She gave a little giggle. And wasn't it just like Father Mahoney to come up with a send-off that went with the greatest of Scripture verses: “All is right with the world, dear listener.” All is right with the world. Bahar hoped that was true; the events of the last few weeks had her seriously questioning the evil in the world. There was just too much wrongdoing going on, even in places where you least expected it. Even in your own household.
Sure, Marjan was being a Good Samaritan by feeding this stranger, this girl up at Estelle's, but what good did it do in the end? What good was it to help someone who was capable of such lunacy, to try to kill her own beautiful baby? Wouldn't it be better not to have such a person around at all, making room for someone who really wanted a child? Wasn't that what being a righteous believer was all about?
Bahar sighed. There seemed to be no good answers. Still, she had to admit Father Mahoney's closing message was comforting. His new spiritual sound waves were further guidance, she thought, toward a smooth and clean conversion. All is right with the world. Every sign was pointing her in the right direction. Next stop was her first Mass, for which she had bought this outfit.
Bahar hoisted the mattress off its base. She pulled the lacy fabric from its resting place. Even in the darkened room the dress radiated cleanliness, pure and white as the Alborz snow. As white as the peak on that mountain up the street, Croagh Patrick, the Reek.
It was on that mountain that she had discovered her need for something greater than her own pain, a need to surrender to whatever it was God held in store for her. It was as though a prism had turned inside her during her climb, letting in light, letting in air, as she ascended.
She had felt happy, simply happy for standing on that peak, turning her gaze out to the Atlantic. She had needed no copper scour while up there; she was cleansed all the same.
Bahar held the dress up to her body and studied her reflection. Yes, she told herself, everything had changed once again; now she was happy to be alone, happy to wear a veil again.
TACHEEN IS A DOMED MEDLEY of baked saffron rice and chicken, forming the shape of a cathedral ceiling. On first glance, the dish looks curiously like chelow, plain steamed rice; it is only after slicing through its center that the layers of fortitude are exposed: first buttered rice and almonds, then fried chicken and sautéed spinach, the yogurt binding them into a brotherhood of delicious play. Tacheen.
Marjan estimated another ten minutes before she would need to turn the baked dinner from its casserole dish. She usually had much more patience when it came to making tacheen, especially that last step, which always verged on exhilaration, but the unease in her belly was making it impossible to stay still today. She had not been feeling entirely rooted since her disappointment yesterday. Just thinking about her uneventful date sent a flush of embarrassment across her chest. Dreaming up possible excuses for Julian did not ease the strange loneliness that was making its way into her stomach. Had she really been so ready to plunge again into an idea of romance, one that might never fully blossom?
Marjan sat down at the round kitchen table, her thoughts traveling back. She had never, not in all these years, blamed Ali for her having ended up in Gohid Detention Center. He hadn't forced her to help out at the offices of The Voice. She had come of her own free will, decided to contribute what she could without being asked.
She had even chosen to wear the roosarie scarf—motivated not from a spiritual yearning but from a need for solidarity: she had wanted to show her support for the Revolution that had begun to sweep through the university halls, she had wanted to bear witness in the form of a dark scarf.
That scarf had turned into a blindfold, quite literally, the day The Voice's offices were taken down by the Shah's police. The day she said good-bye forever to Ali's sweet green eyes.
Marjan sighed. She had never told her sisters about that time; not being involved in the cause, not meeting up with Ali after their high school years, not even the reason she had disappeared for three days that spring of 1978, disappeared without even a phone call.
How could she? Where could she have started?
How could she have stood in front of those two—Layla not yet seven, Bahar only sixteen—and explained how she had placed them all in danger for the sake of a man's affection?
“Tacheen always reminds me of Christmas.” Layla's voice startled Marjan.
“When did we have tacheen for Christmas?” she asked, rising from the table and making her way back to the casserole. She adjusted the platter over its hot rim, closing in the plume of steam that was escaping over the edges.
Layla shrugged, bounding down the stairs. “Never. But it kind of looks like a Christmas pudding, its shape and all. A savory Christmas pudding. It makes me think of cozy things, like blankets and fireplaces and Bing Crosby.” She plopped down at the table with her copy of Much Ado About Nothing. “Though I hear old Bing wasn't that great of a guy offscreen. You wouldn't know it, to look at his twinkly blue eyes.”
Marjan gave her youngest sister a fond smile. Layla would never stop surprising her. “Don't you have that memorized by now?” She pointed the spatula at the book.
Layla smiled. “Yeah, but I like to see the words on the page as well. It's awesome. Listen to this:
BENEDICK: It is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart: for, truly, I love none.
BEATRICE: A dear happiness to women; they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God, and my cold blood, I am of your humor for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
BENEDICK: God keep your ladyship still in that mind! So some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face.”
Layla sighed. “Now that's what I call sexual tension.”
Marjan laughed.
Layla gave her a quizzical look. “What?”
Marjan shook her head. “You are so funny sometimes.”
Layla shrugged. “Don't tell me you don't think of that English guy. What's his name? Julian?” She said the name in a singsong manner. “Have you read his book yet?”
Marjan remained silent as she slowly circled the spatula along the inside rim of the casserole dish. Dominions of Clay remained where she had left it yesterday, jammed under a road map of Mayo in the van's cavernous glove compartment. “Is Bahar asleep?” she asked, changing the subject.
Layla wet her thumb and flipped a page. “I don't know. She said she was taking a nap. I don't think it's a headache, though. No medicine near the bed,” she said.
“I hope not.”
“Maybe she's praying or something,” Layla said, scrunching her nose. “I still can't believe she wants to be a Catholic.”
“It is a bit unexpected,” Marjan admitted. But then, it was Bahar.
“She'd have a fit if she knew about me and Malachy” The corners of Layla's mouth rose mischievously.
“If she doesn't know about it yet, she'll surely know all about it by tonight,” Marjan replied, thinking of the Ballinacroagh grapevine. She turned to Layla. “You're going to keep your promise to me, aren't you?”
Layla sighed. “Yes.”
“And what was that promise?”
“To tell you the next time me and Malachy think we are ready. To tell you so that we can talk about it and figure things out.” She closed the play tucked it under her chin. “How about you spring for a hotel room in Dublin? I'd pay you back.”
“Oh, Layla, what am I going to do with you?” Marjan shook her head. It really wasn't up to her anymore. Her youngest sister was about to embark on her own, become the woman she was meant to be. It was time for Marjan to let go.
Turning back to the stove, Marjan secured the platter over the casserole. She could tell the tacheen was ready from the way the steam had gathered along the sides of the dish.
She turned to Layla. “Okay. Ready?”
Her youngest sister nodded, her eyes widening w
ith anticipation.
Marjan held her breath and held tighter to the tea-toweled platter: “One, two … three!” She flipped the casserole upside down.
The structure that emerged a moment later was a cake of buttery rice ensconcing honeyed almonds and chicken, the lot.
Layla clapped her hands as Marjan took a bow. “It's perfect! Mrs. D's going to love it!”
Marjan smiled at her little sister, wondering how it was that Layla could sound so grown-up and so young in the space of a single second.
It was a mystery as deep as the treasures found in her sweet and savory tacheen.
CHAPTER XIV
IT WASN'T OFTEN that the moral scions of Ballinacroagh were correct in their conjectures, but in the case of Estelle Delmonico's new ward, they were not all that far off-course. A descendant of Biddy Early's may well have been channeling her powers inside the Delmonico homestead. But rather than calling forth the eventide of Judgment, her results were as glorious as the morning dawn.
Marjan noticed a marked change in Estelle right away. The widow was snuggled into her hearth chair in the blue and yellow kitchen, in her favorite lace and eyelet nightgown. With her hair held jauntily back by a lavender ribbon, and a healthy twinkle in her warm brown eyes, Estelle Delmonico looked like a sweet toddler waiting for her bedtime story. You wouldn't think she's nearly seventy, thought Marjan, placing the tacheen on the pine counter.
“You look so nice,” Marjan said. “Like you've slept for ten years, refreshed.”
Estelle smiled coquettishly. “Thank you, darling. You look so pretty too. Just like Sophia Loren.” She pointed to the Lavazza coffee sign blinking sleepily over the periwinkle cabinet. The neon was one of the few mementos the widow had kept from Papa's Pastries, having it rewired so that it gave off a brilliant red hue.
The coffee sign illuminated a framed poster stationed beside it, a large photograph of that buxom actress Sophia Loren, a crush of her late husband's.
“Is that a new skirt? Bellissima!”
Marjan looked down, nodding. She spoke softly: “I wore it last night. On a date.”
“A date! Oh my goodness! How wonderful!” Estelle clapped her hands like a schoolgirl.
“It would have been,” Marjan replied. She explained Julian's disappearance. “I guess I just feel foolish, really. I got so excited over nothing.”
“But why shouldn't you get excited?” Estelle said. “It is only natural that you want to feel joy and love, especially when you are young. I tell you, men are very difficult to understand. Even my Luigi, who was almost perfect, he had problems also, my goodness.”
Estelle paused for a moment. “Maybe this Englishman, maybe something happened like an emergency? Yes? You must first wait and see before thinking the worst. And if no, then there are many Irishmen waiting for you. You are famous, in newspapers, and you own the best café in Ireland.”
“Maybe you're right,” said Marjan, believing the kind widow's words as she uttered them. “We'll just have to wait and see. Now, how about some tacheen?”
She lifted the cheesecloth off the casserole. The scent of saffron and almonds wafted around them.
“It's still warm, but I could heat it up for you again. Is she awake?” Marjan nodded toward the hallway, where Estelle's bedroom door remained closed.
“No, so tired. Sleeping already.” Estelle lifted her eyebrows and grinned. “We walk around my garden today.”
Marjan looked surprised. “Your meditation garden?”
“Yes. For three hours today! Yesterday also! Can you believe it!” Estelle turned to her guest with eyes shining. The Lavazza sign blinked, lighting up a series of pearly droplets above her upper lip.
Marjan gasped. “Are you sweating again?” She peered into Estelle's face.
“Sweat?” The old lady drew the pad of her thumb along the soft slope above her lip, wiping off a band of glistening water. “Look at this!” she said, showing Marjan her thumb. “And it is still cold outside!”
She popped the end of her thumb into her mouth and sucked on the water, a concentration better known in baking circles as sugarcane extract. “Did I ever tell you how I met my Luigi? No? It is all because of this sweat. Remind me, I will tell you the story one day.”
Marjan was astounded. “But if you're sweating, that means your arthritis is much better.”
Estelle nodded and grinned, as though she had a wonderful secret. “Yes, much better.”
“But how is that possible?”
Estelle winked. “Magic, Marjan. Magic.”
IT HAD STARTED AFTER DINNER on Monday night, said Estelle. Though if they were to get technical, it really began the night they brought the girl back from Mayo General, when Es-telle had dropped the spoonful of plum stew from pain. The widow had not known what to expect when the girl reached over and grabbed her long-suffering hands, but the last thing was a cessation of her arthritis.
The young woman had held her gnarled knuckles for only a few seconds, but it had been enough: a heat, simultaneously silvery and as intense as hot mercury, had rushed up her arms and shoulders, instantly soothing her. It was as though a dam had broken, releasing something from the young woman's palms, sending medicine through her fanlike hands. And then, just as quickly as she'd taken them, the girl let go of Estelle's hands, falling back to her pillow with exhaustion. Before Estelle could question what had occurred, the girl had closed her eyes and surrendered to sleep.
That night, Estelle had also slept—without interruption, without one single needle of joint pain anywhere in her body. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so free.
Whatever the girl had done to clear Estelle's hands had also drained her of all energy, for the girl slept all night and the following day. Feeling guilty for causing her any weakness, Estelle had not dared wake her for dinner. Nor had she brought up the subject once her new ward had woken in her hospital bed. Although her arthritic pain had come back over the weekend, it had been more manageable than she remembered in a long time. Estelle considered the moment of healing as a gift sent from above, something best left unexplored, especially considering that the girl was still not talking. But the mystery had deepened without her inducement, becoming even stranger on Monday evening.
Having polished off Marjan's cherry rice, Estelle was clearing away the last of the dishes and getting ready to wet a fresh pot of tea. Although she was sleeping on the linen couch in the living room to make space for her new guest, Estelle still ate her dinner on the mattress. She was accustomed to eating in bed, insisted upon it, actually.
Not only was the four-poster—a lofty structure that would have put princesses and peas to shame—a place of rest and relaxation but it was, and had been for quite some time now, a portal for her magic carpet escapades. It was there that Estelle first began to practice what Marjan had called “eating at the edge of a ready sofreh.”
Estelle always followed the same routine when assembling her dinner sofreh on her bed. First, she would spread the paisley blanket Marjan had given her, tucking the fringed ends in tight around the sides of her mattress. Then, having already wetted a pot of jasmine tea, she would dig a trivet into the blanket's left corner and place the piping pot on top of it.
Following the Persian etiquette of placing the main dishes at the center of the sofreh, Estelle would position the plate of saffron chelow (with crunchy tadig), the bowl of stew or soup that was the day's special, and the lavash or barbari bread accordingly. She would frame the main dishes with a small plate of torshi, pickled carrots and cucumbers, as well as a yogurt dip and some feta cheese with her favorite herb: balmy lemon mint.
Taking off her pink pom-pom house slippers, Estelle would then hoist herself onto her high bed and begin her ecstatic epicurean adventure. She savored every morsel of her nightly meal, breathing in the tingle of sumac powder and nutmeg while speaking to a framed photograph of Luigi she propped up on its own trivet next to the tea.
Dinner was usually Persian, but her dessert
was always Italian: a peppermint cannoli or marzipan cherry, after which she would turn on the radio, always set to the Mid-West Ceili Hour, and dream of the time when a young Luigi made her do things impossible,like when he convinced her to enter the Maharaja sideshow and stand on the tallest elephant's trunk during carnival season in her seaside Neapolitan town.
Estelle had recalled the carnival as she picked up the last platter. “Time for dessert, yes?” She turned to the girl sitting in the wheelchair. Although the widow had insisted she try to sit up in bed, the young woman had preferred to stay in her borrowed seat for her meals. “Some orange tea and black-and-white biscuits. Lovely!”
Estelle's smile was returned with a solemn look. The young woman shook her head, a sign that she wanted Estelle to wait. Wheeling her chair closer to the bed, where the remnants of their supper still stood, the mermaid girl placed a hand on the patchwork duvet.
At once, Estelle understood what the motion meant.
Without another sound, she took off her aforementioned razzmatazz slippers and climbed up on the mattress. Her veiny, swollen feet looked funny to her from this distance; they flopped open like trunks themselves, withered and white with age. Her palms were also open, resting on either side of her round hips, just as the girl was showing her.
“Like this?” Estelle asked, holding her arms out.
The girl turned sideways in her wheelchair and nodded slowly. In the lamplight, her spread fingers looked more than ever like organza pastry, the veils of skin between them taking on an apricot tinge. Although Estelle had seen those fingers up close a dozen times, she was still amazed at their magical appearance.
The girl reached over slowly, but instead of grabbing the widow's fingers, she clasped her own hands, raising them over Estelle as though in prayer. Estelle watched in fascination as the young woman began to rub her palms quickly, as though she were kindling a fire between them.
She rubbed her hands for what seemed like thirty seconds, then slowly she pulled them away from each other, easing them out.
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