“That ring was likely worth more.”
“Less than half what I paid and much more than it was worth to me. I didn’t want to have it in my drawer another day. Who would’ve thought getting your heart broken—that actually sounds like how it feels. I dunno. She might not have been the person I thought.”
“What does that mean?”
After a long silence: “She came to me with this story from the Globe about how you took a swim in the Charles a few years back and some dude had to fish you out. I told her, So fucking what? But she didn’t want you around.”
My anxiety swelled, and I chose my next words carefully: “Peter, I’m sorry if I caused this. I would have gladly resigned if you’d just explained the situation to me.”
“What, are you fucking kidding me? She doesn’t get to decide who you are. So what if you had a death wish once? We all do—it’s in the Mad Men pilot! You’re a fucking brilliant, funny, stand-up fucking guy, and if she didn’t want to get to know you like I know you that’s her fucking problem.”
I was at a deep, cavernous loss for something to say. Luckily, Peter spared me:
“And like I said, maybe it showed another side of her I couldn’t see before. When I lived here I was a fucking psychopath, sleeping with a different girl every weekend. Then I met Rachel right when I got back to Boston and I was fucking humbled and ready to take a breath and be in fucking love, you know? It’s like they say: ‘Ruined love, when it is built anew, grows fairer than at first, more strong.’ ”
“Who says that?”
“Shakespeare, bro.”
“I wasn’t aware you read Shakespeare.”
“Oh, I don’t. BFQ, dude. That shit knows all.”
“BFQ?”
“Bartlett’s Familiar, bro. BartFam. ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’ That thing basically wrote the intro to every paper I ever had in college.”
“You’re a perspicacious man, Peter.”
He patted me absently on the knee: “Stick with me, kid. I’ll take you to the stars.”
On the flight home, I tried to avoid thinking of the two days of dressing, praying, smiling, and emoting that lay ahead. The scent of my childhood home, of meticulously groomed plants and flowers in every corner of every room, greeted me as powerfully as my mother’s worried kiss or my sister’s careful embrace or the eerie sensation of walking into a tomb of memories echoing with an absence. We ate dinner, Haniya and Mumma bickering over her biryani recipe. I stared over Haniya’s shoulder at the rows of old embossed books with gold-leaf lettering, all my parents’ confused texts on the Qur’an. As a child, I’d viewed them with fear because the teachings were as difficult for me to believe as the khutbahs of the imam. I refused to walk by the shelf or sit on the side of the table where I couldn’t keep an eye on them.
Haniya went on about college while my mother stole glances at the muted TV tuned to CNN, something she never would have allowed in our childhood. She watched with worry as the subject never wavered from failed casino owner Donald J. Trump, who it seemed would soon secure enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination. Hani attempted to explicate silver linings:
“He’s going to drag down every Republican on the ticket, Mumma. This is a blessing in disguise, trust me.”
“This is a cursed year. The hateful people are winning everywhere. What about Brexit?”
“That’s not going to happen either, Mumma.”
“When you see your aunties, they will tell you what’s happening in Gujarat. The violence against Muslims is so normal now, and this—this is the beginning of it here.” Mumma shook her head while stock footage of Trump ad-libbing at a political rally played on-screen. Talking heads debated the odds of his unconventional candidacy. Our mother continued: “This is real, Haniya, and when he wins—”
Haniya laughed loudly at our mother’s foolishness. “He’s not going to win! This idiot can’t tie his shoes! He’s probably incontinent. He probably has to wear a diaper onstage!”
My mother slapped Haniya’s hand, though she had lost control of Hani’s foul mouth in her teenage years. Haniya swung her head to me, the crass yellow of her hijab sliding back and a lock of blond-dyed hair spilling out over her forehead.
“Ashir, tell her about the statistical likelihood of this doofus winning.”
My mother continued to stare at the TV and the amateur politician that had so captured the public imagination.
“It’s of negligible probability, according to most polling. But I’m far from an expert.”
Later, when our mother went to bed, I sat in the living room watching game six of Oklahoma City–San Antonio. When Oklahoma City completed its upset, Peter texted me:
Birdman Tannen nails it. When we’re millionaires don’t change on me bro.
I texted back, in an effort to be teasing: Are you concerned that when you achieve what you’ve worked for so vigorously, you’ll find yourself feeling empty? What will you do if you conquer NBA gambling, Peter?
Peter replied: Easy-peasy, bro. We buy a basketball team.
That was when Haniya poked her head in.
“Hey, look what I found.”
She held aloft a bottle of Macallan twenty-year single malt scotch. I’d always known my father hid alcohol in the garage and that his surly moods grew worse if he spent too much time there, but I did not know that Haniya knew.
“Oh, I knew for years,” she said, pouring us each a glass, the incongruity of her bright yellow hijab and the swishing amber liquid notwithstanding. “A son who’s a professional gambler and a daughter who loves a stiff drink.” She clinked her glass against mine, winking at her revelation of what I thought was my secret. “We are bad haraming kids, Ash. Haram-alam-a-dingdong. I’d say Papa would roll over in his grave if he knew, but this probably isn’t the right night for that comment.”
I laughed, and Haniya couldn’t believe it: “Now I have to make it a double to celebrate.”
Before that night, I’d always felt like my sister was alien to me: religious but progressive, bold but closed off. The night before our father’s Janazah was the first time I felt close to her and finally understood what that phrase meant. I could admit to myself that it was good to be with her, that perhaps with the long ordeal of our father’s illness now behind us, a new phase of our relationship might emerge.
The next morning, my head aching from the dehydration of the scotch, my mother asked me to drive her to mosque to help with some final arrangements. I agreed, knowing this was her transparent method to have whatever conversation she wanted to have.
“So your work in Las Vegas. You find this a good use of your talents?”
“It’s lucrative, and it makes me happy.”
“You know what your schoolteacher once told me and your father? Do you remember Miss Addie? Fourth-grade Miss Addie.”
Miss Addie had been my third-grade teacher, but my mother quickly shooed away this point in the manner she had when she was very frustrated with me. My mother’s accent deepened with her intolerance:
“She tells us that she’s never seen someone so young so good with maths. She tells us that we are raising a genius.” Then she arrived at what she actually wanted to say: “You realize I worry. I don’t want you to do it again. It is never far from my thoughts. Or far from my fears.”
“You’ve only seen me for a day. What could you know about my relative state of mind? I’m doing well.”
“You make that impossible to know.”
The picturesque homes of Ann Arbor looked cheerful in the spring sun. I chose to focus on the cool green lawns rather than engage in what I viewed as a tired and unwinnable debate. She persisted:
“Your father was a good man who helped many, many people, Ashir. And some of those sick people that he helped years ago, they are coming for the Janazah. He was so generous. Give, give, give.”