by Kalman Nadia
A guy flip-flopped through the door. “Still here?” he said, tossing his backpack on the floor. Katya curled her legs up on the window sill. “You’re always sitting there, why?” he said with some kind of sensitive thing to his voice.
“I don’t know,” Katya said. She’d found you could get by with “I don’t know” and “Nothing much” and nothing much more. Why hadn’t Matt told his friends she didn’t like to talk?
“I could just push you out right now,” the boy said. Some stupid instinct made Katya grab the frame, so that when he pushed her a few seconds later, she did not fall.
She crossed her arms, stooped her head down so she’d clear the glass. “Do it again,” she said.
He looked at her and raised his hand to her shoulder, then laughed and backed away, taking out a cell phone. “Some crazy bitches.”
Katya felt a different person take temporary control of her, not Brezhnev, someone else, a window-grabber, a confirmer. She packed up her bridesmaid’s dress, called the airline from a pay phone outside. When the feeling ran out half an hour later, she wanted to cancel it all, but lacked the energy, which was how that other person had planned it.
Osip
But they were supposed to be happy! A house before a wedding should be full of giggling and photography. If only someone told him the problem, then Osip, who at twenty-one had published a paper about elevated rails, would find a solution. But in the United States, even in his own family, apparently, his problem-solving abilities, of which one professor, overjoyed to find a smart Jewish boy like Osip at their fifth-rate provincial polytechnic, had called his “sublime pragmatism,” counted for nothing.
He stood watering his big lawn like a big — or at least largish — shot, wondering what could be the matter. Here Milla was marrying a famous Strauss. (He’d asked Mrs. Strauss whether they were descended from the jeans-maker, and she’d said yes, and he’d made a funny joke.) Yes, Malcolm was a bit — uncertain, and made other people uncertain as well. Malcolm seemed always to be worrying a decision when he spoke to you, wondering, should he be more friendly to you, or less? Or was there someone else he needed to be friendly to — at that very moment? Osip told himself that he, too, had been uncertain at Malcolm’s age. He just hadn’t let on: Stalina had been pregnant and they had married. They were in America now, and America was the freedom to admit you didn’t know what you were doing.
The rest of the family was jealous of them. Stalina’s cousin Valentina had been calling to inform them about the layabouts, the failures, the suicides and homicides who’d graduated from Ivy League colleges.
Stalina liked prestigious people. Stalina liked making others jealous. Stalina liked weddings. What, then, was the matter?
Osip turned the hose on some bushes. It didn’t matter if the bench got wet, because Katya was the only one who’d ever sat there.
What would his father have done in Osip’s place? He would have waged a successful campaign. He would have been victorious in battle. Osip sighed. Whenever he tried to imagine what his father would do, he found himself, for lack of information, instead imagining what the Commish would do. For the Commish, these family matters would be a distraction from his real work of the week, uncovering a drug ring, say. The Commish’s wife would have found it charming that such a tough, streetwise man had no idea when it came to women’s problems. She would have massaged his neck.
Katya had come outside, when Osip was watering, when she was nine, ten, and talked to him about science fiction. Osip’s favorite books were about feudal civilizations approaching utopia, a nuke for every pod. Katya’s books were about psychic girls with silver eyes, teenage clones, robots seeking soulmates. If she’d only stayed for Pratik’s arrival, if she’d only learned calculus. Osip had been looking forward to saying: Katyenok, calculus is nothing more than the study of very small numbers.
Pratik
Pratik was a sissy sleeper, had been ever since he, at age six, had shared his bedroom with his asthma-prone grandmother, under strict instructions from his parents to wake them if her breathing changed. Now, anything could wake him: a passing car with muffler trouble, a squirrel in the tree outside his window, Yana, the family insomniac, the family beauty, walking past his door.
He heard her and did what he had not been brave enough to do before: he put on his pants and followed her to the kitchen. He paused in the doorway, wondering whether he should knock, and decided to say, “Oh, hello, Yana,” with an air of surprise.
Yana dropped the box of cereal she’d been holding, jumped in the air, and screamed, “Ah,” a few times. Pratik closed the kitchen door so they wouldn’t wake the rest of the family, hiding a smile at how funny she looked, hopping on one leg like a cripple, her forehead wrinkled like a monkey’s.
“Don’t do that again,” she said. “I’m easily scared, not scared, startled.” She picked up the box of cereal from the floor and held it out to him.
“No, thank you,” Pratik said. He poured himself a glass of water and sat at the table, hoping Yana would join him.
“This fucking wedding,” she said, throwing herself into a chair.
“I wanted to ask you the question, why did you live in New York last year, and not at home?”
“That’s an interesting way of putting it,” Yana said. “Most people ask me why I moved back here.” He loved how her face was always changing. It was comforting, after living with his polite, fearful family, to almost always see what Yana was thinking, even though she most often seemed to be thinking him an arse.
“Why did you move back here?” he said.
He listened to her eating her cereal, which she always had dry. When she’d swallowed, she said, “I was sick of being poor in the city. I’ll have plenty of time to be poor when I’m a teacher.” She spoke those lines like she’d said them many times before. Somehow, he knew there was another reason. Had a man hurt her, broken promises? If only she’d tell Pratik, he’d have revenge on the bandit.
“That is the full reason?” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Yana took a huge spoonful of cereal into her mouth, and the skin around her lips bulged, making her look like a sulking child.
He decided to change the subject. “If you have mathematical projects for your graduate course, I would be happy to assist you, were you to need assistance. You know,” — he knew he should stop talking, but couldn’t — “I was first meant to come here to tutor your sister.” He paused to try to find a clever way of saying that really, Yana would be assisting him, a debt of tutoring needed to be paid for the hospitality of her family…
“I’m sure Katya was so deeply concerned about math,” Yana said, cereal powder flying from her lips.
“It is very hard.”
“What’s very hard, Dr. Science?”
Pratik drank his water. Yana was looking at him as though her sister’s leaving were his fault, as though he’d chased her out the door brandishing a textbook. That was not Pratik. That was Pratik’s German tutor, the year he was twelve. “It is hard to be without a family person. When my father was posted to Paris, my mother and I missed him badly.”
Yana pushed her cereal into one cheek and said, “Why didn’t you go with him?’
“I don’t know. I remember thinking perhaps he was shamed of me, because I was always catching up to the language of the country before. I spoke Spanish with a German accent, for example.”
“Did you ever ask?”
Pratik shook his head.
“You should. I read in Atypical Development, one of the main reasons fathers and sons get alienated is that they feel rejected. Usually, they don’t really want to kill each other, they just need to unpack their issues.”
She was happier now. Although he had no intention of questioning his father, a man so afraid of being held to account that he’d run away from home at age four after having eaten a forbidden korma, Pratik said, “I would not know how to begin such a conversation.”
“You’d jus
t say, ‘Look, Dad, I felt really rejected when you went to Paris without us in’ — what year was it?”
Pratik supplied the year, a detailed description of his emotional state, and a theory about the roots of his father’s behavior. Yana loved his explanation of the importance of pride for Bengalis, reacting as though the desire to avoid embarrassment were an exotic Eastern proclivity, and supplied I-statements for him to inflict. She became increasingly calm, finally yawning a few times while instructing him to put his anger on the table, or mat, if that was what his family ate upon, and wandered back upstairs to sleep. Pratik cleaned their dishes, touching the glass her lips had touched, giving her a new private nickname: The Anger Manager, TAM for short, and imagining how they’d laugh about it once they were married.
Jean
The night before the wedding, Jean made Bobby rent Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman was so sexy in the movie, but still, every few minutes, she jumped up, wanting to check on something, not sure what needed checking, thinking she heard the phone. She had a headache, and, in the bathroom, stretched the wrinkles back from her face. Was she supposed to feel bad about having been a tan, sexy college student? What was God trying to tell her with wrinkling and spotting and being sued by an ex-client and Bobby’s heart problems and this pale and unfashionable sub-European who’d be walking down the aisle tomorrow carrying the Strauss family Torah? Jean had offered the Torah in a moment of weak-minded benevolence upon hearing, back in February, that Milla had agreed to postpone the wedding and get married in August instead of May. A lot could have happened in those extra months, but hadn’t. To think: Jean had given money to free Soviet Jews.
“Bobby,” she called from the bathroom, “Do you think we should call the kids tomorrow to wake them up?” They were staying at Jean and Bobby’s summer house, which was odd. Everyone knew the bride and groom slept separately the night before. Everyone knew about Hamptons traffic.
Bobby shuffled up to the door, not even trying to hold in his stomach. Didn’t he realize that her stomach only looked all right because she was always holding her breath? Why couldn’t he try to be attractive for her? Either a man should be so naturally handsome, like Paul Newman, that a few blemishes don’t matter, or a man should make an effort. She had Bobby, who made a comment: “They have an alarm clock.”
Jean walked to her dressing room, Bobby following. “They’re kids,” she said, “They’ll never wake up on time. Maybe that’s — okay.”
“Jean…” Bobby said.
Jean held her wedding outfit, a white silk shorts-suit, in front of her body. “I should have had Ronette let out the bust more.”
“You can unbutton the top, right?”
“It’s much too small.” Another thing gone wrong. Life was an errand, she had always told Malcolm. What she hadn’t told him, but should have, was that errands were not easy. She tried her hardest at everything, and look what happened.
“Try it on,” Bobby said. Jean lit her closet and went inside. At her age, she wasn’t about to let Bobby see.
“Did you remember to lock it?” Bobby asked from outside, his little joke.
She’d lost a little weight and so only the top button was a problem. The halter drew attention to her arms, still tan from a conference in Cozumel, and to her chest, which looked more freckled than age-spotted. Jean was about to open the door when she caught sight of her back: puffy, pale. She’d have to keep her jacket on tomorrow, that was all. She tugged up the silk shorts (very special for a wedding, Chloe at Saks had said) and opened the mirrored door, then hurriedly reached behind herself and threw on the jacket.
“That looks real good,” Bobby said. Whenever he got excited, he spoke like a blues musician. At least she’d distracted him from telling her whatever he’d wanted to tell her before. And an orgasm, if he could manage it, might help her sleep.
“Shall I get more comfortable, then?” Jean said in her best Grace Kelly voice. Stepping away from the closet, she pulled the jacket over her head and threw it at Bobby. He caught it, stretched it out, pretended to play it like a guitar, and then neatly draped it over the bureau. “Good job,” Jean said. “Very, very, good job.”
Malcolm
Malcolm awoke in his parents’ summer house and felt around for his doubts, which he’d discussed at such length with his family, his friends, his rabbi, his barber, his former Ascetic Philosophy professor, this Buddhist guy who hung around New Haven selling stemless carnations, his dentist, and this girl from high school he’d run into at the drugstore. Miraculously, they’d disappeared.
Of course he’d be able to have a band and be married. Of course he’d still be able to hang out with his friends. Milla wasn’t jealous. He’d still flirt with girls. The only difference was, he’d have a home girl waiting for him every night.
Of course, marriage was a two-way street. He’d do things to make Milla happy, like cook, and encourage her to be more free, and teach her about music. If Nietzsche had met him and Milla, wouldn’t he have said they were those exceptional ones, who could experience both true love and true friendship?
Lately, Milla had looked so different when she was awake, a lumpy vein in her forehead, a wrinkle between her brows. That was probably Malcolm’s fault: she could tell he had doubts, or perhaps had even overheard him discussing them. He would do everything he could to match her sleeping and waking faces. He would write her a song.
Milla’s lips were small and pink, like a baby’s. Sandra had always needed to wear lipstick, had smiled crookedly. In Platonic terms, Milla was better.
Anyway, once he’d agreed with his mother that he had to return to the States, Sandra had disappeared. She hadn’t even shown up at the Sydney airport to say goodbye. All this had happened when he was still a college kid. It felt so long ago. Also, Milla would have shown up, closer to the ideal in that regard, as well.
His mother had been right: it would have been impossible to sustain the kind of relationship that makes you want to drop out of college. His love for Milla was a stable, growing love, a love like moss.
Milla turned onto her stomach. Her hair was still frizzy from the previous night’s rain, and she’d be worried when she saw it. He would tell her she was beautiful. She needed her sleep, but he so wanted to wake her up. The previous night, it had been cloudy, and his thoughts had been cloudy, too, but this morning, all was clear. Wake up, love. Your hair will un-frizz and we will be together always. He lay on top of her, lifted some hair off her cheek, and kissed her. “Wake up, beauty, wake up,” he whispered. It was a translation from a famous line of Pushkin’s she’d recited to him once.
Milla’s head jerked and banged his cheek. She was instantly awake. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, sprang into action like some kind of fire nurse and ran to the kitchen for ice. “It doesn’t even hurt,” he said, but let her press it to his face. That was another thing he could do for Milla: let her take care of him.
Milla
Milla sat on an aluminum stool in the Eskimo Room and said, “My wedding,” in a perky voice. The room had been closed for several years, and most of the Eskimo dioramas were covered with tarp. In a few places, the tarp had torn, and she could glimpse a hooded head, an upraised arm. She hoped her grandmother Byata would arrive soon.
After a few minutes, Jean Strauss speedwalked in, accompanied by a very tall man with eyebrows like slashes over electric blue eyes, wearing an embroidered robe over jeans. “Meet Dawa,” Jean said.
Dawa stuck out his tongue.
“That’s a traditional Tibetan greeting,” Jean said. “See?” She wiggled her own pointy tongue.
“Nice to meet you,” Milla said, standing up.
“Do it,” Jean said, and then, “Her tongue’s so big. Look how thick it is.”
Dawa said, “It will bring your son great happiness.”
“Hmm,” Jean said.
Dawa grabbed the stools, lined them up in front of the window, produced a tiny silver stereo, inserted an old George Michael CD, and just as George
was expounding on the necessity of faith, Julie appeared.
Julie was wearing a navy bustier with diamond buttons in the shape of X’s, as if inviting someone to kiss down their length. Dawa and Jean stuck out their tongues. Milla hurried to place herself between them and Julie, saying, “It’s Tibetan.”
“O-kay,” Julie said, a haughty, frightened Polish Valley girl. Milla made introductions.
Julie said, “Is Johann Strauss the relative of yours?”
“Actually, yes,” Jean said.
Now Julie was attempting friendliness: “I and all Poland loves waltz.”
“Huh.” Jean examined herself in the mirror. “Dawa, are my eyebrows balding?”
Emboldened with the need to protect, Milla asked Dawa, “Can we get a stool for Julie?”
“Dear, we have fifteen people about to come through here,” Jean said.
“Is okay,” Julie said, and guided Milla to the stone bench in the middle of the floor.
“But then how will you —” Julie untied the ribbons on her sandals and kicked them off, knelt on the floor before Milla. “Let me get you a pillow, at least,” Milla said. Julie pressed her leg to signal she should stay seated, reached inside her suitcase, and took out a small pillow covered in fiery poppy blossoms. The sight of Julie’s lacy thighs amidst the poppies was too much for Milla. She could not look at them again, but then, where to look? Not at Julie’s lips, not at her eyes, not her at her collarbone, certainly not at her bustier or those buttons. Milla settled for Julie’s left ear, thick and large, but then found herself wondering whether the lobe would be sensitive.
Even though Hebrew school had made an atheist out of Milla (what kind of God would teach near-illiterate Jamie Heisenberg to make up a rhyming, four-part chant about Milla’s resemblance to a boll weevil?), she now asked God for a sign. If her long-dead grandfather were to emerge from a diorama and tell her to stop imagining Julie’s underpants, then she would have to obey.