For the first time since my visit with Audrey, the urge to cry overwhelms me.
I skip the beach in favor of hanging out in the front yard with Bambi, where I build a wall around my heart, stones and mortar, indestructible. My dog seems to understand my suffering.
Midmorning, Iris comes outside to commence her daily pruning session. I hear her shucking dead buds from her many plants and nestle deeper into the grass, where I’ve been for a while, staring up at the gray sky, feeling very small and very insignificant in this tremendous world.
From where I sit today, Afghanistan might as well be another planet in a different galaxy, but someday, after the San Francisco ArtInstitute, when I’m a photojournalist seeking stories of truth… maybe I’ll make my way there. I’d like to see the places Mati’s described: the Minaret of Jam, the Sultan Masood Palace, Bala Hissar, the Gardens of Babur. The Kabul Zoo, even.
But I won’t go looking for him.
Iris says my name, startling me. She’s peering over the hedge and I wonder, not for the first time, how often she spies on our yard. She looks at me, supine in the grass, and clucks her tongue. “Are you all right, sweetie?”
I heave myself off the lawn. “I’ve been better, actually.”
She adjusts the sun visor tamping down her salt-and-pepper curls. “You look tired.”
“Iamtired.”
“Me, too,” she says, lopping a branch from the Japanese maple standing beside her. It’s an aggressive cut—unnecessary, from what I can tell—and I wonder if she’s paying attention to her task.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Last night was rough at the Higgins cottage.”
“What happened?”
“Well,” she says, severing another branch. “I found out Ryan is in a relationship… with Xavier.”
“Oh.”Oh. Poor Ryan. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own trials, I’ve hardly thought about him. I fight the compulsion to cross into Iris’s yard to find him. But later. It’s pretty clear that at the moment, his gram needs to talk.
“Yes,oh.” She tips her visor up to study me. “You don’t seem surprised.”
I flush, remembering how I so charitably turned Ryan down shortly after we met. “I’ve known for a while.”
“I don’t understand why he’d keep something so important from me.”
I fiddle with my ponytail, trying to come up with a suitable answer, one that won’t put Ryan on the spot with her later. “You know how boyscan be. They get scared and keep secrets from people they care about.” I’m talking about Mati, obviously, but my rationale applies here, too.
“Hmm…,” Iris says. “I suppose that makes sense. But I’m hisgram.”
My skin’s itchy with empathy. “Maybe that’s why he held back. He wasn’t sure how you’d react and didn’t want you to be mad, or sad. He loves you.”
“I love him, too—that hasn’t changed.” Her mouth puckers, downturned, like she’s reliving the unpleasantness of what went on last night.
“When you found out, how’d you react?”
Her frown deepens. “Unfavorably, in hindsight. But only because I was surprised. He’s disappointed in me.I’mdisappointed in me.” She scales another branch from her tree. “I want him to feel comfortable coming to me, no matter the situation. I want him to trust me.”
“You should talk to him.”
She eyes me. “Will you speak to the person who’s responsible for your stewing in the grass all morning?”
Touché.
“My situation’s different, Iris.”
“Still,” she says, nodding like some sort of guru. “You should talk to him.”
***
