by Lara Vapnyar
“Marty!” Ben said.
She looked at Ben, gasped, squeezed Ben in a bear hug, and started to squeal. “Ben, Ben, Ben, Benny, Ben!” Her face turned bright pink under the wisps of her gingery hair.
Ben smiled and said: “Marty, hey!” Then turned to Lena. “Lena—Marty. Marty—Lena. Marty’s Mike’s wife.” Marty shook Lena’s hand and whispered to Ben over her shoulder, “So, Benny, Leslie’s out?” He shook his head, and Marty shrugged. “I thought I’d ask.” She exuded warmth and the sweet smell of sweat, flowers, and cinnamon buns.
“Where’s Mike?” Ben asked as they followed Marty to the front door.
“He had to make a last-minute delivery. Not sure when he’ll be back.”
“You have a beautiful house,” Lena said.
“Well, yeah. I don’t really care. My husband takes care of it. Puts in flowers and stuff.”
“Marty, what’s with the trolls?” Ben asked.
Marty rolled her eyes. “That’s Mike, Ben. That’s his new business. He carves all these stupid figurines. Plywood moose, plywood bears, bunnies, loons—whatnot. And it sells! I don’t know what kind of idiot would want to buy a plywood moose when we have too many live ones around here, but apparently there are plenty of idiots. He even gets mail orders now.”
She led them into the kitchen, sat them at the large table by the wall, and said that she’d run upstairs to freshen up and then they’d have some coffee. But before she did that, she hugged Ben again. Lena thought that she caught some strange intimacy in their gestures.
“Did you sleep with her?” Lena asked after Marty had gone upstairs.
For a moment Ben looked surprised at Lena’s forthrightness, then nodded. “A couple of times. Years ago. Look, we’ve known each other for so long—it would’ve been wrong and almost impolite if I hadn’t.”
“I see.”
Three ideas crossed Lena’s mind, one after another, or perhaps all at the same time. That Marty liked to squeal in bed, that she liked to move around a lot, and that her favorite position was doggy-style. She felt an instant surge of jealousy.
“Does Mike know about you two?”
“No, of course not. He’s a great guy and they have a great marriage. Four kids. Four kids, can you believe that?”
Marty came down wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. She had also put on some lip gloss and sprinkled herself with perfume—sharp and sour, not suiting her at all.
“Where are you from?” she asked Lena as the water in the coffeemaker started to gurgle.
“Originally from Russia, but I live in Boston now.”
“Russia! I was wild about Russia when I was in college. I went to college, you know. Down there in Portland. I had to drop out when I got pregnant, but still I went to college. My husband never did. But my kids are all going to college, mark my words.”
“How old are they?”
“Sixteen, fourteen, and the twins are eleven.”
Marty took a plate with leftover strawberry pie from the fridge and cut a slice for Lena. The crust was crumbly and hard, and the filling too sweet and gooey.
“Russia! Did you like it there? But of course you did, that’s your home! How I wanted to go there. To Moscow and St. Petersburg. Such a great crazy country. So what do you think about Putin?”
“Putin? I don’t really think about Putin.”
“He puts on airs, acts like he’s this tough guy, but he’s a sleazy little jerk, don’t you think?”
“Yes, kind of.”
“I liked Yeltsin. He was like an older Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is my favorite president. My husband hates his guts, though. He’s a Republican. I don’t understand how anyone with half a brain could be a Republican. And you know what, I loved, loved Gorbachev. Such a sweet, smart man.”
Lena said that she loved Gorbachev too. And Bill Clinton.
“Are you married?” Marty asked.
Lena nodded.
“Kids?”
Lena nodded again. Marty reached and patted her hand in a compassionate gesture, then leaned close to whisper something, but then changed her mind.
She kissed Lena on the cheek when they parted. Sticky lip gloss kiss, and the smell of her perfume seemed to creep after them into the car.
THIRTEEN
Their next stop was at a supermarket to get the necessary provisions for the cabin.
Lena felt ridiculous strolling down the supermarket aisles with Ben.
Normally, she went to the supermarket with her husband and kids. She hated supermarkets, so each time she would devise ways to spend as little time there as possible. She would make a list and then tear it in four pieces and give each member of the family a piece—some easy items for her younger son. When making the list, she tried to put the foods in the order of supermarket aisles, so there wouldn’t be darting back and forth. “We get a cart each, and then we meet by the cashier in ten minutes and put all the food together,” she would say. She tried to make it sound like fun, like a scavenger hunt, but she always looked so annoyed that it would ruin the cheerful mood.
And once they got to the store, her strategy never worked. Each of them would become distracted by various items that weren’t on the list and forget about the ones that were. Misha would leaf through the issues of National Geographic and Pokemon guides in the magazine section. Borya would concentrate on discreetly stocking up on junk food. Vadim would get lost among the latest models of grills, even though he’d never grilled anything in his life. And she would be glued to the shelves in the International Foods section, reading the cooking instructions on the packages of Thai noodles and curry sauces. And then each of them would rush to the cashiers to look for the others and, not finding them there, dart back and forth among the aisles.
“So, what are we getting?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know. Anything. I don’t care.”
Ben sighed.
“Okay, so you won’t help me. Well, let’s just walk down the aisles and grab what we think we need.”
They bought coffee, bread, apples, cheese, salad mix, lemons, water, eggs, oranges, olive oil, a pound of potatoes, foil, paper towels, tissues, a flashlight, and biscotti. Then she ran into the pharmacy next door, where she bought Excedrin Migraine, mosquito repellent, and a pack of Pirate’s Booty cheese puffs—those she bought automatically, simply because she was used to getting them for her kids every time she went to a big pharmacy. Ben emerged from a liquor store with a bottle of expensive tequila, looking unsure of his choice and possibly even embarrassed by it.
Their purchases looked even more ridiculous as they were putting them in the small trunk of his car. Bigger things, smaller things, bottles. Or perhaps, it was they who looked ridiculous, engaged in this domestic activity. Ben leaned over his trunk, contemplating the most secure position for a carton of eggs. He had to move the boxes with his books and utensils to make the groceries fit. Past making space for the urgent needs of the present. The juicer fell out. He picked it up and shoved it back.
Lena climbed into her seat and felt strangely comfortable, at home. After all this travel the shape and surface of the seat felt familiar and pleasing, and even the mess on the back seat had a homey feel about it. She thought that Ben’s car was starting to feel more comfortable to her than the one parked by her home in Brookline.
Lena realized that she was also starting to feel just as comfortable in the world of her story. Telling it in Ben’s car now seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
“The next Monday after that lambada weekend, Yanina was late for the morning assembly. She arrived in the middle of the roll call, but stood apart from the others, leaning against the flagpost. She looked tired, and she didn’t walk up onto the platform even for her announcement.
“ ‘Something horrible happened last night. I want all the counselors and staff in my office after breakfast. Take the kids back to your units—we’ll dispatch soldiers to watch them—and come to my office right away.’
“A
nd of course, this was the most exciting breakfast ever. Everybody kept whispering and exchanging ideas. Counselors asked kitchen help. Older kids asked younger kids. Younger kids asked counselors. Kitchen help asked the kids. Everybody had heard something, but nobody knew anything for sure. There were hundreds of different ideas, the most popular being these:
“1. A kid ran away.
2. A kid ran away and was killed.
3. Gorbachev was killed.
4. The U.S. finally dropped that nuclear bomb on us.
5. Vedenej ran away with Natasha the nurse (neither had been seen at the assembly).
6. Vedenej ran away with ten boxes of salami and caviar.
7. Aliens came.
“For once, we couldn’t wait to get to Yanina’s office. By the time Inka and I got there, all of the chairs were taken. Many people crowded by the walls. Inka and I stood by the door next to Nadezhda. Yanina sat slumped behind her desk. I thought that she seemed both intimidating and frightened. She didn’t say anything for a while, waiting for everybody to arrive. There was a single window in the room. It was closed. Right when I started to sweat myself, the room filled with a strong stench of sweat. For a moment or two I worried that I was the one who stank, before I realized the other girls were sweating too, as well as Yanina herself.
“ ‘Guys,’ she finally said. ‘Last night, two people from our camp were seen engaged in a perverse sexual act.’
“The room reacted with a collective gasp. I was convinced that Yanina was referring to what Inka and I had done on my bed the night before. I stared at my knees, and I thought that Yanina must be pointing in our direction, and everybody was turning to look at us, and in a second she would ask us to step forward. I thought maybe I could squeeze past Nadezhda and out the door. I felt the blood draining out of my entire body and going to my head to thump there in heavy merciless strokes. I peeked at Inka and saw that she was thinking the exact same thing. She was staring at her hands, her face bright pink.
“ ‘One of the counselors . . .’ Yanina continued (and I thought yes, yes, one of the counselors, not two, Inka started it, she jumped onto my bed, it wasn’t my fault!). ‘One of the counselors saw the couple in the woods by the pond. Neither was identified.’
“Yanina looked each of us over.
“ ‘Look at her,’ Nadezhda whispered. ‘The eyes of a she-wolf. She is looking for her. Trying to sniff her out.’
“ ‘Do you think it was Vedenej, with someone?’ I whispered back.
“ ‘Oh, yeah. At least Yanina thinks so, or why would she make such a fuss?’
“She concluded the meeting by reading the list of urgent measures, which ranged from fixing the fence separating the camp territory from the woods to an even stricter hands-over-the-blankets policy.
“Volodya said that he had a question. ‘What was the perverse act?’
“Somebody snickered. But Yanina just glared at Volodya.
“She looked us over and said: ‘You know, you might think that sex is something funny, but it can ruin your life. It can!’ Her voice broke when she said that. She looked as if she was close to tears. The expression on her face reminded me of my mother’s, the way she had looked the whole year before she threw my father out. The two sharp lines that would sprout in the corners of her mouth from time to time. Years later I understood that these lines appear when you try to keep your mouth from quivering, when you try to appear tough, while feeling frightened and lost.
“It was such an enormous relief to get out of the headquarters. We were all walking down the path that led from the headquarters to the rest of the camp in silence, together but separately, as one big disjointed herd.
“But once we swerved onto the main path, and the headquarters were no longer in view, everybody stopped as if on cue.
“ ‘Well, I guess it’s clear about the guy, but who the fuck was the girl?’ Svetlana asked.
“ ‘Could be anybody,’ Galina said.
“ ‘Could be you!’ Nadezhda said to her.
“ ‘I’m happily married!’
“ ‘Oh, right! I keep forgetting.’
“ ‘Don’t fight, girls,’ Volodya said. ‘And anyway, I wouldn’t be so sure that the guy was Vedenej.’
“But when nobody paid any attention, he shook his head and walked away.
“The rest of us continued gossiping.
“ ‘Listen,’ Svetlana said. ‘Where is Natasha?’
“Everybody looked around. Natasha wasn’t there.
“ ‘Was she at the meeting?’
“We couldn’t remember.
“ ‘But she is a nurse,’ Inka said. ‘She probably couldn’t leave her office.’
“ ‘Natasha? No way!’ Galina said. ‘She’s not even that pretty.’
“ ‘Remember Anya from last year? And that—what’s her name—that really skinny girl from the year before? Were they pretty? And look at Yanina!’
“ ‘Yeah,’ Nadezhda agreed. ‘Vedenej has weird taste.’
“ ‘Anybody noticed how Natasha hangs around the phone booth every night?’ Inka asked.
“ ‘Yeah, but why would she want to call Vedenej? He’s right here.’
“ ‘But they can’t really talk, because of Yanina. So she comes to talk to him on the phone every night. He’s in his office, like ten feet away from her. And he can see her in the booth through his window. Isn’t it romantic?’
“But nobody had a chance to contemplate the beauty of the situation, because right at that moment we heard a blood-curdling scream. We stopped talking and froze. The scream was followed by silence—I heard nothing but the thumping of my heart.
“Everybody rushed to their units. ‘It’s coming from the swimming pool!’ Nadezhda said, and we all ran there.
“And then a series of screams, not as bad as the first one, but still scary.
“A small crowd had already gathered by the pool. We couldn’t see anything behind the backs of other people, but then somebody moved and we saw our own Myshka, squatting at the shallow part of the empty pool. She was screaming and swinging her head right and left. Inka reached to pull her out, and Myshka jumped into her arms. She was shivering.
“Later that day, after Myshka had calmed down, we managed to coax out of her what had happened. She claimed to have seen the aliens. She said she was walking back from the club with the other kids—they were watching a movie during our meeting with Yanina—and she was lagging behind, because her shoe wasn’t right. Then, all of a sudden, she said she saw a round metal object swishing by. No, not like a saucer, but like a ball. She ducked her head but the object hit her on the shoulder. It vanished right after. She got scared, ran to the pool, and jumped in. The swishing ball was obviously an alien ship.
“ ‘Many alien ships are shaped like footballs,’ Sasha Simonov confirmed with great authority. ‘It was a good thing that Myshka screamed.’
“ ‘Why?’ Inka asked.
“Sasha sighed loudly, having explained this all earlier: ‘Because aliens can’t stand high sounds. Their molecules fall apart. But they really appreciate music, only if it’s not high-pitched. If you want to have an encounter, sing in a low voice.’
“ ‘Everybody knows that!’ Sveta added.
“It was strange, but other than providing us with details, the kids seemed to be pretty much indifferent about the aliens. By the end of the day, even Myshka seemed to have forgotten about her encounter.
“Inka was the one who got the most excited about it.
“After lunch she went to examine the area around the pool. She came back even more excited. She didn’t see anything resembling an alien soccer ball, but she saw patches of burnt grass on the edge of the woods by the pool. She could swear that the grass was freshly burnt. Then she asked if I knew that when a person had an encounter with aliens, she would usually receive a gift of special wisdom? I shook my head. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I used to make fun of people who claimed th
at they saw aliens, but now I was simply annoyed, with aliens, and with Inka and her crazy interest in them.
“That night all I wanted was to go to sleep and forget about all that stuff. But Inka couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. She tossed, and turned, and moaned. And of course, in the middle of the night there came a poem. Which was the longest and by far the most expressive of her poems. I still remember it.
“Aliens! Come to me.
I’m a space element.
I’m a cosmic creature.
I’m a part of the universe.
Come to me! Take me with you.
Fuck all the guys.
Who needs them.
Guys are losers.
Aliens! Take me!
“I woke up with a terrible headache and thought, ‘Aliens, please, take her. And do it soon.’ ”
FOURTEEN
Ben drove deeper into the woods as the road became more crooked and narrow. The car swished past the bushes, twigs crunching under the wheels, until it swerved sharply to the right onto another dirt road that seemed even narrower and more crooked. Random patches of woods singled out by the headlights rushed at them, and then past. Coarse pine trunks, smoother birches, delicate hemlock leaves. Lena half-expected to see a goblin or a troll peeking out from behind a tree.
The car made another sharp swerve and there it was, the cabin. It stood in a partial clearing in the yellow cone of headlights, hemlock, low bushes, and tall weeds. Gray and stern, it was strangely asymmetrical. On the side facing them, there was a single window and a door with a small stoop and large rusty padlock.
They shivered as they got out of the car. It was bitterly cold, and the wind came at them in hard gusts that smelled just like snow. She cuddled up to Ben as he struggled to get his key into the right hole. He let her walk in first. It was even colder inside the cabin, and dark except for the light from the car that came through the opened door and unwashed window. Lena fumbled on the wall trying to find a light switch. “No lights,” Ben said casually. “There’s an oil lamp, I’ll get some oil and light it.”