Most important, he kept renewing the spell that kept Bear and Baba Yaga from finding each other. They both smelled each other, but whenever Baba Yaga thought of seeking him out, or Bear stirred in his somnolence, Mikola filled the air between them with so much of the forgetful haze of summer that they'd become distracted and think of something else, with only a feeling of fitfulness and ennui to remind them of their forgotten desire.
Mikola was no fool. He recognized that Baba Yaga was following the children's trail toward Kiev, even though she must have thought the twisting and turning of her path would deceive him. But he knew what she did not—that in Kiev, their trail took to the air and soared at thirty-five thousand feet across Europe and the Atlantic, heights and distances that would be utterly incomprehensible to a woman who, powerful as she might be, was still only a mortal who had never followed the flow of the great sky river around the world. She might make it to the airport and see the great planes lumber into the sky and figure out that Vanya and Katerina had flown off in one of them. But that wouldn't tell her where they went, and it wouldn't help her follow them. She would stand there, baffled, helpless, and gradually realize that they were out of her grasp.
Mikola imagined her going into one of her tantrums. The authorities wouldn't stand for it, of course. He could imagine the antiterrorist police surrounding her as she madly screamed and sprayed fiery spells through the airport, finally getting a good shot and taking her out just as in those American movies that had taught police all over the world how to walk with the swagger that made them ridiculous and frightening, both at once. Baba Yaga would see the silliness; not knowing the accuracy and range of rifles with scopes, she would not have sense enough to fear them, too. The bloom of a bullet in her head, spraying blood and brains in a fan-shaped pattern on the airport floor—the mere thought of it brought back feelings that Mikola had not let himself feel in years. He could smell battle. And even though he would not strike the blow himself, it made him feel no less triumphant to know that Baba Yaga would never survive in a world where he had managed to preserve a niche for himself and his beloved Sophia.
The whole drive to the airport had been awkward. Ruth just didn't have that much to say to Ivan's parents. During Ivan's long absence in Russia, Ruth had tried to keep in close contact with her future in-laws, and at first it seemed to work, but as the months went by, she got more and more of a sense that they entertained her only out of a sense of duty. In fact, Ivan's father was always distracted—nice, almost too nice, for a few minutes, then anxious to get back to his work. Back to his books. How terrible, for the husband to work at home. Much better the way her parents were—leave the job at the office, come home and really be home. Of course, Ivan would probably expect to live like his father, since they were both pursuing the same career. And that would be fine, Ruth would learn to live with it, that distraction, that there-but-not-there coolness. Besides, unlike Mrs. Smetski, Ruth would have a job. A career of her own.
Mrs. Smetski. She was the problem. Ruth suspected from the start that Mrs. Smetski thought that Ivan could have found a better girl to marry. She wasn't distracted like Professor Smetski. On the contrary, she focused completely, almost smotheringly, on Ruth. But there was this sense of amusement in everything she said. A sense of irony. I know something you don't know.
Ruth had tried to point it out to Ivan, but he never saw it. "That's just Mom," he'd say. "She's always having an out-of-body experience. Looking down on everything from the ceiling. Never part of it. It's nothing to do with you."
But Ruth knew better. A woman knows these things—though of course she didn't say that to Ivan, he got quite testy when Ruth asserted her female power, as if her womanliness threatened him. Of course, he tried to sound like a doctrinaire feminist about it. "Either the only differences between men and women are cultural, or they're innate," Ivan would say. "So if you go for the women's intuition thing, then you have to take that whole package, pedestal and all. And if you want equality, then you have to give up that idea that women have secret ways of knowing."
As if.
But, for the sake of harmony, she allowed his threatened male ego to have its protected space, and didn't push the point. She simply knew, that's all, that Mrs. Smetski disdained her for some reason.
And during the months while Ivan was gone, it became more obvious. Ivan's dad had work to do; Mrs. Smetski had no such excuse. She would wander out of a room sometimes when Ruth was talking. And it wasn't an accident, either. Because when she came back in, she'd resume the conversation with a bland, "You were saying, Ruthie?" in that thickly accented English.
To her, I don't exist. Ruthie could reach no other conclusion.
Come home, Ivan, before your parents make me have second thoughts.
Well, the time had finally come. Of course Mrs. Smetski had hinted that maybe Ruthie should drive her own car, but Professor Smetski put the kibosh on that immediately. "We have to go together, it would be cruel to make Vanya choose between his parents and his bride-to-be. You know he would choose the bride, and then wouldn't we feel foolish!"
"I just thought it might be crowded on the ride home," said Mrs. Smetski.
Crowded? It wasn't as though their car was tiny. Like so many Russians, the Smetskis luxuriated in the American sense of scale. A big old Crown Victoria was their choice—cheap, for a big car; or was it big for a cheap one? Plenty of room.
Too much room. Professor Smetski tried to get Mrs. Smetski to sit in back with Ruth on the way there, "to keep her company," but Mrs. Smetski just laughed and said, "You know I get sick in the back seat," and that was that. And when Ruth tried to engage them in conversation, Professor Smetski was the only one who seemed to be paying attention, and not very much at that. Mrs. Smetski just looked at the scenery. Trees were trees. Ruth knew that Mrs. Smetski was looking at them just so she didn't have to talk to Ruth.
Ivan, we have to have a talk. Your parents don't like me, or at least your mother doesn't, and that's a problem. Then he would kiss her and reassure her that it would never be a problem, Mom likes you just fine, yadda yadda.
Maybe the whole thing was a mistake. Maybe Mrs. Smetski was right, Ivan was charming, smart, fascinating with his sultry foreignness, that fragility hidden within the muscular, lithe runner's body, the sensitive eyes in a sculpted face. But charm, intelligence, and good looks, did they add up to love? As Ruth's own mother kept saying, What kind of boy is it asks a girl to marry him, then he runs off to Russia for long enough to get a girl pregnant and watch it be born before he comes home to his fiancée?
She didn't even want to think about that. Ivan wasn't that kind of boy, damn his shyness. It was so embarrassing to tell the girls at college that no, they hadn't slept together, Ivan believed in waiting—the whooping and laughing! "He's gay," they all said at once, and when she assured them that she had ample reason to believe that he was not, they treated her like she was in love with a cripple. "Did he have a childhood injury?" one of them asked, and then it became a joke. Ruth's fiancé's tragic childhood injury. They kept thinking up some new malady to explain his lack of sexual drive. "He has elephantiasis of the testicles"—that was a favorite—"his balls weigh thirty pounds each." Or "he was just one of those kids who slides down every banister, even the ones with those cruel little spikes every few feet." Or "his parents left him alone with the cat and without a diaper, and you know how cats are when they find something to play with."