“If you can operate on a human body, you can fix an appliance,” she says.
“I’ve never operated on a human body.” I didn’t even specialize in surgery, not that that matters.
She sighs. “And I suppose you never will.”
I count to five. “I’ll help with anything else you need when I’m in town,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “Sorry, Mayrik, I have to catch a flight.” I’m due to meet everyone in the hotel’s lobby in ten minutes to catch the shuttle to O’Hare Airport.
“Okay, janikus. Travel safe.” Her parting words land warmly in my heart, rooting themselves there.
Before I pack my laptop in its travel case, I check my inbox onemore time and emit a squeal like a piglet: The email I’ve been waiting for has finally landed.
Today, 9:18a.m.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: We’re on!
Waters’s office finally confirmed last night—we’re on for next Friday in L.A. Meeting with Craig and his team re: vision for the show. I’ll fly out & meet you two beforehand. Excitiiing!
N
In the lobby, Ryan’s at the checkout desk while Shanthi’s already seated in the shuttle parked in the porte cochere. I spot Maral looking at her phone just outside the hotel entrance and crush her to me in a bear hug. My smile threatens to split my face in two, and I’m dismayed by her tempered one. She’s not nearly as excited as I expected her to be.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says, affecting cheer.
She’s always been more subdued than me, but that’s not saying much given that I’ve been described as, quote,a fireworks display of ebullience. Her elation is just more subtle. Despite the fact that this is the first step toward the best thing that could possibly happen tous.
“Mar,” I say, holding her by the shoulders. “If this goes well, we can achieve a pinnacle forSo Proud of You,andfinallymake our parents happy.”
She smiles unconvincingly. “I know. It’s great!”
She’s clutching her phone in her hand, and I can see on the screen that she has her email open.
“What happened—did you get a follow-up from Nadia or something?” I check my own notifications, but I don’t see anything from my agent. Sometimes Nadia’s in touch directly with Maral to arrange meeting details I don’t need to be involved in. “Did they cancel already? Are they going in a different direction?” And then a terrible thought occurs to me. “They didn’t get wind of yesterday’s event, did they? Is there any video online from the Q and A? I told Shanthi not to post any—”
“Hey.” She blackens her screen and cups my elbows. “Take it down a few levels, please. It’s nothing like that. Anyway, I don’t think some loser’s standards for literature will even register on Craig Waters’s radar.”
“You never know—Hollywood is extremely fickle.”
“Ana, breathe.” I do as instructed, inhaling the scent of her leave-in conditioner and exhaling. “It’s all good. We’re going to meet with Waters next Friday, and soon you’re going to be hosting your own TV show.”
A spark ignites in my chest. I imagine making the call to Mom, imagine her reaction to the prospect of moving to a city with a concentration of Armenians so high it feels like the motherland. Of living near her sister- and brother-in-law again. Nearmeagain, so I can figure out how to fix her washing machine myself and project-manage her home from the inside rather than from a distance. I won’t have to bear her lamentations about my living so far away anymore, nor about my choice of career—those will finally, blessedly, begin to peter off.If you were on television, that would be one thing.And I will be. Like Oprah, at whose altar she worshipped when I was a kid, or Drew, whom she watches religiously now. She partakes in TV, she understands TV—it’s a media source as familiar to boomers as the concept of medicine. She’ll feel just as proud to see me on her screen as she would to call me Dr. Movilian. Andher gratification will make being in her presence day to day bearable again. More than that—it’ll be enjoyable. Finally.
Knowing Maral will be by my side every step of the way only makes it sweeter. I may be the host but there would be no show without her. This beautiful freaking mermaid I get to live my life alongside. How lucky can a person get?
“We’regoing to get a TV show,” I say. “And we’ll get to live in the same city as our family again. Win-win!”
She nods, her chest expanding on a breath. “Win-win.”
The light drizzle that was falling upon our arrival in Seattle becomes progressively heavier over the weekend. If this were our first stop on the tour, I might have made a crack about Ryan having brought the storm with him, but I’m past that now. I’m nothing if not growing every day.
By late Saturday afternoon, when we gather in the hotel’s atrium to head to the First Women conference, Maral is making relentless fun of the fact that I brought three full suitcases and not a single raincoat resides within them.
“You knew we were coming to the Pacific Northwest. Rain is a given.”
