Sons and Other Flammable Objects

by Porochista Khakpour

  “Oh my God, I had that same reaction!” Suzanne snorted in delight. “Same one, but Disneyworld Orlando! It freaks kids out!”

  Her laughter was contagious. He went further, aping Xerxes for her: the scared-child Xerxes face, his melodramatic shudders, his hands over his eyes, his back turned against theirs, his hands folded across his chest, and he was laughing laughing laughing. …

  Until suddenly—like an abrupt shatter to a frame of glass, like that family picture of us all at Disneyland, the one Xerxes had knocked down, that had prompted me, made me, why oh why, strike my own goddamn child, worse than I had ever, and had I ever—he was laughing so hard he was crying, and then just crying and crying and crying. …

  “Oh, poor Dad,” Suzanne muttered, hugging him without a second wasted. “You’ve had a bit too much to drink. My fault. And today’s emotional, I know. …”

  She was used to this, he could tell. Ah, Xerxes. Still, he could not pull himself together. Suddenly in Shireen’s—I mean, Suzanne’s—arms he could cry as he had rarely cried in his adult life.

  He told her more stories, the worst ones this time—now that he had arrived, was already there, he had little to hide—and she didn’t let on, not even once, that she knew more than one of the stories already and more than a few even that he hadn’t gotten to.

  Xerxes was walking, pacing, to where he did not know. With every few yards of terminal he would cover, he’d arrive at another restroom. In he would dart, into a stall, and he would sit and think. He’d find himself ridiculous, no better than where he started, and he would go out again. And then into another restroom. Thoughts. Up and out.

  He was going to run out of restrooms, terminal, time.

  He went to the phone booth. He had to call Suzanne. He had to make himself a real out.

  “Oh, geez, where are you already?!” she immediately cried, still in that new elated high pitch of hers. “Lost, I’m sure!”

  Before he could offer anything, she was telling him where they were, speaking a mile a minute, somehow erasing all his thoughts with her explanations and directions and commands and expectations. He just listened.

  “You got it?” she said. “We’ve been waiting, c’mon!”

  “Suzanne, I’m sick,” he said, suddenly more harshly than he even expected. “I’ll get there, you know, when I get there. …”

  “It’s just that we want to get some food in you, too, before,…” and in came the horrible giggling again, “Oh, we’re very excited, Xerxes. We can’t wait.”

  Numbly, he echoed it back: he couldn’t wait. He also told her his phone card was about to die, so he had to go.

  He lied. About: his phone card—it was fine—and …?

  He hung up.

  They were close. In the distance, he could see it: a bright indeed family-style tiki-looking café. Its logo featured a big yellow glowing bird in flight. He closed his eyes, then opened them slowly, blinked a few more times, then tried to look more closely. Bird—no, not a bird. It actually could be a pterodactyl, he told himself, deciding it was much more likely to be a prehistoric flying dinosaur of some kind—not quite a bird—than yet another omen, another ill-conceived sign. …

  He walked to it, like a man stuck in the autopilot of a dream. Eventually he slowed down to a stop and snapped himself back to reality. No. He was too close. He examined the distance to the ptero-dactyl café and predicted he was the length of two men, two dead men, spread flat on the airport carpeting, head to foot, from it. That close. Just two lying men’s length, that length of two inanimate men over and done with, into the belly of the glowing happy family-loving lit-up bird, where the representatives of the mixed worlds sat waiting for him in the best of spirits. …

  All that rumination on dead men gave him an idea. It was a last resort, but at least it was an idea.

  He looked to the signs to figure out how to get to the beginning, the ticket counter, the Lufthansa ticket counter all over again. If there was an out, that was the out of outs.

  “Hello, madam,” he said in his most charming voice, once he finally made it through the short but still excruciating line and was faced with a smiling old black Lufthansa ticket lady. Two good things: everyone spoke English and everyone smiled a lot in Frankfurt. He had those going for him.

  “Hello, how may I help you?” she said, in good old American English even, with a sincerity that almost broke his heart. Good omens. He wanted to let her know just how badly he wanted her help, how very much she could help him, rescue him even, if she only knew. …

  “Yes, well, you see, I am due to be on this flight,” he said, taking out his ticket and pointing to the destination, no longer having it in him to say Iran, to deal with that on top of everything else.

  She nodded, unfazed.

  “Yes, well, you see, I can’t get on it,” he said. “There’s been an emergency and I’m requesting to go back. Go back where I came from. Right back to JFK!”

  She looked at his ticket. “You’d like to purchase another ticket?”

  He shook his head. Oh no, he could not do that. His bank account looked closer to his age than the price of that ticket, or any ticket really. He had no means to pay for his out. This one had to be on Suzanne—and while he knew in a way he was jeopardizing the whole relationship, since after all she had threatened that on the phone, there was no other way. Suzanne had put him in this mess and she had to get him out. In his madness, he had decided the Suzanne-sacrifice would be the price to pay for his rescue, as well as the punishment for his cowardice. He would take being a coward, a lying cheating coward, whatever, over a man being forced headfirst into a dark vat of his greatest fears. …

  It was not so easy. She could not charge it to the credit card if the credit card was not his. Also, the price would be much higher, since he was purchasing a ticket for that day that day.

  He thought, Of fucking course. Suddenly, on the verge of the boiling point, when every last inch of him pointed toward breakdown, he decided to raise the stakes to the point where he had hoped he would not have to go.

  “Of course, madam,” he said, through eyes suddenly filled with tears. “You see, it was my girlfriend’s credit card … she bought the tickets … and it’s just that it’s an emergency that I get back to New York … a very bad emergency. …”

  She nodded, definitely aware of the tears, he thought. “I understand,” she said, as if she really understood, as if she really grasped how important understanding was at that point.

  He let the tears get the best of him, let his whole idea undo him. “You see, my father,” he began, his voice cracking perfectly as if a sidekick in his hustle, “he … he. …”

  “Oh my, sir!” she exclaimed, shocked by the abundant overflow of his tears, quickly reaching for a box of tissues and passing it over.

  “Yes,” Xerxes cried, amazed that there he was, really, really and truly, moved to beyond tears even, “my father has … died!”

  “Oh, sir, I am so sorry, sir,” the ticket lady murmured, gently. “Please know, in that case, there are options.”

  The tears were so real—tears of the day’s many stresses mixed with tears of shame for going there mixed with tears of actual actor’s catharsis in imagining the reality of the script—that his eyes refused to light up at her sudden resolution.

  “Sir,” the ticket lady continued, gently, “we have a policy where family members can fly at a discounted rate if they can present a copy of the death certificate or a letter from the attending physician defining the imminent death of the family member. Or if you do not have this, you can apply for a Bereavement Travel Refund after travel is complete. Does that help?”

  He couldn’t believe it. No, he thought. It does not fucking help. Tears of defeat were added to tears of stress, shame, and catharsis. There was no way out.

  “But I don’t have any funds for a refund! Hasn’t that ever happened? Emergencies?! I mean, my father, my father—” he was losing it and he knew she could tell. She was look
ing around nervously, swallowing, trying to smile sympathetically, trying to hush him while he was raising his voice. “Don’t you see, I have no CHOICE?!!”

  She shook her head; she nodded. She smiled; she frowned. None of it was any use.

  “MY FATHER!!!” he was shouting, crying uncontrollably. The whole line behind him was suddenly silent, then full of voices, everyone looking at him, everyone looking around. Other ticket ladies were suddenly joining the ticket lady, staring at the bawling skinny young man waving his ticket in her face, waving his fist, pounding it against the counter, wanting, needing, demanding things they could not do. …

  “Sir,” a man in a suit, a bit more official-seeming than the ticket lady, suddenly appeared, interrupting Xerxes’s wails with a deeply accented voice of authority. “Sir. Please stop. You are causing a disturbance. We will have to …”

  But it was no use. Xerxes Adam was holding on to the ticket counter as if it were the edge of a cliff he was dangling from; he felt that he was slipping and so to help himself he was kicking at it, trying to mount it, trying to get closer, to get right up to their faces, to let them see for themselves, he was falling, he had no choice, he needed help—and that there was something, some very real truth at the very least, to the very big deal he was making. …

  You are having a nervous breakdown, his body told him. It’s okay. They can tell. You do what you have to do. You are having a nervous breakdown and the only bad part is that it’s at an airport, in front of hundreds of people. That’s all. But they’ve all been there—well, most, er, some. It’s okay. One day it will be over. For now, you are just having a nervous breakdown, which is better than where you would have been had you not let yourself go through this.

  “Sir, sir,” Suited Man kept insisting, getting Xerxes’s attention only when he changed his song and went right ahead and got to what he assumed was the heart of the matter, “Sir, where, may I ask, are you from?”

  It worked. Xerxes’s hysteria came to a dead halt, as if the man had applied dry ice to his scalding wound, burning the lesion to complete frozen submission. He was about to say he had flown from JFK, he was a resident of New York City, he was raised in Los Angeles, he was a United States citizen, a Californian, a Manhattanite—when suddenly out of his mouth came a truth, a desperatecidal truth perhaps more lethal than the hour’s desperate suicidal lies: “I was born in Iran.”

  Suited Man nodded and looked away. The original ticket lady was still looking into Xerxes’s eyes with her mix of sympathy/horror, while flanked by a group of other ticket ladies who seemed wrecks, too, unused to it all. They were pacing, panicked, turning to Suited Man, eyeing him for answers, eyeing the rest of the line as if fearing more of this Iranian madman’s kind. …

  Their shock shocked Xerxes. But certainly this happens all the time, Xerxes wanted to plead with them, I mean, forgive me, so I got a little carried away, but certainly people have breakdowns in airports all the time? I mean, where better to have a nervous breakdown … ladies?

  But Suited Man’s incisive question had calmed Xerxes or alarmed him into a survivalist calm, and there he was, wiping his face, straightening his shirt, patting his hair, trying harder than he had ever tried to just pull himself together. He wondered if it was having any effect. For a second he contemplated just walking off, but as if also clairvoyant, Suited Man raised a finger at him, a one-moment-please-sir finger gesture, and just like that, Xerxes Adam found himself immobile, absolutely petrified. Suited Man had powers.

  Suited Man, of course, could only gesture because he was on the phone. On the phone right in front of Xerxes Adam the whole time, but talking in such a low voice that Xerxes could barely make anything out. He realized part of the problem was that he was speaking in German. Still, he listened and realized not all was lost in translation—the exclusivity of foreign lexica was fallible and some words broke through even the impenetrable German.

  Specifically:

  1) X-E-R-X-E-S A-D-A-M. His name spelled out not once, but twice. Then pronounced almost perfectly.

  2) Iran.

  3) Suspicious Activity.

  Just as Xerxes Adam choked on those last words, as if they formed a mouthful of poisonous gas causing his throat to close in on him, Suited Man hung up and turned to Xerxes with a smile. It was the secret satisfied smile of a man who knew all too well his upper hand, only barely masked by the grandiose smile of a man who cared.

  “Sir, if you’ll step out of the line and come over with me,” he said, “and them.”

  Before he knew it, behind him three large security guards had his shoulders. Luckily for Xerxes Adam, whatever that poisonous gas was that had gotten him had gotten him good and the wind was thoroughly knocked out of his lungs before he could process what a dire pickle he was in—before he could register Suited Man’s request for questioning, Xerxes Adam, without any encouraging, without the slightest actorly sleight of hand, without any will whatsoever even, just gave in to his body and collapsed. Pure merciful blackout.

  Some would point out that if it weren’t for those guards and their ready arms, he could have cracked his head and … died even. Some would point out that if it weren’t for Suited Man’s security move, Xerxes could have gone off the deep end further and spent half a lifetime locked up. Some would point out that if it weren’t for that timely collapse he wouldn’t have arrived at the peace the mental shutdown afforded him, that allowed him to drift off into a happier alternative universe, where everything was okay again, all in that safe suspension between the blindingly chaste original light of heaven and the nuclear ultraviolet afterglow of earth, his father, his girlfriend, him, all together in a cloud-cuckoo-land all their own. …

  Darius Adam had become a new man recently, he realized then and there—I am a man who cries. Just months ago, it was into his wife’s arms. Then on that day, it was in the arms of Suzanne, a girl who resembled the fake daughter who existed in the fake reality of his dreams. She could, of course, become something more, he thought, a daughter-in-law even. Enough, Darius, enough, goddamn it, what are you becoming?! The idea was a bit much for him, since how could he envision a bride when he couldn’t even imagine the groom? Still, he could not deny that already she felt like family.

  Especially at a time when family felt like less-than-family—Xerxes still missing, somewhere there in the airport, she promised, just delayed, she insisted, he is very sick, she reminded him—her easy family air was much appreciated.

  Wine after wine, story after story, and the hours rolled by one against the other—sometimes, he thought, too slowly, sometimes too fast. Time seemed hit-and-run in Frankfurt, volatile, erratic, capricious—you had to check your watch against another clock and then maybe another just to reassure yourself you had the zones right. All he knew was that at some point time would get the best of them. They had a deadline.

  Suzanne seemed to punctuate the increments of time by leaving messages on Xerxes’s cell phone. He can’t answer it, he doesn’t have the calling plan, she’d explain, but surely he’s checking messages. One by one, all still civil and sweet even, she left them, and turned back to Darius with ever-reassuring eyes. It will be okay. Really. You’ll see. Any minute.

  It took longer. They waited at the gate as their flight boarded and still no Xerxes Adam. They missed their flight, went back to the café, and waited some more. Nothing. They contemplated Plan B’s and C’s and D’s for other flights to board, to buy more and more time, to give him a chance, wherever he was, whatever it was that was happening—and still not a sign of Xerxes Adam. Since Suzanne swore one thing was for certain—he had made it to Frankfurt—they had nowhere to go but stay. They checked in at a nearby airport hotel and made do.

  In New York, Lala Adam was beside herself on the phone to Darius. “Should I come? Should I go home? Do you want to come home? What the hell? Look … what did you do to him, really, Darius?!” she would shriek. He had made the mistake of calling her early on and having little to say about what was happeni
ng. She would hang up on him only to call back again hours later.

  For days, the father and the son’s girlfriend were suspended in a dreamlike haze of shared mixed feelings—terror, anger, remorse, guilt, anxiety, anticipation, every emotion that’s bigger than its carriers. They tried every airport hotel, the police, info lines, the news, hospitals—nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing. Then one morning—after a long night of belatedly “celebrating” their Persian New Year, in tears at a Turkish Frankfurt pub, a dark place to drown out their hopelessness in the alcohol that had discovered both of them suddenly—news came in the form of a phone call from where they least expected it.

  Lala Adam: “Darius, I found him.”

  It was of course not him. Her brother was not found—that was not going to be the purpose of the trip, she realized soon enough. It would take another decade, until she finally did the unthinkable and made it back to that native land that she thought she was done with. …

  She had gone to Tehran still without many links to her old family—and the few she had she had hesitated to use. But soon enough they had found her—a cousin who recognized the family eyes stumbled on her pacing their old neighborhood and brought her into his home. She had reluctantly let herself be smothered in hugs and realized it was not so bad. From this cousin she was led to another cousin and soon dinner parties full of cousins. All that family shocked her, eventually in a good way—it washed over her like a wave that at first chills but then soothes—she thought, I have my people and it’s not so bad! That alone was a gift, but the gift of her life was still waiting at a certain dinner party. Finally, he came, the last guest, a man with little hair and kind eyes and a slouch, with a young child in his arms. Whispers caught up with them and when the man approached Lala the whole dining room went silent.

  My sister, my God, he said.