“I have something I need to tell everyone,” Mr. Khederian blurted, putting down his teacup.
The five other people in the dining room turned to look at him.
“Well, what is it, honey?” his wife prodded.
“I got a job!”
His sons cheered, and his wife put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s wonderful, honey.”
“But I turned it down,” Mr. Khederian confessed.
Mrs. Khederian retracted her arms. “You did what?”
“Seriously, Dad,” Alek asked. “Why’d you bother going on those interviews if you didn’t want the job?”
Mr. Khederian spoke carefully, articulating his thoughts for the first time as the words came out of his mouth. “I didn’t realize until I actually got one, but I prefer to stay at home. I get to see you guys more than I ever have, and I have some business ideas I’ve been wanting to get off the ground. Sometimes you need to get what you think you want to realize you never actually wanted it in the first place.”
“See, everybody’s got something to get off their chest,” Ethan said.
“Everyone, that is, except for you, Mom,” Alek said.
“I don’t know what to say,” Mrs. Khederian insisted. “I don’t have any secrets, I don’t do anything I’m not supposed to, and I have nothing to hide.”
“I don’t believe it,” Alek countered. “There must be something. Something that you think about the moment before you go to sleep with guilt or remorse that rips you up inside.”
“Not a thing,” Mrs. Khederian said simply.
“Nothing, Mom?” Nik asked.
Mrs. Khederian took the slightest pause before responding. “Well…” she trailed off.
“I knew it! I knew it!” Alek said.
“I can’t believe I’m admitting this,” Mrs. Khederian started.
“Nik was conceived out of wedlock?” Alek asked hopefully.
“Alek has a different father?” Nik guessed, equally hopefully.
Mrs. Khederian looked away, her hand on her throat, agonizing.
Her husband leaned in, intrigued. “Just tell us, honey!” he encouraged.
“Sometimes at Whole Foods I sneak a strand of dill into my package of parsley,” she confessed.
For a moment, no one spoke.
“I don’t get it,” Ethan admitted.
“Well, I don’t need an entire container of dill—just one strand for garnish. But I hate the thought of the rest of it going to waste.”
“You could freeze it. That’s what my mother does,” Nanar offered.
“That would work in a soup or stew, but I prefer fresh dill as garnish.”
“Let me get this straight,” Alek said slowly. “Your big secret is that you steal two cents’ worth of dill from Whole Foods every other week?”
“And I feel terrible about it,” his mother continued, guilt riddling her face. “After all, it’s theft. What if the person at the cash register realized? Or I were captured on one of those video cameras? Can you imagine the scandal?”
“We’d never live it down,” Alek deadpanned.
“Well, I don’t mean to be rude,” Nik said, “but we really should get to bed. Alek and I have a study date early tomorrow.”
“For what?” their mom asked. “School doesn’t start for another two weeks.”
“Well, sure, but when you’re taking Honors Algebra II, you’ve got summer assignments,” Alek bragged.
Alek’s parents looked at him, joy bubbling in their eyes.
“Don’t get too excited—it’s just algebra. Ms. Imbrie docked my final paper, so I’ll be in Standard English next year,” Alek explained.
“This is an outrage!” Mrs. Khederian stood up. “I’m going to talk to Ms. Schmidt first thing Monday morning.”
“Mom, chill out. It’s fine. It’s not like I worked my butt off and earned it. And this’ll leave time for other things, like tennis.”
“He has a point, Kada.” Alek’s dad took Alek’s mom’s hand and she sat back down. “Besides, Honors Algebra is something you can be proud of.”
His mother nodded in agreement. “And I’m sure if you work hard, you can make Honors English by junior year, which means you could still be in Advanced by the time—”
“Why don’t we take it one year at a time, okay?” Alek said, cutting his mother off.
“What an excellent idea,” his mom agreed. “There’s no reason to rush anything, is there?” she asked, turning her attention to Nik and Nanar.
Nik, understanding her meaning immediately, put his hand protectively on Nanar’s. “What’re you saying, Mom? That I should break up with my girlfriend because she’s half-Turkish?”
“I’m sure that’s not what your mother is saying,” Mr. Khederian interrupted. “Just that you want to make sure to go slow so that you have time to digest everything that’s happening, like you do after a great big meal. When you’re old, like me and your mother—”
“You guys aren’t that old,” Alek interrupted.
“As I was saying, when you get to be older, you see how important it is to let things take their natural course.”
“Well, I should be getting home,” Nanar said, standing up. “Will I be seeing you at church tomorrow, Mr. and Mrs. Khederian?”
“You and your parents are planning on coming to church this week?” Mrs. Khederian asked, the surprise tingling in her voice.
“Of course. My mother converted before she and my father got engaged. She has as much right to be there as anyone,” Nanar insisted.
“We’ll see you there,” Nik responded. “And I don’t know about my parents, but I want you to know that I’ll always sit with you, in church or at lunch or anywhere.”
Nanar embraced Nik, and then he walked her out to her car. The Khederians turned their attention to Ethan.
“Ethan, you have to understand what an awkward position you’ve put us in,” Mrs. Khederian explained. “You clearly make Alek happy—”
“And he makes me happy,” Ethan said.
“Yes, that’s clear, too,” Mr. Khederian conceded. “But one lovely dinner party isn’t actual proof that you’re going to be a good influence on our son.”
“So what, Dad? I only get to date Ethan if I keep my GPA up above a 3.5?” Alek quipped.
“It isn’t that easy, son. I’m afraid we simply can’t let—”
“Oh, I don’t know, Boghos,” Mrs. Khederian interjected.
Alek’s dad stopped speaking. He turned and looked at his wife. “We don’t disagree in front of the children, remember, Kadarine?” he said in a gentle whisper.
“Well, maybe it’s time we started treating them more like adults,” Mrs. Khederian continued. “After all, your parents didn’t think I was such a good influence on you when we met.”
“And why’s that, Mom?” Alek asked as neutrally as possible, hoping his tone wasn’t betraying how much he wanted the answer.
“I’m three years older than your father, for one thing, which absolutely scandalized them. And I was working on my graduate degree, and his mother wanted him to end up with a nice Armenian girl who would stay at home and take care of the house, not some professional, career-minded woman who—how did she put it?” Mrs. Khederian asked her husband. “‘Couldn’t roll a proper sarma if her life and her children’s lives depended on it.’”
Alek didn’t quite succeed in squelching his laughter at imagining his nana talking that way about his mom.
“All right, honey, I think that’s enough,” Mr. Khederian said.
“Of course, there are certain rules in this household that we expect Alek to follow, Ethan,” Mrs. Khederian explained. “And if we don’t feel we can trust you to respect those rules, there will be no place for you here. It’s that simple.”
“I understand.” Ethan extended his hand and flashed Alek’s mom his most winning smile as they shook on it. Nik returned in time to say goodbye to Ethan, who thanked the Khederians and bid t
hem goodbye.
Alek walked his boyfriend outside. The moment the door closed behind them, Ethan drew Alek into a tight embrace and kissed him fiercely.
“Thank you,” Alek murmured.
“For what?”
“For being here.”
“Ain’t no thing, Polly-O.” They kissed until Alek feared his parents would get suspicious, then Ethan unearthed his shortboard from the Khederian shrubbery.
“You’re going to skate home wearing that suit?”
“The way I feel tonight, I’m basically gonna be flying home,” Ethan responded. “Besides, you ever seen me fall?” He kicked off, gliding into the distance. The moment before he disappeared into the night’s darkness, he turned around and threw Alek one last kiss.
Alek walked back inside, closing the front door behind him. He leaned against it, relishing the disappearing sensation of Ethan’s lips against his own. He gathered himself and rejoined his family in the living room.
His parents were sitting on the sofa, and Nik had begun clearing the dessert dishes.
“I wish the baklava had been a little fresher,” Alek said, picking at the leftovers as he helped his brother clean up. “And do you think we undercooked the sarma?”
“Don’t do that,” his mother scolded him.
“Do what?” he asked.
“That thing of criticizing everything.”
Alek looked at her, dumbfounded. “Where do you think I learned it?”
“Well, it’s good to have high standards,” his father said.
“But it’s also good to be able to sit back and enjoy a well-made, home-cooked meal,” his mother finished. “That’s why food is so important in the Armenian tradition. It takes something you have to do and makes it into something you want to do. Now, you boys sit and your father and I will finish cleaning up.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Nik said.
“We know we don’t,” his father responded.
“But you two clean when we cook, so it’s only fair that we clean when you do the cooking,” his mother insisted. “So sit down and relax. You’ve earned it.”
EPILOGUE
“Right after you left my house, I skated over to the ramps. Now, you know how he can be,” Becky told Alek, playfully punching Ethan on the shoulder as she told the story. “Especially when he’s with the D.A.s.”
“It’s D.O.s.” Ethan struggled to keep up, rolling her giant green suitcase behind him.
“But since I think of you guys as the Dumb-Asses, I call you the D.A.s,” she plowed on. “And hurry up. I don’t want to miss the train.”
“Becky, it’s a five-minute walk from your house to the station. We’ve got plenty of time.” Alek readjusted the strap to her overnight bag on his shoulder, wishing for a moment that he had chosen to wear one of his boring old cotton T-shirts instead of the light blue polyester autoworker’s short-sleeved button-down he’d picked up at Housing Works. But one of his old T-shirts would’ve looked terrible with the five-pocket jeans he’d picked for the day. He changed his grip on the smaller suitcase he was rolling, wondering how anyone as little as Becky could possibly pack so much for one week. “The only way you’d miss the train would be if Ethan and I passed out from exhaustion. And can you explain to me why you’re not carrying any of your own luggage?”
“Remember when you were straight and a gentleman?” A strap of Becky’s trademark overalls hung lazily over her shoulder. “I miss those days. Now, do you want to hear the rest of the story or don’t you?”
Alek nodded eagerly, his extra-spiky hair nodding with him.
“So I say, ‘Ethan Novick, I have a dinner invitation from Alek Khederian for you,’” Becky continued.
“Everyone cracked up,” Ethan added good-naturedly. He was wearing an especially Ethan outfit that day: black, white, and gray camouflage pants and a red sleeveless T-shirt with the words I DO, BUT NOT WITH YOU across the front. “And I was totally embarrassed. But no way I was going to let her off that easy in front of my peeps.”
“So he asked me what would happen if he didn’t go. So I said, ‘I promised I’d get you there, Romeo.’ Everyone is dying at this point, they’re laughing so hard. So Ethan says he’ll skate me for it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this is how Becky got you to show up to my house for that dinner party on Saturday?” Alek asked.
“You’ll see.” Becky’s eyes glinted with mischief.
“Now, I don’t want to brag,” Ethan said, “but I take the course first and I do pretty damn well. Good enough that it’s hard for me to imagine one of the guys doing it better, let alone this skinny girl on Rollerblades with frizzy hair who I only know as Polly-O’s bestie.”
“I spend a few minutes just inspecting the course—you know, judging angles, figuring out momentum, that sort of thing.”
“And then boom—she’s hitting it like a demon possessed,” Ethan said. “Jumpin’ rails, taking turns, going backward. First time through, she freakin’ kills it. No contest. She rolled over and told me that if I didn’t show up dressed nice and make a good impression, she’d school me again.”
Alek laughed appreciatively, thinking how different Becky’s first experience with the D.O.s had been from his own with Jack at the beginning of the summer.
“Well, I have to thank you, Ethan. I don’t think my parents realized how important ‘this rollerblading thing’ was to me until I got home that day and told them about beating you. That’s why they decided to send me to skate camp after all.”
The three of them reached the train station. “Let’s go, boys. Those suitcases aren’t going to carry themselves.” Ethan and Alek exchanged glances before lugging Becky’s suitcases up to the platform.
“It feels so grown-up, taking the train by yourself. You sure you know where you’re going?” Alek asked her.
“NJ Trans to Trenton, transfer to the Amtrak, and then down to Wilmington. The camp has a shuttle that’ll be picking me up.”
“And who’s going to help you carry all this shit for the transfer?” Ethan asked.
“I’ll be fine, guys, sheesh. Oh, I can barely wait! The first day, they have us do these skill evaluations so they can gauge our levels, you know? Then they tailor-make our curriculum.” Becky continued explaining the intricacies and nuances of the skating camp schedule until the train pulled into the station a few minutes later.
“Don’t miss me too much,” she told Alek.
“Impossible,” he shot back.
And then the train whisked her away. Alek and Ethan stood watching it disappear into the distance.
“This summer’s been a dream,” Ethan murmured.
“I know.”
“I just hate that we’ve only got one week before it ends.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, Eth,” Alek said, gently running his hand through Ethan’s surfer hair. “This summer’s not the dream. We are. You and me. And it doesn’t matter what time of year it is, as long as we’re together.”
“I like that, Polly-O.” Ethan smiled.
“We’ll wreak havoc, you and me,” Alek told him.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a Rufus quote, dumb-ass. It means, Watch out, world: we’ll do crazy things together.”
“We’ll wreak havoc, you and me,” Ethan repeated. Alek leaned in to kiss Ethan as the platform vibrated from the force of two express trains shooting through the station, in opposite directions.
The Khederian Family’s Recipe for
STUFFED GRAPE LEAVES
1 cup long-grain basmati rice (if omitting lamb, use 2 cups)
1 16-ounce jar California grape leaves
2 red bell peppers
2 onions
1 bunch flat parsley, soaked thoroughly in lukewarm water (repeat until the water is clear)
¼ teaspoon allspice
1 pound ground lamb (optional)
approximately ¼ cup olive oil (if omitting lamb, make this approximately ½ cup)
2 teaspoons salt (or more)
1 teaspoon pepper (or more)
approximately ¼ cup fresh lemon juice (if omitting lamb, make this approximately ½ cup)
½ cup tomato paste
1. Cover rice in hot water and let soak while preparing rest of ingredients.
2. Separate and rinse grape leaves under cold running water.
3. De-seed red peppers. In a food processor, pulse red peppers until finely chopped. Put in large mixing bowl. Pulse onions until finely chopped. Add to peppers in bowl. Remove parsley leaves from stems and pulse in food processor until finely chopped. Add to peppers and onions. Drain rice and add to vegetables in large bowl. Add allspice.
4. Add ground lamb (optional) to vegetable-rice mixture.
5. Add olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice. If you’re making the vegetarian version, you can taste a little bit of the mixture and adjust the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper accordingly. If you are making the meat version, just add enough olive oil until the mixture glistens, but not more.
6. Line bottom of pot with a single layer of grape leaves.
7. Lay grape leaves flat on a cutting board, veiny side up. Snip the nub of the leaf with kitchen shears. Place one tablespoon of stuffing in the middle section of each leaf (add a little more for larger leaves, a little less for smaller leaves). Fold in the sides first. They should almost, but not quite, meet. Then flip the bottom of the leaf over the stuffing, and roll up to form a snug (but not too snug) bundle. Place rolled leaf horizontally in the pot, on the outside circumference. The ideal pot is average height with a large circumference (wider than it is tall). Continue laying rolled leaves until the bottom of the pot is filled, then lay more leaves on top, forming a second, third, and even fourth layer. Continue until all the leaves are rolled, setting aside especially small or torn leaves.
8. Place a few of the small and/or torn grape leaves on top of the rolled ones. Put a plate with a circumference slightly smaller than that of the pot on top of the leaves.
9. Fill a kettle with water and bring to a boil. Let sit for ten minutes. Slowly pour hot water over stuffed grape leaves until the water reaches the bottom of the top-most layer.
One Man Guy Page 20
