The pope uses the Sistine Chapel — would you not visit that?
Don’t pull your tricks with me, she said, taking hold of the railing. She yanked herself up step by step until eventually reaching the top, where Pasha already held open the door.
• • •
SHE ACTUALLY GOT UP there and danced, said Pasha, arms shooting into the air, hands twirling in demonstration. Levik steadied the wine bottle caught by Pasha’s elbow. She fit right in. The black ladies took her for one of their own. And not only was she prancing around up there, her mouth was moving, which means she was either singing along to the gospels or speaking in tongues.
I wasn’t about to sulk in the pews like somebody here, said Esther.
And wasn’t there stained glass as promised?
The church equivalent of a bathroom window, said Esther as she tried to curl spaghetti onto her fork the proper way, which looked deceptively simple.
They were at what was supposed to be the ceremonious breakfast but, considering the birthday girl’s disappearance and return in such a state that several valerian pills and a nap were required, had been revised to a late lunch in a seafood restaurant that Kelly, the landlord of the string of cottages to which theirs belonged, vouched was the fanciest in the area. For the paper tablecloth, Frida was given a plastic cup of gnawed crayons but took little interest. They all intentionally pointed to different items on the menu but got identical creamy shellfish dishes on giant plates too heavy to take part in their habitual plate-swapping ritual, so they just threw white globs of mysterious seafood at each other, finding that their dishes didn’t only look the same but tasted the same, too. Feeling cautious and uncertain, they offered toasts that grossly overcompensated: May Esther make a quick and easy recovery and have perfect health for a hundred years to come and continue to take trips to places like Venice and Vermont. Pasha added how happy he was to be able to be there for her birthday, to which she replied that if he wanted to give her a real gift, it would be permanently relocating to Brooklyn by the time she turned sixty-six. After thinking about it for a moment, she said, Queens would also work, but that’s the limit. Pasha was oddly relieved to see the subject revived. That night Robert and Pasha convened at the chipped toilet bowl, which looked as if a bear had taken a bite out of it. No, a woolly mammoth. Their unsettled stomachs gave them plenty of time to study the tooth marks and argue. Frida got a plastic tub so she wouldn’t have to get out of bed.
They left satisfied, enriched. There had been a moment of calm, hadn’t there? They’d forgotten that such a moment was possible — everyone together and at peace. Such a moment was created in retrospect. Treading quietly side by side along a dusty trail of allergies, trudging up a comely hill, tugging at their insolent shadows, panting ecstatically, pointing out fungal colonies and rattlesnake-like twigs. Esther hadn’t even complained about the cardboard-stiff comforters, stained sheets, mildew splotches on the ceiling, the death rattle of the ventilation system, the bizarre centipede population in the bedrooms. A vacation was a vacation out of their awful personalities; it was permission to not be themselves, and everybody would get angry whenever those selves showed up in an unsuppressed comment, an impromptu two cents.
On the six-hour drive home, the improved personalities were shed. Traffic. Frida had slept sweetly over the numb laps of Robert, Esther, and Pasha while their car made a valiant attempt at speed limit, but the instant it came to a stagnant, sweaty stop, she swallowed awkwardly, bumped her head on the roll-down window handle, and awoke for good. She didn’t feel well.
Nobody feels well, honey, said Marina from the airy front seat.
She might have a fever, offered Esther.
I’m sure she doesn’t. Everybody’s hot and uncomfortable.
But she’s particularly hot.
I don’t feel well, whined Frida.
They took turns feeling her forehead with the backs of their fingers. The count was three to one, no fever (Levik refused to participate, as he was driving). Fury made Esther lose her voice. She stopped responding to her name. Frida found a dog in the window of the car to the right and switched complaints. Why couldn’t they get a dog? They’d been promising her a dog for years. The drain unclogged, movement reentered the universe. Soon they were lost, driving circles in a town with boarded-up windows and no one to ask for help. How about that man? said Marina, but Levik sped past all human beings until, almost two hours later, after he’d taken every possible wrong turn twice, somebody took pity and inserted the needed highway underneath their wheels.
Their first American vacation, and its chief discovery wasn’t where they went but where they returned. Brooklyn took them back. They hadn’t the strength to wish for anything else.
FIVE
SPUTTERING DOWN BEDFORD AVENUE was a giant rusty green automobile. Marina clutched the steering wheel, the tip of her nose almost grazing the windshield. She was of the belief that one must change lanes — if one didn’t, one wasn’t really driving. Her tendency was to choose an inauspicious moment. She chose not entirely at random — a lane change went into effect once every fifteen minutes or on an in-breath, whichever came first. Before attempting the maneuver, an inner voice started up: Just do it, show those other cars, Go Go Go, you’re the big Green Cow, why not now, the big Green Cow, OK now, Yes now, Go Go Go!
Marina tended to get things she didn’t deserve, a driver’s license being no exception. The midnight before her exam, their friend Yuri, a doctor who lived with his perfect family in a three-story house on lordly Manhattan Beach, administered Marina’s first driving lesson, which had to be cut short because of uncontrollable laughter (his). During parking practice he said, No more, you’ll kill me, I’m going to have a heart attack. He shared a parallel-parking technique for idiots who knew how to waltz, and said, Good luck, you need it. Six hours later Marina was in the driver’s seat a second time. Initially she suspected that her DMV examiner was drunk. But no, she was just hysterical — her mother had taken a turn for the worse in Coney Island Hospital, where the examiner was going right after Marina did her thing. Mothers and hospitals happened to be two topics in which Marina was a genius conversationalist. She forgot the turn signal and straddled the curb while waltzing, but the license was hers, like a key into a house of horrors. (Just learn to drive before you hit the highway, her examiner advised.)
When honks or ugly gestures were insufficient, people lowered their windows to better transmit obscenities. Marina lowered hers to better receive them. A car that would’ve drawn a groan of longing from Levik went out of its way to draw level, and behind the triptych of glass was a man possessed. She slammed down the brakes — and with what mad speed the chiding party scrammed. After outwitting her attacker, she was blasted by a fury of honks. But by then she was impervious. Cars quickly sensed when their aggression would go unappreciated.
Marina, admittedly, had her own aggression to release. Not only did she have to go to work on this gorgeous Saturday afternoon while the rest of humanity enjoyed its slice of paradise on earth, and not only was this the absolute worst of her countless jobs (as it was the one she was going to at the moment), but afterward she had to drive to the Upper West Side to fetch Pasha from his party. His party! Those were Esther’s last-minute orders: Deliver our precious boy home safely. If fully sober, he went to the edge of the Bronx; after a few drinks, he’d end up in a dumpster on Staten Island. Of course, Marina had replied, I’ll pick up my dear brother. But that dear brother hadn’t even told her that his plans included a party, not to mention invited her. She wouldn’t have gone, but did it hurt to ask?