The Sunlit Night (20 page)

His uncle, whose hands were far larger and more capable, was long since back in Moscow. The image of Daniil with his bags in the parking lot stuck with Yasha—it was as if Daniil had come and gone with no change in baggage, as if he weren’t forgetting anything, as if he hadn’t left anyone behind in the sand. Yasha couldn’t comprehend going back to Russia. Russia had come to mean only great separation: the country that kept his mother, the country that killed his father. To go back there now did not reverse enough, did not return what it had taken.

The poles, now off the truck, looked like pick-up sticks in the sand. He had dropped them at the wrong angle, perpendicular to the water, and waves wet their tops. Yasha took off his shoes and socks. He gripped his toes into the sand—it wasn’t hot, the sun up here was cold—and dragged each pole around until it lay parallel to the shore and the horizon. They made the beach look like his mother’s music paper. Seabirds would land on the lines and make notes. The pale wood caught the sunlight and Yasha wondered whether it was possible for the wood to tan, to get toasted—whether the poles would be any more golden when he came back to build the tents. He wondered whether Frances would come and help him with the construction.

Yasha had reserved Room 18 in Frances’s name. Haldor had given it to her for the funeral night, and Yasha hoped she could have it a little longer—he swore the museum had more rooms than it had guests. He went to Haldor and begged. Frances could live in Room 18 as long as she worked for the museum, Haldor promised, up until the end of the season. Haldor had called Frances’s cell phone, standing next to Yasha, who coveted the number. He could hear Frances’s relieved voice through Haldor’s flimsy Nokia. To finalize the arrangement, Haldor had requested Frances’s shoulders-to-hips length in centimeters, for her new sack uniform.

The ponies were waiting for their dinner of old bread up at the farm, but he would visit them later, after he saw her. He expected her to arrive any minute. A tiny crab crawled out of the sand. Yasha kicked it and watched it fly into the surf. The top of the world lay out in the water, right there, washing in at him and his bare feet, and washing up to his father, in his box, farther down the beach. Yasha put on his socks and shoes. He climbed back into the driver’s seat, and his shoes spilled sand around the pedals.

Each time he started the truck, Yasha knew that he might not be the one to turn it off, that they might wind up pulling him out of the fjord unconscious, the truck wrecked, the engine soaked. That Sigbjørn would unbuckle Yasha’s drippy seat belt, lift him out, carry him into his smithy, and try to revive him by the warmth of his coals, with no luck. Yasha wanted to be buried beside his father, at Eggum. He wanted to make the same request. He started the engine. It was a good truck, he liked its red bulk around him, and he drove it back down the road toward the museum, to welcome her home.

•    •    •

“Please come,” I said into the microphone.

“We’re not coming,” my mother said.

“Not a
chance
!” bellowed my father.

“You are breaking Sarah’s heart,” I said, knowing very well that broken hearts didn’t scare them. Hard to say whether my parents considered their own hearts long since shattered, or whether they believed that people were more durable than all that.

“And she is breaking mine,” my mother said, surprising me by taking up the expression.

I said, “I’m still going.”

“And now
you
are breaking mine,” my mother said.

“And you are breaking
mine
,” I said.

“Enough of this,” said my father.

There was a pause in the conversation, and I heard a knock at my door.

“Come in!” my mother shouted.

I went and opened the door. Yasha stood there, with sand all over his pants and in his hair and, oddly, in his eyebrows.

“What have you been doing?” I asked.

“Poles. How do you like the room?”

I thanked him for talking to Haldor. I would have kissed him right then, had my parents not been watching.

“Gregoriov!” my father called out. “Come in.”

“We haven’t seen you since the funeral,” my mother said.

“It went well.” Yasha walked up to the screen. “Frances helped.”

“Oh did she?” said my father. “With what?”

“The blessing,” said Yasha.

My mother looked incredulous.

“I said the Mourner’s Kaddish,” I told her. “Yasha’s mother wanted someone to say it.”

My mother took her glasses off, folded the arms in, and placed them down on her table. She leaned close to the camera, so that I could see the blood vessels in her eyes. I had never seen her look so tired. “A Jewish funeral,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was thinking of her mother’s, years ago, or her own, years from now, or about my sister’s wedding.

The next thing my mother said was, “Marry our daughter.”

I saw Yasha’s chest inch backward, as if his lungs alone were trying to leave the room. He looked at me, then at the sand on the floor, and then his head fell to the side and he looked into the camera at a slant. He bunched his lips and his eyebrows semi-indignantly, as if someone had played a joke on him but he hadn’t gotten it.

My mother must have been joking, but she was smiling the way she smiled when she was deathly serious, and she had begun waving her glasses around like a wand, very excited, with every word.

“She’s just about your age, what are you, nineteen?” my mother said.

“Seventeen,” said Yasha, “and I thought Frances was twenty-one.”

“Sarah,” my mother said, “Sarah.” I gaped at the screen. “Sarah is twenty, and in some deranged rush, you see, to get married. So you see, she might as well marry you, if she’s going to do it—I’d prefer that, I’d prefer your mother, sounds like, to Scott’s, I’ll tell you one thing,” my mother said, now aiming the glasses directly at Yasha, “Scott Glenny’s mother would never ask anybody to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish. I’ll tell you that right now.”

Even my father looked embarrassed. He looked most like Harpo Marx when he was embarrassed—like Harpo caught with oranges down his pants. I loved it when my family’s severity broke. It never happened to more than one of us at a time. When my parents yelled hideous things at each other, Sarah laughed. When Sarah touched the cow in the replica Corot hanging on our living room wall, my father slapped her hand, then my mother stroked it. When my mother told Yasha to marry Sarah, my father blushed and rubbed his ear.

“I understand if you want to leave,” I said to Yasha. “You probably want to leave.”

“Why should he?” said my mother.

“I have to call our landlord,” Yasha managed to say into the camera. “He’s been taking care of my cat.”

“By all means,” said my father. “Good to see you, Gregoriov.”

“You can use my computer,” I said.

“Not yet,” said my mother. “We haven’t gotten anywhere.”

“I’m going to use the phone in the kitchen,” Yasha said. He was already at my door. “Nice sack,” he said, taking in my outfit from a distance.

“Think about it,” my mother shouted, putting her glasses back on. “Will you?”

Yasha left. I bent down to the floor, partly to get away from the webcam, partly to clean up the sand. It was sunny, and each little grain was visible against my green floor. I wondered why the color green signified envy. I had never been jealous of my sister before: not when she French-kissed before I had ever held hands, not when she officially became Scott Glenny’s girlfriend before I had ever called anyone my boyfriend, not when she got engaged the same day Robert dumped me. I was jealous now. My mother’s ridiculous suggestion made the floor seem particularly green.

“Your sister is beautiful,” my mother said, when I stood up. “And I love her. I love her more than I can bear.”

“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s not sick, or pregnant—”

“She’s not
what
?” said my father.

“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s happy.”

“I’m so unhappy, I could combust,” my mother said under her breath.

“Come to the wedding,” I said. “It’s the only thing you can do. You’ll see her, she’ll look more beautiful than you’ve ever seen her before. You’ll see them together. Really
see
them. Take your glasses off and look at them. They’re good.” I wanted to say: They’re better than you. They’re choosing to stick together. They’re better than you at love. Instead, I said, “Come with me.”

“That was some lousy hell of a locker-room pep talk,” my father said.

“Go find that Gregoriov boy and tell him I meant it,” my mother said. “There’s some way out. Who knows? It might not be him, it might be him, cute curly-haired Russian, who knows? In any case, I haven’t given up.”

“I have,” I said. “Bye.” I started looking for the button to hang up.

“Come home,” my father said. Then he realized his mistake. He looked around at the apartment, full of boxes. I knew we were both thinking of something he’d once said:
There won’t be a house for you anyway
.

•    •    •

Frida sat in the kitchen, breast-feeding her baby girl. Yasha came in and stopped short. Frida’s enormous breast was hoisted up over her shirt’s low neckline. It looked like the breast was about to rip the shirt. Her baby had blond hair, short and white just like Frida’s. They were really something together. Frida, Mini-Frida. Breast, shirt, mouth, tiny baby hands. Yasha hadn’t yet been discovered. Frida had her eyes closed, and could have been sleeping were it not for her nose, which flinched and flinched until she sneezed. Her eyes opened.

“I forgot your name,” Frida said. “Hello.”

“Yakov Vassiliovich Gregoriov,” Yasha said. “Pardon me.”

Yasha had forgotten why he’d come in, and Frida didn’t ask him. The baby slurped, very audibly in the otherwise silent room, and Yasha listened, and watched, staring in the direction of Frida’s nipple, which the baby’s cheeks concealed. He had forgotten himself completely.

Kurt came in the back entrance and said, “Lunchtime!”

Yasha jumped and said, “Fine, so, yes, well, right, the phone.”

“The phone?” said Frida. The baby went on. “It is on the wall.”

Kurt pointed to the wall between two industrial refrigerators. Yasha retreated into the nook with relief. He dialed Mr. Dobson’s number. The rings were long and there were many of them.

Mr. Dobson had just woken up. It was seven o’clock in the morning in Brooklyn, and did Yasha realize he was calling so early? And good morning, Gregoriov, and was Russia full of those, what are they, samovars? The whole boulevard wasn’t right without its Gregoriovs, Mr. Dobson said. Yasha pressed the receiver hard against his ear and listened behind Dobson’s voice for the sounds of a possible cat. He heard a television. Gregoriov, Mr. Dobson said, samovars?

Yasha wished he had written a script. There was a great deal of information to deliver, likely to be followed by questions he’d have to answer, and he hadn’t adequately prepared. Frances’s parents had startled him, rushed him out into the kitchen. Frida’s breast had startled him. Kurt’s
Lunchtime!
had startled him, rushed him right to the phone. It was seven o’clock in New York. Frances’s parents were evidently early risers. Mr. Dobson was also awake and on the line.

“Hello,” Yasha said. “It’s just Yasha. My father isn’t here anymore.”

“Where has the grump gone,” Dobson began, “hunting rabbits?” Dobson’s voice was rough in the phone, not fully awake, and Yasha was only half listening, half watching the baby’s boneless jaw pump milk down her miniature throat. Frida was humming. Kurt was wiping down the stovetop. “Gregoriov,” Dobson said, “where is the old grump? Can’t go on with these empty shop windows forever,” he said, and Yasha saw again the bakery windows, full of Danishes, full of light, full of the unusually visible sea wind, and the sea out there, not this arctic sea, the American Atlantic: larger, dirtier, hotter. “Said it was a vacation,” Dobson said, “so, hello, enough. Time’s up.”

“My father passed away two weeks ago, Mr. Dobson,” Yasha said. “Time is up.”

Mr. Dobson’s silence on the other end of the line gave Yasha a moment to watch Kurt rotate all the sausages. He looked at Yasha while he flipped them. Kurt had been participating in the phone call by way of a sympathetic pout, until Agnes came into the kitchen right then through the back entrance and stood behind Kurt and squeezed him around the waist. At least this man wouldn’t compete with him for Frances, Yasha saw. Agnes lodged her head into the space between Kurt’s shoulder blades. Her head faced left, where Frida was lifting the baby’s bangs, tying the hair up until the baby looked like a spouting whale. The pink sides of the sausages went down, the charred sides faced up, and the steam and the smell made the baby squirm. In the corner of the grill, a pile of onions caramelized. Even in the silence, Yasha could not hear his cat.

Mr. Dobson was sorry. He couldn’t believe—Vassily Gregoriov. Yasha could not quite stand Dobson’s real and audible sadness. It intensified his own pain, pulled it up to the surface of his skin where the hurt became especially active, making sweat or tears drip out. Mr. Dobson had never been emotional. He had been brash and cheerful, and had shouted and sung, and even the one time his father had handed Dobson a challah fresh out of the oven and the crust had been hot, and Dobson’s index finger and thumb had burned, Dobson hadn’t minded any more than a loud shout and then it was over. He had been forgiving, friendly.
Good riddens
. Dobson couldn’t say that anymore. Hadn’t it come true? “I can’t believe it,” Mr. Dobson said, “that man.”