Anne Tyler - Digging to America

He set down the can of neat's-foot oil. He wished he could fall into bed now.

Maryam telephoned to invite the two of them to supper. I'll ask Sami and Ziba too, she said, so Jin-Ho will have someone to play with. But of course, her real reason was that the presence of other people would make the occasion less intimate. He could read her like a book.

She did not have the slightest romantic interest in him. He had come to accept the fact. It helped a bit to know that she didn't seem to have an interest in anyone. At least he couldn't take it personally.

He had begun to look around lately and wonder who else might be out there. On his latest birthday he had turned sixty-seven. He might have a good twenty years left. Surely he wouldn't be forced to spend all those years on his own, would he?

But other women seemed lackluster when he compared them with Maryam. They didn't have her calm dark gaze or her elegant, expressive hands. They didn't convey her sense of stillness and self-containment, standing alone in a crowd.

This evening she wore a vivid silk scarf tied around her chignon, and it streamed down her back in a fluid way as she turned to lead them into the living room. Sami and Ziba were already there, settled on the couch with the cat curled between them. Susan was upstairs; she clattered halfway down in enormous high-heeled pumps and summoned Jin-Ho to play dress-up with her. Mari — june's piled a whole bunch of clothes in a box for us, she said. Lace things! Satin! Velvet! From her shoulders, a full red skirt billowed out like a cloak.

The girls disappeared upstairs, and Dave took a seat and accepted a glass of wine. The subject at first was the news from Brad and Bitsy. Brad had sent out a group e-mail from China. They had collected Xiu-Mei, he reported, and she was perfect. They were traveling now with the other parents to a city with a U. S. consulate, and once they had Xiu-Mei's papers in order they would be on their way home. Everyone had seen this e-mail but Maryam, who didn't own a computer. (Her house was so spare that it took Dave's breath away. No cable or VCR or cordless phone or answering machine; no tangle of electrical wires everywhere you looked.) Sami had printed her a copy, and now she placed a pair of tortoiseshell glasses on her nose and read it aloud. 'Xiu-Mei is tiny and she doesn't sit yet, but every day we put her on our bed and pull her up by the hands just to give her the idea. She thinks it's a game. You should see her laugh.'

Maryam lowered the letter and looked over her glasses at the others. Eleven months old and doesn't sit! she said.

They lie on their backs all day in the orphanage, Dave explained.

But isn't it a natural drive to sit? Don't babies always struggle to be vertical?

Sooner or later they do. It's just that it takes them longer if nobody pays them attention.

Maryam said, Ah, ah, ah a series of brief sighs and took her glasses off.

Dinner, to Dave's surprise, was entirely American: roast chicken and herb-roasted potatoes and sautTed spinach. He felt oddly discouraged by the competence of it. Did she have to do everything well? It pleased him to discover that the potatoes were the slightest bit too crusty on the bottom. Or maybe that was deliberate; these Iranians, with their scorched rice and such…

Perhaps he'd been wrong in thinking that he didn't take her lack of interest personally.

Jin-Ho attended dinner in a lady's black silk blouse and a pair of needle-heeled ankle boots. Susan wore a T-shirt as big as a dress with FOREIGNER printed across it. Foreigner? Dave said. He assumed the shirt had been Sami's. You used to be a Foreigner fan? he asked him.

Oh, no, that was Mom's.

You were a Foreigner fan? he said to Maryam.

She laughed. It's not the singing group, she told him. It's just the word. Sami had that shirt printed for me as a joke when I got my citizenship. I was so sad to become American, you see.

Sad!

It was hard for me to give up being a citizen of Iran. In fact I kept postponing it. I didn't get my final papers till some time after the Revolution.

Why, I'd have thought you'd be happy, Dave told her.

Oh, well, certainly! I was very happy. But still… you know. I was sad as well. I went back and forth about it the usual Immigration Tango.

I'm sorry, Dave said. He felt like an oaf. He hadn't even known it was usual. He said, Of course, that must have been difficult. I apologize for sounding like a chauvinist.

Not at all, Maryam told him, and then she turned to Ziba and offered her more spinach.

He always did this with Maryam said something clumsy or dropped something, spilled something. In her presence his hands felt too big and his feet seemed to clomp too noisily.

The topic of citizenship led Sami to his cousin Mahmad. He's a citizen of Canada, he told Dave. This is the son of Mom's brother, Parviz. He lives in Vancouver now with his twin sister. And last month he was invited to speak at a medical meeting in Chicago. Seems he's some kind of expert on liver regeneration. But just before he boarded the plane, he was stopped by the officials. September eleventh, of course. Ever since September eleventh, every Middle Easternulooking person is a suspect. They took him away; they searched him; they asked him a million questions… Well, end of story: he missed his flight. 'Sorry, sir,' they said. 'You can catch the next flight, if we've finished by then.' All of a sudden, Mahmad starts laughing. 'What?' they ask. He goes on laughing. 'What is it?' they ask. 'I just realized,' he tells them. 'I don't have to go to the States! They're the ones who invited me. I don't have to go, and I don't want to go. I'm heading back home. Goodbye.'

Maryam said, Ah, ah, ah, again, although she must have heard this story before.

That's a damned shame, Dave said. Absurdly, he felt the urge to offer another apology.

And when Brad and Bitsy land in Baltimore, Sami said, have you thought about where their friends will meet them? Speaking of September eleventh. When the girls arrived, we were all at the gate, but this time we'll be, I don't know, milling around outside, being shouted at by the police.

Jin-Ho said, Police! Police are going to shout at us?

No, no, of course not, Ziba told her. Hush, Sami. Talk about something else.

And Maryam jumped in to ask if people were ready for dessert.

They all left immediately after supper, because of Susan's bedtime. (So not every modern-day family had dispensed with regular schedules.) Dave didn't offer to stay behind and help with the cleanup. He knew Maryam would say no, and besides, he didn't even want to stay. The evening had left him feeling off balance. He was dying to get home.

When he thanked Maryam at the door, she said, If there's anything you and Jin-Ho need, please feel free to call me.

Oh, I will, he said.

But he knew he wouldn't. Under the glare of the porch light, Maryam seemed stark and severe. Her arms were folded across her chest in a way that struck him as ungenerous, although he knew she was only bracing herself against the cold night air. He recalled the faint look of amusement she often took on around Bitsy, and the time she'd complained that Americans read only American literature, and the time she'd announced that this country didn't understand yogurt. It was just as well he saw no more of her than he did.

As he was settling Jin-Ho in his car, he happened to overhear Sami and Ziba from the car parked just ahead. Where's Susan's bear? Ziba was asking. Did you get her bear? and Sami said, It should be in the back. I don't think she brought it inside. The easy companionability of it the buddy system that was a long-established marriage made Dave go hollow with longing.

On the evening of Xiu-Mei's arrival, Dave drove Bitsy's car to the airport. It was outfitted now with a second child seat Jin-Ho's outgrown one, the baby kind. Jin-Ho sat in her booster next to it, wearing a button that said BIG SISTER and holding a giant rectangular box wrapped in pink polka-dot paper. Inside the box was a green plush frog almost as big as she was. Dave had voted for something smaller, but Jin-Ho was adamant. Xiu-Mei has to notice it, she said. So he'd given in.