The Summer We Came to Life

Arshan was no dummy. He knew who had invited him. He stood and looked out across the city lights. “It’s beautiful, no? It reminds me a bit of Tehran, the city lights in the mountains.”

I peeked at him out of the corner of my eye. I always forgot he spent half his life in Iran.

“So, you’re going to become a married woman, huh, Sammy?”

I don’t know what shocked me more—his question or the nickname. “They told you? Lynette and Jesse?”

Now he seemed surprised. “What do you think we talk about?” He looked at me. “We talk about the four musketeers.” His gaze darted away quickly. “About all you girls.”

Three musketeers, not four. A pointy triangle that doesn’t roll. Oh, Mina. Why am I here and not you?

Something cool and smooth touched my shoulder. Arshan picked it up between his fingers and stared at the maple leaf in wonder. He looked up at the sky, then behind us on the balcony. He’d raked thousands of these in his yard. The deep line between his eyebrows almost made me giggle. I took this new leaf by its stem and twirled it between my fingers.

“There are so many things Mina and I never talked about,” he said as he watched the leaf.

I didn’t respond and we both lapsed into thought. I remembered when Mina and I were children, how we were left to ourselves, how we played “house” for hours in the woods and made TV dinners together.

“Is he the one?”

“Excuse me?”

Arshan continued as if he was no longer talking to me. “You will give him your youth, your idealism, and your capacity for hope. He will seal or destroy your belief in fate and love. You only get one chance at these things. He will fill your life’s bowl, Samantha. So is he worthy?”

I reminded myself to breathe. My heart pounded in my throat. How dare he, of all people? “Was Mina’s mother worth it?” Worth becoming so bitter? I thought.

Arshan laughed so unexpectedly and so loud that I got goosebumps. “You bet she was.” He slapped the balcony railing and laughed again. I had no idea he could laugh like that.

Seemingly having surprised himself as well, Arshan cleared his throat and smoothed his slacks. He nodded his head at me, his dark eyes still crinkled from laughing. Then he turned to walk inside.

“Mr. Bahrami? Arshan?”

He turned back. I held out the maple leaf. He took it from my fingers like a long-stemmed rose and studied its colors of campfire embers in the moonlight. His face assumed a softness, like milk spilling over jagged marble. Then he opened the door and the party music flooded the balcony, rinsing away the moment.

November 10

Samantha

Okay, Mina, tell me this: What is the difference between matter and non-matter?

The craziest lesson of quantum physics is that at the most fundamental level, we don’t know what the world and/or us, as human beings, are made of.

Particles are hard, substantial points in space, like electrons. Waves are spread out and immaterial, like sound. Things have to be one or the other, right?

Wrong. The most famous experiment in modern physics is The Double Slit Experiment. Electron particles are fired through a screen with two slits onto a particle detector one at a time. You would expect the electron to go through one of the two slits and be detected somewhere directly behind one or the other. But after you’ve fired thousands of electrons, you see not two slits of accumulated particles, but a series of thick and skinny bands—an interference pattern indicative of a wave. But how did each particle know where to end up on the wave interference pattern? The electron somehow interacts and acts both as a wave and a particle at the same time, completely defying classic notions of space, time and matter.

See, Mina, we really have no clue about “reality.” At what point are we separate from everything around us? How are thoughts different from, say, your collection of maple leaves?

Scientists aren’t any closer to solving the mind/body debate than the Pope of Rome.

Which is not to say that there aren’t theories….

CHAPTER

9

WHILE THE OPENING CEREMONY STRETCHED into the night, Kendra nestled in Michael’s arm, savoring the familiarity. They always lay the same way, on their same respective sides. Kendra loved all things that had that kind of automatic comfort—cutting her banana over her bran cereal, the concierge hailing her daily cab, the TiVo bloop when she sat down on Sunday to watch all her favorite shows Michael wouldn’t watch.

After the previous night’s fight, Kendra and Michael hadn’t discussed the issue further. Both had said what they had to say for the moment, and neither one was the type to repeat themselves for the sake of drama. Michael came over late with Chinese takeout. They’d watched ESPN and gotten into bed. They hadn’t had sex, but that wasn’t unusual on a weeknight.

The problem was that Michael thought he had won, and figured Kendra didn’t want to discuss the details of abortion. Kendra figured Michael just needed time to adjust and might even propose soon. But this was just a fleeting whisper at the edge of her mind, because really she was happiest ignoring the whole situation.

Then Michael furrowed his eyebrows, and Kendra’s world was just about to explode.

Kendra didn’t see it, of course, in their usual pose, so she was stroking his arm contentedly when Michael said, “I’ll go with you, baby.”

Kendra knew exactly what he meant before he even finished saying it. Words are often superfluous between lovers. Skin speaks its desires; moods hang in the air; intention travels faster than words. Kendra’s face crumpled halfway through “I’ll go,” and Michael said nothing more after that sentence because he could feel her disappointment seep into his skin.

So, with both of them finally on the same page, minus the words to confirm it, their usual pose turned into something entirely different, as Michael hugged Kendra so tight it squeezed out the sobs Kendra took immeasurable pains to contain, at which point she sprang away as if from a branding iron, and curled up on the far edge of the mattress.

Michael wanted to comfort her, but he knew that they were back on the battlefield. He would lose his last five years of youth if he went soft on this one.

Kendra was crying because she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Later, after she was sure Michael was asleep, Kendra picked up her phone to reread my text from that afternoon. She read the words several times, pushing the star key every time the phone darkened to sleep mode.

Kendra, I know something’s wrong. Call me. We all love you no matter what.

Kendra touched her hairline, which had broken out in a fine sweat. She hadn’t gotten her hair redone, a fact that set off alarm bells in the secretary when Kendra came in late that morning with a hat squashed atop a tangled mass of hair.

Kendra hid in her office all day, but hardly accomplished a thing besides staring at her in-box and managing not to cry.

Remembering, Kendra got out of bed. She tiptoed into the living room and picked up the picture of the four girls. Their very first summer trip. Kendra stroked a finger over Mina’s beaming face. She sat down on the couch, studying the picture like an Italian Vogue. Four girls and two mothers in Paris. Kendra’s mother and Isabel’s mom, Jesse, were already best buddies by then, soldiers in the battle against suburbia. They’d started the vacation club to get the girls out of Conformia every summer. Kendra smiled. She was old enough to understand that both mothers secretly loved the celebrity status afforded them by the Conformia of the conservative little burb outside of Washington, D.C. Jesse got to brag about being a supermodel, and flaunt her taste for leopard print. But her mother? Kendra hadn’t quite figured out what made Lynette Jones so wary of the picture-perfect neighborhood, though she was sure it had to do with her father, a civil rights lawyer in D.C.

Kendra set down the picture. It wasn’t fair to worry them. She grabbed her BlackBerry and sent a group text:

Swamped with work. Wish I was there.

One lie and one truth. Kendra looked back at the photo, but this time she saw her reflection in the glass of the frame, her frizzy hair and sallow skin illuminated by the streetlight seeping through the window. Kendra stood up slowly and shuffled over to a full-length mirror. She stood stiller than a sentry, a judging scowl on her face. What was she guarding?

All my sacred plans, she answered the reflection wryly. Career. Wedding. Family. In that order.

Guarding them against whom?

“Against you,” she whispered at the unkempt woman in the mirror.

She stared down the imposter, eyes narrowed and chin up as though she could reshape the image by force of will. But she couldn’t. The frazzled, disheveled lady continued to glare back at her. Kendra let her nightgown slip to the floor. She saw a woman that was no longer the youngest, prettiest girl in every business meeting.

Stretch marks scurried around her nipples. Her stomach was soft and fleshy. Her waist was narrow but flared into wide dimply hips. The woman’s face was a Picasso of curves and shadows, but with lips as full as marshmallows.