The Nearest

2

As Kate pulled into the driveway, she heard Reza enunciating excitedly, “Look who’s home! Look who’s home! Look. Who. Is. Home!”

Before she’d opened the car door, he came out onto the porch with Michael, who was peering toward her, unfocused but tentatively smiling. “Say khosh amadi, maamaan!” Reza urged him. “Welcome to our house.”

Kate said, “Now you’re just being sarcastic.”

Reza grinned. “Sorry.” Kate kissed him, then took Michael in her arms; he flapped his own arms excitedly, then beamed at her and started babbling.

“Someone still appreciates me.” Kate kissed her son’s cheek three times, as noisily as she could, and Reza held the door open for her as she walked into the hall.

“Do you want me to take him for a bit while you unwind?” Reza asked her.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Okay, I’ll start cooking.”

Kate sat in the kitchen, gazing into Michael’s face, engrossed by his responses to her monologue of flattering rhetorical questions. “Who is the most beautiful boy? Can you guess who that is?” Sometimes her words seemed to amuse him, sometimes he frowned in puzzlement. But so long as he was content, watching him was like floating in a warm, tranquil pool—and with the scent of herbs frying and the sound of the gentle sizzling of oil, she felt as if she’d been transported into some otherworldly paradise, as remote from the place she’d just left as waking life from a dream.

After a while, Michael closed his eyes, but Kate let him sleep in her arms until dinner was ready, then she put him down in his cot and joined Reza to eat.

“I’m glad you could get home before he slept,” Reza said. “Have things quietened down at all?”

“Yes, though not in a good way. We still haven’t found the missing woman.” Kate didn’t want to talk about the case, or even think about it for the next twelve hours if she could help it. “How was the bundle of joy today?” she asked.

“Joyous as ever. I think it’s going to take some serious teething before he can be bothered losing his cool.”

“I don’t know where he gets that equanimity from,” Kate marveled.

Reza frowned. “There’s only one possibility, surely?”

Kate wiped her plate clean with the last piece of bread and leaned back in her chair. “That was delicious. Thank you.”

“Noosheh jaan.” Reza stood up and took her plate, then bent down to kiss her forehead. “I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

“Sure.”

“Do you mind if I visit my father tonight?”

“Of course not.” In truth, Kate had been hoping she could fall asleep on the couch beside him, watching something lighthearted and distracting, but Reza had been stuck in the house for the last six days, and he hadn’t seen his father for a fortnight. “When do visiting hours finish?”

“Nine.”

Kate glanced at the clock. “You’d better go right now. I’ll clean up here.”

He kissed her again, put her plate in the sink, picked up his keys and headed out the door.

When his car had gone, Kate sat for a while in the silence, then got up and made herself busy with the dishes. When she’d finished, she went to the living room and flicked through the TV’s menu, but none of the sitcoms did it for her when she watched them alone.

She walked down the hall into Michael’s room, and gazed down at his sleeping form, barely visible in the faint light that came through the curtains from the street lamps. If anyone laid a finger on you, she thought. Anyone. She could feel her heart beating faster. She tried to calm herself, stepping back and scrutinizing her own hyper-vigilance. She had no reason to think that her son was in any danger at all.

But she stayed in the room, watching over him, until she saw the headlights coming into the driveway.

Reza didn’t seem to be in a mood to talk, but when they were in bed Kate worked up the courage to ask gently, “How was he?”

“He thought I was his brother,” Reza replied. “He thought I was Amir.”

Kate tried to make light of it. “I don’t think you look much like your uncle.”

Reza smiled. “He had a lot more hair when he was my age. And a different hairstyle every month. One of them must have been a match.”

“Was he happy to see you anyway?” Kate asked. She knew that Hassan and Amir had been close; better a visit from his brother than from a total stranger.

“He was happy to have Amir to talk to, but not so happy about where they must have been.”

“Back in Isfahan?”

Reza shook his head. “He thinks he’s in immigration detention. Why else would he be locked up by people speaking English?”

“Jesus. I hope the staff there are nothing like those pricks.” Kate’s most enduring memory of all the stories she’d heard from Hassan had been the time some fresh-faced girl from Port Augusta—probably nineteen or twenty, knowing nothing of life, puffed up with self-importance by her uniform—had told this man who’d seen his parents executed by the mullahs, and who’d spent four years imprisoned in various corners of the Australian desert, that because he was on hunger strike he would be treated like a child, and denied such extravagant privileges as phone calls and visitors, until he learned to grow up.

“They do their best,” Reza said. “And I don’t think he thinks that all the time.”

Kate took his hand and squeezed it.

“I just need to show a makeup artist photos of my grandfather,” Reza mused. “With a few wigs and costumes and the right soundtrack, I bet I could take him back to the days before Khomeini.”

Kate laughed softly. Then she said, “What if you brought him here?”

Reza was silent for a while; he must have thought about it many times, but he’d never broached it with her. “It wouldn’t work,” he said finally. “Watching him and Michael at the same time would be impossible.”

“Okay.” Kate felt a twinge of guilt; she’d only dared ask because she was almost certain of the answer. “But maybe you can talk to the doctor about the best way to make him feel…” She groped for the right word; how could he feel free, when he really couldn’t walk out the door? “Normal.”

“Yeah. I’ll phone her in the morning.”

Kate switched off the bedside lamp and lay in the dark. The money they were paying for the nursing home would be enough to pay for some part-time home care; Reza wouldn’t have had to handle everything alone. But she could not have her father-in-law living in the same house as Michael. Nothing she’d seen or heard had ever made her think that he would harbor the slightest ill will for any child, whether or not he was capable of understanding that the boy was his grandson. But once someone lost their grip on reality, it wasn’t safe to make any assumptions at all about what they might do.