Digging to America

by Anne Tyler

  Oh, no, Maryam said. She laughed. When I first came, I brought a single carpetbag.

  But a Persian carpetbag, I'll bet, in some fascinating pattern. Well, yes...

  She had given away the carpetbag a month after she arrived, ashamed it wasn't Samsonite. Oh, in those days she wouldn't have brought rugs from home even if she'd had the space. She'd wanted everything sleek and modern, solid-colored, preferably beige American-American, as Kiyan used to say. Both of them had so admired the Western style of decorating. Only later did she understand that they had embraced the worst of the style the cheap beige plastic dinnerware, the wasteland of bland beige carpeting, the chairs upholstered in beige synthetics shot through with metallic threads.

  Now it was Dave carrying on the what-do-you-do conversation. He had just informed Mr. Hakimi that he was a physics teacher, and while Maryam circled the room with soft drinks and wine and (for Mr. Hakimi) whisky on the rocks, she learned that Connie taught high school English and Brad taught biology. So perhaps it was only natural that this family felt entitled to tell other people how to do things. Could genes determine occupations, even? she wondered as she returned to the kitchen.

  The rice was beginning to send out its browned-butter, popcorn smell. She moved the pot to the sink and switched off the burner. From the living room she heard Mr. Hakimi introducing the next topic: politics, specifically Iranian politics the long, noble history of Iran and its bitter end in the Revolution. Just as well she was out of sight; she avoided discussing such matters with any of Ziba's relatives. She ran cold water into the sink and waited for the pot to stop steaming, although she could easily have left it unattended. When she heard small, uneven footsteps behind her, she was delighted. Susie june! she cried, turning, and Susan smiled and raised both arms and said, Up? She enunciated very carefully, as if she were aware that she was working to learn a language. Maryam picked her up and laid her face against Susan's soft cheek. Then Jin-Ho toddled in with a toy truck clasped to her chest and said, Kack? Kack? and Maryam took a guess and went to the cupboard for Triscuits. Cracker, she said, handing one to each child. Thank you, Mari june! and she set Susan down. Susan and Jin-Ho started rolling the truck between them, each clutching a Triscuit in one hand and squatting in that boneless way that only small children can manage, feet set flat and wide apart and bottoms an inch from the floor. They were such a pleasure to watch. Maryam could have stood there all afternoon just drinking in the sight of them.

  As it turned out, that was the high point of the party. By the time the guests were seated at the table, both little girls had gone past their nap times. Susan was carried wailing to the crib Maryam kept for her upstairs, while Jin-Ho stuck it out in her mother's lap, growing steadily crankier and squirmier and violently averting her face from the morsels of food Bitsy offered.

  And it wasn't only the children who were fractious. First Pat took it upon herself to suggest that Connie might like to try wrapping her head in a pretty silk scarf (did even the in-laws in this family feel free to give advice to each other?), and Connie flushed and looked unhappy, and Dave said, Thank you, Pat, but I think Connie's beautiful just the way she is, and Pat said, Oh! Why! Of course! I never meant ! Then Bitsy, apparently hoping to smooth things over, said, While we're speaking of fashions, Ziba, Susan's little topknot was darling, and Ziba said, Yes, I'm trying to get her hair out of her eyes, and Bitsy said, Ah, well, Jin-Ho doesn't have that problem because we're keeping the style she came with. I guess we just don't feel we should Americanize her.

  Americanize! Ziba said. We're not Americanizing! (As if anything really could Americanize a person, Maryam thought, having watched too many foreigners try to look natural in blue jeans.) It must be that Ziba still felt insecure around the Donaldsons, because ordinarily she would not have bristled like that.

  And when Mr. Hakimi took his own stab at peacemaking, he just made the situation worse. But! We're neglecting our hostess! he bellowed. This is such excellent food, my dear madam, and you were so kind to relieve Ziba of the burden of entertaining!

  Ziba said, It wasn't a burden! What are you talking about? We could have had it at our house! I was longing to have it at our house!

  Maryam said, You were?

  We have more room at our house! I told you that! We wouldn't need to squeeze around the table on desk chairs and porch chairs and kitchen chairs!

  Maryam said, But I thought you said Now she couldn't remember what either one of them had said. She had trouble reconstructing the whole conversation. All she knew was that once again, they must both have been too polite, too please-I-insist and whichever-you-prefer. Well, she said finally. I wish I had known.

  Connie set down her fork and leaned across the table to touch Maryam's hand. In any case, it's a lovely party, she said.

  Thank you, Maryam told her.

  And besides, Bitsy chimed in, this way we get to see your house, and all your beautiful things! Tell me, Maryam; I'm dying to know: what was in that one carpetbag you brought? What does a person choose to take with her, when she's leaving her country for good?

  Gratefully, Maryam turned her thoughts to the carpetbag. A silk peignoir set, she remembered. And two sets of lacy lingerie hand-sewn by Aunt Eshi's seamstress ... She smiled and shook her head. It wasn't how you imagine, she told Bitsy. I was a brand-new bride. I was thinking about how I looked, not my house.

  A bride! You came over as a bride?

  I had been married just one day when I boarded the airplane, Maryam said.

  So the trip to America was your honeymoon! How romantic! From his place at the head of the table, Sami said, Now, Mom. Tell the whole story.

  Oh, tell! Bitsy said, and Lou tapped his water glass with his knife. Jin-Ho, who was just nodding off, started a bit and then resettled her head against her mother's shoulder.

  Maryam said, There is no story.

  Yes, there is, Sami said. He turned to the others. She made that so-called honeymoon trip alone, he said. My dad was already over here. She had a proxy wedding all by herself and joined him afterward.

  Is that true? Pat asked her. You had a wedding without the groom? But how did that work?

  Show them the photo, Sami told Maryam.

  Oh, Sami, they don't want to see the photo, she said, and she ignored their protests (Yes, we do! Show us, Maryam!) and rose to pick up the platter of stuffed grape leaves. Would anyone care for seconds? she asked.

  A photo of Mom in her wedding dress, Sami said, standing alone beside a long table you can hardly see for the presents. It looks as if she's marrying the presents.

  Maryam said, Well, I wouldn't say . . . There was something in his tone that hurt her feelings. Something amused; that was it. And perhaps Mr. Hakimi felt it too, because he cleared his throat and said, In fact many, many girls married that way at the time. All those young men who went to America, don't you know, or Germany or France ... Of course they needed wives, by and by. It was a reasonable solution.

  But how did you court at such long distance? Pat asked Maryam.

  Court! Sami said. He laughed. They didn't. The marriage was arranged.

  Maryam sensed a new alertness around the table, but she didn't look up from the platter she stood holding in both hands. No one had taken seconds. Maybe they had disliked the grape leaves. Maybe they had disliked the whole meal.

  So you see, Sami told Bitsy, it wasn't as romantic as you think.

  Maryam said, Oh, Sami. She spoke very gently, to hide the outrage in her voice. You can't know everything about it, she said. And then she turned away, with as much dignity as possible, and carried the grape leaves out of the room and shut the swinging door behind her.

  In the kitchen, she filled the kettle with water for tea. Obviously she should clear the table before she served the pastries and fruit, but she wasn't quite ready yet to go back and face the others. She lit the burner beneath the kettle and then remained at the stove, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her eyes stinging with tears.

 
When Kiyan had told her, for instance, that her hair smelled like an Armenian church: what could Sami know about that?

  The swinging door opened slowly and Connie walked through, carrying two plates. Maryam said, Please, you mustn't, and took the plates from her. You'll tire yourself, she said.

  Connie said, That's okay; I wanted to stretch my legs. Instead of going back to the dining room, she settled on the stool and watched Maryam scrape the plates. Aren't family gatherings wearing? she said. All those people who know you so well, they think they can say just anything.

  It's true, Maryam said. She began fussing with the stacks of soiled cookware that cluttered her one small counter. While she was facing away from Connie, she dabbed hurriedly at the tip of her nose. And really they don't know you so well, she said.

  You're right; they don't know the half of it, Connie agreed. She turned toward the swinging door, where her husband was just entering with two more plates. We're commiserating about family gatherings, she told him.

  Ah, yes, dreadful affairs, Dave said, and he went straight to the garbage bin in a familiar way and started scraping the plates. Maryam never could get used to men helping out in the kitchen. Where was Ziba? Wasn't it Ziba who should be doing this? Families in general, Dave was saying. They're vastly overrated.

  Connie tsked and gave him a friendly swat.

  And holding this dinner at my house, Maryam went on (reminded by thoughts of Ziba). I never asked to do that! I mean ... forgive me; of course I'm pleased to have you, but We understand, Dave told her. Probably he didn't understand, but he was nice enough to nod his woolly gray head in a sympathetic manner, and Connie nodded too and said, It's funny how we get maneuvered into these things.

  We're too careful with each other, Ziba and I, Maryam said. She turned toward the stove and uncovered the kettle to see if the water was boiling. Our family is not very good at saying what we want. Sometimes we end up doing what none of us wants, I suspect, just because we think it would satisfy the others.

  Be rude, like us, Dave suggested, and he draped an arm around Connie's shoulders and winked at Maryam. She had to laugh.

  Then Connie and Dave returned to the dining room for more plates, and Maryam spooned tea leaves into her best china teapot. She did feel better now. There was something consoling about those two. She poured boiling water into the teapot and replaced the lid and then balanced the teapot on top of the kettle.

  Maybe the hiss of the simmering water was what brought back, all at once, a scene from the earliest days of her marriage. Whenever she had felt particularly lonesome, she remembered, she used to set a tumbler of club soda on her nightstand. She used to go to sleep listening to the bubbles bounce against the glass with a faint, steady, peaceful whispering sound that had reminded her of the fountain in her family's courtyard back home.

  It was Bitsy who thought up the idea of an Arrival Party. That was what she called it, right off, so that Brad had to ask, A what, hon? Come again?

  A party to commemorate the date the girls arrived, she told him. In two weeks it will be a year; can you believe it? Saturday, August fifteenth. We ought to mark the occasion.

  Would you be up to it, with your mother?

  Bitsy's mother had suffered a setback a whole new tumor, this time involving her liver. They'd had a hard couple of months. But Bitsy said, It would do me good. It would do us all good! Get our minds off our troubles. And we'd confine it to the two families; no nonrelatives. Make it kind of like a birthday party. A daytime event, right after the girls' naps when they're at their best, and I wouldn't serve a full meal, only dessert.

  Maybe a Korean dessert! Brad said.

  Oh. Well.

  Wouldn't that be neat?

  I checked Korean desserts on the Internet, Bitsy told him. Spinach cookies, fried glutinous rice ...

  Brad started looking worried.

  She said, I was thinking maybe a sheet cake frosted like an American flag.

  That's a great idea!

  With candles? Or one candle, for one year. But absolutely no presents; remind me to tell the Yazdans that. They're always bringing presents. And we might sing some sort of song together. There must be a suitable song about waiting for someone's arrival.

  There's 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain,' Brad said.

  Well ... and the girls can wear Korean outfits. Shall we offer to lend Susan a sagusam? You can be sure she doesn't own one.

  That would be good.

  We could have a ceremony, sort of. The girls would be in another room; we'd light the cake and start singing; they would walk through the door hand in hand ... just like arriving all over again. Don't you think?

  And, hey! Brad said. We could show the video!

  Perfect! The video, Bitsy said.

  Her brother Mac had taken all the different airport videos to be edited into a single tape. Since then the tape had sat on a shelf there never seemed to be time to watch even the news, anymore but this was their chance to view it. Maybe at the end of the party, to wind things up, Bitsy said. Is this all too hokey, maybe?

  Not a bit.

  You're sure, now. You would tell me if it was.

  You couldn't be hokey if you tried, Brad said.

  The nice thing was, he meant it. She knew that. He had this notion that she could do no wrong. It was Bitsy says this and Bitsy says that and Let's ask Bitsy, shall we? She took his face between her hands and leaned forward to give him a kiss.

  Bitsy never liked for this to get around, but Brad was not her first husband. Her first husband had been Stephen Bartholomew, the only son of her parents' oldest friends. Bitsy's parents and Stephen's parents had double-dated all the way through Swarthmore and kept devotedly in touch ever since, even though the Bartholomews lived clear across the country in Portland, Oregon. Bitsy had seen Stephen precisely twice in her life both times when she was too young to remember before they entered Swarthmore themselves; but the idea was, they were bound to be instant soulmates. The first letter her mother wrote her, the first week of Bitsy's freshman year, began with Have you met Stephen yet? And no doubt Stephen's mother was asking him the same thing.

  Of course they did meet, by and by, and to nobody's surprise they promptly fell in love. He was an ethereally beautiful boy with a narrow, calm face and sea-gray eyes. She was plainer but a born leader, the campus star, outspoken and impassioned. They went through four years of college as an established, recognized couple, although they had such different interests (chemistry for him and English for her, not to mention her various political activities) that it was a struggle to find the time to be together. Christmas of their senior year they became engaged, and they married the next June, the day after graduation, and moved to Baltimore, where Stephen had a fellowship at Hopkins and Bitsy went to work on her education credits at College Park.

  Then she met Brad.

  Or no, first she started noticing Stephen's flaws. Actually, which did come first? Now she couldn't say. But she remembered realizing one day that Stephen's most consistent emotion was disapproval. Oh, that narrow face of his was more significant than she'd guessed! This was a man who could get all worked up about the phrase too simplistic, for Lord's sake; a man who refused to be moved by a haunting rendition of I Wonder As I Wander because he was offended by the ungrammatical construction of people like you and like I. I mean, where will it all end? was his favorite question, and more and more he seemed to ask it about Bitsy herself her tendency to procrastinate, her offhand housekeeping methods, her increasingly lackadaisical attitude toward her studies. He saw the rest of the world as a sliding heap of ever-sinking standards, and it made him frown and fidget; it made him clear his throat in an edgy, portentous manner that drove her to distraction.

  Well, certainly a person could have worse faults than that. It was not enough to justify divorcing him. But the fact was, they had married without much more than an acquaintanceship beforehand. She saw that belatedly. They had been smitten with the mere idea of each other two obedie
nt children trying too hard to please their parents and had spent four years keeping to opposite sides of the campus just so they wouldn't have to find out how very ill-suited they were. (Wasn't their marriage almost arranged, really? Was it so different from Maryam Yazdan's? Maryam's might have been happier, even. Bitsy would have loved to ask about that.)

  So anyway, along came genial, contented, easygoing Brad with his fuzzy haircut and his loopy smile and his absolute faith that she was the most wonderful person in the world. They met at a campus rally for John Anderson; Bitsy was very gung-ho for Anderson but Brad thought he might stick with Carter. He just wasn't sure. She reasoned with him, and went out for coffee with him later to reason some more. He hung on her every word. They invented further excuses to meet. (Wouldn't voting Independent mean throwing his vote in the garbage? Hmm? What was her honest opinion?) She had never known anybody so trustful. Even what others might disparage his gee-whiz style of speech, his beginnings of a beer belly warmed her heart.

  Every time they were out in public she worried he would find some other woman more attractive. How could he not? She knew she was no beauty. That girl behind the counter at their favorite coffeehouse, for instance: she was so much bustier than Bitsy, but it wasn't only that; she was so much softer, more yielding somehow. And furthermore, she was single! Then the girl said, as she refilled their cups, I am completely and totally bushed, and Bitsy felt a vindictive thrill because that was such a redundant, ignorant-sounding phrase completely and totally, good grief ! until she realized that Brad hadn't even noticed it. He wouldn't notice; he lacked that critical quality. But never mind: he was looking only at Bitsy anyhow. His eyes were the same shade of blue as a baby's receiving blanket, just that pure and mild.

  She told him her marriage had been over for months, and he shouldn't give it a thought. She was shameless, ruthless, single-minded, without a shred of conscience. She spent the night in his sweatsock-smelling bachelor apartment and didn't even bother offering Stephen an alibi. And when Brad accepted a teaching job in Baltimore she dropped her education courses flat and never set foot in College Park again.