She dared herself to be happy, but there were too many obstacles. She was hungry, tired, and unable to share her news. On the other hand, Mat was there with her, and within days they would be home. She took one last swig of the water, feeling the warm trickle run down her throat and into her stomach. She called the airline, arranged their flight for the next day, and then called Lesta. Then she brushed her teeth, curled up next to Mat under the blanket on the bed, and fell asleep.
In the middle of the night, she woke up at the sound of a heavy thud. Mat had rolled off the bed and was now lying dazed on the floor. She ran around the bed and tried to pick him up, but he scooted back on his rear until his head hit the nightstand. She reached for him, but the terror in his eyes stopped her.
“It’s okay. You fell off the bed,” she said softly, making a rolling motion with her hands.
He shouted some words in Russian and began to cry, clearly upset that she couldn’t understand him. She finally noticed he was clutching the front of his pants.
“You need to use the potty?” she asked, realizing how many questions she had failed to ask at the children’s home. She walked toward the bathroom, and Mat slowly followed, holding himself with both hands. He made it to the toilet and pulled down his pants, but he wasn’t standing close enough, so much of the urine ran down the front of the porcelain bowl and onto the floor. She threw down a smoke-scented towel and turned on the water to have Mat wash his hands, but he was already gone. She left the mess in the bathroom and found him lying on his side on the floor, crying, wrapping his coat tightly around him.
“It’s okay, Mat.” She touched his shoulder, but he shrugged her away. She pulled the spread off the bed to cover him, tucked a pillow under his head, and curled up on the floor herself under a blanket. She could only hope he was young enough to forget all this miserable confusion, that he would eventually thaw under her patience and understanding. If they were very, very lucky, she thought as she drifted off, he’d just repress the whole thing.
BY MORNING, Lucy’s back refused to bend in the ways it had always bent before. As Mat continued to sleep, one arm thrown over his face, she untangled her blanket, got on her knees, and stretched her aching limbs before standing up. She had never liked sleeping on the floor; even as a child during sleepovers, she had always begged for a couch or a chair, needing some kind of buffer, some platform for dreaming. She dragged herself into the bathroom, which smelled of urine, and pushed the towel into one corner. She was brushing her teeth when Mat appeared at the doorway, still in his coat, pointing into his open mouth.
“Oh, you’re hungry,” she said, relieved they had performed a simple act of communication. “Let’s wash up and go get breakfast.”
She left the bathroom, opened her suitcase, and found a little toothbrush kit she had brought for Mat, along with a new set of clothes: a pair of sturdy size-four jeans, a long-sleeved polo shirt, and a pair of small blue-suede work boots. She tried to get him to brush his teeth, but he threw the toothbrush on the floor.
“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s get dressed.”
Mat drew his coat closer around him and let out a high-pitched scream when Lucy tried to take it off. His face and ears grew bright red. Anyone passing by the room might think she was poking him with pins.
“Okay, okay. Leave it on,” she said. “Let’s just get something to eat. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
He stopped screaming but shook his head vigorously as she tried to put on the sneakers he had been wearing the day before. Instead, he kicked one across the room and pointed toward the blue boots, which she could already see would be several sizes too large. She put them on anyway and laced them as tightly as she could. He flapped toward the door, pointing again toward his open mouth.
“A little food, and we’ll both be happier,” she said. “Here we go, Azamat.”
At the sound of his full name, he let out a string of Russian that she tried her best to interpret based on the tone of the words. She nodded along as they walked down the corridor, though she had no idea what he was saying, hoping she hadn’t just agreed to take him back to the children’s home, or to see his father, or to visit Disney World. She tried to hold his right hand as they stepped onto the elevator, but he pulled it away, jammed it into his left armpit, and stood in the corner, his wide eyes telling her as they descended that this was a new experience for him.
Once in the lobby, they entered the small café where Lucy had been getting her coffee and sat down at one of the two empty tables—the six or seven others were occupied by businessmen reading newspapers or by couples examining brochures. When the waitress came, Lucy pointed to a random assortment of items on the menu, hoping she had happened on something edible, and mimed the pouring of coffee.
She tried again to get Mat to take off his coat, but he refused, twisting the buttons on it until she was sure one would fly off, half wondering if that was his intention. When the food arrived, he went straight for the blini and began shoving the folded pancakes into his mouth with both hands. She had to pound him on the back more than once to prevent him from choking.
“Slow down, slow down,” she said, afraid to take any food for herself. She sipped her coffee, which tasted like instant Nescafé, until he began to decelerate. “At least you’re not crying,” she said, fully aware that he couldn’t understand her but unable to stop herself. “When we get back to the room, we’ll pack up. Then Lesta will pick us up, and you’ll get to fly in an airplane. Have you ever seen a real airplane?”
He kept eating, dismissing the foreign words as so much background noise. When he finally seemed finished, one of his blue boots fell off underneath the table. As she bent down to retrieve it, he kicked off the other boot, letting it drop on her head.
“Hey, mister,” she said, allowing herself to sound just slightly stern as she emerged from under the table and tied the boots back onto his feet. Several of the businessmen looked her way, then went back to their newspapers. She thought she saw one of them smirking.
“I think it’s time to go, Mat.”
He looked at her quizzically, then knocked a half-eaten bowl of milky cereal off the table. It splattered all over her clothes and shoes, the bowl landing several feet away. A clerk from the counter came over, tsk-tsking and frowning, to clean up the mess, and the businessmen shook their heads. Lucy apologized profusely in English, reminding herself to look up the word “sorry” in Russian, because she sensed she would need it again. She left a big tip on the table and ushered Mat out of the restaurant and back up to the room, where she sat him on the edge of the bed to watch a children’s show on television while she showered and changed. The television as babysitter. Now it made perfect sense.
Several hours later, they checked out of the Best Eastern, and Lesta picked them up in his blue sedan for the ride to the airport. She tried to use the drive as a final chance to explain to Mat, in Russian, how much she looked forward to being his mother. Her adoption guidebook had recommended bringing photos of her home and Mat’s new room, but she hadn’t had time to get all that together before she had to leave. Instead, she tried to describe them through Lesta.
“So your room has these nice yellow walls and your own big bed, and you have your own bathroom with fish wallpaper, shiny little fish right on the walls. Are you getting all this, Lesta? And there are lots of toys, and your grandmother is buying you a whole mountain of toys. Does that sound good?”
Mat seemed to perk up a bit at the suggestion of a mountain of toys. She regretted saying it, but it had slipped out, the need to please him causing her to run at the mouth. Despite all the warnings in the guidebooks, she had envisioned this warm bond, this instant rapport, Mat sitting on her lap and clinging to her all the way home. Now she just wanted him to like her a little bit, to refrain from screaming, to stop acting as though he’d rather go off with a passing stranger. Was the prospect of being with her all that terrible?
Lesta parked and led them inside the crowded airp
ort terminal, helping them check their luggage and find the proper gate. He patted Mat on the head and gave him an order: “You be good boy.” Mat held his monkey tightly and stumbled forward in his too-large blue work boots to pick up a cigarette butt from an ashtray in the waiting area. Lucy took it away and kept her hands on his shoulders, even as he tried to pry them off.
“All will be fine, Lucy McVie,” Lesta said with a solemn expression on his face. “I enjoy the knowing of you.”
“Me, too, Lesta,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry I never got to try your wife’s chicken Kiev.”
“For this you come back to Murmansk,” he said. “Someday.”
As she nodded and smiled, Mat squirmed away. She saw him pick up an old tissue from another ashtray.
“I’ll miss you, Lesta. You have no idea how much.”
THROUGHOUT THE FLIGHT, Mat refused to stay buckled into his worn seat, the frayed upholstery of which barely covered the foam padding beneath. She took him to the bathroom three times, because he seemed to enjoy seeing the tiny sink and toilet, though he never actually went. The novelty and enormity of being on an airplane seemed to impress him enough to keep the screaming to a minimum, except when they were descending, and he did, at that point, apparently need to go to the bathroom. She kept an arm tightly across his seat belt and wondered if her eardrums might suffer permanent damage. When they landed, she was grateful for the exposed foam padding, which seemed to have absorbed the puddle Mat had produced. She hustled him off the plane before any of the flight attendants had a chance to notice the sharp odor emanating from seat 14A.
In the half-light of the airport bathroom, Lucy attempted to wrestle the wet pants and underwear off Mat’s kicking legs to at least rinse them out a bit in the sink. He was small and light, but he was wiry and strong—much stronger than she could have imagined when studying his picture back in Baltimore—and he refused to cooperate. She finally picked him up and held his wet rear, pants still on, in front of the hand-dryer until her arms gave out. In the future, she told herself, always bring extra clothes.
Emerging from the bathroom, they followed other passengers to the baggage claim, winding through the smoky terminal and out into the cold drizzle of Moscow in May. They took a taxi to a hotel Yulia had recommended near the American Embassy, traveling through woods and countryside until the suburbs appeared with the same gray, apartment high-rises Lucy had seen in Murmansk.
As they made their way into the center of Moscow, she barely had a chance to look out the window and glimpse what she had only seen in pictures—the fantastical onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, or the vast stretch of Red Square—because Mat had pulled a big wad of stuffing out of a gash in the vinyl seat of the cab, requiring her to stuff it back in. When she did glance up as the cab driver slowed to turn into the hotel’s entrance, the first sign she saw was for T.G.I. Friday’s, unmistakable even if the letters were different. She would have to tell Paul that even Russians—or at least their tourists—appreciated large hamburgers.
Mat followed her cautiously into the hotel lobby, which was smaller than the Best Eastern’s but cleaner and decorated in bold floral fabrics. The bas-relief cherubs on the ceiling were gilded, as was every available surface on the furniture and moldings, as though the Western visitors who patronized the place would feel more comfortable if the whole place glittered with gold paint.
The front-desk clerk spoke to Lucy in English. After they checked in, she walked Mat up the stairs to the second floor and found their room, which blessedly smelled of Lysol and not smoke. The bellhop had already placed their luggage near a small brown armchair in the corner that looked just as battered and worn as Lucy felt. As she was on the phone to arrange for Mat’s medical exam the next day, he climbed up on one of the double beds, burrowed under the floral covers, and fell asleep.
An hour later, it broke her heart to wake him, but they needed to get his visa photo taken before the shop nearby closed, according to her guidebook, at five. In the tiny lobby gift store, she bought a bag of lollipops, though strategically, this backfired. The photographer had to pull the lollipop out of Mat’s mouth to take the picture, which left him howling, his mouth wide open in the picture they would have to use.
As they walked back from the photographer’s shop, the city came into focus for brief intervals: a babushka in a bright blue apron sold grilled meats from a cart; an anemic-looking young man with a scruffy beard manipulated a marionette to a Fleetwood Mac song playing on a boom box; an elderly man in black socks and sandals shuffled down the street on the arm of a stunning woman in high heels, her lips red and full. Lucy tried to smile and nod at a few people, but they looked at her as if she were mentally unstable, so she concluded it was best to keep her expression fixed. Mat seemed to know this already. His face was unreadable, though his eyes opened a little wider each time he saw someone selling food.
The air had the gritty feel of Manhattan in the summer, thick with particulates she had no choice but to breathe into her lungs. Bicyclists fought for the street with taxis, Mercedes with tinted windows, cheap Russian tin cans, buses, and trams. The expensive cars, she noticed, seemed to push past the other cars as if sticker price dictated the right-of-way.
She stopped at a bookstore to buy a Russian-English phrase book for children, which had large type and drawings, and she grabbed a disposable camera as well, having forgotten hers. Then she spotted a toy store and decided to stock up on bribes for the long plane ride back home. Mat, who had been drop-kicking his monkey and following her reluctantly down the sidewalk, smiled when they entered the store. He jumped into a bright red car with pedals and drove it around as Lucy filled a basket with small rubber balls and blocks of clay and Matchbox-style vehicles. When she had paid, he refused to get out of the car, locking his hands to the small plastic steering wheel. She asked an English-speaking clerk to explain to Mat that the car wouldn’t fit on the airplane.
“He say, ‘No more airplane,’” the clerk told Lucy.
She said nothing else, just handed over the cash, and a few minutes later, Mat was pedaling next to her down the wide but busy sidewalk, a blissful expression on his face. When they came to a cross street, she stopped and took a picture: Mat smiling broadly from over the little steering wheel. It seemed necessary to preserve this moment, not only because it was sure to be brief and certainly not because she had acquired it through bribery, but because a photograph would distill the joy, fix it, and focus it in a way her memory could not. The look on his face, as she saw it through the tiny digital camera window, instantly changed her mood.
But just as quickly as her mood lifted, it plunged again. She gestured for Mat to get out of the car so they could cross the street, but he refused and stood up, turned the car around, and started pedaling in the opposite direction.
“Mat, Mat, Mat,” she said, trotting along beside him. “We have to go the other way. The hotel is that way.”
He looked at her as if she were someone he might have met once before but couldn’t quite place and kept pedaling down the street. When he got to the curb on the other end of the block, he turned the car around and pedaled back the other way. She finally lost her patience.
“Okay, then, if that’s the way you want it,” she said. She reached into the car, worked his little fingers off the steering wheel, and pulled him out of it, tucking him under one arm. She slid her other arm under the car’s plastic dashboard and lumbered across the street, dodging cars that failed to stop at the crosswalk. Mat writhed and screamed, and she came within inches of dropping him, but she held on, finding some preternatural strength, some shot of maternal adrenalin that allowed her to reach the other side.
Mat stopped screaming when she let him get back in the car, and in this way—contentment alternating with street-crossing meltdown—they made it back to the hotel, six blocks away. The clerks in the lobby, thankfully, said nothing as Mat pedaled across the carpeted floor, and into the elevator.
Once in the room,
he pedaled as far as he could until he crashed into one wall, then turned around and pedaled back, crashing into the opposite wall. Lucy unpacked her cosmetics bag, trying to ignore the noise, until the phone rang and a clerk asked her in broken English if there was a problem.
“No, no problem,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”
She filled the bathtub with water, an attempt to drown out the crashing noises, then poured in a small packet of bubble bath she had found in her bag. She pulled Mat out of the car, and before he could get a good lungful of air, ran into the bathroom to show him the bubbles.
“Look, Mat, bubbles,” she said, trying to make them sound exotic.
She blew into the bathtub and sent bits of bubbles cascading around them. In the warm, moist air of the bathroom, Mat’s resistance seemed to falter. He finally allowed her to take off his coat, then his shirt and the pants from the plane, which were finally dry. Underneath, he was wearing new, overly large briefs, perhaps his parting gift from the children’s home. His rib cage pressed against the skin of his torso in a way that looked painful, his constant hunger on display. On his rear, she noticed as he climbed into the tub, were two long pinkish marks, and she bent down to look more closely. They looked like scars. Her stomach seized up and she turned away, hanging her head over the sink. She felt light-headed and flushed. This poor, poor boy. No, her poor, poor boy.
As he played in the tub, she sat on the floor of the bathroom and tried to reconstruct what his short life had been like up to this point. He had been born into a harsh climate above the Arctic Circle, possibly beaten as a toddler, and then his mother had died. He had been abandoned by his father, transferred from one orphanage to another. And then she had shown up, taking him away from what was, if not comfortable, at least familiar. Was it any wonder he kept his fists up?
A Watershed Year Page 18