Sons and Other Flammable Objects

by Porochista Khakpour

  They both sat back satisfied, smiling silently at each other once it was all off their chests. They were even more content, however, once they changed the subject, both noticing they were starting to go into areas they knew nothing about—deep in their hearts they did admit this—and they feared sounding stupid even to themselves out loud—and besides, the conversation was doner than done to them, who the hell cared—and the whole matter, it was far away, East Coast and Middle East, and even though she was right there the whole time, just a few stucco walls away, she had in a way made herself farther away, to them at least. And that was just fucking fine with them.

  It was a mistake that would bring Darius Adam back to his senses—or at least, back to his old self.

  During his period of insufficient sleep and emotional breakdown, Darius had begun making more mistakes than usual. He’d write numbers on the chalkboard and they’d come out all wrong. He began letting class out early. He soon began canceling more and more classes. He considered taking a leave of absence, but he knew they couldn’t live without his working. So he continued to operate somehow and the mistakes became more and more frequent. At home kettles burned, toilets overflowed, the car stalled and stalled and stalled, bills got misplaced, and messages got erased. The House of Adam was so seeped in chaos that Lala Adam didn’t even think to get mad at him when he began accidentally opening the few pieces of mail she ever got.

  He was about to absently toss all the day’s mail into the trash, assuming it was all solicitations, when suddenly one envelope got his attention and snapped him out of his autopilot fog for a moment. It was a strangely crumpled envelope, personal-looking, not businesslike, with their address in a human script that he could not recognize, a cryptic New York postmark and a Brooklyn sender address … he quickly added up that it could be about Xerxes, his only New York connection, and so with just that bare minimum of thought he tore into it, not bothering to note that it was addressed to “L. Adam,” not “D. Adam.”

  It was worse than he thought. As he nauseously struggled to follow the dizzying loops and curves of the blue ink that ran against and over all the notebook lines, two things were clear: it was for his wife and it was from a man. A man who, even though he was writing in English, knew enough of the old her to call her Laleh—that word was piercingly clear. Darius did not hesitate to read it all the way through, or rather to read what he could of the impassioned scrawl: I know, it has been years…I am sorry. … I wonder often about you. …Just thought in case you knew where I am now, that I am fine here. …It gets hard. … And I am better. …Maybe one day again. …I have been in Brooklyn, and many other places, in hospitals off and on. And to end it, the most painfully legible words in the entire letter: Yours, Bob.

  Hers! She had a fucking Brooklyn hospital Bob!

  He sat there fuming, not sure how to proceed, so angry that he forgot to notice he had been jump-started back to his old self. Like a coloring book line drawing a kindergartner colors in crudely—adding so much vibrant color that the strokes jut out past the lines—the sick-barely-there Darius Adam began to quickly soak up so much of his old passion so quickly that the red hotness in his face could barely contain itself. He was almost glowing, over-injected with the heat of humanity suddenly—except in the bad way, the very very bad way.

  After all, it was an emergency; there was a new struggle before him! He had never thought to suspect Lala of anything—now he wondered how could he have lived so naïvely. It had just never been an issue or a possibility. For all he knew, she had barely ever existed outside him. His woman who had lived only in Eden Gardens and their Tehran residence, what other life could she have possibly lived these years? She rarely went anywhere—some work, some babysitting, some palling with that old housekeeper … but who knew? He could certainly add “liar” to her list of crimes—and she did have a list. Lala was no angel—he may have never suspected adulteress—but he certainly never thought angel. Who knew what she did all day when he was gone? How she lived? How the hell could he expect a human to have lived all those years, just passing time alone like that anyway? Certainly he couldn’t do it. What did she do with herself every day until he came home? Certainly boredom could breed mischief. Ah, the jendeh, he thought, the prostitute, certainly there was a chance he would do the same but … BUT. Enough: he could not allow himself to empathize. This was murder they were talking about. This was Darius Adam: done. His final undoing. A son who had cut himself off, a wife who was living the worst kind of lie—Oh, how do men keep themselves alive with these fates? Or others alive? He could suddenly feel the hot rage of movie villains, the blurred vision, the steely sweat, the headful of mayhem. He could not wait till she came home from work. Or wherever the hell she was.

  As life goes, she happened to come home late that evening from the school, where they were having a winter recital.

  Without noticing him, she kicked off her shoes, suggested they order pizza, bitched about some incident with the “damn Pledge of Allegiance” and what did the kids’ barely mumbled “indivisible” really mean to anyone anyway?

  When he was able to finally unclench his jaw to speak, when he could finally remobilize his muscles enough to present the torn letter lodged in his fist, when he managed to get the anger in him under control enough to do a thing like walk and stand, just stand, as close as he could up to her face—her not-even-blinking, heavily makeupped, used, old terrible jendeh face, he thought—he said one word: “WHO.”

  She was absently walking to the bathroom, when suddenly she was stopped by his hand on her wrist.

  “IS.”

  She was forced to meet his eyes, eyes she had lately simply ignored as they had grown so dead. But this time she couldn’t believe it. It was him. “Darius?” she whispered, squinting, trying to really make him out, like someone ascertaining the identity of a long-lost love. But it was all there, the redness in the face, the heavy breath, the fists, the awful energy—it was beautiful, she thought. “Why … hello!” she laughed. “Welcome back!” She wanted to cry with happiness—What I would have given these last weeks to see this horrible old guy back! Oh, throw a fit, Darius, for me, please! Break something! Say something horrible, my dear!

  “BOB.”

  He waved the letter right up to her face and she tried to get a glimpse. “What, what are you up to?” she snapped, playfully. Too tired to solve riddles and too heartened by his newfound health to care, she waited for him to get to the point—it would come once his tantrum kicked in. It did, too, soon, and he took the letter, let it crumple just a bit—just to symbolically damage, but not fatally wound, the evidence—and then shoved it hard at her chest.

  Shaking her head, she took one hand to her heart, and removed the paper that had actually managed to hurt, stabbing into her cleavage like that. Darius stomped to their bedroom, knowing if he didn’t let it all go behind closed doors there was the danger that he’d let it all go on her, Let it all go to hell, to hell, everything, wife, son, life, everything hell—and he searched, looking in the room that held the bed they had shared for so long, for the perfect thing to break: bulbs, mirrors, framed photos, her perfumes, whatever could have the greatest hurt-power for the rotten backstabbing slutting bitch, when suddenly he froze at the sound in the living room … of Lala … laughing? But it was not her usual hard bitter laugh. He listened more carefully. No, it was a different sound, a sound he had rarely heard if ever, he thought. It was the opposite sound: Lala Adam was sobbing.

  Good, he thought, really good, he tried to think further, but something was preventing him from enjoying it. It was a stranger, deeper type of crying, a type that didn’t make him feel triumphant. It was—the only way he could describe it—the sound of a child, a little little girl, a little-girl Lala, suddenly broken in a horrible wounded lament.

  He rushed to her to see if his instinct was right.

  It had to be, as there she was suddenly on her knees—no, not in the manner of a woman with an affair exposed—hunched over th
e letter, which again was where he had shoved it, hard against her heart, now getting soaked by tears unlike any he had ever seen her shed, truly a bawling baby’s, her sounds high and hoarse and wordless and unstoppable. He kept saying, “what-what,” even trying his hardest to let the old anger melt enough to kneel at her side, to hold her, to forget he suspected—it just could not be, he suddenly now knew—to even kiss her, until she finally let the sobbing taper off to a raspy whisper.

  “Bob,” she almost mouthed, the sound was so small, “Bob is … Bobak.”

  A Farsi name, fine, he thought. But suddenly he got worried that it was still what he thought it was, only this time a Persian hospital-ridden Brooklyn lover. Even worse.

  “And Bobak … is …” her voice broke into sobs again, but this time she reined them in, still on her knees, grabbing for his hand in a gesture that was more for help than affection, “my one, only, brother.”

  And as if that wasn’t enough for Darius to suddenly join her on his knees, too, about to lose it like her, too, finally lose it for that letter in the right way, she added through another round of tears, “That I had lost. …”

  Three thousand miles across the country, on that big night of Christmas Eve, Suzanne found herself back at the old dazed complacency that made up the personality of her adolescent self. She was back in what her mother called Parlor Number One, one of several “parlors” in a house that wasn’t quite her old house (it was, however, a replication of the house she grew up in) but close enough and in, of course, upstate New York as well. But this new one was not in their old Westchester of white-collar professionals—nobody really worked over here in Dutchess County, land of country homes and summer homes. Sure, the Westchester house still existed—handed down to some relative of Suzanne’s that she didn’t know—and there was the Upper East Side apartment which they rented out primarily to friends of Suzanne, but this, what her mother called the Dutchess Cottage—if by “cottage” one meant a nine-bedroom, four-bathroom estate, equipped with tennis court and pool, complete with garden and pond and a separate guest house over the garage—this was The One, as Suzanne’s father called it, The One just being another name for what they were certain simply had to be true: it was everyone’s dream.

  Christmas Eve dinner was one of their few family traditions and so they all made the most of their time, while waiting for their final houseguest to arrive: the yet-to-be-met boyfriend, that Xerxes Adam. Suzanne’s father Al (short for “Ali,” which he’d conversely claim as a nickname for “Al,” really, whenever, to his consternation, it revealed itself) and her mother Eleanor had been dressed for Christmas Eve all day, with nothing more to do than resign themselves to their favorite chairs. Anita their housekeeper brought endless rounds of holiday goodies: candied almonds, mulled wine, baked Brie, peppermint cakes, gingerbread crisps, eggnog, and even Eleanor’s favorite, courtesy of the Starbucks Web site —’cause if there’s one thing I miss about the city it’s all the Starbucks!—eggnog lattes! It was truly a happy holiday for the couple with their one and only child in town, and she looking lovely as usual: Suzanne, just exquisite, radiant, tremendous, darling, in a dark green crushed-velvet dress, lightly patterned black tights, and patent leather heels. Her seemingly ungentrifiable hair was tamed and bound back into a single long braid, a style her mother adored as it somehow fell into a nice sync with Eleanor’s own meticulously slicked, tightly bunned, amber coif. Eleanor, too, had opted for a little velvet trimming on a black satin suit, highlighted with pearl earrings and a pearl choker, further highlighted by her newly manicured red nails—a color she seldom visited, but, well, it was the holidays and a lady had to be festive. Al had agreed and put on a maroon tie—the closest he’d dare go to red—with his favorite three-piece gray Italian suit. Eleanor had persuaded him to give her hairdresser another shot—he was getting so darn gray!—and so that day he displayed a brand-new dark brown wavy head of immaculate, enviable, artificially toned hair. It sets off that sandy skin so nicely, Eleanor pointed out, Eleanor of the endless umbrellas and wide-brimmed hats, who always made it known she would rather die than be anything but her rightful porcelain. Oh, how you all go together so well! Anita would exclaim over and over, thus volunteering herself for taking endless rounds of photos on Al’s brand new palm-sized top-of-the-line digital camera, special ordered from Tokyo, just in time for the holidays. Eleanor loved the movie function and so she had made endless strings of half-minute-long movies. “Look at this one we made for you!” she had immediately shoved at Suzanne, just moments after their driver presented her at the Cottage from the local train station. Suzanne took the camera and watched the tiny grainy version of her parents, all dressed up as they were now, both popping into the wobbling frame uncertainly. Eleanor was saying, “Oh, Suzi, we can’t wait to see our little Manhattan belle for our favorite holiday—” and Al was saying “We’re doing the maple duck again, your favorite—” and Eleanor was adding “We’re upgrading you and—oh, Al, how do you say his name—” and Al was laughing, “Zer-ziss, yeah? It’s an odd one, not a common Persian—” and Eleanor cutting in with “Yes, well, we’re upgrading you and Zor—I’m gonna just call him Z! How’s that! Well, you two are getting the master-master, you know which one, master-master Number One, and Anita put the sweetest—” and Al cutting in with, “it’s gonna cut off, Ellie, wrap it up”—and Eleanor quickly shoving her face to take up the entire frame with a crackly, fuzzy, “We love, love, love you and Merry Christmas!” and Al ending it with a swift, sufficient “Yes!”

  When she had shown up without “Z,” though, it had taken them at least a half hour for his absence to register. Suzanne had to bring it up. “And I should tell you that Xerxes—that’s how you say it, Mother—is late,” she said. “He’s coming. He’s tied up in the city.”

  “Oh my! Working on Christmas Eve!” Eleanor gasped.

  “Well, that’s the city,” Al mumbled.

  “Well, no,” Suzanne corrected slowly. “It’s not his job. Not exactly. Not yet, I mean. It’s a job interview.”

  Eleanor put a hand to her chest and widened her eyes in alarm. “You are joking, Suzi,” she said. “On Christmas Eve!”

  “Oh, well, I mean, if it’s for a good high position,” Al rambled on.

  It occurred to Suzanne that she had no idea what it was for. These days Xerxes was going on so many interviews for just about everything, she couldn’t keep track. Once in a while he’d even have jobs, though even their types changed often, it seemed. At times he would have freelance this and that, hold a job for an entire month even, design this, manage that, assist this, deliver that—she didn’t really ever know what he did. The struggles of young working professionals eluded her on the whole, but it did bother her that she didn’t even know what areas Xerxes specialized in. She didn’t think he actually specialized in anything, though. His major, after all, it was … Humanities? Liberal arts? Undecided? Could you even graduate Undecided?

  “I’m sure it is,” Suzanne muttered. “He’s very studious. Always has something.” She was unsatisfied with that phony defensiveness. “I mean, sometimes he doesn’t have something, like now, but it’s just that he’s too good for, like, everything! He gets in there and they realize he’s overqualified and can’t pay him enough. Or he just walks out. He really should be, like, ruling the world or something. That type.”

  “Oh my, this Z, he sounds like something already!” Eleanor laughed nervously to herself, taking a big swig of her latte.

  “Please don’t call him that,” Suzanne almost snapped and then, embarrassed by her tenseness, softened it with a, “His name begins with an X. Can you do ‘X’ at least?”

  They spent that endless afternoon, then endless evening, being a family again, occasionally engaging Anita and, of course, Fyodor, Al’s elderly borzoi; and Lola, Eleanor’s Scottish terrier. Suzanne relaxed, even able to admit there were some good things about being home. Her spare, intentionally average East Village apartment made her forget where she came
from—which was usually the plan, the preferred route of sanity, but once a year, once or twice or three times, when her parents invited her, it was nice to go back to that other style of living, her other style of living, that the Cottage, in fact, managed to recreate with almost alarming stone cold precision.

  Finally, when dinnertime grew close, with Anita growing noticeably restless and still no Xerxes—His train must be delayed, it’s so busy this time of year, Suzanne kept insisting, even pretending to dial his cell phone—Eleanor suggested that a perfectly lovely way to pass the time would be to hit the presents, a single present opened early for each, as ritual dictated. Too bad for our tardy gentleman caller—he’ll have to wait to open his! Eleanor’s sentiment made Suzanne nervous—of course they would have done that, gotten him a present. While she dreaded discovering what it could be, she decided it was best to quietly respect her family’s all-inclusive class. Certainly there would be other battles to fight before the night was over. …

  Suzanne had actually checked her bank balance on the way to the Cottage and assumed the well-measured fattening of The Account was her present but apparently not. She picked out the first box Fyodor sniffed in her pile.

  “She can do that one if she does another one, too,” Al said. “That one is kind of a … joke?” He looked to Eleanor for help.

  “It’s really not,” Eleanor added, “but it, well, we like to think it also has a humor component.”

  Suzanne nodded, smiling, curious to know what could have inspired this unprecedented comic streak in her parents. The package, like all the presents, was in a perfect professionally wrapped box. She quickly made her way through the layers of gold and silver and lifted the lid to unveil a …

  “Oh my God—what the hell?!!” Suzanne found herself almost screaming as she removed a very heavy, rather dirty-looking, black rubber-metal-wire-twisted … monstrosity. She had no idea. It looked like something out of a nightmare.