The History of Love (18 page)

My mother looked for weeks for cheap tickets, and finally found three $700 tickets on El Al. It was still a lot of money for us, but she said it was a good thing to spend it on. The day before my Bat Mitzvah, Mom took us to the Dead Sea. Bubbe came, too, wearing a straw hat that stayed on with a band under her chin. When she came out of the changing room, she was fascinating in her bathing suit, her skin wrinkled and puckered and covered with blue veins. We watched her face flush in the hot sulfur springs, beads of sweat forming on her upper lip. When she got out, water streamed off of her. We followed her down to the edge of the water. Bird stood in the mud, crossing his legs. “If you have to go, go in the water,” Bubbe said in a loud voice. A group of heavy Russian women coated in the black mineral clay turned to look. If Bubbe noticed, she didn’t care. We floated on our backs while she kept watch over us from under the wide brim of her hat. My eyes were closed, but I felt her shadow over me. “You don’t have a bosom? Vat happened?” I felt my face get hot and pretended not to have heard. “You have boyfriends?” she asked. Bird perked up. “No,” I muttered. “Vat?” “
No
.” “Vy not?” “I’m twelve.” “So vat! Ven I vas your age I had three, maybe four. You’re young and pretty,
keynehore
.” I paddled out to get some distance from her giant, imposing bosom. Her voice followed me. “But it von’t last forever!” I tried to stand, and slipped in the clay. I scanned the flat water for my mother until I caught sight of her. She’d swum out beyond the farthest bather, and was still going.

The next morning I stood at the Wailing Wall, still stinking of sulfur. The cracks between the massive stones were filled with tiny crumpled papers. The rabbi told me that if I wanted I could write a note to God and add it to the cracks. I didn’t believe in God, so I wrote to my father instead:
Dear Dad
,
I’m writing this with the pen you gave me. Yesterday Bird asked if you could do the Heimlich and I told him yes. I also told him you could fly a hovercraft. By the way, I found your tent in the basement. I guess Mom didn’t notice it when she threw out everything that belonged to you. It smells of mildew, but it doesn’t have any leaks. Sometimes I set it up in the backyard and lie inside thinking about how you used to lie in it, too. I’m writing this but I know that you can’t read it. Love, Alma.
Bubbe wrote one, too. When
I tried to stuff mine into the wall, hers fell out. She was busy praying, so I picked it up and unfolded it. It said:
Baruch Hashem, I and my husband should live to see tomorrow and that my Alma should grow up to be blessed with health and happiness and what would be so terrible some nice breasts.

6.
IF I HAD A RUSSIAN ACCENT EVERYTHING WOULD BE DIFFERENT

When I got back to New York, Misha’s first letter was waiting.
Dear Alma
, it began.
Greetings!
I am very happy for your welcome!
He was almost thirteen, five months older than I. His English was better than Tatiana’s because he’d memorized the lyrics of almost all the Beatles songs. He sang them while accompanying himself on the accordion his grandfather gave him, the one who’d moved in after Misha’s grandmother died and, according to Misha, her soul descended on the Summer Gardens in St. Petersburg in the form of a flock of geese. It stayed for two weeks straight, honking in the rain, and when it left the grass was covered with turds. His grandfather arrived a few weeks later, dragging behind him a battered suitcase filled with the eighteen volumes of
The History of the Jews
. He moved into the already cramped room Misha shared with his older sister, Svetlana, took out his accordion, and began to produce his life’s work. At first he just wrote variations on Russian folk songs mixed with Jewish riffs. Later he moved on to darker, wilder versions, and at the very end he stopped playing things they recognized altogether, and as he held the long notes he wept, and no one needed to tell Misha and Svetya, even thick-headed as they were, that at last he’d become the composer he’d always wanted to be. He had a beat-up car that sat in the alley behind their apartment. The way Misha tells it, he drove like a blind man, giving the car almost full independence to feel its way along, bumping off things, only giving the wheel a spin with the tips of his fingers when the situation verged on life-threatening. When their grandfather came to pick them up from school, Misha and Svetlana would shield their ears and try to look away. When he revved the motor and became impossible to ignore, they’d hurry toward the car with their heads down and slide into the back seat. They’d huddle together in the back while their grandfather sat at the wheel, humming along to a tape of their cousin Lev’s punk band, Pussy Ass Mother Fucker. But he always got the words wrong. For “
Got into a fight, smashed his face on the car door,
” he might sing, “
You are my knight and you wear shining ar-mor
,” and for “
You’re a louse
,
but you’re so pretty
,” he’d sing, “
Take it up to the house, in a jitney.
” When Misha and his sister pointed out his mistakes, their grandfather acted surprised and turned up the volume to hear better, but the next time around he’d sing the same thing. When he died, he left Svetya the eighteen volumes of
The History of the Jews
, and Misha the accordion. Around the same time, Lev’s sister, who wore blue eye shadow, invited Misha into her room, played him “Let it Be,” and taught him how to kiss.

7.
THE BOY WITH THE ACCORDION

Misha and I wrote twenty-one letters back and forth. This was the year I was twelve, two years before Jacob Marcus wrote to my mother asking her to translate
The History of Love
. Misha’s letters were filled with exclamation points and questions like,
What does mean, your ass is grassy?
and mine were filled with questions about life in Russia. Then he invited me to his Bar Mitzvah party.

My mother braided my hair, lent me her red shawl, and drove me to his apartment house in Brighton Beach. I rang the buzzer and waited for Misha to come down. My mother waved to me from the car. I shivered in the cold. A tall boy with dark fuzz on his upper lip came out. “Alma?” he asked. I nodded. “Welcome, my friend!” he said. I waved to my mother and followed him inside. The lobby smelled like sour cabbage. Upstairs, the apartment was packed with people eating and shouting in Russian. There was a band set up in a corner of the dining room, and people kept trying to dance even though there was no room. Misha was busy talking to everyone and stuffing envelopes in his pocket, so I spent most of the party sitting in the corner of the couch with a plate of giant shrimp. I don’t even eat shrimp but it was the only thing I recognized. If anyone talked to me, I had to explain that I didn’t speak Russian. An old man offered me some vodka. Just then Misha rushed out of the kitchen strapped into his accordion, which was plugged into an amplifier, and broke into song. “You say it’s your birthday!” he shouted. The crowd looked nervous. “Well it’s my birthday, too!” he yelled, and the accordion shrieked to life. This led into “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band,” which led into “Here Comes the Sun,” and eventually, after five or six songs, the Beatles broke into “Hava Nagila,” and the crowd went wild, everyone singing along and trying to dance. When the music finally stopped, Misha came to find me, his face pink and sweaty. He grabbed my hand, and I followed him out of the apartment, down the hall, up five flights of stairs, through a door, and out onto the roof. You could see the ocean in the distance, the lights of Coney Island, and after that an abandoned roller coaster. My teeth started to chatter, and Misha took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders. It was warm and smelled of sweat.

8.

I told Misha everything. About how my father had died, and my mother’s loneliness, and Bird’s unshakable belief in God. I told him about the three volumes of
How to Survive in the Wild,
and the English editor and his regatta, and Henry Lavender and his Philippine shells, and the veterinarian, Tucci. I told him about Dr. Eldridge and
Life as We Don’t Know It,
and later—two years after we started to write to each other, seven years after my dad died, and 3.9 billion years after the first life on earth—when Jacob Marcus’s first letter arrived from Venice, I told Misha about
The History of Love.
Mostly we wrote or talked on the phone, but sometimes on the weekends we’d get to see each other. I liked going to Brighton Beach better, because Mrs. Shklovsky would bring us tea with sweet cherries in china cups, and Mr. Shklovsky, whose armpits always had dark circles of sweat, taught me how to curse in Russian. Sometimes we’d rent movies, especially spy stories or thrillers. Our favorites were
Rear Window,
Strangers on a Train
, and
North by Northwest,
which we’d watched ten times. When I wrote to Jacob Marcus pretending to be my mother, it was Misha I told about it, reading the final draft to him over the phone. “What do you think?” I asked. “I think your ass is—” “Forget it,” I said.

9.
THE MAN WHO SEARCHED FOR A STONE

A week went by after I sent my letter, or my mother’s letter, or whatever you want to call it. Another week went by and I wondered if maybe Jacob Marcus was out of the country, possibly Cairo, or maybe Tokyo. A week went by and I thought maybe he’d somehow figured out the truth. Four days went by and I studied my mother’s face for signs of anger. It was already the end of July. A day went by and I thought maybe I should write to Jacob Marcus and apologize. The next day his letter came.

My mother’s name, Charlotte Singer, was written across the front in fountain pen. I slipped it into the waist of my shorts just as the telephone rang. “Hello?” I said impatiently. “Is the
Moshiach
home?” said the voice on the other end. “
Who
?” “The
Moshiach
,” the kid said, and I heard muffled laughter in the background. It sounded a little like Louis, who lived one block over, and used to be Bird’s friend until he met other friends he liked better, and stopped talking to Bird. “Leave him alone,” I said, and hung up, wishing I’d thought of something better.

I ran up the block to the park, holding my side so the envelope wouldn’t slip. It was hot out and I was already sweating. I tore the letter open next to a trash can in Long Meadow. The first page was about how much Jacob Marcus liked the chapters my mother had sent. I skimmed it until, on the second page, I got to the sentence that read:
I still haven’t mentioned your letter.
He wrote:

I’m flattered by your curiosity. I wish I had more interesting answers to all your questions. I have to say, these days I spend a lot of time just sitting here and looking out the window. I used to love to travel. But the trip to Venice was harder than I thought, and I doubt I’ll do it again. My life, for reasons beyond my control, has been pared down to the simplest elements. For example, here on my desk is a stone. A dark gray piece of granite cut in half by a vein of white. It took me most of the morning to find it. Many stones were rejected first. I didn’t set out with a particular idea of the stone in my mind. I thought I’d recognize it when I found it. As I searched I developed certain requirements. It had to fit comfortably in the palm, be smooth, preferably gray, etc. So that was my morning. I’ve spent the last few hours recovering.

It wasn’t always like this. It used to be that a day was worthless to me if I hadn’t produced a certain amount of work. That I noticed or didn’t notice the gardener’s limp, the ice on the lake, the long, solemn outings of my neighbor’s child who appears to have no friends—these things were beside the point. But that’s changed now.

You asked if I was married. I was once, but that was a long time ago, and we were clever or stupid enough not to have a child. We met each other when we were young, before we knew enough about disappointment, and once we did we found we reminded each other of it. I guess you could say that I wear a little Russian astronaut on my lapel, too. I live alone now, which doesn’t bother me. Or maybe just a little. But it would take an unusual woman to want to keep me company now that I can hardly walk down to the bottom of the driveway and back to pick up the mail. I still do it, though. Twice a week a friend brings by some groceries, and my neighbor looks in once a day with the excuse of wanting to check on the strawberries she planted in my garden. I don’t even like strawberries.