Gary Shteyngart - The Russian Debutante's Handbook

“Mothers,” Vladimir said, shaking his head. He reached over to zip up Morgan’s jacket against the gathering wind.

“Thanks,” Morgan said. “So the shrink would ask me: was I depressed about anything? Was I worried about grades? Was I pre-law? Was I knocked up? And, of course, it was nothing like that… I was just this good kid.”

“Hmm.” Vladimir was vaguely paying attention now. “What do you think it was?” he asked.

“Well, he told me, basically, that the panic attacks were sort of a cover-up. That what I really felt was this incredible anger and that the panic attacks just prevented me from really lashing out. They were like a warning sign, and if I didn’t have them I would do something inappropriate. Maybe, like, vindictive.”

“But that’s not you at all!” Vladimir said. He was genuinely confused now. “What the hell could you have been lashing out at? Look, I don’t know much about the mind, but I know what modernity teaches us: whenever there is some kind of trouble, the parents are usually to blame. But in your case, the mama and the papa sound like perfectly reasonable people.” Yes, from what she told him, they lived in a split-level house on South Woodland Boulevard where they raised Morgan and two other Midwestern children besides.

“They sound pretty all right to me too,” Morgan said. “They only really pressured the boys in the family, even though I was the oldest.”

“Aha!” Vladimir said. “And your other brother, is he also hiding out in Belize?”

“He’s at Indiana. A marketing major.”

“Perfect, then! There’s absolutely no kind of pattern we can discern here.” Vladimir sighed happily. He was getting a little panicky himself. If there was something wrong with Morgan, what hope was there for a Soviet Jew–child like Vladimir Girshkin? She might as well have been saying that Tolstoy was wrong, that all happy families were not alike. “Now, Morgan,” he said, “these panic attacks, would you say they’ve gotten better recently or worse?”

“Actually, I haven’t had any since I came to Prava.”

“I see… I see…” Vladimir clasped his hands together in the manner of Dr. Girshkin contemplating an inquiry from the Department of Health & Human Services. This was a difficult moment in its own right, although it was hard to say why. They were just talking. Two expatriate lovers. No pressure.

“So now let us recall what your psychiatrist said…” Vladimir pressed on. “He said your little panic attacks were some kind of cover-up, that they prevented you from, I believe you said, ‘lashing out.’ Tell me, since you arrived in Prava, have you been doing anything, hmm, to borrow your words, ‘inappropriate’ or ‘vindictive?’”

Morgan thought about it. She looked out over the mythic skyline of the city and then looked to the bare earth. Another of her silent moments, it seemed, was upon them. She was playing with the zipper of her jacket, reminding Vladimir of the Russian word for zipper, molnya, which also meant “lightning.” A pretty word. “Have you been lashing out?” Vladimir prompted her again.

“No,” she said finally. “No, I haven’t.” Suddenly, she embraced him, and brushing against his prickly cheek he felt the familiar dime-sized hollow at the tip of her chin, an indentation that Vladimir had somehow perceived as being inherently sexual, but now considered a telling imperfection, a little pothole he could smooth over with his love and analytical bearing.

“There you go, sugar cane,” he said, kissing the giant dimple. “So what we’ve learned today is that your psychiatrist—probably second-rate, anyway; I mean, no offense, but what kind of shrink practices in Ohio? —yes, we’ve learned today that your shrink was completely wrong about everything. The panic attacks did not bottle your anger, did not prevent you from acting irrationally, else how to explain their sudden disappearance here in Prava? Perhaps, if I may infer, what you needed was some fresh air, so to speak, some time away from the family hearth, the alma mater, and—would it be too presumptuous to suggest?—a new love affair? Am I right? Eh? Am I? Of course, I’m right.”

He shook all over with the manic feeling of being right. He threw his hands up in the air, hallelujah-style. “Well, thank God for that!” he said. “Thank God! So now we will go celebrate your complete recovery at the Stolovan Wine Archive. Yes, the Blue Room, of course. No, people like us do not need reservations… What a thought! Come on!” He grabbed her arm and started dragging her down Repin Hill where Jan was waiting with the car.

She seemed reluctant at first, as if the transition from amateur psychology to a night getting horribly drunk at the Wine Archive was somehow inappropriate. But Vladimir could think of nothing he wanted to do more. A drink or two! Enough of this talking. Panic attacks. Lashing out. The mind was sovereign. Faced with the most horrible circumstances, it could say: No! I’m in charge here! And what were the horrible circumstances in Morgan’s case? A young woman’s unease at the prospect of graduating from university? A mother’s loneliness for her daughter? A father who wanted the best for his boys? Ach, Americans were too keen to invent their own troubles. To paraphrase an old Russian expression, they were wild with their own fat.

Yes, it was rather disgusting. All through the ride to the Wine Archive, Vladimir was developing a distinct sense of anger toward Morgan. How could she do this to him? He remembered the tent in the forest as if it had happened half a century ago. Normalcy. Arousal. Affection. That was her implicit promise to him. And now this unsettling talk, and now she wasn’t letting Vladimir move into her apartment. Well, screw her. Normalcy was on its way. The familiar plush, almost pneumatic banquettes of the Wine Archive would soon be sighing meaningfully under his ass. Grant Green would be strumming along on the stereo. A bottle of port would be brought over by some ponytailed Stolovan. Vladimir would give Morgan a nice brief lecture on how much he loved her. They would go home and sleep together, drunk impotent sex having a charm all its own. It was settled.

But Morgan wasn’t through with him yet.

THE STOLOVAN WINEarchive was found right by the Foot, in the shadows of the so-called Big Toe. The Toe was the site of daily protests by angry babushka s brandishing portraits of Stalin and jerry cans of gasoline, threatening to immolate themselves on the spot if anyone ever tried to knock down the Foot or cancel their beloved Mexican soap opera, The Rich Also Cry.

Nu, as far as Vladimir was concerned, the country’s senior citizens needed to keep busy, and their discipline and dedication were kind of cute. The self-proclaimed Guardians of the Foot were divided into several divisions. The feistiest grandmas were out in front, waving their high-concept placards (“Zionism = Onanism = AIDS”) at the patrons of the Stolovan Wine Archive and the local Hugo Boss outlet, the two institutions that ironically thrived astride the Big Toe. Looking at the babushka s’ jowly red faces and subtracting some slack and residual anger, one could almost see them as brownnosing young pioneers back in the forties, plying their teachers with potato dumplings and copies of working-class president Jan Zhopka’s love poems, Comrade Jan Looks at the Moon. Oh, where did the years go, ladies? How did it come to this?

Behind these chanting grandmas, a lesser cadre was assigned the task of caring for the dachshunds of the agitators, and these grannies also performed admirably, spoiling the tiny agit-pups with bottled spring water and bowls of the choicest innards. Finally, in the third and last rank, the artistic babushka s were building a giant papier-mâché doll of Margaret Thatcher, which they burned voraciously each Sunday while howling the former Stolovan national anthem, “Our Locomotive Hurtles Forward, Forward into the Future.”