Chapter 24
Half an hour later, I’m lying on the couch with cold packs on my eyes, mind reeling, while Mar riffles through my closet for clothes she wants to take to Boston. Which is not helping my de-puffing situation, but I don’t tell her that.
My phone rings and I reach for it blindly, peeking around a cold pack to see who’s calling. Mom. I swipe to answer.
“Is it true?” she asks, voice full of hope. “Maral got a job back home?”
Part of me is surprised that it’s taken this long to hear from her, given that Maral told her parents hours ago and Sosi must have spent every moment since screaming it from the rooftops.
“She’s moving to Boston, yes,” I say.
“Park kez, der astvatz,” she says, blessing the Lord. “When is the move scheduled? Have you found an apartment yet? You can stay here as long as you need—or you can just live here.”
I sit up, the cold packs falling off my face. My heart aches at the desperation in her voice. “Mayrik, Maral is moving back, not me.”
“What?” she asks.
“She got a job in Boston. I didn’t.”
She tsks, frustrated. “Surely you won’t stay there all by yourself. Take this as a sign, janikus. You had a fun time and got it out of your system. Now you can come home and get back on track.”
“I am on track,” I say. “There are a lot of balls in the air, but none of them involve moving back to Boston.”
“What could matter more than being with your family?”
It’s not that I don’t agree with her on some level. After all, that’s why I’ve been chasing L.A.—to bring the family back together, because what could matter more? But not having Maral there with us has changed the shape of this prospect so much that I can’t see it quite as clearly anymore.
I’d be deluding myself if I professed that’s the only thing that’s changed.
I’ve never been geographically far from my cousin for more than a few days.
Even when we were in college or at our pre-SPOY jobs, we lived in the same city.
I could always hop on a bus and be with her in a matter of minutes.
And I did that—often—when my ruthless residency schedule wasn’t kicking my ass.
Sometimes especially when it was. We’d settle in together on the scratchy couch she and her roommates had “thrifted” (read: found on the side of the road) and talk about school or work or gossip or read books or study or blast music and have impromptu dance parties in the kitchen.
Whatever—as long as we were in each other’s company.
I don’t know how living without her is going to look.
How it’ll feel. If I’ll be so lonely that she’ll seem farther away than she actually is.
Maybe she will. But I can’t follow her to Boston just because I’m scared of loneliness.
I’ve run away from loneliness before—I can’t keep repeating my old patterns.
Pretty sure any therapist, TayTay included, would tell me as much.
I need to try to do better. It may take a while to figure out what that means, but I know it doesn’t mean basing my decisions on hers.
Or basing them on what I think—what I hope—will appease Mom. I have to decide for myself.
“I need to figure out what will make me happy,” I say.
She makes a disbelieving sound. “God only knows how you expect to find happiness when you throw away every chance at it. Your career, your boyfriend. And now your family.”
“I didn’t throw any of that away,” I say, trying to find my patience.
“Even if you didn’t want to be a doctor, you could still be married to one. Surely that would make you happy.”
“Nathan and I were not a good match, Mom. He didn’t even want to really know me.”
“He wanted to marry you!” she cries. “He wanted you to have his children! Now some spitak woman has all that with him, and I have no grandchildren!”
I lean forward, resting my head in my free hand.
I’ve never been totally honest with Mom about why Nathan and I split up—I’ve just vaguely referred to discovering things that made it clear we weren’t right for each other.
I knew she wouldn’t get it, knew she’d say…
well, everything she’s saying now. That I should be so lucky to be with someone like Nathan.
That I should appreciate what I had and do whatever it took to hold on to it.
Everything Maral said about our parents was true. I don’t doubt they love us, but they’ve never cared to understand our more complex emotions, sweeping away our grievances like so much dust. Insignificant nuisances, incomparable to the much larger problems that exist in the world.
But I’ve also played into it. I haven’t tried to break through that wall.
I shut down that part of myself because I believed my feelings were immaterial in the grand scheme of things.
In some way they are, but in another they’re not—they’re everything.
My whole inner world. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?
I didn’t want to aggravate them, though, these people who had sacrificed everything to give me this privileged life.
Especially my mom, who’d suffered so much already.
It wasn’t her fault she was depressed—inasmuch as external factors play a part in depression, she had them in spades.
It wasn’t her fault that she was emotionally unavailable.
Who would have taught her to be anything else?
Her mother, who died when she was just a child?
Her father, widowed and overwhelmed with needing to provide the bare necessities of life for multiple children?
While she may not understand my emotional needs, she also doesn’t deserve the blame for that—I didn’t give her any opportunity to understand. I told myself I was just being oversensitive, that it wasn’t her job to manage my feelings. I kept them hidden. From her. From everyone. Even myself.
Maybe, if I give her the opportunity at last—like Celine did for Ryan—she’ll surprise me.
Not like the pathetic attempt I made in Boston last weekend, but a real college try.
If she doesn’t take it, how much worse off can I possibly be?
And if she does…it could mean a paradigm shift in our relationship.
I take a breath. “Mom, I was really struggling after Dad died.” It feels strange to say it aloud, for her to hear it.
I’ve never talked about my grief with her before.
But I have to start somewhere. “Working at the hospital became too triggering, and I couldn’t hold myself together anymore.
I’m sorry it upsets you that I left medicine, but I needed to do it. And I need you to accept that.”
“We were all grieving,” she says after a short pause. “If you could have gotten through that time, things would have been better on the other side. You had Nathan—”
“I didn’t. Not really.” Shaky air leaves me. “He couldn’t handle my grief. He only wanted me when I was happy.”
“Doesn’t everyone want to be happy?”
The question seems absurd coming from her. “Yeah, but a person can’t be happy all the time. Especially right after their dad dies.” I crack on the last two words, and they come out broken.
There’s another, longer pause on the other end of the line. “Men are simple creatures,” she says finally. “They want simple lives, no complications.”
“But life isn’t simple. Terrible things happen, and we need support through them.
Like how Dad supported you in the tough times after you immigrated.
Or how I supported you when we lost Dad.
” She’s quiet, not acknowledging what I said—maybe not knowing how to.
I finger the cold pack in my lap. “I may not be an expert, but I don’t think relationships are meant to make you feel lonely. ”
“But you wouldn’t be alone—you’d have him.”
“But he made me feel alone,” I say.
“You wouldn’t be alone, though,” she says emphatically. “Anything is better than being alone, Anahid jan. I promise you.”
My stomach contracts. I picture her, by herself, in the bungalow’s small kitchen, the yellowed wallpaper behind her dotted with cheerful pomegranate vines.
The recliner in the living room notably empty.
The cable-knit sweater vest lying limply on a box in the basement, his scent dissipating more from it every day.
The person meant to fill the house, to fill her heart, absent.
Maybe being alone is worse for her. Maybe her relationship with Dad made her feel understood, accepted, beloved, and she can’t imagine anything worse than being without him. My heart aches for her, because if anybody understands the pain of losing Vahag Movilian, it’s me.
But our experiences of partnership and romantic love are not the same.
Nathan didn’t want to know all of me, and I didn’t want to let him.
I guess I felt it would herald the end, because nobody had ever accepted all of me.
And that subconscious instinct was right.
When my grief could no longer be contained, he retreated.
It’s deeply painful to be in the presence of the people who are supposed to love you the most and feel alone.
As opposed to being with a relative stranger—a colleague, then a friend, then a lover—and feeling less lonely than you ever have in your life.
Maybe self-awareness or emotional acuity are too much to expect from Mom.
She may never get it. But that’s okay. My feelings are valid, whether or not she understands them.
I’ll continue to give her the chance, and maybe one day we’ll connect emotionally.
Or maybe we won’t. I can’t change her, but I don’t have to.
I can still heal, move forward, regardless.
It won’t be easy, I know that. But if the many people I’ve met while running So Proud of You are any indication, I’ll figure it out. I have a whole community behind me.
And I have me behind me.