The Invention of Exile (21 page)

“Vera? How can this be?”

“It's me.”

“Vera, Vera.” He shook his head, looked down at his hands and then said, “Truth or faith.”

“What is it you're saying?” She did not understand. His thick accent, harsh on the English, jagged. It had surprised her. She had not remembered the sound of his voice. Her father's voice.

“Vera. In my language—it means truth or faith. So you choose.”

“I never knew.”

“You don't know Russian? Your mother didn't tell you?”

“No. We went to Russian school, but we learned very little of the language,” she said. He frowned and shook his head. Disappointed, as if she'd caused him a mortal wound.

“Truth or faith?” He then smiled. “Choose.”

“Well,” she laughed, remembering that he did always have a kind of trick or game to play with her, “with truth I'd always know. So, I'll take faith.”

“Smart girl,” he bellowed, beaming. He hit the table with an outstretched hand. “You've grown so. A young lady.”

“I should hope I had grown. It's been fourteen years.”

“It has been fourteen years,” he repeated, nodding his head and looking down.

Silence.

She crossed her legs. The restaurant was crowded, filled with businessmen, workers, the American tourists with their binoculars, sunglasses, and heavy black cameras dotting tables cluttered with Coca-Cola bottles. There was a couple next to them. The woman was looking at a map. The man was far back in his seat, nodding to the woman's suggestions that they go to see Teotihuacán not today, but on Sunday. The restaurant's high ceilings enveloped the drone of conversations. The chandeliers hanging by chains as thick as wrists. It was noisy. Chairs scraping. Waiters called to each other and from the street came a steady stream—cars, pedestrians on after-work errands, halts, beeping. In the fading daylight the darkened storefront windows, as still and serene as a lake in the morning, doubled the dusk's movement.

“You look so like your mother.”

“People do say that. Of course, I never see it.”

“You do. You have her hands too,” he said, picking up one of her hands, turning it over in his own and patting it gently. “And your mother. How is she?”

“Happy to know I'm here. She'll be even more happy to know I've met with you. Of course worried too.”

“Yes. She always did worry herself,” and he began to fiddle with the silverware before him. “Tell me, Vera. You traveled all by yourself, all that long way?”

“Took a plane, flew Pan Am.”

“All by yourself? You should be careful, traveling alone, such a young woman.”

“People travel all the time now, Daddy.”

“Still, you must watch yourself.”

“I do.”

“When did you arrive?”

“A few days ago.”

“And you are staying in the city?”

“Yes. With a Mexican family. I work too.”

“Work?”

“I told you in my letter.”

“You must work?”

“It's the only way I could come here.” He frowned again. This time an expression of deep perplexity. He could not hold her gaze for too long, as if the very sight of her confused him. Instead, he would study her face with intensity, leaning on the table, and then he'd shift his gaze—now to the silverware, or to his hands, or to the left and right of him for a while, now retreating in gesture and in mind. She watched him and waited for him to come back to wherever he went in his thoughts, deep into memory she assumed, but what it was he was thinking about she couldn't fathom. Her mother had told her so little, and when she ever did begin to recount their story she'd begin to cry and this upset both of them so much that Vera never pressed her further. Now she saw that she might have difficulty with her father too. She'd try to help him though. If he could be home, with her mother, with all of them, surrounded by the family, given work, something to occupy his fine mind, as her mother always called it, then nostalgia (the Russian disease, her mother said) would fade and he could focus, she hoped, on the present, the here and now.

“Here is a little something from Mother,” she said, pulling a small pink envelope from her purse. It was a check for ten dollars. He opened the envelope, looked at the check, and shook his head, a deep frown showing the long creases along the sides of his mouth. She knew he had worked, in the copper mines of Cananea, until the Depression hit and he'd lost his job, but now she had no idea how he took care of himself, if he did at all.

“Daddy. Tell me what you do, where you work, how do you take care of yourself?”

“If you send my designs to the patent agencies, like I've told you to do, she wouldn't have to work.”

“Where do you live?”

“She could have a house, you see, and then a garden. Like we had in the Ukraine. Oh, you could spit on that soil and something would grow.” He laughed and she couldn't help but laugh too.

“Why don't you do as I say?” A sudden anger in his voice, which had a deep baritone to it and a tendency to resonate. It caused her to jump, others looking at their table.

“Daddy, please.” She lowered her voice, hoping that he'd follow her lead. “Where do you live?”

“In the center here. A boardinghouse.”

“And for work? You are not at the electric company any longer?”

“Repairs.”

“I see.”

“I do okay. I need very little, you see.”

“Yes,” she said, but could see right away that he'd need several things—a new pair of shoes for certain, a new suit, a haircut.

“Daddy, I have some pictures. Of the family, the boys, Mother and me. That is, if you think you'd like to see them.”

“Your mother?” he asked, an expectant, pleading look.

“Yes. I have photographs, of back home,” she said, reaching into her purse. “I have a whole bunch of them right here.” She pulled out a large white envelope, placing it on the table and pushing it toward him. He didn't motion for it so she picked it up once more and removed the packet of photos bound by a thin grosgrain blue ribbon. Her mother had done that, she thought, and then felt her eyes well up thinking of what she'd make of her husband now. She undid the ribbon and began to place each photo before him. One at a time.

“Wait,” he said, hand raised, “I would like to order some more coffee.”

“Yes, yes, yes of course. In all the excitement I'd forgotten where we were,” Vera said, looking up from their table, sitting tall in her chair, trying to beckon one of the waiters. The orders were placed, Vera doing the ordering, her father sinking back in his chair, staring at the silverware, never once looking at the waiter, even when addressed directly. She observed him when their coffees arrived. He used half the slim carafe of cream, and, from the blue and black ceramic sugar bowl, four heaping spoonfuls of sugar, stirring and not bothering to remove his spoon from the cup. He slurped when he drank, hunched over his cup, he seemed unable to sit upright and drink from the mug as she did now. Coffee spilled here and there from the rim.

She moved their coffee cups to the side of the table and brushed away the sugar crystals that had accumulated in a fine granular surface. She laid two photos down at a time.

“This here?” He pointed to one photograph. Vera winced, closed her eyes and then told him.

“Yes. That's Mother.”

“Julia?”

“Yes. Daddy, we sent you photographs. Over the years, did you receive them?”

“How changed.”

“Did you?”

“Oh, yes. I got them all.”

“Good,” she said, doubting this as she watched him look at her mother's photograph, searching out the face he'd known.

“This is me with Leo, you see,” Vera continued. “We are at the park. This was about, oh, five years ago.”

“Yes, yes. Beardsley Park, is it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I think this is—”

“Beardsley Park, yes. I courted your mother there. We walked and walked till dusk, every Sunday. Without fail. Has she told you that?”

“Yes,” Vera lied, finding it difficult to explain that her mother rarely spoke of him, and when she did out would come a torrent of tears and her lips would draw into a fine thin line. Braced is how Vera always thought of that expression.

“This is Leo's photo from the Navy.”

“The Navy? Let me see here,” he said, sitting forward, smiling now. “So changed, so changed.” A group of men stand up to leave, a loud crush of chairs scraping. One of them is calling for the waiter, a booming
“mesero”
echoing.

“Daddy, you'd like to come home, right?”

“If they'll let me.”

“I'm here to make sure that happens.”

“Oh now, how? What can you do?”

“Well, I will start with the Embassy.”

He considered this, nodding his head, which went from an affirmative, to a kind of defeated shake of the head. Then he leaned close to her, his voice lowered to a near whisper.

“If you do get me home,” he said, his eyes wide, “will your mother accept me?”

“Oh, Daddy. What a silly thing to say. Of course she'll have you. She's written letters her whole life to get you home.”

 • • • 

V
ERA
AND
A
USTIN
left
Sanborns, the crowded clatter of the place at their backs as they stepped into dim streets.

He was walking too fast for her.

“Father, please slow down”—she laughed a bit—“your one step is equal to my three.” He stopped, satchel beneath his arm, his body propelled forward. His face as Vera drew close was expectant. Eyes elevated with some inner blaze of thought she could not fathom.

“The windows close soon,” he explained, and then she fell into step with him and then lost pace again, his stride though smaller still overtaking her own. He dashed through the post office entrance forgetting himself, and doubled back to wait for Vera, clearly unused to having a companion, she thought. They walked through the lobby and he led her to one of the side tables, elbow high. A few others milled about them, but for the most part, the post office, near closing hour, was quiet. She watched as he opened his satchel, rummaging through to find his letters, the envelopes. His fingers marked faint smudges along his, for the most part, clean, unblemished drafts.

“Daddy. Your fingers are a mess. Let me help you,” she said to him.

“I didn't notice,” he said, dropping the papers and turning over his hands.

“No. Of course not, but you certainly can't send them with such a mess of prints on them. Look how your fingerprints are all over this one.” She took a draft from him and inspected it a bit more closely. She sighed. “Here, give them all to me,” she said, spreading out the papers, envelopes, and letters, each addressed to the Ambassador, one to the Patent Commissioner, Washington, D.C., the General Consul, D.F. He stood empty-handed next to her, watching. She knew these letters and the repeated pleas and explanations, how he'd applied for citizenship, how he was married to a citizen of the United States of America. They were the same letters he'd send home to them all, the same ones that made her mother down for days. To see them here now, while she was standing right beside him, made her want to shake him and make him see that no amount of his inventions would allow him back in. But she didn't want to bring all that up just yet and spoil their reunion. She felt her eyes smart with tears. She gritted her teeth. There were the specifications for each invention—the electric welder with its cylinder and flame. He was mailing off the propeller designs too. To Vera, they were all a geometrical conundrum. A series of circles and arcs. Arrows and numbers. She could sense him, see him out of the corner of her eye, watching. He was making sure she was careful, that she was placing the correct drafts with the correct letters. She knew, and it broke her heart to admit it, that all these efforts of his were futile. She wanted to take his hands and plead with him, tell him the truth, “These inventions will not get you into the U.S.” Oh, but it would destroy him she knew.

“Daddy,” she began instead, “you know, you're sending so much of yourself to these patent agents, and now the ambassador too?”

“They will soon see,” he said, cutting her off, not meeting her gaze. He nodded his head with a little grunt of confirmation, his eyes focused on the designs she was placing in the last of the envelopes. She set all the slim bundles one atop the other and then slid them down the table where he stood shifting his weight. She watched him in periphery. He took the envelopes in hand, head cocked, eyes narrowing, double-checking the addresses. He looked to her now and smiled, taking two steps back. He turned to cross the large, empty lobby to the bank of postal windows. A wide stride, the anxiety in the bend of lanky, thin joints. She drew her hand away from the table, feeling a heaviness descend as she took her time walking to the main entrance, all the while wondering and worried about who exactly her father had become.

 • • • 

T
HE
PROPELLER
WAS
FOR
his Sonnie. They were good ideas. Useful inventions—for engineering, for ships and building. He was ashamed of their presentation now. He'd tried to get the best paper, always in shorter and shorter supply, his own funds hardly covered one ream. He'd had no proper presentation materials to work with either. He had explained as much in the patent letters. Once, years ago, he did have a typewriter—a broken, discarded one that he'd found behind a printing house. He'd taken it back to his shop, fixed the keys, though the
E
never worked, so he'd had to painstakingly insert a series of hand-printed
e
's. He'd not realized how many
e
's one used up in the course of official correspondence and soon empathized with the typewriter's former owner, deciding to also discard the old, ineffectual machine. He hadn't used a typewriter since. Relied instead on his fine print—neat, capital letters. The letters were legible, if a bit amateurish. But any good patent agent would soon see the value in his ideas and not take it as an affront to the profession, or at least that is what he hoped.