Maryam had to laugh at that. It was true that she often saw something she wanted but the transaction seemed too complex; it required too much energy, and so she passed it up and then later she was sorry.
In the afternoon they cooked together, preparing several of the Iranian dishes that had proved most successful with foreigners, and that evening Maryam's three women friends came to dinner. They knew Farah from past visits; so it was a comfortable occasion. Maryam traveled between kitchen and dining room while Farah kept the others amused with a description of the Hakimis' party. Really it was two parties, the old people's and the young people's, she said. Maryam instantly understood what she meant, although she hadn't considered it at the time. The old ones dressed up and the young ones wore jeans. The old ones listened to Googoosh on the sound system upstairs while the young ones danced to something bang-bang-bang playing downstairs in the rec room.
Then she said, They're losing their culture, the young ones. I see this everywhere. They pay their traditional New Year's visits but they're not sure what they're supposed to be doing once they get there. They go through all the motions but they keep looking at everyone else to see if they've got it right. They try to join in but they don't know how. Isn't that true, Maryam? Don't you agree?
Maryam's guests turned to her, waiting for her to answer. And although she could have simply said, Yes, and let the moment pass, she had a sudden guilty feeling, as if she were an impostor. What right did she have to speak? She was outside the culture herself. She had always been outside it. Somehow, for no reason she could name, she had never felt at home in her own country or anywhere else, which was probably why her three best friends were foreigners. Kari, Danielle, and Calista: outsiders every one, born that way themselves.
Don't you agree, Mari — june? Farah was asking again, and Maryam stood in the kitchen doorway with a salad bowl in her hands and wondered if every decision she had ever made had been geared toward preserving her outsiderness.
Ziba told Maryam that for this year's Arrival Party, she wanted to serve something different. All those Iranian dishes are getting a little old, she said. I was thinking maybe sushi.
Sushi? Maryam repeated. For a moment, she thought she had heard wrong.
I could order it from that place in Towson that delivers. Maryam said, Ah. Well, but For my parents and my brothers I'd get California rolls. You can be sure they won't eat raw fish.
But California rolls have crabmeat, Maryam said.
Oh, nobody observes those old restrictions anymore. Last Christmas, Hassan's wife served lobster.
And the Donaldsons? Maryam wanted to ask. The Donaldsons would be devastated! No authentic Middle Eastern cuisine! But all she said to Ziba was, Let me know what I can bring. A bottle of sake would be nice, Ziba said.
Maryam laughed, but Ziba didn't. Evidently she was serious.
Maryam did plan to attend this year. She had given herself a talking-to. It was cowardly of her, she realized, not to have gone to last year's party. Apparently she still cared too much about other people's opinions. At this age, she should be able to say, Oh, so what if things would be awkward?
She chose ahead what to wear, perhaps giving too much thought to it, and she consulted the man at the liquor store about which brand of sake to buy. The night before the party, she slept poorly. In fact she would have said that she didn't sleep at all, except that at one point she had a dream and so she must have drifted off at least for a moment. She dreamed she was back in primary school and her class was singing the chicken song. Jig, jig, jujehayam, they sang, in cute little ducklike voices; and Dave was looking on and reproachfully shaking his head, Dave the same age he was now, with his gray curls and his drooping eyelids. Child grieving, Maryam, he said, and she woke annoyed with herself for dreaming a dream so obvious. Her clock radio read 3:46. After she'd lain there watching it change to four, four-thirty, and five, she got up.
Probably her restless night was the reason she passed the morning in such a fog. It was a Sunday, unusually cool and pleasant for August, and she should have worked in her garden but instead she lingered over the newspapers. After that she finished reading a novel she had started the evening before, even though she had trouble remembering the beginning and she wasn't all that interested in the end. Then all at once it seemed to be twelve-thirty. How had that happened? The Arrival Party was scheduled for one o'clock. She rose and collected her newspapers and went upstairs to change.
Ziba would be setting out the sushi trays now and the chopsticks she had bought. Her brothers would be stealing pistachios from the sheet of baklava bristling with American flags, and she would shoo them away and call for her sisters-in-law to come take charge of their husbands. Everyone would be milling about, jabbering half in English and half in Farsi, sometimes confusing the two, so that they would accidentally address Susan in the wrong language.
Such a noisy bunch, Iranians could be! More than once Dave had pointed out that they were a whole lot noisier than the Donald-sons. Maryam would have to concede his point, but still it seemed to her that the Donaldsons were… oh, more self-vaunting, self-advertising. They seemed to feel that their occasions their anniversaries, birthdays, even their leaf-rakings had such cataclysmic importance that naturally the entire world was longing to celebrate with them. Yes, that was what she objected to: their assumption that they had the right to an unfair share of the universe.
Remember the night the girls arrived? she had once asked Dave. Your family filled the whole airport! Ours was squeezed into a corner. She had taken care to speak lightly. This was an amicable discussion, after all a theoretical discussion; not a quarrel. And yet underneath she had been aware of a little flare of resentment. And when Xiu-Mei came: the same thing again. That time, our two families met the plane together, but I felt as if we were… borrowing your festivity. Clinging to the edges of it.
He hadn't understood. She could see that. He really hadn't understood what she was talking about.
She went to the closet for the dress she had chosen a sleeveless black linen, very plain. Instead of putting it on, though, she draped it over the back of a chair. Then she slipped off her shoes and stretched out on her bed, laying one arm across her eyes, which felt hot and tired and achy.
The Donaldsons would be dressing their daughters in something ethnic. Or they would be dressing Xiu-Mei, at least. Jin-Ho (Jo) might resist. Bitsy would be complaining about She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, although probably she had given up trying to find an alternative. Aw, hon, Brad would be saying, don't get in such a swivet. Let the kids have their song.
Last week in Tuxedo Pharmacy, Maryam had noticed a couple cruising the greeting-card aisle and she had wondered why they seemed so familiar. Then she thought, Oh! It was the tall young man who'd stepped off the jetway the night of the girls' arrival, and the young woman who had been waiting for him. Only now they had two children a handsome little brown-eyed boy was shepherding his ponytailed sister down the aisle ahead of them and the young woman carried one of those motherly knapsacks bulging with diapers and sippy cups. They would never guess they had been captured on a videotape that was shown to a crowd of strangers every August in perpetuity.
Something was ringing. Maryam thought first it was her doorbell and next she thought it was her oven timer; that was how deeply asleep she was. She actually reached for the knob on her stove before she caught her mistake. She opened her eyes and rose up on one elbow to look at the clock: 1:35.
The Arrival Party.
It was her telephone that was ringing. She lifted the receiver. Hello? she said, trying to sound wide awake.