“Perhaps Misha will think of something,” Sonia said.
“Perhaps.”
Their voices were devoid of hope.
Back in her room, Elaine stood at the window and stared at the street below. The rain had stopped but the sky remained dark and overcast. She looked down at the travelers hurrying in and out of the railroad station and her gaze focused on a couple who stood beneath the gray corniced entry, locked in an embrace. The young woman wore a jaunty red beret and she stood on her toes so that she could look into her tall lover’s eyes. He, in turn, smiled down at her and kissed her forehead in a tender pledge of affection and support. Elaine thought of David Green whose eyes softened when he looked at Lisa, who called her each evening, his gentle voice laced with concern and caring.
Perhaps your situation will change, Sonia had said.
Elaine seized upon the remembered words, spurred to action.
“I will make it change,” she said aloud.
She turned away from the window and went to the phone. She looked down at David’s itinerary and dialed the number in Helsinki where he was scheduled to be that day. She had thought to leave a message but she gasped with relief when David himself answered the phone.
“Elaine, is everything all right?”
She heard the anxiety in his voice and, willing herself to speak calmly, she told him about the hearing, told him that the adoption had been denied because Lisa was unmarried.
“But there is a ten-day appeal period?” he asked. “Is that what the judge said?”
“There is.”
“How is Lisa?”
“Her heart is breaking.”
He sighed.
“We won’t need ten days,” he said. “I’ll be in Moscow tomorrow. I just need a few hours to cancel my meetings, reschedule things.”
“Oh, David.” Dizzied with gratitude, she sank into a chair. “Was I right to call you?”
She anticipated her daughter’s anger. She knew that she had overstepped an invisible boundary, that her interference might never be forgiven, that the new and precious closeness between her and Lisa might be irrevocably shattered. Lisa would not have called David. Of that Elaine was certain. She would have felt that such a call would place undue pressure on him, would violate her independence and threaten the fragile parameters she and David had erected around their relationship. And perhaps, conditioned as she was to betrayal, she might have feared David’s response.
“You were absolutely right to call me,” David assured her. “Don’t say anything to Lisa and don’t worry. I’ll arrange everything. It will be all right. I promise you. You did what you had to do. For all our sakes. Thank you, Elaine.”
She hung up then and went back to the window. She was still staring down at the windswept street when Lisa returned. They embraced then, offering each other the solace of sorrow shared. Elaine dared not tell her daughter that her own heart soared with hope. David was right. She had done what she had to do. Just as her mother had called Neil all those years ago, so she had called David. Like her mother before her, she had acted to protect her daughter, to protect Genia, to salvage all their dreams.
It was Lisa who answered the knock at the door the next morning. David stood there, a bouquet of yellow roses in one hand and a small white box in the other. His craggy face was wreathed in a smile.
“I hear that you are in urgent need of a husband,” he said and opened his arms wide.
Wordlessly, Lisa stepped into them and lifted her face so that his lips brushed her cheeks, wet with tears and radiant with joy.
Elaine turned away, weak with relief. Her risk had been well taken.
twenty
Lisa and David were married three days later in the American Embassy. Misha and Sonia stood beside Elaine, watched the brief ceremony and signed the registry as witnesses.
Misha then sped over to the courthouse to present a copy of the certificate of marriage to the judge’s clerk.
“There will be no difficulty,” he said happily. “The judge wants to grant this adoption. Irina Petrovna’s objection will be dismissed and the judge will issue the decree of adoption. I myself will wait at the courthouse until I have it in my hand.”
He was right. Two hours later he and Sonia returned, aglow with triumph. He waved the manila envelope excitedly and embraced Lisa.
“When can we get Genia?” she asked anxiously.
“Now,” he said. “This very day. This very hour. Genia is your daughter. Let us go to the Home and claim her.”
Hurriedly Elaine and Lisa raced to their room. Lisa packed clothing and diapers for Genia and Elaine placed her turquoise skirt into a carrier bag. Lisa looked at her curiously but said nothing.
“What about Alla?” Elaine asked.
“I have an envelope for her,” Lisa replied. “Sonia spoke with her. She wants to study nursing, pediatric nursing. I’ve given her enough money to complete the course.”
“That’s very generous of you, Lisa,” Elaine said. “She’ll be grateful.”
“No, Mom. It was Alla who was generous. She gave Genia affection. She taught her how to love and laugh. I’ll be forever grateful to her. And I’m giving Sonia a gift as well. I want her to be reunited with her daughter. She has helped us and I want to help her.”
Elaine looked at her and thought of Neil. How proud he would have been of this daughter, of her kindness, her competence, her capacity for love.
It was Misha who rang the doorbell at the Children’s Home, pressing it again and again, perhaps to announce that he no longer came as a supplicant but as a claimant. Irina Petrovna herself opened the door, her face flushed with anger. She stared at Misha.
“What do you want?” she asked harshly.
“It is not what I want. I am here on behalf of my client.”
He pointed at Lisa and David who were slowly climbing the steps with Elaine following behind them.
“My client Dawkta Lisa Gordon has come to take her daughter, the child known as Genia, home with her,” Misha said.
Irina laughed. “You may recall that the judge denied the adoption,” she said.
“But that has been reversed.” Misha opened the envelope and showed her the Decree of Adoption. “Your objection is no longer valid. My client has married.”
The directress stared at him in disbelief. She took the decree from him and read it. All color drained from her face. She motioned them inside and they followed her into the familiar playroom.
“I will tell Alla to bring the child to you. See that you leave all her garments here,” she said harshly.
She turned and would have left but Elaine called out to her.
“Irina Petrovna, I have something for you.”
She took the turquoise-colored skirt from the bag and held it out. She turned to Sonia.
“Tell her that she admired this skirt and I want her to have it,” she said.
Sonia frowned as she translated Elaine’s words.
The directress shook her head but even as she did so she reached out and touched the gauzy fabric, sliding it between her fingers. Elaine had not been wrong. She was indeed a woman who loved clothing, an addict of color and fashion.
“Tell her that the skirt is an expression of gratitude for the care she gave to Genia. I want her to be reminded of our family when she wears it. It is in no way a bribe. Only a gift,” Elaine told Sonia.
Irina listened impatiently to Sonia, glanced briefly at Elaine and then, as though bestowing a favor, she took the skirt, tucked it beneath her arm and left the room.
“And what was that about?” Lisa asked her mother.
“It was vengeance of a kind. I forced her into accepting a gift from us which, for her, I think, is a kind of humiliation. She knows that I recognize her weakness. That skirt will be a reminder of that recognition and of our generosity. She is a woman who knows that it is dangerous to accept generosity from an enemy, especially after a defeat,” Elaine replied.
David smiled at her.
They all laughed then and were still laughing when Alla entered the room carrying Genia. The child cooed with delight when she saw Lisa.
“Mamamamama,” she babbled excitedly as Lisa took her into her arms.
Lisa smiled and pointed to David.
“Dadadadada,” she said in turn but Genia clung to her.
David grinned.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “She’ll have plenty of time to learn to love me. I love her already. We have a beautiful daughter, Lisa mine.”
He held his finger out and magically, Genia grasped it, stared at him from the sheltering cove of Lisa’s embrace, and smiled shyly, tentatively.
Swiftly then, Lisa dressed Genia in her new clothes, zipped her into the royal-blue snowsuit and handed the frayed and soiled garments she had removed to Alla. Tears filled the caregiver’s pale eyes and she bent to kiss Genia one last time.
Lisa opened her bag and removed an envelope which she slipped into the pocket of Alla’s coverall. She turned to Sonia to whom she had given a similar envelope when they left the hotel.
“Tell her how grateful we are. Tell her that the money I give her means she can leave this place and study to be a nurse. We will always remember her.”
Slowly, softly, Sonia translated Lisa’s words. Alla’s shoulders quivered as she grasped Lisa’s hand and pressed it to her lips.
“Spaseebo,” she said through racking sobs. “Spaseebo. Spaseebo.”
“She thanks you,” Sonia said, her own voice breaking. “She thanks you again and again. As do I.”
Alla ran from the room, leaving behind her the small mound of rags that Lisa had peeled off Genia’s delicate body. It was Elaine who picked up the faded pajama, the ragged undershirt, the soiled diaper, the unmatched socks. She folded each item carefully and left them on a low table.
They left then, slamming the door behind them and walking down the high stone steps for the last time. They did not look back as Sonia put the Lada into gear and drove back to the city. Halfway there Genia fell asleep, cradled in Lisa’s arms.
During the mandatory ten-day period, as they waited for Genia’s passport, birth certificate and U.S. visa to be issued, they traveled to Yaroslavl. Sonia took pride in showing them the dramatic riverfront where the Volga and Kotorosl waters merged. They visited the Church of Elijah the Prophet and followed the semicircular path of the town’s former earthen ramparts. But when Sonia, at Elaine’s request, asked towns-people where the synagogue had been and where the Jews had lived, they shrugged their shoulders and averted their eyes. They asked the questions at last of a sweet-faced elderly monk who guided them through the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Savior. He looked at them sadly.
“All gone,” he said. “The synagogue burned. The houses destroyed.”
“And the people?” Sonia persisted. “The Jews?”
“No more Jews in Yaroslavl.” He shook his head wearily.
They walked slowly back to their hotel, David carrying Genia along the stone paved roadways as once Neil’s long-dead parents must have carried the son they would bring to safety in America. Elaine stared up at the watchtower on the Volga embankment and thought that Neil, as a toddler, might have played on its narrow shingle beach. Her gentle mother-in-law, who loved skyscapes as she herself did, might have looked up at the canopy of clouds that drifted lazily from river to river.
That night back in the hotel, she took out her sketch pad and, with pen and India ink, drew the next two tiles of the mural. A mother and father, burdened with suitcases, their child perched on the man’s shoulders, followed the path that led from the Volga to precincts beyond the city. The second drawing was of a tall man walking beside a slender woman who carried a laughing little girl, her dark hair awash with river mist, following the exact same path. Elaine looked at the drawings with satisfaction. How serendipitously family history had repeated itself. Neil’s parents with Neil. David and Lisa with Genia. Impulsively, she drew ribs of sunlight along the paths in both sketches. Yes, those drawings could easily be etched onto tiles. She thought about using different shapes, different sizes. She sprayed the drawings with fixative and left them on her bedside table to dry.
She was eager now to return to the quiet of her studio, to work with stylus and glaze. She would visually preserve Neil’s vanished childhood, now come full circle in this city of his birth where Lisa, in an adjoining room, sang a lullaby to the granddaughter he had never known.
The day before they left Moscow, they returned to the Choral Synagogue on Arkhipov Street. A marriage canopy was erected in the rabbi’s tiny study and Lisa and David stood beneath it, David’s voice vibrant with love and joy as he intoned the ancient pledge. “Behold you are consecrated unto me according to the laws of Moses and of Israel.”
Elaine held Genia in her arms and the small group of worshippers, so hastily assembled, admired the dark-haired baby.
“She is from Children’s Home Thirty-One?” the young mother whom Lisa recalled from the Sabbath service asked.
“She is.”
The young woman’s eyes filled with tears. She kissed Genia’s hand and turned to Lisa.
“May she have a good life, this precious child of yours, of ours,” she said gravely. “May you raise her to a life of study, of good deeds and her own joy beneath the marriage canopy.”
“Thank you,” Lisa said. “Spaseebo.”
“Shalom. Mazal tov.”
“Shalom, shalom. Mazal tov, mazal tov.”
The sweet wishes became a muted chorus as the others added their voices to hers and so it was with farewell benedictions of peace and luck they left Moscow at last.
Seated on the plane beside David, looking down at the soft white clouds tossed by the winds that carried them westward, Lisa opened her cloth-covered journal.
I am happy, she wrote. Happier than I ever thought I could be. And my mother, for the first time since my father’s death, seems to be happy as well.
She looked at David, then glanced across the aisle at Elaine who cradled the sleeping Genia in her arms, a smile playing on her lips.
twenty-one
Denis Gordon was not surprised to find the house empty when he returned from his law office in Santa Fe. Andrew, he knew, was probably still in the darkroom, working at breakneck speed to develop the film he had shot in Alaska on assignment for The National Geographic. He wanted to send the magazine the commissioned prints and select the photos for a projected exhibit. Always disciplined about his work schedule, Andrew did not want to leave for their annual trip to Jamaica without finishing the project on hand. Denis sighed. He would have to tell Andrew that the pressure was off. He could work at a more leisurely pace. Their Jamaica visit would have to be delayed until Denis himself returned from his unexpected business trip to New York. Of course, Andrew would be disappointed and Denis hated to disappoint Andrew, but he had no choice. A surprise settlement had been offered in the securities case which had engaged him for months, and his presence at the negotiating conference was mandatory. He had thought of asking for a continuance but immediately decided against it. His client, a powerful venture capitalist, was a mainstay of his practice and the New York appearance meant that he would earn enough billable hours to offset the donation he and Andrew had made to the new AIDS clinic.
He went out to the studio but the red light on the darkroom door glowed warningly.
“I’m home,” he called out.
“I need another half hour.”
Andrew’s voice was muffled. He was in all probability bent over trays of chemicals, concentrating on obtaining the exact solution necessary for each contact sheet. There were photographers who sent their film to laboratories for processing but Andrew had always insisted on doing his darkroom work himself.
“I like to be in control of the project from beginning to end,” he had exp
lained to Denis who understood that meant the actual composition of a particular photograph to the final darkroom steps of the developer, the stop and the fix. Andrew had worked too long and too hard to build his reputation. He would not chance it on relying on someone else’s technical skills. In that, Denis thought wryly, he was very much like his ceramicist mother. Elaine mixed all her own glazes, supervised her own firing, although other successful potters and ceramicists often turned such work over to assistants.
Back in the house Denis sifted through the mail. There was an enthusiastic letter from Lisa and she had enclosed a photograph of herself, David and Genia. Lisa, always the most restrained of the Gordon siblings, was newly effusive. She wrote in superlatives, happily underlining each adjective. Genia was marvelous, delightful, responsive. She and David were deliriously happy. And when, she demanded, was Denis coming east to meet his new niece?
Denis smiled. The unplanned business trip to New York had its positive aspects. His sister would be surprised and his mother pleased at his arrival. There would be time, during this visit, to speak with Elaine yet again about her plans for the future.
He had spoken to her several times since her return from Russia and although she had emphasized how much she had enjoyed the journey, how meaningful it had been for her to watch Lisa and Genia together and to witness Lisa’s marriage, he had heard the fatigue in her voice. Yes, she was tired, she admitted, and she had had a brief bout with the flu but she was recovered and back at work in her studio. She was focused on completing new tiles for the memorial mural which, she said, had morphed into a mosaic, a new concept in enamel craft work.
“Mom sounded really tired,” Denis had observed to his sister Sarah when she called from Jerusalem. Her new baby, the child she and Moshe had called Noam, choosing their father’s Hebrew name, was two months old and Sarah often called when she was nursing.
“I’m really tired also,” Sarah had responded laughingly. “Actually a good tiredness. But seriously, Denis, you have to remember that Mom’s not a young woman. She’s getting older, she can’t do everything she used to do. She simply doesn’t have that kind of energy. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Open Doors Page 30