Things We Left Unsaid (3 page)

Once, over coffee, the subject of Artoush and Garnik’s arguments came up and Nina said, ‘You heard it from me, the both of them are talking nonsense. But I always tell Garnik,
“You are right, my love.” And you must always tell Artoush, “Of course you are right, my love.” ’ She roared with laughter, took a sip of coffee and leaned back in her
chair. ‘Men think that if they don’t discuss politics, they are not real men.’

I leaned on the window frame and thought how much I missed Nina’s laughter. I should call her up tomorrow, I thought, to ask how she’s doing. The light in the living room of G-4 went
out. I thought of the afternoon again, and Emily’s frightened, delicate face appeared before my eyes. The girl had not said a word the entire time.

Facing the window, I said, ‘Some new neighbors have moved into Nina and Garnik’s place.’

The newspaper rustled. ‘Hmmm.’

I considered going out to water the lawn and the flowers, then remembered that the yard lights were not working. I decided against it, for fear of stepping on a frog or a lizard. I should have
called the Company Housing Services to send someone out to fix the lights. I closed the drapes and sat back down next to Artoush. ‘The Simonians. Do you know them?’

The newspaper replied: ‘Emile Simonian?’

I pulled out a dirty old sock from under one of the sofa cushions. It was Armen’s. ‘I don’t know his first name.’ Then I remembered. ‘Yes, that might be him. His
daughter’s name is Emily.’

The newspaper pages turned. ‘He’s been transferred to our division from Masjed-Soleiman. He’s a widower. He lives with his mother and daughter. I’m sure he’s all
we’ll need to replace Garnik and make our world an oh-so-much brighter place.’

I looked at the newspaper, waiting for him to continue, but when no more news came out, I went over by the window to sit in the green leather easy chair, sock still in hand. I listened to the
monotonous hum of the air conditioners for a while, then, from the bookcase by the window I took out the book that Mr. Davtian, the owner of the Arax bookstore, had sent from Tehran the day before.
It was a novel by Sardo. Like all books published in Armenia, the colors and the print on the cover were very poor quality. A man with a goatee and a black cape had his back turned on a woman, who
was kneeling on the ground. The sock in my hand got in my way. I tucked it in the pocket of my apron.

My hand rested motionless in the pocket, still holding the sock. I remembered the day I told my mother and my sister Alice, ‘I hate women who wear an apron from morning to night just so
that people will think they are good homemakers. A woman is more than just a homemaker [thinking of Mother] and she should not dress up just to please others [thinking of Alice]. A woman should
above all be neat and nicely dressed to please herself.’ I was, I suppose, hinting to both of them. Mother, though it had been years since Father died, was still wearing black and did not
bother to dye her hair. And my sister was without equal when it came to messiness and clutter.

Mother had cocked her eyebrow. ‘So that’s how it is, is it? So a woman should just live her life and do everything for herself?’ She scoffed, ‘So why do your lips quiver
with disappointment when Artoush doesn’t notice you are wearing a new dress, or that you’ve gone to the hairdresser, or put flowers on the table? If I’m lying, go right ahead and
say so.’

Alice had joined in. ‘Well, where has it gotten you – you who are always supposedly so neat and tidy?’ After Mother and Alice left, I had repeated the question to myself:
‘Where has it gotten you?’ I had to answer, ‘I don’t know.’

I drew my hand out of the apron pocket and set the book back on the shelf. I was tired and did not feel like reading. Artoush tossed the newspaper on the coffee table and stood up. He stretched
and yawned. ‘Will you get the lights, or shall I?’ The newspaper slid onto the floor. I looked at him. He had gained twenty kilos over the past seventeen years and his formerly thick
black hair was now limp and thinning. Everyone called him Doc, because of his standing as an engineer, but because of his goatee, which was no longer so black, Alice called him Professor behind his
back. He has changed so much, I thought. I must have changed too, but his voice cut off my thoughts. ‘I asked whether you’ll get the lights or—’

I cut in, ‘I will.’ I picked up the newspaper and stood there, untying my apron. I headed for the door and turned off the living room light.

Mother drank the last drop of Turkish coffee and turned her cup upside down on the saucer. Then, staring into space, she squinted and pressed her lips together, making her
small eyes and thin lips appear even smaller and thinner. She was thinking. ‘Did you say she was very short? Was she pretty?’

I cut a piece of salted Gata and put it on her plate. ‘Pretty? I told you, she was at least seventy years old!’

Her chin tilted upward and she frowned. ‘Meaning what? Anyway, if it is really her, she must be over seventy. I was still wearing bobby socks when madame, with her wide-brimmed picture
hats and frippery...’

I saw the spot. ‘Mother, your nose.’

My mother had a long nose, and when she drank coffee, the rim of the cup would leave a spot on the tip of it. She quickly wiped it off. ‘...and her seven-strand pearl necklaces hanging
from her neck, cruising up and down Nazar Avenue in a convertible.’

‘She drove herself!?’

She bristled. ‘Go right ahead and interrupt me at every turn. No. She had a driver.’

I looked at the flower box on the window ledge and wished I had asked Mr. Morteza to change the soil. Gazing at the flowers, I remembered Mrs. Simonian’s face. ‘Yes, she must have
been pretty in her youth. High cheekbones, big dark eyes and...’ silently I added to myself: a small elegant nose. In Mother and Father’s wedding photo, in the silver frame on the
piano, Mother’s nose did not look long at all.

Mother put a piece of Gata in her mouth. ‘Delicious!’ she said.

I watched her, my chin resting in my palm.

Along with the books that Mr. Davtian sent from Tehran, he always included some salted Gata. One day Artoush had asked, ‘How does he know that you like salted Gata?’

Before I could think of an answer, Mother said, ‘He doesn’t send them for Clarice, he sends them for me. When we were in Tehran for the holidays, I went with Clarice to the
bookstore. He was kind enough to offer us some coffee and Gata. I said that I don’t have time to scratch my head, much less to read books, but I just love salted Gata. Since then, whenever he
sends books for Clarice, he sends some Gata for me.’ As she said this last part, she laughed loudly. Artoush looked over at Mother in surprise, and I looked down. Was it Mother’s
exaggerated laughter that annoyed me, or the fact that I could not get my tongue to mouth the words: ‘Mr. Davtian always treats me to coffee, and he has known for a long time that I like
salted Gata.’

Mother wetted her fingertip with her tongue, gathered the little crumbs of Gata left on her plate and ate them. Then she drew a Kleenex from the tissue box, folded it twice, and pressed the
upside-down coffee cup onto it a couple of times. The rim left brown rings on the tissue. ‘It’s her, alright. Elmira Haroutunian. Daughter of Haroutunian the Merchant. She married
Vartan Simonian, who owned a trade entrepôt in India. She had inherited a fairly substantial sum from her father, and the husband’s money made her really flush. She was known in Julfa
as Elmira the Jinxer.’

I burst out laughing.

Mother frowned. ‘It’s no laughing matter. It’s not for nothing she got the name. Her mother died giving birth to her. A few years later, her nursemaid threw herself out of a
window into the garden below.’

I wanted to clear the coffee cups, but she brushed my hand away. ‘Wait. I haven’t read my coffee cup yet.’ She stared out the window into the distance. ‘On the night of
her wedding, her father got food poisoning and a few days later, he died. They said it was from the wedding cake. But why did only the father die? Everyone ate some of that cake...’

‘There go those Julfa Armenians again, churning the rumor mill,’ I said. ‘So maybe the cake wasn’t what killed him. Maybe he had a heart attack, or...’

Mother turned my coffee cup over on the tissue and blotted it three or four times. ‘She went to India with her husband and a few years later came back to Julfa with her son. The husband
had been killed. They said the deed was done by one of their Indian servants. Then she disappeared for a few years – they said she had gone to Europe. When she showed her face again in Julfa,
her son was all grown up. She was looking for a wife for him. Word went around in Julfa that the son had an incurable disease – otherwise, how was it he hadn’t married while in Europe?
Much later, I heard the son had married an Armenian girl from Tabriz. Those Tabrizi Armenians are so easily taken in.’

She picked up her own cup and stared at the intertwined patterns left by the coffee. She said ‘Hmm’ a few times, ‘Ahh’ a few times, shook her head several times, and then
set the coffee cup back down on the table. ‘Mine doesn’t say squat.’ She picked up my cup.

I thanked God that Artoush wasn’t there to hear the bit about the Tabrizi Armenians. The day I told Mother I wanted to marry Artoush, the first thing she asked was, ‘He’s
Armenian, but from where?’ The instant I told her, she screamed, ‘What?! Who do these Tabrizis think they are?!’ If not for the intercession of my father – for whom it made
no difference whether his son-in-law was an Armenian from Julfa, Tabriz or the planet Mars – our marriage would not have been so easy to pull off.

I looked at my own cup in Mother’s bony hands. A white cup, with tiny pink flowers. My mother’s hands were wrinkled, etched with protruding blue veins. ‘Well, what happened
then?’ I asked.

She looked up. ‘I heard her daughter-in-law went crazy after a few years and wound up in Namagerd. That’s where she died. Look! There’s a cypress in your coffee cup.’ It
depressed me to think of Namagerd.

Mother set the cup down on the table and stood up. ‘A cypress means change and development. Maybe the Doc has magnanimously decided to oblige the Oil Company and accept one of the homes in
Braim! Your Arab woman will eventually wind up in Braim, while you all continue to stew right here in Bawarda.’

I began clearing the coffee cups. ‘My Arab woman?’

She shook what must have been crumbs of Gata from her black skirt. ‘That dark tawny woman who, every time Mr. Morteza finishes mowing the grass and trimming the hedge, turns up to gather
all the clippings into a bag and haul them away. She just materializes, presto! As if by magic.’

‘Do you mean Youma?’ Youma obviously lived in the Arab quarter, and the thought of her with a house in Braim made me chuckle.

‘Yeah, Youma. What kind of a name is that! I told you a hundred times, don’t let her in the house. You yourself told me the kids are afraid of her. With those crooked teeth and that
tattooed face, you can’t blame them. She’s always wearing black, worse than me.’

She was right about that. Youma was always dressed in black, because she was always mourning the death of someone or other. I put the cups and plates in the sink. ‘They’re not afraid
of her. It’s just that Armen once said he saw her eat a live sparrow, which was nonsense.’

Mother slung the black strap of her purse over her shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

How long had she had this purse? How many times had the strap broken, and Mother had sewn it back on? How many times had I suggested, ‘Isn’t it time to get a new purse?’ How
many times had she replied, ‘If I had wanted to buy new bags and new shoes all the time like all those bimbo ladies, neither you nor Alice would have gotten your Bachelors.’ I had
repeatedly explained to Mother that the certificate in English language I got from the Oil Company was not called a Bachelors. And although Alice had gotten her Bachelors – in England, as an
Operating Room Charge Nurse – the Oil Company had paid for her education.

In the hallway, Mother swiped a finger over the telephone table. ‘Haven’t you dusted?’

Looking at her black purse, I replied, ‘Sure, I have. Eight times the day before yesterday. Sixteen times yesterday. Thirty-two times today.’ I looked up, stared into her eyes, and
made a face.

‘Don’t get smart with me.’ She took hold of the door handle. ‘In this Godforsaken town if you dust ten times a day, it’s still not enough. I’m going to the
Company Store; they have some new imported chocolates.’ She must have noticed the surprise in my expression, because she quickly added, ‘I know. Call me an ass. But...’ She drew a
deep sigh, let go of the handle and busied herself with tidying up the pleats of the lace curtain. ‘Alice is out of sorts. You know that...’ She let go of the lace curtain and spun
round to face me. ‘On the soul of your father, be careful not to say anything that will start a fight. Do you need anything from the Company Store?’

I said I did not need anything and asked, ‘Please do not buy chocolate for the children.’

As the door opened, hot air rushed in along with the smell of red clover. Mother said, ‘Don’t come out. It’s hotter than God’s own hell out there.’ She opened the
screen door and set off.

I held the screen door open and leaned against the door frame, watching her. In the middle of the path she stopped, bent over and picked a flower. Then, with some difficulty, she straightened
up, smelled the flower and walked on. She opened the metal gate, closed it behind her and turned in the direction of the bus stop. How quick Mother’s step used to be, the summer we went to
Namagerd.

I sat down on the front step and drank in the view of the flower beds that bordered the path – the carnations, the verbena, the snapdragons, the larkspurs and petunias
that Mr. Morteza had planted in bunches on either side of the path. Then there was the willow tree overhanging the metal swing seat. We also had three ornamental trees on the lawn. Youma called
them Persian Turpentine trees. Mrs. Rahimi, our next door neighbour, used to call them ash trees. But Alice said that was nonsense; the real name was Judas trees. The twins, oblivious to these
conflicting views, called the first one Armineh’s Tree and the second one Arsineh’s Tree. The third one was smaller than the other two, and despite all Mr. Morteza’s pruning and
fertilizing, it gave fewer flowers.