Thirty-Three Arya
thirty-three
Arya
It was a universal truth of Persian cuisine that kabob koobideh—ground beef (or occasionally lamb) kabob—tasted delicious and smelled like heaven when it was being grilled.
The king of meats. And yet somehow, as soon as it was put into any sort of storage container, it immediately began smelling like farts.
In the ten-minute drive from Shiraz Bistro, where Arya had picked up the to-go order, to his mom’s house, Arya’s car could’ve given the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles a run for its money.
Farzan—who knew more about cooking than anyone—figured it was all the onions in the meat mixture. Volatile compounds or something.
Whatever the reason, it was worth it. Chelo kabob (chelo being rice) was a favorite of the Nazeri family, like it was for many Persian families. And getting it to go meant no dishes and, since Arya was part owner of the restaurant, a steep discount.
Shohreh Nazeri loved a steep discount.
When he pulled up to his mom’s house, Farah’s Lexus was already parked at a weird angle in the driveway.
Badi must’ve been driving: He was a good doctor, but a lousy driver.
Even though there was, mathematically speaking, half the driveway free, Arya could barely park without running over the grass.
His mom loved her lawn, and if he left tire marks on it, he’d never hear the end of it.
He opened his trunk, grabbed the tray of kabob, and made his way to the front door. His heart snaked its way up his esophagus to nestle somewhere in his throat, right behind his tonsils.
Why the fuck did he do this to himself?
He knocked on the door. It only took a second before it swung open dramatically.
“Food’s here!” Oliver called over his shoulder. “Let me help you with that, Dayi.”
“Thanks, Oliver.”
Oliver Sadeghi was lighter skinned, like his father, but he had the Nazeri nose, the one his mother had plastic-surgeried away.
He wasn’t quite as tall as Arya, but he was skinny like Arya.
His black hair was in what Arya could only describe as a half-mullet: faded on the sides, a normal length on the top, but a bit of length on the back.
Not, like, past his neck long, but long enough it curled away from his shirt collar.
Arya shifted the kabobs to give Oliver a one-armed hug—he hadn’t seen his nephew since his white coat ceremony back in May—then let Oliver take the tray while he returned to his car for the other trays of rice and grilled vegetables and bread.
Before he could even close his trunk, Forrest was there.
“I’ve got it, Dayi.” Forrest was as tall as Arya, but he also had Badi’s broad shoulders. He was lighter skinned, too, almost as light as Ramin, with the Nazeri nose and hazel eyes sparkling below thick brows. Unlike his brother, he kept his black hair trimmed short.
“Thanks, Dayi,” Arya said, giving Forrest a shoulder hug and closing the trunk. He followed his nephew but paused at the door.
“How’s it going so far?”
Forrest gave him a sideways look.
“That bad, huh?”
“Glad you’re here, Dayi.”
It had taken Arya some getting used to, having his nephews call him Dayi, which meant uncle.
More specifically, it meant mother’s brother.
And because it was Persian, he could use it to refer to his nephews as a term of endearment, too.
It was the same for most Persian family names—he and his dad could both call each other Baba, for example.
That didn’t work in English so well. Not that he had any kids, but he wasn’t going to go around calling anyone Daddy. Not kids and not a sexual partner, either. He didn’t judge, but it wasn’t for him.
Arya slid his shoes off and closed the door behind him, trapping himself in with his family.
“Arya-joon!” Shohreh swept him into a hug and swift air-kisses. “Thank you for bringing the kabob.”
With her grandkids around, she had switched to speaking English.
Arya didn’t remember his mom having much of an accent growing up—in fact, he was pretty sure she’d worked hard to lose it—but as she’d gotten older, and as she’d spent more and more of her days only speaking Persian, she’d fallen back into it.
Arya didn’t mind it. In fact, he kind of liked it. It made him feel connected to his parents’ homeland, even if he’d never get to visit it himself, despite his dad constantly asking if he wanted to come.
When Arya pointed out (a) that he only had an American passport, (b) the horror stories of other American children of Iranian parents being harassed about their compulsory military service despite not being citizens, and (c) that he was a flaming homosexual, his father just said he worried too much.
Arya was pretty sure he worried a normal amount.
Also, as much as part of him wanted to see Iran, he was pretty sure the Iran he most wanted to see—the Iran his parents had first left—was gone.
Not just because of the Revolution, though that certainly played some part, but because his parents had left Iran nearly fifty years ago, and a lot can change in fifty years.
His dad complained about the changes all the time. Some store he went to as a child had closed; he didn’t remember the youth acting like that; the prices were too high; the food wasn’t as good.
At the end of the day, his mom’s accent, his dad’s stories, the little knickknacks and carpets and food from Iran, those were his homeland. Farzan and Ramin were his homeland.
And Kansas City was his home. It was where his life was. Where his friends were. Where everyone he loved was.
Where Ben was.
Arya didn’t know if he loved Ben. He’d never been in love before. He had no frame of reference.
He did know he liked Ben a whole damned lot.
That he liked texting Ben first thing in the morning, talking to him last thing at night.
That he wished he was with Ben right now, curled up with Simon sipping a glass of rosé.
Ben had introduced him to a positively delectable rosé of Pinot Noir from Sonoma, and it was perfect for summer.
So maybe it wasn’t love. But it was a hell of a lot better than this.
All seven of them squeezed around the dining room table, which realistically only seated four. Arya’s mom had gotten rid of their larger table, the one that could seat twelve with both leaves in, when Arya graduated college and moved out. She’d wanted to downsize, and Arya could hardly blame her.
Unfortunately, it did mean a lot of bumping elbows at dinnertime.
“Badi, can you pass me the sumac?” Arya asked his brother-in-law.
Badi was light skinned, like his sons, with a round nose and a surprisingly still-full head of black hair, though Arya was beginning to suspect he might’ve gotten a transplant at some point.
If the light hit just right, he looked like he had two different hair textures.
His face was friendly, situated behind owlish glasses.
Badi passed the little blue-and-white dish of bright red sumac Arya’s way, but not before Arya’s dad intercepted it and grabbed a spoonful to sprinkle on his own kabob.
Arya’s father liked to cut up his grilled tomato and mix it with his rice, something Arya had never done himself. And his dad liked to add butter to the rice, too. If they didn’t look so much alike, Arya might have wondered if he was secretly adopted.
The sumac finally made it to Arya’s side of the table. He sprinkled it over his kabob, then passed the dish to his mom, bumping her elbow along the way.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine, Arya-joon.” She set the sumac down and turned to Oliver. “How’s residency going, Oli-joon?”
She was the only one in the family who could get away with calling Oliver Oli, and Arya suspected Oliver secretly liked it. He was the baby of the family, a position he was in no danger of losing anytime soon—not unless mpreg became a thing in real life—and had always enjoyed the attention.
Arya tried to listen to Oliver talk about his new internship—at the Truman Med Center emergency department—but before Oliver could answer, Arya’s dad spoke from his other side.
“Arya, how’s work going?”
Arya had just stuffed a big chunk of kabob into his mouth, along with a spoonful of rice, so he took his time chewing while he decided how to answer.
On the one hand, work was, historically, one of the safest topics to discuss with his father, because his father liked work. Or more specifically, he liked making money.
On the other hand, he didn’t know if his father knew what alcoholism was.
(Okay, he was pretty sure his father knew what it was, but he wasn’t sure if his dad had ever actually dealt with it before.
Historically, Iranians weren’t super great at openly discussing things like addiction or mental illness, which is why he hadn’t been able to get an ADHD diagnosis until college, and why he’d only told his parents about the diagnosis at all when Forrest got diagnosed, too, and his mom started criticizing Farah for “raising him wrong.”)
So finally, Arya swallowed and answered, “Busy. I’m trying to land a new client.”
“Ah, it’s important to keep growing.”
Arya just wanted to keep the company’s proverbial head above water, but he wasn’t going to tell his dad that.
“I’m sorry I won’t be here for your birthday, Baba. Forty years! I remember when you were still a toddler, running around the house naked because you hated wearing your diaper.”
Arya winced. Not at the mention of how he’d used to hate pants—he’d been fucking adorable as a child, buttcheeks flapping in the wind and all—but at his impending birthday.
It kept getting closer and closer. His dread kept growing and growing.
He was going to be fucking forty.
“It’s fine, Baba,” he managed.
Thankfully, Afshin turned to Badi to ask him about the Jayhawks.
In addition to working for KU Med Center, Badi had actually gone to KU, same as Arya’s dad.
Afshin had always been disappointed Arya went to UMKC; in fact, he’d asked Arya, repeatedly, if he was sure he wouldn’t rather go to KU and room with Ramin, who did go there.
While the straight men talked about basketball, Shohreh turned to Farah to gossip about a mutual acquaintance’s horrible new hairstyle.
Arya sat back and watched it.
His parents were both at the table, but they never talked to each other. Their conversations were carefully choreographed to never intersect. They were ships passing in the night. Trains on parallel tracks, destined to never, ever meet.
They were practically strangers.
No wonder Arya didn’t know what love looked like.
He’d never seen it in his life.
Arya had made a terminal error:
He’d agreed to help with the dishes.
It wasn’t that he was opposed to doing dishes. He liked being helpful, and despite his dad’s best efforts, he’d never been the kind of Persian man who thought kitchen work was exclusively for the women.
But Farah and Badi and his nephews had all left, so now Arya was stuck alone in the house with just his mother and father, the dwindling mess in the sink the only buffer between them all.
“Are you seeing anyone, Baba?” his dad asked from the table, where he sat drinking tea.
“Hm?” Arya turned the sink off. “Uh, sort of.”
“What’s that mean?” Arya’s mom asked from the doorway where she stood, fighting to get her hoops into her ears. She’d changed into a sleek pair of jeans and a flowy red blouse.
Wait. Was she going out?
Was she meeting with Parviz on her husband’s last night in town?
Arya scrubbed harder at the platter, where the rice starches had stuck to the ceramic. Despite their carryout coming in perfectly good aluminum trays, his mom had insisted on replating it on her nice platters. The ones that couldn’t go in the dishwasher.
“It means we’re figuring it out,” he finally said.
“What’s to figure out? Either you like each other or you don’t,” Arya’s dad offered. “You’re boyfriends or you’re not.”
“Okay, fine, we’re boyfriends. All right?”
Arya’s mom clapped. “Oh my god, azizam, that’s wonderful. How long have you been dating?”
“We’d love to meet him,” Afshin added.
Arya nearly fell over. His parents never agreed on anything.
“Maybe some other time,” he said. He didn’t want to talk about Ben with his parents. Ben was his. He didn’t want to share. He didn’t want to spoil what they had together with all his fucking family drama.
If Ben saw how fucked up Arya’s family really was, how fucked up Arya really was…
“Some other time?” Afshin asked. “You should’ve brought him tonight.”
“Why didn’t you bring him?” Shohreh asked. “We could’ve made room.”
Arya sputtered. Somehow they were both ganging up on him, without speaking a single word to each other.
This whole night, they hadn’t spoken, and now they were on him for protecting his peace?
Protecting Ben? The tension that had been simmering in him all night boiled over as he threw down his scrubby sponge.
“Why didn’t I bring him around?” Arya asked, incredulous. “Why? To see how dysfunctional our whole family is?”
Arya’s mom crossed her arms. “Arya…” she warned.
“What?” Arya asked. “You two haven’t spoken one word to each other the entire night. You’re going off to meet your booty call! Dad’s going home to his mistress. Why the fuck would I want to introduce my boyfriend to you two? What kind of man would he think I am, seeing where I came from?”
Arya’s heart was racing.
He’d resented his parents most of his life, but he’d never shouted at them like this. Much less sworn in front of them.
He couldn’t breathe.
He yanked his gloves off, tossed them in the sink, and stalked toward the door.
There were times when being Persian was really fucking inconvenient. Like now, when he wanted to make a dramatic exit, storming out of the house and slamming the door behind him, but he couldn’t, because he had to grab his shoes.
“Arya!” His mom followed him. “That’s not fair.”
He shook his head. “No, what’s not fair is the two of you subjecting your children and grandchildren to all this shit.”
Afshin joined them, hovering in the hallway. At the venom in Arya’s voice, he put a hand on Shohreh’s shoulder. Like he was protecting her.
Protecting her. From Arya.
What the actual fuck?
“Have a safe trip home, Baba.” Arya escaped into the hot summer air, heart hammering as he raced to his car. If he’d been driving his old WRX, his tires would’ve peeled out; as it was, his Outback just lurched into motion. Why the fuck had he let himself drive an old-man car?
He couldn’t stand it. Not his fucking car. Not his fortieth birthday on the horizon. Not Mitchell’s disintegration. And certainly not his parents and their fucking bullshit.
Thank god Ben hadn’t been there to see all this. Arya had to spare Ben from his bullshit. As best he could, for as long as he could.
He had to.