Entire seasons refused to contain Pasha. Surrounded by icicles, heaps of snow, and grime, sure, but not sunbathers or trees in bloom. Frida was always hearing about terrible snowstorms, Pasha unable to leave his house for weeks, classes at the university canceled, heating broken, tram tracks iced over. In nostalgia tales of the fair Odessa spring, Pasha didn’t figure. Her uncle was stuck in February, unable to fix the radiator because no tool made sense in his large white hands. He could prod some handles, jiggle screws, but the result was that the heating shut off altogether and he huddled beneath five blankets watching his breath while everyone else frolicked seaside or wandered under the birches that had a frail, purebred quality. Pasha awoke with his beard frozen to the wooden boards, bedbugs in the fissures, windows clouded with frost. God forbid he should smile under a clear blue sky. In old photos Frida’s family made Odessa look like a resort town. There are cliffs, roaring waters, rustic picnic tables on rough terrain, tomatoes spilling out of their skins, thick sausages, young cheeses, dark bread. Tan faces. White teeth. Men, small to medium in stature, prematurely saggy but with shapely calves, stand around in tiny swimming trunks. Women tower over them. Breasts, breasts everywhere. No telling where body ends and bosom begins. Esther abounds — here she’s bending over a table (is she going for the last circle of kielbasa on the plate or to tug a tempting braid — Marina’s, perhaps — cut off by the frame?), and there she poses on a boat, hair slapped against her cheek, squinty satisfaction, an ample arm slung over the railing. Marina runs around in white underwear long past an acceptable age.
Pasha chooses not to leave the snow. He wears fur caps with the earflaps pinned, exposing a catastrophic excess of cartilage. Skin strains over nose and ears. His overcoats are as severe as his facial expressions. The sky is low, almost as dark as the shadows under his eyes. The gravity of the Soviet situation is on display, Stalin’s legacy palpable in the photos Pasha populates. The Nasmertovs through their documentation constructed an Eden from which they could be evicted. Pasha did no such thing, almost as if he knew he wouldn’t need it. Or was this mere hindsight? Perhaps it was Frida’s faulty memory. It was years since she’d gone through that box of old photos.
The jumping abated. Frida put her ear to the floor. Uzh liked to plant his seed into Klysma nightly. During this ritual Klysma wailed and pleaded with God, for material possessions or help with their financial situation, which really was in need of divine intervention. It appeared to be a slow night, when it would take forever. Frida could go get a sandwich and easily make it back in time.
But in getting sandwiches Frida got distracted. The kitchen window looked out on the ocean, which had the cast-aside air of a large piece of grandparents’ furniture thrown to the curb. Grandparents put plastic covers on sofas so butts and sweaty palms wouldn’t damage the fabric, and children sat on the loud, sticky plastic but didn’t realize it was a cover, nobody told them, and they suffered, assuming this was just what sitting on sofas was like. The ocean seemed to be inside such a plastic cover, and somewhere at the back there was a zipper that could be undone. But why wax lyrical when Pasha had that angle covered? Outside it was gray and muggy, not at all reminiscent of anything, and Frida sat by a south-facing window, in despair.
TEN
HER MOM HAD GOTTEN her the job, lest she have too leisurely a respite from medical school, but there was little in the way of actual work. She sat at the reception desk in a decrepit medical office with a car-wash vibe, recorded the names and Social Security numbers of the senior citizens who came in, processed their Medicare information, and distributed ten-dollar bills. The majority of patients never actually laid their impaired eyes on the physician. This sort of seedy operation would’ve been unacceptable from a regular doctor, but Dr. Gamsky was Yuri, a family friend. Many days of Frida’s childhood had been spent in his lively Manhattan Beach home, playing with his worldly-wise daughter, Diane, until that abruptly came to an end. Frida’s parents never had to try hard for plausibility with their stories. If Yuri’s beautiful wife, Larissa, went to Africa on safari and two weeks later Diane got accepted and immediately sent off to the best boarding school in the country, in neither Canarsie nor Bensonhurst, there could be no better explanation for why Frida would no longer be deposited in their Manhattan Beach home. Once or twice a follow-up question was raised, whether Diane’s mom had returned from safari or if Diane’s boarding school had an address to which a letter and a charm bracelet could be sent, but then Frida forgot to ask again. She paid no mind to the fact that Larissa’s name was mentioned in a whisper until it stopped being mentioned at all or that her friend was, from that point on, referred to as Poor Diane. Only several years ago, when Diane just as suddenly came back into the picture, seven months along on her dad’s doorstep, did Frida’s mom mention juvenile facilities, illegal powders, older men, but in passing, as if Frida had been in on the situation all along. Pressing for details now would mean admitting to the horrific extent of her gullibility, so she was resigned to remain in the dark as to what exactly went down, certain only that the closest thing to a real safari had been that Manhattan Beach home, and she’d never even known it.
The atmosphere in the office was particularly tense this Monday morning. Giant Dr. Gamsky sat in Frida’s chair at the front desk, clutching his forehead. He looked up, his cheek creased and marked by a cuff-link-size indentation that did little to assuage Frida’s fear that he slept in the office. After vigorously blinking away the fog, he said, Look who’s finally here.
I’m not late!
He waved her off as if she were being trifling about it and informed her that today he wanted to do things a bit differently. Would that be fine with her?
She nodded tentatively.
How are your hands? he asked.
She held them out. I’ve been told they’re small for my size.
He snatched a palm and squeezed. She squeezed back.
They’ll do, he said. Forget the old system. This is not a bank, you can tell them that. No more free money. If they want a checkup or a massage — great — if not, tell them to get the hell out.
But the procedure is a medical massage — I haven’t been trained.
It’s basically the same as what you’d give your boyfriend. A bit more wrist action, if you feel up to it.
But if I’m massaging, said Frida, her throat getting stiff, who’s at the desk?
Let’s play it by ear, said Dr. Gamsky, a favorite phrase, used whenever he felt backed into a corner or thrust into the realm of the hypothetical. Laborious thinking made him feel like a cat chasing its tail. He wasn’t built for problem solving. He stood and retreated to the back. Yuri’s standing was an event. Even if he tried to be casual about it, the room underwent a transformation. Whoever witnessed his rising was robbed of breath. He was so tall and hulking, so huge and statuesque. His size was an accomplishment in itself and had probably tampered with his ambition. Why should he strive like the little folk? His presence used to intimidate Frida. Out of all her parents’ friends, Yuri had been the most alien. He was representative of the male breed and the only one male enough to belong to it.
She was left alone to stare at the door. Gum wrappers accrued, one for every email sent like a paper airplane into an iron curtain. About an hour later, an old man entered. He moaned all the way to her desk, as if being in pain made him more deserving of recompense.