by Chris Cander
“You fucking whore! Who are you to do this to me? After everything I do for you?” Mikhail advanced, red-faced and shaking a rumpled handful of stationery at her. Katya backed away from him and slipped behind the piano for protection.
“What is this, huh? How long has this been going on? He doesn’t even sign his name! What, I’m not going to notice my wife is whore when I find this letter that says, ‘I love you’?” He looked at the bottom of the letter and read in a mocking voice, “ ‘I love you,’ he say. I love you? Someone say to my wife, ‘I love you’? Nobody supposed to love you but me!” And he brought his fist down on top of the ebony case so hard that the piano bounced on the hardwood floor.
“No, Misha! Stop! It’s not what you think!” Katya screamed, flailing her thin arms out. Greg held on to her as Mikhail balled his fist again.
“How long, eh?”
“Mama!” Greg yelled, and tried to pull her away before his father’s next blow landed. Greg had never seen him this angry.
“There is nothing, Misha! Please, stop!”
“If nothing, then why is his letter in your drawer under your clothes? I think you must be keeping it like some kind of buried treasure, you can’t say to me it is nothing!”
“Let me get you a drink. Some dinner. I will explain. It’s nothing to be jealous of, just a young student with confused feelings—”
“I bring you to America, give you sunshine every day. No queues, no dinner without meat. I work so many hours every day, at night all I dream is yellow from that fucking taxi. And you, what do you do? All day you play your silly piano or teach other people to play your silly piano, and afterward you give them bonus lesson, huh? Are you fucking this Romeo on my bed?”
Katya’s eyes were dry and huge with fear; even her tears were scared to fall.
“You want to know what this letter feels like, Ekaterina? After everything I do for you all these years? This is what it feels like!” Mikhail, his face bulging at his too-tight collar, spun around to tear the fire poker off the hearth—it was decorative, they’d never once had to build a fire in Los Angeles—and smashed it down on the piano’s case.
The Blüthner responded with a shattered, rattling sound but held itself steady.
“Stop, Misha! Please!” Katya begged him, even as she allowed her son to hold her arms and pull her away. “You don’t understand.”
“What I don’t understand? You want me hitting you instead? What good is that? That won’t show you.” Mikhail lowered his voice to a growl. “I break your piano like you break my heart. That will show you.” He hoisted the poker above his head with both hands like a lumberjack about to fell a tree.
Greg let go of his mother and lunged at him, grabbing his father’s thick arms with his own. He had inherited his mother’s passions, but physically he was a strong teenaged replica of Mikhail. He couldn’t stop the blow, but he softened it. Instead of splintering the case, the poker left only a blunt indentation. A wound, not a fatality.
Mikhail turned and fixed his prematurely rheumy gaze, his eyes wet with fury, on his son. Greg couldn’t recall the last time his father had looked directly at him for any reason, and the intensity of his boiling stare made him think of a wolf on the hunt.
“No!” Katya screamed.
“You protect your whore mother, huh?” Mikhail moved toward him slowly, prowling, and lowered his voice to a terrifying basso profundo. “Such a child. Stupid child, trying to be grown up and still wanting to suckle at his mama’s breast.”
Determined to face him down, Greg tried not to retreat backward as his father approached with the poker aloft and fury in his face. Even when his bladder failed him and urine soaked his jeans, he didn’t move. Then, with a speed and strength that seemed impossible for an aging and overweight alcoholic, Mikhail cudgeled his son’s left leg with one brutal whack. His mother screamed and he lost consciousness.
In the years to come, Greg would repeatedly return to that moment, trying each time to will his younger self to dart aside, to take his mother’s hand and run, but of course he never could. Instead, the memory of his father and the iron poker and the sound that ricocheted around the room when the blow shattered his femur was like a sharp pebble that he would forever carry in his shoe, limping to minimize the pain of it.
AFTER THEY LEFT UBEHEBE CRATER, Greg retreated into a somber silence. She wanted to know more but wasn’t about to intrude. In the few days she’d known him, she had decided that the landscape of his emotions was as unpredictable as the desert they were driving through. It was like waiting for a storm to pass, trusting that the sun would return once the clouds had been emptied out.
They turned south, going uphill, and the smooth, paved road gave way to dirt. After several miles in a strangely comfortable silence, they passed a sign that recommended using four-wheel drive. The road didn’t look all that demanding, but Clara noted the warning.
“The moving truck doesn’t have four-wheel drive,” she said.
“Sure it does,” Greg said.
“No, it doesn’t. None of them do. And the clearance is pretty low. How bad does this road get?”
“I heard it’s bumpy, but not too bad until the last eight miles or so after Teakettle Junction. But between here and there it’ll be okay. Supposedly there was a rainstorm in this part of the park yesterday, but there weren’t any washouts on the roads. We’ll just take it slow.”
Clara picked up Greg’s National Park Service map of the backcountry roads of Death Valley to see where they were. He’d circled a dozen or so landmarks—presumably where he intended to photograph the piano, as they’d already been to several of them. She found Ubehebe Crater and drew her finger along the route to their next destination. According to the key, the twenty-seven miles down Racetrack Road were “high-clearance” due to loose gravel, washboarding, and rocks. “Flat tires are common on this road,” she read aloud, “so be sure your full-sized spare is inflated, all parts of your jack are on hand, and tire tread is good. May require 4WD due to changing road conditions and irregular maintenance, so check postings.”
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
“Did you check to make sure the spare on the truck was inflated? And that it came with a jack? Renters don’t usually think about those things until it’s too late. I’d have checked it myself if I’d known we were going off-road.”
“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” He looked at her and lifted one side of his mouth in a half-smile.
“You can mock me if you want, but we’re smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, and if we get a flat I don’t know how we’ll get anybody to help us.”
“But that’s why you’re here—right, Miss Fix-it?”
She sighed. “So you’ve mentioned.” She watched the unruly-looking arrowweed bushes that dotted the foothills and mountains scrolling by her window. According to the map, this was the Last Chance Range.
The road topped out on a grassy mesa dotted with Joshua tree groves in all directions, their bayonet-shaped leaves tufting in strange Dr. Seuss configurations. Then, as it started dropping in elevation, the road surface swiftly crumbled into a rippled pattern so jarring that Clara thought she could feel her brain jackhammering in her skull.
“Stop the car,” she said.
“Fucking hell,” Greg said, gripping the wheel as he braked. Clara whipped around to see the moving truck thudding to a stop behind them. “I guess that’s what they meant by bumpy,” he added.
“We need to deflate the truck’s tires,” Clara said, opening the door. “Ours, too.” She went to the back to get her tools.
“What? Why?”
“If we take them down to about forty psi, they’ll flatten out enough to conform to the surface,” she said. “It’ll make for a smoother ride, and help keep the piano from bouncing around. But we’re going to have to take it slow.”
“And ho
w will we get them inflated again?”
“With the pump I brought.” Clara held it up and smiled, enjoying a little moment of vindication. “You check on the piano while I do the tires. It’s a good thing you’re not bringing it out here for a concert; if it wasn’t already, then for sure it’s gone totally out of tune after this.”
Juan and Beto leaned against the truck, dragging on their cigarettes. Juan tipped his chin at her in a gesture of solidarity when she crouched down to unscrew the first valve. She tipped hers back; this evidence of blue-collar expertise seemed to both increase his esteem of her and make her a peer. “Le ayudo?” he asked.
“I got it,” she said, and he nodded.
She had finished and was loading her tools back into the car when her phone rang in her pocket. Without even looking, she knew it was Peter. “I need to get this,” she told Greg, and sought some privacy in this miles-wide stretch of open land by walking down the road.
“Hey,” she said into the phone.
“Hey yourself,” Peter said in that slow, deep voice of his. “I don’t want to bug you, but I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” She smiled. “Thanks for checking. How are you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m good. It’s busy for a Wednesday.” She looked at the clock: almost noon. His mother would start unpacking food for them soon, insisting they stop to eat something. “In a minute, Ma,” he’d usually say. Clara could hear the familiar sounds of the garage in the background: the pneumatic whoop of lug nuts being unscrewed with an impact gun, Teddy laughing, the laïko music. “The Fast Relief 500 was Sunday,” Peter continued. “I was wondering if you got to see it.”
“No, I didn’t.” She hadn’t even thought about it. She and Peter had planned on watching it together. “Did Johnson win?”
“Yeah. Pretty much dominated the whole race. Busch took second, Kahne third. I figured Johnson would win, but you never know what’ll happen, right?”
Clara nodded. She looked back at the SUV, where Greg was reading a map, one hand stuffed into his pants pocket. “I’m sorry I missed it.”
“It’s okay. When I didn’t hear from you, I guessed you weren’t going to make it. But I saved you a seat just in case.”
She pictured Peter sitting on his parents’ couch, watching the race and protecting the promised space next to him by draping his arm over the back. Teddy or Alex might drift in and take a seat, and he’d say, “Not there. That one’s for Clara. She’ll be here any minute.” He rarely dated, though she knew that any sane single woman would fall easily for him, if he gave her a chance. She’d seen a few of them try. A knot inside her tightened as she imagined the look on his face if she’d actually walked in the door. His eyes would go wide, and his lips would part and broaden, revealing his delight. Then, not wanting to scare her off, he would try to hide it, try to pretend he was just glad to have a buddy to watch TV with.
“Clara?”
“Sorry, I’m here,” she said, pulling her thoughts back together. She was still a little offended by how readily he had encouraged her to let Greg buy the piano.
“About that. Where’s here, exactly? I got worried when I didn’t hear from you on Sunday, and I went by your apartment last night. It looked like you weren’t home.”
She could lie and say she’d decided to take a little vacation, to try her luck at a casino in Vegas for a couple of days. Or she could explain that Greg had turned out to be an interesting guy, really nice, and he’d invited her to help out with the photo shoot, which wasn’t a complete lie. No, Peter would probably still be worried, and certainly a little jealous. She thought of how his face fell whenever she said she was going on a date, not to mention the way he’d winced when she’d told him she was moving in with Ryan.
She sighed. Peter knew her too well to believe she was at a casino. The only gamble she would take was trying unfamiliar Greek food. Even moving in with Ryan hadn’t been a risk; she hadn’t had enough skin in the game for it to last. “I’m still in Death Valley.”
There was a long pause before he said, “Clara.”
“I know,” she said. She could picture him closing his eyes, shaking his head. “You don’t have to say anything. It’s crazy and impetuous, and I shouldn’t be doing this, but I couldn’t stop. Remember how I said my piano was rare? It turns out this guy, Greg, his mother used to own it. Can you believe that? And then apparently she killed herself out here. How fucked up is that? Well, maybe it isn’t—he didn’t say why she did it. I don’t think he wants to talk about it, and I’m not sure how he feels about me being here, but I just feel like I have to, for a little while longer.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Peter, I know you want to protect me. I know you think I’m a fool for coming out here. That I’m a fool for letting him rent it instead of buying it so I’d be done with it once and for all. Fuck, I think I’m a fool, but for the opposite reason. I can’t believe I thought I could let the damn thing go after all these years,” she said, and took a breath. “I hate it but I need it. I wish you could understand that. It’s the only important thing I have. And now here’s this guy with a connection to it…”
“Clara, you cut me off,” Peter said, but not admonishingly. “I was going to say you don’t have to explain it to me. I get it.”
“You do?”
“Well, not exactly. But I understand you pretty well, I think. If you need to be there, or whatever, then do it. I’m not saying I want you to, but I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it.”
She thought of him standing at her doorstep in the dark, space heater in hand. How kind he was. How thoughtful. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I appreciate that.” Someone in the shop interrupted him, probably Teddy, and Peter murmured something in reply. “I’m a little surprised you’re not mad,” she said when he was back.
“Mad? Clara, I’m your friend. Not your father.” Then, almost immediately, he said, “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.”
“I’m just glad you’re not mad. I’d hate it if you were.”
“I’m not, okay?” His voice was serious. “But listen, be careful. You’re tough and all, but just watch out for that guy. I don’t even know him, and I don’t like him.”
She let out a small huff that was almost a laugh, thinking about Greg’s frosty demeanor, his limp. He was what her Texas-born uncle would call all hat and no cattle. No threat whatsoever. “I’ll be careful,” she said. “I promise. And hey, we’ll catch the Fort Worth race this Sunday for sure.”
After hanging up, she wandered back to the truck, where Greg was illustrating the rest of their journey to Racetrack Playa by dragging his finger over the map. Beto nodded and Greg folded up the map. Turning, he noticed Clara and limped alongside her to the car.
“Boyfriend?” he asked.
“What?”
“Was that your boyfriend? On the phone.”
“No. He’s just a friend. Why?”
He shrugged. “The way you were talking. I couldn’t hear, but it looked like you were talking to a boyfriend.” He stared at her. Perhaps that was what made him a good photographer—his ability to see beneath the surfaces of things. And people. She wondered how he’d feel if the camera lens were turned around.
“Jealous?” she asked.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, then tried again. “Of course not,” he said.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked. “A wife? Or maybe a husband?”
“That’s rather personal, isn’t it?”
“So…no significant other,” she said, though not unkindly. After he’d dismissed and teased her so unabashedly, it was amusing to see him blush. In fact, that small display of vulnerability was almost endearing.
He j
erked his car door open and climbed in without replying.
WHEN KATYA BROUGHT her son home from the hospital the next day, Mikhail was in their bedroom, passed out—still? again?—from his characteristic cocktail of vodka and rage. Katya didn’t know if he’d even gone to work. He hadn’t gone with them in the ambulance or shown up at the hospital, that was for certain. Katya assumed that he’d stayed in the bedroom, where he’d gone, slamming the door behind himself, after his son crumpled to the floor, because he was ashamed, and possibly afraid that she would tell the police what he’d done. But how could she? What if they didn’t keep him in jail and he came back to hurt them? Or what if they did keep him? Her lover was still married, and she didn’t make enough money on lessons to support her son and herself on her own. She had no idea how Mikhail would behave when he woke up. She hoped he would be tamed by remorse, at least for a while, until she could make a plan. But this latest act of violence was the worst thus far; she really didn’t want to imagine what else he might be capable of.
While Mikhail was unconscious and Greg was asleep on the living room couch in the safe grip of the painkillers they’d given him after the operation to repair his shattered leg, she picked up the telephone and pushed the numbers quickly, before she lost her nerve. He answered in his professional voice, but when he heard it was her he sweetened it to a low whisper.
“Please,” she said, whispering, too. “Please come quickly. I think you must take my piano away from here. It will be better if it’s gone when he wakes up.”
“Katya, let me take you and Greg instead. This is crazy.”
“You know I can’t do that right now. But please, at least keep my piano safe. This is the best solution.”
“The piano isn’t important. It’s you who’s not safe. And your son. I should be protecting you both.”
“There’s no time to explain. I don’t know when he is going to wake up.”
