“You can make it louder again,” she told the girls and walked toward the bathroom.
She needed to wash her face and regain her composure. She felt the looming dread of Lucine’s failed plans and Levon’s reaction. After Bedros had died she had become powerless. Her bargaining chip was gone, and cajoling Lucine with mild threats of telling her father what she was doing was useless. Anoush looked in the mirror as she dried her face. She had accepted the weight of time and her unhappy life a long time ago. It was enduring it that mattered most to her.
From outside, a dark sudden explosion filled the air, and within moments she felt her heart shrink. She imagined a large bomb soaring through the air, moving toward the house. The pain in her chest left her gasping. Before she could hold on to the edge of the bathroom sink, Anoush collapsed on the bathroom floor. She heard the dim sound of the television coming from the living room, and knew she could not call out even if they could hear her. Again, the image of her and her mother crouching beneath the window in their house in Romania came to her.
It would not be for another half hour before her granddaughters would hear the sound of the running water and realize she had been in the bathroom for too long. Araxi had knocked at first, and then returned with a knitting needle to pry the bathroom door open. She scrambled toward her grandmother, who was lying on the floor, her eyes closed, her heart stopped. She rested Anoush’s head in her hands and touched her hand. For the first time in all those years it was now Araxi who held her.
Sophie
She was fishing for another marshmallow out of the Lucky Charms box when the phone rang. She knew her mother was outside and would either not hear the ringing or not bother to leave the backyard. There had been a trance-like quality in the way she had moved through the kitchen fixing herself a cup of coffee, her gray bathrobe hugging her hips and breasts as she left the kitchen and went outside.
Sophie tossed the box on the couch and picked up the phone before it rang a third time.
“Hello?” She was hoping it was Adrian calling her from upstate, and wondered if he was thinking about her at all.
There was the sound of traffic on the other end of the line.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” It was the voice of a girl. “Is this Sophie?” Her tone was impatient.
“Yes,” she said. “Who’s this?”
“You’re going to have to promise not to tell that I called,” the girl said. From the commanding nature of her voice, Sophie knew it was Cecile.
“Cecile?”
“Are your parents home?”
“My mom’s in the backyard, but doesn’t know I’m on the phone,” Sophie said. “Is Araxi with you? Is she okay?”
“Yeah … she’s with me. She’s okay. I don’t have that much time.”
“Can I talk to her?” Sophie asked. She wanted so much to hear her sister’s voice, to hear something other than the dark hopelessness that had consumed her all these weeks.
“She’s not here here,” Cecile said. “That’s why I’m calling.”
“Did something happen to her?” Sophie said, and without realizing it, she started to cry.
“I don’t know where you are in your house, but I want you to go to another room,” Cecile said. “I don’t want anyone to hear you.”
Sophie ran down the hallway and went into her bedroom.
“Okay,” she said. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
The other end of the receiver roared with the sound of car horns and then died down. “Sophie, Araxi doesn’t know I’m calling home,” Cecile said. “She doesn’t want to go back. She wants to keep driving.”
“Does she ever want to come back?” Sophie asked, and in place of her tears, an anger erupted within her. “My parents are worried like crazy,” she said. “Why would she not want to come back?” She grabbed the closest thing of her sister’s she could find, a hairbrush, and hurled it across the room. She didn’t want to hear the rest of what the girl had to say.
“I don’t know,” Cecile said, “but my plan is to try to get her to come back with me. I don’t know how long it will take. I can’t make it obvious because I don’t want her running off from me. I’m calling because I know how worried your parents must be, how worried you are.”
“Your mom called this morning,” Sophie said. She felt the cruel inclination to throw Cecile off balance. After all, Araxi had chosen to run off with her and had had no trouble leaving Sophie behind.
After a moment’s pause, “Did she? What did she want?”
“Just to find out if we had heard from you. She’d figured out that you left with my sister,” Sophie said, baiting her with more to ask.
“How did she know I left with your sister?” She sounded nervous.
“I’m trying to remember.… She said something about how you can’t pull anything off by yourself, how you always find someone to buddy up with.”
“I have to get off the phone,” Cecile said. “Listen, I don’t know if you should tell your parents. Do you think you can hold off for a few days before I figure out the rest of this? I just wanted someone to know that she’s safe and I’m trying to get her back.”
“Sure,” Sophie said, fully aware that she had rattled Cecile. She was about to thank her for calling, but changed her mind. Cecile was half the reason her sister had left to begin with. After hanging up the phone she realized she hadn’t thought to ask where they were. Not that Cecile would have told her, and in knowing that, she was less upset with her own thoughtlessness.
Her mother came inside.
“You’re still watching TV?” she asked when she saw Sophie on the couch.
What else should I do? “Uh-huh,” she said, trying to sound casual. She did not look at her mother for fear the news of Cecile’s phone call would spontaneously fly out of her mouth. She was aware of her tendency to blurt things out during the most inopportune moments.
That evening her father came home early from work and the three of them sat down to eat dinner together. Sophie couldn’t remember the last time this had happened. The silence between the chewing and refilling of glasses and dinner plates was almost more than she could stand. She wanted her parents to have a discussion about something, anything, fight even.
“What did you do today?” her father asked.
“Not much,” she said. “Just watched some TV and then went grocery shopping with Mom.”
She took in large mouthfuls of food, hoping neither of them would bother asking anything else.
“I’ll clear the table,” she said, and stood up awkwardly, accidentally yanking the tablecloth. Her mouth was stuffed with food as she carried her plate into the kitchen.
“Why are you rushing?” her mother asked. “Sit and wait until we’re all finished. We’re both still eating.” She noticed her mother give her father a questioning look.
Sophie sat down and finished chewing her food.
“How was Lucine’s this morning?” her mother asked.
“The usual,” her father said. “Same Lucine. Same nonsense. It was just her toilet. It took ten minutes and I left.”
“What’s new with Nathan?” Tamar had helped Lucine raise Nathan after she had brought him home with her. They had both lived in the house until Lucine had found a job and a place to live.
“Real estate this time. Ha,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s yet to make a man of himself.”
“It’s not all his doing,” her mother said. “You can’t blame the whole thing on him. She made him this way.”
Sophie had heard the popular theories accounting for Nathan’s failures many times. Some said he should be ashamed to still be depending on his mother when he was almost thirty years old. He was by nature like his father—lazy—and would never amount to much. Others speculated that Lucine had spoiled him to make up for his being abandoned by his father, and had ultimately hurt him more than helped by giving him too much. It was an unfortunate combination of the two, was yet another common perception.
Sophie knew of Nathan mostly by name. He was far older and had moved to Long Island with her aunt when she was a baby.
“I’m not saying it’s all him, Tamar. But I am saying that a different sort of person would feel bad seeing their mother work like that. Eventually a person steps up and becomes responsible for themselves. Jesus Christ. He’s almost twenty-eight years old. How many schools did she send him to? How much of her money did he waste? He’s just like his father. A spic drug dealer who’s probably dead or still in jail.”
“Cecile called today. Araxi’s with her.” Sophie bit her lip so hard that she immediately felt the sting of the cut. She grabbed a napkin and blotted the blood.
“What? When?” her mother asked. “I was home all day. I didn’t hear the phone ring.”
“You were in the backyard in the morning, remember? Then,” Sophie said.
“Where is she?” her father asked.
“I don’t know,” Sophie said.
“Did you ask?” her mother demanded.
“Yes, I did,” she said, “but she wouldn’t tell me. She said Araxi didn’t know she was calling, but she’s going to try to get her back to New York.”
She hadn’t wanted to lie, but the intensity of being the focus of their attention disarmed her. For weeks she had existed as if she had no parents. Things that would have been forbidden were now barely supervised: hours in front of the television, eating whatever she wanted whenever it suited her, and feeling bold enough to allow Adrian to climb into her bedroom through the window. She had grappled with the horrible feeling of being completely overlooked, yet experienced a freedom that even her sister Araxi had not yet known under their parents’ roof. As she answered their questions as simply as she could manage, Sophie realized that her freedom during the weeks of her sister’s absence was what Cecile had probably known all her life, and why her sister had no intention of returning home. She immediately regretted her confession.
“We have to call that girl’s mother now,” her mother said, standing up from the dining room table.
This was something that had not occurred to Sophie.
“We don’t have her number,” she said, hoping to contain the repercussions of what she had told them.
“I’m sure I can find it,” her mother said.
“Do we really need to tell her?” Sophie said. She felt sick.
“Yes we do,” her mother said, and stopped herself before walking away. “How long were you going to wait before telling us?” she asked.
“I was waiting until you and Dad were in the same room,” Sophie said. “So you could ask me everything you needed to know.”
“You’re lying,” her mother said, “but I’ll deal with that later. I have to go call this woman. Do these Americans even notice when their children go missing? No. They let their kids leave the house without even asking when they’ll be back. And then they go off to college and they never see them again.”
This was her parents’ common perception of Americans, and she and her sister had heard it all their lives. It was also one that the Armenian community shared. They viewed American culture as one that didn’t value or respect tradition, overlooking the importance of discipline and giving their children too much freedom. Despite having been born in New York, Sophie felt an acute separation between herself and anyone who was not Armenian. The clannishness of her upbringing made her feel embarrassed and confused, and she treaded the boundaries between where she was born and how her parents had raised her and her sister. Again, she thought of Araxi. If Sophie felt this way now, how must her sister have felt all these years and now that she was almost seventeen years old?
She could hear her mother on the phone, speaking with her slight accent that Sophie rarely noticed. Now as she listened, she wondered what impression she would leave on Cecile’s mother.
“Yes, she is.… Yes, you can. One minute.” Her mother walked into the dining room where Sophie was still sitting and handed her the phone.
“Hello?”
“I can’t believe the coincidence,” Mrs. Gradore started. “I called this morning and then Cecile called you. What did she say? I’m going to stop babbling so you can tell me everything.”
Sophie relayed her conversation with Cecile almost exactly, leaving out the part about what Mrs. Gradore had said about her daughter that morning.
“… So that’s about it,” she said. “It wasn’t a long conversation.”
“Did she say when she was coming back?” Mrs. Gradore asked.
“No. But Mrs. Gradore—Cecile wants to come home. She’s just trying to figure out a way of getting my sister to come back with her.” Sophie hoped this would settle the woman’s nerves for the time being.
“Can you please let me know when she calls again? I’d like to speak to her myself. Can you tell her to call me when she calls?”
Sophie hesitated, “I wasn’t even supposed to tell anyone that she called. If I tell her, I’m scared she’s going to get mad at me and stop calling.”
She heard a pause on the other end of line. “Okay,” the woman said. “I guess as long as I know she’s okay it won’t make a difference if I talk to her or not. But really—you have to call me if you hear from her again.”
After she hung up with Mrs. Gradore, Sophie went to her bedroom to lie down. She wished Adrian were back from his trip. She needed the comfort of knowing he would be there to listen. Again, she wondered if he thought about her as much as she thought about him. The general consensus among the girls in her class left her wondering if they were right about boys her age: they are all stupid and clueless when you like them or they are creepy and gross when you don’t. Adrian seemed the former. Many times when they had sat across from each other on her bed, she had been tempted to brush the pieces of hair that fell into his face. She imagined him recoiling from her, his visits abruptly ending, and the fear of that rejection kept her from doing anything bold. Eventually, these visits would end, she knew. She wanted to savor their secret meetings until that reality came to pass.
“What did she say?”
Sophie had been lying in bed with her eyes closed. Her mother was standing in the doorway scowling at her.
“Mrs. Gradore?” she asked.
“Who else?” Her mother closed the door behind her and stood over her bed, waiting with an imperious air that Sophie was all too familiar with.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just that she wanted me to tell her what Cecile told me.”
“Have you told us everything?” her mother asked. She pressed her lips together and drew in a breath as if she were trying to contain her rage. Araxi was usually the target of her mother’s attacks, and in knowing this, Sophie pulled her body toward herself and huddled on the far corner of the bed.
“Yes,” she said, barely able to breathe. She knew her mother’s temper and was immediately terrified. “I’m telling you the truth. I promise I’ll tell you if she calls again. Right away,” she added.
Her mother left the room. Sophie let out a sigh. She had survived what could have been a severe smacking. She thought of Araxi. Keep driving, she thought, wishing the words could somehow reach her sister. Don’t bother coming back.
Faris
He backed out of the driveway and glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure he had wiped the sleep away from his eyes. This would be his fourth trip to the supermarket since that morning. He had never known that pregnancy caused women to become forgetful, but there he was, heading back in the same direction, and this time for three lemons. Sarine had woken him up from a much-needed nap and judging from the urgency in her tone, he knew he didn’t have much time before his in-laws arrived for dinner. Since he and Sarine had announced the pregnancy, her parents had become hyper-vigilant and more possessive. She had miscarried twice before, and for this reason they had waited to tell them only when she was almost four months and showing to make certain that the pregnancy was stable.
Sarine dealt with her parents with the same ease and nonchalance th
at one handled an irrational child. Faris admired her for this, a bit ashamed and self-conscious about his immediate annoyance with them when they arrived at the house unannounced or insisted on accompanying him and Sarine to a doctor’s appointment. He would sit in the waiting room, regarding the other couples, and feeling embarrassed to have Sarine’s parents sitting next to them as if their attendance was routine.
“They’re just excited,” she would say, when they called at seven-thirty in the morning on a weekend to see how she was feeling. “The two losses were hard for us, but they were also hard for them.”
He thought of his father, who had died a year before he and Sarine had gotten married, and his mother, who was living with her sister in their old neighborhood in Sunnyside. The mild onset of Alzheimer’s had left her involvement peripheral. In lieu of this, he chastised himself for not feeling more grateful for his in-laws’ enthusiasm. They seemed like a pair of overeager vultures, waiting impatiently for every morsel of the experience of Sarine’s pregnancy. He resented the Saturday evening dinners that had now become a ritual, and as Sarine’s pregnancy progressed, he could not shake his growing concern over their ubiquitous presence after the baby was born. Watching her revel in the changes of her body and especially now, feeling the first kicks of the baby, he felt paralyzed in asking her to create some boundaries between them and her parents. Instead, he took to the role of playing the dutiful husband, not allowing her to clean or do the laundry, and running her errands for her.
The supermarket was pleasantly empty when he stepped through the automatic doors and headed toward the produce section. He grabbed three lemons and walked to the nearest register, hoping to get back in time to take a shower and have a drink before his in-laws arrived. As he left the supermarket he noticed a woman leaving her car and walking in the opposite direction. He could not see her face, but saw the curtain of long brown hair that hung down to her waist, and knew instantly that it was Tamar. The last time they had seen one another was the night before her wedding less than two years ago.
The Legacy of Lost Things Page 7