The Infinite Tides (39 page)

“OK, OK,” Keith said. He was smiling, more from the absurdity of the situation than anything else. As if Luda’s behavior were not enough, Peter came forward, still smiling, still unspeaking, and grabbed Keith’s face and again planted one wet, smacking kiss on each cheek, stepping back then and saying, “You are good friend to do this for me.”

“OK,” Keith said. “What are we talking about?”

“The NASA called,” Luda said. “The NASA called for Petruso.”

“Your friend, Mr. Chen, asked me for interview. It will be Monday at three and he will ask me about my experiences at Golosiiv.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” Keith said. He let out a loud and involuntary laugh.

“You come to our home now and you have dinner with us. The children they are at brother’s house so no bother,” Luda said.

Before Keith could so much as nod, Peter said, “Yes, all true. You come. I know you have no plans tonight better than this and sofa is gone so nowhere to sit. You come and we eat
holubtsi
and you will never before taste
holubtsi
as my Luda will make for you.”

Keith looked at them, all three of them smiling now. “It sounds like something I shouldn’t pass up,” he said.

He slipped into his shoes and they led him across the cul-de-sac and down the sidewalk and as they walked he thought he could see Jennifer peeking through the upstairs window of her house but he could not be sure and did not know if he even cared. The night air was cool but heat still radiated from the concrete and asphalt and above them the sky glowed with stars bright enough to be visible beyond the halo of
the streetlamps and the houses that lined the streets and courts and ways around them, each holding a green square of lawn that sloped slowly and carefully to the sidewalk as they passed, the whole of it universal and orderly and silent, the unfinished lots and empty foreclosed homes presenting dark vacancies amidst the lit houses of the living.

Peter unlocked the door and swung it open grandly. “Enter, my friend,” he said.

Keith nodded and waved Luda in first and then followed her. The smell of cooking food was everywhere. “My god that smells great,” he said.

“Ah yes, you see,” Peter said. “I tell you this is best food you will have ever.”

Luda giggled and moved past them and into the interior of the house.

“I believe it,” Keith said. Perhaps this was the way it worked: one man gets a job and another loses one, as an Olympian passes a baton. Perhaps this was an equation that would be solved by Keith taking Peter’s vacant job at Target.

“Astronaut Keith Corcoran,” Peter said. “This is honor to have you in our home. Please make yourself comfortable. I want to know everything about this Mr. Chen. I must know all. About research center too. I look up on Internet but you have inside story I think and this is not on Internet.”

“Sure,” Keith said.

“Petruso,” Luda called from deeper inside the house.

“Yes, come, come,” Peter said. “I apologize for excitement. I ask you here to enjoy yourself, not to get your information.”

“I’m glad to help,” Keith said.

Peter walked further into the house and Keith followed. He had seen it once before, when he had stumbled into this room to sling Peter’s unconscious body onto the sofa, but he had paid little attention to it then. It was similar to Keith’s house but not quite the same,
the floor plan differing in ways that were subtle but noticeable. There was no kitchen island here; in its place was a broad, dark wood table with long benches on either side. The walls were decorated here and there with needlepoint tapestries that looked very old, each encased in an ornate wooden frame. A stag with a series of Cyrillic letters underneath. Another a series of small houses with curling smoke before them with a few sentences below the houses as if the letters sprouted out of the earth.

“Very beautiful,” he said.

“Ah yes, from my great-grandmother, that one,” Peter said. “And that one there from great aunt on father’s side. They come from Ukraine. My family is from village and make these things for selling. Later cities come and life changes.”

Keith nodded and stood looking at the hanging pieces.

“Many artists in family. My uncle carves whole scenes out of horns of oxen. So beautiful and detailed. Those are in Ukraine still. Too hard bringing here.”

Luda moved around the kitchen with a kind of bustling energy that at first glance might have seemed foreign to her being. Keith was struck by how very lovely she was, her dark eyes shining from her pale face, black hair pulled back into a small bun. Her bearing was of class and grace but the fluidity of her motion was incongruous with its setting: like watching a queen bake a cake or hoe a field.

Peter was excited and did most of the talking and Keith did his best to educate him on the research center, explaining its structure and the kind of work that was developed there, all the while reminding him that even entry-level jobs like the one Peter would be applying for were highly competitive. Peter continued as if such information was irrelevant but Luda interjected from the kitchen.

“Please,” she said. “Is this real interview?”

“Real? Yes,” Keith said.

“They are serious about him?”

“Yes, they’re serious. It’s a real interview.”

Luda had paused in the midst of her work preparing dinner and appeared to Keith now as if the center of a painting, the counter sloping toward her on one side and on the other the sink with leafy sprigs of wet vegetables fringing its polished steel surfaces, and then in the midst of that warmth stood Luda herself, not an image of a woman but rather an image of a human being in a location of weight or meaning, as if the locus of some physical space that he had forgotten about entirely but which was somehow present here, in this house, and the sight of which rendered him unable to speak.

They sat at the table, Luda and Peter on one side, Keith alone on the other, and Luda dished out a series of pillowlike cabbage leaves from a casserole dish, each stuffed with ground pork and beef and dripping with some kind of thin red sauce and topped with sour cream. The smell that emanated from it was wonderful indeed and upon the first bite the flavor of it flooded through him all at once. He simply could not remember the last time he had tasted anything so good and he said as much and Luda blushed.

“This is Ukrainian food?” Keith asked.

“The best Ukrainian food,” Peter said.

“The only food I know from that part of the world is that beet soup.”

“Borscht,” Luda said.

“Bah,” Peter said. “Beets are like terrible dirt. I hate them. Old grandmas make for children to eat for cruelty.”

“Shush, Petruso,” Luda said. “He might like borscht maybe.”

“No one likes borscht except grandmas with no teeth. He has teeth,” Peter said.

“I haven’t eaten like this for so long I can’t even remember,” Keith said.

“Thank you.”

“She is best cook,” Peter said.

“I agree,” Keith said. “And I don’t think I’ve ever had borscht.”

“I will cook you borscht then next time,” Luda said.

“Not even you can make borscht good,” Peter said.

Luda smiled and then said to Keith, “I am happy you have made my husband your friend.”

“Luda, do not—,” Peter began but Luda placed her hand on his and he quieted immediately.

“Petruso does not want me to say maybe but it is true. You are someone to look up to, I think. For Petruso and this family.”

Keith searched for something to say in response. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

“Yes,” she said simply.

Again the pause as he thought. Then he said, simply: “Thank you.”

“He knows this,” Peter said.

“Maybe true,” Luda said, “but good to say.”

Was he someone to look up to? Even now? He might have believed this to be possible once but that was so long ago now. “I’m glad to be here,” he said.

The food warmed him to the core. He had been given a glass of fruit juice of some kind—peach, he thought—and a glass of wine and Peter kept both glasses full so that Keith had no idea how much wine he had drunk, knowing that given his medication only a few glasses were enough to bring on drunkenness, a state acceptable when sitting outside with Peter but less so when sitting in Peter’s home as a guest. And yet he did not feel like a guest but rather was warm and comfortable and full as if he had become a member of the Kovalenko family somehow. It had been so long since he had felt such a sense of belonging. Not for many years with Barb. With Quinn, though, even during those last months when they were often at odds there had been brief moments of contact between them, silences in which they had simply been together, father and daughter.

And then he could feel her memory turning inside him and he looked up from his dinner plate. Her face floated in the room somewhere, watching him with vacant eyes.

“You are OK?” Luda said and he looked up at her abruptly.

“Oh,” he said, “yeah.” He looked from her to Peter. Both of them were staring back at him.

“You look maybe not well,” Peter said.

“No, no, I’m fine.” He paused and then said, “Maybe too much wine.”

They both continued to stare at him and he took a quick drink of water and then looked back at Luda and said, “You know,” and then paused again, cleared his throat. His heart thumped wildly in his chest. “I know a bit about Peter’s life but I don’t know anything about yours.”

“This is nothing to talk about,” Luda said.

“Please,” Keith said. Just that. Quinn hovering against his chest. Then: “You grew up in Ukraine?”

“Yes,” Luda said. Her eyes were downcast, not as if ashamed but as if embarrassed by Keith’s attention.

“Not like me, though,” Peter said. “In Pechersk. Very nice in Pechersk.”

“Yes, it is nice there,” Luda said.

“Very nice,” Peter said.

“You were wealthy?” Keith said.

“It is long time ago,” Luda said.

“Not so long,” Peter said.

“My grandfather and father worked in Russian government. Many government workers lived in Pechersk. By river. It is very nice there.”

The feeling of Quinn was fading now, the fear and terror of loss drifting out and away from him as Luda spoke, as if the story, someone else’s story, was enough to press that secret gravity away from him.

“When Ukraine is independent we must leave. My father was good man and people like him and so we stay in Pechersk for years but then he has the cancer and is buried. Then not very good anymore.”

“They kicked them out to street,” Peter said with obvious disgust.

“Not so bad as that.” She looked up at Keith, their eyes locking together.

“Bah.” Peter waved his hands in the air.

“Where did you go?” Keith said.

“To university,” Luda said. “For job, not for student.”

“Is that where you met Peter?”

“Yes, that is where I met Peter.” She did not break the eye contact, instead continuing to stare at Keith, her complete attention focused on him. “He is very different from those people I knew before.”

“I was poor,” Peter said.

And now Luda did look at her husband and when she spoke her tone was quiet and lilting, like a beautiful, sad bird: “Yes, but not like poor. Not … how do you say … not stupid.”

Peter did not say anything, instead shaking his head, his eyes half closed in thought.

“He is very smart man,” Luda said.

Keith nodded. “I know.”

“Bah,” Peter said again. “This talk is embarrassing to me. We talk more about job so I know what to do tomorrow for interview.”

Keith looked over at him, and at Luda.

“We were married quickly,” she said as he met her eyes once again.

“Quickly?”

“Yes,” she said. “Quickly.”

“Ah,” Peter said. “You embarrass me now even more.” A hush fell and Keith sat and wondered what she meant and then Peter said, “You do not understand. She was to have baby Marko.”

“Oh,” Keith said. Nothing more. He glanced at Luda and her eyes were cast to the table again.

“It was very fast wedding,” she said. “My mother was very embarrassing. There was no money left then.”

“Yes, I know I dragged you down with me,” Peter said.

“Petruso!” she said abruptly. Her voice was sharp and Peter actually
cringed when she said his name. She cast out a quick sentence in Ukrainian with obvious anger and Peter was immediately silent.

The table awkward and quiet. Then Peter lifted his wineglass ostentatiously and said, “I apologize to my wife and to my guest, Astronaut Keith Corcoran. She is correct. I should not speak these things.” He nodded and continued to hold his glass and Keith lifted his as well. “To our American friend, who is great man and famous astronaut.”

“To new friends,” Keith said.

Luda had lifted her own wineglass and she smiled at Keith’s words, her irritation apparently over.

They continued eating. Peter asked questions about Dreyfuss and about Tom Chen and Keith answered as best he could, offering detail when it was possible to do so. Luda periodically cautioned her husband on his aggressive questioning but Keith did not mind, perhaps an effect of the wine or simply of the good spirits the dinner had put him in.

“This Mr. Tom Chen is good man, maybe?” Peter said.

“I don’t know him well, but I think so.”

“It will be fair,” Luda said. It might have been a question.

“Yes. Don’t forget, though, that it’s still very competitive. I can’t say that enough.”

Peter waved his hands in the air, a gesture that had become familiar. “Yes, yes,” he said.

“OK, but I’m just telling you, even with the interview you still might not get the job.”

“I know,” Peter said. “Difficult to get job.”

There was a long silence. Luda began clearing the plates and then Peter rose and spoke in Ukrainian and Luda sat again and Peter took over the task. A moment later Keith moved to help and Peter told him to sit and continued to clear the table.

“Maybe you tell us story about being famous astronaut?” Luda said at last.

“I’m not too good at that.”

“I would like to hear.”

Keith thought for a moment. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “There’s a lot.”