Page 52 of Like a Love Story
“Did you give it to Mom?” I ask.
“No, of course not—that’s my money. If she was gonna spend it on college for me, then I can spend it however I want.” She flares her nostrils at me, defiant. This is the old Tara. This is the kind of terrible decision she makes. “And it’ll tide us over until I get a job here. It’s not easy to get a job in the States without work papers.”
“That’s like stealing from her,” I say.
Then I have a flash of me rummaging through Abbas’s pants, taking money from his pockets, spending it on Madonna posters, records, magazines. I’m no better than her. I just know how to hide my wrongs better. At least she is open about who she truly is.
“We don’t have to bring that up,” Tara says dismissively. “I like your advice. I’ll have a calm one-on-one with her, I’ll make her part of the decision...”
“Whatever,” I say, suddenly angry with her. Maybe she thought I’d appreciate being a part of her process or something, but it only makes me feel complicit. “And you know what, please stop making me a part of all your lies.”
“Don’t judge me for my secrets because you have your own,” she says, flinging each word at me. “You’re not exactly the poster boy for truth.”
“Amore, calmati,” Massimo whispers to her as he pulls her close to him.
She doesn’t even speak Italian, but she smiles and whispers, “Si, amore.”
We sit in silence. Her words were daggers inside me, and the cuts are only now starting to truly hurt. I know she’s right. My own life is one big lie I’ve shielded people from because I’ve been too afraid to hurt them. Maybe that’s why Tara lies too. Maybe she’s just afraid of hurting us. But then I remember all the screaming matches with our mom, that time she bleached her hair and destroyed the bathroom paint in the process, that time she had to have her stomach pumped, and when our mom caught her in her bedroom with a boy, or when Tara borrowed her favorite dress and burned the bottom of it. And now, love.Love. How can she love him? She’s known him two weeks! I’ve known Art for two months now. I’m overtaken by a desire to kiss him the way my sister kisses Massimo. I want to scream at my sister and tell her that it’s my turn now, my turn to make waves. If she tells our mom all this now, then I’ll need to spend the rest of the year fixing her mess, smoothing the cracks she creates in our family, playing the role of a good boy I know I am not and that I’m sick of being. Maybe this is really why I’m angry. Because I want what she has.
“I’m sorry,” I say, standing up. “I have to go.”
“Zabber, I’m sorry,” Tara says with genuine regret. “I’m so on edge. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. You know I support you no matter what.”
“I know you do,” I say, hating myself for lashing out at her.
“I just wish you supported me too,” she says pointedly.
I’m reminded again that I want love, passion, life.
“I do support you, but I also have to go,” I say. “I... I have somewhere to be.”
What is Art doing right now? Is he already in the cathedral? Or is he getting ready for the big day, dressing himself up in fancy clothes?
“With Judy?” Tara asks.
I nod. I could tell Tara where I’m going, but I don’t have the energy for that right now. I just want to be near Art.
“I thought you said you broke up,” Tara says, suspicious.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll see you later.” I begin to walk away, but some melodramatic impulse makes me turn around and add, “I have my own life to live, you know.”
I don’t know what has gotten into me. I don’t know who the boy is who just said that to his sister. But I like him. He sounded a little bit like Madonna inDesperately Seeking Susan, defiant and edgy, a person no one messes with. This is the person I feel myself becoming as I walk the frigid streets of the city toward the cathedral. I don’t even walk, I strut. I treat the city like my runway. I will myself to turn all my nerves into confidence, to release all the butterflies in my stomach into the cold city air, so that there will be only one butterfly left. Me.
As I get close to the cathedral, I can hear them. Itsounds like thousands of people, and when I turn a corner, I realize that it is. Maybe five thousand. All kinds of people. Young and old, men and women, from every background. They swarm like bees, screaming and chanting and singing and holding signs likeACT UP Fights AIDS,Stop the Church,Keep Your Religion Out of My Body, andThou Shalt Not Killover a photo of the cardinal.
Well-dressed newscasters are everywhere, with their hard hair and their hard smiles, trailed by cameramen, holding equipment, wires connecting back to trucks parked around the perimeter of the church. A man dressed like Jesus screams that he too wants to go to heaven. A group of women sing a song about their bodies belonging to them. A black drag queen in an evening gown and a large white hat raps on top of a box, rhyminghomosexualwithindefensible, andCatholicwithSapphic, andAIDSwithrenegades. This is nothing like the New York Stock Exchange. There were some spectators there, some media, but nowhere near this. I enter the crowd of people, and as soon as I do, I feel myself turning from butterfly into caterpillar again, longing for a cocoon. How will I find Art among all these people?
I push my way past crowds, making eye contact with person after person, their energy and passion transmitting into me, giving me strength. I was too young to remember much of the Iranian Revolution, too young to have gone out into the streets with my dad, who was a part of it. But I remember him describing the energy to me, and I remember driving by a protest. It felt like this. Crowds,chants, anger, passion. I close my eyes and take it in. For a moment, I’m seven years old again. My country is in the throes of chaos. My father is the chaos. My mother fears the chaos. My sister is becoming the chaos. I am in between, hoping for order, not realizing it will never come, at least not to this country. And soon enough my mother will choose to escape to a new life, while my father will be eaten alive by his own demons. I open my eyes again. I pray that the revolution for these people turns out better than my father’s did. That unlike him, they live, and that unlike him, they create a better world.
“Hey,” a man says to me. “I know you.”
I blink my eyes. Do I know him? And then I remember. It’s the man from the deli, the one in the fur coat, the one Art took a picture of. He’s wearing the same coat now, and holding a sign that readsKeep Calm and Rage On.
“You’re Art’s friend, right?” he asks.
I didn’t think he could get any thinner, but he has, in just two months. There is a lesion on his neck now, big and dark and purple.
“Hi,” I finally say. “Yes, my name is Reza.”
