Vaclav & Lena (7 page)

RASIA IS NOT TRICKED
…

R
asia saw Lena scurry away from the refrigerator. Sometimes being a mother is like when you turn on the lights and all the roaches go running for cover, and if you are looking carefully at the floor, expecting to see all the scurrying, then you will see it, but if you are thinking about what snack to have or looking at the ceiling fan and thinking about how long it has been since you’ve dusted it, then you will not see the scurrying. When Rasia comes inside she always looks immediately toward the kitchen, and as with bugs, even if you did not see what the bugs were doing before the scurrying, you can see where they were and where they scurried to and what they scurried away from, and then you have some clues or ideas about what is going on.

Rasia also saw Lena pretend to be interested in the work that Vaclav was doing, so she walks right up to the kitchen table and sees that Vaclav is working on a worksheet that has Lena’s name on the top of the page. Then Rasia opens the refrigerator and sees the peanut butter with the lid askew, and she looks inside and sees all the little spoon scoops, not the knife swirls you make when you put peanut butter on a sandwich.

Today Rasia is on high alert because of the strange behavior of the last few nights. She rehashes this strange behavior in her mind like a detective. First was Lena vomiting. Then was coming home to find Vaclav still in the kitchen, still doing work, with Lena slumped at the table beside him. This is evidence of something bad, because this is not normal. Normal is to come home and to find Vaclav and Lena working hard on a magic act in Vaclav’s bedroom but with the lights on and the door open and feet on the floor because hers is a house with morals.

She noticed, last night at dinner, Vaclav’s terrible mood, a mood like someone who has lost a long and hard game of
csyak svoi kozyi
. And now there is little Lena eating from the fridge and hiding it, and wanting Rasia to think that she is helping Vaclav with homework when she is not.

Rasia wants to know exactly what is going on and also exactly why.

THIS MUST BE PRACTICE TONIGHT
…

F
or dinner, Rasia has made
shchi
. She found, when she came to America, that for very little money she could fill the slow cooker with meat and cabbage in the morning and come home to a traditional Russian meal in the evening. Usually Lena just pushes the gray meat around in her bowl until it is time to clear the table, but tonight Lena eats all her
shchi
before Rasia even has a chance to sit down and pick up her fork. Meanwhile, Vaclav is using his fork to pull out the pieces that he does not feel like eating: pieces of cabbage that have become burned on the edge or the belly-button pieces of the tomato where the vine was attached.

Rasia looks at her husband, who keeps his hand on his vodka so that he can take a sip between bites.

Rasia watches Lena out of the corner of her eye; she is scraping her spoon around on the bottom of her bowl like the
shchi
is the last food on the planet earth.

“All homework is done?” she asks.

“All. All done, and so Lena and I will be preparing to practice our act as soon as we finish eating dinner, thank you.”

“You are welcome,” says Rasia, still looking at Lena, whose focus has not shifted from the
shchi
, not one tiny smidge.

“Lena, you eat so fast you will make yourself sick again. Slow down; you can have more.” Lena looks up at Rasia, embarrassed.

“Vaclav—fill Lena’s bowl,” she says.

“Tonight you are practicing some tricks? Some magic? Some con-artist games?” Oleg says to Lena. Lena is afraid of Oleg, because his face is ugly to look at and covered with small holes, and because he smells and because a little piece of hairy belly always comes out from underneath his shirt, and because everything he says is yelling.

Vaclav doesn’t feel like answering his father, or eating very much, and he doesn’t feel like sitting anymore at the kitchen table. Vaclav doesn’t even feel like practicing the act.

When Vaclav feels discouraged, he likes to read his Houdini book, and to remind himself that Houdini had many hard things to overcome before he became famous, and that he believed that perseverance and resilience were the most important qualities a person could have. Houdini worked very hard for many years with no money and no fame, and that is when he learned all of his important skills. Thinking about Houdini reminds Vaclav that to have struggles and perseverance is important to the forging of his character, and he reminds himself that one day in the future he may be thanking Lena for putting him through the troubles and difficulties of this time, for it will make him great and magnificent. This he tells to himself over and over in his mind, so that he will not forget it.

Still, Vaclav is feeling discouraged about all the time he is spending doing Lena’s homework in addition to his own homework, that all this homework is taking time away from the magic that must be practiced for him to become the most successful and famous magician. Vaclav feels homesick, suddenly homesick, for a place that doesn’t exist.

“May I be excused?” asks Vaclav, looking down at the table, at the half-eaten brown cabbage stew in his bowl.

“Sure,” says his mother, while his father snorts in a laugh that might be a laugh that loves Vaclav, or might be a laugh that is mean.

Vaclav stands up from the table and puts his bowl of
shchi
in the sink, while Lena shovels into her mouth the last few bites of her second bowl and follows closely behind Vaclav, terrified at the idea of being left alone with his parents.

GLOVES
…

V
aclav sits down immediately at his desk and begins making a new, angry list.

“Act for practice first: box of disappearing. I think,” says Lena. Vaclav does not respond to Lena but begins adding to his list:

COSTUMES

“No?” says Lena.

Vaclav does not respond to Lena but begins another list:

LIST OF THINGS NEEDED FOR COSTUMES FOR SHOW AT CONEY ISLAND

“Or card. Cards trick,” says Lena, looking over Vaclav’s shoulder.

“Card tricks,” he corrects.

“Okay!” says Lena. Lena is starting to feel worried that something is wrong, that her plan of making Vaclav feel happy, of making the balance between getting from and giving to, is not working.

“No, not yes to card tricks, just telling you it is not
cards trick
, with a letter
s
on the end of
card
, but it is
card tricks
, with a letter
s
on the end of
trick
,” says Vaclav.

“What it is wrong?” says Lena, even though she knows a little what’s wrong. Vaclav does not answer but adds to his list as if he did not hear her:

LIST OF THINGS NEEDED FOR COSTUMES FOR SHOW AT CONEY ISLAND

TOP HAT

CAPE

TUXEDO

Vaclav knows that there is more that belongs on his list, but he suddenly cannot think of the things that belong in the outfit of a magician, even though he has been picturing the outfit for many years. Vaclav knows that his thoughts and feelings about Lena are pushing around his memory. It is Lena’s fault that he does not remember, and it is Lena’s fault that they haven’t been practicing the act enough.

“What do magicians wear? I can’t think of what magicians are wearing!” says Vaclav, and he means it only as a question, but all his anger about Lena’s fault comes out with it.

“Hat,” says Lena, afraid.

“I have that already!” says Vaclav.

“Ummm, the long, on shoulders, the long …” Lena is looking for words, and this too is making Vaclav wait and making Vaclav angry.

“Cape? I have that one already too,” Vaclav says, and he knows that his voice is making Lena afraid, is scaring her words away.

“Ummm …” says Lena.

“What?” says Vaclav. “I’m waiting.”

“Ummm,” says Lena, with her ummms getting more and more wobbly.

“Never mind!” says Vaclav, and he goes back to writing his lists.

“Ummm,” says Lena, and her ummms now are like a violin that wiggles its notes.

“Forget it!” says Vaclav. And then Lena sits down on the floor, behind Vaclav’s chair, where he can’t see her, so she can hide the tears that are spilling from her eyes and down her face, and she says, “Gloves.”

She says it too low, with the letter
l
too heavy, and the
o
too round to be an American
o
, but still, Vaclav hears her Russian
l
and
o
, and her rumbly
v
, and the
e
just the tiny bit of air exiting her mouth, with the
s
barely hanging on, and Vaclav understands, and he knows exactly the gloves she is talking about.

Vaclav does not notice that Lena is crying. He feels incredibly happy because the white magician’s gloves complete the picture of what he wants to look like for the show on the boardwalk at Coney Island. He is happy because he can see himself looking like a professional magician.

He needs the white gloves, the brilliantly white gloves that will highlight his every movement and make his audience pay attention to his hands so that it is as if he has their eyeballs on fishing line attached to his fingertips. It is very important, in magic, to have the audience’s eyeballs attached to your fingertips, because sometimes the magician is waving his hand and saying, look, the trick is over here, but actually the trick is somewhere else. Vaclav learned this from
The Magician’s Almanac
, which said if you want to learn how a magician performs his illusions, when he says, “Watch carefully as I do this,” you must watch carefully everywhere else, because he is trying to distract you.

“What do you want to wear for the show on Coney Island?” Vaclav asks, because the appearance of the lovely assistant is very important to the art of magic, just like the white gloves that make the audience’s eyes attach to your fingertips as though with fishing line. The assistant is there so that while the magician creates an illusion everyone will look carefully somewhere else. Sometimes the assistant is the somewhere else.

“What do you think your costume should be?” Vaclav asks again.

Lena stops crying and takes deep breaths. She is starting to forget about being upset, because she is very excited. Lena will wear the golden fringed bikini of Heather Holliday.

The first time that Lena saw Heather Holliday she was just five years old, and it was also the first time she saw the famous Coney Island Sideshow, and it was also the first time that she saw the ocean, and it was the first time that she saw a roller coaster, and it was the first time that she smelled a hot dog, and it was the first time that she went over to Vaclav’s house, and it was the first time that she ever had a friend.

HOW IT HAPPENED: THE FIRST TIME THAT VACLAV MET LENA
…

L
ena’s aunt, Ekaterina, was always complaining about having to watch Lena, and about how she was always missing the good shifts, the shifts that made the most tips, because she had to pick up Lena or put Lena to bed, or feed Lena something for dinner. One of the people who the Aunt complained to was her boyfriend, who had a job picking up boxes and standing outside smoking in a T-shirt, and he did this job for the medical supply company on Kings Highway where Rasia was the receptionist. The Aunt’s boyfriend knew Vaclav’s mom, and he knew that she had a kid who looked to be about five, the same age as Lena.

The boyfriend was tired of the Aunt complaining, and was tired of the Aunt not making any money, and also of Lena always hanging around the apartment and getting in the way with her quietness, especially since school had let out for the summer and she was home all the time, and so he talked to Rasia and they set up a playdate.

HOW IT WAS FOR VACLAV
…

R
asia was happy to have someone for her son to play with who was also in his school, because he was the new kid there, and since he had just come from Russia, he didn’t have so many friends. In fact, he hadn’t had a friend come over to play since they moved from Russia, and she was so excited that she rushed home with her news to tell Vaclav.

“Vaclav. Turn off TV. I have something I can tell you.” She was not yet used to speaking to her son only in English. The decision to switch, to speak strictly English at home, was easy, but speaking to her son in a language that was not her own, this was hard. Not always having words for the things she wanted to say, this was especially hard when she was trying to have a conversation about something for which she might not have the words even in Russian, or even if she also spoke Arabic, and the click language they speak in Africa on the National Geographic Channel. Even if she knew all the languages in the whole world perfectly, she might not be able to explain to her son the things she was feeling. What she was feeling was something close to, but not exactly:

I’m so terribly sorry that you are lonely and that you do not have any friends and other kids think that you are strange, and it hurts me like someone tearing off my skin and pouring acid onto it, but we did something that for you would be the best thing in the end, and even if you never, ever know it we will know it, and when you look at us and blame us for choosing for you a hard thing, we will know it, and when you look at us and blame us for being your parents, we will know it then too.

“Is video. I can pause,” said Vaclav, rolling his eyes and pointing his remote up at the screen of the big TV and pausing David Copperfield in midair just as he was being lowered from the ceiling of a huge auditorium.

Rasia eased herself onto the big couch. Then she patted the seat next to her, and Vaclav stood up from the floor, where he had been watching the TV. Vaclav had been sitting about two feet away from the screen, so that he could see up close and be able to guess the secrets behind David Copperfield’s tricks.