Together Tea

by Marjan Kamali

  “Parviz, do you ever miss your parents’ house in downtown Tehran where the bathroom was outdoors and Persian cats roamed by the pond in the garden?”

  “What?” Parviz mumbled.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was in downtown Tehran and the bathroom was outdoors and cats roamed in the garden. That’s why! Darya, are we replaying the ‘I miss my homeland’ record? You know you have to live in the present. You know you can’t go back to the past . . .”

  “Oh please, no self-help rubbish right now, okay?” Darya turned her back to him.

  “You wanted to talk!”

  “I just get homesick, that’s all. I never thought I would be graphing men’s grade point averages for Mina. I thought . . . I thought it would be different when I was middle-aged. That I’d be accomplished.”

  “You are accomplished, Darya. You have three beautiful children. You have re-created a life and a home in a brand-new country. Hooman is a doctor. Kayvon is a lawyer. Mina is in business school. We got out of Iran. We’re Americans. You’re even working as a bank teller now. What more could you possibly want?”

  Darya sighed. “Good night, Parviz.”

  Within a few minutes, Parviz was snoring again. Even his sleeping was efficient. He was right. The kids had turned out well. That was most important. She was indeed a bank teller, which was far better than the dry cleaner’s seamstress she’d been when they first moved here. Darya thought back to her university days. Back then, unlike now, not too many girls had attended university in Iran. Female enrollment in universities had actually increased after the Islamic Revolution. But before the revolution, she’d been one of five girls in her whole class. How the men had vied for her attention! The flirting. The drives to the cinema. The proposals. Darya had tried so hard to concentrate on her grades. The math classes were the most fascinating, the most challenging, the best. The numbers in her mind had felt like numbers she could hold—squeeze between her fingers, roll around, even toss up in the air, and rearrange in perfect new order. The satisfaction when she slotted those numbers into place. Nothing felt like that. Well, maybe some things.

  Those Iranian men of her youth had driven her around in convertibles and taken her on hikes in the mountains. In a Tehran that felt new and modern and on the brink of excellence. They were modernizing, the king had said. They were improving. They were onto something great. Once upon a time. Darya remembered the possibilities that had stared her in the face at every turn. Parviz had been only an afterthought then. All spindly arms and awkwardness, acne scars on his cheeks. His bass voice was all he had going for him. And his kindness. He’d held her hand and helped her as they hiked in the mountains. She had never thought she would marry him. But Mamani had insisted.

  Darya watched her husband’s nostrils flare with each snore. She pulled the comforter over his vibrating belly. Mamani had seen something in Parviz that she’d liked from the very beginning.

  And that had been that. What is done cannot be undone.

  Three kids later, here they were.

  When her sons were little, Darya was bewildered by their manic energy. As they wrestled each other on the living room floor, destroying the khatam boxes and nut bowls that she’d so carefully arranged, she’d dream of having a daughter one day. In her fantasy, she saw herself as an older, wiser woman eating chelo kabob at a restaurant with a young lady who was her grown daughter. They’d chat and eat, gossip and share. Darya would listen and advise as her daughter confided in her. They’d burst out laughing at silly little things. After lunch, they’d shop for silk together, then go home and swap dress patterns. Darya would guide her daughter’s hand along bolts of fabric, teach her how to cut just right, instill in her the sense of strength and inner confidence that her own mother had given her. On her daughter’s wedding day, Darya would watch her dance, feeling pride in a job well done. That was how she had imagined it when she was a young mother of two sons who fought at her feet. Then it had happened. After hours of pushing and a pain that felt as if it could blind her, a wet, purple kitten-like baby had been placed in her arms. A girl. And Darya felt the joy infused with terror that only comes when a long-held dream is finally realized.

  And sometimes she still felt that joy infused with terror, the pain that could blind her.

  Some dreams had come true. Others had not.

  Darya closed her eyes. She should let Parviz sleep. But she managed to somehow throw her hand across his face. Managed to because she wanted to wake him.

  “What? What is it?” Parviz shook awake again.

  “Parviz, did I wake you?”

  “Um . . . yes. Did you just slap me?” Parviz rubbed his cheek.

  “No, sorry. Look, I just can’t sleep. I just . . .”

  “Darya, forget about the men. I told you. Just go to sleep.” Parviz nestled into his pillow.

  “Do you think I made an error in inputting the data? Is that why Mr. Dashti didn’t turn out as planned? I thought I was doing everything right. But maybe I’m not . . .”

  Parviz sat up. “That’s it! You want to improve your skills! And I know just the thing. I saw something the other day . . .” He was awake now all right. Within seconds, the comforter was thrown off. I’ve done it, Darya thought. He’s in his Let’s Solve This Problem by Taking Action NOW! Mode.

  “Let’s grab life by the throat, Darya Joon! Let’s take care of this right now!”

  Parviz walked over to the bedroom desk and started rifling through a pile of mail and papers. He held up a booklet.

  “Look, it’s 1996, okay? The solution to every problem can be found. You just give me a minute, my lady. You just give me one minute.”

  Darya watched as Parviz flipped through the pages of the booklet. He was now fully in his hyperactive mode. She lay back on her pillow and pulled the covers over her. This was not what she had been looking for.

  “Ah-ha! Perfecto! See what I found for you, Darya Joon? Would you look at this? Huh? Come on! And it’s perfect timing. Just come over and look at this!”

  Darya flung the covers back and got out of bed. She went and stood behind Parviz in her pajamas. He was holding the Adult Education Community booklet that had arrived in the mail earlier in the month. He had opened to the Queens Public Library page. She squinted to read the fine print.

  “Would you look at that! A class, my dear. A class that will take care of your yearning for more knowledge and know-how and will better your ability to manipulate percentage probabilities. Look at that, Darya Joon. It’s made for you!”

  Darya’s eyes followed Parviz’s hand on the page.

  “Forest Hills Adult Education Fall Class Schedule.” Parviz’s huge forefinger glided down the page to “Spreading Spreadsheet Specs. Intermediate/Advanced class on all things spreadsheet.”

  “Oh,” Darya said.

  “That’s what I’m saying! Oh! indeed. It’s like it was meant to be. What do you say? Let’s get this done!” Sounding just like his go-getter guru, he ripped out the registration form at the end of the booklet and started filling it out with a pen. He quickly wrote in her name, their address, their credit card number and expiration date. “In the mail tomorrow morning, I promise. Your first class starts next week. This will help you. Done! Now, let’s get some sleep!”

  With an excitement and zeal that only Parviz could muster for the simple act of having filled out a registration form for an adult education class that Darya didn’t even want to take, he jumped back into bed, snuggled in, and, before long, was snoring again.

  Darya stood there staring at the filled-out form. The air around the desk still smelled of Old Spice. The scent clogged her brain. Spreading Spreadsheet Specs. Had she said she wanted to take a class? Is that what she had said? No. But that’s what he thought would make her feel better.

  Well, the so
lution was simple. She’d get rid of the form before he could send it in. She simply wouldn’t go. Silly class in some library at night taught by who-knows-who. Who said she had to go?

  Chapter Five

  Spreading Spreadsheet Specs

  Darya walked to the Queens Public Library under streetlamps festooned with banners for an upcoming neighborhood carnival. She stopped and hesitated in front of the redbrick building. Against her better judgment, and because Parviz was absolutely convinced that improving her Excel skills was her key to happiness, she’d come. But in truth, she’d come because, of course, Parviz had woken up early and mailed in the registration with full payment before Darya could get rid of the form. When she had called a few days later to cancel her registration, they’d said the fee was nonrefundable and now Darya needed to talk her way, face-to-face, into a refund.

  Going down the musty steps caused a sharp twinge in her right knee, which probably meant the beginning stages of some form of arthritis. Lovely. Middle age and all its new aches and pains. Darya followed signs on yellow paper featuring a hand-drawn arrow and the words “Miranda Katilla’s Spreading Spreadsheet Specs!” until she arrived outside a room with an opaque glass door. She turned the knob and walked in. Was she late? Because the teacher was already talking and people were already seated on folding metal chairs, taking notes as if it mattered. Darn it. Now she couldn’t talk privately to the teacher till after the class was over. Darn it, darn it. It was too late to go back. She’d already walked in, and all eyes were on her and the teacher motioned for Darya to sit with a huge, welcoming smile. Darn. It.

  Miranda Katilla was the kind of chipper that came about from overly caffeinated bad coffee. Darya eyed the Styrofoam cup in Miranda’s hand. How rude. People here always ate and drank in front of others, when the others weren’t eating and drinking, which in Persian culture was considered beyond uncouth. She hated herself for being so judgmental, but she’d lived long enough and had seen enough to know a few things. For example, already Darya knew that Miranda was the kind of woman who never ironed anything.

  Miranda Katilla was talking about the importance of spreadsheets in everyday life. “Not just for work. Not just for accounting, per se. But for everything. Your groceries. Your home budget. A way of measuring and keeping a record. Documenting. Adding up.”

  Darya sat a little straighter. She did like the sound of this. Perhaps she would sit through this one class, then ask for her refund. Poor Miranda Katilla. Teaching this class at night instead of having a real job. Yes, Darya decided, she would be more open-minded, as Mina would say, and give this fool a chance. There, she was getting better at being less judgmental already.

  Darya rummaged for a pen in her handbag.

  “Here you go,” she heard a whisper.

  A man was handing her a pen. He was about Darya’s age, slim, with brown hair and deep laugh lines around his mouth. He wore a flannel shirt that looked like a second-rate lumberjack’s.

  Darya took the pen and murmured, “Thank you.” She held it in her hand. It was a fountain pen. Who on earth came to a spreadsheet class with a fountain pen?

  Miranda’s curls (unnatural, forced into shape by chemicals, Darya had already surmised) bounced as she continued to extol the virtues of Excel.

  “Sam, was it? Sam, can you tell me one thing you think spreadsheets could help you with? In your own life?”

  The man next to Darya looked up. “Well.” His voice was much deeper than it had been when he was whispering. “For my music. Lesson plans, student names. Grades. Especially grades.”

  “Teachers need spreadsheets more than anyone!” Miranda said, apparently delighted. “Now. If we all turn on our programs, I’d like to review some Excel basics, then take you all to another level.”

  Parviz would really like Miranda Katilla. She spoke his language: “another level” and all that. Darya realized she didn’t have a computer. Of course she didn’t. She had only come to get her refund and leave.

  Sam’s chair was suddenly closer to hers. “Share?” he said and flipped open his laptop.

  His chair had made no noise. Darya looked down and saw that all four legs ended in yellow tennis balls. She looked around and noticed that all the chairs had tennis balls attached to the bottom of their legs. So that’s why Sam’s chair had sidled so silently next to hers. Darya found herself enchanted by this trick of tennis balls.

  Sam smelled of soap and tea, a bergamoty smell. Not of Old Spice. His eyes were kind, and he pulled his chair even closer and tilted the screen so she could see. His kindness reminded her of Parviz.

  When Miranda Katilla asked them if they really appreciated the difference between columns and rows and if they truly understood how mastery of the program could do no less than “change their spreadsheet lives,” Darya couldn’t help but snort.

  Sam raised his eyebrows at her and smiled. He didn’t smile the way a classmate smiles at another classmate in the basement of the Queens Public Library during an adult education community class. No, he smiled at her the way those boys of her youth had smiled at her, back when she hiked in the mountains with them, back when she had suitors, back before she got committed to the gift her mother gave her, and before she signed up for the strict columns and rows of adult life.

  WALKING HOME FROM THE LIBRARY that night, Darya felt that the evening air was a little sweeter than it had been on her way to class. When she opened the front door and saw Parviz sitting on the couch, eating pistachios, and he asked, “How was it, Darya Joon, how was class?” Darya felt almost guilty when she said, “It was so wonderfully wonderful.”

  She hadn’t asked for a refund. Maybe she could use more spreadsheet knowledge. It would help her at work, wouldn’t it? Maybe she could even get a promotion with this training.

  “Was it interesting?” Parviz asked.

  “Yes.” Darya again felt guilty saying this to Parviz as he sat there shelling pistachios. She put down her handbag. It was just a smile from a middle-aged man in a class taught in the basement of the public library by a woman who never ironed anything. But during that smile, Darya’s round middle had whittled down, her wrinkles had been erased, her skin firmed, her legs toned, her knee pain vanished, and she didn’t need her reading glasses. Her daughter’s eye rolls no longer broke her heart, and she wasn’t in chronic grief for the mother she’d lost to the bombs that fall and kill at random. For that brief moment, within those musty library walls, Darya Daneshjoo felt herself again. Her old, young self. The self that stood at the top of the mountains of Tehran and laughed because she felt free. That self.

  “So, you liked it, Darya Joon?” Parviz asked.

  “I did,” Darya said.

  “Highlights?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “The class, the teacher, the students. Anything stand out?”

  Darya fluffed her hair. “There were tennis balls at the bottom of the chairs.”

  “Tennis balls?”

  “Tennis balls.”

  Parviz held a pistachio in midair. He seemed to be thinking. Darya got ready for more questions. She stopped him before he could ask more. “To keep the chairs from scraping the floor when you move them.”

  Parviz nodded as it dawned on him. Then he popped his pistachio into his mouth and clapped his hands in the air. “Genius!” he cried. “What will they think of next?”

  And with the clap of his hands, she was back. Back in her living room in Queens, no longer on the mountaintops of Tehran. No fountain-pen-wielding, lumberjack-shirt-wearing, deep-voiced music teacher was smiling at her. Her right knee started to hurt. She asked Parviz if he wanted some warm milk before bed.

  “With honey, my honey,” he called out.

  He did not just say that, Darya thought.

  But of course, he did. He always did.

  Chapter Six

  Samosas and Kimbap

  Samosas and
mango chutney for you ladies, made by yours truly.” Kavita handed Darya a plate covered with a dishcloth. “I told Shenil that if he doesn’t learn to appreciate the virtues of his domestic goddess soon, he’ll find himself with a ghost of a wife in search of a bon vivant Clark Gable for romantic times tout de suite!”

  Darya let Kavita in and led her to the dining room. It was their third math club since Darya had started her spreadsheet class at the library. In class, she and Sam sat next to each other. They’d talked a little. She’d learned that he lived on his own, had no kids, and that he liked fly-fishing. She had no idea what fly-fishing was. Catching fish with flies? He was so . . . American. They chatted before class and sometimes after, and during “break” they went outside while others smoked or ran to get coffee from Starbucks. Darya and Sam never got coffee. They just stood together under the starless New York sky, and Sam told her about his students. He taught guitar. Not violin. Not piano. Not Persian sitar, which would’ve been really impressive. But guitar. That wasn’t a “high-class” instrument in Darya’s book.

  “I do believe you have wafted to the fjords!” Kavita said in her high voice. “My dear, what has gotten into you? What puts you so deep in thought, darling?”

  “Oh, nothing! I love your samosas, you know that!”

  Kavita arched her overly tweezed eyebrows. “I do believe, Darya dear, that our guitar hero with whom you are so besotted has convoluted your mind and gotten you in a tizzy. What tomfoolery! Who would’ve ever supposed that math-obsessed Darya would find her heart flying out to a children’s music instructor, ey? The world does not cease to amaze moi!”

  Darya had confided in Kavita and Yung-Ja over equations and samosas and dolmeh. Confided wasn’t the word. She’d shared. Wasn’t that the expression? So American, so Sam. They had asked her about her new class, and she had answered. Only unlike Parviz, who believed that her fascination with the class lay in mathematical precision and tennis balls on chair legs, Kavita and Yung-Ja had caught on that there was a certain someone whom she liked to sit next to and read her xeroxed handouts with. She’d insisted that it was nothing more than that, but Kavita and Yung-Ja had chuckled and giggled and snorted and wheezed. They were convinced that Darya was “besotted,” as Kavita called it, with American Sam.