“I can’t eat more.”
“You’ll have to. She won’t stop until you do.”
Olivia leads him toward the tunnel of grapevines. In their corner, the chukars laugh quietly, as if they’ve sensed motivation. “My mother had birds. Or one, I guess. When my dad met her, she had a parrot named Bigelow. My dad drinks tea, and there’s a tea called Bigelow, so when he picked her up for their first date, he said he knew. All because of the parrot.”
“Your father believes in signs.”
Under the vines, light swims on the ground. Ebbed movements from the leaves, a marbled moonlight. She wants her camera, wants to capture it in black and white, this patterned pathway. “My father is a writer. He believes in whatever makes a good story.” Most of the time what could’ve happened is the great story. “Did you mean us that night? That what could’ve happened with us was the great story?”
Again he draws her to him, making the most of their privacy. “Back then, you were the story I told myself.” A whisper in her ear. “But I think this is a better one.” With a quick kiss, he surveys the green above them. “We should plant grapes at home. We could have a tunnel on the side with the Spanish house. I wouldn’t have to take leaves from the neighbors for dolmas.”
“But raiding the neighbors’ yard is part of dinner at our house.”
Though she said it jokingly, his tone is sharp. “I give back. I don’t steal. We have an exchange.”
She tilts her head as if to question the direction he’s taking the conversation, though she herself set the dial. Delan’s need to never disappoint, to never place himself first—she’s loved it but seen it verge on destructive. As it did today.
“They come and take oranges,” he says. “And herbs. Basil, I gave them two plants before we left.”
“Delan. That’s fine.”
He steps away from her. “The zucchini. I can’t believe we’re talking about the zucchini.”
Taken from the neighbors’ garden when a couple of his friends had been sent to find swiss chard—not zucchini, not something the neighbor had been watching and waiting for. But Delan had said nothing to them. Delan, who needed to be liked at any expense, who would bring empty-handed friends home and smile as they ate the groceries he’d bought for the entire week, and who’d helped people move because he was the one with a Vanagon and yet said nothing when the time came to fill up with gas and he’d been forced to stack his quarters and dimes on the counter.
“It wasn’t right,” she finally says.
“I bought him a dozen the next day, did you know? I knew it wasn’t right. I saw it in your eyes.”
“You didn’t need to see it in my eyes to know. That’s what bothers me. You knew. You just didn’t want to upset that guy, your castmate.”
“What could I do, glue them back to the plant? What was done was done; why make my guest uncomfortable? What do you really mean, Liv?”
A vine by the wall shakes from something within. “You want everyone to like you. And everyone does. And they know you as good, because you feed them and love them and pick them up at the airport or help them move—but people take advantage of that. And you let them.”
A small smile. “And you want to protect me from that.”
“There’s no reason to sacrifice yourself just because you need to be liked.”
Smile gone. “That’s how you see it?”
She regrets this now. How can you tell someone that their goodness is wasted? “Your being nice is a good thing, but when it comes at your expense—”
“The expense of a few dollars. Going to a movie that week. Those are my friends.”
Mason, Alan, and only a few others are his real friends. The core, the ones who’ve proven themselves on nights gone sour with news of home, the ones who won’t leave the table when Delan’s voice rises above the rest. The others, all the castmates with their months of closeness or the directors with their searching eyes, they’re moths that circle tight but are gone by morning.
But the way he said the word friends. Like a plea. Like a child hopeful to avoid a truth, reacting to the impending edge of hurt. Just looking at him, this man who is generous to a fault, who loves unabashedly and wholeheartedly, she does feel the need to protect him. Don’t confuse your anger, her father used to tell her. Sometimes we get mad just because we’re forced to feel. The anger she’s felt on his behalf, she realizes, has fallen upon him. An anger for making her care. “Fine. I want to protect you.”
He smiles. Just as the back door swings shut and Soran steps into the garden.
“Your brother,” she says. “Your dream—”
“That fig tree is gone. The one I dreamed of. I asked my mother, and a branch broke last year and the tree died. Liv, you were right. I dream in metaphor. It’s not to be translated as real. Of course. I was told to come here, that they needed me. And I listened. And I’m glad I did.” He smiles at her. “This is good. Now, let’s forget everything under this tunnel, okay?”
By the pomegranate, Soran uprights a pot that’s tilted over, dirt in a spill by its edge. In the second-floor window of the neighbor’s house, Olivia sees the little girl Lailan, a doll in her hand that she’s making walk straight up the window frame, her hands moving the legs, one two, one two. Then she lets go of the doll, which falls from view, and even from next door, Olivia sees her face transform into mock concern before she disappears. “She’s cute,” Olivia says.
Soran looks up to the direction of Olivia’s
