Secret Lives of Second Wives

by Catherine Todd

  13

  Alexei Strela was twenty minutes late and arrived rumpled in khaki pants, running shoes, a T-shirt, and a black leather jacket.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in perfect, nearly unaccented English, when he was shown into my office. “I got held up.” He sank into the client chair with the ease of someone settling in to watch The West Wing in the comfort of his own living room. “I left my bike in the lobby,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

  I assured him that it was, although in fact the building management frowned on it. If you let one do it, you have to let everybody….

  Even though all of my clients were foreign, I never knew what to expect, particularly from the Russians. Many of them had had very little practical English in the former Soviet Union and still spoke it very hesitantly. They were a friendly group on the whole, but for whatever reason—the system of government they had grown up under or some cultural conditioning I was unaware of—they were often wary and excessively private. A number of my clients objected to receiving faxes where they worked and even seemed to harbor suspicions of phone calls. A lot of them were apparently nocturnal and asked if they could call me at home late at night. (No, they couldn’t.) Alexei Strela, with his easy English and easier manners, was, if not a rarity, at least intriguingly different.

  “I’d like to know,” he said, suddenly dropping the bonhomie, “if there’s something wrong with my visa.”

  So he had heard something.

  I was ready for him. “I reviewed your documents,” I said, “and I don’t think so.” I had this down pat by now—I’d already gone through it with a number of clients. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, but—”

  “I work at SLAC,” he said. “I have to be careful.”

  SLAC (pronounced “slack”) is the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, a national research laboratory operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy. SLAC designs, constructs, and operates state-of-the-art electron accelerators and related experimental facilities for use in high-energy physics and synchrotron-radiation research, and though it used to be a bigger deal than it is now, it still has plenty of clout in the scientific community.

  “I know that,” I told him. “To be doubly sure, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to examine the documents the INS has sent you directly.”

  He sat back in his chair and regarded me coolly. “Why is that?” he said. That was another thing different from the stereotype—he had very black hair, flecked with gray, and his eyes were dark brown. A Russian George Clooney, or Sean Connery when he had hair. Just at the moment, he looked like no one to be put off with half-truths.

  I met his gaze with an effort. “I’m sorry to say, Dr. Strela, that we’ve discovered some irregularities in our own files,” I told him. “It’s really in your own best interests if we look over the documents the INS sent directly to you.”

  “Define ‘irregularities,’ ” he said, leaning forward in his chair with the air of a professor delivering a particularly nasty pop quiz.

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “One of the members of the firm appears to have … altered … some approval notices, or worse,” I said. “It’s still under investigation, but in the meantime we’d like to be sure all our clients are perfectly safe.”

  “Thank you,” he said, sitting back. “I was wondering if you would be honest with me.”

  I raised my eyes. “What do you mean?”

  He smiled slightly. “The word is out about Mr. Grady.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I couldn’t help saying, although it was no worse than I’d expected.

  He seemed amused at my reaction. “The immigrant community … gossips a lot, at least at a certain level. These things get around. Everybody knows about it.”

  I resisted the urge to hold my head in my hands and moan. I might as well close up shop right now. “I see,” was all I could manage.

  He appeared not to notice my distress. “Anyway,” he said, “you passed the test, Ms. Bartlett. What is it you’d like from me?”

  I got hold of myself and told him what I needed to be sure his status was in order.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got most of that stuff in my pack on the bike. I’ll just go and get it.” He’d also come prepared, apparently.

  I nodded, though he was not asking permission.

  If you were not from Northern California, you might wonder why a forty-eight-year-old Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics was riding around on a bicycle like an impoverished graduate student or a resident of Beijing. The truth is, bikes have a cachet on the Peninsula that extends far beyond the university community. Drive down Foothill Expressway along the edge of open land, and hordes of cyclists, helmeted and tricked out in the latest high-tech racing gear, go whizzing by you in the bike lane with the purposeful air of Africanized bees en route to the hive. Secure in the recognition of their environmental superiority, they often feel free to ignore regulations (such as lane markings and stop signs) formulated for less noble conveyances, so you really have to watch out. Since I was even less adept at bicycling than I was at driving, I had never been tempted to join them, but Jack sometimes went riding with friends on weekends. Still, the ultimate status symbol, at least in certain circles, was not having to drive to work.

  Alexei came back with the documents, which matched, thank God, the ones in our files. “I think you’re fine, Dr. Strela,” I told him after I’d looked them over. “I don’t see any problems.”

  He reached for the folder with his left hand. “Thank you,” he said. He didn’t get up from his chair, so I wondered if he had understood.

  “You’re all set,” I told him.

  He folded his hands and looked at me. “Yes,” he said. “I know. I wondered if I could discuss getting a green card.”

  I was surprised that he would consider the firm for further work and concluded that he was information-gathering at minimal expense. Potential clients did it from time to time—they’d get the answer to their questions and then find somebody cheaper to do the work. It was a version of cornering a doctor at a cocktail party to get a free diagnosis of your symptoms. It came with the territory, I suppose.

  “You have time enough on your visa,” I told him. “You can probably get a labor certification before it expires.” A labor certification, a permanent residency petition approved by the Labor Department after the employer gave evidence that the alien was not taking a job away from an American, took about three years, depending on the INS backlog.

  “I don’t think the position will last that long,” he said. “I would like to be safe … and free.”

  “Are you thinking of changing jobs?” I asked.

  He laughed, but I didn’t get the joke. “Possibly,” he said.

  “And you would like to have your immigration status assured before you do?”

  He nodded.

  I understood; a lot of potential employers don’t want the hassle of dealing with immigration difficulties and require a green card before they take you on. In addition, the employee can be a kind of slave (subject to lower wages and fewer options) as long as he’s on any sort of a temporary work visa. I looked at the documents Harrison had filed for the H-1 at SLAC. Strela had a Ph.D. from Moscow University, the most prestigious school in the former Soviet Union. Presumably he’d done high-level work in Russia before he came here. “Has anyone talked to you about an extraordinary-ability petition?” I asked.

  “I’ve heard of it,” he said levelly. His expression gave nothing away. Perhaps after all he had the Russian sense of caution.

  “You might qualify for that,” I told him. “It allows people who are at the very top of their fields to get first preference for permanent residence,” I said. “The INS created the category so that someone like Albert Einstein could come to this country without having to prove that he isn’t robbing an American of a job.”

  He smiled. “I’m not exactly Einstein, Ms. Bartlett.”

  I smiled back. “You don’t
have to be,” I told him, although anyone who could get a Ph.D. in physics automatically qualified as a genius in my book. “The INS accepts evidence in a number of categories to prove your extraordinary ability—your original work, your publications, articles about you, awards, your compensation—”

  He laughed. “My compensation is …” He named an improbably low sum. “I don’t get much more than a postdoc at the university.”

  “In that case I can see why you might want to look for another job,” I said lightly. But even I was shocked. I wondered how you could live on a salary only slightly above librarian level in the Bay Area, where even cheap apartments rented for thousands a month. “There are ways around the salary issue, so don’t worry too much. If you want to pursue this, I would need to know more about what you’re doing now and the work you did before you came to the United States.”

  The smile dropped from his face. “In Russia, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  “A lot of it is classified,” he said.

  “That’s not necessarily a problem,” I told him. A physicist was unlikely to be a pornographer, or a spy, or something equally undesirable from the INS’s point of view. “In fact, it probably shows that your work was prestigious and important. We’d have to say what you did, but we wouldn’t have to go into detail.”

  “You’re very optimistic,” he said. He sounded skeptical.

  I knew it must seem as if I were desperate for business, which was true, and willing to say anything, which wasn’t. “I have reason to be,” I said. “The firm does a lot of different kinds of immigration work, but this is my specialty.”

  “Assuming you decide I’m qualified, what would you charge?” he asked.

  I told him.

  He blanched.

  “It’s a very labor-intensive process,” I said hurriedly. “This sort of case takes a lot of time to prepare, unless you have a major international prize like the Nobel.”

  “Not even the Order of Lenin,” he said with a wry smile.

  “Well, if you did, you wouldn’t need me, or anyone. You could just send in the clipping of yourself in Sweden with the medal around your neck and approval is pretty much automatic. Otherwise you have to build the case.”

  “There’s no other way?”

  “As I’ve said, there’s labor certification, or you could apply for the lottery.”

  “You’re joking,” he said, not looking amused.

  “I’m not. If your name gets picked, no matter who you are, you get a green card, as long as you haven’t committed any crimes.”

  “That is bizarre,” he said.

  “I agree.” It was bizarre to make the Dr. Strelas of the world jump through incredible hoops to get the privilege of staying here and then offer thousands of slots to anyone whatsoever who happened to draw the winning number. “I’m not an apologist for U.S. immigration policy,” I told him. I cleared my throat. “Another way to get a green card is to contract a bona fide marriage to an American,” I told him.

  His whole body stilled. “I’m already married,” he said. I couldn’t read his expression.

  “Not to an American, I assume?”

  “No.”

  “Is your wife here with you?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, in the same flat tone. A shadow of something—pain or longing or what?—crossed his face.

  My position gave me a certain license to pry, but I knew a closed door when I heard it. “Well,” I said.

  He got to his feet abruptly. “I’ll think it over,” he said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  I knew I’d never see him again. “That will be fine,” I said. “Thank you for coming in.” I extended my hand, and he took it, without the uncertainty that sometimes troubles foreigners when a woman offers a handshake.

  He slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and his expression changed. He pulled a card out of his pocket and glanced at it. “I almost forgot,” he said. “Do you remember David Peh?”

  I didn’t. “I don’t think …”

  He laid the card on the desk. I looked at it. It was mine. “How did you…?”

  “He was my roommate for a while,” he explained. “David said you were nice to him when they repossessed his car,” he said, watching my face.

  Now I remembered: the kid who got bested by Repo Man at Jack’s party. “Oh, yes,” I said. “I do remember. But in all honesty I didn’t really do anything. He never called.”

  “You were kind,” he said gently. “That counts for a lot.” He picked the card up again and put it back in his pocket.

  I blushed. “Um, did he get another job?” I asked.

  He smiled. “He married an American,” he said. “He’s starting his own company.”

  14

  My stepdaughter was less than enthusiastic about my dinner invitation. “I’m not sure we can make it,” Meredith said. “I’ll have to get back to you. Justin might be tied up. What about some other night?”

  “Your grandmother’s only going to be here for the weekend,” I reminded her.

  Silence.

  “It means a lot to your dad to have a family dinner,” I said.

  “I know that, Lynn,” she said. “But the health club’s really busy right now, after the holidays. Justin’s putting in a lot of extra hours.”

  I forbore mentioning the obvious, that it was not Justin’s grandmother who was coming. Moira would scarcely lament his absence in any case; live-in boyfriends were entirely off her radar screen, something like second wives. “Well, whatever you decide,” I said. I wasn’t going to beg her; I knew she would come in the end anyway. She always did.

  “You remember my food issues, right?”

  “Right,” I said. I was scarcely likely to forget. Jack said Meredith’s diagnosis was orthorexia nervosa, which might be defined in layman’s terms as “picky eater to the hundredth power.” It seemed to be an obsession with health food, an apparent fear that ordinary sustenance would contaminate her body. Egged on by Justin, she also pushed herself to rather astonishing physical feats, including running in the Badwater, an absurd (to my mind, anyway) 135-mile race from the floor of Death Valley (in summer!) to eight thousand feet up the slopes of Mount Whitney. Dehydration and exhaustion had put her into the hospital for three days afterward.

  “Because,” she added, “I noticed there was nothing I could feel comfortable eating at Dad’s birthday party.”

  “There were several platters of raw vegetables,” I pointed out.

  “From the hotel,” she said, her voice rising. “Who knows what they were grown in? They might not even have been organic. They might have been genetically modified.”

  Genetic modification seemed like an excellent idea at the moment. I sensed I was supposed to apologize, but I refused. “Well,” I said, striving for a neutral tone, “if you and Justin do decide to come this weekend, you should probably bring your own entrée, just in case.”

  More silence.

  I thought that would be the end of it, but she said, “Lynn, you know Mom and Grandma were very close.”

  I closed my eyes and exhaled.

  “And Valerio’s in Italy right now. …”

  I waited, gathering strength. No wonder I always felt drained after these conversations.

  “I don’t suppose Mom—”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said firmly. At least I hope it was firmly. “But I’m sure Moira will want to go over and see her. At her house,” I added, for emphasis. “So they can talk.”

  “Well,” she said, after a moment, “I might have to miss it anyway.”

  “That would be a shame,” I said.

  “IS MEREDITH COMING?” Jack asked over dinner.

  Patrick looked up from his shrimp and surimi salad—a take-out staple when it was my turn to cook—and shrugged. “She said Justin might have to work.”

  I was surprised—and then alarmed—that they’d talked about it. After Jack’s party I found myself looking for conspiracies.

/>   Jack sputtered. “Well, Justin—”

  I touched his arm. “She’s coming,” I said. “I’m sure she’s looking forward to it.”

  Patrick studied his plate. “She just likes to jerk your chain, Dad,” he said eventually. “You should know that by now.”

  I was thrilled by this astute observation, but I doubted that Jack would take it to heart. He was an eternal optimist where his children were concerned.

  “I’m sure she doesn’t mean to,” he said decisively. “Not to change the subject”—there was a lie if I ever heard one—“but did you catch the Stanford game last night? I didn’t see who won.”

  I knew that this sports camaraderie was not directed at me and smiled demurely. Jack knew better than to ask me for information on any topic having to do with balls, pucks, goat carcasses, or anything else people liked to play games with. I remained happy in my ignorance.

  “Pat?”

  Patrick shrugged.

  I’d heard him listening to it in his room. I wanted to swat him.

  “We’ve still got this morning’s sports section,” I offered.

  “Thanks,” Jack said.

  NAOKO WATANABE, the head of human resources for Kojima Bank’s West Coast operations, was one tough cookie. She dressed like a model and had Japanese manners, but, like most Asian businesswomen, she knew how to hold her own. Today she was all sober business.

  “I see,” she said when I told her that the vice president, information technology, in the Menlo Park office, who owned a house in Atherton and had three children in Peninsula private schools, was technically in the United States illegally. If she was surprised by this distressing news, as the VP and his family doubtless would be, she didn’t show it.

  “I know it’s something of a shock,” I said. “It was to me, too.”

  “It must be,” she said noncommittally. “You’re saying that the labor certification that was approved by the INS was never actually filed.”

  “Apparently not,” I said.

  She folded her hands on the desk and looked at me. “So …”