Teta Salma stole Talia the next day.
They ended up in Back Bay again, strolling through an upscale shopping mall mostly for the sights. Boston was a city for seeing, as Talia had learned over the years, but much more so on a warm June day than a blustery January afternoon. A summer day could take you from the scenic water views of the Seaport to the old cultural charms of the North End and through the myriad of 3-D American history lessons scattered in between.
A good three years ago now she'd pondered sending a couple applications to some of the many colleges that dotted every corner of this city, but she'd chickened out at the last minute, choosing to venture a solid fifty-five minutes north of her house instead. Never had she regretted—heck, even thought about—her decision more than today.
But it was too late. She had no choice but to finish the rest of her college years (well, year) back home, and then it was off to the land of uncertainty: post-grad.
"Don't you think it's time we got a late lunch?" Teta asked, linking their arms.
Their four shopping bags nestled themselves between their bodies, as they had somehow convinced themselves they needed Massachusetts' entire supply of wool and cashmere, material that would be borderline useless for Talia back home. She was probably going to end up giving a few sweaters to her grandmother while trying to shove them all in her suitcase, having realized her grandmother's petite frame meant they almost wore the same size.
Either that, or she needed to lose a few pounds.
Talia pulled her toward the earthy Italian restaurant she knew was around the corner. "It's never not time for lunch, Teta."
"Is this where Zaid took you out to the other week?" Teta asked, diving straight in.
Talia could tell she had been itching to steer the conversation towards him all afternoon, but every time a mere gasp had escaped her mouth that could have led to the word Z-a-i-d, she had stopped her. Or really, shoved another sweater into her arms. Come to think of it, the damage to her grandfather's bank account was more her fault than her grandmother's, as apparently, it took a lot of cashmere to avoid the topic of a certain devastatingly handsome and lamentably charming housemate.
"No," Talia said, hiding her smile with her fingertips. "He went the traditional route. You know, mezze. Lots of academic conversation. Mostly respectful boundaries."
Like shoving his tongue into my mouth once we got home that night...
A confused wince crossed Teta's face at the last phrase, but she said nothing, nodding to herself and grabbing her glass of water. "Well, Zaid is a bright one. I've never met anyone who can first talk to you about classical poetry, then civil engineering, and somehow end the entire conversation in perfect French."
She blinked. "Zaid speaks French?"
Teta nodded. "Oui, moi aussi."
"You speak French?"
There she was thinking her two semesters of college Spanish was a feat.
"Well, it's been many, many years since getting yelled at by nuns in Latin and French class, but the trauma let the languages stick more than I thought they would." Sighing, she added, "I only wish I learned English before those other two."
Talia noticed the downward movement of her lips and those downcast eyes. "Oh, come on, Teta, your English isn't bad at all. You've been living here for half a century at this point."
"Thank you, ya rohi, but apparently some people do not agree." Ah yes, patriotic Chad and monolingual Karen who believe the official language of the US is American. After a brief pause, her lips parted again, and Talia could swear they were forming into a Zai—
"Hi, I'm Henry, and I'll be your server today. Can I get you started with some drinks?"
He passed them each a menu, and Talia already knew she would skip straight to the overpriced pasta section. Teta jumped to ordering appetizers, clearly having been there before as she rattled off three different small dishes to the sever with special substitutions.
"Teta, I've always wanted to know something." Her grandmother looked up from her lap and smiled, brushing away some of her short brown hair. "How did the relationship between you and Zaid's family evolve over time? I know you were neighbors when Baba was young, but what happened after he and Zaid's mother went off to college?"
She nodded, folding her hands and leaning over the table. "Well, Talia, we didn't live that close by. We raised your Baba and uncles just a couple miles from our current house in Newton, as you know, but Nabil—Zaid's grandfather—used to work as a researcher at a medical school about an hour away. Given the distance, we'd have our get-togethers on the weekends, but Fouad and Nabil spent most of them on their own, golfing or watching football at the nearby pubs. Your father wasn't very close with Zaid's mother, but I'm sure it's because his brothers were already a handful." Her smile grew warmer, but there was a certain distant look in her eyes, as Talia knew much of the history that followed was more heart-rending than heart-warming. "When it came time for college, ironically both Elias and Nour fled to California: one to Palo Alto, the other to Los Angeles. You could call that their official goodbye to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."
"Oh, come on, Baba did come back sometimes," Talia tried, but when Teta narrowed her eyes, she topped lying. "At least your other sons live sort of close by, right?"
One of them lived about an hour away in Rhode Island with his physician wife, raising four sons each two years apart and less annoying by age. The other was childless and on his second marriage with a woman seventeen years his junior, who had convinced him to sell his Boston penthouse because urban life made her uncomfortable.
(But not marrying her father's coworker.)
Maybe that was why her father's exodus still aggrieved Teta.
"Zaid mentioned his mother met his father on a study abroad trip, but how soon after did they get married?"
She was steering the conversation where she wanted it to go, but their server interrupted them with two mouthwatering plates of arancini and bruschetta. They took the time to order their entrées, and with all this food ahead of them, they had plenty of time to get through the rest of this conversation.
"If Nour had gotten her way, she would've married on that same trip, but Nabil and Nahla needed a little convincing. She was their only little girl, after all, and Youssef was older than her. Not by enough that it was strange, but still, twelve years was not an age gap to laugh about." She paused to cut into a fried rice ball and popped a piece into her mouth. "By twenty-three, she was out of the house and as happy as could be."
Somehow, Talia didn't find Nour all that crazy after this surprise winter break experience.
"She kept in touch with her parents, right?"
Teta nodded. "Nabil and Nahla went back and forth a few times a year for several years; sometimes, it was the other way around. Then, while your father was still a miserable graduate student in California, Nour gave birth to Zaid's brother." Her eyes creased up on the sides as she smiled pensively. "Gosh, I had no doubts the two would have cute children, but Saif was an angel, just like your father as a baby. Those rare visits used to make my day."
Talia paused, thinking to herself for a moment. "Does that mean you met Zaid as a baby, too?"
God, maybe this family connection was a lot deeper than she'd once thought.
She tensed, curling her fingers around her fork. "Yes, but I wish I could say it was during better circumstances. Nahla, Allah yerhamha, passed away around six months after Zaid was born, so our first meeting was at a funeral." She dabbed at the corner of her eye. "That event changed a lot in our lives. Nabil moved back to Amman to be closer to his daughter's family, and he grew apart from me and Fouad. Our relationship consisted of phone calls and very occasional visits until it revived many years later—with another death."
"Zaid's father," Talia whispered, knowing exactly where they were on the timeline.
Her tone grew heavier, weighed down by the gravity of withheld emotion. "It was an odd experience reuniting at a funeral after all those years and seeing Nour's two sons again. They were so different from those photos from when they were children, so cold and distant. Mature beyond their years, too, especially Saif." She paused to fish a tissue from her purse and blow her nose. "Zaid, oh the poor boy, he couldn't hold it in as well as his brother, so I now have this horrible memory of him holding on to me, a practical stranger, all those years after I held him as a baby at Nahla's funeral... But the reunion was bittersweet in a way. It brought back a friendship from better days, and so much so, that Fouad and I were the first people Zaid reached out to when he knew he wanted to study abroad in Boston for the year." She sighed and flicked away the last teardrop from her eyes. "And that, Talia, is how we ended up here."
She busied herself with another small bite, eyeing her grandmother's face warily as she pondered asking a few more questions. Eventually, she plastered on another smile, something she realized was the only way to handle the hardest cards life dealt. She could only imagine Zaid's mother pain, having lost both her own mother and husband so young in less than twenty years.
"Was Zaid very close to his father?" Talia asked, wringing her fingers under the table. "From what I've gathered from him, he seemed far more affected by his passing than his brother was."
She nodded. "Zaid was undoubtedly the closest to his father among his two siblings, and he grew up to be a lot like him personality-wise. He's also the only one who still shares his deep appreciation for literature, but sometimes I wonder if it grew from how much Zaid idolized him."
Their meals arrived earlier than she thought they would, but despite the tempting look of mushroom ravioli bursting at the seams, she pushed her plate away, wanting to finish the rest of this conversation. Teta felt the same way, glancing between her dish of veal Milanese and Talia's waiting face.
"You must care about him to be asking so many questions," she remarked, some warmth returning her brown eyes at last. When Talia opened her mouth to object, Teta gripped her wrist and leaned over the table with a much cheekier smile. "It's okay if you do, habibti. Fouad and I aren't blind. Nor deaf, for the matter."
Talia's cheeks burned hotter than the bottom of her plate. Thankfully, she and Zaid had been discreet enough over the last few weeks that she had little to hide, but sooner than later, they'd have to give up the whole we-can't-stand-each-other façade.
"Okay, fine, you got me," Talia grumbled, shoveling in two forkfuls of ravioli. When she finished swallowing, she leaned over the table a little. "But I'm also asking because this isn't the easiest subject to bring up with someone you're trying not to have hate you."
"Oh, trust me, Zaid does not hate you," Teta said, almost smugly so. Well, then... "But he does not always open up so easily to people. So it's alright if he hasn't with you yet."
That was the impression Talia had gotten from when they'd first met, but as she mulled over some of their recent encounters, she'd gotten a surprising glimpse into his personal life. Yet, despite her knowledge, she still had an insatiable thirst to learn more.
Only this time, her hunger won. "Let's eat," Talia told her grandmother, pushing her plate towards her. "Your food won't taste good cold."
They dragged on lunch for another hour, topping it off with coffee and tiramisù, and then they were back to draining Fouad's bank account with more useless purchases. Teta had gravitated to a luggage store, which, despite Talia's impending flight this week, sounded like more of a snooze fest than watching paint dry.
Planting her hands on her hips, Talia stopped her grandmother in her tracks. "Teta, do you mind if I go poke around a bit myself? I noticed a few stores I haven't seen before."
She gave her the go-ahead, and Talia clacked away on the heels of her black ankle boots to the other side of the first floor of the mall. Her aching toes reminded her of the practicality of tennis shoes, but as she stood in front of Golden Goose, she wasn't sure what would convince her to buy the dirt-speckled sneakers she'd worn in kindergarten for half a grand.
She ducked into the stationery store nearby as an alternative, sure that no matter how old a person got, the sight of notebooks and writing instruments still brought out that inner child who'd once found school supply shopping fun. The ornate gold-embellished pens she stared at didn't quite resemble her rainbow ones from middle school, but when a store associate noticed her keen interest in them, she ducked to the notebook section, knowing she'd have to smile and nod along as he tried to sell her a seven-hundred-dollar ballpoint pen she'd probably lose the next day.
As she laughed to herself at the thought, a row of small leather notebooks distracted her, leaving her to think of the one person who would use one. After a quick consultation with the lonely store associate, Talia happily left with a navy-blue notebook, for once not charged to Fouad's poor Amex.