Zabelle

by Nancy Kricorian

  Toros put down the magazine. “Jack,” he bellowed, “time to go. Get down here.”

  Without thinking I blurted, “I’ll get him.” I hurried to the attic. Sure enough, the curtain fluttered in Joy’s window. I craned my head and saw my son jog down Walnut Street.

  I wasn’t sure why, but I told Toros that Jack didn’t feel well. “He’s upstairs in bed.”

  “What’s the matter with that esh now?” Toros asked.

  “His stomach. He’ll be okay, but he needs to rest,” I said.

  Arsinee caught my eye and winked. I ignored her. Joy spread her books out on the dining-room table.

  When the prayer meeting was over, we stood on the church steps with Hagop Kalajian, his wife, and moon-faced Maral. By chance, Toros looked up as a blue convertible sped by, driven by Jack’s friend Danny Dedayan, who had his arm around a blonde. Jack and a brunette were in the backseat. Toros grabbed my arm and pointed. “There goes your rotten son! Stomachache, hah!”

  I pressed my lips together and exhaled slowly through my nose.

  The Kalajians fidgeted in our living room for less than an hour. They had seen Jack, and Maral was humiliated. After the company left, and Joy had gone to bed, Toros and I sat on the back porch.

  “He’s American, Toros, and he’s a teenager. You named him Jack, not Hampartsoum.”

  “American! What does that mean? A good-for-nothing who defies his father?”

  “It’s not like the old country. They want to choose for themselves now. So they have to meet different people to get an idea.”

  “Fornication? Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Going to the Town Diner for a hamburger, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  “When I was his age, I was God-fearing and respectful of my elders. Did you and I go to the Town Diner? No.”

  No, I thought, we hadn’t even laid eyes on each other when we were married. “This is the 1950s Toros, and America.”

  “No wonder he acts this way, with you encouraging him.”

  “Toros, don’t be on his neck every minute, or we could lose him.”

  Toros harrumphed.

  “You can’t break him,” I said. “You can only drive him underground, or away. Let me talk with him, okay?”

  “I need some sleep,” Toros grumbled.

  After midnight Jack tiptoed through the living room. I was sitting at the bottom of the attic stairs in my robe.

  “Ma! You should be in bed!”

  “I should be in bed? I saw you climb down the porch, Jack. And your father spotted you in Dedayan’s car.”

  He sat down next to me. “Sorry.”

  “You stink like cigarettes. Why are you sucking on filth? Your body is God’s temple.”

  “Sorry, Ma,” he said again.

  “Why not a girl from the church? A nice Armenian girl. Not Maral. Maybe Sophie Agahigian. She’s pretty.”

  Jack said, “Sure.”

  I knew Jack was lying. He’d marry some odar just to spite us. “Go to bed. And please use the stairs from now on. I don’t want you to break your neck.”

  Things were okay for a few weeks. I noticed that Toros had stopped referring to Jack as Mr. Romance, Donkey, and Squash Head. For his part, Jack arrived on time to the market and attended church without complaint. But the boy got out of bed in the morning with dark circles around his eyes. I suspected he was still sneaking out after we were all asleep.

  One night when we were lying in bed, Toros complained to me that money was disappearing from the cash box at the store. Just a few dollars here and there, but it had started to add up.

  “Do you think it could be the boy?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” I answered. “Maybe you should start paying him.”

  “He gets an allowance,” protested Toros. “We give him food and a bed. We buy his clothes. What more does he need?”

  “His work is worth something, Toros. Maybe you should make him a partner in the store.”

  “His reward for stealing should be partnership?”

  “Why would he steal from himself?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Toros said.

  “His birthday is next week,” I reminded him.

  “I said I’ll think about it.” He rolled over and went to sleep.

  But I couldn’t shut my eyes. As I lay in the dark, listening to the noises of the house, I heard the creak of the attic stairs and then the click of the front door as it closed. After pulling on a day dress and a pair of shoes, I watched from the back porch as Jack loped down Lincoln Street. I suspected he was heading for the market and decided to follow.

  When I reached the foot of Lincoln Street, I crept into the alley behind the store, where the blue convertible was parked. Through the screen door I spied Jack and his buddies Danny Dedayan, Bobby Goulian, Joe Pellegrino, and Tim Flanagan sitting around a table in the back room. A rope of smoke curled around the bare lightbulb and spread into a cloud above their heads. The Italian slapped cards onto the tabletop, where quarters were stacked in small columns. Each of the other boys, including Jack, held a slim-necked brown bottle. I was thankful Vartanoush Chahasbanian rested in her grave, because I could imagine what she would have said about this scene.

  I stood there for another moment, thinking that I hadn’t seen Jack look so relaxed and happy in years. There was a time when he made silly puns as we worked in the garden. I now couldn’t remember the last time he had told me a joke or even smiled at a family meal. Just then Jack, after laughing at something the Irish boy whispered in his ear, leaned back in his chair to drink his beer. Beer?

  I yanked open the door. “Okay, boys, game’s over.”

  Their eyes bugged out of their heads as if the Mother of God herself had appeared in their midst. Jack’s face tightened into a grimace, and his shoulders bunched together. Only Danny Dedayan, that snake charmer, said, “Mrs. Chahasbanian. I haven’t seen you in a long time. How’s your health?”

  “How’s your mother’s health, Danny? I haven’t given her a call in months.”

  That shut him up. The Italian gathered up the cards, and the others shuffled to their feet.

  “I think you might want to leave the quarters where they are,” I said. “And pour out those bottles in the sink.”

  “Ma,” Jack protested.

  “We’ll discuss this when we’re alone,” I warned him.

  The boys mumbled good night and sped off in Danny Dedayan’s car.

  “Pull up a chair,” I said to Jack. I carried the jar they had been using as an ashtray to the trash barrel and emptied it, then sat down myself.

  “Have you been stealing money from the register?” I asked.

  Jack hung his head. “We’ve been playing cards, and I’ve had some debts.”

  “Whose quarters are these?”

  “The guys’! I didn’t take them from Pa, I swear.”

  “Then give them back. Drinking, smoking, lying, stealing, gambling. Where are the dancing girls? Have I left anything out?”

  He shrugged.

  “Thou shalt not smoke cigarettes. Thou shalt not gamble. Thou shalt not steal from thy father’s store. There are a few more commandments, but you can start with these.”

  “Okay,” he said as if he meant it.

  Jack locked the door, and we walked home in silence. Leaves shifted in the breeze, and a lemon moon hung over us. Bits of glass in the pavement sparkled under the streetlights. I looked at Jack, who had his hands shoved into his pockets and his chin almost resting on his chest. Poor thing, I thought. Teenagers were a terrible American invention.

  For Jack’s eighteenth birthday I baked a chocolate cake. Joy helped me roll, cut, and stuff dumplings for mantabour, which Jack loved. Toros, without informing anyone, hired a man to paint new gold letters on the store’s front window: T. Chahasbanian & Son. In the late afternoon, Joy, Toros, and I stood out front admiring the new sign when Jack drove up after a round of deliveries.

  Jack parked the truck and joine
d us on the sidewalk. I watched a dozen competing emotions play across my son’s face. I think pride was one of them, but it was jostled to the side by what looked like dread.

  “Happy birthday, son!” Toros clapped Jack on the shoulder, and the boy winced.

  “Thanks, Pa.”

  “What do you think?” Toros asked, gesturing at the window.

  “I don’t know what to say,” the boy replied.

  “Try ‘Thank you,’” Joy suggested.

  “Yeah. Thanks,” said Jack.

  They closed the market, and we went home for dinner. Jack kept running his fingers through his hair and glancing around nervously all through the meal. He wouldn’t have noticed if the manti had been made out of rubber the way he bolted them down.

  While Joy did the dishes and Toros snoozed on the couch, Jack headed out to water the garden. I trailed him as he dragged the hose toward the tomato plants.

  “Do you have something to tell me, Jack?”

  He sighed.

  “You didn’t like Chahasbanian and Son?” I asked.

  “That’s not it,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “I signed up.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Today I went to the recruiting station and joined.”

  “Joined what?”

  “The army, Ma,” he answered.

  I didn’t know whether to slap him or start crying. “Vay babum! Are you out of your mind? Do you want to march around a strange country shooting at people who’ve never done you any harm and then come home in a box?” I sank into a lawn chair, shaking my head.

  “I’d have been drafted eventually. They promised I’d go to Germany. There’s no shooting in Germany, Ma.”

  I saw newspaper images of concentration camps. Walking skeletons, stacks of bodies, piles of hair. “They kill Jews there, Jack.”

  “The war is over, Ma. They’re not killing Jews.”

  “That’s because there are no more Jews to kill. Do you think they can tell the difference between an Armenian and a Jew?”

  “Don’t get yourself going, Ma.”

  I was adrift in a river of misery. “Moses has practically disowned us. And now you’re going to get yourself shot and killed. Next year Joy will run off with a traveling salesman. Why did I have children? All they do is stab you in the heart.”

  “Don’t talk crazy, Ma. I won’t get shot working in the commissary. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  “Have you told your father?”

  “I kind of hoped you’d talk to him,” he said.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Basic training starts in six weeks.”

  Toros took the news better than I did. He spewed out some plastic phrases about the boy getting some discipline, learning a thing or two, becoming a man, and so forth. I went through all the handkerchiefs in my drawer, while Jack and Joy took turns patting me on the back.

  When Arsinee came over on Saturday to help me make beoregs, I related the whole sorry tale.

  “Germans aren’t Turks,” she reassured me.

  “The Turks taught the Germans what they know,” I said.

  “But Germany lost the war. They are on their knees apologizing.”

  “Tell that to the dead Jews.”

  “He’s going to be fine, honey. The worst you have to fret about is that he might come home with a venereal disease.”

  “Aman im! This is how you comfort a friend?”

  She laughed. “Can’t you take a joke?”

  “Some joke.”

  “Think of it this way,” she said, trying to make me feel better. “The boy wants to see some of the world before settling in your small corner of it.”

  “You think he’ll come back?”

  “He’ll be back, Zabelle.”

  “Look at what happened with Moses,” I reminded her.

  Arsinee said, “We both knew that boy wasn’t coming back. And we both know this one will.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Wedding

  (HENNIKER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1960)

  Jack sent us postcards and photographs from all over Europe. My favorite was a picture of my uniformed son standing in front of a tulip bed with a blond-braided Dutch girl who wore a long skirt and wooden shoes. For Christmas the first year he was in Germany, he mailed me a wooden cuckoo clock, which we hung in the living room. I didn’t wind the clock, because the sound of the bird got on my nerves, but it looked nice on the wall.

  While Jack was away, Joy graduated high school and found work as a secretary at the Underwood Factory just up the street. A few weeks after she started her new job, a slim envelope with a California postmark dropped through the mail slot. On an engraved card I read that the Reverend and Mrs.

  Thomas Aiken were pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter Sarah to the Reverend Moses Charles. I was stunned. I had bought a sky blue suit to wear at Sarah and Moses’s wedding, assuming that the invitation would be on its way. How could you not invite your mother to your wedding?

  Moses called minutes after I had opened the envelope, as though he had timed its arrival. The telephone receiver felt like a poisonous snake in my hand. Moses explained that he and Sarah had married in a small ceremony in the Aikens’ living room, with only a handful of friends as witnesses.

  “I didn’t want you and Pa to have to come all the way out here just for that,” he said.

  What was I supposed to do? Sit in the mud beseeching God to put an end to my wretched existence? Rage at my firstborn son that he had broken my heart and would soon drive me into my grave? The tie between Moses Charles and the Chahasbanians had thinned to a spider’s filament, which couldn’t bear anything heavier than a dust mote.

  I pretended Moses was my second cousin twice removed. I said, “Send us some pictures so we can see what you were wearing. When do we get to meet Sarah?”

  “Next year,” he promised, “we’ll be out to see you.”

  I thought, I’m not going to start stuffing grape leaves for that visit until the plane lands.

  As soon as I hung up the phone, I began to cry. I was red-eyed and limp as a rag when Joy and Toros came home after work.

  “Zabelle,” Toros said, “you can’t make a donkey into a horse. Moses wanted it this way. The Aikens are a fine church family. They’re not Armenian, but you can’t have everything.”

  Joy said, “Don’t worry, Ma. You can wear the suit to Jack’s wedding.”

  In the old country, parents arranged marriages for their children, but you couldn’t do that in a country where girls and boys mixed with each other like so many plums and apricots in a bowl. When Jack came back from the army, Toros trotted Armenian girls in and out of the house like show ponies. You’d think he would have learned his lesson.

  Toros even went so far as to get the Hovanessians and their daughter Takouhie to drive up from Philadelphia for a weekend. Of course, just as the Hovanessians were pulling up in front of the house, Jack was pulling his car out of the back driveway. He didn’t show up again until Monday, after the poor girl had been carted back to Pennsylvania.

  Toros and Jack did come to a kind of peace at the market, though. While Jack was in Germany, Toros had hired a fellow named Hagop Marashlian, who had robbed him blind over the course often months. After firing Hagop, he took on Raffi Janjigian. Raffi, an easygoing and trustworthy boy, was a little short on brains. So after two years’ absence, when Jack finally cranked down the market awning, his father gave silent thanks to God.

  Chahasbanian and son didn’t step on each other’s toes. Toros kept the insults down, and the army had taught Jack how to pay attention to details. Not that Jack had completely reformed. When I did the laundry, I smelled cigarettes and perfume on his shirts, but at least at home he was on good behavior.

  We never met any of his phantom girlfriends, until the time Jack invited Helen Foster to the house for dinner. For him to take such a step, I knew marriage had to be looming on the horizen. I was disappoi
nted that she wasn’t Armenian, but she was polite and modest, and her pocketbook matched her shoes. She worked as a receptionist for a dentist in Newton, where she shared an apartment with a few girls she had met in secretarial school. Toros questioned her and seemed satisfied when she said that she attended a Baptist church and owned a copy of the Bible.

  After Jack and Helen announced their engagement, we were invited to pay a visit to Helen’s family in New Hampshire. Her five sisters and five brothers, plus their spouses and children, gathered at the rickety old Foster farm. We drove up the rutted road and parked next to rusting pickup trucks and station wagons in a weed-filled yard. Toros, Joy, and I crossed planks over puddles to the house.

  Helen, with Jack standing uneasily at her elbow, introduced us to the crowd, one by one. I despaired of ever being able to tell them apart. The brothers were thin and rangy with slack jaws, and the sisters were distinguishable only by the lengths and styles of their brown hair.

  There were names and nicknames. Helen, who was the youngest, was called Princess; the eldest sister, Roberta, was called Bobo; the skinny Hubert answered to Fats. A sister with a streak of white through her black hair was called the Skunk. Her real name escaped me, and I couldn’t imagine calling someone Skunk.

  Helen’s mother was long dead. Her father was a dried-up, mean-tempered old man who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and lived on saltines and coffee. His beard and his fingers were stained yellow; he was practically toothless. His hearing was bad, so when I sat next to him on a ragged sofa, I had to shout, which gave me a headache.

  Everything about the Fosters was loud. They all talked at once, so everyone yelled to be heard. There were dogs underfoot, barking and yapping. In the middle of our visit a raccoon wandered out from behind the refrigerator and scratched a four-year-old boy—one of Helen’s nephews—who cursed like a sailor at his mother. I suddenly came to a deep understanding of the wisdom of arranged marriage. Not only was Jack marrying Helen, but the Chahasbanians were being joined to the Fosters, and it was not a union that I relished.