by Emily Rubin
“The short guy with the crucifix tattooed on his neck. What’s his name, Jesus?” he asked.
“Arkady, his name is Rafael, but everyone calls him Shorty. The flea market reminds me of the ones at home,” she added.
“They’re all con artists, Radya; of course they want you to think there is no other like it,” he said as he turned to come back inside.
My mother had clearly exacted her revenge. Any disruption to their perfect little life would have pleased her.
“Thank you both for your hospitality. I really must be going. Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked.
I had taken the photograph from the table and was hiding it behind my back. I wanted it to add to my collection and to remember this day. The Chernovskys might miss it, but I did not care.
“Nadia wanted us to take you to the boardwalk,” Radya said.
“That’s perfectly fine. I can go myself,” I said. “I should be getting back to Connecticut soon.”
“Stalina, why did you come to Brooklyn?” Arkady asked.
“My mother sent me to take vengeance for my father’s disappearance and ugly demise.”
Arkady laughed. “He wore the wrong hat; he could not stay among us.”
“Arkady, how could you?” Radya said as she fidgeted with a doily from one of the tables.
Now I knew the truth.
“I’m just kidding, Stalina. No one will ever know why your father was sent away.”
“Actually, I came because I heard there were good bookstores on Brighton Avenue with Russian newspapers and books. I was homesick for them.”
They both stared at each other silently, and then Arkady got his voice. “The best shop is called St. Petersburg,” Arkady said.
“I like the one next to M&I,” Radya said.
“M&I, that’s where I had the coffee that burned my throat,” I said.
“They always keep their coffee too hot,” Arkady said.
“But they make the most delicious meringue cake with chocolate and walnuts,” Radya added.
“I actually heard someone talking about it on the street,” I said.
I had to get away from them. There’s something foul about informers, and Radya and Arkady had started to reek. They made me ill. “I’ll stop there on my way to the bookstore. I better get going,” I added.
“Stalina, I forgot to ask you with all the confusion—how is your mother?”
“Radya, would you let the poor girl go,” Arkady said as he grabbed another handful of sunflower seeds.
I looked at the urn. Both of them looked at me looking at the urn.
“Nadia didn’t tell you?” I said. “My mother passed away in Petersburg not long ago.”
“Where is…” Radya tried to ask.
“I had her cremated.”
“And her ashes?” Arkady asked.
“Scattered in the Baltic Sea,” I said.
“Radya, maybe this urn you bought was filled with someone’s ashes. I feel sick,” Arkady said.
“Oh Arkady, stop fussing. Whatever it was is gone. Stalina, your mother will be happy in the sea; she was a beautiful swimmer. I am sorry for your loss,” Radya said.
“Thank you, I appreciate your hospitality,” I said. I felt my palm sweating as it clutched the photograph. I grabbed my bag and held it behind my back as I slipped the frame into a side pocket.
Arkady’s mouth was already filled with sunflower seeds when I went to shake his hand. He nodded and said nothing. The door closed behind me with a whoosh of air from the vacuum created in the windowless corridor.
I spoke to my mother on the way down in the elevator. “Thank you, Mother, for the amusing show. Your ashes went out to sea over the rooftops of Brooklyn. Now you cover half the globe. It’s better that we sent you out to sea; otherwise you’d be trapped in that apartment with the Chernovskys. The urn, your ashes—what a mess you made all over their fancy-schmancy furniture. It was all very amusing.”
I could see my mother nodding her head in agreement. Whenever she acknowledged something, she would close her eyes as if to trap it in her soul. My mother liked to hold on to things. Hate, ribbons, Stalin, and her wedding ring. Being a mother was the only thing she could not hold on to. Hers was a cold distance she never learned to control. After the siege, she was simply waiting, for a strong cup of tea, for Stalin’s henchmen to take my father, for me to leave, and for death. She was always far away. I pulled the photograph out of my bag and looked at it once more, feeling slightly woozy from the whole encounter, or maybe it was just because the elevator wobbled on its way down to the lobby.
Outside on Neptune Avenue, the wind greeted me like a wall. I leaned into it and walked as if climbing the Altai Mountains. I grabbed my collar and pulled my coat closed. Breathing in the salted, slanted air put a big sting in my lungs that reminded me of home.
St. Petersburg, the name of the bookstore, was scrawled in red neon script above the door like a ribbon of candy. It was a market of videos, magazines, music, and books. A feast from home for an immigrant tourist like myself. There were hundreds of romance and science fiction novels. Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Chekhov were carefully placed for good measure on the narrow, crowded shelves in between the smooth, hard plastic covers. So many, many books. The splashy covers and rough parchment pages were a trip home for my hands and eyes. The Cyrillic letters were like fireworks dancing in front of me. I grabbed a book off the shelf. The cover had an astronaut in the foreground and a blond female alien floating in space behind him. I opened the book to page one and read.
An Astronaut’s Dilemma
Chapter One: Asteroid Zero, 2056
Lt. Yuri Griskovksy tied his bootlaces and thought about the general’s wife flirting with him at the state dinner the night before. Fanya was her name, and she was a lot younger than her husband. She had beautiful blue eyes and a petite, athletic figure. He wondered if the flirtation was the reason he was chosen for the extremely dangerous mission, Asteroid Zero. He discovered a handkerchief in his left boot infused with her gardenia perfume. He placed it inside the vest pocket of his flight uniform so that he could take it with him into space.
Romance and space travel—how Russian of you, dear author. I’d buy the sequel also, Alien Children of the Asteroid’s Moon. Procreation in space—this should make for fascinating reading. In the store’s video section they had Krokodil, our famous puppet cartoon. Krokodil Takes a Trip by Train. I’d bring it as a gift to Nadia for letting me have the day off. Good-bye, Brighton Beach. Next time I’d have the meringue with chocolate and walnuts.
Chapter Twenty-three: Returning Home
The subway rumbled back from the end of its line while the sunlight flickered a little through the tracks and Brighton Avenue was pulled away from me. The light flashed along the tops of babushkas’ heads. Women becoming blonds in the beauty salons closed their eyes as the train went past and the fading Cyrillic lettering on the walls disappeared. My eyes were pulsing to the speeding landscape as I went back into the beast and held tight, waiting to be put out at Port Authority and Forty-second Street.
Inside the terminal a man was playing a banjo under a poster of the Statue of Liberty. I would have to save my visit to that torch-wielding lady for another time. The strain of the metal strings vibrated off the steel girders and made the air sweeter. My hips swayed with the beat. I was happy.
“That’s right, mama, you move those big ol’ scrumptious hips. I’ll keep playin’ for ya,” the musician said with a big smile flashing a gold tooth.
He quickened his rhythm. I sashayed over to his money hat and threw in a dollar.
“You dance like an angel, mama! God is going to want you for his own, but right now I’m glad you’re here on earth in the blessed Port Authori-tay!”
“Moscow, Kennedy, Port Authori-tay!” I sang back to him as I made my way outside.
“A world traveler, oh my, my, my!” I heard him sing as I went through the doors.
I wanted a taste of the city
once more before getting on the bus. The streets were torn up with huge, gaping holes. Men were working down below. I had seen them years before. Their yellow hard hats still bobbed up and down as buses and cars rumbled past. They looked like residents of a new sub-level city, added to accommodate the masses. I thought of Frederica the palm reader and wanted to see her to tell her how accurate her prediction of betrayal had been. I also thought it would be helpful to have her tell me something else about my future. But when I turned the corner, I saw that her storefront was gone. Only a big, gaping hole remained, empty and blackened like a tooth pulled from a giant’s lower jaw. The Christ Almighty Church was still standing, but its side wall was now exposed. There was an advertisement on the wall. The faded letters read:
Dancers
All Shapes & Sizes
Men
Come to
“A Cheap Way to Heaven”
Five Cents
for Six Minutes
Right Around
the Corner
The words were transparent like clouds disappearing into a mountainside. A church wall advertising a peep show? I would expect that in Russia, but here in New York, it was a welcome sight for me. It was almost like a poem, and it made me feel even more at home. A Cheap Way to Heaven was still there, but the sign above their door said “Fifty Cents a Minute.” I wondered what would happen if I raised the rates at the Liberty. The cost of linens had recently gone up.
On a fence where Frederica’s storefront had been, a sign read, “Site of Bank of America’s Midtown Branch.” Frederica’s crystal ball was nowhere to be seen. What a shame, this city changed almost as fast as the ruble.
The Liberty Motel in Berlin, Connecticut, was now my home. I’d be going home now. With my mother’s revenge complete, I was free to go. I’d be glad to leave this city. It was so dirty. No one here bent over to pick up their trash. The garbage stayed where it was dropped and became part of the scenery. Amalia’s son, Alexi, told me why this was so.
“It’s very American,” he explained one morning in the kitchen when I asked him why people threw their garbage out car windows.
Alexi at sixteen had embraced the American luxuries of boredom, disdain for adults, a passion for privacy, and everything disposable. But he would still do anything his mother asked, even steal, and with that he remained Russian.
“It’s someone’s job. They get paid to pick up after us,” he added, leaving for school with his shirttails hanging out.
* * *
The buses waiting to depart from the bowels of Port Authority were like fidgeting horses with their rears swaying in impatience to be fed. The front seat with the picture window next to the driver afforded the best view, and as I was first in line, this place of privilege was mine. The bus left the city out the back end of Port Authority. These back-streets were dark and deserted even with the last pieces of sunlight holding onto the sky between the buildings. The few people we passed on the street looked up at the bus as if they yearned to leave the city, too. The alleys felt like places where secrets are kept.
Stopped at a light before we entered the tunnel, my question about Frederica’s whereabouts was answered. A folding table with a crystal ball was set up in front of a building, and there she sat in the same white plastic chair, looking at the split ends in her freshly dyed blond hair. She was taking advantage of a little bit of sunlight bouncing off a window across the street in the brief moment that it was touching her. The bus pushed forward a few inches, cutting off Frederica’s light like a prison door slamming shut. She looked up at the bus, the thief of her light. In my bag I found the picture of my parents I had showed her more than two years ago and held it up to the window. Her eyes squinted to see me and the photograph. As the bus pulled away, recognition came to her face. She pointed to her eye as if she wanted me to see something. Then she pointed behind her back. I turned around, and in the seat directly behind me was an old woman, near in age to my mother, wearing a lemon yellow sweater and a lime green beret with a rhinestone pin that said “I Heart NY.” I looked back out at the nodding Frederica and then to the old woman whose big, broad smile was exaggerated by pink lipstick applied thickly and sloppily over the edges of her lips. Everything around her, even the deserted streets, suddenly felt carefree and filled with possibility. Frederica flashed me a crooked purple smile, and just as the bus entered the tunnel, she disappeared. The old woman yawned loudly, and I sat back and thanked New York for offering me such hope and humor.
As the bus moved in a northwesterly direction, an intoxicating vista unfolded. Blurring signposts, rail guards, and trees along the highway flashed by as the white lines disappeared underneath the bus and the burning sunset on the driver’s horizon gave way to an idea for a new room design. My eyes went dream hazy and I envisioned the “Highway to Heaven Room,” or room number three. This new room would take my customers’ fantasies to a spectacular place. A vibrating “mobile-a-bed” would transport them with top-down convertible style into a perpetually changing and mesmerizing sunset. The wheels of the car would be textured with fleece and the interior lined with satin. It would have a fur-covered steering wheel, and the back seat would be wide enough for a picnic. There would be vanity mirrors everywhere, and the radio would play whatever station you chose. Regulation seat belts, of course. The sunset machine, a multicolored rotating light, would be timed for the length of your stay. I have always found bus rides in America inspiring.
Epilogue: My Other Blunt Self-Portraits
I like to relax in what was Mr. Suri’s favorite heart-shaped tub after a day of serving the needs of my customers. The Liberty Motel can be a wonderful, playful, euphoric place, but it also can be a place of fierce battles and casualties. In any case, every day is a long day, and I look forward to a relaxing, steamy bubble bath. Today while cleaning out the front desk I found a note I never sent to the parents of one of our casualties in the war of love.
This was a few years ago. A pair of teenage lovers went the way of Romeo and Juliet. They left a note that said, “We love this room and each other very much. Good-bye.” I sent this note through the police to the families. I hope they are glad to have something from their loved ones and to know that even in such tragedy the motel had given them a place of peace, however briefly.
Bill Clinton had just been elected president, for the second time. It was late on election night and most of the votes were already counted. Carmela and I were not yet citizens, but we watched on the television and ate lots of popcorn, throwing bits to the cats. In Russia, the elections were never cause for celebration. Democracy was a shadowy illusion of the Kremlin. Elections were always landslides. Little did we know that while we amused ourselves, and Bill Clinton was basking in his triumphant second win, the desperate couple was drinking a poisonous cocktail.
I made my usual fifteen-minute warning call to the room, the Caribbean Sunset Room. After several calls with no response, I went in and found the young lovers in each other’s arms, dead. The double suicide made the tabloid papers. Apparently the young fellow had spurned the older sister of his beloved. The rejected sister went mad and had to be institutionalized. The family never forgave him and tried to keep the lovers apart. The papers made him out to be a ruthless cad. I remember seeing them before they went to the room. They seemed simply young and in love. Business slowed down for a while after that, but not for long. This sad story was soon forgotten.
A couple of years after the suicides, there was a death by hanging, but that one never made the papers. President Clinton was in the news again. This time it was about a stain on a stocky girl’s dress. I never understood what the problem was. I can understand his wife being upset, but he’s a man—they are known for losing their minds when it comes to what my mother used to affectionately call their “Monsieur Mindless.”
* * *
“Tell your lover, ‘I miss your Monsieur Mindless,’” my mother said to me one night. “It never fails to fluster them, but men like to know you are thin
king about them. Miss your, monsieur—get it, Stalina?” She was simply being philosophical about men. Her experience was limited to my father and Maxim, but her delusions made her expansive with advice. She knew English and French and would mix the languages in our conversations often. I was very confused, and had been crying about Trofim.
“Yes, Mother, I miss his Monsieur Mindless,” I said.
“Don’t bother with him; he’s a two-faced snob. You can always find someone else to fuck.”
I was too shocked to react, beyond choking back my tears. When I told my friends the expression, they thought my mother was hysterically funny. I informed them that she was losing her mind. My friends still loved the expression, and when we would gossip about the men in or out of our lives, “Monsieur Mindless” was always there. Sometimes I still miss Trofim, but luckily, I live here at the motel and have this red heart-shaped tub to soak away any troubles in the water and bubbles.
* * *
That terrible night, a fellow who had been to the motel several times, always with a different woman, rented the “Roller Coaster Fun Park” for two hours. After half an hour he came to the front desk to get change for a fifty-dollar bill. I got a better look at him and saw how strangely he was dressed. His black raincoat had a fur collar, and his head was covered with a baseball cap that had “I Love Berlin” embroidered in red across the front. Previously, I remembered him being bald, but this time he had chin-length black hair sticking out from under the hat. I recognized him for the distinctive pockmarks on his face that had the shape of half moons on both his high cheekbones. He usually signed in as Santa Claus, but that day he signed the name Julius Caesar.
“Hello, how are you today?” I gave him my usual greeting.
“You recognize me?” he shot back.
“It’s your handwriting. Santa Caesar, Julius Claus, it makes no difference—you have a very distinctive half-moon shape to your…letter C, sir.”