Free Digging to America by Anne Tyler Page B

They had started noticing each other lately. They were beginning to play together instead of back to back. And Sami was asking Brad how he liked his new Honda Civic, and Ziba was helping Bitsy set out the refreshments. It had become the custom for Ziba to be the one to make the tea when she was visiting. Surely the Yazdans could not actually taste the paper on a tea bag, but Ziba maintained that they could and so Bitsy kept a box of loose tea in her cupboard (a box she regularly had to discard because another thing the Yazdans could taste was old tea, in theory) and Ziba brewed it herself in a complicated process that involved a precarious tower of teapot on top of kettle and a periodic sniffing for the proper melting smell to the leaves. Jeannine and Laura were fascinated. They hovered around the stove, getting in everyone's way and asking questions. Shouldn't there be some easier method? This seems a little ... makeshift. Why not just dump the leave s directly in the kettle? Streamline the operation? Ziba merely smiled. Bitsy felt secretly proud, as if some of the Yazdans' mystery had transferred itself to her.
    The one boy cousin, Linwood, was asked to light the candle on the cake. Bitsy had thought this would make him feel more included. He was such an awkward creature, all Adam's apple and knobby joints, with thick, smudged glasses and too-short hair. But even stepping up to the table turned his face a deep red, and when he finally got a match lit he somehow managed to drop it as he was lurching toward the cake. Bitsy's father, who was closest, snuffed it out easily with one palm and said, No harm done, which wasn't quite true because a charred spot showed on the tablecloth, not that Bitsy cared about such things; but Abe's three daughters squealed as if he'd set the house on fire. God, Linwood, you're such a dork, his sister said, tossing her adult-looking mane of blond hair, and Laura said, That's quite enough out of you, young lady! and Linwood wheeled blindly and tried to escape through the ring of relatives, leading with his lowered head. It took a while for people to persuade him to try again.
    Meanwhile, Brad was waiting out in the kitchen with Jin-Ho and Susan, listening for their entrance cue, but evidently neither child understood the situation. Bitsy could hear Susan asking, Mama? Mama? Just light the damn thing, Linwood, Mac said, and Laura said, Mac! and Linwood struck another match and lit the candle on his first try. It was fortunate there was just one candle. Bitsy was already calculating that next year, when there were two, the girls might be old enough to do it themselves with proper supervision, of course.
    All right, everybody, Bitsy said, and she started singing. They'll be coming round the mountain when they come . . . She had been searching till the very last minute for a more appropriate selection. There must be a song in grand opera about a long-- a waited arrival. Or almost certainly in The Messiah, if that wasn't sacrilegious. But nothing had occurred to her, and this at least was a song the children knew. Everyone but the Hakimis (who were gamely smiling) joined her halfway through the first line even Linwood, in a mumbly undertone while Brad flung open the kitchen door and called, Ta-da! They're here! The two girls Jin-Ho resplendent in red-and-blue satin, Susan in pink organdy clung to his trouser legs and looked bewildered.
    Oh, we'll all go out to meet them when they come, Bitsy sang. Come on, honey! she called to Jin-Ho. Come on, Susan! See your cake?
    It was a beautiful cake a huge Stars and Stripes. The lady at the bakery counter thought we were just really, really late for the Fourth of July, Brad told Sami. The two of them were hoisting their daughters in their arms now so that they could have a view of the table. Abe stepped forward to aim his camera at them. You get in this too, he told Bitsy. You too, Ziba, get into the picture. Okay, all together now! Smile!
    Everybody smiled