Page 263 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

of those sudden bursts of euphoria, the kind where you want to wrap strangers in

a hug and dance with them in great big swoops.
It’s your mother I worry for, Baba said.
I’ll call every night. I promise. You know I will.
Baba nodded. The leaves of the maples near the entrance to the parking lot
tossed about in a sudden gust of wind.
Have you thought some more, he said, about what we discussed?

You mean, junior college?
Only for a year, maybe two. Just to give her time to get accustomed to the
idea. Then you could reapply.
I shuddered with a sudden jolt of anger. Baba, these people reviewed my test
scores and transcripts, and they went through my portfolio, and they thought

enough of my artwork not only to accept me but to offer me a scholarship. This
is one of the best institutes of art in the country. It’s not a school you say no to.
You don’t get a second chance like this.
That’s true, he said, straightening up in his seat. He cupped his hands and
blew warm air into them. Of course I understand. Of course I’m happy for you. I
could see the struggle in his face. And the fear too. Not just fear for me and what
might happen to me three thousand miles from home. But fear of me, of losing
me. Of the power I wielded, through my absence, to make him unhappy, to maul
his open, vulnerable heart, if I chose to, like a Doberman going to work on a
kitten.
I found myself thinking of his sister. By then, my connection with Pari—

whose presence had once been like a pounding deep within me—had long
waned. I thought of her infrequently. As the years had swept past, I had
outgrown her, the way I had outgrown favorite pajamas and stuffed animals I
had once clung to. But now I thought of her once more and of the ties that bound
us. If what had been done to her was like a wave that had crashed far from shore,
then it was the backwash of that wave now pooling around my ankles, then
receding from my feet.
Baba cleared his throat and looked out the window at the dark sky and the
clouded-over moon, his eyes liquid with emotion.

Everything will remind me of you.
It was in the tender, slightly panicky way he spoke these words that I knew
my father was a wounded person, that his love for me was as true, vast, and
permanent as the sky, and that it would always bear down upon me. It was the
kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free
or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something