Anne Tyler - Digging to America

And meanwhile Farah, reclining next to her, was murmuring away in Farsi as if William hadn't spoken. Why is it that older women in this country cut their hair to resemble monks? Why do the women of the upper classes here never wear enough makeup?

Like two small children, they had competed for Maryam's attention; and Maryam, to her own surprise, found herself favoring William his enthusiasm, his innocence, his endearing optimism. There was a world-weariness to Farah that could be dampening, at times. Maryam smiled at William and thought suddenly of Dave. Dave in fact was nothing like William, certainly not so extreme or eccentric; but even so…

I don't know why truly good people always make me sad, Kiyan had told her once. She understood now what he had meant.

She had written Dave during that Vermont trip to tell him that she missed him. Well, she had put it more subtly than that. (I am having a very nice time here, but I think of you constantly and wonder what you are doing.) Still, she knew the effect it would have. Slipping the letter through the mailbox slot, she had held on to it for a long, indecisive moment before she let it fall. And then she'd thought, What have I done? and half wished for some way to retrieve it.

When Dave met her return plane, though, he had behaved no differently. Clearly he was pleased to see her, but he didn't refer to her letter or act as if things had changed. Enjoy your visit? he had asked. Catch up on all the family gossip? She had been mortified. How conceited of her to believe that what she had written would matter to him! She had treated him coolly, and sent him home early. She had tossed and turned all night mourning what she had seen to be her very last chance at love. Forever after she would be one of those resolutely cheerful widows carrying on alone.

Oh, the agonizing back-and-forth of romance! The advances and retreats, the secret wounds, the strategic withdrawals!

Wasn't the real culture clash the one between the two sexes? The next day he had arrived on her doorstep in the middle of her lunch. I got your letter, he'd told her.

My letter?

They delivered it just ten minutes ago. You beat it home. Oh!

Maryam, you thought about me constantly? You missed me?

Then even before she could answer he had gathered her up and covered her with kisses. You missed me! he kept saying. You love me! and she was laughing and returning his kisses and fighting for breath all at once.

It was nothing like her marriage. This time around, she proceeded knowing that people died; that everything had an end; that even though she and Dave were spending every day together and every night, the moment would come when she would say, Tomorrow it will be two years since I last set eyes on him. Or else he would say it of her. They were letting themselves in for more than any young couple could possibly envision, and both of them were conscious of that.

This made them less likely to quarrel or take umbrage. They wasted little time on petty irritations. She was tolerant of his clutter and his insistence on reading the paper aloud. (Listen to this: ' I have a three-million-dollar home, the boxer boasted to one interviewer, and sheets with a ten-thousand thread count. ' Ten thousand threads! Is that possible?) He, for his part, learned that she could be revived by a bowl of plain white rice when she was feeling fluey or tired; and once when Moosh disappeared for two days he had printed up dozens of posters reading LOST and REWARD and CHILD GRIEVING. Child grieving? she had asked. What are you talking about? There's no child here.

But he had said, You are. You are the child. And he'd taken her face between his hands and kissed the top of her head.

And he'd been right.

She used to fantasize about traveling on a time machine to eras long, long ago. To prehistory, for instance, where she could witness how language had developed. Or to Jesus's time; what had that all been about? Now, though, she would choose a much more recent period. She would like to board a BOAC plane again to visit her mother, crossing the tarmac on clicking heels because in those days, women always did wear heels for plane trips, and settling in one of the two-by-two seats and smiling at the stewardesses in their aerodynamic-looking uniforms. She would like to dine with Kiyan in Johnny Unitas's old Golden Arm Restaurant on York Road. (She would order the famous shrimp salad and the crusty fried eggplant slices, and the waitress would be singing Strangers in the Night to herself as she served them.)

Then she remembered how whenever she and Kiyan ate out, Kiyan would study the menu too long before he finally made his selection, and after their food arrived he would look at his meal, look at hers, look at his again and say, Poor me! She always seethed when he did that.

Or that time she'd dumped the crock of yogurt on his plate: she'd spent all afternoon making his favorite meal, baghali polo, with the lima beans whose skins she'd had to pop off one by one till her fingertips grew puckered and waterlogged; and when she'd set the platter before him he had said, No yogurt to put on top, I see.

A forgivable remark, but the wrong one for the moment, and that was why the crock of yogurt had ended up where it did.

She saw her past self as grudging, miserly. She should have told him, Here, take my shrimp salad if you like it better. She should have said, Yogurt? Of course. I'll fetch it. But at the time she had resented his never-ending neediness. It hadn't yet occurred to her that a life where no one needed her would be a weak, dim, pathetic life.

Wasn't that what had drawn her to Dave? It had been so clear that she could make him happy. All it took was a yes; how long since she'd had that power? Seduced by Need, she thought, picturing it as the flame-edged title on a lurid romance comic book. In the end, that had been her downfall: the wish to feel needed.

Fool.

For the sake of feeling needed she had linked herself to a man so inappropriate that she might as well have fished his name out of a hat. An American man, naive and complacent and oblivious, convinced that his way was the only way and that he had every right to rearrange her life. She had melted the instant he said, Come in, even though she knew full well that inclusion was only a myth. And why? Because she had believed that she could make a difference in his life.

How could you do that, Maryam? he had asked. And, How will you explain throwing everything away?

Sometimes lately she felt as if she had emigrated all over again. Once more she had left her past self behind, moved to an alien land, and lost any hope of returning.

The reason Farah was visiting Maryam this year, instead of Maryam's visiting her, was that William had a plan to refinish all their floors and he said it would be easier if Farah was out of the way. But her visit didn't really coincide with the Arrival Party; that had just been an alibi. She arrived on a Friday afternoon at the end of July, bringing so many clothes that you would think she was staying a month rather than a weekend. Her hostess gift was a painted tin box filled with saffron. (Living in rural Vermont, she had no inkling that saffron could be found nowadays in most supermarkets.) I ordered it off the Internet, she said. I have become an Internet wizard! You should see me with my mouse, click-click! She had also brought an assortment of little cardboard squares streaked to resemble wood in different shades of brown or yellow. What do you think, Mari — june? Which finish should we choose for our floors? I say this one; William says that one.

To Maryam there was little difference, but she said, Yours is nice.

I knew you would agree! I'll call William tonight and tell him. Then she said, Oh, Maryam, American men can do anything. Unstop a toilet, replace a light switch… Well. But you know that. She looked flustered, suddenly, and Maryam couldn't think why until Farah asked, Do you ever hear from him?