“Olivia,” Delan says when they part. “My father, Hewar.”
But he gets nothing else out, as Delan’s mother is there, wrapping herself around him, saying something over and over. My son, Olivia imagines it to be. Knows it must be. Delan, much taller, rests his chin on her head as she clings to him and spreads his hand against the black of her hair. His father, meanwhile, stands with his hands clasped behind his back. There is a pen in his jacket pocket, and something about that makes Olivia love him right then and there.
“My mother,” Delan says when at last she allows him to pull free. There is a hitch in his voice, as if the words themselves caused a certain pain. “Gaziza.” Then he says something else in Kurdish, and Gaziza excitedly brings her hands together as if in celebratory prayer.
“Olivia,” Hewar says, the word slow and thick with accent. “It is pleasure. Maths, I taught.”
“A teacher,” she says and glances back to his mother, who now holds Delan’s wrist but watches her with eyes that are mahogany dark. Though Olivia goes to her for a hug, there is a pause. A moment of fluster in which Olivia regrets this choice. But then Gaziza lifts her arms, allowing an embrace, hesitant though it is, and Olivia relishes the moment, itself a small wonder. All this way, all this time. His mother in her arms. The root of him. The one who picked him up when he fell, who came to him when he cried. She smells of pepper and something sweet, like sugared tea.
A month before Olivia and Delan started dating, they had a party. It was one of those nights when voices sounded from the path below her window and suddenly there were people in her house, and so Olivia, long used to last-minute parties after rehearsals, threw an old sweatshirt over her nightgown, dabbed on lipstick, and knew to give in to whatever was about to happen. Guitars, the firepit. Food that seemingly appeared from nowhere. Nights like this sparked with unforeseen magic.
Cooking with Delan. He’d take the lead while she trailed behind, watching and observing, chopping and stirring. Oregano and rosemary for when he thawed out lamb. Cumin and coriander for the okra. This night, he sprinkled a red spice on the chicken.
“Sumac,” he told her. “I found it at that market on Vine.” Dipping his finger into the little bag, he then pressed it against her lips. It was unexpected, his touch against her mouth. For a second she was confused, until she understood she was to taste it. His eyes never left hers as she let her tongue find the spice. Heat bloomed from his observation.
“Lemony,” she said. Across the room, a woman who’d arrived on his arm let the screen door bounce loudly against its frame.
When he started on the okra, he turned to the spice cabinet, but Olivia was already there with cumin, garlic powder, and coriander in hand. He looked at the spices and then at her. Steadily. Not breaking her gaze. Then, without warning, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. His lips stayed on her skin while he breathed in and out, and she felt his exhale on her hair. Around them, people were watching, but she didn’t care, just felt his lips on her skin and smelled his sandalwood and the sharpness of the scotch he must’ve been drinking.
Everyone ate on the living room floor. Plates balanced on knees, bottles of wine by plant stands or speakers, the fireplace lit. Candles flickered, wax a slow creep. Ashtrays filled and spilled over. Then the silver dial on the Kenwood amplifier got cranked further than it should, and while Led Zeppelin sang of silent women in the night, Delan spoon-fed okra to that woman he’d arrived with, a woman with wild corkscrew hair who insisted she didn’t like okra and managed to keep an eye on Olivia even while chewing. “You will like it; I promise,” he said to her, his hand on her shoulder. Olivia looked away, embarrassed that she suddenly cared, that she was still thinking of the way he’d watched her with the spice on her lip, the way he’d kissed her forehead and how she’d breathed him in, isolating the place of contact on her skin. Always they’d been close, but tonight had crossed a line and she wasn’t sure why. Then the woman he was with leaned in to him while he threaded a curl around his finger, and Olivia decided that the line must have been crossed only in her mind. She had been a fool to even give it another thought.
And then a man appeared. Tall, with Mark Harmon blue eyes and a Davy Jones accent. He offered her wine from a bottle he held under his arm, then sat by her for more than an hour, telling her of his difficult childhood with a stepfather who didn’t want him and the English fog that swallowed houses and cars. In turn, Olivia told him of the rain she grew up with and omitted the fact of her own father, loving and present. He nodded when she said that back home nothing seemed to dry, then closed his eyes, getting it, feeling that same eternal drizzle. Then somehow she was talking to the woman beside her, facing the bright flare of orange beads that separated the living room from the kitchen, and with her back turned to the man, she overheard him announce that his stepfather had ridden on the Concorde just last month. “London to New York in three hours,” he said. “When they pulled the plug on my mom, it took longer than that for her to fucking die.”
Olivia was shocked, hearing it said
