I didn’t love her less, or long for her less, although I envied her more. If she’d put her arms around me then—well, in some metaphorical way she did put her arms around me, she had done so from the beginning; and perhaps I’d even thought, all those months, that she could really see me; and on some level I believed it even after Skandar stopped, and looked, and actually saw—even then, so late, I believed that she could see me, and so my guilt made Skandar a shadow that I marveled that she could not see. I thought, “This is going to be hard. Harder than I realized.” But I didn’t think, “This is going to be impossible.”
That Thursday night, I went to sit for Reza. I expected it to be my first time together with all three of them at once, but Skandar wasn’t home: meetings at the university, Sirena said. Some end-of-year thing. She’d join him at the dinner party.
She was distracted, not chatty—rushing to change her clothes, almost peremptory in her list of what there was to eat, of who might call. I fought not to see her brusqueness as a sign, as ill will directed at me. You know how it is: a criminal anticipates suspicion. She reappeared in a black caftan covered with a riot of colorful embroidery, a heavy medallion at her throat. When at last she paused on her way out the door, I couldn’t resist: “Is everything okay? Have I upset you?”
“Upset me? How absurd! You could never upset me. I’m so sorry—I am—out of it. Beset by difficulties in the practical things. If I were only in Paris, I could sort these things out. I’m thinking I’ll have to get on a plane and go there—but with Reza—so complicated. Now the term at Harvard is finished, Skandar is traveling so much … So: my head is full of nonsense—like a chess game. If I move this piece, and then that piece—then, so. And if you don’t look far enough ahead, then bang, you are in trouble.”
Didn’t I know it. “If I can help …”
“You’re here, aren’t you? You’re my greatest help.”
“Put it all out of your mind for tonight. Have fun.”
“Some hotshot economics professor and his psychoanalyst wife? And that tall man with a face like a horse who’s always on the television! I’ve been stuck with him before—he’s so boring and his breath is terrible, like a dead mouse. Who has time for this bullshit? I should get Skandar a professional wife. No, you’re the lucky ones—you and my little Reza.”
And in truth, we were the lucky ones: that evening after we ate, Reza and I sat on the living room floor building a free-form spaceship out of Legos. Using pieces from a great bucket of abandoned creations, we spent over an hour at it, calculating its perfectly symmetrical rocketlike tower and finding the shapes necessary for its wide, ovoid base, complete with lights and windows and opening doors. We created detachable roomlets, some with wings, some with tank wheels; we found Lego people—stringy, hammer-headed Star Wars creatures, a couple of solid fellows who looked like farmers, a grass-skirted cannibal or two—and populated our space station. Each time we added a person, Reza invented a story for him, about where he came from, what he did, why he was there.
“When I grow up,” he said, out of the blue, “I’m going to be an architect. I want to create worlds for people. And maybe,” he said with a glint that reminded me of his father, “maybe creating worlds will create new people, too. Do you see, by changing his hat, I’ve turned this farmer guy into a heart doctor? Isn’t that cool?”
I was waiting for him to walk me home. He’d always walked me home. But this time, soon after eleven, Sirena came alone.
“I’m exhausted,” she said, as she dropped her bag and keys on the dining table. “I couldn’t stick there a minute longer. Skandar and the mouse-breath man were involved in deep conversation. I don’t know what Skandar thinks he can persuade him to do—go on CNN and insist on a two-state solution? Who is so foolish, in this country, who wishes to remain employed? So I said to him, ‘Skandar, maybe you’re going to save the world tonight, but I must get some sleep …’ ”
“It is late—”
“Yes, and you’re teaching in the morning. I’m terrible, to forget—I’m sorry. It’s raining, a bit—do you want me