No, said Misha tentatively.
Did you see him earlier today?
I don’t think so, said Misha, leaving room for possibility as he rushed to the calendar where he jotted everything from Mama’s Birthday to Buy New Toothbrush so that each month became a solid ink-black block of accomplishment. The date of Pasha’s arrival was nowhere to be found. He’s not here, said Misha. I’m not sure where he is.
The line went dead.
Misha didn’t finish flossing his sculpted popcorn molars, though the upkeep of his teeth was the closest he had to a sacred rite. He dropped into a regal velvet-cushioned chair at the head of his oval endangered-wood dining table, which as a bachelor’s dining table was strictly ornamental and somewhat forbidding. It was sterile, strange, a place he never sat. The apartment looked different from here, longer, the ceiling lower. Why did he feel so unsettled? Pasha was in the city, out wandering the streets, catching up with someone more important. Misha had held back from asking Robert when Pasha had arrived — the question would only prove that he didn’t know, implanting doubts in Robert’s mind as to their friendship. Misha was proud to be the one called for information on Pasha’s whereabouts. He didn’t want cracks in Robert’s perception of their bond. It was suddenly very important that Robert consider him Pasha’s dearest New York friend. But after he dug around in his brain, he seemed to recall that Pasha had been scheduled to arrive on the eighth. Today was July 6, which meant that Pasha had been in the city for a month with no word. A month! Misha sat with perfect posture at the dining table (his mother had picked it out, and it demanded perfect posture), overtaken by a vaporous distress, which was replaced by anger at Pasha, because who did he think he was, a hypocrite surely, but this accusation stuck to Pasha like paper snow, since Pasha was unhypocritical to a fault. The anger petered out, and Misha was returned to nipping sadness, or had he just forgotten to turn on the air conditioner?
• • •
MARINA, juggling bags, arms, appointments, swooped into the living room to peck her grounded brother good-bye. Overscheduling led to domino-effect lateness, threadbare excuses that no one demanded or believed. Pasha tugged an appendage, toppling bags, plopping her into his lap. Why has Mama never had any patience with me? he asked.
What are you talking about?
Everything I’ve ever done has been met with disapproval. When I stayed in bed, reading, she’d yell that I needed fresh air, but when I took up soccer, she mocked me for days. Who are you fooling? she said. Her reaction was never to the activities but to me, like that time with the stamps.
An undeniable thrill in being confided to. Pasha had never spoken to her this way before, his fingers locked around her wrist, the immediacy of his hushed voice and strained mouth — Marina couldn’t help feeling deemed worthy. From the youngest age, Pasha had given the impression that the family was a nuisance, their clannish mentality a constraint; their affairs didn’t merit a second thought in his globally scaled brain. Evidently this impression couldn’t have been more false. Deep-seated grievances and injustices had been eating away at him all these years. He mentioned minor events from adolescence the way he’d refer to a passage from the Old Testament. He put on the professor face. Switched into lecture mode. Let’s look at the incident of May 18, 1972, when Mama took my entire collection of literary journals and…. Having exhausted the list, he asked Marina to provide some insight.
Insight? she said. I’m sorry, Pasha, I don’t have it.
How about more memories in the same vein? It took hundreds of hours of psychoanalytic toil just to unearth these. There must be more. My tendency is to bury traumatic episodes. Your memory should be terrific for the stuff. That’s why I thought you might provide—
Some insight, yes, I get it. But I’ve got nothing. She kneaded the dough of her knees. It’s a hot soup, she said, and time is like cornstarch. Last week I locked my keys in the car, poured milk into the washing machine. Though on second thought, she said, is it possible that the psychic work didn’t retrieve memories but invented them? Take your literary-magazine episode. I remember it differently. You found out the KGB was on its way, but it was Rema who called to tell you. And Mama didn’t burn your magazines. Mama wasn’t even home at the time. You dumped your magazines into the fireplace yourself, forgetting, though you later denied having been told, that all of Mama’s valuables — her jewels and heirlooms, gold coins and cash — were hidden in a little sack under the grate.
Pasha’s arm slackened, allowing her to disengage. That can’t be, he said softly.
Marina gathered her bags. It’s incredible that you don’t remember. I’d bet all of Odessa remembers Mama’s screams.
Robert came to Pasha’s rescue. He brewed a pot of Earl Grey, spooned some syrupy quince jam onto a saucer, and snuck into the living room, where the desquamating inmate lay under a massive heap of art books. Flaps of skin hung off his nose and ears, his chin finding a new shape with each scratch. It looked like a root vegetable that had been partially grated, then thrown away because of pervading rottenness.
I don’t want, said Pasha.
I come with an offer, Robert said, setting the ruse on the floor. We say we’re going for a walk on the boardwalk but really sneak off to Manhattan!
Pasha reached for the jam. No way, he said, licking the tiny spoon.
You mentioned the Frick.
It’s two hours just on the subway.
We’ll take a cab.
The last thing I need is another scolding.
Pasha’s refusal only restored his father’s ease. Here’s the phone, then. Call Misha.
I’d rather hold off. He doesn’t even know I’m here.
Don’t be so sure. Robert shuffled out, a sad sight. Though America filled people out (with such tasteless food that you had to keep on the search for flavor), Robert proved the exception: America shrank him. Over the last year, he’d been dragged to doctors, had his organs inspected, put on a strict diet of lard, red caviar, and French fries. Nothing was wrong, and nothing worked. The admirably, reassuringly plump Robert, a stern doctor with a double chin so perfect it served as a guiding credential, whose paunch pulled taut his striped gray vest and made any neurosurgery seem hopeful, was no more. He was gaunt — every surface that had been convex had concaved, as if a vacuum cleaner had turned on at his core. He became wholly implausible as a physician. Luckily, most of his remaining patients lived in other cities, consulting by phone. His clothes hadn’t changed, the same two charcoal suits that now looked like bunkers in which Robert was hiding. The curse of shabbiness — when a barber cut Robert’s bristle-thick gray hair, the result was that it stuck out more sharply in every direction; shaving with these disposable razors, he bled; his shirttails went untucked; there was always a button to miss, a zipper to overlook. What had Esther done to deserve this? The shabbiness was innate, but how well it had been hidden under layers of respect and busy living. They’d been so involved. A stethoscope and a reflex mallet had done wonders for Robert’s image. With the layers peeled away, the shabbiness was profound. In fighting this impossible battle (Pasha had inherited the gene, and Marina and Levik were inveterate slobs), Esther forgot herself. She lived as if the Master Photographer would arrive at any moment to snap the one photograph that counted, to be filed away into the Permanent Records, yet she never took into account that as part of the family she’d also be expected to pose.
Pasha found her duct-taping the split slits of the yellowed blinds clattering with the breeze. Art project? he asked.
It’s not even a project. I’m not even here. I’m actually where I need to be, which is in the oven. Come, take this. She handed him the duct tape, clamped his fingers over the cracked slit she’d been holding perfectly aligned.