Our friendship with the Ostrovskys went back many years—to a time when little Lenny and little Irochka employed her father’s old blood-pressure cuff to play doctor on the Ostrovskys’ Lithuanian carpet. In ’79, we’d stayed in Russia just long enough to witness six-year-old Irina bud into a musical prodigy, displaying her talents on the violin with impromptu chair-top performances to the accompaniment of her mother shouting “More bow!” as the little girl sawed away. In subsequent years, we would learn through letters and phone calls that this early achievement was followed by a string of others, including prizes not only in violin, but also in ice-skating, citywide mathematics competitions, and English. All the talk of Irochka’s prodigious talents had led Lenny to remark, before he’d left for his vacation, that he expected to find in Moscow not a girl but a well-trained circus animal. And so Lucya and I were pleased when Lenny reported back that Ludmila’s daughter, in spite of her sweatshop childhood, seemed quite “well adjusted,” and “not terribly annoying.” That year was marked by several perplexing return trips to Moscow and many expensive transatlantic phone calls that concluded with Lenny’s announcement that Irina would soon be arriving in the United States on a fiancée visa so the two of them could get married.
It wasn’t like I thought that goofy grin on Lenny’s face was a result of all those visits he’d made to the Tretyakov Gallery, not like I had no clue about the singular charms of Moscow’s girls. But marriage? Still, I’d be lying if I said I completely disapproved of this union. Maybe it was the push Lenny needed. And how could I object to Irochka, who, besides being as pretty as a picture, was also mature, impressive, and clever? Impressive enough, apparently, to make Lucya question the virtue of her motives. Not that our son’s motives were so virtuous, I reminded her. He was beside himself with his windfall, telling his friends, “A girl like that wouldn’t talk to me here. A girl like that wouldn’t piss on my face if it was on fire.” This was Lenny-speak for being in love. In love, and full of hallucinatory visions of childhood nostalgia, though it was plain to see that the girl who bore the weight of all his rapture was, even in her plain jeans and cotton sweater, far more sophisticated and shrewd than our son. For all her wholesome Young Pioneer exuberance, Irina was no kid. In that two-room flat she shared with her mother, she had lived through a decade of upheavals no less disturbing than the American sixties; had watched her father drop dead of a stress-induced infarction and seen her mother go from Gosplan economist to “redundant state employee” with a vanished pension in a matter of weeks. This would go some way to explaining why, in 1996, while Ludmila was embarking on a late-stage career as an accountant doctoring the books at a telecom start-up, Irochka was quietly at work seducing our son on the same Lithuanian carpet where the two of them had played as children.
Not long after she arrived, it became obvious to me and Lucya that Irochka had a taste for finer things than the starter apartment our son was offering. She rolled her eyes coldly at his jokes over Passover dinner. Two years later, her nitpicking of Lenny’s every failing and lack of ambition had become the signs of a woman challenging a man—begging him, really—to let her go. Some twisted sense of duty kept her from walking out herself. Through all this searing pain our son held on until Irina finally left him, taking with her a few possessions and a letter of acceptance from the Stern School of Business.
And yet the greatest irony was still to come. A week after Lenny signed the divorce papers, putting his name beside all those tragic little “x”s, he was on a plane headed to—where else?—Moscow. To make his million and prove his manhood. To whom? I still wondered.
Lenny came out, wearing a thin bathrobe like Hugh Hefner, then wolfed down both his lunch and mine.
“You don’t think this arrest was accidental, though?” I asked him. I was trying to summon the courage to tell him about Kablukov, but something prevented me. Knowing Lenny, he would only get mad at me for meddling. Maybe better to stay quiet.
“The simplest explanation is usually the correct one,” he said, chewing. “If there is a case against our old client and the Ministry of the Interior wants to finger more people…well, that would explain why Zaparotnik was so eager to seal his deal with WCP and cut me out. Clever bastard. He dissolves our old firm—so no liability there. Gets himself and his buddies beamed up to WCP—the fortress. But he leaves one person, me, in the lurch. So, if the FSB needs to sniff around our old business, there’s always someone to blame. A scapegoat.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That doesn’t exactly sound simple.”
He seemed not to hear me. “He’s a son of a bitch.”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” I said.
“A sign of what?”
“A sign that it’s time to head home.”
“Hell, no. I’m not going to let them gaslight me out of here just like that. I’ll get to the bottom of it. You want one?” He handed me a Yarpivo from the fridge, and went to find a bottle opener.
“It doesn’t pay to get to the bottom of things,” I said.
But once again he seemed not to be listening. His phone was ringing. “Yeah, where are you?” he said. I could hear digital bits of a feminine voice in distress. “I’m just here, with my Pop….How much did they ask for the work? I’ll talk to them….” He set the phone on the table. “Katya’s on her way here,” he informed me.
“Where was she?”
“At the orthodontist’s office. They’re overcharging us again.”
Us? I thought. “Since when has she been wearing braces?”
“Since Mom told her—when she visited last summer—that she should get her teeth fixed.”
This was pure revisionist history. Katya had already been self-conscious about her teeth. My wife had made a mere suggestion, which she would never have made if she’d known Lenny would be footing the bill.
“I thought you two were through,” I said. “What are you doing—making her beautiful for your successor?”
“This is from before. I made her a promise.”
My son, the promiscuous promiser. “Lenny,” I said, “I think we should start looking for tickets home for you. Today.”
But again he was deaf. The door buzzer rang twice, then went flat. “That’s her,” he said, getting up.
My heart sank a little as Katya came in, carrying two bags of groceries. “Aunt Valya asked me to pick up some eats for tonight,” she said, seeing Lenny first. “I thought we could get a head start to the dacha. You’re expected too!” She turned to me. “We’re giving your boy a big homecoming! Aunt Valya is already there, preparing. And if we leave now, we can beat the weekend traffic.”
“Oh crap!” Lenny said, hitting his temple.
“Didn’t you tell him? Aunt Valya has been planning for your father’s visit for weeks!”
“I forgot! I’ve been attending to more pressing matters, obviously.”
“Well, we better pack,” Katya said petulantly.
I stared at Lenny in amazement. What was this dacha nonsense? If he had any wits right now he’d be packing a suitcase for the States, not for a summer outing.
“Katen’ka, Lenny and I have some plans of our own.”
“It’s going to be boiling here this weekend! The whole city will be empty. And Aunt Valya got a whole calf to grill for us!”
I checked my watch. I was out of time to argue. “I have to get back to a meeting,” I said.
“So come after. We’ll pick you up at the train station,” said Lenny.
—
“HOW IS EVERYTHING WITH the boy?” Kablukov inquired from his seat in one of L-Pet’s overstuffed leather chairs.
“Better, miraculously.” I tried to smile. I felt provoked to add that I was in his debt, but hesitated.
“Our friends at the Ministry of the Interior were quite appalled at the way he’d been harassed,” he hinted.
“I’m grateful, Ivan Matveyevich.”