by Lisa Lutz
“Where are they?”
“There was an accident. Last night. It was very bad. Your mama and papa are with God now.”
All of Kate’s memories were categorized by whether they’d occurred before or after that moment. But all memories shift over time, like a story rewritten again and again. When she was older, the memory was dusted with suspicion. She’d always felt that there was something her grandpa wasn’t telling her. Maybe because that was the only time he’d ever mentioned God. For an hour she’d sat on his lap and cried. Ivan said, “I am your papa now. I vill take care of you.” Kate never went back to the house she’d lived in with her parents. Her clothing was gathered in a rush, her parents’ belongings either sold or donated to charity. Ivan paid a waitress named Doris three hundred dollars to take the day off and turn his guest room into the perfect domain for an eight-year-old girl. Kate returned home from school to find her new bedroom transformed into a princess’s chamber. The smell of fresh paint stung Kate’s nostrils, but it was the light pink walls that offended her senses the most. The ruffled curtains in a darker rose shade, Doris explained, were an accent, as decorators called it. Atop the twin bed was a frilly white duvet and ivory dolls with locks of tight blond curls. Kate’s unfinished-wood dresser from home had been painted white and decoupaged with butterflies and fairies. Ivan and Doris looked so pleased with themselves that Kate could only force a smile and thank them. It took Kate three years before she had the heart to tell him that she missed the bare wood of her old room and the checked flannel comforter on the bed. She had never wanted to be a princess.
Ivan had come to the United States with his wife and ten-year-old son. Two years later his wife died of cancer. Ivan was a kind father and then grandfather, but he had little interest in anything but work. He had come to this country for a better life, a life he could pass on to his child. Kate could recall very few leisure activities with her deda. He took her to the movie theater once. She slumped in her seat, shrinking in embarrassment, as he commented his way through What About Bob? The next time Ivan asked her if she wanted to see a movie, she told him she wasn’t a fan. Of movies in general. Smirnoff’s Diner was the glue that held them together. That was what they did together. They didn’t need anything else.
The tone of this conversation in her deda’s office was unlike anything that had previously transpired between them. Kate noticed an odd formality in Ivan’s voice, as if he were trying to calmly deliver an unfortunate piece of information.
“I haf news, Katia. I tink it good news. I hope you agree.”
“You don’t look like someone with good news,” Kate said.
“It is good news,” Ivan firmly stated.
“Spill it,” Kate said.
“Spill it?” Ivan repeated with a mocking tone.
“It means ‘lay it on me,’” Kate said. She liked to define colloquialisms for her deda with even more obscure colloquialisms.
Ivan rolled his eyes with vaudevillian theatrics.
“I haf sold the diner.”
He leaned on his desk. Kate felt a knot in her stomach and adrenaline heating the back of her neck.
“Is it sitting on an oil well?”
“Vat? No, did I say oil vell?”
“No. But why would you sell the diner?”
Kate began swiveling the chair, making its joints squeak rhythmically. Ivan circled his desk, took both arms of Kate’s chair, and steadied it.
“I don’t vant this life for you. You are smart. You are smarter than anyone in the family. You could be anything,” he said, sitting down again.
“And I want to be the owner of this diner,” Kate said. “We had an understanding. I was going to take over the restaurant when you retired.”
“It is too late. I haf already signed papers.”
“Why? Why would you do that?” Kate stood. She was almost shouting. She rarely shouted, especially not at Ivan. He got to his feet again, alarmed by her anger. Kate had never been this angry with Ivan before. And now she was furious, incapable of modulating her response.
“I haf put some money aside for you. You vill be fine. You vill do something else vith your life. Now, you go home and you calm down. Do you understand me?”
“No,” Kate said. “I don’t understand you.”
She turned on her heel and walked briskly out of the restaurant.
The 2.4-mile walk home did little to dull Kate’s anger. Kate couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known her future and embraced it. Her mother and father had worked at the diner until they died. Kate remembered years of her childhood spent sitting at the counter eating cherry pie and reading library books while her family hustled around her, seating customers, serving customers, patting her on the head as they passed by. She began working at Smirnoff’s at age twelve and learned every aspect of the family business. She had big plans for the diner when her deda retired. For example, the Czech delicacy furry dumplings would be excised from the menu, and she would hire a chef who made comfort food that didn’t taste like it came out of a box. She’d always wondered how the restaurant managed to stay afloat.
Kate’s ability to spot a poker tell extended to everyday life. Her grandfather was lying about one thing: the papers hadn’t been signed. There was still time to reverse this trajectory. The house was empty when Kate returned home. She found Anna’s address book by the kitchen phone, picked up, and dialed.
“May I speak to Colin Fury,” Kate said when Colin’s receptionist at the law firm of Galey and Furst answered the phone. “Tell him it’s Kate Smirnoff. I’m a friend of his sister.”
Colin picked up the phone immediately, his tone rushed and edgy. “Is Anna all right?”
“She’s fine. She’s fine. I’m calling about a legal matter,” Kate said.
“A legal matter? Related to Anna?”
“No. A personal legal matter, related to me.”
Colin quickly regrouped once he realized his sister wasn’t in prison or worse.
“What can I do for you?”
“I think I want to sue my deda—my grandfather. Ivan Smirnoff.”
“What do you want to sue him for?” Colin asked.
“Breach of contract.”
Colin asked Kate to take a week to cool down and then revisit her response. Meanwhile, Ivan solicited the help of Anna and George to talk some sense into his potentially litigious granddaughter. Both roommates diligently advocated for the elder Smirnoff, baffled that anyone would want to stand on her feet twelve hours a day running a greasy spoon. Ivan understood that it was Kate’s last connection to her parents, but he wanted to break the link. The diner was part of the past. Kate needed to look forward. Ivan called the house repeatedly, leaving angry, ranting messages on the answering machine for Kate. He could shout for five minutes and yet he always signed off the same way:
“I love you, miláèku.”
Despite Kate’s repeated phone calls to Colin, Anna convinced him not to take the case. She also suggested he be prepared to provide legal precedent when he turned Kate down. Colin told Kate that the statute of limitations on a verbal contract was two years. Kate couldn’t recall the last time they had had an explicit discussion about her role in the business, but she had a letter exchange from her freshman year in college conveying the same sentiment, and since the statute of limitations on a written contract was four years, Kate believed she still had a case. Colin told her he was unfamiliar with California law and was not equipped to take on her lawsuit.
Kate promptly sought out local attorneys and soon concluded that she couldn’t afford one without the money she would receive upon the sale of Smirnoff’s Diner. In the midst of finals, just a week before graduation, Kate spent all of her usual restaurant hours in the law library learning how to write a legal brief. She drafted a three-page complaint against her grandfather citing the numerous occasions on which they’d discussed her future in the business and the many sacrifices she had made over the years to ensure the success of Smirnoff’s Dine
r. She filed the document with the circuit court in Santa Cruz, California, right after completing her Managerial Economics final.
When Ivan was served the complaint, by an eighteen-year-old skateboarder with a pierced lip, he phoned the Fury/Smirnoff/Leoni household and started hurling what Anna could only assume were Czech invectives at Kate. Anna attempted to mediate between the two, but Kate refused to speak to Ivan about it, and Ivan refused to speak about it in English. Ivan also refused to seek legal help and hoped that in the thirty days he had to respond, his granddaughter would come to her senses.
As the thirty days ticked away, Anna and Kate prepared for graduation. The event was anticlimactic in the household, since George wouldn’t graduate until the following year and Anna was still taking courses to try to ramp up her mediocre GPA. Before all the legal maneuverings commenced, the roommates had arranged for a graduation party at Smirnoff’s Diner with a small flock of family and friends in attendance. Anna asked Kate whether they needed to find a new venue, considering the brewing conflict, and Kate said, “Of course not. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
Kate received her diploma, tossed up her hat, and walked down the procession line into her grandfather’s arms.
The diner hosted a crowd of twenty or so people. Ivan had kept the buffet simple, at Kate’s request. She explained that the Furys had no taste for goulash. Sandwiches and salads would suffice, although Ivan, believing the Furys to be descendants of early colonists and thus WASPy to the core, couldn’t refrain from attempting a few high-tea recipes he’d found in his research. He baked a couple dozen doorjamb scones and served what he thought was clotted cream but that was really just whipped cream, which deflated the moment it hit the reheated scone. Every time Kate breezed past the table, she’d pocket a scone and later toss it in the bin. By the end of the day, only three scones had touched anyone’s lips. Ivan assumed they were a great success. The cucumber sandwiches were acceptable, as Lena said. Then again, how hard is it to pull off white bread, cucumber, and butter?
Like cliques in a schoolyard, the families didn’t mingle much at the party beyond the preliminary introductions. Although Colin, unable to turn away from a pretty girl, made his way over to George and chatted with her about the negative effect of commercial forestry on rivers and catchments.
“When you plant trees,” George said, “rainwater runoff in rivers increases the sediment and can also cause floods downstream. There are plenty of methods to mitigate the impact, and commercial forestry still has some environmental benefits, but it has to be done responsibly.”
“Of course it does,” Colin said, taking a thoughtful glance downward, furtively memorizing the outline of George’s hipbone jutting out from her dress.
Anna briskly walked over and bulldozed her brother in the direction of Lena and Don. There were occasions during which Anna believed Colin’s sole purpose was to be in the domestic trenches with her. If she had to endure small talk with her folks, he did too.
And across the room were Kate and Ivan. She sat on his lap after he insisted. He whispered how proud he was of her. He told her how proud her parents would have been. He said, “I love you, miláèku.” She said “I love you” back. He gave her an envelope, a graduation gift. A tacky card with flowers and glitter and a whirling calligraphy font.
Colin watched the exchange from across the room and nudged Anna with his elbow.
“Isn’t she planning on suing him?” Colin asked.
“She already filed the complaint. Drafted it herself.”
“But he looks so proud of her, like there’s nothing wrong.”
“He is proud of her. He’s also angry with her. After he was served the papers, he called her up and shouted for fifteen minutes and then he told her he loved her,” Anna said. “They’re fucking crazy, right?”
“I don’t get it,” Colin said.
When Kate opened the card, a check dropped onto her lap. As a child, she had been instructed not to look at the money until later, so she slipped the check back into the card and kissed her deda on the cheek.
“Thank you, Deda.”
“Look at it,” Ivan said.
Kate opened the card and unfolded the check. She had never seen so many zeros. Two more zeros than she had ever seen on a check with her name on it: $50,000. At first she thought Ivan had made an error. His eyes weren’t what they used to be. It’s easy to mistake a comma for a decimal. But then she reread the amount. Fifty thousand dollars. And she knew he had signed the papers.
“Blood money,” Kate said, getting to her feet.
“You vill get over dis,” Ivan said instructively.
Kate’s voice took on a formal register: “You have thirteen days now to respond to my complaint. If you do not do so, the court will rule on my behalf.”
It turned out that Ivan had only five days. He died of a heart attack while cleaning out his office. He had spoken to Kate just two hours earlier. They argued, and she threatened to sue for damages. And still, when they ended the call, they both said in sharp, angry tones, I love you.
2012
Chicago, Illinois
“What do you say?” George said to her three-year-old son when she gave him a cookie.
“I love you?” Hudson said.
When Anna got the birth announcement, she’d exclaimed, for the third time in a row, “What the fuck is up with the last-name first names?” But Anna was pleased to have heard from George at all. It was a sign that their relationship was continuing its glacial thaw. A month after Bruno’s funeral, Anna began phoning George. Once a week, without fail. At first George didn’t answer the phone. Anna left messages, long, rambling, one-sided conversations, mostly about her life off the grid. Eventually George picked up. They stayed on safe subjects—children, creatures in the walls—with one exception.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Anna asked at the end of the first call.
“No,” George said. “I don’t ever want to talk about it.”
They never did.
“Normally, you say ‘thank you.’ But I think ‘I love you’ is better,” George said to Hudson.
“Thank you. I love you,” said Hudson, who was now the sweetest of her boys. Carter, ten, wanted only his Game Boy or George’s smartphone to occupy him. He had no interest in her beyond the power she wielded over his electronics. Miller, eight, lived to be outside, to ride his bike, play baseball or soccer, and climb trees. His mother was nothing but transportation to locations where these activities could be pursued. She still occasionally tried gender-role interventions and encouraged playdates with girls, and when Hudson had lost his shit in the barber’s chair, she let him grow his wavy brown hair well past his shoulders.
Other than a few relationship sputters and whiplash breakups, George had been single for four years now. Some days she enjoyed not having a man around, having the option of serving pancakes for dinner or leaving the dishes until the morning or not even thinking about shaving her legs. She liked ruling her boys by whim—Go ahead, eat the worm, or jump off the roof onto your old mattress, or set the raked leaves on fire (just make sure you’ve laid the rocks for a fire pit as I taught you)—but some nights in bed, the same old need returned, and it felt so ugly. She wondered if it was what Anna had felt that day when she got herself arrested.
These days, human contact could be simulated on one’s computer, and George would sometimes spend hours online, reading what her distant acquaintances were up to through their mundane posts.
Shari is enjoying a latte.
Jonathan just scored fifty points on Brain Game.
Francine likes white wine.
John wonders if it’s okay to eat two burgers in one day.
Sometimes George would share pictures of her boys in midair. Lately she had stopped including photos of herself with her online posts. As far as George was concerned, she’d become middle-aged overnight.
It was always when the house was so quiet that the creak of the floorboard under h
er feet sounded like a legato stroke on a violin that she’d creep into her office and try to connect with the world. George had looked up old friends before. Mostly old boyfriends. Occasionally after she drank a couple glasses of wine, she’d make clumsy contact. She hadn’t searched for Edgar but saw his profile turn up on the page of another acquaintance from college who had tracked her down just a year ago.
Edgar Dalton. Apartment 3A. She remembered their one dreadful night together. She remembered how he’d looked at her, that unabashed adoration, a look she should have been seeking from every boyfriend and husband since. That’s the kind of man I should be with, she thought. She drank a glass of wine and ran a search on her old friend.
Edgar Dalton had been busy in the intervening years. He had apparently made quite a name for himself in Silicon Valley. Photos of him, in tuxedos, no less, were littered over the Internet. He looked different these days, impeccably groomed, at ease, sure of himself. George drank another glass of wine and composed a message.
Dear Edgar,
George Leoni here from Santa Cruz. Do you remember me? It’s been almost twenty years. I’m not sure why I’m writing. I saw your picture online and it brought back memories and I wanted to see how you were doing. Although it’s clear you’re doing well. I had a feeling great things would happen for you.
I just thought I’d say hi. Write back if you have the chance.
Best,
George
George turned off her computer after she sent the message and went straight to bed. By morning she had received a reply.
Dear George,
Of course I remember you. How have you been? A brief survey of your online profile informs me that you live in Chicago and have three boys. That must keep you and your husband very busy. Are you still working in the forestry service?
I hope your life has turned out well. Are you still in touch with Anna and Kate?
I’ve thought about you now and again over the years. Tell me what you’re up to these days.
Warmest regards,
Edgar
George, elated to receive such a prompt response, immediately replied.
