Page 268 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

“Oh, Abdullah …” Pari says.

Smiling, her eyes teared over, Pari reaches for Baba’s hands and takes them
into her own. She kisses the back of each and presses his palms to her cheeks.
Baba grins, moisture now pooling in his eyes as well. Pari looks up at me,
blinking back happy tears, and I see she thinks she has broken through, that she
has summoned her lost brother with this magic chant like a genie in a fairy tale.
She thinks he sees her clearly now. She will understand momentarily that he is
merely reacting, responding to her warm touch and show of affection. It’s just
animal instinct, nothing more. This I know with painful clarity.

A few months before Dr. Bashiri passed me the phone number to a
hospice, Mother and I took a trip to the Santa Cruz Mountains and stayed in a
hotel for the weekend. Mother didn’t like long trips, but we did go off on short
ones now and then, she and I, back before she was really sick. Baba would man
the restaurant, and I would drive Mother and me to Bodega Bay, or Sausalito, or
San Francisco, where we would always stay in a hotel near Union Square. We
would settle down in our room and order room service, watch on-demand
movies. Later, we would go down to the Wharf—Mother was a sucker for all the

tourist traps—and buy gelato, watch the sea lions bobbing up and down on the
water over by the pier. We would drop coins into the open cases of the street
guitarists and the backpacks of the mime artists, the spray-painted robot men.
We always made a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, and, my arm coiled
around hers, I would show her the works of Rivera, Kahlo, Matisse, Pollock. Or
else we would go to a matinee, which Mother loved, and we would see two,
three films, come out in the dark, our eyes bleary, ears ringing, fingers smelling
of popcorn.
It was easier with Mother—always had been—less complicated, less
treacherous. I didn’t have to be on my guard so much. I didn’t have to watch
what I said all the time for fear of inflicting a wound. Being alone with her on
those weekend getaways was like curling up into a soft cloud, and, for a couple
of days, everything that had ever troubled me fell away, inconsequentially, a

thousand miles below.
We were celebrating the end of yet another round of chemo—which also
turned out to be her last. The hotel was a beautiful, secluded place. They had a
spa, a fitness center, a game room with a big-screen TV, and a billiards table.