I know it’s a little out there, but I was hoping that if I got this article published I could send it to Erebuni (or, um, Vache could) and show her,See? I’m not a total wishy-washy coward. That with work, at least, I tried. I picked a side like she told me to do. And I paid for it, but I’m going to own it, write about it, make it mine. I kept imagining Erebuni reading the piece, what she might think. How it might turn into a second chance.
I twist to my other side, and my muscle yelps as I try to stretch it.Pain is progress, I tell myself, half believing it.
But no one’s going to publish it, so it’s just going to sit on my laptop unread. Nothing will change. She’ll never forgive me. The thought of that makes me almost sick to my stomach, and I hold back a rolling tide of nausea. Ugh, I guess I worked out too hard. Mom would not approve.
I relax my neck muscles, and my face sinks deeper into the carpet. The threads tickle my nose. It’s weird—this is the same carpet I grew up with, and while I know the shape of every stain from sodas or markers over the years, I can’t remember a single incident that caused a stain. I’m sure they felt like such a big deal at the time; I’m sure Dad and Mom yelled at me about them.
My phone dings, and I assume it’ll be Diana, who’s been very sweet. She took me out for a manicure, and I complained about my ex-job and ex-boss, and she was super sympathetic, but I still didn’t tell her about the real story behind Erebuni. I almost did, but my throat tightened and wouldn’t let the words come out.
But the text is not from her, it’s from Trevor. An actual text, not a WhatsApp message, which means he’s back.
I untwist and sit up straight. I haven’t heard from him since our polite-with-notes-of-wistful texting exchange a week and a half ago. He could be saying anything now. “It’s over.” “I want to see you.” “I’m outside your front door.” I mean, probably not that last one, but who knows, maybe he’d think it was romantic. I tap to read it.
Home in the U S of A. Finished unpacking. I’d love to see you, if you wanted. You can come by here.
Oh no. He’dloveto see me. Went from some light I miss yous to loving to see me. Sounds a touch more than polite. Part of me feels like I need Trevor now, kind of like how I need to exercise to do something and make progress. It’s a balm for the thing I’ve been trying not to think about for days. That at my core, right now, I’m directionless and my future career has been derailed by being fired. Not laid off but fired. That so much of my hope in the last week has hinged upon my essay, and that it’s clear by now that it’s never going to be published. The scary thought when I put all this together is that I have nothing. But Trevor, he could be something.Your safety net, a voice tells me. And I tell it to shut up.
What would Dad think of me now? He loved that I was a reporter, that I was the face and the voice of American news. He was always proud about my career when Mom wasn’t, when she mostly worried about the dangers and the physical stress of my job. Disappointed wouldn’t begin to cover how he’d feel; that’s clear. In a way, I’m glad he doesn’t have to see me like this. There’d be nothing tender in his feelings. He’d act like my getting fired was an affront to him. My parents both have (or had) such highexpectations of me at all times and took everything personally, like I was an extension of themselves, not a separate person. Then he’d spring into action with a plan on how to get me back on my feet, perhaps a plan to sue Richard and the station. “John Casings is a lawyer. He can advise us,” I imagine him saying. Or he’d ask me to get Trevor’s advice, even though Trevor is a patent lawyer.
I feel, again, how much he adored Trevor. He met his parents only once before the crash, at a classic San Francisco steakhouse, and I remember how much he loved Trevor’s dad in particular. Not surprising, I guess. Trevor’s dad is exactly how I think cowboys back in the day were: tall, quiet, handsome, with a touch of misogyny. Dad would want me to jump back into the fold—he’d tell me that Trevor was my ticket back into a normal life.
But I don’t know.
There’s a knock at my door. I straighten.
Mom opens it. She’s holding an armful of clothes, one fuzzy pink sock dangling from the bottom, threatening to fall. “Do you have any reds?”
It’s been weird with her. She’s assumed three modes around me: tiptoeing about my margins like I’m contagious, pestering me to look for jobs (though I told her I was writing, which according to her is not a job), or reverting to business as usual regarding the household chores and bills and the like. Not a word about Erebuni ever since that awkward moment she saw her face on our TV, and I haven’t brought her up, either. I’m afraid of what I would say, that I might blame her for breaking us up, though it wasn’t my mom’s fault.
Mom may have a point about the job hunt, though. I am fully in favor of taking a mourning period after a shock, but this one feels bigger than I anticipated. The thought of going back to anews station makes me physically sick. That’s why I’ve been writing my article and ignoring everything else—it’s one thing that feels purposeful in my life. But there’s a dread of realism that’s lurking beneath it, because even if my article gets published, one piece isn’t enough to start a new career. I hardly even know what’s out there for me other than the news, and I’m too afraid to look, for fear that my hoped-for future—that someone would take a chance on my telling lovely cultural stories without a breaking news element—doesn’t exist.
Now she’s asking me about laundry. Then we’ll be shopping for food. Cooking that food. Washing dishes. Cleaning the house. Mom has loved the extra help and piled more on to me. We’ve been making more complicated dishes, sorting through old clothes, and finishing tasks that have been long put off. But I’m not sure how much longer I can sit in this house cycling through a never-ending circle of chores.
“Mom, how do you do it day after day?”
“Laundry? I don’t do it every day. That’s the secret.”
“No, I mean not working. How do you stand it? Aren’t you bored? Don’t you wish you were still teaching?”
She grimaces and waves dismissively. “Don’t talk to me about this kind of thing.”
But I want to push on this. I am honestly curious. “So you never want to think about it? I’m, like, a week and a half into unemployment, and I’m losing my mind. And you’re way smarter than me; you must be dying. It’s been years since you retired.”
She shrugs. “You get used to it. What else am I supposed to do? I have no grandkids”—her voice darkens—“and apparently I’m never going to get them.”
A reference to Erebuni, I’m guessing. It hits right at the centerof me, sharp and ruthless in its carelessness. I want to hit back. “You can’t just wait for me to do something to make your life more interesting—”
She interrupts, “Why not? I am your mother. A mother with an old daughter has expectations.” Old! I’m literally so young by normal societal standards. Not by Armenian mom standards. “But life has been disappointing.”
Nope, I’m not falling for her pity party. I feel like she’s doing this purely for sympathy, and I have very little left for her after the banquet. Not to mention when I asked her where the photo strip of Erebuni and me was and she said she snatched it from Sona and destroyed it. I might have never wanted to see it again, that tiny photograph that caused so much trouble, but it wasn’t the photo’s fault. That photo strip contained the only pictures of Erebuni and me together, and even if I never see or speak to her again, I want to have it. A memory of when things were very, very good.
She looks back at me. “No, I will do the red laundry, then the whites, then the colors, do the vacuum and the mopping, and that will take up half the day. This is what I am reduced to.”
Okay, that kind of does make me feel sorry for her, but she’s still not owning up to her lack of responsibility and action, to relying on me to make things happen in her life. “But you have a choice in this. Just because you don’t want to leave Nene home alone doesn’t mean you can’t create anything. Start a math tutoring business. Don’t make it a business if you don’t want to. Have kids come over here a couple times a week—”
She wrinkles her nose like I suggested she try leeching herself. “Why are you making work for me? Just have some baby, and that’ll settle it.”
I sigh. I don’t feel like fighting. “I’m only twenty-seven and”—Iraise my voice to preclude an interruption—“before you say you were twenty-seven when you had me, first of all, I know, and second, things were different back then.”
