The Stationery Shop(68)
Chapter Twenty-Six
2013
* * *
Appointment
By the time Roya walked back to Walter to hear about how the molding of the inserts had gone, she was flushed and ready to collapse. You might think that the world is complicated and full of lost souls, that people who’ve touched your life and disappeared will never be found, but in the end all of that can change. One shop, one glass of tea, and all of that can simply flip.
Bahman’s son, Omid—he’d told her his name—had been easygoing. A benefit of living in America, a benefit of his generation. He was open and willing to share. Not guarded and suspicious the way he would have been if he’d been her age. When she told him that she had known his father once upon a time, his eyes widened. “Seriously? Wow. Are you kidding?” She couldn’t bring herself to form the words to ask if he was alive or dead. Ever since Jahangir had passed away, she had lost news of Bahman. She had pushed him to the bottom of the bucket anyway.
But the son said, “Shall I tell him I saw you? He’d be tickled to know I met an old friend of his.”
“That won’t be necessary, absolutely not,” she said. “Don’t bother him. We were barely acquaintances. I’m just happy to know he is . . . well. And to meet his son. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for the tea. I have to go now. My husband waits.”
“Oh, sure. He’s at the Duxton Senior Center now, just so you know. He gets pretty lonely. My sister and I visit as much as we can. But you know how it is with these crazy busy lives.”
She couldn’t imagine the boy who would change the world in a nursing home. What had happened to Shahla? But she didn’t dare ask this nice man about his mother. She said she had to go, and they both repeated over and over what a small world it was and how she should come again.
The new inserts were made of foam, Walter told her when she returned to the clinic. He said that even so they were surprisingly firm, how do you like that? They got in the car, and Walter groaned at the top-of-the-hour news. “Can’t they ever get it right in Washington? We should vote them all out.” And then: “What’s the matter, Roya? You look pale. Roya? Roya, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just felt a little faint earlier, that’s all.”
“Should I stop?”
“No, Walter, carry on. Let’s just carry on.”
Once home, she was still winded, shaking.
“I’ll heat up the coffee,” Walter said. “It’ll perk you up. No pun intended.” He slipped on his moccasin slippers and headed to the coffeemaker. Drip. Not the fancy espresso machine with the pods, which Zari kept encouraging them to buy. Walter preferred coffee brewed in an old Mr. Coffee machine, left to stand in the pitcher all day long.
“Thanks. Just going to the bathroom!”
Walter’s camel moccasins, beige fur peeking out around the ankles, were just a flash as she rushed past him.
Driven by an energy that was new and frightening, she climbed the stairs faster than she had in years. She hurried to the desk Walter had built in their bedroom, sat, and turned on their laptop. Her hands were sweaty (must be from the thermal gloves) and her heart pounded. Maybe these were symptoms of an impending heart attack after all. Like Mrs. Michael, their neighbor, she’d have a stroke, her head would fall on the keyboard, and Walter would find her, never knowing what she’d intended to type. Maybe she should stop. But tears ran down her cheeks as she heard again the bell from the Stationery Shop. She clicked on the browser just like Kyle had taught her. When the cursor hovered in the search bar, she typed: Duxton Senior Center.
How you haven’t googled him in all these years is beyond me, Sister! Lord knows I’ve searched for every man I ever loved. Yousof from Tehran is a retired neurosurgeon in Maryland now—I saw his photograph on a website. Did you know? But you insist you want to leave the past in the past. As if that’s possible!
Her fingers shook. Well, if she was going to have a stroke, then at least let her find out what had happened. By those jasmine-soaked bushes on that summer night, she had kissed him hard. From him, she had learned the tango. It was his letters that she’d run to get day after day that blasted summer, because of him that she had written page after page with a fountain pen in blue ink. For him, she had waited in the square.
Walter would be pouring a cup of oily coffee. Roya reached for her reading glasses.
Images and words came into focus on the screen. The Duxton Senior Center was a community center with its own assisted-living facility, in the heart of beautiful Duxton, Massachusetts. Photos of trees near a lake, seniors ballroom dancing, a close-up of a plate with beef stew and carrots and corn and the caption Delicious homemade meals! filled the website. She felt like she was witnessing something forbidden but also absolutely normal and mundane. The boy who had built their stationery shop in America was at this center—which, according to the directions she now googled, was 53.5 miles south of this house. The house where Walter waited. How do you like that?
The center had a phone number, a fax number, step-by-step directions on how to arrive at its front doors from north, south, east, and west. Roya pressed the corners of her eyes. Ridiculous old lady revisiting something she thought she had reconciled a thousand years ago.
She got up to go downstairs to Walter.