Snow in May: Stories (22 page)

Masha was irritated at being disturbed.

“Svetochka got lucky, with a grown child and all. Do you know how rarely the immigration goes smoothly?”

Masha shook her head, although, of course, she knew. She looked toward the table, where Brian was clearing the dishes. “We tried not to think of the complications.”

“And look at her now. Don’t you dare pay any attention to the dirty looks.”

“Nobody throws dirty looks at me,” Masha lied again.

“So, how did she choose him?”

Masha sighed.

“He had the right persistence. Translated his letters into Russian. Sent flowers, money for Sveta’s English lessons. And—very important—he looked like in the photos, not much fatter or older.”

“
A-ga
. He probably studied with a life coach—everyone has one here. He didn’t make the mistake of sending a gift that required taxes to be paid at the post office, like my Roger. We can’t all afford to receive such packages.”

“Well, he’s a history teacher,” Masha said, surprised to feel a tinge of pride.

There was laughter at the table. Lizochka threw back her head in a snorty giggle.

“Americans, they’re funny. Humor is different, you have to get used to it.”

Masha was about to ask her to translate the joke, then changed her mind.

“Does Sveta ever complain to you about anything?” she said.

Lizochka gripped Masha’s hands. “No, never. She knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Masha nodded, suddenly tipsy.

“Worry about yourself, Mashen’ka. Sveta’s going to be fine,” Lizochka said. “Time to check on my Roger before he starts making his bed under the table. Don’t want him saying it’s my Russian drinking influence.” She pecked Masha on the forehead and waddled back to the table. Masha didn’t even see that Americans were drinking that much.

Miladze stopped, mid-wail. Brian was standing by the stereo with a glass of champagne. Lizochka quickly returned with a glass of champagne for Masha.

“I’ll translate for you,” Lizochka said, gesticulating “no need to thank me.” “Brian is very eloquent. He’ll say something nice about you, too, you’ll see.”

Brian raised his glass.

“
Tak,
he’s starting … I’ll do my best here but I’m not signing any papers. You know, Americans, they never sign anything without a lawyer. Now he’s saying he’d like to congratulate Sveta and Katya on their new green cards, though they’re still conditional. Soon, they’ll become real citizens and their old friends back in Russia will be green with jealousy.” Lizochka laughed with the rest of the guests, her breath hot and sour.

Brian talked on, conducting with his champagne glass and, from time to time, checking the length of his nose. It seemed to Masha that Lizochka was translating much too slowly, leaving out crucial information. “Something about shame and the government. He feels he has known your daughter all his life. Something about how he almost died when he came to Magadan.
Oi,
I hope he’s not talking about that Gulag hike he and Roger went on. Okay, okay—oh, that is very romantic. He’s saying that he has finally found the love of his life, Sveta, and Katya, a wonderful second daughter and sister for Brittny.”

Sveta smiled and nodded to everyone at the table. She patted Katya’s knee. Katya, who had been resting her head on Sveta’s shoulder, eyes closed, wiggled her leg, and Sveta’s hand slid off.

“He’s saying that we all know how much he loves Russia. His boys at school collect Lenin pins and Komsomol banners, and watch documentaries.” Lizochka paused and furrowed her painted eyebrows.

“What? What is he saying?” Masha poked Lizochka’s thigh. She felt, absurdly, that her life depended on this speech by this strange man, who was, thanks largely to her, her daughter’s husband.

“It’s hard to understand. Something about a circle, and we, well them, being a part of the real history. They can look into your, our, our eyes, the eyes of the people who had been through it all, who had once been strangers on television and in newspapers, the enemy, and see for ourselves, themselves, that you, no we, are just like us. Them. I don’t know what the devil he’s talking about…”

Masha latched on to the one word she understood—“dream.” She’d used it over and over in the correspondence with Sveta’s potential suitors. Everyone emptied their glasses and applauded. Brian’s eyes were phosphorescent with alcohol and pride.

Sveta dabbed the inner corners of her eyes and smiled at Masha from across the room. Masha wanted to go to the table and sit with her daughter, to hold her plump, childlike hand, but she couldn’t bear another question about toilet paper rationing or surviving on a diet of cabbage and potatoes.

Perhaps Lizochka was right, and Sveta was going to be fine with Brian. As long as neither of them ad-libbed. He was not unkind. Perhaps Sveta did harbor that mutant feeling some women were capable of: grateful love. And its fraternal twin—separate happiness.

Brian bent down and tried to draw Sveta’s face out from its hiding place in the crook of Katya’s neck. Sveta looked up and, as he went in for a celebratory kiss, instinctively offered him her cheek. The confirmation of this banal domestic tragedy—getting exactly what you expected and not one gram more—stung Masha doubly, for herself and for Sveta. She wanted to stomp her feet, throw a tantrum, like a girl.

She saw Brian approaching her. The broken capillaries under his skin made it look like rotten watermelon flesh. And that repulsive yellow mustache.

“Babushka, it’s time for our surprise,” Katya sing-songed in Russian. Her voice was thin and loud, ideal for folk melodies.

“No, no,” Masha said. How to say “different plan” in English? “Katya, stop. I think,
ne nado, nezachem
all this,” she whispered, but Sveta had already heard them.

Brian announced something to the guests. They perked up. Lizochka went up to the table and downed another shot of vodka.

“And then cake Napoleon, right?” Katya squealed and plopped down on the chair next to Masha’s. “Ooooh. Warm.”

“Mama, what’s happening?” Sveta said in Russian.

Masha stood up. The world darkened.

“Babooshka,
mee zhdat’,
” Brian said in his broken Russian.

“Mama, are you feeling all right?”

“Grandma, c’mon, I want to eat the cake!”

“
Apladismenty
!” Lizochka cried out and began clapping. Everyone followed suit. Masha sat back down.

“Oh, dedicated to Mama,” Katya said; this Masha understood.

Katya began to sing, and Masha had to join.

That is not the wind bending the branch,

That is not the bugle grass humming.

Their voices poured out clear and a little off-key, mew-like on the high notes. They breathed at the wrong places. Katya was singing with so many “ah”s, so many “ah”s didn’t exist in the modern Russian language. Masha didn’t dare look at her daughter. Instead she focused on a constellation of red spots on the carpet.

That is my heart moaning,

Trembling like an aspen leaf.

Katya’s voice stuttered.

Kruchina haas exhoh-oh-ohsted meee …

She was choking on giggles now. Masha scanned the room and easily located the source of trouble: Brittny was wiggling her hands in fake sign language.

Treacherrrous snake …

Burn, buuuurn, my k-kindle …

Brian jumped up from his seat and, without uttering a single word, slapped his daughter on her beautiful pink cheek. Brittny screamed at him and flew up the stairs. Moments later, a door thundered shut. Katya ran up to Sveta and they draped their arms tightly around each other and closed their eyes as the wave of deafening pop music crashed on the frozen room from the second floor.

Masha grabbed a few empty plates from the table and escaped to the kitchen. She felt nauseous and hot, her body swimming. She took the cake Napoleon out of the fridge and cut it, then licked the frosting off the knife blade—a bad omen in Russia that meant you will become mean. She didn’t care; she already was mean. She hoped that Sveta would come into the kitchen and forgive her, let her save them, all three.

For a wild instant, Masha considered going up to the master bedroom, getting out the ancient syringe, and injecting herself with milk. If she ended up at the hospital, she would spend a few more days with her girls. And if she died—well, that would be an interesting little twist of her fate.

It was so hot in the house, always so stuffy and hot. She needed fresh air. She opened the hallway closet, where the guests’ coats had fallen from the hangers, and sat down on the soft pile to rest for a second. Her head was spinning. The coats smelled of cigarettes, stale bedsheets, and dogs—of long, boring, happy lives.

Our Upstairs Neighbor

1997

Sonya sat in the first row of the balcony and stared at the theater curtain, seeing nothing but a blur of red. The eye incident happened almost a week ago, but she was still thinking about what she should have said to Max, reevaluating the timing of her sighs and awkward giggles. Her friends had seen him so close to her face—they didn’t know she’d almost lost an eye—and concluded that they had been kissing. Max looked like he wanted to, maybe, and she had felt as though a giant envelope were opening up inside her chest. He had such kind eyes, for a boy. But.

She couldn’t wait for the concert to begin so that she would have something else to think about before her head burst.

This wasn’t a concert, exactly, but a celebration of the ninetieth birthday of the renowned Soviet tenor Vadim Makin. Several famous singers and TV personalities had flown into Magadan from St. Petersburg and Moscow for the occasion, which was all the teachers at the arts college had talked about for the last month. Sonya was a student in the gifted section there. Her mother was the accompanist in tonight’s program, and Sonya was excited to see her onstage, next to this Makin, though she’d only heard of him a month ago. Maybe her mother would also play for someone Sonya would recognized from TV.

Sonya watched the auditorium fill until only a small island in front of the stage was still empty. This was the VIP section for the guests from the capitals. Max was not someone who would voluntarily attend an event like this, probably, yet she still looked out for his tall figure. Couldn’t he be pulled into the theater if she thought about him hard enough?

Though they had been officially going together for almost two months, the ten minutes leading up to the eye incident was the longest time they’d spent one-on-one. The power had gone out at the school and second-shift grades were let out early. Instead of going home, several of them from ninth A and ninth C lingered at an abandoned construction site behind the soccer field. They played hide-and-seek among the concrete beams, tripping over metal rods and halfheartedly shouting the latest obscenities into the darkness. By accident or conspiracy, as the others were hiding, Sonya and Max found themselves sitting on two perpendicular slabs of cold concrete, all alone.

Here he was, so near. Sonya was barely breathing. He smiled, and she smiled. She was afraid. He was the captain of the basketball team and the tallest boy in all the ninth grade sections. His nose was large and his eyes slightly close-set, but he was very cute. He wore a neon yellow pom-pom hat, the hat she watched come out of the apartment building across from hers to take out the trash every evening. The hat she followed to school every morning, hanging back at a safe distance. In the evenings, she turned off the light in her room and stared at Max’s windows. If the lights in his room lit up before she counted to ten, he loved her. If his silhouette appeared in the kitchen, she loved him.

On those concrete slabs they were shy and tongue-tied. Sonya still couldn’t tell whether his eyes were brown or moss green. She had no siblings, she said when he asked. And yes, her father would be returning to America soon. His older brother was in the army, Max said; he himself wanted to be an engineer. His mother was already saving for the bribes to get him out of the mandatory two-year military service. Why? she asked. Terrible things happen to young men in the army. She didn’t ask for elaboration. He picked up some of last night’s snow and balled it up. What about his father? His father lived in another town with another family. She wondered what he thought of her family: he must have seen both her father and Oleg, her mother’s boyfriend, at the school.

Max threw the snowball and it hit Sonya smack in the left eye. The darkness around her became more solid, then flashed with yellow triangles. I will be blind, she thought. Tears ran down her face, out of surprise and pain and embarrassment. Max rushed over to her. “I didn’t mean to, it was a joke. I am so sorry. Does it hurt bad?” The pain began to recede and Sonya forced herself to smile. “I sure have excellent aim,” he said, dabbing her tears with his hat’s pom-pom. She laughed. She realized that he was holding her hand. And then everybody else appeared, stumbling and giggling, tired of waiting to be found.

*   *   *

Almost half an hour after the concert was supposed to start, the celebrity guests walked in—some men in suits and some in torn jeans and half-unbuttoned shirts with billowing sleeves. A group of beautiful young women in high heels tottered after them. Somebody started clapping and the rest of the audience joined in. The celebrities gave half bows from their chairs.

As the lights went down Sonya edged toward the balcony railing. The curtain rolled up to reveal a red throne in the corner of the stage; she remembered it from an operetta earlier in the season. It was empty. In the back, suspended by two wires, hung a huge black-and-white portrait of a handsome young man. Makin a long time ago, she assumed. Sergey Yakovlevich Frenkel, the theater director, strode out to the microphone in the middle of the stage. He was a massive man with red hair and an even redder beard. The applause petered out.

“Dear Magadanians and guests,” he thundered. “Thank you for coming to our historic celebration. I’ve just gotten word that Vadim Andreevich Makin is running a little late, so while we wait, and for the entertainment of our esteemed guests, please enjoy a performance by the youngest members of Magadan’s music community—the choir of the Children’s Music School Number One.”