A Replacement Life (24 page)

“Did it work?” Slava said.

“No,” he said sourly. “They shut the door in our faces.”

“Oh.”

“You think I stopped there? I got our lawyer to get the case judge to come to our house for dinner. I am twenty-six years old at this point, Slava, basically five minutes older than you. We’re toasting to the health of the motherland and all that, and
khop
—I slip him a white envelope. Five large. And my little Misha got three years instead of ten. And I got to pick him up from the prison once a month and take him home for a home-cooked meal and a haircut.”

Slava nodded politely. All of a sudden, their twilight upon them, the old men of his old neighborhood were willing to talk about their valorous actions. Initially, they held back so as not to trouble the children with the frightening truth about life. But now, in the last lap, they were frantically unloading, like thieves dumping gold, pursued by the one collector from whom no
reprieve. Finally, they had met something more fearful than the prospect of disturbing the sleep of their children.

Lazar Timofeyevich closed his eyes, so slowly and heavily that Slava could imagine the lids never rising again. When he opened them, he said: “You think I am telling you all this to stroke my dick one last time? I am telling you this so you can understand the difference between your own and not your own. Who is your best friend?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’ve got a best friend?”

Slava thought about it. The only answer that came was Arianna. “No,” he said.

“I had ten best friends back home,” Lazar said. “Boys who would slit someone’s throat for me. All Jews. Every last one of them Jews. Now, whoever your closest friend is, would he do that for you?”

“I don’t know,” Slava said. “I don’t have—that many friends.”

“That girl,” Lazar said, pointing at the stairs, “will stand behind you like a tank, Slava. And you need it, with your head in the clouds. She may not know who Sakharov was, but she knows life, loyalty. You get caught doing what you’re doing? She would take the fall for you. That’s what I mean by your own. You name me one American person who will do that for you, and I will end this conversation. We brought you here, but that means we are Americans all of a sudden? Do you scoop from a box of cherries at the store without looking? No, you pick the good ones. Just because we are here, we have to live a thousand miles apart and call once a week to say hai-hava-yoo? Get a nice job, buy a big house—but you don’t have to take any more from this place.”

“So we are supposed to be foreigners here?” Slava said. “It wasn’t enough for you to have to be a foreigner back there, now you are choosing to be a foreigner here? They have psychopathic classifications for this kind of behavior.”

“We will become Americans, Slava, don’t worry,” Lazar said. “Your children will be almost Americans, and then their children will watch the shampoo commercials without understanding what could be different. It has to happen on its own timetable. You can’t rush the facts.”

“Life is long,” Slava said.

“Life is not long,” Lazar said. “At the front, twenty-five was a senior citizen. Lyuba was swaddling at twenty-five, very nice for her, but at twenty-five, I was commanding a Red Army platoon. That’s one thing I have to give those crazy medievals next door. They have five kids, six kids, seven kids. We are so small, Slava. We are always in danger of disappearing because of one thing or another.”

“Has anyone asked Vera what she wants?” Slava said.

“You have to speak into this ear,” Lazar Timofeyevich said impatiently.

“You are willing to give away your one granddaughter to someone who earns half her salary?”

“What?” Lazar whined. Slava wondered if the hearing impairment had been invented for deployment as needed. It had caused notably less interference at dinner.

“It’s not important,” Slava sighed. “I have to go, Lazar Timofeyevich. Long trip back.”

The old man shrugged, too weary to continue. He rose somberly and shuffled off to a corner cabinet. From it he withdrew a sealed white envelope, thick, and dropped it on the table in front of Slava. Then he lowered himself back into his chair. “Make it good,” he said.

“What is this?” Slava said.

“Your fee. Two hundred and fifty.”

“Thanks,” Slava said. “I don’t need a fee.”

“Your grandfather said not to give it to you, but you’re the one who deserves it.”

Slava felt warmth in his cheeks.

“Lazar Timofeyevich, you should have waited until they came,” Lyuba said reproachfully from the doorway. Garik was next to her, two eavesdropping children.

“Wait till who came,” Slava said.

“Who, who,” Lazar said, an old owl.

The doorbell rang, a slow tick-tock that banged around the tiled halls for eternity. They stood sealed to their places. On the elders, it dawned that Slava had no idea what was happening. Why had he been kept out of it? Well, he kept his distance now, they had heard. Fucking children, God pardon their speech: You give and you give and they spit in your face. Why
were
they so set on pairing Vera with Slava? That was the only reason they’d said okay when the Gelmans asked to come over. It wasn’t the kid’s fault that the parents—the grandfather—was a high-nosed prick. But what, the apple falls far from the tree? The kid was a strange one, too—in his own way, but strange all the same. All this flashed through the minds of the elder Rudinskys.

“Must be them,” Garik said.

“Who,” Slava said, a mild hysteria entering his voice. He knew the answer, but prayed to be wrong.

“Them, them,” Lazar said impatiently.

Lyuba disappeared into the hallway. Slava jumped from his chair, Lazar following at lesser speed. When Lyuba opened the door, the three men were bunched in the hallway behind her, wearing pained expressions: Garik because he didn’t know what to expect from this encounter—in some ways, he felt responsible for the estrangement, because his need for the limousine seed money had started it, though for the same reason, he also felt the most aggrieved and unprepared to reconcile, though of course he would do it for the children; Lazar because he was halfway to the next world and therefore understood, as only his granddaughter did, the imbecility of such estrangements; and Slava because he was bewildered, one that his grandfather had been charging for the letters, and two that, very likely, there were Gelmans on the other side of that door. Above their heads, Vera’s feet pressed the carpeted stairs. She was still wearing her goddamn arousing heels, the stilettos pricking the soft carpet.

The door opened to reveal, indeed, two Gelmans—father, daughter—and one Shtuts. Slava’s grandfather wore a white guayabera and an expression of disdain. His daughter was in a multiflowered tunic. Her husband was tidy in a short-sleeved shirt. They held chocolates, cheap champagne, the weight of the world.

“From New Jersey, they have graced us with their presence,” Lyuba said. She was aiming for playfulness, but the words came out scornfully.

“What are you keeping them outside for?” Garik said. “You’re wasting air-conditioning. Come in, people, come in.”

“It’s Slava,” his mother said, as surprised to see him as the Rudinskys.

“He’s on this side of the door already,” Lyuba said coquettishly.

The person in question examined his grandfather with blazing eyes.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” cried Vera, and ran down the remaining stairs into the hallway. She began to relieve the Gelmans of their bags and setting out house shoes from the closet. Massed in the foyer, the Gelmans obediently began to shed their footwear.

“I’ve cleared the table from dinner already, I just have to set out the china,” Lyuba said.

Grandfather’s nostrils flared. He was always being invited for coffee and cake after a dinner to which he had
not
been invited.

Dumbfounded, Slava searched out Vera’s eyes, but she avoided him. “Why don’t we sit in the living room?” she announced, and ran into the kitchen to gather provisions. Slava followed her, though he could only stare.

Her hands were deep in a cabinet. She stopped rummaging and looked over at him. “Are you going to help or not?”

“You’re joking, right?” he said. The adults trooped past the kitchen doorway en route to the living room. Lyuba was about to come in, but Vera waved her away. “The good china,” Lyuba hissed from the doorway and winked at Slava, an accomplice.

“Why can’t you let them settle it themselves,” he said to Vera.

“Because they’re children, that’s why,” Vera said.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

“You’re not leaving,” she said. “Help me.” Her expression softened. “Please.”

“He’s charging people,” Slava exclaimed. “Behind my back.”

“I’m sure it’s for you.”

“I don’t want the money!” Slava yelled.

“What’s the matter in there?” they heard from the living room. Vera and Slava stopped to listen. Their bickering had given the adults a subject of conversation. Someone even laughed. “You see?” Vera said to him through her teeth.

The children appeared in the living room carrying two trays of gold-rimmed plates and teacups. Stiff with silence, the adults were wedged into a sofa and love seat, thighs against thighs. The appearance of the children gave them a subject.

“What’s for sale today?” someone asked.

“What does the tea cost?” a second added.

“Just like old times,” someone announced, because it wasn’t like old times at all.

“Today we have a special,” Vera said playfully. “Open house at V and S Alimenti. Free snacks and tea.”

“Hooray,” Slava’s mother said tentatively.

Slava wished violence on all of them. After he set his tray down, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the white envelope. Stepping over Garik’s feet, he thrust it in his grandfather’s face. The conversation stopped. His grandfather looked up at him, fearful and mocking.

“I think this is for you,” Slava said. The white envelope hung between them like a poisonous sun. It anchored a galaxy of fat Russians.

“Can we skip business talk this one time, please?” Vera broke in. She snagged the envelope from Slava’s hands, folded it in half, and wedged it housewifeishly inside her décolletage. “Looks like I’m getting a shopping trip out of all this.” Everyone laughed.

“It’s so nice that you wanted to come,” Lyuba announced when everyone had settled down.

“We
wanted to come?” Grandfather said.

“Vera said—” Slava’s mother began.

“Oh, what difference does it make!” Vera cried. “You me, me you . . . we’re together. We’re together for the first time in almost twenty years.”

“Well, everyone, you look the same,” Garik said, and again they laughed.

“What the fuck did we get ourselves into,” Lazar said, not much hilarity in his voice. He meant America.

“Do you know that some people just stayed in Italy,” Slava’s mother said. She pulled at her tunic.

“If I did it again, I’d stay in Italy,” Garik said. “Do you remember these two?” He pointed at Vera and Slava. “They’d be speaking Italiano by now.”

“But we’re doing well,” Lyuba interjected. “We have almost no mortgage on this house.”

“They have a Nissan Altima
and
a Ford Taurus,” Grandfather announced, pointing to his daughter and her husband.

“I’d stay all Japanese,” Garik sniffed. “I understand these things.”

“Well, of course, you’re in a taxi all day long.”

“It takes skill,” Garik reminded the older man.

“Wafers?” Vera intruded. “There are cookies and biscuits as well. And what about ice cream?”

While the adults talked, Slava counted. He had written twenty-two letters. Twenty-two times two hundred and fifty was fifty-five hundred. A third of the graves. Or was there a sliding scale? Five hundred for some, two hundred and fifty for others. Did Grandfather say, “Lazar, I charge
five hundred. But you let my kid get at your pear-assed progeny, and we’ll make it two-fifty. Just do me a favor, don’t let him know. He’s fragile.”

No. It was Vera who’d done the bribing. She had called Grandfather like an equal: Come over, make peace, and we’ll buy a letter. Slava in this was a marionette. She knew that Slava wouldn’t deny her—was he so obvious, a panting dog?—and with him clearing the way, they would come. She ran circles around him. In public, at Stas and Lara’s, she was his shadow. In private, she achieved what needed achieving. She was as tough as Grandfather—tougher. That’s why he liked her: He saw a kindred spirit. Slava was writing the letters, sure, but the boy was flighty. Slava imagined Vera wearing Grandfather down on the price, the old man charmed by her enterprise. He didn’t want to condescend, however, and made her work for it. They went back and forth: Two hundred. Three hundred. Two-fifty.

Slava inspected Vera with a contemptuous wonder. She felt his eyes and swiveled to face him. Then she pulled out the white envelope and thrust it at him with the eyes of a parent. He took it.

By the time he rejoined the conversation, they were hollering like drunk people. And they were. Vera quickly realized her mistake—what biscuits? They needed cognac. They pulled out the best in the Rudinskys’ possession, a bottle of Rémy Martin VSOP someone had gifted a long time before. (Grandfather reminded them that it was he who had gifted it, it was him.) Thimbles were emptied, lemon wedges sucked down, thimbles emptied again. Gallantly, Garik asked to drink for Slava’s grandmother. The noise ebbed and they gazed mournfully into the crystal in their hands. “It’s nice crystal,” Grandfather said. Then they drank. Eventually, Slava excused himself. They became upset. He said he had a letter to write. Then the waters parted as if for a king.

–12–

O
utside the Rudinskys’, Slava was beset by an urgent desire to flee—to Manhattan, to Arianna’s. Throughout the preceding month, he had retraced back toward Bensonhurst and Midwood every step that he had taken in the opposite direction two years before. It had happened imperceptibly. You do not notice exactly when day becomes night, but you notice night.

He strode toward the subway. The sun was descending, fluorescent bulbs clicking on and casting a pale blue glow over the pears and lettuces in the bodegas. The heavy-breasted women who supervised the discount-clothing emporia that lined Eighty-Sixth Street wheeled in the enticement racks from the sidewalk, and a grandmother who had been selling
lepeshki
from a foldout table on Bay Twenty-Second Street sang quietly to herself as she stacked the plastic bins into a shopping cart.