Things We Left Unsaid (16 page)

‘Until now, we kept quiet for Armen’s sake, and didn’t spill the beans. Today on the bus, instead of thanking us, he slapped Arsineh in the face, in front of all the kids! Now
it’s time to tell you the whole story.’ Armen was in love with Emily, she explained. Emily wants to make Armen jealous by joking and laughing with other boys in school. Today, somebody
wrote in big big letters above the seats on the bus: ‘Armen loves Emily, Emily loves no one.’ The kids on the bus all laughed, Armen accused Armineh and Arsineh of writing it, and
smacked Arsineh in the face. Armineh took a deep breath and continued the story. ‘That night at Emily’s house, the reason Armen coughed was that...’

Arsineh said, ‘Don’t tell on him!’

Armineh said, ‘I am telling! Why shouldn’t I? That night Armen coughed because, playing Spin the Bottle, Emily made him drink a whole glass of vinegar. And she even poured a whole
bunch of the chutney her grandmother made into it.’

I sank into the chair.

The idea of drinking a whole glass of vinegar with that chutney made my throat burn something awful. The twins stared at me, their jet black hair spilling out from under their color-matched
headbands and their chubby cheeks all ruddy as they waited anxiously for my reaction.

What was happening? What had I been thinking? How had I not noticed? I wiped the sweat off my forehead and asked, ‘Where is Armen now?’

They shrugged their shoulders and looked at me with pouting faces.

I looked at the sweet peas, blowing in the breeze. It was near sundown and the ledge was in shadow. A bee was buzzing around one of the flowers.

Arsineh’s eyes were still red and Armineh was searching in her satchel for something. She took out a notebook and a book, and held them out to me. ‘Miss Manya gave this for
you.’ It was the manuscript of the translation of
Little Lord Fauntleroy
with the original English text.

I told them to sit and have their snack, and went off to the living room. Back in the green leather chair, my gaze settled on the bare windows whose drapes I had washed that day. I thought of
Emily. Was it really possible? Artoush had said, ‘What a sweet girl.’ I had thought, ‘How shy.’ I thought of the glass of vinegar and chutney again, and I don’t know
why but it reminded me of the day Armen was born.

Artoush’s cousin had come to visit us from Tabriz with her husband. At lunch, Mother and Alice were there too. I was going back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room, and
hearing snippets of conversation.

‘This is an unprecedented cold spell!’

‘It may even snow.’

‘Snow? In Abadan? Don’t be silly. We’re not in Tabriz, you know.’

‘Clarice, don’t walk so much. It’s not good for you.’

‘Are you kidding? Today she followed the gardener all around the yard and drove in the stakes for all the tomato plants.’

‘She drove in what?’

‘They drive stakes in the ground next to tomato plants to train them while they grow. They twine the branches around the stakes.’

‘People don’t grow tomatoes at home, in Tabriz.’

‘What do they ever grow at home, in Tabriz?!’

It was the first time I had planted tomatoes. Every morning, the first thing I did was go to the backyard and check on my still green and very tiny tomatoes.

That evening we went to Khorramshahr to drop off Artoush’s cousin and her husband at the train station. On the way back, near the outskirts of Abadan, my contractions started, so we headed
straight to the hospital. It was the middle of the night when Armen was born. I lay awake until morning, shivering in the Oil Company hospital bed. I assumed that all my cold and shivering was a
result of giving birth. But when Alice and Mother came to the hospital that morning, they were wearing their thick woolens.

‘It was freezing last night!’

‘The temperature went down below zero centigrade.’

‘It never got this cold in the past fifty years.’

‘All the plants and flowers in town are shriveled up, blackened in the frost.’

‘The tomato plants...’ I exclaimed.

Mother picked up Armen in her arms. ‘A whole city full of plants and flowers and tomatoes aren’t worth a single hair of the head of my grandson.’

Alice kissed Armen on the head with a hearty laugh. ‘What hair?’

When I got back home from the hospital I went straight to the backyard. The hard frost had shriveled all the tomato plants. I sunk to the ground and broke into tears.

‘Aren’t you ashamed to cry for a few lousy tomato plants?’ chided Mother.

Artoush slid his hands under my arms and scooped me up.

Alice said, ‘Post-partum depression.’

Mother replied, ‘What nonsense. Take the child inside; don’t let him catch cold.’

In the room we’d set up for Armen, I looked at the curtains I had embroidered with my own hands, and the colorful photos of mice and cats and rabbits we had hung on the walls. I turned
down the baby blanket that Mother had knitted for the crib and laid Armen down to sleep. I wiped my tears and said, ‘My poor little baby.’

Now, leaning back in the leather chair, I wiped my tears and gazed through the window at the cloudless sky. Someone had given a glass of vinegar to ‘my poor little baby.’ It made me
sad. I wished that he was not so grown up. When he was little, he only did what I wanted him to do – ate only what I wanted him to eat, went only where I wanted him to go. And now... Now
someone had made him swallow a glass of vinegar, and I hadn’t even noticed. My thoughts turned to Emily. Where had she learned to do such things?

I still had the notebook in my hand. I opened it to Vazgen’s steady and legible handwriting. He always wrote with black ink. I’ll read it later, I thought. I closed the notebook, set
it on the bookshelf and returned to the kitchen. Arsineh and Armineh were whispering together. When they saw me they jumped up.

‘Armen just came in and went to his room.’

‘Was it wrong for us...’

‘...to tell you?’

‘You won’t punish him, will you?’

‘You won’t punish him, will you?’

I assured them that they had done nothing wrong and that I would not punish Armen. I told them to go do their homework.

I knocked on his door. ‘It’s not locked,’ he said.

He was stretched out on the bed, arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling. I sat down beside him. Years ago I had replaced those embroidered curtains in his room. I had given away the baby
crib and packed away the baby blanket in a suitcase in the storage room. What had I done with the pictures? I couldn’t remember. It had been a few years now since those pictures of the mouse,
the cat, and the rabbit had given way to posters of Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Lancaster. Posters of Claudia Cardinale and Brigitte Bardot.

I looked at him and felt I was seeing a stranger. Until that morning, my fifteen-year-old boy had still been my poor little baby, and now...I looked at his eyelashes, still the same as when he
was a child. Long and up-turned. He still had a mark near his left eye from the chicken pox, which he got when he was a year old. I was noticing it all for what seemed like the first time in
fifteen years. I was trying to figure out what to say to him when he, still staring at the ceiling, came to my aid.

‘I know what I did was wrong. It was not Arsineh’s fault.’

Any other time, slapping Arsineh in the face would be reason enough to give him a good scolding and a nice long lecture, but now I only wanted him to talk about the deeper subject at hand, for
me to talk to him, and for us to talk together, about Emily and – it was difficult for me to voice this aloud – about being in love.

I did not know where to begin or how. I looked at the map of Iran on the wall above his bed. My eyes circled around a lake and I leaned in closer to read its name: Bakhtegan. I remembered my
appointment with Mrs. Nurollahi and wondered why it was that I knew the names of all the cities on the map of Armenia without ever having seen them, and yet did not know the names of the lakes of
Iran?

I tried to recall how I felt during my engagement to Artoush. It was the only time in my life I would consider myself to have been in love. I could not remember much of it. The time between our
first meeting and the engagement was not long, and the marriage followed not long after that. A week after the birthday party of our mutual friend, I ran into Artoush near our house. I was
surprised first, and then felt happy.

Artoush seemed to be surprised as well. ‘What an interesting coincidence!’

‘Yes, what a coincidence!’

One day, later on, we were walking down Saadi Avenue eating piroshkis we had bought at Bakery Mignon. He asked me, ‘You mean you did not realize I came around on purpose?’

Surprised again, I asked, ‘How did you know where I lived?’

With great gravity, he explained, ‘Yes, indeed, it was extremely difficult to find your address, but...’ I don’t know what he saw in my eyes that interrupted his monologue and
made him laugh. ‘Well, I asked around.’ Then he put his arm around my shoulder. ‘It’s this innocence about you that I like so much.’

My eyes fixed on Lake Bakhtegan, I wondered whether it was innocence or idiocy.

Armen, still staring at the ceiling, asked, ‘Did you and Father fall in love with each other before getting married?’

I was caught off balance. Unexpected questions, unforeseen behavior, anything I could not prepare myself for ahead of time made me lose my poise, and Armen was a master at it. Now he was staring
at me instead of at the ceiling, waiting for an answer.

I got up and went to the window. I thought of the day many years ago when the high school algebra teacher unexpectedly called on me out of turn, and I did not know how to solve the equation on
the blackboard. I could feel the eyes of my classmates boring through the back of my head and I saw the teacher out of the corner of my eye waiting impatiently, rapping his fingers rhythmically on
the table. My heart was pounding and sweat was pouring off me. I kept repeating to myself, ‘Oh God, help me. Make it end quickly.’

My heart was not racing now, nor was I dripping with sweat, but I wanted it to end quickly. With my eyes on the jujube tree and my back to my son, I told him, ‘I was just like you, I did
not really like math.’

Armen did not come out of his room all night and when I called him to dinner, he shouted from his room, ‘I’m not hungry.’

The twins ate dinner in silence, brushed their teeth in silence, got their pyjamas on and went to bed. They did not ask for a story, nor did they try their usual tricks to stay up late. Neither
Rapunzel nor Ishy went missing that night.

Artoush was sitting in front of the television. In one hand he held a book of chess strategy and with the other he was stroking his beard. The chessboard was open on the table.

I sat down beside him and watched a few minutes of television. There was a documentary on about the date palm orchards near Ahvaz. ‘Mother is right,’ I said. ‘From now on we
had better keep a bit of distance from the Simonians.’

His hand hung motionless on his beard. ‘Why?’

I recounted the story. He listened to the part about the glass of vinegar and chutney. When I got to the part about the handwriting in the school bus he laughed. At Arsineh getting slapped by
Armen, he returned to his book and the chessboard. ‘Don’t take it too seriously. That’s how kids are. By the way, Emile said he was taking the afternoon off tomorrow to come over
and change the flowerpots with you? Or plant flowers? Something like that. I don’t remember exactly.’

For a few moments I forgot about Armen and Emily and the glass of vinegar and keeping a bit of distance from the Simonians. I twirled my hair around my finger. ‘How interesting. So he did
not forget.’

Artoush moved the pieces around. ‘He didn’t forget what?’ In the documentary an Arab man was about to climb a palm tree.

‘A few days ago he said he would come over so we could change the soil of the sweet peas. I thought he was just saying it to be polite.’

Artoush raised his head and looked at me for a few moments. ‘Sweet peas?’

‘The sweet peas on the kitchen ledge.’

‘The kitchen?’

I drew a deep breath, sunk back in the sofa, and fixed my gaze on the television. The Arab was shinnying swiftly up the palm tree. ‘We have a house, this house has a kitchen, the kitchen
has a window, and on the ledge of this window we have for years had a flower box, and once a year I plant sweet peas in this flower box, and twice a year I change the...’ The Arab had reached
the top of the date palm.

Artoush twirled a chess piece in his hand. ‘Ahh.’ Then he sneered. ‘He’s taking the afternoon off to change the soil in a flower box? Really, now!’

‘He didn’t take the afternoon off for our flower box. He wants to plant some flowers in his own yard.’ I remembered the glass of vinegar and chutney again. ‘But I believe
it would be better to keep a distance from the Simonians.’

He closed the chess book. His finger was saving his place. ‘Making mountains out of molehills again? They’re kids. They fight, they make up. They fight again. What does our keeping a
distance or not have to do with these things?’

You are only worried about losing a chess partner, I said to myself. To Artoush I said, ‘You’re right. There’s nothing I don’t make a big deal out of. Every time I talk
to you I’m making a big deal out of something.’

For a second or two he looked at the ceiling, then at the television, then he stood up. He tossed the chess book on the table and left the room. A black pawn tumbled over and rolled under the
chair.

The TV announcer, Mrs. Doorandeesh, smiled. ‘And I wish you a pleasant evening.’

I was choked with emotion, almost in tears.

Alice was so excited she could barely talk straight. ‘He telephoned. Can you believe it? He phoned the hospital. He invited me to dinner at the Club.’ She was
laughing, hiccupping, and walking round and round me and Mother and the kitchen table.

Mother got up, opened the fridge, poured a glass of water, gave it to Alice and said, ‘God help us. She’s gone stark raving mad.’