At my mother’s request I ran down the stairs to tell my father it was time to go to the hospital, gripping the wooden banister and slowing down when I arrived at the knob that marked its end. “Baba!” I screamed.

“What! What!” The coffee table squeaked as he jumped up from the couch. Within seconds he was in the hallway.

“The baby’s coming!” I felt both important and scared.

Hours later I was staring at newborn Karim through the glass partition, thinking him superfluous and knowing things would now be different, my mother no longer mine entirely.

Chapter 3

3

A WEEK HAD PASSED SINCE THE RESTAURANT INCIDENT. Anna and I had been trying to act as though nothing had happened, but the memory of that night was still thick between us. That evening we were both at home, reading on opposite ends of the couch—me a novel, and she leather-bound law books—when my phone buzzed. My heart leaped when I saw who the message was from: the professor.

“I’m tired,” I said to Anna, lying. “I’m going to bed early tonight.” I looked up from my book and we made eye contact. She held my gaze for a few moments, as if she knew something was amiss and wanted me to crack. “Cool,” she finally said. “I’ll join you once I’m done.”

I got up, cradling my laptop in my arms, then kissed her good night, shut the door to our bedroom and immediately opened the professor’s email. It was just one line: “Where do you live?”

We’d met the previous summer, almost a year earlier. She taught French literature at the Alliance Française in Midtown East, in between semesters at Columbia. The class was on Thursday evenings, before my shift began. I was taking it to practice my French, a language I’d been learning since fifth grade and that seemed worth keeping up for the intellectual stimulation DJing failed to provide. On the first day, she’d announced that past students had told her she didn’t smile enough. “So …” She placed her palms on the edge of the desk and leaned forward smiling, as if to say, “Here you go.”

I’d loved her since the day she kept me after class and suggested I was too harsh on Emma Bovary for her childish fantasies and for cheating on Charles. “Emma’s pathetic, sure,” she said, pressing a polished fingernail to the word méprisable on my paper. From the dinosaur Band-Aid on that same finger I surmised a husband and kids. “But this is melodramatic.” She looked at me, paused, then offered an effortful smile.

For the first time I noticed the dimple that appeared above her lip when she smiled, like a second, smaller smile. While we stood there, I began to fall into its span. As I gathered up my things and walked toward the classroom door, she asked, “Is it so bad?”