We should all go, said Frida.
Obligations, work, money, protested her mother.
But you’re always going on about how you walked him in the baby carriage and his first time saying Mama was directed at you, how everything would be different if we stayed together as a unit, poor Sanya this, poor Sanya that, practically an orphan.
You’ve certainly changed your tune, said Marina. What happened to not another wedding ever again? You barely survived the last one. This is vulgar, that trashy, the other pathetic. My friends will never let me live down your lovely toast. Marriage — an obsolete institution, remember?
That’s here in America, where people spend a decade orchestrating an apocalyptic celebration with registries and flower arrangements and twenty-piece bands. By no means am I opposed to weddings on principle. In fact, I wouldn’t mind one of my own. And to be honest, I like the way this sounds. Engaged in May, married in August. That’s a proper duration.
She’s obviously knocked up, said Marina.
He didn’t marry the other two!
This time the girl is high-maintenance.
If Frida wasn’t fighting off the accusation that she was singing the same old tune, it was that her tune had changed, and which was the worse offense not even Marina could say. To top it off, Frida was tone-deaf — the intractable pronouncement of her piano teacher, the wife of Rostislav Dubinsky, first violinist of the Borodin Quartet, made after spending two lessons with Frida in 1994. Heartbroken, Esther had demanded a second opinion. Perfect pitch runs in the family, she’d insisted. For the second opinion, Marina had wanted to know, Should we get Shostakovich’s widow or Prokofiev’s?
The computer made a sound and went black. Marina swiveled her chair around. Though I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice to go. Who knows what’s going on over there? Slumped down, arms hanging lifelessly, Oioioi! she cried. Even if we don’t go, we’ll have to send at least a thousand dollars. That’s what’s expected of the Americantsi! And if we go, don’t even think about it. It’ll be a ten-grand affair. Of course, I do want to go, she said. She got up and went to the window. Who says I don’t want to? Believe me I do. Only it’s absolutely a hundred percent out of the question. Papa would kill me if he found out I even told you about this. Though of course it would be good, even necessary, to go. Not that Pasha said anything the last time we spoke. That he was nominated for another prize, he didn’t forget to mention, or that he’s being translated into Finnish. But about his son’s wedding not a word. Either way, we should’ve gone back for a visit years ago. It’s shameful that we haven’t made the time.
Frida’s face contorted as she ventured to ask, How come he never came here?
He did, twice — you know that!
It wasn’t easy to stir cement. No, she said, what I mean is — why didn’t he come for real?
Oh, that. It wasn’t even something we considered, not in any serious way.
Now who’s changing their tune? Baba Esther didn’t want her son nearby?
You can’t want something from the grave. Pasha did get his visa once upon a time, but there was no longer anyone to nag and yell. The visa went to waste.
And — that’s it? That’s all there is to it?
There was this, there was that, and the other.
The other?
Sveta.
Frida blinked. How do you mean?
Marina answered helplessly, He wasn’t about to leave without her.
Why couldn’t they come together? said Frida, in that exuberant way of people with sudden strokes of genius. Her mother’s gaze was withering. Oh, said Frida slowly, he was still with—
Lay off, Frida! How many times?
Frida raised her palms, signaling that she had no difficulty laying off, in fact she didn’t much care one way or the other, was just making conversation. In heated moments eyes also needed a breather, and in such cramped surroundings this was accomplished by staring with great longing at the foggy windowpane. On the windowsill, lined in cattle-car fashion, were all of Frida’s stuffed toys, eye buttons missing, ears torn, fur flat and faded. Here’s an idea, said Frida much to her own surprise, how about I just go?
The option struck her mother as highly comical.
Am I missing the joke? said Frida.
Well, it’s a little preposterous, you must admit. After all these years, the one to go back is you. You barely have any connection to the place.
And here I thought it’s where I was from!
Seeing the look of pained defiance on her daughter’s face, Marina bit her lip but proved unable to stop herself. Do you even remember anything? she said.
I’ll make more memories now, said Frida.
You better get a move on it, then.
Are you trying to scare me?
I don’t have energy to do anything of the kind. All I’m saying is, Don’t make me regret telling you about this. Your father will say all this foolishness is my fault and he’ll be right. Besides, you can’t go. You have school.
Classes start the week after.
Marina glanced at her watch. Oh, my God. We had to be there half an hour ago at the latest. Levik, she yelled, up!
They were off to Irina Tabak’s fiftieth-birthday extravaganza at the overpriced Mediterranean restaurant on the bay, or was that next week? Tonight was the Brukhmans’ anniversary at an opera restaurant in midtown, only first they had to stop by Lera’s to drop off a present for her son whose party they’d missed last week because of Vova’s backyard fete. They could forget about that! Mascara crumbs were permanently sprinkled under Marina’s large, tired eyes. She woke up with a fancy earring tangled in her spray-hardened hair and the necklace Levik had gotten her turned around, the pendant stuck to her perimenopausally damp back. She had more dresses than T-shirts, more gowns than slacks, more absurd open-toed heels and only one pair of brown loafers, the rubber soles superglued. The funny thing was that Marina was enjoying none of it — backyard fetes were tiring, nightclub parties pathetic, no one dancing or letting loose like in the old days, endless dinners at whole-fish-on-a-plate restaurants were taxing on the digestion, and the conversations didn’t help the chunks of eel — always so much eel — go down. Momentum kept the gears spinning. Everything had to be celebrated: their birthdays, their parents’ birthdays, their grown-up children’s birthdays, and now their grandchildren’s birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, departures and arrivals, holidays both Russian and American, both Jewish and American. This took care of most weekends, but if one rolled around occasionless, it would be spared such a dire fate by anyone with an aboveground pool or leftovers.
• • •
LEVIK WAS NO LONGER in any mood for a party. He stared straight ahead into the infinity of segmented boredom that was Ocean Parkway. When the light turned yellow, he didn’t sail past but slammed down on the brakes, solely to spite Marina.
You weren’t in the mood long before you overheard a thing, she said, so don’t you even try.
Whether he’d been in the mood before was irrelevant. He’d certainly been more in the mood, but to address this point would be to fall for an ingeniously, if too commonly, laid trap. His jaw clenched so tight his ear canals ached, as he persistently drove and stopped, drove and stopped, while the cars in the other lanes drove and drove and drove.