I'm Not Who You Think I Am Page 3

  Xiu was thankfully silent, because I didn’t think her answer would be nice, or even printable about my parents right now. I quickly changed the subject.

  “Well, Rat, one of my uncle’s friends, speaks Mandarin, so I can practice with him too. I’m going to look at Uncle Yushua’s library to see if there’s anything in Latin or Greek.”

  “He’d have books like that?” Xiu asked.

  “Classical studies undergraduate, master’s and PhD in Egyptology. I looked it up once, because Father was being sarcastic about Uncle Yushua not having a ‘real’ degree or being a real doctor. The study has a lot of books in it, as well as the living room and the dining room. I’ll find enough things to keep me occupied for the next month or so.”

  If I was here that long. If I was, I needed to go shopping for all sorts of things, because I didn’t pack for it.

  “Was his thesis interesting?” Xiu asked. “I might get bored and want to read something new.”

  “Search for Yushua Rostami,” I told her, wondering what havoc a bored Xiu could do. “You should be able to find it, if you use Columbia’s catalog. I never bothered to read it, and I don’t remember the title.”

  Xiu’s mother was a literature professor over at Columbia. Xiu had been using her library access since before she was ten to get any book or article she was interested in. Her mother didn’t mind and had stopped checking what Xiu was researching ages ago.

  Xiu’s father did something with the family business. I never understood what. It was some big, worldwide-extended corporation. Xiu’s family left Hong Kong before the Chinese government took it back in 1997 to join the New York branch, on the insistence of his mother, Nainai.

  Mention either Mao Zedong or Chaing Kia-shek to Xiu’s grandmother and then stand back to watch for the explosion of Chinese out of her. Whatever dialect she was swearing in, it wasn’t even remotely close to Mandarin.

  “I’m going to check in with my brothers,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”

  “Call me if you want to talk,” she offered.

  “I promise.”

  I hit the bathroom and did my thing before I checked in with my brothers. They were twins, eight years older than I, and probably didn’t know what was going on because they didn’t come home very often. Mostly because of their heavy class load in grad school. I knew they really didn’t worry about me, but I needed to call them.

  I called Ezra first. He’d be livid if I called Hoshea first because he was the eldest, needed my respect, and all that other crap he spouted.

  “Good afternoon,” I said at his brisk hello.

  “What do you want?” he barked. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  I bit back the retort that he could have had the call go to voicemail and didn’t bother with trying to be nice. “You know Mother and Father are talking about getting a divorce.”

  “They aren’t,” he scoffed. “They’re just working things out. Mother told me this a month ago.”

  I was silent for a moment. “They told me a couple of nights back,” I said quietly. “When I asked them questions about what they exactly meant, they stopped short of telling me it was none of my business.”

  “It really isn’t,” he said loftily. Because I was a kid, and I didn’t have any say in my life was his way of thinking.

  “Well, I’m at Uncle Yushua’s if you want to know,” I said tightly.

  Then I hung up before I started yelling. I shouldn’t have expected a different reaction. I wasn’t important in Ezra’s life. I shouldn’t have expected better, but I still held on to a stubborn hope that we might become close, like Xiu and her brothers were.

  I called Hoshea next. “When did you know our parents are thinking about getting a divorce?” I asked bluntly as soon as he answered.

  “Father mentioned it a few weeks ago,” Hoshea said. “He said I wasn’t to worry about it. They just needed to talk things out, and he didn’t think they would get one. And hello to you too.”

  “I was at dinner with them Saturday night when they told me,” I said. “Actually, what I was told was I was spending time with Uncle Yushua and was leaving in a couple of days. On the train, so I should pack lightly, since I could buy stuff up here if I needed. Mother didn’t think it would take too long, but she and Father did have a lot to talk about and evaluate, so they were going away to do so. I might be here all summer and I wasn’t supposed to be a bother to Uncle Yushua.”

  Hoshea stayed silent.

  “No ‘I’m sorry about your summer.’ Or ‘about any plans you had.’ Or any sort of understanding about anything. It was basically ‘be quiet and eat your meal’ anytime I wanted to ask them a question. Oh and a few remarks that I should have done better in my math and science courses. I was wasting time I needed to study by taking language courses.”

  I knew I was ranting now, but it felt so good to get that off my chest. I was just sorry Hoshea was my target and not someone who deserved it.

  “Mykayla, are you all right?” Hoshea asked finally, when the silence stretched out because I ran out of rant. “Do you need me to come and get you?”

  “I’m fine,” I assured him. Finally a relative who cared, or appeared to. “I just wanted you to know where I was, just in case you were worried or something. They closed everything down before they left.”

  “Do you even know where they went?” Hoshea asked, sounding alarmed.

  “Um… I guess they sent all that information to Uncle Yushua, last night. He didn’t even know I was coming here,” I said softly. “I didn’t think to ask them. There wasn’t a lot of tension in the house. You’d think they had planned a vacation and not whatever they’re doing.”

  I hadn’t been encouraged to ask and didn’t think of it until it was too late. While they had been relaxed, I spent a couple of days wanting to jump out of my skin. Last night was the first good night’s sleep I’d gotten in a while.

  “I swear…,” Hoshea started. “I’ll send you everything they sent me. Your email’s still the same?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, I still want you around,” Hoshea assured me. “I know you don’t think so. But….”

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. “And thanks. For, like, actually being like a real human being.”

  “What the fuck did my idiot twin say to you?” Hoshea demanded, knowing what I wasn’t saying.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I muttered. “I have to go now,” I lied. “The battery’s dying and I need to recharge.”

  “Just call me if things get too bad,” he said. “I’ll make room for you here.”

  “I will,” I promised and ended the call.

  So my brothers knew about this a month ago and I didn’t. I felt sick to my stomach and decided curling up with books was a fine way to spend the day. I got up to see what Uncle Yushua had to read, wanting something big and serious to keep my mind off my troubles.

  I WAS still looking for a book when Uncle Yushua came home for lunch. I wandered out of the dining room when I heard him moving around the kitchen, making plenty of noise so he knew I was there. He was starting the coffee maker when I walked into the area.

  “I was going to ask if you’d had a good morning, but I’m going to make a wild guess and say no if you’re still in what you slept in and your hair’s still wrapped,” he said. “I checked on you before I left. You’d kicked the quilt off.”

  He was wearing a gray tailored suit, with a pale pink shirt and matching handkerchief in his pocket. Uncle Yushua looked a lot better today than he had last night. He seemed embarrassed for admitting he’d seen me asleep, though.

  “It was all right,” I said. “I slept in. I know I can’t do that all summer, but today wasn’t a good day. And I don’t think checking on me is out of line.”

  I wasn’t going to flat-out say I didn’t think he was being a creepy uncle, because that might make it worse. But he relaxed.

  “Harper and I need you to go running with Rat, so no sleeping in,�
� Uncle Yushua teased. “Please tell me you’re a morning person like he is. And I expect you to have some fun up here.” He looked at the sink. “Did you eat yet today?”

  Did Rat live near here? Or was he going to be spending nights over here for some reason? This was confusing.

  “I wasn’t hungry,” I said, not wanting to tell him I got up less than an hour ago. I bit my lip and blurted out, “Ezra and Hoshea knew this was going to happen about a month ago. But Mother and Father didn’t tell me until last Saturday.”

  “How are your brothers?” Uncle Yushua asked as he turned to peer into the fridge, looking for something to make for lunch.

  “Ezra’s at U Miami in grad school for chemistry. Hoshea’s doing grad work in practical math at Caltech.”

  “Neither one of…,” Uncle Yushua started. “What do you want for lunch? Because you need to eat, even if you’re not hungry.”

  I shrugged, answering his unasked question. “They have each other. I was just the too-young bratty little sister. I can cook something if you’re hungry.”

  “Fereshteh taught you to cook?” he asked in surprise.

  “Anna did,” I replied. “She thought I needed to learn the basics when the twins went off to college and didn’t know anything, according to her. Which was right, because they didn’t know how to even make a bed. Xiu’s grandmother taught us a few things too. Nainai likes kicking the housekeeper out of the kitchen and cooking.”

  “Your grandmother didn’t know how to cook,” Uncle Yushua said. “She was supposed to be decorative more than useful, she’d tell us. But we wouldn’t have gotten out of Iran without her, after Father died. I didn’t even remember the place when I visited as an adult.”

  “Mother’s never been back,” I said, sitting at the island. “To Iran or the Philippines, aside from that one time.”

  The time being Grandmother’s funeral when I was about five. I didn’t remember much about it, aside from liking that it was warm in February.

  “Your mother, and your father to a certain extent, aren’t great believers in the past.” Uncle Yushua grimaced. “I think that’s why they both believe my work is useless.”

  “I don’t even know exactly what you do.”

  Mother didn’t talk about or to Uncle Yushua that much. He seemed to be as reserved as she was. When he visited, we all talked about anything but what he did for a living. Not that Uncle Yushua needed to work really. There was a lot of inherited money on both sides of the family, various trusts and other things.

  “Mostly tedious administrative things.” He smiled. “It’s boring, but because of a number of reasons, going back to any part of the Middle East isn’t safe for a dig. And you need to take care of what has been discovered as much as recovering more of the past.”

  I nodded. Modern politics had made the Middle East a mess.

  “I work for the Shawmut Institute. I don’t know if we’d talked about my work any of the times I was down there.” He chuckled. “I think Fereshteh thinks you’re going to run off and start digging in the desert if I tell you about what I do.”

  I grimaced. “Mother has been hinting I’d better have a science type of major when I chose where I want to go to college.”

  Not going was out of the question. I just needed to figure out where I wanted to go. Someplace far away was looking better and better lately. I was going for the “out of sight, out of mind” strategy with my parents.

  Uncle Yushua sighed. “I remember all the arguments she had, because she wanted to go to college and major in biochemistry. She wanted to do research and not worry about a husband or a family. Our mother never understood why Fereshteh wanted to go to America to learn and not start a family.” He smiled faintly. “Your grandmother was overjoyed when your parents met. She knew a woman didn’t need a man to take care of her, but it eased her heart Fereshteh had found someone.”

  As much as I wanted to call my mother a hypocrite, I didn’t. Going to college wasn’t something good girls from good families did, as Iran was very behind the times with women’s rights in the eighties.

  Mother didn’t talk about family much, but I had pieced together the bits from what little was said and figured out they’d had a lot of money, which they managed to get out of Iran. The family was small, with just my uncle and mother left.

  “Even when I was on a dig site, I wasn’t the one supervising the digging,” Uncle Yushua continued. “I was the one doing the paperwork and cataloging. It wasn’t exciting like in the movies. Archeology isn’t the wild place it was during the beginning, when anyone with money could get a license to dig.” He paused. “You can tell your mother it’s a science, just to see her reaction.”

  We both laughed when he said that, even if it wasn’t that funny.

  “I don’t know what I want to do,” I admitted. “But Mother thinks the sky would fall if I went to college with ‘undeclared’ as my major.”

  Uncle Yushua laughed. “Both of your parents are serious people who knew what they wanted to do with their lives, even before they were in high school, from what I know of your father.”

  “Hoshea and Ezra are the same way,” I said glumly. “I seem to be the changeling here.”

  “I really wouldn’t worry about it,” Uncle Yushua assured me. “Do you mind a quick lunch? And did you bring any knitting with you?”

  “I packed something small with me, and it’s almost finished,” I said, glad he remembered my hobby. “I was going to see where there were some shops tomorrow, so I could get my next project.”

  “I have to check out several things at the museum’s storage, which could take several hours. We can visit the shop I got your Christmas present at after I spend some time at work, if you don’t mind hanging out at the museum while I do boring administrative work.”

  Uncle Yushua was laying it on a little thick, but he was trying. And he didn’t even need to try very hard to get me interested. He’d had me at the word museum. Yarn shopping was just going to be the cherry on top of the treat for me.

  “You couldn’t keep me away,” I said. “Museums are never boring.”

  “A girl after my own heart,” he chuckled. “So we can go over after lunch and then have most of the evening free. You don’t mind taking the T everywhere, do you? Parking in Cambridge is a nightmare I want to avoid.”

  “I’ve been taking the subway all over New York since I was thirteen. The trip getting someplace is half the fun,” I said.

  Uncle Yushua frowned.

  “The twins started when they were twelve,” I reminded him. “I have a curfew, so it’s not like I’m out there in the wee hours of the morning. And usually I have Xiu or one of my other friends with me if I’m going to be out late.”

  “I’ll say there were two of them, when Ezra and Hoshea went out at your age, but that meant they could get into twice as much trouble.”

  I TOOK a quick shower. I was excited to visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, otherwise known as the MFA. It was almost as old as the Met in New York and had several excellent collections I wanted to check out. Museums were as much fun as bookstores for me. I showered and was dressed in record time.

  I was wearing another one of my full midi skirts, this one indigo with a loose purple tunic top over it. I grabbed the purse I’d shoved into my carpet bag, a smaller knit version of it, so that I had something to put all the necessities of life into: wallet, my small tablet, a notebook with pens and pencils, and my phone. This skirt didn’t have any useful pockets in it, alas. I snatched my shawl up and was ready to go.

  “A bagel before we get going. It isn’t like the museum is going anyplace,” Uncle Yushua said, clearly amused at the speed I’d gotten ready.

  He put a couple of bagels in the toaster while I got the cream cheese and apple juice out of the fridge. I saw those were about the only food items in the huge refrigerator, aside from leftover take-out containers, some eggs, and odd blocks of cheese in glass storage containers.

  “What do you have to d
o at the MFA?” I asked, waiting for the toaster to pop.

  “Just some inventory checking,” he said. “Some of the items I look after might have been sent over there and not recorded. It might take several hours for me to find what I’m looking for.”

  “I like museums,” I assured him, wondering about the phrase look after. It sounded odd, like the items were alive. “Mother always tells me I spend too much time in them.”

  The bagels popped up before he could say anything. I smiled brightly at him as I took my plate, and we ate in companionable silence. Mafdet showed up to beg from Uncle Yushua, throwing me a glare, almost daring me to say something. I just broke off some of my bagel, added more cream cheese, and slid it toward her.

  “This is your home,” I explained, “and you have better manners then half my friends.”

  “Really?” Uncle Yushua asked.

  “Never get between a hungry athlete and some prime protein,” I said. “The fingers, or any other body part you save, will be your own.”

  I popped the last of the bagel into my mouth. After rinsing off my plate and loading it into the dishwasher, I went to brush my teeth and get my hat.

  Uncle Yushua was waiting by the door, shaking his head when he saw the hat on my head. He looked pleased that I had thrown my shawl over my shoulders.

  “You’ll be able to find me in a crowd,” I said brightly.

  “Fereshteh must hate that thing.” He smiled.

  I shrugged. “Mother, as well as a few other people, have expressed dismay at its existence.”

  “Really?”

  “Xiu has informed me I’m twenty years too young to be sporting the demented cat-woman look.”

  What roses had to do with cats, I didn’t understand, but her thought processes were alien to me at times.

  “She has?” Uncle Yushua said as he shooed me out the door and locked it behind us.

  “Xiu is very fashion-conscious,” I informed him. “She wants to turn me into her personal model if she starts designing seriously.”

  I didn’t think she would, but Xiu always knew the right thing to wear. She said clothing was an important social clue and one that needed to be used carefully.