Lights All Night Long Page 6

  “Are you an idiot?” she said. “Or did you just not go?”

  Ilya thought of the man in the bookshop. How many times in his life had Vladimir been called an idiot?

  Vladimir slumped into his chair at the head of the table. Vladimir had told Ilya that it had been their father’s chair, but Ilya couldn’t picture anyone but Vladimir in it. “I’m an idiot,” Vladimir said.

  Ilya’s mother nodded very slowly, and the precision of the gesture, its economy and patience, reminded Ilya of the way lions stretch backward before they pounce.

  Vladimir tucked his chin into his chest and looked at the empty patch of table before him. “The teachers are bitches,” he muttered.

  “Ilya,” their mother said, “has he been there?”

  His mother had white spots on her cheeks. Under the table, Ilya could feel her foot shaking. This was another way the apartment could be, with the refinery’s lights turning everything blue, like they were trapped in a cube of ice.

  “Ilya?” his mother said.

  “I don’t know,” Ilya said.

  “You do know,” she said, and the words came out crushed with anger. “Look at me, Ilya. How long since he’s gone?”

  Ilya looked at Vladimir. His hair was dirty. Little zits bridged his eyebrows, and his eyes were red-laced. He did not look worth protecting. Ilya thought of the folder of homework and how Vladimir had dropped it to the ground and the hours he’d spent on it and how Vladimir’s teacher had said, That ship has sailed, and he wondered if Vladimir even wanted protection.

  “Look at me, Ilya,” their mother said.

  Babushka was ripping a hunk of bread into tiny pieces without eating a bite. She cocked her head, considering Ilya. “What can he do? Tattle on his brother?” she said, just as Ilya blurted, “A month.”

  Ilya’s mother pulled her hairnet off her scalp and crumpled it in a fist. It left a thin, red groove across her forehead. Next door, Tatyana Zemskova was vacuuming. Across the hall, the Radeyevs had the television turned up. Someone was climbing the stairs, making the burners rattle gently on the stove. Outside, Ilya could hear the snow collecting, a silence like a giant, held breath.

  “Where’s your term card, Ilyusha?” Vladimir said, with this clench to his voice that was usually reserved for their mother. “Let me guess: all fives again.”

  “Yes,” their mother said, and her voice was just as hard, “all fives again.”

  Vladimir rolled his head around on his neck, sighed, and said, “You know I’m not good at school. I’ll get a job. Aksinya’s sister—”

  “Is a whore,” Ilya’s mother said, and Ilya thought of the oligarch, the prostitutes with their diamond nipples and thongs of gold, of Sergey’s voice when he’d said, “He can do whatever he wants with them.”

  “The whole generation has no morals,” Babushka piped up. “Neither does yours,” she said, with a look at Ilya’s mother. “Maybe communism wasn’t such a bad thing. We gave it up for what? Salami and blue jeans and—”

  “Not tonight,” his mother said.

  “I just want to have some fun before I get shipped to Georgia,” Vladimir said.

  “You’ll get shipped there even sooner if you drop out,” she said.

  Vladimir grinned, like he’d suddenly found something funny in the idea of conscription. He stood, snapped his legs straight, and held his right hand to his head in a military salute. “Can you imagine me in uniform?”

  The longer he tried to stay stiff and still, the more he swayed. Babushka was clutching her podstakannik, staring up at him, and as Vladimir grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself, her tea sloshed onto the tablecloth.

  “Bozhe moy,” she said. “He’s drunk before eight a.m.” Her voice sounded dramatic, but they’d all seen Vladimir drunk. She just didn’t want it to go unsaid.

  “You go to school tomorrow or you’re out,” Ilya’s mother said. “Out of school and out of here.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Vladimir said. “I doubt they’d want me to show my face.”

  “Then sleep it off until Monday,” she said. Her features had gone stiff—she was trying to keep herself from crying. Babushka had no such control. She put her face in her hands and splayed her fingers so that they could all see her tears. Ilya pushed his spine against the back of the chair, the pressure somehow holding him together. He didn’t look at his mother. He tried not to listen as Babushka muttered choked little prayers. He understood that they weren’t grieving over Vladimir’s expulsion. They weren’t grieving at the thought of conscription, of Georgia or Chechnya. They knew, as Ilya did, that it would be a miracle if Vladimir made it to eighteen.

  That day Babushka left the dirty dishes on the table as a reproach to all of them. Their mother went to bed with a wrung-out look in her eyes, and Vladimir slept for ten hours straight. When it got dark, Ilya climbed into bed next to him and slid a Michael & Stephanie tape into his player. It had been nearly four years since Vladimir took him to buy the tapes, and the Delta headphones were disintegrating. When he turned the volume all the way up, there was this high, quavering whine in the background.

  “The cup is red,” Michael said.

  “The bowl is red and blue!” Stephanie replied.

  It was a Level I tape—colors, meals, domesticated animals. Ilya had memorized it but still he liked to listen to it before bed. In it, Michael and Stephanie used only short, declarative sentences, each word a tiny, enthusiastic nail. They spoke slowly and never ventured out of the present tense.

  Sometimes, Ilya had the feeling that the more English he learned the less Russian he spoke, as though the languages were worlds and he could only exist in one or the other. That night, he wanted that feeling, wanted very much to leave this world. That was why he’d chosen such an easy tape—so there would be no effort of translation, so that he could be transported—but Vladimir’s feet were stuffed under his pillow, and they smelled of mushrooms and sweat, and the ridge of one of his shins pressed against Ilya’s ribs, and he couldn’t conjure the feeling. Instead he found himself waiting for the swampy tide of Vladimir’s breath to wash over his face. He flipped the tape to the B-side and kept listening. Not long after eleven, when the Radeyevs’ clock tolled endlessly, the quality of Vladimir’s breathing changed, and Ilya realized that he was awake.

  “Vlad,” he said.

  “Ilya,” Vladimir said.

  The refinery light was pouring through the windows, giving the ceiling the glow of the moon. Right over Ilya’s head, there was a smudge that looked like a footprint, and Ilya liked to pretend that the footprint was Yuri Gagarin’s, though he knew that Gagarin had never made it to the moon.

  “What if I just stopped?” Ilya said.

  “Stopped what?”

  “Stopped studying. Stopped going to school.” Just saying it gave him a pain in his sternum like there was a shard of glass lodged there.

  “Why would you do that?” Vladimir said. He was yawning as he said it. He didn’t understand Ilya’s point yet, couldn’t know that Ilya was remembering the two of them out on the balcony and the way Vladimir had held him and made him yell his first English words over the courtyard, or the way Vladimir had given the shopkeeper the extra money for Ilya’s books.

  “Why would you?” Ilya said. “You think I don’t ever want to be lazy too?”

  “No,” Vladimir said. “I don’t. I don’t think it’s possible for you to be lazy.” Then he propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at Ilya. The radiator in the corner began its nightly orchestra: a rattle like there was a whole pocket of change in its pipes. And Vladimir smiled. “Are you threatening me?” he said.

  “Just tell me you’ll try,” Ilya said.

  “Or what?” Vladimir said.

  “Or I stop too.”

  “What if I try?”

  “Hollywood Boulevard. You and me. Vladimi
r and Ilya Van Damme.”

  “You fucking punk,” Vladimir said, but his grin was huge. Each tooth lit up like a tiny candle. Ilya was joking, of course. In all the talk of Ilya’s future, with all of the English he’d learned, no one had ever mentioned America. America was a place that existed only in Michael & Stephanie, in the television, in the Cold War corners of their mother’s and Babushka’s minds.

  “Fine,” Vladimir said. “I’ll try.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That first morning in America, Ilya took the longest shower of his life in hot water that seemed as though it would never go cold. He used the toiletries that Mama Jamie had bought him—the toothbrush and toothpaste and deodorant—and then carefully returned each to its cardboard box.

  “I do speak English,” he whispered to his reflection in the mirror. “I’m sorry,” he said, getting his inflection just right.

  When he was sure that they were awake, he climbed the stairs. They were all at the kitchen table except Sadie. Molly was wearing a miniature ball gown and crown and had an arm plunged into an enormous box of cereal.

  “I ate every marshmallow,” she was saying. “Every single one.”

  Marilee was staring at the TV, transfixed by a cartoon of what seemed to be Jesus lugging his cross through an unpleasant throng. Papa Cam was in a bathrobe. Hair stuck up from the back of his head, and at the sight of this vulnerability, Ilya wanted to slink back down into the basement, but he thought of Sadie saying that they would forgive him. Mama Jamie turned in her chair and saw him. Her face had been shellacked with makeup. She’d been up for hours, waiting for him, he realized, as she said, “He’s awake!”

  Ilya took a step toward them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, in English.

  Papa Cam set a forkful of eggs down on his plate, and the eggs quivered in this way that made Ilya want to vomit.

  “I do speak English,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was in grief. My brother died.” The Masons looked at each other across the length of the table. “I’m sorry,” Ilya said again.

  “No,” Mama Jamie said, “you poor thing. Please don’t apologize. I’m so sorry about your brother. We had no idea.” She stood and opened her arms, and Ilya crossed the bit of carpet between them and hugged her. With her arms around him, she breathed deeply, as though her own calm might somehow osmose into Ilya, and Ilya felt each of her exhalations as a hot rush on his shoulder.

  “What happened?” she said, when she released him. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “He was sick,” Ilya said. He thought of Vladimir in the clinic. He had not been sick exactly, but he certainly hadn’t been well. And if he was convicted he might as well be dead.

  “Was it cancer?” Marilee whispered.

  Ilya looked at her. Her eyes were huge. “No,” he said.

  Next to her, Molly began to cry, and Mama Jamie scooped her up.

  “Will his brother go to Heaven?” Molly managed. “If they’re not Christian, will his brother get to go to Heaven?”

  “He’ll go to his own Heaven,” Mama Jamie said, and Ilya saw Vladimir with a needle in his arm.

  “Amen,” Papa Cam said, and Ilya had no idea what the word meant. Papa Cam looked at him. Ilya expected to see mistrust in his eyes, but they were wet and shining with what looked to Ilya like a mix of pity and pride.

  In the cartoon, Jesus had fallen under the weight of the cross, and the show ended with a preview of next week’s episode: the crucifixion. Mama Jamie fixed Ilya a plate and told him that they’d be leaving for church in a half hour. She had to go upstairs to wake Sadie, and when Sadie finally came down, her eyes were small and sleepy.

  “Ilya found his voice,” Mama Jamie said. “The first miracle of the day.”

  “How many are you expecting?”

  “More than you, it seems.”

  Sadie lifted the carafe of coffee up and sloshed it to gauge its fullness. “This is a miracle,” she said, emptying it into a mug.

  “You know I don’t like you drinking that,” Mama Jamie said.

  Sadie slurped it.

  “You shouldn’t even need it. Lord knows you’re not waking up early,” Papa Cam said. “You don’t drink coffee, do you, Ilya?”

  “I drink tea,” Ilya said. Sadie had changed into a pair of leggings that had a sheen to them and were printed with the galaxy. The Milky Way curved around her thighs, and the hubris of this was not lost on him. “Very strong tea,” he said. “It’s stronger than coffee.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Mama Jamie said.

  Sadie looked at him over the rim of her mug. Her feet were clean now, and if the dog hadn’t been leaning against her shins, panting, he’d have believed that her standing out in the yard in the middle of the night had been a dream.

  “I met your dog last night,” he said, and he was not imagining Sadie’s sudden attention, the way her head swiveled toward him.

  “Dolly,” Marilee said. “She’s an idiot. Sometimes she walks into walls.”

  “Did she bug you?” Mama Jamie said.

  “Bug me?”

  “Wake you up?”

  “No, she didn’t wake me,” he said. He looked at Sadie. She was looking at her feet, cheeks flushed, and he felt a stab of guilt for having said anything. “Do you know how to say ‘idiot’ in Russian?” he said to Marilee.

  “I don’t know how to say anything in Russian,” Marilee said.

  “Ee-d-ee-o-t,” he said slowly, thinking of the shopkeeper at the bookstore on Ulitsa Snezhnaya and the way he’d flicked his tongue with the “t” as though he were spitting on the sidewalk. “Or ‘durashka’ if you want it to be a little nicer.”

  “Durashka,” Marilee repeated, and her pronunciation wasn’t as terrible as he’d been expecting.

  “What a wonderful word,” Mama Jamie said. “Durashka. We should call her that.”

  “That wouldn’t be very charitable,” Papa Cam said.

  “She wouldn’t even know the difference,” Marilee said. “It’s not like she ever responds to her name.”

  The dog let her body sink to the ground as though too weary to defend herself.

  “Poor Durashka,” Papa Cam said, and his pronunciation was terrible.

  “Ilya,” Molly said, “what was your brother’s name? The one who died.”

  Ilya was quiet for a moment. Sadie looked at him, her face softer than he’d yet seen it. Somehow telling them Vladimir’s name felt more like tempting fate than telling them that he’d died, as though, if given his name, fate might find a way to make the lie true. “Vladimir,” he said, finally, and his voice was almost a whisper.

  * * *

  —

  The Masons’ church, Star Pilgrim, seemed to have been designed in defiance of the central Louisiana weather. The two walls of glass acted like a magnifying glass, taking the morning sun’s light and focusing it into something capable of burning. Even before the service began, the congregation’s faces dripped. Ilya’s balls chafed in his jeans, and he tried to locate a bathroom where he could air them out, but Mama Jamie herded the girls and him into a pew at the back of the church.

  “Is it always so hot?” he asked. He was between Sadie and Marilee, and he let the question float out into the viscous air.

  “This isn’t even that bad,” Sadie said.

  “Sometimes it’s hotter, but if they turn the air too loud we can’t hear the sermon,” Marilee said, just as music began to blare over the loudspeakers and a tall, slab-jawed man strode to the pulpit.

  On the way to Star Pilgrim, Papa Cam and Mama Jamie had explained to Ilya that their church was nondenominational. “We believe in Jesus and all, but we don’t follow the rules of some of your more orthodox religions,” Papa Cam had said, and from that—and from the fact that the girls and Mama Jamie were shawlless and showing a considerable amount of skin—Ilya gathe
red that their religion was some sort of watered-down version of Christianity. But nothing could have prepared him for a Star Pilgrim service. The pastor looked like a porn star. His teeth were opalescent; his shoulders strained at the seams of his shirt, which gleamed like sealskin. He stayed behind the pulpit for only a millisecond and then, as though the music were rippling through his spine, he began to shimmy back and forth across the stage and up and down the aisle. Above him, a giant projector beamed a rainbow of light that hit the concrete wall and burst into images of mountain streams and sunsets and cuddling baby animals, the same sorts of images that had been posted on Lana’s wall. Three colored spotlights swung to the beat of the music, and an overserious man with a video camera darted among the pews. “He’s streaming,” Marilee said when she saw Ilya staring. “When we’re sick we watch Pastor Kyle from home.”

  Pastor Kyle’s sermon was a mishmash of sound bites. He seemed more concerned with volume than with content. His voice was a power hose, blasting the congregation’s brains. Serve. Jesus. Amen. Spread. The. Word. Of. God. Amen.

  Pain began to prickle Ilya’s temples. He could feel the sun scorching the back of his neck. Sweat trickled down his spine and into the gully between his buttocks, a sensation that could not have been less celestial, but then Ilya had never been much of a believer. Babushka was the only person in his family to have faith. Under communism, the church in Berlozhniki had been repurposed as the Museum of Atheism, and Babushka had not dared attend the covert services that other women held in their apartments, but after perestroika she made up for lost time. She’d spent the bulk of Ilya’s life at the Church of the Ascension, with its dank nave and incense and the faded, golden ikony that braver families had hidden under their floorboards and in their mattresses. There had been one icon—a chipped, barely distinguishable Virgin Mary—which Babushka said had simply appeared at the church without being painted, and was a miracle. Ilya’s mother always said that she didn’t have time to believe in miracles, but that God could feel free to convince her.