Lights All Night Long Read online

  PENGUIN PRESS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Lydia Fitzpatrick

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Fitzpatrick, Lydia, 1982- author.

  Title: Lights all night long : a novel / Lydia Fitzpatrick.

  Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018034986 (print) | LCCN 2018038616 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525558743 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525558736 (hardcover) |

  ISBN 9781984877901 (international edition)

  Classification: LCC PS3606.I8874 (ebook) | LCC PS3606.I8874 L54 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018034986

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design: Ben Denzer

  Main cover image: RobShaw@BackFromLeave / Getty Images

  Version_1

  For my family

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.

  —Louise Glück, “Nostos”

  CHAPTER ONE

  The air in the Baton Rouge airport tasted like toothpaste. Chemical-tinged and cold enough to give Ilya goosebumps, to make him wonder where he had left his winter coat, whether it was somewhere in the Leshukonskoye airport or wadded in the backseat of Maria Mikhailovna’s car or still at home on the hook that had given it a permanent hump behind the collar. Up ahead, through a set of glass doors, his host family—a man, a woman, and two girls—were holding a poster that said ILYA ALEXANDROVICH MOROZOV in cramped letters. His name was surrounded by hollow red hearts. The poster was too small to be held by four people, but they each gripped a corner determinedly. Ilya walked past them. He felt their eyes move over him, and then on to someone else, and all the while he kept his face vacant and slack.

  Behind them was a row of baggage carousels, but only one was moving. Ilya stood by it and waited for his army duffel to emerge. The bag had been Vladimir’s. It was the one Ilya and his mother had brought to the clinic, stuffed with gauze and ointment and a plastic bedpan. Now everything Ilya owned was inside—his clothes, a book of English idioms, his Learn English: The Adventures of Michael & Stephanie tapes, and his tape player. The duffel was half empty. He’d told Maria Mikhailovna that everything inside was worthless, but still she’d written his name on a baggage tag in the same careful letters that she used to correct his translations. Then she’d swaddled it in plastic wrap, murmuring about what thieves the baggage handlers were, about how Leshukonskoye was bad, but Moscow was worse, and who knew about America. When the bag finally circled, the plastic wrap was in tatters, clinging to the old hammer-and-sickle pins that Vladimir had stuck in the canvas. Ilya almost smiled, wondering what, if anything, they’d bothered to steal. More likely they’d looked inside and known instantly that he was too poor to steal from.

  Ilya headed for the bathroom. He had to walk by the host family again, and he allowed himself a longer look this time. Maria Mikhailovna had told him that they had three daughters, and all winter he had imagined them: three girls, each more beautiful than the last, like in a fable. But there were only two girls, knobby and prepubescent, with long, lank hair and rabbity eyes. The man was tall, the woman short, and they both had bodies like matryoshka dolls, like all of their weight had sunk into their hips and asses. They weren’t fit. They weren’t tan. They could have been Russian.

  Outside the bathroom, Ilya fished in his pocket for a coin before realizing that peeing was free here and that he didn’t have any American coins anyway. The stalls smelled like lemons. Each tile was perfectly bright and white. He took a long piss. The family would either wait or they wouldn’t, and he didn’t feel especially tied to their decision. He pumped the soap dispenser a dozen times, just to see if there was any limit to how much soap one could take. There was not. The dispenser kept dutifully squirting pink gel until his palm was full. He washed his hands, smearing soap all the way up to his elbows, and he had to rinse for a long time to get rid of the suds.

  As he pulled a wad of paper towels from the dispenser, a sonar noise filled the bathroom. A sound both underwater and electronic. Ilya pinched his nose and blew hard out of his ears, thinking that the noise was in his head, that his internal pressure might still be out of whack from the plane, but the noise gathered strength and resolved into a stuttering human voice. Ilya’s English was good, but these words were hesitant and mangled. It took him a minute to realize that the voice was speaking Russian, not English, was hacking away at the same series of syllables, and that those syllables were his name. There was a pause, a static silence, then the voice asked him to come to the information desk by the Budget Rent-a-Car.

  The family huddled under the orange fluorescence of the Budget sign. This time Ilya lifted a hand in greeting. As they recognized him, confusion tangled the adults’ faces. The man gave Ilya an embarrassed smile and held out his hand, and Ilya could feel him pocketing his hesitation.

  “Zdravstvuyte,” the girls said, in unison, their tongues tripping over the silent “v.”

  The older girl stared at the poster as if it had betrayed her. “Did we spell your name wrong?” she said.

  “I’m Cam Mason,” the man said, “but you can call me Papa Cam.”

  “And I’m Mama Jamie,” the woman said. Her hair was very yellow and cut in a banged bob, a style that Ilya had only ever seen on prostitutes and small children. They introduced the girls—Marilee and Molly—and as they waited for him to say something, their faces were so wide open, so vulnerable with hope. He knew the expression because he had imagined them having it, when he was vulnerable with hope too.
But now Vladimir was in prison, and Ilya hadn’t imagined the guilt these strange, smiling faces would call up in him. His throat narrowed, and because English felt like too much of a betrayal he said, in Russian, “I’m Ilya.”

  * * *

  —

  The airport doors parted with a sucking sound, and the heat rushed through them. It was wet, heavy, something to be reckoned with. Ilya’s lungs could barely expand, and he imagined them sticking, their pumping slowing to a twitch and then stopping. He was momentarily terrified, but the Masons were unfazed. The girls each took one of his hands and led him across a parking lot. Papa Cam and Mama Jamie dropped back, whispering, Ilya guessed, about his lack of English.

  Halfway across the lot, Papa Cam hit a button on his key ring, and a car honked in enthusiastic response. It looked like something an oligarch would own—black, with aggressive tires and tinted windows and enough rows that they could each occupy one. It was spotless except for a bumper sticker that read, LOVE, GROW, SERVE, GO!, the senselessness of which reminded Ilya of the Young Pioneers slogans that his mother and her friends would recite when they were drunk and feeling cynical and nostalgic. They all climbed inside and again the girls sandwiched Ilya. Papa Cam put on a pair of sunglasses that wrapped around his head and gave it the look of an egg that’s been cracked by a spoon. He adjusted the rearview mirror until it was centered on Ilya’s face.

  “We’re two hours from Baton Rouge, three hours from New Orleans, and a whole lot happier for it,” he said.

  As they sailed down the highway, the girls told Ilya their favorite colors, favorite foods, and favorite sports. Molly told him that she was seven and three-quarters, and Marilee told him that she was eleven, and he pretended not to understand a word. When they’d exhausted the topic of themselves, they took turns asking him what he ate for various meals in Russia and what sounds animals made in Russian and whether American Idol played in Russia. He nodded vaguely.

  “Mama,” Molly said, tugging on Mama Jamie’s seat belt from behind, “you said he’d speak English.”

  “I know I did, sugar pie,” she said. She twisted in her seat and reached out and touched Ilya’s knee. “Did you take English in school?”

  Ilya shrugged.

  “He doesn’t know a word,” Marilee said.

  “Shhhh,” Molly said.

  “Why?” Marilee said. “It’s not like he can understand us.”

  He wanted to slap the girl, and he could feel the urge showing on his face, so he brought his hands up and hid his eyes in the cave of his palms.

  “He might be tired,” Mama Jamie said, “or shy.” And when Ilya let his hands fall, she was giving him this huge and forceful smile, as though her smile alone might be powerful enough to drag him from his shell.

  “He looks old. Like twenty. Or there could be something wrong with him.” Marilee leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Like from Chernobyl?”

  It took Ilya a moment to understand her pronunciation of “Chernobyl,” to feel its sting.

  “Hey now.” Papa Cam braked and flashed his eyes in the rearview. “Let’s give him some peace and quiet, girls. He’s traveled a ways to be with us.”

  “Life is hard there,” Mama Jamie said.

  “The life expectancy is only sixty-one,” Marilee said.

  Molly tapped his thigh with her pointer finger. She had become his favorite by default. “What about a rooster?” she said softly. “Do roosters in Russia go cock-a-doodle-do?”

  Her eyes were dancing over his face, the sort of eyes that hid nothing. For a second, she reminded him of Vladimir, and he wanted to answer her, to give in to her the way he’d always given in to Vladimir, but the second passed, and Papa Cam turned the radio on to a news station, and the low voices lulled the girls into silence.

  On either side of the road was swamp. Kilometer after kilometer of swamp, and Ilya had learned the word, though he’d never known the thing itself. It was beautiful. Shimmering and still, you thought, until you looked closer and saw long-legged birds sunning with their wings spread and fish leaving ringlets on the surface. Buzzards picked at carcasses on the roadside and their feathers ruffled as the car sped by them. The sun was hidden behind a low shield of clouds, but still everything was bleached by it.

  Way out across the water, in a tangle of swamp trees, Ilya caught the flash of metal. He narrowed his eyes and tried to follow it, and then the pipeline pierced the thicket, shot across open water, and curved along the road. Before long it led to a refinery and its crown of smoke. There were the stacks and the cooling towers and the lengths of chainlink fence. It was just like the one in Berlozhniki, and Ilya imagined the pipeline snaking through land and water, connecting this place and the place he’d come from. Oil pumping through it like blood. He knew, though, that it didn’t work that way.

  “That’s my office,” Papa Cam said. He worked in human resources at the refinery. Maria Mikhailovna had told Ilya that, and that the Masons were getting paid to host him. “If they don’t feed you, if they’re treating you poorly, just call me,” she’d said, in a burst of worry. “You can use a code word if you need to. How about ‘Raskolnikov’? Just mention him like he’s someone you know.” At the time they’d been a third of the way through Crime and Punishment—an English version, poorly translated—and now it occurred to Ilya that they’d never finished it. Maria Mikhailovna had spared him the punishment part.

  Papa Cam eased the car off the highway and onto a smaller one with traffic lights. There were shops now, fringing the swamp. Groceries and video stores and pizza places and a store with a sign saying, EVERYTHING’S A DOLLAR!, and through the windows Ilya could see that the shelves were completely full. There were gas stations, their crimson signs slashed by the white E of EnerCo. Each series of shops was larger than the town square in Berlozhniki, and they seemed to go on forever.

  Ilya swallowed. He was exhausted. It had been two days since he’d left Berlozhniki. Thirty-six hours since he’d flown out of Leshukonskoye, but his stomach was still sour with the liquor he’d drunk there. Samogon, the man hawking it had told him, but it had tasted more like rubbing alcohol. He wanted to close his eyes, but when he slept he dreamt of Vladimir. For months—since the night of the Winter Festival—he’d been dreaming of Vladimir. On the flight to Moscow, he’d awoken to a stewardess’s hand on his arm, her face bent over his.

  “You were screaming,” she’d said, her mouth tight, and then she’d moved off down the aisle.

  Now Mama Jamie was pointing at something. “That’s our church,” she said. Up ahead, an ugly building rose out of a field. It was shaped like a pyramid, with two walls of concrete and two of glass. As they got closer, Ilya saw letters carved over the door. STAR PILGRIM CHURCH, they said, and otherwise he never would have known that it was a church. There was no cupola, no cross—Orthodox or not. Papa Cam slowed as they passed it and through the glass Ilya could make out rows of seats, a shadowed aisle that must lead to a pulpit.

  “We go every Sunday,” Mama Jamie said. “I think that’s the same—in Russia, I mean?”

  Ilya stifled a snort. He imagined Babushka hearing her say that, as though Americans had been the first to worship on Sundays.

  “Is he Christian?” Marilee said loudly, like she was suddenly terrified to be sitting thigh-to-thigh with a heathen.

  “I’m not sure, honey,” Mama Jamie said. “But whatever he believes is OK. Remember? We talked about that.” Then she aimed another invasive smile at Ilya. “We also have family dinner every night—all five of us. Six now, with you.”

  Ilya knew this meant that there was another daughter, who would, no doubt, be waiting at home with questions about communism and American Idol, but he let himself imagine that Vladimir would be the sixth at the table, that somehow Vladimir had been able to come too, that he was with them now, in the back row of the car, with his duffel under his head and his boots pr
opped against the window.

  “Tell them to stop. We need some refreshments. I’m starving,” he’d say, pointing at one of the convenience stores whose windows were plastered with advertisements for lottery tickets and sausage sandwiches. “I bet these places put the Minutka to shame. I bet they have Doritos we’ve never even heard of. Did you see that sign? ALL YOU CAN EAT! They’ve got no idea how much this Russian can eat.”

  Molly had fallen asleep with her mouth agape and her temple bouncing against Ilya’s shoulder, and Vladimir said, “The girls are a bit of a disappointment, no? One’s a bitch. And they’re both a little young. But just be patient, Ilyusha. Think of the long con. Trust me—the age gap will be a good thing down the road.”

  Ilya turned around, suddenly sure that he would see his brother’s face, but the back row was empty. The leather was smooth and shining in the sun, and Ilya bit his lip to stop the burn in his eyes. The seams in the road ticked by, taking him farther and farther from Vladimir, and he could feel it in his gut, this growing absence, and, worse, he was sure that Vladimir, wherever he was now, could feel it too.

  In the front seat, Mama Jamie was still talking about the family rules. She was saying something about praying every night. She put her hands together and bowed her head in supplication. “Pray,” she said, dragging the word out so that each letter was a syllable.

  Behind him, Vladimir belched. “We’ll pray for your daughters to get hot,” he said, and Ilya looked Mama Jamie in the eye and made his face as blank as a field of snow.

  CHAPTER TWO

  At the train station in Berlozhniki, a billboard stretched across the tracks. BERLOZHNIKI MINES RUSSIA’S FUTURE! it said, though the mine had closed decades earlier and in the winter, when the trains stopped running, there was no one to see the banner. On the town square, birds roosted on a concrete pedestal where a statue of Stalin had once stood, facing the labor camp, his overcoat unbuttoned as though he were expecting milder weather.