A Watershed Year (21 page)

“What?” Rosalee said.

“I better get moving. Yulia said to leave extra time to go through security.”

When Lucy emerged from the bathroom, with Rosalee behind her, she was startled by the sight of Cokie, Paul, and the kids; her father; Angela and Vern; and Louis, all standing near the security gate with balloons and a large paper banner that read “Mazeltov!”

Cokie stepped forward as Lucy came toward them. She looked annoyed. “The guy at the flower shop said that ‘mazeltov’ meant ‘good luck,’ but I’ve since been told otherwise. I’m taking it back after you leave.”

Cokie was wearing some sort of strong citrusy scent that smelled familiar—possibly air freshener. She tucked a small plastic bag into
Lucy’s raincoat pocket, whispering, “Here’s a little beauty trick for the trip. You’ll wake up looking fabulous.”

Paul came over and stood next to Cokie. “Good luck, Luce. Free meal for you and the kid at T.G.I.’s, soon as you get back.”

Lucy looked at her watch. She had an hour before her plane left, but she wanted to get through security, the final barrier before the journey could truly begin. Her niece and nephews hugged her next, then Angela, and then Vern, who looked up at her: “Remember, I get to teach him baseball.”

“Of course, Vern. We’ll get him a little ball and bat as soon as we get home.”

“And a glove,” Vern said. “Don’t forget the glove.”

Her father came forward. She sensed some important shift in their relationship, one in which she had always been the protected child, the one who hadn’t quite grown up. But now she was about to find out what it was like to be rewarded and terrified by parenthood, just as he had been. His hands were jammed in the pockets of his rain jacket. Lucy used to think he kept candy or mints or change in his pockets, but now she realized it was a pose of submission, an acknowledgment of the many things over which he had no control.

“My little girl, going to get her new son,” he said, his lower lip quivering. “You be safe, sweetheart.”

“I will, Dad. Don’t worry, okay?”

“Oh, I’ll worry,” he said, smiling through watery eyes. “But don’t you worry about me worrying.”

Louis came forward next, putting an arm around her shoulders. She wished, then, that he was coming with her, if only for the company on the long plane flight. But then she would have had to send him home. She couldn’t afford to let Mat see him yet, when their relationship was so new. And in the smallest corner of her mind, she anticipated her own jealousy. She wanted Mat to need her most, couldn’t allow for the possibility that anyone else might bond with him first.

Yulia emerged from behind a large rectangular pillar, as if she had been waiting for the good-byes to be over but had lost patience.

“No time to waste,” she said, motioning for Louis to get it over with. “She must go.”

Louis took Lucy in his arms and kissed her, knocking off the rain hat as everyone else applauded. She flushed as she bent over to pick it up, aware that her entire family was grateful to Louis: for his attention, his persistence, his obvious affection for her. She knew what they were thinking, too: He was young, sure, but wouldn’t they make a nice family when Lucy came back with her little son. And they could certainly have a few kids of their own. A new fantasy to replace the old one.

“Good-bye, everyone. Thanks for coming to see me off.” Yulia took her arm and led her toward the security gates. “Good-bye.”

Yulia squeezed her arm a little too hard as they stood in line, and Lucy shook her off. “What’s with the death grip?”

“Just nervous.”

“But aren’t you supposed to be reassuring me?”

Lucy showed the security officer her driver’s license, airline ticket, and visa and began piling her belongings on the conveyer belt. She could still see Yulia, who couldn’t accompany her but appeared to be waiting for a last word.

“Wish me luck,” she said.

“Remember,” Yulia called through the gate. “No luck needed. Just cash.”

Lucy looked around, hoping no one else had heard the invitation to mug her, then strode off down the concourse, relieved to be on her own, responsible—at least in part—for how all this turned out. She shifted her heavy carry-on bag higher onto her shoulder and lifted her chin, striding forward with a surprising degree of fake confidence until she stumbled over a slight ripple in the hideously patterned terminal carpeting. She caught herself, though, and kept going, certain that Harlan would say that fake confidence was better than no confidence at all.

LUCY FLEW TO JFK in New York and then found her flight on the departures board in the terminal: Delta Flight 62 to Moscow, 5:39 p.m., On Time. She boarded the plane and settled in for the long flight. As they flew over the Atlantic, she watched a movie, ate something that might have been chicken, flipped through the airline magazine, then attempted to sleep in her narrow coach seat, with her raincoat bundled up for a pillow. After an hour, she gave up and remembered that Cokie had stuffed something into her pocket.

She unrolled the raincoat and found the plastic bag, which contained an eye mask filled with a cooling gel. Feeling ridiculous, she tried it on, adjusted the elastic strap, and eventually relaxed, losing consciousness. When the plane landed in Moscow, she almost felt refreshed. She reset her watch to 11:10 a.m., then stood in the customs line for an hour, where an agent who spoke a little English directed her to the shuttle bus that took her to Vnukovo Airport for the flight to Murmansk.

With less than an hour before her next flight, she was afraid to wander too far from the gate, so she sat down in the shabby, poorly lighted waiting area, which reminded her of a bus terminal, and ate a granola bar from her carry-on while rereading the information Yulia had given her. The description of her hotel, which touted its “original coziness,” made her smile until she read the descriptions of several other hotels and realized that they all claimed to have “original coziness.” So much for original, and now she had to wonder about the coziness as well.

Lucy read, for the countless time, the section in her guidebook on Murmansk: population four hundred thousand… on Kola Bay… substantial downtown, several museums… the largest city in the world inside the Arctic Circle. She hoped she had enough warm clothes.

She reassured herself that the facilitator would be waiting for her at the Murmansk Airport, remembering Saint Anthony of Padua,
who helped travelers. She could say nothing in Russian besides
do svidaniya
, which meant simply good-bye but sounded more dramatic and tinged with finality. Yulia had gone on the Internet and printed out a phonetic phrase guide, which turned out to be from a Web site for mail-order brides. Lucy had looked through the phrases on the plane and wondered about the desperate American men who found it useful to say things in Russian like “I thank my destiny for sending you to me,” “My sincere greetings and best wishes!” or “Fly to me on wings of love.”

Three hours later, after a nauseatingly rough flight, she landed in Murmansk. At takeoff, she had been reasonably sure someone would be there to meet her, but the bumps and vibrations had shaken the odds in her mind down to about fifty-fifty. She was the last in line to exit the cabin because everyone around her had unbuckled their seat belts and started unloading luggage from the overhead compartments as the plane was still taxiing toward the gate. When she stepped off the plane, her legs shaking, she spotted a rectangular piece of gray cardboard that said “Lucy McVie,” held by a short, stocky, balding man who was scanning the faces of the passengers. She lugged her carry-on over to him.

“I’m Lucy McVie,” she said, extending her hand.

“
Zdravstvujte
, hello,” he said, ignoring her hand. “Yes, I wait for you, Lucy McVie. I am Lesta Petrovich, facilitator for Yulia Doletskaya.”

“Lester?” she said.

“Les-TA,” he said, emphasizing the second syllable. “And this is what you may call me.”

“Got it,” she said, relieved that she would be able to communicate with at least one person in this vast country with its unfamiliar alphabet. Following Lesta closely through the dim terminal—which smelled like an ashtray—Lucy feared that he might turn a corner and leave her alone in the maze of hallways. The last flight had left her feeling slightly dizzy, as though she had just stepped off an amusement park ride.

Lesta found a cart for her baggage, and they waited with the other passengers for a half hour at what Lucy presumed was the baggage area, until someone became impatient and opened a door that led directly onto the tarmac. All the passengers trooped outside to haul their luggage from a little train that had been abandoned a few hundred feet from the terminal. Lucy pointed to a large green suitcase, and Lesta crawled over the others to retrieve it. It took them another twenty minutes to find her smaller blue duffel bag, which was buried under a mound of flattened cardboard boxes in the last car.

Outside the terminal, the sky was almost indistinguishable from the murky gray inside the building. Lesta stored her luggage in the back of a battered blue sedan and held the passenger door open for her.

“You must be very tired, Lucy McVie,” he said. “I take to hotel, and tomorrow we pick up paperwork.”

“When will I go to the children’s home?” she said, gripping the car door as Lesta drove through the airport, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a cigarette, swerving around cars stopped in the middle of the road. She felt around for a seat belt but couldn’t find one.

“We call and set appointment,” he said. “Tomorrow or day after.”

In the time it took to drive from the airport to the hotel, about thirty minutes, Lesta gave her a short history lesson on Murmansk.

“You see the hills—here we say
sopki
—very different for Russian city, like your San Francisco, eh? In the ports, we have Northern Fleet and many nuclear-powered icebreakers. Outside city, we have Alyosha, giant concrete soldier built to celebrate hero of Great Patriotic War, who blew up Nazis and himself, too, with grenade. We also have beautiful St. Nicholas Church. Government made plans to tear down, but then we have perestroika—you know this word?—and church was saved.”

After another few minutes of swerving around bicyclists, pedestrians, other cars, and various bits of debris in the streets, Lesta pulled up to the Best Eastern Arktika hotel. It was a white modern-looking building in the shape of a wedge of cheese. Lesta helped Lucy bring her bags into the lobby, which looked less promising
than the exterior, with worn carpeting and a few uncomfortable-looking chairs. Still, it wasn’t too expensive, and the Web site had mentioned a bar, a beauty salon, a coffee shop, a currency exchange, a gift shop, a restaurant, and a sauna. Lesta took her to the front desk to check her in.

“Here is your key,” Lesta said, smiling. “Get some rest, and tomorrow I pick you up in lobby at nine. Restaurant is terrible, but you find something.”

“Do you really have to go?” Lucy said, feeling suddenly very fond of Lesta, with his head the shape of a volleyball and his matching volleyball paunch. He had straight teeth with the exception of one canine that was turned sideways, and her eyes were pulled to the imperfection. She realized he wasn’t as old as she had originally thought, just prematurely bald. “Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy McVie,” he said. “I must get home. Wife is waiting.”

“Just call me Lucy.”

“Okay, Lucy McVie,” he said. “Be in lobby at nine.”

She went to her room, which was a double in standard, overused Holiday Inn decor—no sign of Original Coziness. She had requested a nonsmoking room, but everything, including the bathroom towels, smelled of smoke. She took a bath in the surprisingly large tub and changed into her nightgown. Then she made an attempt to call home through the room phone but gave up when she kept getting recordings in Russian. Her cell phone had no service.

She had no one to talk to, nothing to read that she hadn’t already read twice on the plane, so she finally fell asleep out of sheer boredom. It was ten o’clock when she woke up, eerily alert. She paced the room, turned on the television, and watched ten minutes of
Seinfeld
in Russian, then she put on jeans and a sweater, thinking a glass of wine might help.

The lobby was empty except for a couple waiting at the front desk with two sleeping children draped over their shoulders like sacks of grain. Lucy found the dark-paneled lounge behind double doors of
etched glass and sat down on a stool at the bar. A singer in a purple-sequined head wrap crooned Russian ballads into a microphone, with a single keyboard player behind her.

The ten or twelve other people in the bar didn’t seem to notice her, and neither did the bartender, who was watching the singer. Lucy—who could be struck with ordering anxiety at McDonald’s—had no idea how to get his attention without seeming rude, so she sat there self-consciously, until a slender middle-aged man with dark skin and a goatee sat down next to her.

“Hello,” he said, extending his hand. “Calvin Olmstead. I’m gonna take a wild stab and guess that you’re here to adopt.”

“How did you know?” she said.