Dreaming in English (42 page)

Mrs. Hanson slips by me and quickly gets to Maryam. “You’ll be fine,” she says. “Your body knows what to do.”

“Will you stay with me?” Maryam asks her.

“Of course,” Mrs. Hanson says. She holds her hand out for Maryam to take. “Come, you’ll be fine. You’re about to become a mom. To experience love on a whole new level! You just have to be brave, like your sister here was just so very brave.” She smiles at me.

“My sister’s brave, too,” I say. “She’s a woman from Iran, so of course she is! Right, Maryam?”

Maryam nods and tries to smile. The bailiff holds the door open for us. Maryam goes first, flanked by Ardishir and Ike’s mother. I’m right behind them, thrilled.
I’ll be here. I get to be here!
This is so great! This is such a good day for our family!

There isn’t room for everyone in the elevator, so the others stay behind and call out excited good-byes and good lucks.

“The airport!” Ardishir remembers when we’re halfway down. “I’ve got to get to the airport!”

“I’ll go,” Ike says.

“Will you? Thank you!” I say. “And then bring Ardishir’s aunt to the hospital.”

“You go, too, Tami,” Ardishir says.

“No, I’m going with you,” I say. “No way will I miss this!”

“You need to go with Ike to the airport,” Ardishir says. “My aunt won’t go anywhere with a man she doesn’t know.”

“No, I can’t—”

“You
have
to, Tami,” Ardishir insists. “And don’t worry, by the time we get to the hospital, you’ll be at the airport. Just pick her up and bring her directly to the hospital, and you’ll only be half an hour behind us.”

“But”—I turn to my sister—“Maryam? What do you want me to do?” She wants me to stay with her. I can see it in her eyes. “I’m staying with my sister.”

But she shakes her head. “It’s okay. Go with Ike. Just hurry back!”

“You’re sure?” I ask. She nods that yes, she’s sure.

“I’ll text you the flight information,” Ardishir says.

“Text Ike,” I say. “I left my phone at home.”

When the elevator arrives at the ground floor, Ike and I shout good-byes and run down the hall, through security, and to his truck. “Rose!” I say, remembering that we gave her a ride to the courthouse. “How will she get home?”

“You don’t need to worry about Rose,” Ike said. “Rose will be fine. She can find her own way home.”

I snap the seat belt around myself and say, “Hurry!
Hurry!
”

Ike isn’t usually a fast driver. He’s a little slow, if anything, but today he’s willing to go ten miles over the speed limit. This is good but ...

“Faster, Ike!”

“If we get pulled over, that will just take more time.”

I know he’s right, but around us on the interstate, trucks and cars are speeding by. “I don’t think we’re going to be singled out.”

“Her plane’s going to get there when it gets there,” he says. “Us being at the airport five minutes early won’t make her arrive any sooner.”

“Well, I know, but—”

His phone vibrates. He retrieves it from his pocket and hands it to me. “See what it says.”

It’s a text from Ardishir.
Arriving at 4:40. Meet at top of stairs leading to baggage.

It’s four thirty right now, and we’re more than ten minutes away.

“Ike! Please, you have to go faster!”

He laughs. “If I get a ticket—”

“Who cares if you get a ticket? If that’s the worst thing that happens to us today, so what?”

He laughs harder. “You’re right. Today’s been pretty incredible. All right, here I go.”

He takes off, passes several cars, and maintains a high speed on the exit ramp. We’re back on city streets, and he makes the first few lights on Irvington and keeps going through the yellows, which he never, ever does. I laugh the whole way.

We barrel into the short-term visitors lot and run inside, straight to the stairs where we’re supposed to meet Ardishir’s aunt, and then stop short. We’re here, we made it! It’s exactly four forty. It’s so fitting, so appropriate, that we’re meeting her under the WELCOME TO TUCSON sign.

“Will you recognize her?” Ike says.

“I think so,” I say. “I doubt there’ll be any other Persians on the flight.”

I look around, at all the people coming and going, their lives in motion, and
mine is, too!
“Ike, we did it!” I throw my arms around him. “I’m here! I’m here forever!”

“No hockey babies,” he says.

I laugh. “No hockey babies—but babies, for sure.”

“For sure,” he says, and then steps back from my embrace and turns me to face the arrival gates. “It looks like the flight’s here.”

I scan the oncoming crowd and wait for a flicker of familiarity. I know a Persian when I see one.

“She’s how old?” Ike asks.

“In her fifties, I think.”

“Well, there’s someone that might be her. She’s very pretty and looks Mediterranean, but ... she’s with someone. Never mind.”

My eyes follow his, to the side of the ramp, halfway back, and my heart starts beating rapidly. It seems to know something I don’t.

“Ike ...”

This ... can’t be ... It can’t be right
. I squint at the couple.

“Ike?”

Tears blur my vision.
Why am I crying?

“What’s wrong, Tami?”

“That’s—oh, my God, Ike!”

I cover my mouth with my hand, trying to hold my emotions in. My hand shakes. I might faint. It’s them. It’s
them.

“That’s my mother, Ike.” I burst into tears.
“It’s my mother.”

“Wha—?” He looks at the couple. My parents—my mother, my father—are looking right at me. They’re crying, too, and smiling through their tears.

I start walking toward them. They must be a mirage in the distance, sure to disappear when I get close. And that’s why I walk so slowly. I don’t want them to disappear. But then again, maybe if I get there quick enough ... I begin running.

“Maman? Baba?”

They’re about twenty meters away.

“Tami!”

My mother starts running, too. Seconds later, we collide, locking together in one huge, long, screaming, traffic-stopping hug, expanded to include Baba when he reaches us.

“I won!” I say. “I won in court—just now! Just, thirty minutes ago! I get to stay! And Maryam—she’s having the baby! And, oh my God! Come meet Ike! You’re here!
You’re here!
”

I’m so flustered; I’m talking so fast and I’m sure I’m not making any sense. I don’t know what to do, where to go, how to steer them, but there’s Ike in his suit, looking like a gorgeous American model, looking exactly how I’d want him to look when meeting my parents for the first time.

“Sir.” He shakes my father’s hand, then my mother’s, too. “Mrs. Soroush. It’s very nice to meet you. I have to say—you came on the perfect day.”

I’m beyond tears. The ones streaming down my face mean nothing.

“Our daughter has told us so much about you,” my father says, his English perfect. “It’s very good to meet you.” His proud eyes glisten. “You are a good man.”

Oh, to hear my father say this. It means everything. They will swim in the ocean together, Ike and my father. Ike and my father and my son, someday.

“Tami, you might want to read this.” Ike hands me his cell phone. There’s a text message, from Ardishir:
Baby Hope is here!

“Maryam had her baby,” I say. “She had her baby!”

“Can we go?” Maman says. “Can we go to her right away? ”

“Of course,” I say. But I have to stand still for a minute. I have to catch my breath. I have to look at my mother and my father and understand that this is real. That
they
are real, and that they’re here.

“How did this happen?” I say.

“It’s our time,” my father says. “It’s our time for joy.”

So much has happened so fast. For so long, after dreaming for decades of somedays, within minutes, all our dreams have come true. My U.S. residency. Maryam’s healthy baby. My parents, here.

It’s really a little much.

I look at Ike and swallow over the lump in my throat. “You were the one who made me say it out loud.” He looks at me, unsure what I’m referring to. “Don’t you remember, you made me say my most secret dream out loud, the day we moved into the guesthouse?”

“Right.” He nods. “The day we put that map up.”

“This is it, Ike. This is that dream!”

I imagined the door to Maryam’s hospital room opening, and my mother stepping through it, with my father right behind.

I imagined Maryam with the baby in her arms and Ardishir by her side, seeing my parents for the first time in over fifteen years.

I imagined my mother, moments later, holding Baby Hope in her arms.

Can you see it?
I asked him.
Can you ever see it happening?

Absolutely
, he said.
If anyone can pull it off, you can.

This is why I love him: because he believed in me even before I believed in myself.

 

 

 

We take the escalator down to the baggage claim. My parents’ luggage is already circling the carousel, and while Ike and my father go to collect it, my mother and I stay back. She stands close and smoothes my hair, caresses my cheek. “I’m here,” she says. “Can you believe it?”

“Of course I can.” I smooth
her
hair. I caress
her
cheek.
This is my mother, in America!

She looks familiar and different at the same time.

I think it’s her smile that’s different. It’s a smile I’ve only ever seen before in photographs from long ago. It’s the smile of the mother I’ve missed every day of my life, the smile of the mother I’ve longed to know.

I don’t have to miss her anymore.

She’s here. She’s here!

My mother, at long last, has come to wake up her luck.

Laura Fitzgerald
is the author of
Veil of Roses
and
One True Theory of Love
. A native of Wisconsin, she lives in Arizona with her husband, who is of Iranian descent, and their two children. She can be reached through her Web site at
www.laurafitzgerald.com
.