A Replacement Life

by Boris Fishman

  He flopped back onto the grass and glared at the stars—where else to look? They would disappear as soon as he and Arianna reentered the light, though they would remain up there, something you had to believe without evidence.

  “Saltshaker,” he said.

  “Hm?” She looked over at him.

  “The stars, like somebody shook out a saltshaker.” He looked back. “Your turn.”

  She laughed through her nose, shy and grateful. She took his arm, and he let it be held. “A necklace,” she said. “A necklace of stars.”

  “White cherries.”

  “Rice grains.”

  “Rice grains in ink.”

  “Tonight we are pleased to offer rice grains in squid ink.”

  “Only the night sky has freckles.”

  “The biopsy showed a profusion of light.”

  “A celestial rash—heavenly spores.”

  “Ew.”

  “A placenta.”

  “Who’s the father?”

  “Only Jerry Springer can say.”

  “And the children? The Seven Sisters?”

  “No, the children are us.”

  They kissed.

  –11–

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 2006

  The Rudinskys’ two-story brick slab squatted next to a disheveled pillbox belonging to Orthodox Jews. Half a dozen side-locked children in matching gabardine outfits spun around the singed grass on their side of the lawn. The Rudinskys’ half was treacherous with lawn product. To the shrieking children, the young man wending his way through their game was as invisible as a spirit.

  Slava’s knock was answered with thundering feet, and then Vera swung open the door. He wore a miserable expression in deference to the awkwardness of their last encounter, but she issued a broad, bland smile. She wore a pair of velour shorts stamped with Hello Kitty characters. In the distance, past an ornate Persian-style runner and a lacquered flamingo sprouting a spume of pink tendrils, a large television jumped with Russian pop stars.

  “Ver-ka!” boomed from upstairs. “Who is it?”

  “Sla-va!” she shouted back.

  Slava squeezed out a smile and stepped inside, Vera’s bare soles slapping the tile, tiny prints from the television remote on her thigh. Her legs had yet to slough off their adolescent plumpness. He felt a momentary sting—she hadn’t bothered to dress up. They stood in clumsy silence at the foot of the stairs. In the living room, chartreuse and puce vases of Bohemian crystal trembled in tune to the permed crooners thrusting on television. Finally, the upstairs voice made its heavy way down: Aunt Lyuba. Slava felt a second sting at being handed off to the adult. After all, it was Vera who had called and asked him to come, not that he hadn’t thought about picking up the phone himself many times.

  “Slava!” Aunt Lyuba reached the first-floor landing and embraced Slava with soft, bunching arms. He answered, his arms reaching around the puckered bun of her. They stood grasping each other as if he’d just come home from the war. From Aunt Lyuba’s grip, Slava watched Vera steal off to the living room.

  “Did you see my God-fearers next door?” Lyuba said, releasing him. “One year and three months since we bought this house, do you think that woman—Malka, Schmalka—has come by to say ‘Hello, welcome to the neighborhood’? I made the mistake of going over there once—I needed flour! Her face turned the color of snow. She just ferries that army of believers day and night, till Moshe comes home. Then you don’t see her. I’ve been asking Garik to please go over there; those children trample my lawn every day. But I have to do everything myself.”

  Aunt Lyuba took Slava by the hand and strode into the kitchen. “You saw our Vera?” she said. “Darling?” she called out brutally into the living room. Vera peeked out. “There she is.” Lyuba’s voice became tender again. “Not the girl you remember, eh?” Vera blushed.

  Lyuba instructed Slava to sit down at the rose-colored banquette around the kitchen table and went shoulder-deep into the refrigerator, her rump struck outward. Vacuum-sealed ham emerged, smoked chicken thighs, a bowl of beet-colored vegetable vinaigrette. “Slava, you are half a meter taller than I saw you last,” she said from inside. “Tell me how things are. I haven’t seen you in years.”

  “Nothing, Aunt Lyuba,” he said. “I work at a magazine—”

  “Well, we’re making do,” she interrupted him. “Garik’s driving the cab. He wanted to start a limousine company”—she quit shuffling in the fridge to calibrate how much Slava knew about the argument, though only her rear end could judge—“but it didn’t work out. He’s a geologist by training, you know. Used to these large open spaces, rocks bigger than a house. Now he’s twelve hours a day in that box of a taxi. You should see his eyes when he comes home.” She closed the fridge and turned around. “You know what my husband the geologist does now? He sings for his fares. For extra tips. Russian war songs. He was chief geologist, State Institute of Earth Materials, Minsk.” She pointed to the cramped square of the backyard, where stones with pretty striations loomed in various sizes like bird droppings. “One day he got a ticket because he was lugging home that chunk of obsidian. God knows where he got it. Isn’t that a beautiful name, obsidian? It’s like an Armenian name. Vera!”

  Vera reappeared in the doorway. “Yes, sweet Mother.”

  “You have to get dressed,” Lyuba said. Then, to Slava: “Go up with her, Slavchik.”

  “Up with her where?” he said.

  “Well, don’t go in the room, Slava, you seducer,” Aunt Lyuba laughed, baring her teeth in satisfaction. “Stand outside the door and talk to her while she’s changing. You young people have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Leopard-print or the jean skirt with the blouse with the ruffles?” Vera said from the doorway.

  “Let Slava decide,” Lyuba said.

  He followed Vera up the stairs, the skin of her thighs near his nose. “It’s nice to see you again,” he said, to say something.

  “You, too,” she said absentmindedly.

  “I should let you get dressed,” he said. “We’ll talk downstairs.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she insisted. “Talk to me.” She walked into a room decorated with a girl’s hearts and pinks. She jumped onto the bed, one leg folded under the other, and shelved her chin on her knee. In front of her was a binder filled with costume-party outfits: sailors, maids, prisoners. She motioned him inside. “Talk to me for two minutes, and then I’ll get dressed.”

  He asked about the binder.

  “Work.” She swatted the air. “Big event on Monday. So, leopard-print or jean skirt?” She leaped off the bed and rifled through a hundred hangers. A mound of shoes collapsed around her ankles. Kitten heels, stilettos, flats, pumps, platforms, sandals, boots, knee-high and ankle.

  “But you don’t live with them,” he croaked, thinking of the place where Vova the Cruiserweight had dropped her off.

  “What? Speak up.” The mass of clothes was like an enchanted wood: It killed sound.

  “You live here?” he yelled.

  “No, I got that place,” she said.

  “Why did you call?” Slava shouted. The closet was as large as the rest of the room.

  Her round face peeked out of the wardrobe. “What do you mean? We needed your help.” Slava saw tiny Vera’s eyebrows sitting together as she peered at Slava tracing out prices for the paper scallions and plums of their childhood supermarket. How odd that her parents recommended him—in his memory, she was the serious one. His hands were always clammy when she gave him an assignment. But she could be playful as well. One day on their way to the market, she found an opera record, a plump, heavily rouged sufferer weeping on the cover. Vera played it over and over, vocalizing soundlessly into his ear as the singers roared on their thirdhand stereo. Himself, he wasn’t enchanted by the music, but he loved watching her.

  After coercing an opinion from Slava, Vera settled on the leopard-print dress. She squeezed into it while he stood outside her door. Her heels sank into the furry c
arpet as she made her way downstairs ahead of Slava, his eyes fixed on the geometrically essential sphere of her ass. Like a gentleman, he had insisted that she take the stairs first.

  As they made their way down, two male voices entered the house. Garik, Lyuba’s husband, clutched a singing cabdriver’s materials: a two-liter Pepsi bottle half filled with water, a seat cushion, and several slovenly sections of Novoye Russkoe Slovo. With his free hand, he pushed Lazar, Vera’s grandfather. The older man seemed not to recognize Slava even though they had seen each other at Grandmother’s funeral dinner only weeks before, but Uncle Garik brightened.

  “Slava, you’re an oak! Look at him.” He came close and hugged. “What’s more historic, the Germans giving us money or Slava Gelman showing up in this house? This is an occasion for a glass. Come, let’s eat. Lyuba, why isn’t the table set? Papa, let’s eat. Papa, it’s Slava!”

  While everyone was trooping to the table, Slava’s cell phone rang. He excused himself into the hallway.

  “I called the big one, but no one picked up,” Grandfather said.

  “What big one?” Slava said.

  “The earth line. You said I can try you on the little one if no one answers the big one. What are you, sleeping?”

  “I’m not at home,” Slava said.

  “Did I ever tell you about Misha Grandé?”

  “Who? No.”

  “There was a guy in my barbershop back home—Misha Grandé. They’d given him a real shoe box of an apartment, and he had to live there with his wife and his mother. He had begged them for something bigger, he even tried to bribe a guy. Of course, he found the one guy in Minsk who wouldn’t take bribes. Then the shah of Iran comes for a visit.”

  “Is this a joke?” Slava said.

  “No, it’s a real story, listen to me. The shah of Iran comes to Minsk. And Misha knows the motorcade has to pass by his house, because it’s the one road in from the airport. So in the middle of the night, Misha drags his bed into the street. And when the shah rides by in the morning, they all see Misha Grandé snoozing. Naturally, the shah wants to know why there’s a man sleeping outside.”

  “What did they do to him?” Slava said.

  “They gave him a bigger apartment.”

  “Oh. I thought something worse. Look, I’m not at home. I’ll call you later.”

  “With a lady?”

  “Yes, with a lady. I need to go.”

  “Let’s talk like men—is she going to pass through your bed?”

  “What? I don’t know.”

  “You have to wear a rubber. Because if she’s lying down with you, she’s lying down with Ivan, and with Sergei, and Isaac.”

  “It’s Vera!” he yelled.

  “Aha!” Grandfather said. “Attaboy. Ass like a pear. I guess we’ll see each other.”

  “Not a tomato?” Slava said. “How will we see each other? I have to go home afterward.”

  “Never mind. I’ve got bad news.”

  Slava straightened. “What happened?”

  “Volodya Kleynerman. Uncle Pasha’s uncle on his mother’s side. You don’t know him.”

  “What about him?”

  “They got a letter. They sent in their application a long time ago. They got on it early.”

  “And?”

  “And they just got an answer.”

  “My God, just tell me.”

  “They got a rejection. ‘Ineligible.’ What does that mean? They can appeal? If they can send different information? I don’t understand it.”

  “And their story was . . . the truth?”

  “And their story was the truth. At the Jewish Center, they told me they’re trying to get the deadline extended,” Grandfather said. “And the rules expanded for who’s eligible? I don’t really understand it. You need to come over here and talk to someone. Those goddamn Germans—Volodya Kleynerman was a tank commander. You know what that means? How many Jewish Red Army tank commanders do you think there were?”

  “But you know Red Army doesn’t qualify,” Slava said, feeling relief. “If that’s what they said, of course they didn’t get it. They told the truth?”

  “He’s got metal in two hundred places in his body.”

  “I’m sure it’s not two hundred.”

  “Oh, who can talk to you?”

  “Have you thought for one moment what happens if they catch us?” Slava said.

  “I’m an old man, Slavik. My wife just passed away, and Section 8 is raising the rent by twelve dollars this year. Did I tell you that? The letter came the other day.” He added resentfully: “Mama translated.”

  “You’re an old man, you don’t speak English. You’re just drooling into your shirt cuff.”

  “I am an elderly man.”

  “Have you thought about what happens to me?” Slava said. “Do you know what an indictment is? Extradition?” He had to say the words in English.

  “I know extra,” he said feebly.

  “Yes, you know extra. You’re worried about twelve dollars. How about market rates? You don’t know what market rates are. They can take away everything you have. Section 8, Berta, everything.”

  “Okay, let’s not wet our underpants right away,” Grandfather said. “It’s not your name on the thing. I’ll tell them I wrote it myself and an agency translated.”

  “Why did you need this?” Slava said. “Israel lives like a political prisoner. His kitchen looks like there hasn’t been food cooked there since his wife died. He’s got these blocks of cheddar, you want to kill yourself looking at them. You have a one-bedroom apartment for a hundred dollars a month, and you have a woman who cooks all your food. How much more do you want?”

  “I need you to figure out this eligibility business. You could get more people if they expand it and postpone the deadline.”

  Slava closed his eyes. “If they expand eligibility,” he said weakly, “maybe you could get in honestly.” But that wouldn’t change anything. Always there would have to be some deception for more. More, more, more.

  “Berta sent in your letter and the affidavit this week,” Grandfather said. “It’s too late.” He used the English word—effie-davey. “The Katznelsons came over the other day. They said you wrote them a good one. I haven’t seen them in two years. They didn’t even call after the funeral.”

  “You saw people who didn’t call after the funeral?”

  “You lose a little steam in the late years, Slavik. Thirty years ago, they would’ve heard from me. They would’ve heard from your grandmother. But they came, I’m telling you. They brought flowers, they brought your letter, they wanted to see mine. One of their grandsons translated their letter, they said he couldn’t get his nose out of the dictionary! But I still like mine the best, with the cows.

  “The Kogans came, the Rubinshteins came,” he went on. “You remember him, with the cross-eye. Their son just had a boy, they invited me to the bris next week. And you’re telling me you don’t want to do this.”

  “Can’t you see, devil take it, this is what I’ve been trying to explain,” Slava said.

  “I’ve always been your biggest supporter, Slavik. Who is your number one supporter?”

  Slava dropped his hands. “Forget it.”

  “How’s progress with Vera?” Grandfather said conspiratorially.

  “Leave me be,” Slava said.

  “You’re talking to someone who can find out what he needs to know. That girl has a twinkle in her eye.”

  “That was a kilo of mascara you saw, not a twinkle.”

  “So she knows how to take care of herself, what’s wrong with that? Did you write their letter?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not yet?”

  “I just got here!” Slava said. “It’s not a bread where you add the ingredients together and the dough rises. Look, I have to go.”

  “Good luck,” Grandfather said. “You are my only joy in this world.”

  In the kitchen, Garik and Lazar sat while Lyuba and Vera busied with dis
hes and cutlery. Crossing the kitchen, Lyuba paused to admire her daughter. Vera laid her arms around her mother’s formidable circumference and smooched her upper arm three times.

  “Leave me alone, you rascal,” Aunt Lyuba said, beaming. “Slava, how old are you now?” She started setting dishes with faux-Greek fretting in front of the men. “Same as Vera?”

  “Twenty-five,” Slava said. “My birthday’s next month.”

  “I was already swaddling that one when I was twenty-five,” Aunt Lyuba said. “Now look at her.” They all investigated Vera. She adjusted her dress, her hoop earrings bouncing.

  “You can’t compare life over there,” Uncle Garik said. “At twenty-five, you had every question answered already.”

  “Are we eating tomorrow, not today?” Lazar Timofeyevich bawled.

  “I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” Aunt Lyuba shouted. “I have only two hands. Verochka, my princess, you think you might want to do something?”

  Vera pulled down the hem of the dress. “Chicken thighs?” she said.

  “Yes, please. Use that knife in the drying rack.” Aunt Lyuba turned to Slava. “I expected you a little later, Slava. But there will be a lamb to make you forget your name. Just so you know, Vera can cook something, too, once in a while, if she wasn’t so busy with work. Frankfurters and mashed potatoes for now, but we’re working on it.”

  “There’s a little place near where I work,” Slava said. “The guy makes lamb like it still breathes.”

  “One of ours?” Uncle Garik said. “Central Asian?”

  “No,” Slava said. “Lebanese.”

  “Oh,” Garik said. “Ali Baba.” He raised his palms and swiveled in imitation of a dervish.

  “There is only one solution to that problem,” Lazar Timofeyevich said.

  “Kill them all!” Vera yelled a little hysterically, obviously repeating something she had heard around the dinner table. Slava watched her fingers work through the chicken thighs, flecks of grease decorating her wrists. With her teeth, she notched up the sleeves of her dress.

  “I never said ‘kill,’” Lazar Timofeyevich said. “Please don’t put words in my mouth. I said ‘remove.’ Just give them money and please go someplace else. Our people have not suffered enough, they have to deal with this, too? Just leave us alone.”