The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

  He was nine years late, but Raphael’s Son had finally made his wife happy to be married to him: his gesture toward her parents, the ease and speed with which he delivered the money and signed the papers, even the seemingly sincere way in which he shook Dr. Raiis’s hand and kissed Zeeba’s—“Congratulations, madame, I wish you success; please do not hesitate to contact my assistant Eddy should you have questions”—all made Neda believe that he was, in fact, a better person than she had judged him to be.

  * * *

  The girls were nine and seven, so it was safe to say Neda had not been intimate with her husband for eight years; they had slept in separate bedrooms since they brought Kayla home from the hospital and Raphael’s Son moved across the hall to get a good night’s sleep while Neda breast-fed. After that, his main function as a father was to write checks and complain about the cost of private schooling and extracurricular activities for kids. He paid for lavish birthday parties and even more lavish bat mitzvahs, but he didn’t spend a minute involved in the planning, and couldn’t leave the events fast enough.

  Is it true that we harbor the greatest resentment for those we need most? Is that why Raphael’s Son so hated the community he had so longed to be accepted by? Why—now that he had finally made it, forced the doors open, and inserted himself into every business gathering and nonprofit board and social event—he could barely stand the company?

  __________________

  Perhaps predictably, the one person who was not pleased to see Dr. Raiis rise from store clerk to owner at Benny Produce was Angela. She heard the news from Nilou and immediately warned of dire consequences such as, but not limited to, bankruptcy, prison, divorce, or a murder-suicide for the lucky new owners. At thirty-three and working at a big, fancy law firm, Angela was just a bolder, more assertive version of her younger self. She didn’t care how rich everyone in the country had become or how wide open the gates of success lay for every man, woman, and child in the age of easy mortgages. She knew what Raphael’s Son was made of and could guess what he planned for his in-laws.

  She went to Benny and personally warned Dr. Raiis, who continued to wear a suit and tie every day to stand behind the cash register and scan pound after pound of Japanese eggplant, Indian tea, and Israeli pickles, that he had made the biggest mistake of his life: “This is worse than when you wouldn’t listen to Auntie Zeeba and got yourself stuck in Iran”; that he had not only made a pact with the devil but borrowed money from him: “I mean, who told you this was a good idea? I don’t know how, but I promise he’s got some dark agenda that he’ll break out just when you’ve made this place good and profitable.”

  Dr. Raiis had a feeling he and Zeeba would be long dead before Benny became profitable. They had owned the place for under a month and already it had sucked whatever strength he and Zeeba had left. She had a permanent set of aches and pains, kept picking fights with the Honduran boy they had hired to replace Dr. Raiis in the back. She didn’t talk to anyone unless she had to, and then usually about how a vendor had cheated them or a customer had slighted her. Dr. Raiis had known that he and Zeeba were too old and inexperienced to run a business of this kind, his years of service at Benny notwithstanding, and he had said as much before they accepted Raphael’s Son’s offer, but now here they were and—what the hell?—they would fight to keep from failing.

  “Don’t worry so much about me and my wife,” Dr. Raiis told Angela, “we’ve had our turn. You just try to make sure that you and Nilou each have a husband and a couple of kids before I leave you all.”

  __________________

  More than anything else when it came to marriage, Angela was among the lost generation of Iranian women who fled the country in their childhood or early teens and became stranded in the netherworld between East and West. Too young to have been shaped entirely by traditional values, too old to understand and adapt completely to modern ways, these women vacillated between seeking the safety of a “wise” marriage and the appeal of “true love,” between the good sense of capitalizing on their youth and beauty to ensure financial security and the creation of a young, healthy family, and the temptation to make the most of their brainpower and individual strength. Most Iranian men found them too modern, and most Westerners thought them too traditional.

  Because Los Angeles, as Raphael’s Son would famously express to the Aramaic brothers, was indeed a third world country. The image was that of a city filled with tall, blond California girls and boys, all rosy cheeks and short shorts and bicycle rides by the beach. In fact, nearly everyone who lived here had come from outside California, blondness was chemically induced, and more than 224 languages were spoken in LA County.

  The arrangement made it easier for a foreigner to feel at home, but it did have a few flaws: once they arrived here, members of each ethnic group joined their own little tribes and stayed there, more or less harmoniously, for good. Each tribe was possessive and territorial and forever threatened by the success or expansion of their neighbors. In some parts of town, they acted out their fears with AK-47s and other constitutionally sanctioned weapons of mass destruction—hence the city’s distinction as the “Gang Capital of the World.” In others, as on the West Side, they took the war into the sandboxes and playgrounds of private preschools, the boardrooms of city councils, and the sanctuaries of synagogues.

  Within each tribe, a war of attrition was waged in which Western values first threatened, then encroached upon, then ate the dying carcasses of old beliefs and traditions. Angela knew about that war. As far as she could tell, her entire adult life had been shaped by this conflict. It was the reason she received a first-class education, had a career, and controlled her own fate. It was also the reason she was alone and childless.

  * * *

  In the late ’80s and early-to-mid ’90s, when Angela was of dating age, young people in the community were expected to marry other Iranian Jews. Anything else (like marrying an Ashkenazi Jew) was cause for the parents to sit shivah. This always struck Angela as preposterous, given that they had chosen to live in America instead of Iran, but it was largely irrelevant in her case because no “normal” white male had expressed real interest in her anyway. Normal white males, it turned out, thought they could do better than Iranian women.

  All those LA natives who complained that Iranians were loathe to mix with and integrate into the larger community—who blamed the parents for insisting that their children marry other Iranians and who blamed the children for bonding primarily with other Iranian kids—all the former immigrants who accorded these newer ones the same lack of regard as they themselves had once been held in, now overlooked their own part in keeping the tribes separate.

  Nor were normal Iranian males of suitable ages lining up with applications to marry Angela. She wasn’t pretty enough to satisfy the prospective mothers-in-law’s physical requirements, and not rich enough to influence their fathers to waive those requirements. Past age twenty-five, she was not pretty enough, not rich enough, and getting too old. Before she knew it, she was twenty-seven and older women were saying things like, “She never did get married,” as if she were dead or on the verge of it, had missed the three-minute window of opportunity during which girls were considered worthy of marriage. Then she was thirty, with an Ivy League education and a high-paying job, but as far as anyone in the community was concerned, she was a walking tragedy because she remained unmarried. This way of thinking was not particular to Iranians: postfeminism, most American women also thought of marriage as the best of all options.

  * * *

  When she turned thirty, Angela bought a small house on Mulholland overlooking the valley, and told herself she must learn to accept what she wasn’t able to change. Three years later, in 2005, she had accepted that, at thirty-three, she may be heading toward permanent “husbandlessness.” She was mostly fine with this. But every once in a while she saw a child, usually a stranger’s, who made her heart sink and filled her with a sadness she would not be able to shake for days.
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  __________________

  She hadn’t seen John Vain since he turned himself in at Lompoc, but she had been keeping count and knew it was almost time for him to be released. He had served eleven years of a thirteen-year sentence. In federal prison, convicts get fifty-four days reduced from their sentence every year for good behavior. Assuming he had received the maximum amount of time off, he would be released at some point within the coming months. Until now, Angela had respected his wish to be left alone, but “enough is enough,” she told Elizabeth when announcing her intention to visit John Vain, “he’s coming out any day now and he’s going to need help getting his life back.”

  Angela was right about that—John Vain needing help—but she got the release date wrong: she went to Lompoc only to find he had been let go sixty-three days earlier “because the fifty-four-day rule, you see, madame-attorney-from-the-East-Coast, isn’t set in stone, we all liked John Vain and the warden did too.”

  Stricken, she tried to track him down every which way she could think of. She was working as a government attorney then, at less than half the salary she had drawn in the private sector, and she couldn’t afford to hire the kind of investigator she thought was needed to track down an ex-con who was determined to remain lost. She felt Elizabeth owed her this, that she owed it, in fact, to John Vain, regardless of his one-time plea for emancipation from their friendship.

  Not that Angela harbored any conscious anger toward her mother. Past thirty, she was sure she could understand, even excuse Elizabeth for not giving of herself that which she had never received from her own mother. Angela could see how the losses of the early years, the disruption of exile and the ensuing strife, would stifle in a person, even one as steadfast as Elizabeth, the kind of tenderness a daughter longs for. She could imagine how, having buried one child, Elizabeth might hesitate to attach too deeply to another.

  Still, there were facts Angela could not forget even after she had forgiven. One of them was the habit instilled in her from her childhood to be independent to the extreme. The other was to be alone and unattached. This was easy enough in Manhattan where she had no family and didn’t like any of her coworkers. But once she moved back to LA, she was always running into people she knew from high school, or people who knew her even though she had no idea who they were, who came up and stopped her in the middle of the street, in a restaurant, anywhere, really, to ask about “your dear mother” until it became clear that they had more personal information about Elizabeth than Angela ever would; and as if that weren’t enough of an affront, they invariably went on to inquire about her private life, or what should have been private anyway, like whether she was married yet and if not, “Don’t worry, girls marry later these days, some even date Americans, you shouldn’t have any trouble meeting a great guy, you’re smart and accomplished and have many other assets.”

  “Translation,” Angela would fume on the phone to Nilou, “you may be smart, but you’re no looker. Or, someone’s bound to marry you for your mother’s money.”

  That last one—about Elizabeth’s money likely attracting a husband for Angela—was a fair prediction, given the way things happened in every community in every part of the world, and especially given the amount of money at stake.

  __________________

  Elizabeth’s house on Oakmont Drive in Brentwood had the kind of Zen simplicity that costs a lot of money to look inexpensive. All the lines and frames were straight and fine, every surface smooth and quiet, every color neutral and easy on the eyes. The maid wore sleeveless gray Calvin Klein dresses reminiscent of the heyday of Communist China. The male servant wore white dress shirts, gray ties with white stripes, and tailored gray suits. They both spoke with spa voices—the practiced just-above-a-whisper tone that signals overpriced tranquility, tap water flavored with cucumber slices, eighteen types of herbal tea, and chenille bathroom slippers.

  Against this backdrop Stephanie Dalal, Elizabeth’s self-appointed chief of staff and jealous gatekeeper, stood out like a well-dressed rash. Tall, thread-thin, and salon-tanned like a beach volleyball player in Rio de Janeiro, Stephanie Dalal was one of those painfully conflicted creatures that are found in such unfortunate abundance all along the California coast: women in their forties and fifties who once believed they could and should and would have it all. They had started out smart and educated, attractive and confident—and yes, thin, tanned, and toned—and they had assumed that life—and men—would reward them fairly for all they had to offer. A divorce or two and a string of bad relationships later, they were still smart and educated, and still a size 4, but they now subsisted on undressed salads and nonfat lattes, got spray tans instead of lying in the sun, couldn’t run up and down the Santa Monica steps without injuring a knee, and had to resort to paying overly grown young men with underdeveloped brains $180 an hour to help them with “spot reduction” at the gym. Men ten or more years older wouldn’t consider dating these women because they were too old, too demanding, and had “too much baggage.” Married women their age avoided them, and unmarried ones competed with them for the attention of the very few recently divorced or widowed men who hadn’t been snatched while they were married or the minute their wives got sick.

  Stephanie wore pencil skirts and lizard-skin pumps, listened to self-help courses in her car, and addressed everyone as “Dear.” She served Elizabeth faultlessly but hated her for being ungrateful and stingy—not with money or perks, or vacation and sick time, but with her handsome, wealthy, and single male friends and associates, of which Stephanie knew there were many. In seven years of seeing her every day, Elizabeth had never once inquired about Stephanie’s personal life. One might either credit her for respecting an employee’s privacy, or assume she didn’t ask because she didn’t care. Stephanie believed the latter. She was on her way out of the house on Tuesday afternoon when the gate guard called to announce Angela.

  “Tell her no,” Stephanie barked at the guard. “Mrs. Soleyman is busy and is not expecting visitors.”

  Two minutes later, Angela’s Prius was storming up the driveway like a toy tank driven by a kamikaze pilot.

  * * *

  A male servant showed Angela into the library and closed the door. He returned a few minutes later with a small silver tray bearing a bottle of sparkling water, one crystal glass, and a Daum candy dish with Fauchon chocolates. He put the tray down on one of those minimalist tables that are put on display in museums of modern art, threw an ever-so-subtle glance at Angela who had splayed herself on the love seat like an unruly ten-year-old, and asked if he should pour.

  “No,” Angela said, combatively. “But please tell my mom I don’t have all day.”

  She was thinking the man seemed like someone who would be named Gerald. He could have been a manager at a men’s luxury department store, making minimum wage plus the occasional commission but acting like he owned the business and holding the customers who spent enough in contempt until he was replaced by a better-looking, more athletic version of himself and had to find employment elsewhere.

  “You’ve been with her long?” she asked, trying to soften her voice. She realized it wasn’t his fault that she felt like a stranger at her own mother’s house—that, for all practical purposes, she was in fact a stranger at her mother’s house.

  “Five years this August,” he said, carefully signaling his disapproval of her manners by averting his eyes.

  “Hmm,” Angela pondered aloud, “I wonder why—”

  “We have, indeed, met before, madame,” Gerald interrupted. “A few times.” He bowed his head perfunctorily and left the room.

  Were they really that different—Angela and Elizabeth—when dealing with other humans?

  * * *

  She heard the quick tempo of heels against the gray wood floor, like a metronome set to presto, and felt her heart tighten with emotion.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Elizabeth said as she emerged through the door. In an instant, she was upon Angela, kissing her on both chee
ks, and then she said the phrase that was the trademark of every Iranian Jewish mother: “Ghorboonet beram”—May I be sacrificed for you.

  “I’ve been hoping to see you.”

  It always distressed Angela to hear Elizabeth say, “Ghorboonet beram,” or use any other maternal term of endearment. To Angela, these phrases felt like an unfair attempt to undermine the cold war she had waged against her mother for decades.

  Elizabeth wore a plain (no doubt expensive) beige dress, two-inch heels, soft makeup, and no jewelry except for a watch.

  “You’ve been working hard?” she asked in Persian.

  “No. But I want something from you. That is, I want you to fulfill an obligation you’ve neglected.”

  At this, the light in Elizabeth’s eyes dimmed. She nodded once, then smiled sadly and asked, “You mean about John Vain?”

  It always surprised Angela to think how young—fifty-one—her mother was, how wise she seemed at times, how quick to understand and learn. Angela couldn’t help but be in awe of her, admire the strength that had helped her survive the many past lives.

  “I can’t find a trace of him,” Angela said, suddenly bereft. “I think you should hire an expert. I would do it, but they’re expensive.” She glanced around the room as if to verify that Elizabeth could afford it.

  “Do you think he wants you to find him?” Elizabeth asked softly.

  That she said “you” instead of “us” felt like the coldest of the cold postures to Angela.

  “What the hell, Mom!” She only realized she was yelling when she heard her voice echo in the room. “You should be looking for him too. You should never have stopped seeing him.”

  It wasn’t the first time Angela had reproached Elizabeth for abandoning John Vain to his wishes.

  “I know you want to help him,” Elizabeth said calmly.

  “Someone needs to.”