The Nesting Dolls

by Alina Adams

  The possibility is music to Zoe’s ears. Forget world peace and business meetings, think of what it could do for her own family! As Baba would say, that means it’s too good to be true. Zoe hears Baba’s voice coming out of her mouth as she says, “There are so many cultural norms, though, even within the same culture. It’s going to be a massive task to compile that data, much less tweak your code to recognize such a fine level of nuance and convey it instantaneously.”

  “Go big or go home, right? You know the Billy Joel song ‘Movin’ Out’?” Alex hums the catchy chorus. “I used to think that when he’s singing ‘Is that all you get for your money?’ he meant, is that all you’re going to settle for, when there’s so much more available? Here’s this song about a guy jumping out of the rat race, and I thought it meant, if you just work harder, you can have so much more than a house out in Hackensack or the fender of a Cadillac to polish! Middle-class banality isn’t truly moving up, that’s why he’s moving out.”

  “I used to think ‘you won’t fool the children of the Revolution’ meant the survivors who had their lives destroyed know revolution is a horrible thing, and you won’t fool them into supporting another one.” It’s one of Zoe’s most embarrassing memories. She’s never shared it with anyone. “My best friend from high school, Lacy, I said it to her mom when we were talking about music. I was trying to sound hip about the old stuff. It was mortifying. Luckily, she already thought I was a poor, unfortunate immigrant. Lacy’s mom calls herself the last of the red diaper babies. When she found out my family was from the USSR, she was dying to meet them, hear about their authentic experience. She wanted to trade stories about how her grandparents from the Lower East Side were also warriors for socialism. Can you imagine if I’d let that happen?”

  “Americans are adorable, aren’t they? They’re the ones who truly believe in international brotherhood. Remember how they sang about Russians loving their children, too?”

  “Knowing Lacy’s mom got me prepared for NYU. Whenever I’d say something negative about Communism, I’d get smacked down with how somebody as privileged as me could never understand the experiences of the oppressed, and my passing judgment was culturally insensitive. The professor said I had to apologize for making my classmates uncomfortable before her lecture could continue. At least I had enough sense not to tell my grandmother when it happened. She’d have given me a different smackdown about my privilege and made me apologize again!”

  Alex looks sympathetic, shocking Zoe with the realization of how desperately she’d been waiting for someone—anyone—to understand how odd it was to be American, feel American, look American on the outside—and yet somehow still be so foreign on the inside.

  “That’s the nice thing about going to a glorified trade school like Caltech. No engineer would talk up a theoretical idea that hadn’t been field-tested. Or one that failed every time it’s been tried. We’re not like those hippie pure-math guys.”

  “Ooh, nerd burn!”

  “Hey, I’m speaking as a reformed sinner.” Alex mea culpas his chest with a fist. “I thought I was going to be a math major myself. Till I got to Caltech and found out that, compared to those guys, I couldn’t do math at all. Thank God for Gideon showing me the light—and his notes—and guiding me into something practical.”

  At the mention of his friend’s name, Alex briefly pivots in the direction of Gideon’s work space. Zoe can see the top of Gideon’s head, like black sheep’s wool. She feels an urge to run her palm against it. Now that, she understands, actually is culturally insensitive. A microaggression.

  Back to his sales pitch, Alex says, “Gideon calls me Icarus, flying too close to the sun. He’s ridiculously well read. Private school all the way. Classic literature is a huge help in translating. Latin, too. All that metaphor, instead of saying what you mean. It’s a master class in beating around the bush, not to mention covering your ass by leaving everything open to interpretation and plausible deniability. How totally Communist is that?”

  “I wish I were better at it,” Zoe confesses, shocked, once again, by the unexpected catharsis of saying what she’d only thought—and even then, hesitantly—before.

  Alex doesn’t appear to notice the soul baring going on. Why should he? These are colossal moments for Zoe. For Alex, it’s just another pitch meeting.

  “I’ll take the Icarus comparison with pride,” he says. “Why would the sun be there, if we’re not supposed to reach for it?”

  “I’d like to get hot with you,” Zoe blurts out, still on a candor high. Then she hears herself.

  Alex doesn’t look taken aback. Maybe it’s still just another pitch meeting. Maybe he hears things like that all the time. Self-confidence is scary-sexy in a guy. And Alex reeks of it, like he’s been attacked by an army of department-store salesgirls pushing Eau de I’m Great.

  Zoe stumbles to recover. “What I meant was, I’d like to hear details regarding how you expect to blast your company off into the stars, as it were. And how my company might help you achieve your objectives.” That is not what she’d meant.

  “I have a proposal for you.”

  Zoe nods, ready to agree with anything he’s about to say.

  “Go out with me.”

  Except that.

  This calls for reinforcements. Zoe asks Lacy to meet her after work at a bar that serves alcohol alongside Rice Krispies treats and ironic, retro board games like Battleship, Operation, and Connect 4. Lacy instantly agrees. Because she is Lacy.

  Lacy is Zoe’s most American friend. Out of all of Zoe’s friends, she’s the only one who believes everything will always turn out fine. Her last name is Freeman. Her grandfather took out the d to make a point. She’s Jewish, like Zoe, except Lacy doesn’t believe in the evil eye. She doesn’t believe in not telling people your good news because they will be jealous and curse you. She doesn’t believe in never relaxing enough to enjoy the present because even the best of situations will go wrong.

  “Of course not,” Zoe’s grandmother snorted when she heard this about Lacy. “It’s easy to believe the world is good when nothing bad has ever happened to you.”

  It’s not that bad things have never happened to Lacy. It’s that she refuses to see them that way. Lacy’s parents are divorced, like Zoe’s. Lacy insists it’s great. “My mom and dad were miserable together. Now they can be happy apart! It’s best for them, and it’s best for me, too.”

  Of course, unlike Zoe, Lacy spends time with her dad. He’s a dancer turned stuntman turned performance artist. Lacy has taken Zoe to a bunch of his shows, held in sketchy clubs in even sketchier neighborhoods that Zoe most definitely didn’t tell her family she was going to. Zoe was freaked out every minute they were there, but Lacy acted like the old drunk guy chatting her up was just being friendly, and the five frat bros who surrounded them and pushed the girls to do shots were something Zoe and Lacy could disentangle themselves from as soon as they felt like it. And, because she was Lacy, she was right.

  Which is why Zoe loves Lacy.

  Which is why Zoe needs to speak with Lacy, ASAP.

  Zoe needs someone to tell her that everything will be fine.

  “Everything will be fine,” Lacy says the moment she slides into the booth next to Zoe. Lacy doesn’t even know what the emergency is, but she knows it’s what Zoe needs to hear.

  Zoe tells her about Alex. The work part, and the part where he asked Zoe out.

  “This is great,” Lacy squeals. “He sounds perfect for you.”

  Let the record show that Lacy says this about everyone.

  It just so happens that, this time, Zoe might agree with her.

  “I don’t date guys from Brighton,” Zoe reminds her, as if Lacy hasn’t heard her singing this song for exactly a decade now.

  “But this one’s different—you said so yourself.”

  “I said he seems different.”

  “He’s ambitious.”

  “He is.”

  “He’s cute.”

  I
t’s entirely possible that Zoe may have shown Lacy Alex’s photo off his website.

  “Your family will love him!”

  “Is that really a good thing?”

  Lacy laughs. Let the record also show that Lacy’s family loves everything she does. After dropping a quarter of a million dollars on her college education, Lacy’s family thinks it’s thrilling that she’s working a combination of TaskRabbit and waitressing jobs, since connecting with a wide variety of people is vital for an artist!

  Zoe would love Lacy’s family, too. Except they confuse Zoe so.

  Lacy’s mother, who was dying to talk politics with Baba—she had Lacy in her forties, so she and Baba are practically the same age—lives in a classic-six apartment on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive. She inherited it from her parents. It’s decorated with framed posters from famous protest marches, including one that proclaims all property is theft. It would be so easy to make fun of her. Except Lacy’s mom is so darn nice. To everybody. The only time Zoe let Baba and Lacy’s mom exchange words was at Lacy and Zoe’s high-school graduation, when Lacy’s mom gushed about the Rozengurt family’s inspirational courage in fleeing the USSR and Baba magnanimously let her. Baba thinks Lacy and her mom’s perennially upbeat air is, at best, naive, and, at worst, an act so they can lord it over everyone else. She doesn’t understand that they honestly think people are good at heart. They have that Anne Frank quote up in their classic six, too.

  This time, it was Balissa who took umbrage. “The Frank girl wrote this before Auschwitz, yes? Did anyone ask her after? No. Because she was dead.”

  When Lacy predicts Zoe’s family will love Alex, she isn’t being naive or condescending. She’s just being Lacy. Which is why Zoe called her in the first place.

  Because this whole Alex thing is making Zoe very, very nervous. Her day wasn’t supposed to go like this. Her day was supposed to go like every other day. Work, meeting, work, meeting, work, text from Mama, work, text from Mama asking why Zoe hadn’t replied to her earlier text, work, meeting, call Mama back, argue about minutiae for Baba and Deda’s anniversary party, run errand to fetch last-minute item for said anniversary party, home, microwave meal, sleep, rinse, repeat. At no point did her schedule include: meet the most potentially perfect guy ever, get asked out by him, freak out.

  If Zoe wrote down her requirements for the ideal man and her family did the same, there would be a tiny Venn diagram overlap. Alex Zagarodny was it. He had all the qualities Zoe was looking for, as well as enough of what Mama had been listing just the other day. He seemed too good to be true (thanks, Baba). And if he was as ideal as he seemed, what would someone like Alex want with someone like Zoe? Better temper her expectations. Baba always encourages Zoe to imagine and prepare for the very worst outcome, then she’s less likely to be disappointed. And Baba can say, “I told you so.”

  So Zoe hedges, “There’s still the conflict of interest with my job . . .”

  Maybe if she hedges enough, the evil eye will become bored and look elsewhere, thus not screwing up what had the potential to be a really great thing—pu, pu, pu, knock wood, we should only live so long.

  Then again, who needed the evil eye? Zoe could screw up any potentially great thing all by herself. Just look at her now, conjuring up excuses to avoid so much as giving Alex a shot.

  “Oh, that’ll work out, don’t worry.” Lacy gets the look she first assumed when she decided, back in high school, she was going to make Zoe her fixer-upper project, Wicked-style. “Cut it out.” Even when Lacy gets exasperated, she remains buoyant. “Quit making excuses for why this won’t work before you’ve given it a chance.” Does Zoe get any credit for at least thinking that? “Why not take a leap of faith and assume Alex is the perfect guy for you, you’re happy, your family is happy, Alex gets his investment, the company is a huge success, I get to wear a hot bridesmaid dress, and absolutely nothing goes wrong ever?”

  Lacy bites into her Rice Krispies treat and washes it down with a shot of tequila.

  Zoe wants to be Lacy when she grows up. She wishes she’d grown up as Lacy.

  However, at this point in time, she is still, unfortunately, Zoe. Who grew up with Mama and Baba and all the self-doubting self-sabotage therein.

  Lacy knows this. Which is why she makes Zoe take out her phone and text Alex.

  Now.

  Chapter 36

  Lacy holds her hand over Zoe’s and makes her text, Yes.

  Alex responds barely a second later.

  “You see?” Lacy beams. “He was waiting for you!”

  Zoe manages to be both thrilled and terrified. At least, if he’d ghosted her, she could say she’d tried. And the failure was absolutely not her fault. She’d have taken that as a win.

  Alex writes, Cool.

  “Write him back,” Lacy commands.

  “Balissa says you should make men wait. So they want you more.”

  “That is so last century,” Lacy groans. “Since when are you a Rules girl?”

  Zoe declines to clarify that the rules she’s been raised on go back to the century before the bestselling book. And involve standing in front of the Odessa Opera House in a tight white dress. “What should I write?”

  “Something clever. But not too serious. Sincere. But no pressure.” Zoe notes Lacy doesn’t actually offer any examples.

  Zoe types, Don’t you want to know: yes, what?

  Alex responds, Surprise me.

  And then a date, time, and place.

  Zoe dutifully returns to Brooklyn on Saturday. This is the anniversary party that will not die. At least, one Mama refuses to put out of its misery.

  “Why are we doing this?” Zoe demands during a tour through Brighton’s 99-cent stores, on the hunt for decorations that don’t look cheap—but are. “Baba has said, over and over, she doesn’t want a party.”

  “That’s what she says,” Mama dismisses, picking up off a shelf a Japanese spinning lantern made of tinsel. She checks the bottom for a price. She makes a face and sets it back down, as though the tchotchke tricked her into giving it a second glance. “It’s what she’s supposed to say.”

  It’s what all properly raised people are supposed to say. Zoe was taught it’s bad manners to accept something the first time it’s offered. When you’re visiting someone’s home and they ask if you’d like something to eat or drink, you’re supposed to decline. They then spend fifteen minutes cajoling you—“Not even a tiny slice sausage? I bought it fresh”—then guilting you—“Such shame to waste, I went especially looking for it, I heard it was your favorite”—then threatening—“Since I can’t serve the main meal until after you’ve had the appetizer, I suppose we’ll all just go hungry.” The ritual ensures a good time being had by all, while proving you are a classy person. It wasn’t until Zoe visited American friends’ homes, was offered a snack, refused it, and then went hungry for the rest of the afternoon that she learned the ritual wasn’t like that everywhere else.

  “What’s the point of saying what you don’t mean?”

  Mama moves to examine dented on-sale stacked boxes of candy. She considers buying the lot, tossing the boxes, stacking the candy on a festive plate and, there you go, problem solved, with no one being the wiser. Except all the guests who do the same at their houses. “Baba can’t say she wants this party. It would sound greedy and selfish.”

  Mama keeps moving. The store aisles are so narrow, the pair of them can’t walk side by side. Zoe ends up ducking other customers and addressing Mama’s neck. “But just this one time, how can you be sure Baba doesn’t mean what she says?”

  “Because she never does this,” Mama tosses over a shoulder. “It wouldn’t cross her mind.”

  “It wouldn’t cross her mind to tell the truth?”

  Mama stops, sighs, and turns around, exasperated. “What is this American fascination with truth? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Can you not see truth is different, depending on who is saying what
to who and why? God, I am sure, can see this.”

  Zoe echoes Lacy. “That’s so Soviet!”

  “Not just Soviet.” Mama shakes her finger in Zoe’s face, forcing a pair of children to duck beneath her elbow. “American, too. American schools. You don’t remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “So who was right, you or me?”

  In eleventh grade, Zoe’s teacher assigned an essay analyzing The Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield. Zoe had been shocked by how Holden bad-mouthed adults, how little respect he showed, how he presumed to know better than them despite lacking life experience, how everyone indulged his hissy fits instead of telling him to pull himself together or matching his stories of imaginary suffering with real suffering, like exile, physical labor, starvation! The teacher gave Zoe a D. Poor Holden, she explained, was alienated. We should pity him and his traumatic, tragic life. No, Zoe countered, Holden was spoiled. We should send him to a Soviet work farm. Because Zoe had such an outstanding record up to that point, the teacher offered to let her rewrite the paper, this time with the correct opinion.

  Mama told Zoe to do it. “Your teacher knows what is right.”

  Baba told Zoe to do it. “Do what she says and get the grade you deserve. Why risk your average for something so unimportant?”

  Balissa told Zoe to do it. “Write how she wants it and she will leave you alone. You do not want to get a reputation for troublemaking.”

  Deda said, “Let our poor girl be. She is intelligent; she will decide for herself.” Though later, he did whisper, slipping Zoe a piece of candy, “Why not do this one little thing to make everyone happy and bring peace to the house? For your old deda?”