nearly half the seats were already taken, and sweaters and scarves marked the spaces that were being saved. In the center aisle, an old man in a Dodgers cap was mounting his camera on a tripod. I followed my mother down to the front row, where Salma sat alone, staring at her cell phone. We kissed each other on the cheeks. “Where’s Tareq?” my mother asked Salma.
“Emergency tooth repair.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “It’s too bad he’ll miss the play.”
“That’s how it is when you run a practice,” my sister said coolly.
I turned my attention to the program booklet. Sleeping Beauty, the title said in gold lettering. I skipped past the director’s introduction, the donors’ list, the appeals for fundraising for next year’s performance, and looked for the twins’ names on the cast list. Aida and Zaid were to play night watchmen. “Do they have any lines?” I asked.
“No.”
“How come?”
Salma shrugged.
“Well, I’m looking forward to it anyway,” I said. “I’ve never seen them in a school performance.” From behind the curtain came the shrill sound of a microphone being hooked up to a power source. The air-conditioning unit stopped and, a moment later, started again. Back when I went to school here, there was no AC, just an oversized fan that whirred painfully from above. I had to sit backstage in whatever costume Mrs. Fleming had sewn for the play, sweating under its weight, scratching my skin in places where it met the cheap fabric, waiting for my cue. Even though I ended up with the same parts every year, I liked performing in plays because it was the closest thing I’d found to reading a book. Books were better, of course. In books, I could be more than the mute sidekick; I could be the hero. “It’s already ten past six,” I said, looking at my watch.
“Do you have somewhere else you need to be?” my sister asked sharply.
The testiness in her voice had been there since my father’s will had been delivered to the house by a courier from the lawyer’s office. The will had been drawn up many years ago and we all knew what it said: legalese about splitting my father’s assets between his spouse and children. What none of us had expected was a life insurance policy worth $250,000. Its sole beneficiary was me.
The din in the cafeteria rose. A cell phone rang, then another. In the back, chairs scraped against the floor. “I don’t understand,” Salma said. “I just don’t understand. What did I ever do to him?”
“Nothing,” my mother replied. “This is not your fault.”
“Nor is it mine,” I said, looking at my mother, but she didn’t acknowledge me; her eyes were fixed on my sister.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” Salma asked me.
“About what?”
“What do you think? About all that money he left you.”
“Since when do you care so much about money? Or is this Tareq talking?”
“This isn’t about money.”
“What is it about, then?”
The houselights dimmed, and the audience grew quiet. Salma turned to face me. “I’m the one who stayed here. I’m the one who stuck with dental school. I’m the one who took care of him when he had cataract surgery. I did everything he wanted me to do while you were”—she waved her hands in the air—“gallivanting at music festivals. And then he leaves it all to you. You can’t even hold down a real job!”
The insult was still ringing in my ears when an old woman in the row behind us cleared her throat pointedly. I lowered my voice to ask, “Do you really want to talk about this here?”
“What does it matter where we talk about it?”
“He didn’t leave everything to me. You and Mom still have the business.”
“Yes, it was quite thoughtful of him not to take that away.”
I glanced at my mother, hoping for some kind of support, or at least some sympathy. Instead, she put her hand on Salma’s knee, as if to beg for her forgiveness. “Your father