The Cosmopolitans (26 page)

“
But —”

“
Zaskuchalsa, got homesick, fine — and live like that. You think
I would be so sad and sick all the time if you were here
?”

“
What’s he telling you
?” Alyosha said in his lord-of-the-house
voice.

“
Don’t you want to come here, just for a visit, just to see what
it’s like
?” Roman said.

“
I don’t know
.” She began to cry.

“
Mam: we could go to New York, we could look at all the
stores
.”

“
Maybe. Just to look at my son
.”

Alyosha said, “
What kind of shit — bossing you?
”

She muffled the phone for a minute, and when she returned,
said, “
No, Roman, you really can’t boss me.”

“
I’m not, mam, you just said
—”

“
I’m the mother. I’m the mother, hear?
” What did Alyosha have
her on now?

“
But —
”

“
Oh no, you’re not the czar.
” She hung up.

Malcolm

After Milla and Izzy finally left for the park, Malcolm and
Jelani tried to rock, Malcolm on the keyboard, Jelani on the guitar,
and Malcolm was the one who knew a lot more about music, but he
kept missing cues.

“Boy,” Jelani said. Malcolm hated it when Jelani called him
“boy,” but today, he deserved it.

“I probably just need to eat something.” Malcolm got some
leftover Thai salad out of the refrigerator. At least Jelani was real.
All Malcolm’s friends from college were still working out scales.
One of them had actually referred to himself as “the recipient of a
nationally recognized prize.”

“Adulthood is riffing,” Malcolm said aloud.

As he reheated some matzo ball soup Milla had made for his
parents the previous night (she still wasn’t that good at it), Jelani put
on the Go-Betweens. Great. An Australian band.

Who was that freckle in a bikini to him now?

“You ever thought of the women you had before Theanra?” After
all this time, Malcolm still wasn’t sure whether Jelani’s girlfriend
had a “d” at the end of her name or not: was it Thean
dra
or, as he
kept saying, Thean
ra
? He always slurred the end, just to be safe.

Jelani began talking about Italian twins he’d supposedly done
in high school. “Milla reminds me of them sometimes, her big
thighs.”

Malcolm had heard Jelani on Milla before. He wasn’t jealous,
like some guys might be, but what about their friendship? Here
Malcolm was, trying to share something important, and Jelani was
off on his big thigh thing. He took advantage of Jelani’s attempt to
bite through a matzo ball and said, “Right, like me, in college, I did
this semester abroad, and there was this Australian girl. Remember
my Visions of Landra song? That was about her. She had these tits,
they looked like they were fake, but they weren’t.” He wasn’t doing
her justice. “They were really ripe, like they could pop any minute.
She was an, an explosive force, you know?”

Jelani shrugged and nodded, chewing.

“She could talk to anyone. She played the violin for this metal
band, she was a great violinist, and her natural smell was, like, tan.
Think there’s a song in this? Or no?”

He almost hoped Jelani would say no, but he said, “Whatever.”

Before Malcolm could get his hands on a pen, he knew how it
would go, and yelled the words to Jelani: “It’s only in the ocean,
that it’s ever truly night, and you tried to drown me, and I tried to
fight.”

“There is no try.” Jelani said. Malcolm sometimes enjoyed
Jelani’s
Star Wars
references, but more often than not, they ruined
the flow and the mood. They weren’t Mathletes doing problem sets
in some basement, they were funk musicians.

“Wait,” Malcolm said. In the beautiful indigo ink of his father’s
pen, he wrote down what he’d just said. Perhaps he should be
focusing on his poetry, forget this shallow music business.

What kind of life could he have had with Sandra? He saw her
cowboy hat hanging off the doorknob, a wave arcing over his head.
For what had he returned to the States? For college, which was
useless to artists. There was Milla, and there was Izzy, and he cleaved
unto them, sure, but with Sandra, it would have been a Blakean life.
“What kind of boy you want today? To play?” Malcolm was trying
to get Sandra’s spontaneity across, but having to rhyme was ruining
it. “Let’s go wrestle. Outside. Let’s go to the park.” Milla and Izzy
would be there, though.

“What’s with wrong with you?” Jelani passed him the bong.

“Nothing’s
wrong
,” Malcolm said. “It’s just I’m —” He’d
expected to finish the sentence with the words, “still hungry,” but
“trapped” came out instead. What was that about?

He got up and began to pace before the windows, purposely
stepping on the bottoms of the red velvet curtains. How had he
ended up here, living with his parents and a child and a wife who
was far from being the hottest woman he’d ever met? And another
day was ending, and he still wasn’t famous, he still wasn’t anyone
whose name the other Strausses would drop. How had this happened
to the boy who’d played in a piano bar at the age of eighteen, hiked
the bush alone at twenty? “I’m not blaming Izzy, he’s just a baby,
that’s what they do, cry for like eons. It just feels so small here, you
know?”

Jelani looked around the living room.

“Not spacewise. Internally. And our room is really small. It’s
like, am I going to just be a dad? That’s what Milla acts like.” Jelani
took another drag. “Does Theandra ever pressure you?”

Jelani said what Malcolm knew he would say: He and Theandra
were open, so it was different. To Malcolm, it seemed not only
different, but also better. Open, by definition, was better than closed;
even if you only listened to those two words, you’d know that.

“You know Milla, though,” Malcolm said.

Jelani leaned back on the smoking sofa and gave Malcolm some
excellent advice, really freeing his mind, so that at the end, Malcolm
didn’t know how to express his gratitude, could only endeavor to
freestyle some riffs in the style of Prince.

Osip

Only Osip was on hand to greet the Rehmans: Pratik’s parents
and grandmother, three tiny, sleepy, people, accompanied by
strapping, suitcase-swinging, dentist cousins from Pennsylvania.
Yana and Pratik were shouting upstairs, Katya was hammering in
the basement, and Stalina was clanking in the kitchen.

The two Mrs. Rehmans stepped away from Osip’s proffered
hand. “You are a little like Orthodox Jewish ladies,” he said, putting
his hand in his pocket. He wanted them to know that he knew people
like them, that they did not seem strange to him.

“I’m afraid they don’t understand English,” Mr. Rehman said.

Not having prepared an alternate topic, Osip continued his
theme of unity, “Islam is in many ways close to Judaism. You have
Moses, too, yes?”

“Indeed.” Mr. Rehman said, smiling, but without attempting a
translation.

Osip smiled. “Stalinatchka!”

Something in the kitchen crashed. Stalina emerged, with the
fixed smile and crab walk of a game-show hostess. “Welcome to
America,” she said, sweeping her arm to encompass the living and
dining rooms, for which she’d recently purchased gold slipcovers.
“Make yourself at home. You know, in Jewish law, we say, ‘Be good
to strangers, because you were once stranger, and not only stranger
— slave.’” She proffered a plate of shish kebobs.

Pratik’s grandmother pointed at the skewers and spoke rapidly.
“We are very tempted,” Mr. Rehman said, and then asked whether
he might ask whether the meat had been certified for Muslim
consumption.

Stalina continued to hold out the plate, as if it were a baby they’d
failed to admire. “But they are shish kebobs.”

Osip excused himself to go get the children.

Upstairs, Yana was pacing her bedroom in a long, green, Indian-
style dress. “You’re the first generation,” she said. “You want to be
Westernized. Duh.”

“Mr. Molochnik,” Pratik said, “You have just met my parents,
have you not?”

“Have you not?” Yana mimicked.

“Is it your impression, Mr. Molochnik, that they would be very
excited to now have a strange American girl kiss their feet?”

Yana wrapped a tie-dyed scarf around her neck. “It’s like I’m
too Bengali for you.”

“Bangladeshi,” Pratik said.

“Not all the time, like my family’s from Ukraine, but sometimes
we say we’re Russian, to make it simpler. I’ve heard you say
‘Bengali.’ You’re just saying ‘Bangladeshi’ now to shut me out.”

“Parents are here,” Osip said. Something of the panic of the
previous scene must have lingered in his voice, because the children
immediately stepped into the hallway. Behind Yana’s back, Osip
raised his eyebrows at Pratik, to signify manly unity.

Katya had already come up from the basement, and was perched
on the edge of the couch, unaware she was still holding a small
screwdriver.