Clank. Swish.
It was coming from the kitchen.
“Mom?”
She stood at the sink in her robe, Mamou’s bright pink rubber gloves pulled up to her elbows. Her hair was still done up Persian Casual, all curls and falls, though several locks had managed to escape their careful arrangement.
The counters to the right of the sink were stacked high as the Gate of All Nations with pots and pans, plates and glasses, and teacups.
So many teacups.
“Hi, sweetie.”
“What’re you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Can I help?”
“It’s okay. Go back to bed.”
I could tell she was just taarofing.
“I can’t sleep either.”
“All right. You mind drying these?” She nodded to the serving platters in the dish rack. “You can stack them on the table.”
I pulled a tea towel from the drawer next to the stove, then grabbed the ceramic rice platter and dried it off. The enormous dish was white with concentric rings of tiny green leaves on it.
“Hey. Didn’t we send this with the Ardekanis last year?”
Mom pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose with her forearm. “Yeah. For their anniversary.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Mamou and Babou had been married for fifty-one years.
I thought about all the fights they must have had, and all the times they had forgiven each other.
I thought about the little secrets they knew about each other that no one else knew.
I thought about how they might not reach their fifty-second anniversary.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?” Her voice had gone all pinched, like the neck of a deflating balloon.
“I’m sorry. About Babou.”
She shook her head and scrubbed the soup pot hard enough to bore a hole through it. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I had brought you and Laleh sooner. It’s not fair you only get to see him like this. So tired. And just... well, you saw.”
She stopped scrubbing and blew a hair out of her face.
“Yeah.”
“His doctors say it’s going to get worse.”
I swallowed and looked for a dry spot on my towel.
