The UnAmericans

by Michael Carter

  The hands on her crown changed, Mom took over and their second procession round the altar began a little less confidently. The crown started to dip, then left Lucy in a long slide over her forehead. She shoved it back before it took off for Saint Paul’s lap. They were in ceremonial crisis when a small miracle happened: other hands helped Peg stabilise the crown; her father and mother were helping her together. This moment of parental concern after three and a half decades dizzied her with a narcotic rush. Her mother’s hands dropped, the others remained on the crown for the final circuit and she realised they were not her father’s but Shota’s. She fell into the familiar pit of disappointment, but by the end of the short, holy circuit she settled for acceptance and felt calm.

  That small emotional shift was what she really understood by miracles: modest things levering a soul from delusion to reality, from anger to calm, the epiphany that switches off the voices in the head. The odours and beauty of sanctity, the continuity of religion from the catacombs and the crucifixion, the Christian constancy through centuries that raged with change, resolved as nothing more than a wonderful piece of theatre which she would remember one day and cherish. She no longer believed in God, but as she and Timmy came to a halt in front of the altar, she thanked Him, because at that moment she felt the need to thank someone or something.

  Everything was saturated in a painter’s light. On Shota’s low, white walls tubs of flower stained the sea with blues, reds and yellows. Emerald waves drenched the rocks. Citrus trees mottled the headland with orange, and above them delicate trees climbed so lightly they seemed nothing more than green air. She waited with the wedding photographer for her parents to dance into this brochure composition but they clung to the far side of the magnolia. Way off Shota’s property, a barrage of other long lenses and video cameras followed her father’s every movement, occasionally breaking to focus on her under a forest of waving arms and cries of ‘Loosea’.

  Max had disarmed everyone by dancing with his daughter then asking Peg to a waltz. This cued the village to wade into the Americans and get them all up. Arnold swayed with a willowy lass with a charming moustache and Henry beamed through sweat screens at his partner, a little younger but a couple of weight divisions above him and ahead on points. At a table Timmy and Masha were queens in a swarm of children demanding cartoon after cartoon.

  These moments expanded in Lucy like the first hit of a favourite cocktail. She found the photographer, pushed him under the magnolia and pointed out her parents and he waited for the perfect composition on the long lens when her mother said something that drained everything out of Max. Suddenly they were staring past each other, marking time till the end of the music, and it was in this alienation, that they drifted into frame. The photographer looked at Lucy and she nodded as if nothing had happened and the auto-wind buzzed off shots of the cold reality and not the warm hokey fantasy of a few seconds before.

  The celebration babbled under the wide magnolia and the sea provided its rhythmic harmonic, but what had passed between her parents set her sniffing every nuance of the main players for hidden meaning. Her mother’s eyes now swept the horizons above her new dance partner, Menteshashvilli, the short fisherman, who had enticed her for another waltz which he invested with the ham passions of an Argentinean tango while she retained her stiff American correctness. Max and Masha slid coldly along the horizon together. Despite the evening in the hotel and the insomniac phone calls to Lucy, Masha hovered silently on the edges, daring anyone to speak to her. Peg brushed past again and the battle-hardened face gave away nothing.

  Every morning Lucy woke to the thought of drink. Whether she actually drank or not was down to fate or whether her laces broke. This unpredictability was fathomless. She had no idea what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was, but she knew what it felt like. Under a Georgian sun, blessed by an ancient church her radar began scanning for the drink opportunity. Some last fragment of pride prevented her from lifting a glass in front of the family and her hosts, but she knew she would find a way to a drink. In all other parts of her life she had no faith, but in the pursuit of this great love she possessed a gift that functioned without her bidding. She luxuriated in this certainty, watching everyone ease into a second glass. They had gone through a celebration in which she was top of the bill, but the show was now over; hosting was on rest mode, to be switched on only when the bride or groom came near. For all their warmth and generosity, they were her father’s people, separated from her by an abundance of courtesy. Lightened by the knowledge that she was near to her next drink, she cut a path through the wedding guests to her father, who greeted her with a gentle smile.

  “The village will remember this for years. Thank you for coming.”

  “Thanks for inviting us.”

  “You drive a hard bargain.” He raised one eyebrow at Peg and Henry back under the tree.

  “You seem to be bearing up.”

  He smiled. “And you? Are you bearing up? These occasions can be overwhelming. Particularly in a strange place.”

  “Most places are strange places to me.”

  He laughed up into the magnolia. She pointed up the hill at a cottage and barn among the scrub and trees. “Is that Gia’s place?”

  “Yes. His sister rents it out to tourists now.”

  “He made the barn doors, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a kind of shape that runs through his stuff. A curve.”

  “His motif. It bored him, but it’s what people wanted.”

  “He seemed shy.”

  “Yes, he was shy.”

  It was almost fascinating watching him keep everything buried about Gia.

  “You must miss him a lot.”

  “It is strange. His not being here.”

  She would have been a presence, even in this remote village, in the last months between Max and Gia, a subtle contamination. How peculiar, she thought, that we can exist as a force in others’ lives on the opposite ends of the earth, and it struck her how in the pain of that dreadful night in Tbilisi, sleeping with Gia was an instinctive way of hitting back that seemed to have worked. Beneath Max’s wedding suit, she had made a little wound that was still painful.

  Had Gia been alive she would not have been able to come to her wedding. Or would she? Adultery on her wedding night would have set the family off for years. May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. With a drink inside her anything was possible. But even Gia would probably have resisted; not everyone was afflicted by the same urge to self-abort. She was sometimes driven to push herself through every boundary and taboo in the book, to go further than anyone else and shock the unshockable. Why? Just to prove she could. Life had often been an experiment in going further and the few minutes with her father triggered that recklessness. Had Gia been there she would have blatantly gone to him and shaken everyone. The Moscow assassins had probably done her a favour.

  During the exchange with Lucy, Max’s attention slipstreamed a Mercedes with four men in T-shirts cruising slowly past. It disappeared then, the T-shirts arrived and stood off behind the gaggle of press photographers, smoking, talking and watching. One had eyes that vanished in deep shadow. As soon as Lucy had gone Max called across to the prettiest of Shota’s girls. “Shorena, see those men? Find out who they are and what they’re doing here.”

  “How?”

  “Just stand near them as if you’re taking a break. They’ll talk to you – you’re pretty.”

  “Suppose they don’t?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Shorena, just do it! Please!”

  “Okay, Max, keep your shirt on.”

  “Sorry, Shorena. Say something. Tell them I’m having kittens.”

  “Kittens? What are you talking about?”

  “Anything, just find out what they are.”

  “What is it with these guys?” />
  “Nothing. Just please do it. I’ll explain later.”

  “Max, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, Shorena. What’s the fucking problem? Just do it! Please.”

  “Alright. Keep your hair on.”

  Casually making her way off Shota’s patio onto the road, taking out a cigarette and feigning having no light, Shorena made straight for the men with the subtlety of a flying mallet. “Jesus Christ, girl, disguise it a bit,” muttered Max from the cover of the great magnolia trunk. As she asked one of the men for a light, a tap on his shoulder made him jump with fright, before turning on a smile and a moment’s pretence of joy with old Georgi the house painter as he complimented Lucy’s grace and beauty. Max felt sweat soak the front of his shirt and kept the men in the edge of his vision as he exchanged pleasantries till old Georgi left on an unsteady path to the drinks table.

  Max observed a cold indifference to Shorena from the men, which, given her bonny face and manner, was suspicious. There seemed a glint of cruelty about them. Around him, the wedding heaved in motion, music and noise that clashed with the terror isolating him from everything. He imagined the great crowd of guests and family scattering as the first shots exploded. His attention was drawn to Menteshashvilli asking Peg for another dance and he saw something sinking in Arnold. A little unspoken drama was unfolding in front of him and he had no connection to it; he was marked down for death while they would live on with their petty and increasingly decrepit lives, waltzing backwards to a second childhood of decay and silliness. He knew that his life would end in absolute fear.

  In front of him Peg declined, but Menteshavilli, as usual wouldn’t take no for an answer. Max felt the urge to be close to bodies, lost in the density of the crowd, out of the men’s sight.

  “I think the lady needs a little rest,” he suggested in Georgian to Menteshashvlli.

  “Fuck off!” was the response. A whiff of fish defied his cologne. Menteshashvilli extricated himself from Max’s grip and bestowed a flamboyant bow on his American guests before disappearing into the dancers. Max was on the point of sitting with Arnold and Peg for a couple of minutes to hide and exchange pleasantries in the hoarse shout that the noise was demanding in anyone wishing to be heard, but Peg looked up at him and for a second there was a shadow of some old look, an appealing look, not the hostile Medusa glares that had whipped everyone so far, but a trace of something they had once shared. It faded almost as soon as it appeared, but Max’s nerve failed and he spread his arms in a burlesque explanation of Menteshashvilli’s over enthusiasm and retreated. To his left he saw the T-shirted men walk off and disappear behind the headland again and the drumming in his chest accelerated.

  When Shorena returned, he had trouble hearing her over the music. The men wouldn’t say who they were. “They gave me the creeps. Weirdoes.”

  “Were they Russian?”

  “Two of them didn’t speak. The other two were Georgians. They offered me ten American dollars to get them into the party.”

  “Shit,” said Max. He had no idea where to go or what to do. He was trapped. The men were now nowhere to be seen. They were biding their time.

  When it was time for the consummation Lucy and Timmy left in a pony and cart under a blizzard of rose petals. Her mood had dipped dramatically. On the road to Max’s, the marital act squatted between them like a toad. He knew consummation was a custom too far, but desperate for some sense of inclusion, grazed the beach breasts for inspiration. However, she left him staring through Max’s windows at the kids stroking the pony while she changed into beach casuals in the bedroom and raged. She wanted rid of him so she could ransack her father’s house for a bottle.

  He was kneeling for his deck shoes under Max’s sofa when he became aware of her legs. The whispers in her head had thrown her from the sublime to the ridiculous: she was now violated; her life burgled, her wedding a diversionary exercise. She stared through her freshly re-married husband and quietly stated “I can’t continue calling you Timmy.” then retreated into the bathroom, leaving him shocked and diminished, feeling a cut of agoraphobia in a strange room on a foreign shore.

  “Timothy. I can call you Timothy” floated from the bathroom and she followed the statement in a new mood, her contrite head quickly nuzzling his chest. But something had given way in him and he was cold as ice. She baled off him in anger and went back into the bathroom.

  When they had changed, they headed back to the wedding crowd under a single nimbus cloud, loaded with magenta rain. The stone terrace caught the sky’s pinks, and under the magnolia conversation buzzed and lowed between flushed faces. Everything had wine slowed.

  But there were no Americans. The remaining guests lolled on the wall watching kids dive off the headland into a sea that was now dark and loud and there were stares at the couple where earlier there had been smiles. Slowly, in broken English, came the tale of how Menteshashvili, who always got a little tedious when he’d had a couple, had tagged on to Peg and Arnold. There had been some tension, the American lady also had a little to drink and later it was noticed they were missing.

  Lucy whimpered something Timmy didn’t catch; he was lifting high into the twilight spaces, training his painter’s eye on the unpolluted shades of purple dipping to lilac and then to a rose horizon. His breathing took on the rhythm of the sea. The bulbs from the magnolia warmed his neck and he sensed the moon waiting to glide onstage for the last act of the comedy in which he was bit-part fall guy.

  Peg’s laugh boomeranged from somewhere in the trees on the headland. Lucy fired off in its direction and he didn’t care; mother and daughter deserved each other.

  Max appeared with Pepsis and flipped open a bottle opener from a red knife. “Is that a Swiss Army knife?” asked Timmy.

  “It’s a Russian Swiss Army knife. You are currently in a parallel universe.” As he drank, the reflected magnolia lights slipped over the bottle like fireflies. Timmy’s flat beach dude tones fascinated Max. In his day everyone tried to sound like Walter Cronkite. “When were you born?”

  “Three years after you defected. Sixty-seven, summer of. Named after Timothy Leary. You heard of him? My parents were into all that Sixties drop out and tune in stuff, you know – screw convention, let’s get real? Like their contribution to reality was being able to play ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ in three keys.”

  “Are they still dropped out and tuned in?”

  “No. Now my dad’s like a transport manager for a trucking firm in Albuquerque and my mom teaches pre-school in Point Reyes California? My brother’s in a law firm in Seattle. Man, in the old days lawyers made them blow chunks, but they love him now.”

  “I had a law degree once. Never practised.” Max sipped his Pepsi. “And you’re an artist.”

  “I ink the pencil drawings of cartoon strips,” corrected Timmy. “Not an artist. At my launch exhibition in a Long Beach fish warehouse I didn’t sell one picture.”

  “Van Gogh only sold two pictures in his life.”

  “Thank you Max, I appreciate that but…”

  “I have no artistic talent at all. Apart from music. I play a little.”

  “Proper music, you mean?

  “Classical.”

  “Was your family musical? Because your daughter has a tin ear.”

  “No, there was no music in my family.”

  “No art in mine, despite the hippy bullshit.” Timmy turned up at the stars. “Hippies aren’t artistic. They’re just decorators. Bad ones.”

  “All those candles and spangles?”

  “Kid’s stuff. I didn’t feel at home, you know? Living in a commune. Being encouraged to run naked and piss where I stood. Hang loose and relax , Timmy. Just made me more uptight. I was like the odd kid, cruising around like some little IRS clerk lost in the Velvet Underground.” Light littered the waves. The moon was waiting to e
scape. Timmy nodded up at the sky. “But old Leary’s still keeping the faith, up there now, turnin’ on in space, knockin’ on Heaven’s door.” They absorbed the big, wide night together. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “All that espionage and stuff, you know: have any of them like actually mentioned it?”

  “It’s a bit out-of-date now.”

  “You hope.” Where everyone had studiously danced round the subject, Timmy, the stranger had spoken out. It was almost breaking the rules, but Timmy was an artist of sorts: it was in his gift to break the rules. However, the moment in Max’s room when his name had been dismissed had planted and germinated in Timmy. Beached thousands of miles from his own turf, his identity stripped away for loneliness and whisker biscuit, he was an extra in this family’s opera and he didn’t give a damn what he said to the other outsider. All the bullshit in his life was rising in his gorge and choking him and he could no longer play the game. In the sourness of his feelings there was also the sweetness of some kind of freedom.

  “You know, sir, your daughter is a very difficult woman.”

  “Is she? I’m sorry.” Max noticed the twigs on his jacket and busied himself brushing them off.

  When Peg went missing, Henry, Masha, Shota and Arnold had set off in the wrong direction. Max saw Peg and Menteshashvilli disappear into the headland woods, but said nothing. He checked that there was still no sign of the T-shirted men, waited till the others disappeared then followed alone, feeling for noiseless footholds, replacing bending branches quietly, climbing till a kind of nothingness stopped him with the soundless sensation of two people trying to be quiet.