The Stationery Shop(61)

“That would be lovely, thank you,” Patricia said. She put down the grocery bag on the table and cleared her throat. Then she said, “I went to Mount Auburn after work.”

Roya stiffened. Marigold was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

“Mount Auburn Street. The shops there,” Patricia went on. “I got you something. Some things.”

Roya watched as Patricia removed items from her paper bag and placed them carefully on the kitchen counter. There was a small pot of hyacinths in cellophane and a bag of apples. Chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil and a packet of sumac spice. A bottle of vinegar and a few cloves of garlic. There was even a bag of senjed, the dried fruit of the lotus tree.

These were all items that began with the letter s in Farsi, traditional items for the Persian New Year Haft Seen seven s’s table. Roya had carefully laid out these symbolic objects every single year growing up with Maman and Zari and Baba. It was a tradition she had hoped to share with Marigold one day. It was not a tradition she had ever expected Patricia to help her celebrate.

“Happy New Year, Roya,” Patricia said gently.

A lump the size of all of New England rose in Roya’s throat. A sheen of sweat coated her skin. She was filled with a huge wave of gratitude that made her want to fold over and cry. “Thank you, Patricia,” Roya whispered.

Patricia turned to straighten the hyacinth and move the sumac spice over to the left a little. She was not one to express her feelings all too well—this much Roya knew. But when she turned around, Roya saw that her sister-in-law’s eyes were filled with tears. “I am,” Patricia said, “so very sorry.”

Roya didn’t know if she was giving condolences again for Marigold (so many people told her they were sorry whenever they saw her these days—it was the one thing she heard the most) or if Patricia was perhaps apologizing for anything she’d said in the past.

Roya just nodded.

Patricia reached into the paper bag and retrieved another item. It was a small see-through sachet filled with the thin crimson threads that Roya knew so well.

“Where did you find saffron?” Roya gasped.

“Oh, I did my research. I have my ways.” Patricia came close and gently pressed the sachet of saffron into Roya’s hands. For a minute she kept her hands around Roya’s. Then she quickly straightened herself up and said in a loud and authoritative voice, “Now then! Where is that tea you promised me?”

They sat together that afternoon and drank the tea. Their conversation was halting at first, but slowly they opened up more. For the first time since she’d married Walter, Roya and Patricia even commiserated about Walter’s obsession with the Red Sox.

“Thank you, Patricia,” Roya said when Patricia got up to leave. “I do appreciate this. More than you know.”

“No need to thank me.” Patricia went to the foyer and got her coat. At the door, she hesitated. Then she said, “I may have been a bit hard on you over these past few years. Perhaps. You have to understand that Walter is my only sibling and I adore him. You could argue I love him to a fault. Mother says I mollycoddle him. No one is ever good enough for my little brother and all that. But . . .” Patricia fidgeted with the buttons on her coat and then looked up. “Well, Roya, we may have lost Marigold. But we are so very grateful to have you.” She quickly walked out, went down the front steps, and slid into her car.

Roya stood at the doorway, and this time, she broke down into tears.



They became the couple that others turned their heads toward and gave a sad smile to, the couple prayed for at Alice’s church, the ones who received cards in the mail filled with fountain-penned condolences. Roya continued to work at HBS, and she felt for Walter a strange kinship. They were united in pain. He spent every night drinking in the rocking chair before bed. She retreated into her shell. Ice frozen over a melted layer is even harder to break than before.

A routine of work and a few friends and, painstakingly, a semblance of return to the world. Eventually, Walter and Roya went out again to dinners at their neighbors’. Sure, she even got out the pots and pans again and cooked. For Walter. She forced herself to buy rice and soak it in lukewarm water and boil it, and one night when Walter came home from the office (he worked at a huge law firm now, in Boston, near the Prudential Center, he was successful, everyone told him so), he was able to smell again the fragrant saffron, thanks to Patricia. He held Roya close and inhaled her hair. She was glad that he didn’t say something awful like “You’re back.”

For their anniversary a few months later, they went to a restaurant for the first time since. At the table, Walter took her hand.

“Roya Joon, we should try again.”

The words landed like sharp needles against her scalp, her skin.

“Not if you’re not ready. But, I don’t know. We are so young, Roya Joon, aren’t we? I’m not saying now. I’m saying when you’re ready.”

She would never be ready. She would never want in any way to replace Marigold. Why had she agreed to come out with Walter? She wasn’t even ready to be out in public at a restaurant where everyone around them was having fun. All she wanted was her daughter. She wanted to feel her daughter’s face against her cheek. She wanted to hold her and hear her laugh. She wanted Marigold.

Under the dim light of the restaurant, Walter’s expression was pleading. Not for the first time, Roya saw how he’d aged. The Berkeley café coffee-cup-spilling incident was seven years ago. They’d been married now for five years. It was 1963. They were twenty-seven. But their loss had removed them from the normal scheme of things—they were part of an elite club who’d experienced a coup of the natural order of life. Marigold had come in their fourth year of marriage, unannounced and unexpected but oh so welcome when she arrived. Only to then disappear and prove Roya’s every worst fear true.