Things We Left Unsaid (29 page)

Arsineh added, ‘But before they could fight, the principal came by.’

‘What did Emily do?’ I asked.

They answered in tandem. ‘She laughed.’

It was late in the afternoon and the sun was no longer so intense. But our old Chevrolet was parked on the street, and the garage was wide open to welcome the green Cadillac.
The twins were leaning on their elbows over the kitchen table, flipping through the monthly issue of
Lusaber
. I took the magazine. ‘You have an exam tomorrow.’

Armineh pouted, her lower lip protruding. ‘We just got it today.’

Arsineh’s lower lip followed suit. ‘At least let us flip through it to the end.’

I tossed the magazine on the counter. ‘Before bed. For now, revise your history, and I’ll quiz you.’ They looked at one another and left the kitchen without another word. For
the last couple of weeks they had not been stubbornly insisting on things. I wondered why. Was it because the children sensed I had no patience?

Artoush said, ‘They’re not big coffee drinkers, they’ll have tea.’ I filled up the kettle and set it on the stove. Half an hour later I took the tea tray to the living
room. The guests said thank you under their breath. Artoush smiled and closed the door behind me.

I went to the bedroom and stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling fan while I had a little talk with myself: How come you only notice the stupidity of others? Why don’t you listen
properly to what people are saying? Why do you criticize Alice? You are worse than she is.

I got up and went to the window. It was sunset and the branches of the lotus tree looked greyish in the fading light. I should be doing something, anything to occupy my mind and keep it from
ruminating. Shall I straighten the drawers? I had done that only last week. Read? The books were all in the living room and I did not want to disturb Artoush and his guests. Even that was just an
excuse, as I did not feel much like reading. And dinner was already prepared. I could go to the garage – for some time I had been meaning to sort through the junk piling up in the garage and
toss some of the stuff out.

As I stepped out the front door I heard a noise. It sounded as if someone was sneaking through the boxwood hedge into the garage. Who could that be? Artoush’s guests were still in the
living room and the children were studying. The door to our garage was now closed. So was Mr. Rahimi’s. Armen had better not be messing about! He might scratch the Cadillac or something.
Stupid me – here I thought my boy was all grown up. I opened our garage door.

I don’t know who was more scared, me or the young man bent over the open trunk of the Cadillac. I screamed. The man turned around with an armful of papers and as I screamed a second time,
his foot caught on the bumper and he fell to the ground. He cried out in pain on the garage floor, his flyers scattered all about.

Artoush was sitting at the kitchen table. ‘How many times are you going to ask me? I said I did not know. I was not aware of it. They decided this on their own.’ He
was pushing the sugar shaker back and forth on the table.

I was shaking and shouting and I did not care a whit if I was yelling. ‘You didn’t know? Your precious friend deliberately parks his Cadillac in our garage to...’

‘He’s not my friend.’

‘Whatever. Your precious enemy. Of course he’s not your friend! A friend would not treat a friend like this. He drinks our tea and coffee, spinning his ridiculous plans, and
meanwhile orders his minion to come and collect seditious flyers from our garage? What if they were following him? What if they broke into our house? If you were, and still are, so hell-bent on
being a political activist, you should never have married. You should never have had children. If SAVAK broke in here, what would happen to me and the children? You don’t think of anyone but
yourself!’

On and on, I held nothing back. Artoush just took it. Then he picked up the sugar shaker from the table. I was still yelling: ‘Thoughtless, selfish.’ He was playing with the cap of
the sugar shaker.

‘I slave day and night for you and the children, and for what? So you can do just exactly as you please. So you can play chess, devote yourself to your supposedly important political
projects, and play at being a hero, while the children suck the life out of me and leave me with no time to do anything for myself, and no one even once stops to ask me, “Are you
tired?” And...’ I put a tissue to my eyes and began sobbing out loud. Artoush was twisting the sugar shaker open and closed.

It was the first time that he had not walked out in the middle of an argument.

‘I dance to every tune you play. Living in Braim is bourgeois, fine. What do we need a high-end model car for, fine. I have guests coming, fine. I like chess, fine. I’m going to
Shahandeh’s, fine. And now...now things have come to the point where they’re distributing dangerous political flyers from my house and his highness, the master of the house, says,
“I was not aware of it. They decided this on their own.” If you are so stupid that you don’t know what happens in your own house, then...’

I did not finish my sentence, but stared in shock as Artoush unscrewed the top of the sugar shaker and without a single word, poured sugar all over the table, the chairs, and the kitchen floor,
as though he were watering the flowers. Then he screwed the cap back on the sugar shaker, set it down on the table and left the kitchen.

At the kitchen table I was mending the twins’ school uniforms, torn again at the pockets.

The kitchen had been swept several times after the argument with Artoush, both by myself and by Ashkhen. But each morning a long line of ants marching this way or that told me that traces of
sugar were left in spots. I had not spoken a single word to Artoush since that day. Instead I had been waging an internal struggle about who was in the right, me or him. The twins were out in the
yard, on the swing seat, singing a song:

The gate squeaked, followed by laughter and shouting from the twins.

‘Thank you, Sophie!’

‘Thank you, Uncle Garnik.’

‘Both of them green!

‘How pretty!’

‘Just like Sophie’s!’

‘Thank you, thank you!’

I had a pot of kidney beans on the stove. I turned off the burner and went to open the door. The twins were jumping up and down, each holding a hula-hoop.

From the front step, smiling, I called out, ‘So you had to go out and do it, in the end?’

Garnik looked in my direction, waved and came up to me. ‘A man and his word! I told them I would get one for them, so I did.’

I cleared the table and set the uniforms and the sewing basket on one of the chairs. ‘Every month some new toy is all the rage. If we bought them all, we’d go broke and the children
would be spoiled. Not that they’re not already spoiled. Will you have coffee or sherbet?’

Garnik sat down and took a large handkerchief out of his pocket. He wiped his neck and forehead. ‘First water, then coffee, then sherbet! They only love toys while they are children, and
they’re only children for a few years. Blink a couple of times and they’re all grown up, swimming in a sea of troubles, like us. And no one’s gone broke yet buying toys.
Where’s Artoush?’

I took out the pitcher from the fridge and a glass from the cupboard, poured the water, set the glass on the table and got the coffee pot. I measured out the coffee. ‘Sweet or medium?
Where’s Nina?’

Garnik drank the water in one go and put the empty glass down on the table. ‘She went to the bazaar with Violette to buy American sheets. Now that’s what’s going to make us go
broke! Sweet, please. Artoush isn’t back yet?’

I stood by the coffee pot to make sure it did not boil over. ‘I have to buy sheets, too.’ I poured the coffee into a cup and sat down with him at the table. ‘Shall I cut some
Gata for you?’

He drew the coffee cup toward him. ‘Did you have a fight?’

The kids were counting loudly in the yard. ‘Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven...’

Garnik sipped his coffee and asked, ‘Want to know how I knew, huh?’ He looked at me and laughed. ‘First of all, you’ve made coffee for me a hundred times and you know I
like it sweet. Second, I asked you twice where Artoush is, and each time you changed the subject. What happened?’

Should I tell him? Shouldn’t I tell him? I told him. ‘I’m at my wit’s end with Artoush playing politics.’

In the yard, Sophie said, ‘Whoever gets to a hundred spins first is the winner.’

Garnik watched me for a moment and played with his coffee cup, sliding it back and forth a few times. Then he looked out the window. ‘Well, everyone’s got to believe in
something.’

On more than one occasion, Artoush had said, ‘ARF supporters can’t see beyond the end of their nose.’ Each time Garnik had replied, ‘Doesn’t the end of our own nose
take priority over the noses of other folks?’

I got up and stirred the kidney beans. ‘It’s not a question of belief. It’s a question of selfishness. We women have to slave sun-up to sundown to get everything ready for you
men, while you go on imagining you are building a better world. Meanwhile you have no consideration for your wives and no consideration for your children.’

I went on lecturing about ‘we women’ and ‘you men’ for five minutes while Garnik listened quietly. The problem was that what I was saying did not seem entirely fair, even
to me. I must have left something out. I was sure that I was somehow in the right, but I did not know how to say it without coming off like a nagging wife, whining and complaining after a quarrel
with her husband.

Garnik got up and went over to the stove. He lifted the lid off the pan and inhaled. ‘Mmm, smells delicious! Here’s what I’m thinking: if we selfish men, as you call us,
don’t try to build, as you say, a better world, what would you have to cook in this pan? That is, if we still had pots and pans?’ Still holding the lid, he looked over at me. Then he
cocked his head and smiled.

In the yard the girls were shouting, ‘Ninety-eight, nighty-nine, one hundred, hooray!’ I was sure there must be a good answer to Garnik’s question. I was sure of it, but
nothing came to mind. I asked, ‘Want some beans?’

Joop said, ‘I do hope, good sir, that you will, like myself and Alice, be happy and content with this decision. I have sent a correspondence to my mother and aunt in
Holland. They too are happy and content. If you, good sir, be content and happy, Alice and I, too, are happy and content.’ Artoush loosened the knot of his tie and shifted position in the
easy chair.

The day before, Alice had said, ‘Tell Artoush to put on a tie. You dress up nice, too. With lipstick. Send the kids over to Nina’s, or, I don’t know, anywhere. Just so long as
they don’t disturb us.’ It did not even occur to me to ask why she could not hold this little courtship dinner at her own house.

To keep myself busy, I got up and offered sweets to everyone. Joop took one of the cream puffs that Alice had bought and did not touch the pastries I had made from scratch. ‘I like creamy
puff.
Shad-shad
thanks.’ He looked at Alice and smiled.

Alice laughed and turned to me. ‘I’m teaching him Armenian.’ Then she pushed the dish of homemade sweets away. ‘He only likes cream puffs.’ She cocked her head and
smiled at Joop.

Mother, with a smile that looked pasted onto her face, said ‘
Shad-shad lav
,’ nodded, and peered into the narrow space separating Joop and Alice.

Armen was in his room and the twins had gone bike-riding. I gave them money to buy bread from the
Dairy
and ‘whatever they felt like’ from the
Store
. Their eyes lit
up.

Joop was explaining in great detail the water-heating system in his house in Holland for Artoush. Artoush was listening carefully, whether to occupy the time, or because he was really
interested, I could not tell.

Looking up at the ceiling, Alice said, ‘I hear Emile and Violette are getting married.’ Ever since her marriage to Joop was semi-officially announced, Alice no longer looked in my
face when speaking to me. At least it seemed like she was looking down at me, and since she was shorter than me, that took some doing. ‘Poor Violette, with that nutty mother-in-law. She
probably imagines that the instant they marry, the lady midget is going to hand over all her jewels to her daughter-in-law on a silver platter.’

Mother helped me set the dinner table and she talked nonstop as we walked back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room.

‘I always hoped Alice would get married in our church here in Abadan. God bless the cross in that altar! It has granted each and every favor I prayed for and every vow I made. For the safe
delivery of your babies, for the setting of Armen’s broken arm; for the quick recovery of the twins when their tonsils were removed. And now, for this. You’ve made a ton of salad again?
No one here eats that much salad. Still, it’s a good thing you did. These days Alice eats nothing but salad.’

Armen and the twins were playing Chutes and Ladders on the kitchen table.

‘It was a four.’

‘Nuh-uh, it was a three.’

‘It was four, wasn’t it, Arsineh?’

‘It was four. No cheating, Armen!’

‘One, two, three, four. Swoop, up I go! Your turn, Arsineh.’

Mother poured dressing on the salad. ‘I would hate Joop to think I am one of those mother-in-laws who butts into everything. If they want to marry in Holland, well, so be it. There’s
no difference from one church to another.’

Armineh said, ‘Nana, when you said church, it reminded me of a joke one of the sixth graders told today. Shall we tell them, Arsineh?’

‘Let’s tell them,’ said Arsineh. Then she warned Armen. ‘Your piece is right here, in this square. Above this big chute, here. No cheating, now! Go ahead, Armineh. Mommy,
Nana, listen.’ And they began telling the joke, each jumping in amid the other’s words.

‘A naughty boy kept knocking on the church door.’