And the Mountains Echoed

you?
    Oh, heaps. Ready to be unleashed. For when you’re old and helpless
.
    I
am
old and helpless
.
    Now you want me to feel sorry for you
.
    I play with the radio, flipping from talk to country to jazz to more talk. I turn it off. I’m restless and nervous. I reach for my cell phone on the passenger seat. I call the house and leave the phone flipped open on my lap.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œ
Salaam, Baba
. It’s me.”
    â€œPari?”
    â€œYes, Baba. Is everything okay at the house with you and Hector?”
    â€œYes. He’s a wonderful young man. He made us eggs. We had them with toast. Where are you?”
    â€œI’m driving,” I say.
    â€œTo the restaurant? You don’t have a shift today, do you?”
    â€œNo, I’m on my way to the airport, Baba. I’m picking someone up.”
    â€œOkay. I’ll ask your mother to make us lunch,” he says. “She could bring something from the restaurant.”
    â€œAll right, Baba.”
    To my relief, he doesn’t mention her again. But, some days, he won’t stop.
Why won’t you tell me where she is, Pari? Is she having an operation? Don’t lie to me! Why is everyone lying to me? Has she gone away? Is she in Afghanistan? Then I’m going too! I’m going to Kabul, and you can’t stop me
. We go back and forth like this, Baba pacing, distraught; me feeding him lies, then trying to distract him with his collection of home-improvement catalogs or something on television. Sometimes it works, but other times he is impervious to my tricks. He worries until he is in tears, in hysterics. He slaps at his head and rocks back and forth in the chair, sobbing, his legs quivering, and then I have to feed him an Ativan. I wait for his eyes to cloud over, and, when they do, I drop on the couch, exhausted, out of breath, near tears myself. Longingly, I look at the front door and the openness beyond and I want to walk through it and just keep walking. And then Baba moans in his sleep, and I snap back, simmering with guilt.
    â€œCan I talk to Hector, Baba?”
    I hear the receiver transferring hands. In the background, the sound of a game-show crowd groaning, then applause.
    â€œHey, girl.”
    Hector Juarez lives across the street. We’ve been neighbors for many years and have become friends in the last few. He comes over a couple of times a week and he and I eat junk food and watch trash TV late into the night, mostly reality shows. We chew on cold pizza and shake our heads with morbid fascination at the antics and tantrums on the screen. Hector was a marine, stationed in the south of Afghanistan. A couple of years back, he got himself badly hurt in an IED attack. Everyone from the block showed up whenhe finally came home from the VA. His parents had hung a
Welcome Home, Hector
sign out in their front yard, with balloons and a lot of flowers. Everyone clapped when his parents pulled up to the house. Several of the neighbors had baked pies. People thanked him for his service. They said,
Be strong, now. God bless
. Hector’s father, Cesar, came over to our house a few days later and he and I installed the same wheelchair ramp Cesar had built outside his own house leading up to the front door, the American flag draped above it. I remember, as the two of us worked on the ramp, I felt a need to apologize to Cesar for what had happened to Hector in my father’s homeland.
    â€œHi,” I say. “I thought I’d check in.”
    â€œIt’s all good here,” Hector says. “We ate. We did
Price Is Right
. We’re chillin’ now with
Wheel
. Next up is
Feud
.”
    â€œOuch. Sorry.”
    â€œWhat for,
mija
? We’re having a good time. Aren’t we, Abe?”
    â€œThanks for making him eggs,” I say.
    Hector lowers his voice a notch. “Pancakes, actually. And guess what? He loved them. Ate up a four-stack.”
    â€œI really owe you.”
    â€œHey, I really like the new painting, girl. The one with the kid in the funny hat? Abe here showed it to me. He was all proud too. I was, like, damn! You
should
be proud, man.”
    I smile as I shift lanes to let a tailgater pass. “Maybe I know what to give you for Christmas now.”
    â€œRemind me again why we
can’t
get married?” Hector says. I hear Baba protesting in the background and Hector’s laugh, away from the receiver. “I’m joking, Abe. Go easy on me. I’m a