Alla Chaikin said to Milla, “
Leonid sounds like the name of an
old commissioner, or Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, even.
” She shuddered
at the thought.
“Lenya’s eyebrows look nothing like Brezhnev’s. Call
him Len-Len, like you did in Rome.”
Arkady Chaikin said, “
Yes, and she chased him around. ‘Len-
Len, I have such a good prince-and-princess book for you.
’”
“
But he’d say, ‘Father, hide me!
’” said Alla Chaikin. “
He didn’t
like books
.”
“
He still doesn’t,
” said Arkady Chaikin.
“
Such an American
,” said Alla Chaikin.
Leonid Chaikin modestly lowered his gaze.
“
He doesn’t have time to read,
” Milla’s mother said. “
Didn’t he
just get promoted?
”
“
Who told you?
” Mrs. Chaikin said, and then, quickly, “
And do
you know the first thing he bought with his raise?
”
“Ma,” Leonid said. He hooked his thumb in his suspenders.
Only he and the Brooks Brothers mannequin in the mall ever wore
suspenders.
“
Tell us,
” Stalina said, putting a playful hand over Leonid’s
mouth. His face looked especially large compared to the hand. Milla
couldn’t believe that her mother was willingly touching his lips.
“
I’m not bragging,
” Mrs. Chaikin said, and Stalina vigorously
shook her head. “
It’s just very interesting, because Arkady and I, we
never even knew things like this existed. Show them, Lenka.
”
Leonid removed Stalina’s hand. “Come on, Ma.”
“You are come on,” Mrs. Chaikin said.
“
Batyushka, my lord,
” Stalina said. “
Millatchka, look.
”
Milla lowered her eyes to the object in Leonid’s hand: a gold
money clip. They were all so
gauche
. How could her mother, who
had taught her that word, betray her own standards so completely?
She wished she could tell Malcolm how awful they all were, but she
would never have that chance again.
“It’s just more convenient than a wallet,” Leonid said. “When I
went to Japan, they —”
Stalina said, “No apologies, Leonchik. You saw something
perfect, and you grabbed.” She rolled this last sentence in Milla’s
direction as if it were a tank.
Roman
Roman’s mother wasn’t always a
narcomanka
, but she was
always a hairdresser, which was bad enough, a girl from a good
Jewish family. To their credit, all their relatives had made dire
predictions about his mother for years, which mitigated Roman’s
surprise when, at age eight, he had returned from a field trip to the
Institute of Metal Testing to find his mother asleep on the couch,
shiny-skinned, a needle sticking out of her arm like a helpful arrow
in a diagram.
A few years ago, his mother had found Love! with a man who
sold underwear on the street and claimed a Mafia connection. That
was what she’d been looking for all along, didn’t Roman understand?
He’d get there soon enough himself.
The more this new love beat her, the more heroin she needed,
and the more heroin he provided, the more he beat her. One night,
Roman jumped on the man’s back, and his mother took out one of
the kitchen knives. Its ultimate destination was to be Roman. He
finally agreed to go stay with his aunt and uncle in America.
Now, Roman sat alone in the Molochniks’ den, watching
the same program he had watched in Russia: beautiful American
teenagers lit another beach bonfire. During the commercials, he re-
drew X’s on the backs of his hands. Someone had left half a beer on
the coffee table. He reminded himself he was straight-edge now.
A girl came in, darkening the room with her black-hole hair.
“You can change,” he said, holding out the remote control. She
must be one of the Molochnik daughters. His aunt had told him they
were
intelligentniye
girls, so he’d thought they would be ugly. This
girl changed the channel to one on which some boys were flopping
their hair around and breaking mirrors. The music was all right, a
little soft for him. He preferred hip-hop and rap.
“MTV?” he said.
“MTV sucks.” With jerky little motions, she sat on the floor. She
was a scrawny mosquito, but sexy, but probably a druggie, but a rich
Americanka
, so she’d be okay. Not that drugs were okay for anyone,
he let the X’s remind him.
“You go to high?” That was wrong, he could tell from her
expression. He couldn’t grind away at English any more. “
Do you
go to university?
”
“
In school
,” she said, in a laughably heavy American accent.
“
Do you like this band?
” Now the main boy was drawing a piece
of mirrored glass across his throat, but no blood came out.
“They’re a little soft
,
” she said.
“
I think the same!
”
He told himself to calm down and furrowed
his brow, which people said made him look older.
“But seriously,
they are —
posers.”
She turned and smiled, only on one side of her mouth, a little
suspicious. Her teeth were fine. If she only used a few drugs, it was
okay, he’d teach her the straight-edge lifestyle.
“
So, do you have a young friend?
” he said. She squinted. Her
nose also squinted. “Boo? Mac?” He gave secret thanks to MTV:
Russia.
She shook her head, and behind her, a man stretched a stick of
gum across a city street.
“Really?” Could he pull this off? Only in Russian. “
It’s just that
you’re so
cool
and
hot.”
Her face turned red, and she said in a familiar male voice, no
American accent at all: “
The Israeli aggressor has finally revealed
its predatory —”
And his face was set to laugh, because it was a joke, wasn’t it?
She hopped up, still speaking — “
Never before has an invader —
”
and slammed the door shut.
Leonid
Leonid, upon being tipsily instructed by his mother to run
off and play with Milla Molochnik, found himself on an allergy-
inducing carpet opposite an implacable foe. Meanwhile, his cousin
Roman was probably jacking off in the TV room. That option was
not open to Leonid, no, he had to be a model of excellence for all
Russian boys in the tri-state area, had been ever since, and even
slightly before (thanks to his SAT scores), his acceptance to Harvard
seven years ago.
He wasn’t interested in this Brezhnev-browed lump, who jerked
like an epileptic every time the phone rang, displacing the Scrabble
tiles; didn’t she know he could be banging a hot model right now?
Or at least his group’s cute-from-behind secretary, in a few years,
when he’d risen a bit more in the hierarchy, gotten his MBA? Didn’t
this Milla know this was his only night off for the next five weeks?
Still, he roused himself to say, “So, do you ski downhill? Ever get
out to Aspen?” Most Russians only knew how to ski cross-country,
only knew small hills, slow speeds. Perhaps she was different; he
was open to that possibility.
She shrugged with one shoulder. At least she was quiet. From
the dining room came the voice of Yana, the hairy middle sister.
“That
is
racist.”
Leonid’s mother said, “
No, Yanatchka, I like the black people
very much.
I’ve often wished I could be merry like a black lady.
”
Yana stomped past them and upstairs, slammed a door, and then
must have turned on some rap music.
Leonid said, “Do you like rap? Snoop Dogg?”
“Snoop Dogg is for rapists.” Milla’s mouth twisted strangely
during this sentence, as if she were in a language class. Had he heard
her correctly? He’d known her since they were little, but she was
acting very differently tonight. Perhaps she had developed a crush
on him, and was trying to flirt, by arguing? His mother had told
him that her mother had some romantic ambitions for the two of
them. He turned partly away so as not to meet her glare, or stare, or
whatever she thought she was doing.
From the kitchen issued some strange Russian words being, in a
manner, sung. He couldn’t understand all the words — some kind of
animal, maybe a goat, or was it a nobleman, marching, banging on a
drum, and the drum was made out of the goat’s or nobleman’s skin.
Neither definition made complete sense for both the marching and
the drum-skin. This kind of thing was exactly why he’d never taken
any poetry at Harvard.