Dreams of Bread and Fire (12 page)

“They went out for dinner. Kyle and I ate food that wasn’t fit for no dog.”

Ani said, “I missed you too, Syd.”

“What did you do for Christmas?” Sydney asked.

“An old friend came by. You want a cheese sandwich or peanut butter and jelly for lunch?”

“Cheese. Boy or girl?”

“I’ve known him since I was five.”

“A boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Mommy said to be nice because your boyfriend dumped you. You should send him a stink bomb. Kyle showed me how. We have all the ingredients.”

“I’m not into revenge, Syd.”

A stink bomb didn’t seem like a bad idea to Ani, although her own fantasies ran toward letter bombs. It made her sick, thinking about Asa’s exciting post-Ani life. Only that morning she had dreamed that Asa had insisted on showing her photos of him and May on the beach. He was red-eyed stoned. She woke feeling like a dishrag that had been laundered until it was threadbare.

At least with Sydney and Tacey back Ani had a reason for getting up in the morning. Then seminars at Jussieu resumed, and dance classes provided more distraction. Odile and Ani were choreographing a piece that came out of their improvisation sessions. One afternoon Ani met Michael at the Pompidou Center to watch four hours of ethnographic films. She fabricated an excuse for why she couldn’t go to his place to play backgammon.

When Ani had given up hope of hearing from him, Van finally called. They made plans to go to the movies later in the week. Ani selected an old comedy and they met outside the cinema. In the darkened theater clear black-and-white frames rolled over the screen, dialogue played out crisp as newly minted bills, and Ani laughed until tears slid down her face. She was still smiling when they emerged onto the street.

“That was entertaining,” Van said.

“I’ve seen that movie at least five times on TV.”

“You were laughing before the lines were out of their mouths.”

“I know some of the dialogue by heart.”

They strolled through throngs of tourists on the place Saint-Michel and headed across the river. After passing beneath the massive blackened walls of the Palais de Justice, which gleamed under stark floodlights, they paused on the Pont au Change to survey the facade of Nôtre-Dame.

An image flew like a bat across the back of Ani’s skull: a torn gap in the chain-link fence at the edge of the country club.

Watertown. Ani was sitting on a flat stone under a tree, having spent all her tears. She had fled the house after a fight with her mother. She squeezed her eyes shut and rested her cheek on her knees. When she heard footfalls approaching she lifted her head.

Van had said, Ani? Is that you?

What are you doing here, Van?

I come up here a lot. That rock you’re on is my thinking spot. And then I line these up and knock them off with stones. He scooped up a half dozen empty beer bottles and cans, nimbly arranging them at the foot of the fence. With a precise hand, he hurled a stone at the first bottle, shattering its neck. You want to try?

Ani lobbed a rock, missing a can by about a foot.

He handed her another stone. Look at it and aim for it.

Have you heard about my mother? Ani asked. She pegged the can.

Good job. . . . What about her? He pitched rocks in quick succession, knocking down the row.

She’s going out with a guy named Harry Vosdanian. His wife’s running around town weeping and calling my mother a whore.

Van grimaced. That’s too bad.

It sucks. Ani sat down on the flat stone.

He sat beside her. Must have been hard on her, coming back to Watertown after your father died.

Her grown-up life disappeared and she was in her parents’ house again, Ani said. Now she’s acting like a teenager. I’m the one who’s supposed to be running around with the boyfriend that everyone despises.

They sat in silence, listening to the wind in the trees and the occasional passing car.

Ani replayed the scene from earlier that morning when she had entered the kitchen. Her bleary-eyed mother, hair crushed on one side and billowing wildly on the other, was sitting at the table in her housecoat nursing a cup of coffee. Baba hid behind his newspaper. Grandma noisily stirred her coffee while spying Violet out of the sides of her eyes.

Mariam Kersamian’s face was like the time and weather display that hung in front of the bank in Coolidge Square: 8:50
A.M.
, 48°F,
CLOUDY WITH CHANCE OF THUNDERSTORMS
.

As Ani sat down with her breakfast cereal she felt the air pressure plummet.

Grandma said accusingly to her daughter, You out late last night.

Don’t start, Ma, Violet protested wearily. I have a headache.

You have hang-in? the old woman asked with contempt.

A hangover, Violet corrected.

Ahnbeedahn.
Married vith tree children she take my daughter and get her drunk.

He, Ma.
He
took your daughter out and got her drunk.

Grandma inhaled sharply. You admit it! Vith a married man.

He’s separated, Violet said.

The old woman flipped into Armenian. Separated? He has separated from his senses? Have you also separated from your senses?

Baba carefully folded his paper, rose from his chair, and headed out of the room.

Where are you going, coward? Grandma shouted after him. Tell your daughter what you think about this squash head she brought to our house last night.

From the dining room Baba called, I’m not jumping into your cooking pot.

Violet pressed her temples with her hands. Ma, don’t.

Amot kezi
. Aren’t you ashamed? Do you know what people will say? Look at your daughter. How can you shame her?

Hold on, there. Leave me out of this, Ani said.

She fled the kitchen and went down the basement stairs. She put a pillow over her head so the bickering was unintelligible.

In the late afternoon, Violet called Ani into her room. She patted her bed, indicating that Ani should sit next to her.

So, what did you think of him? Violet asked almost shyly.

Who? Ani asked.

You know good and well who, Ani.

Ani didn’t respond, but thought, You mean that fat rich guy with the mouth like a split cherry and the tacky white Cadillac?

Violet ignored her daughter’s silence. We’ve known each other for years. I was surprised when he asked me out on a date a few months ago.

Do I need to know this? Ani muttered.

Why are you so mean? It’s bad enough that my mother treats me like a criminal. After ten years of living in this convent, I have a boyfriend. What crime is there in that?

Is this supposed to be girl talk? Ani asked deliberately.

Get out! her mother shouted. Just go away!

So Ani stormed out of the house and headed to the golf course, where she had been discovered by Van. He was sitting next to her now on the thinking rock as stars were beginning to appear in the sky beyond the hill. Ani realized her mom would be worrying. Her own anger was spent and she could almost remember having been fond of her mother.

It’s getting late, Ani said to Van, looking across the darkening green of the country club.

Van stood and took Ani’s hands, pulling her to her feet. For a second they were facing each other, only inches apart. A feather of anticipation brushed along the inside of Ani’s skin. Did she want him to kiss her? It was confusing. But then he stepped back and they turned to go.

Leaving the golf course, Ani and Van walked under the broad canopy of summer trees down Bailey Road as the asphalt glittered under the streetlights. Across plush carpets of lawn, they saw the gold glow of table lamps or the stuttering blue glare of televisions from living room windows.

I can’t believe you’re going to California, Ani said, when they reached the bottom of the hill.

What’s the matter with California? he asked.

It’s about as far away as you can get without leaving the country.

Leave the country, now there’s an idea, he said. I’ve never been on an airplane.

Me neither, Ani said. So where to?

Moscow, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Delhi.

How about Paris? Ani asked. That’s where I want to go.

Sure, why not? Van had replied.

That was the last conversation between them before he left town. How many years ago was that? Almost six. Now here they were on an old stone bridge in a foreign city as black water flowed beneath them, long streaks of light playing across its surface.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Ravenous,” Ani said.

“Let’s go,” he said, putting his hand at her elbow. “There’s a good couscous place a few blocks from me.”

When he dropped his hand to his side Ani still felt the pressure of his fingers on her arm. It was a phantom touch that ached. She glanced over at Van’s profile, and her heart fluttered in its box.

This was how it began: a hunger that was indifferent to food and averse to sleep. The feelings frightened her, because they reminded her of the early days with Asa.

The first night she went to Asa’s apartment he had cooked supper. After the meal with his housemates, Ani and Asa had retired to his bedroom. There were stacks of paperbacks under the window and several yellow plastic milk crates filled with ropes and climbing gear. Ani and Asa sat across from each other on his mattress on the floor, both of them cross-legged.

Thanks for dinner, she said.

My pleasure, Asa said.

Ani looked into his blue irises patterned with black. She felt a flickering near her ribs and a slight dizziness.

I want to show you something. Put your hand up like this, Asa said, holding his palm facing out at the level of his face.

When Ani imitated his gesture she noticed how perfectly proportioned his hand was—long fingers with a broad palm. The hand looked so gentle and sincere that she couldn’t help but trust it.

Now, he instructed, move your hand toward mine. Stop when our palms are about an inch apart.

Ani did as he said. Their palms were parallel.

Now what? she asked.

Close your eyes. Stay like that and see what you feel.

It was as though light with the force of water flowed in the space between their two hands. Ani felt its warmth pulsing against her skin.

Open your eyes, he said. Can you see it?

Ani stared intently at their hands. No.

One time I saw the energy curling like little tendrils of smoke, he told her.

Were you in an altered state? Ani asked.

Tripping my brains out. He laughed, clasped her hand, and leaned toward her.

When they kissed it was black velvet; it was a cleft in the sky.

Wow, he said. Nice.

A confusing set of sensations danced through the nerves in her body.

That’s the problem with bodies, Ani said. If you try to say what you feel, the words bounce off sideways. It’s like smells. How can you describe a smell? I mean, the smell of white paste brings back first grade, but how can you explain what white paste smells like? Some combination of flour, sugar, the sourness of yogurt, and a Popsicle stick. I feel everything in that scent: the colored construction paper that we cut with small scissors, the rows of desks with children at them, the yellowing window shades on the tall windows.

Is how to describe it the first thing you think of? Can’t you be in it? Asa asked.

Ani paused. What do you mean?

Try to empty your mind of words so the only thoughts are sensory perceptions.

They kissed again.

Falling, falling, Ani thought, down a dim stair with satin-lined walls.

Ani saw herself and Van reflected in a display store window as they walked.

There would be no more pitching headlong into the dark.
Gamatz, gamatz,
Grandma always advised. Slowly, slowly, one foot after the next.

A bell jangled as Van opened the restaurant’s door and gestured her in. All the tables were occupied, but the
patron
assured Van in Arabic that it would be two minutes. Then a waiter showed them to a table and soon afterward a platter of fluffy couscous and a steaming tureen were set in front of them.

“How’s your mother?” Van asked, as he ladled food onto Ani’s plate.

“She’s okay, I guess,” Ani replied. “She writes me these long letters filled with news about people I don’t care about.”

“Whatever happened with that Harry guy?”

“He eventually went back to his wife and broke my mother’s heart. I hated him so much it was hard to be sympathetic,” Ani said.

The waiter came to the table and refilled their water glasses. A few minutes later Van excused himself to go to the men’s room. Ani stared out the window, her focus turned inward. Another scene surfaced from the pool.