Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

Their first American vacation, and its chief discovery wasn’t where they went but where they returned. Brooklyn took them back. They hadn’t the strength to wish for anything else.

SPUTTERING DOWN BEDFORD AVENUE was a giant rusty green automobile. Marina clutched the steering wheel, the tip of her nose almost grazing the windshield. She was of the belief that one must change lanes — if one didn’t, one wasn’t really driving. Her tendency was to choose an inauspicious moment. She chose not entirely at random — a lane change went into effect once every fifteen minutes or on an in-breath, whichever came first. Before attempting the maneuver, an inner voice started up: Just do it, show those other cars, Go Go Go, you’re the big Green Cow, why not now, the big Green Cow, OK now, Yes now, Go Go Go!

Marina tended to get things she didn’t deserve, a driver’s license being no exception. The midnight before her exam, their friend Yuri, a doctor who lived with his perfect family in a three-story house on lordly Manhattan Beach, administered Marina’s first driving lesson, which had to be cut short because of uncontrollable laughter (his). During parking practice he said, No more, you’ll kill me, I’m going to have a heart attack. He shared a parallel-parking technique for idiots who knew how to waltz, and said, Good luck, you need it. Six hours later Marina was in the driver’s seat a second time. Initially she suspected that her DMV examiner was drunk. But no, she was just hysterical — her mother had taken a turn for the worse in Coney Island Hospital, where the examiner was going right after Marina did her thing. Mothers and hospitals happened to be two topics in which Marina was a genius conversationalist. She forgot the turn signal and straddled the curb while waltzing, but the license was hers, like a key into a house of horrors. (Just learn to drive before you hit the highway, her examiner advised.)

When honks or ugly gestures were insufficient, people lowered their windows to better transmit obscenities. Marina lowered hers to better receive them. A car that would’ve drawn a groan of longing from Levik went out of its way to draw level, and behind the triptych of glass was a man possessed. She slammed down the brakes — and with what mad speed the chiding party scrammed. After outwitting her attacker, she was blasted by a fury of honks. But by then she was impervious. Cars quickly sensed when their aggression would go unappreciated.

Marina, admittedly, had her own aggression to release. Not only did she have to go to work on this gorgeous Saturday afternoon while the rest of humanity enjoyed its slice of paradise on earth, and not only was this the absolute worst of her countless jobs (as it was the one she was going to at the moment), but afterward she had to drive to the Upper West Side to fetch Pasha from his party. His party! Those were Esther’s last-minute orders: Deliver our precious boy home safely. If fully sober, he went to the edge of the Bronx; after a few drinks, he’d end up in a dumpster on Staten Island. Of course, Marina had replied, I’ll pick up my dear brother. But that dear brother hadn’t even told her that his plans included a party, not to mention invited her. She wouldn’t have gone, but did it hurt to ask?

Merging into the right lane before her exit, all she got was a measly middle finger, which had about as much effect as a blown kiss or a catcall — the juvenile methods of American men. The frequency with which these methods were applied to her was an absurdity of daily life. Though it wasn’t really an absurdity if you looked around. Women left home in unfitted pants, wrinkled jackets, and the ultimate ignominy: sneakers. It didn’t have to be a stiletto, but anything less than two inches was indecent! Of course she’d been prepared for the sorry state of the American female; the stereotype had spread across the globe. The surprise was that her friends — Lyuba, Vera, Irina — hadn’t wasted any time. Their physical assimilation had been total. In the few years Marina hadn’t seen them, they’d lost their waistlines, cropped their hair to ear length, and fully converted to the religion of comfort, wearing trousers that could fit a diaper inside and the modern equivalent of bast shoes. They’d all been equally brusque with themselves, as if one day they all shook hands on their resignation and since then held monthly evaluations. Marina made a promise not to succumb. She smoked twice as hard and pretended to dislike the taste of French fries. A passion for Coca-Cola was impossible to conceal.

She pulled into the cobblestone driveway of a house at which it was best not to look directly so as to avoid being overwhelmed by its dimensions. It was two houses, really, conjoined. Better to take it room by room, which she did every Saturday, though a once-a-week scrub-down hardly kept the place out of the grip of chaos. A concatenation of bolts was unlocked, and the fancy door from the Russian-owned door store swung open.

Oh, said Marina.

It’s me, said Shmulka. Charna fled today.

Shmulka was younger than Marina but had six kids under the age of ten, all boys, all running around the house in formal attire. Isolated locks of hair hung like the strings you pulled in the old country to flush the toilet. Charna, who usually opened the door, was Marina’s age and had her own flock. The patriarchs were brothers. They wouldn’t have hired Marina were she not Jewish, but neither did they consider her Jewish. She considered them the filthiest people she’d ever met in her life. They paid by the hour. Maximal accumulation didn’t take much ingenuity.

Charna’s out? said Marina, eyeing the carpets.

She had to go by the hospital, said Shmulka, relocking bolt twelve.

Everything OK, I hope?

Another tsibele in the bake, it looks like.

Enough! At this point the functionality of Charna’s oven was suspect. The tsibelach she baked in there were deteriorating in quality. The last one looked plain inedible. But what would Charna do without recourse to being out of commission? As a girl she had laughed. She had that look, as if her mind had been blasted by laughter. Her eyes were like neglected goldfish bowls, the water unchanged for months. Surrounding wrinkles were many and deep. The laughter had leaked out for the most part, but occasionally it still shook her. It hadn’t evolved — little girl’s laughter. She was squat, haggard, prematurely aged, and she was always home, whereas her sister-in-law, Shmulka, the size of a pinkie finger, was hot with ideas, always hatching up plans about opera drapes or flowerpots or skirt-length alterations and out attending to them. But here was Shmulka with her round brown eyes gleaming under a heavy, dead wig. Her entire life force battled that wig, which nevertheless remained fastened to her scalp, though not securely; she clawed at it so hard it slid onto her forehead or down one side. Although a shaved head was supposed to be underneath, Shmulka had a full head of thick chestnut curls. The layering probably caused discomfort, but Shmulka wasn’t one for shortcuts.

Though Marina arrived early and left late, the husband-brothers rarely made an appearance. Being tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, they confounded preconceptions. They were like actors playing Hasidic brothers in a Hollywood movie. Marina dreaded their entrance. Only when they were around did she suddenly transform into a cleaning lady. They could step over her abandoned ankle without a glance in the direction of her head. It was hard to maintain illusions around them, though objectively it would seem they were the ones to have strayed from reality.

You need what? said Shmulka.

Marina looked at her, not comprehending.

To go by the closet…

Don’t — I know where is all what I need.