“I love apples,” Mr. Suri said, biting into his again.
“I feel better now,” I said.
“What are you going to do about your mother? In India we cremate and send the ashes on a paper boat into the river.”
“I think the rooming house can organize a cremation. They are very practical about such things in Russia.”
“Will you go?”
“It’s very expensive. Olga can…”
“What about Olga?”
“She can help with the arrangements. She has her own beauty salon not far from the rooming house.”
“Do you think people need to have their hair done for cremations?” he asked and cocked his head. In that moment I saw him as a very young boy. Innocent and curious.
“No, that wouldn’t be very practical. I need to go home, Mr. Suri.”
“Home? So you will go? You stopped crying. I’ll see if I can get someone to cover your shifts.”
“I mean home to Star Lane, not Leningra…I mean Petersburg.”
Even though he was being very patient with me, I could tell he was agitated that the couple in the Gazebo Room had not yet vacated. He was staring at the empty room-key hook.
“I can knock on room one when I go to put Svetlana back in the linen room.”
“Thank you, I was starting to think I would have to call them again.”
He opened the office door, threw his apple core under the pine trees, and said, “That crow eats apples.”
I stood up with the sleeping Svetlana in my arms. She barely stirred. When I stepped outside, her eyes opened wide and she stretched her paws.
Caw! Caw!
The crow had flown down to grab the apple core.
“Svetlana, there’s your adoptive mother.” The cat squirmed in my arms, wanting to get down. “Not now, I’ll let you be with her tomorrow.”
The couple from room one was coming out of the room as I approached the door. They looked slightly shell-shocked, but they managed to smile as we passed each other.
“I hope you liked the room,” I said.
“Very unusual,” the young man said.
“Very stimulating,” the young girl said with a laugh.
I turned around to watch them and saw her grab the back pocket of his dungarees and hold on to it as they walked to the office. A successful experience in the “Gazebo in a Rainstorm” gives me great satisfaction.
It was two o’clock in the morning Leningrad time. The same nurse was probably still doing the night shift at the rooming house. She could tell me what happened when my mother died. I wondered if she traded those bras for something worthwhile. I’d only sold one I brought here, but it was very well received. It was the largest one, 85DD, which translates in American sizes to 45DD. A maid who worked for Amalia’s cleaning agency bought it. She found it particularly sexy.
She told me, “I usually have to wear bras that look like forklifts. Forget about anything sexy or pretty.”
I sold the bra for twenty-five dollars. “What a steal,” she said. “Can you get any more?”
I have to say, in Russia we have a great history of lingerie, going back to the czar’s French mistresses. There were scandals about frilly undergarments, duels, and champagne while the serfs dug carriages out of muddy ditches.
“Here you go, my kitten Svetlana, back to your linens. Mara, are you here?”
“Geez, can’t a girl get a decent nap?” she said, raising her head from between the piles of towels.
“You are going to have to clean the Gazebo Room soon. The couple just left. Your uncle has not called you yet?”
“No, but I expect he’ll be sending me a smoke signal soon.”
The crackling of the intercom started, and Mr. Suri’s voice came over sounding like a soldier reporting from a wartime trench.
“MARcrrrrA! crrrr…rooms one…crr and four are…crrr empty!”
“Mr. Suri, it’s Stalina. Mara’s on her way. Will you call me a cab?”
“Crrrr…yes, Stalina, crr…of course…crrr.”
“Thank you. Someday we’ll have a new intercom.”
“Crrrrrrrrrr…”
“Mara…” I started to tell her.
“I’m on my way, comrade.”
“My mother died.”
“Nothing like dropping a bomb in the linen room, Stalina. I’m so sorry.”
“I just found out. I thought you should know.”
“I am sorry.”
“She was old. I’m going home now.”
“To Russia?”
“Star Lane is home now.”
Mara quickly gathered her cleaning supplies and was out the door. Svetlana made a sound like a balloon losing air as she circled into a pile of warm sheets.
Chapter Fifteen: Home
The motel signs flapped in the wind as we drove past. The clouds looked like exhausted soldiers marching across a field going dark. The worn tires of the Mike’s Taxi Service sedan skidded into the wet curves. To keep from sliding across the plastic seat cover, I held onto a strap dangling behind the driver’s seat. With the window open, the rain on my face diluted the salt of my tears. The air tasted like metal. Everything appears to move in slow motion after someone has died—the clouds, the car, and even my tears.
My mother was there, in the corners of the back seat, lingering in the taxi with me. We were often silent together. Standing on a platform waiting for a train, queuing on food lines, or sitting in our apartment watching a shaft of light move across the room. Little or no conversation, just lingering. She was in the shadows somewhere for sure. Even here in Connecticut, USA, I could smell her soft skin and brittle, angel-white hair. Now that she had abandoned her fragile body, ravaged brain, and creaking cot, she was free to roam. Perhaps she had become a rattling cable car on Nevsky Prospekt, or a thornbush in the garden of Anna Akhmatova’s house. Maybe she traveled across the sea and entered the cuckoo clock on Amalia’s kitchen wall so she could disrupt the silence every half hour. My brain in sorrow and slow motion was a very accepting brain, even for reincarnation. When there is time and no time left at the same moment, we linger, shifting our weight from one foot to the other, our soul seeking a way out. There is a superstition in Russia that when there is a lull in the conversation, another policeman has been born. No wonder there is often discomfort in silence.
When my father died, only the people in Kolyma, the labor camp where he was sent, knew. We received a parcel with his ashes and clothes a year later. It must have taken months in the Siberian cold for his body to decompose. On the shirttail of his prison-issue shirt, almost in tatters, I found something scrawled in charcoal. It was this poem: