The Stationery Shop of Tehran

by Marjan Kamali

  To reform Jack, Zari had moved mountains. Under Zari’s expert stewardship, Jack the beat poet transformed into a corporate hack. He wrote jingles for ads, first for print and eventually for television, and if the former idealist poet was saddened by this transformation, one could not tell. Whenever Roya had seen him, Jack was beaming, his kids hanging off him like zoo monkeys, his formerly long hair in a buzz cut. In his suits and thin ties, he was the epitome of a 1960s advertising employee. How had Zari managed to mold her man into this, what wonder drug did she give her Jack, what kept that smile on his face? Oh, Sister, we both know in the end it comes down to what happens in bed, don’t we? That’s how you get anything done, let’s face it! I am no fool and I know what to do.

  At the thought of beds and sheets and lovemaking, Roya simply felt numb now.

  Zari cleaned the house. The kind of thorough cleaning normally reserved for Persian New Year, the first day of spring. But it wasn’t spring, it was still winter, the ice and snow were everywhere. Zari didn’t care; she cleaned. And Roya thought of all the rituals with which they had been raised to celebrate the first day of spring—all useless now. As if she would ever again have the where-withal to prepare a Haft Seen table for Persian New Year, to set it with items beginning with s that were symbolic of rebirth and renewal. No. To soak lentils in water so they could grow green sprouts, to paint eggs to celebrate fertility—never. Persian New Year, the first day of spring, Nowruz—meaningless now, all of it. Walter and Roya wouldn’t celebrate it, or Christmas or Thanksgiving either. What was the point?

  Zari washed her windows (in February! in New England! why bother? they’d be covered by snow and frost anyway). Zari washed all the clothes too. She went to the store and bought fresh ingredients and cooked and sautéed and fried and basted and filled Roya’s freezer with khoreshes and rice dishes and stuffed grape leaf dolmehs and meat patty kotelets and potato quiche kukus. She opened the windows and let in fresh air (freezing air was more like it). Zari even insisted on melting sugar in a saucepan, then adding a few drops of lemon juice and warm water to create a wax with which she wanted to remove the hair on Roya’s legs.

  “Do you honestly think I care about that right now?”

  “It’s not for you.”

  “I can assure you that Walter does not care. I can assure you there is no reason he would even know there is some hair on my legs.”

  “Please. At some point you have to . . .”

  Roya’s body heaved with the familiar grief. She wanted to disappear. What difference did it make? No one could make it different.

  During Zari’s two-week visit, Roya sat once on the floor to play with her niece and nephew. She listened to their giggles and chortles. Then she got up. She climbed into bed and stayed there for the rest of the evening.

  When Zari brought up a tray for dinner, she lingered at the edge of Roya’s bed. “I had no choice, Roya Joon. I had to come with them. I couldn’t leave them with anyone. Jack works into the night; he is no help.”

  This was how it would be now. People would apologize for the presence of their children, tuck away their happiness from her, become self-conscious of their joy. This was her new destiny.

  During those two weeks, in addition to cleaning the house and stocking Roya’s fridge, Zari entered the nursery. She did ask first, and Roya could barely muster up a shrug. Zari brazenly boxed up Marigold’s clothes, put toys in bags, and visited the church with donations. She had the audacity to tell Roya that she’d saved a few outfits for her to look at later, when she was ready. She’d never be ready.

  “Thank you, Zari, thank you,” Walter said again and again. “Aren’t you kind. So kind of you to do this. You have no idea how much we appreciate it.”

  Uber-polite, wimpy Walter. The hell with both of them. The hell with Walter’s manners and Zari’s zeal. What was the point of going through her child’s clothes, of washing the blasted windows? Roya stayed in bed and stared at nothing. In the rocking chair where she had breastfed Marigold, Walter sat with his damn drink and rocked to and fro in silence.

  When the day came for Zari’s flight back to California, Roya did not cry. Or did she? She cried so much these days, it felt invisible, she couldn’t tell sometimes. When she thought she’d wrung out the last possible tear, there was always a well of more.

  “Bye,” Roya said. So tidy, so American. Bye! Easy-peasy. See ya! Maybe there was something to these Americanisms. Breezy. Casual. They made everything seem like strawberry milkshakes and good times coming.

  “I’ll miss you, Sister,” Zari whispered in Farsi as she wept into Roya’s neck. “I’ll miss you so much. You can always write to me. I’ll telephone you. You know the next time I can come, I will. . . .”

  “Bye!” Roya said it again. “Thanks!” She didn’t know if she’d ever access gratitude or kindness in herself again. She wished she could stop the ice forming around her.

  “I am so sorry.” Zari smelled the same way she had when they were girls sharing a room in Iran. Like tea, like home. “You know you can always—”

  “Go. You’ll be late.”

  Little Leila made a fuss about leaving and Darius hid behind the couch in a game of hide-and-seek that no one was playing. After some cajoling and yelling, Zari scooped up her children and shepherded them into the taxicab waiting outside. Roya waved. Walter had said good-bye that morning with endless thanks and gestures of gratitude and apologies that he could not drive Zari to Logan Airport, he had a motion to prepare, the judge was relentless in this case.

  Roya stood in the doorway and looked out at the snow as the cab took away her sister and nephew and niece. Behind her a spotless, organized house filled with food in the fridge. In front of her, nothing.

  Nothing to do but go back to work. Eventually, you waxed your legs again. Not one hair there to bother Walter, see, Sister? In their grief, husband and wife slowly achieved a new equilibrium. They padded around each other carefully at first, and then with more spontaneity because, as it was said, life somehow went on.

  Snow turned to spring. Roya couldn’t bring herself to celebrate Persian New Year for the first day of spring though. No Nowruz. What was there to renew? What rebirth was there to celebrate? The seasons were indifferent to Marigold. Someone had mangled the script, taken the pages and burned them in a fire, destroyed all semblance of meaning and order. Someone had wrought this wrong. Happy spring!

  She got home from work a little earlier than usual on the first day of spring and made some tea. Walter was working late, and Roya did her best to ignore Persian New Year. When the doorbell rang, she expected it to be Mrs. Michael from across the street (she sometimes came by with cookies or a pie—much more so in the past few months since Marigold had died). But when she opened the door, Roya was surprised to see not Mrs. Michael, but Patricia. Patricia wore a dark-blue coat with hexagonal buttons and carried a grocery bag. Her blue suede pumps were sensible and looked expensive.

  “May I come in?” Patricia asked.

  “Of course. Please.” Roya stepped aside so Patricia could come into the foyer. Roya knew better than to ask her sister-in-law to remove her pumps. The first time Walter had mentioned that Roya preferred for people not to come inside with shoes on, Patricia had looked confused and said, “I didn’t use up half my paycheck on footwear so I could walk around in my stockings.”

  Roya took Patricia’s coat, hung it up in the foyer closet, led Patricia into the kitchen, and asked robotically if she’d like some tea.

  “That would be lovely, thank you,” Patricia said. She put down the grocery bag on the table and cleared her throat. Then she said, “I went to Mount Auburn after work.”

  Roya stiffened. Marigold was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

  “Mount Auburn Street. The shops there,” Patricia went on. “I got you something. Some things.”

  Roya watched as Patricia removed items from her paper bag and placed them carefully on the kitchen counter. There was a small pot of hyacinths in cellop
hane and a bag of apples. Chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil and a packet of sumac spice. A bottle of vinegar and a few cloves of garlic. There was even a bag of senjed, the dried fruit of the lotus tree.

  These were all items that began with the letter s in Farsi, traditional items for the Persian New Year Haft Seen seven s’s table. Roya had carefully laid out these symbolic objects every single year growing up with Maman and Zari and Baba. It was a tradition she had hoped to share with Marigold one day. It was not a tradition she had ever expected Patricia to help her celebrate.

  “Happy New Year, Roya,” Patricia said gently.

  A lump the size of all of New England rose in Roya’s throat. A sheen of sweat coated her skin. She was filled with a huge wave of gratitude that made her want to fold over and cry. “Thank you, Patricia,” Roya whispered.

  Patricia turned to straighten the hyacinth and move the sumac spice over to the left a little. She was not one to express her feelings all too well—this much Roya knew. But when she turned around, Roya saw that her sister-in-law’s eyes were filled with tears. “I am,” Patricia said, “so very sorry.”

  Roya didn’t know if she was giving condolences again for Marigold (so many people told her they were sorry whenever they saw her these days—it was the one thing she heard the most) or if Patricia was perhaps apologizing for anything she’d said in the past.

  Roya just nodded.

  Patricia reached into the paper bag and retrieved another item. It was a small see-through sachet filled with the thin crimson threads that Roya knew so well.

  “Where did you find saffron?” Roya gasped.

  “Oh, I did my research. I have my ways.” Patricia came close and gently pressed the sachet of saffron into Roya’s hands. For a minute she kept her hands around Roya’s. Then she quickly straightened herself up and said in a loud and authoritative voice, “Now then! Where is that tea you promised me?”

  They sat together that afternoon and drank the tea. Their conversation was halting at first, but slowly they opened up more. For the first time since she’d married Walter, Roya and Patricia even commiserated about Walter’s obsession with the Red Sox.

  “Thank you, Patricia,” Roya said when Patricia got up to leave. “I do appreciate this. More than you know.”

  “No need to thank me.” Patricia went to the foyer and got her coat. At the door, she hesitated. Then she said, “I may have been a bit hard on you over these past few years. Perhaps. You have to understand that Walter is my only sibling and I adore him. You could argue I love him to a fault. Mother says I mollycoddle him. No one is ever good enough for my little brother and all that. But . . .” Patricia fidgeted with the buttons on her coat and then looked up. “Well, Roya, we may have lost Marigold. But we are so very grateful to have you.” She quickly walked out, went down the front steps, and slid into her car.

  Roya stood at the doorway, and this time, she broke down into tears.

  They became the couple that others turned their heads toward and gave a sad smile to, the couple prayed for at Alice’s church, the ones who received cards in the mail filled with fountain-penned condolences. Roya continued to work at HBS, and she felt for Walter a strange kinship. They were united in pain. He spent every night drinking in the rocking chair before bed. She retreated into her shell. Ice frozen over a melted layer is even harder to break than before.

  A routine of work and a few friends and, painstakingly, a semblance of return to the world. Eventually, Walter and Roya went out again to dinners at their neighbors’. Sure, she even got out the pots and pans again and cooked. For Walter. She forced herself to buy rice and soak it in lukewarm water and boil it, and one night when Walter came home from the office (he worked at a huge law firm now, in Boston, near the Prudential Center, he was successful, everyone told him so), he was able to smell again the fragrant saffron, thanks to Patricia. He held Roya close and inhaled her hair. She was glad that he didn’t say something awful like “You’re back.”

  For their anniversary a few months later, they went to a restaurant for the first time since. At the table, Walter took her hand.

  “Roya Joon, we should try again.”

  The words landed like sharp needles against her scalp, her skin.

  “Not if you’re not ready. But, I don’t know. We are so young, Roya Joon, aren’t we? I’m not saying now. I’m saying when you’re ready.”

  She would never be ready. She would never want in any way to replace Marigold. Why had she agreed to come out with Walter? She wasn’t even ready to be out in public at a restaurant where everyone around them was having fun. All she wanted was her daughter. She wanted to feel her daughter’s face against her cheek. She wanted to hold her and hear her laugh. She wanted Marigold.

  Under the dim light of the restaurant, Walter’s expression was pleading. Not for the first time, Roya saw how he’d aged. The Berkeley café coffee-cup-spilling incident was seven years ago. They’d been married now for five years. It was 1963. They were twenty-seven. But their loss had removed them from the normal scheme of things—they were part of an elite club who’d experienced a coup of the natural order of life. Marigold had come in their fourth year of marriage, unannounced and unexpected but oh so welcome when she arrived. Only to then disappear and prove Roya’s every worst fear true.

  “Honey.”

  She hated it when he called her honey. He only called her that when he was being patronizing. Roya Joon was what he called her when he was actually affectionate, but honey meant I know better. Honey meant you’re not thinking clearly, of course we’ll have another child. Honey meant that he had no idea that the only reason she hadn’t quit it all was out of obligation to him.

  “I can’t. No,” she said.

  He got up, and she thought that he was going to the bathroom. Maybe he was even leaving the restaurant. He had every right to get away from her. She had been impossible since Marigold’s death: selfish and quiet and withdrawn. Maybe he would go to the restroom and gather his wits in his very Walter-ish way and come back with a façade of good cheer—as much as he could muster in public—and they would go on eating their beef stroganoff amidst the clatter of the restaurant. They would pretend to be like any other couple there.

  But he didn’t leave. He came to her side of the table. He knelt down and gently took her face in both his hands. His blue eyes were filled with a sadness that was theirs alone.

  “She will always be right here,” Walter said. And he touched his chest just like he had during the first time Roya had cooked for him in Mrs. Kishpaugh’s kitchen all those years ago. Then he rested his forehead against hers.

  The waiters came and went. The other diners clanged their utensils and chatted and guffawed every once in a while. Roya and Walter stayed that way—foreheads touching. Of his love she had never been more sure. For every ounce of grief that she had, Walter had the same. He had labored with her in this grief, felt his way through the darkness and the depth of it, and all the time as the world carried on, he was there by her side. Walter was always there. Reliable. Trustworthy. Steady. The love that she and Walter shared was a lifeline she did not want to do without.

  At the end of the Christmas holidays, after Marigold had been gone for almost a year, she dragged the rocking chair down the stairs and to the curb. She knew Mrs. Michael was watching from her window across the street as she did it. In the town where America had begun, Roya deposited the rocking chair on the curb and left it there for someone new to pick up, take home, rock on.

  Part Five

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  2013

  Virtual Friends

  If there was one thing Claire would ban, it was TV commercials. And if there was one thing she couldn’t stop watching, it was these commercials. Her friends on Facebook told her to record her shows and just fast-forward through the advertisements or to download them from a streaming site, but Claire couldn’t help but watch each program in real time with all the ads—almost in a masochistic way. Like dwell
ing on a wound, like itching a scab and feeling it sting.

  Every night after she came home to her small apartment in Watertown, Claire made herself a dinner of pita bread with turkey and tomato or Top Ramen noodles or microwaved packaged rice and a fried egg. She turned on the TV and prepared to feel the sting. She didn’t watch the shows her friends on Facebook watched—the dramas on cable that won all the awards: sexy, well-written, edgy shows that warranted social media status updates and spoiler alerts and virtual water-cooler conversations. She watched instead—almost with horror—reality shows featuring plastic-surgeried housewives fighting in expensive restaurants or families with twenty happy children going through scripted mayhem. During the commercials, Claire would lie under her beige blanket as buddies ate fast food together, parents and children found bliss with mobile phone apps, cute toddlers ran around in diapers, fathers tearfully watched their daughters grow up in a montage from baby-in-a-car-seat to teenager-behind-the-steering-wheel. Claire scoffed at the sentimentality and rejected it, but longed for it all the same. Years ago, she had been a long-legged undergrad at college majoring in English literature, convinced she’d end up as a successful and content university professor. But then her mother had called in tears saying, “It’s positive.” The tiny lump in her mother’s breast ended up, even after removal, continuing its evil journey throughout her body, so that by the time Claire was twenty-four, her mother was in a graveyard in Bedford, Massachusetts, just a mile from the local Whole Foods, and Claire was tented in chronic grief. Her father had died in a car accident when she was just a toddler in those diapers constantly featured in the commercials she watched at nights alone now. Claire had felt, at a very young age, the stunning reality of being alone. Boyfriends came and went. None of them stuck, even though she had been convinced that she was in love once. Maybe twice.