Things We Left Unsaid (10 page)

I was about to blow up. ‘Her son telephoned.’

She was quiet for a few seconds. Then her tone changed. ‘So, please don’t forget and...I’ve set aside a jar of chutney for you.’

I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t make sense of her hot and cold behavior. I said I would speak with Ashkhen, thanked her for the chutney, and put the phone down. I had better warn Ashkhen what
she would be getting herself into.

The children’s piano teacher was an English woman, fair-skinned and blond. She had married an Iranian man, and despite living for many years in Iran, her Persian was much
worse than us Armenians. Before the children’s lesson began, she told me, ‘My telephone number...you, to Mizzus, Mizzus, what is her name? Your neighbor.’

‘Simonian,’ I said.

She clapped her hand on her freckled forehead. ‘Ahh! Simonian. She called today. She very strange woman. She say come tune our piano. I say I am no piano tuner. She spoke with bad
manners.’ She arched her thin blond eyebrows and shrugged her delicate shoulders. She waved her upturned fingers in the air a couple times, with their red polished nails, beckoning the
children to follow her to the piano room.

I took a seat in the parlor, feeling embarrassed, as if I was the one who had done something awful. While waiting for the children to finish their lesson, I glanced over the plaid easy chairs,
the chintz drapes, the little statues, the large paintings, the silver and china dishes, and waged an internal struggle: ‘What does it have to do with you? You are not responsible for the
wrong-doings of anyone else. Artoush is right. You should not socialize much with this family.’ Taking in the room’s decor, it occurred to me that dusting all these tiny statuettes,
heavy busts, paintings, and dishes must take quite a long time.

On the bus on the way home I tried to explain to the twins why they should not ask after Emily so much. ‘Emily has more homework, and her classes are harder than yours. And I suppose her
grandmother does not like Emily to go out of the house too much. Everyone has their own ways, and we have to respect that.’

Arsineh blew away a curl that had fallen over her forehead into her eyes. ‘But Emily is our friend. We like her a lot.’

Armineh put the piano book down on the seat next to her and took her sister’s hand. ‘Every day she says “I wish I could come to your house.” ’

Poor Emily, I thought. If it were me, I would also long to get away from that jail and its jailer.

‘Can we go to the
Store
?’ asked Armineh.

‘Can we buy
Smarties
?’ asked Arsineh.

We got off at the stop near the
Store.

The supermarket was cool and fragrant, as always. The twins ran straight for the candy counter. ‘Basket or cart?’ the clerk asked me. ‘Basket, please.’ I hooked the
shopping basket over my arm and headed directly to the health and hygiene section. A woman was leaning over her grocery cart looking at the shelf of soaps and lotions. Her cart was full of
different kinds of Cadbury chocolates. We smiled at one another and, as though obliged to explain, she said, ‘I’m taking souvenirs for some Tehranis who rarely get their hands on
imported chocolates.’ She laughed and I laughed back. ‘They also asked for soap and lotion. I’m not sure which soap to pick.’

I picked up a bar of Vinolia soap and put it in my basket. ‘I always take Vinolia for souvenirs.’ She picked four bars of the soap and dropped them in her cart, along with three jars
of Yardley hand cream. She said goodbye and, with some difficulty, got her cart to roll forward. I took a jar of Yardley and placed it in my basket.

I made the circuit of the store and got two boxes of Nice cookie wafers, the kind Artoush liked, and Haliborange vitamin syrup for the children.

Arsineh and Armineh turned up with their hands full of chocolates. Armineh said, ‘You told us to remind you to...’ Arsineh finished, ‘...buy bread and milk from the
Dairy
.’ I told them to return half of their chocolates to the candy counter, and then we went over to what the Abadanis called the
Dairy
, a little room attached to the
supermarket, and bought rolls and milk.

When we arrived home, exhausted by the heat, Artoush’s car was in the garage.

Armineh said, ‘Oh, goody! Father is home.’

Arsineh said, ‘Father is home. Goody!’

We could hear voices in the living room. Armineh set her piano book down on the telephone table. ‘Do we have guests?’ Before I could say that the piano book does not belong on the
telephone table, Arsineh picked it up and said, ‘We have guests.’

I wondered who was here. Alice was working the afternoon shift this week, and Mother would always sit in the kitchen, and Armen must be in his own room, because the music on his portable Teppaz
turntable was loud enough to hear three houses away. Armineh looked at me. ‘Maybe it’s one of Father’s acquaintances.’

Arsineh said, ‘The green Cadillac was not in the garage.’ She plunged her hand into the grocery bag and fished out a box of Smarties.

Armineh stroked her chin, as if to play with a beard, in imitation of Artoush. ‘Actually, I forgot to tell you. A few of the fellows are coming over.’

Arsineh burst out laughing. ‘Manners!’ I reminded her, and she obligingly stifled her laughter.

‘A few of the fellows’ referred to three middle-aged men who sometimes came to our place. They were not Armenian. They would sit, not on the living room sofa, but at the dining
table, and when I took tea in to them, they would thank me profusely. Artoush would close the door behind me as I left the room, and for an hour or two I would only hear muffled voices.

Armineh turned to her sister and mimicked one of the three, the tall fellow who spoke in a staccato fashion. ‘Par-don me...Would it be pos-si-ble to leave the Ca-dil-lac in the
ga-rage?’ The first time the tall fellow came over, he asked to leave his green Cadillac in the garage, because the sun would damage its paint. It became a habit every time he came over; even
in twilight, when there was no sun, he left the Cadillac in the garage and closed both of the double doors.

Angry at Artoush for forgetting to tell me that he was to have guests, I yelled at the twins, ‘Wash your faces and hands and do your homework.’ When the twins ran off to their room,
I went to the kitchen.

I had seen the green Cadillac in front of Shahandeh’s store a few times, under the blazing sun. When I mentioned this to Artoush, he shrugged. ‘Well, there’s no garage near
Shahandeh’s store.’

I began putting away the stuff I had bought. I did not know the names of these three people, and I did not want to know. ‘Won’t it cause problems to have them come over here?’
I had once asked Artoush after they left. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’re just shooting the breeze.’

I put the bread in the breadbox, grumbling to myself, ‘Just shooting the breeze, my foot!’ and went to the living room.

There, instead of ‘Father’s acquaintances,’ as the twins put it, I saw Emile Simonian, who got up as I walked in, said hello and extended his hand. I shook it and quickly
withdrew my hand. The hand cream was still on the kitchen table. We exchanged pleasantries and I asked, ‘Care for coffee?’

While the coffee was brewing, I washed my hands at the kitchen faucet, opened the Yardley hand cream and rubbed some on my hands.

I headed for the living room with a tray of coffee and wondered how it came about that Artoush had invited Emile over. Artoush said, ‘Did you know that Emile is a mean chess
player?’

Well, there was my answer. I thought of our honeymoon in Isfahan and Shiraz. For hours Artoush, with infinite patience, had tried to teach me to play chess, but I never learned.

Emile lifted his coffee cup and looked at the window. ‘What pretty drapes.’

I had embroidered the lace flower trim along the hem of the drapes myself, and liked them quite a lot. But no one (other than Mother, who had said, ‘Your tastes take after mine’)
ever complimented the drapes. As Artoush set up the chess pieces I left the room. I told the twins to bring their dictation notebooks to the kitchen and told Armen to turn down the record
player.

I was thinking about what to fix for dinner when Armineh and Arsineh ran in, pouting.

‘My dictation notebook is missing.’

‘My pencil case is missing.’ They stomped on the floor in unison.

‘That Armen!’

‘That Armen!’ I said, and got up.

Armen’s door was locked, as usual. Instead of knocking, I jerked on the doorknob, twisting it left and right several times. The second I said, ‘Again, you took...’ Armen
shouted from inside the room, ‘The cabinet in the living room.’ Still facing the closed door, I said, ‘You have a real sickness, you know,’ and headed for the living
room.

Emile looked up. The top button of his shirt was undone, revealing a fine gold chain. I opened the door of the china cabinet. Emile asked Artoush, ‘What was going on today? Everyone left
early.’

Artoush stroked his beard, his eyes on the chessboard. ‘There was a speech. Why didn’t you come?’

‘A speech?’

‘Pegov was speaking.’

‘Pegov?’

‘Nikolai Pegov, the Soviet Ambassador.’

‘I see.’

I collected the dictation book and the pencil case from the china cabinet and returned to the kitchen.

I was boiling macaroni noodles for dinner when the doorbell rang. It was Emily, conveying a message from her grandmother that they were waiting on her father for dinner. Emile jumped up.
‘I wasn’t paying attention to the time.’ He reacted just like his daughter, the first time her grandmother had come after her.

Artoush looked like a kid whose toys had just been yanked away from him. The twins pleaded, ‘Let them stay for dinner.’ I forgot all about those limits on socializing and my vow
‘never to subject myself to that again,’ and told Emile, ‘Why don’t you stay for dinner? I’ll call your mother.’ Artoush affirmed the invitation, and the twins
each grabbed an arm, tugging me toward the telephone. Armen’s door was open, and he was leaning on the door jamb.

Elmira Simonian not only agreed to let her son and granddaughter stay, she even agreed to come herself. After this quick and unexpected acceptance, the twins jumped for joy, and Emile and
Artoush returned to their chess game. Seeing Emily’s smile, I thought ‘the innocent child.’ My back was to Armen, so I didn’t see if he was happy or not.

They sat cross-legged on their beds, clutching Ishy and Rapunzel, respectively.

Armineh said, ‘You didn’t tell us why, but we finally figured out all by ourselves why Emily’s grandmother never got bigger.’

Arsineh, with great gravity, explained, ‘Because she didn’t get vaccinated.’

Whenever it was time for the twins to get a shot, I had to cajole them with pleas, explanations, and warnings, including: ‘You won’t get bigger if you don’t get
vaccinated.’

Artoush laughed when I told him half an hour later what they had said. I sat down beside him. ‘Mrs. Simonian has a lot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in her. You start thinking she is a
selfish, beastly creature, then she does something totally unexpected, something that makes you want to like her. Those were wonderful stories she told! And you have to admit that her piano playing
was flawless.’

After dinner, first Emily and the twins had played the piano. Then Mrs. Simonian had played the difficult parts of their lessons for them, before taking song requests, and finishing up with some
old Armenian melodies. I believe that even Armen didn’t notice that Mrs. Simonian’s feet did not reach the pedals.

Artoush yawned. ‘They are not bad people. Nothing wrong with Emile’s chess playing, either!’

‘Where did the political discussion lead?’ I inquired.

He clasped his hands behind his head. ‘Nowhere. Emile lives in his own world and marches to his own tune.’

I picked a pistachio shell off the carpet. ‘What world is that?’

He let his hands drop, drawing them across his goatee. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Literature, poetry, that sort of thing.’ I juggled the pistachio shell from one hand to the other.
Mrs. Simonian had said, ‘No matter how hard I tried, he didn’t learn to play piano. Instead, he began reading books and composing poems before he even started going to
school.’

I tossed the pistachio shell in the ashtray. ‘Well, what’s wrong with reading books?’

Artoush stretched his legs out on the coffee table in front of the sofa and looked at the blank TV screen. ‘Nothing wrong with it at all. As long as it has a point, or offers a solution,
or teaches people something, and isn’t simply an amusing pastime. Emile doesn’t seem to be living in this world.’

I twirled a strand of hair around my finger. ‘You mean to say that anyone who reads or loves poetry is not living in this world?’

He yawned. ‘Poems and stories don’t pay the rent. Oh, by the way! Mrs. Nurollahi said she wanted to ask you something. She said she would phone.’

What could Mrs. Nurollahi want with me?

Mrs. Simonian had said, ‘A very important journal published a number of Emile’s poems. One of his stories won an award.’

What could Mrs. Nurollahi want with me?

Artoush asked, ‘Did you figure out what ever happened to Ishy and Rapunzel?’

After the Simonians had left, Ishy and Rapunzel were missing. We all suspected Armen, as usual. But Armen, who usually gave a mischievous smile and eventually admitted where he had hidden his
sisters’ toys, was serious this time and even had a tear in his eye as he protested, ‘I swear to God, to the Christ, to Mary, to all that is holy, I didn’t hide them.’
Finally, Artoush found Ishy and Rapunzel outside, in the yard, beneath the window of the twins’ bedroom.

I tucked the strand of hair I was twirling behind my ear. ‘I don’t think it was Armen’s doing.’ Artoush closed his eyes and leaned back in the sofa. I stared at the dark
TV screen. So, could it have been the girl’s doing?

Artoush opened his eyes, stood up and stretched. ‘Will you get the lights, or shall I?’

‘I will,’ I answered.

While I was clearing the dinner table, Emile had asked, ‘Clarice, can I lend a hand?’ Was it his offer of help, or his calling me by my first name, that made me happy? I turned out
the living room lights and before retiring to the bedroom, put the jar of chutney that Mrs. Simonian had brought in the back of one of the kitchen cupboards. It was the cupboard where I kept things
I rarely used.