back to her office. Why did she feel like they’d suddenly hit an iceberg?
* * *
Yusef stuffed his pipe and leaned back in his chair. Now that everyone had gone home, he could smoke and think. It had been nearly two weeks since he and Shireen had argued, and still she hadn’t apologized. An entire weekend without a word to each other. He’d visited Marvelous Lake on Saturday and spent Sunday lounging at the country club. Just his luck that Lubyana was visiting her parents in Fort Lauderdale.
He blew a steady stream of smoke into the air and watched it curl like ghostly claws around the swing arm lamp on his desk. She wouldn’t dare go to Mitra, he reminded himself. If she went to San Francisco, he would divorce her. A woman did not choose a daughter over her husband. But this was the problem with women: no foresight. They let their emotions dictate their actions. How could he blame her entirely? She was a mother, a vessel of procreation, and therefore inherently illogical where it concerned her children. It was partially his own fault. He had allowed her and Anahita to carry on a relationship with Mitra over the years. He should have forbidden it. When Mitra came to town, he said nothing. He took the high road. Everyone knew it. But everyone was careful never to mention her name in front of him and to prevent the two of them from running into each other. An effective patriarch instilled a little bit of healthy fear in his family. On two occasions, when Anahita wanted to visit Mitra in San Francisco, she came and asked his permission first, assuring him that she meant no disrespect and that she understood it was her sisterly weakness that compelled her to go. She pleaded with him to allow it. And he had been benevolent (it was difficult not to be with Anahita), knowing that her loyalty to him would always be stronger than her love for Mitra. Anahita, that perfect girl-child, did not have it in her blood to go against tradition.
But Anahita was gone, and now Shireen was under Mitra’s influence alone. Mitra: a formidable opponent. When he saw her at the One Year, his heart had pounded in his ears. His flesh and blood. Memories of her childhood flooded his eyes, crisp as the snap of a dead branch.
How talented she’d been! Her comprehension, her creativity, and her focus: sharp as a sniper’s eye. He had indulged her from the moment she asked the question, “Baba, what is that shape?” It was an arch, specifically an ogee on the cover of a book about Persian architecture. That she had noticed it and was interested in it at such a young age astonished him. Oh, how she’d followed him around! Dipping her silky head under his arm to peer at blueprints; sitting on the floor with tracing paper over a page of one of his volumes, the tip of her pink tongue protruding like the nub of an eraser as she penciled meticulous lines to create whole structures: “Build this, Baba.” And eventually her eagerness—her demand—that he take her with him to inspect the building projects each weekend. And he had taken her, amused by the smudges of dried mortar on her bean-pole legs, sawdust in her hair, filthy ridges of calluses on her palm from hammering and screwdriving.
He’d been beside himself with pride in her, even imagined that this amazing child—who built a cardboard model of Versailles when she was eight years old and drew a complex aqueduct system for northern New Jersey when she was eleven—had the prospect of becoming a brilliant architect. How shortsighted he’d been! He’d refused to let himself peer into the future, to see that she would grow into an oddball woman, an aberration, because of his lack of foresight.
His face crinkled into a sour expression, one that had often prompted Shireen to comment facetiously, “Don’t bother your father, he has a mouthful of tamarind.” He couldn’t help it; he was remembering the day he noticed that Mitra was no longer a child; it struck him like a thunderbolt. In the garden, there she was, lying on a towel in a bathing suit, taking the sun. On a Saturday afternoon, from the window in this very study, he’d squinted to peer through the hydrangea bushes for a better look at the nymph who stirred his loins—one of Shireen’s young friends or perhaps the daughter of a visiting cousin. He didn’t know it was his own daughter until he’d heard Olga call her name from the patio, and when she’d raised her head to answer, he’d heard himself gasp. He’d closed his eyes to swallow his self-disgust, then had felt the fury rise into his chest. How had he not seen that his daughter was no longer a little girl? He’d glanced out at her again but had to look away. What a stupid, stupid man he was. A fool!
From that moment—a wake-up call—he pledged to set Mitra right, to repair the damage he’d done, to expunge the rebelliousness, bad manners, back talk, and boy interest. He was determined to bring out the woman in Mitra, even with the smallest tricks. He coaxed her in the direction of interior design or even painting, something appropriate for a girl. She scoffed at him, assumed he was joking. When a button fell off one of his dress shirts, he gave it to Mitra instead of having the Chinese laundry take care of it, reminding her that sewing was a very important aspect of wifehood; of course, she passed the job on to Anahita, who never revealed the subterfuge. Finally, he arranged a month’s summer trip to Iran, expressly for the purpose of exposing her to a lifestyle and traditions that would straighten her out. He’d thought he was so clever! As if it were enough merely to remove her from the liberal American ideas of hippies and middle-class weirdos who allowed their children—and themselves!—a promiscuity he never thought he would see in his adopted country: the swingers, the antiwar factions, the marijuana smokers. As if Iran could influence Mitra in the way her frequent exposure to their household of Iranian visitors and to the elegant dinner parties he held for his equally elegant American business acquaintances had not done. As if. Mitra had a mind of her own, whether generated by his indulgent fatherly attention in childhood or simply an inherent abnormality. A trip to the old country did not sway that stubborn girl in the least. She came back unchanged, except for an uncanny ability to speak and understand a vernacular Farsi, and an even more pronounced insouciant expression.
Shireen had once said to him back then, “Can’t you see that Mitra is like you?” Hah! Mitra was not a man. It disconcerted him that several relatives told him Mitra reminded them of his mother. All those years of his childhood and his mother was mentioned only in whispers, and now when he didn’t want to think of her, people felt they could bring her name into conversation as if there had never been a disgrace attached to it. What resemblance did they see in Mitra? She certainly didn’t look anything like his mother, who had been squat and bug-eyed. “Her spirit,” one of his aunts had said. Had everyone forgotten that his mother was insane?
In any case, he’d refused to give up. Mitra’s talent and genius had become her weaknesses. She simply refused to be female. As a father, his paramount duty was to care for his daughters until he passed them on to suitable husbands. He’d vowed to be patient and relentless in this task.
He’d been a fool.
Relighting his pipe, he remembered his last argument with Mitra as if it were yesterday—no, as if were just a moment ago that she stomped out of this very office, hair flying like the mane of a galloping horse. That was his eldest daughter for sure: the horse in the stable that no one wanted to ride, the one who would as soon kick you as nuzzle your sugar-filled fist. But also the one you wanted for a dangerous journey, even at just twenty-four years old. Competent, she was. Like a man. Yusef rubbed a spot beneath his sternum and reached for his antacid pills.
“I’ve changed my mind, Baba,” Mitra had said to him that day. He knew exactly what she was referring to: the marriage to Ahmadi’s son Hassan, to whom she was engaged, to whom she’d agreed to become engaged. She sat where Vivian usually sat, across the desk from him.
He swiveled in his chair, his elbow grazing the tea saucer. They both watched the tea glass as if their eyes could will the sloshing liquid not to spill over. Looking up, Yusef spat, “What are you talking about?”
Mitra shrugged. “I don’t want to marry Hassan.”
It was Yusef’s own fault that she dared come to him to discuss personal issues at the office. He’d given her free rein there as a child. He’d been naïve, a new father, a man whose own father’s disregard still rankled, and so had allowed his paternal feelings to flow freely. And now she had grown into this uncontrollable, insolent woman-child.
“This is not a game, Mitra. You cannot change your mind.”
“Why not? He’s got problems.”
“Everyone has problems. You think you’re perfect? Anyway, this is neither the time nor the place for debate. We will talk at home tonight.”
She didn’t move. “Baba, Hassan is an idiot.”
He slapped his palm on the desk. “Hassan is a successful accountant! An Iranian boy! And everything has already been arranged. Do you not understand that such fickleness will embarrass the whole family?”
Well, of course she did! She was manipulating him as if they were playing poker, but he would not fold. “I am not stupid, Mitra. I call your bluff. If you do not marry, neither will Anahita. The whole wedding will be off! You hear me? Off!”
She fixed him with an unwavering stare, her irises nearly black. “No, Baba. You are going to let Ana marry, not only because you won’t be able to bear the embarrassment of canceling two weddings instead of one, but because I’m no longer on the market. The goods are spoiled.” And with that, she pulled an envelope from her purse, unfolded a document with trembling hands, and held it out to him.
“What is that?” he asked, not moving to take it.
“Read it yourself,” she said.
Steely eyes met. Two generations, five thousand miles of culture apart. Righteousness hard as stone on both sides.
He snatched the paper, read, puzzled. A paid invoice from a medical outfit for a procedure called a tubal ligation. Such an idiot he was; he had no idea what the words meant. Which only added to his anger—she was further tricking him into exposing an ignorance. Of course she saw his confusion. Leaning forward slightly, in a venomous voice—his daughter speaking to him like the Serpent itself—she said, “Now try finding a husband for a sterile daughter.”
She hadn’t waited to see his reaction; no doubt she knew what the look on his face would be like. Yes, he’d felt his face turn red with fury, but just as quickly he’d felt the blood drain. He’d dropped the medical document as if it were contaminated. Indeed, he thought now, that one document had poisoned all of their lives. How had he raised a daughter who would do such a thing? Now she had nothing. No husband, no children, no family. His own foolish creation, a barren and estranged daughter. He’d committed the ultimate sin: he’d raised a bankrupt child who would die alone. And now, as further punishment, he too was left alone.
He reached for the newspaper on his desk, knocking over a cup of sharpened pencils. He was a childless man. Where was the justice in life? He snorted at such a naïve thought. Justice was a vapor; he knew that better than anyone. If justice existed, it would have been Mitra who died in that mangled car. And with this unbidden thought, bile rose in Yusef’s throat. Bile and self-disgust.