The UnAmericans: Stories (2 page)

Of course I’d opened my mouth just when our hands were touching. It was during these moments in life that I feared I’d become one of those old men I always saw here in the coffee shop, alone at a table, slurping soup.

The check came and we both reached for it. “Let me,” we said in unison.

“I had good time,” Sveta said, slapping down a bill before I’d even opened my wallet.

I assumed she said it out of politeness after my Gandhi comment, but when we walked outside, she grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me, hard. “Where you are living?” she whispered. I pointed west, toward the Hudson. “Good,” she said, taking my hand.

Inside my apartment, I led her to the kitchen. Not the sexiest room, but I really wanted to show off the view above the sink: I rarely had the opportunity anymore for guests to see it. While Sveta stared out at the boats dotting the river, the bright white lights of Jersey in the distance, I looked at her full cheeks and jagged teeth, remnants of lipstick escaping the corners of her mouth. In one long slow moment the room went quiet. I pulled her close. We were quick with each other, untucking, unbuckling, unzipping, until we were pressed naked against the dishwasher except for socks and watches and my glasses, which Sveta, at the last moment, set on the counter.

We stayed up so late that gauzy yellow light filtered in through the blinds and I could hear the garbage trucks outside, making their runs. Sveta was curvy and round, with a scatter of moles across her hips. And here I was, sixty-three, paunchy and balding, wondering how I had gotten a woman like Sveta into my bed, wondering even more how to make certain she stayed, and still completely clueless about how to keep things casual. “How long,” I said finally, “has your husband been gone?”

“Eleven month.”

“And am I too nosy if I ask how he went?”

“No, not nosy,” she said, propping a pillow behind her head. And then she told me their story. She’d met him fifteen years ago, in her late twenties, just as they were finishing graduate school. They’d both been deep into their research—Sveta’s dissertation was on Kiev’s Golden Age, and Nikolai, a chemistry Ph.D., was researching Chernobyl’s long-term impact on the nearby city of Pripyat—and there was something so comforting, Sveta told me, about those early years together. “It was the first time,” she said, “I really knew what happiness means.” Whenever they were together, even just reading side by side or walking down the block for groceries, the sky seemed a little brighter, the sun a little warmer, the world turned up a notch. They were both obsessed with their work, introverts at heart, and it had felt, once they were married, that she no longer had to try with other people, that what everyone else thought of her was of little importance. Of course they still went out with friends, but there was always a moment toward the end of the evening when they’d share a look across the bar, a silent understanding it was time to leave, to be alone again. That was a look I knew well, one Gail and I would notice between other couples, at dinners or parties, a look that always made us feel defensive and exposed. After those evenings, we’d find ourselves dissecting the relationships of our friends, picking apart their dynamic until we felt better about our own, standing beside one another at our twin sinks, brushing our teeth.

Nikolai had been exposed to Chernobyl’s radiation every day for six years while he researched the disaster, Sveta continued, but it wasn’t until he accepted a fellowship here and they moved to a safe, quiet street on Staten Island that he walked outside to rake the leaves one morning, clutched his chest and collapsed right there in the driveway. “Nobody had idea about his heart,” Sveta said. “We were knowing nothing. Murmur condition is affecting something like one in every million men, and it has to be my Nikolai.” Sveta was left alone in a new house in a new country with only Galina, a cousin she’d grown up with in Kiev who now lived in Chicago, to talk to.

I ran a finger along the inside of her wrist, creamy and warm and marbled with delicate veins. My own problems, the ones I had wallowed in for months, were nothing compared to hers. It occurred to me that she was stronger than I was. “Why not go home to your family?”

“I have no child, and my parents die long time ago. My grandmother raise me, but when Nikolai and I marry, she do aliyah to Israel. Move back home?” She shook her head. “At least here I can learn English and get job in accounting. It’s more easy being in U.S.”

“Oh, Sveta.” A throwaway comment, but the only thing I could think to say.

“How you say here? Shit it happens.” She laughed, but it sounded startled and strained—the laugh that carries over everyone else’s in a crowded restaurant.

I, in turn, tried my best to hint at what an unbelievable catch I was. I told Sveta about growing up next door to Gail in Brooklyn, how she went from being my playmate at school to my best friend to my steady girlfriend. I told her we married at twenty-three and scrimped for years, finally landing our dream apartment on Riverside Drive. I told her Beth’s birth was undoubtedly the most important day of my life. I told her how even as a little girl, Beth seemed more like a friend than a daughter. And I told her what a terrific time we had over the summer, after Beth finished law school and moved home to save money while she studied for the bar. What bliss: we ordered in most nights, matineed on Sundays, sat up late talking in the kitchen—it was as if she had never been gone.

I didn’t tell Sveta how painful it was to hear my daughter announce, at the end of the summer, that she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life (“Neither do I!” I’d said. “And I’m sixty-three!”), that she’d chosen this career simply because she was terrified of never discovering what she
did
want—only then to run off to Jerusalem and return with Ya’akov. I didn’t tell her how even walking from the subway to Beth’s new apartment made me jittery and cold. I felt like I was walking back in time, back to when I was still a religious kid living in Brooklyn. Back when my family had enough money for a silver kiddush cup but not for new winter coats, back when we were just another poor family with too much faith in God.

Everything felt so new and fragile with Sveta that I didn’t want to make the mistake of oversharing too soon. There was a huge part of me, hearing Sveta talk so openly about her marriage, that didn’t want her to know my own had failed. And I knew my closeness to Beth—whom I’d always felt understood me better than anyone else in the world, including her mother—might sound odd if I attempted to describe it to another person. So I didn’t tell her how Gail would snap about some mess I’d left in the kitchen and Beth would catch my gaze and roll her eyes: she had a way of making me feel she was on my side without ever explicitly saying so. I didn’t tell her that when Beth wasn’t around and we were left without a buffer, Gail and I could barely share a meal without a blowup. Everything I did ignited a fight: the way I chewed my food, the way I folded laundry, the way I made love. I told Gail it was impossible to live with someone so critical; Gail said it was impossible to live with a man who dealt with emotion by avoiding it altogether. But I had wanted to work things out—if not for us, then for Beth. I suggested counseling; Gail flew to Burlington and fucked a retired architect she had met online.

“The fantastic thing about Gail is that we’re still great friends,” I lied. “I couldn’t imagine not being in touch after sharing so much.”

Sveta touched my face. “I told Galina I wasn’t ready for new somebody, but she said there were many other people out there.”

I waited for her to finish the thought, but she didn’t. She tucked her body around mine and shut her eyes, as if there were nothing left to say.

F
OR THE
next few weeks, I’d close up the shop near Herald Square and wait for Sveta to finish her English class. I’d had this same view of a bodega and a produce stand for years and never thought much of it—but now Sveta would come gliding around the corner and even the asphalt would shimmer.

“But be honest,” the fool said, “aren’t you the tiniest bit worried you’re just a rebound?”

I was, yet again, at Beth and Ya’akov’s for Friday night dinner. It was the only time I saw them: they wouldn’t ride the subway to visit me on Shabbat, they wouldn’t eat in my kitchen because it wasn’t kosher, they wouldn’t eat at kosher restaurants near my apartment because they weren’t kosher
enough.
Who does the hashgacha at this place? Ya’akov always wanted to know.

“I mean, how long has it been since this guy died?” Ya’akov held up his hands, as if they were supported by logic. “Tell me you haven’t considered this.”

“What do you know about loss?” I said.

“Actually, a lot. When I was in Jerusalem I did home visits with my yeshiva to bring a little tikva”—already he and Beth had begun to pepper their sentences with Hebrew, their inside jokes with God—“back into the lives of people who had lost family in the bombings, and—”

“Ya’akov.” Beth shot the fool a look he deserved. “My father knows what he’s doing. He’s a grown man.”

“Thank you, Beth,” I said. “Listen, why don’t you come over tomorrow and spend the day with me and Sveta? Lightning won’t strike if you miss services just this once.”

“I
like
going.”

“But why?”

“I just do. Why do you care so much?” She suddenly sounded like the old Beth, and I had a glimpse of how she might have been as a lawyer, her delivery so sharp I felt my own voice wobble when I said, “No, really. I mean—what about it do you love?” I honestly wanted to know.

“Something about stepping into that sanctuary where people have been singing the same melodies for hundreds of years. It’s like I finally belong somewhere,” she said, her tone softening, and though I expected her blue eyes to be wild with fervor, they were bright and calm. “All these people in shul, they’re like my safety net,” she said, and I stood there blinking: wasn’t it enough to fall back on me?

“Now that you’re here,” she said, “I wanted to tell you that—”

“We’re pregnant,” Ya’akov said, coming behind her and stroking her flat belly.

He gathered me into a hug, his skinny arms tight and firm, while I stood there, my feet cemented to the floor. I swallowed a pain in my throat, but it came back up again.

“What news!” I said, sliding out of Ya’akov’s hug. “Does Mom know?”

“I haven’t told her yet,” Beth said. “I wanted you to be the first to hear.”

“Well,” Ya’akov said, “after Reb Yandorf and the rebbetzen, you’re the first.”

I kissed her cheek. She even smelled like a mother, of sweat and cooking oil and a dozen oniony dinners. “I’m so happy for you,” I tried. “That’s wonderful.”

“Thanks.” Then she glanced at me with more concern than a daughter should. “You’re really sure Sveta’s making you happy, too?”

That was the understatement of the century. I loved waking up beside Sveta, watching her rub sleep seeds from her large brown eyes. I loved how quickly we slept together, as if neither of us could muster a reason to hold back. And I loved the sex itself, which was undeniably, almost unbelievably, good. I loved watching her face scrunch up and then go slack, and I loved the moment right after, when she would huddle into the nook of my arm and run a hand over my hairy chest, calling me her big bear. I loved that she came to Friday night dinner at Ya’akov and Beth’s and never let her eyes glaze during the blessings, though I’m sure she was bored nearly to sleep. I loved that she was kind to them, and I loved the quiet dignity she maintained when refusing to join in on the prayers—letting them know that growing up, she hadn’t been
allowed
to learn them—rather than snapping at Ya’akov, as I often did, to hurry up already so we could eat. Those moments at the dinner table, I felt as if Sveta were teaching me something important: that I didn’t need to make every opinion known, didn’t need to be filterless, that sometimes the best thing was to sit quietly and smile and sip my wine. I loved the weekends, when we would take the paper to the park and spend all day lazing around the meadow, watching the neighborhood parade by with its strollers and dogs. I loved kissing her in that meadow, on the street, on the subway platform, just before the train roared into view—as if we were the only ones who existed, as if the entire city were being carried away in a tornado, and we were caught smack in the center of its glorious gray swirl.

Of course there were nights when I heard her slip out of bed after the lights had been off for hours. As my eyes settled into the darkness of the room, I’d see her standing by the window, lifting a book or a paperweight off my shelf. Not really looking at the object, just turning it over in her hands like she’d forgotten its function. Usually I rolled on my side and fell back asleep, knowing at some point she would return to bed—after all, when Gail first left, I’d found myself wandering the rooms of my apartment, opening cupboards or flicking on lights, then forgetting why I had entered the room in the first place.

But one night—it was October, a work night, two weeks after I’d learned Beth was pregnant—I put on my slippers and followed Sveta’s footsteps down the hall. I found her on her knees in the bathroom, face cupped in her hands, weeping. She was in one of my undershirts, so baggy it reached her knees, and the sight of her on my bathroom floor was—well, it just
was
. The room was dark, but there was enough moon coming in from the window that her skin lit up white. I had no idea what it meant to find her hunched on my tiled floor in tears, and to be honest, I didn’t
want
to know—who would interrupt a moment like that to ask if she was having, like the fool would suggest, a meltdown?—so I knelt beside her and stroked that soft ambiguous space between her back and her behind. I wiped her damp face with the heel of my hand, and then I asked her, just like that, and she said yes.