“If you get to tell me to quit smoking, I get to tell you to go on a diet. Linda, do you have any grits? Could I have two sides and some extra butter?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Gregor said.
Bennis speared a sausage and looked at every side of it, as if it could tell her something she didn’t already know. Then she put it down again and let Gregor take the plate from her. “I don’t see how you can eat that stuff,” she said. “The fat practically oozes out of it.”
“I don’t see how you can eat grits, with or without butter,” Gregor said. “It’s good to see you actually awake in the morning. Unusual, but good.”
“Oh,” Bennis said. She stood up and reached into the back pocket of her jeans, coming up with a wadded mess of what looked like fax paper. “I wanted you to look at this,” she said. “I wanted to know what you thought I could do about it. And don’t tell me I can’t do anything, because I’m not going to listen.”
Gregor opened the papers and looked at the title just as Linda Melajian came back yet another time, with yet another pot of coffee. “Reconsidering The Death Penalty,” the papers read, “by Edith Lawton.”
Gregor shook his head, and said, “Why does the name Edith Lawton sound so familiar?”
2
It was late, much later than he had expected it to be, by the time Gregor left the Ararat. Ohanian’s was all the way open when he came out, and Lida Arkmanian was already getting into a cab for her twice-weekly trip to the serious department stores. She was wearing her three-quarter-length chinchilla coat, and taking with her poor Hannah Krekorian, who had all the fashion sense of a psychotic duck. But then, Lida and Hannah had always been this way, even when they were all growing up together on this street, and instead of town houses the blocks were filled with tenements. Lida was the most beautiful girl in school, the one who always knew what to wear and what to do and what to say. Hannah was the quiet little lump in the corner of the dance floor. As Gregor passed them, they waved, and he saw, glinting in the start of the winter morning, the gold of the cross Lida always wore around her neck. Hannah wore one, too, and so did all the older women on this street. When Gregor was growing up, it had almost been part of a community uniform, for the men as well as for the women. Gregor tried to remember if old George Tekemanian wore one, but old George tended to wear shirts buttoned high up on his neck or turtleneck sweaters his niece-in-law bought him at Neal’s. The women, though, definitely did. The very old ones wore theirs outside the high collars of their dresses, as if they wanted very much to have them seen. Gregor stopped where he was, in the middle of the sidewalk, and looked up the street to Holy Trinity Church. Bennis stopped with him, shoving her hands into the front pockets of her jeans.
“I’m freezing,” she said. “I forgot to wear a coat.”
“You always forget to wear a coat. If I wasn’t stumbling over it all the time, I’d think you didn’t have a coat.”
“Whatever. Maybe we should go inside.”
“I’m thinking.”
“About Edith Lawton?”
“About religion,” Gregor said. He walked a little farther up the block and stopped again. Holy Trinity was a very traditional church. All Armenian churches were. You wouldn’t find an Armenian-American community building a Crystal Cathedral. Gregor crossed the street and then crossed again, heading always for the church. It seemed to him that Armenian people, or at least Armenian-American people, were—what? He had been about to think “more liberal than other Americans,” but that wasn’t true. In a lot of ways, they were a lot more conservative. They believed in marriage and family and putting children before career, for men as well as women. They believed in working hard and doing without to get ahead, and they were very antagonistic to the idea of welfare. Their church had held the same doctrines and practiced the same rituals, word for word, for over a thousand years. And yet—and yet. Gregor stopped when he got to the sidewalk in front of Holy Trinity and looked at the building. It was made of rough stones and set back from the street, small but sturdylooking, built in the 1920s by people who had had very little money to give to its construction, but who were not willing to live without what they felt it could give them. And yet, Gregor thought again.
Next to him, Bennis wrapped her arms around her body and shivered. “Do you at least want to tell me what we’re doing?” she demanded. “I’m turning into an icicle.”
“I’m thinking about religion,” Gregor said. “Would you say that Tibor is a very religious person?”