Chapter 10 #3
He considers his answer. “I’m pragmatic by nature. My circumstances made it so I always had to operate within restrictions, and once Celine came into my life, it was only natural to put her needs first. Stricter boundaries just came with the territory.”
Serving Celine’s needs is one thing, but I can’t help thinking that his adherence to boundaries is more about controlling—or blocking out—his own needs. Because they competed with hers?
“Worth it, though. You’ve met Celine,” he says, eyes glimmering with pride, with devotion. “Was it hectic for a while? Sure. But for better or worse, Mom had had training, raising me on her own.”
“But you hadn’t.”
“I mean, yes and no. She worked long hours when I was growing up, trying to make ends meet. I’d learned how to do things for myself. And I took odd jobs as soon as I could, to help out.”
My brain lights up at the thought of little Ryan running a lemonade stand or throwing rolled-up newspapers onto doorsteps from a Schwinn. “What kind of jobs?”
“Tutoring, dog-walking, babysitting.” He smirks. “Real glamorous stuff.”
I smile. “Hey, don’t knock childhood glamor jobs. I did all those same things.”
I try to think of how I can meet him halfway in this conversation. I never adopted a child as a teenager, but I feel I can relate on some level, at least.
“My dad worked long hours too,” I say. “He was the clerk at a corner store. His shifts lasted all day. He’d open the store first thing in the morning and close late at night.”
He turns toward me, settling back against the train wall. “What was his job in Armenia?”
“His family owned a coffee shop, and he worked there. It was kind of a hybrid corner store and coffee house—they sold ground beans as well as dried fruits and nuts, other pantry items. And they had a couple of tables set up inside and out where they served coffee to in-store patrons. I’ve seen a few pictures. ”
“So your love of coffee goes back generations.”
I put a hand over my heart. “It’s our legacy.”
“Did your mom work?” he asks.
“Her mom died when she was pretty young, so she looked after her dad and helped to raise her younger siblings, mostly. When my parents got married, she helped with the shop. After they immigrated here, she took some odd jobs, trading on the skills she had. She baked pastries for the local deli. She could sew, so she made adjustments for a local seamstress when they were backed up. That kind of thing. She could do those things from home, so she and my aunt could trade off being home with Maral and me.”
I stick to practical details because I’d rather swallow thumbtacks than put a dour spin on what’s otherwise a story of resilience and starting over—the kind of story people like to hear.
From the kind of Ana people like to see.
So I keep it light. Don’t tell him how Mom retreated for long periods in those early years in Boston, and was never quite the same after immigrating.
That the transition from the rural Armenian village she’d called home her entire life to a Western urban metropolis was not easy on her.
She went from being surrounded by family, siblings and cousins, a language she knew, and a role she embodied to her core to living in a city where she only knew her sister-in-law’s family, had to learn a whole new language, find space, and weather microaggressions in an entirely foreign culture.
Had to raise her child within it when she was still trying to figure it out for herself. It took a toll on her.
And not just on her.
“How long did you all live together?” Ryan asks.
“I was twelve when we moved into the house my mom still lives in now. But till then, we all shared an apartment. Mar’s parents had come over on my uncle’s student visa a couple years before us and applied for citizenship. After the Soviet Union collapsed, they were able to sponsor our immigration.”
“How old were you?”
“Three.”
“If you were born there, does that make you first-generation?”
“Technically, yes. But because I was so young when we moved, I identify more as second-gen. I remember almost nothing from my life there.”
I have a couple of vague images from life in Armenia, where I was born. A wooden matryoshka doll in my grandmother’s house. The deep maroons and olive greens of a low-pile area rug. The hazy bumps of mountains on the distant horizon. My mother’s smile.
“How come you never talk about this stuff?” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’ve written a whole book and recorded three hundred and thirty-seven episodes of a podcast about people’s experiences as children of immigrants, which you are too. Yet you rarely talk about your own life.”
My pulse ramps up a little as I remember our first meeting. His insistence that readers would be disappointed in a book that didn’t focus on my story, such that it is. “So Proud of You isn’t about me. It never has been. Readers and listeners appreciate the focus being on our guests.”
He’s eyeing me, as though he suspects that’s another partial truth. Then he straightens in his seat, saying under his breath, “Guess I was just hungry for details.”
My heart hammers. I’m pretty sure I heard what I just heard, but before I can process it, he goes on.
“No wonder you and Maral are so close, having lived together.”
I nod, re-entering the moment. “We shared a room in the apartment our families rented. She couldn’t pronounce Anahid, so for the longest time she called me Aynay. Still does sometimes.” My smile turns wicked. “I used to terrorize her.”
He huffs a sound that could be a laugh. “You, a terror? But you’re so measured and easygoing.” The mirth in his tone is unmistakable.
I narrow my eyes. “Believe it or not, I am practically zen now compared to when I was a kid.”
“I would pay good money to see footage of young Ana.”
I whistle. “I wouldn’t even register on the screen, just a puff of smoke as I zinged around the room.”
He’s watching me, his indulgent expression mirroring the look he gave Celine earlier today. I don’t let myself linger on the comparison too long. On how it’s making my chest feel gooey.
“One time I folded myself into the bottom drawer of the dresser in our room,” I say.
“Mar was playing peacefully by herself for, like, half an hour, lulled into a sense of solitude. She came to get something out of the drawer and I jumped out. I’ve never heard anyone scream that loud.
And it’s the only time I’ve ever been punched in the face. ”
His mouth drops open. “She punched you?”
“It was a fear response, unintentional. I would have pegged her for flight over fight, but shows what I know.” I point to the faded scar on my chin from where my skin split.
He examines it closely. “Huh. I guess you’re not perfect after all,” he says, a mock wistfulness in his tone.
“Far from it.” If only he knew.
“I’m glad you lived to tell the tale.”
“Well, it was the first and only time she physically assaulted me,” I say. “Although I have been a lot kinder since then.”
“Think she’d corroborate that?”
“Memory is fallible,” I say.
“Hard to believe memories of you wouldn’t stay vivid forever,” he says, his gaze dropping to my lips for a moment before he turns abruptly toward the window.
This time there’s no doubt in my mind—I heard it. And I know precisely which memory of me is playing vividly in his mind.
I also know that, as much as Ryan is playing the good boy, acting all professional and trying to put our kiss out of his mind, it’s haunting him just as much as it is me.