We would walk out holding a strawberry or watermelon lollipop. In the entire bowl, those were the flavors you gravitated to, and I took one and tucked it in my pocket to give to you later. I wanted our day to last longer and so I would ask if you wanted a scoop when we passed the ice cream shop, and your eyes would light up like Hadia’s and Huda’s did when I agreed to read a story to them. The door made a “moo” sound when we entered, and I lifted you up to the counter and you pressed your face against the glass to look at all the flavors, your breath leaving circles of fog. I stopped myself from reminding you that the glass had germs. Not today, I told myself. Once when I was a boy my father had taken me to the ice cream parlor in Hyderabad. No one there offered samples like they did here, when you pointed to flavor after flavor and the girl behind the counter passed you little purple spoons with a bit of the ice cream. She told me how cute you were, smiling widely, which often happened when we went anywhere with you. Sometimes, even now, I wonder if you realized that the world loved you, softened at your presence.
While I waited for you, I asked the girl for a scoop of pistachio and almond, the flavor that most reminded me of the ice cream from home. Then you would ask for the same. This happened every time. You sampled at least four flavors and then got mine, though you had not tried it. Is it silly that I felt proud that you copied me in that way? She gave you your cone and I got my cup and I tipped her generously, partly because of how kind she was to you. Shall we eat here? I asked, and you would have relaxed with me by then. When you were excited your legs swung because they did not reach the floor, and you were talkative, and moved about in your seat making wild gestures with your hands. You asked me questions, and I did my best to answer them.
“Why does forever rhyme with never?” you asked me once.
Another time you asked, “What’s a tsunami?” When I answered, you asked, “Why don’t we ever go to the beach?” and then, without missing a beat, as though it were the logical next question, “Why do squirrels run when I go near them?”
And I knew when you stopped asking me questions and turned to look out the window that our time had reached its final movement, and you wanted to go home to your mother. I gathered our trash and threw it away. I wet a napkin and wiped your mouth, your fingers, and rubbed roughly the stain on your shirt, so Hadia and Huda wouldn’t see it and be hurt.
* * *
WHEN HADIA APPEARS again she is not alone. The doctor with her is very tall, especially when standing next to Hadia, his skin dark and eyes very bright, made brighter when he smiles, and even before he has extended his hand to shake mine, I trust him. My hand, when I lift it, feels weak, something that has been happening with alarming frequency and something I’ve kept from Hadia. His name is Dr. Edwards, he says, he is a neurosurgeon, and a good friend of Hadia’s. When Hadia was very young, I would remind her seriously that she had no male friends, just colleagues and acquaintances, but as she grew older my reminder became a joke at first for her, and then, after much teasing from her, for both of us. When I glance at her seated at the edge of my bed, she is smiling mischievously, as if she has read my mind.
Nothing about Dr. Edwards’s demeanor suggests that something is wrong, and so I sit back against the raised bed, fold my hands in my lap.
“Everything is okay, Baba, do not begin to worry,” she says in Urdu, and she nods at Dr. Edwards.
Dr. Edwards explains what they found in the MRI. In my brain? I ask, when I hear him say tumor. Most likely benign, he responds, a meningioma, in the tissue between the skull and the brain, but it has grown enough to begin to impact the brain, mine. My mouth is dry. I look at the bracelet on my wrist and the tiny numbers that mark me as a patient and my name that marks me as a person and the blue veins beneath my skin saying I am alive. He tells me that judging by its location and size it could be removed with little effort and then taken for a biopsy. Hadia touches my leg and says that means it’s no problem, Baba, saying it in Urdu as if I do not speak English, as if I do not know what benign or little effort means. I search my daughter’s face. She is eerily calm. I am a lucky man, and maybe when I had opened my eyes to the light moving across the dome it was misfortune I had wished for, something grave enough to give you a reason to return.
“We will have to have a surgery to remove it, Baba, it’s beginning to affect you in a way we cannot ignore. Hence the headaches. Dr. Edwards has been very kind—he scheduled you in for the end of the week.”
Dr. Edwards asks me if I have any questions. I say I do not. I say thank you. I say I am glad Hadia has a good friend. And at this, I glance at my daughter, who has been calm, who has been using her doctor voice, who now looks quickly away from me and out the hospital window.
* * *
ON THE BEDSIDE table beside me, two flower arrangements: one extravagant, store-bought bouquet sent by my old coworkers, and one made for me by Layla. Her bouquet has her touch; I can spot any bouquet Layla arranges in an instant. The flowers were plucked from Hadia’s garden. A giant plant leaf is fanned out in the back, framing them. Layla could have been an artist, I think now, as she lifts the page of her prayer book and continues moving her finger across the next page. It has been a recent pursuit of hers, growing and arranging flowers, and now every room in our home is adorned, and if there is a celebratory event for a family friend, we go with a bouquet.
When you were very young, maybe four, she came home with a packet of tomatoes and said she would try to plant them. Soon it became tomatoes and garlic. Then she read books that said do not plant the same vegetable in the same soil twice, and it might have been the challenging and particular methods that interested her, so she got a notebook where she drew our backyard and drew in squares to plan what would go where and in what season. On wooden Popsicle sticks she wrote what she planted and then pushed them into the dirt, and this was her favorite part, I think, when I came home to find her meticulously writing: mint, green pepper, eggplant, cauliflower, basil.
The year after Hadia’s wedding, she did not walk into the garden to tend to anything at all. Hadia had moved to Chicago with Tariq. She was so busy with her work and getting accustomed to her new life and soon, her pregnancy, that she hardly visited us. Huda worked as a fourth-grade teacher at a school hours away. Her evenings were often spent preparing for the next day. They called us with their stories: Hadia’s first time assisting with delivering a baby, Huda winning over a particularly difficult student. We were so proud of them both. But once the phone clicked to end their call we were so very alone. Each of you had left us in your own way. I predicted Layla would turn even more to gardening to pass the time. But instead she made tea and sat at the kitchen table with the mug before her looking out at the backyard, her hands wrapped around the mug for warmth, the steam rising. I would walk away and not long after would hear the splash of the entire mug in the sink.
Then one day, about three years ago, I came home to see little white packets I recognized to be seeds on the kitchen table in rows. I was relieved. I always feared she had been punishing herself. But this time it was just flowers. And a small stack of books in the corner: Flowers of California. Plants of the West. She did not explain and I did not ask. She spent months studying which flower to plant when. The first spring they bloomed was incredible, our garden so vibrant and alive. At first her bouquets were messy, the stems drooping against the glass, but soon something clicked: she deliberately chose colors that completed each other, stuck a feather in if she found a feather. I was amazed that even a jagged twig could be placed beautifully, if Layla was the one to place it.
* * *