The Stationery Shop(65)
And she had to move. Some things stay with you, haunt you. Some embers nestle into your skin. Shots cannot be forgotten. And neither can that force of love.
Sometimes she could sense his breath on her ear at night. He could not have been the man she thought she saw almost always here and there in New England or even in California in the early years, when a rush, a person going past made her body buzz and from her peripheral vision, for a flash, she’d be sure it was him. Once at Filene’s in Boston, while she was browsing through shirts for Walter, a man on the other side of the rack looked like Bahman. She felt sure it was Bahman, but of course it wasn’t. Couldn’t be. Another time, at an airport stopover, a young man had looked and walked exactly like Bahman. She had to lean on a pillar to catch her balance. That man was about twenty. As she caught her breath in the airport, she remembered she was in her forties. So Bahman was in his forties as well. Of course that young man couldn’t be him. It was impossible not to always imagine him as young, impossible to muster him up as old. Would he have lost his hair? Gained weight? Walter hadn’t lost his hair. He was “a stunner,” Patricia liked to say, a verifiable Jimmy Stewart. What was Bahman? Which movie star did he look like? What had life served up for him? It was not her business to know.
When Kyle arrived, a small pocket of air had been let into their tightly wrapped bubble of privacy and pain. Soon that pocket of air expanded and let in the world again. Because of Kyle, Roya had tea with the other mothers. Because of him, she attended PTA meetings and sprang up when he hit the ball at baseball games. She accessed joy again, moved with ease again, made the scrambled eggs in the mornings and discussed soccer scores and pored over textbooks and report cards. Because of him, she learned about the world again.
“What happens when the blood in our veins runs out?”
Kyle’s questions never stopped. He was endlessly curious. She took him to the library and sat him on her lap and read him book after book. In the early years, Kyle had her Iranian accent because her voice was most of what he heard. It disappeared once he started school. Other mothers complained that their children didn’t pay attention, but Kyle listened. His appetite for understanding how the world worked was immense. When he was little, they were the two musketeers. The third musketeer—his older sister—was in Roya’s heart always. Her Marigold.
Roya was thankful that they could afford for her to quit her job and be with Kyle. She wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. If only she could carry Kyle’s heart in a padded tea cozy and protect it so it would not break. If only she could somehow shield him from danger, from loss, from grief. But she knew that the fate on his forehead was written with an ink she could not see and no amount of mothering or hovering or worrying could keep the dangers at bay.
She showed him tadpoles in the pond on Merriam Hill, learned the distance of the stars and moon just so she could teach him, traced the outlines of his favorite TV characters on sketch paper for him. With Walter’s steady presence, she carved a life in New England for the three of them and stuffed all that mattered into a colonial home with shutters on its windows.
Each year when Kyle blew out the candles on his birthday cake, Roya’s mingled relief and anxiety wafted in the wisps of smoke that rose. They nestled into the baseboard molding of their dining room. They landed in every strand of their hair. Another year. Another year, and he was here.
The stationery store was 2.7 miles from their house; she knew because she liked to set the odometer to zero sometimes just for kicks. The big-box store was huge and overlit, a warehouse really. Part of a national chain. Stepping in with Walter, Roya steadied herself inside. The aisles smelled of chemicals and cheap carpeting, of corporate gluttony and weariness. Row after row of notebooks, Post-it notes, antiseptic wipes, plastic boxes, folders, envelopes, markers, crayons, popcorn. (Popcorn? Why?) It was what she used to love: stationery and sharpeners, pens and pencils. But nothing she wanted anymore, not like this, not spread out in this cavernous space without even an owner present. Pimply teenage boys wearing uniforms ignored her “excuse mes” until Walter had to blurt “Excuse us!” as though he were scolding them. Only then were they directed to the correct aisle for paper shredders. (Walter was determined to go through their old files and shred what wasn’t needed so “when the time came” Kyle didn’t have to do it: “Best we organize and get rid of all that paperwork we’ve saved over the years. We should do it now. While we still have our wits. Make it easier for when we’re gone. Kyle doesn’t need to be burdened with going through all our things.”)
He picked out the shredder after much comparing and contrasting, and then led Roya through the chemically carpeted aisles until they found the correct place for paper clips. So much to choose from in various packaging. Just for paper clips. They finally selected a clear jar filled with clips of cheerful blue, grass green, bright yellow, and deep red.
In line for the cash register (one of eight—so many!), Roya picked up a small vessel of hand sanitizer from a bin. It had a rubber loop that allowed it to attach to a purse, a key chain, anything. She could ward off colds and flu and pneumonia and the latest diseases with this. Could Marigold have warded off the croup? she thought. With this little plastic vessel of antibacterial gel?
When they finally reached the front of the line, Roya grumbled, “This shop is so big and not one of those teenagers knows what he’s doing.”