“What are you doing?” Maya said.
“‘You want,’ ‘I want,’” Alex mimicked as they listened to Max descend the carpeted stairs. “Let’s ask him directly.”
“Ask him what?” Max said, blinking twice and surveying the adults in the kitchen. He reached up and touched the side of his head gingerly. One of his Indian masks from Mexico was around his neck on its string. It was the one with the snakes coiling out of the red mouth.
“Max, why are you wearing that mask?” his mother said.
“I was playing,” he said.
“He wants to go to Mexico, not Montana,” his father said. “Remember, Maxie? Turtle stakeouts after dark? We’ll take pictures this year.”
“You can’t, it startles the babies,” Max said. He slipped the mask off his head and winced again when it grazed his temple.
“Max, honey, stop that,” Maya said sharply. “It’s long healed.”
Max’s hand fell from his head as if he’d touched a flame with his finger. Alex eyed his wife with the satisfaction of a winner before the contest has started.
“Max?” Alex said. “Mama wants to ask you something.” He nodded at his wife.
Startled, Maya cleared her throat. She tried to collect herself. “Maxie?” she said hoarsely.
Max raised his eyebrows.
“How would you like to go on vacation? Me, you, and Papa? Mama’s always staying behind because of the airplane, but mama wants to go somewhere with you. We’ll drive there. A road trip.”
“Uh-huh,” Max said. He looked up and blinked twice. Every time he did that, Maya had the same thought: He didn’t get that from us. And then she fought it. “But where?” he said.
“Montana,” Maya said. Eugene and Raisa stiffened, as if the word alone would reveal to Max everything that had been so diligently kept from him. “Do you know where that is?” Maya went on. “It’s beautiful. More stars than you’ll see here. And very different kinds of grass, too. Many more kinds, I think. We’ll be gone for my birthday. We can celebrate it out there. Isn’t that fun?”
“It’s Mama’s birthday soon!” Raisa clapped, remembering it. She was eager to remind everyone that the future harbored good things as well.
“But what about school?” Max said to his mother.
“You’ll miss school,” Maya said. “How would you like that?” Alex looked at her — an unfair move. But it wasn’t — Max liked school.
“For how long?” Max said suspiciously.
“We’ll decide together,” Maya said. “If we like it there, we’ll stay longer. If not, we’ll come back.”
“If we like it, we’ll stay there longer?” Alex interfered. He was done leaving the conversation to his wife. He looked at his son. “Do you want to go, Max?” he said. “We won’t go if you don’t want to.”
Maya shot him a betrayed look. “School can wait,” she jumped in. “Did you know that your father missed the first two months of third grade because he was busy making his way to America?” She looked up at Alex, who confirmed resentfully.
Max shrugged heavily, a little Eugene. (Why did Max demonstrate only distinctions from Maya but resemblances of the other Rubins?) “But that wasn’t vacation,” the boy said, pleasing his father. For someone who wished to commune with the wild, her son could be annoyingly pedantic, Maya thought. And from whom had he inherited this blessing?
“And this is,” Maya said quietly. “The three of us are going.”
Alex slapped the table: See? She was conscienceless, his wife. Without the answers she wanted, she would force the child.
But then Max touched his ears with his shoulders. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” Some internal switch, mysterious to the Rubins, had been touched and the cloud of skepticism was gone from his face. The adults peered at him, not sure what to make of his acquiescence.
Maya walked to her son and embraced him. He let her. When Maya and Alex had fought as young people, Maya had her arms around Alex’s shoulders before the argument was over. Alex would cast her off: He wasn’t a robot to switch from anger to affection like that. But Max was different. Perhaps there was a trace of her in her son after all.
+
In the manner of a larger organism unable, to its own surprise, to fend off the negligible parasite that has beset it, the Rubins gave in to Montana, though, as the days passed, it became clear that they would go only if Maya took charge of the arrangements. Alex wandered in an itchy moroseness. Raisa banged around the kitchen, trying to memorize things and clucking her tongue in despair. She asked if Maya had all her recipes in one place.
“I’m not dying, Mama,” Maya said. “We’ll be back.” She half believed this herself. Her unease created the impression of illness; her ears roared and there was a constant sweat on her forehead.
“What are we going to do here without you,” Raisa said, shaking her head.
“I’m sure you’ll survive,” Maya said. “You might even enjoy it.”
“Maybe we should come with you,” Raisa said, her voice loading with excitement. “All together, you know?”
Maya blanched. “No,” she said. She had blurted it out before she could soften it.
Raisa stared at her, wide-eyed. “Of course,” she said after a moment. “What was I thinking? You children need to go off on your own.”
It was Eugene who opened up to Montana the most, perhaps because he was certain not to be going. He became promiscuous in his advertisements of the voyage, if not the reason for it. The cashier at the Russian grocery heard about it, as well as the line of customers; so did the honey wholesaler; even Bender was called. Answering the half-curious, half-skeptical inquiries he aroused, Eugene only shrugged: More than three decades had passed in America; wasn’t it time the Rubins found out what it actually looked like? Immigrants like Bender hid out in their American port of arrival, but the Rubins did not fear change, exploration, discovery. Livingstone, Amundsen, Rubins. (On their way, the children could stop to see Eugene’s brother Karl and his wife Dora in Chicago, thereby relieving Eugene of his guilt for failing to do the same in more than a decade.) Because Eugene could only hint at his true meaning — the junior echelon of his family was about to embark on an honorable, romantic, spiritual action; and what has yours been up to? — his listeners enjoyed the possibility of not having grasped it and sent him off with tight-lipped good wishes.
Maya spent her evenings with the Internet and the road atlas. She read that Montana was the fourth-largest state, and New Jersey the fourth-smallest. Twenty New Jerseys could fit inside a single Montana. The latter felt to her like a giant, poorly known animal that would leave New Jersey bloody and pulped. She read the road atlas like a student of English reciting the dictionary. Rudyard, Rocky Boy, Roscoe. They had a Harlem as well. “Zortman, Landusky,” she said feebly to the evening lamp, naming a pair of towns that huddled together astride a vast emptiness. The Jewish-like surnames gave her comfort.
How did one plan for a trip of this kind? When she tried to imagine the out there that waited for them, her heart beat quickly and her palms moistened. The vision would not even resolve into discrete dangers, just a black mass of badness and trial. Only fools make unrequired journeys, Raisa had quoted a proverb. They could scrap the trip. Max hadn’t shown the enthusiasm on which she had counted. By canceling, Maya would receive a boost with the Rubins. She could show Max pictures of Montana on the computer. She could find a book about the animals of the West.
But Maya had been telling Alex the truth — she wanted Max to see where he was from, even if he would never find out that he was. She couldn’t say why she thought this would help — but it was what Laurel was after when she drove two thousand miles. Laurel needed to see for herself where Max was going. Maybe it gave her some kind of rest.