The Sunlit Night (6 page)

“What are you doing?” Yasha asked, after a block, stopping abruptly.

“Don’t
stop
,” she said, not stopping, “you’ll get wetter. Let’s go.”

This made a certain, immediate sense. He walked, slightly behind her. The subway tracks above them veered north at Coney Island Avenue, revealing the sky again, such as it was, and Brighton Beach Avenue turned into Oriental Boulevard. They passed Joseph’s and Jerry’s, the twin pizza parlors—Yasha recalled his lunch, which he had eaten today, back when today had been the simplest possible Friday—and soon the chaos of the market dissipated, resolving into brick family houses, each with a healthy front yard.

“How sweet,” she said, touching the red hat of a sopping wet gnome and flicking a pinwheel, which was spinning hysterically next to a birdhouse. She kept the candy bag closed with a clenched fist, giving the bag a kind of neck, one that she was strangling.

Upon first sight of the entrance to Pat Perlato Playground, Olyana hung a sharp right. She beckoned Yasha on with her free hand, stopped short at the gate, and looked out, admiring the shore. Manhattan Beach, a name that had long confused Yasha, made Brooklyn’s thin barrier against the Atlantic Ocean.

“I’ve missed you,” Yasha said to the back of her head, hoping that she wouldn’t hear it through the wind.

“I’ve missed you
terribly
,” she said, opening the low gate to the playground, “so terribly I thought I would burst.”

She sat down, straddling a grasshopper that rocked back and forth on a giant spring. The only other place to sit near her was the adjacent dragonfly, which required a child to sit on top of the open wings, cross-legged.

Yasha was relieved that he did not have to say or think anything for the next forty seconds as he got himself onto the dragonfly. It was wet, and the wings were slippery. His legs were much too long, even when crossed. When he was finally seated, he looked like a mix of Aladdin on his carpet and Buddha on a windowsill.

“Did you ever play here?” his mother asked.

“It’s for babies.” Yasha looked out toward the shore. “Sometimes Papa and I used to build things down on the beach.”

“The beach,” she said, and offered him the bag. It was wide open, and she had rolled down the edges. The Nerds and Dots had blended and looked like confetti. He took a gummy worm.

“How extraordinary, to be on the water,” she said. Yasha thought about Moscow. Locked into its own country.

“We like it here. Papa says, ‘Brighton Beach, a Ton of Bright.’” His father had never said that. “Not that you picked such a good day—”

“Yes, I simply don’t know what was I
thinking
, standing by your window like that. Vassily could have seen me. I mean, Vassily could have
seen
me,” she said, biting into a caramel. “First you, Yakov. First you and me. Then, when we’re ready, your father.”

If he argued with her, Yasha feared she might disappear again. She was breaking the chocolate bar into chunks now, letting the pieces fall into the open bag. When it was all broken up, she handed the bag back to Yasha. The gesture reminded Yasha of kids at his high school, passing beers around the swing sets in Battery Park. She was so thin, and so strong, and so hungry; his father, in comparison, seemed barely alive.

“Papa’s heart is too thick,” Yasha said, hearing immediately how ridiculous he’d made the cardiomyopathy sound.

His mother, pouncing on his mistake, said, “You mean he doesn’t miss me?”

“I mean the walls between his ventricles are stiff, and he has to sit down a lot.”

She continued to pick through the candies. “He is older than I am.”

“He’s the one you should be seeing right now,” Yasha said. “I’m younger than both of you. You can see me later.”

“No, not right now, especially if he is ill. You know I am a great deal to handle,” his mother said, biting into a toffee and smiling with her cheeks while she chewed, smiling so convincingly that Yasha smiled back on instinct. He corrected his face. “It wouldn’t be wise to spring this whole thing on him just like that, dear,” his mother said. Yasha wanted to know what “this whole thing” was. It didn’t seem possible that anything could be larger or more terrible than the woman herself.

“Talk to Papa tomorrow, or I’ll tell him you’re here,” Yasha said, and it felt like negotiating with a terrorist.

Yasha’s mother slid off her grasshopper, shook the rain from her dress, and started walking toward the B train. Yasha followed.

“I’ll come tomorrow,” she said as she walked. Yasha had no means of guaranteeing the agreement. The only rules were her words,
I’ll come
, and Yasha began to understand how easily the last ten years had happened the way they had. There was a veil over her, a touch of the preternatural—the air out of which she appeared, and into which she disappeared again, could have been outer space.

She climbed up the long, switchbacked stairway to the platform, two steps at a time. Yasha stood on the street with his arms by his sides, looking up. He could see her panties for a moment each time she took a double step. All the blood in his body seemed to pause in his heart and then rush out again to his limbs. When she reached the top, she pulled out a MetroCard and turned onto the Manhattan-bound track. So she was staying in Manhattan, Yasha thought, before realizing that there was nowhere to go in the other direction, and that she could have been riding the train to just about anywhere. Nothing, in essence, had changed.

•    •    •

He came back to the bakery soaking wet. His father hadn’t called the neighbors, or the police, but looked bewildered. Yasha stood just inside the door. He looked at the space of the bakery. He wanted to thank his father for their house, their bakery, the food he had eaten for the past ten years, the Band-Aids and books, and for feeding the cat each time Yasha forgot. He looked at Vassily: middling height, gray hair, bulb nose, filthy pants. He wanted to say, You’ve done everything right. His father was about to become angry. Yasha said he’d forgotten his precalculus textbook at Joseph’s Pizza and had gone to look for it but hadn’t found it. He said he’d been all through the neighborhood. No one had seen it. He’d have to ask Mr. Usoroh for another one. Vassily shook his head and said there had been dozens of children while Yasha was gone, all of them wanting black-and-white cookies. They closed up for the day. Both men were quiet and exhausted.

•    •    •

Saturday. Swarm of bagel customers, dearth of poppy seeds, Vassily’s pants drenched in a bowlful of spilled eggs, Yasha’s shoes untied, Yasha’s shoelaces dragging through the egg yolks, the cat licking the floor all morning, Vassily many times kicking the cat, Vassily apologizing, talking to the cat, frightening the customers. The customers, usual. The Danishes, a little sour. No mother, no mother, no mother.

•    •    •

“When I die,” Vassily said, sitting down after the rush, “put me with no people. Get me far away.” He looked out the window and toward the beach. “Do you remember, Yakov Vassiliovich, about the reindeer hunters?”

Yes, he remembered about the reindeer hunters. It was his father’s favorite story. He told it once a month.

“No,” said Yasha. “What reindeer hunters?”

“The Sami,” Vassily said. “They live at the top of the world.” He blew his nose. “My father’s hunting teacher was a Sami. Crossed the land bridge into Russia from Lapland. Not so many people there. Mostly ice.” Vassily yawned and smiled at the same time, showing Yasha all his small teeth. “His name was Ommot and he used to teach me how to shoot. I think, growing up, I loved Ommot best of anybody.”

“You know how to shoot?”

“I know how to shoot a reindeer.”

“Have you ever shot a reindeer?”

“No,” Vassily said cheerfully, “your father is a twiglet.” A twiglet? Yasha imagined branches being shot to splinters by reindeer-hunting guns. “I wanted to live Ommot’s life, the hunter’s life,” Vassily said, “but I didn’t have it in me. I had bialys in me.” Vassily’s smile widened, making his teeth look even smaller. “I didn’t live the life of peace. That was how Ommot lived, all those years, crossing Lapland, not so many people, mostly ice. He lived the life of peace. Peace.” Vassily squinted. “
,” he translated. “The word used to ring in my ears before I went to sleep. I was a boy. Well”—he straightened his back—“I can live the death of peace, at least. I can look out at that ice my whole death long.”

Yasha pushed himself up onto the countertop and sat between the two registers.

“That’s what I wish for myself—” Vassily said. “A death full of peace.”

Yasha let his finger fall on the
CASH
button, made it ding, made the drawer shoot out, closed it, and did it again. He made it ding five times in a row. His mother, he realized, did not have much to do with peace.

A girl came into the shop. “Three Danishes, please,” she said.

“They’re a little sour today,” said Yasha.

“But aren’t you sweet,” Vassily said, standing up from his chair with some difficulty. “If the Danishes are sour, one babka on me.”

The girl smiled and ruffled her bangs. She had exceptionally thin eyebrows, big eyes, and not much nose, which made her look like a baby. Vassily gave her three cherry Danishes. She bit into one and declared it to be sweet. Vassily gave her a chocolate babka. “It’s Saturday,” Vassily said, and charged the girl for only the Danishes. Yasha’s head chimed. $35.50.
It’s Friday
. The fifty-dollar bills. Were they in on this together? Was it possible that his parents had, once upon a time, developed inside jokes?
It’s Saturday
, his father had just said. Yasha imagined his mother’s panties. He imagined his mother wearing different panties for every day of the week.
It’s Friday. It’s Saturday
. It seemed possible that his parents were, a decade later, in love. The girl left the bakery finishing the first Danish, leaving some flakes on the floor. Yasha ran to keep the cat from following her out.

“She was cute,” Vassily said, “no?”

“Not for me.”

“Women—” Vassily said, then stopped.

Yasha wanted to hear the rest of the sentence. Both men, at that moment, were thinking of Olyana. It was four o’clock, about the same time she had appeared the day before. Yasha looked out to the mailbox: no mother. He picked up the cat and held him. He wondered if the cat had some animal means of locating her. The cat bit into Yasha’s chin.

“I loved your mother,” Vassily said, sitting down again.

The cat bit a little harder, and Yasha dropped him. What could he say? Not I know, not Me too, not She’s here, or could he?

“I loved your mother,” Vassily said, more adamantly. “So. I was thinking—” He lifted the large knife that had been resting on the counter, but the envelope no longer lay beneath it. He looked up to the ceiling for moment, then at the large knife, then at Yasha, and then reached into the bialy bin. He stabbed a fresh bialy with the knife and cut it down the middle. He opened the refrigerator and took out the cream cheese. Yasha watched his father schmear his bialy professionally, the surface beginning to look like a circus tent: white and smooth, a few peaks. Just as Yasha was going to ask his father to finish his sentence, Mr. Dobson came in. Yasha had never been more unhappy to see the door open. His father was right about Lapland, Yasha thought. No people. Ice. Real peace.

•    •    •

Vassily and Yasha lived directly above the bakery. The apartment had the same shape as the store below it. Yasha slept near the window, and Vassily slept toward the back, over the ovens.

Yasha had just brushed his teeth and was doing push-ups at the side of his bed. His mother hadn’t come all day. She had broken her promise, but so had he—he hadn’t given his father a word of warning. It wasn’t fair that he should have to do it. The news might make his father pass out or, worse, sound like a mean joke. Yasha’s arms were burning, and he hoped it would show in the morning. If she came in the morning, he would look bigger. If she didn’t come, he could punch something.

His father knocked on his door and whispered, “Yakov Vassiliovich?”

“Come in.”

Vassily opened the door just wide enough to slip in and left it open. Yasha got up from the floor. His father had changed into his extraordinary pajamas. This was the first warning. His father’s ordinary pajamas consisted of boxer shorts and a pink button-down shirt, once white, a casualty of an attempt three years earlier to sell pink cookies on Valentine’s Day. He seldom wore his best: a gift from Mr. Dobson’s wife, a matching set, consisting of a button-down top with a fish-mouth lapel and elastic-waisted bottoms, the whole set printed with small gray bagels. Vassily had rolled up the bottoms of his bagel pajama pants, as he had learned from Dostoyevsky. The envelope in his father’s hand was the second warning. Septimos crept in the open door and sat beside Vassily’s exposed ankles.