Chapter 19
The nazook is delicious. So is the Armenian coffee, the dolma, the lahmejoun, the kofte, and every other delicacy Mom toiled over in the days leading up to my arrival.
You’d think I was staying for a week with the sheer volume of food she’s prepared, so I do my due diligence and stuff myself.
The food brings back treasured flashes in time—Maral and I stealing bites off each other’s plates at the table and giggling over the yeasty crumbs stuck in our dads’ beards; our moms affectionately stroking our heads, gratified to fill our bellies, murmuring anoush, anoush, which translates directly to sweet but is used to mean I hope you’re enjoying it.
Mom does the same now as I bite into a flaky boreg, her eyes shining with tenderness as she whispers, “Anoush, anoush,” and it makes me want to stay in this moment forever.
In the love she bestows so freely, the best way she knows how, filling my stomach and my heart.
If only it could always be like this—I would move us to L.A. together right now, to hell with the show. But it isn’t long before conversation inevitably veers into unwanted territory again.
Like when Reese Witherspoon’s team gets in touch asking me to record a short video for their socials, and I set up in the garden (a scenic backdrop), and Mom watches on confoundedly.
“What’s all that for?” She nods at the portable ring light/tripod combo before me.
“It holds the camera and improves the lighting quality for the video.”
Her brows rise. “To think you could be traveling with a medical bag. Instead you cart this”—she waves at the setup on the grass—“equipment around to make your little videos.”
I swallow hard. Count to five, this time with Ryan’s suggestion hanging in the back of my mind: to share my needs with her, ask her to stop with the disparaging remarks. Whether she hears me or cares or changes her behavior is up to her, but I could put the ball in her court. I give it a shot.
“Mayrik, that commentary isn’t going to help me get this done any faster.”
Okay, as far as shots go, it’s a weak one.
It doesn’t exactly convey my needs, but at least it succeeds at stopping the diatribe for now, as she heads inside to set the table for afternoon coffee.
Somehow the idea of being any firmer feels more like an intrusive thought than anything—uncharacteristically aggressive, and its likely result needlessly disruptive.
Handily, my visit is short enough that unwelcome conversation is curbed by the various projects she’s saved for me to do—packing away the outdoor furniture for the season, clearing the acorn husks from the oak tree out of the gutter, removing unused programs from the ancient desktop computer in the kitchen so it doesn’t take ten full minutes to load a single web page.
Typical adult–child tasks she won’t let me outsource between visits.
I’m lugging a box of extra dishware to the basement (Why do I need so many plates and cups if I’m the only one here to use them?
she asked wistfully) when my eye catches on a cable-knit sweater vest slung over a brown faux-leather suitcase from the previous century.
I set the box on a shelf and pick up the garment, its wool coarse and springy against my fingers. I bring it to my nose.
It’s been too long for his scent to remain, but I swear I detect a whisper of it in the fibers.
Smoky khoung, warm and homey. Memories—his broad smile, crooked teeth shining bright against his dark beard, soulful eyes glittering under thick brows—rush over me with such potency that my nose burns, the broad gray cables blurring before me.
I bury my face in the sweater, breathing him in for long moments, sinking into the feeling, until I hear Mom’s footsteps heavy on the basement stairs and drop it like a teenager caught with a joint.
She pauses halfway down the staircase, eyes lingering on the fabric swinging on the edge of the suitcase. Time seems to slow, the basement air heavy, like we’re underwater. Movements lethargic, strenuous.
I swipe at my eyes, arrange my face into a smile. “Done down here,” I chirp.
She’s silent for a long moment, not noticing—whether by true or willful ignorance—anything untoward in my demeanor. “Good. Almost time for dinner.”
When my Uber arrives on Monday morning, Mom’s wringing her hands by the door, griping about how short my visit was until I hug her, offering assurances that we’ll see each other again soon.
She hands me a travel cooler full of leftovers, insisting that I share some with Mar, Shanthi, and Ryan on the train back to New York.
I promise I will, even though Ryan flew out yesterday so he could be back at work this morning.
Today is his potentially consequential meeting that was delayed till the tour ended.
I cringe, thinking of Ryan facing a firing squad made up of Woodsworth’s top brass and HR, hoping against hope that my email made a dent, and count the minutes until I can text him to see how it went.
There’s probably a German word for the feeling of missing something you rejected. Or at least never accepted.
There’s probably also a word for climbing out of your skin from missing the touch of someone no longer in your reach.
Even my little purple friend hasn’t been cutting it.
Sex with Ryan has ruined me for masturbation—wouldn’t have predicted that.
In all the time I’ve been sexually active, no partner has had that effect.
When I was with Nathan and getting it regular—one of the things he praised about me was my ridiculously high libido—I was still insatiable enough to need to auto-stimulate once in a while if he had class or a shift when I was raring to go.
It always did the trick, calming my buzzing nerves and settling the tingle in my belly for at least a short while.
I’ve never felt even hornier afterward…like it was only an amuse-bouche before a favorite main course.
Uncannily, my phone chirrups as the car whizzes up the 93 with a message from Jacob, of ye olde NYC roster.
You home yet, gorgeous? Missing you. My bottom lip burns and I realize belatedly that I’m chewing on it.
What should be a welcome invitation from a tried-and-true hookup somehow doesn’t feel as satisfying as it should.
It’s probably just because it’s been a while.
I’ll feel differently once I’m back home.
I lock my screen without responding just as the car pulls up to South Station.
The three of us agreed to meet at the Starbucks kiosk inside, but Shanthi is alone when I arrive. She nods a hello and hands me a grande cup from the tray she’s holding.
“Bless you,” I say, the first sip like electricity powering through my veins. “How was your day yesterday? Did you get to see everything you wanted to?”
When Shanthi said she wanted to stay in Boston an extra day and return on Monday with us, Mar and I each invited her to join our respective plans.
But Shanthi was quick to decline—this was her first time in Boston and she wanted to explore.
Hard to believe she’d rather hit up the many cool neighborhoods, museums, and restaurants than watch me do chores at my mother’s house in the suburbs or listen to Maral reminisce about college with strangers. Kids these days.
“It was awesome,” she says. “I walked through Beacon Hill and the Charles River Esplanade then to the Back Bay Fens.” Mar and I had suggested the parks to her—some of the most beautiful Boston has to offer.
Their foliage is at its lushest now, at the tail end of summer, just before it starts to morph into a spectacular kaleidoscope of fall colors.
“I wanted to hit up the museums but there wasn’t enough time. When are we coming back?”
“Tomorrow, if my mom has anything to say about it. Where’s Mar?”
“She texted that she’s running late,” she says, sipping her own coffee.
“Weren’t you staying at the same hotel? Why didn’t you come together?”
Shanthi shrugs. “I haven’t seen her since Saturday. She just said she had something to do this morning.”
“What thing?” I ask, surprised.
“I don’t know,” she says, tapping her phone to check the time. 10:25 a.m. Ten minutes till boarding.
Weird. We may be out of our routine, but usually I know Maral’s plans right down to buying gum at the bodega. What could she have to do that was pressing enough to be squeezed into the few morning hours before our train departs?
It hits me like a defibrillator shock. Checking her phone more frequently and surreptitiously than usual.
Evading my questions about it. My suspicion was right—she’s seeing someone.
Someone in Boston, it appears. They must have spent the night together and couldn’t tear themselves away, enjoying each other’s company one last time before she has to leave.
My heart swells with happiness for her, my goddess of a cousin who deserves for every man in the world to fall at her feet in worship.
Something niggles beneath the surface, though. Maral is seeing someone and she’s kept it from me. The concern I had over her evasiveness at the bar last week rises like magma.
Why would she keep this from me?
We’ve always been totally open with each other about our love lives.
Sure, I’ve only ever had one serious boyfriend, but she had the honor of being privy to every single detail of Nathan’s and my relationship—from my budding crush on a fellow student to our first kiss to every date to moving in together to falling apart.
I met every boyfriend of hers through high school and college, dutifully on my best behavior when she warned me not to put them off by, quote, going all Ana.
I even helped her write her profile for dating apps (she wasn’t being as effusive about her positive attributes as she should have been, and it’s criminal to undersell the wonder that is Maral). What changed?