Things We Left Unsaid (28 page)

Mother said crossly, ‘No laughing with your mouths full. It will get stuck in your throat.’

Alice put her lipstick and compact case back in her purse and glowered at Garnik.

Nina slapped the back of Garnik’s hand. ‘Stealing from my plate, again?’ Then she turned to Alice. ‘Forget about him, you know how he is – just waiting for some
excuse to talk rubbish. Don’t you have a date tonight?’

Alice looked at her nails, turned the ring on her finger and pursed her lips. ‘Joop is busy tonight. He has to write a letter to his mother and his aunt.’

Garnik cracked up again, and after a good laugh, he said, ‘Couldn’t be busier than that!’ He winked at the twins and Sophie, who had caught the giggles from his infectious
laughter.

Alice announced, ‘I’ll have to take a couple of days off work, soon.’

Nina elbowed Garnik and said to the still tittering children, ‘What are you standing around here for? Go on, skedaddle!’

Mother was fanning herself and Artoush was spinning the fruit knife on the table.

Armen was leaning over my shoulder trying to reach the plate of sweets. I gave him two cookies and looked at Violette, who had not said a word since she arrived. What’s wrong with her, I
wondered?

Sophie said, ‘We want to play house with the dolls.’

Armineh said, ‘We want to get out the dolls...’

Arsineh said, ‘...and we want to play house.’

Armen said, ‘I’m going to ride my bike.’

Alice said, ‘I have no choice but to take some days off work.’

Violette got up and went to the window. ‘Did the locusts eat the flowers?’

I looked at her. She had her hair in a ponytail and was wearing white flats. She swiped her finger on the window, leaving a smudge. ‘Poor things,’ she said. Was it my imagination, or
did she have a faint smile on her lips?

This time Alice said it very loud. ‘I have to go to Tehran to...’

‘Tehran?’ asked Nina. ‘What for?’

With her back to us, Violette said, ‘When they migrate they fly for kilometers. Each locust eats its own weight in foliage every day. In Cambodia, cooked locusts are considered a
delicacy.’ I did not need to guess where she had heard that.

‘To renew my passport,’ Alice replied. ‘Joop said we’ll go to Holland together in September to see his mother and aunt. We’ll get married there. Of course, we may
have a small wedding party here first.’

Me, Mother, Artoush, Nina, and Garnik all turned to Alice.

Violette turned to us. ‘Poor things.’

We all looked at Violette, who was looking back at us. ‘I meant the locusts.’ Then she turned to Alice and laughed. ‘How marvelous! Congratulations.’

Alice smiled a little. ‘Thank you, Violette. At least one person has sense enough to congratulate me.’ She slid her chair back and stood up, turning her big round head toward Mother,
who was still staring at her open-mouthed. ‘I’m going. Are you coming with me, or staying?’

Mother jumped up and tugged hard at her purse strap, slung over the back of the chair. The strap broke. Mother tucked the purse under her arm with its broken strap and walked out of the kitchen
after Alice. Her chair tottered back and forth a few times before falling over. We all stared at the toppled chair.

I do not know how much time passed before Violette, to shake us all out of our trance, jokingly recited the line from the children’s game: ‘Red light, green light, freeze! Nobody
move...’ Then she stepped forward, set the chair upright and sat down on it.

Now all eyes were on Violette, picking out a pair of cherries connected at the stem from the fruit bowl. She looked them over. ‘How pretty!’ She hung them over her ear as if they
were an earring and glanced at each of us in turn. She arched her thick eyebrows. ‘Well, why are you all speechless? Marriage is not such bad news, is it? After all, I’m going to get
married, too.’

At that moment both the twins and Sophie ran in, out of breath. They each lifted a finger in the air, imitating a pupil asking the teacher for permission. ‘May we ride our bikes,
sir?’

Violette turned her profile to the children, tilting her head left and right. ‘Isn’t my earring pretty?’ The two cherries were swinging back and forth, making the children
laugh. Violette laughed as well. ‘Girls, would you like to be bridesmaids at my wedding?’

Armineh, Arsineh, and Sophie jumped up and down, clapping. ‘Super, super! What color dresses will we wear?’

‘Pink for me,’ said Armineh.

‘Blue for me,’ said Sophie.

‘Pink for me,’ said Arsineh. Artoush looked at me, Garnik at Nina, and Nina at Violette. The girls were dancing around in a ring, calling out, ‘Wedding, wedding!’

Violette took the cherries off her ear, plucked out their twin stems, and ate them both.

Garnik asked Nina, ‘What did she say?’

Nina asked Violette, ‘What did you say?’

Violette got up, tossed the two pits in the dessert plate and said, ‘Kids, come on. Let’s decide who will wear what color. I will wear white, of course, because I am the bride. You
all...’ And she stepped out of the kitchen with the kids.

Nina stood up. ‘She’s off her rocker.’ She told Garnik, ‘Get up. Get up, let’s go see what in the world’s gotten into your niece; it’s obvious
she’s even nuttier than I am.’

I stayed in the kitchen with Artoush, who was scooting the sugar shaker back and forth from one hand to the other. Kshsh...Kshsh...Kshsh...Kshsh. I held my tongue...Held my tongue...Held my
tongue. In the end, I shouted, ‘Stop it!’

I was uneasy in the green leather chair, tucking up my legs, stretching them out, sitting up straight, slouching to the side. I dangled my arms over the armrests, then folded
them across my chest. I leaned all the way back, closed my eyes, then opened them again. I picked up Sardo’s novel from the bookcase, read two or three lines from the spot I had bookmarked,
then closed the book. I didn’t care any more whether the man in the story would choose love or responsibility. I hated the hero of the story for being so stupid, and the heroine for not
seeing the hero’s stupidity. I got up and went to the kitchen, chiding myself, ‘You are the stupidest of them all.’

A glance at the kitchen clock showed that the children would be back before too long. I opened the refrigerator. We had no milk, not much cheese, and the butter was missing. I was sure we had
had butter that morning. Glancing around the kitchen, I spied the butter dish. It had been left out on the counter since morning and the butter was by now almost completely melted. The unwashed
dishes from breakfast were piled up in the sink.

How many times over the past seventeen years had the breakfast dishes sat unwashed in the sink until the end of the day? Maybe only once or twice, and that in the final months I was pregnant
with the twins. My eyes settled on the silhouette of Sayat Nova. Two of the thumbtacks were missing, and the head of the poet was sagging away from the wall. I went closer. My, it was ugly! How
come I had always thought of it as pretty? Maybe because Artoush’s niece had sent it to us from Armenia? But it did not matter where it came from. It was ugly and, stupid me, up until that
very moment I had fancied it was pretty.

I tore down the silhouette and crumpled it up. And then I crumpled it some more, balling it up until it fitted in the palm of one hand. I juggled the balled-up paper from hand to hand a few
times, turned toward the garbage pail and took a shot. Sayat Nova hit the rim of the pail and fell to the floor. I picked up my purse and left the house.

The gate of G-4 was half open. I walked all the way to the water tank in the neighborhood square. I passed by the benches and the leafless trees and the deflowered oleander bushes. I tried not
to look around me as I walked along. I had never seen Abadan the color of dust; the city looked tired and listless. Like myself, very tired and very listless.

At Adib’s store, a sign hanging on the door said: CLOSED. I had never come at this hour of the day to buy anything, and so had never seen this sign before. And I never came at that hour,
knowing the store was closed from one to three o’clock.

I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to three and the children would be home in another hour. We had no butter and not much cheese, and the children would be left snackless. How could I
have forgotten we were out of cheese and milk, and that the store closed for a long lunch? Instead of tending to the duties of the house that morning, I had squirmed around in the leather chair,
resenting the heroine of the story and her stupidity, and the hero’s stupidity, and...

I took a deep breath and rapped on the glass door with my wedding ring, right in the center of the letter ‘O.’

I exhaled when Mr. Adib opened the door. ‘Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Doc? You’ve never come around at this time before!’

The store was hot and dark. Mr. Adib chatted as he weighed out the butter and the cheese. ‘Ever seen such hot weather? They say it’s ’cause of the locusts. After a locus’
attack, the weather heats up. For sure, the kids’ll jump in the Shatt. And God knows how many of ’em the sharks’ll get. What’re the poor things to do? The heat makes
’em reckless. I for one have never seen such hot weather.’

I was looking at Mr. Adib’s scale, rusted in places and the pans warped or dented here and there. I did not have the patience to tell Mr. Adib, ‘You have seen even hotter weather
than this. Me, too. Tonight and tomorrow night and the next night, the kids of the Arab quarter, of Ahmadabad, and of neighborhoods I’ve never been to and don’t even know the names of,
will jump in the Shatt for the umpteenth time, and if the sharks don’t take their life, they’ll take their arm or their leg, and we’ll hear from Alice that “they brought
seven shark-bite victims to the hospital yesterday, eight today, ten last night.” Me and Artoush and Mother will say “tsk tsk” and after a shorter or longer spate of silence
– whatever seems appropriate for a death or the loss of a limb – we’ll concentrate on our own children, who will be asking, “What are we having for our after-school snack?
What are we having for dinner? The heat is killing us! Why don’t you turn up the air conditioner?” ’

‘I just got a shipment of some first-class Halva,’ said Mr. Adib. ‘Shall I get you some?’

At our house no one liked Halva but me. ‘A few ounces, please,’ I said.

With the bag in hand, I headed for home. Our street was empty and the sun was hot. Even the frogs were quiet. The door of G-4 was closed.

As I entered our yard, I saw him standing by the door of our house. I passed by the dusty flowerbeds and the denuded trees and bushes.

‘Barev, Clarice.’ His green eyes were the only speck of green to be seen.

‘Barev,’ I said, and opened the front door. ‘I bought some butter. Before it melts, let me put it in the fridge.’ He followed behind me into the kitchen. I put the
butter, cheese, and Halva in the refrigerator and started to wash the dishes. Behind me I heard no footsteps and no chair dragging across the tiles. So he was not sitting down, but must still be
standing in the doorway.

My polite side whispered, ‘It’s bad manners, ask him to sit down.’ I turned my head around. He was staring at the empty space where Sayat Nova had been.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ I said.

He sat down and got straight to the heart of the matter. From the first day he saw Violette in our house something told him, she is the woman you have been searching for all these years. The
next day, as he was leaving the Company, he sees Violette again, who happened to be passing by. They go together to the
Milk Bar
for coffee, and they talk. They arrange a few further
meetings on the banks of the Shatt.

The clean dishes were in the dish rack. As I sat listening to him, I remembered: Artoush had said, ‘Violette asked me and Emile all kinds of questions about which division of the Company
we work in and what we do. I couldn’t imagine these things would be of interest to her.’

Nina had remarked: ‘Violette is still upset about the divorce. At sunset she walks alone along the banks of the Shatt.’

And Violette herself had told the kids: ‘One day soon I’ll take you to the
Milk Bar
for ice cream.’

And when Garnik asked her, ‘How do you know about the
Milk Bar
, you little imp?’ she just smiled.

Emile was worn out. He kept running his hands through his hair, putting them in his pocket, pushing back his chair, pulling it forward, talking. ‘My mother never approves of anything I do.
She always thinks I am making a mistake. She doesn’t believe I can reason things through to the end. She has always done things by the book. She doesn’t believe in love. But the meaning
of life is love, no? Surely, you agree with me?’

He was quiet for a while, looking at me with anticipation.

I put out my cigarette in the ashtray, and sat quietly, thinking. I don’t want to know what decision the man in Sardo’s story takes. I don’t like Sardo’s writing. I lit
another cigarette.

He said, ‘I didn’t know you smoke.’ And then he began to talk about Violette again, about how guileless she is, how kind, how humble. How much she likes poetry and music. He
talked just like a Sardo novel.

When we heard the voices of the children coming up the path, Emile got up. ‘Will you talk to my mother? I don’t wish to offend her, but if she will not agree, I will have no
choice...’ He said goodbye, and then looked doubtfully at me. Then he took me by the arm and said, ‘Please.’ And then he left.

I gave the kids their snack and tried to concentrate on what they were saying.

‘The math test was very easy.’

‘We have two weeks to go before the end-of-year celebration.’

‘We were practicing the poem “Four Seasons” today.’

‘Emily is Cinderella in the play.’

‘The Prince will be played by a classmate of...’

Armen gathered up his sandwich and his milk, and slid his chair back. ‘I have a geography test tomorrow.’

The twins watched Armen go to his room and close the door. Then they lowered their voices. Armineh said, ‘After the rehearsal, Armen slapped his classmate, the one playing the
prince.’