When they got a little older they could have sleepovers, Ziba said.
Maryam had joined them by now. She was gently setting Bitsy to one side so she could fill the kettle. Being together so much, Bitsy said, they would think adoption was natural. I mean, they would know it was. They wouldn't have any self-doubts or sense of inferiority.
Does this stove need a match to light it? Maryam asked.
Oh, I'm sorry! No, just that one burner; the others are fine, Bitsy told her. You know, she said, turning back to Ziba, when I was in that poetry group, I read about these two women poets who had so much they wanted to share with each other, they installed a separate telephone line and left their receivers off the hook at all times so as to keep in constant contact. Not that I'd want to do that myself, but don't you sympathize with the urge?
They left them off night and day? Ziba asked. Wouldn't the telephone company send one of those beeping signals?
Well, I don't… I may have some of the details a little wrong, Bitsy said. I'm just talking theoretically here. I did wonder how they could hope to catch every last word. What if one of them happened to speak while the other was in a different room? They surely couldn't have heard from everywhere in the house.
From her place at the stove, Maryam said, How interesting that that's what you would worry about.
Pardon? Bitsy said.
Why wouldn't you worry too much would be heard, rather than too little? Private things, that families should keep separate.
Oh, Bitsy said. Well, of course. She glanced toward Ziba. Of course, that would be… Well, maybe they didn't have the phones off the hook every single instant.
Ah, Maryam said. In that case, then.
I mean, it isn't something I would want to do myself. I said that. I said it was just the general urge that I understood.
Maryam didn't comment. She had a disconcerting way of letting a conversation drop, Bitsy had noticed. All she did was spoon tea leaves into the teapot. It was Ziba who spoke up next. Another thing about the video, she said. I kept thinking I could smell the smells. I remembered how Susan smelled when I first held her, like a spicier kind of vanilla, and now she doesn't smell that way at all. She's more like regular vanilla. Did you think of the smells, too?
Well, no… I know what you mean, though, Bitsy said. But her heart was not in it. A sort of dullness fell over her, and all at once she felt out of place in her own kitchen. She was underfoot here. She had nothing to do. In a sense she had nothing to do with her life, if you didn't count Jin-Ho. She had never completed her education courses, never held a full-time job. She had busied herself with dribs and drabs like teaching yoga and attending poetry seminars and throwing pottery and weaving little made-up activities without steady pay or health-care benefits. Brad said her weaving was beautiful, but he would, of course. In fact she hadn't sat at her loom in months, and last week when she was wearing one of her old creations she had happened to notice herself in the full-length mirror upstairs and all at once she saw that she might as well be wearing a rug. The fabric was so coarse and so boldly striped, a board-stiff rectangle from which her bare arms and legs emerged all scraggy and ropy.
Oh, she said, I should see to…, and she turned and left the kitchen. She drifted through the dining room, where Laura and her sexy daughter were hissing at each other over the coffee urn. She passed Linwood, slouched in the doorway chewing a thumbnail, and Bridget hauling Susan toward the miniature rocker. In the corner chair in the living room she saw her mother the person she'd been looking for, she realized. She sidled past Mr. and Mrs. Hakimi, who apparently had no one to talk to just now but what concern was that to her? She settled on the arm of her mother's chair. Oh, good, her mother said instantly, and Bitsy took comfort from the thought that one person in this room, at least, was pleased to see her. But next her mother said, Here, and handed her a slip of paper.
What's this? Bitsy asked.
It's the name of a woman.
Bertha MacRae, Bitsy read, and a telephone number, in a careful, rounded hand.
A woman who comes to the house, her mother said.
Comes to the house?
Her mother gazed up at her, unblinking. Lately her eyes had changed shape. The lower lids had dropped and pouched, which somehow gave her an expression of reproach although she was not the kind of woman who had ever reproached anyone. She said, I don't believe she's a nurse, exactly. She must be some sort of aide, but she's licensed. She's been trained. And she has a couple of sisters who might take the other shifts. Evidently the twenty-four hours are divided into three shifts.
Where did you get this? Bitsy asked.
Maryam gave it to me. This woman nursed Maryam's husband when he was dying.
The word dying had a sharp, shocking sound, but Connie seemed not to notice. She passed smoothly on. Maryam says the woman's still working. They still keep in touch. She's not sure about the sisters, but if they aren't available, Maryam thinks the woman would know other people who are.
She took Bitsy's hand. Connie's skin was so dry these days that her fingertips had a puckered feel, as if she'd just stepped out of a bath. Will you help me with your father? she asked.
Help you how, Mom?
You know he's going to object. He's going to tell me he can take care of me himself. But he can't do it all, Bitsy. Not morning, noon, and night. And I want to be able to ask for things. I want to ask and not have to worry that I'm asking for too much.
Bitsy said, Oh, Mom, and bent to lay her cheek on top of her mother's head. Connie's poor hair was so thin that it felt warm. Of course I'll help, she said.
Thank you, dear.
Bitsy knew she should feel grateful to Maryam, but instead a wall of resentment rose up within her. It seemed that some belonging of hers had been taken away from her. Or some plan of hers had been foiled; that would be more accurate. Although in fact she had not had any plan, and it should have been a huge relief that someone else had come forward with one.
The children were laughing and tumbling, and the men were trading technical specifications, and Mr. Hakimi was apparently telling Mrs. Hakimi something instructive, although he was speaking in Farsi and Bitsy couldn't understand his words. She had to guess at his meaning just from his tone, as if she were a foreigner in an unfamiliar country.
Sami had a sort of performance piece that he liked to put on for the relatives. He was known for it. They would be sitting around the living room with their afternoon tea a few of Ziba's brothers and sisters-in-law visiting from L. A., or maybe a couple of aunts or the cousins who'd settled in Texas and one of them would say, almost slyly, These Americans: can you figure them out? Then this person would offer some anecdote to start things rolling. For instance: Our hostess asked where we were from and I told her Iran. 'Oh!' she said. 'Persia!' 'No,' I said, 'Iran. Persia is only a British invention. From the start, it was always Iran.' 'Well, I prefer Persia,' she told me. 'Persia sounds much more beautiful.'
People would cluck and nod, having been through such exchanges many times themselves, and then they would gaze expectantly at Sami. Sami would roll his eyes. Ah, yes, he would say, the Persia Passion. I know it well. Sometimes that alone was enough to start them grinning; they were so ready for what came next.
What you should have told her is, 'Oh, then! In that case! Please don't let a mere twenty-five hundred years of history stand in your way, madam.' (The madam came out of nowhere. He tended to slip into a fusty, overstarched style of speech on these occasions.) You can be certain she'll argue. 'No, no,' she'll insist, 'Iran is a newfangled name. They announced the change in the thirties.' 'They announced what their real name was in the thirties,' you tell her, and she'll say, ' Well, anyhow. I myself plan to keep calling it Persia.'