Vaclav & Lena (23 page)

He puts her down, on the sidewalk, and there are other people trying to get around them, which is a surprise. A moment ago, while she was in the air, in his arms, there had seemed to be no one else in the world. She looks up at him and smiles, and her smile is toothy and goofy, but her lips are beautiful, and Vaclav smiles back.

“I want you to come to Russia with me,” she says.

“Sure,” he says.

“I’m serious,” she says, smiling.

“I know,” he says.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” she says.

“I thought we were going to Russia,” he says.

She puts her hands on her hips and gives him a stern face, one eyebrow up, one eyebrow down, chin commanding attention, the same stern face she gave him the last time they saw each other.

“I meant now,” she says.

“When are we going to Russia?” he says.

“Soon,” she says.

“This afternoon?” he says.

“No,” she says.

“Good, because I’m not packed.”

“I’m serious,” she says.

“When?” he says.

“We’ll see,” she says.

“Where are we going now?” he says.

“To eat something, maybe?” she says.

“Okay, cool. Because I’m really hungry,” he says.

“I’m not,” she says.

“I’m always hungry,” he says.

“You must be growing,” she says.

“You think?” he says. “We can get pizza. Do you like pizza?” Such a strange question to ask the most important special secret person in your life, but he has to ask; he doesn’t know. He’s never seen Lena eat pizza.

“I’m not hungry,” she says, “but I’ll sit with you. We have a lot to talk about.”

“No shit,” he says. She is surprised to hear him curse but excited at this reminder that they are both grown-ups now. His saying “shit” makes Russia seem possible. The Russia plan is a thing she is holding in her head, and she pokes it, like a loose tooth, to see if it is real. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it feels good, sometimes very bad. Today it’s feeling really good. Really real.

They start walking down the sidewalk together, side by side, looking down at their feet. They are unused to navigating the sidewalk together; they do not have a pace for walking together, like couples in the city do, like old friends do. Vaclav walks slowly, to keep pace with Lena. They squeeze awkwardly past lampposts and groups of people, and find crossing the street awkward.

“What have you been up to?” Vaclav says.

Lena smiles at him mischievously.

“A lot,” she says. “What have you been up to?” She smiles; it is so strange to ask him what he has been up to. Like meeting the president and saying, “Hey, how are you doing?”

“Same thing,” he says, meaning same thing as when you left, meaning still magic, still trying to take care of you with my mind, still trying to control events using supernatural powers.

A SECRET MISSION
…

I
t’s unbelievable to Lena and to Vaclav that they are sitting in a pizza dive, across from each other, just ordering pizza, like everything is normal.

Luckily for Lena and Vaclav, it is assumed by Vaclav, and unchallenged by Lena, that as Vaclav eats he cannot talk at all. Vaclav eats like a pig. Lena is afraid that she might be sprayed with pizza sauce, burned by hurtling molten cheese. While Vaclav eats his first three slices, Lena picks the cheese off a slice and explains to him the Russia plan.

“I want to find my parents,” she says. “I mean my biological parents. I have a mom now, an actual mom, my real mom. She adopted me. I love her. I just want to know about my real parents.” Vaclav notes the striking calm in Lena’s voice when she talks about her new mom, her actual mom.

“I want you to come. It’s going to be really hard to find them. I don’t know yet how to go about doing that, but I’m sure we can find them. I mean, it can’t be impossible. I’m sure they’re there, so it’s just about figuring out how to find them. Through documents and whatever.”

Vaclav pauses eating, just momentarily, directs his eyes up at Lena; he wants to ask her a question, but his mouth is full and she’s not stopping.

“We’ll do as much research as possible here, before we leave, and we might be able to make some progress, but I’m sure that we’ll hit a wall, and we’ll need information that we won’t be able to get unless we’re actually there, you know? We might have to knock on doors and ask questions, or find records in some obscure place, or whatever.”

It is becoming quickly very clear to Vaclav that much of Lena’s concept of this plan is based on television shows. But then again, much of the brashness of her plan is based on the confidence of a straight-A student, the confidence that with diligence, with hard work, with dedication, with exhaustive research, questioning, planning, any result can be achieved. Vaclav too is a disciple of this method of living. It is precisely why he is sure that he will, someday, be a successful magician. “The problem is just getting there—specifically, the money to get there. But that’s just a number; you count to all numbers one at a time. One dollar at a time,” she says.

This is again the thinking of a person who is smart enough to know that they are smart, and that even in a very big world, there is no one significantly smarter, and so anything can be accomplished. There is nothing so childish about wanting to find your parents. This need, he thinks, must be innate, natural, eternal. Lena is like a homing pigeon, a boomerang. There is a motor inside her, always seeking them.

She isn’t done talking.

“The main thing is, we can get there if we just decide to go, you know? And I know you understand that, that if we just decide to make it happen, then we can. Then it is done. Basically.”

“You know what Houdini said? He said, ‘I have done things which rightly I could not do, because I said to myself,
You must
.’ ”

“I like that,” she says.

“I thought you might,” he says, and they both blush. “First of all,” he says, “yes, of course I’ll go with you.” Lena never doubted that Vaclav would come along. She nods.

“So I just want to get that out of the way, because of course I’ll do it, I just have a few questions, and some ideas and stuff, about the plan. But I don’t want you to worry that in any way I’m not on board, because I really am,” he says. “First of all, are you completely sure that they’re in Russia?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Why?” he asks. “If you don’t know where they are, how can you be sure they’re not here?”

“If they were here, in America, they would have contacted me. They would have found me. At some point.” Lena says this as fact. Vaclav is less sure.

“How do you know they’re still alive?” he asks, and then immediately wonders if this is a question he can ask. It seems like such a cruel question, such an awful question.

“Doesn’t matter. If I find them and they’re dead, that’s still finding them. I just want to fill in the holes. I don’t want anything from them. I just want to know. I want to know why they came here, and why they left me. I think anyone would want to know that.”

Vaclav thinks about how his parents too came to America, brought him here. He thinks about how they haven’t discussed it much, not in years. He hasn’t asked his mother or father what their lives were like in Russia, why they left, anything. Their dinner table discussions are about school, about politics, about everything else. Vaclav remembers a little bit of living in Russia when he was little; he remembers a day he played with another little boy outside of their big apartment building, and a windup spaceman toy that he cried about when they landed in America and he realized he had left it behind. He remembers that he took his Houdini book with him on the plane. These are only vague memories he has from when he was little; life before Vaclav is never discussed. Vaclav wants to tell this to Lena, to say something like, “My parents live with me in my house, and I don’t know these things that you think most people know. He does not say this.
I could know if I wanted
, he tells himself,
and that’s the difference
.

“Are you going to tell your parents about this?” he asks, realizing, again, that the very basic things he does not know about Lena’s life would make a long list.

“Parent. It’s just my mom. And no, I’m not, because she would never let me travel alone. I mean, alone? To Russia? Never. It has to be a secret.”

This is a mission. Vaclav understands missions, understands the need for secrecy when something is so important.

“I won’t tell my mom either; she would flip out.”

Lena almost cringes at this mention of Vaclav’s mom, and wonders why. Why would the mention of Vaclav’s mom make her feel anxious? Her brain is full of holes sometimes. Having Vaclav here feels good, but she feels like he’s poking around in some dark soft spots. His questions are harder to answer, harder to hear, than she thought they would be, like he’s pressing on some muscles that have atrophied.

“Yeah,” she says. “I feel like it’s best if no one knows. Easier.”

“Okay,” he says. He doesn’t even wonder why they would have to go alone, why it therefore has to be a secret, he so much likes having a secret with Lena again.

They walk outside the pizza parlor, and Lena tells Vaclav that she has to go, she has a meeting. School council. Yes, it is boring. She’s the president, and it’s still boring. Yeah, good for college applications, she tells him. This conversation, this small talk about high school politics, it is all just words to fill the air while they stare at each other. They never want to leave each other’s company, and they do not know how to say goodbye.

“Oh, wait!” Vaclav says. “What about your aunt? Would she be able to help us? Does she still live on Seventh?”

“She moved,” Lena says. “Back to Russia.”

“Oh, too bad,” Vaclav says. “She probably knows, right?”

“Yeah,” Lena says. “I wish I could just ask her, but she’s gone.”

There is a pause, and Vaclav fills it with “Can I see you tomorrow?” and Lena hops on the end of tomorrow with her yes. Here, after school. Okay, they say, too many times, okay, okay, okay, smiling, on the verge of goofy. They are about to turn and just walk away from each other, not knowing at all what to do with this departure, how it should go, and then they step forward into each other’s hug space, which as soon as they are doing it seems like the reasonable thing to do. Two long-lost friends hugging. Reasonable. Except there is too much contact between necks, between the softness at the intersection of neck and jaw, not enough friendly vigor, too much of the world falling silent while they hold on to each other.

As Vaclav walks away, he realizes he meant to tell her about his newest trick, the Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus of Mystery. She would be so excited, because they dreamed of building it together when they were little, and he’s finally done it. It’s a trick for two, and he hasn’t been able to practice it yet. He was always waiting for Lena.

THE NEXT DAY
…

T
hey sit under a tree in Fort Greene Park. They sit on the ground and run their fingers through the grass. It’s good that the grass is there; it gives them something to pick at, to pull at, somewhere to put their eyes while they talk.

Lena is looking at the grass, and Vaclav is looking at her. He can’t believe she’s right there.

Lena tells Vaclav that she wants to tell him everything, and then she tells him almost everything.

She tells him what she knows about before she met him, which they never discussed when she was nine. She tells him about Radoslava Dvorakovskaya, and about the day she found her dead in the bathtub. She tells him she doesn’t know where she was before Radoslava, or how she got there. She tells him about waiting for her aunt, about coloring, and about not being able to talk.

Vaclav feels so good, so good that she’s telling him everything.

He asks her what she remembers about when she was taken away. She tells him about Child Protective Services, about going to live with Em. She tells him about the day Em announced that she was going to adopt Lena, which was the second day Lena was in Em’s house. She tells him about how she and Em decided on what Lena would call her, how Em was the first two letters, the first syllable of her name, Emily, and also the first letter of Mom, how it was a way to call her Emily and Mom without saying either.

Vaclav notices that Lena is skipping things. She’s skipping the part about his mom calling the police. He figures she’s leaving it out because it’s awkward to talk about, because it was his mom’s fault that Lena was taken away. He’s always blamed his mom, and he imagines Lena must too. Of course he’s not angry anymore; he knows his mother thought she was helping when she overreacted, ruined everything, made them take Lena away. Just because she was home alone a lot, just because her aunt was a stripper and all of that, she called the police. He’s really glad that Lena was happier with Em, that it all turned out better for her. Somehow he had always imagined that things got worse for Lena when she went away, maybe because it was so much worse for him.

The sun is going down, and a chill is coming on. He gives her his sweatshirt; he couldn’t possibly feel cold. They talk until it’s dark and the park is closing.

They get up and walk toward the subway, and he tells her he can’t wait to work on the magic show again. He tells her that he never found a replacement assistant.

She smiles at him and tells him she can’t wait to start planning their trip to Russia.

WHEN YOU ARE IN LOVE, IT FEELS LIKE YOU ARE FLOATING
…

L
ena and Vaclav spend their time ecstatic in each other’s company. They are wild-eyed like starving dogs, like recent converts. They both coast through school like zombies, and no one notices. For the first time, Lena does her homework in the hallway against a locker ten minutes before class is due to start, instead of meticulously, the afternoon it is assigned, at home, at the kitchen table, with Em keeping company, keeping watch, like a fire tower attendant.

Until now, homework was a bad place. A contaminated zone, a slash-fest, an all-out slaughter. Much pencil chewing and lead breaking. Much ripping up. Lena is surprised at her ability to break her own mold. Em is pleased too. Lena doing her homework for hours at the kitchen table, immersed, obsessive, was better than the screaming fights, but it was still just another version of being off balance.