Sonia Moravian sat at the kitchen table kneading her rice mix and stuffing her freshly picked grape leaves, listening to the “Armenian station” on the radio. It was Saturday, a day to relax from her nine-to-five secretarial job at the bank. She looked out the window at the budding trees and thought about her mother, Arpine Hagopian, dead two years now, on her would-be birthday. Even more so in death, Arpine Hagopian had remained a mystery, a dark secret.

When asked where she was born, Arpine, called “Arpi,” would say, “I don’t know.” When pushed, she’d say, “Aleppo.” During her childhood and into her young womanhood and adulthood, Sonia knew very little about her mother. Through hushed conversations, she heard bits and pieces. 

Over the years, Sonia practically begged her more loquacious Aunt Anna, her mother’s sister, to reveal pieces of the family history. Aunty spoke in whispered tones of the torture that she and Arpi had gone through as young women in Armenia and Aleppo, and in between. 

“Your mother was married before, in Armenia. Her husband was murdered by the Turks,” her aunt recounted, swallowing hard, tears rolling down her cheeks.” But not before she was pregnant. She lost the baby while she and I “survived” the death marches across the desert to Aleppo. Very few did.” 

“When your mother came to America, she had an arranged marriage with your father, Varkus Hagopian. The matchmaker at the church planned it. Arpine Hagopian knew little English and spoke Armenian when she did speak, which wasn’t a lot. But she was a great housewife who did not think about love or intimacy or fun. She dutifully provided for her husband and children.”

The forced marches of young girls and women through the Syrian desert were part of the planned, systematic genocide specifically calculated by the Turkish Empire to create a pure Muslim-state. The tortured Armenian women as well as the few surviving men, came to the United States scared, angry, and ashamed, but also strong, smart, thankful, and, above all, secretive.

Sonia had her own child now, her beautiful son Eddy, her own Armenian community, her own Armenian Apostolic Church, and best of all, her own new granddaughter, Molly. Sonia sat back and envisioned the newborn. She was made of two steel-like materials, the survivorship of not one, but two holocausts. She had been forged with pain and suffering, but also with a maniacal will to endure. “This granddaughter will be strong, brave, smart, but most of all, unbreakable,” thought Sonia.

***

Molly pushed open the heavy silver door at Eddy’s Luncheonette and walked in to say hi to her dad. She was tall like her father, had a swimmer’s build, and her wavy, shoulder-length black hair was still wet from high school swim practice. She had bright blue eyes, long lashes, and round wire-rimmed glasses when she wasn’t wearing her contacts. 

Most would call her cute. Many would call her beautiful. 

The diner was not a fancy place. The counter had ten shiny silver-based stools with bright red vinyl seats that twisted through 360 degrees. There were six booths with seating for four to a table, six in a real squeeze. Molly had been coming to the luncheonette as long as she could remember, by herself or with her dad. Very seldom would she come with her mom. In fact, her mother, Susan, rarely came to the diner at all. 

"I don’t know what goes on down there. That’s your business,” she would say to Eddy. Not in an angry or derogatory way, but in a way that said, 

“That’s nice what you have there. You do what you want. What happens at Eddy’s Luncheonette stays at Eddy’s Luncheonette.”

Molly sat down at the end of the counter. She came straight from swim practice. This year’s high school team was undefeated. Molly won some individual events and lost some, but the important thing was that she worked hard to improve. She was glad to be on the team. Swimming was her major diversion from her studies. As a high school senior, she was taking all advanced placement courses and had applied to medical school. Every institution on her list was a six-year program, combining four years of undergraduate studies and four years of medical school into six years.

“Hi, dolly. How are you doing? How was practice?” Eddy was already serving her a tall cup of coffee in a white porcelain mug, extra cream, three artificial sweeteners, a small white plate with two biscotti, one chocolate, one plain. No nuts. 

“Thanks, Dad.” 

As a little girl, her beverage of choice had been hot chocolate with a dollop of fresh whipped cream. She seldom spent time “in the front” unless there were very few customers in the place. Molly heard all sorts of talk from the customers at the counter but never paid much attention to what was said. Most times, she headed for her dad’s “office,” one of three back rooms.

The first of the rooms was a 10-by-10-foot storage room with a refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, and dusty shelves filled with bottles of mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, large containers of cooking oil, loaves of bread, bags of rolls, boxes of napkins, and the usual assortment of dry goods as well as dishes, glassware, and cutlery. 

The second room was 12-by-12 with a sign on the swinging door that read Employees Only. Entering through that doorway one could see that on the far wall of this second room stood four one-armed bandits. Muted sound. Quarters only. 

On the left-hand side of the room, four gray aluminum kitchen chairs rested beside a rustic and scuffed five-by-six-foot solid-oak table in need of refinishing, on top of which sat eight black rotary telephones, their wires snaking back to eight outlets in the baseboard. A wooden box, measuring one foot cubed with a slit at the top and a metal latch on the side, sat in the center of the table; it seemed poised for something important as it waited there alongside the oversized hard plastic cup that held a dozen or so pens and pencils. A large metal ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts sat off to the right side. A wire wastebasket, always filled to the brim with crumpled papers and discarded brown paper bags, sat on the floor under the table. 

On the right-hand wall was a huge Deere and Company safe.

“That’s been there before I got here,” her father would say when asked. Its worn black exterior made of solid steel had scrolled gold lettering on the door and a large gold-plated combination dial on the front. Standing six feet high, five feet wide, and four feet in length, it weighed over 3,000 pounds. 

“There’s no way we could ever move that out of here. She’s here for life,” Eddy would say. 

Two or three of her dad’s “friends” would sit at the table, answering the phones and smoking cigarettes. They’d remove pieces of white paper from small brown paper bags, scribble on them, and drop the latter into the wooden “drop box.” Some men would be yanking at the slot machines. As a little girl, Molly would occasionally peek into this room but she was frightened by the creepy old men and their stinky cigars and cigarettes. 

From time to time people would either drop off paper bags at the diner, or runners would collect them from others at their homes or places of work. Inside each bag was a piece of paper with a number on it. The winners matched the lucky number of the day. 

Two additional metal fold-out card tables with wooden folding chairs on all sides lined the wall to the right, just inside the doorway where guys like Tommy the Rat, Tony Flowers, Manny the Mule, and other guys played pinochle. Glass ashtrays, mugs of coffee, and piles of cash adorned the tables.

The third room, Eddy’s office, was the smallest. At the far wall of the room sat a small gray metal desk, a wooden swivel chair on four legs with ball-bearing casters, and a green corduroy seat pad, frayed at the edges. On the desk next to a black rotary telephone and a goose-necked lamp stood a brass-framed picture of Eddy, his wife Susan, his daughter Molly, and his son Leo. A marble-based pen set with two Cross pens sat at the front of the desk with a gold-plated engraving that read: “Be Kind.” As a child, Molly spent most of her time there. After school, Molly would come and sit at the desk and do her homework, or read, or simply draw.

"You see, when I first came to New Bedford as a teenager, it was a dump. It had come on hard times and was a shadow of its former self,” said Eddy to a wide-eyed daughter, Molly, years ago, during one of their many discussions in the little office.

“Sure, it had its rundown whaling museum and failing aquarium, but by that time it had attracted the worst elements…drugs, the mafia. and God knows what else.”

“If you read Moby Dick,” he said waving his old copy in front of her, "and if you haven't, you should, Herman Melville in the 1840’s described New Bedford as ‘thriving and opulent, with grand houses, parks, and gardens.’ According to the author, the crews on the whaling ships came from ‘all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth.’

“Fact is, you know that Portuguese sweet bread that I serve you in here that you love, well that's a product of the large community of Portuguese people in our town. Those islands were big producers of oranges, like Florida is today. When the industry failed, the islands went to pot. Whalers and their families began to migrate here to make money; they came to New Bedford.” 

“Even Frederick Douglas came to town in 1838 as a freed slave. He had been a caulker on the docks of the Chesapeake Bay and knew the whaling industry was booming. He too was astonished at ‘the wealth and grandeur’ of this seaport.” But after they struck oil in the States, the whaling boom was ravaged, never to rise again. Just like New Bedford.”

As Molly grew older and entered high school, she spent more time sitting at the counter in the diner instead of listening to stories from Eddy. She caught various conversations—about husbands and wives, work, births and deaths, but mostly about the weather, weather, weather, football, football, football, football, or baseball, baseball, baseball. 

She occasionally spent time “in that other room” too, in a pinch, when there was a shortage of runners. Once in a while, she would answer the phones, record the bets, and properly arrange the names and numbers. On those days, Molly would check the Boston Herald for the attendance at Suffolk Downs that day, note the last three numbers, determine the handle of the day, figure out the take, organize it for her dad, and place the monies due in alphabetical order on his desk. 

Over time, Molly transformed her dad’s methods. At her suggestion, he had replaced all the big black phones and other old stuff with three internet phones and four laptops. The whole operation was cleaner, faster, more reliable, but most of all, more secure. 

Occasionally, for reasons he didn’t elaborate, Eddy would ask his daughter to drive over to the houses of people she had known since childhood, like Irene Delgado, Anna Kalafian, or old man Harry Donabedian. She would be politely asked in and given some cookies, yalanchis or a piece of paklava. She would invariably leave with a little piece of paper with names and numbers written on it. 

Molly’s participation was infrequent. Eddy knew his daughter was good with numbers, extremely focused, and trustworthy. Reports from school over the years from her teachers and coaches alike described her as a self-reliant, bright, motivated young lady who had true grit. 

Eddy’s back-room operation was “a small family business.” And he liked it that way. He had roughly a half dozen or so runners. He was always fair, honest, and kind. He did not want any trouble. Hogs go to trough, and pigs go to slaughter, thought Eddy. For certain reasons, some obvious and some not, the police turned a blind eye and the Mob left him alone.

Eddy’s favorite was pinball. For this, in the corner to the left, nearest the doorway to the largest room, he placed two pinball machines. No one but no one was as good at pinball as Eddy Moravian. Eddy did not have time nor the inclination for cards, but if anyone ever wanted to challenge him to pinball, they would have to wait in line just after closing, on Wednesdays, and be ready to lose their wad. Nobody beat The Wizard. Nobody.

***

Molly drank her coffee slowly that day and watched her father work the counter and grill. Mostly, he served coffee and pie during these in-between hours of the day. She planned to go home soon to do her homework. Her mom would still be at her one-woman CPA office, where she was CEO, administration, clerical, billing, and accountant all rolled into one. Molly’s profile shared features of both her parents: bright, hardworking, strong-willed, honest, and patient to a fault.

Molly got up to leave, but hesitated as she overheard three men at the counter talking softly in commiserating tones. 

“Yeah, mom’s got cancer too. Turns out that my uncle, aunt, brother, and cousin all got cancer,” said one. 

"Yeah, same deal happening in my family,” said another. 

“Sure wish they had a cure for that sucker,” said the third.

Molly put on her coat, swung her backpack over her shoulder and said,

“See you at home, Dad.” 

She walked home thinking about what she had just overheard. 

Eddy watched his only daughter, head high and spirits up, as she left the diner. He shook his head. The diner paid their bills and gave his daughter her future. Susan’s profession as a tax accountant helped, but the diner was their rock. And although he loved to tell his only daughter about the history of the town, he doubted if he’d ever tell her how he came to own the diner that bore his name.