How much further he’d recover was anyone’s guess.
“Hi, Maman.” Ari leaned over and kissed both his mother’s cheeks, then crossed the kitchen to greet his father. “Baba.” He bent so his father could kiss his forehead the way he always had until he turned sixteen and was suddenly too tall. “You look well.”
His father gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I’m not ready to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet. Stop looking so surprised.”
Apparently he’d been reading Shakespeare again.
“Not surprised,” Ari placated. “Happy.”
“Hmm.” He brandished a wooden spoon at Ari. “Go and make chai for your mother, hmm?”
Ari quirked a smile. “Yes, Baba.”
The motions of home comforted him—filling the kettle, locating the correct loose-leaf tea, warming the teapot. “Where’s Afra?”
“You know your sister,” Maman said, smiling even as she shook her head. “She was born in Iran.”
Afra did just fine getting Ari to gigs on time, scheduling his life, ensuring everything was where he needed it when he needed it. She was only ever late for dinner at their parents’. But it wasn’t like Ari could tell them that.
“Perhaps they have big news to share and they want to make an entrance,” Ari’s father put in.
Ari elected to excuse himself from that conversation and paid a lot of attention to measuring out the tea.
“Regardless of what your father thinks, we aren’t going to be around forever,” his mother said, picking up the thread.
Unfortunately this situation called for something stronger than chai.
“We just want to see you and your sister settled.”
Alotstronger.
“I have an apartment,” Ari said, keeping his voice as level as he could. But it was a losing battle. His parents loved him. They wanted him to be happy, and they accepted that he was gay. It was beingsinglethat was the problem. Or recently, single and only in town for half the year. “I have a good career. I’m settled.”
The kettle whistled an interruption, but he got no reprieve.
“You need someone to look after you,” his mother said. “Afra can’t run around after you forever. She has Ben. She isn’t getting any younger, you know. What will you do when she has children?”
Afra was thirty-eight. Ari didn’t even know if she and Benwantedkids, but he was extremely well acquainted with his parents’ arguments in favor of them.
“Afra is an independent woman. What makes you think she would quit her job?” He looked pointedly at her. “Youdidn’t.”
Ari’s parents had emigrated from Iran thirtysomething years ago, after the Islamic Revolution in 1978 and the Iraq-Iran war. They told Ari and Afra they wanted a better life for their children, and Ari knew they had never regretted their choice—especially because of what life would have been like for him living there as a gay man. They had both worked at the hospital until Ari began touring at twenty-two.
They’d gone back when the pandemic hit. Ari’s mother was a pulmonologist.
“She wouldn’t have to quit working to take a job closer to home,” his mother pointed out. “She’s done other jobs. That law office she managed would kill to have her back. Or she could hire staff!”
That was probably true, but…. “And in the meantime, what?” Ari asked. He reminded himself to breathe deeply while he took down the teacups. “I’m supposed to meet a man, marry him, and make him my tour manager?”
“What about that nice intern?” his father put in, forestalling what was doubtless a comment from Ari’s mother that he could just give up touring completely. “What is his family like? Does he have a degree?”
Ari’s heart migrated to his toes in an attempt to escape his body. “Theo?” Now that was a horrifying concept. “Theo is an infant, Baba.” He was what, maybe twenty? He was still too young to be served in the US, that was for sure. “And even if he weren’t, I’m pretty sure he’s not interested in men. And I’m not going to hit on an employee!”
“Well, you can’t expect Afra to arrange your life indefinitely.”
No, that’syourjob, Ari almost said, but fortunately he bit his tongue before the words could escape. “Our work is between the two of us.” He poured a cup of chai and set it in front of his mother. “It would be disrespectful of me to discuss any changes with you before I talk to Afra, and I won’t do it.”
It was going to be a long evening.
