In the hallway, Mother swiped a finger over the telephone table. ‘Haven’t you dusted?’
Looking at her black purse, I replied, ‘Sure, I have. Eight times the day before yesterday. Sixteen times yesterday. Thirty-two times today.’ I looked up, stared into her eyes, and made a face.
‘Don’t get smart with me.’ She took hold of the door handle. ‘In this Godforsaken town if you dust ten times a day, it’s still not enough. I’m going to the Company Store; they have some new imported chocolates.’ She must have noticed the surprise in my expression, because she quickly added, ‘I know. Call me an ass. But...’ She drew a deep sigh, let go of the handle and busied herself with tidying up the pleats of the lace curtain. ‘Alice is out of sorts. You know that...’ She let go of the lace curtain and spun round to face me. ‘On the soul of your father, be careful not to say anything that will start a fight. Do you need anything from the Company Store?’
I said I did not need anything and asked, ‘Please do not buy chocolate for the children.’
As the door opened, hot air rushed in along with the smell of red clover. Mother said, ‘Don’t come out. It’s hotter than God’s own hell out there.’ She opened the screen door and set off.
I held the screen door open and leaned against the door frame, watching her. In the middle of the path she stopped, bent over and picked a flower. Then, with some difficulty, she straightened up, smelled the flower and walked on. She opened the metal gate, closed it behind her and turned in the direction of the bus stop. How quick Mother’s step used to be, the summer we went to Namagerd.
4
I sat down on the front step and drank in the view of the flower beds that bordered the path – the carnations, the verbena, the snapdragons, the larkspurs and petunias that Mr. Morteza had planted in bunches on either side of the path. Then there was the willow tree overhanging the metal swing seat. We also had three ornamental trees on the lawn. Youma called them Persian Turpentine trees. Mrs. Rahimi, our next door neighbour, used to call them ash trees. But Alice said that was nonsense; the real name was Judas trees. The twins, oblivious to these conflicting views, called the first one Armineh’s Tree and the second one Arsineh’s Tree. The third one was smaller than the other two, and despite all Mr. Morteza’s pruning and fertilizing, it gave fewer flowers.
The name of the third little tree depended upon the twins’ best friend of the moment. When Nina and Garnik were our neighbors, it was called Sophie’s Tree, after their daughter. Then Sophie broke the twins’ Sing-o-ring transistor radio and they stopped talking to each other. The tree remained nameless for a few days, until Sophie’s brother, Tigran, fixed the radio, whereupon it was renamed Tigran’s Tree. Before Sophie and Tigran, there was Elise, the daughter of Mother and Alice’s neighbor. And then there was Tannaz, who lived two streets over and had taught the twins how to tell fortunes using larkspur petals. The day Tannaz moved away to Tehran, Arsineh and Armineh cried. For several days they augured with larkspur petals, foretelling the date their friend would come back to them. A few days ago the third little tree had been re-christened Emily’s Tree.
‘Alice is out of sorts. You know that...’
Of course I was aware that Alice was out of sorts. I knew why, too. The week before, one of the Armenian nurses working under my sister’s supervision at the Oil Company Hospital – whom Alice thought to be ‘the ugliest, dumbest, hickest girl God ever created’ – had married the Armenian doctor whom Alice – gazing off into the distance with a half-smile on her lips – had often called ‘the most handsome, most considerate man I have ever seen.’ The fact that Alice took every wedding as a direct personal insult was beside the point; the heart of the matter was that for some time my sister had been murmuring, ‘I think Doctor Artamian likes me,’ and just when she was sure the handsome and considerate doctor was thinking of asking her out to dinner, the invitation to his wedding had arrived.
‘Be careful not to say anything that will start a fight.’
A bougainvillea bush clambers up the front of our house, and when a bright pink blossom fell onto the doorstep beside me, I remembered.
I was ten, maybe twelve years old. Alice wanted to play with the stones I had been collecting for the game of jacks, and I wouldn’t let her. She was screaming and crying. Mother shouted at me, ‘The poor child’s nearly fainted from crying. Give her the stupid stones. You are older and have to cooperate.’ But I wouldn’t cooperate, so Mother shouted at Father, ‘Say something, for once! I have had it with these two and their fighting.’ Father looked at me for a moment, then at Mother, then at Alice. Then he calmly folded the newspaper, got up, took the stones that I had spent months hunting and collecting, gave them all to Alice and told me I had to go to bed without dinner. He sat back down and picked up his paper. Alice made taunting faces at me, Mother resumed knitting the shawl she was working on, and I cried myself to sleep that night.
A few days later, when I asked Alice for the stones, she just shrugged, by way of saying, ‘I lost them.’ It was a month later, maybe, that Mother found the stones Alice had scattered here and there around the house, and put them on the nightstand next to my bed. And maybe a few days after that, early one morning before leaving for work, Father dipped his hand into the pocket of his raincoat, took out five smooth stones of the same size and shape, and quietly put them in my hand.
I set my old stones in front of Alice. ‘You can have these. Father has collected some new stones for me.’
Alice shot me a dirty look. ‘Only babies play with jacks. I’m collecting movie star photos.’
‘On the soul of your father...’
I picked up the pink bougainvillea blossom and jiggled it around in my hand. Why did Mother swear on the soul of my father? How did she know?
I remembered the anniversary of Father’s death, in Abadan. We had just come home from the church. Mother and Alice were sitting at the kitchen table arguing, and I was passing through on my way to the backyard to collect the clothes off the line. I was still dizzy from the smell of frankincense and candles, and numb from crying. Mother told Alice, ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Don’t go accusing people for no reason. It was probably not meant to be.’
Alice shouted angrily, ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault!? What about his slutty little sister, who appeared like the Grim Reaper out of nowhere – rushing all the way down from Tehran to get her brother to change his mind!’ Standing with the empty clothes basket in my hands, I remembered the red rose bush I had planted at the head of Father’s grave in Tehran the year before. Had the cemetery attendants remembered to water it?
Still thinking of the red roses on Father’s grave, it just slipped out of my mouth: ‘It wouldn’t hurt to consider our own faults and shortcomings, too. Expecting a three-carat diamond ring...’
Alice did not let me finish. ‘And just what faults and shortcomings do I have that I should not have a diamond ring? I don’t come from a good family? I do! I’m not educated? I am! Just because I’m not all skin and bones like you, but have a little meat on me, should I settle for whatever grouchy loser happens along, like his Excellency the Professor? Should I sell myself short, like you, and wind up with a crummy little gold wedding band not worth a red cent instead of an engagement ring?! No way, sister! I’m worth quite a bit more than that. The thing is, you’ve been jealous of me ever since we were kids. You still are. Well, you know what? If I had wanted to settle for a husband like yours, I could have been married twenty times by now.’
I set the basket down and wheeled round to face my sister. I don’t know whether I turned pale or flushed, or there was something in my expression. But it made Alice look first at me, then at the basket, and then turn to Mother and say, ‘What is it? I didn’t say anything wrong.’ I left Mother and Alice in the kitchen and went to the backyard with the empty basket.
Every time we went to Tehran I planted a red rose bush at the head of Father’s grave, and every time I made the cemetery attendants promise to water the rose
bush, but they never did. So each time I went, I would plant a new rose bush. In the backyard, I looked at the laundry on the clothesline. My son’s socks, the twins’ slips in identical size and style, Artoush’s shirts, the sheets and the pillowcases. I took them all off the line, folded them one by one and put them in the basket. I gazed at the empty clothesline I had stretched between the jujube tree and the backyard wall. The branches of the tree rustled and a few ripe jujubes fell to the ground. Why hadn’t I reminded Alice what a tempest she had raised over my marriage to Artoush?
How red the jujubes are, I thought.
Why hadn’t I pointed out to Alice that she had tortured me for months after my marriage, hinting here and there behind my back, and even to my face, that ‘Artoush first wanted to marry me, then Clarice shoehorned in between us like a dirty spoon.’
Instead of a red rose bush that no one remembers to water, it would have been better to plant a jujube sapling over Father’s head. The next time Mr. Morteza comes, I told myself, I should ask him where I can buy one. Maybe jujube trees grow wild? Maybe they don’t thrive in Tehran’s climate. I had never seen a jujube tree before coming to Abadan.
Alice and Mother argued right up until it was time to leave. After I put the kids to bed that night, did the dishes, and cleaned the kitchen, I sat in the green leather chair. I ate those red jujubes one by one and remembered how Father would say, ‘Don’t argue with anyone and don’t criticize them. Whatever anyone tells you, just say “you are right” and let it go. When people ask your opinion about something, they are not really interested in what you believe. They want you to agree with them. Arguing with people is pointless.’
I ate a jujube and said to myself, ‘You were right about that, Father. Arguing with people is pointless.’ I promised Father that no matter what Alice said, I would just tell her ‘you are right,’ and that I would approve of whatever she did. I ate the last jujube and thought, ‘I wish Father were here; I bet he would have liked the taste of jujubes.’
Now, sitting on the front step, I noticed the bougainvillea flower lying crumpled in my hand. A fat frog hopped out of the flowerbed, came to rest directly in front of me, and stared into my eyes. I got up, went inside, closed the door behind me and said out loud: ‘Yes, I know I have to be quiet, and just listen. And you, Mother, you know that for at least a week you must not nag Alice for over-eating or being overweight.’
When Mother nagged my sister about over-eating, if Alice was feeling good, she would tell a joke, make light of it, and somehow change the subject. If, as of late, she was not in a good mood, she would yell and scream: ‘Why can’t you let me be! What joy do I have in life? Yeah, I’m fat. But exactly who’m I supposed to keep myself thin for, anyway? My boyfriend? My husband? My kids?’ And Mother would have to give in and bring out the Cadbury chocolate bars Alice was always buying and Mother was always hiding, and lay them in front of Alice. Or, when the situation got really grave, as it had been for the last few days, Mother would say, ‘Call me an ass,’ and then traipse off to buy chocolate for my sister herself. I ran my hand over the telephone table. Mother was right. If you left the door open for two minutes, the house filled up with dust.
I tied on my apron and before turning on the faucet over the dishes in the sink, I looked inside my coffee cup. There was no sign of anything whatsoever that resembled the shape of a cypress tree.
5
I drew the curtains in the twins’ room and straightened their bedspreads. Mother had stitched the quilts for them out of swatches of cloth she had been collecting over the years. On the day she finished, after months of hand-sewing, the twins counted the patches in both bedspreads to make sure they were equal in number. At the foot of each bed was a pair of plastic house slippers, both red with yellow tassels. In a room where everything came in identical pairs, only the dolls were not lookalikes. Once I asked them, ‘Why do you like all your things to look the same?’
They pow-wowed together before answering. Armineh said, ‘This way, it seems like...’
Arsineh finished the sentence, ‘...it seems like we are never alone.’ And she put her arm around her sister’s shoulder.
When I asked, ‘How come the dolls aren’t lookalikes, then?’ They looked at each other, then at me, and said, ‘We don’t know.’
I tidied up the room, thinking about the close rapport between my daughters, and hoping they would remain close friends as adults. I folded Arsineh’s pyjamas and put them under her pillow, thinking about me and Alice when we were kids. Which one of us was to blame for how things turned out? I put Ishy on Armineh’s bed and thought, well, there were also times I was mean to Alice. I picked the black doll, whose name was Tom, off the bed. The twins were more careful of Tom than of their other dolls. ‘We don’t want the poor thing to think we like him less because of the color of his skin.’ I remembered the day when, out of spite, I taught Alice the multiplication tables all wrong. And there were a few times when she asked me to write her composition assignments for her, and I had not done it. I put Tom in the dolls’ crib. As the little cradle rocked, I recalled yet again the promise I had made Father, and repeated it to myself: ‘Whatever Alice says, I will say she is right.’ The doorbell rang.
I opened the door and, again, did not see anyone at the expected height. This time I lowered my head more swiftly than the day before.
She had on a white blouse with buttoned-up collar, and a black skirt. Yesterday’s pearl necklace dangled over her blouse. She was wearing nylon stockings – it made me hot just looking at them. When I saw her black patent-leather high-heeled shoes, I thought her shoe size must be a 30, the same size as the twins. She held out a box in my direction. ‘It’s sour cherry cake. Home-made.’
I suggested that we go to the living room. She held up the palm of her left hand and looked downward. ‘No. This is not a formal call. I’ve actually come to apologize.’ Her eyes gazed up at mine. ‘For my behavior yesterday.’ She put the box in my hand and headed for the kitchen.
By the time I could close the door and follow after her, she was already sitting at the kitchen table. She had on two rings today, one with a green stone and the other with a big, colourless stone, which I presumed must be a diamond. If Alice were there, she would have known for sure. My sister loved jewelry almost, or maybe even just as much, as chocolate and sweets.
My short-statured neighbor was looking around. ‘What a pretty kitchen. How originale!’
I couldn’t see, but I was sure her feet did not reach the floor.
I took a cake plate down from one of the kitchen cupboards, a round china dish Alice had brought back as a souvenir from her last trip to England. I opened the box and slid the cake off its cardboard disc onto the serving dish. I left the box and the cardboard disc on the counter and took the cake plate over to the table. ‘What a pretty cake! Why did you go to all this trouble?’
She gave a half-smile. ‘Bravo!’
Seeing my confused look, she explained, ‘Every other Armenian lady I’ve brought cake for just sets it on the table on the cardboard platter.’ She preferred tea to coffee. She poured milk in her tea and started to stir.
The sour cherry cake looked better than it tasted. ‘What a tasty cake,’ I hurried to reassure her.
‘It’s not tasty,’ she said. ‘I had no vanilla.’ She was still stirring her tea.
I tried to find a conversation topic. I started with the heat and humidity of Abadan, which seemed to my neighbor to be nothing compared to the heat of India. The sound of her spoon clinking against the sides of the cup was beginning to get on my nerves.
What could I say that would interest her? My eyes fell on the small basket on the table, which still held a few left-over Easter eggs. ‘Take a colored egg for Emily,’ I said, offering the basket.
She finally set down the spoon next to her cup. She picked up one of the eggs and, turning it over in her hand, asked, ‘Colored them yourself?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No. I mean, with the children...
’
She returned the egg to the basket. ‘Emily doesn’t like such things.’
‘Oh, but children love colored eggs,’ I suggested.
It was as though she had heard something offensive. ‘Emily is no child. She does do some strange things now and then, but – she is not a typical child. She has her own ways.’
I made a conscious decision not to speak about anything else, at which point she drank her tea and started talking away. She began every other sentence with ‘When I was in Paris...’ or ‘The year I was living in London...’ or ‘My house in Calcutta...’ In spite of this, I can’t say why, I did not feel she was posing, like Alice. Talking about herself was my sister’s forté.
She got up suddenly, thanked me for my ‘kind hospitality,’ and headed for the door, saying over her shoulder, ‘We are expecting you Thursday evening for dinner. The children will play together, you and your husband will meet my son Emile.’
She did not even bother to ask whether we had any plans for Thursday night.
6
Artoush had been grumbling and grouching about it for several days, and he repeated it all in front of Mother and Alice. ‘It’s the first and the last time! Puleez don’t start a social circle; I’ve got no patience for it, at all. And I won’t put on a tie.’
Alice took out a chocolate square from her large straw purse and opened the gold-foil wrapper. She popped the chocolate in her mouth and tossed the gold foil on the kitchen table, saying with bulging cheeks, ‘Was the ring stone an emerald? She probably got it in India.’