“Even their voices. Some of them are already a little deeper, right?”
“I was a mess as a teenager. I wish my skin looked as translucent as an eggshell,” Suzie said. “You make it sound so pretty, Mags.”
I laughed. “That’s what my mother always says about me. I’m always trying to find a sliver of light when everyone else sees shadows. It’s the romantic in me.” I smiled ruefully.
19
THAT afternoon I drove up to Yuri’s house and rang the doorbell, excited to see him after the five-day break.
The Krasnys’ front door still had a corn husk and cranberry wreath outside, and as I waited, I could hear the sound of classical music coming from inside.
“Come in,” Katya said, waving me into the hallway.
“I should turn down the stereo,” she apologized. “Sometimes when I’m restless, I put on a little Tchaikovsky and it soothes me. Back in the Soviet Union, I trained as a dancer.”
“Why does that not surprise me,” I said as I placed down my handbag. “You have a dancer’s build.”
Katya forced a smile. “So I’ve been told. But it was a long time ago, and a world away.”
By the time I walked into the living room and sat next to Yuri in his large, plush chair, the music had come to a halt. Katya’s mood, however, still lingered in the air.
* * *
• • •
YURI had finished Shoeless Joe and now pushed his most recent journal entry in front of me.
“You said to write about family traditions. I wrote about making pierogi with my mother.”
I laughed. “How did you know the way to my heart is through my stomach, Yuri?”
“I didn’t know that.” His eyes widened. “Does that mean I automatically get a good grade?”
“It depends on the writing, not on the food,” I teased him. “And you’re the second student of mine today to write about something they love to eat.”
“It’s more than just enjoying the pierogi. I like to make them with my mom.” He reached over and handed me his journal.
In my family, food is a very important tradition. My Mom celebrates Christmas and Easter, and my Dad is Jewish. So one thing that we love to do as a family is make pierogi every New Year’s Eve because it’s one holiday when we can create our own tradition. I help peel the potatoes for the stuffing while my mom rolls out the dough. Knowing how much work goes into making them, my Dad says he can feel our hearts in his stomach. He says he can taste the love with every bite.
“My mom and I used to make tomato sauce together every Sunday,” I confided. “I’d skin the cloves of garlic and chop it very fine. She’d sauté it in olive oil and ask me to go downstairs to get one of her jars of canned tomatoes. When she poured the tomatoes into the pan, it was like she was releasing summer into our kitchen.”
I looked at Yuri in the big recliner. He was so much smaller than Finn, his frailty made more pronounced by his oversize chair.
“Food connects us to our past, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so . . . that’s why the hot dogs and mustard bring back memories of baseball for Ray.”
“That’s right, champ.” A memory of my father and me sharing a hot dog at a Mets game flashed in front of my eyes. “Did you finish the book over the break?”
“Yeah, I did.” He looked over to the paperback on the coffee table, its brown surface strewn with marble composition books and pencils. “I told my dad it was a book I wished didn’t have to end.”
20
MAY 1985
KIEV, UKRAINE
KATYA had been surprised when Sasha confided to her that he was Jewish, but even more taken aback when he said he did not believe in God. She heard her mother’s voice in her head, telling her that even though religion was technically forbidden in the Soviet Union, you still must believe in God, you just couldn’t talk about it. But Sasha’s lack of belief was due not to his devotion to Communism or the motherland, but to his family’s history.
“My father spent the first three years of his life in a cave in Western Belarus. The Germans came to their town and sent half the Jews to a concentration camp and the others to the ghetto.”
Katya’s face tightened. “How horrible,” she uttered, trying to be sympathetic. “I know my family had their own suffering during the war.”
Sasha tapped a spoon against the wooden table. “Don’t tell me another sob story about your grandfather who got trench foot and had to have three toes cut off,” he half joked.
“Four,” she informed him. “The flesh closed off like a club.”
“Everyone from here to Siberia has a similar story.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Katya whispered as she leaned closer to him. She couldn’t help but be afraid someone would hear them and report them for being anti-Communist.
His face twisted. “Those stories are different, Katya. My grandfather’s neighbors, all full-blooded Ukrainians, were more than happy to point out every Jew’s address to the Nazis.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. Katya now avoided his eyes. She suddenly felt ashamed. “I can’t begin to imagine.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. You weren’t even alive then.” He forced a laugh.
She managed a meek smile, but secretly she had heard her grandmother say derogatory things about Jews in the past. But, then again, her grandmother was distrustful of almost everyone, she thought as she tried to appease her sense of guilt.
He looked at Katya, with her delicate hands wrapped around the ceramic mug, and wondered if he should tell her the rest of his family’s story.
“Maybe I should stop. I don’t want to upset you.”
She shook her head. “No, Sasha. Tell me the rest. I want to know.”
He pushed his mug toward the center of the table and settled himself back in his chair. Then he began:
“My grandfather had scouted out the caves days before the roundup and instructed my grandmother to run there with the children if she ever heard gunshots. He had already left some provisions. Bags of grain. Jugs to collect rainwater. And most importantly, a millstone to grind the grain for bread.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, then cleared his throat before continuing.
“They lived there for three years. And as horrible as it was, my father and his family had a better chance of surviving in that freezing cave than any other place in Ukraine.”
She felt nauseated picturing his family’s ordeal, but she forced herself to focus on each word.
“When they finally returned to their village after the end of the war, they were the only Jews left.”
“Too much suffering, Sasha . . .” She didn’t know what else she could say. She had heard vague stories about how the Communist government had ordered many of the Jews to settle in far-off Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan after the war. She was glad that Sasha’s family had been spared that fate, at least.
“Indeed,” he said, lifting his mug and finishing the last sip of his tea. “And now you have my family’s sad, dark story.” He had in fact edited out much of it—refrained from telling her the stories his grandfather had told him about the earlier pogroms and the torching of the family’s house by angry mobs. Instead, he tried to steady himself by falling back into the beauty of Katya’s eyes.
“Is that why you don’t believe in God?”
“I don’t believe in God for many reasons, Katya. For one, I consider myself a man of science. But even deeper than that, I can’t believe a god would stand by and let so many perish so senselessly, so violently. Not just Jews, but how many millions of Russians died in the last fifty years?” he challenged her. “And I believe nearly every one of those souls died praying to a god that didn’t listen.”
“I understand why you say this, but I still believe . . . Do you think I’m ridiculously naïve?”
She looked at him with soft eyes.
“The same way you said you can’t imagine a god that doesn’t listen, I can’t imagine a world this beautiful that could be created without God’s help.”
He folded his arms and studied her as though he were examining a rare species. Sasha was someone who was sensitive to all changes. The slightest alteration in temperature or sound level would not go unnoticed by him. With Katya, he noticed that the light in the room changed along with her. Some women can enter a room and be lost in a sea of other people. But Katya illuminated the space she occupied. Her internal light burned as bright as a candle.
“You’re something special, Katya,” he told her. “Can you still date a heathen like me?”
She blushed. “I think I can. But tell me, do you at least believe in heaven?”
“How could I not?” He smiled at her. “It would be painful for me to imagine that I could only enjoy your beauty in this life. I must believe it waits for me in the afterlife, too.”
She laughed and reached for the warmth of his hand.
* * *
• • •
THE first time he saw her dance, he felt something stir. Even though she wasn’t center stage, his eye was drawn to her. A magnetic energy that pulled him with each of her movements.
“Never in my life have I seen anything more beautiful than you up on that stage,” he gushed to her after the performance.
Her cheeks flushed red. “I was just one of many dancers up there, my love. It was Alexandra who had the principal role.”
“My eyes were only on you,” he said, leaning in to kiss her over the bouquet of wildflowers he had brought.
He wanted to tell her more, but he felt that he didn’t have the right vocabulary to express himself. The language of dance was so different than that of science, and Sasha’s inability to adequately articulate himself frustrated him terribly. He sensed one could never capture in words the ethereal, for it was the opposite of holding something concrete in your hands. And perhaps that was yet another one of the mysteries that made Katya so alluring to him. Her magic could not be quantified nor contained.
* * *
• • •
A few months later, over a late dinner in the square, he proposed. The ring was a simple gold band in a red velvet box, and she slipped it on crying, “Yes! Yes!” over and over again. That night, as he made love to her and her hand reached out to touch him in the moonlight, he felt perhaps he had been wrong all these years. There was something that was equally as inexplicable as all the senseless pain and death in the world. There was the beauty. And there was love. He didn’t utter those words into Katya’s ears, but he thought them to himself anyway. There just might actually be a god.
* * *
• • •
KATYA’S family is not pleased when she tells them that she and Sasha plan to marry.
“But he’ll be one of the youngest doctoral candidates in his department,” she says, hoping to win their approval.
“Suffering,” her mother whispers to her as they wash the Sunday dinner dishes together. “His people attract it in their bones.”
21
THE weather after Thanksgiving became positively glacial. The mornings were so dark, it was hard to force myself out of bed. As Bill showered, I found myself hitting the snooze bar of my alarm clock for just a few more minutes of sleep. At least the holiday spirit was already in the air. During my drive down Moriches Road, many of the homes were swathed in Christmas lights, and the store windows on Route 25A were bedecked in artificial snow and colorful ribbons. It always gave me a slight energy boost as I pulled into the school parking lot.
Suzie was standing in the main entrance that morning. She had already begun to wear her most outrageous sweaters to beckon in the holidays. Today’s outfit was a cardigan with little silver paillettes attached to the fuzzy wool. Her hair was tied in a topknot, and her lipstick was cherry red.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she teased when I walked in. I was clutching a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and I felt like I still had pillows under my eyes.
“I need whatever you’re having,” I groaned as I lifted my paper cup in her direction. “The coffee isn’t doing it for me, even with two extra sugars in it.”
“I had some tofu scrambled eggs this morning. Can I bring you some tomorrow?”
“Maybe not.” I laughed. “But you might be onto something . . .”
She gave me a little nudge with her staple gun and lowered her voice. “Daniel was chatting about you the other day. Seems he’s in the market for a new violin.”
I looked at her, puzzled. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Your father, silly. He asked me to check if your dad might talk to him about it.”
I laughed again. “Ah, my father, the luthier . . . who knew it would make me so popular.”
“Unless it’s just a ruse to spend more time with you.” Her eyes twinkled. “You should tell that Bill of yours that someone else might have eyes for you. A little jealousy might reignite the flames of passion.” She giggled again.
“You’re a nutcase, you know. But thanks for making me feel at least better than roadkill today. You’re a good friend.”
* * *
• • •
OVER the summer, my mother had handed me a clipping from a Dear Abby column, in which a teacher described how, for the past twenty years, she had assigned her sixth-grade students to write letters to their future eighteen-year-old selves. She asked them to consider who they might become at that age and what their dreams of the future were. Once the children finished their letters, she asked them to self-address the envelopes and promised to mail them back on the afternoon of their high school graduation. “You can’t imagine how much joy this brings them,” the teacher had written in the column. “And for me as well, to make a connection with them one more time before they enter the adult world.”
“Isn’t that a fabulous idea?” my mother had gushed over coffee and biscotti. “I think you should make this one of your classroom traditions, too.”
I lifted the small newspaper clipping in between my fingers and reread the teacher’s description in the fine print. “It does sound like something that could end up being quite meaningful.”
“For you and the students.” She clasped her hands in front of her, and I noticed she was wearing my grandmother’s vintage gold ring with the oval amethyst in the center. “I mean, can you just imagine their surprise when it arrives in the mail all those years later, right when they’re about to leave for college?” She made a small clucking noise with her tongue. “They’ll think it’s amazing getting a letter they wrote when they were only twelve.”
“No kidding.” I was tickled by her overflowing enthusiasm. “You’re amazing to clip this out for me.” And I didn’t say no when she offered me the last biscotti.
* * *
• • •
THE letter-writing assignment was such a great idea, I couldn’t wait to mention it to my colleagues. There were two other English language arts teachers at Franklin Intermediate besides me: Angela Tizzo and Florence Konig.
Both Angela and Florence had been at the school for over twenty years. They reminded me of Laverne and Shirley. One was tall with frosted blond tips on her feathered locks, and the other was short and round with cropped gray hair. They were close friends, with grown children of their own, and seemed to have an opinion on everything. But since they had both shared their favorite projects with me when I arrived at the school, I thought it would be the right thing to ask whether they wanted to do the letters with their students, too.
“It’s a great idea in theory, Maggie. But do you really think you could keep three classes’ worth of letters every year for the next six years? Just think of all that paper!” Angel
a said dismissingly. They were a Greek chorus of naysayers.
“And what if the child moves? You’ll be so disheartened if the letters don’t reach them,” added Florence. “Imagine getting all those envelopes returned to you.”
“I just wanted to give you the option,” I said, trying to ignore their pessimism.
“Why don’t you do the book cover project?” Angela suggested. “The kids love designing their own cover art.”
“Or a diorama of their favorite interior scene from a book? That’s also a winner with the kids every year,” Florence said.
“But they’ve already decorated their writer’s notebook covers,” I answered. I was going to stand firmly behind the letter assignment. “This project encourages them to imagine their future.”
“When you’ve been teaching for nearly twenty-two years, Maggie, come back and tell me if you still want two hundred letters in a filing cabinet in your basement.”
I rolled my eyes. I hadn’t known Florence for very long, but I did notice that while all the other teachers changed the decorations within their classroom each year, and even went so far as to pick a motif for every season, Florence had maintained her theme of “butterflies” since last September, when I first started at Franklin. Who even knew whether she’d kept it every year since she first began teaching twenty years before? Regardless, what I did know was that Florence didn’t seem like she had any intention of cycling in anything new and fresh in her classroom.
I gathered up my folders and made a gesture that I was excusing myself. “No worries,” I said to Florence and Angela. “I never did mind a crowded basement. I’ve learned from my father, it’s a sign one has a creative life.”
22
“FOR today’s class, we’re going to be doing something a little outside the box,” I told my sixth graders as I handed them each some ruled paper and an envelope.
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