She scrambled out of the car. “Pop the trunk?” He wasn’t going
to let her hoist luggage. His stomach hurt with the effort of removing
the bags. “I got it,” Yana said. Osip held on to the handle of the
largest suitcase — the dark green one that taken them to Grand
Cayman. She wouldn’t be able to wrest it away from him; he’d won
a few more minutes.
In the end, like any determined criminal, she escaped. “See you
later, alligator,” he managed to say.
“Oh, because of the green?” Yana laughed: she was trying to
make a nice memory for him.
She walked into a crowd of women dressed just like her, but
half her size, so that she appeared, from the back, to be some kind of
super Bangladeshi of the glorious future.
***
A few nights later, Osip lifted his wine glass. “
So, as they say,
Yana’s gone — let’s drink to Yana
.” He didn’t want any, himself. It
shouldn’t be, in this modern age, that husbands come like marauders
to take daughters away: first Malcolm, then Pratik, and now this
Roman had come to drink Osip’s wine and have his way. As soon
as everyone finished clinking, Roman stretched an aggressively
muscled arm past Osip to fetch mushrooms for Katya.
Osip took a bite of his fish. Stalina liked people to know which
ingredients she’d used; otherwise, what was the point? For example,
when she cooked something in lemon, you knew.
“The fish is too dry, Roman?” Stalina said.
Roman put a giant portion on his fork, and began saying, “
Oh,
no, it’s very —”
“No, you must to practice English!” Stalina said.
Roman took a gulp of wine. “Fish is banging.” He banged a fist
on the table and the glasses hopped. Stalina gave Osip a look. Before
Roman had arrived tonight, she’d told Osip how unsuitable he was:
he’d never finished college, besides which he was
mallo-culturni
,
little-cultured, his mother was a
narcomanka
and he probably was
one, too, and on top of all that, Stalina was almost positive she’d
once seen him put five Daffy Duck watches in his pants at Caldor. It
was fine for him and Katya to go to movies together, or ride bicycles,
but now that Katya had invited him for dinner, the elder Molochniks
needed to present a united front against seriousness.
Katya was happy, so there was that. Shaving her head had made
her happy, dropping out of high school had made her happy, drinking
and drugs had made her happy, getting a tattoo with a picture of a
singer who’d killed himself had made her happy, and now Roman.
“
Happiness
,” Baba Rufa used to say, fluttering her arthritic fingers,
daring it to alight on her purple veins, her bruised knuckles.
“I got for you dishtowel,” Roman said now, and pulled a neatly
folded cloth from one of four front pockets on his fat man’s jeans.
Stalina held it up. Printed on the front was a pink kitten crawling out
of a cookie jar, like a demonstration of a dirty kitchen in a hygienic
comradeship filmstrip.
Stalina took a breath. “You find it at Caldor, maybe? You find it
or you buy it?”
Roman gulped some more wine.
“You found also at Caldor many watches? You are a lover of
duck?” Stalina’s technique was terrible. She should have been
friendlier, should have established date and time first.
“Mom,” Katya said, and rubbed the back of Roman’s neck.
Roman shook her hand off. He asked in Russian whether Stalina
was calling him a thief. He wanted to know, because he and his
mother had been called many names, and he had names, too, for the
Molochniks.
Katya said, “His mother just —” and Roman said, “
What about
my mother? You want to talk about mothers?
” He started babbling
that he knew Stalina was a liar, he’d seen some letter, she was a liar
with Brezhnev. Stalina had been right; he was a drug addict.
Osip told Roman he was sorry about his mother, but it was no
excuse. Osip himself had lost both his parents and — Roman walked
out without having to be told.
Katya ran after Roman to the end of the driveway, in her socks,
and wouldn’t talk to them when she returned.
In their bedroom, Stalina stood in her blouse and pantyhose and
aimed her blame at him. “
If we were in Boston, of course, she’d be
so busy with —”
“
Enough,”
Osip said.
“You think I’d move to Boston and what?
Take money from your former lover’s wallet? You think I’m a
boy
toy
for you?
” He went outside and sat in his car. He thought about
asking Lev whether he could stay with him for the night. It was
already eleven thirty-seven, and he had to get up at six.
Stalina
Fortified by half an hour’s worth of a teen beach drama, Stalina
stalked the house in search of Katya. She’d often, over the years,
watched young people’s programs before confrontations with her
daughters, to make them think: “Is there anything on Earth my
mother does not know?”
She found her in the kitchen, under the sink, practicing what
she’d been learning in her class for women who wished they were
men. Stalina got a colander and began peeling potatoes. “Roman is
too sketchy for you.”
Katya scooted out from under and sat up, her head cocked, her
legs folded. She looked impossibly small in that position, a stunted
child, but her mouth went crooked and mean when she said, “Excuse
you?”
“
How can you stay with him, after he behaved so coarsel
y?”
Stalina said in chorus with the Soul.
That terrible voice: “
We’ve started on the path upon which
hundreds of millions of people have already followed, and upon
which all of humanity is fated to tread
.” Katya stood and ran from
the room — crying? — but no, she returned with one of Osip’s
Sharpie markers and, tearing off a paper towel, wrote on it: “We’re
getting married. Me + Roman.” The potatoes rolled into the sink.
“
I must also congratulate our loyal ally, Romania, on its steadfast
progress towards an economy that is truly economic.
”
“
Yes, I’m sure — many such good qualities
,” Stalina leaned
against the sink, cold water seeping into her sleeve, and called,
“Osya,” but he was upstairs on the web, too distant to hear.
“The weakening of any of the links in the world system of
socialism directly affects all the socialist countries…”
Brezhnev
justified the invasion of Czechoslovakia
.
Katya scribbled, “Can
Roman move in here?”
“Katyenok, think: Who you are? Who he is?”
“What? I don’t understand your English.”
So easily, Stalina had shut down the voice of her daughter’s
happiness. She stuttered out, “You are good girl from good family.”
“Roman’s a Russian Jew and a Chaikin.” Katya picked up her
wrench and tossed it from hand to hand.
“
Tell her she was meant for finer things, a big beautiful wedding
to an officer, with parasols and merry peasants, village dances,
fountains of borscht and vodka,
” the handkerchief said.
“
You will meet someone better
,” Stalina said. “
Do you see any of
the mothers here trying to svatat’ their daughters with Roman? Does
that mean nothing to you?
”
“Um, it means he’s not popular with the biddies?”
What was a biddy? Like a birdy? “It means he is thief and
narcoman.”
“He happens to be straight-edge.”
Stalina didn’t know this word, either. Television had failed her.
“
Narcoman
, straight-edge…I’ll tell you some words.
Porok — za
porog.
Sin — get back from door.”
“Sin? I’m an adult.”
“What kind of adult, Katyenok? You live with mama and papa
and have no job.” Katya narrowed her eyes, but this was no time to
be afraid of her own daughter. “What, you want me to say, move him
here, give him master bedroom for black-market dealings? The son
of
narcomanka
— ”
“And whose daughter am I?”
Tears trembled at the edges of Stalina’s eyes. She forbade them.
“
Kak?
The daughter of intelligentsia. Even when we have no money,
for food even for you, your father and I never steal.”
“Maybe you should have, right? My lack of carrot juice was my
whole real problem, right? Very interesting to give me that letter in
Russian when you knew I couldn’t read it. You got to confess, you
got to feel like a good person, but you thought I’d never find out
what you wrote.”
The handkerchief said. “
Tell her you will go out to the fields and
die of exposure if she says one more word
.” Stalina could only stare
at the wire basket by the window, which held only one onion, which
was sprouting.
Katya said, “It doesn’t matter, because I did read it. Roman
translated. Nice job, Mom, letting me think all along I was crazy, all
along it was you and your whoring ass.”