For all his criticism of America, it struck me that Lenny was the most forcibly American one at this table: a gabber, a confessor, an over-sharer. Fishing out desiccated bits of family “dysfunction” from the black holes of memory to vindicate himself. But vindication from what? You child, I thought.
But in the bathroom, splashing water on my face, I tried to put the episode at lunch behind me. The important thing was to get Lenny alone. I was in luck: stepping outside, I found him on the veranda, reclining amid the Turkish cushions. I had rehearsed what I’d say to him: Son, listen, I don’t think it was those friends of yours who landed you in jail….But the words now seemed to possess a grubby hollowness. Observing him among the bright pillowcases, his pale thighs spreading out from his nylon running shorts, I was reminded of the slatternly indifference of a pasha in an opium den. “Have you given some more thought to your exit plan?” I said, sitting down beside him. “If you want, I can go to your apartment and pack your things,” I offered in what I hoped was a softer tone. “I don’t think we should be losing time.”
He looked at me with toil-worn eyes, as if I were the last torment of his afternoon, then propped himself up on his elbows. “You’ve been here, what, a week? And you’re already micromanaging my life?”
“I’m not micromanaging. I’m trying to get you out of danger.”
“Why don’t you let me decide that, okay? I talked to Austin. He had a lawyer look at our end of the deal—I’m completely untouchable.”
Just tell him the truth, I thought. But instead what I said was “Goddamn it, Lenny. Today you’re out, tomorrow you’ll be back in. And lawyers won’t do you any good here. You get on the wrong side of someone and they’ll spare no effort to hunt you down.”
I knew this outrage was camouflage, but my anger felt real. What Lenny needed now was hardness, disciplined talk, not more softness.
“Cool it,” he said.
“I will not cool it….You are being grossly selfish.”
“Selfish?” In his eyes was an expression of chagrin or amusement, or possibly both.
“If you land in jail again, who do you think will bail you out? You want to force me and your mother to mortgage the house? You want to bankrupt us in our old age? Because that’s what we’ll have to do to save your skin.”
Browbeating him, I was so steeped in my pretense that I saw no way out. A confession seemed now like a mistake. Lenny would only add it to the satisfying tally of wrongs I had inflicted on him, and I would lose what little clout I had left.
“Don’t worry: calling you for help would be the last thing on my mind,” he said.
I tried to steady my breathing. “Lenny, I know it’s not easy to put so much of yourself in a plan that doesn’t turn out the way you want. I lost seven years working on a dissertation that they never gave me any credit for. But you know what I thought when I got denied? I thought, It’s better than losing those years in the camps, like my mother.”
There was a pinch in his brow when he said, “Baba Flora didn’t regret her life. And neither do I. She had a front seat on history.”
I thought my jaw might drop. “Is that what she called it?”
“She always said, ‘The only way to learn who you are is to leave home.’?”
“Did she, now? And who are you?” I stared at him. “Do you have any idea?”
Lenny stared back at me. “I do, actually. Not that you’d understand.” The chagrined expression had deepened the groove between his eyes. “You act like my time here has been a big waste. You think I regret not having spent all these years sitting in a cubicle with four dudes in monkey suits, looking like a diagram of the Chain of Evolution? Dreaming about how I’m going to retire at forty-five, stash away my cash in a T-bill at seven percent, move to a Tahitian island, and have sex on Viagra for the rest of my life? ’Cause that’s how the guys I know in America live. No, thanks. I’ve been part of something bigger here.”
“History?” I said, more mockingly than I’d intended.
“My life’s been an adventure, is what I’m saying. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, but I can honestly say I’ve experienced things about myself—”
“Adventure?” I said. “That’s what they call it when everyone comes back alive. Otherwise it’s called a tragedy. That’s what my father’s life was—a tragedy. And my mother’s, too, for that matter.”
“Yeah? She didn’t seem to think so.”
“That’s because she was a narcissist, Lenny,” I said. “She didn’t think about anybody but herself. She was a grade-A delusional narcissist. Like you.”
These last two words, uttered by mistake, fell hard on the planes of his face. For a moment I thought he might cry. But he only looked at me with bitter, laughing eyes. “I get what you’re trying to do, Pa. You think if you can make me feel small enough you can put me in your suitcase and take me home.” He stood up. “You think this is the first time I’ve been threatened? You think it’s the first time I’ve been thrown in jail? It wasn’t. Trust me, I’ve learned to withstand worse than the shit you’re flinging.”
This came as a surprise to me. I was shocked that Lenny had been able to keep something like this private. But what I said was “Well, you’ve really become a Russian, then. In love with your suffering.”
He stood up. His face, above me, looked merely disappointed, nothing more. “Like I said, I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand.” I couldn’t stop myself now. “I can’t understand it, because this ‘pioneer of human experience’ business is not a model for being a man, Lenny. It’s not a model for leaving a mark on the world. What you’re describing is just a recipe for”—I couldn’t help thinking of my mother again—“for being a leaf on the ripples of life!”
How oddly satisfying it felt to say this, even as it undercut any progress I’d hoped to make with my son. How grimly triumphant, like kicking myself in the groin.
Lenny was at the screen door, his eyes still glistening with indignation, when Valya appeared on the porch. Had she been standing there all along, in the shadows? “Well, what’s happening here? Not more politics, I hope. The dacha is for relaxing, not for solving world problems. That’s our rule.”
I was again at eye level with her mighty, yeomanly thighs, which her blue sweatpants, far from concealing, only demonstrated as capable of overpowering even the loosest of clothes. I watched my son go inside and felt an ancient sadness. Valya held a zinc bucket with that morning’s mushroom crop, and over her shoulder was slung a bag through whose plastic netting I could see the outlines of apples, cheese, pickle jars. “I’m off on a walk to Aprelevka to bring some food for a friend,” she said. “You wanted to see the damage, didn’t you? I wouldn’t mind some help.” She handed me the canvas bag of food without waiting for an answer. “A walk is good for our old bones.”