“Hey, I’ve been wallowing.”
“Well, wallow yourself into some soap, please.” She waves a hand in front of her nose. “Because ew.”
I grumble, pointing at her face. “Don’t push it.”
She follows me to the bathroom in a routine as old asSPOY. I undress and step into the stream of water as she tells me more about the job, the things she’s excited about and the things makingher nervous. I listen and tell her in various ways that she’s the smartest and most valuable employee anyone could ever hire, that the Metropolitan Planning Agency is lucky to have her, and that if they don’t realize it, they’ll have me to answer to.
As I dress, I feel marginally more human, due less to the cleanliness and more to the normalcy of having Maral in our shared space again. Then I remember that soon this won’t happen anymore, and my chin starts wobbling again.
Mar tries to bolster me. “Nadia says Scope is excited to see your talk tomorrow night.”
My stomach drops. I have been avoiding facing reality for two days, and part of that was ignoring the fact that I have to go up onstage at the Infinitude Symposium tomorrow and be jazz-hands Ana for the two thousand people attending, not to mention the thousands more who will tune in to the Instagram Live that Shanthi will be streaming of the event. Nadia emailed me over theweekend to let me know that Scope, with whom I’m meeting in the morning, will also be tuning in. So they can see my screen charisma in action, I guess.
Reading my reaction, Mar says, “I’ll be there with you. It’s going to go great—you can do this talk from memory at this point. I’ll bet they sign you immediately. You’re going to get everything you want.”
I blow out a breath. “Not everything. Not you. Not—” I stop myself, not sure how I almost slipped and said his name when he wasn’t on my mind for once.
Or wasn’t he? Isn’t he always right below the surface, simmering like a riptide, ready to draw me under?
Maral presses her lips together, reading the subtext. I’m wearing sweats and one of her MIT T-shirts—represent—but feel exposed under her gaze.
“Your parents are gonna bepissed,” I say, pushing through the moment. “Just when we dangled the carrot of you moving closer to them.”
“We?” she asks pointedly. Then she sighs. “I honestly don’t think I care. I mean, not that I don’t care. I’m just…making a concerted effort to care less. I don’t want to be guilted into a life I don’t really want.”
My stomach knots. Have I been doing that to her? Guilting her into staying on withSPOYwhen she would have rather been somewhere else? I feel dizzy again and sit on the edge of my rumpled bed.
“I don’t think you should be, either,” she adds.
I lift my chin. “I’m not being guilted. I’m the one who’s pushing the move to L.A.”
“Yeah, but is that what you really want?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Because it matters,” she says. “What you want matters, Ana. What you feel matters. Your mom doesn’t think so, but it does.”
Whoa. What’s this, now, Throw Our Parents Under the Bus Day? “That’s not fair.”
She scoffs. “You know what’s not fair? Putting all your shit on your child.”
“She doesn’t do that—”
“No?” Her voice is strident now—like she’s had this conversation locked and loaded and is finally getting to pull the trigger. “What about when Vahag died?”
My breath catches, sticks. “What about it?”
“It was all about her. She didn’t let anyone else grieve him.”
“She’d just lost her husband! She was broken.”
“You’d just lost your dad,” she says. “So were you.”
I shake my head but it feels stiff, uncooperative.
“You needed space to grieve just as much as she did,” Mar says. “But she sucked all the air out of the house, didn’t let you share the pain. Didn’t let you even feel it—keeping you running all the time.”
She’s not being fair. Iwantedto keep busy, do the arrangements, the paperwork, the upkeep. I wanted to run, needed to hustle. Mom may have benefited, but it was my choice. It was my choice.
