Massachusetts, of all places …” She trailed off, then began again: “Do you know what it’s like?” A tear had come out of her eye and was finding its way down her cheek. “Most of the time you don’t think about it, not consciously. But sooner or later, someone will make a comment that has to be explained away. You know, Skandar had cousins in refugee camps. His brother was killed in a bombing in Beirut—at twenty-three. Vanished into dust. Skandar grew up lucky, but he knows all too well what it’s like. I know it’s important for Reza to take all this in, to know about it—but later. I want—I wanted—for Reza to have a childhood like I did, where all you have to know is how to be a child. No rage, no hatred, no cry for vengeance. No stone-throwing. There’s time enough for all that—for history—later; and I thought with luck and enough time we could make him whole, round, not warped by this legacy. Of all my worries about coming here—not this. And now, this. You see? Everything’s changed because he can no longer be free of it. Because this, now, is the beginning.” She wasn’t really crying, but she put her head in her hands, and her hair fell over her face. When she looked up again, she was smiling. “You probably don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“I think I do.”
“Never mind. It’s okay. As you say, his eye will be fine—that’s the most important thing.” She stood, piled the plates. “It’s late now. Not time for more melodrama. I don’t think Reza will be at school tomorrow, but you must be, so you must get home to sleep.”
At the door, like my mother, she turned on a new and brilliant smile. “Nora, my dear, I can’t ever say enough thank-yous for tonight. What would we have done without you? You’re a true friend.” She extended her arms, and I saw that she was offering me a hug. I’m not much of one for hugs—they make me uncomfortable—but I stepped into her embrace and hugged her back. She didn’t try to kiss my cheek, but instead clasped me tightly against her, long enough for me to unstiffen and properly hug her back. I could feel the lumpy hooks of her bra through her sweater. She smelled of perfume and the sharp sweat of fear. I don’t know where it came from, but I felt like crying. It had been such a long day.
“I don’t know if I’ll be at the studio tomorrow,” I said, pulling away at last.
“I don’t think I will be,” she said.
“When does Skandar come?”
“Maybe earlier, now. We’ll see. He doesn’t really believe in a crisis—he’s seen too many and he says they’re almost never really real.”
“Easy to say from the outside.”
“Always. Good night.”
“Call me if you need my help?”
From her mysterious smiling nod I knew she wouldn’t call me. And I was right.
Then there was the waiting. Reza didn’t come to school the next day, or the next. Or the next, Thursday, by which time I understood that we wouldn’t see him again before the holidays. On the Wednesday and again on the Thursday after school I went back to the studio and found it abandoned—the coffee cup she’d been drinking from when I called from school standing half full on the counter. On the Friday, on the Saturday, the Sunday, I couldn’t bear to go back alone.
They were returning to France for two weeks, but I didn’t know exactly when they were leaving. I kept waiting for Sirena to call—to tell me how Reza was faring, to report on his state of mind, for God’s sake even to ask whether there was any homework he ought to be doing. By Thursday, it occurred to me to call them—think of all the things that might have happened: Reza’s eye might have gotten infected, or he might have become hysterical or despondent, or Sirena and Skandar might have had an enormous argument about any of it—about Skandar being away, or about being in Cambridge in the first place, or even about the fact that I had taken the boy to the hospital—any of these might have happened. They might have decided to leave early for France. They might have decided to return home for good. The one thing I didn’t want to believe was that they were going about their days in that dingy town house in perfect and consoling uneventfulness,