The Cosmopolitans (9 page)

***

After the children left, Stalina sat in the kitchen and let Osip
cook some liver for dinner.

“
He’s a nice boy from a very good family,
” she said.

Osip nodded.

“
Of course, if we were in Boston, we could bring ten, twenty
nice boys to the house for Milla to choose from. But you moved us
here, where there’s nothing but Leonid and Malcolm. So she picked
Malcolm, because he is better-looking. He has longer legs. They’ll
have attractive children.
”

Osip nodded.

“
He wants to get married, he wants five children, even. That
shows he’s a serious boy. He will have to make money to support
those children.
”

Osip nodded.

“
And you?
Did a cat eat your tongue?” Why did she have to be
the only one looking for optimistic things to say? “
What, you think
it’s better for her not to get married? To sleep with a lot of men, and
after that, try to find someone?
”

He stirred the liver as if he were not planning to reply. The
Russian Soul counseled “
women’s golden patience
.” Why was it
that she always had to be the one to face facts? Finally, he lifted
the spatula and said, “
I’ll teach Malcolm how to do more practical
things, fix toilets, like that.
” That was all he could come up with?
What about Malcolm’s joblessness? Should they try to find him
something themselves? Or would that anger his parents? Would he
laugh? What would Milla say? She was a smart girl, an accountant,
she had to understand…and there was Stalina, in the middle of an
argument with her daughter, and Osip nowhere to be found.

For so long, Stalina had felt as if she were driving a
troika
and
her daughters were the horses, and she was whipping them forward
to what she knew would be a better place. And no one ever thought
about how difficult it was for such a driver, how frightening. She
said, “
You think Malcolm Strauss wants to learn? To fix toilets?
From you? Do you know what his family thinks of us?
”

Osip’s shoulders hunched. Now, he had cause to ignore her, and
that was what he would do. In a minute, he would finish the liver and
take it to the TV room. He would call Pratik in there, too, and Stalina
would wander alone through the rest of the house.

“
I said us, Osya, not you, us
,” she said.

Jean

You had to send in the wedding announcement at least two
months in advance, was what Bobby’s sisters had said. If you were
a rapper or a famous banker, like Bobby’s cousin Paul, you could
get away with five weeks, but that was it. It was now four weeks
and five days before the wedding, and no announcement in sight.
Part of her wanted only to tell the kids about the deadline and to say,
“There’s no use now.” Another part of her thought Malcolm might
still change his mind, so why announce anything? However, she
was determined that if Malcolm did break it off, he would have no
grounds to blame her. She would proceed with good faith, as Bobby
had advised.

“So, have you sent in your
Times
announcement yet?” she asked
Malcolm and Milla over take-out Portuguese.

Milla looked at Malcolm, as Jean had known she would.
Wouldn’t anyone save Pauline from Peril, in the guise of a simple
yes/no question?

“Why don’t we write it now?” Jean said. “Won’t that be fun?”
She got a pad and her Waterman pen from her briefcase (Briefly, she
wondered about the Waterman Malcolm had received as a graduation
gift: had he lost it? She never saw him using it.) “How shall we start?
How about, ‘Malcolm Philippe Strauss, the son of Jean and Robert
Strauss, was wed —” It was difficult to finish the sentence; it made
it all seem so real. Now she understood why Malcolm hadn’t wanted
to write the announcement. “Milla, what’s your middle name?”

Milla looked up, seemingly surprised, and pointed to her own
masticating mouth. A few seconds later, she said, “Russian people
don’t really have a middle name? It’s the patronymic? So mine is
Osipovna.”

“So you do have one. ‘Milla Osipovna Molochnik, daughter
of Osip and Stalina Molochnik, in the Great Hall of the American
Museum of Natural History.’ Okay?” They nodded.

Now, Jean had a brief respite from Milla, as she and Malcolm
filled in information about his family, Yale, (“Weren’t you at least
cum laude?” she asked. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t been any
laude at all; music was an easy major, wasn’t it? At least he’d rowed
crew.) his internship with Harold Krasner, and, at his insistence, his
“abiding interest in Klezmer music.” She needed a few more sips of
wine before resuming with Milla. “An accountant’s assistant —”

“— Assistant accountant,” Milla said. “I mean, sorry, that’s my
official title.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that was important. What do you want me
to write again?”

“It’s not so important.…” A little shrug.

“What should I write?”

“Assistant accountant.”

“Isn’t that what I had? Oh well, ‘assistant accountant at Lazar
Partners, a Big Ten firm in New York. She graduated magna cum
laude.’” She had remembered; Milla should be flattered.
“From Southern Connecticut State,” Malcolm added.

“I don’t think I have to put that,” Jean said. “If I just say she
graduated, right after I talk about you, people might think: Yale.”

Milla was widening her eyes at Malcolm. What message was
this inept Russian spy transmitting now? She didn’t like prestige?

Malcolm said, “Southern Conn is a great school for accounting.
Everyone knows that.”

Milla gazed wetly at Malcolm. Pauline had been rescued.

“Trust me,” Jean said. “I’m more experienced —”

“More experienced?” Malcolm said.

“Not like that, you child. I have more experience in the world
than you do, and thinking Milla may possibly have gone to Yale will
give her that
je ne sais quoi
in people’s eyes. Milla, you know what
I mean, don’t you?”

Milla pointed at her mouth again, as it were too full to speak,
but it didn’t look all that full to Jean.

Malcolm said, “Aren’t we supposed to put in something about
you, and something about Milla’s parents?”

“How did you know that?”

Malcolm reached for the last prawn and put the whole thing in his
mouth, even the disgusting tail. “I read
Sunday Styles
sometimes.”

“I thought only homos did that.” Jean loved to tease him about
being a homo, because he so clearly was not one, although he was
not as muscular as she would have liked. “But anyway, I can write
that without you. Your father, founder of a law firm, Harvard magna
cum laude, blah blah, me, maybe I’ll put in that I represented Michael
Landon — do you think I should put that in? Do you think anyone
would care?”

“Sure, put it in, why not?” he said.

“I don’t want it to take up space if no one cares. Do you kids
even know who Michael Landon is? Milla, do you know?”

Malcolm said, “Put it in, Mom, it doesn’t matter.”

“Fine. I’ll leave it out.” Malcolm sighed and sprawled his legs
outwards, as if he were sitting on an exercise ball at the gym, rather
than a century-old Louis XV style dining chair, complete with claw
feet, that Jean had discovered at an auction in (of all places) Truro,
Massachusetts.

Yana

The wedding was in eight days. Milla combed her hair a different
way every half hour and stuck a veil on it, stared at herself in the
bedroom mirror, refused to emerge. She was becoming a vainer,
dumber version of Uncle Lev, not that telling her that made any
difference.

From an undisclosed location in Santa Barbara, Katya tortured
their mother with her indecision about attending the wedding,
bringing Stalina to such a state that she had staggered back from
the mall that afternoon cradling a strapless orange prom dress some
commissioned witch told her was perfect for a hot M.O.B. Now, the
dress lay in wait in its plastic bag at the bottom of Stalina’s closet,
where she’d let it fall — a very uncharacteristic gesture, alarming in
itself — while describing to Yana a dream in which Katya had been
a bird playing the piano.

Publicly and politely, as she had done for months, Stalina argued
with Jean over expenses, offering to pay for any item Jean happened
to mention, be it tuxedo alterations, the rabbi’s fee, the entire catering
bill (which Yana knew they couldn’t afford), or Jean’s pedicure.

Privately, less politely, and with a great many more of what
Stalina called jokes, she fought — also with Jean, in her mind, but
actually with Yana, who was there, over the senselessness of Jean’s
insistence that the couple be married at the Museum of Natural
History, just because a Strauss cousin sat on the board. “
How can
you marry young people in the midst of all that death?
” Stalina asked
Yana, who felt herself absent during those times, a Jean-protoplasm
undulating over her body.

Malcolm fought with his parents over whether he would apply
to law school. Yana and Milla fought over whether Milla was a
zombie. No one, except for Osip, talked to anyone else unless it was
necessary; and no one, except for Yana, laughed at Osip’s jokes.