Authors: Michael Barakiva
20
“
You
’
re rolling the sarma too tight
,”
Alek insisted.
“Am not,” Nik said.
“They’re going to burst when they’re cooking,” Alek warned.
“Will not.”
“Will too.”
“Will not!” Nik practically screamed, ripping the leaf he’d been working on, sending lamb and rice stuffing flying all over the kitchen.
The brothers Khederian paused for a moment and took deep breaths.
“Why don’t you do it with me?” Nik asked.
“You know Mom and Dad haven’t taught me how yet,” Alek responded.
“So I will. Here,” Nik said, passing one of the unwrapped grapevine leaves to his brother.
“Really?”
“Why not? Put around a tablespoon of the stuffing in the middle, fold in the sides, then roll it up from the bottom.”
Alek accepted the leaf and got to work, following his brother’s instructions.
“You see how much faster it goes if we do it together?” Nik said. Alek nodded in agreement, enjoying the long-awaited feeling of the grapevine leaf in his hand.
“Alek, after we finish rolling the sarma, I’ll start chopping the onions for the string beans and lentils.”
He placed the completed leaf in the pot, starting a second layer on top of the already-rolled leaves.
“Why don’t you start on the lahmajoun and I’ll do the onions?”
Alek surveyed the family kitchen, which looked like a war zone. Nik had gotten one of his friends from student council to take him shopping for the ingredients that morning. They had returned hours ago, which Alek and Nik had naïvely believed would give them more than enough time to do the cooking, and laid out each ingredient neatly as they’d seen their parents do before embarking on a great meal-making. Between then and now, however, it looked like an earthquake had rumbled through the kitchen, violently tossing the ingredients in random directions. And not a single dish was ready.
“What time is it?” Alek asked nervously.
“Seven fifteen.”
“That only leaves us forty-five minutes!”
“Then what’re you waiting for?”
Alek chopped his anxiety out on the onions. When he had suggested the dinner party to Nik last week, it had seemed like the perfect idea. They had spent the rest of that Saturday and all the next Sunday flipping through their parents’ cookbooks, trying to put together the perfect meal.
“What about making kufteh for the appetizer?” Alek had asked his brother.
“What’s that again?”
“Can there possibly be some piece of Armenian culture you don’t know?” Alek asked, faux-shocked.
“Just tell me what it is.”
“Aunt Arsinee makes it every Easter, remember? It’s that lamb/pine nut/parsley patty thing, like an Armenian slider. She makes it with lots of cumin.”
“Isn’t that really hard to make? I think we need to make things that we know how to do. Or at least things that we think we can pull off.”
Alek considered this. “Good point, Nik,” he conceded.
They had agreed to start with premade lahmajoun instead, a thin flatbread baked with ground meat and herbs that simply needed to be heated up. For the entrée, they had decided to make the sarma, which would be accompanied by bulgur, lentils, and green beans in a walnut sauce.
If he had realized how much chopped onion the green beans needed, Alek might’ve selected a different dish. He tried to look away while chopping to protect his eyes from watering, but was worried that he’d end up cutting his fingers.
“Here, let me show you a trick,” Nik offered. He lit a candle from the dining room and placed it next to the chopping board. “That should do it.”
“Really?” Alek asked.
“Yeah, cutting onions makes you cry because enzymes from the surface mix with the sulfenic acids inside to produce syn-propanethial-S-oxide. The gas floats up to your eyes, reacting with the moisture to create sulfuric acid. Then your eyes burn, releasing more water, and a chain reaction forms. But the flame draws the gas away, preempting it.”
“I can’t believe I’m actually happy you’re a nerd for once,” Alek said.
“Just chop those onions, okay? T-minus thirty minutes.” Nik filled a large pot of water, put it on the range, and turned the flame to high. “Let’s see,” he thought out loud. “That’s probably two gallons of water, and at a minute a quart, I’m going to guess it’ll boil in around ten minutes.”
“Your sorta cool nerdiness just descended into uncool super-nerdiness, FYI,” Alek informed him. He took a large skillet for the green beans and put it on medium-low heat. Once the skillet was warm, he poured in a few tablespoons of olive oil, waited for it to start shimmering, then dumped half the onions in, gently stirring them until they were translucent. While the onions cooked, he pounded the walnuts and garlic into a paste, then seasoned it with coriander, paprika, salt, cayenne, and red wine vinegar.
“I’m going to start the lentils,” Nik said, putting a pot on low heat. He waited for it to warm up, then added a few tablespoons of olive oil. He took the remaining onions and dumped them inside, letting them cook slowly until they caramelized, as he’d seen his dad do a million times. While the onions quietly sizzled, he gave the lentils a thorough rinse and began sifting through, looking for stones or debris.
“Good call,” Alek commended him. “Can you imagine the fuss Mom would make if she bit into something hard and inedible? It’s almost enough reason to slip one onto her plate to see what happens.”
“Almost,” Nik said, making sure Alek was kidding. “You never told me how you got Ethan to come, by the way.”
Alek laughed nervously, then removed the trimmed green beans from the fridge and tossed them in with the translucent onions in the large skillet.
“He
is
going to be here, isn’t he, Alek?”
“Sure.”
“So what’s that nervous giggle about?” Nik asked.
“It’s just that, well, I spent the last week trying to get the courage up to ask him—” Alek began.
“Which is your way of telling me that it didn’t actually happen, right?” Nik continued.
“So I had a friend do it for me,” Alek finished.
Alek’s dad had another job interview and hadn’t been able to pick him up after school on Friday, so Alek had taken a detour to Becky’s house on the way home. He had knocked on the door urgently, praying that Becky would be home. He was supposed to call his dad’s cell phone from the landline after school, so his window was only a few minutes wide.
“Where have you been, dumb-ass?” she had asked him when she opened the door. “You haven’t returned any of my calls. Or e-mails. Or texts. Or smoke signals.”
“I’m grounded for life. My parents walked in on me and Ethan.”
“I wonder if I should start a support group with them. I was totally traumatized when it happened to me.”
“Thanks, Becky.”
“Always here for you.”
“Look, I need you to do something for me.” He rushed through the explanation of everything that had happened. “That’s why I need you to carry a message for me and ask Ethan to come over for dinner tomorrow night with my family.”
“Are you Romeo or Juliet?” she asked.
“What?”
“Well, if I have to be the Nurse, ferrying messages back and forth between the two of you, I want to know who’s who.”
“I’m going to have to tell you I’m Juliet for you to do this for me, aren’t I?”
“You’re quick.”
“Okay, Becky. If you’re the Nurse, then Ethan is Romeo and I’m Juliet.”
“Say it again.”
“I’m Juliet,” Alek repeated.
“Leave it to me. He’ll be there,” Becky had reassured him.
“And make sure he knows what he’s in for, okay?” Alek had told her.
Alek looked at his brother, who was giving the lentils one final pass. “How did you get Nanar to agree to come over?”
“I did what any self-respecting guy would do. I returned all the Armenian books I bought this summer and used that money to have a dozen roses delivered to her house with a note begging for her forgiveness and telling her that if she took me back, I’d be her slave forever.”
“Very masculine.”
“It worked, okay?”
Alek let the pot with boiling water cool down for a few minutes, and then gently poured half of it into the pot with the uncooked, rolled-up sarma. He turned the flame to medium-high, and the moment the water started boiling again, covered the pot and dropped the heat down to medium, letting the dish cook at a gentle rolling boil. The rich, earthy smell of grapevine leaves wafted from the pot.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to smell sarma without thinking of home,” Nik said.
“I know what you mean,” Alek agreed.
Nik’s onions had finally caramelized into a crispy dark brown. He poured a few cups of the rinsed lentils into the pot, stirring them around to coat them in the remaining oil. “Now, you know not to put salt in with lentils until after they’ve finished cooking, right?” Nik instructed.
“Duh,” Alek responded. “I’m not one of
these Americans
. Everyone knows you can’t put salt or vinegar in with legumes until they’re already done or they’ll never cook through all the way.”
“You know, I don’t mean to imply that you’re stupid when I tell you things. I’m just trying to be a good older brother,” Nik said.
Alek felt thousands of possible sarcastic responses journey from his brain to his tongue. But instead of releasing any of them, he just mumbled “Thanks” under his breath and continued stirring.
“Let’s see,” Nik said. “The bulgur just needs to sit in there and finish absorbing the water, the sarma has to finish cooking—”
“Don’t forget to put the tomato paste in.”
“I won’t. We’ve got to finish up the beans, pour the chicken stock into the lentils and let them simmer, put out the madzoon sauce, and heat up the lahmajoun, but I want to wait until the last minute to do that so that it’s still warm. I think I can do all that. You want to set the table?”
“Sounds good,” Alek said. “I can also put the hors d’oeuvres out.”
“Do you really think we need the string cheese as well as the soojoukh? It might be enough just to have the meat out with the pita and olives.”
“The string cheese is a must, okay?”
“Okay,” Nik conceded.
Alek grabbed the soojoukh, a salted, air-dried meat, from one of the bags and sliced it thinly, then arranged it on a small platter around an impressive serving of the braided cheese. Then he cut the pita into quarters, drained the olives out of their plastic container into a ceramic bowl, and grabbed another small bowl for the pits. He set all the dishes in the living room with a neat stack of napkins nearby.
In the dining room, Alek opened the credenza his parents used to store the nice china and removed a stack of plates. He placed them around the dining room table, then folded six linen napkins and put them on the center of each plate. Next, Alek removed the silverware from the drawers. Since he and Nik had decided against a salad or soup course, he only needed two forks, one knife, and two spoons. Each utensil was placed precisely: appetizer fork then entrée fork on the left side of the plate, knife and teaspoon on the right side of the plate. He laid the dessert spoons horizontally on top, the handles facing right.
When he placed the last spoon, the timer bell on the toaster oven chimed from the kitchen.
“Is that the lahmajoun?” Alek called to his brother.
“Yup,” Nik called back. “Do you know where the oven mitts are?”
“I put them back in their drawer.”
“Thanks.”
Alek went back into the kitchen and took the yogurt dip they had made earlier that day from the refrigerator, sprinkling freshly chopped mint on top.
“Great idea to serve the lahmajoun with madzoon on the side, Nik,” Alek complimented his brother.
“Nanar says that’s the way her family does it because they love to dip it into the madzoon. When we were hanging out last night, she also told me—” Nik cut himself off when he heard the front door open.
“Are we allowed to come in yet?” their mother called out.
Alek and Nik looked at each other and nodded.
“Come on in, guys,” Alek called out. They heard the front door close.
“Boys, everything smells lovely,” their father called out warmly. Alek and Nik took off their aprons and walked out of the kitchen to meet their parents in the dining room. Mrs. Khederian was wearing a short, dark blue cotton dress. Alek realized it was the first time all summer he had seen her wearing something other than a suit. Mr. Khederian wore a jacket and tie and square silver cuff links.
“Now, are you going to tell us why you decided to cook us this meal, or will we find out soon enough anyway?” their father asked.
The sound of the doorbell ringing saved them from having to respond.
“Should I get that?” his mother asked.
“No!” the boys called out in unison. Alek looked at the clock in the living room, which read eight o’clock exactly.
“That must be Ethan,” he whispered to Nik.
“There’s no way an Armenian
or
a Turk would ever be on time,” Nik agreed. “You want to get it? I can keep them occupied.”
“Thanks,” Alek said gratefully.
“Ready?” his brother asked him.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Alek responded.
21
Ethan was wearing a cream linen suit over a sharply starched white shirt, his hair combed and slicked back. Alek inhaled his sweet scent, and his knees buckled slightly. They stood staring at each other, familiar and awkward.
“I didn’t actually know if you were going to show up or not,” Alek said finally.
“Me neither,” Ethan admitted.
“Then why did you?” Alek asked.
“Because I’m older.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“I have to be the mature one and forgive you when we fight.”
“That’s funny, I don’t remember asking for your forgiveness.”
“And that’s what makes my forgiveness so incredibly mature.” Ethan smiled.
The smile warmed Alek’s insides. He stepped toward Ethan, slowly wrapping his hands around his waist. When Ethan didn’t pull away, he leaned his head in, letting it rest against Ethan’s chest, and listened to the sound of Ethan’s heartbeat.