Laughing Without an Accent Read online

  She went into the living room and came back with my father’s carry-on bag.

  “You put it in my bag?” my father asked.

  As my mother opened my father’s bag, a look of horror came upon her face. The jam had spilled.

  This would have been a mere nuisance for most people but the fact that it had occurred in my father’s bag held monumental significance. My father’s complex relationship with his carry-on bag probably requires psychoanalysis. For as long as I can remember, his Iran Air bag, which he received one time when he flew first class, is always packed and ready to go. It is a constant source of comfort and pride. He keeps all his personal hygiene products in there, in miniature containers, which he refills constantly. He also keeps his various eye washes and drops, made necessary by a misdiagnosed and mistreated childhood bout of trachoma. He keeps clean underclothes, a hand towel, and special cotton swabs for his eyes, along with a miniature flashlight, extra batteries, and a radio. Everything is packed in a deliberate manner in neat rows, the clothes and towel on the bottom, then everything else by weight. He has shown the contents of this bag to me many, many times, with hope that I, too, will learn his organized ways. He also claims that whenever his bag is searched at the airport, the airline employee comments on the neatness of his bag. I have never believed this story, but it makes my father happy so I just go along with it.

  As soon as my mother announced the carrot jam disaster, my father leapt to his feet.

  The lid of the jam had come off and everything, from his miniature Listerine container to his Grecian Formula 16 to his clothes was covered with sticky, orange goo interspersed with slivers of pistachio.

  My father turned bright red. “Why did you have to put the stupid jam in my bag?” he yelled at my mom, completely forgetting that there were others in the room.

  “It was for Fransva,” my mother said, invoking the name of her new son-in-law as some sort of human shield.

  “Why couldn’t you have put it in your bag?” my father asked.

  “We’ll help clean everything,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you put in a plastic bag?” my father continued.

  “I was going to,” my mother meekly responded.

  “But you didn’t,” my father continued. “Why didn’t you put it in a Ziploc? You put everything else in a Ziploc. You put Ziplocs in Ziplocs. Why didn’t you put the jam in a Ziploc?”

  It was clear this argument was going to go past New Year’s.

  François and I tried to help my father clean the bottles, but the Iran Air carry-on bag was ruined. Had we had a crystal ball, we would have told my father that someday he might not want to walk through an American airport with an Iran Air bag, lest he enjoy random checks every time.

  My mother was clearly embarrassed that her new son-in-law had just witnessed such an ugly scene. “I’m so sorry, Fransva,” she said. “The jam voz for you and so good.”

  “Maybe he can eat my bag,” my father suggested.

  “Baba, basseh. That’s enough,” I said, in Persian.

  “Speaking of eating,” François said, “let’s eat!”

  “I have to change my clothes first,” my father said.

  “But you look so nice,” François commented.

  My father always wears a suit on airplanes. He belongs to the generation for whom airplanes are more than buses in the sky. Flight attendants universally love him, not only for his dapper attire and liberal use of aftershave but because he is probably the only person who compliments them on airplane coffee, every time.

  While my father was changing his clothes, François got up. “Maybe I should wear a jacket,” he said, adjusting his tie. “You’re fine,” I assured him.

  A few minutes later, my father showed up wearing a velour navy blue jogging suit.

  Francois looked at me, perplexed.

  The velour navy jogging suit is my male relatives’ default attire. I asked my father one time the origins of this de facto uniform and before he could answer, my mother said, “Don’t answer. It’s gonna be in one of those stories.”

  As I remember it, back in the early eighties, my uncle Nematollah, always considered the most debonair of the brothers, purchased a velour jogging suit in Las Vegas with the money he had not lost at the blackjack tables. Uncle Nematollah wore his suit everywhere and all the time, with all of us stroking it to see how soft it was while he described its wrinkle-free qualities. Within weeks, my father, his brothers, his brothers-in-law, and some of my cousins had each bought one. This trend spread faster through my family than the flu.

  Soon all our gatherings consisted of groups of men in velour touching each other’s forearms and discussing prices. “I got it on sale at Robinson’s. I went back last week to get a second pair. No mediums left. They go fast.”

  After all of them had acquired second and, in some cases, third pairs, they started getting catty. “The stripe down the side is girlie,” one of my uncles was told. “The brown color looks cheap. Only the navy blue looks good,” another was told.

  After a few years, most of my younger cousins moved on from the trend, but not my father and several of his brothers. At any given moment, six pairs of velour navy blue jogging suits hang in their closets. Years ago, my father called me one morning to ask me to go to all the local Price Clubs to look for a particularly high-quality velour suit. “They’re all out of mediums down here,” he explained, sounding desperate.

  “I can’t do it,” I told him.

  “Why not?” he asked, rather surprised.

  “Because I have a two-year-old and a five-year-old and because you have eight pairs of the same thing already hanging in your closet.”

  I heard him say something to my mom. Then my mom came on the phone.

  “Firoozeh, these are made from really thick velour, highest quality. Your uncle Abdullah just bought one, but he’s a small. That’s why he found one. Most men don’t wear smalls, but he does. The only other size left is the XL. You know how big Americans are. Your dad’s not an XL. He’s a medium. That’s why he’s asking you.”

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  And it was thus that during Christmas dinner, my father sat across from my husband in one of his many navy blue velour jogging suits.

  For the first course, François had made gravlax—salmon cured with vodka, salt, and fresh dill. He served everyone, then started to pour the wine, a dry Alsatian Riesling.

  My parents didn’t want any wine. I had already told François about this but he hadn’t believed me.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to try a little bit of wine? It really complements the flavor of the food,” François said.

  “Ve’re shoor,” my mother said.

  My mother picked at her gravlax and asked me in Persian what else there was. “It’s not really cooked,” she said.

  “It’s salmon,” said François, guessing from my mother’s scrunched-up face that there was a problem.

  “Eez good,” my mother said to him. “I can’t eat it,” she said to me, in Persian. “What else is there?”

  I explained to her, in Persian, that there were several courses. Each would have to be finished before the next one was served. I also told her that a scrunched-up face means the same thing in French and English as it does in Persian.

  “Why didn’t you tape the lid on the jam jar?” my father asked my mother.

  “I did,” my mother said.

  “I didn’t see any tape,” my father said. “What kind of tape did you use?”

  “Please stop,” I told my father.

  “I just want to know what kind of tape she used,” he persisted. “And this salmon really is raw.”

  François was, by now, fully aware that my parents did not like the salmon. He cleared the plates, not doing a very good job of hiding his disappointment. My father wanted to keep his fork and knife for the next course. “These are just for the appetizers,” François pointed out. “The bigger utensils are for the next course.”
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br />   “You will end up with so many forks and knives to wash,” my father added.

  “That’s okay,” François responded.

  The next course—quail stuffed with foie gras and served in a porcini mushroom sauce—evoked oohs and aahs from everyone.

  “Vat eez een dees?” my mother asked.

  After François explained what foie gras was and how it was made, my parents didn’t touch it.

  As we ate the quail, everyone was quiet until my father stood up, plate in hand, leaned across the table, and gave his mushrooms to my mom, perhaps as some sort of conciliatory gesture. A huge glob spilled on the white tablecloth. Before I could say, “Don’t,” my father picked up the glob with his fingers and ate it.

  I cleared the plates and had the same conversation about the forks and knives with my father that he had had ten minutes earlier with François, but this time in Persian. My father kept shaking his head.

  “Can I talk to you for a moment?” François asked me. We went upstairs. “What’s with the jogging suit?” he asked. “And why won’t your parents eat anything?”

  “The first question requires a long answer,” I said. “And the second question, I don’t know but I know they think you are a wonderful son-in-law so please overlook their faults. There are many.”

  Back downstairs, François went in the kitchen to make coffee. “Firoozeh!” he yelled. I ran into the kitchen. “Look!” he said, pointing to the buche de noel. I looked at the Yule log, which he had spent hours preparing the day before. The marzipan mushrooms were intact, the dark chocolate crème on top, with its designs to make it look like wood were intact, the chocolate holly leaves were there. I didn’t see anything wrong.

  “Look inside!” François said.

  That’s when I noticed that the mocha buttercream filling in the Yule log was missing about two inches in on each end. “Your parents ate this while we were upstairs, probably with their fingers,” he said.

  François cut off the ends of the Yule log that now had no filling and threw them away. He then re-etched the wood design in the chocolate crème on top, trying to hide the damage from the missing ends. The Yule log was now a Yule stump.

  The dessert was the one part of the meal my parents ate with gusto. “The inside is the best!” they told François.

  “I know you like that part,” François told them.

  As we cleared the plates, my parents thanked François profusely. “Fransva, tank you so very much. Deh best Chreesmas ever, very best!” my mother said several times.

  François and I cleaned the kitchen, while my parents sat on the sofa, looking at the Christmas tree. The Duraflame was still burning.

  François took down the Armagnac from the cabinet. “I know your parents won’t drink this, but maybe they can just pretend,” he said. He arranged the plate of candied orange peels and dark chocolate truffles he had made the day before. As he poured the drinks into tiny glasses, I heard, for the first time, the Ella Fitzgerald record that had been playing in the background the entire evening.

  And then I heard my father’s voice: “Why didn’t you put it in your bag?”

  Blur

  During my first pregnancy, I was employed at a Fortune 500 corporation. It was an entry-level job with generous medical insurance, a subsidized cafeteria, an endless supply of T-shirts, mugs, and Frisbees with the company logo, and a stock option plan that I, having inherited my father’s business sense, stayed away from. At the urging of my co-workers, I eventually signed up, but made sure to sell the stock as soon as it went up a few points. With my total gain of twelve hundred dollars, I avoided the whole “sudden millionaire” scenario that later plagued so many of my former colleagues.

  During the couple of years I had been employed, I had been through two rounds of layoffs. During one of these layoffs, the only person who lost his job in our department was a blind programmer who was a single father. The sight of him standing in the lobby, his belongings hastily thrown in a box, waiting for a ride, made it clear that I was in the wrong place. For-profit companies are not in the business of charity, but this was a company that spent a six-figure sum annually on indoor plants. I asked the fired man’s manager why, of all people, he had to be laid off. She said, “We had to lay off one person, and he was the slowest.” Seeing the look of horror on my face, she added, “Yeah, it’s a bummer.”

  From then on, I imagined a sign at the entrance of our company: “Please Check Your Soul at the Door. Pickup Not Necessary.”

  After the birth of my son, I was offered an exciting new position along with a substantial pay raise. This new position entailed traveling around the world, which is possibly the worst job description for a nursing mom. I turned down the offer and hoped that the world would still be there once I got around to traveling again. I had no doubt I was making the right decision but I was very confused. I belonged, after all, to the generation of Americans who had grown up with the idea of women having it all, but suddenly that philosophy seemed like a well-marketed but unattainable promise of the eighties, like the Buns of Steel video.

  Motherhood was what every corny cliché promised it would be, with one glaring exception: I have yet to see a coffee mug showing a mother telling her bundle of joy, “I would trade my spleen for another hour of sleep.” It is no wonder that sleep deprivation is a kind of torture. By the time my son was two months old, I would have confessed to killing Jimmy Hoffa if it had brought me more sleep.

  Perhaps it was appropriate that in my permanent groggy haze, I did not have use of our one car. Public transportation exists where I live, in theory. In practice, it takes two hours and three bus transfers for what takes twenty minutes in a car. This is assuming the buses come on time or at all. It is apparently easier to put a man on the moon than it is to design viable public transportation in California.

  Between the sleep deprivation and the lack of transportation, with its ensuing isolation, my life as I knew it came to a screeching halt. Astronauts go through decompression chambers to ensure a smooth transition; new mothers need the postpartum equivalent. Fortunately, my mother came to stay with me for two weeks. She made me addas polo (lentil rice), gave me canned peaches, and made sure anything I ate was well cooked and contained no garlic or onions, lest the baby get a tummyache. She also lived with the singular obsession of feeding me watermelon, since it is “good for breast milk.” Even though there was a grocery store across the street from our apartment, our building had no elevator, and maneuvering a watermelon up two flights of stairs was beyond her. I was recovering from a Caesarean and even though the doctor had not specifically said, “Don’t lug watermelons,” I didn’t think it would be a good idea. Every day, my mother lamented that “if only we had a watermelon” all would be well. If I complained about lack of sleep, pain from surgery, swollen ankles, my mother had the same response: watermelon.

  One day I awoke to find an enormous watermelon on my kitchen counter and my mother smiling like Sylvester after he had finally eaten Tweety.

  “Where did this come from?” I asked.

  “From the grocery store,” she said.

  “How did you get it home?”

  “Nice man helped me.”

  My mother explained that the store was having a special: all melons were the same price, regardless of weight. She had noticed an enormous, only-in-America-size watermelon, and bonded with it in a way that only a frugal immigrant can. She then did what any self-respecting mother would do. As she described it, “I looked for a strong man.”

  According to her, she asked an unsuspecting soul in the fruit aisle if he could “Peh-leaze help for my daw-ter eat vater-melon for baby.” This kind, perhaps frightened, gentle giant of a man then carried this super-size fruit across the street, up two flights of narrow stairs, and placed it on my kitchen counter.

  “Did you offer to pay him?” I asked.

  “I said to him, ‘You are verry, verry kind man’ and offered him addas polo.”

  Not surprisingly, t
he kind man had turned down my mother’s offer of lentil rice, lest he then be asked to clean the chimney.

  The watermelon was indeed very sweet. I don’t know if it actually benefited my breast milk but it made me happy, which benefited everybody. And when my mother left a few days later, she made my husband repeatedly promise to keep me supplied with watermelons, which he did.

  Once my mother left, I felt even less capable. This used to be where the extended family came in—sisters, aunts, cousins helping ease the new mother in to her new role—but that sort of support network has gone the way of manual typewriters. I fantasized about Mary Poppins, Mrs. Butterworth, and Enya suddenly appearing and filling my house with the smell of homemade meals, reassuring me with capable, yet gentle voices, insisting I take a nap while they did the housework, singing “Orinoco Flow” until the baby fell asleep or until I understood the lyrics.

  In reality, I had no idea what to do with my son. All I knew was that I was completely gaga over him. Other than that, I waited for some primal knowledge to kick in and guide me. I was not about to read any books on child rearing. I had read a few books about pregnancy, which had succeeded in assuring me that I was doing pregnancy all wrong. They didn’t make sense to my multicultural brain. I understand the danger of eating raw foods, but what about Japan? Do Japanese women avoid sushi? After a random survey of Japanese people at the local market—that is, those who did not walk away from me or pretend not to speak English—I discovered that, indeed, pregnant Japanese women eat sushi, but only good quality. That made sense. Pregnant French women, I discovered, drink a little bit of wine occasionally, and their children are fine. I immediately got rid of the books, bought sushi, and felt much better.

  Taking the same approach to raising my child, I decided that if I just watched my son enough, he would convey all his needs to me. He did. He let me know that he never wanted to sleep. This led to many trips to the pediatrician, who continually assured me that my child was perfectly healthy but was just one of those babies who didn’t need a lot of sleep. I didn’t even know there was such a category.