The Legacy of Lost Things

by Aida Zilelian

  “Are you going to tell him?” Lucine asked. She was weak with anxiety.

  “No,” said Anoush. “But I will if you don’t stop seeing him.”

  They both knew how dangerously Bedros’s mood turned. Unlike the other men that Lucine knew in the neighborhood, he was not the jovial sort who made small talk if he were to see an acquaintance on the street. Perhaps other fathers, upon hearing the news that their daughter was dating an American, would have reacted as if someone had poured a pail of scalding water over their head. But her father’s reaction would have a subtler shift from sour to ominous. Often, no one knew what triggered his bouts of rage until after a table had been overturned or a plate of food had been thrown across the room, the labor of Anoush’s cooking plastered against a wall.

  Remembering this, Anoush softened. “Lucine,” she said, turning to her daughter. “Please just let it go. There will be other boys. There are so many of our young men who live right here under your nose. You’re telling me there isn’t one whom you like? Out of all those boys, not one?”

  Lucine let out a sigh. The Armenian boys her age repulsed her. They all looked like her brother—dark hair, dark eyes, too hairy. Their features were too familiar. None stood out from the rest. She thought of Jakub with his bright blue eyes and light blond hair. His parents were from Poland, but he was born and raised in America. The first time she had seen him was in the early summer. He had been standing outside the grocery store smoking a cigarette, the sun shining on his fair skin.

  She didn’t say anything. The silence hung in the room as Anoush set the table. The only sound was the tinkling of forks and knives and the gentle simmer of pilaf cooking on the stove.

  Anoush thought of her brother Onnig, who had drowned in the ocean when he was sixteen years old. She thought of her father who had died less than a year after. Her mother had married a brute of a man, whom Anoush endured until she met Bedros. Nearly seventeen, she tried to ignore her stepfather’s crude advances when her mother wasn’t looking, his long stares that made her hands tremble at the thought of being alone with him. Sensing this, her grandmother understood the inevitability of what might occur if the opportunity arose. She did not trust that her daughter Seta, oblivious to her new husband’s fixation with Anoush, would keep her safe. One afternoon there had been a knock at the door, and behind it stood Bedros, young and sheepish, asking to speak with Anoush’s mother.

  Her grandmother had pulled her into the bedroom. “That boy who came to the door speaking to your mother right now,” her grandmother explained quickly, “is here to ask to marry you. Please say yes. It will be the best thing.”

  Anoush had barely caught a glimpse of him.

  “I’ve never seen him before in my life!” Anoush said.

  “Eh!” her grandmother swatted the air as if shooing away a fly. “You think I knew who your grandfather was before I married him? All I knew was that he was the son of a grocery store owner in town. This is the best thing,” she repeated.

  Perhaps it had been the best thing. The memories of her near-escapes from her stepfather still came to her unexpectedly. She remembered how several times as she stood over the stove, he had crept up behind her, put his hand over her mouth, and pressed against her with such strength and force that she became suddenly nauseous. Once she had pulled away and vomited on the floor, the mess splattering onto the tips of his shoes. Anoush knew that her grandmother had arranged for Bedros to come ask for her hand, and despite the difficult years she had suffered with him, she was grateful.

  One Sunday afternoon after their usual family dinner, Bedros complained that he wasn’t feeling well and went to the bedroom to lie down.

  Tamar helped Lucine clear the table and Levon sat on the couch with his mother. He and Tamar had been married a year. The two visited every Sunday for dinner, and instinctively knew that it was better to mask the tension between them. Levon would awkwardly place his hand on Tamar’s shoulder now and again, as if conveying a gesture of affection, and she would try to return a smile in his direction. Anoush’s mind was distracted with Lucine’s newest love interest—a Puerto Rican, older looking than the previous men, who appeared in front of the apartment building almost every evening wearing a long black leather coat and dark sunglasses. Even still, she could sense that her son and his new wife were unhappy.

  “I don’t like him,” she said to Levon that evening, seeing that Lucine was washing the dishes and out of earshot. She hoped he would be able to have a talk with Lucine and find out who the boy was. “He wears his hair long and has a beard. Then that leather coat and sunglasses—you would think he’s disguising himself. And he never rings the bell. He just waits outside for her every day at six o’clock. I see her stick her head out the window, and then she runs out and doesn’t come back until at least nine or ten o’clock.”

  Levon was surprised his father hadn’t intervened, and said so.

  “I don’t want your father knowing,” Anoush said. “I don’t know what he would do. I tell him she’s meeting with friends. He doesn’t even like that, so just imagine if he knew what was really going on.”

  Levon sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe Tamar can talk to her. You want me to ask her?”

  “If you think it would help,” his mother said. “I’ve talked to her so many times. First it was a Polish boy, then some stupid mechanic also too old for her, and now this guy. He looks like a drug dealer,” she said. She wanted to ask how he and Tamar were getting along, but stopped herself.

  “I’m going to set up the coffee,” Tamar called over.

  Lucine rummaged through the refrigerator and took out some apples and pears that needed to be washed.

  “Let Tamar do that,” Anoush said. “Go tell your father we’re having dessert,” she said, hoping to get her out of the room for one last word with Levon. She lowered her voice and said, “Maybe one day this week I can send her over to you so Tamar can talk to her?”

  “Ma!” Lucine’s voice was almost shrill. “Please come!”

  The three of them ran into the bedroom where Bedros lay. Lucine was sitting on the bed holding his hand. She turned to them. “He’s not waking up,” she whispered.

  A constant wind brushed over the cemetery the afternoon Bedros was buried. Bedros had no close friends, but the community had come to show their respects as a form of duty. Within days of his death, the cool fall air had become numbingly frigid. Levon stood with his mother and Lucine on either side of him as the priest chanted the last prayer before the lowering of the casket. Lucine sobbed quietly, pressing her face into his shoulder, and Anoush watched blankly, waiting. She had not wished for this day, nor had she dreaded it. An unwelcome indifference overcame her, for she knew she should have felt a more profound grieving. She and Bedros had been married nearly twenty-five years, and she was barely in her mid-forties. What she dreaded now was the unknown. She would have to learn English, find a job and still look after Lucine. It was the latter that worried her. With Bedros gone, Anoush knew nothing could keep her daughter bound, like a ship’s sail loosened and released by the force of the wind.

  For several weeks, Lucine stayed home from school, most of which was during her Christmas recess. But even after, she didn’t want to return. She left the house at the same time every morning as if she were going to school, but Anoush knew otherwise. Lucine came home later and later, until one evening she did not come home at all. Anoush sat on the couch with only the lamplight on. She thought of how only a year ago it was all four of them living together, and now she was alone. She wanted to call Levon, but hesitated. Her son’s marriage was already strained, for reasons she was not aware of, and she did not want to burden either of them.

  She waited until the morning, and finally got dressed and walked the ten-block distance to Levon’s.

  “There’s no point in filing a police report,” Levon said. “She’s over eighteen and they won’t look for her.”

  “How are we supposed to find her?” Anoush
asked.

  “We can’t. Maybe we can ask around the neighborhood, but otherwise we can’t do much,” he said.

  Levon was boiling over. Goddam her, Levon thought to himself. It’s not bad enough our father just died, and now she’s pulling this shit. He was disgusted with Lucine’s blatant negligence, and hoped she didn’t return, at least for a long while.

  As if obeying his wishes, the weeks went by and Lucine did not come home.

  “I want to buy a house,” he told his mother one afternoon. “I want to use what I saved and the savings Dad left behind. You can come live with us.”

  Anoush thought for a moment. “Half of that savings is for your sister,” she said. “I can’t give it all to you. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “To hell with her,” Levon said. “If she were so concerned about it she wouldn’t have left. I can’t buy the house without it. And Tamar is pregnant,” he said.

  Anoush went to hug him, “That’s wonderful,” she said. “Such wonderful news during such a terrible time for us. The baby will be a blessing all the more.”

  She pulled away and looked at him. His face was serious and tense. “You’re going to be a father,” she said. “Why aren’t you happy?”

  “I am,” he said. He did not want to bring up the idea that he suspected the child may not even be his.

  By the early fall, Levon had bought a house in a more residential area of Queens. Instead of the long blocks of apartment buildings the family had grown accustomed to living in during their time in America, the street they now lived on was quiet and the houses tastefully separated by large trees and lush bushes. They came to realize they didn’t miss the constant din of street traffic and the crowds of people that poured out of the subway terminal, all bound toward the same vicinity of overcrowded buildings.

  Tamar gave birth to a girl, and named her Araxi. Anoush welcomed the changes of her new life. She didn’t suffer the loneliness of living in the apartment, and she was now a grandmother. It made it easier to distract herself from thinking about Lucine and wondering if she would ever see her again. There was no place for her daughter to find her, and she had given Lucine’s share of the savings to Levon, two realities that she was doomed to feel the guilt of.

  “Don’t worry,” Levon said the one time Anoush brought up her concern of how Lucine would find them. “She’ll turn up when she has no place to go and she’ll find us.”

  It seemed Levon and Tamar were not especially excited about being parents. Levon worked longer hours, and Tamar took care of the baby with a quiet resignation that Anoush found unsettling.

  One night, Anoush had gotten up to use the bathroom and stopped in the middle of the hallway when she heard them talking.

  “She is yours,” she heard Tamar’s voice.

  “I goddam hope so,” Levon said.

  “Please stop with all this,” Tamar said. Her voice was muffled and Anoush could barely understand her through her tears. “I can’t do this every night. You’re making both of us crazy.”

  It was Anoush who woke up to the baby’s cries in the middle of the night. She stood over the small wooden cradle and rocked her to sleep with even more gentleness than she had with her own children. She thought of her grandmother Anoush and understood the irony of her position in life now; she knew her single task was to protect her granddaughter from all the unforeseen inevitabilities that would come their way. In turn, as she grew older, Araxi became her grandmother’s shadow, two steps behind her, following her at very turn.

  If Tamar resented the growing bond between them, she did not show it. She often left the house claiming she had errands to run and returned in the late afternoon, sometimes empty-handed. The fights between her and Levon persisted. Anoush said nothing. She gathered Araxi in her arms and walked away, leaving the two to their endless cycle of bickering.

  One morning, Tamar had stayed in her bedroom until the afternoon. When she came into the kitchen she was still wearing her robe and had left her hair uncombed. Anoush was feeding Araxi in her high chair, prodding the child’s mouth open with a last spoonful of food. Tamar stood over the sink washing one of the dishes, and as she bent down to find a sponge from under the sink Anoush saw a large bruise on her chin. It was like an ugly, purple stamp against her smooth, olive-skinned face. Their eyes met for a moment.

  “How are you feeling?” Anoush asked, trying to keep her voice light.

  Tamar said nothing. She placed the cup back in the sink and returned to her bedroom.

  “Dughas,” my son, she said that evening when Levon came home. “Tamar was not herself today. She stayed in her room for most of the day.”

  Levon stood in the entrance of the kitchen yanking off his work boots. His hands were covered with grime from another day’s work, and his undershirt was wet with perspiration that had soaked through his clothes.

  When he didn’t say anything, Anoush continued, “You know I don’t like to interfere, but I would feel bad not saying something. Why does she have a bruise on her face?” She was ashamed to confront her son. It was the same shame she had felt when Levon was younger and had wanted to confront his father for the very same thing. She had never let him.

  He turned his back to her and started washing his hands in the kitchen sink. She sensed the same anger in him that she had in her husband for all those years. It was a quiet brooding that eventually festered until finally there was the terrible outburst, unpredictable and violent. She waited for him to finish. He started walking out of the kitchen.

  “Talk to me,” she said, catching him by the arm.

  He pushed her hand off with more force than was necessary and said, “You were right. Are you happy? She married me to get away from her family. But there was one person she didn’t manage to get away from, and now I’m the idiot who has to pay for it.” He pounded past her and down the hallway, the slam of the bedroom door loud and jarring.

  Araxi, who was sitting in the playpen in the living room, started to cry. Anoush ran to her. Upon seeing her grandmother, the child raised her arms toward her, her cries becoming screams. Anoush held her, blinking back her own tears, and felt the comfort and warmth she herself needed.

  The telephone had rung five times because Anoush had just stopped washing the dishes and needed to find a towel to dry off her hands. Whether or not Tamar was at home she didn’t know, and she hadn’t bothered asking the girls. The high-pitched shriek of an angry guitar emitted from the television screen, and although she hadn’t told them to change the channel, she knew Tamar would not approve.

  “Hi Ma,” she heard when she picked up the phone. It was Lucine.

  “Hi,” she said, and before pacing across the kitchen floor like she usually did during these phone calls, she went into the living room. Araxi and her sister Sophie, fifteen and ten years old respectively, were sitting on the couch completely transfixed, watching a blond rock star on television playing the guitar and singing, surrounded by jumping cheerleaders. Anoush lowered her voice, “Please can you lower it?” she asked the girls. “I can’t hear.”

  “Sure, Medz-mama,” said Araxi, and lowered the volume.

  “How are you?” Anoush spoke into the receiver.

  “I’m good,” said Lucine. “Nathan has big plans for us.”

  Anoush waited. She knew there was more. She had come to realize that the big plans that Lucine or Nathan had in mind were usually well under way without them having asked for her or Levon’s opinion, when it was too late and the repercussions detrimental.

  “He’s playing the stock market now,” Lucine continued.

  “That sounds good,” Anoush said, knowing Lucine was too self-engrossed to detect the skepticism in her voice.

  “It’s great,” Lucine said. “He just made a huge investment and it’s looking good.”

  “What kind of investment?” Anoush asked.

  “We took a second mortgage out on the house,” Lucine said. “And Nathan said the stocks are almost fool-proof. I’ll be able to quit m
y second job …”

  As she continued describing the new life she and Nathan would have, Anoush sat down on the kitchen chair and closed her eyes. Her mouth was suddenly parched, so much so that she could barely part her lips to speak. She had heard all of this before; Lucine’s ridiculous plans, her high hopes that eventually came to nothing. Where she found the wherewithal to fixate on a new, foolish enterprise only to be so miserably disappointed, Anoush did not know. One of the last dreams had been Nathan’s spontaneous interest in law school. Lucine had worked full-time as a retail manager and part-time as a cashier at a supermarket to finance Nathan’s new aspiration. Within a year he had changed his mind and decided to become an actor. The tireless, dogged cycle of Lucine’s life was sometimes more than Anoush thought she could bear. Levon had told her a long time ago that he was done bailing out Lucine. The only promise Anoush managed to make him keep was that he would help her maintain the house that she owned. Inevitably, Lucine would almost lose that when Nathan’s investments failed and they would be forced into foreclosure. Against his last word, Levon would step in and save her as always.

  “How’s everything there?” Lucine asked.

  “Fine,” Anoush managed to say.

  “Yeah? The girls are good? Levon? Tamar?” Anoush could tell the conversation was over, and Lucine was being polite.

  When she hung up the phone she remembered the night Lucine had finally reappeared after having been missing for two years. In the middle of the night, the incessant ringing of the doorbell had awoken everyone except for Araxi, who was still a baby then. Levon had opened the door with Anoush standing behind him, and there stood Lucine, wearing a thin raincoat in the middle of February, holding the hand of a young boy. She hadn’t said much, but Anoush was eventually able to extract most of the story: the man she had been seeing was a drug dealer as Anoush had suspected, and they had been living in the Bronx in his brother’s basement until he was arrested and Lucine was thrown out. The boy was her boyfriend’s son from a previous relationship and had no living relatives besides his uncle, who wanted nothing to do with him. He was ten years old.