“You didn’t come last night,” she said. “Why not? Not in the mood?”
Not in the mood for you, he thought.
“Answer me,” she said.
He pushed his plate away, having no taste for tomato soup from a tin, white bread like air, a casserole crammed with noodles but no meat. He wanted homemade cabbage soup with dense, dark bread, potato pudding with sour cream. He wanted food that took time, love and skill. He wanted food from home. He did not care for insubstantial Canadian fare.
“I no like.”
“Oh, you no like,” she said, her tone sarcastic.
He did not like her mocking him. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, exhaled. He took his time. Tapping his cigarette on the ashtray’s edge, he waited a little longer.
“No like you so much anymore.”
Her complexion mottled like red clouds of blood released into water.
“Well, you can just go to hell! You can get the hell out of my house, too, if you don’t like what’s on offer.”
It would be on offer to someone else soon, he thought.
“OK. I stay. If Dobilas and Maryte stay.”
“You’ve got very high opinion of yourself. You think you can just come here and do what you want.”
Maybe yes, maybe no. In Lithuania he’d been studying to be a forester. Here he worked in a rubber factory making red white and blue striped balls for children. He would not be a factory worker forever. A better life lay just ahead. And women were much the same everywhere.
“You people,” she said. “You stick together.”
Yes we do, Steponas thought. We stick together. And for good reason.
“I know what’s happened. Maryte’s become your floozy.”
Steponas leapt up from his chair, sending it scraping backwards.
“You be careful.”
“You don’t scare me,” she said, glaring up at him. “You’re all the same. Dirty foreigners.”
He almost hit her, this Canadian woman who understood nothing. No soldiers with bayonets would ever enter her kitchen, giving her twenty minutes to prepare for a journey to Siberia. She would never have to beg permission to take a quilt. She would never be pushed roughly out. Living in a country that would never be invaded, she would never be forced to leave.
“You have everything,” he said, meaning not just the house but freedom, prosperity and safety. “Why so mean?”
“Not everything,” she said, reaching for his hand.
“Bah!” he said, jerking his hand away.
“Wait. I didn’t mean it. I take it back.”
Steponas waited.
“I’m sorry. Don’t go.”
Steponas continued waiting.
“Stay. Please.”
Steponas waited a little more.
“Maryte and Dobilas can stay, too.”
He grunted, refusing to look at her. Satisfying though her concession was, he would never stay now. Dirty foreigner. He would never forgive or forget. And leaving the landlady’s kitchen, he went back upstairs to Maryte.
When he told Maryte the story, she looked as if she might throw her arms around his neck. Stepping out of reach of her desperation, he removed himself from the possibility of embrace. He did not like having to disengage himself. He did not like to unlatch their arms. He always travelled alone.
Where will you go?” she said, her heart sinking. Dobilas sat cross-legged on the bed, pulling at the knobbly fringe on the white chenille bedspread. Where could she hide her brother from a once-friendly woman who had just lost her lover?
“California,” he said, squinting off into the distance.
California, a faraway magical place. California, the land of palm trees, sunshine and oranges. Amerika, even better than Canada. It beckoned on the horizon, an even better life.
“Why so far?” she said.
Because dreams live in the distance, he wanted to say. Shaking his head, he tried to dislodge this strange thought that had come out of nowhere and didn’t seem to be his.
“Fresh adventures,’ he said with a slight smile.
Maryte wondered if he meant new women, a new country, or a new life. One day he would have to stop running. He would have to turn around and look back. You will have to face what you have left, she wanted to tell him. To live with it, as we all do.
Suddenly, she wanted to fling her arms around his neck, asking him to take her with him. Cooking and cleaning, she would take care of Dobilas and him. Please don’t leave me, she wanted to say. But they couldn’t keep running. Nor could Steponas run forever.
She took his hand and wished him well. She asked him to say goodbye before he left. He nodded, knowing that he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Nor could he explain why.
He returned to a room in which he only slept, in a house in which he only ate and had sex. Covering the short distance from Maryte’s door to his own, he heard ghosts padding behind him. He slipped into his room.. They slipped in behind him. Standing before him, they watched and waited.
His mother, long dead.
His father, probably dead now, too.
And Agate, his old nurse.
She had taken care of him after his mother died, tending him with an old woman’s care. Wrinkled and toothless in a headscarf, she’d offered him shimmering spoonfuls of black-red cherries. He’d taken them into his mouth. He’d closed his eyes and swallowed. And leaving his homeland, driving the horse and wagon to the train station, he’d let her come along.
Take me with you, she had said, placing her wizened arms around his neck.
Take the wagon. Go back, he had said, unlatching her hold.
He sat on the edge of his bed, his face in his hands. Crying without crying, he remembered his nurse, his mother and his country. He cried silently to himself. He cried hoping to be forgiven. He cried wishing to return so that ache in his heart would cease but, until then, to forget.
Maryte helped Dobilas dress for church in the early quiet of Sunday morning. Standing before him, doing up the buttons of his green plaid shirt, she pushed them through the tight holes. Now is the time to tell him, she thought as he looked down, watching the working of her fingers. And chucking him under the chin, she moved the fringe of yellow hair out of his eyes.
“You need a trim,” she said.
He settled with delight upon the kitchen stool, the tea towel draped over his shoulders, his head bent, his neck offered to her ministrations.
Strong sunshine filled the room with its sticky glory. Silence surrounded them. Steponas and Mrs. Moynahan still slept, he is his bed, she in hers. Their love, if love it had been, was finished. She would have Dobilas forever. He would always be hers, and she his.
“Time to make the beds,” she said, waggling him by the nose then kissing it.
She tucked in the sheets of her double bed while he tidied his cot. Every night they listened to the sounds of one another’s breathing as they fell asleep. Every morning they awoke to one another’s stirring. Are you awake? he would whisper. Mmmm, she would reply in a sleepy murmur. They had never spent a night apart.
“Let’s go to the park first,” she said.
Eager and open-mouthed, he slipped his hand into hers.
They stepped into the sparkling morning light, blinking like lovers emerging after a tryst. Squeezing between shiny cars parked along only one side of the street, a long line running from Dundas to Queen, they crossed to the park. We could be taken for husband and wife, she thought, glancing at the windows of the quiet Sunday morning houses. And though the world pitied her unmarried state, she had a love that lasted forever.