“Did you look at Anna’s bank accounts at all? Did you find anything?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing.” Then he goes into his pocket and reaches for his wallet. “That reminds me.” He shoves a bunch of cash in my face.
“What is this for?” I ask. He’s so close to me now I can smell his generic Dove soap. I back up a little.
“It’s not from me,” he explains. “It’s from your grandpa.”
“Oh. Nazi money?” I ask, taking the pile. It’s probably my portion of all the quarterly reparation money he gets from Germany. There’s like over a thousand dollars in there. I figured once I left he would give my half to Anna, but it doesn’t appear that way now at all. Or maybe he did give money to Anna. Maybe that’s the money she used to leave town. “Wow. That’s a lot of German guilt right there.”
Papa slides his hands into his coat pockets and starts walking up the stairs. “I guess maybe we know where Anna got the money to leave,” he says.
MASHA
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Mashinka!” Dedushka cries out with joy. “Finally! You’re here!” He wraps me in a suffocating hug, before allowing my grandmother to do the same. By the end of which I have to sit down on their itchy couch to catch my breath. This is hard, when it’s probably eighty degrees inside. I wave a hand over my face, hoping they will get the hint. They do not.
“What took you so long?” Dedushka asks me instead.
I turn to my dad in confusion.
“They calling me nonstop since you landed,” he repeats in English. “But you had… enough to deal with.” The way he says it makes me understand: they have no idea that Anna is gone. Maybe they don’t even know my mom is gone.
“Excuse me,” I tell my grandpa, the closest phrasing to ‘I’m sorry’ that Russian has. “I was really busy.”
“Too busy for your grandparents?” Babushka chimes in from the rug-covered couch. It disturbs me slightly that she hasn’t bothered to put on real clothes for our visit. She’s in a long, cotton dressing gown with several large stains on it, and holds a thick blanket over her lap that smells like it didn’t dry well enough before she took it out of the dryer. “Who practically raised you? Oy, such ungrateful girls you have Pavel.”
My dad explains: “Mama. She only arrived yesterday.”
“I’m here now,” I say, trying to relax them. “Isn’t that good enough?” As I begin to peel off my coat, which is now stuck to me with a layer of sweat, I take the moment to look around the apartment. Was I expecting it to be different? If so, I would have been disappointed; it is exactly the same. I don’t think even one old framed photo from the long array of our school yearbook pictures has been moved. Like a time capsule from the nineties. No, like a time capsule from the Soviet Union. Because they still have all their old flower-patterned dishes and hand-painted tea sets and beautiful glassware sitting behind a glass case, as if in a museum collection, practically untouched. They never made friends here, not really, and I doubt people come to visit them other than my dad. And sure, most people in the building are old and Russian, some of them even related to them. But they probably have nice china of their own. What reason would my grandparents ever have to take it out? Even on their birthdays, we always went out to eat, or for the major ones, had parties in Russian restaurants.
“You’re getting old. Why don’t you give me any grandchildren?” my grandma starts. “You know I don’t have much time left.” I don’t bother responding to this age-old request. I’m too hot. I fold my coat over my arm and stand up. Then I turn into the kitchen, which is only a foot away from the living room, hoping the air will be cooler here, but it’s not. In the sink, I notice, there are a few nice glasses and plates standing in water. Dirty.
“Babushka, you have grandchildren,” I say. I sit down at the small dining table, which is littered with photos and mail. “I think what you mean is great-grandchildren.”
“Masha, stop being such an elitist. You know what I mean,” my grandma says, nearly making me choke with laughter. She has a point, perhaps.
“Anastasia’s nineteen, and I’m not married or ready for kids in any way,” I explain. I gaze quickly at the clock, a Hebrew one they got on their last visit to Israel with an image of a praying rabbi in the background, says it’s a little past noon. My grandma went nuts buying things with Hebrew writing on them—besides the clock, there is also a mezuzah, several oversized T-shirts and caps, and at least ten different candle holders—all so she could practice reading them upon her return. In another life, she could have been a linguist. In another life I could have, too. “Sorry. You may need to wait a little longer for great-grandkids.”
I start rifling through their mail so I don’t have to look at them and come off as annoyed. This topic of conversation is always draining for me. I can’t think of a good excuse to leave already, although I would prefer to come back tomorrow or when I have less on my mind. I still have so much to do; I’m not any closer to finding Anna. She could be in danger. She could be in Ukraine! She could be in danger in Ukraine. I’m about to say I have lunch plans, but then I remember my dad knows I ate because we ate together, at Beans and Barley, about ten minutes before we arrived.
“I don’t have time to wait,” Babushka complains. “I’m practically dead already. What about this boyfriend of yours? Is he Jewish?”
“Mama, please,” my dad says.
“Of course he’s Jewish. I live in Israel.”
“You live in Israel? Bozhe moy. How could you do such a thing to your parents?” Babushka asks. Then she stops as if remembering something. “Well at least he’s Jewish. Tell him to marry you already so I can see your children before I die.”
“Babushka, you’ve been telling me you’re dying for about twenty years,” I explain. “I think it’s safe to say you’re not actually dying yet.”
“Nothing safe about being alive, young lady,” she merely replies. “Especially not at eighty.”
“You’re eighty-three,” my dad corrects. He is standing next to the table with his arms crossed, looking more impatient than I am. I look back to the scattered piles of mail. Most of it is junk, but then I notice a handwritten letter sticking out of an open envelope. Who would be writing my grandparents handwritten letters?
“Once you reach a certain age, who cares?” Babushka shrugs. This is true, but my grandparents have never really known their exact ages. My grandma’s mom forgot hers, and my grandpa lied about his to avoid getting conscripted into the Russian army for an extra year or two after the war ended, so he no longer remembers his actual birthday, either. We celebrate it on Yom Kippur. Which, as it turns out, was the day my dad called me to return. In the chaos, I had completely forgotten to wish him a happy birthday.
“Dedushka, Happy Birthday!” I say, standing up again to give him a hug. “I feel so bad now that I didn’t call you.”
“Oh, thank you,” he says, surprised, but smiling again. As I hug him, my coat falls from my hands onto the floor. I bend over to pick it up. The slight draft knocks over the letter I had noticed onto the floor and flips it over, so that I see the return address. I remain on the floor an extra moment to look at it to make sure I’m not imagining things.
Nope, I’m not. It’s a letter. From Anna. With her current address. I shove the envelope into my pocket and put the letter back on the table as I stand up. Relief blooms in my chest, and I am calm for the first time since my dad dropped me off in Riverwest.
Somehow, I manage to get through ten more minutes of small talk with my grandparents before my dad is satisfied we’ve stayed long enough.