Freddie’s mother tried to temper the Old Man’s jabs: “How can he know what he did not live?” But no one could protect Freddie from the wrath of his community. When he was twelve years old, Freddie grumbled in church. The service had ended, and the parishioners were milling about, waiting to thank the priest. The entire congregation, and those who didn’t hear, were later told, “Freddie Vilkas said, ‘Lithuania wasn’t even a country for very long. Nobody’s ever heard of it.’” A collective gasp rose to the rafters.
The Old Man walked over to Freddie and smacked him. He pointed his finger. “You ungrateful, you. You keep your mouth shut forever.” The collective gasp evolved into a collective but silent cheer. Freddie had it coming! How dare he disrespect his homeland? Even the priest comforted the Old Man: “One day, he will understand.” The Old Man was ashamed of his son. Freddie was humiliated.
As long as Freddie lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, he was Lithuanian. He would speak it, write it, and play its music. To do otherwise was unacceptable.
He tried.
When the Old Man was at work, Freddie sometimes handled the singular photograph, imagining his father’s family as they might’ve been before Stalin killed them. Trying to imagine what his father and the other Lithuanians felt. But he couldn’t, and it wasn’t fair that he should suffer because of the past. Freddie was still under the illusion that the past is past, that it doesn’t repeat itself, catch up with itself, loop over and over, unstoppable.
When Freddie was just a boy, he eyed the photograph with suspicion. Maybe the Old Man exaggerated the past. Maybe he couldn’t think straight because he was old or because he’d survived a war. The Old Man was always old. Freddie was sick to death of him and his death stories. Freddie couldn’t conceive of a world where grown men murdered girls.
The photograph’s border was frayed by Freddie’s eager hands. He wanted to know the truth. It was hard to tell what anyone looked like, but according to the Old Man, his mother was blond with a pert nose like a finch’s beak. His father was tall with hair like his own, how the Old Man’s hair used to be before he went gray. All three men had blue eyes, swirly ocean marbles. Daina had starburst eyes, hazel with an orange sun. Danut˙e and Audra had gray eyes, alternating hues of soft blues. They were both blond like their mother, Aleksandra, while Daina was brunette. The Old Man’s father was named Petras. In the picture, Petras was supposed to look stoic, but a smile broke through. According to the Old Man, he was a jovial father when he should’ve been more serious.
At night, Freddie dreamed his grandfather Petras to life, but instead of a mass grave, Petras was blindfolded like in the movies. His last request was a cigarette, and a Russian general hurried to give it to him. In Freddie’s subconscious, there was romance in everything. The Russian general flicked open his lighter, shielding it from the wind. Petras inhaled. With his hands tied loosely behind his back, the cigarette dangled above his handlebar moustache. Until the end, Petras wiggled his fingers, keeping time with some song. He was smiling and smirking, arrogant as hell—as heroes have license to be—when the bullet reached his brain.
Freddie lived between his dreams, between mythical dark pines coming to life and the Old Man’s horror stories: “No one escaped! My sisters were butchered.”
Freddie needed an ally: someone, anyone, who’d understand him. He managed to find this savior in an Italian kid named Marco. Marco’s parents had suffered the wrath of Mussolini. They carried their own horror stories to the United States. Together, Marco and Freddie formed an alliance dedicated to living in the now. All things contemporary. Movies, comic books, girls, and music. In 1967, Freddie thought he’d move west when he graduated—find his place among the much-maligned hippies. Play in a band or something. There was no doubt he could play anything with strings. Even the Old Man had to admit, “I taught him well.”
The day that Freddie left Brooklyn, the Old Man stood on the front stoop of their brownstone. He puffed and pointed a cigar. “You’ll be back with your legs between your tail.” He tended to reverse idioms. “You don’t know nothing!” And speak in double negatives. “The world will eat you up.”
Ingeburg watched from the window. She’d already said her good-byes. She’d given Freddie sixty dollars and a dozen Spam sandwiches.
The Old Man narrowed his gaze.
Ingeburg’s palms itched and she broke out in a sweat. She banged on the wavy glass of the living room window—“Wait!”—and hurried onto the porch. “You have something for him! Don’t you have something for him?” Her expression pained, she added, “Don’t be not smart, Old Man. Don’t be that way.”
Freddie looked to his doting mother. “I don’t want anything from him. I’ve had enough.”
Ingeburg stared pleadingly at the Old Man, who dug into the left pocket of his high-waisted trousers. “Come here now!”
Freddie rolled his eyes but climbed the steps. Ingeburg’s heart broke—seeing them together, so much alike, yet so different—seeing them part.
“Put your hand out, boy,” the Old Man said.
“I’m not a boy.”
“Do it.”
Freddie held out his palm. He expected money, but he’d turn it down. He didn’t want anything from his father. But then the Old Man did something unexpected. He pressed his father’s gold timepiece into Freddie’s palm, and cupping both hands around his son’s, he said, “You can come home when you’re ready.”
Freddie looked at the watch. He was confused. Why are you giving this to me? He wanted the Old Man to say something kind, something apologetic, something meaningful about Freddie’s ancestors and the timepiece. Unfortunately, the Old Man wasn’t like that. He turned to Inge, flicking his cigar ash, and said, “I gave it to him. Are you happy?”
Freddie slipped the watch in his pocket. “Thanks.” He was unsure what to say. Part of him wanted to fling the watch back at his father. Screw you! My mother made you do this, but Ingeburg had never made the Old Man do anything. Freddie didn’t know how to feel. He walked toward the subway, singing a Beatles’ song, He’s a real nowhere man/sitting in his nowhere land . . . He was ready to start his own life.
In 1989, Freddie’s former wife, whom he’d never bothered to divorce, contacted him, screaming into the telephone, “Your father had no right to call my home! Who the fuck does that old man think he is? He says he’s coming here. He can’t do that. You don’t even pay child support.” She was out of breath. “What is going on?”
“I’ll take care of it.” Freddie would’ve said just about anything to hang up with Veronica. There was a groupie in his bed. She’d planted herself there a day earlier and, except for moving naked between the bed, the refrigerator, and the bathroom, showed no signs of leaving. This was a serious problem but not an uncommon one. Just the same, he didn’t want the mother of his only child to know that there was a woman in his bed. Freddie reassured Veronica, “I will handle it.”
“And I’m supposed to start trusting you now?”
“You called me. Isn’t that why you called me?”
No one had said anything about trust.
Freddie phoned the Old Man in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. They hadn’t seen each other since Freddie had left home, age eighteen. Ingeburg picked up. Overcome by the sound of his voice, she whispered, “Wait a second.” She crept upstairs, where she continued to whisper. “I miss you. I love you. Your father loves you. It’s hard for him to say what he feels. I don’t know about Prudence. He is insisting we go to Florida . . . No. No. I do not know when. I am not a mind reader. You have to be a mind reader to know what this man is thinking one minute to the next. But no, he is not crazy. I think he is too sane. He talks too much these days. I like him better quiet. I need a respite . . . How are you? I miss you. A mother is supposed to see her son.” Ingeburg had to say everything in one fell swoop.
Downstairs, she told the Old Man, “There’s someone on the phone for you.”
“When did the phone ring?”
“You must not have heard it.”
The Old Man looked confused. “Who is it?”
“Just take it,” she said.
Putting the receiver to his ear, the Old Man said, “Who is this? What do you want?”
“Dad,” Freddie began, “I don’t want anything.”
The Old Man looked accusingly at Ingeburg. “Freddie’s on the phone.” Ingeburg shrugged. To his son, the Old Man said, “You always want something. You would not telephone if you do not want something.”
“I called to say hello.”
“Hello. Can we say good-bye now?”
“Dad! Listen: Veronica called me.”
“Is that your wife who is not Lithuanian and not German, and not worth a cent red? The one you don’t live with? The one you never talk to? Is that the wife you married without anyone’s consent?”
“Yes, that’s her. But that’s beside the point. She said you called her house. She said you called Prudence. Why did you do that?”
The Old Man looked to Inge and pointed at his cigars before beginning his dissertation. “Listen, my one and only son, Freddie, I am an old man, but I remember that when the Nazis came and they chased the Soviets away, the first thing they did was write everything down. First names and last names and your parents’ names and their parents’ names. I knew enough German. I could say ‘Heil Hitler.’ I could say anything they want after the Red Army. The point is, I know your name. You are my son. You know my music. You are my son, but I do not know the little girl who is growing up, and she is your daughter, and I do not think that even you know her since you do not live with her, so I am going to see her. She is blood. I am going to introduce her to our Lithuania, a country that exists in the hearts of a people. I am a speech maker these days, but really, I am just an old man, and this is something I must do. Can you be there in Florida to keep your strange wife away from me? Or maybe she will want to hear about my sisters and your grandparents. I do not know. I know you, son, and I was wrong not to know my own grandchild before now.”
In Nashville, the toilet flushed. The groupie was back in Freddie’s bed.
Freddie asked his father, “When are you planning to go to Florida?”
“I don’t know. We are asking Andrei one block down to help for the plan. He has been to Florida before. And I am only joking about you being there. You are too busy for us. We do nothing for you but give you life.”
“I’ll come home.” Freddie peeked into his bedroom. The groupie was examining her legs.
“You’ll do what?” The Old Man looked to Ingeburg. “He says that he’ll come home.”
Using calf muscles she’d forgotten she had, Ingeburg jumped, her old feet rising a good inch off the ground.
“Calm yourself down. He won’t come home.”
Folding her hands together, Ingeburg pressed them to her lips.
Freddie told his father, “Tell Mom that I’m coming.”
“That’s what the boy says, Inge.” He grumbled, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Surprisingly, the Old Man did believe it, and he felt a kinship to the son he had nearly disowned. Maybe age had made the boy Freddie wiser. Maybe age had made the Old Man softer. Either way, their lives were going to change irrevocably. The Old Man felt it. It felt good, like if he opened his mouth to scream, to warn his sisters that something bad was coming, they would finally hear him.
9
Prudence
The clouds rolled in and bore down on the Los Vientos pier. The brown baggers weren’t catching fish, just an occasional skate, their tails and wings twitching, the whiteness of their underbellies writhing on the concrete. The black storm clouds came in from the north and settled over us like squat men in capes. We could feel the darkness pressing down.
In Brooklyn, the Old Man kept dreaming, and in Los Vientos Wheaton had his visions. He gave them permanence in his brown notebook, sketching my wings. Like the rendering of the ghostly girl, they were veiled, not fully realized. But I knew them. Meanwhile, I felt them: long feathered things tickling my ankles, making me feel that any four walls were too cramped. We were three individuals feeling global shifts, cosmic ripples, a wall cracking, an iron curtain torn like dusty drapes, the reunification of the Vilkas clan. These things filled us from the inside, a collective breath holding.
It’s a bumpy landing, and we’re in the back of the plane. Sam Kirk and I wait patiently for the other passengers to gather their carry-ons. I wonder how the pilot would react if I ran my fingers through his candy hair. Not very well, I think.
“I need a glass of water,” he says.
He’s sticky with booze. Apparently, neither of us is in a hurry to get up. I pass him my water bottle. “It’s been opened, but you can have the rest.”
“Luckily, I’m not a germaphobe.” He guzzles it down, confessing, “I’m better at flying than being a passenger.” He sits up straighter. We watch the other passengers hurrying to disembark, pulling down square suitcases, mothers grabbing hold of children’s hands, middle-aged women complaining about the rough landing, the businessmen folding their papers, their Wall Street Journal and New York Times, securing their laptops, looking anywhere but at the other passengers. Sam Kirk, my new friend, says, “I’m going to see my mother.” He reaches in the seatback for a spiral notebook and a pencil.
“That’s nice,” I tell him.
He holds up the pencil. “Not really. I come once a month to write down her memories.”
I’m perplexed, and it shows. Is the pilot also a writer?
He says, “Usually, I drink too much, but it’s not like she notices. She has Alzheimer’s, and it’s getting worse. The only thing she wants is for me to write down her stories and then, when it’s worse, and she doesn’t know who she is, to read them back to her. She lives in Greenpoint, Brookyln, and last month, she asked me, ‘Do you know where I am? Am I still in Greenpoint?’” He grimaces. “She whispered, ‘I don’t know where I am, and I’m afraid to ask anyone.’ Then she said, ‘I’m scared. I’m really scared, Roy. I don’t want to lose my mind.’ Roy was my brother. He’s been dead ten years.”
Sam Kirk looks like he’s going to cry, and I think about the Old Man. Is he really finally old? Will he know me? Does he know Oma? Nothing is more important to him than his family. He can’t lose us. Then, I do the unexpected. I slip my fingers under Sam Kirk’s blond curls. Instead of pulling away, he leans closer, and we stay like that, his sour breath under my nose, on my collar, and in my ear. We look like lovers.
The flight attendants have begun sweeping and collecting trash. Sam Kirk touches my hand, my fingers still twisted in his hair. His eyes are filled with tears. He says, “There’s a woman who comes during the day, and my mother has neighbors and friends who stop by, but I don’t know for how much longer.” We separate slowly, gracefully. He opens the spiral notebook. The pages are filled with blue script, the pilot’s hand. “I never dreamt that my mother would have so many things to say. I never imagined that it would get worse so damn fast, and that’s what it is now. This month, I’m reading to her.” I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. “I’m reminding her who she is.” As I get up, he awkwardly pulls his wallet out. “My card,” he says. “Here. Let me give you my card.” Sam Kirk is lovely, but he has the wedding-band tan. Just the same, I take the card. He’s going to see his mother, and I am going to see the Old Man.
Veronica is already at baggage claim. She still smokes, so she’s eager to get outside for a cigarette. “Where were you? What took you so long?”
“I was in the back of the plane.” We don’t see her suitcase. “Maybe we should go to Oma’s before the hospital?”
Veronica’s features soften. “We can do that.” She squeezes my wrist. “If that’s what you really want to do.” Sometimes I make my mother out to be this horrible person, but she’s not. She’
s got heart. She doesn’t always show it. She’s terrified of being vulnerable. I guess we all are.
“I don’t know,” I waffle. We had to get to the airport three hours before our flight. “I mean, we could rest up a bit.” Veronica knows what I’m doing—postponing the inevitable.
“Your Oma said that he doesn’t have much time,” she reminds me. “The Old Man is old. He’s lived a long life.” This is not what I want to hear. It’s June 4, 2005, a Saturday. I think I understand the Old Man better than anyone, and this isn’t a long life. Not long enough.
Freddie thought that his father lived in the past, but the truth was that the Old Man couldn’t escape the past. If he’d been able to forget, maybe he would have. He’s always felt guilty for surviving, but whenever he told his story, he kept them, each of them, his mother, his father, and his sisters, alive in some small way. Without a survivor, there’s no one to tell the story.
On June 14, 1941, in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Old Man’s mother, Aleksandra, was carried away, a soldier’s hand squeezing each elbow, her black shoes brushing the ground. She was a beautiful woman born exiled in Kazakhstan. She had walked with Petras, the Old Man’s father, back to a home known only through song and story.
At the train station, the Old Man’s little sister Daina, the songbird, squeaked, “I’m coming, Mother,” and chased after, but a soldier pointed his gun at Daina and said, “Begi!,” which Daina knew to mean “Run!” Her mother told her, “Go now!” Daina ran home to her sisters. Finding no one, she hid in an upstairs closet. As you’ve heard, Daina means “song.” Run sounds like run in every language. Three years later in Germany, Ingeburg knew to run. The word run is conveyed in the eyes, in one look. Ingeburg had fallen and cracked her tooth, tasted blood. She could imagine the Old Man’s little sister running, but there’d been no place to go.
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