Babylon and Other Stories (16 page)

Nick said, “I'd really rather not know this about you, Mom.”

Leda shrugged, her cheeks a flourish of color. “It's not enough to base a relationship on,” she said, “not one that will last forever.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Nick told her.

Now he's in a corner with Martin and Leda, listening to them talk. All week long he worked on wedding arrangements during the day and on his various projects in the garage at night. He looks exhausted, dark shadows beneath his dark eyes. Leda, on the other hand, looks radiant, wearing a pink suit with a corsage—what Nathalie thinks of as a mother-of-the-bride outfit—and a flower in her hair. She's staring at Martin with a wide-eyed, loving stare. Martin's elaborating a joke that involves an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Belgian; Nathalie misses the setup, but the punch line is the single word
potatoes.

Leda's laugh rises and flits across the room, a string of notes like pearls.

At dinner Martin rises and makes a toast. He is sixty-six; his ex-wife has moved to Florida, and his children live in Europe. His
suit bags and pouches, and it looks like he's carrying rocks in his pockets. His eyes are watery; his nose hairs need clipping.

He raises a glass in Leda's direction. “To my darling bride,” he says, “I let you go once before, and I will never be so foolish again.”

Leda blows him a kiss.

Michael Thomas says, “Aw.”

After dinner, while Nathalie and Leda clean up, Nick and Michael Thomas take the groom out for his bachelor party. Since Martin likes to go to bed early, this is at seven-thirty. Nathalie drives Leda home, and when she gets back, at nine, the light in the garage is on. Nick is standing over the chair, looking down to where it rests on its side at a weird angle. His eyes are bloodshot and he smells like booze.

“How was it?”

He grimaces. “Michael Thomas bought Martin a lap dance.”

Nathalie pictures a nineteen-year-old stripper hovering over Martin's hairy nose, shaking her pasties in his face. She laughs. “Did he enjoy it?”

“He did until he tried to get up and give her some money, and he pinched his sciatic nerve or something and we had to take him home.”

“Is he okay?”

“He says he will be. Let's go in, okay?”

Nick never wants to come in from the garage. His tools and handiwork are in here, all his gear and paraphernalia. She looks down at the chair and realizes it's not really lying at a weird angle. What it really is is broken. He has sanded it so hard that he snapped part of it off. He sees her see this and says, “I can fix it. You'll never even know.”

“It's my grandparents' chair, Nick.”

“It'll be even better once I fix it. It was structurally weak.”

She sighs, heavily and on purpose. The garage is a blur of dark shadows, of Nick's head, of wood pieces scattered like detritus on the ground. “I don't know why you had to start messing with it,” she says.

“This is what it's supposed to look like. Once I fix it, you'll see how much better it is.”

“If you say so,” she says. In the flick of his head she sees how annoyed he is that she won't get mad at him, won't lose her temper and yell. But what would be the point, anyway? She turns on her heel and goes to bed.

The wedding day is cool and blustery. It's November and all the leaves are golden and half gone from the trees. The small church smells overwhelmingly of potpourri, which Nathalie realizes comes from air freshener, the same spray Leda uses at home. Nick's aunts and uncles and cousins—all that could make it at the last minute—filter in, greeted by Martin, who's loitering by the door in a moth-eaten tuxedo that predates the Vietnam War. He shakes all the relatives' hands and cracks jokes.

“I guess you heard it's a shotgun wedding—but don't make any comments about Leda showing. She's kind of sensitive about it.” Nathalie, who is handing out programs, smiles at this, and he winks. To the next aunt he says, “We had to have another wedding because the presents were so disappointing last time. I hope you acquitted yourself well.” In a lull between guests he wanders over to her, his silver cummerbund rising halfway to his neck, and confides that he is nervous.

“You'll be great, Martin,” she says. “It's going to be great.”

“Where did your fine husband get off to?”

She shrugs. “Probably refinishing all the pews at the last second.”

Martin looks at her, his rheumy eyes gleaming kindly behind his thick glasses. “Now, sweetheart. Be grateful his hobbies are harmless.”

Harmless,
Nathalie thinks later, as the organ plays the wedding march and Nick, his face a study in beleaguered patience, escorts his mother slowly down the aisle. She thinks,
It's not enough.
The minister, a solid twenty-five years younger than the two he is about to wed, greets the bride with a smile. She wonders if Leda knew, each time, that her marriage wouldn't endure— wonders when and how this knowledge dawned on her. And each time it happened, was she surprised? Behind her, one row back, Michael Thomas sighs with audible sentiment. Nathalie shoots him a look over her shoulder, and he leans forward and whispers in her ear, “Grouch.”

Nick kisses his mother on the cheek and takes his seat beside Nathalie without looking at her. Leda's wearing the floor-length gown she chose in the store, its wide skirt buoyant around her, her exposed chest and shoulders wrinkled, age-spotted, as soft as cushions. She's also wearing elbow-length gloves, a veil, and— Nathalie can just make it out, its gems nestled and sparkling against Leda's white hair—a tiara. She smiles at Martin, her thin lips parted slightly. She looks like a travesty and a fantasy, both.

She and Martin promise to love each other, to honor and obey. Martin lifts up her veil and looks into Leda's eyes; she looks back, then they share a gentle, dignified kiss. One princess-gloved hand reaches up and squeezes Martin's arm in its ancient tuxedo. What she's seeing, Nathalie can tell, is love—the real thing, stripped down and authentic—and as they walk back up the aisle together, she looks down at her hands.

At the reception, which is held back at the house, Martin tells her a joke involving a mailman, a fireman, a policeman, and a farmer's daughter. Leda and Nick are dancing in the living room, swaying more than moving their feet, their shoes scuffling against the bare floor. Leda's gloves lie where they've been flung, in postures of abandonment and repose, over the back of the couch. Nick smiles down at his mother. They've made up, as they always do.

He sees Nathalie watching them and glances away, a gesture that is half anger, half apology, and wholly familiar. Michael Thomas comes over and asks her to dance. He's been leaning against a wall since the party began, tapping his feet to the music and looking longingly at the people on the floor. Passing by him earlier, handing out hors d'oeuvres, she even heard him humming along loudly to “The Way You Look Tonight.” Now he stands before her, wide-eyed and eager. She shakes her head. Michael Thomas seems like the kind of person who's had dance lessons and isn't afraid to use them.

“Please?” he says. “Just one dance? I love to dance at weddings.”

“I'm not really much of a dancer.”

Beside her, Martin gives her a nudge—actually, less a nudge than a poke in the ribs, sharper and more forceful than she would've expected.

“Go ahead, dear,” he says. “Who knows how long it'll be until Leda and I get married again?” He pushes her in the direction of Michael Thomas's skinny arms. She relents. Michael Thomas takes her hand and bows an exaggerated introduction. The two of them step and swirl, paired and clasped. She was right about him: he has
technique.
People head to the edges of the room, making room for them. He spins and dips her, and by the time the
song finishes, she's breathless and grateful not to have been injured.

When Michael Thomas bows and retreats, Nick comes over and hands her a drink. “Impressive moves,” he says.

“It was all Michael Thomas,” she tells him.

Together they watch him scouring the room for other partners. Leda and Martin are dancing together now, cheek to cheek, eyes closed in rapture, swaying only the slightest bit. Nathalie sips her champagne and observes the happy couple. Next to her, Nick smells of cologne and sweat and shrimp canapés and wine; the rhythm of his breath as familiar as her own. She knows the two of them won't dance tonight. They'll stand side by side, as if on guard, waiting until the others are through.

Maxine was the good child; her little brother was the problem. When he kept getting in trouble at school, their parents conferred and took drastic steps. The doorbell rang one Saturday afternoon when Maxine was home alone, doing her trig homework. Her mother was working at the hospital and her brother was wherever he went when he left the house. Nobody knew what he did with his time. Maxine opened the door, and there was a boy standing on the porch; she'd never seen him before. On the street behind him, a horn honked and a car drove away.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“I am Yuri,” said the boy, and just stood there. He was thin and dark-haired, pale-skinned, with high, prominent cheekbones. Despite the warm October weather he was wearing a wool sweater. Dark circles under his eyes made it hard to guess his age.

“Is your parents at home?”

“No.”

Maxine noticed a black suitcase on the ground, bound by a leather strap. Yuri looked to the left and the right, as if checking the truth of her story. Finally he looked back at her. “I am exchange student,” he said. “I live in your house one year.”

“What?” she said.

“Then, if you like, you may come to Soviet Union and live in my house one year. But only if you like,” he continued. “It is no obligation.” His accent was halting and twisted, like nothing she had ever heard.

“I know nothing about this,” Maxine said.

“It is glasnost program.”

“It's like nobody tells me anything,” she said.

“You have a brother,” Yuri stated flatly, and fished a piece of paper out of his jeans. “His name is Brian. He is for me the exchange host.”

“Nobody calls him Brian,” Maxine told him. “We call him Bat.”

Yuri gazed at her with his exhausted eyes. He reached into his jeans pocket again and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then sat down on the porch and lit one, throwing his match onto the rock lawn.

“Because his room is like a cave,” Maxine said.

Yuri nodded. “You are talking of the mouse with wings.”

“Yes, exactly.” She left the house and sat down next to him and waited until he was done smoking. Then she picked up his suitcase and led him to Bat's room. It was pitch black in there and smelled like an armpit. She usually avoided it.

“Well, here's your new home,” she said. “You can watch TV if you want.”

Maxine's mother made enchiladas that night and they all ate dinner together, in the dining room. This was such an unusual occurrence that Maxine and Bat stood in the kitchen beforehand, momentarily baffled, until their mother gestured to the chairs around the table. In their house people tended to be preoccupied by individual activities—work, school, juvenile delinquency, as
the case may be. They rarely ate meals together, were rarely even home at the same time. Maxine enjoyed this setup as a rule, especially when it freed her own days from scrutiny, but she liked it less when Russians started showing up on the doorstep unannounced. She sat down across from Yuri, who had taken a nap that afternoon but still looked tired.

“Yuri, these are enchiladas,” her mother said. “A local specialty. It's Mexican. We are very close to Mexico, I guess you know that.”

“Ah, yes,” he murmured, looking out the back window as if he might see Mexico right there. Maxine followed his gaze: there was nothing to look at, just some faded rosebushes blooming into the alley, then the square backs of other houses, all the same-looking houses in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

“I didn't make them too spicy, because I thought you might not be used to it. But if you do like hot food, you can put the salsa on it. Salsa comes from the chile pepper. Do you have chile peppers in Russia?”

“Chiles are a New World crop, Mom,” Maxine put in.

“Oh, shut up, Max,” Bat said, and Yuri looked at him. Bat was slumped in his chair, hair falling over his eyes. He also looked exhausted. Last year he'd been suspended for selling speed out of his locker; school administrators took it away from him, and since then he had had no energy. Their parents thought this could all be traced to their divorce.

Yuri lifted some enchilada with his fork. Strings of cheese stretched down to the plate. He chewed carefully, swallowed, and smiled. “This is delicious, Mrs. Watson.”

Maxine's mother beamed at him. “Why, thank you, honey,” she said.

On Sunday, as always, Maxine and Bat had dinner with their father at Furr's Cafeteria.

“Ah, the Russian's here. Welcome,” he said to Yuri, extending his hand. “We're real happy to have you.”

“Thank you,” said Yuri.

They picked up the wet plastic trays and pushed them along the metal counter, past the salads and Jell-O. Yuri watched Bat carefully, Maxine saw, and said to each counter person, “The same as him, the same as him.” He wound up with a plate full of starches, macaroni and cheese and fried potatoes, but seemed satisfied. At the table he gulped down two glasses of Coke, then went back with Bat for coconut cream pie.

“So, Yuri, what part of Russia are you from?” their father said.

“Like you know any part of Russia,” Bat said.

“I live in the very far north,” Yuri said. “I like the weather here.”

“Okay, I seen this on the TV,” their father said. “That's the land of the midnight sun. In the winter it stays dark, but in the summer, the sun shines all the time, right? Way into the night.”

“Yes,” said Yuri. He took a fork to his pie and tried it. When he smiled, the chocolate sprinkles caught between his teeth were as dark as dirt.

Yuri stuck next to Bat all the time. There was one other exchange student that year, a Swede who was living in Happy Valley and called Yuri on the telephone a few times, almost singing his name in his lilting accent, but Yuri discouraged his advances. He explained at the dinner table that he had come to America to meet Americans, not Swedes. At school Maxine sometimes saw Yuri and Bat drifting down the hallway together, or smoking cigarettes in the parking lot. Bat said he thought that Yuri was a
spy, a Soviet agent brought over by their parents to watch his movements. “We're living in a police state,” he whispered.