by Kalman Nadia
Instead, in came her mother, saying, “The show is on road.” Yana had gotten Stalina into a business suit, with jewelry, rather than the horrible orange dress she’d bought before. The handkerchief her mother always carried around was neatly folded in the jacket’s front pocket, and not (as Stalina had previously modeled it) tucked into the cleavage of the terrible dress.
“Where’s Baba Byata?” Milla said.
“Oh, yes, my mother has problem taking the train I tell her,” Stalina said in jocularly irritated tones, more in the direction of Jean than of Milla.
As some Strauss cousins entered the room, Yana started. “I have to call the chuppah guy again and…” Scrabbling through her dirty college backpack, she exited with a hasty “Good luck,” not looking at Milla.
Julie clamped down on Milla’s right eyelash and said, “Maybe you introduce me someone?”
“To more Strausses?” Milla said, as three more Strauss cousins chattered past. But she already understood.
“I want normal American man, like your Malcolm.”
“Sure!” Milla said. This enthusiastic response cost her four eyelashes. That was good. That helped her understand what it was like to rip something out. She could still see, couldn’t she? That would be life without Julie.
“The only thing Polish have, is kiss your hand. No money, and they cheat.” Julie went on: American men were homosexuals, and some of them failed to stand for old ladies on the bus, but they were still better than Poles.
“Now I finish,” Julie said. She held the mirror to Milla’s face. This being a formal occasion, she had painted two lakes of purple glitter where Milla’s cheekbones should have been.
“You made me look really fun. Now, you should get out of here. Go have some fun!” Milla playfully pushed Julie, whose arms were cool and delicately muscled. It was difficult to stop pushing, and Julie almost tumbled over.
Julie stood, squinted. “I put enough powder so nothing come off.”
“I know!”
Julie walked away, listing to one side with the weight of her silver suitcase, stockings twisted, fingers glittering purple.
“Dawa can fix you,” Jean said, when Julie was out the door. Dawa thanked Jean for her faith. Dawa said that real makeup artists listened to their clients, and fit their soul-talent into the vessels their patrons provided, and that Milla should take him about fifteen minutes.
Jean went outside to get photographed. Dawa told Milla to take a seat in one of the high chairs. Milla couldn’t: she was efficiently removing Julie’s hideous purple mascara, by crying.
Stalina asked Dawa, whom she called Da-Da, to give them a moment, sat on the bench beside Milla and kicked off her shoes. “Nu?”
Milla reached up to wipe her tears. Her hand came back streaked with purple. “I don’t know,” she said, feeling herself convulse, “If maybe I…”
“If maybe you…” Her mother leaned forward. Usually, she resembled the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Now, her face powdered pink and white, she looked more like the White Rabbit, like someone who understood complications.
“Maybe — I love someone else. And that other person — I love — more than Malcolm.”
Her mother handed Milla her handkerchief. “Nu? You think if Petya Townshend wanted me, I’d have married your father?”
Milla closed her eyes so that she could see Julie again.
The door opened — Julie? — No, Baba Byata. “Mam —” Stalina said.
“What’s this? Who stepped on my little frog? Who?” Milla’s head was in her grandmother’s green silk bosom before Stalina could finish her word.
“Mama, you can stay if you’re willing to be helpful. Are you willing to be helpful?” Stalina said.
“Of course, I’ll help my Millatchka.”
“We have only about eight minutes. Our problem: Milla is nervous.”
“Of course, she’s nervous.” Baba Byata kissed Milla’s hand. What would it feel like if Julie kissed her hand? Milla was a pervert. She didn’t deserve Malcolm or her grandmother’s bosom, and raised her head, still crying.
Baba Byata said, “Millatchka, don’t you think I was nervous, when I married your grandfather? This isn’t the time for bourgeois proprieties, and I must confess that we had already practiced sex —”
Stalina raised a hand. “Once more we roll around on the greatcoat in the woods? Now? Really?” Her expression changed, and she threw her handkerchief on the floor and skewered it on a heel. “I will not give subtle hints!” She paused and shook her head. “You know how I got married? His previous friend showed up and saw I was pregnant. She said to me, such hamstvo, what a little pig she was, ‘Six months ago, I was just like you, and Osip left me.’”
“Linatchka, you never told me this,” Byata said.
“What good would it have done to tell you?” Stalina turned to Milla. “Your father’s different now, he would never do that. But then, I cried, just like you, except I was already wearing my dress. It wrinkled.”
“Oh, golubchik, little swallow, I would have fixed your dress,” Byata said, reaching a hand out to Stalina.
“I spoke to myself very strongly. ‘Stalina, he chose you. The other one had an abortion. You’ll have his children.’” Switching to English, she added, “He was quite the champion of sperm.”
Byata said, “I’m not allowed to mention physical love, but you can use this charming language on lyagushinka’s wedding day?”
“Do you want her to have a wedding day? That’s it, Mama. That’s what the world is. That’s how people get married.”
Milla had somehow stopped crying. “You think I should?”
“Horseradish is no sweeter than radish. Here we’ve organized a marriage to Malcolm. This other one — he won’t marry you, da?”
“Da.”
Her mother stood up, patted Milla on the shoulder, then lunged forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I left lipstick, tell Dawa.” She pushed Byata towards the door, paused. “Or we could be romantic, like the girls in Lermontov. We could get on one of those dinosaurs in the next room and chase him down, that boy you love.”
“It’s okay,” Milla said. Her mother didn’t really mean it.
Stalina
Stalina stood at the chuppah, watching Milla take those last three steps which proved she was getting married of her own free will. She was glad she’d read that Jewish wedding guide — it was calming to know all the procedures. As the cantor sang the last lines of her song, Osip muttered, “I should help with the chuppah.”
“You — not moving,” Stalina said.
“You trust that Johann?” He gestured with his chin to Malcolm’s best man, a bearded Tartar in a yellow velvet suit.
The rabbi said, “I am overjoyed to be marrying this young couple, whose Hebrew names are Moses and Malka.” Stalina tried to look pious, even as she thought: Moses and Malka? Like a peasant baba? Why not Miriam?
Osip was looking up at the chuppah, suspicion in his eyes, probably wishing he’d gone into the garage and built one himself, and forgetting he was no good at such projects. Malcolm was smiling at everyone like he was about to free them from serfdom.
The handkerchief said, “If Milla grows consumptive, will it be Malcolm who empties her bloody cups, carries her in his arms to the sunlit veranda?”
Osip grabbed the pole above Johan’s hand, saying, “You will excuse.”
Jean looked over at them and Stalina gave her best American check-my-back-teeth smile. Were those really shorts on Jean’s chicken legs? It was either in terrible taste or too avant-garde for even Stalina to understand.
“Trapped by your ignorance of Western ways,” the handkerchief suggested.
The rabbi said he’d known and loved the entire Strauss family for years. He was honored to have in his synagogue descendents of Oscar Solomon Straus, the first Jewish cabinet member in American history. This new generation of Strausses was also one of trailblazers, Jean having been one of only twenty women in her law school
class, and Bobby having convinced the board of Temple Beth El that the conference room should be repainted not in white, as it had always been, but in turquoise. “Many of our members thought turquoise was too bold, but Bobby said, ‘Well, we’re a bold congregation.’”
The Molochniks were less familiar to him, and indeed, less familiar to many of the guests, “strangers in a strange land.” Stalina eyed Osip to make sure he wouldn’t make a joke about the science fiction book of that title, but he was calmer now that he’d commandeered the pole.
A movement at the back — a new arrival — no, not Katya. It was Osip’s most recent boss, a bony woman not beloved by any of the Molochniks. Yana had promised that Katya would come.
It was Milla’s turn to say the vows. Osip strained forward to hear her, pulling the chuppah off balance. “A beautiful bride,” the handkerchief said, “like a porcelain doll.” Stalina squeezed it but could not make it get quiet. She could barely hear Milla. “Will marriage place her high on a proud mahogany bookcase, or will marriage break her into delicate shards, too fine for even a mother to repair, or will marriage melt her, as the heat released by a hydrogen bomb melts even the sturdiest china? Ah!” Milla walked around Malcolm seven times, as the tradition said she should. She was so gawky. How could she get married if she didn’t even know how to walk gracefully in a dress?
However, Milla finished, smiled a little, and now it was time to sign the contract. Malcolm had to put in writing that he would take care of Milla. His parents were lawyers, so he would take it seriously.
As Arkady Chaikin and a member of the mayor’s administration came forward to witness the contract, the Russian Soul did its worst: it sang a song Stalina had learned at Young Pioneer camp. She’d had a boyfriend and he hadn’t cared that she was Jewish and he was not. Soon, no one would even remember what the word “Jew” meant, was their opinion. They sat at the campfire, holding hands, and joined everyone in singing:
Crumbs of stars
I’ll give to you
Instead of a crown
A gentle song
“And did you find that gentle love you dreamed of?” the handkerchief said. “Or did you ruin yourself for the sake of the old bitch Adventure?”
Milla was staring at her with round, red-veined eyes. “You have to drink the wine now,” Milla said.
Katya
In the airplane bathroom, the lights were blessedly dim, and the mirror smudged her into any regular girl. Katya had missed her first plane, and so had missed the ceremony, but should make it to the reception, Yana had said, it would be extremely hard even for Katya to miss the reception. Katya wasn’t worried, because she’d taken a few pills.
She put on her bridesmaid’s dress. It came with a scarf, which she tied in a bow at the front of her neck. It was like her head was her wedding present.
As she returned to her seat, she felt calm and immense, and also she wanted to die inside the dress. It was a dark pond and to sink into it she took a few more pills. She fell asleep, and when she awoke, she couldn’t remember how many pills she’d taken before, so she took one more, and another in the taxi, to be safe.
The museum had three doors, but no people, and she chose the door decorated with violets, and Yana was there. Katya had been right about the doors. She wanted to tell Yana, but Yana spoke too quickly: “Finally. Malcolm’s parents showed this movie they had professionally made, called Legally Strauss, I was throwing up, basically, but Mom was crying in the bathroom about how our family was just as good, so can you sing ‘We Are Family’? Like you did in that talent show, but without the weird man-voice? It’s not the crowd for that. Do you remember the words? Say hi to Milla — they’re carrying her on chairs again, with her consent or not, I have no idea.” She stopped talking. “You’re on something. Right?”
“Okay,” Katya said.
“I can get you water. Or coffee.” Yana pulled Katya’s hair back from her forehead. “If we put you in a ponytail, you’ll look more normal. Jesus Christ.”
Her father came up and said, arms spread, “We thought you’d crashed plane!”
That wasn’t funny. Her family shouldn’t always be expecting her to crash things.
Osip
Osip waited as Bobby Strauss, in a “morning suit” that matched his own (Osip had never heard of grown men dressing like twins before this wedding), finished his speech. “Here we are in the Hall of Advanced Mammals, and I have to say — I’m feeling like a dinosaur.” The Strausses laughed. Osip laughed, too, because he was representing the Molochniks on stage. Stalina smiled her approval. She was so much happier now that Katya was here.
Bobby Strauss was talking about September 11. “When all of us felt as though we had lost our innocence, our children made the most innocent decision of all…” Osip couldn’t be expected to come up with something about September 11 on the spot, could he? Bobby Strauss, in the meantime, had finished with terrorism and moved on to Judaism, providing an English translation of the wedding contract, explaining why it was a model legal document, pronouncing the word “Ketubah” in what seemed to Osip like an excessively Hebraic accent. He finished: “I hope this marriage endures as long as the eighteenth-century Lodz Torah Milla carried up the aisle.” Colossal applause, standing ovations, whistles and a few weeping faces. The Russians tried to clap in rhythm, but broke down in the face of the Americans’ chaotic onslaught.
Osip fixed his gaze on some small, smooth-featured horses trotting across a mural. They, at least, looked friendly, expectant of evolution but not impatient for it. “We are so happy Milla is marrying a boy from such a large and —” Stalina mouthed the word culturnaya — he remembered — “cultured family. Malcolm, you are like son to me. Milla, you are like daughter.” A few people laughed, Strausses, yet.
“Our great Russian bard Bulat Okudjava said about people in love, they are ‘Kracivie i mudriye kak bogi, schastliviye kak jiteli zemli.’ In English: ‘Beautiful and wise as gods, happy as Earthlings.’ This is what I see in Malcolm and Milla, and it makes me happy, also.” A few people applauded.
He could stop here, but Bobby Strauss’s speech had been very long, with symbolism. Osip could be symbolic. “My company makes surgical staples.” The audience looked impressed, or, perhaps, confused. “If you are stapled with our staple, it will be in you until you die. From another cause, not rupture.” He turned his head, so as not to see Stalina’s expression, and found himself face-to-face with a Strauss grandfather, who was smiling. He was also drooling. Still, Osip felt a little bit encouraged, a little bit understood. “So I hope, my daughter and son, that your marriage is joined with very strong staple. How? You must be design engineer.” Of marriage, but also of staples for the marriage, no? He massaged his forehead, trying to organize his thoughts. “You choose a good metal and the shape you want. Then you see if works. If it doesn’t, fine, change.” What was he saying?
He’d spent so much time telling Stalina it would all be all right. Milla still had her eleven-year-old face. “We should now drink to newlyweds.” Everyone drank — almost everyone. Roman, the Chaikin nephew, had his arms crossed and was looking at the guests as if he were about to report them.
Edward Nudel, that show-off, started the chanting: “Gor’ka, Gor’ka, Gor’ka!” Bitter, bitter, bitter, the Russians shouted, first the large, rowdy Boston contingent, then the smaller Stamford group. Polya, Stalina’s cousin with all the problems, stood on a chair and scratched her arms in time to the chanting. Milla, smart girl, kissed Malcolm on the lips. The American guests looked so confused that Osip, who’d been leaving the stage, returned to the microphone in a pedagogical capacity. “Gor’ka means bitter,” he whispered over the chanting. “The married young couple must kiss to make our shampanskoye sweet. Shampanskoye is champagne.”
The Russians smiled at one another, bolstered by Osip’s explanation, and returned to the chant with renewed gusto. “Gor’ka, gor’ka, gor’ka, gor’ka, gor’ka, gor’ka, gor’ka!” Milla kissed Malcolm again and a
gain.
Pratik
“Your first Jewish wedding, huh?” Mrs. Rabinowitz said to Pratik. He was seated at a table with nine Strausses, who had pulled their chairs together to discuss someone’s son’s potential Jacuzzi, and two Rabinowitzes.
“What a location, huh?” Mrs. Rabinowitz said to Pratik, pointing to a display. “Look at them, fighting over a girl.”
“She means female moose,” Mr. Rabinowitz said.
“What, you’re a biologist now?”
Mr. Rabinowitz looked as though he were about to say something, but only made a quiet sound, somewhere between a whistle and a moan.
“In Bangladesh we have a museum like this, but no one ever gets married in it,” Pratik said, watching Yana talk to the keyboard player, a man with a shaved head and pleated neck — a turtle.
Mrs. Rabinowitz laughed, and then grew serious. “Osip told us how you…came to be. Feel free to ask us anything you want. Even if you think it sounds stupid, it’s okay.”
“Thank you.” What could Yana possibly have to say to that man? Perhaps he was shirking his work, and she was reprimanding him.
Mrs. Rabinowitz said, “We were the ones who helped Osip and Stalina when they first got here. We showed them where the synagogue was, and how to use the supermarket —”
“— Not the supermarket, the laundromat —” Mr. Rabinowitz said, chunks of risotto toppling from his fork.
“— And now we’re just really good friends.” Mrs. Rabinowitz nodded at Pratik until he felt like he had to say something.
“What wonderful luck.” Pratik ate a forkful of grotesquely overcooked rice. Yana had moved away from the keyboardist and the band was playing a new song, more pop rock without singing.