Authors: Jennifer Oko
30
July 7 (B.D.)
Turning a Few Months Back, to the Summer Again.
Morning.
By Which I Mean Noon.
The first time Mitya took her down to Brighton Beach to meet his aunt Zhanya (Tyotya Zhanya, he called her, “tyotya” meaning “aunt”), Polly told him it felt like they had arrived in another country. When she said that, he laughed and said that in fact most of his Russian friends often joked that Brighton Beach was more Russian than Russia, that it was like a caricature of the Motherland, set more than two decades in the past, about the time when his family had emigrated (a time which Mitya said he hardly even remembered—he was just a little kid back then).
As they descended from the elevated subway platform, Polly could see what he was talking about. The scene reminded her of the Russia from the news clips of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, not the glamorous, cosmopolitan and often very wealthy Russia of the Russians she knew from the Manhattan hot spots and gallery openings.
They stepped off the metal staircase onto the street, but walking a straight path from the subway was a challenge. Vendors bled out over every square inch of pavement, and cars were double-parked with their hoods splayed open, exposing trunks overflowing with a wild assortment of merchandise. Mitya took Polly’s hand and led her through the dizzying maze of goods.
Caviar, fur hats, wool scarves. Even though it was summer. There were sausage links, dried fish, and samovars. Tables were lined up along the curbs, displaying loaves of bread, large cardboard boxes with Cyrillic labels, books. Burly women of indeterminate ages stood like statues, holding small items in their swollen palms as if they were making offerings. There were small bottles, Zip-Lock baggies filled with gray capsules, and black lacquer jewelry boxes. Some of the women had skinny little kittens peeking from out from the depths of their bosoms. One even had a small dog. The shops overflowed into the streets as well, with shirts and jackets hanging from the canopies that covered an endless number of junk-filled bins. It was hard to figure where the storefronts ended and the street vending began.
“See that?” Mitya said, nodding toward a handwritten sign taped in front of a small plastic table. “It’s amazing.”
“What?” The sign was in Cyrillic, so it could have been a cookie recipe, for all Polly knew.
“It’s a list of the drugs she has.”
“Drugs?”
“Stuff she’s selling.”
Polly looked at the woman standing next to the display. Thin, bluish-white strands of hair peeked out from under her thick knit hat. She was short, maybe 5 feet in heels, if she ever wore them. And round. A caricature artist would probably draw her of equal height and width, but that would be an exaggeration. A slight one. She looked like the kind of woman you would want as a nanny for your children, not a person who would sell you narcotics.
Polly asked Mitya what the list said after they walked past.
“It said she has diazepam, codeine, and some heart medication.”
“Wow. Just like that. For anyone to read.”
“Anyone who reads Cyrillic.”
“I guess none of the cops around here do,” Polly said.
“Or maybe someone has been encouraging them to keep a secret.”
“What do you mean?” Polly asked, turning to take a surreptitious photo of the granny dealer with her phone.
“Well,” said Mitya, stopping to pick up a book up from a stack on a table. He chose the one on top, flipped it over to see whatever it was that was written on the back, and then put it back in its place. “Remember, a lot of these people, the older ones, grew up learning to distrust pretty much everything. So why would they trust a doctor or a pharmacist here? Maybe it’s more familiar and comfortable to buy medicine in boxes with directions you can read and from people you trust. My aunt buys stuff here all the time. She depends on it. I mean, I really don’t think the local police are looking at these people as being on the front lines of the drug trade. This isn’t meth they’re selling.”
“Defensive, are we?” Polly mockingly crossed her arms and grinned. I must say, she looked particularly cute that day. And it’s funny, because even though we were barely on speaking terms at that point, she was wearing one of my favorite sundresses, a sleeveless one with a gray floral print. Sharing clothing had been so much a part of who we were that it made sense the tradition would continue, even through rough patches. The dress looked good on her. It’s nice to know it will probably continue to get some good use.
Mitya was grinning back. And, yes, I admit it; he looked kind of cute. He had a nice, not too-toothy smile that created a deep dimple on his left cheek. “No,” he said, crossing his arms to mimic her, “it’s just that the black market is not always as insidious as it sounds.”
“Well, then the market clearly needs a new publicist,” Polly said, suppressing a laugh. “They could put the grannies front and center in the campaign.”
“Black Market Grannies.” Mitya laughed. “I like that.” He pulled Polly against his chest and gave her a sweet little kiss. “You are a clever one, Polly Warn
er.”
31
November 5 (A.D.)
Today.
A Little After 6:00 P.M.
Okay, so
maybe Mitya wasn’t so bad. Maybe Polly was right about me being too quick to judge. But how could I have known? I mean, short of being dead (and thereby attaining the ability to flit around, in and out of other people’s memories—actually, just Polly’s, I haven’t yet tried to access anyone else’s, and I’m not even sure if I could), how are you supposed to know what really happens in other people’s intimate lives? You can only make decisions and create opinions with what you know. And for the past few months, all I had in front of me was a rapidly disappearing best friend who wasn’t telling me much of anything at all. At least I can learn about it now.
I have to say, this afterlife thing really isn’t so bad. Everyone should have a little taste of it. I mean, sure they will, eventually, but it would be nice if one could, while living, take a brief departure for a little while. Get some perspective. Crunch years of psychotherapy into a tiny blip of time. Time span seems to be irrelevant here, so in theory it wouldn’t even have to take too long. Seriously. With all of my ruminating and remembering, you would think hours have passed. But look down there, you know, at that car and at Missy skulking away and whatnot, and you’ll see that we’re still right here, at the moment of my death. Well, not long after it, anyway. It hasn’t even been an hour and there they are, lifting me out onto that gurney. My arm is falling off the side. Rigor mortis hasn’t even set in.
I can’t feel anything, though. Not physically, I mean. My body hasn’t hardened yet, but the strange thing is, I’m sensing a greater and greater emotional freeze. I feel my emotions freezing up with each passing nanosecond. They’re still here, but they’re fading. Emotional rigor mortis, I guess. Which is fascinating to me, given my research. Though I suppose that will soon subside as well, the fascination. It’s just an emotion, after all, even if it isn’t one I understand. I’ve never looked at its chemical components. I did look at a lot of interesting things, though. Thanks to Missy, really, though I hate to admit that. I mean, without her, without the funding from Pharmax, my research into emotional chemistry would have dried up completely.
Obviously (and I can admit this now that I’m dead), studying the actual chemistry of any emotion is only a part of the equation. Had Polly and I been talking in any real sense over the past few months, had she been telling me about what was going on in her life, and had I been telling her what was going on in mine, I might have really learned a thing or two. I might have learned, for example, that there’s a surprisingly fine line between contentme
nt and euphoria.
32
July 7 (B.D.)
Turning it Back Four Months Again.
12:32 P.M.
T
hey were not what she expected.
When Mitya had told Polly she would be meeting his distant cousin—a once-renowned-but-now-not-even-remembered-enough-to-be-considered-“disgraced” pharmaceutical scientist from the former Soviet Union—and his aunt, a depressed, aging Russian widow—she imagined she would be meeting an angry Dr. Strangelove-type, and a frail but nostalgically elegant old lady. Not a puffy fifty-something-year-old man with soft, boyish features and an overweight babushka stuffed into a threadbare floral housedress.
When they walked in, Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn and Aunt Zhanya were sitting at the kitchen table, illuminated by the flickering light of the television set on the opposing counter, their backs facing the door, an old dog sleeping at their feet.
“Tyotya,” Mitya said, flipping the switch for the overhead light. “We’re here.” Without turning to look at him, Zhanya muttered something in Russian.
“No, no,” Mitya responded. “I’m not staying the night. I brought Polly here to meet you, like I said I would.”
Zhanya mumbled something else.
“It’s fine. We can order in,” Mitya said with a hint of exasperation in his voice.
Zhanya brushed some crumbs off of her lap and slowly lifted herself out of the chair.
“C preyezdom,” she said, forcing a smile as she weakly shook Polly’s hand.
“Tyotya, she doesn’t speak Russian.”
Zhanya sighed and tried again. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, sounding neither insincere nor particularly interested.
The distant cousin was another matter. As soon as Zhanya had finished her turn exchanging niceties (which didn’t take long), Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn bounded forward to greet Mitya and his new girlfriend. “Come, come. Sit down. Please.” He clasped both of Polly’s hands in his own and pulled her back toward the table.
“I am Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn,” he said, not letting go of Polly’s hands. She had to tilt her head back to escape the onslaught of his oniony breath. “So, so happy to meet you. So good. So good. You call me Ivan, yes?”
Polly nodded and looked back at Mitya, who shrugged as if he had no idea what all the fuss was about.
“Mitya, he say so much about you,” Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn continued, wiggling his bushy eyebrows as he spoke. “We wait too long to meet you. Such interesting young woman, yes?” He looked at Mitya and winked with great exaggeration.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” said Polly, although in truth she’d been determinately dragging her feet on this front, partly because, having heard about Mitya’s eccentric cousin who had recently arrived in Brighton Beach—this scientist character who Mitya had said might bore you to tears with halitosis-tinged stories of his faded glory—she was reluctant to meet him. But Mitya had been pressing Polly to meet Aunt Zhanya for some time. It was, if nothing else, an affirmation of how seriously he was taking their fledgling relationship. With his mother back in Moscow, Zhanya was the closest family Mitya had. And when family is in need, well … Mitya hadn’t sugarcoated the scene. He’d told Polly that his aunt Zhanya had been deeply, profoundly depressed for months now, for no discernible reason. She’d suffered bouts of depression throughout her life, but this one seemed to be intractable. Which was the real reason Mitya wanted Polly to meet her. He thought she could help. Actually, Mitya had initially thought I might be able to help, that because of my background—that I might be able to help convince his aunt to get help. Polly struck that idea down immediately, figuring I would never consent, at least not at that point in time.
She was probably right.
So instead, she suggested that she try to meet with Zhanya first, try to talk to her woman-to-woman, share her own stories of how medication had helped her, maybe even help get her started on a course of treatment. But now, looking at her, Polly was starting to think that Tyotya Zhanya was a woman no medication on earth could possibly assist.
“Can you pass me the sugar, please?” Polly asked Zhanya after they all sat down at the table and Ivan Petrovich poured out some tea.
Zhanya’s eyes were fixed on the floor, and she didn’t look up when she pushed the chipped ceramic sugar bowl a few inches across the table. The few moments of greeting had depleted her. She crossed her arms and slumped deeper into her chair. Ivan Petrovich reached over and took the teaspoon out of the jar.
“How many, sweet?” he asked Polly.
“One’s fine. Thanks.” She watched him stir the spoon around in her ceramic cup. “So,” she said, filling the awkward silence, “Mitya tells me you just recently got here?”
He nodded. Polly looked over at Mitya, who smiled back at her with encouragement.
“He said you got a job driving a cab? In Manhattan? That must be interesting. I mean, you must get a really wide range of passengers.”
“That what Mitya tell you?” Ivan asked, making an exaggerated frown and shaking his head. “That I just taxi driver?”
“Well, no. I mean, he said that you had been a scientist, and …”
“Da. This is right,” he said, tapping his chest. “I was Gyeroy Sovyetskogo Soyooza. Hero of Soviet Union.”
“Oh.” Polly looked at Mitya, who made a show of rolling his eyes, mouthing the words “here we go.”
Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn did have a story to tell, as much as one could follow it. At least according to him. Three months before, he explained, he had arrived at Zhanya’s doorstep unannounced, straight from immigration at Kennedy Airport. He was carrying little more than a small, tattered piece of paper with her address. In some way, he said, metaphorically speaking, he had been carrying this paper for the past few decades, from the moment Gorbachev, with his spotted brow and expansive outlook, unwittingly unclogged the pipes and let the Soviet scientific brain drain begin. By now, already deep into the next millennium, most of his renowned colleagues were well ensconced in prominent universities and well-funded laboratories around the world. But, because of who Ivan Petrovich claimed he was and what he claimed he had discovered, it had been a much harder sell for him to get permission to leave. The Russian authorities hadn’t wanted to let him go, he said, and the American authorities were not sure they wanted him to come. Until, that is, all the authorities had become too distracted by events elsewhere to give a hoot about someone’s connection with or at least cooperative support of the no-longer-such-named KGB, especially not a chemist whose discovery was about as relevant to the new world order as dial phones and typewriters.
What Ivan Petrovich said he had discovered, back when he was a twenty-five-year-old scientist of nondescript origin with a nondescript face, was the exact chemical and hormonal solution to create the perfect Soviet Citizen. Capital C. With his secret mix, he had laboratory monkeys humming party hymns and dogs marching in unfettered synchronicity. Even the rats and the mice were observed evenly dividing up their food and forming long lines to collect it.
Polly kicked Mitya’s ankle under the table.
Mitya smirked. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard this story. “Ivan Petrovich, tell her about the medicine.”
“Yes, yes. I get there,” he said, and went on to explain that the medicine developed from this formula, Leninzine, was given, first experimentally and then as commonly as kasha, to members of the convicted criminal class.
“It is proof,” he said, his excitement visible in the increasing range of motion of his hand gestures. “If you see records, you notice number of criminal peoples no more in prison was same as increase in year’s numbers joining Communist Party parades and events.” He said he was hailed as a genius throughout the Union, and spent the better part of the year lecturing at research centers and prison clinics, from Vladivostok to Lvov.
“That’s great,” said Polly, not sure if she should believe him or if he was a delusional maniac.
“Da!” Ivan Petrovich slammed his palm on the table. Even Zhanya looked up at that. “Was great. But no! No more!”
“What?” Polly silently mouthed at Mitya. “What did I say?”
“No, no. I sorry,” Ivan Petrovich reached across the table and patted her hand. He exhaled and explained that by the time the worst side effect of Leninzine was discovered—it metabolized in such a way that the body craved at least half a liter of Vodka every ten hours after taking it—the Soviet Union was dissolved, the research lost in the crypts of the Kremlin, and no one remembered what the purpose of the drug was in the first place.
Well, hardly anyone.
“If I can find job here, in laboratory, I could make much money! Become famous! Buy Zhanya new house!” Ivan Petrovich was practically bouncing off his chair.
Polly cocked her head. “So why don’t you?”
“Blat!” he said. And then Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn—Soviet psychopharmacology’s aging boy wonder—spit on the floor. “Menye Pizd’ets.”
“What does that mean?” Polly whispered to Mitya.
“You don’t want to know,” he answered.
“Oh, come on.” She crossed her arms.
“Well, I’m not sure of the literal translation, but basically he’s saying he’s fucked.”
“Why?”
Ivan Petrovich waved his hand in a circle. Mitya knew the story. Let him tell it.
“He says there are no records. His awards, his diplomas, his papers, his transcripts—all of them are missing. He says that everything was destroyed by the KGB right before the coup. They wanted to destroy any evidence that that drug ever existed, that anyone had ever worked on it—anything that might one day incriminate anyone involved.”
“And now I am here, driving taxi cab in the New York City. But if I had laboratory,”—Ivan Petrovich shook his head in dismay—“I could be help for her. I could make medicine for her.” He looked over at Zhanya, who was still slumped in her chair as she looked aimlessly into her teacup.
“I know,” said Mitya. “I’m sure you could.” He nodded at Polly. She took the cue and handed him her purse. “And I’m sure you will, someday.” Mitya placed his hand on his aunt’s shoulder and pressed the bag into her lap. “Tyo
tya, we have something for you.”
***
Zha
nya held the Ziperal at a distance, trying to adjust her eyes so she could read the tightly printed text that wrapped around the bottle. It had taken a good ten minutes just to get her to open the bag, Ivan Petrovich lecturing them the whole time—about the advances in psychiatric medication, about what he saw as the lawsuit-averse timidity of the American market, about all the possibilities, if only he could have a hand in it.
Mitya finally waved his hand at his cousin, imploring him to shut up. “Tyotya?” he said to his aunt, “are you okay?”
Zhanya shook the bottle and then thrust it in Mitya’s face. “And I should trust this, why?”
“I know a lot of people who’ve taken it,” said Polly softly, gently touching Zhanya’s wrist, lowering her arm. “It might give a little buzz at first, and then might take a few days for the full effect, but I think it could make you feel better.”
“You should try it, Tyotya,” said Mitya. “It’s going to be fine.”
Polly picked up one of the seven-day sample packs scattered amongst the bottles from her purse. “It’s actually much faster acting than most antidepressants.”
“Apparently it has other benefits as well, Tyotya,” Mitya added, trying to sound encouraging. It was, after all, the other benefits that had been of interest to him and his friends in the first place. The increased ability to focus, the initial boost of energy, the clearer skin. Depression was never the issue. Not for him, anyway.
But antidepressants were just not part of Zhanya’s generation’s emotional vocabulary. Not in any language. To her, taking them seemed shameful, like Ziperal might as well have been an antipsychotic used in insane asylums. These were not medications she was familiar with. They weren’t medications she could buy from the babushkas down the street. Or that someone she trusted—someone who really understood these things—could vouch for. She turned to Ivan Petrovich, seeking his advice. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “The brain, it just one big chemical soup,” he said. “You not like taste of soup now. Why not add new spice?”
Zhanya was too tired to argue with that, and finally relented. “So, how many do I ta
ke?”