Emily Rubin - Stalina

Mr. Suri finally agreed to my idea.

“I’ll let you do two rooms, and then we’ll see. Don’t touch my heart-shaped tub.”

He was very fond of this red tub.

“My first room will be called ‘Gazebo in a Rainstorm,’” I announced.

“I like gazebos,” he replied.

I had seen a gazebo in a magazine called House and Garden . I get much of my inspiration for my room designs from the pictures in American magazines. Good Housekeeping , Travel and Leisure , Women’s Day .

Then he surprised me by saying, “Since Mara has been helping with the cleaning, I want you to take a shift at the front desk.”

Usually Mr. Suri or his brother managed that part of the business because of the money. The motel operates twenty-four hours a day. The customers’ visits must be timed correctly, and everyone gets a fifteen-minute warning from the front desk phone. I felt moved by Mr. Suri’s trust and confidence. In addition to my respect for Mr. Suri—you could say my affection—I was glad to be a part of making his business successful. The business of business interests me very much. I might be older than Mr. Suri by a number of years, but I could still swing my hips and offer compliments to his nature when it helped to make our business run smoothly. Russian women know how to get what they want: no distractions, no destruction.

“I’d like you to do the morning shift. Garson has agreed.”

“Eight a.m. to…?”

“Just till four p.m. My brother and I will split the evening and overnight shifts.”

“I can work on my room designs while I’m at the front desk.”

“As long as you keep everything straight.”

“Yes sir. At your service, Mr. Suri.”

It made him uncomfortable when I called him sir, but he smiled and offered me the seat at the front desk in the office. It felt as if I were receiving an important award.

“I have to go to Hartford to get a permit for the septic system,” he informed me.

He winked at me as he turned to go outside.

“Room five has twenty minutes left. They’ll need a warning soon,” he added.

The March wind blew across the driveway and into the pine trees as he drove away in his large, gold Delta ’88. I tidied up the front desk and then made my call to room number five. The phone rang four times.

“Hmm, huh?” a female voice responded.

“Fifteen minutes,” I answered.

There was no further discussion. We hung up simultaneously. I embraced my new assignment with the fervor of a flag bearer at a May Day parade in Moscow.

Two weeks later, I unveiled room number one, “Gazebo in a Rainstorm,” to Mr. Suri. He was very impressed. Room number two had become the “Roller Coaster Fun Park.” There had been much activity at the motel and much gossip up and down Windsor Avenue about these rooms. The other motels were feeling the competition and had started to add their own attractions. The Flamingo’s sign read “Sun Lamps in Every Room,” the Windsor Castle added “Feel Like Royalty in Our Rooms,” and the Route Five Pay and Stay advertised “Lunch Hour Specials.”

Capitalism was exciting, even with its flaws. To be positioned on top was a complicated goal for a Russian soul. I understood better now my childhood friend, Nadia, who was singular in her desire to compete and succeed above all her peers. She had a passion to possess and control in the face of any obstacle. When we were children she was always judging, comparing, and pushing us out of the way. She always wanted to seem superior and boasted about everything. I would always try to counter her attempts to make us feel inferior. Whether we were ten, twelve, or twenty, it was always pretty much the same. Here is a typical conversation, word for word.

“My father makes more money than your father.”

“Yes, Nadia, he does,” I said. Her father was a baker and a well-paid informant for the NKVD.

“My house has more windows than yours.”

“Big deal. More cleaning for your mother.”

“My hair is straighter and shinier than yours,” she would say, flipping her long, straight, blond hair behind her shoulders.

“I like the wave in my hair,” I replied.

“I have a sister.”

“I have pity for her.”

“My dog is more obedient than yours.”

Making a judgment about my dog made me angry. Her miniature poodle, Trala, with the matted white hair and leaky pink eyes, may have been more cooperative than my strong-willed terrier, Pepe, but her dog was showy and obnoxious, just like her. My parents made me put up with Nadia and her dog.

“She lives right next door, she is smart, has good manners, and her family is well connected,” my mother would say.

She was well mannered in front of the adults, but she treated her friends like servants. No wonder my dog Pepe bit her. Soon after that incident, when Nadia and I were seventeen, both Pepe and my father were gone.

Pepe had been gone for a month the day my father disappeared.

My mother lied. “They needed soldiers to fight the fascists. Your father agreed to go.”

“When will he return?”

I asked the same question about Pepe. My mother’s answer about dog and father was to light a cigarette.

Amalia later told me the truth.

“Your mother has no idea what he was arrested for, so she made up the fighting fascists story. There are no fascists to fight—we beat them all in the war,” she said while we played cards.

“It’s not a story. My father is a soldier,” I responded.

“Your father is a writer.”

“So?”

“Writers are the worst, and on top of that your father wears that ridiculous hat,” she said, making a face and pulling her hands down over her ears.

My father wore a tight-fitting blue beret. He used to say it kept out the lies of his neighbors.

Amalia added, “And besides that silly hat, your dog bit Nadia.”

“My father punished Pepe,” I said, holding four aces, a jack, and a queen and king of hearts in my hand. “Amalia, I don’t think you shuffled these cards very well.”

“When was the last time your father published anything?”

“When he returns, he will write about the fighting,” I said, holding the photograph of my father in my hand along with my playing cards.

“You’re a duckling head,” Amalia said and sneered from behind her cards.

“Don’t call me names. Gin!” I said and put my cards down.

“Did you hear Nadia’s dog Trala disappeared?” she said, turning the photograph of my father around to face her and tapping it with her finger.

“Who cares?” I said. “She and her dog can go to hell.”

“Nice shovel he has there,” she said, holding the photograph close to her face. “I did not know your father was a gardener. Your deal.”

Life was so different at the Liberty Motel. I’ll now take a moment to describe the décor of my room designs. With these “Rooms for the Imaginative” I hoped to bring happiness to our small part of the world here in Berlin, Connecticut, a little bit of green (and yes, concrete), easy to get to from all the converging highways that feed into the city of Hartford. Berlin was like a young sibling in a struggling family—the town waited for the castoffs from big brother Hartford. Everything in the town from the road signs to the picket fences around the tiny front yards looked tired and worn.

Upon entering room number one, you encountered a bed on a raised platform with a six-sided gazebo built around it. I called it the “bed-zebo.” It had green ivy around the posts at the sides of the platform and thin strips of clear plastic attached to each of the six sides. With the air moving from the ceiling fan, the Mylar fluttered and gave the feeling of rain falling. Getting trapped in a gazebo during bad weather is very stimulating. Movies and novels are filled with such moments. Who wouldn’t want it? I decorated the roof of the bed with wood shingles, but it was what you saw upon looking up from the bed that made this a very popular room. There were six triangular mirrors fitted into the top turrets in the roof. The reflections broke into six different views from anywhere in the bed. Even though I had only been in the bed alone, I still found the angles and broken views quite stimulating. The sides of the bed and the platform were covered with green plastic grass. It was the same stuff like the mat outside Rosalinda’s fortune-telling salon. I put up a wallpaper trim that shows a woman in Victorian dress entering a gazebo. After the trim was in place, the room was complete. Total cost, sixty-three dollars and fifty-three cents.