by Mara White
We eat lunch at a crappy downtown diner, and everyone’s in shock. I’m thinking back to the times when I was small and I thought we were well off. My parents worked menial jobs with very long hours, but they doted on Alexei and me, and we had everything we wanted. I stir my chicken-noodle soup around and around in it’s bowl. I keep adding crackers without taking a bite, and then I can’t eat anything when my mother starts crying.
My father comforts her softly in Russian as she snivels into the shoulder of his well-worn cardigan with dark-brown leather elbow patches. Mozey is with us, squished in the booth next to Lex. I’m on the very end, one butt cheek hanging off. I look at Mozey and register how strange it is that he’s here. He’s like a parasite, but a good one that’s taken ahold of us. I still hate that I’m so attracted to him. Maybe if I weren’t we could just adopt him. But who am I kidding? Who’d want into this family? We haven’t even got a place to live and the future of our finances is banking on one lousy social worker and her unmotivated little brother.
“Hey, everybody,” Mozey says, grabbing all of our attention. “I’ve done this before. It’s not so bad. It’s just called starting over. I’ve lost my house, had nothing, but life still goes on.”
“Thank you, Mozey, for your words,” my dad says, leaning across the table and roughing up Mozey’s shoulder. My parents have accepted him as if he were their third kid. Since when is it so easy to just snake into this family? Just ride a bus to Detroit and then you get to be one of us? I’ve paid my dues over twenty-five long years, and I’m not gonna lie, a whole lot of those years have been pretty shitty. Especially the ones where I’ve been footing all of the bills.
“Starting over from zero,” I say morosely. I’m not in the mood to be cheered up. I loved my house. I love my family. I don’t understand how things could be so fucked.
“A fresh start!” Mozey says, smiling, and I shoot him a dirty look. I wish his cheerful ass would shut the hell up.
“Mom and Dad, Lana and I discussed how this should be done. Dad, it will be too emotional for Mom to see her things carted off.”
My dad nods in agreement then massages his brow. All this negotiation has been going on for years, and now suddenly the threats are all real. It’s a done deal. Our house is up for short sale—but more likely it will be demolished and the land sold, our house is in bad shape.
“You and Mom will pack tonight with just the absolute necessities. You can mark whatever you want put in storage, and tomorrow we’ll take care of that. There won’t be much room for furniture so most of it will end up going to the dump.”
Alexei assumes my mom won’t understand this, but she does and again bursts out crying.
Mozey grabs my mom’s hand, and I practically fall out of my seat. She looks at him sincerely as she wipes away her tears.
“Mrs. Finch, they won’t take anything you don’t want them to.” His gesture is kind but his appropriation of everything mine is down right blowing my freaking mind. How do you just insert yourself into someone’s family over the course of a few days? It’s his job to comfort my mother? His easy character drives me nuts. Now he’s charmed everyone into caring for him, and it doesn’t seem fair.
I shove my soup away from myself and abruptly stand.
“I’ll wait in the car,” I say, throwing some cash on the table.
I storm out of the diner and head toward the car. I stomp my foot when I realize that Lex has the keys, and it’s colder outside than I remembered it being. I lean against the car, trying to get the best angle of the sun. I’ve got to get some space between me and him before he drives me insane.
I squint and look up at the weak sun and smile. I remember when I was a teenager and I took a towel to the back yard to try to tan my pasty Siberian skin, and my dad came out to do some yard work. I must have been around thirteen.
“Why are laying down, Svetlana?” he asked me with genuine curiosity.
“To get a tan, Dad. You know, to try to get bronzed. Beach girl—like Malibu Barbie.”
That’s when my dad schooled me on how Russians tan standing up. Then everything is exposed at once.
“You won’t have to flip around like a grilled sandwich.” I remember him telling me.
I smile into the weak sun as the memory warms me. My dad always did stand on the beach or at the lake. The sweetness of the memory honeys the sting. Goodbye to that backyard. Goodbye to all of those memories.
I open my eyes when I see a shadow cross over my lids. Mozey Cruz is blocking my sun and all up in my personal space.
“You got a lot of nerve following me here,” I say, pointing my finger at him. “Hijacking my family, trying to take over crisis control!” I cross my arms and stare him down. “That’s my job. And speaking of jobs, having you here could make me lose mine. I support my family, Mozey, by eating shitty Ramen for dinner, packing toast for breakfast every morning and NEVER even going to the movies!”
Tears are streaming down my face, and I can’t even remember the last time I cried. I’m numb to tragedy especially when I work with it daily and it’s my job to try to smooth it.
“I’m sorry, Lana. Would you rather have me leave?’
He looks so handsome when he says it, grown-up concern shadowing his beautiful face.
“I wanted to help you, but if I’m not helping, I’ll leave.”
I put my hands on my hips and groan and cry a little more.
“Just say the word, I’ll go. Am I no longer a team asset?”
I smile a little at him and use my sleeve to wipe my cheek. I can’t help but giggle even with the tears flooding my face.
“You’re a pain in my ass is what you are. A certified stalker. We’re not even on the same team.”
“I could give you a hug and maybe you’d feel better.”
“I’m not allowed to hug clients,” I say, bringing my arms across my chest. My green sweater is scratchy, and I want to dig inside my grandmother’s old coat and tear at my skin.
“We’re not at Pathways. We’re in Motor City, and no one will see us. I followed you here because I like you Lana. A lot. And I think you like me, too, even though you won’t admit it.”
I spin on the pavement and march to the other side of the car, trying all the door handles even though I know they’re all locked. The tears are falling again, making me feel so out of control.
“I don’t even have a house, Mozey. Don’t make me lose my job, too!” I can see my words reflected in the little puffs of air that let me know the temperature is quickly dropping.
When I look up my mom and dad are hobbling down the steps of the diner. My mom’s hip has been bad for years, but now my dad really has to sustain her. Mozey rushes over to help them, and it makes me even angrier.
I wipe away the tears and plaster on a fake smile to hide my pain from my mom. She doesn’t need more to worry about. She’s just lost everything she ever owned.
Later that evening I help my mom pack up pictures. We wrap them in her silk scarves, something she’s got maybe fifty of. She takes out a bright purple one and wraps it around my head.
“Your eyes,” she says. Brushing the back of her hand along my temple.
“Purple brings out green,” I say, and she smiles and nods.
My father is at the kitchen table with Mozey and Lex, going over finances. Really it should be me down there because I basically support my parents, but in my house we adhere to sexist gender roles for the most part, no matter how antiquated or ridiculous.
“Mozey, eh? Eh?” my mother says, smiling at me.
I blush so hard my face is probably more purple than the scarf on my head. My mother and I DO NOT discuss men. Or sex, or even menstruation for that matter.
“Handsome boy,” she says, nodding her head.
I screw my face up at her. I’m m
ortified. Of course she saw right through our cover.
“He’s Alexei’s friend.” I shrug my shoulders at her. “Should we move onto your jewelry and hair combs?”
She keeps nodding at me like we have a secret, and it’s completely annoying. I go to her dresser and yank out the top drawer. It’s velvet lined and contains every treasure she’s ever collected.
I have childhood memories of when she’d let me look at and touch these mysterious things. They seemed to hold so much power to me when I was small, the way they shimmered and glistened and made my mother beautiful when she wore them. I remember thinking she was magical with these charms, and it made me want to grow up fast and become a woman.
Sometimes she would put a scarf on me or a necklace or a comb in my hair. I’d walk around like I was balancing a book on my head, refusing to even move my neck and shoulders.
But then I grew up into a tomboy and then a hippie and then an activist, right in that order—I was never a glamor girl. I never even got my ears pierced. Now that I think about it, Lex and I probably both disappointed the hell out of our parents.
I lean in and give my mom a kiss on the cheek, something I rarely do with her is initiate affection.
“You’re right, Mom. Mozey is smokin’ hot! But he’s way, way too young.”
She probably doesn’t understand me, but I feel the need to share this, to speak it out loud. She wants me to have a love life, so I can pretend. Besides, I’ve got to tell someone how attractive he is, and I can’t even tell Janey he’s here let alone detail the description of his freakishly beautiful face and his stupid gorgeous body. Guys shouldn’t be so pretty. Mozey’s face and body are a crime against humanity for making us feel lesser than.
Her green eyes that mirror mine sparkle at my comment, and for a minute, I wonder just how much she plays dumb when it comes to understanding us.
We drink a toast of vodka before bed with my dad because he’s Russian and he’s a lunatic and he vehemently believes in ceremony, no matter how painful or embarrassing. Now Mozey knows my whole crazy family intimately and our finances and apparently that guarantees him an honorary spot in my dad’s weird rituals.
We drink out of a crystal decanter that’s been in the family a long time. Dad makes a toast in Russian, and we all clink glasses. My mom and I each take two, but then the guys keep going. We head to the kitchen to pack some final things, and we can hear all three of them laughing and clinking. At least it brings some warmth to the house, and at least they’re not drinking in sorrow, they’re bonding and singing. My dad is teaching Mo to toast in Russian, and my mom and I giggle when my dad bellows “Na Zdorovie” and Mozey repeats it with a terrible accent.
I’m the first in bed. The house is freezing. I put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt and climb in under the covers. This is the last time I’ll sleep in this bed. A place where, as a child and then an adolescent, so many dreams and nightmares, so many of my thoughts were processed here. It’s a strange feeling, your last night in your room that is no longer your own. The spot you grew up staring at on the ceiling that was the starting point for so many beginnings. It’s what your eyes saw day after day when you woke up in the morning. If there’s one place you know you can always return to—it’s your parent’s house to your childhood bed. It’s your ground zero, your home base, and your personal nook of security. I fall asleep thinking about how a lot of the kids I work with never had this spot, that comfort is a luxury that too many of us take for granted.
Mozey probably never had a comfort spot like this; he left his home early to immigrate to the States. Then his mother never replaced the comfort spot when they got to wherever they were going. He came all this way to comfort me—comforted all of us over the last couple of days, and it breaks my heart he doesn’t have a place like this to return to. There is a simple solace of knowing your own origin. I wish I could give him a comfort spot, is my last thought before sleep.
I awake in the middle of the night with a start to the familiar squeak of my childhood bedroom door closing. A dark shadow drifts across the floor.
“Lex?” I say, sitting up quickly in bed. My adrenaline rushes as the shadow looms over me, and I blink my eyes in the dark.
“It’s me, Lana. Mozey,” he whispers, and two things happen with the sound of his voice—my heart heaves itself off of Niagara Falls in a barrel tumbling down toward the rocks, while my spirit soars like a rocket ship plowing through the atmosphere.
“What do you want?” I yell-whisper at him, trying to keep my cool.
“Your dad set me up in the basement, and I think it’s forty below down there. I have hypothermia, and I can’t feel my toes.”
“Sleep on the couch, then!” I bite back, turning away from him and pulling my covers up to my chin. But my blood is roaring through my veins with the mere proximity of him.
“I tried that, too. But you have a crazy Russian couch stuffed with horsehair and hay. And I’ve slept on cement before, so you’d think I could swing it, but it’s triggering my asthma, and I’ve only got a few pumps left in the inhaler.”
“Do you even have asthma?” I say, sitting up. But when I say it out loud, it brings forth a memory of seeing it listed on his intake form under personal medical history. Mozey takes advantage of my momentary shift and plants his butt on my childhood twin bed.
I press my body as far as I can into the freezing cold wall.
“If you come anywhere near me. You’re sleeping on the floor!”
“I promise I won’t touch you. Just sleep. I don’t even snore.”
“If you touch me, I’ll scream.”
“I would hope so. I’m more of a moaner, myself.”
I ignore the joke.
I’m using the temperature of the wall to cool down the need that’s swirling through my limbs with the thought of having him pressed up against me. I’m wet just thinking about lying next to his body.
“Thanks, Lana,” he murmurs as he snuggles under the covers. I’m immediately assaulted by the distinctly manly smell of Mozey. It’s cedar and turpentine, musk and spray paint, and it’s become a reluctant opiate to my olfactory preference. I breathe him in like oxygen and delight in his smell. I want to hold him and make out with him until my lips hurt. I want to press my body into his, to feel all of this pent up desire returned. I place both of my hands palm flat against the cold wall.
Social work. Damaged child. Obligation. Respect. Distance. I conjure up words, hoping to trigger a bucket of cold water to pour over my perverse attraction to a client who happens to be sleeping in my bed.
“Lana?”
“What?”
“Are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Can I hold you?”
I don’t answer him, and the seconds tick by like celestial slugs as big solar systems. Seconds that are everywhere but go nowhere and suffocate me with their infinite presence. Seconds where I can’t fathom an answer to that question because holding him might just be the one thing I want more than anything else in the world. But holding him might mean the downfall of everything I know—everything I’ve worked for and struggled to become. Trash it all away forever in a single embrace.
Embrace him I would, but what would it lead to? Sex. I can’t control myself around him. And then? The unraveling of all of my carefully assembled existence.
“Lana?” he whispers.
I exhale hard and raspy like I’m releasing a snore.
“I followed you here because I think I’m in love with you.”
I force myself to breathe and not react with my body. The seconds are looming again like dark storm clouds and the tension is unbearable. How can I not answer that? How can I pretend to sleep through this monumental moment? No one has ever told me they were in love with me. Not one person. Ever.
I reach out behind
me and my hand bumps his hard stomach. I want to turn and face him, to discover what our love is. But instead I grab his hand, and I pull his arm around my shoulder. He takes the signal and moves his body across the small space that divides us. A few inches that represent the complete rearranging of my world. He presses his body to my back, and we fit together perfectly, seamlessly. Just like I knew we would.
The seconds soften and melt into symbiosis with time. We are two hidden lovers, embraced against the world, warm and perfect under the covers. We hold each other with stillness and a universe of promise. We hold one another against the unknown and declare silently together, I am his protector, and he, is my protector.
Chapter 12
When I wake up in the morning, Mozey is not in my bed, but it’s still warm where his body lay, and I bury my face into the sheets to retrieve every molecule of him. I run my hands over the warmth he’s left and imagine what it would be like to wake up next to him every single morning.
I let myself indulge in the fantasy of being in his arms for a full five minutes. Then I drag my body out of bed and force my feet to meet the cold floor. Today is going to be hell. Today is D-Day. They day we’ve been dreading and waiting for.
Alexei takes my parents over to my uncle’s early. My mom got up when it was still dark to prepare a poppy seed cake for them because no way in hell she’s going over there empty handed. Lex told me she wept the whole time she baked the last morning in her own kitchen. She’ll bring them a sad poppy seed cake baked full of tears, only to have them toss it when she’s not looking because they eat toaster waffles, not cakes from the old world. They’ll reluctantly invite her into her new home which, undoubtedly to her, will smell like a home that doesn’t want any visitors.
That leaves Mozey and I alone in the house together. My plan is to pretend nothing happened last night. There is nothing illegal about sharing a bed for warmth. I’m on edge, I’m emotional, and I don’t want his stupid help. He’s already moving everything with a red piece of tape on it outside to the dumpster we rented. A red tag means garbage, and blue means to keep. My dad red taped so many things last night while my mom followed behind him trying to replace every single one with blue.