Alena whined and did not want to go anywhere. She had fallen in love with Vadik from the next class, who always threw a heavy medicine ball at her back during physical education, but never at the other girls. Although there were bruises from the ball on her back, it was still not worth ignoring Vadik.
Kate, the older sister, interrogated Alena, “Vadik! Ha! What was the name of the boy you fell in love with last week? Dima?”
“Cyril. He stuck gum in my hair.”
“But Dima didn’t?”
“Cyril also stuck gum in Dima’s hair.”
Kate twirled a finger at her temple. “Ugh! Such drama! Cyril and Dima stick gum in each other’s hair, and she falls in love with some unfortunate Vadik! That’s it, go pack your backpack!”
Alena took a broom, swept her broken heart away into the dustpan, and started packing.
Finally, the day of departure arrived. Papa took Mama and the kids to the station. Then he was to return, load into the minivan the things that amounted to much more than seven backpacks, and drive for a whole day. However, the train also took a day. So they should turn up in the same place around the same time.
The watchful granny from the second floor unexpectedly went to see them off at the station. Papa and Mama did not want to take her at all and made up a story about broken seatbelts in the third row of seats, but it turned out to be quite difficult to turn her down. In the car, the old woman held Rita on her lap and kissed the top of her head, and Rita turned her head, because the kiss was moist.
“Look! She’s drinking from her brain!” Peter whispered and laughed so wildly that they wanted to send him to the station by subway.
At the station, the old woman kissed all the children, not even excluding Peter, who had to bend down because he was two heads taller. Peter, after being kissed, made scary faces and tried to catch free Wi-Fi at the station.
“I remember when you were still so tiny!” the old woman said, showing with her hand the level of her knee. Then she gave the children a transistor radio with a solar charger. Rita, of course, immediately wanted the radio for herself alone and she lay down on the asphalt right on the platform so that everyone could see how indispensable it was to her.
“It will be shared! And it’s yours too!” Kate said, but Rita wanted it only for herself and kicked.
“Look here! No one is torturing her!” Papa Gavrilov could not refrain from saying.
“Work with the child’s character, work! Explain to her!” the watchful granny said, but in a rather weak voice.
The train started moving and the watchful granny waved to them. “Kate, Alex, Rita, Costa, Vicky, Alena, Peter! Goodbye! Write me! I don’t even know your address!” she shouted.
Mama was astonished. She had not even suspected that the watchful granny knew all their children by name. The train pulled away, and it was visible from the window that the neighbour was walking along the platform and wiping her eyes.
“You know, but she’s kind of good! How come we didn’t notice this before?” Mama said uncertainly.
“We can go back! It’s not too late to jump off the train!” Vicky proposed.
“No! We won’t go back!” Mama hastily replied. “But now that I know she’s good, my heart will be lighter!”
Vicky chuckled and sat down to read The Headless Horseman,[3] in which there were often horses.
Chapter Three
No. 6 Vine Street
While a frog is sloshing around, it will not drown.
Before leaving, Papa walked around the minivan and rocked it, checking if it had been loaded evenly and would not lean to one side. The minivan was loaded up like a mule. Boxes and things filled it from floor to ceiling, even with the seats down.
“Poor thing!” Papa said, feeling sorry for his minivan.
The Gavrilovs’ minivan was Japanese, right-handed drive. Once, a young Alena washed it with a brick, scraping away the dirt, and then a year later the already grown Alex thoughtfully tapped it with a hammer on all sides, knocking down the ice in the winter, and covered the minivan with pockmarks. Papa sometimes thought whether it would be good to exchange the old minivan for a new one, but who is to say that they would not wash the new one with a brick, and the old one, though looking like a wild shed and more than 10 years old, was actually quite lively.
By the example of his own minivan, Papa learned to identify minivans with many children. To do this it was necessary to go to any busy intersection on Sunday mornings, when services got under way in the churches in the city centre, and see which minivan was bouncing and swaying, waiting for the green light. There turned out to be quite a lot of them.
Papa spent the day behind the wheel, listening to a good audio book and making an effort to drive faster, but all the same, because of having to load the boxes, was an hour late. Mama and the children were standing at the station, not knowing what to do, and their backpacks, boxes, and suitcases were lying in a small mound near them. Rita, whom Mama was holding so that she would not fall down, was jumping on top of said mound. However, it goes without saying, Rita was certain that she would not fall and pulled her hand away, but when Mama let go of her, Rita immediately tumbled. Papa barely managed to catch her.
“It was a quiet horror!” Mama complained. “We terrorized the entire car! Rita was running all the time, Costa didn’t want to sleep on the same berth with Alex, pushing him off with his feet, and Vicky didn’t want to take him!”
“You sleep with Costa, you wake up in a puddle! He’ll then say that he dreamt of the potty again,” Vicky explained.
“Not true!” Costa wailed.
“…and our rats slipped away!” Mama added, changing the subject.
“Yes, yes, yes! Even Schwartz!” Kate shouted. “They ran around the car! And what do you think? All the men were afraid of rats, one even jumped onto a second berth, but the women picked them up!”
“That’s because women aren’t afraid of rats but of mice! And when it’s advantageous for them!” Peter said.
“And where’re the rats now?” Papa asked, hoping that they had escaped and that would be the end of it.
“In the cage, of course! They later returned!” Kate said and looked in her backpack to check whether the rats had slipped away again.
Then everyone piled into the minivan, managing to find a seat on top of things, and Papa proceeded to show them the house. He was very proud of himself and wanted everything to be great.
“Soon you’ll see! Soon!” he repeated constantly, but the promised “soon” for some reason did not come.
They drove along the waterfront six times and crossed the tram tracks ten times, but did not find the figure 8 street. The next time along the waterfront, the children staged a mutiny. They wanted to swim, but Mama did not remember which box their swimsuits were in. And she doubted that the water had warmed up. The beaches were still quite empty.
Mama started to look at Papa with some doubt. “At least the right city?” she asked guardedly. “Do you remember the street name?”
“No. 6 Vine Street!” Papa blurted out.
“Well, so ask someone!”
Papa refused to ask out of principle. He already considered himself a local, and locals do not ask for directions. “I know how to walk from the station! But I walked through courtyards, you can’t drive through that way!”
“So, let’s leave the van and walk!” Mama, who was impatient to see the house, demanded.
“No, that’s stupid! We may lose the van and all the things! Now I remember, it’s here!” Papa became obstinate and, turning resolutely, drove into a dead end, which was complete with a wall of green shrubs. Papa started to make a U-turn, which was not easy, because boxes and his kin lying horizontally blocked up the whole rear window and the street was almost as wide as their car. Papa backed up, then drove forward and unexpectedly cut into a solid wall of green shrubs.
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