The UnAmericans: Stories (13 page)

Of course I didn’t really expect a woman with no money and next to no English to leave, and it was only when I made the first custody drive down the Taconic that it actually felt real. Of course I didn’t expect Katka to find steady enough work cleaning houses in New York, or that she’d parlay it into her own business with a dozen employees before eventually selling it and enrolling in business classes. And of course I didn’t expect that three years after Katka left, communism would collapse and the work I’d dedicated my life to would be done. That the dinner discussions at Saul Sandalowski’s would suddenly revolve around Bosnia and that a young female Serb would become Saul’s newest honored guest—and I certainly didn’t expect that same woman to win tenure over me. That my thirties and forties would be about mastering the delicate, tricky dance of pleading for adjunct work up and down the east coast—Albany, Durham, Burlington—and now, for the past two years, in Harpswick, Maine, which, if Katka thought of Vermont as the edge of the earth, would have made her feel she’d fallen off completely.

D
ANIELA LOOKED
different than I remembered. When I’d seen her the previous summer, she still had that self-consciously sloppy, post-college look. Gone now were the flip-flops and baggy hooded sweatshirt, and with that change I would have hoped—and, deep down, expected—that she’d have continued to take after her mother. I had expected her dark hair to be wavy and loose like Katka’s. I had expected that she too would straddle the precarious line between fatness and fullness, settling on the latter, and that she would have the same thick black eyelashes that first caught my attention, more than thirty years ago, on the street outside the Clementinum Library.

The sad fact was that Daniela was turning out plainer than her mother, but she was certainly more polished and put together. Though the afternoon was hot and gray, she wore a white button-down, pointy sandals and creased jeans cuffed at the ankle. Her long hair was so flat it looked ironed, and her pale blue eyes—she had my eyes—were hidden by thin-framed glasses. Standing outside the arrival gate, she could have easily passed for one of the students who used to trudge slush into the classrooms Katka had just mopped. I’m certain that to anyone else Daniela would have appeared exhausted from her flight; rumpled, nervous and probably overwhelmed to be seeing her father after almost a year. But to me she looked like one of those girls, who, with one quick toss of her glossy hair, used to make me feel like an awkward foreigner with an ill-fitting sweater and tangled teeth.

“Daniela!” I got out of the car. I wondered if I should hug her. “You look . . . older.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

I glanced at my shorts and striped shirt, my stomach puffing over my belt. “You got in early,” I said.

“There was a delay at JFK but the pilot said he made up for it in the air.”

People rushed past us and through the automatic glass doors. Somewhere nearby, a car alarm went off. I looked at my daughter and she looked back.

“So,” I said, just as Daniela said, “So,” and then she said, “Jinx.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Everything’s good with you?” I said.

“Great.”

“Good.”

“Your semester’s almost over?”

“Yup.”

“That’s good.”

Ever since I could remember Daniela had been so bumbling and nervous around me, so desperate for my attention that she’d blurt anything. And now she was just standing there, looking deeply amused as I sweated through the conversation, her hip cocked and her leather suitcase at her feet. Finally I swallowed and said, “We just finished the Battle of Königgrätz.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Ah,” I said, and we fell into silence.

Traffic was light for Friday night. Alfalfa fields blurred past, dotted with the occasional farmhouse before the land seemed to give up altogether and retreat into marsh. As we made our way into town, I followed Daniela’s gaze, trying to see what she did. There was the hardware store that doubled as a market now that it was May and apricots were everywhere; the movie theater, which for the past three weeks had been showing a film about a foulmouthed man trapped in the body of a baby; the fire department, which hosted pancake breakfasts every fall. I rolled down the windows and the soupy smell of algae swelled in. I liked living a block from the water, away from the perky bakeries lining Willow Road or the Neanderthal bars closer to the college. I remember taking long walks along the harbor when I first arrived and knew no one in the entire state of Maine, and I sat with some of the men who looked as old as the weathered wooden dock they fished on, making small talk that helped me feel less alone than I feared I was.

But when I pulled into the driveway and Daniela saw my small gray clapboard, when she saw the front yard, wild with tall grass and calla lilies and the rope swing the previous owners had left hanging from an elm, she said, “So this is it.” And then her face opened into something between a smile and a smirk, as if anyone belonged here more than I did.

I was admittedly a bit of a slob, and in anticipation of her visit I had washed the floors, vacuumed the two butterfly chairs that faced the fireplace, even organized my record collection: the Ellington I’d coveted in my twenties, the Gould that had felt like required listening at Collins, the Billy Joel I played now that I figured I was old enough not to give a shit. I had wanted Daniela to see I was stable, homey and responsible. But now, leading her inside, I wondered if she was making mental notes for the script.

“You want to wash up?” I said.

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“You need some time to settle in and unpack, then?”

“Not really,” she said. “It’s two days.”

Daniela, it seemed, was going to revel in making me work for everything this weekend. She set her backpack in the entryway and I wheeled her small suitcase into the guest room. “We can walk out to the water,” I tried.

“If you want.”

“Or maybe you’re hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Daniela,” I said, unable, suddenly, to control the shrillness in my voice, “just tell me what you want.”

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s eat.”

I brought cheese and a baguette and a bottle of wine out to the porch and dragged two Adirondack chairs together. “To my daughter the playwright,” I said, filling her glass.

Daniela raised her drink, then took a long sip, as if unsure how to navigate the line between excitement and bragging. “The craziest part,” she said, “is that they did Mamet on that same stage.”

“Impressive,” I said, a knot pressing into my chest. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might actually be good.

“Or bizarre. Mom was worried—I was working on it every night after work, and I think she was nervous about what would happen if nothing came of it.”

“Your mother’s the biggest worrier around, isn’t she?”

Daniela looked confused, or annoyed, as if she were searching for the joke in my words and couldn’t find it. I knew putting down her mother would score me no points. Katka and I worked hard at keeping up a friendship, mostly for Daniela’s benefit; sometimes I felt as if tolerating me was just another item on her long list of things to do for her daughter, right after making sure that the security system in her building worked and she was getting enough protein in her diet. I wanted to change the subject to something tame and tried to remember the name of the company Daniela had been temping for this year. While I had no real interest in the job, I liked envisioning my daughter at a desk in a bright buzzing office, staring out at buildings and sky. I liked imagining that she also chewed up her pens and that she popped her knuckles while she wrote—that she’d gotten certain traits from me that were irrevocable.

“You know when I heard, I didn’t tell anyone the first day?” Daniela said, swallowing a bite of bread. “Not even Mom. I was convinced they’d made a mistake and that the producers would call to apologize.”

“I’ve always been the same way. The moment something good happens I’m waiting for a bus to speed around the corner and kill me.”

“Mom said you had that side.”

So, they
did
talk about me. “We’re both just really happy for you,” I said, a little too fast. “Did I ever tell you that when my first book was published here, your mother spent an entire weekend making a celebratory meal?”

“Really?” she said, her voice beginning to rise. Daniela loved stories about times she was too young to remember. When she was little I used to catch her staring at this one photo of me and a pregnant Katka outside our flat in Prague, as if looking long enough would reveal what we were saying just before the shutter clicked.

“She took the bus all the way to Burlington to get lamb and then spent the next day baking dumplings,” I said. “It was outstanding.” That was a lie; Katka used ingredients from the Stop & Shop and the dessert came out charred and inedible, but the conversation finally seemed to be flowing and I imagined us sitting up late, finishing one bottle and then the next, swapping stories and secrets. At least I thought we would, until Daniela stood up and said, “Is the guest bed ready?”

“It’s not even ten.” I hoped it didn’t sound like a plea.

“It’s been a long day.”

I’d set her up in my study, just off the kitchen. It was my favorite room: wood-paneled and dark, with a wall of books and an old copper lamp I’d bought at a yard sale years ago. But when Daniela walked in, the space felt small and dusty, and I wondered if the futon, which I napped on every afternoon, would even be comfortable for her.

“Here are towels,” I said, setting two on the desk chair. I hesitated, unsure how to say good night.

“Dad?”

Here it came. I blinked, twice, and stepped closer. “Yes?”

“I need to change into my pajamas.”

“Right,” I said, backing toward the door. “I’m out here if you need anything.”

I spread my students’ bluebooks across the kitchen table and listened as Daniela walked down the hall to the bathroom. The faucet turned on, then off, the bathroom door opened, the guest door closed. And then, finally, the band of light beneath her door went out. I opened the first bluebook and read the sentence “Austrian forces arrived near Sadowa” three times without registering a word. I got up, poured myself a glass of water, sat down. Then I took off my shoes and slid quietly through the kitchen, the living room, and into the entryway, keeping an ear out for Daniela. Her backpack was still leaning against the mail table. I coughed, masking the sound as I unzipped it. Then I thought about what I was doing, how easily I could get caught, and closed it back up. I told myself to go back to my bluebooks. But I couldn’t. I crouched on the floor, unzipped her bag in a single motion and searched the entire thing. But there was no notepad or laptop, nothing at all resembling a play—just her running clothes, a neck pillow and the Sunday crossword, and it occurred to me that Daniela wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave the play out where I could find it; I’d kept every copy of the
Chronicle
hidden behind my medicine cabinet until we were ready for distribution. Or was I being too cynical? Could Daniela not even trust her own father? I shut it again and returned to the kitchen. But the last thing I wanted to do was read another student essay, so I took the cordless out to the porch. It embarrassed me that I was dialing Katka’s number for a second time this week, when she never seemed to make these desperate calls—at least not to me.

“This is a disaster!” I said when she picked up.

“Tomás?”

“She’s barely talking to me.”

“You got in a fight?”

“Of course not.” Right then I wanted nothing more than to confide in Katka about what I’d just done, but it felt too terrible to say aloud. “Daniela’s impossible to read. And to be honest, she’s getting on my nerves a little—the whole too-confident-to-notice-I-exist thing is a bit much. She’s hardly asked anything about my life—and you two
talk
about me?”

“She’s probably just stressed.”

“What does
she
have to be stressed about?”

“I don’t know, Tomás. Sounds like a relaxing weekend to me.” Katka’s voice drifted. She sounded bored. “Where is she?”

“She went to bed. What twenty-four-year-old is in bed at ten?”

“Can she hear you?”

“I’m outside,” I said, but suddenly I worried that Daniela could. Living alone, I never had to consider this. I ran across the lawn and let myself into my hatchback. The interior still smelled like Daniela’s buttery lotion. I reclined the seat and closed my eyes, the way I did after takeoff. “Have you been in all night?”

“Sam and I were at a concert earlier.” Her boyfriend of the past few months.

I could see Katka as clearly as if she were in front of me, sprawled on her sofa in an oversized sweater and ankle socks, one of those crime dramas she liked on mute. It was always so comforting to slip back into Czech with her, and in the beginning I’d wonder if sitting on the phone long enough we could begin to feel like us again—not the “us” in Vermont but the “us” that was good, back on Bo
ivojova Street—but it never happened; she told me about Sam and all the other men she dated with loose, offhand ease, as if she could barely remember why she had married me in the first place.