You Are One of Them (17 page)

“This is the surprise?” I said.

“Please,” she said to the women. “Help yourself to Pringles.”

“Zoya,” I said. “I need to talk to Zoya.”

“Ya?”
said Zoya. Me? Her tone was arch.

“Da,”
I said. Up close, her eyes were a murky green. Not like Jenny’s at all. Colored contacts, perhaps? I wasn’t convinced.

“You are the interruption,” Svetlana said to me.

“I know you speak English,” I said to Zoya.

“Of course I speak English,” Zoya said. “Educated people do.” She had a Moscow accent.
But she’s been here for ten years,
I thought. And Jenny was always good at accents.

“What’s your real name?” I said. I felt like one of the bouncers at the Georgetown bars my friends and I used to frequent in high school. They used to quiz us about the information on our driver’s licenses. The bouncers were right to be skeptical; our IDs were fake. But we were careful to memorize all the pertinent information. We lived in our false identities. We knew where everything was. In real life I was a Scorpio, but my cover was an Aquarius.

I heard the hiss of carbonation as Svetlana opened a can of Czar. She covered the can’s label with her hand as she made her way around the table, filling cups. The perfect hostess.

The other women’s eyes burned into me. I knew that Richard and Andrei were watching, too, from behind the glass. I glanced at the mirror but could see only my face staring back at me. They had obviously turned off the light. So the research was still under way, which meant that I was part of it now. I was another potential consumer under the microscope. Unless it wasn’t real research at all. Maybe it was all staged and everyone was in on it, even Richard. Maybe he spoke Russian perfectly. Rule #1:
Assume nothing.
In the mirror all my uncertainty reflected back at me. My hair was neither blond nor brown but somewhere in between. My eyes were neither blue nor green. An indeterminate color. I wasn’t sure what to write under “Eye Color” on my passport application. I finally settled for hazel, but that wasn’t exactly right.

“What is this ‘real name’?” Zoya was fierce, unyielding.

She looked so Russian. Until I traveled through Europe in college, I didn’t understand how much physiognomy can give away. On a train from Paris to Rome, two traveling companions and I met an Italian woman who promptly categorized us as Jamaican, Czech, and Danish. “No, we’re American,” said my friend Kate, prepared to defend the Melting Pot. But the woman wasn’t talking about nationality. She said it was clear from our faces where our ancestors had come from. Kate was in fact descended from ancient Bohemians, and Michelle’s grandparents were from Kingston, but I protested that my ancestors were English until I realized that my forebears could be traced all the way to Jutland in what is now Denmark. All that emigration and assimilation couldn’t totally erase our origins.

“Your American name,” I said to Zoya. But I was running out of steam.
I’m losing my mind,
I thought.
I’m hallucinating because of all the smoke.
This was just some woman with a vague resemblance to Jenny. Russia was making me paranoid. Jenny had been dead a long time.

“Kto ona?”
said Zoya. Who is she? She was talking to Svetlana. I was acting so crazy that they were talking about me like I wasn’t there.

“She is a foreigner,” Svetlana said, as if that explained everything. Or maybe she meant, “She is a stranger.” It’s the same word in Russian. A foreigner is a stranger. A stranger is foreign.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I made a mistake.” I backed out of the room, hot with shame. My skin was prickly. I escaped to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.
Deep breaths,
I told myself.
Deep breaths.
My skin was blotchy, my eyes strained and bloodshot. I was washed out, uneasy. My skin is the sort that is often afflicted: sunburn peels like paint; mosquito bites pucker and swell. I’m quick to bruise. I break out in hives. A day at the beach leaves me raw. I don’t look relaxed on vacation, but beaten down by the elements. How I longed to have the smooth, even-toned skin and doe eyes of someone who never had to try.

There was a knock on the door. “Just a second,” I said. I needed to pull myself together.

•   •   •

W
HEN
I
CAME OUT OF THE BATHROOM,
Andrei was waiting for me. “What’s wrong? You saw a ghost?”

I really was turning into my mother. Chasing ghosts. “Go translate your fucking focus groups,” I said.

“Ooh,” he said. “The pretty American talks like a sailor.”

It was vaguely satisfying to debunk his idea of me as some kind of dainty flower. “She said she lived in the States when she was a kid,” I said. “I heard her. Why didn’t you translate that part?”

“You understand more Russian than I thought,” he said.

“Answer my question,” I said. “Why didn’t you translate that part?”

“Richard wants typical Russians, okay? People who haven’t been to the States, who have a very limited idea of America and American brands. That woman—Zoya—wouldn’t have matched his recruiting specs, but Svetlana didn’t have enough people for the groups, so she couldn’t be too picky. Sveta obviously forgot to tell the woman not to mention her childhood in the States. I did not want Sveta to be fired.” He was making eye contact with me. He wasn’t blinking at an unusual rate. Nothing about his face suggested he was lying. “You’re not going to say anything to Richard, are you?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t want Svetlana to get fired either. Especially since she was supporting her parents. “Did you know Sveta before you worked together?”

“Of course.” I must have looked cynical, because he added, “You know, the intelligentsia. We’re all connected.”

“Is your father a spy?” I said.

“Chto?”

“Your father the diplomat, the one who took you to Washington . . . was he KGB?”

“Amerikanka molodaya,”
he said. Young American.

“Was he?” I said. “Did he have an American contact named Edmund Jones?”

“Edmund Jones the spy?” he said.

“Edmund Jones was a spy?” I said.

“That’s what you just said. I’m just repeating you.”

“You should probably go back and translate. If Richard really can’t understand anything.”

“We’re taking a break,” he said. “Richard says we need to ‘reset’ their attitude and then start again in ten minutes. But don’t worry, they will talk about you, and it will be a good place to begin discussion about Americans, about Cold War iconography.”

“Great,” I said.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “You worry too much.”

“So I’m told.”

“Before you go,” he said, “you need to sign this.” He handed me a confidentiality agreement and a ballpoint pen. “Standard stuff,” he said as I skimmed the page. “We can’t have you selling our secrets.”

•   •   •

A
FTER
I
LEFT
THE AGENCY,
I waited outside on the street. I tucked myself behind one of the columns outside the Bolshoi Theater and kept my eyes on number 26. I just wanted one more look at Zoya. I knew she’d lived in the States; I needed to know if she lived in the house across the street from me.

After about forty minutes, she exited the building. She was wearing a short wool coat and, like most women her age, a miniskirt and black tights. She turned left and walked toward the Metro at Teatralnaya. I followed from across the street. I was a few feet behind her on the escalator as we plunged into the station; I was twenty yards behind as she crossed underground into the Red Line station called Okhotny Ryad. She never looked back. When she boarded the train, I slipped into the same car. She pulled a book from her bag. I was too far away to see what she was reading but close enough to see that it was in Russian. Zoya resembled all the other people on the train: sitting up straight, book open on her lap, taut as a wire.

As the train approached Park Kultury, she returned the book to her bag and stood up. In Russian she mumbled, “Are you getting off?” to the people blocking the door. The sea parted for her. I trailed her off the train and up the escalator.

When we emerged from underground, we were on the bank of the river. I followed Zoya over Krymsky Bridge to Gorky Park. She paid her entrance fee at the enormous stone gate. I did the same. The Central Park of Culture and Leisure was no longer the proletariat’s perfect playground. The manicured gardens of Brezhnev’s day had given way to cracked concrete littered with broken glass. Rickety amusements lined the riverbank: an old Soviet space shuttle; a roller coaster; a Ferris wheel. The Buran shuttle seemed especially dated, a trophy from another era. The Buran shuttles were designed in response to the American shuttle program but were never actually launched. Now this prototype was collecting rust.

Zoya walked with sharp, small steps. There was no suggestion of Jenny’s easy stride. Her hands were shoved deep into her pockets. Was she meeting someone? There were other young people in the park, drinking and smoking, killing time. But Zoya marched toward the roller coaster. It seemed an odd choice on an October afternoon with just a couple hours of light left in the day. But when the coaster creaked into motion, I was two cars behind her.

I hadn’t been on a roller coaster since a trip to Kings Dominion when I was nine or ten. Jenny’s mother took us for the day. I remember the mounting dread as we waited in line for the Rebel Yell, snaking closer and closer to the ride’s entrance, corralled by railings that made it impossible to turn back. My mother had alerted me to the dangers of roller coasters before we set out that morning. A sixteen-year-old girl had died after she fell from a coaster in Connecticut, she warned. A ten-year-old girl died after a ride in Orlando; apparently she’d had a heart condition that was triggered by the speed. Jenny squealed with excitement. I feigned enthusiasm. I wanted to be the kind of girl who was fearless and fun. When the safety bar came down, I clenched my teeth and shut my eyes as our car rattled up the first hill.

Now I kept my eyes open and saw Moscow spread out below us. We had a spectacular view of the river from above. If the coaster flew off the tracks, we’d plunge into the water and drown. I was sure that Russian safety standards were not up to snuff. A bribe slipped to an inspector was enough to cause catastrophe. I calmed myself by focusing on Zoya. I could barely see the back of her head. If she were actually Jenny, I thought, perhaps she came here to re-create her American childhood. The roller coaster was supposedly invented in Russia—that’s why the French call them “Russian mountains”—but in Russia, roller coasters were seen as a foreign amusement. They called them “American mountains.” The first coaster in Gorky Park was imported during perestroika.

Reasoning failed me and nerves took over when we reached the apex of the first hill. We seemed to hang in space for a moment, like a cartoon car whose driver has not yet realized he’s gone off a cliff. Did I have an undiagnosed heart condition that was going to kill me? I had my passport, in case someone needed to identify my body. My poor mother. I clamped my eyes shut for a moment, but then I heard a delighted squeal—could it be Jenny’s voice?—and I forced my eyes back open as we hurtled down the American mountain. I kept them open for every stomach-turning curve, every gravity-defying loop, and though I didn’t hear any more Jenny screams, by the end of the forty-five-second ride I experienced the surprising alchemy that turns fear into thrills. I actually enjoyed it.

After the ride, Zoya nonchalantly lit a cigarette and walked toward the exit. Had she come all the way to Gorky Park for one roller-coaster ride? Was this her way of blowing off steam? Was this a typical afternoon for her? I suddenly realized I was going to throw up. The bile swam up my throat, and I spewed, leaving my motion sickness pooled on the cement. I studied the vomit as if it were a Rorschach test, and I swear I saw a hammer and sickle, and then an anchor, like the ones at the gates of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue in D.C. And that made me think of the British embassy, the brick monstrosity next to the Naval Observatory, and that made me think of my father, who escaped my mother because he thought he’d have a better life somewhere else. So much for vows. Jesus, I was so desperate for direction that I was looking for signs in my own puke. Surely this was madness. Was I destined to be like my mother, living in an emotional tundra with nothing but a library of memories, shelved by date, to keep me warm? I didn’t want to spend my life replaying the same footage again and again. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my pea coat. When I looked up, I’d lost Zoya. She was nowhere in sight.

•   •   •

I
SUPPOSE
I
THOUGHT
that if Jenny were really alive, if we were ever reunited, that there would be some sort of instant click of recognition and that we would fit neatly together like old parts. But my encounter with Zoya—during the focus groups and then in Gorky Park—was so opaque that even hours later I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. I could have sworn it was Jenny through the glass, but then inside the conference room nothing was certain. She thought I was a stranger. Surely Jenny would recognize me, even after all this time. I hadn’t changed that much, had I?

As we get older, voices deepen. Wrinkles crease the skin around eyes. Teeth yellow. Hair turns gray. I’d seen how my childhood classmates changed over the years. Noses grew bigger in puberty, altering the way features lined up in a face. Cheekbones emerged from baby fat. Gangly girls became pear-shaped, stubby girls shot up, slouchers pulled their shoulders back. There were girls like Kim whose metabolisms betrayed them. And then there was me, who suddenly started getting noticed for reasons I couldn’t explain and still didn’t entirely trust. During college I ran into an elementary-school classmate on an Amtrak train somewhere between New York and Boston. Her family had moved away from Washington, so I hadn’t seen her since sixth grade. “Sarah Zuckerman?” she said in disbelief. “You’re . . . beautiful.” She was nicer to me than she had ever been before.

In my room that night, I studied the photos of Jenny in her book. I tried to transpose my mental image of Zoya onto the pictures from 1983, to see if and where the bone structures lined up. It reminded me of
America’s Most Wanted,
of the drawings speculating what criminals might look like long after escape. If you add ten years and twenty pounds and a mustache or a beard. If you change the hair color and the eye color and add glasses or bangs. The possibilities were infinite. Even something as simple as a hat or a scarf can change the way you see someone. I’d always thought of Jenny as typically American, but what did that mean? I could see now how deep her eyes were set and how high her cheekbones were. Her face was almost Slavic. What if she were really Russian? Maybe she and her parents had moved to Washington from Perm, not Dayton. Maybe they had been posing as Americans. It’s amazing how our perspectives shift with time. It’s like the drinking fountains at my elementary school. As a kid I had to stand on my toes to reach them, and when I went back to visit as an adult, I couldn’t believe they were so low to the ground. I fell asleep with Jenny’s book open in bed with me. I was startled awake by the blare of a car alarm—they were everywhere in Moscow, erupting violently, reminding me where I was. A place seething with crime. A place of new money and ancient grudges. I went to my window. I don’t know which car was the source of the noise, but it was snowing, and I watched the white swirl over the alley and cover the dirt.