The funeral was held in a massive Soviet-immigrant death establishment on Coney Island Avenue, a street where cars had many lanes but still bunched together and tiny people on the tiny strips of sidewalk seemed to be crossing a desert.
PART TWO
2008
NINE
EMBARKING ON the Coney Island–bound Q, Marina spotted an inch of bench and reverse-parked herself into it. Was there a greater victory? Pregnant lady looked sturdy, Park Slopey—she’d be getting off soon anyway. Secured in this cradle of human warmth, rocked back and forth, soothed by a lullaby of rails. Too quick to rejoice—at DeKalb Avenue eyes were locked, pupils zapping. No escape. Marina summoned emergency energy reserves, reserves tapped daily and for the most part depleted. Acquaintance swooped in, hovering, head dangling from armpit. This woman, who, to be honest, Marina couldn’t place—which former life should be referenced?—began to rave about some novel she’d just finished reading: epic, absorbing, deeply evocative. Permission to tune out. Marina nodded along, studying the woman’s chiseled jaw, single chin, teeth aligned in neat rows, until her neck cramped and she looked down. Snakeskin boots, brass buckle, pointy toe, collided head-on with her own pair of subway-rat-gray Reeboks discounted from Loehmann’s, a half size too large, extra wiggle room for her toes, hallelujah! A few stops later, the train-evacuating stampede left Marina alone, holding a book. If she hadn’t been at the limits of exhaustion, she never would’ve accepted something that locked her into future interactions with whoever this acquaintance was, clearly someone liable to get carried away in the after-work delirium and make grand gestures soon to be regretted; just wait and see, in a week or two there’d be a phone call, unknown number, this friend of hers wanting the book back or at least feeling entitled to Marina’s thoughts, to a meaningful exchange of ideas and opinions.
She’d put off cracking the spine for a long time. In the first place, she resented the imposition on her life. No one knew what she was going through. No one had been through anything like it. In the second place—the cover! A blurry reproduction of a drawing depicting some dim medieval scene alerted her to the likelihood that the novel was historical fiction, a genre she avoided like the plague. Finally there was the size of the thing. It’ll build my biceps, she joked. Precisely how long it was, she still didn’t know. In the beginning she’d figured that knowing the exact number of pages would daunt and discourage, and now she feared the arrival of the end. Her mother used to say that after a certain age all a woman needs is a good book, a statement Marina found too preposterous to require rebuttal. But . . . The novel was written in a lucid style (so said a back-flap blurb—she agreed) and thus far had been set in seventeenth-century America (witch trials), at the turn of the twentieth century in northern China (Boxer Rebellion), and in present-day Zurich and Moscow (life). Marina couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so drawn in, so quick to lose track of the hours.
Interruptions came regularly. Marina’s childhood friend called from Tel Aviv to complain about her situation, which had a habit of hitting rock bottom, then getting drastically worse; it began to pour, and the windowsills had to be lined with towels, a plastic tub put in the corridor under the leak; Levik cut his finger making Biff Stroganoff for the guests about to arrive any minute now; the electricity went out during the October heat wave and waited to return until the last item in their fridge had perished; the cat’s vomit had to be cleaned; the cat’s diarrhea; Robert lost his hearing and began listening to Shostakovich’s string quartets at such a pitch the walls shook and reading became impossible, and Marina could only lie on the bed staring up at the ceiling in urgent need of a paint job until she either fell asleep or surrendered utterly to the fury of Shostakovich, the despair, the doom, the colossal force, which happened once. When she began driving to work instead of taking the subway, having started a new job in the cardiac unit at Methodist Hospital, the change made her put the book down for months, and when she picked it up again one evening (the evening she finally tossed the heap of junk mail and found it hiding underneath), she got a pounding brain-on-the-brink-of-explosion headache, so she took two Advil and half of her father’s yellow pill and fell into a dreamless sleep. The same thing happened a few evenings later. Every attempt brought on the same damn headache. A protracted visit to the doctor resulted in eyeglasses. For a while she avoided the book in order to avoid the glasses, or more precisely the feeling that somehow, without realizing quite when, she’d become a middle-aged hag with bad vision and achy joints and a host of other stereotypical-for-her-age issues not necessary to mention (she was still a lady after all). Eventually, however, she grew accustomed to the glasses and even began to enjoy the gesture of slipping them onto her nose, notifying her body that it was about to be returned to the realm where it felt happiest, which, oddly enough, was currently in the nineteenth century, at a monastery on a hillside in France.
But then an entire year elapsed, every minute of every day accounted for. There wasn’t a single moment when Marina could shut the door, crawl under the covers, and turn on the reading lamp now colonizing her nightstand. On the lamp she’d decided to splurge. It was nice to treat oneself to a touch of luxury. The lamp gave off a peculiar quality of light, intense and ghostly, but Marina figured she was just too used to crappy fixtures, half-dead bulbs, ancient chandeliers. How could good light not seem peculiar to her? But after a month of being no less shocked each time she flipped the switch, she did a bit of research and realized she’d gotten one of those plant lamps. This was for the best, really, as the plants were dying slow, miserable, inexplicable deaths, and anyway at night she fell asleep, as they say, before she hit the pillow. The plants got a last-wish sort of gift. She stopped attempting to make time in her day to read.
Until a few miraculous occurrences: Robert recovered from his lung surgery and agreed to test-drive a home attendant; Marina’s on-again, off-again lover, Serge, moved to Cincinnati to be near his autistic grandchild; and most important, after an interim period of living at home and working part-time in a doctor’s office, Frida was accepted to medical school in Pennsylvania. They’d failed to get her out of the house for college, though not for lack of trying (John Lamborg was alive and well, still slaving away in the Slavic department at Harvard—and of course he remembered them! How could he forget their generosity, or those delectable cherry dumplings? He looked back fondly on that afternoon but held no sway with the undergraduate admissions board. And he thanked them for the elephant ears, quite unnecessary, much appreciated). Frida had gone to NYU, commuting to class because there was no way in hell they’d also swallow the cost of housing, an arrangement that must’ve suited her fine, since she’d hoped to continue in the same vein after graduation. But sitting at home and weighing options for an eternity wasn’t an option. She had no luck with medical schools in the city and was forced to pack her bags and get out. It was as if Marina found a secret door in the wall and walked into her life: With a snap of the fingers, Frida’s room became hers. This was only fair, as Levik and his flock of laptops inhabited the bedroom, Robert had a claim on both his room and the living room, and the home attendant, a West African lady with whom Robert refused to coexist, camped out in the kitchen, where she kept up constant contact with her alcoholic husband’s hundred-and-one-year-old mother in Nigeria.
There was time—not only to read but to tell her friends about the good book she was currently reading while they waited in line for the new Almodóvar film at the Angelika, to go for a swim at the Y and take a morning stroll to Seagate, to learn how to ride a bicycle and get a manicure from a Chinese boy in a face mask.
But school years end. In the damp, double-digit days of May, Frida’s summer vacation began.
• • •
FRIDA CAME HOME, ready to talk—about the weather, the new shampoo by the tub, the downstairs neighbors, everything, in short, with the exception of her studies. As she saw it, she didn’t owe them a report. They’d gotten their way—she was already goi
ng to medical school. Wasn’t that enough? Evidently not—she had to be forthcoming and positive about the experience as well. Misery was impermissible. She couldn’t not like all her classes and not find any of the other students worthy of companionship and not see any benefit to being situated in such proximity to Lake Erie. She’d always wanted to be more in sync with nature. This was her chance. No, simply becoming a doctor wouldn’t cut it; she had to be happy about it, too. This need for a positive outlook was more for their sake than hers. They’d forced her into medical school despite vehement protest. She’d put up admirable resistance, but they’d left no choice, attacking like hyenas at the whiff of her lostness, pouncing on her sense of guilt. Did she not remember that ever since she was eight years old, she’d been saying that she would be a pediatrician? Imagine how disappointed Baba Esther would be. After four scholarship-less years of university, did she really have no idea what she wanted to do with her life? It was a common misconception that time was the answer to anything. Time was never the solution. Besides, if another idea should ever present itself, a medical degree wouldn’t prevent her from pursuing it. The halo of an M.D. over one’s name had never hurt anybody.
The moment Frida gave in, the story was rewritten. They pressured her? Don’t make me laugh! Who could force Frida to do anything? She was completely incorrigible and always did just as she pleased. Had anybody ever heard her say she wanted to be anything but a doctor? Such a story relied on Frida’s doing more than gritting her teeth through the rest of her professional life. At the moment, however, she was prepared to do just that.
Robert was particularly distraught at her merciless restraint. He thought he’d get to polish his rusty jargon, banter in doctorly argot, whip out medical arcana, warn of pesky hospital perils, offer seasoned advice. (Marina was just a nurse after all.) He was riddled by fantasies of a wondrous return to the old days, when Frida sat on Grandpa’s lap as they hatched plans for fantastic science-fair projects that even when compromised by a translation to reality never failed to take first prize at ecstatic ceremonies in junior high school gymnasiums. Frida’s eschewal of any medicine-related topic in long-distance communications had been explainable as typical to Levik’s side of the family’s telephobia. There was no meaty discussion to be had with Frida unless an interface-to-face was established (an internet-aided one, notably, didn’t make the grade, causing her to be even flimsier and flightier than the phone—the more elaborate the technology, the harder to invest concentration). So when she appeared at their doorstep in pimply, ramen-plumped flesh, Robert attacked. What had she learned? Had a specialty been chosen? Waiting for inspiration was futile! Would she be sticking with the pediatrician-like-Grandma line or switching to neurosurgeon-like-Grandpa (a better ring, perhaps)? What about the instructors—did they know what they were talking about of course not! Frida exploded. Get off my back, Ded! I’m on break!
That one subject excluded, there was nothing she didn’t intend to discuss. The latest gossip was particularly welcome—was Brukhmansha’s anorexic daughter still seeing the balding poodle groomer? Had the Marazams finalized their divorce? Did Lera’s daughter get out of rehab, or at least go back into it? Marina found her daughter’s newfound garrulity and excitability disturbing and was adopting shameful habits such as turning the lock quietly when she got home from work, loitering in the locker room of the Y, tiptoeing from bathroom to bedroom, where she exhibited all the signs of someone hiding out, strategies that invariably failed at avoiding an encounter. At least Frida had a particular way of leaning her weight on the door handle, allowing Marina a chance to brace herself.
Frida barged in, forehead glistening, hair rising. She looked as if a cherry pit had gotten lodged in her throat and she was about to commence choking.
The firefighters are here, she said.
Give them my regards, replied Marina, not glancing up from her book (unable to make out a single word).
Frida hurried into the hallway. She was worried about her mother. She suspected that Marina had succumbed to clinical depression. She knew the checklist backward, and the signs were impossible to miss: Marina had virtually stopped cooking (once a fervent pastime), lost her joie de vivre, always claimed to be exhausted yet was never asleep when Frida paid visits (Frida took it as her duty to keep her mother engaged). And now her mother was forgoing a chance to flirt with the firemen—unimaginable that the old Marina would have passed up such an opportunity. Admittedly, the opportunity was lately in abundance. Someone in the building—was it Igor from the fourth floor or crazy Marusya?—had gotten into the habit of reporting fires, and several evenings a week the staircases were scaled by firemen. At the identifiable bustle, doors unlocked, men in slippers and boxer shorts emerged, women in hair rollers and bathrobes, gunky spatulas still in hand. Everyone hoped and prayed for a fire, and it was as if the firefighters themselves were failing to conjure the flame. Interest waned. People gave up going out on the landing.
Frida persisted, and not in order to flirt. One must have a sense of ceremony. The men were responding to a cry for help. They wanted to dazzle with heroism. Frida didn’t intend to insult them further by not coming out on the landing. A fire, even just the threat, demanded respect. (There was little excitement in Frida’s life recently, or none at all.) She stood by the stairs radiating concern. That’s the most delicious fire I ever smelled, said one of the button-nosed firemen, referring to Inga-from-across-the-hall’s cooking. Frida wanted to congratulate him on his joke but didn’t even manage a grin.
They lumbered down the stairs in a fury of grunts, scrapes, burps, and groans. Having seen them off, Frida returned to the apartment, overstepping a mound of spilled cat food and the colony of roaches partaking, skirting the pile of neglected pianos and bicycles and an ab roller like a cherry on top, into her mother’s toasty bedroom.
Still no fire, she reported. But the guys seemed in good spirits.
That’s nice, said Marina, tucking a yellow strand into her ponytail and leaning into the mirror. Frida hopped onto the unmade bed—a cherished, elusive moment was upon them. The makeup case had been laid out, unzipped. Marina’s manicured fingers reached inside, and the plastic tubes and compacts, the lipsticks, mascaras, eye shadows, and rouges began to stir in the dark, rearranging. Marina knew what she was looking for, oblivious to the hypnotic purr emitted by her search. It was as if she were choosing bones from Frida’s body. A pair of rusty tweezers emerged, efficiently attacking a chin hair.
You know how Anna and I take our Friday-night walks? said Frida.
You do?
Well, we’ve been meaning to make it more of a thing.
That’s nice.
But yesterday I stayed in—
I remember.
Do you know why?
Nowhere to go. Lipstick found Marina’s taut lips, traveling smoothly back and forth like a swinging car on the Ferris wheel.
Because Anna’s cousin is in town from Poland.
She couldn’t invite you to hang out with her cousin?
Frida swallowed. That isn’t the point.
Anna’s cousin might be your soul mate.
He’s in high school. And they were doing a family thing, a sit-down dinner. I wouldn’t even have wanted to go. But I do want to go to—
I told you, Frida, not another word about the wedding.
Have you even considered—
Does it seem like I’ve had time to consider something? She smudged eyeliner with a fingertip, dabbed a few powdery finishing touches, assessed herself, and gave a long, defeated sigh.
You’re not old, said Frida.
But you are. Turned away from her reflection, Marina lost the pout and vacant mirror stare, released her belly, dropped to a slouch. And it’s Saturday night.
I have plans, if that’s your way of asking.
That involve leaving the house?
Fuck off!
Lighten up a little, said Marina.
I’m leading a pathetic existence!
Frida glanced at the keyboard. A different message overtook the screen: GREETINGS, AMERICANTSI . . .
Marina’s eyes bulged. Don’t forget I was the one who showed you this, she said, and don’t make me regret it.
Sanya had gotten engaged, news he deemed worthy of sharing with his estranged Western aunt, who then made the mistake of sharing with her strange, not-distant-enough daughter. Getting married at last, that sullen, mousy boy. . . . OK, so it was hard to get sentimental. The guy was thirty-two and had two kids from two different women, both older and married. Otherwise his record was clean. Not a single divorce. This was to be his first relationship in the eyes of Ukraine. And he was Frida’s only cousin—there were dozens of photos of the two of them in the cardboard box stashed away in some not readily accessible nook of the apartment. Though it was probably more readily accessible than she remembered. In her mind it had to be unearthed, dug up. A major effort had to be involved. All those photographs of them together, or not exactly together but caught in the same frame. A courtyard scene: Frida in ballooning denim overalls, staring into a well (old, dry, someone’s rubber ducky at the bottom), next to her a ratty courtyard child of indeterminate sex grimacing into the camera, and in the background Sanya squatting over a neat mound of something (probably dog feces; he went through a prolonged fascination, the only time Pasha displayed a measure of paternal concern). At birthday parties they were seated together but never to be found looking at each other or even in the same direction. But at that age a seven-year difference was very significant (this phrase, repeated over and over). Sanya hadn’t been the type to take anybody under his wing; he’d needed someone to do that for him, but there had been no takers.
Panic in a Suitcase: A Novel Page 14
