The Stationery Shop(54)

“Such a beautiful moon out there!” Zari said when she finally came home. She entered the living room, her voice giddy from her date with Jack. Roya could always sense the after-Jack aura around Zari.

“You should have heard Jack tonight, Sister!” Zari’s lipstick flashed ruby red in the small stream of moonlight coming from the window. “Why are you sitting here in the dark? Oooh, smells so wonderful in this house! You made your ghormeh sabzi?”

Roya nodded, but she wasn’t even sure if her sister could see that.

“These pumps are killing me.” She heard Zari kick off one shoe and then the other. “Did you know Jack wrote a poem where every line starts with p? Every line except the third-to-last line, which then starts with z. Isn’t that clever?”

“Genius.”

“How was your night with Walter? Did you teach him how to cook ghormeh sabzi?”

“I’m marrying him.” To anchor herself and not evaporate from the light-headedness that came from the enormity of what she’d agreed to, Roya clasped her onion-smelling hands on her lap. She had stumbled upon the role of fiancée to Walter, as though she’d been roaming the studios of a Hollywood lot, been mistaken for the lead actress, and then been asked to say the lines that someone else had written.

“What?” Zari stood still.

“You heard. Correctly.”

“Vaaaaay! When?”

Roya shrugged.

Zari pranced over to her in stockinged feet. When she came in for a hug, she smelled of Jack’s cologne. Of course her sister wanted details. Zari would have liked nothing more than for the two of them to talk into the night and process every moment of the evening: how Walter had proposed, what he’d said, breaking everything down word by word. But what was there to tell her? He had asked, and Roya had said yes. It was as simple as that.

“Good night, Zari.” Roya patted her sister’s back awkwardly. She wasn’t ready for Zari’s gushing. She felt drained.

“Oh my goodness, Sister! Married! Can you believe it? We have to tell Maman and Baba. Have you spoken to them? Did you ask their permission? Will you go back to Iran to have a wedding? How will they come here? What will we do? When will it be? I can help you. Do you want to have it here, in California? Should we tell Mrs. Kishpaugh? Will you move with him to Boston after graduation? Sister, what will I do without you? We’ll be apart for the first time in our lives. You know I’m staying here, right? Mrs. Kishpaugh said I can stay even after graduation. I mean, I don’t know what will happen with Jack. He wants to write poetry; he says San Francisco is too expensive. Sister, you will need a dress! You will have to speak to Baba. Oh my goodness! Walter! American! You should make a list of all that you have to do. You need to make a list. I’ll write it up for you.”

“Yavash, yavash—slow, slow,” Roya said. Her head was spinning. Zari talked too much. It was happening quite fast. Walter’s breath had smelled like saffron and butter. The tahdig rice had turned out golden and crispy that night. It was the perfect complement to the ghormeh sabzi stew. She’d been surprised. She had worried it would burn in Mrs. Kishpaugh’s old pot and get stuck, but it had slid out perfectly. She hadn’t thought about a dress. Or a list of to-dos. She wanted to lay her head on the back of Mrs. Kishpaugh’s armchair and weep. She was tired. Zari was saying something about an engagement party, whether she would have one, and if she did then maybe they could invite the friends from chemistry class, and on and on. Roya didn’t need an engagement party. The moonlight fell from the window in one small band. The rest of the room was dark.

“Sister, it’s late, go to sleep, we’ll figure it out eventually,” Roya said.

Zari said a few more things about flowers and phone calls and petticoats and Jack. Then she got up, walked to the doorway in the dark, and fumbled on the floor first for one shoe and then the other. They dangled from her fingers as she walked out. Before she left the room, she whisper-shouted, “You know what this means? We are done with that boy for good!”

Shadows quivered like lace on the living room floor after Zari left. Roya couldn’t force the to-do list out of her mind. How many boxes would she need to pack for New England? A heavy coat would have to be bought, of course. She would have to telephone her parents and let them know that a wedding was in order. Baba would want to meet Walter—he was supposed to approve first, they had done it all the wrong way, she had said yes before her parents’ agreement. But everything was topsy-turvy in this country, and with Baba and Maman so far away, what choice did she have? Maybe they’d be relieved to hear she was engaged. Of course they had worried she would never marry after the breakup with Bahman. She wasn’t considered as damaged as if she had been a divorcée, God forbid. But still. They had written off marriage for her—at least, she had. It had been a public mess of a broken engagement. In their social circles, it was talked about for a while. But Walter was American; he lived here, in this country. It was different here. Maybe it was all in the script. The forehead-written fate.

She would need a dress, of course, Zari was right. She added that item to the to-do list.

Sweet, dear Walter. He was very kind, wasn’t he? He would never betray her. She liked his mother—when Roya had met her at homecoming weekend, she’d been reserved but polite. She kept saying how much Walter’s father would have loved to have been there. His sister, Patricia, was cold, but Walter had merely shrugged and whispered, “New England,” as an explanation for her demeanor. Roya willed her mind to focus only on Walter and her to-do list.