“Auntie, I’m so glad you’re here. My mother told me all about Vartan. I was afraid to tell him I didn’t want to marry him for fear he’d kill me.”
Arsinee said, “What did your mother tell you?”
“Everything you heard about Vartan murdering a man in Beirut.”
Arsinee laughed. “I saw him kick a dog.”
“That’s all?”
“She gets carried away with her ideas sometimes. But you’re better off without him.”
“She made it up?”
Arsinee shrugged.
Joy saw me standing on the steps. “Ma, why did you tell me he was a murderer? Didn’t you think I could make my own decision?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Joy’s face was flushed, but she didn’t seem angry. I joined them near the drinking fountain.
Joy said, “Leave me alone, the two of you. He wasn’t for me. If you weren’t such a busybody, Ma …”
“Me?” I asked.
Arsinee said, “Don’t play innocent.”
“Don’t stick your nose in my business again, okay?” Joy glared at me.
I said, “It was Arsinee’s idea.”
“There she goes again,” said Arsinee. “You know you started the whole thing.”
“You’re the one.…,” I protested.
“Enough,” said Joy. “Pa’s waiting.” She headed up the stairs.
Arsinee turned to me. “So how did he kill that man in Beirut? With the pinking shears?”
“Don’t gloat,” I replied.
Joy stayed at home and kept working at Underwood. She was a fond aunt to Jack’s daughters. Sometimes I worried that she missed having a husband and children. But we were right in getting rid of Vartan. A few months after Joy refused him, Vartan married Sophie Kazanjian. Over time, the women in our church realized he was the kind of man who bullied his wife in order to feel strong. When Vartan and Sophie came to church on Sunday, there was never a bruise showing—he was too smart for that. But we all suspected what her long sleeves hid.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Survivor
(BOSTON, 1971)
On my dresser, among the snapshots of my grandchildren, I kept a framed photograph of Moses Charles—a black-and-white glossy his organization sent out to people who donated money. He wasn’t just a church pastor anymore. He was also a radio preacher invited to speak at evangelical churches all over the country. He had launched his first northeast regional tour in New York City and would give a sermon at the Tremont Temple in Boston. Pastor Margossian had reserved seats for our congregation and had even chartered a bus.
I heard Toros beep the car horn in the drive. We were about to go to the airport to pick up Moses and his family. We hadn’t seen them since their second son, Peter, was born. He wasn’t a baby anymore, and Jonathan was almost fourteen. I sent both boys presents on their birthdays and received thank-you notes written in a beautiful looping hand by their mother and signed in their names. Sarah was the one who remembered my birthday and the one who had called to tell us they were coming to Boston.
“Ma!” Joy called up the stairs. “We’re waiting.” The door banged shut.
I opened the icebox again to admire the food. Joy, Helen, and my two granddaughters had helped me make stuffed grape leaves, jajikh, dolma, kufteh, and lahmejun. I had also prepared ghadayif and pakhlava and would have continued baking if Toros hadn’t untied my apron and cast it into the laundry basket, saying, “Enough, woman.”
Elizabeth, Jack’s oldest girl, bolted up the stairs, breathless. “Grandma, the cars are running, and you’d better get out there before Grandpa has a heart attack.”
Pausing on the landing, I smoothed my granddaughter’s long hair and straightened the straps of her jumper. Elizabeth was eight years old, so my fussing didn’t bother her. I rooted in my pocketbook for a hard candy, and when I couldn’t find any, I slipped a quarter into her palm.
“Shnorhagalem,” she said, thanking me in Armenian.
“Khelatsi aghchigs. Shad keghetsig es. My smart and beautiful girl. I’ll pay for you to go to Armenian school so you can talk with me.”
The horn sounded from the street.
Why was I dragging my feet? I wanted to go to the airport, and I didn’t want to go. The prospect of seeing Moses made me nervous. It’s funny how that works—a baby who was closer to you than your own heart could grow into someone more intimidating than a stranger. But at least a stranger had no claim on you.
The whole family drove out to Logan Airport—me, Toros, Joy, Jack, his wife, Helen, their two girls. Arsinee had wanted to come, but even though we planned to take two cars, I told her there wasn’t enough room. She had her own opinions about Moses, and I didn’t need to hear any more from her.
We stood at the arrival gate, watching for Moses. I recognized his face in the sea of faces and felt a jolt of happiness. Next to him was Sarah, and behind her were the two boys. Jonathan was a skinny teenager, with a mouth full of braces. It was the first time I had seen Peter, except for some baby photos, and that boy looked more like me than my own children. In the center of his face was the nose of Moses Chahasbanian.
Moses Charles’s eyes searched the crowd, passed right by us, and settled on some men to our left in suits, ties, and sunglasses. The men moved toward him, smiling, and I headed toward him as well, with the rest of the family behind.
Our three groups collided. Moses acted as though he hadn’t expected us at the airport, and I guess we hadn’t really discussed it when Sarah phoned. There was some confusion about where he was staying. Were these men taking him to a hotel? Was he coming home with us? His eyes went back and forth between his missionary men—these Bobby Lyle, Dick Baldwin, and Charlie Somethingtons with good haircuts—and us, his ragtag family, wearing King’s Department Store all over us. I felt the embarrassment I could see on his face. I picked up Peter, my grandson, who studied me with serious eyes.
All that food was waiting at home. “Moses,” I said, putting the boy down and taking his hand firmly, “we’ve made your favorite foods. Manti, lahmejun, jajikh …”
How could he say no to my good cooking? But I saw a stubbornness on his face that I knew only too well. I nudged Toros.
Toros said, “The attic bedrooms are ready, but maybe you’ll stay someplace else?”
I held my breath.
Moses bowed his head and studied his clasped hands. “We’ll go to Watertown,” he answered.
Even though it was a weekday, we sat down to a Sunday dinner in celebration of Moses’s arrival. Jack and Toros closed the store for a few hours. Joy inserted extra leaves in the dining-room table, setting out the good china and silver. I tied a clean apron around my waist and turned up the flame under the pilaf. Moses’s eyes darted around the room as though he were looking in the corners for a heavenly apparition. I heaped his plate with food and watched him move it from one side to the other.
“Ma, you didn’t put enough salt in the jajikh,” Jack griped.
“It’s fine the way it is,” said Helen, coming to my defense. “What grade are you in now, Jonathan?” she asked.
“Eighth,” he answered.
Toros said to Sarah, “Those Garabedian kids come in after school, and they’d run out with their pockets stuffed with candy if I didn’t stand by the door with a broom.”
“I don’t know about that,” Jack said.
“Elizabeth and Julie, if you don’t stop right now, there will be no TV tonight, and I mean it,” Helen admonished.
“She kicked me first,” complained Elizabeth.
Peter, who sat next to me, tugged at my sleeve. “Can I have some more of those, Grandma?” He pointed at the stuffed grape leaves.
“We call them cigars,” Julie confided.
“Moses, how many people does the Tremont Temple hold?” asked Toros.
“Two thousand,” Moses said. He drummed his fingers again.
“Can you believe that my son, the little Armenian boy in knickers, has become a f
amous preacher speaking before two thousand people?” asked Toros.
After lunch Moses and Sarah went to the attic for a nap. Toros dragged Jonathan with him to the market, while Joy headed to her office. Helen offered to take Peter with her and the girls to the public library, but he wanted to stay home with me. Sitting on the couch with my grandson’s head in my lap, I told him a story about a talking fish until he drifted into sleep. I slipped Peter’s head to a cushion and covered him with a blanket. The house was still.
I heard the mail thud through the slot and scatter onto the floor of the front hall. I padded down the front stairs in my slippers, stooped over, and picked up the pieces of mail one by one. Amid the bills and a postcard for Joy was a plain white envelope addressed to me. There was no return address, and I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but it was postmarked Worcester. Moses Bodjakanian, I thought. I wondered what he could want to say to me after all these years. Maybe the goddess of beauty had died, and he was looking to give me the ring. I tore open the envelope. Across the top of the white sheet, a note was printed in English.
“Dear Mrs. Chahasbanian, My father died last month. He asked me to send this letter to you. Sincerely, Zaven K. Bodjakanian.”
I sat heavily on the bottom step and read on.
Dear Zabelle,
After my first heart attack, I decided to write you a letter, which my son Zaven has promised to send to you after I die. He doesn’t read Armenian, so don’t worry.
Some years ago, I sent you an unsigned note, which said, “In dreams and in heaven, we shall meet.” Maybe that is the best way. We had our moment of happiness, and we each had a secret that no one could touch.
May God protect and keep you. Heaven is ahead.
Your Moses
Memories flashed by like a deck of playing cards being shuffled, then slapped onto a tabletop. I was a girl, sewing buttons on dozens of shirts, shining in the light of a boy’s eyes. His shadow fell over my shoulder. A silver thimble lay like a promise in my palm. I was a young mother, bending over my son in the garden, who held up a zinnia he had just plucked from its stem. I stood in the dark hallway, staring into the room where my babies slept. Where had they’d isappeared to, the ones I loved? I saw the desert and the lost faces of my family. I remembered my first night in the orphanage after Arsinee left—I was lying in a strange bed, feeling smaller and more alone than a speck of dust.
Suddenly a small hand was on my shoulder. It was Peter. I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs.
“Grandma,” he asked, “why are you crying?”
I answered in Armenian, “Loneliness.”
“What?”
I continued in Armenian, “My heart is a broken bowl.”
“Say it in English, Grandma.”
I heard the worry in his voice. I wiped my face with my apron and retrieved the letter from the floor. “A friend of Grandma’s died, sweetie, and she’s very sad.”
He slipped his hand into mine. As we climbed the stairs, I heard voices beyond the living-room door.
“I don’t know how to talk to these people,” Moses said.
“Honey, they’re your parents. Tell them about your work. Talk about the weather.”
It was obvious they thought they were alone in the house. I should have opened the door and interrupted them. But wanting to hear what Moses had to say about me made me forget the little boy at my side.
“We have nothing in common,” Moses continued. “We live on different planets.”
“I know, hon,” she said.
“And Peter’s getting on my nerves, following my mother around like a puppy.”
“She’s his grandmother, dear.”
“Don’t I know it. He has that same hangdog look in his eyes.”
We had heard more than we needed. Peter’s face was full of sorrow. I whispered in his ear, “Let’s get an ice cream at Grandpa’s store.”
We retraced our steps quietly and sneaked out the front door. As we walked down Walnut Street, Peter scuffed his sneakers along the sidewalk. My grandson was a cuckoo in a robin’s nest.
“My daddy doesn’t like me,” he said.
“Yes, he does,” I reassured him. “He’s just a little grumpy today.”
“Mommy loves me. And you love me. Right?”
I crouched to hug him. He rested his head on my shoulder, and I smoothed his hair. “I love you, yavrum. You are my very own boy.”
At dinner Moses lectured us about his mission. His hair was blonder than I remembered it, and I felt pity for his vanity. I noticed how uncomfortable he was at our table and how he boomed at us as though we were an audience.
“When we were in Topeka, over four hundred people answered the call,” he said.
I went to the kitchen for the dessert and coffee. Moses’s voice sounded like the neighbor’s lawn mower. Coming back with the tray, I paused in the doorway and surveyed the family gathered at the table.
Toros wasn’t eating much. There were dark circles around his eyes, but they were bright with the excitement of having Moses in his home. Jack had finished his meal and was spinning a quarter on the tabletop. What he wanted more than anything was a cigarette, his secret vice I knew all about. Helen observed Jack quietly, watching his bad mood approach. Joy picked crumbs from the tablecloth.
In the living room, Elizabeth and Julie were lying on the floor, watching cartoons. Jonathan sat in my armchair, reading Pilgrim’s Progress, and Peter slept on the couch, curled up like a puppy.
Moses rambled on, his words gathering like clouds near the ceiling. Pretty soon they’d be taking up all the space, and everyone would be forced under the dining-room table. That’s where I wanted to be. Under the table, like a grain of rice that had fallen to the carpet. But you can’t do that when there are stacks of dishes in the sink.
Over the next few days a black sedan came and went with Moses and his suit-wearing men. They were planning the Friday night meeting and visiting other ministers in the area. I took telephone messages like a hotel desk clerk.
Peter and I became great friends. He played “button, button, who’s got the button” with me and his cousins. He helped me make pickles and punched down the cheoreg dough. He even picked up a few words of Armenian, which gave Moses a headache, I could tell. But I had decided to ignore my son and not notice that he was avoiding me. What can you do? They spend a small time in your body, a small time in your arms, and a lifetime walking away.
And I mourned Moses Bodjakanian. It had been dozens of years since I had seen him. He wasn’t a part of my daily life, but there was a small room that I visited once in awhile in the house of memory where he remained. Now that I knew he was gone from the world, it was as if someone had plucked a lucky stone from my pocket.
Suddenly Peter was at my elbow, looking like a dark-haired version of his father as a child.
I took his hand and said, “Let’s go to the store and ask Uncle Jack for a candy bar.”
I wish now that I had paid more attention to Toros during those days. Later Helen told me she found him sitting on Gigante’s steps, muttering to himself in Armenian. She tried to talk with him, but he closed his eyes and shook his head. The night before Moses’s big meeting, Toros told me a story I had never heard before.
We were lying in our bed, and the words poured out of his mouth like ashes. “I was in the store with my father when we heard shouts in the street. My father went out to see what was happening. The Turks were dragging away our neighbor, Vasken Hamparian. My father asked them what they were doing. They cursed at him, and one of them smashed my father on the head with a club and he fell in the street. His blood ran over the stones. I watched the whole thing, and did nothing. God will never forgive me.”
That was how it was with us. We never spoke about those times, but they were like rotting animals behind the walls of our house. He knew nothing about my experience in the desert, and that was the first I had heard of what he had known in Adana.
I said, “God has forgi
ven you, Toros.” And we went to sleep.
The next evening a sleek gray limousine came to collect Moses. My son was a general in the Lord’s army, and he went to prepare himself for battle.
Peter and I waited in the yard for everyone else to come down. We lifted the marble stepping-stones on the lawn to examine the bugs living underneath. Then we sat on the picnic bench and counted the pears in the tree in Armenian.
“Grandma, what’s your last name?” he asked me.
“Chahasbanian.”
“How come Daddy doesn’t have that name?”
What do you tell a child? Because it’s hard to pronounce? I said, “Nobody can be famous with a name like that.”
“Why not?”
“You spend so much time spelling it for people, you can’t get your work done.”
“Can you write it down for me?” he asked.
I pulled a pen and an old envelope from my pocketbook and slowly printed the English letters.
He said, “When I grow up, I want to be a Chahasbanian.”
I squeezed his hand. “When you grow up, you can be anything you want, honey.”
One of Moses’s men met us in the lobby of the Tremont Temple. We weren’t with our church but had special seats in the first balcony, with a clear view of the stage. There were hundreds and hundreds of people, their bright faces all turned toward my son. The buzzing voices hushed when he stood behind the pulpit, and when he waved, they all clapped. He stood up there, gleaming under the lights, talking about water and Christ and righteousness. Moses’s men were handing out paper cups of water, with a Bible verse inscribed on it. John 4:13–14.
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
When Moses had droned on at our house, stiff with discomfort, I had forgotten how charismatic he could be. Always an intense and introspective child, as an adult, he had reversed his coat, turning the internal fire outward. He radiated light. And when he spoke, it was as though he were appealing directly to you—not to the person to the right or left of you, or anyone else. He was as personal and loving as Christ himself.
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