And the Mountains Echoed

Caesars Palace, they have Roman soldiers with swords and helmets and red capes. Baba kept trying to get Mother to take a picture with them but she wouldn’t. But I did! I’ll show you when I get home. That’s it for now. I miss you. Wish you were here
.
    Pari
    P.S. I’m having the most awesome ice cream sundae as I write this
.
    She flips to the next postcard. Hearst Castle. She reads the note under her breath now.
Had his own zoo! How cool is that? Kangaroos, zebras, antelopes, Bactrian camels—they’re the ones with two humps!
One of Disneyland, Mickey in the wizard’s hat, waving a wand.
Mother screamed when the hanged guy fell from the ceiling! You should have heard her!
La Jolla Cove. Big Sur. 17 Mile Drive. Muir Woods. Lake Tahoe.
Miss you. You would have loved it for sure. Wish you were here
.
    I wish you were here
.
    I wish you were here
.
    Pari takes off her glasses. “You wrote postcards to yourself?”
    I shake my head. “To you.” I laugh. “This is embarrassing.”
    Pari puts the postcards down on the coffee table and nudges closer to me. “Tell me.”
    I look down at my hands and rotate my watch around on my wrist. “I used to pretend we were twin sisters, you and I. No one could see you but me. I told you everything. All my secrets. You were real to me, always so near. I felt less alone because of you. Like we were
Doppelgänger
s. Do you know that word?”
    A smile comes to her eyes. “Yes.”
    I used to picture us as two leaves, blowing miles apart in the wind yet bound by the deep tangled roots of the tree from which we had both fallen.
    â€œFor me, it was the contrary,” Pari says. “You say you felt a presence, but I sensed only an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like the patient who cannot explain to the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.” She puts her hand on mine, and neither of us says anything for a minute.
    From the recliner, Baba groans and shifts.
    â€œI’m really sorry,” I say.
    â€œWhy are you sorry?”
    â€œThat you found each other too late.”
    â€œBut we
have
found each other, no?” she says, her voice cracking with emotion. “And this is who he is now. It’s all right. I feel happy. I have found a part of myself that was lost.” She squeezes my hand. “And I found you, Pari.”
    Her words tug at my childhood longings. I remember how when I felt lonely, I would whisper her name—
our
name—andhold my breath, waiting for an echo, certain that it would come someday. Hearing her speak my name now, in this living room, it is as though all the years that divided us are rapidly folding over one another again and again, time accordioning itself down to nothing but the width of a photograph, a postcard, ferrying the most shining relic of my childhood to sit beside me, to hold my hand, and say my name. Our name. I feel a tilting, something clicking into place. Something ripped apart long ago being sealed again. And I feel a soft lurch in my chest, the muffled thump of another heart kick-starting anew next to my own.
    In the recliner, Baba props himself up on his elbows. He rubs his eyes, looks over to us. “What are you girls plotting?”
    He grins.
    Another nursery rhyme. This one about the bridge in Avignon.
    Pari hums the tune for me, then recites the lyrics:
    Sur le pont d’Avignon
    L’on y danse, l’on y danse
    Sur le pont d’Avignon
    L’on y danse tous en rond
.
    â€œMaman taught it to me when I was little,” she says, tightening the knot of her scarf against a sweeping gust of cold wind. The day is chilly but the sky blue and the sun strong. It strikes the gray-metal-colored Rhône broadside and breaks on its surface into little shards of brightness. “Every French child knows this song.”
    We are sitting on a wooden park bench facing the water. As she translates the words, I marvel at the city across the river. Having recently discovered my own history, I am awestruck to find myself in a place so chockful of it, all of it documented, preserved. It’s miraculous. Everything about this city is. I feel wonder at the clarity of the air, at the wind swooping down on the river, making the water slap against the stony banks, at how full and rich the light is and how it seems to shine from every direction. From the park bench, I can see the old ramparts ringing the ancient town center