Mother Country

by Irina Reyn

  “Mama told me you are trawling the bars in search of a husband for your daughter.”

  That was Olga’s greeting for you. Nadia regretted not inviting Boris and flaunting a potential new boyfriend in front of her sister. That was a mistake. She had been afraid of her sister’s judgment (“What does he do again? A Jew? Isn’t he a little … coarse?”) but now she realized he could have been useful as armor, a deflection.

  “Hello to you too, sister dear. Mama twisted my words as usual. I was not ‘trawling.’ An opportunity arose. A man was introduced to me, that’s all.”

  “Nadyush, no offense, but Larisska is now twenty-seven years old. And she is living in a war zone. We need to start having more serious thoughts about her future.”

  Nadia should have been prepared for the first attack. The rush of wanting to be loved and protected by her sister tended to curdle within minutes of interaction. She had to remind herself that Olga believed criticism was a method of helping. It was one interpretation of loving dialogue.

  “It’s impossible here, so crowded,” she deflected. “Where’s Vivian?”

  “You know what?” Olga stepped back and assessed her appearance. “You look really good. I mean it. Youngish, well put-together.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m getting older. Can’t keep the weight off for the life of me.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you. When I say you look good, you look good.”

  The compliment seeped into Nadia, spread pleasantly along the plane of her belly. The certainty that her sister was always right, that her words carried within them an unshakeable authority never dissipated. She immediately regarded herself through the eyes of her sister’s praise. Her weight gain was not too serious, and it certainly wasn’t hampering her romantically at the moment; after embracing her in the elevator last week, Boris had asked for a second date.

  “Here comes Vivchik.”

  Olga’s granddaughter, Vivian, was beside them now, stretching out a pair of arctic arms for a polite, emaciated hug. If she were a young girl in Ukraine, she would be considered homely, with her tiny stature, her shoulders rising almost to her ears, thick snatch of brown hair, and decent gray-blue eyes. Here, she was probably no worse off than her peers, where being skinny was the crucial accomplishment for young women, from what Nadia understood.

  “You look so beautiful, my dear, so grown-up.” She gave Vivian a warm kiss. Last time she saw her, she was eleven years old, and frankly, much cuter.

  “Hello, Tyotya Nadia,” Vivian said, tolerating the imprint of lipstick on her cheek. She was clearly adhering to a script spoon-fed to her by Olga. “Nice to see you again.”

  Olga tucked the flamingo-pink shawl into the cowl of her shearling coat. “Shall we?”

  They were swept into a tide of human bodies. Among them, grown men were dressed in orange puppet costumes and families were clogging movement in order to take pictures with these creatures. Shouting hawkers raised tickets overhead, ignoring the sloshing cars flinging mud at their feet. The smell of sickly-sweet peanuts burned the nostrils. Six and a half years in New York City and this was Nadia’s first trip to Times Square.

  This was turning out to be her least favorite part of Manhattan, a borough she had no use for anyway. Manhattan just did not seem like a serious place. It felt like something young people did before they absorbed the bitter reality of adulthood.

  Vivian insists on a trip to New York City, Olga told her on the phone two months back, which was not at all the same thing as, And naturally, I want to see you.

  They were making little progress down the street but the effort was beginning to feel significant, Olga and Vivian vanishing in a tide of hair and cinched coats, then reappearing. “Over here,” Olga directed, as if she were the local and Nadia the tourist from Cleveland. She took Nadia’s elbow, wound her arm through its noose. The act of it was so fluid, as though they were often conjoined like this. In fact, they linked arms only for the rare reunion pictures they emailed their mother.

  They vaulted themselves through the front doors of the museum. She had taken the whole day off in anticipation of their staying with her. She scrubbed the surfaces of her apartment so it would pass Olga’s inspection. But a few days before the visit, Nadia was informed that an alternate itinerary was cemented: Marriott, wax museum, early dinner, then the family would see a Broadway show on their own. It would be a short trip, a jaunt from Cleveland, everyone returning to their responsibilities at home. Shortness of trip aside, they were very much looking forward to spending some time with Nadia.

  Vivian tottered in behind them in her high-heeled leather boots, her oval face bathed in the light of her phone.

  “Is this any way to act?” Olga berated her. “Can’t you look up for a change? You’ll fall into one of these grates.”

  “Oh Baba, it’s fine. Quit your yapping.”

  Olga turned to Nadia, with defeated face. “Do you see how she treats me?”

  But Nadia was impressed with the girl, with the insouciant way she brushed Olga’s rigid expectations aside. She and Olga had been raised under a strict regimen of social interactions, a road map you dared not veer from. A young girl doted on her elders, anticipated their every need, expressed the proper gratitude. In exchange, she was lavished with affection, with gifts and treats and compliments. The young girl was favored, spoken well of among the adults. She was “good,” positively contrasted with someone else’s daughter who was “bad.” It was clear that Vivian had skimmed the rulebook, but then tossed it. If only she herself had been that brave.

  On the board above the front desk, a confusing array of prices was posted: “Ultimate Experience ticket, $44.99” or “Extreme value. Museum + Wax Hand, from $36.99.”

  She assumed she’d read that correctly: wax hand? Some extreme value; the three tickets were the equivalent of a full day of work with Sasha. But the museum was a nonnegotiable attraction and it would have to be her treat according to the mystical yet unbendable laws of Ukrainian hospitality. Olga would weakly fight with her over who paid, but after the expected three efforts, would graciously accept.

  “Three wax hand value, please,” she told the cashier when it was their turn.

  Olga reached into her pocketbook for her wallet and even began to list through the bills.

  “Absolutely not,” Nadia said firmly. “I’m paying.”

  “It’s too expensive.”

  “Please, it really is my treat,” Nadia insisted. “Put that purse away.” They went through the motions the requisite three times, at the appropriate deescalating levels of impassioned intensity.

  The goateed teenager ripping their tickets sleepily eyed the exchange. (“Let me.” “No, I will not allow it.” “You are being ridiculous.” “Your stubbornness is ridiculous.”)

  “You may collect your hand on the way out,” he said when a resolution was reached.

  “Thank you, Nadyush,” Olga said, putting her wallet away, and the pleasant seeping sensation returned. She was so rarely the beneficiary of Olga’s appreciation. To be thanked meant that someone was in your debt, and what was a more powerful feeling than that?

  They entered the museum, moving with the warm torrent of bodies. They wandered among Michael Jackson and that British princess, the president of the United States, Frank Sinatra, the blond waves of what was probably Marilyn Monroe. She did not recognize many of the others, the faces exuding the appearance of fame but not clicking to anyone she cared about. Where was Lyubov Orlova, the classic Soviet movie actress and singer so beautiful and accomplished that even Stalin didn’t dare execute her, so famous that ships were named after her? These figurines in motion seemed trapped in the amber of time, faces twisted into demonic smiles. Living people that looked dead, dead people meant to look alive. Everyone here, the visitors and figurines, looked equally shellacked and happy.

  “Perk up, my dear, or we won’t be able to tell you apart from the statues.” For a minute Nadia thought Olga was talking to her. But she
saw Vivian unfold her pipe-cleaner body and take a blinking look around. “Baba! Quit it already.”

  “You were the one who wanted to come here. And now here we are.” Olga took out her own phone and snapped a picture of Marilyn Monroe. A tour group colonized the room, enfolding its tentacles around them.

  Nadia heard Vivian pressed against her, whispering, “Baba said you wanted to hook cousin Larissa up with an American husband. I meet men all the time on the computer.” Without the phone in her hand, she looked unprotected and doelike, her Russian as charming as a foreign student’s.

  “Is that a good idea, meeting strange men on the internet? You’re only sixteen!”

  “I just mess with them. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is,” Vivian confided. She moved aside for a group of Korean tourists.

  “I don’t know.” Nadia frowned. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

  “Not all of them are losers. By the time you meet them, you’ve already vetted them. Don’t worry.”

  “Vivchik, it seems like a bad idea.”

  “I’ll set you up with a profile if you want. It’s easy and you can delete it if you want. Just don’t tell Baba.”

  Nadia thought of her failure at the nightclub. What was wrong with the plan was her own involvement. What if there was no mediation between the man and Larissa? “Maybe I’m being old-fashioned. Would you do it? If it’s not too complicated.”

  “Oh my God. It’ll be done in five minutes. At school, I can tell them that I helped bring over my cousin from Ukraine. Cool, no?”

  “Thank you, Vivchik, really.”

  It occurred to her that Vivian was the first person she encountered in America who initiated any assistance. For six years, she’d been pushing and pushing, making appointments at immigration agencies, law offices, embassies, begging senators to pay attention to a daughter caught between sniper fire. She had been asking everyone for favors but no one volunteered first: You look like you’re in distress, why don’t I help you?

  Marilyn Monroe was preening in a glittering blood-colored dress, the scoop of the décolletage revealing waxy breasts. Looking at her, you would never know that halfway across the world, men were losing their precious lives for an airport in Donetsk. Just that morning, Ukrainian forces announced their control of the airport, the week before, the separatists flew their flag over the terminal. In between, the images on television were tank fire, helicopters shelling, trapped soldiers, the plume of black smoke, men dragging dripping bodies across the tarmac. On the balconies of bombed-out high-rises of Donetsk, women her mother’s age were weeping. “What did we do to deserve this?” A year ago, when the unfathomable schism began, she was screaming in her head. Now she watched in a kind of trance, numbed to the helplessness of watching her bleeding country from an apartment in Brooklyn.

  Olga was emerging between sleek wax actresses in sequined evening gowns. “I’m falling off my feet, girls. Yasha says he’s got us a restaurant. Let’s get out of here.”

  She and Vivian shook on the deal with the wax hands that were handed to them at the exit.

  * * *

  There was no elegant way to traverse slushy New York City streets. Olga was gingerly tiptoeing around puddles in her suede pumps, and even Nadia in her practical furry boots assessed each step for safety. Even when they broke free from the Times Square tussle, the city stretched before them gray and insurmountable. The windows of restaurants were fogged over in an unwelcoming way, the snarl of car traffic made it impossible to weave from block to block.

  “Yasha’s picked us a French restaurant, but it’s a bit of a trek,” Olga said.

  Nadia instantly agreed. “I love French food,” even though the closest she’d come to French food was spying the contents of the plates on bistro tables of Regina’s neighborhood restaurants. She recalled the least edible parts of a salad and French fries, egg pies in phyllo dough. People sipped out of miniature wineglasses filled to the rim with pale wine. The more she thought about it, the less appealing it was, but with Olga you had no choice but to agree.

  “French is my favorite,” Olga said, in a way that made Nadia want to insist on any other cuisine.

  They passed a string of perfectly good options—Indian and Irish and something with a Buddha in front—but Olga plunged on, nose in scarf, wax hand tucked under her arm, burgundy leather gloves readjusting a wool hat. Nadia was impressed with Vivian, who seemed to float on the sharp instincts of a phone addict, her peripheral vision like antennae, slipping through the flow of the crowd.

  For a moment, she mentally deleted Vivian’s body and inserted Larisska’s. After a year in America, this would be her and Larisska, and there would finally be a good excuse to go to Manhattan. They would see a Broadway show, eat at French restaurants anytime they wanted to.

  Through a neon smudge, they saw Yakov waving to them from the street corner. On his head was some kind of ridiculous chinchilla, his moustache was almost entirely gray, and his coat was the wrong cut for such a square man, the sleeves wide and long. Nadia always felt a sympathetic affinity for Yakov. In Ukraine, he had been too weak to stand up to Olga in any area of their lives except when he put his foot down about changing his name to something less Jewish like Yuri. Of course, in the end, that had been the very thing that allowed them easier emigration. When they were picking the Jews to save from Ukraine, how could they overlook a man named Yakov? How could a Yakov not have suffered in a place like Ukraine?

  He kissed her on both cheeks. “Nadyen’ka, you are not a year older, not even a minute.”

  She wished she could say the same, but she came up with: “And you are quite stylish, very dashing.”

  “Okay, okay, Don Juan, we are freezing out here,” Olga said.

  Yakov waved them toward a place named Caquelon, opened the door and ushered them inside. It was like being pressed to a warm bosom, the warm air embracing them. Their coats were shrugged off and they were seated next to a fireplace. Nadia expected to be intimidated by waiters in crisp tuxedoes, but the tablecloths looked like Ukrainian kerchiefs and the plates looked like Regina’s, a heavy porcelain with charming red borders.

  Olga unwrapped a napkin on her lap. “I could eat a cow, an entire cow.”

  “In French places, you can do just that.” Yakov scooped Nadia and Vivian up into the same warm smile. “I did a lot of research and this one had the most stars.”

  “In the future, you should really let me pick,” Vivian said. She’d clearly decided she did not like the place, filled as it was with people their age and older, an entire circular table of ladies lifting glasses in a toast.

  As Yakov and Olga engaged in a tussle over the expense of garage parking, Vivian whispered, “Here, while we were walking, I’ve set up a very basic profile, which means we can browse the options for Tyotya Larissa. I gathered you wanted a Russian-language site.”

  She had pulled up the Russian website VKontakte and was flipping through pictures of American men. Man after middle-aged man, like a display of shoes, like the spinning fruits of a slot machine.

  “How in the world do you know about VKontakte?”

  “Here’s one. He seems okay.” The one Vivian was pointing to had the look of a contented panda. He was posed in some banquet hall, a skewer of meat suspended between two index fingers like a rubber band. “‘I have been employed by Citizen’s Bank for over twelve years,’” Nadia read slowly, then skimmed his profile for relevant details. “Forget it, he lives in someplace named Nevada. He must live near here.”

  A woman in a peasant blouse pinned back by suspenders placed before them heavy leather tomes. She was not at all what Nadia pictured a real French restaurant would employ. It reminded her of the Russian restaurants aimed at tourists, the waitresses dressed to resemble rural prostitutes.

  “Let’s eat. Yasha, you look at the menu and pick for us. I want my usual steak,” Olga said.

  “Excellent.”

  Vivian rolled her eyes as if to say, Is this how old married people b
ehave? but Nadia found it touching, the way her sister and husband had clearly heaved and shifted over the years, making small adjustments and concessions. In Ukraine, Yakov had been beaten down by Olga, flayed of his masculinity. He was a lowly medical student at a second-tier university on a Jewish quota, in the wrong specialty, with the poorest and most insignificant of patients. Olga had taken every opportunity to remind him of his smallness, his distance from any hope of power. Here in America, Yakov was a gastroenterologist with his own practice, finally accorded the kind of respect that assumed dominance over restaurant and meal selection.

  “This seems like a special place. There are very few choices. I like restaurants that know what they do well and don’t make you pick from a million options.” He pointed at the page, asked about Pinot somethings, and closed shut the leather encyclopedia.

  “How about this American?” Vivian’s black-painted nail was directed at a “Chris.” She translated: “‘I like that Eastern European women are old-fashioned and domestic. I am looking to start a family right away.’ He lives in Staten Island. That’s in New York, isn’t it?”

  “He’s better than the first one.”

  “Who’s better? What are you two conspiring about over there?” Olga wanted to know.

  Nadia decided to come clean. “Vivka is helping me find Larisska a fiancé. I’m not ‘trawling’ now. You have to admit that a fiancé visa might be faster than this endless wait. Even the immigration lawyer said so. They don’t consider the regular citizens as war victims here. They only see evil Russians and evil separatists. But every day Larisska can’t get out is a day she can get killed.”

  Olga and Yakov exchanged a look. Nadia was not in the mood for what it might entail. The seeping sensation was fading, replaced by a queasy resentment.

  “It’s just a way to get her here faster. I know it sounds crazy but I don’t expect her to stay with him. They will live nearby and then see if they like each other. But at least her life can begin. She will be safe.”