The Cosmopolitans

by Kalman Nadia

  As if she were teaching schoolchildren new and difficult words, Yana said, “We. Are. Getting. Married.” After a quick glance at both of her parents, as if that was all she needed to see of them, she said, “We don’t care what you think.”

  “That’s it? You don’t care?” Osip said. He looked at Pratik, whose fearful eyes perhaps mirrored his own. Osip put a hand to his forehead and stared at the carpet. It was supposed to look like a zebra’s skin. The stripes were at a twenty degree angle from the fireplace.

  “We would want your blessing —” Pratik said.

  Yana lifted a hand. “The right to choose who I can marry —”

  Stalina said, “What do we say to such a daughter?”

  “Do you care or do you not care?” Osip said.

  “She cares, Mr. Molochnik, of course, we both —” Pratik said.

  “I don’t want you say it, I want she say it.” He sounded as if he were still fifteen, trying to buy vodka with a breakable voice.

  Yana said, “I’m a Care Bear.”

  Osip ran from the room and out the back door.

  It was raining, but he ran until he reached the red maple — his own beautiful, exotic tree — behind the garage. Under its semi-protective canopy, he could try to forget. He would stay until his regular family had reclaimed the house. Osip had been the father of three girls who jumped on him when he came home at night, who loved his stories about computer programming and youthful hooliganstvo. Yana used to sit in that very tree, reading about her crazy activists. Perhaps he should have talked to her back then, but he’d thought that in America, children should be allowed to read any kinds of books they liked. Why else had they come?

  He heard a splash and turned to see Stalina’s legs in their pink jeans, picking their way through the swampy lawn.

  “I’m in slippers, I can’t go all the way out,” she said.

  “So go home, you’re giving all the animals palpitations with your noise,” he said, and turned away to face the neighbor’s fence. The neighbor, Vick, a former alcoholic, grew tomatoes and rode a motorcycle. Why couldn’t Osip have a life like that?

  She sloshed toward him. “What animals?”

  “Hedgehogs, frogs,” he said as she came near and ducked under the tree’s branches, tore off a vine which had had the misfortune of falling across her face.

  “See my slippers?” She lifted a muddy foot in the air.

  Osip gave an elaborate shrug.

  “Don’t worry about Yanka, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. That Arab’s probably feeding her hookahs.”

  Osip realized one of the main reasons he’d married Stalina: she was a girl who wouldn’t make him cry, who talked about preserving your nerves, who wasted no feelings unless death or career failure were involved. Crying was something Osip had done more of as a boy than any other boy he’d known. And here it was again. Even Stalina, in such moments, couldn’t keep him from it. Recidivism would always rear its ugly head, no matter what the liberals said.

  “What am I going to do if you go crazy?” Stalina took her handkerchief from her pocket. “Blow.” He waved it away. “I’ll get them out of the house, and then I’ll make you tea.”

  Holding his nose, Osip shook his head. “You didn’t — you didn’t say love — so it must — I’ve raised — I’ve raised —”

  “Oh, what have you raised now?”

  Her skeptical tone made him almost angry enough to stop crying. “Daughters who have only contempt for my teachings!”

  “You have teachings now?”

  “You can mock me, too, I don’t care anymore.”

  “You’re suddenly a Nihilist?” Stalina had not actually said that, but he felt her thinking it, and adding something about him being older than Turgenev’s Fathers, and mentally younger than the Sons.

  “Why don’t you go home?” he said.

  A displaced seagull flew above the tree, and Stalina ducked her head. She had a speech: Seagulls: Not Romantic Birds, as We Were Led to Believe. “Not without you,” she said.

  “Why are you trying to make me feel bad?”

  “Osya.” She dripped and stared. He would have to go back.

  Like an alien spacecraft, Yana had torn the roof from his house, and there was no more warmth, only the feeling of someone watching. Once they were inside, and the children had left, he told Stalina these ludicrous imaginings, and she didn’t laugh at him, but seemed to want to say with her eyes, Don’t look up, then.

  Katya

  She came carrying a bottle of water, because wasn’t that a good thing for a girlfriend of a guy working construction to do?

  “Kotletka,” Roman shouted over the noise. A kotletka was his favorite food, a chicken patty, so it had become one of his nicknames for her. The sight of his giant silver-toothed smile went to her head.

  “If we approach the blight of imperialism in a more systematic way —” She turned around and clapped her hand over her mouth: the familiar feel of her own lips wetly moving.

  A yellow-gloved hand on her shoulder. “What?” Roman said in her ear.

  “The voice.” She wasn’t going to yell it: he should know by now. There were guys only ten feet away.

  “The what?”

  “The fucking voice,” she said in his ear. “Now your friends hate me.”

  “But they couldn’t fucking hear it. Because it’s so” — he spun a finger in the air, “fucking loud.”

  Katya let herself be turned back around. A few men were looking at her, but in a friendly, leery way, as they might have looked at any girl.

  She leaned against a beam and watched him hammer. She’d never spent any time watching construction work before, except for in music videos. “Can I try?”

  Roman only had to show her twice. The hammer wasn’t very heavy at all. Holding it, she felt like a giant with a long, strong, swinging arm. “You really like?” he said, and found her a mask, and put his gloves on her hands, and warned she’d have to Audi if his boss returned.

  After a few minutes, she took off her mask and yelled, “This is easier than I thought.” He gave her a thumbs-up. “Will you show me how to drill?” He nodded again, a smile pushing up his mask. “Is this so easy for everyone?” He shook his head. “What’s this smell — wood chips?”

  “Hot stuff, mask on face,” Roman said.

  “Fine.” She finished the board. “Can I do another one? We are a unique state requiring unique —” she covered her mouth, swiveled her head. No one was looking at her. All that banging and sawing sounded like electro-thrash, made her feel like she was back at that non-alcoholic club she’d gone to freshman year of high school, before so many things were her fault. She let her hand drop.

  Roman

  Roman, having recently discovered a few calling card tricks, dialed his mother’s number as soon as his aunt and uncle left for work.

  “What up?” he said. He’d taught her this bit of American English before he left.

  “Allo, Allo?”

  “What up?” In the background, Alyosha said, “kakoita bandit?”, some kind of bandit. Alyosha — the boyfriend who gave her heroin, a gangster so small-time his street name was also the name by which his mother called him.

  “It’s me,” Roman finally said.

  “Romachka!” Something clattered.

  Roman said, “I’m getting all kinds of medals in school.”

  “Gold or silver?” She sounded all right, she could follow a conversation.

  “Mostly gold, but a few silver. I tried to send one to you, but the post office told me it was too heavy.”

  “It was too —” His mother yelped, and Alyosha came onto the phone.

  “So, boy, you found a baba?” he said.

  “Yeah. Pamela Anderson.”

  “It’s good to have a baba.”

  In the background, his mother said “Lyosh,” laughed.

  Roman said, “How is she?” Who else could he ask?

  His mother took back the phone. “Roma, tell me
something new, something happy.”

  She’d made this request so often, he instantly thought of a half-dozen new lies. But he didn’t have to lie about everything anymore. “I have a girlfriend, she’s very nice, she’s not wild.”

  “Is she Jewish?” His mother, who had conceived him with, to the best of her recollection, an Armenian at a Feast Day disco, wished to know whether this young lady was of the faith.

  “Yes, Jewish, from a good family, friends of Aunt Alla’s.”

  “She’s not spending all your money?” She didn’t sound as happy as he’d thought she would.

  “Mam, no. I’ve saved over eight hundred dollars.”

  “You’re buying a car? He’s buying a car, Lyosh.” Alyosha snorted into the phone.

  “Mam? Remember, I’m saving to bring you here, to rent you a nice apartment?”

  She sighed. “Ah, da, and didn’t I tell you, I don’t need your America? Lyosh, stop it.”

  “Why don’t you just come for a visit and see?”

  “Your aunt decided you’d luchi pajivyesh, live better with her, I said all right. You weren’t fighting to stay here in the provinces with your mother.”

  “But —”

  “Zaskuchalsa, got homesick, fine — and live like that. You think I would be so sad and sick all the time if you were here?”

  “What’s he telling you?” Alyosha said in his lord-of-the-house voice.

  “Don’t you want to come here, just for a visit, just to see what it’s like?” Roman said.

  “I don’t know.” She began to cry.

  “Mam: we could go to New York, we could look at all the stores.”

  “Maybe. Just to look at my son.”

  Alyosha said, “What kind of shit — bossing you?”

  She muffled the phone for a minute, and when she returned, said, “No, Roman, you really can’t boss me.”

  “I’m not, mam, you just said —”

  “I’m the mother. I’m the mother, hear?” What did Alyosha have her on now?

  “But —”

  “Oh no, you’re not the czar.” She hung up.

  Malcolm

  After Milla and Izzy finally left for the park, Malcolm and Jelani tried to rock, Malcolm on the keyboard, Jelani on the guitar, and Malcolm was the one who knew a lot more about music, but he kept missing cues.

  “Boy,” Jelani said. Malcolm hated it when Jelani called him “boy,” but today, he deserved it.

  “I probably just need to eat something.” Malcolm got some leftover Thai salad out of the refrigerator. At least Jelani was real. All Malcolm’s friends from college were still working out scales. One of them had actually referred to himself as “the recipient of a nationally recognized prize.”

  “Adulthood is riffing,” Malcolm said aloud.

  As he reheated some matzo ball soup Milla had made for his parents the previous night (she still wasn’t that good at it), Jelani put on the Go-Betweens. Great. An Australian band.

  Who was that freckle in a bikini to him now?

  “You ever thought of the women you had before Theanra?” After all this time, Malcolm still wasn’t sure whether Jelani’s girlfriend had a “d” at the end of her name or not: was it Theandra or, as he kept saying, Theanra? He always slurred the end, just to be safe.

  Jelani began talking about Italian twins he’d supposedly done in high school. “Milla reminds me of them sometimes, her big thighs.”

  Malcolm had heard Jelani on Milla before. He wasn’t jealous, like some guys might be, but what about their friendship? Here Malcolm was, trying to share something important, and Jelani was off on his big thigh thing. He took advantage of Jelani’s attempt to bite through a matzo ball and said, “Right, like me, in college, I did this semester abroad, and there was this Australian girl. Remember my Visions of Landra song? That was about her. She had these tits, they looked like they were fake, but they weren’t.” He wasn’t doing her justice. “They were really ripe, like they could pop any minute. She was an, an explosive force, you know?”

  Jelani shrugged and nodded, chewing.

  “She could talk to anyone. She played the violin for this metal band, she was a great violinist, and her natural smell was, like, tan. Think there’s a song in this? Or no?”

  He almost hoped Jelani would say no, but he said, “Whatever.”

  Before Malcolm could get his hands on a pen, he knew how it would go, and yelled the words to Jelani: “It’s only in the ocean, that it’s ever truly night, and you tried to drown me, and I tried to fight.”

  “There is no try.” Jelani said. Malcolm sometimes enjoyed Jelani’s Star Wars references, but more often than not, they ruined the flow and the mood. They weren’t Mathletes doing problem sets in some basement, they were funk musicians.

  “Wait,” Malcolm said. In the beautiful indigo ink of his father’s pen, he wrote down what he’d just said. Perhaps he should be focusing on his poetry, forget this shallow music business.

  What kind of life could he have had with Sandra? He saw her cowboy hat hanging off the doorknob, a wave arcing over his head. For what had he returned to the States? For college, which was useless to artists. There was Milla, and there was Izzy, and he cleaved unto them, sure, but with Sandra, it would have been a Blakean life. “What kind of boy you want today? To play?” Malcolm was trying to get Sandra’s spontaneity across, but having to rhyme was ruining it. “Let’s go wrestle. Outside. Let’s go to the park.” Milla and Izzy would be there, though.

  “What’s with wrong with you?” Jelani passed him the bong.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Malcolm said. “It’s just I’m —” He’d expected to finish the sentence with the words, “still hungry,” but “trapped” came out instead. What was that about?

  He got up and began to pace before the windows, purposely stepping on the bottoms of the red velvet curtains. How had he ended up here, living with his parents and a child and a wife who was far from being the hottest woman he’d ever met? And another day was ending, and he still wasn’t famous, he still wasn’t anyone whose name the other Strausses would drop. How had this happened to the boy who’d played in a piano bar at the age of eighteen, hiked the bush alone at twenty? “I’m not blaming Izzy, he’s just a baby, that’s what they do, cry for like eons. It just feels so small here, you know?”

  Jelani looked around the living room.

  “Not spacewise. Internally. And our room is really small. It’s like, am I going to just be a dad? That’s what Milla acts like.” Jelani took another drag. “Does Theandra ever pressure you?”

  Jelani said what Malcolm knew he would say: He and Theandra were open, so it was different. To Malcolm, it seemed not only different, but also better. Open, by definition, was better than closed; even if you only listened to those two words, you’d know that.

  “You know Milla, though,” Malcolm said.

  Jelani leaned back on the smoking sofa and gave Malcolm some excellent advice, really freeing his mind, so that at the end, Malcolm didn’t know how to express his gratitude, could only endeavor to freestyle some riffs in the style of Prince.

  Osip

  Only Osip was on hand to greet the Rehmans: Pratik’s parents and grandmother, three tiny, sleepy, people, accompanied by strapping, suitcase-swinging, dentist cousins from Pennsylvania. Yana and Pratik were shouting upstairs, Katya was hammering in the basement, and Stalina was clanking in the kitchen.

  The two Mrs. Rehmans stepped away from Osip’s proffered hand. “You are a little like Orthodox Jewish ladies,” he said, putting his hand in his pocket. He wanted them to know that he knew people like them, that they did not seem strange to him.

  “I’m afraid they don’t understand English,” Mr. Rehman said.

  Not having prepared an alternate topic, Osip continued his theme of unity, “Islam is in many ways close to Judaism. You have Moses, too, yes?”

  “Indeed.” Mr. Rehman said, smiling, but without attempting a translation.

  Osip smiled. “Stal
inatchka!”

  Something in the kitchen crashed. Stalina emerged, with the fixed smile and crab walk of a game-show hostess. “Welcome to America,” she said, sweeping her arm to encompass the living and dining rooms, for which she’d recently purchased gold slipcovers. “Make yourself at home. You know, in Jewish law, we say, ‘Be good to strangers, because you were once stranger, and not only stranger — slave.’” She proffered a plate of shish kebobs.

  Pratik’s grandmother pointed at the skewers and spoke rapidly. “We are very tempted,” Mr. Rehman said, and then asked whether he might ask whether the meat had been certified for Muslim consumption.

  Stalina continued to hold out the plate, as if it were a baby they’d failed to admire. “But they are shish kebobs.”

  Osip excused himself to go get the children.

  Upstairs, Yana was pacing her bedroom in a long, green, Indian-style dress. “You’re the first generation,” she said. “You want to be Westernized. Duh.”

  “Mr. Molochnik,” Pratik said, “You have just met my parents, have you not?”

  “Have you not?” Yana mimicked.

  “Is it your impression, Mr. Molochnik, that they would be very excited to now have a strange American girl kiss their feet?”

  Yana wrapped a tie-dyed scarf around her neck. “It’s like I’m too Bengali for you.”

  “Bangladeshi,” Pratik said.

  “Not all the time, like my family’s from Ukraine, but sometimes we say we’re Russian, to make it simpler. I’ve heard you say ‘Bengali.’ You’re just saying ‘Bangladeshi’ now to shut me out.”

  “Parents are here,” Osip said. Something of the panic of the previous scene must have lingered in his voice, because the children immediately stepped into the hallway. Behind Yana’s back, Osip raised his eyebrows at Pratik, to signify manly unity.

  Katya had already come up from the basement, and was perched on the edge of the couch, unaware she was still holding a small screwdriver.