by Alina Adams
“Because it’s the right thing to do!” Mama insists, her tears as bitter now as Zoe imagines they must have been then. Zoe can also imagine Baba’s disapproval, Eugene’s confusion, and the entire neighborhood’s contempt. And yet, Mama—Zoe’s soft-spoken, conflict-averse, peacemaker Mama—stuck to her guns and did what she thought was right, regardless of the consequences. She didn’t let anybody cow her. She didn’t care what anybody thought. Another family member whom it turns out Zoe hardly knew. At least this secret was a good thing. Something to be proud of.
“I could not stay married to a man who would be so dishonest,” Mama continues.
“Because you were scared you’d be caught,” Baba begs to differ. “You’re just like your father!”
“I already said I was sorry for disappointing you. I know you think I never should have divorced Eugene!”
“You never should have married him!” Baba amends, which comes as much of a surprise to Mama as it does to Zoe.
“But you liked Eugene,” Mama practically whimpers. “You said he was shrewd, ambitious, dynamic, enterprising.”
Now where has Zoe heard those words before?
“Good for him,” Baba says. “Not good for you. Or for our Zoya.”
“No such thing as good man,” Balissa unexpectedly speaks up. “Only man in a good time. If Eugene is living in USSR, what he does, it is to provide for his family. He would be hero. But in America, he is criminal who puts family at risk.” Balissa says to Baba, “I love your papa, yes?” referring to the great-grandfather with the eye patch Zoe has seen only in photographs.
“I suppose . . .” Baba falters.
“I love him. He is good man. Drinks too much, talks too much, works maybe too little, still good man. There are many good men where we live in Siberia. But your papa, he is a soldier, he is there temporarily, and he has propiska, permission to live in Odessa. I want to return to Odessa.”
Balissa lets that sink in. It does.
Baba begins, “You married Papa for . . .”
“Many reasons,” Balissa insists. “Odessa propiska is one of them.” She goes on, instructing Baba, “Your grandfather Edward was good man, too. He loved my mama. He loved me and my sister. But the right man must also be in the right place, at the right time, for the right purpose.” She looks meaningfully at Baba, and something passes between them that Zoe can’t identify. “You know this, don’t you, my Natashenka?”
Baba clearly knows this.
“Alex is the perfect man for me at the perfect time.” Zoe is unsure how this happened. She thought they’d be the ones selling Alex to her, not the other way around! Her extant terror of making the wrong call, thanks to her family’s continued expectation of Zoe doing precisely that, flares with a vengeance. The less confident Zoe is of her choices, the more she feels compelled to defend them. By putting the onus on somebody else.
“You told me I should find a nice Brighton boy. Alex is from Brighton! And he’s nice. Enough. You said the problem with your husband, Balissa, is he worked too little. No one could say that about Alex. And everything he’s doing is legal. I saw the paperwork, Mama; you don’t have to worry he’s too ambitious. Alex inspires me to be a better person. Isn’t that why you’re constantly criticizing me, telling me how to behave? Because you want me to be a better person? Alex is on your side! He already sees me as the person I want to be. You told me not to be myself when we went out? I wasn’t. I did what you said to land the kind of guy you want who believes I already am the girl you think I should be!”
Zoe’s great-grandmother speaks Russian—and some German. Zoe speaks English—and some Russian. Zoe’s grandmother and mother speak both Russian and English.
Right now, Zoe doesn’t think any of them are speaking the same language.
Which, as her family learned almost one hundred years ago, is a sure path to disaster.
That no one could figure out how to stop.
Chapter 42
“Did you convince them?” Lacy asks when Zoe calls post-tribunal.
“I convinced myself,” Zoe says. Unconvincingly.
Alex and Zoe are eating in a restaurant tonight, not juggling finger foods alongside business cards. Zoe notices that Alex deliberately doesn’t eat European-style, with the knife in the right hand, fork in the left, but the American way, where he switches his fork from side to side, even though it goes against the way he was taught. It comes off awkward, like he has to remind himself to do it before every bite. It’s the first chink she’s noticed in his ultra-smooth armor. It’s reassuring. Alex isn’t perfect, either.
It gives Zoe the courage to blurt, “My grandparents’ forty-fifth wedding anniversary is next weekend. Will you come?”
He considers the question much longer than Zoe thinks should be necessary, then asks an equally unnecessary, to Zoe’s view, follow-up. “Do you even want me there?”
“What? Of course I do. Why would I invite you if I didn’t want you there?”
“Come on, tell the truth, Zoe, are you even all that into me?”
This is not the way any of this was supposed to go. Zoe’s family was supposed to fall in love with Alex, and Zoe was supposed to fall in love with Alex, and, most important, Alex was supposed to know he’d been fallen in love with! Deep, meaningful like, at least. Did Alex think Zoe just went around kissing anybody? (Wait, strike that.) Did he think she invited just anybody to intimate family gatherings? It was one thing for Zoe to have moments of uncertainty, but how dare Alex feel the same way? And after how she’d defended him! How dare Alex doubt Zoe when she’d gone out on such a limb for him, not only with her family but with herself. Did he think that level of self-delusion was easy?
“Of course I’m into you,” Zoe defends for the benefit of all assembled. And then the perfect excuse comes to her so expeditiously, she must have been subconsciously anticipating whipping it out all along. “It’s just—I—It’s—It’s the evil eye!”
The evil eye is why you spit three times when something good happens. It’s why you stick your thumb through two fingers and hide the doolya in your pocket when a stranger compliments your kids. To keep the evil eye from seeing and ruining everything.
Alex scoffs. “You don’t believe that superstitious nonsense, do you?”
“I just don’t want to screw this up.” It’s the most honest thing Zoe has said to Alex, possibly ever. “I really appreciate how great you were with my family. They really liked you.” That part might have been a little less honest. “So will you come? To Brighton? Saturday?”
Alex leans back in his chair, scratches his nose, looks everywhere but at Zoe. “I don’t know. Weekends aren’t any easier than weekdays. So much work to do. I had this idea.” Now he leans forward, eyes blazing. “What if we combine the translation app with a dating app? Everybody wants to know what the person they’re out with is thinking, right? What if we could calibrate the app to pick up nuances not just in language but in tone of voice, inflection, hesitation, pitch? You’d be talking to someone, and right there, on your phone, you’re getting subtitles. How amazing would that be? Think of the partnership opportunities! The cross promotion!”
He goes on in this vein for over an hour. Zoe doesn’t need any subtitles to know that he also manages to avoid answering her question.
As they linger at the top of the subway steps, much to the chagrin of those running to catch a train on either side, Alex asks if Zoe would like him to escort her home, as a gentleman should.
Before she left her studio that morning, Zoe gave it a thorough cleaning, including a scrub under the toilet seat, should Alex care about such things. She was ready for the inevitable offer to shepherd her home. She was ready to accept it with enthusiasm. It was the least Alex had earned after spending the afternoon with her family.
Yet now, Zoe hears herself ducking. “Rain check?”
Considering how he’s asked it of her, Alex can’t very well object, can he?
Alex looks like he realizes that’s th
e case. But he doesn’t have to be happy about it.
Zoe waits for Alex to hop in a cab and speed away. After a perfunctory hesitation to pretend this wasn’t what she’d been thinking about all through dinner, Zoe takes out her phone and, before she can change her mind—channeling Lacy insisting everything will be fine—she types a text to Gideon, asking if he’d like to be her date for Baba and Deda’s anniversary party. She hits Send and descends toward the platform, away from Wi-Fi as soon as she sets foot on the train and the possibility of an answer. Or a rejection.
She’d planned to wait until she was in her apartment before peeking, but then she decides waiting until she’s out of the subway is enough. If Zoe gets a connection, it would be God’s way of telling her she was right to jump the gun. And to have sent the invite in the first place.
She has bars.
She has a reply.
Gideon texted back, Sure.
Zoe smiles without thinking about it. And then she slips her thumb between her two fingers. To keep the evil eye from seeing and ruining everything.
Obviously, Lacy needs to hear about this. Obviously, Zoe’s family doesn’t.
Zoe tells Lacy she invited Gideon to be her date for Baba and Deda’s anniversary party.
“That’s great!” Lacy gushes. Which, like the reason Zoe’s great-grandmother married her great-grandfather, isn’t the sole grounds for calling Lacy, but it’s definitely one part of it. Lacy can be counted on to gush about anything.
“Does that mean I’ve screwed things up with Alex for good?”
“If that’s what you want.” Lacy can also be counted on to be supportive about anything. Even if it is confusing.
“I don’t want to screw things up with Alex!”
“So why did you invite Gideon?”
“Because he’s fun. And he makes me laugh. And I like being around him. And when we’re together, I don’t feel like I’m constantly being judged. I can be myself with him. Which is why he’s the wrong guy for me.”
“That makes sense,” Lacy says. Zoe doesn’t know if she’s being sarcastic or sincere.
“You understand, right? With Gideon, I’m just me. And who the hell needs me?”
“Um . . . I’m going to guess . . . Gideon?”
“My family really likes Alex,” Zoe tells Lacy what she wishes would be the truth, already. It’d make all of this so much easier.
“I thought you said they liked Gideon, too.”
“He was nice to Deda,” Zoe concedes. “But it doesn’t matter. They’d never accept Gideon.”
“So what?” asks Lacy, the American girl whose parents have celebrated her every turn since the womb. “How you feel is the only thing that matters.”
So, so American.
“I’ve told you how I feel. Alex is the guy I should want to be with. I will never, ever find anyone better for me.”
“And Gideon is . . .”
“Gideon is . . .” It’s been years since Zoe allowed herself to twitch her fingers when she gets nervous. She’s twitching them now. “Gideon is the guy I’m taking to Baba and Deda’s anniversary party.”
Getting dressed for said anniversary party, however, turns into a minor crisis. Zoe weighs the formal requirements of a Brighton Beach gathering versus her distaste for anything that crowd considers fashionable versus Mama calling her disrespectful versus Gideon thinking she dressed up for him and/or feeling underdressed himself. The latter is the tiebreaker when Zoe convinces herself black dress pants and an aquamarine sweater that sparkles not-excessively are acceptable. She also puts on a pair of gold hoop earrings Baba bought for Zoe’s sixteenth birthday. She wished her Zoyenka luck in breaking family tradition and managing to hold on to them.
Zoe is ready with defenses for what she anticipates will be her family’s mortification at Gideon’s appearance in casual wear (as if Gideon’s taste in clothes will be their biggest gripe), when he shows up, right on time, and looking more Brighton-appropriate than Zoe.
Not that he’s wearing a red velour tracksuit with white racing stripes, a Miami Vice neon knockoff, or a costume rejected from a high-school production of Guys and Dolls. Gideon is wearing beige slacks; a jewel-tone orchid dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms; and a tie in a darker orchid hue. He’s carrying a flat package wrapped in silver paper with a matching bow.
“You look terrific,” Zoe blurts out.
“Thanks.” Gideon doesn’t try to deny, Brighton-style, how, no, he really doesn’t. It leaves Zoe without a traditional conversation pattern to follow.
“You brought a gift.” She points out the obvious, stunned and touched.
“My grandmother would disown me if I didn’t. I’ve had home training.”
“My grandmother would never disown me,” Zoe says. “Who would she criticize?”
As they walk from the train toward the boardwalk restaurant, Zoe offers Gideon an overview of her family tree, including the great-great-uncle visiting from Israel, as well as all the folks she’s not related to but still calls aunt or uncle—no Russian-speaking youth would dare address an elder by only their first name—and their children, whom Zoe had been friends with when they were little because her family was friends with theirs.
“Play cousins.” Gideon says he has those, too. He asks, “Do your grandparents hang out with the same people here they did back in the USSR?”
“No. It’s pretty strange, actually. They call Brighton Little Odessa. You’ll be walking down the boardwalk and run into the girl you sat next to in first grade. Or getting your nails done and, hey, the manicurist once lived in the same courtyard as your second cousin. Most people love it. It’s why they congregated here in the first place. My grandmother hates it. She goes out of her way to avoid everyone and anything that reminds her of the past.”
Chapter 43
The party is in full swing when Gideon and Zoe enter. Zoe timed it so the space would be full and dimly lit, and they wouldn’t attract too much attention. There’s a nightclub stage at the farthest end of the floor Mama rented. A band named Russian Spirit, composed of a piano, bass, drums, and tambourine, is plugging away, fronted by a dude in his forties, sweating through his black dress shirt and matching fedora, and backed by three busty women of the same age, but dressed as if they’d raided their teenage daughters’ closets—in the 1980s. Baba isn’t the only one refusing to give up on figure-flattering fashions.
There’s a dance floor in front of the stage. A handful of couples, a few Mama’s age, most Baba and Deda’s, are getting down. The old guys have serious hip action going. The women match them in wild head tosses and wanton shoulder shaking. Those without partners dance in groups, gyrating their legs, swooshing their skirts, waving their hands beneath the disco ball, a Soviet-inspired hora.
Four rows of tables are set up in semicircles around the dance floor. Each seats four. Each bears two bottles of vodka. The buffet is in the corner, featuring sculpted mountains of beet and potato salad, pickles, olives, caviar, black bread, shredded cabbage, deviled eggs, meat pastries, veal tongue with a dab of mayonnaise on every slice, and herring so dry you have to hit it against the table—that’s how you tell it’s good. And, of course, the pièce de résistance, a whole roasted pig, complete with an apple in its mouth.
Baba and Deda sit at the head, sharing a table with Balissa and Mama. They aren’t dancing. Not in the designated area, anyway. Deda has turned his chair to face the action and is kicking his legs, cancan-style, and raising his arms, torquing his wrists as if screwing in two lightbulbs. Baba is doing her best to ignore it.
The room is flickering with strobe lights bouncing off the mirrored walls and gilt-edged furnishings. But it’s not so blinding as to distract from Gideon’s presence. He’s being stared at. Some are doing it discreetly, taking quick peeks, then whipping their heads away innocently. Some are pretending to study an object right next to him, while their eyes shift surreptitiously for a better look. Others are blatantly gaping.
Zo
e turns to Gideon and whisper-shouts over the pounding music, “Are you okay?”
“I’m used to it,” Gideon reassures her.
“To . . . this?” Zoe can’t think of any other way to describe . . . this.
“Looks like any other room of white people to me.”
Right. Where Zoe sees the cringeworthy culture she tries to distance herself from, he sees . . . white people. It’s like when Zoe has to explain to those who’d call her Russian that she’s not; she’s Jewish. Soviet Russians didn’t consider Jews to be Russian, and Zoe’s family never thought of themselves that way . . . until Americans insisted they were. “But weren’t they born in Russia?” Americans would ask. Actually, they weren’t, they were born in Ukraine, except those who were forcibly passed through Siberia. They speak Russian, though, not Ukrainian, because that’s what the Jews of Odessa spoke, since they weren’t considered Ukrainian, either. That nuance is even more difficult to grok. Zoe’s standard reply used to be, “If you were born in Japan, would that make you Japanese?” But then she gave up and, when asked if she was Russian, shrugged and replied, “Sure.”
“Wanna dance?” Gideon asks.
Zoe’s about to shock herself and say yes when the music scrapes to an abrupt halt, and the singer, also their emcee for the evening, announces it’s time for the festive toasts Baba and Deda’s friends have prepared. One toupee-wearing gentleman announces that, on this joyous occasion, he is moved to muse about how marriage is like the following Russian verse:
When you’re first hit in the eye
