He envied her love of New York, a feeling he had never experienced for it, or any place, having left Minsk too soon to have any feelings about it save for an unfocused dread of bodily harm due to his being a Jew and the magic scent of the lilac bushes that clotted the yard. Perhaps that was why he didn’t mind coming to her, he would reason as he lay in bed next to her, she long asleep. In the small space of her home, the cat darting around like a fiend, the television on to no discernible purpose except to vanquish the silence, he could draw off the sense of home she felt in the city, the way poor people in poor countries got light by siphoning from the municipal wires. He never spoke about this to her. He was resentful to a degree; it wasn’t as if she was born there. She was an émigré, too, of sorts. But her relocation was to a place that was meant for her all along — somehow she had sniffed out the right destination all the way from Los Angeles. Slava had neither liked nor disliked the place he was born. He noticed it as a trout notices water. He understood that he was in some place only when he was let out at JFK. And this place he hadn’t chosen, the way Arianna had chosen New York. Did that mean he had to keep looking? But he couldn’t smell what place was right for him. Instead of exhausting him into sleep, this pinballing forced an ever wearier wakefulness, and many mornings he woke blearily tired.
The only thing that Slava preferred back on his side of the island was its river. Sometimes, before heading to work, he would take a detour and head across the park before heading downtown to the office. Across this river, if you kept going past Queens and Long Island, eventually, you would come to Europe and then, a little beyond it, Slava’s Minsk. Was it any more his by now than New York? Over there, he would be finished with army service by now, probably married, probably a child, probably two. Would Grandmother still be alive in this replacement life? he wondered. Maybe the blood from transfusions went bad only if you took it outside of the Soviet Union. Maybe the blood didn’t work anywhere else.
Arianna had asked once what he was working on all those evenings at the office. Trying to look her in the eyes, he said he didn’t want to say that much about it, would that be all right? It was a family story but unformed, and he didn’t want to jinx it. She nodded and ran a hand down his cheek. She never asked the question again. He burned with guilt mixed with satisfaction at the mastery of the lie: He had looked her in the eyes, asked her permission not to explain, ostensibly left it in her hands; of course she would do what he asked. He had thought hewing as close to the truth as the lie could afford — a family story — would lessen his burden, but it increased, as if he were teasing her without her knowing.
If ever Slava returned from Brooklyn before she was asleep, their late dinner together often ended with her heading out for a short walk. “To where?” he would say. “I just got here.” She never reminded him that she had spent hours waiting for him. “Just a little one,” she would say with a smile, and off she would go, her head already in the street. She would return a half hour later, coffee in hand — it didn’t keep her up — or a newspaper, or bananas, or nothing. Once she came back with a small painting that a late-night seller had insisted she take because he wanted to know that she had something of his. It depicted, in bright, tropical colors, a pigtailed girl jumping over a puddle.
Slava called for her from the couch one evening, her hands on the shoelaces of her sneakers. “I want to come with you,” he said guiltily. “Wherever you’re going.”
“Just to the park and back.”
“I’d like to come with.”
“Of course you can,” she said. “I didn’t know you wanted to.”
“Why would you think that?” he said.
“You don’t have to do what I do.”
“Don’t we?”
“Slava, let’s not argue. Do you want to come?” She paused, a knee on the floor, a sneaker untied. Her face brightened. “Can I take you somewhere? I think you’d love it.”
“To the park?”
“You’ll see. We need a flashlight.”
“A flashlight?”
“Just come with,” she said.
They walked east. He took her hand in his, and she answered: They were going to try. The streets of the Upper West Side were falling quiet with the temporary exception of Broadway. They crossed Amsterdam, then Columbus — they were going to Central Park. But when they reached its edge, she kept going: in, past the perimeter.
“In the dark, Arianna?” he said.
“Don’t be a codger.”
He tried to erase his discomfort. “Are we uncovering your high school time capsule?”
“You’d have to go to Brentwood School for that. The closest right-end bleacher if you have your back to the school.” She marched through the darkness as if it were daylight, twigs snapping under her sneakers.
Slava looked longingly at a vanishing streetlight. “What did you put there?” he said, his shoes crunching through Walden.
“A pack of Marlboro Lights. I can’t wait to have one when I dig them out in twenty years.” It wasn’t entirely dark, due to occasional streetlights, but Arianna was maneuvering away from the lights, looking for tree cover. “Do you know why I love the park?” she said. “It’s the only place in Manhattan with no street signs. This could be Eighty-Fifth or Ninety-Fifth. Now they’ve started putting maps on the lampposts, telling you where you are. I want to rip them down.”
Slava looked up at the trunk of a nearby streetlight: There it was, in laminate. Following impulse — he wanted to do something heroic for her — he sprinted toward the light and wedged the map out of the holder.
“Slava!” she yelled. “Put it back.” He knew the expression — an awkward surprise — even at a distance, and wedged the map back. They walked in silence the rest of the way. Finally, Arianna paused at the edge of a stand of oaks, the closest light three hundred yards behind them. “This is good as it’s going to get,” she said. “I haven’t done this in a while.”
“Could I be allowed in on the plan now?” he said.
She faced him. “Another thing about the park — the homeless have the best view in New York.” She pointed at Central Park West, whose peaks glowed dimly beyond the perimeter. “And us,” she added.
They walked through the oaks into a clearing, concealed from a bike path by a series of boulders. The grass sloped gently. Slava looked around uneasily.
“No, up,” she said.
He followed her eyes. It took him a moment to understand what she wanted him to see, but there they were, as nowhere else in the city: stars. Not many, and the ones you could make out were feeble, occasionally erased by a passing wisp of cloud, but then they emerged once more, charming in their earnest junior performance, like children playing at adulthood. Arianna was beaming — they were her children.
“You come here by yourself at night?” Slava said, incredulous.
“When I was young and stupid enough to walk in Central Park alone at night,” she said. “I haven’t done this in years. Come on the grass with me.”
Slava looked around. They hadn’t seen a soul since entering the park. His eyes were adjusting, the darkness turning from black to blue. Nervously, he settled next to her. The grass was careful, the mowers of the Parks Department reaching even this far.