Digging to America

Hey, there, he told them. You two ready for your party?

Jin-Ho said, Grandpa! and came over to give him a hug. Susan gazed up at him with her usual dubious expression. He cupped her head with one hand as he passed her. She wore her hair in two thin braids, nothing like Jin-Ho's thick, bowl-shaped bob, and there was something poignant about the perfect roundness of her little skull inside his palm.

We're waiting for Polly and them, Jin-Ho told him. Polly was the oldest of Abe's three daughters thirteen, now; just the right age to fascinate small girls. Mama said we could, if we didn't go near the street. Mama doesn't know about the hummet.

Hummet? Dave asked.

Susan's not wearing the trike hummet.

Ah, Dave said. Yes, he could see the helmet now on the top porch step a sleek black beetle-shaped object with racing stripes on the sides. Well, I imagine life as we know it will go on, he said.

Huh?

He waved at her and continued toward the house. As he reached the porch, the screen door opened and Bitsy said, Finally! She came out to kiss his cheek. She was wearing a sundress made from one of her more attractive pieces of weaving purple bands threaded with blue although it billowed out from the bodice in a way that he found unfortunate. He liked for women's waists to be evident. (Connie used to claim that this preference revealed a masculine fear of pregnancy.) Everyone's here now but Abe, Bitsy told him. All the Iranians. . and then she leaned closer to whisper in his ear. They've brought an extra.

Pardon?

The Yazdans have brought an extra guest.

Oh.

They didn't ask me first.

Well, I guess maybe in their culture…

Then he all but bumped into Ziba, who was standing just inside the door. Hello, Ziba, he said, and he accepted her kiss too. As usual, she was packed into a tight T-shirt and tighter jeans, and her heels were so high that she teetered slightly as she stepped away from him. Happy Arrival Day, she told him. She gestured toward a cavernously thin teenaged boy who stood next to her with his hands clamped in his armpits. This is Siroos's son, Kurosh, she said.

Dave had no idea who Siroos might be, but he said, Well, hello. Happy Arrival Day to you, and the boy unclamped one hand to shake his.

Thank you, sir, he said with no accent. And many happy returns, which didn't quite suit the occasion if you thought about it long enough.

Brad ambled up, sweating and grinning. More or less the same weather as the first Arrival Day, right? he said. He led Dave into the living room, where Mr. and Mrs. Hakimi sat next to one of Ziba's brothers (the oldest one, who could almost have been her father with that bald head and leathery face) and his motherly-looking wife. The four of them formed a decorous row down the length of the couch, the men in suits and the women in good black dresses, and it was probably their general stiffness that made Brad so eager to add Dave to the mix. You remember Bitsy's dad, he told them. All the Hakimis smiled brightly and made a motion as if to stand, even the women, but then kept their seats a gesture Dave had grown to expect from earlier occasions.

Sami, who seemed to be in charge of the drinks, was over by the deep windowsill that was serving as a bar. Hey there, Dave! he called. Can I offer you a Scotch? I was just fixing one for Ali.

Well… why not? Dave said. He was glad to be reminded of the brother's name, although he still couldn't think of the wife's.

You have seen the pictures? Mr. Hakimi asked in his booming voice. Take a look at the pictures! Very nice!

The pictures lined the mantel and the top of the built-in bookcase beside it photos from Arrival Parties One and Two, most of them unframed and curling in the middle. Dave turned his face toward them in a perfunctory way, but Mr. Hakimi said, See the one on the right! You are standing with Jin-Ho! so that Dave had to walk over there and pull his glasses from his shirt pocket to demonstrate his interest. The photo on the far right showed him lifting Jin-Ho by the waist to light a candle with one of those propane wands meant for lighting stoves. It might have been just the effort of lifting her that caused his face to seem so ropy and strained, but all he could think was, I look like hell! I look ruined! All his adult life he had been a few pounds overweight, large-framed and loose and shambling, but in the photo he had a haggard appearance and the tendons showed in his neck. Connie had been dead just five months when that picture was taken. He saw now that unbeknownst to himself he must have progressed somewhat from those days, because he felt so thankful not to be back there. And he was almost certain he had regained the lost weight.

See the grandfather-granddaughter! Mr. Hakimi was saying.

A toast to the grandfather-granddaughter! Your good health, sir! And Sami pressed an icy tumbler into Dave's hand.

That Bitsy was bothering with cocktails suggested she was going ahead with her plan to serve a full meal. He supposed she'd had little choice, once she had scheduled the party for a weekday evening. So he resigned himself to a late night, and to seeing very little of Bitsy since she would be occupied with the food. He settled in a rocking chair and listened with what he hoped was an attentive expression as Sami and Brad discussed the Orioles. He didn't follow the Orioles anymore. Once you lost touch with a baseball team its gossipy human-interest stories, its miniature dramas of heartbreaking personal slumps and miraculous comebacks it was hard to work up much enthusiasm. And the Hakimis felt even less connected, if you judged by their glazed smiles. Only when Maryam emerged from the kitchen, where she must have been helping out, did they come to life. She was carrying a tray of something, and when she bent over the row of guests on the couch they leaned forward eagerly and there was a murmur of foreign phrases, a quick back-and-forth and a patter of soft laughter that made Dave realize how much went on inside these people's heads that he would never have guessed from their stunted, primitive English.

Wouldn't it feel like a permanent bereavement, to give up your native language?

Maryam wore a deeply V-necked top that revealed her polished collarbones. When she approached him with her tray, she said, It's good to see you, Dave. Would you care for a canapT?

Thank you, he said, taking one. It seemed to be some sort of fish paste.

Are you pleased you might have a new grandchild?

A new…? Oh. Yes, right, he said. Very pleased, because he supposed that was what was expected of him.

I wonder if this means that now there'll be two Arrival Parties, she said.

God forbid! he said before he thought. Maryam laughed.

By the time Abe and Jeannine had shown up with their daughters, everyone had eaten far too many hors d'oeuvres. The sight of the huge banquet waiting when they moved to the dining room made several people groan. Bitsy, what have you done? Jeannine asked. There were platters of cold chicken, cold salmon, and shrimp, along with half a dozen vegetable dishes and almost as many salads. If this was a competition, Dave dreaded to think what the next year would bring.

The cake at the end of the meal was the usual Stars-and-Stripes sheet cake, and the song was the usual song in spite of all Bitsy's efforts. I'll know, she began hopefully in a high, sweet voice, but Abe's three boisterous daughters drowned her out. They'll be coming round the mountain when they come, Bridget led off, and Brad flung open the kitchen door to reveal Jin-Ho and Susan, who stood looking nonplussed as always instead of marching forth as they'd been instructed. Toot! Toot! Abe's daughters shrieked. Clearly they enjoyed the sound effects even more than the song itself. Scratch! Scratch! Whoa, back! Hi, babe! First Abe and Jeannine joined in and then Sami, then Ziba, and finally Dave, although he hated to seem disloyal. Even the Hakimis mumbled along as best they could, chuckling bashfully each time they came to the toots and sending each other shy peeks.

After cake it was time for the video. The Arrival of Jin-Ho and Susan, it began a whole new title, in italics now rather than copperplate. People paid varying degrees of attention. The Hakimis, for instance, sat erect and kept their eyes fixed respectfully on the screen throughout. At the other extreme, Jin-Ho busied herself with a Tickle Me Elmo doll. Dave, who was standing at the back of the room, watched more closely than he let on because he knew he'd be seeing Connie. He didn't want the others to notice how much this mattered to him. They would worry; they would try to distract him. They would say he was being morbid.

Yes, there she was, smiling beautifully and clasping her hands in front of her chest as if she were praying. GRANDMA, her lapel button read. It was true that she wore a baseball cap already she was ill but how full and rosy her face seemed! How sturdily she stood, next to him but not leaning on him! He kept forgetting that this was how she used to look. When he pictured her nowadays, she had the papery white skin and jutting bones of a dying woman.

Then she was gone. Oh, damn. He wondered, as he had the year before, if he could somehow spirit this tape away and take it home to watch in solitude. He would play just the frames with Connie in them over and over and over. He would dwell on the dear slope of flesh beneath her jaw and the cozily embedded look of the wedding ring on her finger.

The infant Jin-Ho arrived in her courier's arms and was surrounded and engulfed. Various Dickinsons and Donaldsons behaved like total fools. Then Susan flashed by now you see her, now you don't but Dave barely noticed that part. He knew there wouldn't be any more shots of Connie.

It was difficult to watch Connie, no? Maryam asked.

She stood nearby, on his left. The foreign intonation of her no? struck him as irritating. He felt so far removed from this random assemblage; he resented being dragged back to it. He kept his eyes fixed stubbornly on the TV screen (the credits rolling by in the original, copperplate font) as he said, Not difficult at all. I liked seeing her so healthy.

Ah, Maryam said. Yes, I can understand that. Then she said, I used to think that if someone had come to me out of the blue and told me, 'Your husband just died,' when he was in perfect health, I would have found it easier. It was watching him go down, down, down that made it so hard.

He looked over at her. He was often startled by Maryam's smallness someone so elegant should be statuesque, it seemed to him and now he had to lower his gaze a few inches to take in her profile, her eyes trained on the other guests and her fingers curved delicately around the handle of a teacup.

I thought, If only I could mourn the man I first knew! she said. But instead there were the more recent versions, the sick one and then the sicker one and then the one who was so cross and hated me for disturbing him with pills and food and fluids, and finally the faraway, sleepy one who in fact was not there at all. I thought, I wish I had been aware of the day he really died the day his real self died. That was the day when I should have grieved most deeply.

I'd forgotten his was cancer too, Dave said.

She was silent. She watched the others streaming out, the children heading toward the backyard and the grownups to the living room.

Connie in her final version was… very demanding, Dave said. He had started to say something else but changed his mind. Then he went ahead and said it after all. In a way, she was almost mean, he said.

Maryam nodded without surprise and took a sip of tea.

I guess it was inevitable, he told her. People when they're sick begin to feel something is owed them. They get sort of imperious. In real life, Connie wasn't like that in the least. I knew that! I should have made allowances, but I didn't. I snapped at her, sometimes. I often lost my patience.

Well, of course, Maryam said, and she set her cup back in her saucer without a sound. It was fear, she told him.

Fear?

I remember when I was a child, if my mother showed any sign of weakness took to bed with a headache, even I always got so angry with her! I was frightened, was the reason.

He thought that over. He supposed she had a point. Certainly Connie's decline had scared him out of his wits. But somehow he felt unsatisfied with this conversation, as if there were something more that needed to be set straight. He shifted to one side to let Siroos's son edge past him, and then he said, It isn't only her last days that I regret.

Maryam raised her eyebrows slightly.

It's her whole life. Our whole life together. Every thoughtless word I ever said, every instance of neglect. Do you ever do that? Think back on those things? I've always been such a concentrator; I mean, driven to concentrate on some project and let everything else go to hell. I remember one time I was wiring our house for a sound system I'd concocted. I wouldn't stop for lunch, wouldn't go with Connie to this movie she wanted to see… Now I'm sick about it. I think, What I wouldn't give for lunch with her now, or to be sitting with her at a movie!

You folks coming? Brad asked. Seconds on cake in the dining room.

Thanks, Dave told him, but Maryam didn't respond. She took another sip of tea and then looked down into her cup. Ah, well, she said. If we had been different, would they have loved us?

Pardon?

If you were not a man of many interests, enthusiastic about your projects if you had no interests except for Connie and followed her every footstep would she have chosen to marry you?

But she didn't seem to expect an answer, because while he was still considering her words she said, Jeannine! Hasn't Polly grown up this summer!

Yes, alas, she's a teenager now, Jeannine said. Heaven help us all.

Maryam laughed lightly and turned to accompany her out of the room, and Dave trailed after them. He did think he might want more cake. All at once he felt positively hungry.

September brought its smell of dry leaves that could so easily be mistaken for the smell of freshly sharpened pencils, and the neighborhood children returned to school with their giant book bags and the college students drove away in their overstuffed cars and the fact of Dave's retirement hit him in the face all over again. Never mind those fond goodbyes last June. Forget the yearbook dedication (To our beloved Mr. Dickinson, who made physics come alive for three generations of Woodbury girls) and the plethora of farewell parties yielding their gifts of clocks, mostly, which seemed ironic when you considered that he no longer had much need to know what time it was. This was the moment of truth: autumn, when the rest of the world was beginning anew but Dave himself was just going along, going along the same as in the summer. He had thought he couldn't wait to be done with it all. They had worn him out, those Woodbury girls! But now he found himself missing their shallow, breathy voices that ended every statement with a question mark, and their cataclysmic emotional crises that erupted almost hourly, and even their mysterious fits of giggles although he had often suspected that he was the one they were laughing at. They would already have forgotten him. He didn't kid himself. They were already going gaga over his successor, a debonair young man fresh out of Princeton. It was like walking down a red carpet and then turning to find the attendants rolling it up behind you. He was gone. It shook his whole view of himself to discover how much he minded.

Always he'd been a good putterer a competent repairman, woodworker, seat-of-the-pants inventor and this was why he'd assumed that retirement would come easy to him. But one day he was down in the basement replacing a three-way lamp socket and he felt all at once that he couldn't stand another minute of the gloomy, dank, earth-smelling air. The scummy little window above his head reminded him of the painted-over panes in derelict factories, and his workbench with its neatly hung tools, each outlined in white and arranged according to function and size, inhabited a chilly cube of fluorescent lighting with the dark pressing in all around even on this sunny afternoon. He imagined he couldn't breathe. He wondered how long he'd be lying here if he happened to have a stroke.

Up in the kitchen (airy and almost too bright), he gulped down a glass of water while he studied the replacement socket he'd unthinkingly brought with him. That was when it occurred to him that he could move his workbench upstairs. Well, maybe not the workbench itself, or the larger of the tools, but certainly the smaller items. He could take over the little room they called the study, which led directly off the kitchen and served as a sort of catchall for Connie's sewing supplies and the unpaid bills and the out-of-date magazines. There was no one to object, after all. He felt a flicker of his old zest bestirring itself. Something to do! He set his glass on the counter and went to the study to investigate.

The house was a rambling Mount Washington place they'd moved into nearly forty years ago when the children were small, and from simple inertia they had allowed the clutter to accumulate. Besides which, Connie had been disorganized by nature. How many times had Dave grumbled about the scissors left on a chair or his best pair of pliers mislaid? One whole corner cupboard was stacked with fabrics, and he knew without looking that some of them were cut up but left unsewn, the tissue patterns still pinned in place; and others had been bought on impulse ten or fifteen years back but never put to use, their folded edges bleached by dust and sunlight. He felt wickedly pleased that finally, finally he could whip this place into shape.

That afternoon and all the next day, he stuffed objects into plastic trash bags for Goodwill. The fabrics and the knitting supplies, a sheaf of Butterick dress patterns, a wicker sewing basket, a half-finished baby afghan that might very well have been started in their oldest grandchild's infancy. A flat tin of watercolor paints dried into shrunken tablets. A sketchbook, perfectly blank, yellowed around the edges. A leather punch he'd been looking for since the previous Christmas. A book on needlepoint dollhouse rugs due back at the Roland Park Library on May 16, 1989. A manual for an electric typewriter they no longer owned. A box of unused thank-you cards. Twenty years of tax returns, some of the years missing.

He did keep the tax returns, on second thought. While he was retrieving them he chanced to notice the sewing basket and he retrieved that as well, because after all he might need to sew on a button from time to time. Then he thought of other things, like the green vinyl case of crochet hooks he'd tossed out at the very start. Crochet hooks made very useful tools for small repair jobs. Which trash bag had he put them in?

By the end of the second day the room was looking much, much worse than when he'd begun. There was hardly any space to walk. The tax returns filled the one armchair and the sofa was heaped with photo albums and fat manila envelopes packed with other photos that he planned to sort through later. He couldn't even sit down. He felt defeated.

He opened the bottom desk drawer, where he was hoping to store the tax returns, and came upon a cache of sickroom supplies.

They dated from the earliest days of Connie's illness, he guessed. In the later days her equipment like her disease had spread outward and filled their lives. There'd been a hospital bed in the living room and a wheelchair in the front hall. But the items in the desk drawer were minimal and unobtrusive: a box of alcohol swabs and a digital thermometer and a photocopied information sheet on the side effects of chemo.

Dave himself never called it chemo. He refused to speak so familiarly about something so horrific. He used the full word: chemotherapy.

Connie had vowed it wouldn't get to her. She'd intended to breeze right through it. Then one morning Dave had wondered why his shower water was ankle deep and he'd looked down to find handfuls of her hair clogging the drain. She hadn't realized yet; it wasn't till that evening that she noticed her matted comb. And he didn't tell her. It was the start of the widening separation between them. Willy-nilly, he remained in the world of the heedlessly healthy and Connie joined an inner circle of fellow sufferers who sought each other out in waiting rooms, comparing symptoms and discussing alternative treatments and trading nuggets of advice on various coping techniques. (Canned peaches, one man swore by.) The caregivers, hollow-eyed and weary, exchanged sympathetic glances but said nothing.

She traveled farther and farther away from him. She swung into battle against each new malady that popped up now here, now there, just when she wasn't looking, just when some test result or consultation had raised their hopes, while Dave dealt alone with the insurance and the medical bills and prescriptions.

Sometimes he thought the side effects of chemotherapy were contagious. He lost his appetite and he felt constantly, faintly nauseated and it seemed to him that when he cut himself shaving his blood took longer to clot. He said as much to Connie and she said, Do you have any idea how trivial that sounds to a person in my condition? The jolt of outrage her question gave him was almost enjoyable. For a moment, it freed him of guilt. But only for a moment.

All my life, he told Bitsy now on the phone, I've been so impatient to get to the next stage. I couldn't wait to grow up, to finish school, to get married; couldn't wait for you children to learn to walk and talk. I hurried things along anyhow I could. For what? I ask myself now. But here's the worst: when I think back on your mother's illness I see I reached the point where I couldn't wait for that to be over with, either. I'm horrified at myself.

Well, of course you couldn't wait, Bitsy said in a soothing voice. You were imagining she'd be well again.

No, honey, that's not what I mean, he said, although for one moment he considered pretending that it was. I mean that I was wishing for your mother to go ahead and die.

The silence stretched out long enough for him to regret telling her. Some things were best kept to oneself. Finally she said, Dad, would you like me and Jin-Ho to come over for a little visit?

No! he said, because he didn't want her to see what had happened to the study.

Would you like to come here? You could have lunch with us. Only PBJs, but you know we're always glad of your company.

Thanks, but I've got some chores to finish around the house, he said, and he told her goodbye.

It was wrong to burden her. He would have to endure this alone.

He went to the kitchen and fixed himself a bowl of cold cereal, but he found it too hard to swallow and he gave up after three spoonfuls. He sat dully at the kitchen table and gazed out at the neighbors' backyard, where the tree men were cutting down a huge old gnarly maple. The day before they had lopped off the leafy tip ends and fed them to the chipper, and he could imagine that overnight the maple must have stood there in some botanical version of shock. But only the smallest branches had been removed, after all. A tree so large could adjust to that. This morning, though, the men had moved on to the larger branches, and perhaps that too could have been adjusted to even though the tree had become as stubby and short-armed as a saguaro cactus. But now they were setting their chain saws to work on the trunk itself, and all those earlier adjustments turned out to have been for nothing.

He stood up heavily and carried his bowl to the sink.

At night now he welcomed sleep because his dreams had become so vivid. It was like a whole separate life; the paler his waking life grew, the more colorful his sleeping life. He dreamed, for instance, that he owned a giant tiger with a shaggy, yellowed rug of long white hair beneath its chin. The tiger padded into the room and rose silently to set its front paws on the foot of the bed and survey Dave's sleeping form. Then it appeared to make a decision and leapt up, deeply indenting the mattress, and trod across the blankets to set its nose an inch from Dave's face. Dave could smell its hot, meaty breath and feel the tickle of its whiskers even though they weren't touching him. It was a pleasant, friendly experience, not alarming in the least. But when he awoke the tiger was gone, and he was alone in his bed.

Maybe his dreams had been influenced by the scrabbling of animals in the attic just a few feet overhead squirrels or raccoons or mice. He should take steps to get rid of them, but there was a companionable intimacy to these nighttime sounds and so he kept putting it off.

If a nonexistent tiger could visit him, why not Connie? Why couldn't she be watching over him, as nearby as those attic creatures?

She used to believe that her ancestors were taking care of her. She'd been more spiritual than he, if not conventionally religious, and she used to quote a pagan saying, Gratitude is the root of all virtue, which she interpreted to mean that people should be mindful of those who had gone before. She imagined that her grandparents were cheering her on and guiding her through the hard parts, as well as the great-grandparents she had never known and the great-greats and so forth, all the way back. So why couldn't Connie herself be taking care of Dave? That this was a non sequitur occurred to him only belatedly. Connie wasn't his ancestor. They weren't even related. But he kept forgetting that. He thought of the medical consultation where, briefly and hypothetically, a doctor had mentioned a bone-marrow transplant. She can have my marrow! Dave had said, and only at the doctor's quizzical glance had he realized his mistake.

He closed his eyes again and willed her, willed her. He summoned up her most concrete details: her long spongy earlobes, the sparrow's-egg speckles on the backs of her hands, the slight croakiness of her voice that always made her sound so appealingly unselfconscious and lacking in vanity. Do you remember what it was like to have a date on a spring evening? she asked. It wasn't Dave she was talking to; it was someone on the phone. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a trowel in her lap; evidently the call had interrupted her gardening. Every year when spring comes, I find myself thinking of that. The boys would come up the front walk in their short-sleeved shirts that still smelled of their mothers' ironing, and we girls would be wearing flowered dresses and ballet slippers and no stockings and there was something so fresh and so… free about the first bare legs of the season. .

Dave was in the living room with his two sons and someone else. Who? Some neighbor woman, a friend of Connie's who had stopped by for a visit. Connie's on the phone, Dave told her, but she ought to be off any second. He cocked his head to listen for a winding-up note in Connie's voice, but she wasn't speaking just then and he realized now that she had been silent for several minutes. Then he understood that the silence was real the silence in the actual bedroom and that Connie wouldn't be speaking ever again.

The oldest photo album showed women in rigid dresses and complicated hairdos, men in collars so high that their chins were buried, and stern-faced babies smothered in white lace. These people might have interested him if he had known who they were, but he didn't. The captions inked on the back were frustratingly evasive. Sunday, September 10, 1893, just before a delicious meal treat, one read. Or, With the beautiful amaryllis Mother gave us at Christmas. It seemed no one had imagined that the day would come when these people would be strangers.

The later albums were more clearly labeled, but even if they had not been he would have recognized his paternal grandparents, sitting on a wide lawn with their firstborn, who grew up to be his Aunt Louise. Poor Aunt Louise: she had lost her only love to TB and died mindless in a nursing home at eighty-eight, but in the photo she was toddling triumphantly toward the camera with both little arms outstretched, and her parents were watching her progress with the proudest, happiest smiles.

In the forties people looked surprisingly glamorous, even his mother in her house dress with the slantwise stripes. In the fifties they took on color, mostly jarring pinks and blues, but they were dowdy now and rumpled and the men's haircuts were too short. Had Connie really consented to be seen in a shiny rose-colored sheath that narrowed at mid-calf so you wondered how she could walk?

After that, life must have grown more rushed, because the later photos weren't mounted. Dave opened each manila envelope to peer inside: Bitsy in her bucktoothed stage, before braces; Abe with a terrier puppy who'd been run over soon after they got him; Abe again, at his college graduation. In the bottom-most, thinnest envelope Jin-Ho and Susan were blowing soap bubbles at each other, but even they seemed long ago, their faces rounder than nowadays and less definite, less specific.

Oh, what was the point, what was the point, what was the point?

He wiped out the corner cupboard (three separate dust rags, that took) and placed the albums and the envelopes on the lowest shelf. He put the tax returns in the desk drawer where the sickroom supplies had been kept. From the basement he brought up his boxed set of miniature tools, his compartmented chest of screws and nails and his repair manuals and his tin of adhesives, and he arranged them on the upper shelves of the cupboard along with the crochet hooks and Connie's sewing basket. He lugged the trash out to the alley, the Goodwill bags to his car trunk. He dusted the desk and the lamp tables. He stuffed his cleaning rags into the hamper. He vacuumed the floor and the sofa, which was littered with specks of paper.

He felt too tired to fix himself supper. Instead he drank two glasses of Scotch and went to bed. His sleep was a drugged sleep, cottony, like a cloth laid over his face. He dreamed he was out in the country, walking through a vast field that he understood to be a furniture graveyard. Abandoned pieces of furniture were grouped by category an acre of beds, an acre of bureaus, an acre of dining-room tables. Dozens of armchairs sat beneath a mulberry tree, their seats empty except for the weeds growing up through their cushions, and the fact that they were facing each other made them seem all the lonelier. How can they stand this? he asked, and somebody off in the distance, some man in faded clothes, caroled, Ooh, how can they stand this? in a mocking, cruel voice. He stopped in his tracks, stricken. Then he felt a hand slipping into his, and he turned to see Maryam Yazdan calmly surveying the chairs. They are thinking of all they have lived through, she told him. They like to remember that. He found this consoling, for some reason, and so when she said, Shall we go? he tightened his hand around hers and followed her out of the field.

He woke up and lay for a long while staring into the dark.

By the time Maryam heard about Sami and Ziba's new house, they had already made a down payment and arranged a settlement date. She said, A new house? I didn't know you were looking!

Oh, we hardly knew it ourselves, Sami said, and Ziba said, We weren't sure we would find what we wanted; so why tell anyone?

Maryam was not just anyone, though, and it puzzled her that they had been so secretive. They must have pored over real-estate listings, taken numerous tours, debated the merits of one place compared with another. And yet they'd never breathed a word to her!

But she said, Well, this is wonderful. Congratulations. And she patted Susan on the knee. They were sitting in Maryam's living room, Susan on the sofa beside her with a picture book in her lap. Are you excited? Maryam asked her. Have you seen your new room?

It's got a window seat, Susan told her.

A window seat! Really!

You lift up the cushion part and there's space underneath for my toys. Me and Jin-Ho climbed all the way inside it, even.

Jin-Ho had been to the house?

They'd already told the Donaldsons?

Sami cleared his throat and said, We mentioned this place to Brad and Bitsy because it's in their neighborhood.

Ah. In Mount Washington, she said.

I hope you aren't disappointed we're not moving nearer you, Mom. We did think about Roland Park, but the general atmosphere of Mount Washington seemed more, I don't know…

The general atmosphere of Mount Washington seemed more Donaldsonian, Maryam thought. Better not say it, though. Well, still you'll be very close, she said. Five or ten minutes away! I'm delighted.

Then Sami and Ziba leaned forward at the same moment to pick up their teacups, as if they felt suddenly unburdened. And Maryam picked up her own teacup and smiled at them.

She thought she knew now why they hadn't told her. They were embarrassed to be observed copying the Donaldsons yet again. Oh, those Donaldsons, with their blithe assumption that their way was the only way! Feed your daughter this and not that; let her watch these programs and not those; live here and not there. So American, they were.

But Sami and Ziba thought the Donaldsons were unique, and Maryam didn't feel that she should be the one to set them straight.

The new house was on Pettijohn Street, just three blocks from Brad and Bitsy's. It had a big front porch, lofty old trees, and a spacious backyard. There was only one guest room, though; so Ziba said they would have to buy a foldout couch for the relatives. She invited Maryam to come along when she went shopping. Of course she knew all the furniture stores because of her work, and she spoke knowledgeably about styles and fabrics and projected delivery times. Oh, please! Nothing from Murfree-Mainsburgh, she told a salesman. They take forever with their orders. Maryam was impressed, even though she privately questioned Ziba's taste. Ziba said that her long-range goal was to outfit the house entirely in American Colonial, and she pointed out lace-canopied four-poster beds, velour-lined life chests for memorabilia, revolving stools on barley-twist pedestals, and scallop-trimmed entertainment centers, all in a high-gloss, cocoa-colored wood that seemed not quite real. But what did Maryam know?

They moved on a Friday in late April a nonworking day for Ziba and a working day for Maryam, so that all Maryam had to do was step down the hall to collect Susan from preschool when it was time to go home. She had volunteered to keep Susan till that evening.

Susan was in the Threes class, having turned four only in January. Usually Maryam resisted the urge to look in on her, and when the Threes tramped past the glassed-in office on their way to the playground she tried not to glance up from her desk. It was a pleasure, therefore, to have this excuse to walk straight into the classroom. The children were stowing their art supplies, washing their hands at the knee-high sinks, hanging their smocks in the cubbies labeled with their names. It took Maryam a minute to find Susan because she was sitting at the Reading Table with a book. Had she finished her art project early, or had she never joined the group at all? Maryam always worried, because Susan seemed so reserved next to her rowdier classmates. The teachers kept insisting, though, that she was doing fine. She's such a little… person, one had said just recently. Maryam's feeling exactly, and so she had relaxed, for the moment.

Time to go, she told Susan now. You're coming home with me today, remember?

Susan shut her book and filed it neatly away on the shelf, all without saying a word, but as she walked past one of the teachers she said, I get to sleep in my new room tonight.

Oh, I know you do! the teacher said. Greta, this was a spirited type.

But first I'm going to Mari june's because Mama's busy setting up my bed.

Well, aren't you lucky! Greta said, and she flashed a grin at Maryam. Have fun, you two!

Maryam smiled and thanked her, but Susan walked out of the room without responding. And in the car, she refused to discuss her day. You'd think Maryam would have learned by now, but she always found herself asking, How was school? What did you do? while Susan gazed out the side window in a silence that seemed not rude but diplomatic, as if she were graciously overlooking Maryam's faux pas. She still rode in a safety seat, because she weighed so little. Jin-Ho had graduated to a booster by now but Susan didn't yet qualify, even though she kept arguing about it.

Just the week before, Maryam had taken in a small stray cat that she'd named Moosh Farsi for mouse because of his gray coat. Susan was in love with him, and the minute they arrived at the house she had to race through all the rooms calling, Moosh? Moosh? Mooshi jon! Where are you, Mooshi jon?

Let him find you, Maryam told her. Come sit in the kitchen and have your snack. He'll show up by and by.

Which was what happened. Susan had barely started on her milk and cookies when Moosh appeared out of nowhere to twine around the legs of her chair. Moosh! she squealed. Can I feed him something? Can I give him some of my milk?

Try these cat treats, Maryam said, and she handed her a box.

Susan slid off her chair and squatted next to Moosh, her sharp bare knees jutting outward. On the wall above her, the phone started ringing, and Maryam reached over to answer it. Hello? she said.

It's Dave Dickinson, Maryam. How are you?

Hello, Dave. I'm fine; how are you?

I understand you're watching Susan this afternoon.

Yes, just till the movers are done.

I was wondering if you might like me to bring Jin-Ho to keep her company.

Oh, you have Jin-Ho today? Maryam asked.

Well, no, but I could go get her.

That would be very nice. Susan, she said, would you like for Jin-Ho to come over?

Susan said, Yes! without taking her eyes from the cat, who was cautiously sniffing the treat she held out. So Maryam told Dave, We'd love to see her. Thank you for thinking of it.

We'll be there in half an hour, he said.

He made such offers a lot nowadays. He must be missing Connie. And Maryam suspected also that he was having trouble adjusting to retirement. She could tell it from the way he prolonged all conversations, and took forever to say goodbye, and invariably joined in when the Donaldsons and the Yazdans got together for any social event.

This afternoon he stayed on after bringing Jin-Ho even though Maryam told him she'd be happy to watch both girls on her own. It's not as if I have anything better to do, he said, and then he gave a strange grimace. I mean, he said, I like sitting here. If I'm not in your way.

Not in the least, Maryam said. In fact, she had planned on using this time to make a meal to take Sami and Ziba, but she asked, Could I fix you a cup of tea? Or coffee?

Coffee would be good. Oh, but, I'm sorry; you have things to do, don't you? Really, I don't need any coffee.

She smiled at his phrasing. Although need was, come to think of it, a word that summed Dave up these days. He watched people so expectantly; he kept his eyes fixed on her so steadfastly as she moved around the kitchen. And when she set his coffee in front of him he was so disproportionately grateful. This is very kind of you, he said. I really appreciate your going to the bother.

It was no bother, she told him.

As long as he was just sitting there, she might as well proceed with her cooking. She took a pan from the cupboard almost soundlessly, as if that would keep him from noticing what she was up to. While she was filling the pan with water he said something she didn't catch, and she waited till she'd turned the faucet off before she said, Excuse me?

I was saying, this coffee tastes unusually delicious. Do you get it someplace special?

Just the supermarket, she said with a laugh.

Well, maybe it's because someone besides me made it. I get awfully tired of eating my own cooking.

A streak of gray passed by: Moosh escaping the girls, who followed close behind. He was not so much running as walking very fast, trying to keep his dignity, and the girls managed to corner him between the table and the door. Mooshi-Moosh, they were saying. Mooshi june! even Jin-Ho, squatting next to Susan and holding out a cat treat. Like Susan, she wore shorts and a T-shirt, and on her feet were those jelly sandals that all the children favored this year.

Mooshi? Is that his name? Dave asked.

Moosh, Susan told him.

Well, hi there, Moosh! Dave said heartily. Where do you happen to come from?

Susan turned to Maryam and wrinkled her forehead. She said, I didn't know Moosh could talk.

He can't, Maryam said, spooning out rice. You'll have to answer for him.

Oh. Susan turned back to Dave and said, Mari — june found him under her porch.

Lucky Moosh! he said.

Guess what, Susan told him. I get to sleep in my new room tonight.

So I heard. You have a whole new house.

The moving truck's moving my bed today.

Is it a normal house, or is it a magic house? Dave asked. What?

Well, for instance, some mornings when I go for my run I see this house two streets over that I really like to look at. It's got a porch swing, and a hammock, and a cupola on the roof. But then other mornings, I don't see it.

Susan sat back on her heels and studied him in silence. I mean, he told her, it's not there.

Where'd it go?

Well, I don't know, he said. Sometimes it's there and some — times it's not. A lot of things do that more than we're aware of. They do? She looked at Maryam. They do? she asked Maryam.

'There was one, and there wasn't one,' Maryam quoted, surprising even herself. 'Except for God, there was no one. '

Dave said, What's that?

That's how people at home used to begin old stories. It's like 'Once upon a time,' I guess.

Really! Dave said. He set down his coffee cup. That's fascinating! How does it go, again? 'There was one…'

Oh, well. It's just a loose translation, she said.

No, really. How does it go?

She couldn't say why she felt so weary, all at once. She dropped the scoop back into the rice bin. At her feet, Susan was asking, What's a cupola, Mari — june? Does my new house have a cupola?

Instead of answering, Maryam told Dave, You know, it's ridiculous that you should have to stay around here all afternoon just twiddling your thumbs. Why not let me bring Jin-Ho back when I take Susan home?

Oh, he said.

She felt a twinge of remorse. Not that you aren't welcome, she said. But there's no reason you should tie up your day.

I don't have a day, Maryam.

She pretended not to hear this. All you'd have to do is switch Jin-Ho's booster seat to my car, she said, if you don't mind my asking.

So that he was forced to say, Well, of course, I don't mind at all. Then he stood up, with his hands hanging loose at his sides in an empty, disconsolate way. But still she didn't relent.

Susan and Jin-Ho spent the afternoon building Moosh a house out of a cardboard carton. They begged a bath mat from Maryam to pad the floor, and they scrawled windows on the walls with a felt-tip marker. For a bed they lined a shoe box with one of Maryam's scarves, although she warned them that most likely Moosh would refuse to use it. Cats are too willful to sleep where you tell them to, she said. Jin-Ho said, Okay, the shoe box can be his bureau, then, but Susan who was fairly willful herself said, No! It's his bed! I want it to be his bed!

Well, I guess it won't hurt to try, Maryam told her.

And we're going to have a cupola, too.

Maryam laughed and went back to her cooking.

Around six o'clock, Ziba called to let her know they were more or less moved in. At least the furniture's in place, she said. So Maryam wrapped the rice pot in a towel and rounded up the girls and put them in the car. When she dropped Jin-Ho off at the Donaldsons', Bitsy came out with a Styrofoam cooler of food for Sami and Ziba. This can be for tomorrow, she said, and then I thought the day after tomorrow I'd invite them for supper at our house. Would you like to join us, Maryam? I could ask Dad to come too.

Oh, thank you, but I have plans, Maryam said. She didn't want Sami and Ziba to think she was overly involved in their lives.

On the way to the new house, she tried to orient Susan. See, when you're old enough to walk home from Jin-Ho's on your own you would pass this big house with the trellis, and then you would cross the street looking both ways first, remember and then at this next street you would turn right, at the yard with the bird feeder in it…

Susan listened in silence, studying each landmark as if committing it to memory. She had the most beautiful posture. She sat in her seat like a miniature queen, perfectly composed.

Ziba met them at the door in one of Sami's old shirts. Her face was shiny with sweat and there was a smudge on one cheekbone. Come in! she told them. Welcome to your new home, Susiejune! She swooped Susan up in her arms and showed her the living room. See how nice it looks? Do you like it? See where we put your rocking horse? Maryam, holding the rice pot, took a right instead of a left and headed toward the kitchen. She had planned to send Sami out to her car for Bitsy's cooler, but he was nowhere to be seen and Ziba was carrying Susan up the stairs now, chattering in a rather anxious way about how pretty Susan's new bedroom was; so Maryam went back for the cooler herself. She saw when she unpacked it that Bitsy had supplied not just a casserole of some sort and a container of salad, but also a dessert a homemade pie. She set the pie on the table next to her pot. The pot contained Sami's favorite dish: rice with fish and mixed greens, a meal complete in itself; but now she wished she'd provided something on the side.

Ziba came into the kitchen, holding Susan by the hand, and said, Will you stay and eat with us?

Maryam had assumed all along that she would stay, but the fact that the question had been asked made her doubtful, suddenly. She said, Oh, well, I know you must have work to do.

You're more than welcome, Ziba said, not denying that she had work.

So Maryam declined again and took her leave.

Slipping back into her car, waving at Ziba and Susan, who stood watching from the porch, she wondered if she had done the wrong thing. Should she have offered to help, to put the meal on the table and share it with them and clean up afterward? Or was Ziba glad to see the last of her? It was so hard to tell. She could understand, sometimes, why Sami lost his patience with these elaborate old-country courtesies that concealed everybody's true feelings.

She cast a final glance at the two on the porch and then pulled away from the curb, feeling unsettled and dissatisfied.

The new house changed their lives, and only for the better. Susan could join in the neighbor children's outdoor games no more complicated playdate arrangements. It was a ten-minute drive to her preschool, and less than that to the grocery store, and just a short walk to the Donaldsons'. When school let out for the summer and Maryam resumed her Tuesday-Thursday babysitting schedule, she sat on Sami and Ziba's front porch contentedly hulling strawberries while Susan rode her tricycle, or she puttered with Susan and Jin-Ho in the tiny backyard garden they had planted. The first slim carrots were ready in late June, and both girls were beside themselves. They ate them raw for lunch with a dill-and-yogurt dip. Even Susan, who usually spurned all vegetables, polished off three.

Maryam worked at Julia Jessup just one day a week in the summer. She paid a few bills, saw to correspondence, made a couple of telephone calls to order supplies or arrange for routine maintenance. Often the only other person in the building was the janitor, pushing his wide broom down halls that were already gleaming. The school's director, Mrs. Barber, spent her summers in Maine, but she would phone from time to time and ask how things were going. Oh, fine, Maryam would tell her. The men are here to resurface that place underneath the jungle gym, remember? And the Windham twins' father has been transferred to Atlanta, so I've written to the next two families on the waiting list. She was aware of sounding busier than she really was, as if trying to demonstrate that she was earning her pay.

Even during the school year this was an undemanding job, carried out at a measured pace among people long familiar to her. She worked in a kind of trance, sitting at an immaculate desk in the center of the so-called goldfish bowl that she shared with Mrs. Barber and Mrs. Simms, the assistant director. It soothed her, somehow, to perform the most trivial tasks to perfection. At the end of every day she emptied her computer's recycling bin, and she defragmented her hard drive exactly once a month.

In July she went to Vermont to visit her double first cousin, a daughter of an uncle on her father's side and an aunt on her mother's side. Farah was several years younger than Maryam, and different from her in almost every way. Living in an area where everyone else was a native, married to an ex-hippie she had met while she was studying in Paris, she had chosen to become exaggeratedly Iranian. She met Maryam's plane in an outfit so exotic that even in Tehran, people would have gawked: a maroon satin tunic over tight white leggings, curly-toed sequined slippers straight from a Persian miniature, and a bib of golden chains that all but covered her plump bosom.

Maryam jon! Maryam jon! she shrieked, jumping up and down. Everyone else at the gate pale and drab by comparison turned to stare at her. Salaam, Mari june! she cried. For a moment Maryam wanted to pretend she had nothing to do with this woman, but then when they were face-to-face she saw Farah's Karimzadeh eyes, long and narrow with pointed corners, and the Karimzadeh nose as straight as a pin. Unlike Maryam, Farah was letting her hair go gray, and the gray hairs frizzed and corkscrewed up from the black just as their grandmother's used to.

During the drive from the airport (in a dusty beige Chevrolet with a back seat full of machine parts), Farah spoke Farsi in such a rush that it seemed to have been bottled up inside her. She relayed all the news from home, quoting telephone conversations not just word for word but in the appropriate voices their cousin Sholeh's thin whine, their second cousin Kaveh's bullish bellow. Farah kept in much closer touch with the family than Maryam did. Oh, a dozen times a week, she said, one person or another will be wearing me out with complaints, and at my expense, too. Which implied it was she who placed the calls, but why, if she found them so tedious? Some form of survivor guilt, perhaps. They go on and on about the difficulties of current conditions their entertainment so limited, almost no films allowed, almost no music, no liquor except what the smugglers deliver in bleach jugs after dark. They imagine my own life is sheer pleasure. They have no idea how hard it is here!

To look at her, encased in satin and glittering with gold, their relatives might have laughed, but Maryam knew what she meant. It was hard, harder than the people back home could possibly imagine, and sometimes she wondered how they both had lasted this long in a country where everything happened so fast and everybody else knew all the rules without asking.

My sister reads off lists of items she wants me to send, Farah said. Athletic shoes and cosmetics and bottles of vitamin pills. There are vitamins in Iran! Perfectly good ones, but she believes that the vitamins in America are more powerful. I sent her a bottle of Vigor-Vytes and the first pill she took, she told me, 'Already I feel so much younger! I have so much more energy!'

Uttering the phrase Vigor-Vytes led Farah to change over to English, probably without meaning to. It was a phenomenon Maryam had often observed among Iranians. They'd be rattling along in Farsi and then some word borrowed from America, generally something technical like television or computer, would flip a switch in their brains and they would continue in English until a Farsi word flipped the switch back again.

I suppose you have less of that because your brothers can ask their children to send things, Farah was saying. Or Parviz can, at least, with his two up there in Vancouver where all the stores are excellent. (This last sentence flipped back and forth lickety-split, triggered first by Parviz and then by Vancouver.) And besides, you're so much stronger. You would just say no. I should be stronger. I am a, how you say, floormat.

Doormat, Maryam said.

Doormat. I am a push-off.

Maryam held her tongue.

They had been traveling through the New England countryside at a speed that was surely illegal, passing small, tidy farms that could have lined the tracks of a toy train set. Now they swerved onto a gravel road, with a clanking of metal from the back seat. A few minutes later they parked in the yard of the Jeffreys' gray clapboard house. Oh, good, Farah said. William's home.

He was sitting on the front porch steps a wiry man in faded jeans. When he saw the car he rose and ambled over, grinning. Salaam aleikum, he said as Maryam stepped forth, and then, in English, It's good to see you.

It's good to see you, she told him, pressing her cheek to his.

William was one of those men who had never quite managed to leave their adolescence behind, in her opinion. His jeans were patched with bits of the American flag, and he wore a wisp of a goatee and a single long braid which, now that he was bald on top, made it seem that his hair had somehow slipped several inches backward on his head. His enthusiasm for all things Iranian struck her as adolescent, too. Guess what! he told her now. I've made fesenjan for dinner tonight in your honor.

Exactly what I'm in the mood for, she said.

William was in full charge of the cooking and the housework. He was also the breadwinner; he taught creative writing at the local college. Maryam couldn't imagine what Farah did with her time. They had no children hadn't wanted them, evidently and she had never held a job. When she led Maryam upstairs to the guest room she said, Now, I think the bed's made up… oh, yes, good. The wildflowers on the bureau, jammed clumsily into a cruet, were probably William's doing as well.

Once Maryam had unpacked they met for cocktails in the parlor, which had the hollow, barnlike feel of a bare-bones New England farmhouse but was decorated with Persian rugs and Isfahani enamelware and jewel-like paisley fabrics. William talked about his newest invention: he was working on an executive toy that he felt sure would make them rich. It's kind of on the order of a lava lamp, he said. You remember those. Only this is much classier-looking. He brought it out to show her: an hourglass shape, in clear plastic, filled with a viscous liquid. See, he said, inverting it, how the liquid sort of squiggles down, spirals clockwise awhile and then changes to counterclockwise, builds up on the surface in a pyramid shape and then all at once decides to flatten… Doesn't it just grab you?

Maryam nodded. She did find it oddly mesmerizing.

What gave me the idea was, we were coming to the end of a bottle of McGleam shampoo and so I turned it upside down over a new bottle; you know how you do. Propped it just so in order to get the last few drops out. And I was watching the drip and suddenly I thought, Man! This could be some, like, Zen-like thing that would center people and focus them. We could market it as a device to lower people's blood pressure! So I worked out this design; figured out the most attractive shape… only I haven't got the liquid quite right. I mean, it has to be the proper consistency. Thick like McGleam but not too thick, of course, and clear like McGleam because I believe clear is more calming Why can't you just use McGleam? Maryam asked.

Oh. Use McGleam.

Wouldn't that be the obvious solution?

But… shampoo? Besides, McGleam's about the most expensive brand in the drugstore. He gazed fondly at Farah. Nothing but the best for Farah — june, he said.

Farah gave him a languid wave and told Maryam, What can I say? I have that tanglesome Karimzadeh hair.

Over dinner that evening (a real Iranian meal from start to finish, everything authentic), Farah reminisced about their shared childhood. She had a sunnier vision of the past than Maryam did. All her memories seemed to involve hilarious parties, or wagon rides at the family's summer place in Meigun, or daylong picnics with every single relative on both sides in attendance. Where were the quarrels and the schisms, the uncle who took opium and the uncle who embezzled, the aunts' endless, bitter competition for their father's grudging notice? Did Farah not remember the cousin who killed herself when they forbade her to go to medical school, or the cousin who was refused permission to marry the boy she loved? Oh, those were happy, happy times, Farah sighed, and William sighed too and shook his head as if he had been there himself. He loved to hear talk about Iran. He would prompt Farah if she skipped a detail. And the coins! he said. Remember them? The brand-new gold coins that they used to give you children every New Year's? Maryam found this presumptuous of him, although she knew she should feel flattered that he was so interested in their culture.

It must have been the dinner conversation that caused her to dream that night about her mother. She saw her mother as she had looked when Maryam was just a child pure black hair and unlined skin, the beauty mark on her upper lip accentuated with an eyebrow pencil. She was telling Maryam the story about the nomad tribe she used to spy on as a girl. They had moved into the compound across the street, arriving mysteriously late one night. The women wore gold up to here (and she gestured toward one elbow). The men rode shining horses. One morning she awoke and all of them had vanished. In the dream, as in real life, she told this story in a slow, caressing voice, with a wistful look on her face, and Maryam herself awoke wondering for the first time if her mother might have longed to vanish also. She had never asked her mother a single personal question, at least as far as she could remember; and now it was too late. The thought stirred up a gentle, almost pleasurable melancholy. She still mourned her mother's death, but she had traveled so far from her, into such a different kind of life. It no longer seemed they were related.

The guest room was beginning to grow light, and the window above her bed showed a square of pale gray sky and a jagged black ridge of fir trees. The scene struck her as no less eerie than a landscape on the moon.

Over the next several days, she fell into the leisurely routine of the women from her childhood. She and Farah sat drinking tea as they leafed through glossy magazines. William was generally tinkering in his workshop or off somewhere cruising hardware stores and junkyards. Then in the afternoon he started cooking, and every evening he served another Iranian dinner. He took great pride in stating the names of the dishes in Farsi. Have some khoresh, he would say, the kh so stressed and labored that it sounded like a cough. As the week wore on, Maryam found this behavior more and more ridiculous. Although really, where was the harm? She knew she was being unreasonable.

On the last evening of her visit he asked, May I serve you more polo? and she said, Why don't you just call it rice?

He said, Pardon? and Farah looked up from her plate.

I mean, Maryam said, backpedaling, thanks, I'd love more polo.

Am I pronouncing it wrong? he asked her.

No, no, I just. . She disliked herself, suddenly. She seemed to be turning into a cranky old lady. I'm sorry, she said to them both. I guess it's the combination of the different languages. I get confused.

But that wasn't what was bothering her.

Once, a year or two after Kiyan's death, a colleague of his had asked her to a concert. A nice enough man, American, divorced. She hadn't been able to think of a good excuse for declining. In the car she had mentioned that Sami was contemplating tennis camp she had used that exact word, contemplating and the man had said, You have an excellent vocabulary, Maryam. And then a few minutes later he had told her he would love to see her sometime in her native dress. Needless to say, she had not gone out with him again.

And once while she was waiting in her doctor's office a nurse had called, Do we have a Zahedi here? and the receptionist had answered, No, but we have a Yazdan. As if they were interchangeable; as if one foreign patient would do as well as another. And the way she'd pronounced it: Yaz-dun. But even if she'd said it properly, Yazdan was an Americanization, shortened from its longer form when Kiyan first came to this country. Besides, in point of fact Maryam was not a Yazdan anyhow. She was a Karimzadeh, and back home she would have stayed Karimzadeh even after marriage. So the person they were referring to didn't even exist. She was an invention of the Americans.

Well. Enough. She straightened in her seat and smiled across the table at William. I believe this is the best ghormeh sabzi I've ever eaten, she said.

He said, Gosh, merci, Maryam.

When she got back to Baltimore, she found that Susan had changed just in that one week. Several freckles as fine as powdered cinnamon were scattered across her nose now, and she had learned how to walk in flip-flops. She strutted through the house with little slapping sounds as the rubber soles hit her heels. Also, Ziba said, she had discovered death. It's like it all at once dawned on her. I don't know from where. She wakes every night now two or three times and asks if she's going to die. I tell her not till she's old, old, old. I know I shouldn't promise that. But I tell her, 'Children don't die.'

Exactly right, Maryam said firmly.

Well, but Children do not die.

Bitsy told her not to worry about it anyhow, because she'd get to come back again as somebody else.

Maryam raised her eyebrows.

But Susan said, 'I don't want to be somebody else! I want to be me!'

Yes, of course she does, Maryam said. Tell her Bitsy's crazy. Oh, Mari — june.

People have no business pushing their airy-fairy notions on other people's children.

She meant well, Ziba said.

Maryam allowed herself a derisive hiss, although she knew that Ziba was right. Bitsy had only been trying to offer reassurance. And she'd been a blessing during Maryam's time in Vermont keeping Susan not just that Tuesday and Thursday but all of Saturday when Ziba's mother had had to undergo an emergency appendectomy. So on Maryam's first Tuesday back home, she made a point of inviting Jin-Ho over to Susan's for the day. Brad delivered her, along with her bathing suit rolled in a towel, and the girls spent the morning splashing in the inflatable wading pool. After lunch, while they were napping together (really just giggling and whispering upstairs in the guest room), Maryam prepared two separate pots of chicken with eggplant, and when it was time for them to walk Jin-Ho home she carried one of the pots with her to give to the Donaldsons.

Bitsy said, Is that what I think it is? the minute she opened her door. Am I smelling what I think I am? You've made my favorite dish!

A small token of our thanks, Maryam said. You were so kind to take care of Susan.

I was happy to do it. Won't you come in?

We should be getting back, Maryam told her.

I've just finished making a pitcher of iced tea.

Thank you, but Right, I forgot, Bitsy said. When it comes to matters of tea you're such a purist. You must hate when people put ice in it. Maryam said, Not at all, although it was true that she had never understood the practice.

For some reason Bitsy seemed to take this as acceptance of her invitation, because she turned to lead the way into the house. The girls scampered after her and Maryam reluctantly followed, wondering how she had ended up agreeing to this. I didn't leave Ziba a note, she said, placing her pot on the kitchen table. She'll be wondering where we've gone. But even as she spoke she was settling onto a chair.

You know what you should do? Bitsy asked. She opened the fridge and took out a blue pitcher. You should come help us eat your dish tonight when you've finished watching Susan. Oh, I'm sorry; I can't, Maryam told her.

Dad will be here!

I'm having dinner with a friend.

Bitsy went to the cupboard for glasses. Jin-Ho said, Mama, can me and Susan make popcorn? but all Bitsy said was, What a pity. A man friend, or a woman?

Pardon? A woman. My friend Kari.

Mama. Mama. Mom. Can me and Susan I'm having a conversation, Jin-Ho. So, Maryam, is there ever an occasion when you have dinner with just a man?

Maryam felt taken aback. She said, Are you talking about a… date? Goodness, no.

I don't know why not, Bitsy said. You're a very attractive woman.

I'm past all that, Maryam said flatly. It's too much work. But you surely don't think my father would be work, Bitsy said. Your father?

Mama, can me and Susan make popcorn?

I am talking, Jin-Ho. Bitsy set a glass of iced tea in front of Maryam. She hadn't filled her own glass, but she didn't seem to realize that. She sat down opposite Maryam. My father thinks you're wonderful, she said.

Well… and I think he's very nice.

Would you ever go out to dinner with him?

Maryam blinked.

He doesn't know I'm asking this. He'd be mortified if he knew! But you're so… Well, face it, Maryam: you can be fairly daunting. If we waited for him to get up the courage to ask you himself, we'd be waiting forever!

Maryam said, Oh, I

He's been mooning over you for months, Bitsy said. She leaned forward, clasping her hands on the table. Her eyes had grown round and shiny. Don't tell me you haven't noticed, she said.

You must be mistaken, Maryam said, at the same time realizing that Bitsy was probably right. All those coincidental encounters, the way he kept hanging about, the goodbyes that took forever… She sighed and sat straighter in her chair. Let's talk about your new baby, she said. Ziba says you've heard from the Chinese adoption people.

Bitsy said, Oh, yes, the. . But clearly her mind was not on the adoption people. She stayed frozen in her earnest pose, fingers still interlaced and her gaze fixed on something inward.

They have a child picked out for you, I understand?

Yes, a… girl. She appeared to collect her thoughts, finally. Well, of course a girl, she said. That's almost always the case. But still we have a long wait. Probably till next spring, can you believe it? Our daughter's going to be ten or twelve months old before we set eyes on her, and meanwhile there she is! All alone in that big orphanage!

And so on and so forth, all the niggling requirements and rules and regulations. Maryam took a sip of her iced tea. The girls were on the back porch now, playing with a toy that tinkled out a tinny version of Old MacDonald. The afternoon sun sent a dusty slant of gold across the tiles, and the kitchen seemed safe and peaceful once again.

At dinner that night, Maryam asked Kari, Do you ever feel exposed because you're not half of a couple?

Kari said, Exposed?

I mean, oh, not threatened; I don't mean that, but vulnerable? Unprotected? Anyone can walk up to you and just… invite you out on a date!

Horrors, Kari said, and she laughed. But then immediately she grew serious again, so that Maryam suspected she understood what she had been asked. She must; she was a beautiful, fine-boned woman with hauntingly shadowed eyes. Men surely invited her out all the time, although she had never mentioned it. I tell them my culture forbids it, she said.

Maryam said, You don't! because she'd always felt that Kari was about as liberated as a woman could get.

I say, 'Pardon? Go out? With a male person? Oh, my goodness!' I say, 'It's clear you don't know I'm a widow.' They say, 'Oh. Uh. .' because of course they do know, but now they're wondering if there's some primitive Turkish taboo that they weren't aware of.

I should do that, Maryam said, only half joking.

It was probably too late, though. Oh, why had she labored all these years to appear so assimilated, so modern and enlightened? Take up wearing a veil, Kari suggested.

But she was laughing again, and so Maryam laughed too and went back to studying her menu.

It was Sami and Ziba's turn to host the Arrival Party. Ziba had grand plans, it emerged. I'm thinking about a whole roast lamb, she told Maryam after work one day. Wouldn't that be impressive? You know our Greek friends, Nick and Sofia: they did that for their Easter. Nick dug a hole in their backyard and their auto mechanic made them the spit. We could borrow it, they say. Don't you think?

That sounds like a lot of trouble, Maryam said.

I don't mind the trouble!

And a lot of food, too. How many people are coming?

Oh, tons of people; you know how it is. Well, only two of my brothers this year, as it happens; but also their wives, and three of their children, and my parents. And all those Dickinsons and Donaldsons or Mac and Abe, at least, and Bitsy's father…

Still, a whole lamb! Maryam said.

But Ziba seemed to be following some other train of thought now. She was gazing at Maryam with a speculative expression. In fact, she said, I think her father would come even if you were the only one here. A dimple showed up in one cheek. Especially if you were the only one here.

It sounds as if you've been listening to Bitsy, Maryam said drily. I don't need to hear it from Bitsy! Any idiot can see how he feels.

Well, this is not a subject that interests me, Maryam told her. She took her handbag from the couch.

Ziba said, Oh, Mari — june. He's such a kind man, and he always seems so lost. Besides, think how convenient this would be for our two families. Couldn't you just go to dinner with him?

Maryam stopped digging through her bag for her keys. She said, For heaven's sake, Ziba! Why would you suggest such a thing?

Why wouldn't I suggest it? You're alone; he's alone… I'm Iranian; he's American. .

What difference does that make?

You should have been at Farah's with me, Maryam told her. Then you wouldn't ask. Such a point her husband makes about her foreignness! It seems she's not really Farah at all; she's Madame Iran.

Dave wouldn't do that.

Oh, no? 'Tell me,' she said, putting on an earnest tone of voice, 'what are your people's folktales, Maryam? What are your local customs? Tell me your quaint superstitions.'

He did not say that.

Well, almost, Maryam said. She had her keys in hand now. She said, Anyhow, I'm off. Susie — june? Susan? I'm going.

Susan didn't answer. She was singing a song from Sesame Street as she rode her rocking horse.

See you Thursday, Maryam told Ziba.

But this Ziba was so stubborn. Following Maryam to the front hall, she said, I'm not asking you to marry him.

Ziba! Enough!

Or to have a romantic relationship, even. Why, people go to dinner all the time in this country! It doesn't have to lead anywhere. But you don't understand that, because your own marriage was arranged and you never had the chance just to see a movie with a man or grab a hamburger with him.

There was a great deal that Maryam could have said to this, but she merely waved a hand and stepped out the door. Ordinarily they would have kissed cheeks. Not today. She clicked down the front walk. She could sense Ziba watching after her but she didn't turn around.

What she could have said to Ziba was: her marriage may have been arranged, but it was nothing like what everyone imagined.

She had been the most Westernized of young women, the most freethinking and forward-looking. She attended the University of Tehran but she hardly had time for her classes because of her political activities. This was when the Shah was still very much in power the Shah and his dreaded secret police. There were terrible, terrible stories. Maryam attended clandestine meetings and carried tightly folded messages from one hiding place to another. She was thinking she might join the Communist Party. Then she was arrested, along with two young men, while the three of them were distributing leaflets around campus. The young men were kept several days but Maryam's Uncle Hassan arranged for her release within the hour. She wasn't sure how he accomplished it. No doubt there was much head-shaking and cluck-clucking and offering of cigarettes from his flat silver cigarette case. Money changed hands too, probably. Or maybe not; Maryam's family had influence.

But not influence enough, they told her not if she went on behaving like this, endangering herself and all of them as well. Her mother took to her bed and her uncles stormed and shouted. They talked about making her drop out of the university altogether. They considered sending her to Paris, where her second cousin Kaveh was studying science. Maybe she could marry him. She would have to marry someone.

Then their neighbor, Mrs. Hamidi, mentioned her friend's son. He was a doctor in America, a pathologist with a good-paying nine-to-five job and no on-calls, and he happened to be home right now for a three-week visit. His mother thought it was time he got married. She had been introducing him to various young women even though he said he wasn't interested.

Mrs. Hamidi came to tea, bringing her friend and the friend's son, Kiyan. He was a tall, stooped, serious man in a dark gray business suit, and to Maryam he had seemed quite old, it amused her now to recall. (He'd been all of twenty-eight.) But she liked his face. He had thick eyebrows and a large, imposing nose, and the corners of his mouth gave away his thoughts, mostly turning downward at the older women's insinuations but once or twice twitching upward when Maryam made some caustic response. She could tell that Kiyan's mother found her impertinent, but what did she care? She was planning to marry for love, perhaps when she was thirty.

The women discussed the weather, which was warming up early this year. Maryam's mother announced that her rosebushes had begun to send out green shoots. Everybody's eyes traveled to Maryam and Kiyan, who had been nudged into adjacent chairs at the start of the visit. Maryam jon, her mother said in honeyed tones, wouldn't you like to show Agha Doctor the roses?

Maryam sighed audibly and stood up. Kiyan made a grumbling noise but he stood too.

As in every living room that Maryam had ever seen, the dozens of straight-backed chairs lining the walls framed a giant square of empty space, and she and Kiyan had to cross this space in order to leave. When they reached the center, some demon seized her and she stopped short, turned toward all those staring women, and performed a snatch of the Charleston the part where the hands crisscross saucily over the knees. Not a person moved. Maryam turned and walked on out, followed by Kiyan.

In the courtyard, she gestured toward the scratchy bare shrubs and said, Notice the roses.

The corners of Kiyan's lips were twitching upward again, she saw.

Also the fountain, the jasmine, the full moon, and the nightingale, she said.

There was no moon, of course, and no nightingale either, but she flung one arm toward where they might have been.

Kiyan said, I'm sorry about this.

She turned to look at him more closely.

It wasn't my idea, he said.

He had the faintest difference in his speech. It was not a real accent, and it was certainly not an affectation. (Unlike the speech of her cousin Amin, who had returned from America pretending such an unfamiliarity with Farsi that he had once referred to a rooster as the husband of the hen.) But you could tell that Kiyan was out of practice with his native tongue. This made him seem less authoritative, and younger than she had first thought. She found herself warming to him. She said, It wasn't my idea either.

Somehow I guessed that, he said, and this time the corners of his mouth lifted into a smile.

They sat down on a stone bench and discussed what had happened to the country since he had been away. I hear there have been demonstrations against our mighty Shah of Shahs, he said. My, what bad, rude people, and the two of them dissolved in silent laughter. They exchanged their views about politics, and human rights, and the status of women. On every issue they agreed. They interrupted each other to spill out their tumbles of thoughts. Then after half an hour or so Kiyan cocked his head toward the house, and she followed his eyes and saw three of her aunts clustered at a window. When the aunts realized they had been noticed, they shrank hastily out of sight. Kiyan grinned at Maryam. We've given them quite a thrill, he said.

Maryam said, Poor old things.

Let's go to a movie tomorrow. They'll be in heaven.

She laughed and said, Why not?

They went to a movie the next evening, and to a kebab house the day after that a university holiday and that evening to a party at the home of one of his friends. This happened to be a period when young women had more freedom than at any other time before or after, in spite of Maryam's complaints, and her family thought nothing of letting her go unchaperoned. Besides, it was understood that Kiyan's intentions were honorable. He and Maryam would almost surely be getting married.

But they had no interest in marrying. They agreed that marriage was limiting and confining, a state that people settled for when they wanted to reproduce.

At night she began to feel his presence in her dreams. He never physically appeared, but she caught a whiff of his nutmeg scent; she felt his looming height beside her as she walked; she was conscious of his particular grave, amused regard.

It was unfortunate that by the time they first met, he had already been in the country for five days of the twenty-one planned. The end of his visit drew closer. The women in Maryam's family became more anxious, their questions more pointed. A hopeful-looking uncle or two began popping into view any time Kiyan paid a call.

Maryam pretended not to notice. She acted breezy and unconcerned.

One day after her English class she was descending a long flight of steps with two friends when she caught sight of Kiyan waiting at the bottom. Spring had backed off somewhat, and he wore a casual brown corduroy jacket with the collar turned up. It made him look very American, all at once; very other. He was gazing away from her toward some people boarding a bus. The sight of his strong, pronounced profile sent a knife of longing straight through her.

He turned then and saw her, and he watched without smiling as she approached. When they were face-to-face, he told her, Maybe we should do what they want.

She said, All right.

You would come with me to America?

She said, I would come.

They set off walking together, Maryam hugging her books to her chest and Kiyan keeping his hands deep in his jacket pockets.

As it happened, there was no way she could go with him when he left, a mere four days later. They had a long-distance ceremony that June Kiyan in Baltimore on the phone, Maryam in Tehran in her Western-style floor-length wedding dress with guests from both families surrounding her. The next evening, she left for America. Her mother held a Koran above Maryam's head as Maryam walked out the front door of the family compound, and all the women were crying. You would never guess that they had been praying for this to happen since the day she was arrested.

She had not been one of those Iranians who viewed America as the Promised Land. To her and her university friends, the U. S. was the great disappointer the democracy that had, to their mystification, worked to shore up the monarchy back when the Shah was in trouble. So she set out for her new country half excited and half resistant. (But underneath, shamefully rejoicing that she would never have to attend another political meeting.) The main thing was, she was joining Kiyan. Not even her closest girlfriends knew how Kiyan had grown to fill every inch of her head. When she stepped into the Baltimore airport and saw him waiting, wearing a short-sleeved shirt that showed his unfamiliar, thin arms, she experienced a moment of shock. Could this be the same person she had daydreamed of all these weeks?

She was nineteen years old and had never cooked a meal, or washed a floor, or driven an automobile. But clearly Kiyan took it for granted that she would somehow manage. Either he lacked the most basic sense of empathy or he had a gratifying respect for her capabilities. Sometimes she thought it was the first and sometimes the second, depending on the day. She had good days and she had bad days more of the bad, to begin with. Twice she packed to go home. Once she called him selfish and dumped a whole crock of yogurt onto his dinner plate. Couldn't he see how alone she felt, a mere woman, undefended?

Telephoning overseas was not so common back then, and so she wrote her mother letters. She wrote, I am adjusting very well and I have made several friends and I am feeling very comfortable here; and in time, that became true. She enrolled in driver's ed and earned her license; she took evening courses at Towson State; she gave her first dinner party. It began to dawn on her that Kiyan was not as acclimated to American life as she had once supposed. He dressed more formally than his colleagues, and he didn't always get their jokes, and his knowledge of colloquial English was surprisingly scanty. Instead of disenchanting her, this realization made him seem dearer. At night they slept curled together like two cashews. She loved to press her nose into the thick damp curls of hair on the back of his neck.

That part, the most powerful aunts on earth could not have arranged.

Sami said he was dubious about roasting a lamb on a spit. He worried it would disturb the neighbors. So Ziba added more dishes to the menu, and her mother came for a week and helped with the cooking. Afternoons, Maryam joined them. They peeled eggplants and mashed chickpeas and chopped onions until the tears were streaming down their cheeks. Susan was given the task of washing and soaking the rice. It touched Maryam's heart to see her standing on a chair at the sink, no bigger than a minute, wearing an apron that fell to her toes and concentrating importantly on stirring the rice about in its bath of cold water. While she worked she practiced the song that Bitsy was teaching the girls. Evidently Bitsy had given up trying to dissuade the welcomers from their eternal darned 'Coming Round the Mountain,' as she put it, and was focusing instead on the arrivers. She had sent away for a CD of Korean children's songs, which to her dismay turned out to have not a single word of English on either the label or the case. For all we know, these are dirges, she had complained to Ziba. But the song she had selected seemed anything but a dirge, with its jaunty, perky melody and its chorus of Oo-la-la-la-la's. Maryam found it charming, although Susan told her that she and Jin-Ho had preferred another one. She sang no more than a line of the other one Po po po, it sounded like before collapsing in a fit of giggles, for some reason. Maryam smiled at her and shook her head. She was struck by the ease with which Susan had picked up this music, as if her Korean roots ran deeper than anyone had guessed. And yet here she stood, tossing her colander of rice with the efficient, forward-swooping motion employed by every Iranian housewife.

In the intimacy of the kitchen, Mrs. Hakimi timidly ventured to call Maryam by her first name. Maryam, I don't know, does this have enough mint? she asked in Farsi. Unfortunately, Maryam couldn't think fast enough to remember Mrs. Hakimi's first name in return, but she compensated by saying, Oh, you would know far better than I using the familiar you. She wasn't sure why they were still so stiff with each other. By rights they should be as chummy now as sisters. She suspected that the Hakimis considered her too independent. Or too unsocial. Or something.

Ziba was discussing the guest list now. I wish we had more guests from our side, she said. I wish Sami had brothers and sisters. There are always so many Donaldsons! Could you invite Farah, maybe? Oh, Maryam said, well. . And she let her voice trail away. The thing was, Farah would probably accept. And William would come with her, as long as Mercury was not retrograde or some such New Age prohibition. They would stay with Maryam for a week or more and she would have to involve herself in their many group activities. Farah got along famously with the Hakimis. The last time she was in Baltimore Maryam had had to ferry her to Washington for three separate dinner parties, in addition to giving a dinner herself to pay everybody back.

It was true that she was unsocial.

She went home that afternoon happy to be on her own, grateful for the quietness and neatness of her life. For supper she had a glass of red wine and a slice of cheddar cheese. She watched a television program on the habits of the grizzly bear.

In the middle of the program, Dave Dickinson phoned. He said, I was thinking about this weekend. Could I offer you a ride to the party?

Thank you, but It seems silly to take two cars.

But I'll have to be there early, she said, helping with the preparations.

Couldn't I help too?

No, I don't believe you could, she said. Besides, you live right there in the neighborhood. It makes no sense for you to drive over here.

He said, I guess I was just thinking it would be nice to have your company.

Thanks anyway, she said.

There was a silence.

Goodbye now! she said.

She hung up.

The bear shambling through the woods had a matted, rough coat that made her sad, and she pressed the off button on the remote control.

The Chinese orphan was ready at last. (Like a muffin, Dave pictured when he heard.) Brad and Bitsy packed baby clothes in three different sizes, gift toys for the orphanage, money in red gift envelopes, disposable diapers, nursing bottles, powdered formula, strained prunes and peaches, zinc ointment, scabies medication, baby Tylenol, a thermometer, antibiotics for both infants and grownups, granola bars, trail mix, vitamin pills, water purification tablets, melatonin, compression kneesocks, electrical adaptors, a dental emergency kit, and pollution-filtering facial masks. Dave was the one who drove them to the airport, and he had some difficulty fitting everything into his car trunk.

He stayed with Jin-Ho at her house rather than his, because her parents felt three weeks was too long for a not-quite-five-year-old to be uprooted from her home. He slept in the master bedroom an intrusive-feeling arrangement, but Bitsy had insisted. (It was closest to Jin-Ho's room.) Every morning when he awoke, the first thing he saw was a photograph of Brad and Bitsy hugging on a beach somewhere. The second thing was Bitsy's earring tree, hung with big, crude, handcrafted disks of copper and wood and clay.

It was early February, so Jin-Ho had preschool every weekday morning. That was a help. And most evenings they were invited to supper at Mac's or Abe's house, or the Yazdans', or a neighbor's. But the rest of the time it was just the two of them, Dave and Jin-Ho on their own. He told himself that now they could really get to know each other. How many grandfathers were given such a chance? And he did enjoy her company. She was a lively, inquisitive child, full of chatter, fond of board games, crazy about any kind of music. But he never completely lost an underlying sense of nervousness. She wasn't really his, after all. What if something happened? When she went outdoors to play he found himself checking through the window for her every couple of minutes. When they crossed even the narrow, untrafficked street she lived on he made her take his hand in spite of her objections. My mom lets me cross without holding on, she said, as long as she's beside me.

Well, I'm not your mom. I'm a worrywart. Humor me, Jin-Ho.

Sometimes in the evening she would grow the least bit tremulous, once or twice even tearing up. What do you think they're doing now? she would ask. Or, How many more days till they're back? And occasionally she showed some impatience with his unBitsy-like ways. He didn't brush her hair quite right; he didn't cut her toast right. For the most part, though, she adapted very well. She knew her parents would be bringing her a sister something she very much wanted. She talked about how she planned to feed Xiu-Mei her bottle and push Xiu-Mei in her stroller. Xiu-Mei was pronounced something like Shao-may, to Dave's imperfect ear. (He'd first heard it as Charmaine.) He found the sound a bit harsh, but Jin-Ho was more accepting. It was me and Xiu-Mei this, me and Xiu-Mei that. Me and Xiu-Mei are going to share the same room as soon as she sleeps through the night, she said.

What if she gets into your toys? Won't that bother you? he asked.

She can play with my toys all she likes! And I'm going to teach her the alphabet.

You'll be the perfect big sister, he said.

Jin-Ho beamed, two little notches of satisfaction bracketing her mouth.

It amazed him that she had no definite bedtime no schedule whatsoever, almost. Modern life was so amorphous. He thought of the leashes people walked their dogs with nowadays: huge spools of some sort that played out to allow the dogs to run as far ahead as they liked. Then he chided himself for being an old stick-in-the-mud. He rubbed his eyes as they sat at an endless game of Candy-land. Aren't you sleepy, Jin-Ho? She didn't even deign to answer; just efficiently skated her gingerbread man four spaces ahead.

While she was in preschool each day he'd go home and check on his house, pick up his mail, collect his telephone messages. He missed his normal routine. The trouble with staying at somebody else's place was that you couldn't putter; you couldn't fuss and tinker. Although he did his best. He bled all of Brad and Bitsy's radiators and he planed the edge of a door that was sticking. He brought some neat's-foot oil from home and spent an evening rubbing it into the scarred leather knapsack that Bitsy used for trips to the farmers' market. What's that? Jin-Ho asked him, leaning on his arm, giving off the licorice smell of modeling clay.

It's neat's-foot oil. It's good for leather.

What's a neat's foot?

You don't know about neats? Ah, he said. Well, now. There's the shy brown neat, and the bold brown neat. This particular oil comes from. . He picked up the can and squinted at it, holding it at arm's length, . comes from the shy brown neat.

It was the kind of tale he used to tell his own children; he was famous for it. They would take on a look of suppressed glee and prod him to go further. But Jin-Ho knitted her brows and said, Did they kill the shy brown neat?

Oh, no. They just squeezed its feet. Neats' feet are very oily, you see.

Does the squeezing hurt?

No, no, no. In fact the neats are grateful, because otherwise they would slip and slide all over the place. That's why they don't make good house pets. Their feet would ruin the rugs.

Her expression remained troubled. She stared at him in silence. He was sorry now that he'd started this, but he didn't know how to get out of it. Maybe she was too young to know when someone was pulling her leg. Maybe she lacked a sense of humor. Or maybe this was it, really they needed an audience. Another grownup, whose snort would give away the joke. In the old days, that had been Connie. Connie would scold him good-naturedly: Honestly, Dave. You're terrible. And she would tell the children, Don't you believe a word of it.

He set down the can of neat's-foot oil. He wished he could fall into bed now.

Maryam telephoned to invite the two of them to supper. I'll ask Sami and Ziba too, she said, so Jin-Ho will have someone to play with. But of course, her real reason was that the presence of other people would make the occasion less intimate. He could read her like a book.

She did not have the slightest romantic interest in him. He had come to accept the fact. It helped a bit to know that she didn't seem to have an interest in anyone. At least he couldn't take it personally.

He had begun to look around lately and wonder who else might be out there. On his latest birthday he had turned sixty-seven. He might have a good twenty years left. Surely he wouldn't be forced to spend all those years on his own, would he?

But other women seemed lackluster when he compared them with Maryam. They didn't have her calm dark gaze or her elegant, expressive hands. They didn't convey her sense of stillness and self-containment, standing alone in a crowd.

This evening she wore a vivid silk scarf tied around her chignon, and it streamed down her back in a fluid way as she turned to lead them into the living room. Sami and Ziba were already there, settled on the couch with the cat curled between them. Susan was upstairs; she clattered halfway down in enormous high-heeled pumps and summoned Jin-Ho to play dress-up with her. Mari — june's piled a whole bunch of clothes in a box for us, she said. Lace things! Satin! Velvet! From her shoulders, a full red skirt billowed out like a cloak.

The girls disappeared upstairs, and Dave took a seat and accepted a glass of wine. The subject at first was the news from Brad and Bitsy. Brad had sent out a group e-mail from China. They had collected Xiu-Mei, he reported, and she was perfect. They were traveling now with the other parents to a city with a U. S. consulate, and once they had Xiu-Mei's papers in order they would be on their way home. Everyone had seen this e-mail but Maryam, who didn't own a computer. (Her house was so spare that it took Dave's breath away. No cable or VCR or cordless phone or answering machine; no tangle of electrical wires everywhere you looked.) Sami had printed her a copy, and now she placed a pair of tortoiseshell glasses on her nose and read it aloud. 'Xiu-Mei is tiny and she doesn't sit yet, but every day we put her on our bed and pull her up by the hands just to give her the idea. She thinks it's a game. You should see her laugh.'

Maryam lowered the letter and looked over her glasses at the others. Eleven months old and doesn't sit! she said.

They lie on their backs all day in the orphanage, Dave explained.

But isn't it a natural drive to sit? Don't babies always struggle to be vertical?

Sooner or later they do. It's just that it takes them longer if nobody pays them attention.

Maryam said, Ah, ah, ah a series of brief sighs and took her glasses off.

Dinner, to Dave's surprise, was entirely American: roast chicken and herb-roasted potatoes and sautTed spinach. He felt oddly discouraged by the competence of it. Did she have to do everything well? It pleased him to discover that the potatoes were the slightest bit too crusty on the bottom. Or maybe that was deliberate; these Iranians, with their scorched rice and such…

Perhaps he'd been wrong in thinking that he didn't take her lack of interest personally.

Jin-Ho attended dinner in a lady's black silk blouse and a pair of needle-heeled ankle boots. Susan wore a T-shirt as big as a dress with FOREIGNER printed across it. Foreigner? Dave said. He assumed the shirt had been Sami's. You used to be a Foreigner fan? he asked him.

Oh, no, that was Mom's.

You were a Foreigner fan? he said to Maryam.

She laughed. It's not the singing group, she told him. It's just the word. Sami had that shirt printed for me as a joke when I got my citizenship. I was so sad to become American, you see.

Sad!

It was hard for me to give up being a citizen of Iran. In fact I kept postponing it. I didn't get my final papers till some time after the Revolution.

Why, I'd have thought you'd be happy, Dave told her.

Oh, well, certainly! I was very happy. But still… you know. I was sad as well. I went back and forth about it the usual Immigration Tango.

I'm sorry, Dave said. He felt like an oaf. He hadn't even known it was usual. He said, Of course, that must have been difficult. I apologize for sounding like a chauvinist.

Not at all, Maryam told him, and then she turned to Ziba and offered her more spinach.

He always did this with Maryam said something clumsy or dropped something, spilled something. In her presence his hands felt too big and his feet seemed to clomp too noisily.

The topic of citizenship led Sami to his cousin Mahmad. He's a citizen of Canada, he told Dave. This is the son of Mom's brother, Parviz. He lives in Vancouver now with his twin sister. And last month he was invited to speak at a medical meeting in Chicago. Seems he's some kind of expert on liver regeneration. But just before he boarded the plane, he was stopped by the officials. September eleventh, of course. Ever since September eleventh, every Middle Easternulooking person is a suspect. They took him away; they searched him; they asked him a million questions… Well, end of story: he missed his flight. 'Sorry, sir,' they said. 'You can catch the next flight, if we've finished by then.' All of a sudden, Mahmad starts laughing. 'What?' they ask. He goes on laughing. 'What is it?' they ask. 'I just realized,' he tells them. 'I don't have to go to the States! They're the ones who invited me. I don't have to go, and I don't want to go. I'm heading back home. Goodbye.'

Maryam said, Ah, ah, ah, again, although she must have heard this story before.

That's a damned shame, Dave said. Absurdly, he felt the urge to offer another apology.

And when Brad and Bitsy land in Baltimore, Sami said, have you thought about where their friends will meet them? Speaking of September eleventh. When the girls arrived, we were all at the gate, but this time we'll be, I don't know, milling around outside, being shouted at by the police.

Jin-Ho said, Police! Police are going to shout at us?

No, no, of course not, Ziba told her. Hush, Sami. Talk about something else.

And Maryam jumped in to ask if people were ready for dessert.

They all left immediately after supper, because of Susan's bedtime. (So not every modern-day family had dispensed with regular schedules.) Dave didn't offer to stay behind and help with the cleanup. He knew Maryam would say no, and besides, he didn't even want to stay. The evening had left him feeling off balance. He was dying to get home.

When he thanked Maryam at the door, she said, If there's anything you and Jin-Ho need, please feel free to call me.

Oh, I will, he said.

But he knew he wouldn't. Under the glare of the porch light, Maryam seemed stark and severe. Her arms were folded across her chest in a way that struck him as ungenerous, although he knew she was only bracing herself against the cold night air. He recalled the faint look of amusement she often took on around Bitsy, and the time she'd complained that Americans read only American literature, and the time she'd announced that this country didn't understand yogurt. It was just as well he saw no more of her than he did.

As he was settling Jin-Ho in his car, he happened to overhear Sami and Ziba from the car parked just ahead. Where's Susan's bear? Ziba was asking. Did you get her bear? and Sami said, It should be in the back. I don't think she brought it inside. The easy companionability of it the buddy system that was a long-established marriage made Dave go hollow with longing.

On the evening of Xiu-Mei's arrival, Dave drove Bitsy's car to the airport. It was outfitted now with a second child seat Jin-Ho's outgrown one, the baby kind. Jin-Ho sat in her booster next to it, wearing a button that said BIG SISTER and holding a giant rectangular box wrapped in pink polka-dot paper. Inside the box was a green plush frog almost as big as she was. Dave had voted for something smaller, but Jin-Ho was adamant. Xiu-Mei has to notice it, she said. So he'd given in.

Bitsy's car was strewn with balled-up tissues and cracker crumbs and parts of plastic toys. It also pulled to the left a bit; he should remember to mention that. He drove more slowly than usual, yielding any time another car edged in front of his. The evening was drippy and misty, not all that cold but dank. He had to keep the defogger on.

Jin-Ho wanted to know if Xiu-Mei would feel homesick. What if she gets here and decides it's not as nice as China? she asked.

Oh, she won't do that. She'll take a look around and say, 'This is great! I like it here!'

She doesn't talk yet, Grandpa.

Right you are. How silly of me.

Jin-Ho was quiet a moment, rhythmically kicking the passenger seat in a way that would have been irritating if anyone had been sitting there. Then she said, Remember when me and Susan tried to dig a hole to China?

I remember it very well, Dave said. Your dad sprained his ankle stepping into it after dark.

So the kids in China, Jin-Ho said. Are they? Well, I never thought about it, but I guess they might be. Sure; why not?

Wouldn't that be cool?

Very cool.

They'd pop up out of the ground one day when me and my friends were playing. They'd say, 'Hey! Where are we?' I'd say, 'Baltimore, Maryland.'

Very cool indeed, he said.

He supposed he should point out a few problems with the logistics, but why bother? Besides, he took some pleasure in this uncomplicated, coloring-book version of the world, where children in Mao jackets and children in Levi's understood each other so seamlessly.

In the airport parking garage, he drove past Abe's Volvo as it was pulling into a space. And then on the pedestrian bridge, Jin-Ho called out, There's Susan! I see Susan! Susan was walking ahead with her parents, swinging a shopping bag at her side. The three of them turned and waited for Jin-Ho and Dave to catch up. I'm bringing Xiu-Mei a frog! Jin-Ho said. She had to crane around her big box to see in front of her, but she'd refused to let Dave carry it for her.

Well, I'm bringing her a bath towel with a hood for her head and a washcloth and a yellow duck and a bottle of special shampoo, Susan said.

It was good of you to come, Dave told the Yazdans.

Oh, we wouldn't miss it, Ziba said. Jin-Ho, let me read your button. So you're a big sister now!

There was no sign of Maryam. Dave wasn't sure she'd even been told the arrival time.

Once they were inside the terminal, Dave said goodbye to the Yazdans and led Jin-Ho toward Pier D. The plan was that the two of them would wait immediately outside Security so that they could be the first official greeters. Then they would go down to baggage claim, where the others would be gathered.

Jin-Ho looked very grave and important. She stood beside Dave, hugging her gift, gazing steadily toward the approaching passengers even though the L. A. flight hadn't landed yet. At first Dave tried to entertain her by pointing out the sights (Can you believe how many people travel with their own bed pillows?), but Jin-Ho's polite, abstracted responses shut him up, finally. He rocked back on his heels and studied the different faces all ages and all shades, each one wearing the same dazed expression.

Then at long last, here they came Brad in front, forging the way, laden with totes and hand luggage, and Bitsy close behind, a bundle of pink quilt on her left shoulder. Bitsy looked exhausted, but when she saw Dave and Jin-Ho she brightened and veered toward them. Brad followed; he had been about to go off in the wrong direction.

Jin-Ho! Bitsy said. We missed you so much! She knelt and hugged Jin-Ho. Still kneeling, she turned the pink quilt bundle to face outward.

Xiu-Mei had spiky black bangs and sharply tilted eyes that gave her a whimsical air. It was impossible to see her mouth because she was sucking a pacifier.

Xiu-Mei, this is your big sister, Bitsy told her. Say, 'Hello, Jin-Ho!'

Xiu-Mei took a deeper suck on her pacifier, causing it to wiggle. Jin-Ho stared at her in silence. Too late, Dave realized that he should have brought a camera. Downstairs there would be several, but this was the scene they would want to have on record. Not that there was much to show, really. Like most life-altering moments, it was disappointingly lacking in drama.

Hell of a flight, Brad was telling Dave. We had turbulence from the Mississippi on, and the takeoff and the landing bothered Xiu-Mei's ears. Everybody swore the pacifier would help, but man, she was screaming her head off.

It was true that a single tear rested on Xiu-Mei's cheek. I got her a present, Jin-Ho said.

Oh, wasn't that nice of you! Bitsy told her. What a good sister! She sent Dave a grateful look and stood up, setting Xiu-Mei against her shoulder again. Shall we go down and see the others?

First she has to open her present, Jin-Ho said.

Not now, honey. Maybe later.

Dave expected Jin-Ho to insist, but she meekly fell in beside Bitsy. He relieved her of her gift so that she could keep pace. From Brad he took a couple of tote bags, and he followed them toward the down escalator. Jin-Ho looked so big, all at once, that he felt a pang for her. He remembered feeling the same about Bitsy when they brought her new baby brother home. Her hands had looked like giant paws and her knees had seemed so knobby.

Downstairs, a cheer arose. Their welcoming committee was standing at the foot of the escalator friends and relatives smothered in their winter wraps, bearing gifts and balloons and placards. As soon as Brad reached the ground level, he dropped his bags and grabbed the baby, quilt and all, and held her over his head. Here she is, folks! he said. Ms. Xiu-Mei Dickinson-Donaldson. Cameras flashed, and video cameras followed Xiu-Mei's progress into Brad's mother's arms. Isn't she precious! Brad's mother said, hugging her close. Isn't she a sweetie pie! I'm your Grandma Pat, sweetie pie.

Xiu-Mei stared at her, and the pacifier bobbed.

Now Bitsy could turn to Jin-Ho, thank heaven, and take hold of her hand. Everyone headed for the baggage carousel, where suitcases and knapsacks were just starting to arrive. You should have seen what they gave us for breakfast every day, Bitsy was telling Jin-Ho. So many foods we'd never eaten before! You would have loved it. Jin-Ho looked doubtful. Laura's camera flashed in her face. Polly fifteen years old now and bored to death with family events adjusted the earphones on her CD player and eyed a boy in a football jersey. People here were wearing a wild assortment of clothing. Some, evidently fresh from the tropics, had on Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, and some wore puffy ski boots and multiple bobbles of down. A young couple walked by carrying canvas cases the size and shape of ironing boards, mountain passes dangling from their jacket zips, the woman flinging back her streaky dark hair and the man describing a wipeout in an Irish accent that made it sound like wape-oot; and right behind them came… why, Maryam, strolling up at an unhurried pace with her hands thrust into her coat pockets. She approached Jin-Ho, who was standing to one side now while Bitsy scanned the baggage carousel. Is your sister here? Maryam asked her, and Jin-Ho said, Grandma Pat's got her.

Maryam looked over toward Brad's mother, who was surrounded by various women cooing at Xiu-Mei. Very cute, she said, without attempting to move closer.

We're assuming she's cute, Dave said, but we can't be sure till she takes that pacifier out of her mouth.

Does it bring it all back? she asked him. The day Jin-Ho arrived?

Oh, yes. My goodness, yes.

But he said this just for Jin-Ho's sake, to make her feel a part of things. In fact, tonight seemed nothing like that evening four and a half years ago. Oh, everyone was making an effort. Lou was walking about with a microphone, recording congratulations. Bridget and Deirdre were harmonizing on She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, and one of Bitsy's book-club friends carried a WELCOME, XIU-MEI sign. But the atmosphere was different now that people hadn't been allowed to gather at the gate. The crowd had a mismatched, ragtag feel, and the enthusiasm seemed forced.

Maryam was telling Jin-Ho about Jin-Ho's own arrival. Your plane was late, she said, and we had to stand around for ages. We had shown up early, of course, because we were so eager to meet you. It seemed you were never coming! And not a word of explanation for what was causing the delay.

To hear her, you would think that she herself had been there for Jin-Ho's sake. Dave all but forgot that she hadn't even known them back then.

Susan said, Our plane was late? She edged in between Jin-Ho and Maryam. I didn't know our plane was late! Did you? she asked Jin-Ho.

Jin-Ho just shrugged and gazed elsewhere. (There were times when Dave wondered if she would prefer not to be reminded of Arrival Day.)

They never did announce it, Maryam went on. But a moment came when we understood that something must be happening. They opened the door to the jetway; all of us gathered around…

Brad and several others, meanwhile, were building a mountain of luggage next to the carousel even more luggage than he and Bitsy had left with. Finally Brad stepped back and started reading aloud from a list. Duffel bag: check. Garment bag: check. Red suitcase, blue suitcase, smaller blue suitcase. . Bitsy had reclaimed Xiu-Mei and was traveling through the crowd inviting all the welcomers to return with them to the house. Lord only knows what it looks like. Remember I haven't been there myself for the past three weeks, she said (slightly offending Dave, who had cleaned the place top to bottom just that morning). But we'd love to see you, all of you, and Jeannine is bringing refreshments, bless her heart. A flush had risen in her neck always a sign of excitement, with Bitsy and she looked gawky and fervent. Dave felt a stab of love mixed with pity; he couldn't have said quite why.

Well, I'm an old fool, Lou was saying cheerfully. I poked my mike at somebody who turned out to be a stranger. I took him for one of the neighbors or some such. But he was mighty nice about it. Said, 'Regretfully, I don't have the pleasure of knowing these people but I certainly wish them the best and I think they're very lucky to have such a beautiful baby.' Of course I could always erase him, but I'm thinking I might leave him in.

Definitely leave him in! Bitsy said. Is he still here? We should invite him back to the house! She hoisted Xiu-Mei higher on her shoulder and turned to Dave. Dad, will you be riding with us? Can you fit between the two car seats?

I don't see as I'll need to try, he told her. I'll just hitch a ride with…

He turned to look for Abe or Mac and found himself face-to-face with Maryam. She said, Certainly. I can take you.

Before he could explain, Bitsy said, Great! Thanks, Maryam. And thanks for coming to welcome Xiu-Mei.

I wouldn't have missed it, Maryam said, but in that idle, floating tone that always made Dave wonder if something had struck her as humorous.

Everyone headed for the parking lot carrying pieces of luggage, Dave in front so he could show where he'd left the car. Jin-Ho protested when he tried to stash her present in the trunk. I have to give that to Xiu-Mei! she said. She can open it while we're riding.

Okay, sweetheart, he said. See you in a few minutes.

He handed Brad the keys and then set off with Maryam to where she had parked her own car, one more level up. The garage felt colder than outside, bone-chillingly cold, and both of them walked quickly, the sound of their footsteps almost metallic against the concrete floor.

Isn't it odd, Maryam said. Just like that, a completely unknown person is a part of their family forever. Well, of course that's true of a birth child, too, but… I don't know, this seems more astonishing.

To me, both are astonishing, Dave said. I remember before Bitsy was born, I used to worry she might not be compatible with the two of us. I told Connie, 'Look at how long we took deciding whom we'd marry, but this baby's waltzing in out of nowhere, not so much as a background check or a personality quiz. What if it turns out we don't have any shared interests?'

Maryam laughed and wrapped her coat more closely around her.

They didn't speak again until they were in her car, merging onto the highway with the ticket booth behind them. Then Dave said, How about Sami and Ziba? Think they'll adopt another?

I suspect they feel that one child is all they can afford, Maryam told him. What with the cost of private schools these days.

They don't believe in supporting public education?

She sent him a sideways glance but said nothing; merely drove for several minutes in silence. Her profile, edged in silver by the passing headlights, seemed icy and austere, the long slant of her nose impossibly straight.

Although I guess that's a very personal decision, he said finally. She said, Yes.

He felt a surge of rebelliousness. What right did this woman have to act so superior? He said, You know, it wouldn't do you any harm to indulge in a little to-and-fro discussion.

She sent him an even briefer glance and went back to watching the road.

You could tell me, for instance, that the Baltimore public schools are abysmal. I could say, well, yes, but if the parents got involved I still had some hope we could change things. Then you could say you didn't want to sacrifice your granddaughter's future for a mere hope. I could handle that! I wouldn't fall apart!

Still she didn't speak, but she seemed to be fighting back a smile.

You act as if you think you're so right that you don't need to bother arguing, he said.

She said, I do? and now she gave him a full-on stare of surprise.

It's as if you think, Oh, these cloddish Americans, what do they know about anything?

I don't think any such thing!

It's harder than you realize, being American, he told her. Don't suppose we aren't aware how we appear to the rest of the world. Times I used to travel abroad, I'd see those tour groups of my countrymen and flinch, even though I knew I looked pretty much the same. That's the hell of it: we're all lumped in together. We're all on this same big ship, so to speak, and wherever the ship goes I have to go, even if it's behaving like some… grade-school bully. It's not as if I can just jump overboard, you know!

Whereas we Iranians, on the other hand, Maryam said wryly, are invariably perceived as our unique and separate selves.

He said, Well. He felt slightly foolish. He knew he had overreacted.

Did you see how people edged away from Sami and Ziba and me at the airport tonight? No, probably you didn't. You wouldn't even have noticed. But that's what it's been like ever since September eleventh. Oh, she said, sometimes I get so tired of being foreign I want to lie down and die. It's a lot of work, being foreign.

Work?

A lot of work and effort, and still we never quite manage to fit in. Susan said this past Christmas, she rode home with me after school one day and she said, 'I wish we could celebrate Christmas the way other people do. I don't like being different,' she said. It broke my heart to hear that.

Well…, Dave said. He spoke cautiously, not wanting to call forth another of Maryam's looks. Um, maybe you could let her have a little tiny Christmas tree. Would that be a problem?

She did have a tree, Maryam said. They were entering the city now and she glanced into her side-view mirror, checking for a chance to switch lanes. She had a huge tree. That much we could do for her.

Then… I don't know, decorations? A wreath, a string of lights?

Of course. Also mistletoe.

Ah. And… would it go against your beliefs to give her a few small presents?

She received dozens of presents. And gave them.

She did, he said. He was quiet for a moment. A stocking, maybe, he said at last. Did she hang a stocking?

Oh, yes.

And how about the caroling? I mean, not the more religious carols, of course, but maybe 'Jingle Bells' and 'Good King Wenceslas,' and, let's see, 'I Saw Three Ships…'

She went caroling with the next-door neighbors. They walked up and down her street singing every single carol there is, baby Jesus and all.

Well, then, he said. I'm not quite sure But in the car that day she told me, 'It's not the same. It doesn't feel the same. It's not like a real Christmas.'

He started laughing.

Oh, for goodness' sake, he said. You're talking about every child in this country!

She braked for a light and looked over at him.

He said, You don't think that's what all of them say? They say, 'Other families celebrate better; on TV it seems much better; in my mind it was going to be better.' That's just Christmas! That's how it works! They have these idealized expectations.

She did seem to get his point, he saw. Something seemed to clear in her forehead.

The kid's one hundred percent American, he said.

She smiled and started driving again.

For the rest of the way they rode in a silence that Dave didn't try to break, because she seemed deep in thought. At red lights she tapped a fingernail against the steering wheel as if keeping time with some private dialogue, and as she slowed in front of Brad and Bitsy's house she said, You're right, of course.

I am?

I am far too sensitive about my foreignness.

What? Wait. That's not what I said.

But she nodded slowly. I make too much of it, she said. She had brought the car to a stop now but she left the engine running; so he gathered she would not be coming in. She stayed facing forward, gazing out the windshield. One could even call it self-pity, she said. A trait that I despise.

I would never say that! You don't have an ounce of self-pity.

No, you see, she said, you can get in a, what would you call it, a mind-set about these things. You can start to believe that your life is defined by your foreignness. You think everything would be different if only you belonged. 'If only I were back home,' you say, and you forget that you wouldn't belong there either, after all these years. It wouldn't be home at all anymore.

Her words struck Dave as profoundly sad, but her voice was cool and her profile remained impassive. A yellow glow kept flickering across her face as guests passed between the car and the front-walkway lamp.

Dave said, Maryam.

She turned and observed him from a distance, it seemed, her expression friendly but contemplative.

You belong, he told her. You belong just as much as I do, or, who, or Bitsy or… It's just like Christmas. We all think the others belong more.

At least she seemed to be listening to him. She cocked her head and kept her eyes on his. He felt self-conscious, all at once. He hadn't meant to sound so solemn. Anyhow, he said in a lighter tone. Aren't you coming inside?

She said, Oh..

Please, he said, and he reached for the ignition key and turned off the engine. She didn't object. Come in, he told her, and he gave her the key. And then it seemed that the words began to mean something more, and he said, Come in, Maryam. Come inside, and her fingers closed not just around the key but around his fingers too, and they sat there clasping hands and looking at each other soberly.

Well. Ziba didn't know what to think. People kept asking her questions the women, mostly. Her mother and her sisters-in-law and Siroos's wife, Nahid. Is Maryam… is she…? Could there be some special reason she is always with that Bitsy person's father?

She showed up with him at the Hakimis' New Year's party in March the real one, the completely Iranian one that Ziba's parents gave every year at a big hotel in Washington. Ordinarily she would not have attended. Khanom thinks she's too high-class for our simple family gathering, the relatives liked to tell each other, although in fact there was nothing simple about it, which was probably why Maryam had always before sent her regrets. It was very, very dressy, very musical and loud, and it lasted far into the night. But this year, there she was, in a long black silk caftan trimmed with gold embroidery, her chignon of pure black hair pulled back tight and sleek, her face a perfect, stunning oval perfectly made up, and Dave Dickinson stood next to her in a baggy gray suit and blue shirt and striped tie, perhaps the first tie Ziba had seen him in outside of his wife's funeral. He was almost the only American present. Oh, a few of the young male cousins had married blondes there was no getting past that Iranian thing about blondes but still the man was noticeable for his pale-skinned, faded appearance. Not that it seemed to bother him. He was looking all around with an expression of open joy, taking in the elaborate decorations and the musicians with their santours and tambours and the dressed-up children running wild among the grownups. When he saw the array of foods, he pressed his huge hands together as if he could barely contain his happiness. This made some of the other guests laugh, and Ziba felt almost sorry for him although he himself seemed unaware.

She had known he would be coming, but only because her parents had told her at the last minute. Maryam herself had said nothing. Did she say anything to you? Ziba asked Sami, and Sami shook his head. This was before the party began, even, but still it came as a shock to find Dave in the midst of the swirling crowd an hour or so later. He stood beneath a high marble arch, next to a fluted column. There were not two inches of space between him and Maryam. Ziba paid close attention to that. (Everybody did.) All evening he stuck to Maryam like a shadow, although he never actually touched her. Maryam, for her part, seemed merely his acquaintance. She didn't set a hand on his when she spoke to him; she didn't take his arm as they moved toward Sami and Ziba to say hello. It was early in the relationship, then: a first or second date. Or maybe not a date at all; maybe a cultural expedition born of Dave's curiosity. Or a convenience for Maryam, who felt uncomfortable driving at night. (But in that case, why not just ride over with Sami and Ziba?)

Ziba telephoned Bitsy the very first thing the next day. Bitsy said he hadn't breathed a word to her.

In April, at Maryam's own New Year's party that she had put on every spring since the girls' arrival, Dave was already settled in when Sami and Ziba got there. And they got there early. As usual, they came to help out ahead of time, not that Maryam ever left the slightest detail unseen-to. It was Dave who offered them drinks, Dave who went to answer when Ziba's parents rang the doorbell. Although again, he and Maryam stayed physically quite separate, and he complimented her food as any casual guest might wanting to know the name of a spice and appearing to have no previous, inside knowledge of her menu.

Bitsy, when she and Brad showed up, said, Oh, there you are, Dad! We've been phoning you all morning to see if you'd like a ride.

All morning? Ziba thought. Exactly how long had he been here?

Ziba's mother told her later that she should come right out and ask Maryam what was going on. She's your mother-in-law! she said on the phone. You see her almost daily! Ask, 'Should we be buying our wedding clothes?'

Ask Khanom? Ziba said.

As a rule, Ziba objected when her family called Maryam Khanom behind her back. Madame was all it meant, but in their particular tone it might as well have been Her Highness. Ziba pretended to disapprove. She never let on how intimidating she had always found Maryam. Really you just have to get to know her, she often told them, and she hoped with all her heart that someday that would be true. Now, though, she admitted it: I wouldn't have the nerve to ask her!

Her mother said, Well, Sami, then. Surely she would tell Sami.

Sami said he didn't mind asking in the least. But he waited till the next time he saw Maryam in person, Ziba noticed. He didn't just pick up the phone and address the subject head on. (Which Ziba refrained from pointing out. There was a certain delicacy between them, a certain gloved and tentative quality, when it came to discussing his mother.) The next Sunday afternoon, when they stopped by Maryam's house to drop off Susan on their way to a movie, Sami said, What: no Dave? Seems to me Dave is everywhere I look these days.

No Dave, Maryam said serenely. Susan, come look at my garden with me! I need to decide what flowers to plant.

Butter would not have melted in the canary's mouth; wasn't that the saying?

And if they are a couple, Ziba ventured to ask Sami once they were back in the car, how would you feel about that? Would you feel I'd feel fine, Sami said.

Because I know it might seem strange to you, seeing your mother with somebody new.

I would wish her every happiness. She deserves it, after all. It's not as if my father was an easy man to live with.

He wasn't? Ziba said.

Oh, no. He slowed for an intersection.

You never told me that.

Oh, he was very moody. Very up-and-down, Sami said. You just couldn't predict, with him. When I was a kid I'd check his face every morning to see if it was going to be a good day or a bad day.

That's not the way your mother talks about him at all!

On good days he was quite friendly asking about my schoolwork, offering to help with my projects. On bad days, he just… sank in on himself. He went all morose and dissatisfied; he demanded constant attendance. 'Maryam, where's my this?' and 'Maryam, where's my that?' Had to have his special tea and his English digestive biscuits. Demanding. A very demanding man. I always wished Mom would stand up to him more.

Ziba said, Really.

She wondered how it was that Sami hadn't mentioned this till now. Men! she thought. And then she felt a flood of appreciation for all the ways that he was different from his father. There was nobody steadier, more even-tempered and amiable than Sami, and he was so conscientious about helping with the housework and the child care. The women in her family marveled at that. She moved over as close as her seatbelt allowed and laid her head briefly on his shoulder. That must have been hard for you, too, she told him.

But he said, Oh, it wasn't too bad, and then, What time did you say this movie starts?

Men.

In May a new contraption appeared in Maryam's kitchen: an electric kettle with a teapot that matched it exactly both a modernistic brushed steel, the teapot's base the very same circumference as the kettle's top. No longer did she have to balance the one tipsily on the other. Oh! Where did that come from? Ziba asked.

From that import shop in Rockville, Maryam said.

You went to Rockville by yourself?

Bitsy's father drove me.

Ah.

Ziba waited. Maryam measured out tea leaves.

I thought you liked your Thousand Faces teapot from Japan, Ziba said finally.

Well, I did, Maryam said. But this is nice, too. And besides… it was a gift.

Ah, Ziba said again.

Maryam had her back turned, so Ziba couldn't see her expression.

It was a favorite subject now any time Ziba and Bitsy got together. What was happening? they asked each other. And why bother keeping it secret? Didn't Maryam and Dave realize that everyone in both families would be thrilled to see them dating? They cataloged the few clues they'd gathered: Maryam was less often available for babysitting duty; Dave had been caught playing an LP record of Iranian music sung by a woman named Shusha. Shusha! Ziba said. Maryam's favorite singer! And Maryam is the only person I know who still doesn't own a CD player.

Although she did own an answering machine now. After all the times that Sami and Ziba had urged her to get one! But she didn't seem to know how to work it. Her outgoing announcement kept reverting, for some reason, to the generic greeting provided by the factory Please… leave… a… message in a robot-like male voice without intonation. And then, mysteriously, a new announcement of her own would take its place, even though she had claimed to need Sami's help to record it. He would show up as requested and she would say, vaguely, Oh, it's back to normal again, I believe. But thanks. As if the new announcement had installed itself by magic, while she was looking elsewhere.

Dave must have done that. Dave must have bought the answering machine in the first place another gift. She used to say that an answering machine would just complicate her life. What are you implying: you can't be bothered calling me twice if you don't find me at home? she would ask. One of those Maryam-isms, those Her Highnessuisms, that always made Ziba close her eyes for an instant.

Oh, Bitsy said, they're dating, all right.

But if so, why not admit it? Ziba asked.

Maybe Maryam is embarrassed. She told me once she was past all that; maybe she feels sheepish now that she's changed her mind.

It's hard to imagine Maryam feeling sheepish, Ziba said. They smiled at each other.

Once upon a time, Ziba had been painfully shy in Bitsy's presence. Bitsy had seemed so much older and more accomplished; she was so creative; she was passionately involved in politics and recycling programs and such and she had very knowledgeable opinions.

But that was before she fell all over herself apologizing for her Americanness and her First Worldness and her white-breadness, as she called it. She was forever complimenting Ziba's exotic appearance and asking for her viewpoint on various international issues. Not that Ziba had much of a viewpoint, or any that was different from what she read in the Baltimore Sun if ever she could find the time. But somehow she was granted a kind of authority, even so.

And then lately, she had become Bitsy's moral support almost her elder as various difficulties arose with little Xiu-Mei. It seemed Xiu-Mei was having trouble taking root. She was a very sweet child, very warm and loving, but every germ that came along managed to lay her low, and twice since her arrival she had had to be hospitalized. Bitsy had the sagging, sleep-deprived appearance of the mother of a newborn. Sometimes she was still in her bathrobe at ten o'clock in the morning. She snapped at Jin-Ho over trifles and she seemed defeated by her own house. So Ziba ran her errands, and collected Jin-Ho for playdates, and offered what reassurance she could. Xiu-Mei's so much bigger now than when you brought her home, she said. And look at how she hangs on to you!

In the beginning, Xiu-Mei hadn't known how to hang on. It could be that she had never been held. She would arch her back in a stiff, rejecting posture when people tried to pick her up. But now she nestled in Bitsy's lap and clung to a twist of her sleeve, observing the scene narrowly over her pink plastic pacifier. They couldn't get that pacifier out of her mouth. Bitsy said she regretted ever introducing it, although what choice had they really had, with the flight home such a problem? Now we have a pacifier in every single room, she said, in case of an emergency, and three or four in her crib and half a dozen in her stroller. When I'm feeding her I have to unplug her mouth, pop in a spoonful of food, and then plug the pacifier back in again; and she objects the whole time. I think that's why she's so thin.

She was thin thin and wispy and small for her age, and at fourteen months she had not yet begun to crawl. But no one could doubt her intelligence. She watched one face and then another so closely she might have been lip-reading, and when Jin-Ho and Susan were playing nearby she grew especially attentive, following every movement with her tip-turned, bright-black eyes.

If only she would nap, Bitsy said, I believe I could get on top of things here. But she refuses. I lay her down in her crib and she starts shrieking. Not just crying shrieking, in this high sharp wailing voice. Sometimes late in the evening I think, There was something I meant to do today. What? What was it I meant to do? And then I remember: comb my hair.

Which reminds me, Ziba said. You know the Arrival Party: I think we should have it at our house this year.

Why? You had it last year.

Yes, but with Xiu-Mei and all That party is three months away, Bitsy said. If life isn't any better by then, I'll be on the psych ward.

All the more reason to have it at our house, Ziba said, risking a joke. But Bitsy failed to smile.

So Ziba switched the subject, and asked if Bitsy thought the girls might be old enough for day camp this summer. Oh, I don't know, Bitsy said in a listless voice. Who can say about such things?

There was a time when she would have had plenty to say. Ziba missed those days.

One June afternoon Ziba opened her door to find Maryam standing on her porch in a tailored blouse and linen skirt, beige linen pumps, and a bicycle helmet. What on earth! Ziba said.

I'm sorry to arrive unannounced, Maryam said. May I come in? And then she walked on in without waiting for an answer. The helmet was black and orange the orange a flame shape over each ear and the chin strap emphasized a pad of flesh beneath her jaw that Ziba had never noticed before. I was out shopping, as you see, she said, gesturing toward her skirt as if to prove it, and when I came home I thought I'd try on this helmet I had bought. I wanted to make sure that I knew how to work it.

You bought a bicycle helmet?

But clearly I did not know how to work it, because once I had it on I couldn't get it off again.

Ziba had an urge to laugh. She kept a straight face, but still Maryam said, Yes, I know: don't I make a spectacle! But I thought I would rather ask you than go to one of my neighbors.

Well, of course, Ziba said soothingly. Here, let's see, now… She stepped forward to take hold of a plastic buckle at one side. She squeezed it, but nothing happened. She felt for some sort of latch but she didn't find one.

Susan, who had been playing out back, came in just then with a watering can and said, Ooh, Mari — june! What have you got on?

Just a bicycling helmet, dearest, Maryam told her. Any luck? she asked Ziba.

No, but give me a minute. I'm sure there must be. . Ziba ran her fingers along the edge of the strap. She could smell the faintly bitter cologne Maryam was wearing, and she could feel the heat of her skin. What was it that you fastened when you put it on? she asked.

I believe it was that buckle, but now I don't remember. In the shop the boy who sold it to me undid it in a flash, but now I don't ouch.

Sorry, Ziba said. She had attempted to pull the strap up over Maryam's chin, but obviously it was meant to stay put. What did she know about such things? The only sport she'd played as a girl was volleyball and in a maghnae at that, a heavy black fitted headscarf that muffled her ears and covered her chest. I must be missing something, she said. Here's the buckle, here's the strap…

Where's your bike? Susan asked Maryam.

I don't have a bike, june-am.

Then what do you need a helmet for?

I had intended to ride a bicycle belonging to a friend.

Susan wrinkled her forehead. Ziba stepped back and said, Sami will know.

Sami? Is he home?

No, but I expect him any minute. Come in and sit down and we'll wait for him.

Oh, dear, Maryam said. She went over to the gilt-edged mirror that hung opposite the front door. Wouldn't you think this plastic piece she said, peering at her reflection.

I tried the plastic piece, Ziba told her. Come and sit down, Maryam. Let me make you a cup of tea. Or… can you drink tea with a helmet on?

I don't know, Maryam said. Oh, I don't want tea! Maybe we should just cut the strap with scissors.

There's no point in ruining a brand-new helmet. Come in and wait for Sami.

Maryam followed Ziba into the living room, but she didn't look happy about it.

Does the bike belong to Danielle? Susan asked, trailing after Maryam.

This made Ziba laugh out loud, finally the image of Danielle LeFaivre, the most hoity-toity of Maryam's women friends, doggedly pedaling a bicycle in her Carolina Herrera suit and fourhundred-dollar shoes. Maryam sighed and sat down on the sofa. No, she said, it was another friend. Then she changed the subject. What were you watering? she asked Susan. Do you already have something growing?

No, I was just messing around.

Yesterday I went to the nursery and bought some catnip plants for Moosh, Maryam told her. I thought you and I could put them into that patch beneath the kitchen window the next time you come over.

Is the bicycle Dave's? Ziba asked abruptly.

Then she was sorry, because Maryam took a long moment before she said, It was Connie's.

Oh.

Dave was planning to take me for a ride in the country this weekend. He still has Connie's bike in his garage, but he thought it would be safer not to rely on her old helmet.

Oh, he's right! Ziba said. It's like children's car seats, I think. You're not supposed to resell them. They have a limited life expectancy.

When Sami opened the front door you would think they had both been rescued; they turned so quickly toward the sound.

Sami wasn't as taken aback as he should have been, in Ziba's opinion. All he said when he walked in was, Hi, Mom. What's with the helmet?

I was wondering if you could help me get it off, she told him.

Why, sure, he said, and he came over to her, did something to the strap that made a snapping noise, and lifted the helmet from her head.

Thanks, Maryam said. And thank you for trying, Ziba. She rose and tucked the helmet under her arm and retrieved her purse from the sofa.

Have a nice bike ride, Ziba told her.

Thanks, Maryam said again, already in the front hall.

Sami said, But, Mom? Will you know how to undo it again? She said, Oh, I'll figure it out. Goodbye.

It seemed she couldn't get away from them fast enough.

In July, Maryam went to Vermont for her annual visit. She boarded Moosh with Sami and Ziba, and Ziba agreed to water her houseplants halfway through the week.

Ziba drove to Maryam's on a Wednesday morning after dropping the girls off at day camp. When she let herself in she felt like a thief; there was something so private and close about the dim little living room. She left the front door open behind her, as if to prove she had nothing to hide, and went directly to the kitchen. A single rinsed cup and saucer sat in the sink, she noticed. She filled the watering can that Maryam had placed on the counter, and then she walked through the house, stopping at each plant and testing the soil with her fingertips. Most of the plants were fine; the week had been mild and humid.

Upstairs she went first to the guest room, where she had often put Susan down for a nap when they were visiting. The double bed with its crocheted white spread, the bureau with its paisley scarf, and the pottery bowl of ferns (these in need of water) held no surprises. And Sami's old room now a sort of catchall, a combination sewing room and bill-paying room and whatever had obviously been tidied just before Maryam's departure. The desk was bare, and the twin bed with its boyish plaid blanket had been cleared of the ironing and mending that Maryam often laid out there.

Maryam's room was less familiar, and Ziba couldn't help glancing at the objects on the bureau as she entered. They were the same as last year, though: a painted wooden pen case shaped like a fat cigar, an easel-backed Persian miniature, and a mosaic box. No photos, either recent or old; those would be filed away in the album in the living-room bookcase. It seemed that Maryam had decided long ago exactly how her world should be arranged, and saw no reason to vary it ever after.

As Ziba was watering the ivy plant hanging in the window, she chanced to look out and see Dave Dickinson coming up the front walk. Now, what was he doing here? She emptied the watering can of its last few drops and then hurried downstairs. By the time she reached the door, he was peering through the screen with one hand shading his eyes. Hello? he said. Oh, Ziba!

I'm watering the plants, she told him.

Well, of course; I should have realized. He drew back a bit, and she stepped out onto the porch. (She didn't feel she could ask him in without Maryam's knowledge.) He was wearing a chambray shirt and khakis that he might have slept in, and his curly gray head was mussed and damp-looking. I noticed the door was open as I was driving by, he said, and I worried something was wrong.

Why he should be driving by on a residential street that led nowhere, he didn't explain. And next he asked, Have you heard from her? without bothering to say whom he meant.

No, but we wouldn't usually, Ziba told him. She's only gone for a week, after all.

I did talk to her right after she got there, Dave said.

You did?

Just to make sure she'd arrived safely.

He turned and gazed away, out toward the street. He said, in an offhand tone, I don't suppose you knew her husband.

Ziba said, Me? The question was so unexpected that she wondered if she had mistranslated it. Goodness, no, she said. I wasn't even living in this country yet when he died.

Yes, I didn't suppose. . He followed the progress of a lawn-care truck that was rumbling past. Then he turned back to Ziba. His mussed hair gave him a rattled look, as if he were the one who was surprised by this conversation. She's still very attached to his memory, I guess, he said. I'm sure he was a wonderful man.

Ziba debated telling him that Kiyan had been moody and difficult. On second thought, no; better not.

But anyhow: you may have noticed that I like her, he said. Um, yes.

Or love her, even.

For some reason, Ziba felt herself blushing. So, does Maryam love you too? she asked.

I don't know.

It interested her that he thought it might at least be a possibility. She said, But you must have an inkling.

No, I don't, he said. I don't know what to think!

These last words seemed torn from him. He stopped short, as if he had shocked himself. Then he said, more quietly, I don't know what she expects of me. I don't know how to act. I invite her out and we go someplace, dinner or a movie; she seems to enjoy my company, but… it's like we have a pane of glass between us. I don't know what she's feeling. I wonder if she still feels, let's say, loyal to her husband's memory. Or maybe bound to him, by some Iranian social custom.

No, Ziba said. There's no such custom.

Well, then, something else? Something like, I should ask Sami's permission before I court her?

A little spurt of a giggle escaped her. Now it was Dave's turn to blush. Sorry, but what do I know? he said.

Well, or me either, she told him. Maryam belongs to a completely different generation. But I can promise she doesn't think you have to ask Sami's permission.

Then I'm flummoxed, he said.

She had never heard that word before, but she admired how well it got his point across.

Look, she told him. How hard could this be? You like her; she likes you. She must like you, because believe me, Maryam would not be putting up with you if she didn't. So what's the problem? I'm sure that sooner or later everything will work out.

Right, he said.

She could tell she had somehow failed him, though, because the look he gave her was so kind. He said, Thanks for letting me yammer on. And he patted her shoulder and turned and descended the porch steps.

Bitsy said, Oh, poor, poor Dad.

Because of course Ziba told her everything, not even waiting till she brought the girls back from camp. She drove straight from Maryam's to the Donaldsons', jabbed the doorbell, and barreled in saying, Guess what!

I just hope he doesn't get hurt, Bitsy said. She was changing Xiu-Mei's diaper on the living-room rug, but she had paused when she heard Ziba's news and she didn't even notice Xiu-Mei reaching for the wipes box.

Why would he get hurt? Ziba asked.

Well, he's so naive, the poor dear. He's so lacking in experience. It's not as if Maryam is all that worldly-wise herself, Ziba said. No, but As far as we know, the only man she ever went out with was her husband.

No, but well, you're right, of course, Bitsy said. Something still appeared to be troubling her, though.

I thought you would be glad, Ziba told her.

Oh, I am! Honestly I am. She recovered the wipes box, finally, and pried a wad of wipes out of Xiu-Mei's fist. But I would be a lot happier if you told me she was madly pursuing him, calling him at all hours and hanging around his neck.

Maryam is a dignified woman, Ziba said stiffly. She's a lady. In our country, ladies don't act that way.

It was probably the first time she had ever used that phrase, in our country. Always before she had been so eager to say that this was her country, and she wasn't sure why now should be any different. Bitsy must have noticed, because instantly she said, Oh, yes, she's a lovely woman, and I am so, so pleased that things seem to be moving ahead with them.

Then they both changed the subject. Wasn't Xiu-Mei the teeniest bit plumper? Ziba wanted to know, and Bitsy said she did seem plumper, now that Ziba mentioned it, and maybe they should weigh her. So they went upstairs to the bathroom, and Bitsy stepped on the scale with Xiu-Mei in her arms and then stepped off and handed Xiu-Mei to Ziba and stepped on the scale again, and they did the math. They were very perky and chattery.

On the wall above the toilet hung a framed black-and-white photo of a much younger Dave and Connie with Bitsy and her brother Abe, all of them in ragged wigs and hideous, hayseed clothes. Dave wore a Groucho Marx mustache-and-glasses set; Connie and Bitsy had enormous artificial buckteeth, and four of Abe's teeth were blacked out. That photo had been taken the summer Mac got engaged, Ziba knew. Connie had mailed a copy to Laura's parents with a note saying that the future in-laws would like to introduce themselves. A joke, of course, but Ziba hadn't laughed quite soon enough when it was explained to her. How could people view themselves so lightly? she had wondered.

And who on earth would hang a family photo above a toilet? Some things about Americans would forever… flummox her.

Maybe being away for a week made Maryam appreciate what Dave meant to her. At any rate, after she got back from Vermont they were seen together more often, and they did appear to be together. They chimed in on each other's stories, and reminded each other cozily of shared experiences, and sat side by side and quite close on the couch. When Maryam was speaking, Dave smiled around the room as if inviting the others to join in his admiration. When it was Dave who was speaking, Maryam smiled too but directed her gaze discreetly toward her lap. They acted like teenagers, Sami told Ziba. He said he was glad to see his mother so happy, but it did make him feel sort of funny.

Bitsy said it made her feel old. She couldn't be more delighted, she said, but, Oh, Lord, how long has it been since you lit up like that when a certain person walked into the room? Be honest, Ziba.

This was at the Arrival Party, which did, after all, take place at the Yazdans' this year instead of at the Donaldsons'. Xiu-Mei had been hospitalized for three days the previous week some kind of intestinal blockage, now resolved, thank goodness and so at the very last minute Bitsy had given in. She brought over what she'd already made, a casserole and some home-baked bread, and Ziba and Maryam swung into action and prepared the rest in thirty-six hours.

As fate would have it, the guest list was longer this year than it had been in some time. There was even a rare representative from Maryam's branch of the family: her brother's wife, Roya, who was in the U. S. with her friend Zuzu to visit Zuzu's son in Delaware. Zuzu had been scared to travel alone, was the story. Apparently she could not be left alone at her son's place, either, or else Roya was also scared to travel alone, because Roya brought Zuzu with her when she came to Baltimore, and the two of them stayed at Maryam's. In one way this was helpful: they had been happy to pitch in with the emergency food preparations, and Zuzu, who hailed originally from a town on the Caspian Sea, made an impressive stuffed fish that was the centerpiece of the table. On the other hand, they were your traditional sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed Iranian women, and not ten minutes into the party they began to focus very closely on Dave Dickinson. They watched every move he made and were not above whispering to each other after his most inconsequential remark. Of course they might just have been working out a translation (neither of them spoke much English), but Ziba suspected they were gossiping. She was interested to see that they appeared to have no prior knowledge of him; they had been at Maryam's for three days but required an introduction when he arrived at the party, and from their first, dismissive reaction it was clear they didn't know that he had any special importance. Then he said, Aha! Salade olivieh! and rubbed his hands together. He started walking around the table surveying the dishes, which had already been laid out in two long rows. Fesenjun! he said, putting a u in the last syllable less formal and more intimate-sounding than fesenjan. Is it yours? he asked Maryam, and she nodded, smiling at him with her lips sweetly closed, and that was when the two women grew extremely, extremely alert.

Doogh! he said. I adore doogh, he told the two women, and he said it with some pride, evidently knowing that most Americans were disgusted by the very notion of a carbonated yogurt drink. He pronounced the gh sound with a conscious, laughable effort, practically gargling in his attempt to speak far enough back in his throat; and in fact the women did laugh or tittered, at least, each raising a hand to her mouth and exchanging a glance with the other. He laughed too. He must have thought he was connecting with them beautifully. And Maryam may have thought the same, for she went on smiling from the other side of the table. It was Ziba who moved forward, at last, and took him by the elbow. Wait till you see the baklava, she told him. My mother brought it over this morning.

But this only caused the women to exchange another glance. (See how Maryam's daughter-in-law treats him so familiarly!) Dave said, Your mother brought her baklava? I crave her baklava. He told the women, She makes her filo dough from scratch. You wouldn't believe how good it is.

They pursed their lips, as if assessing something. They looked thoughtfully toward Maryam.

The baklava was serving as the Arrival Cake, in fact. Ziba had spiked it all over with tiny American flags and set it on the sideboard at the end of the meal. She omitted the candles, and she didn't bother sending the girls out of the room. Instead she plunged straight into She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, and the others joined her even the girls themselves. If Bitsy was disappointed, she didn't show it. She might have been too tired to care. Xiu-Mei was asleep on her shoulder, head lolling and pacifier halfway out of her parted lips, and Bitsy swayed with her in time to the song. Toot, toot! the girls were shouting. Hi, babe! They sang louder than anyone else, as if they'd been waiting all these years just for the opportunity.

And later the videotape ran almost unobserved; most people knew it so well. Jin-Ho went off in a corner to play Old Maid with two cousins. Linwood and his girlfriend grew all whispery and nuzzly. Several of the women started cleaning up while the other guests stood about in small groups, merely glancing toward the screen from time to time and remarking on how small the girls used to be, or how much more hair Brad used to have, before returning to their conversations. When Ziba crossed in front of the TV with a stack of dishes, she had to say Excuse me only to Susan and Bitsy. Susan was watching the video from her seat on the rug. Bitsy, in the rocker with Xiu-Mei, seemed on the verge of sleep. But then Bitsy asked, out of the blue, Remember how we used to tell each other we wouldn't want to go back to that day for anything on earth?

I remember, Ziba said.

But now I think that in some ways, I would want to go back. I hadn't made any mistakes yet. I was still the perfect mother and Jin-Ho was still the perfect daughter. Oh, not that I'm saying… I don't mean to say I know what you're saying, Ziba told her, and she would have given Bitsy a hug if she hadn't had her hands full of cake plates.

What do you suppose their lives were like before they came to us? Bitsy asked, not for the first time. They've had all those months of experiences that we will never know about. I'm sure they must have been treated well, but, oh, it kills me, it just kills me that I wasn't there to hold Jin-Ho when she first opened her eyes on the day that she was born.

On the day that Susan was born, Ziba was on the other side of the world wondering if she'd be able to love a total stranger's baby. And she had cried for half of one night some weeks after Susan's arrival, not knowing what she was crying about till all at once she had thought, What happened to my own baby?

Two things she would never say aloud to anyone not Bitsy, not even Sami.

She told Bitsy, Oh, well, just look at her. She turned out fine anyhow, didn't she? For Jin-Ho was chortling gleefully while Deirdre, studying the card she'd just picked, was pantomiming despair.

In the kitchen, Ziba found her mother scraping plates. Roya and Zuzu were spooning leftovers into refrigerator containers, and Maryam was knotting the drawstring on a plastic bag of garbage.

Dave said, Oh, Maryam — june! Don't lift that! Let me! and he stepped forward to wrest the bag from her. Maryam straightened, brushing a strand of hair off her face. Roya set down a salad bowl and sent a long look toward Zuzu.

Susan started kindergarten that September. She'd been accepted at a private school out in Baltimore County. Every morning Sami drove her there, since he worked in that area anyway, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Ziba picked her up. But the kindergarten program ended at noon, which meant that on Tuesdays and Thursdays Maryam had to be the one who fetched her. Maryam brought Susan back home with her, gave her lunch, and kept her until Ziba arrived several hours later. Ziba told Maryam that she worried this was an imposition now that Maryam was leading such a busy social life; but Maryam said, What do you mean, busy? Ziba didn't answer that.

Often when Ziba got to Maryam's she would find Dave there before her. He would be sitting in the kitchen while Maryam prepared supper and Susan played with the cat. (Later, Ziba would ask Susan, Did Dave eat lunch with you? and most days Susan said, Mmhmm. No telling if he'd been around even longer. All morning? All the previous night?)

Touchingly, Dave made a point of rising when Ziba walked in. Well, hello! Good to see you, he'd say, running a hand through his pelt of gray curls. A mug of coffee would be sitting on the table in front of him he drank coffee around the clock and a jumbled pile of newspapers. He liked to read aloud from the papers and make comments to Maryam. As soon as Ziba turned to greet Susan, he would sit back down and resume where he had left off. Listen to this, he told Maryam. Here's a man arrested for road rage as a jogger, for mercy's sake. Maryam smiled and topped off his coffee with the pot that she kept going for him. Oh, thank you! he said. He never failed to show his gratitude another touching quality. Although Ziba thought the newspaper-reading could get a little tiresome. 'Area residents complained that the club's exotic dancers performed with denuded breasts,' he read from another page. 'Denuded'! Don't you love it? Maryam laughed gently as she rinsed out her Thousand Faces teapot. Where was her new electric contraption? Ah: shoved toward the back of a counter, half hidden by a package of pita.

Susan said a boy named Henry had called her a poop-faced poop-head. Oh, that's just boys, Maryam told her, and Dave announced, with some urgency, Now, here is a bunch of parents protesting the multiplication tables. Ziba was reminded of how a child will tug at his mother's sleeve when she is on the phone, requiring cookies, milk, juice, complaining of a stomachache, desperate to reclaim her attention. They feel that rote memorization dampens the students' love of learning, Dave said. And they don't see why anyone should have to diagram sentences. That's old-fashioned, they say. He lowered the paper to frown at Susan over his reading glasses. You need to diagram sentences, young lady. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Susan said, Okay.

If a certain TV anchorman could diagram a sentence, he would not have reported on the national news that as the father of two young children, chicken pox was sweeping the country.

Huh?

Maryam lit the flame beneath her kettle. Was today your day with the leopard-skin lady? she asked Ziba.

Yes, and you'll never guess now what. Now she wants tiger-striped curtains in the master bedroom. I said, 'But the wallpaper there is zebra-striped!' She said, 'Of course. It's a theme room.'

Maryam leaned back against the counter and folded her arms. She was wearing a long white apron over her black slacks; she looked crisp and almost too thin. Last night I had the most upsetting dream, she said. You've just reminded me. The zebra stripes reminded me. I was driving in a strange city, trying to get to the zoo, and I couldn't find a parking space. So finally I parked on a side street. And then I told the ticket lady, 'Oh! I forgot where I parked!' I said, 'Wait a minute; I just need to make sure I can get back to my car.' So I turned and I went down this street, went down that street… but I couldn't find my car again. All the streets looked the same.

Maryam, sweetheart? Dave said, lowering his newspaper. Are you feeling particularly anxious these days?

Why, no, not that I

Because I would call that an anxiety dream. Don't you think so, Ziba?

Ziba said, Well…

I do have to drive to Danielle's tomorrow night, Maryam said. And you know how far out of town she lives.

Aha, that's it, Dave told her. You hate driving at night! You don't have any night vision. You always end up getting lost.

Not always.

I will drive you.

No, no. .

I will drive! I will be at your beck and call! I will drive you there and come back for you at some appointed time.

That's just silly, Maryam told him.

Oh, let him, Mari — june, Ziba said.

Yes, let me, Mari — june. Besides, Dave said. He winked at Ziba. This way I might finally get to meet the famous Danielle.

You haven't met Danielle? Ziba asked.

I haven't met any of her friends.

Why, Maryam! You ought to introduce him, Ziba said. Invite him in when he comes to bring you home.

Ordinarily she would not have been so forward, but all at once she felt a kind of impatience that amounted almost to anger. Wouldn't you think Maryam could show a little more warmth? Clearly she loved the man; why was she so stiff-necked, so obstinate, so frustrating?

But Maryam said, I will drive my own self, thank you, and turned back to her kettle.

Then Susan complained that Moosh had snagged her hair, and Ziba said what did she expect if she swung her braids in his face, and Dave said, Look at this! Now churches are projecting the words to hymns on overhead screens with little bouncing balls like Lawrence Welk. They say it's too much trouble for people to read down the staves in the hymnbooks. For God's sake! Too much trouble!

Maryam clicked her tongue. Ziba told Susan to collect her things because they had to be going.

When the Donaldsons gave their leaf-raking party in October, Maryam attended. She hadn't in the past, not after the very first one. (I have my own leaves to rake, she always said, although her own leaves were oak and barely beginning to turn by then.) But here she came, emerging from the passenger side of Dave's car and waving to the others. She went into the house first to drop off her purse and a bottle of wine, and then she joined Dave, who'd already started raking a section near the front. The girls were helping too this year, each wielding a child-sized rake and competing to see who could make a bigger pile. Xiu-Mei was sitting on a tarpaulin that Brad had spread nearby, reaching for the shiny brass grom-mets. You could tell she had not had much practice operating her hands. They moved as waveringly and unpredictably as those scooping-claw games on boardwalks.

It was a perfect day for this a breezy, bright Saturday afternoon, warm enough so that bit by bit, people shucked their sweaters off. Brad's mother, who as usual was just standing about decoratively, gathered the sweaters and put them in a heap beside Xiu-Mei. Bitsy stopped work for a minute to go inside and check on dinner. Brad's father started a boring real-estate discussion with Sami, and Dave dropped his rake in order to walk over and confer with the girls about something. Ziba couldn't hear what he was saying. All she heard was Sami telling Lou how difficult the insurance companies were making home-buying these days.

Bitsy came back out of the house with a pitcher and a stack of tumblers. Who's for lemonade? she called, and the girls said, I am! I am! Ziba laid aside her rake and went to help, but the men continued working. So did Maryam, till Dave said, Maryam? Want to stop for lemonade?

Oh, she said, maybe later. She was raking alongside the driveway with languid, leisurely strokes. She didn't like sweet drinks, Ziba knew not that she would ever be so rude as to say so.

Dave went over to Bitsy and accepted a glass of lemonade from her. Then he bent and whispered to the girls. Jin-Ho said, Oh, and handed her tumbler back to Bitsy. Susan said, Here, Mama, and shoved her own tumbler at Ziba. They followed Dave across the lawn toward Maryam. Bitsy raised her eyebrows at Ziba, but Ziba had no idea.

Maryam? Dave was saying. Won't you sit down? I brought you a glass of lemonade.

Oh, thank you, but Sit down, Mari — june! Sit down! Susan said, and Jin-Ho said, Please, please sit down. They were tugging at her arms and giggling. Maryam seemed puzzled, and no wonder; the only place to sit was directly on the ground. But she did allow herself to be dragged down, finally, until she was seated tailor-fashion on a stretch of mossy grass already cleared of leaves. Then Dave handed her the lemonade.

In the distance, Sami was telling Lou, It's like the insurance companies have completely forgotten that gambling is their job description. They won't insure a house if it has ever in its life had a leak; never mind that the leak has long ago been Dave called, Sami?

Sami broke off and looked over at him.

Girls, Dave said.

Still giggling, the girls dug something out of their pockets. They pressed closer to Maryam and started working busily just above her head. Maryam said, What? She tried to bat their hands away but they were all over her, four insistent little fists making brisk, bustling motions. It's sugar! Susan cried. We're grinding sugar!

What on?

Maryam, Dave said. Will you marry me?

Maryam stopped swiping at her hair and stared at him. The girls were still working away, but Dave said, Okay, kids, that's enough now. Reluctantly, they stepped back.

Maryam said, What?

This is a formal proposal, he said, and he dropped to his knees beside her. Will you be my wife?

Instead of answering, she looked at the girls. Sure enough, their hands were full of sugar cubes the uniform white rectangles that came in the yellow Domino box.

The sugar should have been cone-shaped. That was what they used in Iran: rough white cones of sugar some six or eight inches tall. And the people grinding it should have been grown women known for their happy marriages, and they should have worked over a veil so that the crystals would not be speckling Maryam's hair like a very bad case of dandruff. And it was never ground at proposals. That happened only at weddings.

Either Dave had been gravely misinformed or else he had decided to redesign the whole tradition. Switch it around and embellish it. Americanize it, you might say.

Maryam looked past the girls to the others: Bitsy smiling above her pitcher, Pat clasping her hands as if praying, Sami and Lou gaping, and Ziba herself… what? Probably clench jawed with tension, because it would be so sad if Maryam said no to this poor, sweet, foolish man.

Maryam looked at Dave again. She said, Yes.

Everybody cheered.

On Sunday Ziba woke with a headache from way too much champagne. It had been a rowdy celebration, extending so late that finally Maryam herself had been the one to break it up. By that time both girls were sound asleep on the couch, which Ziba would have noticed earlier if she hadn't been so tipsy. Sami had to carry Susan out to the car. (He practically had to carry Ziba.) He'd drunk very little himself because he was driving, and this morning he was cheerfully smugly, even putting on his socks while Ziba said, Oh, oh, my head, and squinted toward the alarm clock. Nine-fifteen. Oh, God, she said. Where's Susan?

Downstairs watching TV.

I feel as if I've got a bowling ball in my head. I turn this way wham! Turn the other way wham!

Want some aspirin?

I'm afraid I might throw it up.

I warned you, Sami told her.

Sami, don't even start. Okay?

He rose and padded in his stocking feet to the bathroom. She heard the medicine-cabinet door slide open. One, or two? he called back.

Four, she said.

She heard water running.

I hope Maryam doesn't feel this bad, she said.

She didn't drink all that much that I noticed.

Oh, great, was I the only one?

Well, Brad was putting away quite a bit, and it seemed to me that Pat and Lou were fairly Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

Sami stepped out of the bathroom and sent her a questioning look.

Don't answer it, Ziba told him.

But a moment later Susan called, Mama? Mari — june's here. Ziba said, Oh, God, and fell back on her pillow.

I'll go, Sami said. He set two aspirin on the nightstand, along with a paper cup of water, and left the room. After a pause, Ziba heard his chipper Hi, Mom! and then murmur, murmur normal morning voices that made Ziba feel even worse.

Well, no getting around it; she would have to show herself. She sat up to swallow the aspirin. Then she hauled herself out of bed and went to the closet for her bathrobe.

By the time she arrived downstairs, Maryam was seated at the kitchen table watching Sami fill the kettle. Whether or not Maryam had drunk much champagne, she had the drawn, unhealthy look of someone who had stayed up too late. Her black blazer turned her skin almost yellow, and she wasn't wearing lipstick.

Morning, Mari june! Ziba said. She tried to sound fresh and energetic.

Maryam said, Good morning, Ziba. Then she said, I was just telling Sami that I feel horrible.

Oh, do you really? Me too. I don't know what I could have been This is the worst mistake of my life.

Excuse me? Ziba said.

She looked over at Sami. He was standing to one side of the stove now, waiting for the kettle to heat. Mom didn't mean to say yes, he told her.

Didn't mean…?

Maryam said, I was trying to be. . She let out a little breath of a laugh, although her expression stayed grim. I was trying to be polite, she said.

Polite! Ziba echoed.

Well, what would you have done? If someone put you in a spot like that, asked you in front of everyone? Funny, Maryam said. I've always wondered about those very public proposals. The men who propose on billboards or hire a plane to fly a banner past. What if the women have no wish to get married? But there they are, trapped. On public view, and so what can they say but yes?

Ziba was speechless. After a moment, Sami cleared his throat and said, Well, ah, but it's always been my assumption that those couples have arrived at some understanding beforehand, so that the men feel fairly sure of their answer. Are you saying that you and Dave never discussed the subject?

Never, Maryam said. Then she hesitated. Or never in so many words, at least.

Sami cocked his head.

It's true we have been… a couple for some time, she said. I admit that he means a great deal to me. And my first reaction yesterday was 'yes'; I won't deny it. But not two minutes later I thought, My Lord, what have I done?

She looked at Ziba when she said this. Instead of responding, Ziba sank onto the chair across from her. She didn't know whether the hollow in her stomach came from her hangover or from dismay.

He is so American, Maryam said, and she hugged herself as if she felt cold. He takes up so much space. He seems to be unable to let a room stay as it is; always he has to alter it, to turn on the fan or raise the thermostat or play a record or open the curtains. He has cluttered my life with cell phones and answering machines and a fancy-shmancy teapot that makes my tea taste like metal.

But, Mari — june, Ziba dared to say. That's not American; it's just… male. Then she shot a quick glance at Sami, but he was too focused on his mother to take offense.

No, it's American, Maryam said. I can't explain why, but it is. Americans are all larger than life. You think that if you keep company with them you will be larger too, but then you see that they're making you shrink; they're expanding and edging you out. I could feel myself slipping away. I was thinking so for a while now! And then before I could say that, he did this thing in public.

She was speaking in an unusually stilted manner, Ziba noticed, and with more of an accent, perhaps to prove that she herself was not American in the least that she was the opposite of American. And her huddled posture, so unlike her, did make her seem to have shrunk.

All his fuss about our traditions, she said. Our food, our songs, our holidays. As if he's stealing them!

Oh, well, but, Mom, Sami said. That's a good trait, his interest in our culture.

He's taking us over, she said, unhearing. Moving in on us. He's making me feel I don't have my own separate self. What was that sugar ceremony but stealing? Because he borrowed it and then he changed it, switched it about to suit his purposes.

Even though she had had nearly the same thought herself, Ziba said, Oh, Maryam, he just wanted to show he respects our way of doing things. She was suddenly filled with sympathy for him, remembering Dave on his knees and his eager, open face. You can't object to his Americanness and then fault him for trying to act Iranian. It's not logical.

It may not be logical, but it's how I feel, Maryam said.

The kettle was boiling now, and Sami turned to lift it off the stove. Ziba didn't know how he could take this so calmly. She asked Maryam, Couldn't you give it a little more time? Maybe it's just a case of, what do they call it. Wet feet.

I have given it time, Maryam said. Otherwise I would have told him last night. But no, all I said last night was that it was late and I was tired; he should drop me off at my house and I would see him in the morning. And then this morning I came to you two first to explain the situation, because I know everyone will be angry at me. All of you, and I don't blame you. It will cause an awkwardness in your friendship with Brad and Bitsy.

Oh, don't worry about that, Sami said, although Ziba herself was worrying about exactly that. Here they'd been just about to join ranks, become one big happy family! Would the four of them stop being friends now? And what would they tell the girls?

But Sami was saying, If you can't marry him, you can't. No two ways about it.

Thank you, Sami jon, Maryam said.

She looked next at Ziba, but Ziba said nothing.

Then Maryam told them she had to go I want to get this over with, she said and she refused a cup of tea and collected her purse. Goodbye, Susan, she called as she passed the living room. Sami followed, but because he had no shoes on he didn't see her out to her car. He stopped at the front door, with Ziba some distance behind. Drive carefully, he said. Ziba kept quiet. She couldn't fight down her sense of outrage. None of this should have happened, she wanted to say. She wanted to shout it. This was all so unnecessary, and so cruel, and there was no excuse for any part of Maryam's behavior from start to finish.

Maryam was descending the steps, walking toward the street with her purse clutched tight against her. She seemed much smaller than usual. In her black blazer and slim black pants, she was a single, narrow figure, straight-backed and slight and entirely alone.

Jin-Ho's little sister had a pacifier in her mouth about a hundred hours a day. The only time it came out was when she was eating, but she didn't really like to eat so that didn't take very long. On account of her not eating she was itty-bitty, teeny-tiny. She was two and a half years old but Jin-Ho could still lift her up. So Jin-Ho's mother said they would have to get rid of the pacifier. Maybe then Xiu-Mei would take more interest in food.

Except it didn't work. Binky! Binky! Xiu-Mei howled. (That was what she called pacifiers, because that was what Grandma Pat called them.) Jin-Ho's mother said, The binky is all gone, sweetheart, but Xiu-Mei wouldn't hush. She screamed and screamed, and Jin-Ho's mother went upstairs with a headache and closed her bedroom door. Then Jin-Ho's father carried Xiu-Mei around the house and sang her a song called Big Girls Don't Cry, but still she went on screaming. Finally he said a bad word and put her down on the couch not very gently and went into the kitchen. Jin-Ho went too because the screaming hurt her ears. She colored in her workbook while her father unloaded the dishwasher. He made a lot of noise, enough to drown out Xiu-Mei's noise, and every now and then he would absentmindedly sing another piece of his song. 'Bi-ig girls… don't… cry-y-y,' he sang in a high thin girly voice. Usually when Jin-Ho's parents sang it made her crazy because they didn't land on the notes quite right. This time it was okay, though, because he was just clowning. 'Do-on't cry-y,' he sang, and the don't went so low that he had to tuck in his chin to get down there.

Then Xiu-Mei stopped screaming. Jin-Ho's father turned from the dishwasher and gave Jin-Ho a look. It was very, very quiet. He tiptoed back to the living room, and Jin-Ho slid off her chair and tiptoed after him.

Xiu-Mei sat on the couch reading her favorite board book, busily sucking a pacifier she must have found between the cushions.

Because she didn't have just one pacifier; she had dozens. She might have had a thousand. She had about ten in every room, and more in her stroller and more in her crib and more in both the cars so she would never be caught short. Jin-Ho's mother had gathered up handfuls of them earlier in the morning, but no way could she get hold of every single one.

So that afternoon during Xiu-Mei's nap, Jin-Ho's mother announced a new plan. They were going to throw a party. As soon as Xiu-Mei woke they all told her, Guess what, Xiu-Mei! Next Saturday we'll have a huge party and the Binky Fairy will fly in to take away all your binkies and leave you a wonderful present instead. Even Jin-Ho told her that. (Her mother said she should talk it up.) Only six more days till she comes, Xiu-Mei! Xiu-Mei just looked at them and made a winching sound on her pacifier. She seldom said very much, because her mouth was usually full.

What's her present? Jin-Ho asked, but her mother said, Oh, that's a secret, which probably meant she didn't know. Jin-Ho wasn't stupid. If the Binky Fairy could fly, she must be bringing something that mortals couldn't even imagine.

Did the Binky Fairy bring me a present? she asked her mother.

Her mother said, Well, no, actually, because you never used a pacifier. That was so impressive to the Binky Fairy! She really, really admired you for it.

I'd rather she'd brought me a present, Jin-Ho said.

Her mother laughed as if Jin-Ho had made a joke, although she hadn't.

And how does she know when to come? Jin-Ho asked. Well, she's magical, of course.

Then why didn't she come this morning, so you wouldn't need to take away the binkies on your own?

Oh, that was just a… miscommunication, her mother said. So what if on Saturday you have a miscommunication again and It's going to work out, okay? her mother said. Trust me. Take my word for it.

But if it didn't work out this morning Jin-Ho, her mother said. Enough! We'll send the Fairy a letter. Will that satisfy you?

I think it would be safer, Jin-Ho said.

So her mother got on the computer and printed out a special card showing a stork carrying a baby because she couldn't find a picture of a pacifier. On the inside she wrote in block letters that Jin-Ho could read for herself: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2003, AT 3 P. M., PLEASE COME FOR XIU-MEI'S BINKIES. She put the card in a bank-deposit envelope, and that evening when they were barbecuing chicken out on the patio she set the envelope on the grill and they watched it go up in smoke. Jin-Ho's father said, Jeepers, Bitsy, and moved a drumstick away from the black papery bits with his tongs. Jin-Ho's mother said, I know! I know! You don't have to tell me! Then she plopped onto a chaise longue. How did I get myself into this? she asked him.

But after that she cheered up. Come sit with me, sweetheart, she said to Xiu-Mei, and Xiu-Mei toddled over and climbed into her lap. Her pacifier this evening was yellow, shaped like a sideways 8. Once upon a time, Jin-Ho's mother told her, there was a tiny, sparkly fairy who was known as the Binky Fairy.

I sure hope we don't regret this, Jin-Ho's father said.

Whom to invite? Anyone who would come, Jin-Ho's father said. They discussed it over supper. He said, Invite the damn mailman, if you want. Invite the garbage guys.

Yes! Alphonse! Jin-Ho said.

Who's Alphonse?

He's one of the garbage guys.

We'll ask my dad, of course, Jin-Ho's mother said. And your parents. And my brothers and their families. Well, it's an excuse for a get-together! The pacifier issue is incidental, really. And the Copelands, because little Lucy will be company for Xiu-Mei. And maybe… what do you think? The Yazdans? Or not.

She was looking at Jin-Ho's father, but Jin-Ho was the one who answered. She said, We always have the Yazdans! I always have to play with that bossy Susan.

We do not always have them, in fact, her father told her. We haven't seen them in nearly a month. We don't want things to get uncomfortable, Bitsy. I think we ought to invite them.

Well, it's no fault of mine we don't see them, Jin-Ho's mother said. She handed Xiu-Mei a chicken wing. Xiu-Mei was no longer allowed to suck her pacifier at the table, but even so she just turned the wing this way, turned the wing that way, and then set it down on her plate. You know, somehow Ziba's acted differently toward me ever since the breakup, Jin-Ho's mother said. She's seemed… I don't know. Strained.

She feels anxious; that's all it is. She worries you hold it against her.

Well, that's absurd. She knows I'm a fair-minded person. Why would I blame her for something her mother-in-law did?

Maryam, she meant. Susan's grandma. Who was once about to marry Jin-Ho's grandpa; and if she had, then she would have been Jin-Ho's grandma as well. (Jin-Ho's father had pointed out that also, Jin-Ho's mother would have been Jin-Ho's aunt. You could start calling your mom 'Aunt Bitsy,' he'd said. Jin-Ho had said, Huh? I don't get it.) But Maryam had changed her mind, and now they didn't see her anymore. She didn't give her New Year's dinner in the spring and she was out of town during this year's Arrival Party. Conveniently out of town, Jin-Ho's mother had said. Jin-Ho wished she could have been out of town. She hated Arrival Parties.

Here's a thought, Jin-Ho's father said. He was talking to Jin-Ho now. We do invite the Yazdans, but we invite a friend from your school besides so you'll have someone not bossy to play with.

Oh! Brad? Jin-Ho's mother said. Why go complicating my guest list? That's just one more complication!

Now, hon, you remember what it was like when you were a kid your parents always pushing their friends' kids on you, even if the friends' kids were dorks.

Susan Yazdan is not a dork!

What I meant was I would invite Athena, Jin-Ho said in a definite voice. Jin-Ho's mother said, Oh.

Athena was African-American, which Jin-Ho's mother approved of.

Well, all right, she told Jin-Ho. But promise me that you won't make Susan feel left out. She's a guest. You promise?

Sure.

Anyhow, it was the other way around. Susan was the one who could make a person feel left out.

Jin-Ho's mother said, Someday, sweetie, you're going to value that friendship. I know you don't think so now, but you will. Someday you might even travel to Korea together and look up your biological mothers.

Why would we want to do that? Jin-Ho asked.

You could do it! We wouldn't mind! We would support you and encourage you!

Well, getting back to the subject Jin-Ho's father said.

Jin-Ho was not about to travel to Korea. She didn't even like the food from Korea. She didn't like wearing those costumes with the stiff, sharp seams inside, and she never, ever, even once in her life had watched that stupid videotape.

Jin-Ho's grandpa said he thought they should do this more gradually. It's like giving up cigarettes, he said. You can't expect XiuMei to go cold turkey all in a single day.

Well, I see your point, Jin-Ho's mother said. Maybe you're right.

They were in the TV room. It was Monday afternoon, and she was folding laundry while they waited for Xiu-Mei to finish her nap. So, she said, let me see how we could work this. Maybe today I could tell her no binkies in the car anymore. Only when we're home, I'll say; not when we're out and about.

You'd better get rid of all the binkies in the back seat, then, Jin-Ho told her.

Yes, yes, I know… They're everywhere! I can't believe I actually went out and bought those infernal things!

She shook a pillowcase with a snapping sound and folded it in half. Then tomorrow, she said, I'll say no binkies in the yard, either. You know how she loves the swing set. She'll have to do without her binky if she's planning to use the swing set, I'll say. And Wednesday she can't have her binkies anywhere except her crib. And not at nap time next, on Thursday; and then Friday will be her last binky at night before the party on Saturday.

I had in mind more like a month or two, Jin-Ho's grandpa said. What exactly is your hurry?

I can't wait a month! I can't stand it anymore! Those damn things are driving me crazy!

Jin-Ho and her grandpa looked at each other. Sometimes Jin-Ho's mother did get sort of crazy.

In school today we talked about planets, Jin-Ho said.

Did you! her grandpa said in a brighter-than-usual voice. And which planet do you like best, Jin-Ho?

Pluto, because it looks kind of lonesome.

I could put up with it if she ate better, Jin-Ho's mother said. But I think she finds her pacifier so satisfying that she doesn't feel the need for food. It's discouraging to have a child who won't eat! Here I make such healthful meals, whole-grain and free-range and organic, and she just… spurns me!

Jin-Ho's grandpa was bending over to get his rain hat from under his chair. It had been sprinkling when he arrived, although now it seemed to have stopped. As he stood up he said, I'll just leave you with one thought, Bitsy. Have you ever seen a teenager who still has a pacifier? Think about it.

Yes! Yes! Jin-Ho said. I have!

You have?

Those girls from Western High, she said. Sometimes they wear gold pacifiers on a chain around their necks.

Well, thanks a lot for bringing that to our attention, her grandpa told her. But you see what I'm saying, Bitsy. Sooner or later, Xiu-Mei will give it up on her own.

Then he left in a rush, as if he didn't want to hear what Jin-Ho's mother would answer.

Jin-Ho's grandpa didn't use to visit so often, but after Maryam changed her mind he got to dropping by almost every day and talking, talking, talking to Jin-Ho's mother. He would start out discussing politics or his volunteer tutoring job or a TV program he'd watched, but before you knew it he would have moved on to Maryam. Sometimes I'm walking toward my house, he would say, coming back home from your house or the mailbox or whatever, and just before I turn onto my block I think, What if I find her waiting there for me? She could be waiting on my porch, planning to say she was sorry and she didn't know what had come over her and begging me to forgive her. I don't look up as I'm rounding the corner because I don't want her to think I'm expecting her. I feel a little self-conscious knowing she might be watching me. I have a sense that my posture doesn't seem entirely natural. I want to act nonchalant but not, you know, too nonchalant. She shouldn't think that I'm carefree; she shouldn't think she hasn't harmed me.

When he talked like this, Jin-Ho's mother would first pat his hand or make a low murmuring sound but in a sort of hurried way, as if she couldn't wait to get past that part. Then she would start in on Maryam. Why you give her a thought, Dad… why you ever gave her a thought, I honestly can't imagine. She's not worth it! She was wicked! Oh, not that I'd have blamed her if she'd simply said, 'No, thank you.' It's true that you'd been dating for just a few months. And besides, a lot of women that age feel they simply can't remarry because of their late husbands' health insurance or pension payments or some such. Plus you didn't show the best judgment in springing it on her; admit it. With no warning like that; out in public. But she should have made herself clear right away dismissed the subject tactfully, brushed it off, made light of it. Instead, she told you, 'Yes.' And we all celebrated! We offered all those toasts! Jin-Ho and Susan started figuring out how they would be related! Then, bam. Just… bam. She tells you to get lost.

Well, not exactly to get Why couldn't she have kept seeing you, at least? You could still have gone on dating, you know. It didn't have to be all or nothing.

Ah. Well, in point of fact, Jin-Ho's grandpa said, I believe that was more my decision than From the start I felt she was a very cold person. I can say that now that it's over. Very cold and aloof, Jin-Ho's mother said.

She's just a woman with boundaries, hon.

If she's so fond of her boundaries, what did she ever immigrate for?

Bitsy, for goodness' sake! Next you'll be telling me she ought to love this country or leave it!

I'm not talking about countries; I'm talking about a basic… character flaw.

Jin-Ho always worried that her mother might be hurting her grandpa's feelings when she criticized Maryam. But he kept coming back to visit; so it must have been all right.

When Xiu-Mei got up from her nap, their mother took the two of them grocery-shopping without any pacifiers. Xiu-Mei cried the whole way there. She cried in the store, too, but Jin-Ho's mother gave her a banana and that helped a little bit. She went on snuffling, but she did eat part of the banana. On the way home, when she started crying again, Jin-Ho's mother pretended not to notice and talked right over her, discussing the party. I've bought colored sugar, and chocolate sprinkles, and those little silver BBs… I think cupcakes will be better than a single big cake, don't you agree?

Jin-Ho said, Mmhmm, with her fingers stuck in her ears.

As soon as they reached home, Xiu-Mei got herself a pacifier from under the hall radiator and went off to sulk in the TV room.

On Tuesday, when Jin-Ho's car pool dropped her off after school, she found her mother sitting on the front steps in her big thick Irish sweater. What are you doing here? Jin-Ho asked, and her mother said, Waiting for you, of course. But she wouldn't have been waiting there ordinarily. And then she said, I thought maybe we could have our snack on the patio today, which was odd because it was real fall weather sunny, but cool enough that Jin-Ho was wearing a jacket. It all made sense, though, once her mother had the tray ready to take outside. Coming, Xiu-Mei? she asked. Xiu-Mei was pushing her kangaroo mama and baby around the kitchen in her purple toy shopping cart. But you'll have to leave your binky in the house, her mother said, and Xiu-Mei stopped short and said, No! which caused her binky to fall to the floor. She bent to pick it up, jammed it back in her mouth, and started pushing her cart again. They had to go on outside without her.

Over their snack, which was peanut butter cookies and apple juice, Jin-Ho's mother talked some more about the party. She didn't like the sound of the weather forecast; a hurricane was heading up the coast. This is one time the weather matters, she said, because I've thought of a really good solution for the binkies. We're going to tie them to helium balloons and let them fly up in the sky. Won't that be beautiful? Then we'll go into the house, and we'll find the present the Fairy has left.

Could a hurricane blow us away? Jin-Ho asked. (She'd just seen The Wizard of Oz on TV.)

Not this far inland it couldn't, but it could bring a lot of rain. We'll just have to hope it's over by then. They're predicting it for Thursday, which would give us two days to recover, but since when has the Weather Bureau known what it was talking about?

Then she turned toward the house and called, Xiu-Mei? Have you changed your mind? Yummy peanut butter cookies, honey!

They'd left the back door cracked open, so Xiu-Mei had to have heard her. But she didn't say a thing. The only sound was the squeak-squeak of her shopping cart. Jin-Ho's mother sighed and reached for her apple juice. She pulled her sweater sleeve over her hand like a mitten before she took hold of her glass.

Wednesday was No Binkies Outside of the Crib Day. Jin-Ho's father said all he could say was, he was mighty glad he had a job to go to. Then he left for work half an hour early. And Jin-Ho was glad she had school to go to, because already she could see how things were shaping up. By the time the car pool honked out front, XiuMei had thoroughly searched the house and found not a single pacifier. They were all in a liquor-store carton on top of the refrigerator, but she didn't know that. She curled into a ball underneath the kitchen table and started crying very loudly. Jin-Ho's mother was in the bathroom with the door closed. Jin-Ho called, Bye, Mama, and after a moment her mother called back, Bye, sweetie. Have a nice day. From the sound of her voice, it seemed she might be crying too.

So Jin-Ho sort of dreaded coming home again. But when she walked in, the house was quiet a cheerful, humming quiet, not a sulking quiet. She found her mother stirring cocoa on the stove, and her grandpa sitting at the table with the newspapers, and XiuMei in her booster seat sucking a pacifier.

Well, hey there, Ms. Dickinson-Donaldson, her grandpa said, and Jin-Ho said, Hi, Grandpa, carefully not looking in Xiu-Mei's direction, because maybe the grownups had failed to notice the pacifier and she was not about to point it out.

But then her mother said, As you can see, we've changed the rules a bit.

Jin-Ho said, Mmhmm, and climbed onto a chair.

I was telling your mom, her grandpa said, if the Binky Party is the big renunciation scene, why put Xiu-Mei through all this misery ahead of time? Right, Xiu-Mei?

Xiu-Mei busily sucked her pacifier.

We should just wait for the actual moment, he said. I know earlier I suggested a tapering-off approach, but I've reconsidered. Then he nudged Jin-Ho with his elbow and said, 'Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'