by Davis Bunn
Lucius was outside the Hilton Garden Inn when Sonya arrived early Sunday morning. She had sounded very formal the previous evening when he called to confirm his arrival. When he slipped into the car, her greeting was colder still. He waited until she was driving to ask, “Was I wrong to come?”
She did not pretend to misunderstand. “My son telephoned last night. He was most concerned about our spending this time together. I assured him it was church and nothing more. No meal, not even coffee.”
“I understand.”
“Yes, I see that you do.” She glanced over. “Do you know, I would imagine that you could prove to be most relaxing company.”
“But not today,” Lucius replied, liking her very much. “Not with your son and granddaughter perched in the backseat, worrying over what might happen next.”
She drove them along the empty Sunday streets and halted, facing across from a green expanse. “This is Bicknell Park,” she said. “And the monument you see there is the Armenian Genocide Memorial.”
Lucius stared through the windshield at a circular cluster of eight tall arches. The pillars supported a distant roof, white and very solemn. As they sat there, one car after another divulged families and couples of every age. Many of them were dressed entirely in black, the women’s head covered in knitted kerchiefs. They climbed the stairs and laid flowers at the memorial’s base. They stood there for a time. They greeted others with the somber formality that Lucius might have expected at a funeral. Then they returned to their cars and drove away.
“I wanted you to see this because it has an importance upon what we will next witness,” Sonya went on. “The first Armenian immigrants arrived in the United States after the Hamidian massacres of the 1890s. Then another wave followed the Armenian Genocide of 1915. In the seventies there was yet another mass immigration as the Soviet Union began to collapse. Now there is a fourth wave of Armenian immigrants arriving from Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. As a result there are more Armenians living in the Los Angeles area than anywhere else in the world outside their home country.”
She reversed from the parking space and drove in silence. Lucius had no idea where Sonya was going with this, but felt no need to press her for an explanation. This was Sonya’s story. Her tempo. Her morning.
She joined a long line of cars pulling into a vast parking area and waved to the young man signaling her into a space. She cut the motor, took a scarf from her purse, settled it over her hair, then opened her door. Lucius rose from the car and went around to accompany her. As they joined a long parade of families headed into a massive concrete cube of a building, Sonya went on, “Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion, in the year 301. The Armenian Church claims to have been originated by the missions of Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus in the first century. The country today is surrounded by Muslim nations. The entire region is in flux. There are constant border disputes and incursions by one army or another. Much of this conflict is financed and coordinated by my home country, Iran.”
They entered the church’s massive vestibule, where Sonya was greeted by one family after another. She did not introduce Lucius, and the parishioners did not press. Lucius observed a rainbow assortment of people and races and even manners of dress. Most of the women wore kerchiefs over their heads, but not all. Sonya guided him into the sanctuary, a vast chamber shaped like a shallow square bowl. She selected a pew toward the back, where they could sit and observe as the hall rapidly filled. A band played upon the dais, the music offering a pleasant isolation.
“Los Angeles is home to the largest Persian community outside Iran. What is more, it also contains the largest Kurdish population in the West,” Sonya went on. “This church serves all three communities, which in itself is an astonishment, for the Kurds and the Persians and Armenians have been at war for over two and a half thousand years.” She gestured out over the congregation. “Now here is what I want you to see. Look there.”
“I don’t . . .”
“In the midst of my own tragic undoing, I was approached by this community. Remember what I told you on our drive to Dino’s home. I was a product of my nation, and my nation is held in the amber of its past. I was orphaned and I was alone.” Sonya gazed out over the rapidly filling hall. “These people welcomed me. They taught me by example that I was free to choose. I could walk away from the elements that invited me to live in dreadful solitude. I could join them here in this island of refuge and peace.”
As Lucius listened, he felt an image take shape behind his eyes. He saw himself seated not in a church, but rather a harbor. Surrounded by people who had all come for the same reason as himself. They sought an hour of calm. Here they were protected. Sheltered. Here they might know a brief instant of peace. And all the while, out beyond the harbor walls, the sea roared and the storm raged.
Sonya said, “Almost every family here carries its burden of calamity and woe. Each face you see, from the youngest to the old. They are immigrants, they are unwanted, they are unable to find the kin they left behind. They have loved ones trapped in the sea of refugee tents lining the Syrian borders. They have every reason to remain locked in solitude and sorrow.”
Sonya turned to him and said, “I am Persian. It is my legacy. No matter that I am disowned by my family for marrying the love of my life. Or that I am banned from ever returning to my homeland. I speak of this because you need to understand that I am a woman of two worlds. I love the West and its constant push into tomorrow. The freedom this grants individuals to live their own lives, free of the chains of the past, you cannot imagine how liberating this is, especially for a woman. And yet I remain distinctly a part of my heritage.”
“It is in your blood,” Luke said.
Sonya leaned toward him. The church lighting carved her features into shadow and yellowed stone. Lucius thought she had never looked so much like a queen as now. Sonya said, “The West has liberated us, especially women. But in the process it has lost something.”
“The past,” Lucius murmured.
“The mystery. In my homeland the past is not some distant series of half-forgotten events. It is part of the here and now. It defines today. What does this mean? How could it possibly be important enough to discuss with you?” Sonya’s accent was richer now. “Listen, then, and I will explain. The people of my land have learned to live with the impossible and the unexplained. The West seeks to define. To classify. To explain. The East says, some things cannot be clarified. Not now. Not ever. And that is why I found comfort in this haven. Because here, in this place, the Western culture is set aside, and the heritage of my homeland is embraced. In song. In prayer. In the company of good people living in two cultures.”
“You believe me,” Lucius realized. “The events that brought me here, they are real . . .”
Sonya tsk-tsked. “Why do you waste time with such comments?”
“But . . .”
“Pay careful attention. What I think of your story, that is not the issue.” Sonya gave him time to object. When he remained silent, she said, “There is one question you must answer. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” he replied, and he was.
“Here it is, then. The eternal quandary that every one of us either faces, or spends our entire life fleeing.” She was close enough now for him to smell the gentle fragrance of lilacs. “What will you do with the gift of your next breath?”
CHAPTER 51
Dino arrived back the next morning at six. Asha’s mother greeted him with a peck on the cheek and a hot breakfast no one said they wanted, but which everyone ate with gusto. Asha and Dino left promptly at six thirty. Her parents stood there on the sidewalk, waving them off. Asha rolled down her window and waved back, until Dino’s SUV turned a corner and they disappeared from view. As he pulled up onto the freeway, Asha said, “That’s a first.”
Dino waited until she had rolled up her window to say, “Don’t expect anything so pleasant from my family.”
Asha
liked everything about the morning. How they had the freeway almost entirely to themselves. How there was an easy sense of gentle harmony between them. How the sun was both brilliant and pleasant, not a cloud or hint of smog. How they were a couple, doing things that couples did.
Three hours later, they entered the Barbieri estate through stone gates shaped like two welcoming arms. A pair of tall signs stated that the vineyard was closed for the day. The drive rose along a gentle slope with acres of grapevines stretching out to either side. The leaves held a minty springtime color, fresh and new and in sharp contrast to the ancient twisted plants. When she commented on that, Dino said that many of the original vines had been brought over from Italy seventy years ago.
The family was huge and loud and greeted her with a great wave of people and noise. Asha had no choice but to allow herself to be swept along, back through the public tasting rooms and out to the rear courtyard, where a long table had been set beneath a grove of elms. Three barns and dozens of tall oak barrels framed the stone veranda. Birds flitted about overhead. Children ran and shrieked. Their elders laughed and argued and chattered. Asha was seated in the middle of the table and plied with questions and comments and antipasti and a deep red wine. She had no trouble in pretending to ignore any question or comment that she found inappropriate. The table was that loud.
Asha watched as Dino became the children’s focal point. They refused to let him even sit down. He was pulled away by dozens of demanding little hands and voices. He smiled an apology back to where she was seated, clearly embarrassed and enjoying himself immensely.
To Asha’s right sat the family matriarch, a wizened old woman named, of all things, Bernadette. She was brown and small and wore a shapeless knit dress with a mottled neck ringed by black glass beads. Asha could easily imagine her dressed head to toe in black, clustered together with other village women, screeching at something awful the grandchildren were doing.
Instead, when she spoke, it was to say, “Our Dino is a master at charming the little ones.”
“He’s the same with his younger patients,” Asha said. “It was one of the first things I liked about him.”
“Was it indeed?” She had a gaze dark and piercing. Asha felt as though she was being probed by a black scalpel. “What else attracted you?”
“I liked him before we ever met. He wrote the textbook that drew me into counseling.”
She drew back a notch. “My grandson wrote a book?”
It was Asha’s turn to be surprised. “You don’t know?”
“Young lady, my grandson says almost nothing about himself. He is the most closed-up individual in my family. It has been a bone of contention since he was as young as those who pester him now.”
Asha had no idea what to say.
“He brought his ex-wife . . . You know about her, I suppose.”
“A little. Yes.”
The old woman sniffed. “Then it’s probably more than the rest of us. Dino brought her here once only. I saw her again at their wedding. After that, not at all. I have no idea what she did with her life, other than buy clothes none of us cared for. Too extreme and too aggressive. She looked like a fashionable shark, if you want my opinion.” She made a brushing motion with her arthritic fingers. “I do not care to speak about that one any-more.”
“Fine by me,” Asha said, thinking how remarkably like Sonya this woman was. Not in any external fashion. But down deep. Where it mattered most. They could have been sisters. “Dino has authored four books, and I don’t know how many articles.”
“This is true, what you are telling me?”
“Your grandson has an international reputation. He is a master in his field.”
The old woman watched Dino push a shrieking trio of young girls in the woven hammock hung between two elms. “You can explain to an old woman what these books are about?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Asha replied, and meant it. “Can I ask you something?”
“In this family, my dear, you do not need to precede your questions with a request for permission.”
An answer worthy of her own grandmother. “Bernadette is not an Italian name, is it?”
“Hardly. I was named after my grandfather’s forbidden sweetheart.” Her cheeks dimpled at Asha’s surprise. “He was a porter in the grandest hotel in Rome, perhaps the finest in all Italy. He fell in love with the daughter of an Irish diplomat. There is much supposition about their affair, but all anyone can say for certain is, a ticket was purchased for him to travel to California by steamer. He had six children by my grandmother, all boys. I was the first female offspring in our family. He insisted upon naming me.”
“Your grandmother must have loved that.”
“I was sixteen months old before I was christened. That is how fierce the argument was. My naming has become part of the family’s lore. Of course such fables grow richer with the years.” The dimples grew deeper. “The last time someone shared my naming tale with the young ones there, I heard something about a witch and a tower and perhaps even a dragon or two.”
Asha found herself liking the old woman enough to ask, “Are we to become friends?”
Ancient fingers curled around Asha’s wrist. “Do you know, my dear, I believe we already are.”
CHAPTER 52
Lucius drove straight from the Los Angeles church to Miramar. The journey took a little less than five hours. He held his speed to sixty miles per hour and let the other vehicles sweep past him. Traffic was very heavy, and several times the southbound lanes appeared to freeze up like a giant parking lot. The Pacific Ocean slipped in and out of view. The sunlight was strong. He noticed all these things but was impacted by nothing except his destination.
He arrived back at the guesthouse just after six. The manager was clearly surprised to see him again, but greeted Lucius with a severe formality and gave him the room he had used before. He let himself in, set his case on the narrow dining table, then crossed the town’s main road and entered a very pleasant diner. By the time he finished eating, Lucius was almost nodding off in his booth. He returned to his little room, undressed, and was out for the count.
The next morning he walked down to the café and took his time over a smoothie and a black coffee. The jangle of the door’s bell and the hissing steam and the chatter offered a sort of comforting normality. He got a refill on his coffee and drew out his pad and pen. But there was no list to work through this day. Everything began and ended with seeing Jessica again.
The Wright home was as utterly unappealing as the first visit, a great heaping monolith of white stone and ego. Sarah was there on the front portico, just as unwelcoming as before. Lucius offered a greeting, accepted her silent rebuke over his disturbing their peace, and followed her back down the long central corridor to the conservatory.
This time, however, Jessica did not keep him waiting. He was still standing by the glass wall when the door behind him opened once more. “Why does our guest not have tea?”
“Because your guest does not want anything,” Lucius replied.
“Nonsense. Sarah, phone Consuela and ask her to fix a tray.”
Lucius decided not to object. “Good morning, Jessica.”
She waited while Sarah positioned her chair just so, close to the rear glass wall, but in the shadow of the striped canopy. When her aide phoned the kitchen and returned, Jessica said, “Sarah, you need to hear this. Sit down over there.”
Sarah cast Lucius another of those glances, equal measure resentment and curiosity. The way she moved, like she swam through some viscous fluid, made Lucius fairly certain she had never been seated here before.
Jessica did not speak again until Lucius had settled into his own chair. “I wish to hire you as my secretary.”
Lucius decided it was good that Sarah was seated. Otherwise he was fairly certain she would have keeled over from the shock.
“I suppose we can come up with some fancier name, if ‘secretary’ offends your male sensibilities.”
>
“‘Secretary’ is fine,” he replied.
“I would want you available day and night. Which means you must reside here on the premises.”
“Not inside the main residence,” Lucius replied. “The pool house will do me just fine.”
She seemed to find that humorous. “Aren’t you going to inquire over your pay?”
“No.”
“For a student of finance you seem very cavalier in your attitude.”
“I’m not agreeing to this job for the money,” Lucius replied. “I’d just as soon you not pay me at all.”
Sarah’s shocked expression deepened even further. He knew she was suspicious of his motives, and rightly so.
But Jessica looked at him. Not in the sideways manner of a matron taking on a new hire. Really looked. For an instant the film of pain and age vanished and a trace of the old spark returned to those eyes. Lucius found himself staring into the gaze he had known and loved.
Then the moment passed. Jessica was once more an elderly woman clearly afflicted by more than the weight of years. “Very well, young man. I accept your terms. Sarah, you may transport me back upstairs.”
But as she was wheeled from the room, Jessica glanced back. Just a fleeting look, but long enough for Lucius to see that same glimmer of the past. Only filtered by everything that had separated them, and still did so today.
* * *
Sarah, Jessica’s aide or servant or whatever she was, avoided Lucius for the rest of the day. He would never have found Jessica’s office, had it not been for Consuela. The cook was beside herself with joy over his arrival. “I pray and I pray for you to come. Okay, maybe not you. But somebody who is alive. Somebody who will open up these windows and bring life into this place.”
“You don’t like the house?”
Consuela sniffed. “What is there to like in this place? It is so big, I walk through rooms and I think ghosts follow me, the sound my feet make. But then I know it is only the echo. What ghost would want to live here?”
As he ate his lunch in the kitchen, a solid-looking woman in a white nurse’s uniform entered and greeted him with an unflappable calm. She accepted his name but did not give hers in return, which Lucius found only mildly odder than him being here at all. She collected a tray with food for two and departed. Consuela said, “That is the day Ruth.”