There are valves in the heart there's no going back through. No room for remorse, none of that forgive thy neighbor bullshit, no backtracking. Some things are unforgivable. Some things are impossible, impassable, implausible. You cut your losses. There's nothing left in the ruin. Nothing to salvage. But you still try.

“Amy, please go to sleep.” I begged for the tenth time. I'd hoped to be drunk for this.

“Give me this,” Amy slurred, reaching a hand toward me. Even after six years, she was still a pretty drunk. I was almost jealous. Not almost—I was jealous. “Soriya, give me this.”

Dinner had been tipsy, giggly. Six years was worth celebrating, and Amy had a certain weakness for sparkling pink wine. Classless, expensive, and, of course, chilled. I had a glass, but Amy, per usual, inhaled most of the bottle. That was Amy—take her to the most expensive French restaurant in Manhattan, and she'd order the French fries with that stick bread, please.

Now, she sat on the bed in a blue tank top and hot pink spandex shorts, sleepy and wet. Her freshly showered blonde hair, clumped and moist, dampened the worn, dog-eared poster of John and Yoko behind her. I perched on the arm of the zebra print lazy-boy facing the bed, cradling a glass teacup and picking threads from the fuzzy, aqua throw blanket dangled over the back.

Between us, on the floor, was a handwoven oriental carpet from India. Like the rice cooker, the japanese tea-kettle, and tapestry of Ganesha, the eight-armed Hindu elephant god, it was meant with love but off. Well, wrong, absolutely wrong—none of those things were Iranian.

She splurged on them because I was homesick. I had to remember that. Even if she mixed up Iran and India on a regular basis.

“I can't just give you a baby, Amelia.”

She thumped the bed sheet with a closed fist. Once. Twice. Anger and alcohol warmed the pale skin between her collar bones. “Sperm donor.”

“Too expensive.”

“We've got money.”

I changed tactics. “At least get under the covers. Please.”

She ignored me. “We have got money!”

“Your salary.”

“So?”

Did she think I was going to carry it in me for ten months? “You're nipping.” I warned.

“Adoption.” She persisted.

I snorted. “As if they'd just give a baby to an unmarried, interracial lesbian couple.”

Her face turned red, and she sat up indignantly. Her mouth was a thunderstorm. Her eyes were threatening rain. “I am a lawyer. Soriya. I can do things.” She slurred indignantly in her trial voice.

“And I'm a nurse. Bitch, a power suit and heels don't turn water to wine.”

“Wine? There's more wine?” Amy slumped across the bed sideways, curling into a kittenish ball of petulant limbs. Her hands clenched and pawed at the comforter. It was hopeless. There'd be no moving her. I'd have to sleep on the couch tonight.

“You don't need more wine.” I said firmly. If I had known we were having this conversation tonight, I would have ordered three bottles of that damn pink fizz instead of one. I set the teacup down to tuck Amy under the throw blanket until only her nose stuck out. I leaned down to kiss the crown of her head. Under the fruity sweetness of the shampoo, she smelled like cigarette smoke. Despite my annoyance, I felt a rush of love; she was just so American. “Just get some sleep, joonam.”

“You'd make a great mommy.” She whispered sleepily.

For goodness sake.

I picked up the teacup, and closed the bedroom door quietly behind me. Our living room was quiet, less spasmodic than our bedroom. Black leather couch, dark wood and glass coffee table, white carpet, nice coffee table books filled with scenic pictures of Zimbabwe. A cheery fern in the window sill. There, at least, I'd gotten my way. Except for the god Ganesha, who dancing at me from the far wall by the kitchen entryway. “Is your wife baby-crazy too?” I asked, stopping in front of him. His beady elephant eyes were squinty and judgmental.

“Are you a homophobe, dong nose?” I demanded, pointing right up between his eyes. “I won't tolerate a homophobe on my walls.” He didn't have the shame to look embarrassed, just moderately constipated. “Hey, G, it's about skill, not size.” I winked bawdily, then flinched, looking behind me to the closed bedroom door. I wouldn't hear the end of it if Amy heard me talking like that to the tapestry. Again.

It was then I noticed the glaring red eye of the answering machine, blinking morse—Listen to me! Listen to me!

And Amy called me old-fashioned for insisting on a landline. I'd have to tell her in the morning, even if it was just another tax collector. I left Ganesha to his dancing, went through to the kitchen, hit play.

1 new message at 7:46 pm. “Soriya? Soriya-jon? Pick up the phone. Soriya? It's Baba.” My father's voice slipped into my chest and twisted, like a surgeon with quick, sticky fingers. Five years, but I knew that voice. “I wonder where you are so late on a thursday night.” Another pause. I'm fileted down to all but the bones. “Call me. I want to give you some of Mamani's things before I go back to Iran.” Some of Mamani's things? “Mamani would have wanted you to have them. Okay. Call me.”

The surgeon tugged and tugged and something snapped and the meat sack that was my body collapsed inward. The tea cup slipped from my hands. A moment of disconnect from the slip to the sound, to the explosion of glass on the tile. A pause between the separation and the pain, as I slit my fingers, as I tried to lift the pieces.

“Please don't go alone.” Amy said quietly. She sat on the arm chair while I packed, her legs pretzeled. It was difficult, painful around the swollen throb of my bandaged fingers. Amy's eyes were rimmed red. “I want to come with you. I should be with you.”

Once, when I was small — I must have been four, five, little — Baba took me to a park with a river. I'd been sitting near this meshed fence that separated the park from the river bank, coloring on a scrap of newspaper Baba had given me. It was back when I still thought crayons were people––back when Red and Yellow were girls, and Red would get jealous of Yellow sat next to Blue in the crayon box. Purple'd gotten a grass stain on his paper. So I got this smart idea to push Purple through the fence. He was just small enough to fit. I was positive, absolutely certain, that all Purple needed a bath, and once he was clean, he would come back up and jump back through the mesh. Then I could keep coloring.

But after a few minutes, nothing happened. Purple didn't jump up through the fence and when I looked down past the mesh, all I could see was grubby brown water. Purple was gone.

When Baba found out what I did, he had rolled up his newspaper and swatted me hard on the arm for being so careless, for being so wrong. That's where I learned you do not throw the important things away. How had I forgotten that?

“I'll call into work tomorrow morning. Tell them what happened. We won't be able to take the same flight, but I'll be there.” Amy persisted.

“That's enough.”

“I could be--”

“That's enough.” I slammed the lid of the suitcase shut.

When I called Baba back, he told me it had happened three months ago. Was it sudden? No, they'd known for a few months, but hoped she could fight it. It? Thyroid cancer. Was it painful? Some. She had been depressed when she lost all her hair. Listen, the realtor was here and could he call me back?

My father and I discussed my mother's death as cooly as if it were the weather. Five years had made us tepid strangers.

“I just want to help.” Amy whispered.

“You have done enough.” I turned back to the suitcase.

I felt her rise quietly and the bedroom door closed behind me. Let her go.

“Sori-jon.” My father greeted. “How was your flight?”

The proud, old man, sitting along the far wall of the coffee shop next to a battered shopping bag, barely looked like my Baba. When I'd walked in, I hadn't even recognized him until he stood up and waved. We did not hug. The light blue dress shirt hung loosely off his shoulders, pants belted high and tight on his stomach. Was it because there was no one to make him ghoresh-polo anymore? Even his mustache had aged. It was almost white now. Then I wondered if he was sick. How would I know, after all? How would I know anything anymore? A paper cup of coffee sat in front of him, three hollowed creamer capsules littering the space between us. It was silly but all I could think was how he used to drink it black.

The language of childhood crumbled on my tongue, five years rendered useless. I stumbled over the rolled r's, smooth s's, strong kh's and finally skidded into mortified English. “Not bad. I had a delay out of Chicago.” My face heated, and I sat abruptly, only halfway out of my coat and scarf. “Is that where you live?” Baba asked, sipping his coffee. Except for s's, which he pronounced “es,” his English was refined, almost British from his college days at Leeds, but the Farsi gave it an undercurrent of music, of magic, of eloquence. He spoke like a hard cover laminate library book, crackling under your fingers: carefully. The accent was a little stronger than I remembered, but who would he have had to practice with?

“No, I had a connection. We're in New York.”

“New York?” His eyes flicked to my mouth and I immediately regretted putting on red lipstick.

“New York, Baba. The city?”

“Oh, the city is good. Many Iranian live there.”

“I remember.” I said quietly. Little things with sharp bones. “You're going back to Iran?”

“Yes.” He said, waving his hand dismissively. “Your aunt is setting up an apartment for me. I'm too old to live alone in America-shmemrica”

“You could move closer to us.” It was out before I could catch it.

He clucked disgustedly. “There is still 'us'?”

If Amy had been there, she would have done something crazy and beautiful and American. She would stand behind me, and tilt my head back, and kiss me—right there in front of Baba. Probably give him the middle finger. Or she would launch into one of her fits, standing there with her hands clenched, her round Quaker face turning bright red to the roots while she lectured him in her court voice about homophobia and injustice and suffocating traditionalism. But she wasn't there. And even if I was born here, I wasn't American.

“Yes.” I said quietly. Because I wanted to be honest. Because I had already gone out that door and there was no going back through it. Even now.

Baba waved his hand at me, jerking his head slightly to the left—the quintessential Iranian gesture for enough. I had forgotten that.

He pulled a large box from the Abercrombie shopping bag on the floor and set it on the table between us. It was a wooden box inlaid with small pieces of bone, brass, gold, silver, wire in an ornate pattern of stars, circles, hexagons — a khatam. Like black tea with cardamum, hardwood floors covered by rugs older than my grandparents, the sticky honey of homemade baklava, I hadn't seen a khatam since my early twenties.

“She would have wanted you to have this.” He said, giving the box a jab toward me. Inside, something tinkled dangerously. “Mothers always give their daughters these things.”

My hands quivered as I lifted the lid. Inside, velvet pouches in dark reds, blues, emeralds, sat together as neatly as library reference cards. I lifted one carefully, a blue one, and tugged open the draw string. A silver necklace set with turquoise slithered cooly onto my heart line.

Mamani had only worn jewelry like this to Persian parties. The jewelry was as much a part of her as her pulse. As the rugs I'd grown up playing on.

“This one was my great-grandmother's, joonam.” She would say delightedly, looking at me through the mirror while her brown fingers fastened silver and emerald earrings into her ear. Her accent was less refined than Baba's—long, exaggerated words, lifted with the lilt of the Isfahani accent. “She gave it to me when I get marry. I give you when you finish nurse school.” Then she'd lift a vial of perfume from her counter. Liquid armor—a nasal assailant of Channel so other women knew their place. Mamani was very talented at putting other women in their place, and appearance was her weapon of choice. “It's easy to throw a woman off, Sori-jon. Look at her shoes like they ugly.” She told me once. I sometimes did it to Amy when we were fighting and she started using her lawyer voice.

“She told you to give this to me?” I asked disbelievingly.

Baba took a sip of coffee. Foam stuck to his mustache. “You were her only daughter. No one else to give it to.” He drained his coffee, and put his palm on the table expectantly. “I should get home.” He said.

“Baba.” I said, then stopped. He sat back down and raised an eyebrow. My pulse was in my ears. “Did... she ask for me?”

He sighed, and put his face in his hands. “What you think?”

I nodded slowly. I closed my fingers around the silver necklace. “Baba?”

“Hmm?”

“How do I make this better?”

Baba stood. He looked so much more fragile, so antique when he stood. “It's too late, Sori-jon.” He said softly. “Have a safe flight.”

Some things are unforgivable. There’s nothing left in the ruin. Nothing left to salvage.