“I packed it in my suitcase,” she explained. “I didn’t trust the Lithuanians to have coffee up to my exacting standards. And I am very old and unwilling to compromise.”
“As well you should be,” I said. The coffee was pitchy black and smelled glorious.
I sat with her at the table, trying to think up some safe conversational gambit. She was writing busily in a journal and it seemed rude to interrupt her, but also strange to sit silently. She looked up. “Have you ever been on a history tour before?”
“No,” I said. “Have you?”
“My husband and I used to love to take history tours, especially of Jewish places of interest or historical sites. We’ve been on many, but I think this program is particularly unique.”
“How so?” I asked. Ridiculously, I had not done any research on history programs in general, it never having occurred to me that I could use that little pamphlet as a jumping-off point to find other options. Vilnius was Vilnius, and that pamphlet had been more of a portent to me than a piece of paper. But it was turning out that there were many aspects of being on the history tour that I had not entirely anticipated. Like the fact that Vera would be the only teenager and would feel out of place in rooms filled exclusively with gray-haired, bespectacled, fanny-pack-wearing retirees. It had also somehow not occurred to me that everyone on this trip would be Jewish since Vilnius was a place of Jewish cultural interest. I didn’t mind any of this, I had just failed to realistically picture the whole scenario.
“Well, it’s idiosyncratic. The program. The main historian who runs the tours is a preeminent scholar of Vilnius. This city is his life’s work. So I’ve heard the walking tours are just masterful. But I also think the program has a bit of a literary bent. Somehow it turned out that Nikolai Azarin, the poet — have you heard of him?”
“I haven’t read him, no. I’ve heard the name,” I said, though truthfully I had only heard his name for the first time at the reception last night from the sexy redhead who looked like my mother.
“Well, he’s friends with the people who run the history tour, and he visits Vilnius every summer, so he always does a reading with the program. And he sort of spread the word through literary circles about this amazing tour, so a lot of the people here are actually writers. Novelists, but also memoirists, journalists. And then, of course, you have the Owl People.”
“The Owl People?”
“Oh, you know, didn’t you meet them last night? That couple from Wisconsin who have those matching thick glasses that distort their eyes? And they look out of place anywhere you put them?”
I knew exactly the couple she was talking about. They had also been wearing matching brightly colored plastic gardening shoes. “Oh, them,” I said. “I did meet them.”
“Well, there are always those kind of history weirdos on tours like this. Nice people, but the kind who collect spoons or bird-watch or whatever. Not that there is anything wrong with collecting spoons.” Judith shrugged. “I’m just saying, most history tours are about eighty percent Owl People and twenty percent intellectuals, and I’ve heard that this tour is the inverse. Which was part of what spurred my interest.”
“I have a terrible feeling I might be one of the Owl People,” I said.
“Nonsense,” she said. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m an English professor.”
“No. Plus you get extra cool points for bringing your daughter,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee, which she had poured into a small bowl instead of a proper mug. “But I didn’t see many possible romantic candidates at that reception last night despite the better ratio of Owl to intellectual, so I’m afraid I’m rather blue.”
It took me a moment to catch up with her. “Oh, so you’re on this tour looking for love?” I asked.
“It’s been a year since my husband died. I’m not sure I’m looking for love exactly, but I’m tired of grieving. I’m exhausted from being sad. I think it’s safe to say I’m looking for sex.” She smiled at me, and I laughed. I liked Judith Winter very much.
Vera burst into the apartment then with a huge bag of groceries, babbling about a beautiful clothing store she had seen and could we possibly go before the walking tour? I was confused by how animated and awake she was. I would have preferred to sit around drinking coffee and eating some of the appealing little pastries she had brought back with her, but this was out of the question. Vera had that look. She had seen something she wanted in that window and every second that she was not able to get back and find the thing she wanted was killing her. She was hopping around like a little kid who has to pee as Judith and I chatted.
When we said our goodbyes, Judith asked permission to stay in our apartment so that she could “be close to the food source,” by which she meant our refrigerator, while I took Vera shopping, and of course we said yes.
The store Vera wanted to go to was only a few sunny blocks away, but once we were inside she was transformed into a velociraptor stalking prey. She hardly noticed I was there until it came time to pay. I was just sitting on a chair as she tried things on and decided to check my e-mail on my phone. I had turned off my cell service to avoid charges, but there was Wi-Fi in the store because of the café next door. I had seven e-mails from Kat. Guilt lurched my stomach. I hadn’t called. I hadn’t called to tell Kat we got in safe. I hadn’t even sent an e-mail.
“Did you let your mother know we got in safe?” I asked Vera through the dressing-room door, though obviously I knew she hadn’t.
“No,” she said. “Oh my God, you didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You’re gonna be in big trouble,” she said, laughing.
“Should I try to Skype her or what?”
“Call.”
“If I turn on my phone it will be like eighty bucks.”
“Call,” Vera said.
So I stepped outside to call. Katya was understandably furious. I let her yell at me as I leaned against a metal utility pole, which, I noticed, was plastered with a poster advertising a reading by Nikolai Azarin. There was a black-and-white picture of him, hollow-eyed and serious, on the poster. He must be some kind of big deal, I thought.
“You are trying to kill me,” Kat said. “You are trying to give me a heart attack.”
“No, no,” I said. “The time change just really threw me for a loop and we had to get into our apartment and then attend this concert and then we just fell asleep. But I promise — everything is fine. Vera is safe. It’s all good.”
“No, no, no,” Kat said. “It isn’t all good. Be a grown-up. You can do that, Lucas, I know you can. Don’t make me regret saying yes to this trip. Just pretend. Just pretend you’re a grown-up.”
“I am a grown-up, Katya,” I said.
“Are you?” she asked.
It wasn’t an entirely insane question. Katya had been dropped into adulthood as though from a helicopter by Vera’s birth. Meanwhile, I had meandered my way through the prolonged adolescence of graduate school. There had been long periods of my life where my entire plan for a Sunday was to watch football from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed, at some point leaving the house to buy a rotisserie chicken and a six-pack of beer. Since I had given up on ever finishing my dissertation and had started teaching at a community college, I had at least mastered showering more regularly and showing up places on time, but honestly not much else had changed. I closed my eyes there on the street, leaning against the face of Nikolai the Writer. In the private dark of my mind there was only her voice. Just me and her.
“Probably not,” I said.