Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

They burrowed into a corner table under a tiny but very deep TV soundlessly projecting a football match. Lamborg itched for the chance to halt Pasha’s menu inspection if only Pasha showed some sign of noticing the menu or any awareness that such a thing existed. Eventually Lamborg simply caught a moment when Pasha’s gaze drifted and said, Don’t bother with that, I’ll order for us, which he did in proud, overstated Russian that failed to arouse admiration in the waiter with black eyes glued to the TV.

Pasha kept Lamborg from ordering chak-chak, Lamborg’s favorite dessert, and invited him back to the apartment. These were the instructions he’d received. Lamborg didn’t protest — he was a collector of Russian household experiences. He entered the building lobby and began to systematically take note, inspecting the floor tiles, plants, odd ceramic bowls, and how they were all used in equal measure as ashtrays.

Pasha was caught off guard by what he discovered at home. The apartment was clean. The dining table had been transplanted to the living room (Pasha’s foldout cot had disappeared, as had his suitcase) and covered with a celebratory cloth, on top of which stood a city of saucers filled with jams and tiny treats. This was Esther’s fancy china set, only admired from behind the glass door of a cabinet, until now. His family members were scrubbed to a shine and dressed in their finest. Lamborg himself was surprised by the magnitude of the reception. Sweat stains deepened the blue of his shirt, and his lips receded, exposing horsey teeth that didn’t suit his face at all.

Hardly more than our usual Sunday lunch, said Esther, waving away the concern.

Pasha took Marina aside. Number one, what is all this? Number two, I told you we were going out to eat. Number three, whose idea was this?

Not an ounce of gratitude! You’d think we were doing something horrible. If you really want to know, Papa ordered this up. And it’s for Frida as much as for you.

Frida was by then a big girl three months shy of eleven. She had to be impressive when the man from Cambridge came to lunch. Expectations were low. Impressive applied to Frida meant that she wear a dress and sit at the table. No one expected smiles, precocious conversation, grace. She wouldn’t have to use a knife. Even a fork was optional. The man from Cambridge didn’t need to leave with a distinct impression of Frida. Better he did not. When a few years later she would be applying to Harvard, he should be able to remember, upon gentle prodding, that sunny Sunday afternoon, that immaculate lunch, that delightful, generous, expansive family of the poet Pavel Nasmertov, and his niece, who just blended into the background, did nothing jarring or off-putting, was in no way insane, misbehaved, or emotionally corrosive, neither capricious nor foul, and so must have been quiet, reserved, and mature, traits meriting acceptance to America’s most prestigious institution of higher learning. It would be the least John Lamborg could do after a block of black caviar.

But along with a dress, a proper young lady must wear stockings. No two ways about that. Frida’s lumpy, bruised legs, her knees of picked scabs never allowed to heal, couldn’t just stick out of her dress. It was a hot day, and just looking at the shiny, airless material created a frantic itch. Frida whimpered and clawed at her flesh. There was a lot of meat to pack into those sausage casings, and Frida didn’t deal well with constriction. She wore shoes two sizes too large for her feet, confounding the salesladies with their measuring devices. For months she hadn’t allowed a comb near her hair, which grew increasingly lopsided, tangled, lackluster and shaggy, until a bloated white bug stepped out onto the balcony of her forehead. All of it had to be chopped off. It was growing back frizzy and brownish and currently fell just past her ears, her large ears that also seemed to have fought their way out of confinement, to freedom.

After ten too-good-to-be-true minutes at the table, Frida began to fidget. This during the routine immigration narrative they were replaying for their guest, who’d certainly heard a thousand such narratives with a peppering of charming details like how Marina had thought that in America she would work as a professional clairvoyant because around that time Barbra Streisand gave an interview in which she said she never went anywhere without her personal fortune-teller, Tatiana, and the hearsay was that after that all the wealthy women in Manhattan wanted their own Eastern European fortune-tellers, so instead of learning English in the time leading up to their departure, Marina learned to read palms and Turkish-coffee grounds and was embarking on tarot cards and astrological charts. She usually told the story better — Frida’s writhing and squirming distracted.

Lamborg abruptly turned to Frida. What about you, he said, do you like it here?

It was difficult to fathom a more catastrophically off-the-mark question. Here — as opposed to where? If there had been a somewhere else, Frida was currently engaged in an immense struggle to extract every last trace of it from her DNA. The writhing stopped. She looked at the man dead-on from under hooded eyelids. Without uttering a word, without needing to, she made it all too plain just what she thought of him.

She’s timid, said Esther. Needs time to warm to strangers.

Answer the man’s question, said Marina.

It’s OK, said the man, she doesn’t have to.

Actually, she does have to.

Just a very sensitive girl, said Esther. Will become a pediatrician one day, just like Grandma.

Frida rose partially off her chair as if about to charge. But she didn’t — she stayed in what appeared to be a very uncomfortable half-squatting position and lifted her hand, in which something beige was balled up. She flung this ball, which unraveled midflight, at Marina’s face. The stockings didn’t quite reach the face, landing weightlessly across Marina’s plate. Frida glanced nervously at Pasha, as if expecting him to appreciate the act, to laugh perhaps, or also toss some nearby object. When he did neither, his face remaining impassive, his gaze motionless, she ran out of the living room on lumpy, bruised legs.

Anecdotes are good, was Robert’s take. His temperament was conducive to seeing the big picture. Seven years would be sufficient for any residual unpleasantness to wear off. Bitter aftertastes had relatively short half-lives. In six years’ time, when John Lamborg would be reminded of Frida’s stocking fling, you know what he would do? Laugh! Everything falls into perspective. What appears to be a tragedy now will be repackaged as a light anecdote, a bit of color — crumpled stockings in Marina’s plate of glistening caviar. Answer me this, if the encounter had gone smoothly, what reason would there be to remember it?

Of course, there was no guarantee that in six years John Lamborg would even be alive. The man drank a good deal.

Levik had been ordered to pull out the vintage merlot they’d gotten as a welcome — to — the — New World gift from their distant New World relatives (scattered in the mansioned pine forests of New Jersey) and which served, it seemed, as a sort of bribe — we will give you an outrageous bottle of wine the likes of which you’ve never tasted, even though the odds you’re able to discern the notes of vanilla oak and black truffle and hints of plum cassis on the finish are slim, and in exchange you’ll never ask us for anything or expect any sort of relationship or call on the holidays. Levik’s hands shook violently as he uncorked. He was going through the actions as told, but it was taking profound control to tune out the internal hiccup — Don’t, don’t, don’t.

Such a deep nuanced red came out of the tender opening as Levik poured.