Mariano had stopped eating and stared at her for a moment, blinking his eyes rapidly. "I can't take much more of this," he finally replied and stood up from the table. He stalked off into the living room with Marlene running along behind him.
"She's crazy," he said as Marlene helped him into his coat. Part of her purpose in coming over was to give him a break so that he could spend a few hours down at the local VFW post.
"She's not crazy, Pops, she has Alzheimer's, it's a disease…like cancer. She can't help it," Marlene replied.
"If she just tried a little harder…," he said, but his voice trailed off as the tears sprang to his eyes. He hugged Marlene and headed out the door.
Marlene returned to the kitchen, where she found her mother still sitting in her chair, staring at the half-finished meal. "I'm tired," she said. "Would you help me to bed, Josephine?"
Sighing, Marlene did as asked. She was grateful that her mother slept for the next few hours. She used the time to return to the basement, where she located the big cardboard box marked Christmas and brought it upstairs. Inside was the old, plastic, three-piece Christmas tree her parents purchased in the 1960s and had kept ever since as a "family tradition." She set it up, strung it with lights, and hung ornaments. All in all, it was a pretty sad excuse but better than nothing.
When Concetta woke and came into the living room where Marlene was reading a magazine, she clapped her hands at the sight of the tree. "Well, hello, Marlene. I didn't know you were visiting. Mario should have come and told me. But at least he finally set up our tree. Now, I'll have to get to my shopping to have something to put under it. Christmas trees just don't look right without presents."
Happy for any little sign of her mother, Marlene smiled back and patted the couch next to her. "Pops is off talking to his buddies at the VFW, and I figured you could use the rest," she said.
"How many times do they need to hear the same old lies," Concetta replied, and they both laughed.
They were still sitting on the couch laughing as they pored over the photographs in one of the family albums that Concetta had so carefully put together when Mariano returned home. "Hello, my darling," Concetta said when he walked in the door. "How dare you leave me for those boys at the club."
"You go on now," Mariano said, winking at Marlene. "We'll be all right. Come Concetta, my love, say good-bye to our beautiful daughter and we can sit on the couch and watch some golf on the television."
Concetta nodded. "I'll see her to the door, Poppa. You turn on your golf game."
Happy that at least for the moment her mother's ship appeared to have sailed back into the sunlight, Marlene hugged her mother at the door. But just as she was breaking the embrace, Concetta whispered in her ear.
"If I disappear, you'll know I was telling you the truth about that man," she said, then hurried back behind the door.
Marlene went home and was glad that her husband and the boys were still gone. She didn't want to talk to anyone or have any reminders that the picture of a stable family might, in the end, be an illusion. She gathered her painting supplies and headed out before anyone got home.
While in New Mexico, and much to her surprise, she'd discovered that she had a talent for painting, and she also found it meditative and relaxing, especially after a morning like the one she'd just had. But it wasn't until she was in a taxi that she decided to go to Brighton Beach, and from there walked down the boardwalk to Coney Island.
Still thinking about the conversation she'd had with her husband about the attack on Liz Tyler, she'd decided to feature the pier and, off to the side and in the foreground, the Ferris wheel. It took a bit of artistic license because the scene in her painting didn't exist, at least not in the perspective she'd drawn it in. But if I wanted accuracy, she thought, I'd have taken up photography.
She didn't really have the heart for it, though, so when the cold started to make it past her coat, she decided to pack it in and go get a cup of tea at the tearoom she'd passed. As she walked back up the boardwalk, she saw several older couples who reminded her of her parents, only these were speaking to each other in Russian.
For decades now, the Brighton Beach area had been an enclave for the Jewish Russian emigre community. The women and some of the men she saw were dressed as they might have been in St. Petersburg-in furs and leather. The antifur crowd wouldn't have lasted two minutes. There were probably a dozen fur shops along Brighton Beach Avenue that boasted-in signs written in both English and Russian-"Real Russian Furs from Siberia…Best Price, Half-Off Sale."
Marlene had just about reached the teahouse when she passed a bench on which sat a young woman with her face buried in her hands. Then she noticed that the woman was crying.
She started to walk on past-she'd had enough emotional turmoil for one day-but she'd never been good at walking away from someone, especially a woman, in trouble. She turned back to the young woman. "Are you okay?"
When the woman looked up at her, Marlene was struck by the exotic beauty created by the wide Slavic cheekbones below jade eyes that gave her face a feline quality. She was somewhat older-early forties-than Marlene had first thought but was one of those women whose looks would change but not diminish with age.
The woman started to nod her head yes to Marlene's question. But then shook it and began to sob. "Nyet," she cried. "Is not okay for me."
Marlene leaned her easel against the wall behind the bench and sat down next to the other woman. "Can I help?" she asked.
The woman shook her head again. "I am sorry, my English is not so good," she replied. "This is not for your concern. But I thank you for asking…showing me…umm…compassionate. I do not have many friends here, so I thank you for kindness." She wiped at her tears with the sleeve of her coat and held out her gloved hand. "My name is Helena Michalik."
Marlene's mind was telling her to stand up and walk away, but her heart kept her seated and she shook Helena's hand. "Marlene Ciampi. It looked like you could use a friendly face." She glanced up and saw the sign for the St. Petersburg Tea Room. "How about we get out of the cold and have a cup of tea," she said, nodding toward the establishment.
Helena hesitated but then sighed and nodded. "Yes, perhaps, some tea to warm my body and my heart."
When they entered the tearoom, it took a moment for Marlene's eyes to adjust to the dark interior. It wasn't just the dimmed lights, either; everything in the place was dark-the woods, the heavy velvets, and the rich carpets. Even the otherwise colorful Russian Orthodox icons seemed dark in tone. The Russians are a moody people, Marlene thought.
The room was long and narrow, and as her eyes adjusted she noticed two large men in monochrome rumpled sweatsuits watching her and Helena from the back of the room on either side of a door marked Office. Bodyguard types. This place must do a hell of a business to need that much muscle, she thought. Otherwise, the tearoom was empty except for the waitstaff.
Marlene looked back at Helena, who was also watching the two men with a worried look on her face. They frighten her, she thought; then she looked down as Helena took off her coat. "Congratulations! You're going to have a baby."
Helena blushed and smiled as both of her hands went to her belly as if to support the small mound growing there. "Yes," she said. "Finally. We have been trying for years. Now we say it must have been the water in America. A child has sprouted."
After a few minutes, an unsmiling waiter emerged from a side door, which, Marlene assumed, led to the kitchen. "You would like tea, no?" Helena asked Marlene as he approached. He came to a standstill in front of the table and just stood looking at them through heavy-lidded eyes as Helena ordered in Russian.
The waiter still hadn't said a thing when he turned on his heel and headed back to the kitchen. A moment later, he emerged with a pot, which he set on the table, and he quietly retreated from whence he came.
"So, want a shoulder to cry on?" Marlene offered.
"I don't understand," Helena said. "You want me to cry?"
&nb
sp; "No, it's a saying. I meant, would you like to talk about what was making you cry outside on the bench?"
Helena bit her lip. "I should not trouble you. But I am in a strange country, and I know small number of people…no friend to talk to." The woman hesitated as if weighing Marlene's trustworthiness and apparently decided that she would do. "It is about my husband, Alexis…"
An hour and several pots of tea later, Marlene had the whole story-at least what Helena knew of it. The long and short of it was that Alexis Michalik was a visiting professor of Russian poetry at New York University who'd been accused by one of his graduate students of drugging and raping her one night in his office on campus.
He'd admitted "flirting" with the woman but denied having sexual relations with her. Yes, he'd met her at his office that night but, he said, it was at her insistence and to discuss her master's thesis. However, the next morning, the graduate student had returned to his office and accused him of raping her. He said she'd threatened to go to the university administration and the police with her allegations unless he approved her master's thesis and sponsored her admittance as a doctoral student. He'd refused to be blackmailed, and that afternoon, she'd made good on her threats.
Helena didn't know exactly what they were, but apparently this student had "proofs" of her husband's transgressions. They were enough for the NYPD to have arrested him. He'd since been released on bail, but the university had immediately suspended him without a hearing. Meanwhile, the district attorney's office had not yet decided to bring charges, but the Michaliks feared it was just a matter of time.
Although hurt by the confession of flirting, Helena said she loved her husband and did not believe he would have raped a woman. But she was fearful of what would happen. If Alexis did not beat the charges, he would go to prison. And even if he won, it appeared he would be fired and lose his work visa.
"Then we will have to return to Russia," Helena said, "where the only peoples paid less than Jewish professors of Russian poetry are Russian poets." She laughed at her own joke, but her fear was evident in her eyes and shaking hands.
The Michaliks believed that the "mean bitch" who ran the New York District Attorney's Sex Crimes Bureau wanted to make an example of her husband and that the case had not been well investigated before the police and university jumped to the conclusion that Alexis was guilty. In the meantime, the press had got wind of the case-presumably from the accuser-and was having a field day with it.
As Helena talked, Marlene remained largely silent, not volunteering that her husband was the district attorney or that she knew the "bitch," Rachel Rachman; indeed, she'd been another of Marlene's protegees, though they'd since had a falling out. When Helena mentioned the press coverage, she remembered the New York Post's headline Russian Casanova Rapes Student, though she had not read the story.
Marlene wasn't sure what to think. It wouldn't be the first time a college professor diddled a coed, who then thought better of the whole thing. She'd decided not to get involved when she heard herself tell Helena that she might know someone who could look into the case. And then that in fact she, Marlene, could still practice law in the state of New York and was willing to take on the case "on the condition that after I talk to Alexis, I believe him." She was so surprised at what she'd said that she forgot to be embarrassed when the other woman burst into tears, grabbed her hands across the table, and kissed them as she thanked her over and over again.
"Uh, look Helena," Marlene said, taking her hands back. "I should warn you that I might not be able to do much more than represent your husband while he gets convicted of rape."
Helena dabbed at the tears in her eyes with a napkin and nodded her head. "Yes," she said, "I understand. But now I feel at least that we have…um, how do you Americans say it…a fighting chance? Thank you, Marlene. My Alexis…sometimes he is, um, filled with emotions and doesn't think straight, but he is a good man and I love him very much."
Marlene felt the tears in her own eyes welling up. Love was a great thing, she thought, even if something like Alzheimer's came along later and made you fight to hold on to it. All of a sudden, she wanted very much to be back in her loft, curled up on the lap of her husband, watching her twin sons tumbling around on the floor. She dug in her purse and plunked a twenty-dollar bill down on the table.
"I'm sorry, but I need to go. Here's my telephone number," she said and handed Helena an old business card she found at the bottom of the bag.
"Yes, of course, I have kept you too long," Helena said.
"No, it's just time to get home and I-" Marlene was interrupted when she was nearly trampled in the aisle by a thin, pale-looking young man who stumbled in through the door and ran to the back of the room. She noticed that he had only one arm and that the empty sleeve was pinned up near the shoulder.
The two big men in the back had jumped from their seats when the young man blew in through the door. She noted that they both had reached behind their backs-and not to scratch an itch-with one hand while holding up the other to intercept the intruder.
Seeing Marlene's appraising look of the situation at the back of the restaurant, Helena grabbed her by the elbow and steered her out the door. "Those are bad men…is best not to look too closely," she warned.
The younger woman walked her to the avenue and waited until Marlene could hail a cab. When Marlene got in, Helena leaned in the door. "If you change your mind about helping, I will understand. I am a stranger."
"Hey, didn't we just drink three pots of tea together?" Marlene asked.
"Yes?" Helena said, puzzled.
"And didn't I show you photographs of my children and husband…and didn't you show me photographs of your husband and parents?"
"Yes."
"Then we're not strangers anymore." Marlene turned toward the taxi driver. "Crosby and Grand," she said, "and make it snappy, please."
5
Several hours before he nearly trampled Marlene Ciampi and Helena Michalik, Igor Kaminsky had hurried down the steps at Grand Central Station to catch the number 4 subway train to the Bronx. His brother was supposed to meet him on the platform and together they planned to celebrate his release from prison. First, they'd score some Ecstasy and then hook up with a couple of sisters they knew who lived near Yankee Stadium.
Igor could hardly wait for the sexual pleasure of the drug and its impact on whatever morals the girls might possess. He was barely five hours from his release from Auburn State Prison, where he'd served two years of a seven-year sentence for armed robbery, and was ready to start enjoying life again.
However, at the moment he was on edge. Part of it was the bus ride back to Brooklyn; he worried that at any moment the bus would be pulled over by the cops and he'd be taken into custody again. He thought he was supposed to have been released to an agent with the INS for deportation back to Russia, but God-or the Russian mob in Brighton Beach for which he'd done a few odd jobs-had smiled on him and he'd been given a bus ticket and set free.
Yet it wasn't just the specter of the INS that had him looking over his shoulder. Igor wasn't the most brilliant of thieves. He'd lost one arm as an adolescent trying to break into a butcher shop in the Moscow suburb where he'd been raised. The butcher was home and had let him have it with a cleaver when he stuck his arm through the broken pane of glass in the front door to let himself in.
However, thanks to a generous benefactor who owed his father a favor, Igor and his brother had been smuggled into the United States aboard a freighter. He'd promptly resumed his life of petty crime but again proved that he wasn't cut out for the job. One night he'd tried to rob a Korean grocer and decided that the man was moving too slowly, so he put his gun down on the counter to help empty the cash register.
The store's owner, Mr. Kim Tysu Jung, quickly grabbed the gun, pointed it, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. This time Igor got lucky; the bullet whizzed past his shocked face and blew out the window behind him. Igor fainted, which may have saved his life, as the store owne
r couldn't bring himself to shoot an unconscious man and instead called the police.
Igor might not have survived prison, either, except that his benefactor on the outside was able to arrange for his protection by the mob behind the walls. He made himself useful as a sort of courier, but he was definitely not part of the inner circle and was merely tolerated. His benefits did not include getting to choose his cellmate, and so it was that he found himself bunking that past spring with Enrique Villalobos.
Igor didn't like Villalobos. Just looking at Enrique's oily, pockmarked complexion and protruding yellow teeth made Igor queasy. And he hated that the man bragged about raping old women and young girls and was, in fact, serving a life sentence for raping and killing an eighty-seven-year-old grandmother.
About the only prisoner who seemed to like Villalobos was his "chicken," a twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican transvestite named Roberto Flores, who called himself "Little Rosa." Flores could pass for a reasonably attractive girl when he wore his makeup, and normally his favors would have been claimed by someone bigger, tougher, and meaner than Villalobos. However, Flores was HIV positive and already had some of the telltale purple blotches of Kaposi's sarcoma-a type of skin cancer associated with AIDS. As a result, the rest of the prison population steered clear but Villalobos didn't care. He was HIV positive, too, and already facing life in prison.
Roberto became even less desirable that spring when he had a nasty accident in the prison laundry. Somehow his head got caught in the massive steam press used to iron prison uniforms and sheets. He was horribly burned on the sides of his face-his ears looked like puddles of melted wax with holes-and from that point forward, his formerly well-formed head had a sort of pressed look to it, accentuated by a bug-eyed stare.
Igor had seen Flores when he finally got out of the prison hospital and the bandages were removed. He'd barely been able to keep his lunch down when he got a glimpse of the deformed ears and protruding eyes, but Villalobos had just shrugged and said, "I don't screw his face so who cares? He can wear a bag over his head." Roberto had wept at the cruel words, but with no one else willing to protect him and buy him the little things he required-like lipsticks and rouge-he stayed with Villalobos. At least while Villalobos remained at Auburn, which wasn't much longer after the "accident."
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