Moonlight in Odessa (43 page)

I couldn’t stay at home any longer. I’d cleaned every surface of the house, including the windows, several times. I’d cooked every recipe in the
Low Fat and Lovin’ It
cookbook. I’d watched all his movies (
Die Hard
I, II, III;
Star Wars
I,II, III;
Indiana Jones
I, II, III;
Rambo
I, II, III,
Rocky
I, II, III, IV), I read my books dozens of times. I paced. I wrote
Dear Jane, Forgive me for my silence. You were so right and I so wrong, and I simply did not want to admit it
. Then I ripped up the letter and threw it into the fireplace and watched it burn.

Jane had written to the closest universities for information on master’s classes; I looked through catalogs from Berkeley and Stanford, touching the smooth, shiny pages of happy students. But if we couldn’t afford to pay the phone bill, how could we pay for schooling? Even if I could get loans and grants like Jane said, he would never let me out of his sight.

I walked to the town’s only café before I made any other insane phone calls.

It was a dark place. Dark paneling and carpet, and it smelled as if the cook had fried chicken for thirty solid years. The man behind the cash register wore chewed-up jeans and a T-shirt and had long hair and a handlebar mustache. When he smiled, I noticed he had more tattoos than teeth. I asked him who I should contact for a job.

‘I’m the owner,’ he said. ‘Name’s Skeet.’

Americans often asked impertinent questions. I loved this. I longed to do it. ‘What is Skeet short for?’

‘George.’ He guffawed and handed me an application.

I filled it out, requesting evening shifts. As defeat spilled over me, I did what Boba would have instructed – I looked for the positive: the job would give me room to breathe, it would give me my own income. I didn’t let myself resent the small town. Didn’t remind myself that there was a reason I hadn’t been able to find Emerson on a map, that only a fool doesn’t look before she leaps. I went to the bathroom to put on the brown sweat-stained uniform Skeet handed me. And felt my childhood dreams die. Buck up, I told my reflection. A job is a job. Money is money. You’re in America. That’s what you wanted.

Skeet taught me to take orders and how to carry five plates at the same time. ‘This’s a tough job. Ya have to be strong.’

I was strong. I could do it.

I went home and told Tristan my news.

Waitressing wasn’t so bad. I enjoyed talking and joking with the customers. I grew accustomed to the job and even looked forward to it. It got me out of the house. Of course, after the first time, I never ate at the restaurant. Never. The bagged salad tasted like formaldehyde. The potatoes were bought already peeled and boiled. Where? And by whom? The cooks soaked the steaks in large tubs of mayonnaise to tenderize them. They prepared a large pan of lasagna and kept it in the refrigerator for weeks. And I saw Skeet drop a slice of buttered toast on the floor, pick it up, and put it back on the plate.

The cook’s name was Raymond. He worked double shifts because his wife was sick and they didn’t have insurance to cover her ‘meds.’ The evening dishwasher was a high-school student named Rocky. He loved his truck, shop class, and a girl named Pamela Anderson.

I loved this feeling when I was with Americans. They would say anything, absolutely anything. Even intimate details about their lives. On a slow night at the restaurant, I talked to Pam, another waitress. She wore the same uniform as me, a knee-length polyester dress with a large white collar. Right away, she told me she’d gone through a bad divorce (which made me wonder if there was such a thing as a good divorce) and needed a place to ‘recoup.’ She was about thirty and had eyes with watery whites that were actually pink – she scared me a little because she looked so sad, I thought she would burst into tears.

‘So where’d you come from? You talk all funny.’

I failed to see what was humorous, but answered, ‘Russia,’ because no one here knew or cared about Ukraine. I continued to ladle the ranch dressing from the white bucket into the plastic squeeze bottles. She refilled the salt shakers.

‘Well, you sound prissy.’

I shrugged. I couldn’t help how I sounded.

She looked at my hands. ‘So you’re married?’

I nodded.

‘Got kids?’

I shook my head.

‘I got two,’ she said. ‘It just happened. Don’t know what I was thinking. I should’ve been like you and waited.’

It seemed she was seriously telling me she regretted having children.

‘So how long you been married?’ she asked.

‘Nine months.’

‘I heard he comes around.’

‘Yep,’ I said, trying out a new word I heard people use all around me. I’d had a week of freedom at work in the evening. Then he came in ‘just to see how things were going.’ He asked for a Coke, so I served him and he sat there for an hour, just watching me. He came in the next night and the next and the next and glowered at anyone who talked to me. In these moments, I hated him.

‘Think he’ll come in tonight?’ she asked. She started filling the pepper shakers.

How I wished I had the courage to say, ‘God I hope not.’ But I remained silent.

She nudged me and winked. ‘So how’s your sex life?’

I wanted to talk ‘casual’ like a real American, to use phrases like ‘you don’t know shit’ or ‘she works her butt off.’ More than that, I wanted to be honest and forthright like Americans. I wanted to tell her what I was unable to tell Jane, to tell myself. I closed my eyes and screwed up the courage to be honest about just one thing, then looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘It sucks. It really sucks.’

I had a job and money and paid the phone bill, but when I called anyone, even Molly, he turned up the television volume so I could barely hear. He hated to hear me speak Russian with Boba because he couldn’t understand. Paranoid, he thought we were talking about him. As if. We talked about everything but him. Boba described the borscht she made that week, or the amber-colored honey she bought at the bazaar. My mouth watered as I imagined these tastes of home. She said she still hadn’t received a single phone bill. When she called the telecom office, the clerk insisted it was paid. How could that be? She said, ‘For once, they made a mistake in my favor, I won’t question it.’

‘Are you still on the phone?’ he growled.

Shrink-shrank-shrunk.

‘Why is he always grumbling?’ Boba asked. ‘He was so nice in Odessa. Was that just a façade?’

Oh, Boba, you have no idea. I put my hand over the mouthpiece, and said, ‘Will you please let me talk to my grandmother?’

‘You’ve been talking for twenty minutes, eighty dollars. That’s enough.’ He grabbed the receiver and slammed it down.

‘You, you monster!’ I sputtered. ‘I have my own money, I can do what I want.’

He stood there, as if stunned.

‘S-sorry,’ he said.

The phone rang. And rang. We just stared at it. Finally, I picked it up. It was Boba. I’d given her the number in case of an emergency but never expected her to use it – calling from Ukraine was horribly expensive. A minute cost one-fifth of her monthly pension.

‘We must have been cut off. You know how the phone lines are.’

‘I know how the phone lines are,’ she repeated in a tone of voice that told me she knew exactly what had happened. ‘Little rabbit paw, maybe you should come home. Maybe I was wrong to tell you to go to America?. . .’

‘I’m fine, Boba. Wouldn’t I tell you if I were suffering? This is costing so much. Let’s say goodbye until next week.’ I hung up the phone.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tristan sniveled. ‘Sorry, sorry. I love you. I love you.’

‘Would you just leave me the fuck alone?’ I yelled, speaking my mind like a real American woman. I grabbed my copy of
Anna Karenina
and took refuge in the bathroom – the only room with a lock. I stayed there the whole afternoon, lying on a towel in the tub, reading. As always, Tolstoy spoke directly to me from the first page. ‘. . . there was no sense in their living together and that people who meet accidentally at any inn have more connection with each other than they . . .’ What to do? Like poor Oblonsky, I again pictured all the details of my quarrel with Tristan, all the hopelessness of my position and, the most painful of all, my own guilt.

And yet . . . How dare he hang up on my grandmother? Boba was right. He’d been so nice. That was then. And now . . . Now I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to touch him, not even accidentally while asleep. I would sleep in another room. And it would be a relief. I hated the way his milky sperm oozed out of my body, how most nights I went to sleep with a pad between my legs to sop up his mess.

I made up the bed in the office and lay there, next to the empty crib. At midnight, he threw open the door and turned on the light.

‘Are you coming to bed?’

I squinted up at him. ‘I am in bed.’

He slammed the door.

At work the next day, I asked the guys at work to put a deadlock on the office door. Tristan brought home six limp roses as a peace offering. I stuffed them down the garbage disposal. Never was I happier to have a modern appliance.

True to earlier Soviet-American cold war relations, we did not fight, we did not yell. We simply did not talk. After six nights of sleeping in the office, the door locked, Tristan came to me as I stood at the kitchen counter making a rump roast for him, apple compote for me. I bristled with anger and he slunk towards me like a dog that has displeased his master. He laid his latest peace offering on the counter.
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
. He’d chosen the right gesture. Books always pleased me. Dinner was a somber affair in which we did not speak, the only sound was him chewing and the scrape of cutlery on his plate as he dissected his meat. After dinner I took the book and began to read. Men are different. They have different needs. Different desires.
Nu
,
da
. Well, duh. Between the last page and the back cover, I found a letter.

Dearest Daria,

We haven’t wrote to each other since you came to California. I miss your letters. They told me exactly what you felt. And when I wrote, I thought of what I was going to say a head of time. Now, I say and do things without thinking of how it will effect you. Maybe I should go back to writing letters.

I have made many mistakes since you got here. I’m so sorry for hanging up on your grandma. It is the worse thing I have ever done. I should of understood how important talking to her is. I should of been more understanding. You and her should be able to talk as much as you want, whenever you want. I will work more hours so that you can talk to her more.

I hope that you can forgive me for being such a jerk. I love you more than anything more than anyone with all my heart and all my soul and more than anything want to live with you as husband and wife, to start a family, to be a real family with you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world and when I am with you, I finally feel like I am someone.

Your loving husband, Tristan

I opened the office door. When he took me in his arms, I felt only pity and exhaustion. But these emotions are just as binding as love. He steered me to the bedroom. His eyes were solemn and he wanted to talk about it all over again. I had no desire to. As he opened his mouth to apologize again, I asked, ‘How did you find me?’

He looked at me, tears floating in his eyes. ‘It all started at my twenty-year high school reunion. A buddy there had a Filipina wife. She was real pretty and young. She didn’t speak a word of English and looked up at him like an adoring puppy. She’d arrived the month before. We all thought he didn’t want to be single for the reunion, so he got himself a wife.

‘I asked him about it and he told me that it was easy, that there are dozens of dating sites and thousands of women looking for a decent guy. When he read what Amelia wrote and looked at her picture, he decided she was the one.’

‘Amelia doesn’t sound like an Asian name,’ I said.

‘Actually, she changed it. Her real name was unpronounceable.’

A little like Daria, I thought to myself. ‘What did she look like? What did she say?’

‘She was short and cute. On her profile, she wrote – well, someone translated what she said, because she hardly speaks two words of English – that she was a traditional lady who wanted a home, a husband and children. She didn’t need a lot of money, she just wanted kindness and respect. He went and got her. Well, that gave me the idea. If he could do it, why couldn’t I? He’s just an ordinary guy like me, but he has a sexy wife twenty years younger than him. I thought I’d have more in common with a European woman, so I looked at the Russian sites. Some had over eight hundred ladies. It was overwhelming. I looked at the ones my age and they looked ten years older than me . . .’

It’s true that our women have so much work and so many worries that they age quickly.

‘So I looked at younger ones. Ladies so beautiful that I could never have scored with them in America. It was, like, whoa –’