by Debra Dean
A man waiting for the trolley, a lunch pail in one hand, a newspaper under his arm, witnesses the young couple emerging from the trees of the park. The girl is heartbreakingly beautiful, her clothes rumpled, her red hair loose on her shoulders, her cheeks flushed like fruit. She fingers the sleeve of her young man’s shirt, says something, stops. The young man shakes his head no. Taking both her hands in his, he speaks very earnestly to the girl. Then he kisses her lightly on the mouth, turns around, and walks away. It is then that the man sees the armband of the People’s Volunteers. It is a timeless story being reenacted, repeated, over and over, for centuries. Nothing changes. Only the young couple themselves do not know this.
She stares after the young soldier for a moment, and then turns, herself, and runs in the opposite direction.
Inside the Winter Palace, at the foot of the Jordan Staircase, one might believe that time has indeed stood still, that nothing has changed for centuries. The stone pillars rise regally up into a painted sky inhabited by the gods of Olympus, and the mirrored walls seem to hold the glittering reflections of generations of imperial soldiers, their sabers glinting in the dim light, and elegant women in huge satin skirts, their bosoms draped with fat pearls, their faces hidden behind sweeping fans. Marina ascends the marble steps, up, up, up, and stops on the first landing to catch her breath.
This is where the tour begins. For two years, she guided groups of schoolchildren or factory workers through the Hermitage. They would gather here at the start of a tour, and she would welcome them to the museum and begin by noting how many visitors had passed up these stairs before them. “This staircase was designed in the eighteenth century by the architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli. Notice the lavish use of gilded stucco moldings, the abundance of mirrors and marble. And above us”—she would direct their gaze to the intricately painted ceiling fifteen meters up—“the Italian painter Gaspare Diziani has depicted the Greek gods on Olympus.
“All this Baroque splendor was intended to overwhelm visiting dignitaries with the might and wealth of Russia. But this is merely the entrance. The State Museum of Leningrad comprises four hundred rooms in five contiguous buildings: the Winter Palace, where we stand now, the Small Hermitage, the Old Hermitage, the New Hermitage, and the Hermitage Theatre. The architecture is, as you can see here, magnificent. But what is even more remarkable is what these buildings contain, the most precious collection of art in the entire world.
“In pre-Marxist society, this was considered the private property of the ruling class, but after the Great Socialist Revolution, it was liberated and returned to the workers who created it.” Her sweeping gesture would direct their eyes down the grand staircase and back up again to the soaring ceilings.
“Comrades, all this is yours.”
This is the official welcome, lines scripted by some Party functionary, but for her it is not empty propaganda. She herself is still amazed: they are her paintings. She is like a lover who still sees her beloved in the trembling golden light of their first meeting.
Her uncle brought her here for the first time shortly after she came to live with them. It was the day his wife went to the hospital to deliver their first child. Rather than following the old ways—leaving his niece with the women while he went off with the men and got drunk—he decided instead to bring her with him to the museum, saying that they could both pass the time better in educational pursuits. She was bitterly disappointed by this change in plans, having looked forward to seeing for herself what she had heard about only in whispers. Nothing her uncle proposed could be expected to be nearly so interesting; that much she had learned already.
Even now, she can still recall her shock, how shallow and fast her breath came, as she first walked through these gilt rooms, how each new hall opened dreamlike onto still another room. The walls were crowded with the faces of stern old men and the nude figures of young women, their bodies a hot shock of flesh. Her uncle seemed not to notice what she saw—he droned on about acquisitions and restorations and who knows what else, while around them angels fluttered in turbulent skies and serene Madonnas gazed down as they passed. And the landscapes, one after another, shimmering with light, each frame a portal into a fresh world. Her head swam, dizzy, ecstatic, saturated with color. She was twelve years old, and this was her first taste of passion.
The gallery is nearly bare now, but she hardly notices. She is trotting through the silent, formal rooms, her low heels clicking on parquet floors. The ghostly court recedes into the shadows.
She is already in the future, somewhere she can only dimly imagine, but it is very different from what she has known.
Helen has been tracing a six-block radius around her parents’ house for the last half hour, looking for a place to park. Every time she passes their house, she is reminded again of the phone conversation she had with her brother. “It’s getting to be too much for them to handle,” he said, and she has to agree that the house is starting to resemble the student rentals in the neighborhood, the lawn scrubby with dandelions, the hedge in need of pruning.
She’s passed only one open parking space, which looked to be the exact length of the Chevy Malibu she is driving. She can’t remember the last time she had to parallel park, and she doesn’t feel up to an extra challenge this morning, but on the fifth loop she finally relents. What the hell, it’s a rental car, she reasons. She cranks the wheel and backs slowly into the space, then realizes that she’s cut it too tight and pulls back out. Behind her, a kid in a jeep hits his horn in frustration. Back and forth she maneuvers, cranking the wheel one way and creeping forward, then the other way and rolling back, until she taps the bumper of the car behind her and sets its alarm shrieking and caterwauling. Thoroughly shaken, she leaves her car hanging at an angle into the street and flees.
The plan was to get here yesterday afternoon and have a little time with her parents before they all headed up to Andrei’s this morning. But all it takes to shut down a major airport these days is one hophead who panics and bolts for the gates when the screener asks a few questions. She doesn’t know for a fact that’s what happened; this was only the rumor that later circulated around the baggage claim carousel. What she does know is that they hung over LAX for almost an hour before the pilot came on and said something vague about a security breach. And next thing you know, they’re diverting the flight to San Diego and then lining up on the tarmac behind dozens of similarly diverted planes stacked up to approach the terminal. Then there were the refugee-length lines snaking up to every ticket counter, and the smiling, dead-eyed ticket agent at the front of her line who happily informed Helen that there was a seat on a flight to Portland that left in an hour and she could connect to Seattle from there. Past midnight, too late to barge in on her elderly parents, Helen finally dragged herself to the Holiday Inn Express at Sea-Tac Airport. She spent a few fruitless hours trying to shut out the din of traffic and the thunder of engines overhead before emerging into a pink, diesel-fueled dawn, renting a car, and taking her life in her hands driving up I-5 during rush hour. She’s frazzled and weak-kneed, she feels about ten years older than she did yesterday morning, and she hasn’t even seen her parents yet.
So she’s almost too tired to notice, when she knocks at her parents’ front door, that the knob rattles and the dead bolt clicks back and forth before she hears her father calling from somewhere in the back of the house that he is coming. Eventually, the door swings open. A split second passes before she reconciles the two elderly people in the foyer with her parents. She visits at least once and usually twice a year, but every time, it comes as a surprise that they are getting old. Not getting, are. Helen notes the towel tucked around her father’s withered neck and the dollop of shaving cream in his left ear.
“Lenochka,” Dmitri murmurs, as he squeezes her and pecks each cheek. He turns to his wife and announces, “Elena’s here.” Marina’s face brightens and she chirps, “Well, hello there,” looking for all the world as though Helen’s arrival is a surpris
e. A pleasant surprise, but a surprise nevertheless. Marina steps forward and looks up expectantly. As Helen embraces her, she is struck afresh by the oddness of being able to see over the top of her mother’s head. She seems even shorter than eight months ago, as though she is plotting to slip out of the world under the bar.
“Come in, come in,” Dmitri says, ushering Helen through the living room, Marina trailing behind.
So far as she can tell, very little has changed since her last visit. In fact, very little has changed since her childhood, beyond the glacial accumulation that comes of years spent in the same place. When she grew up, the house, predictably, got smaller and, though there were fewer occupants, more crowded. Now, every surface is layered: an old brocade sofa is festooned with crocheted antimacassars and buried under a drift of decorative throw pillows; a pair of recliners is draped in afghans. The top of the enormous old Admiral television cabinet, as well as every other horizontal surface, is crowded with framed photographs of the grandkids and knickknacks and cut-glass candy dishes. But the house still looks clean. There are no empty tuna cans or piles of newspapers.
The thought of sorting through and packing up all of this overwhelms Helen, and she can see why her parents would be so resistant. But Andrei is adamant that the time has come to get them set up in a retirement village with an assisted living facility. “Of course, they don’t like the idea,” he said when she last spoke with him. “Who would? But they’re getting up there, Helen, and frankly, we probably should have pushed this a few years ago.” He’s asked her to stay on for a few days after the wedding. Get that behind them and then sit down with the folks for a little powwow. See if between the two of them, they can’t make their parents see reason. It’s a perfectly normal request, or it would be in some other family, but she is younger than Andrei by eight years and is the eternal baby sister, rarely informed, much less consulted. It’s almost silly how flattered she feels to be approached as an equal, how eager to be an ally in what has the potential to be an unpleasant battle.
In the dining alcove, Dmitri pulls out a chair in the dinette set for his wife, another for Helen. Helen remembers doing homework at this table, the aluminum edge and boomerang-patterned surface imprinted in her brain alongside Ovaltine, Little Debbie snack cakes, and the Pythagorean triangle.
“You look tired, Elena.”
“I didn’t get much sleep.” She looks at her father. “You look a little tired yourself.” In fact, he looks more than a little tired. He looks haggard.
“Well, we can all maybe have a nap in the ferry line. But first, you should have some coffee for the drive.”
“No, Papa. I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
He checks the wall clock. “Well, then, I better get moving. Mama’s ready, but I still have to finish.”
Marina pipes in, “I’ve been ready for hours.”
“Naureen said we should leave by eight-thirty so we can catch the one o’clock ferry.”
“If we miss the ferry, there’s another one,” Helen says.
Dmitri isn’t convinced. “The lines get long in the summer. I don’t want to get into the soup like a chicken. You can keep your mother company while I dress?”
“You go ahead.”
“I won’t be long.”
“No hurry.”
“On the road, we can talk.” Dmitri smiles at her, his watery blue eyes holding hers for a long moment. “It’s good you are home.”
As soon as he is gone, Marina pops up out of her chair and disappears into the kitchen. Helen hears her opening drawers and rooting around. She follows her mother into the dim kitchen and finds her methodically opening and closing each of the overhead cabinets. Post-it notes flutter like so many prayer flags.
“What are you looking for?”
“Coffee. You want a cup of coffee, yes?” Marina opens the doors beneath the sink and peers in at the collection of rags and cleaning supplies.
“I don’t need any coffee, Mama.”
“It’s somewhere here, but Dima keeps moving things.”
“Really, I’m fine. I had some at the hotel.”
“It’s somewhere here.” Increasingly agitated, Marina opens the silverware drawer again and then each of the drawers below it.
“Mama, I don’t want any. Truth is, if I have one more cup of coffee, something’s gonna shake loose.” Marina seems determined to ignore her. “Please. Come sit down.” This comes out sharper than she intended, but it stops Marina in her tracks.
“Well, if you’re sure.” Reluctantly, Marina follows Helen back out to the table and settles her hands in her lap. She smiles at Helen.
“So, how is your family?” she asks.
Helen finds the question odd, but she can’t place why. It’s nothing new to tell her mother something and find out later that she’s forgotten. Helen has long since stopped taking it personally. So she repeats last week’s big news, that her son Jeff has been offered a promotion. It’s a great opportunity, heading up customer fulfillment for the entire Southwest division, but Helen is hoping he’ll pass it up.
“I’d miss them, but it’s not just me I’m thinking of. It would mean transferring the family to Houston, and then he’d be spending a lot of time training people in India.”
“It’s nice to have the family all in one place,” Marina agrees. “But I learned you have to let them chase their dreams.”
“Phoenix was hardly my dream, Mama.” Her mother seems never to have appreciated that Helen’s moving away was not an act of rebellion. It was her ex-husband, Don, who had insisted on picking up and transplanting her and the boys, and for no better reason than he was tired of the rain. She’d had a hard time adjusting to the heat and the ugly, sunburned suburbs with no trees. Eventually she did, and even grew to love the desert, the clean emptiness of it. But none of it—not Phoenix, not the house, not the marriage—none of it had been her dream.
Her dream had been entirely different. She minored in art at the UW, and while there, she had concocted a future identity as a working artist. The fantasy was hazy but included unencumbered days following the pulse of a painting, late nights spent in the company of other artists, arguing and laughing and drinking chianti, a disorderly, passionate existence on a picturesque houseboat or in a quaint cabin in the woods. Even at the time, she’d known that such clichés wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of her practical parents, and she knows herself well enough now to question whether she would have had the courage to so openly court their disapproval. As it happened, she never had the chance to find out. She got pregnant and stumbled forward into a life crushingly typical in its compromises: a husband who drank his ambition into quiet submission at the end of each day, two boys whom she loved fiercely enough to quell her periodic resentment of them, a job in the city planning office that was stupefyingly boring but from which she would never be fired, a few hours of drawing squirreled away here, a class there, a local art fair, a group show. Every once in a while, her lurking discontent would surface and overwhelm her, and then she would have to lock herself in the bathroom and run the tub, weeping under the thunder of the water. Lying submerged up to her nostrils like a crocodile, she would plot her escape: after the boys grew up and moved out, she would leave Don. She would throw off the yoke of her parents’ caution, quit her job, and commit herself wholeheartedly to her art.
Then, surprise, Don left first, beating her out the door six months before their younger boy graduated from high school. Their son Kyle was already living in Los Angeles, and in the fall, when Jeff packed up his TV and computer and moved into a dorm at Arizona State, she was suddenly, unexpectedly alone.
She could do whatever she wished. There was no one to answer to and no one to blame. She felt—not free exactly, that was not the word. More like abandoned.
Worse, it turned out that she was incapable of making the ripping, headlong leap out of the familiar that she had been planning for years. Instead, she has been
slowly edging forward in a series of tentative half measures. She stayed in the house but converted the rec room to a painting studio. She stayed at her job for the health insurance but treated herself to a trip to Florence last year. Sometimes she stays up until four in the morning and leaves jars of paint thinner and brushes on the kitchen counter. At this rate, she figures she’ll be living the dream by the time she’s, say, seventy.
But she can’t explain any of this to her mother. Compared with her brother, the doctor, Helen is the wild child. Picking up and moving to the middle of a desert is just the kind of thing Andrei would never do. She can’t make her mother understand her, but she can’t give up trying, either.
“For better or worse,” Helen says, “I moved to Phoenix because I was trying to be a good wife.”
Marina smiles at her benignly. “You are, dear, I’m sure.”
“What?” Helen feels a little outside of her body, that light-headedness that comes of traveling and going without sleep. “I’ve been divorced almost ten years, Mama.”
Her mother doesn’t miss a beat. “Has it been so long? It’s strange how time seems to fly away, yes? Poof, and it’s another year.”
Helen nods. “I was just thinking that.”
Even before the all-clear siren has died in their ears, crowds are streaming up out of the air raid shelter and back onto Nevsky Prospekt, rushing to reclaim their places in line. One by one, they stop and raise their faces to the sky.
It looks like snow, drifts of snow falling from the German plane. As the white flakes float closer to earth, they resolve into squares of paper. They catch on currents of air, darting and sailing like tiny kites. Marina watches scores of children leap and grab at them with a mixture of terror and delight. Her little cousin Tatiana is tugging at her hand to escape, but Marina knows better than to let go of her in this crowd.