The Stationery Shop(80)

“Ready?” Claire’s eyes were red. “Let’s take you home.”



Claire pulled into the driveway of the colonial house with its dark-green shutters, and Roya undid her seat belt but did not get out. “Would you like to come in?”

She said it because it was the polite thing to do, but also because Claire knew more about Roya and Bahman than anyone else. She had been Bahman’s confidante at the center. He had shared their history with her. Roya felt an inexplicable need to be with Claire. His kids weren’t the only link to him. Claire was too.

“Oh.” Claire looked surprised. “If you’re sure it won’t be any trouble. . . .”

“No trouble at all,” Roya said.

“All right. Thank you. I have something I was going to give you when I dropped you off. I’ll give it to you inside then?”

“What is it?”

“He wanted you to have it. That’s all I know.”

Roya put the kettle on the stove and motioned for her guest to sit at the kitchen table. Walter wasn’t due back from his town meeting for a while. Those meetings always ran over and went on for hours as people argued.

Once she was seated, Claire fumbled in her tote bag and took out a round blue tin box printed with pictures of Danish butter cookies.

Roya and Walter had shared many of those cookies over the years. There was a box just like it in Roya’s closet. She kept her sewing things in it: spools of thread and pins and needles and thimbles and extra buttons.

“He was very insistent that this be given to you. His kids took all the rest of his belongings. But he was adamant that no one but you see this box.”

Roya was feeling slightly faint. Claire pushed the box gently to her, and she pried the lid open, hands shaking.

Paper. A stack of onionskin paper. She took out a sheet and unfolded it. The handwriting was amazingly familiar but she couldn’t place it. Then her heart stopped.

It was her own. She dropped the sheet and thumbed through the rest of the box’s contents. These were the letters she had written to Bahman in the summer of 1953. These were the contents of her heart. She quickly put the first letter back in, as though touching it too long could burn her fingers. Then she closed the lid tight and put the box in the drawer of her kitchen desk.

Claire didn’t say a word.

“Now then,” Roya said. “What kind of tea can I get you?”



They spoke only about Bahman at first. Claire shared stories about him from the center, and Roya dared to share a few memories from 1953. Then Roya asked about Claire’s own family. She had lost her mother to cancer and her father had died in a car accident when she was two. Something about Claire’s bereft expression struck Roya. This young woman was especially alone.

“I should really go,” Claire said after she had finished her Persian tea and baklava.

“Please, would you like to stay for dinner?”

Roya barely knew this young woman. What did they have in common but a fondness for the man Claire called Batman? But Walter wasn’t home yet, and it was getting dark, and part of her worried that if Claire left, she would be alone with her grief. This girl looked like she shouldn’t be alone. “Have you ever had Persian food?” she blurted out.

“There’s a kebab place in Watertown,” Claire mumbled.

“Oh, forget kebabs. Have you ever had khoresh, any of our stews? Have you ever had Persian-style mixed rice?”

“I’ve certainly heard Mr. Batman talk about them all the time. His favorite was something called allyballoo—”

“Albaloo! Sour cherry rice?”

“Yes. And he always talked about something sabzi?”

“Ghormeh sabzi! Look, I was going to bake frozen fish sticks tonight. Walter loves the fish sticks with ketchup and with mayonnaise. He’s at the town meeting. They’re discussing the override. It’s good, you know, for him to stay involved? You have to stay involved. But if you like? We can surprise him with a nice dinner. If you stay.”

That first night of cooking lessons at Mrs. Kishpaugh’s boardinghouse, Walter had come with his perfectly combed hair under his porkpie hat and she had made him khoresh-e-bademjan with chicken. It was not usual to use chicken; it was supposed to be made with beef. But she’d made do and it had turned out so well and now, well, this young lady looked like she could use a good home-cooked meal. Why not? After all Claire had done for Bahman, the least Roya could do was make her a good dinner. My goodness, it had been ages since she’d showed someone how to cook Persian food. Patricia and Alice had never cared for it. But this young lady who sat in her kitchen, whose parents had died, who had taken the time to talk to Bahman, who had listened to him and taken care of him and gone above and beyond the dictates of her job, she deserved a good dinner. “If you help me?” she said again. “We could try.”

Claire shrugged. “Tell me where to start.”

Together they navigated the kitchen. Roya showed Claire where everything was. They washed the basmati rice and soaked it, and then Roya had Claire start the Persian rice cooker that Walter had ordered from Amazon. No more fumbling with a cloth under the lid to catch the steam the way Maman did to create the perfect bottom-of-pot crunchy tahdig. This rice cooker did that for you!

She got out a bag of dried Persian limes, yellow split peas, and from the fridge some chicken. She had made khoresh-e-bademjan with chicken for Walter that first night in Mrs. Kishpaugh’s boarding house, but tonight she had no eggplants so she’d make khoresh-e-gheymeh and use the yellow split peas. They cut and chopped and sautéed and added saffron and turmeric and Persian allspice. Claire opened up more and rattled on with tale after tale of Mr. Batman. How he had campaigned for the center to hold lessons in tango and had participated in them even in the wheelchair. How he had read every article he could get his hands on about depression and anxiety and the effects of loss.