“Because it’s rude,” I cried, “because you don’t like it when everyone speaks in English, because he’s my fiancé.” Then I delivered the final blow. “He’s going to be my husband!”
“Whose husband?” Grandmother reeled from the table as if preparing to fall backward from her chair. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying!”
I took Eddie’s ring from my purse and placed it on my fourth finger.
“Now zhat’s a ring to fist your eyes on!” Yakov observed snidely.
“What’s going on?” Eddie asked. “Don’t they know we’re engaged?”
“Sure, we knew zhat you two engaged. We’re very happy for you,” my mother said, covering for me.
“Let us make toast,” my father joined her, raising his glass, “to our future son-law—may you two be happy, healthsy and wealthsy!” Vodka was instantly poured into every glass and a collective smile invaded the table like an enemy brigade, keeping each mouth taut and wide, except for one.
“Oy, vey iz mir, what to do?” Grandmother stammered, parading her frown and yet reluctantly raising her glass. “Bozhenka, I don’t know if my heart is strong enough to endure more suffering. Bozhenka, help me, DON’T LET MY HEART GIVE OUT!”
“What’s your grandmother saying?” Eddie asked.
“Oh, she’s suffering from indigestion,” I told him.
Yakov gripped his stomach and chest with both hands as laughter was bubbling up his wide neck and out his nostrils. In driblets, Russian sputtered out. “Do you—you—you mean to tell me—ha, ha, ha—that your daughter—oh, this is hilarious—is marrying again?”
“Not again, for the first time,” my mother upbraided him.
“Right, what’s the difference? More invitations, Sonichka, huh, ha, ha, you’re going to pay for more invitations! And how much money did you lose on that deposit at the Drake?”
“What’s your uncle talking about?” Eddie asked.
Everyone ignored him.
“More vodka—waiter, more vodka,” Yakov cackled. “We really need to celebrate—fill the whole room with vodka! And the flowers, Sonichka, make sure you get French—not Spanish, not Chilean, not African, but French orchids!”
“Why is your uncle laughing?” Eddie tried again.
“Oh, he just found out that we’re engaged,” I said.
“And that’s funny because?”
“In my family, anything can be funny with the right amount of vodka,” I said petulantly.
“Oh, he doesn’t know about the recent one—no, no, I won’t say his name,” Yakov kept on (fortunately in Russian). “God, women are vicious, they’re all blyadi! You hear that, Larry, don’t get married, all women are blyadi!”
“Keep beating your chest, Yakov, but we all know your balls are firmly lodged in your wife’s metal grip.” My mother stared at him as she spoke, her mouth curving into a strained lethal smile, then she added, “If I hear you insult my daughters again, I’ll make sure your discotheque fails! And this time Semyon won’t bail you out!”
“Sonichka, dorogaya,” my father jumped in, “I apologize to you—but my brother has abysmal manners.”
“Yes, I forgot you’re all very well-mannered aristocrats,” Yakov spat. But just when we thought this was a new battle cry, he retreated by focusing on my poor confounded Eddie, and in English said, “Look Andy!”
“Eddie—my name is Eddie.”
“Zese people you marrying—zey aristocrats—you Americans don’t chave aristocrats, but ve Russians vere raized on zem. Tolstoy and Chekhov really gots to us bones. So zey—Sonichka, your future mozer-in-law, she particularry imagines herself high in sky.”
“Yakov, have you lost year head?” my father exclaimed.
“Have you forgotten,” my mother joined in, “that Semeyon and I own a percentage of this restaurant. Try to remember that the next time you speak!”
“How could I forget when you never cease to remind me, Sonichka!”
“Shut up, Yakov,” my father said, then turned to my mother. “We promised each other that it would belong to him, that we’re giving him the money freely, that we’re doing a good deed.”
“We had an excellent saying about good deeds in Russia”—my mother pointed at our Bella on the stage—“only do a good deed if you want a bucket of shit dumped on your head!”
“I’m sorry, Sonya, for my rude behavior. I sincerely apologize—it was just my bad nerves talking,” Yakov announced at last, full of false contrition and fuming with indignant pride, possibly because Katya had pinched him under the table.
Not understanding a word, Eddie stood up, raised a glass of vodka and said, “I just want you all to know that I will try in every way to make Emma very happy, and if you wish it, I will convert to Judaism.” He looked with such astounding conviction at each of my family members that they momentarily forgot themselves and refocused their energy on him.
“To our Lenochka, everyone raise your glasses,” my father said. “I mean to vhat he just call you—to our Emma!”
“To Lena,” Igor stated in his usual drone.
“Eeema? Who’s Eeema?” my grandmother echoed mockingly, and downed her shot. “What did he just say?”
“He’s offering to convert to Judaism,” my mother answered in Russian, taking a cautious sip of vodka.
“Bold fellow,” Yakov noted, gulping one shot after another, ending up possibly at four consecutive shots. “I think we make him nervous—we should speak in English more,” he added, continuing to speak in Russian.
“Lena says you investment banker.” My father began a KGB-style investigation.
“Yes, I work for Norton Bank.”
“You worked wiz Alex, isn’t zhat correct?” Yakov instantly picked up on it.
“Yes,” Eddie said, looking around the table.
“Vhat did you think of him?” my father went on.
“We didn’t really spend that much time together,” said Eddie.
“We hear he is genius,” Yakov inserted for strategic purposes.
“Eddie fired him,” I declared, somewhat recklessly.
“Fired! Fired,” my mother cried out, “we did not know zhat—he told us somesing else.”
“What did you fire him for?” Igor uncharacteristically joined in.
“Let’s just say Alex lacked an understanding of corporate mores—better stated, social mores—”
“Not better stated for us,” my mother said with a laugh, “what ‘mores’ mean?”
“What’s accepted or expected of you in a certain environment—sometimes it can mean morals, but in this case it’s more like rules, social rules.”
“You mean he didn’t follow your rules?” my father asked, warding off an incredulous laugh.
“He lectured the client on his lack of understanding of basic algebra, and then during this same meeting went off on what a terrible vocabulary Americans have—in front of the client—”
My whole family broke into a roaring laugh.
“That sound just like his mozer,” my mother muttered through laughter, “they think they’re ze smartest people in ze world.”
“Yes, well,” Eddie returned with a conscious smile, “I thought it was hilarious. The client didn’t think it was so funny, though.”
“Well, it true, isn’t it?” my father suddenly put in, his face reddening. “Buziness types don’t have any basic understanding of math. Alex spoke trus.”
“I agree with you, Mr. Kabelmacher. But if you want to be part of the business world, you have to play the game—understand the politics.”
“In Russia, vhen I was at university—did Lena tell you I vas professor of mathematics at Moscow State University, Eddie? Anyvays, at my university, we always spoke ze trus,” my father exclaimed. “If you were idiot, you were told you were idiot. You needed real knowledge to speak. Here vhen you speak to idiot, you have to figure out if he has lots of money and if he does, you chave to smile and leek his balls! No trus here, all about money.”
“You’re right, Semeyon,” my mother continued arguing, this time in English for Eddie’s benefit. “We did speak trus—I mean truth—only little problem vas zhat truth-tellers were shot on spot or put in gulags. It vas a very honest country!” my mother announced with her customary panache and stood up from the table. “Vould anyone like more Salat Olivye?”
“You exaggerate as always and twist my words!” my father exclaimed, exasperated. “You know zhat I vas not talking about political freedom. I vas talking about American corporate stupidity.” He paused, examining his wife’s expression. “And yes, please I vould like more Salat Olivye!”
Like Alex, my father believed that he too struggled against corporate imbecility. His exact title, technical senior vice president, said it all: the King of Nerddom! He pored over formulas, oversaw brilliant minions from MIT, Cal Tech, and Berkeley, and together they churned out results only to watch them get pulverized in meetings, where the bottom line dictated every decision. Truth was as elusive in America, my father often argued to the dismay of my mother, as it was in Russia. He felt that the business world lacked intellectual broadness and sensitivity, and now it seemed I had plucked someone from its very core and presented him before Father’s throne. That Eddie was not Jewish did not distress my father nearly as much as the fact that Eddie symbolized my father’s adversaries—the Ivy-League-MBA-wielding, summarize-it-for-me-in-four-words, barely-out-of-diapers, ladder-climbing corruptors of mathematical truths. Nor had my father reconciled himself to the strange American custom of not offering his opinion on everything; while he restrained himself at meetings out of a remote understanding that it might get him fired, he suffered from implacable urges to yell and the nervous tremor would assail his right leg. For, like Alex, he considered himself a superior intellect, the brain that could seize all the other brains and squash them with its proverbial pinky.
“I apologize,” my mother said, “for my husband view. I love America, I very grateful to zhis country for opening its arms to us.”
“Vhat I can’t criticize—if I criticize, point out flaws, zhen I become ingrate?” my father exclaimed.
“Oh please—you fill up viz nostalgia for Russia every day,” my mother lamented.
“Zhere’s no freedom for man. I can’t even watch Russia TV in peace,” my father said.
“There’s no justice in zhe world. How quickly people forget! How quickly people forget zhe truth! You speak of truth, Semeyon, but you live in fantasy. You remember nozhing about our suffering, nozhing about our children’s suffering. I still remember—everyzing!” My mother spoke with quiet menace. Her face had become so red and swollen that I feared flames would break out along her hairline. She opened her mouth to say more but only the words “mudila, ti mudila” escaped her lips like a whistling steam.
A thick impenetrable silence settled over the table.
“But that’s just it, Mrs. Kabelmacher, I mean Soniya,” Eddie stepped in to help reseal the wound now openly festering between my parents. “Alex will be great in a university setting.”
“I don’t believe a word he’s saying,” my mother announced in Russian.
“I don’t believe him at all,” Grandmother backed her up with urgency.
“I haven’t been completely straight with you, Sonya, or you, Emma,” Eddie said, as if by some miracle of facial tics, he had understood them both.
The table shut down, its synapses, blood vessels, extremities frozen, only the multifarious eyes popped out and landed on him. Eddie scanned my clan without fear, and then he spoke. “I’ll tell you this because you should know the truth. We hired Alex because of his fluency in Russian and rather impressive banking credentials. We were in the middle of a deal with a Russian company and we needed someone to navigate between the two cultures. But Alex hated being the ‘middleman’—he felt that he had basically become a ‘lowly translator’ and that Norton wasn’t properly utilizing him for his math and econ skills.
“He complained to my boss, Grant, that he was being treated like a ‘nothing’ during meetings. Alex took notes, translated documents, and sometimes was allowed to be present during critical transactions, but for the most part he was told to keep silent. Then one day Grant relented and gave him more responsibility. Alex was allowed to sit in and participate in the complex merger between this Russian monolith and an American oil company. During a break in the proceeding, Alex offered his ‘financial’ opinion to the Russian CEO, in Russian, without giving a single thought to all the work that went into nurturing our clients’ relationship. According to Alex, he advised the CEO against a merger that Norton had spent a year putting together.”
“No wonder he didn’t tell anyone the truth!” I said. “So that’s why you fired him?
“I should have fired him then, but I didn’t. Because …” Eddie paused and looked at me, his blue eyes darkening, making the room vanish. We were the only ones left in some black void. “I was waiting for you to come back to me. She’ll come tonight, I told myself, or the next night and say, ‘I left Alex; I left Alex for you.’ I thought, I’ll cover for Alex if I have to—my boss thought the deal fell through on its own. But every day that you didn’t come to me, every day that you stayed with him—I realized that I was losing. I realized that I could only be magnanimous if I had you. When Eric told me, ‘Did you know, Beltrafio, that Alex is engaged to some Russian girl?’ I was done.” Eddie halted, his eyes strained, his expression drained of its habitual ease.
“That’s when I told Grant, and Alex was fired that same day.” He bowed his head for an imperceptible instant, then looked up at me. “I’m sorry, Emma. He couldn’t stay if I had lost you.”
How I wanted to scream, because you knew you and I belong to each other, but instead I simply grabbed hold of his hand. The feeling remained inside, beating under my tongue.
“So you sent Alex back to Chicago,” my mother noted cleverly, “vhere you knew he vould lose zhis game.”
“So it vas a duel!” my father said, in a mocking tone, with just a hint of nostalgia. “A modern-day duel, like Pushkin—only today zhere are no bullets, just dollars!”
“Yes it’s true: I knew he couldn’t stay in New York if he didn’t have the job at Norton,” Eddie said. “But I wasn’t as Machiavellian as you’re implying, Mr. Kabelmacher.”
“Ah, Machiavelli, a genius! I very impressed, an American who knows a little philosophy!” my father interrupted, then added, “Money is veapon nowadays.”
“What are you talking about Semeyon, zhis is about love,” my mother cried.
“Love and money!” my father noted, grinning at Eddie.
Eddie’s gaze was directed only at me: “I knew that Emma would then have to decide—that you would have to decide and when you didn’t, when you didn’t go to Chicago with him …”
“But how did you know that?” I asked.
“I knew his flight, we booked it for him, part of his severance pay was that we paid for his flight. I knew you were still in New York, I was waiting—”
“I came that night—that same night—”
“I waited.”
“And the girl?”
“Bait. To torment you.”
I smiled strangely to myself, and thought, ah, the torture instruments of love.
“You were that aware?” I said with sudden terror.
“I was that in love,” he said simply, his eyes watering. “And I had a glimmer of hope—that maybe, just maybe, you were in love with me.” No one existed in that moment. I forgot that my parents, my grandmother, my whole family were in the room, listening to us. I brought his face close to mine and kissed his quivering mouth, kissed him with dread and urgency and hunger.
“I see, Eddie, I see: you play to win,” my mother broke in.
Yakov suddenly turned to me, saying in Russian, “Wouldn’t he love to know that you just broke up with Alex—that you’d been playing him all this time? When was the breakup—only a month, two months ago?” He stared at Eddie
with the intention of somehow secretly intimating the truth to him.
“Well, I like him—he’s a romantic!” my mother announced in Russian, and suddenly the whole table nodded. Eddie’s bold confession, his directness, his tormented feelings for me connected to their belief that they possessed these qualities, and tapped into their vanity like heroin that hooked and unwound them. Eddie reminded them of themselves in Russia, a man of romance willing to sully his bare hands for that ineffable prize—a woman—like Pushkin who had idiotically challenged a man to a duel and died for his love. They drifted into memories when they were young, wild, easily bruised, and irrefutably beautiful. And something within them seemed to alter their perception of him, to soften their collective scrutinizing gaze.
My father appeared to forgive Eddie for being purely a “businessman,” and my mother’s cheeks flushed in a warm glow of admiration. When Igor finished translating to Grandmother, she gave Eddie that prestigious mark of her guarded approval, “A real man, that’s what I was afraid of.”
“Who’s a real man?” Bella’s voice pierced through our rumination, and her beautiful figure materialized behind the table like a phantom that’s been converted to real mass. Bella plopped down next me, heaving, perspiring, her chest rising and falling, her face exquisitely bent on Eddie.
“Why, it must be you!” she exclaimed, laughing in English, “you must be the real man!”
Eddie squeezed her hand and said warmly, “No, I’m just the hapless American who’s dating your sister.”
“You’ve only begun and already you’re feeling ‘hapless’—just wait till you get married!”
“Ah finally a family member who knows we’re engaged,” Eddie exclaimed with a jovial laugh.
“I’m beyond happy for you guys but I won’t lie to you, Eddie: our family loves to criticize everyone, and Americans in particular, and it goes without saying that we don’t ever tell Americans what we think about them.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’m failing miserably! My only comfort is that I’m aware of it.”
“Well then you’re unique in my book—I mean for an American!” She laughed warmly, and Eddie’s smile widened further than I had ever seen it, but then again Bella always had that effect on men, a kind of ethereal, otherworldly power to put them in a trance.
The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield Page 29
