Roseheart

by Catherine Dehdashti

  She doesn’t smile for weeks. She barely clucks, she just frowns a lot. She can’t even spy out the windows anymore at Yasmin Noury’s father or the other joggers.

  She won’t go anywhere with us, and I even beg her sometimes to come along, “We could go to the mall and buy all new underwear, and then we could go again to return it tomorrow!” She just clucks and tisks at me, but I see a thin smile break through at my teasing.

  Even though neither Naveed nor I have good feelings about the world of professional psychology, Naveed learns about an Iranian woman who is a psychologist.

  “Does she offer an Iranian discount?” I ask, joking, but Naveed says that in fact she sees almost exclusively Iranians, and yes they do get a very good rate. It’s only twenty-five dollars a visit.

  Here I always thought Iranians were sort of stoic like Norwegians and wouldn’t get professional help, but those with enough money do—like those who lost loved ones during the Iran-Iraq war. Or those who were tortured by the shah’s SAVAK, or during the Islamic Revolution. Or those who just lost all their money when the shah fell from power and are still traumatized by that. The psychologist is a middle-aged woman with the purple henna-dyed eyebrows. She makes house calls, but we have to leave the house when she comes. This is the best thing ever to happen because Goli Joon gets company while we go on a date without her.

  Besides seeing the psychologist, Goli Joon gets cheered up by watching T.V., but she isn’t watching The Oprah Winfrey Show anymore. Oprah has changed to a less voyeuristic perspective. She’s truly helping people now, and has become an inspiration to all.

  Also, the reruns of The Love Connection have gone off the air, much to Goli Joon’s dismay. She switches to The Jerry Springer Show. We put an old T.V. Naveed had into her bedroom. I’m embarrassed one evening when I walk by her closed door and hear her all by herself, yelling, “Jerry! Jerry!” along with the studio audience before the show begins. But at least her post-oral-surgery depression is lifting, I think.

  I’m not sure about my own.

  Reluctantly, I’m reading the Dance of Anger book Savi gave me. There’s a chapter on mothers. The advice would help me with Goli Joon, except that it’s impossible to use the advice because it’s all about communication. We cannot communicate deeply across languages, so we act passive aggressively toward each other. I was nicer for awhile after Goli Joon’s oral surgery. But as soon as she started feeling better, she started making more little digs, and then I reverted to my passive-aggression.

  Sometimes I get a sick little joy out of coming home to a big dinner she’s prepared for us and refusing it. While the two of them dine on khoresht, salads, and fancy yogurt dips with rose petals and curled green onions, I fry two eggs in butter, sprinkle them with Cajun spice, and eat them in a pita bread pocket.

  “That’s the kind of fast meal some women eat when they need to run quickly from one job to the next,” says Goli Joon slyly one such evening as I down my egg sandwich while still standing at the stove.

  I get this faster than she expects me to. She’s insinuating something like the Sicilian spaghetti alla puttanesca— whore’s pasta, because of its quick sauce.

  Naveed gets it right away too and shoots her a warning look. I just shrug. “We women all need to eat.”

  When I act like this for more than a day or two, Goli Joon will issue a silent challenge by making a dinner that I can’t resist, like her “potato chops,” which are potato patties stuffed with spicy meat, fried, and served with garlicky dill yogurt sauce. I don’t know exactly how to make those myself because she’s kept the exact spice mixture a secret. Also, I don’t know how to make them stick together in the pan. I have to eat them when served. But even the magical potato chops might not melt my icy feelings that have reformed lately.

  “You sure do love my potato chops!” she’ll say.

  “They’re okay,” I’ll answer, and she’ll drop another one onto my plate just to rub in her victory even more.

  Naveed tries to help us by translating, but I don’t think he’s a very good translator. I can tell he isn’t translating everything I say, which is probably smart since what I’m basically saying is, “I’m angry at you, even though you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Like all of the books I find about mothers-in-law on the internet, The Dance of Anger urges communication. But communicating across cultures, across generations, and filtered through Naveed—it’s a booby trap, a mine field. It’s impossible to communicate without miscommunicating. And maybe better not to.

  Rendezvous

  We’re flying back from Turkey, where we went to meet up with Naveed’s sister, Firoozeh. It’s a bad flight. You’re supposed to think of turbulence as bumps on a road, but the bumps scare me anyway. I’m not afraid of flying—I would love to be able to fly like a bird. I’m afraid of riding in an airplane. Or like my southern granddad always said, I’d be fine with riding in an airplane if I could drag one leg on the ground.

  Sometimes in my dreams we’re flying, and sometimes we’re crash-landing. Sometimes I’m just at the airport and the service desk won’t help me, or I’m at home packing even though my flight is leaving in five minutes. In the dream I had before we left, half my body hung out of the plane through a hole in the floor, and I held my arms out against the floor to keep from falling out all the way.

  Naveed had been worried about Firoozeh for a few months. She was depressed, he said. Join the club, I thought. She wouldn’t tell him that exactly, but he knew from his conversations with her. And she’d asked him to send her selenium, because she couldn’t get it in Iran. He looked it up and read that it was a natural remedy for depression. They had not seen each other for eighteen years. Naveed never wanted badly enough to visit Iran, and his sister hasn’t been able to get a visa for the U.S. After so many years apart, Naveed decided he had to see her. They decided to rendezvous in Turkey, and that I might as well go along.

  Goli Joon came too, of course, and since we were on a tight budget, we all shared a hotel room. It’s a good thing we didn’t waste money on two rooms, because Naveed and his sister stayed up talking every night. During the days, we visited the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the Blue Mosque, and a nearby island in the Bosphorus Straits.

  I thought Naveed might want to take the long bus ride across Turkey to a place that looked out across the border to Iran. Just so he could lay his eyes on his childhood home. That idea made him laugh, as if he hadn’t even thought of it. But then he said, “Who would spend twenty-five hours on a bus to get to the middle of nowhere?” which made me think he’d thought of it enough to check the route.

  We brought Firoozeh to the American embassy to get permission to bring her to the United States for our “upcoming wedding.” We aren’t really engaged yet, but we think we will be, so we didn’t feel bad about the exaggeration. Then the woman behind the desk asked what month. We paused and then I blurted out, “May!” while Naveed said, “June.” There was a silence, and then I said, “May or June—we haven’t set the date.”

  The woman said the answer would probably be no, but we could fill out the paperwork if we liked, as if for sport. So we did that. We spent most of a day in a café drinking Turkish coffee and tea, and even I helped with some of the forms because there were so many. Since it’s about the same number of forms, we went ahead and filled out the ones for residency as well as the visitor’s visa—not that Firoozeh thinks she wants to move to the U.S., but just in case.

  To take a break from filling out forms with Naveed’s family, I went to a payphone to call my mom, using a phone card. Mom was taking care of the chickens and our cat at her house.

  She told me this would be the last time she would babysit our animals. The previous night she couldn’t find the chickens, even though we had set up a fence for them in her backyard. The cat ran away twice. She had to walk around her neighborhood last night calling after all three. Her neighbors thought she was crazy, and she felt lucky none of them reported her when she told
them she was caring for chickens in this suburb that does not permit farm animals. Minneapolis doesn’t permit them either, of course. When she got home from searching for them, she looked up and saw Nancy and Nala roosting in a tree.

  I’d come back from making my phone call and found Naveed out in front of the American embassy taking photos of the entrance to the parking ramp. This is typical for him—we’ve taken a couple of trips together now and he takes pictures of parking ramps everywhere. That’s the kind of engineer-nerd he is.

  But it’s not a good idea here. A group of armed guards brought him back. They questioned and researched him for more than an hour to confirm his non-criminal interest in parking ramps. I thought Goli Joon would die from fear, or from walloping herself for most of the hour. She wouldn’t stop kissing his cheeks when he got out.

  When we left Istanbul a week later, Goli Joon took a different flight. She went back to Iran with Firoozeh and will stay there for awhile.

  Whenever we’re in an airport, we push Goli Joon in a wheelchair. Because of her heart, she walks too slowly for any place bigger than Southdale Mall, so it’s easier to just push her. But being in the chair, she looked older. She started bawling about leaving Naveed, and about how her children being apart from each other is so unfair. Firoozeh wiped her mother’s nose with a wad of tissues. I think the only reason Naveed and Firoozeh didn’t cry when they said goodbye to each other is that their mother did all the crying for them.

  Naveed hardly speaks the whole trip home. I say something about how lucky he was to be able to see his sister, but he steels himself against the tears that are right behind his eyes and doesn’t answer me. As soon as we get home, Naveed checks on the paperwork, trying to hurry along the bureaucratic process for his sister to be allowed to come to the United States.

  Goli Joon is still visiting Iran. I’m not sure how she went from “visiting” us to “visiting” Iran. Even though I promised myself I would be nicer about her staying with us, I have to admit how happy I am right now while she’s gone.

  I feel free again, with the kitchen, bathroom, and my man to myself. I run around the house bra-less, my breasts jutting out freely through my thin T-shirts. Salty, stringy lasagna and fish tacos with guacamole grace our table again. I have the bathroom to myself—no denture cup. No pre-prayer water splashed all over the vanity.

  Melinda visits Minnesota without Roger, due to his legal problems over the grant funding. I have her over for dinner, and while Naveed thinks she’s obnoxious, we still have a fun dinner together. She’s impressed with my new cooking skills, albeit dismayed that I’m not yet using real Parmigiano-Reggiano instead of regular parmesan cheese.

  We get invited to Laura and Ty’s house and to Savi and Matthew’s. We reciprocate and have them all over to our house, celebrating gregariously. Savi rolls her eyes when she sees the shiny, velvety cushions I made for my house after being inspired by the ones in the harem rooms of Topkapi Palace, but I can tell she’s impressed that I sewed so many.

  When Savi asks if I’m happy that Goli Joon is away, I deny it.

  “Well, I will admit that I’m much more excited to invite you over when I don’t feel obligated to invite Goli Joon,” Savi says, out of earshot of Naveed. Laura agrees with her on that. They both express that they know I must be feeling so relieved right now. Savi pours me wine that she brought as a hostess gift, even though I thought she knew that I don’t drink much because it often makes me sick. “It’s a special occasion,” she says. “Have a glass to celebrate your independence.”

  So I do drink a glass of wine, and then another, and then we open the bottle that Laura and Ty gave us and drink it too. And for once, I wake up the next morning and feel just fine.

  Engagements

  The breakfast in front of me is served on a Christian Dior plate, purchased for pennies on the dollar at the Minneapolis discount store called Bank’s. Nobody would know. The plated meal looks like a Gourmet magazine cover. Perfect pancakes are topped with whipped cream, dark berries, and chopped pistachios. On the side, tangerine wedges merrily encircle something not entirely unexpected. It looks like a pomegranate seed, but it sits on a ring of gold.

  Princess Diana had a sapphire when she married Prince Charles, so not everyone needs a diamond. I will have a ruby, for passion, something Diana and Charles did not have. Now Diana does have passion with her Egyptian boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed.

  There are some drawbacks if I say yes to Naveed’s marriage proposal, but I know I will. I tell him I need a few days to think about it, as if I might say no. Still, I take this decision seriously and write down the pros and cons in bullet points, as is my habit. The cons:

  loss of my expectation for a regular nuclear family

  our parents’ failed marriages lower our chances

  Naveed is a pack-rat, which will later be known as a hoarder

  Here are the pro bullet points, but it really just comes down to the last one:

  Naveed is a very good man

  the cool stuff I learn from Goli Joon, and potential free daycare

  Naveed is my greatest lover of all time, and we’re still on fire

  Bachelorette

  Of course I say yes to Naveed, yes to getting married to the man I love. But I still spend the next weeks ruminating about my bullet points, especially reflecting on my parents’ marriage.

  I used to like telling my friends about how my parents got together. Then my mom started saying things like, “if we make it to our twenty-fifth anniversary,” or, “if your father hasn’t left me in disgust by then.” She started saying these things when I was in junior high school and her drinking was out of control. But then she went to treatment and she was doing great. My dad wasn’t happy with a sober wife either.

  When people asked me why my parents got divorced, I approached it from the optimist’s perspective. “The question is,” I would say, “How did they stay together for nearly twenty-five years?” They had nothing in common. They dated for two weeks (knew each other for six weeks) before they ran away to Las Vegas to marry. My mom wore a twelve-dollar white knit dress from the store across the street from the pop-up chapel. My dad wore one of his Control Data suits. My dad’s parents were up here in Minnesota, and they knew my mom was southern and Baptist, but they were just glad he wasn’t marrying a Catholic.

  I’m not still devastated by their divorce, but wary of the prospect that I could end up getting divorced too, that in Melinda’s words, “it could end badly.” When I tell Melinda about my engagement, though, she seems happy for me. “It’s not what I’d want to do, but it seems to be working for you,” she says.

  Then she invites me to Santa Fe for a bachelorette trip with just her. She says she’ll treat for everything and I won’t have to spend any money other than my plane ticket, so I go. But I do end up treating for one of our outings, a little tourist gig they have going in outer Santa Fe, called the Psychedelic Peyote Tour. That, along with the spa treatments Melinda treats us to while we’re still on our first-ever peyote high, are worth every cent I spent getting here.

  Although I’d scoffed at Melinda for writing it to me in her first letter from her new home, it’s true that Santa Fe does have a special vibration. And I love her adobe townhome and its blue door.

  Return

  I’m outside working in the yard with the neighbor girl, Parvaneh, hanging around me when Naveed drives up with Goli Joon. I hadn’t gone to the airport, which was probably rude, but I’m busy hiring a flower girl. Parvaneh, somehow, has found out about our engagement.

  “Somebody has to throw the rose petals when you walk down the aisle,” she says, gesturing a gentle toss of petals from an imaginary basket. “Then you step on them and it makes your shoes smell good.”

  I’m not sure Naveed even planned to invite the Nourys to our wedding, but not inviting them makes no sense to me. And I can’t resist Parvaneh for anything when she demonstrates to me how she’s been practicing her flower girl walk—step/step-together/step
—to audition for the job. By the time Goli Joon and Naveed unwedge that monster-sized suitcase out from the trunk of the car, Parvaneh has landed the job as the best flower girl ever, and we already have plans to go shopping at Dayton’s for her dress.

  Goli Joon brought lots of things from Iran again. She brought pashmak, which is the original cotton candy, pistachios, and cherry jam. The jam is her own, homemade, which she’s brought back in a big plastic jar that does not conform to the USDA’s food safety guidelines on food preservation, which I have learned at my job. Goli Joon has brought it, I think, just to say, This is how cherry jam should taste.

  Again, the items come out little by little. There’s a separate pillowcase for the goods from the family rose business: rose perfume oil and soaps to last for years, and the new product that Goli’s sister has come up with to rejuvenate profits. It’s a capsule that “harnesses the ancient medicinal power of wild roses to increase metabolism and reduce bloating.”

  “If it works, then wouldn’t drinking plain rosewater and eating rose petals do the same thing?” I ask. Goli Joon juts her chin up in the air and clicks her tongue, but she also smiles and doesn’t bother to defend her sister’s entrepreneurial invention.

  We told her we’re engaged over the phone when she was still in Iran, and I know there’s also gold jewelry for me in one of the other pillowcases.

  Naveed is so happy to have his mom here again that he takes her out to Southdale Mall almost every evening for a week. I go once, but the other nights I stay home and write or just stare into space.

  One night, they come home with Goli Joon’s new mother-of-the-groom dress and it’s charcoal gray. The wedding will be in August and she’s picked scratchy gray wool, probably because it was on the eighty percent off rack at Dayton’s from last winter. I’m too sensitive and totally offended. Why gray? Why not put some money into a dress for her son’s wedding? She’s pushed for us to get married, but is she now remorseful?