Yelena Akhtiorskaya - Panic in a Suitcase

But then an entire year elapsed, every minute of every day accounted for. There wasn’t a single moment when Marina could shut the door, crawl under the covers, and turn on the reading lamp now colonizing her nightstand. On the lamp she’d decided to splurge. It was nice to treat oneself to a touch of luxury. The lamp gave off a peculiar quality of light, intense and ghostly, but Marina figured she was just too used to crappy fixtures, half-dead bulbs, ancient chandeliers. How could good light not seem peculiar to her? But after a month of being no less shocked each time she flipped the switch, she did a bit of research and realized she’d gotten one of those plant lamps. This was for the best, really, as the plants were dying slow, miserable, inexplicable deaths, and anyway at night she fell asleep, as they say, before she hit the pillow. The plants got a last-wish sort of gift. She stopped attempting to make time in her day to read.

Until a few miraculous occurrences: Robert recovered from his lung surgery and agreed to test-drive a home attendant; Marina’s on-again, off-again lover, Serge, moved to Cincinnati to be near his autistic grandchild; and most important, after an interim period of living at home and working part-time in a doctor’s office, Frida was accepted to medical school in Pennsylvania. They’d failed to get her out of the house for college, though not for lack of trying (John Lamborg was alive and well, still slaving away in the Slavic department at Harvard — and of course he remembered them! How could he forget their generosity, or those delectable cherry dumplings? He looked back fondly on that afternoon but held no sway with the undergraduate admissions board. And he thanked them for the elephant ears, quite unnecessary, much appreciated). Frida had gone to NYU, commuting to class because there was no way in hell they’d also swallow the cost of housing, an arrangement that must’ve suited her fine, since she’d hoped to continue in the same vein after graduation. But sitting at home and weighing options for an eternity wasn’t an option. She had no luck with medical schools in the city and was forced to pack her bags and get out. It was as if Marina found a secret door in the wall and walked into her life: With a snap of the fingers, Frida’s room became hers. This was only fair, as Levik and his flock of laptops inhabited the bedroom, Robert had a claim on both his room and the living room, and the home attendant, a West African lady with whom Robert refused to coexist, camped out in the kitchen, where she kept up constant contact with her alcoholic husband’s hundred-and-one-year-old mother in Nigeria.

There was time — not only to read but to tell her friends about the good book she was currently reading while they waited in line for the new Almodóvar film at the Angelika, to go for a swim at the Y and take a morning stroll to Seagate, to learn how to ride a bicycle and get a manicure from a Chinese boy in a face mask.

But school years end. In the damp, double-digit days of May, Frida’s summer vacation began.

• • •

FRIDA CAME HOME, ready to talk — about the weather, the new shampoo by the tub, the downstairs neighbors, everything, in short, with the exception of her studies. As she saw it, she didn’t owe them a report. They’d gotten their way — she was already going to medical school. Wasn’t that enough? Evidently not — she had to be forthcoming and positive about the experience as well. Misery was impermissible. She couldn’t not like all her classes and not find any of the other students worthy of companionship and not see any benefit to being situated in such proximity to Lake Erie. She’d always wanted to be more in sync with nature. This was her chance. No, simply becoming a doctor wouldn’t cut it; she had to be happy about it, too. This need for a positive outlook was more for their sake than hers. They’d forced her into medical school despite vehement protest. She’d put up admirable resistance, but they’d left no choice, attacking like hyenas at the whiff of her lostness, pouncing on her sense of guilt. Did she not remember that ever since she was eight years old, she’d been saying that she would be a pediatrician? Imagine how disappointed Baba Esther would be. After four scholarship-less years of university, did she really have no idea what she wanted to do with her life? It was a common misconception that time was the answer to anything. Time was never the solution. Besides, if another idea should ever present itself, a medical degree wouldn’t prevent her from pursuing it. The halo of an M.D. over one’s name had never hurt anybody.

The moment Frida gave in, the story was rewritten. They pressured her? Don’t make me laugh! Who could force Frida to do anything? She was completely incorrigible and always did just as she pleased. Had anybody ever heard her say she wanted to be anything but a doctor? Such a story relied on Frida’s doing more than gritting her teeth through the rest of her professional life. At the moment, however, she was prepared to do just that.

Robert was particularly distraught at her merciless restraint. He thought he’d get to polish his rusty jargon, banter in doctorly argot, whip out medical arcana, warn of pesky hospital perils, offer seasoned advice. (Marina was just a nurse after all.) He was riddled by fantasies of a wondrous return to the old days, when Frida sat on Grandpa’s lap as they hatched plans for fantastic science-fair projects that even when compromised by a translation to reality never failed to take first prize at ecstatic ceremonies in junior high school gymnasiums. Frida’s eschewal of any medicine-related topic in long-distance communications had been explainable as typical to Levik’s side of the family’s telephobia. There was no meaty discussion to be had with Frida unless an interface-to-face was established (an internet-aided one, notably, didn’t make the grade, causing her to be even flimsier and flightier than the phone — the more elaborate the technology, the harder to invest concentration). So when she appeared at their doorstep in pimply, ramen-plumped flesh, Robert attacked. What had she learned? Had a specialty been chosen? Waiting for inspiration was futile! Would she be sticking with the pediatrician-like-Grandma line or switching to neurosurgeon-like-Grandpa (a better ring, perhaps)? What about the instructors — did they know what they were talking about of course not! Frida exploded. Get off my back, Ded! I’m on break!

That one subject excluded, there was nothing she didn’t intend to discuss. The latest gossip was particularly welcome — was Brukhmansha’s anorexic daughter still seeing the balding poodle groomer? Had the Marazams finalized their divorce? Did Lera’s daughter get out of rehab, or at least go back into it? Marina found her daughter’s newfound garrulity and excitability disturbing and was adopting shameful habits such as turning the lock quietly when she got home from work, loitering in the locker room of the Y, tiptoeing from bathroom to bedroom, where she exhibited all the signs of someone hiding out, strategies that invariably failed at avoiding an encounter. At least Frida had a particular way of leaning her weight on the door handle, allowing Marina a chance to brace herself.

Frida barged in, forehead glistening, hair rising. She looked as if a cherry pit had gotten lodged in her throat and she was about to commence choking.

The firefighters are here, she said.

Give them my regards, replied Marina, not glancing up from her book (unable to make out a single word).

Frida hurried into the hallway. She was worried about her mother. She suspected that Marina had succumbed to clinical depression. She knew the checklist backward, and the signs were impossible to miss: Marina had virtually stopped cooking (once a fervent pastime), lost her joie de vivre, always claimed to be exhausted yet was never asleep when Frida paid visits (Frida took it as her duty to keep her mother engaged). And now her mother was forgoing a chance to flirt with the firemen — unimaginable that the old Marina would have passed up such an opportunity. Admittedly, the opportunity was lately in abundance. Someone in the building — was it Igor from the fourth floor or crazy Marusya? — had gotten into the habit of reporting fires, and several evenings a week the staircases were scaled by firemen. At the identifiable bustle, doors unlocked, men in slippers and boxer shorts emerged, women in hair rollers and bathrobes, gunky spatulas still in hand. Everyone hoped and prayed for a fire, and it was as if the firefighters themselves were failing to conjure the flame. Interest waned. People gave up going out on the landing.