by Niles Kovach
I was feeling particularly secure the next morning as I sipped my coffee. There was no Mercedes outside. My pots-and-pans intruder alarm by the door was undisturbed. Frank, the dear, wonderful man, had solved things, and I was determined to take his very good advice. Safety was attractive today.
As I surveyed the pans by the door, I noticed for the first time a note lying on the floor. Father Paul had arranged a meeting at his house with my mother and could I please come over before going to class? No, I could not. No car. No phone. No finals. No future. Safety was suddenly not enough. There were other problems to solve.
I managed to call the priest from a pay phone down the street. He said he would pick me up and then take me to school after our meeting. I dreaded this meeting and would have been glad of any excuse to get out of it. But his offer of a ride to school was a temporary fix to an immediate problem.
In Father's house, the ugly curtains were drawn back, combining the dining room with the living room and improving the look of the whole place considerably. Mother was waiting for us, having coffee with the Matushka. The two women sat at either end of the table, watching absently as a chaotic and noisy jumble of little bodies hurled themselves and their toys around the living room.
Erin stood up and indicated for me to take her chair. Father Paul took a side chair while his wife made more coffee.
"Father, I know you mean well," said Yelena Dolnikova, "but this daughter of mine wants nothing to do with her own mother."
"Mama, I'm right here. You can talk directly to me."
"Why should I? You never listen."
"I do listen, when you have something to say."
"I always have something to say."
"No. You're always saying something. It's not the same thing."
This infuriated Mama. She was temporarily speechless, a rare condition.
"Now then," said Father Paul. "Why don't we try to find some common ground, a starting point for understanding? You two cannot go on hurting each other this way."
"There is no common ground." Mama said this, before I had a chance to say it.
"Yes, there is. We must find it." Turning to me, the priest asked, "Why have you moved out, Alex?"
"I have explained that to her ad nauseum."
"Explain it again, Alex."
"I don't want to hear it," said Mama.
"Please, Yelena Alexeievna, just a little while. Please," said the priest.
I felt the bitterness rise in my throat as I remembered what it had been like at home. The priest's presence barely helped me to stop listing my mother's offenses and come directly to the point. "I can't study at home, Mama."
"Why?" It was not a question. It was a confrontation. "Tell me why."
"Because you won't leave me alone." I could not contain my exasperation any longer. My reserve faltered, and I spewed it all out, word after word, hurtful or not, not meaningful as a whole except in the emotions expended and the pain perceived.
"Because I can't go anywhere without you following me around. I can't sit with a book. I can't have silence and peace. It's one stupid conversation..."
"Stupid!"
"Yes, stupid. One after another. No proof of anything, but you accuse everybody of everything, and I'm tired of hearing it. But that's still not it. It never stops. I get up in the morning, and you're talking. I go to bed. You're talking. Same topics. Same people. Mara did this. Mara said that." My voice had risen considerably so that it did not have far to go to become a scream. "I don't care what Mara said."
"Well, she said it on her deathbed. I thought you would like to know. You never listen!" Mama was also shouting.
"I don't want to know! May her memory be eternal, she was a crazy old woman. I never believed a word of what she said."
"You have no respect for the dead or for your elders. You know nothing. She suffered much. She had real wisdom."
"What?" I accepted the cup of coffee Erin offered me. "She shut out everything new. She was mired in superstition."
"New is not always good."
"It's not always bad."
"True. But you are no judge."
"I'm a better judge than you think, Mama."
"She said what on her deathbed?" asked Father Paul. "When did you see her, Yelena?"
"Just before you came, Father. I saw you pull up to the hospital as I was leaving. I waved. Didn't you see me?"
"No. What did she say to you?"
"She told me about the icon."
I was suddenly interested. "What about the icon?"
"Now you're interested. You couldn't be bothered on Monday night, sitting there with your fancy notebooks and drawing numbers and letters like some secret language. It's that ancient alchemy, is what it is. It will lead you to perdition! A wise old woman lies dying in a hospital and you don't want to know about a miracle."
I groaned. "Not the miracle again."
"Yes, again. No, not again, because you never listened the first time. You don't really believe."
"I do really believe, Mama. I just don't trust Mara's interpretation. There's probably some explanation. What's the miracle?"
"Even when there is an explanation," interrupted the priest, "It can still be a miracle."
Erin refilled his cup. "I agree with Alex," she said. "There is always an explanation, usually somebody's imagination."
"I didn't say always," I said.
"You've given birth four times and you don't believe in miracles?” Mama asked Erin.
"No, I don't. I don't see that mess out there as a miracle." Erin pointed to the living room.
"Well, it is. You just don't know how to discipline your children, that's all."
I put my head in my hands and waited for the explosion set off by my mother's wayward mouth.
"You have your nerve telling me how to raise my children," shouted Erin above the din. "You don't know what I put up with!"
"I do know. I've been there. What you put up with is what you get."
"My children won't leave me."
"But you'll want them to!"
"Mama," I said, "What was the miracle?" It was the only thing I could think of to stop the shouting. Father Paul's "Now, now," was not working.
"What miracle?"
"Mara's miracle."
"Oh. The icon, the Trinity Icon, laughed. Sarah laughed. With Mara! Mara was thinking about her late husband — you know he died in the Gulag. Mara thought something funny about him — she wouldn't tell me what — and she laughed, and Sarah laughed with her. Imagine it! The icon laughed. We have a miraculous icon. Isn't it wonderful?"
"That's not entirely accurate."
"What? You don't believe it? Well, Mara heard it and I believe her."
"I'm sure she did. In fact, I find it easier to picture the icon laughing than Mara with a smile on her face. No, I mean it's not accurate because we don't have the icon, miraculous or not." Turning to Father and cutting off Mama's next comment, I said, "Did she tell you about her miracle, Father?"
"Yes."
"On Monday?"
He nodded.
"You believed her. Didn't you?" asked Mama.
The priest looked distinctly uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair and stared into his coffee. "No," he admitted. "I didn't."
Mama was shocked, horrified. Erin, who had been noisily shifting dishes between the sink and cabinets, became still.
Father Paul continued. "But I was in the church the next evening. I was to meet someone there, as I explained to you before, Alex," he said with a confidential look. "I was contemplating that icon when it struck me, just as you mentioned, that it must have been something to see Mara laughing. The thought made me chuckle." The priest looked into his coffee again. "Then Sarah chuckled, too."
"So you turned Grayson down," I said.
"I had to. I couldn't let that icon go. Where would it wind up? No matter how many assurances he gave me that it would go to a private collector, what if it were placed in a museum? On a wall next to who knows what? Think of the
people in this church, the people who should be in this church. I could not let go of a miracle."
A loud crash of a frying pan into the sink signaled a renewal of the Matushka's efforts to express herself without speaking.
"You told the bishop's secretary," I said.
"Yes. We drew up a plan to try to verify the miracle."
"You would have looked like a fool," said Erin.
"I would not have, Erin. I am no fool and the bishop knows it." He sighed and slumped in his chair. "But that's neither here nor there now that it's gone."
"Like my little girl," said Mama. "My little girl is gone, too. The icon will turn up, Father. You've mislaid it. But my little girl?" She gave me a pleading look.
"No, Mama. I'm not a little girl, and I have to make my own home."
"You will always be a little girl to me."
"I know. That is part of our problem. You don't see me as a person."
"I do see you as a person."
"If you do, it's a person you made up. Your idea of me has nothing to do with who I am."
"I know more about you than you think. You forget, I made you."
"God made me."
"He gave you to me to finish and polish. I do know you. If there's something I don't know, it's because you never bother to tell me. You keep your life away from me like you're afraid I might steal it."
"You don't give me any space. You want to know everything. Can't I have some privacy?"
"I don't want to know everything. I just want to protect you. I want to tell you what I know so you are not hurt. Don't you understand that? Where is your car? There's an example! What has happened to it? Do you have any idea how much it hurts not to know?"
"The car broke down, Mama. That's all."
"What will you do now?"
"I'll manage."
"How?"
"I'll think of something."
"That's it. You will think of something." Mama threw her hands in the air. "Don't ask for help. Don't relieve your poor mother's mind. You will probably hitchhike or something. Some nut will pick you up..."
"I won't hitchhike. But I have to make my own way."
"The way is a lot harder than you think." Mama stood up. She picked up her purse and walked to the door.
"I'm a lot stronger than you think, Mama."
"Yes. I know you think so. Goodbye, Father, Matushka." She let herself out, slamming the door as her goodbye to me.
I had Father Paul take me to my car instead of school. He watched me start it—the dear machine actually cranked right over. He drove away, confident that all was well, as I hunted for first gear. When the car finally agreed to move forward, it was with a lot of noisy complaint and waywardness, but at least there was no sign of a black Mercedes all the way to school.
CHAPTER ELEVEN