The Legacy of Lost Things

by Aida Zilelian

  That week she was quieter than usual. Her parents and sisters even noticed. She tended to each chore without complaining and replayed her evening with Faris over and over in her mind, humming the melody under her breath.

  Several days later she went to the backyard to gather the dry laundry off the clothesline. The song had become a mantra, and much of the time she was not aware that she was singing. “May God bless and grant you long lives … May God make you good mothers and wives …”

  “What are you singing?” She heard Shoushan’s sharp voice and turned around. Her sister was leaning against the doorway as if she had been there for a while.

  “Just a song I made up,” Tamar said. She turned her back, pretending to be absorbed in taking down the laundry.

  “No you didn’t,” Shoushan said. “I know that song.” She took a few steps toward Tamar. She kept her back turned.

  “Why do you have to make something out of nothing? I was just singing a silly song I made up. Now you’re embarrassing me,” Tamar said, picking up the basket and walking away.

  “Ma!” Shoushan shouted.

  There lay the difference between Shoushan and Anahid. Perhaps it was because Shoushan was the middle child and had an eagerness for authority that made her report Tamar’s misconducts now and again. It usually depended on her mood and what she had discovered. Tamar knew that this time there was no relenting.

  “Why can’t you leave it alone?” Tamar whispered fiercely. “Please,” she hissed.

  She saw the triumph in her sister’s eyes as she smirked at Tamar knowingly. “And I know for a fact that it is only playing on Hamra Street,” she said.

  “Please don’t say anything,” she pleaded. “I never go anywhere. Please.”

  “You didn’t go alone—that’s for sure,” Shoushan said, unwilling to let the matter go. Tamar stood in front of her sister defenseless. “And I bet anything Faris went with you.” She studied her little sister’s face for the slightest reaction—a twitch, a blink—anything that would surrender the truth. Tamar challenged her sister’s hard stare and didn’t waver. “All right for you,” Shoushan said finally, concluding her interrogation. “I won’t tell Mama or Baba, but I don’t want you to ever do that again. Hamra Street is crazy, as you saw yourself. All someone has to do is snatch you up and dash off. I doubt little Faris will be able to protect you in that situation.”

  Tamar nodded, almost collapsing from the sudden rush of relief that swept over her. She wished someone would snatch her up and dash off. At least for one evening Faris had helped her escape, even if it was only for a few hours. He was the fraying rope between her family and the freedom she would always desire. Neither of them would come to know the impossibility of their love for one another until they had left Beirut and come to America, a place that, despite its newness, would only offer what they could not leave behind.

  Araxi

  It was almost a full moon. The summer evenings in Santa Fe were warm and breezy, the perfect weather to walk around with no particular destination. Araxi stood on the sidewalk waiting for her companion as he sifted through a box of junk that had been left out on the street by one of the neighbors. The young man was lean and tall and carried himself with a casual confidence. His brown chin-length hair and wide dark eyes lent him an air of innocence and charm that one could mistake for coyness.

  “Anything?” she asked him.

  The young man stood up and produced a long cylindrical piece of glass. “I could make a lamp out of this,” he said. “I have some wiring at the house that may fit through the opening.”

  For several evenings they had taken to walking through the neighborhood, and Araxi would watch as he looked for odd objects. Sometimes they talked, sometimes not.

  Santa Fe seemed to be divided into two distinct sections. Old Town was an area dense with tourists and mazes of streets lined with restaurants and expensive shops. The other side was where the locals lived, and where Araxi and Cecile had been staying. They had been there for two weeks now, living in a glorified flophouse owned by a man referred to as Big John. They had met the young man, Kyle, at a local convenience store when Araxi had tried buying a six-pack of beer with no success. Kyle lived with Big John and several other people, and had invited the girls to stay at the house. The transition had been seamless. Araxi cooked dinner every night in exchange for staying in the house and Cecile had found a job at the Salvation Army and bought the groceries.

  “How very hippie of us,” Cecile commented one night. “Living here with all these misfits.”

  Araxi waited for her to say something about the fact that she had been staying in Kyle’s room since they’d gotten there. “I guess,” she said. She was aware that everyone in the house was talking about her and Kyle and their blossoming romance, when, in fact, nothing had happened between them. She could hardly admit to herself that she was enamored of him, because there seemed to be no reciprocity. His demeanor with her was off-handed and sometimes aloof when they were around everyone else. Yet in the evenings he would turn on the one small lamp that sat on the bare wood floor in the corner of the room and play music for her that he had written. She would read her poems to him. Eventually they would lie on the floor in their sleeping bags and fall asleep.

  Life felt simple. The pressing need to keep driving through the country had finally faded for Araxi, and she did not think about her parents or Tom Jones or the idea that she would have to leave New Mexico. She woke up every morning, made breakfast, and cleaned the kitchen. Sometimes she read or took a walk through town and inevitably the hour came when she knew Kyle would be returning from work and she would make sure to be back at the house by then. He worked in a small sound engineering studio a mile away from the house. Local bands would hire him to record and produce their music. Araxi looked forward to their routine of leaving the house at night to go walking and then staying up late.

  When Araxi told Cecile how she and Kyle spent their evenings Cecile said, “How terribly romantic. He sings you songs and you read to him.”

  The two were sitting on the porch and the house was quiet. Everyone had eaten dinner, and the only sound they heard was the television coming from the living room.

  “How long do you want to stay here?” Cecile asked.

  “I don’t know,” Araxi said.

  Her eyes were fixed to the right of the house, where Kyle would be walking back from work.

  “We can’t stay here indefinitely,” Cecile said.

  “Why not?” Araxi asked. “It’s easy here.”

  “It is,” Cecile admitted, “but it’s not the answer.” She paused for a moment and then took a risk. “Don’t you want go back at some point?”

  “No,” Cecile heard. She should have known better than to ask. “I don’t want to go back and I haven’t been thinking about it,” Araxi said.

  “Sophie is there,” Cecile said.

  “I know that. And I still can’t go back. It’s no place to live,” Araxi said.

  Cecile remembered the evening Araxi had shown up at her door last summer. She hadn’t said what had happened at home, but only that she wanted to leave. Compared to Araxi’s life in New York, Cecile’s was manageable. Cecile’s mother was an alcoholic and her father was consumed with work, but having self-involved parents didn’t compare to the brutishness of Araxi’s father or the bleak existence that Araxi’s mother suffered as a result. Cecile could now admit to herself that leaving New York was something she had done out of boredom. But Araxi regarded all of it as a permanent escape. It was certainly a naïve solution, as far as Cecile was concerned. And poor Sophie. She was old enough to absorb the chaos in her home, but too young to comprehend how to survive without Araxi.

  “Well, I think we should think about leaving here,” Cecile said.

  “For what reason?”

  “We can’t just stay here,” Cecile said. “Let’s keep heading west.”

  “Fuck you, Cec,” she heard. Araxi stood up and was about to walk off.


  “I’m serious,” Cecile said, unrelenting. “I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

  “Why not?” Araxi wanted to avoid this conversation. “I feel good here. Why can’t we just stay?”

  “I don’t want to, I said,” Cecile said.

  “So go home, then,” Araxi said, surprising them both. Throughout the course of their friendship she had always felt that Cecile was her extension into the real world, a sturdy plank she could walk across to get to the other side safely.

  “I can’t do that. How would I explain leaving you behind? How would I explain leaving in the first place? You can’t expect me to go back without you. It isn’t fair,” she said.

  “So you’re going to drag me along with you? That’s shitty of you,” Araxi said.

  “It’s no more or less shitty than you dragging me out here in the first place,” Cecile said.

  “It was our idea together,” Araxi protested. “I didn’t beg you to take me away from New York. You wanted to leave just as badly.”

  Cecile watched her as she walked off the porch steps and down the block. She went to her bedroom and grabbed a fistful of quarters from a jar she kept them in and left the house walking in the opposite direction. There was an enclosed phone booth several blocks away.

  After two rings someone picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” It was Araxi’s father.

  “Hi,” Cecile said and hesitated. “This is Cecile. Araxi’s friend.”

  “Cecile? Is Araxi with you?”

  She had never seen or spoken to Mr. Yessayan. She thought his accent would be much thicker.

  “She is,” Cecile said. “But she doesn’t want to come back and she doesn’t know I’m calling you. She’s okay. We’re in New Mexico.”

  “New Mexico.” There was silence.

  “She says she’s not going to go back,” Cecile said.

  There was more silence. “My wife has two sisters in San Francisco. Can you get her to go there? Just agree to keep going and get her to San Francisco.”

  “Yes,” Cecile said, feeling an overwhelming relief. She hadn’t realized until then how intimidated she was to meet Araxi’s father after having heard about all her parents’ arguments.

  “Okay. So call again when you are getting closer,” he said, and was about to hang up the phone.

  “Mr. Yessayan. I’m guessing you or your wife have spoken to my mother. Can you please tell her I’m okay and I’m trying to get home?”

  “I will.” Before she could thank him he had hung up the phone.

  Araxi saw Kyle from a distance. His tall, narrow frame and sauntering gait were unmistakable.

  “You looked pissed,” he said when he saw her.

  “Let’s walk,” she said.

  Without questioning her he walked quietly alongside her.

  “Cecile wants to leave,” she said, finally.

  “How come?” he asked, after pausing for a moment.

  Araxi shrugged. “She says she’s bored and that staying here isn’t the answer,” she said.

  “Do you want to stay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, thankful that it was dark enough to hide the redness in her face.

  “So stay,” he said.

  “It’s not that simple,” she said.

  They started heading in the direction of the house. “Can we not go home just yet?” she asked.

  Kyle veered right at a corner a block away from the house.

  “Why don’t you want to go back?” he asked quietly.

  Araxi knew someone would inevitably ask her this question, and she had thought of all the answers she could give. Beyond the fear of her parents’ reaction that she had run off or her father’s terrifying temper and her mother’s chronic depression, there was the reality that she had killed a man … and now she couldn’t even say why.

  After leaving St. Louis, Araxi had started paying closer attention to the news, and although there were no reports of a vagrant found murdered, she felt it was only a matter of time before it was all traced back to her.

  “My parents,” she said. “It’s pretty terrible living at home.” He said nothing as if waiting for more. They continued walking in silence. “What was it like for you?” she asked.

  “What? Living at home? Good,” he said. “Pretty good. My mom raised me. My dad wasn’t around. My mom is quite the independent character. She still managed to go out and have fun. I had lots of babysitters,” he laughed.

  “And what about Big John?” she asked.

  “My mom knows I live here. Big John is the brother of one of her ex-boyfriends she’s still friendly with.”

  “And she’s okay with you living out of the house?” She could not imagine freedom being relinquished so easily, as if it were part of the ordinary course of life.

  “I’m almost twenty,” he said. “It’s not like I don’t visit or she doesn’t stop by the house. How about you?”

  “There are so many answers to that,” she said. “I can give you the least exciting version: my dad is nuts and has made my mom nuts.” “And what’s the exciting version?”

  “It’s pretty terrible,” she said. “I have a little sister I’ve left behind, I should have stayed and taken care of her the way our grandmother took care of us before she died …”

  Before Kyle could grab her, Araxi began sprinting down the street. From where he stood he saw her lift her face to the sky and begin wailing. Her figure grew more distant as she kept running down the block, her screams fading until eventually he heard nothing. He ran to her and found her sitting under a tree. She was crying quietly, covering her face with her hands. He sat down next to her.

  “He threw her against this mirror …” She turned to him, unafraid of letting him see the ugliness of her swollen eyes and runny nose. “I mean, really, Kyle. Who throws someone against a mirror? We, we …” She had to steady herself. “I wanted to take my mother to the emergency room, but she didn’t let me.”

  The image of Tom Jones’s battered face came to her. She remembered the rage she had felt when she had lifted up the heavy rock and slammed it into his face. His broken teeth had caved inside of his mouth and his nose had split in several places. Despite how or why it had happened, she knew she needed forgiveness.

  “Who does that?” she asked, feeling her body shake against his.

  Kyle took a deep breath and sat with her. Together they watched daylight fade into another night.

  Faris

  A brutal, cold wind hissed through the bare trees as Faris and Sarine sat on the living room couch watching television.

  “Ugh,” she said shivering. “Just looking out the window gives me a chill. Good thing my body temperature is higher than normal.” She rubbed her belly appreciatively and smiled.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” he asked. “Even from outside. I don’t mind.”

  “Just tea,” she said.

  He got up and headed toward the kitchen. “When I tell my friends how helpful you’ve been I can tell they get jealous,” she called out so he could hear her. “They all complain about their husbands and how useless they are.”

  Faris filled the kettle with more water than necessary and didn’t respond. The same gnawing guilt wormed its way into his thoughts as he stood by the stove waiting for the water to boil. He had not seen Tamar since that horrible afternoon in the parking lot of the supermarket. Not that it was for lack of trying. Sarine could praise him all she wanted for leaving the house to run errands regardless of the weather, but he knew the true purpose of his constant acquiescence. He visited the supermarket at least once a day, even if Sarine hadn’t sent him there to get something for her. Each time he sat in his car playing silly games with the time. If it was 12:02 pm he would tell himself to wait until 12:10 pm and maybe he would see Tamar in the parking lot. Sometimes he would walk in and weave through the aisles several times hoping to find her.

  Just as his friends had predicted, Sarine had completely lost interest in having s
ex and preferred lying on the couch with him while he rubbed her hands or feet. When she left in the mornings to go to work, he would take long showers thinking about Tamar, pleasuring himself under the scalding water, practically choking on the steam-filled air. The memory of her skin, the faint sweet smell of her perspiration while she sat on top of him in his car felt like abuse in retrospect. There was no way of exiling her from his thoughts. Ashamedly, the further Sarine’s pregnancy progressed the more desperate he became to find Tamar again. She could go into labor at any moment, the doctors said. She was a week past her due date.

  “The kettle’s boiling,” he heard her say, snapping him out of his train of thought. “Are you there?”

  “I am. I was getting something from the refrigerator and had my hands full,” he lied.

  Later that evening as they sat in bed, Sarine sat upright and grimaced.

  “Should I get the car ready?” he asked.

  She smiled through her frown. “No,” she said. “We should wait. They’ll send us back home if the contractions are irregular. They need to be three minutes apart at most.”

  In a span of an hour the mild pain Sarine felt had intensified. He helped her down the stairs and eased her into the car.

  “We’ll call my parents when we get there,” she said, hunching over through her gritted teeth.

  Faris rolled his eyes. He was sure his in-laws would be in the room with them despite his having expressed to Sarine his desire to be alone with her during the delivery. Thankfully, it all happened so quickly that minutes after being admitted Sarine had been wheeled into the delivery room. Faris stood next to her as she gripped his hand, screaming. It was a boy. Faris hadn’t had a preference, but knew Sarine had wanted a boy so she could name it after him.