Page 31 of Like a Love Story
“Yeah, but they’re just a bastardized version of opera,” Judy says. “All we do is take other cultures, steal their treasures, and take the credit. We have no culture of our own.”
Judy’s mother sighs, in much the same way Judy just did. Their mannerisms are remarkably similar beneath their divergent facades. Mrs. Bowman turns to me. “I’m sorry if my words offended you, Reza. I promise you that I only meant well.”
“Oh, I was not offended,” I say.
“Well, I was offended on your behalf,” Judy says, placing her hand around my waist. She likes to do this, put a hand on my body. Sometimes around my waist or my shoulder, sometimes on my leg, through my fingers or my hair. It usually makes me feel safe for a moment, and then it reminds me of everything I cannot give her, everything I am pretending to be, and everything I feltwhen Art’s hand touched mine. But that already feels like a lifetime ago.
I take a sip of the tea. Though it did not come from a teabag, it tastes like it did. It has none of the richness of flavor my mother’s tea does. “It’s delicious,” I say. And then, wanting to lighten the mood, I add, “This master of the tea approves.” I’m such a liar. Everything I say is a lie.
“You see,” Mrs. Bowman says, with a look toward her daughter. “He likes my tea. Perhaps you could take some lessons in graciousness from your new... boyfriend.”
A wave of tension passes through the room. Boyfriend. Girlfriend. We have not used those words yet, at least not in front of each other. I can feel Judy scanning my face for a reaction, but I stare at the linoleum floor. This word has just underlined my deceit with its specificity.
“Yeah,” Judy says, squeezing my waist. “You Persianshave such good manners.”
I don’t laugh, but Mrs. Bowman does. She pulls Judy in close to her. “Listen, I’ll be at book club for most of the afternoon, so if I don’t see you, I hope it goes well.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“And Reza,” Mrs. Bowman says, “once my daughter has approved, I’d love to meet your parents and your brother as well.”
I smile and nod. We Persians have such good manners. But what I want to say is that they are not my parents. I have a stepfather and a stepbrother now. They don’t belong to me, and I don’t belong to them. LikeCinderella, I’m an impostor in my home, and like her, all I want is a prince.
“Okay, may we be excused now?” Judy asks.
“You were nevernotexcused,” Mrs. Bowman says, and she turns away from us toward a dog-eared book above the microwave. “It’s a free country.”
The title of Mrs. Bowman’s book leaps out at me.When BAD Things Happen to GOOD People. The wordsbadandgoodare capitalized, like warnings. Bad things have happened to me, but I am not a good person. I’m a liar and a thief. Have bad things happened to Mrs. Bowman? I remember that her brother is sick. Maybe that’s why she’s reading this book.
As Judy takes my hand and leads me to her bedroom, I think about how easy it was to meet her parents. I met them weeks ago, and there was no pomp or circumstance about it. Judy brought me by her house for a casual dinner. Her mother made pasta and salad and insisted I call her Bonnie. Her father asked me questions about the revolution with genuine interest and insisted I call him Ryan. Since then, I have been welcome in their home. Easy. Nothing about tonight will be easy. Unlike this family, mine doesn’t come from a free country. We have rules and expectations. I had offered to bring Judy by the house to meet my mom and Abbas, but my mom rejected that suggestion, worried about what kind of impression it would make on Judy that they wouldn’t take her out to dinner first. I wanted to say it would send the impression that they were relaxed, normal people, but I let her haveher way. My mother made and canceled three restaurant reservations before we finally settled on a place. She decided her first choice was too stiff, her second choice was too far downtown for Abbas, who generally won’t go below Fifty-Ninth Street, and her third choice too loud. At dinner in our ornate dining room, she asked me where I thought Judy would like to go. Perhaps, my mother said, we should choose the restaurant Judy would like. That’s when Saadi made his first of what I knew would be many cracks. He said Judy would like any restaurant that serves food, the more of it, the better. A moment of silence, and then the revelation that Judy is overweight. I could see my mother taking this in, accepting that her son’s first girlfriend may not be the perfect Persian princess she once imagined. I glared at Saadi and revealed some more important details about Judy to my mom and Abbas. I told them that she designs clothes, and that she loves Saint Mark’s Place, Debbie Harry, and avant-garde art. That’s when Abbas decided we should go to Mr. Chow, which is where the rich and the avant-garde meet, where Warhol liked to eat when he was alive and wanted overpriced dumplings. My mom wondered if we could get a table, and Abbas said that of course he could. This is the thing about the Abbases of the world. They may prefer to stay above Fifty-Ninth Street, but if they want to go elsewhere, they have access. That’s what money buys you, access to any corner of the world you want to explore and the safety to return home.
“I hope you like it,” Judy says. “And obviously, if youdon’t, then you don’t have to wear it.” We are in her room now, and she sits at her sewing machine, a pint of cookies-and-cream ice cream by her side.
“I’m sure I’ll like it,” I say.
“Don’t do your polite Persian thing with me, okay? I want you to feel free to be rude with me. To be yourself.”
“But I am not rude,” I say.
“Right, of course,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s like sometimes I think that deep down, everyone is an asshole, and nice people are just hiding their true selves. Does that make me horrible?”
I shrug and spoon a bite of ice cream into my mouth.
“Maybe it just makes me a New Yorker,” she says. “Honestly, whoever decided children should be raised in this city is the horrible one.”
If only she knew what being raised in Tehran was like.
“Obviously I’m happy about it, though. Nobody raised in Peoria would design this fabulous shirt for you.”
Now I take a spoon of ice cream and feed it to her. She accepts it as she continues to sew. “This is the life,” she says. “When I’m a famous designer, I’m going to make sure I have a gorgeous man feeding me ice cream while I work. He’ll have one of those ice cream trucks, but instead of some dumb jingle, it’ll play ‘I Love Rocky Road’ by Weird Al on a loop.”
I look around her room, at the posters on her wall. David Bowie in pants that look inflated. Debbie Harry in a gold leotard. Pages ripped from fashion magazinesand taped to the walls with abandon. Models I don’t recognize, wearing dresses with zippers down the sides, men’s shirts way too big for them with belts cinched around them, gowns with sequins on them, clothes so shiny that some of them look like they were made for another planet.
She looks over at me and smiles. “You okay?”
I look away. She asks me this question a lot, and I never like it. We don’t ask this question in my family. We know that the answer will always be yes, but that the truth will always be no, so what’s the point in asking the question? “Of course,” I say. Does she ask me this all the time because she senses that something is not okay, or does she ask this question because this is what Americans do?
“I’m sorry about my mom,” she says. “I hope she didn’t upset you.”
