“Listen, stop right there—will you listen?”
Suzanne closed her eyes in dread. She could feel it coming.
“Because, Mother, the most amazing thing is happening and it simply can’t be delayed—Suzanne and I—yes, we’re cooking—anyway, the most amazing thing … Mother, next week—and now that I know our arrival will be on Persian New Year, that’s an even better reason, certainly a sign—did you hear that, Su, March twentieth is Norouz?—anyway, on that very day, Su and I, we’ll be in Tehran!” After either some silence or some too-brief response on the other end, he added more quietly, “I’m dead serious.”
Suzanne went back to the kitchen to chop, trying to swallow back tears. She wished she could get back to that original foolish passion for the damn trip. She hoped she would, maybe when she could get used to trusting Xerxes’s newfound enthusiasm—certainly it would be contagious, certainly she was still the girl who got the tickets in the first place—but the quickness, the date that she had so haphazardly picked—although apparently perfectly, clairvoyantly, picked, the damn Norouz!—rushing up on them, speeding way over any limit, head-on, ready for collision, it didn’t feel right. …
“And the best part of all is,” Xerxes yelled to her over the running sink, once done with his mother and back to his kitchen business, “can you believe it’s Persian New Year? Now if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is!”
Suzanne nodded, trying to smile. She started to set the table. “But your mother. Wasn’t she coming to see you?”
Xerxes laughed, in a crude way that seemed wrong to her. “Oh, please! No. Not at all. She’d never do that. She has … other business. I can’t even explain it—it all sounds like madness—but she thinks, she thinks she can find her brother.”
“Her brother is lost?”
“Oh, it’s a long story. But let’s just say she’s taking a vacation—from work, from my father, from her boring life. I’ve often wondered why she didn’t do it sooner. But New York—who knew? It’s too bad … but then again, who needs another one of my parents to visit New York and then God knows what. …” he laughed in that disturbed way again, while blindly pouring olive oil into the steaming pot with new wayward recklessness.
“Xerxes, are we really? I mean, really? Don’t you think it’s too soon, if we should even do it at all?”
He looked at her with bewildered eyes for a moment. Almost hurt, confused eyes. He shut them for a few seconds. When he opened them they were again wild, laughing, ecstatic, almost delirious. “No fucking way out, my dear!” he rushed up to her, swooping her up like a romantic-comedy bride, even spinning her in his arms for a second. They were both breathless, laughing. “Happy birthday to me … happy Persian New Year to me … to us, I mean, it’s yours, too!” he laughed, kissing her head, burying himself in the wild wisps of the always untamable dark locks that had made her so otherworldly to him on first sight. “So many happy things,” he continued, “so, Suzanne, let’s just take it: right now we’re a lucky people? Let’s take it while it lasts.” She nodded and kissed him back. They ate, washed dishes, napped, woke, had sex, and slept a full restful night as they had rarely managed before. And as the clock ticked on, as the days wasted away, Suzanne could feel herself regaining the old confidence, indeed letting him rub off on her, suddenly growing that thick skin of blindingly sunshined nihilism. What else are there but risks these days anyway? What’s so good about this new world anyway? So what if it all goes to hell? she thought, without understanding that was his point exactly.
Because it was a hell of a history—twenty-nine Norouzes that they had spent together—Lala didn’t have the heart to skip the usual preparations. In came the Haft Seen, the seven sibilant symbols of the Persian New Year—several spices, some goldfish, a red apple, a mirror, all arranged in a circle on a white-lace-draped coffee table, flanked by tulips. She even got the usual Persian cookies—chewy walnut clusters, delicate almond paste confections, chickpea wafers, honey and nougat candies, and dyed nuts. She loved the ritual. She set them down sadly, however, defeated by the notion that she wouldn’t be around to put them away—or worse, that they would still be there when she returned, Darius undoubtedly letting the spices and apple and fish all sit and rot until she came back, a pathetic remnant of a holiday meant to be spent at home that she had instead spent in a city trying to turn miracles.
Should he be found, of course, it would be worth everything in the world. And should he be found, she would inflict the New Year niceties on her brother, too, hospital or not. Bob needed a nice long thorough Persian Norouz more than anyone else, she imagined.
For a few days she kept the news of Xerxes and his lady friend’s trip to Iran a secret. She didn’t know what to do with the knowledge—tell Darius and witness any number of chaotic reactions or withhold it from Darius and delay his wrath at her secrecy? Could she even afford secrecy—what if something happened to these naïve youngsters in Iran? A violation, border trouble, a run-in with officials—say they ended up in one of those notorious Iranian prisons that peppered everyone’s Tehran-today gossip? Surely those jails were full of unknowing Iranian tourists, people who were innocent, who had only made a false move or two or not even that, people who had stumbled rather than slithered snakily through the clergy’s fascist state. … What would Darius do if she suddenly told him their son was in prison in his homeland? O apocalypse in the un-homeland, her head cracked on the Haft Seen! But on the flip side, should he know about the trip in full? What would Darius do with the knowledge anyway? Run to Iran, too? Ha! On the other hand, maybe he would; he often spoke about it these days, Lala reminded herself. Would he call Xerxes and encourage him even more? Tell him it’s about time, give him some numbers, names of places to visit? Or decide it was too dangerous, too full of the unknown, and call Xerxes and talk him out of it? Or would he do nothing at all? Would he deal with it silently, proud of his son for seeking out his homeland? Would he deal with it silently, outraged at his son for going solo with some nothing-woman rather than his own family? Would he deal with it silently, upset at his son for again giving them the finger by purposely seeking out what they had left behind, for contrarian effect—a homeland he and his American idealism and his adolescent-level Farsi could barely hope to navigate—the home-land they had abandoned for him and his future alone?
She had no idea how Darius would feel about it because she herself had no idea how she felt. All she had wanted was for Xerxes—and especially this new lady friend, who had gotten him all happy on the phone, talking as he did, a bit lively, seeking roots, hell, cooking!—to be with her in New York, to give her a tour, to be her anchor on this desperate mission, to ensure that even if she didn’t find her brother it wouldn’t be a wasted trip. She wanted the chance Darius had had, to see her son in his element, and to not fuck up that opportunity as he had done. Now, as it stood, it would be another long possibly forever while until her son became anything more than a voice on the phone. Not to mention that her own mission in New York looked bleaker than ever. To return empty-handed—when that was the realistic truth of it, to not even be able to say, Well, at least I have my son, to be able to say only, Well, at least I have my son’s city—it was a devastating and highly probable possibility. She started to worry that her brother hunt was an excuse to find her son again, when really she had almost been convinced it was the incidental opposite.
She had even dared to imagine the four of them—Bobak, Darius, Xerxes, and herself—all together the following New Year. It was heartbreaking—it was also simply hard to imagine, but she had to. She was tired of watching Darius curse at what the daily mail did not hold, moaning about abandonment like a jilted child; she was tired of tiptoeing around her son’s name as if it were an obscenity. She was tired of her shattered family. The broken circle and all the faith required to envision its completion were exhausting her.
Don’t give up, don’t be like those stupid cowards! she told herself over and over, pissed at all these men passi
vely living their separate, tortured lives. She tried to remind herself that a reason for any hunt at all could be in simply finding a purpose—a purpose, the best out in any life—and through it a world, a mission, a goal, a dream, a life, and an afterlife outside Eden Gardens. She was being employed by the world, she reminded herself, the world—starting with her brother suddenly like a genie in a bottle appearing out of nowhere—was finally calling her and she had to respond. …
She swallowed her worries and faced her husband. But when Darius asked her if they should put some money in an envelope with a card for Xerxes—what they had done for every Persian New Year while he was away at college—and have her hand-deliver it to Xerxes upon her arrival, Lala couldn’t take it anymore. She would have to let him know.
“Darius, I am not seeing our son,” she said. As usual, in her attempt to have her words be bold and firm and heard it all came out too harshly. “I mean, he won’t be in New York when I am there. I just found that out.”
The idea of Xerxes not in New York, the New York where he had left him, immediately alarmed him. “What? He’s not coming over … here?” He looked filled with fear and grief, but a thin, transient-looking fear and grief that could quite possibly unmask themselves as ecstasy and gratitude, she thought.
Lala shook her head gently and took his hand with a dramatic tenderness, like the stilted somewhat-off affection of high school stage actors in a love story. “Darius, he’s not coming to this home, but he is going home. For a visit. Home. Do you know what I mean?” She tried to smile.
“Enough, woman, there is one home and that is—” he exploded, ignoring her nod—“and that is exactly where our son would never be!” He paused, seeing her smiling nods out of the corner of his eye as she tried not to face him, unsure what his reaction would be should he, could he, believe it. When he finally spoke all he had was a whisper. “It is not possible.”
“I spoke to him and his lady friend and it’s true. They are actually getting there on Norouz—celebrating it there, isn’t that nice?—and they will come back after a week. Isn’t that …” she didn’t know what the right word could be, but it had to be nice, “really, really nice?”
Darius continued to avoid her eyes, staring at some other unknowable ghost in utter disbelief. The ghost of an ill-founded equation: his son + Iran = what the hell did that equal? What could he make of that? It was more than a surprise, more than a shock—it was an almost impossibility. Every one of the reactions Lala predicted ran through his head but all amounted to nothing, no single clear emotion. He was at a loss. His son once again had managed to kill him without even thinking of him.
He told Lala he had nothing to say about it and went to take a nap—he had a headache, he claimed, unrelated by the way, he added, to our son. But of course it wasn’t. During the course of his pretend nap, Darius experienced everything from outrage to fury to pleasure to thrills. There was no knowing what portion of that spectrum was his true feeling. But one thought stood out and gave him a tiny bit of peace: he had mentioned to Xerxes months ago in that letter that he wanted to go to Iran. He had mentioned it before the idea had even taken on a particular urgency. It was just stated as a general fact, the exposure of a habitual feeling of his, written mostly to be taken as, Son, one day it would be nice to consider a trip to Iran. Hypothetical. That was all. Then who knows—power of his own suggestion maybe—Darius had suddenly realized that not only did he want to go to Iran, his whole world was kicking him out of his exile and sending him back. He had no other home but his original home. For weeks he had been desperate for Iran, and he had even imagined being there on the New Year. Now what calmed Darius a bit and gave him the preferred food for thought was, what if this was Xerxes’s response to his letter? What if this was Xerxes saying, Look, father, I am finally doing as you said? What if it was a symbolic gesture, a white flag combined with a gift? He and his lady friend, what if this was their call for him to follow their lead, without explicitly asking? Xerxes, after all, had always lived in the realm of the implicit—rarely was he straightforward about anything as a child—and recently, with his absence from his father’s life, he had become less than implicitly existing, he had become a specter of a son-past. But was this his way of reappearing, on his father’s terms, in fact? Did Xerxes want his mother to leak this info to him and see what happened? Did he leave it to the last minute to test his father, see just how far he would go to get his son back? His son with a bonus, his son enveloped in the wrapping of his original package, his son in the only context that mattered, his Xerxes, a king in his own country? Was this his invitation to take back their kingdom?
In his head, as deep thinking with closed faux-sleeping eyes turned to genuine dreaming eyes, there she was, there she always was: a suddenly more adult Shireen, same wispy bright dress, same huge eyes and wild midnight hair. Shireen this time was in total peace, simply sleeping in a vessel in the sky. Oh, Shireen, he thinks, Shireen, help me, Shireen. What do I do? But Shireen, in her green-, white-, and red-striped sundress, sat limp against a pillow against a window. Her mouth was only slightly open and the only thing coming out was, barely, breath. Shireen was deep in someone else’s dream maybe. Oh, but Shireen, can’t you wake for just a second and help your old dad out? His own words bounced back to him, returned to sender, with a harsh echo so that he had to hear it again and again, Help your old dad out, help your old dad out, until he realized, for the first time really, that it was silly and bullshit, and this daydream, too, like all the others had no choice but to once and for all be shattered, once and for all crash and burn—because there was no daughter, no preferred sibling … if he wanted his child, he needed to get to the one he really had. He knew this and so he said again, hoping for just one last stir, Shireen I just wanted to say good-bye, Shireen, and that I wish you well wherever you exist or don’t, just a good-bye, Shireen? but she couldn’t hear him, not in that insulating coat of artificial silence, thirty thousand feet into the air, in the realm of constant sunsets and sunrises, cloud upon cloud, weather to new weather, of indistinguishable landmass and generic oceanic mileage, striped in invisible longitudes and latitudes, all altitude, all ungravity, pure heaven after heaven, over and out, over it all, over and oblivious to everything below, as if it was an accident, just dirt and grass and germ and concrete, featuring them, the ones with alleged souls, the ones that were doing and undoing it, over and over, day after day, and what was a day anyway but just another symposium of the star-crossed, and how could anyone blame her giving up like that, on humankind: what’s not to hate … no, no, it was true, Shireen was already gone, Shireen was not about to stir for anything, anyone, certainly not him. He didn’t take it personally, just kept his eyes closed enough to watch her and the big silver steel bird that held her burn through the layers of atmosphere, circling that pitiful dreamless grounded world, only bothering to wind down in sweeping swift spirals, makeshift circumferences, until it was clear that the vessel and its inhabitants were in a place where home was no longer a euphemism—the type of land that when you’d actually set foot on it, Darius smiled to himself, you’d want to shake yourself awake, wondering if this was really happening, wondering if you had maybe died and gone to the one heaven you could still imagine like yesterday.
XERXES: I didn’t mean this the way you’re thinking. Can we get that straight? I’m not inviting you. I’m better now, but not well. In regards to you.
DARIUS: In a way, from the beginning, this was how I saw it ending. This is the only way I imagined. You and I could never understand each other anywhere else.
XERXES: I’m not inviting you, Father. Now if you happened to be there when we were there, happened to run into us, me and my girl, if you were able to dig us out of a sea of our clones, our countrymen, then fine. I can’t stop the inevitable if that’s what has to be.
DARIUS: There is no other place for us. You won’t know how much of that world you are until you get there. Then you’ll see. You’ll wonder how you can leave.
You might not be able to.
XERXES: This is a trip. A vacation. I can guarantee you I would not be going if it were anything else. We are expecting to return. We are praying that won’t be a problem. It can’t be. It’s curiosity, the politics of a relationship, my status in this new life in New York City, the ways of the world around me currently—those are the elements pushing me to go. It’s not what you think. No longing for home. I don’t know where the hell home is. I belong to fucking nowhere land.
DARIUS: I won’t hold New York against you. So don’t worry about coming back to me.
XERXES: I won’t hold New York against you. So leave me alone.
DARIUS: Why can’t I just call you right this minute and we’ll talk?
XERXES: I’m trying to imagine you picking up the phone and calling me—me picking up, me hearing your voice—now what’s going to stop me from hanging up really? I still am not at peace with you, my past, your past, where I come from, who I come from … and this whole Iran trip, from the drama to the actual vacation, none of it would be such a mess, such a conflict, if it were not for you. All my life I have looked for a stability, a peace, a wholeness that can’t exist—because it’s not only not in my countrymen, it’s not even in my country. My blood is fucked. Yes, Father, I said fucked.
DARIUS: I don’t think you’d hang up.
XERXES: You’ll never know.
DARIUS: I’m dialing.
XERXES: Dial all you want … Father, we’ll be together again in a conversation, in a place, in a time, when it’s right. Only then. Good-bye.
“Hello?” Darius could barely recognize his own voice. It sounded weak, shaky, elderly, particularly when bounced back against the echoed “hello” that was all youth, vibrancy, confidence … and femininity?
The bastard—it was not Xerxes—he had done it again!
“Who is this?” Darius said in his natural snap.
Sons and Other Flammable Objects Page 28