Lydia Fitzpatrick - Lights All Night Long

“Of course. Another time,” Ilya said. He and his mother and Babushka had never been to the pizza place before, but it seemed suddenly possible that they might go there again, that after America, eating out on the square might become a regular thing.

“Congratulations are in order,” Dmitri said, and there was this tiny snag to his voice as he said, “Congratulations,” and Ilya wondered whether Maria Mikhailovna had told him about the boards.

“Spasibo,” Ilya said, and then Dmitri ducked into the restaurant and beckoned to a waiter.

When he came back out, he kissed Maria Mikhailovna on the top of her head. “I ordered the ladies a bottle of wine. Surely they’ve earned it,” and again Ilya wondered if Dmitri meant something else by what he was saying, but Maria Mikhailovna smiled at him and said, “They have.”

Behind them, Gabe Thompson coughed—a terrible sound—and when they turned to look at him, he said, “Fuck off.”

Maria Mikhailovna looked at Dmitri, and Ilya did too, expecting the same anger he’d seen in him the night he’d chased Vladimir in the car, but Dmitri just said, “I’m off duty tonight, myshka,” in this tired voice. And then to Ilya, “Even the Americans have their problems. Remember that,” and he led Maria Mikhailovna away.

His mother and Babushka were thrilled with the wine, and with each glass his mother alternated between saying that she’d never, ever imagined this and that she’d known all along that Ilya would succeed—from the moment she’d first held him, his head huge, his eyes alert to the whole world—that through hard work he would create great opportunity. Babushka was adamant that Jesus was involved, and she swore over and over that Jesus would be thanked like he had never been thanked before.

Ilya winced when the waitress brought the bill. Just the pizza cost what his mother made in a week, and she’d gotten them all hot chocolate too. His mother saw his face and said, “Don’t worry, golubchik, there will be only three mouths to feed soon.”

Two, Ilya thought, and normally his mother and Babushka would have thought the same thing, all of them acknowledging Vladimir in a beat of silence, but they were too happy or too drunk to think of Vladimir that night.

“Unless Timofey Denisovich moves in,” his mother said.

“Please,” Babushka said, blushing. “That old fart.”

“More like old flirt,” his mother said.

By the time they left it was close to eleven, and the borrowed Lada wouldn’t start. It was sixteen below freezing, and the battery had gotten too cold. Ilya’s mother tried, and then Babushka tried, though she hadn’t driven in a decade. Their neighbor kept hot water bottles in the glovebox for just this situation, and they brought them into the restaurant and begged the waiter to fill them, and then they wrapped them around the battery the way Babushka wrapped them around her knees at night. When the water cooled, they filled them again. Once, twice, and the waiter began to charge for the hot water. On the third try, the ignition sparked, and his mother ground the gas pedal to the floor, and the car groaned to life. His mother and Babushka cheered and the sound of them filled the square, which was empty and bright. Even Gabe Thompson had found somewhere warmer to be.

On Friday morning, they parked Sadie’s car at the Walmart near Leffie High and piled into J.T.’s truck, which was not as inconspicuous as Ilya would have liked, with the matte black paint job, the enormous tires, and the flame decal that sprouted from the grille and licked at the windshield. As they sped north, sugarcane fields filled the windows, electric green in the sun, and they went over the details: Ilya would be the one to knock on Gabe’s door. He’d have the tape recorder running inside his duffel, and he’d have Sadie’s cell on him so that he could call J.T. or the police if worse came to worst.

They all went quiet at this last statement. The asphalt unspooled ahead of them, gray and smooth. Roads like this were rare in Russia, and its very perfectness seemed to convey a sort of expectancy, as though it had been waiting here, in the middle of nowhere, to carry him from past to future. It was a ridiculous thought, Ilya knew, sprung from a hope that he’d let grow too large, and as a way to reduce his hope, to turn it into something useful, he reminded himself of all the ways this might go wrong: Gabe’s parents might not let Ilya see him. Gabe might admit nothing, might show nothing. He might slam the door in Ilya’s face.

Up ahead one of the fields was burning. Smoke ribboned up from the rows of cane, giving the air the taste of burnt sugar. Ilya had succeeded in making his hope smaller; it was a tight knot between his lungs, something he could almost ignore. They passed a sign, and Ilya read the letters, which would have seemed an incomprehensible combination except that he’d teased out the tangle of their syllables the day before when they’d planned their route.

MISSISSIPPI, it said, WELCOMES YOU!

They drove all day and into the night. J.T. and Sadie took turns behind the wheel and napping in the truck’s tiny backseat. At five a.m., on a highway skirting Pittsburgh, under a blur of fluorescent signs, Sadie took a hand off the wheel and reached for Ilya’s.

“Are you scared?” she said.

He nodded. J.T. was snoring lightly in the backseat, and Ilya lay down with his head on Sadie’s thigh. He could see the point of her chin and that delicate triangle of skin that bridged her jawbones and that quivered each time she breathed. She put a hand on his cheek, then on his forehead the way Babushka did to check for fever, and he felt safe just as he had with Babushka, as though his existence was simple, was reduced to the spot where their skin was touching.

The sun, bright on his face, woke him. They were at yet another Walmart, identical in every way to the one in Leffie. J.T. was standing in the parking lot smoking. Sadie sipped at an enormous coffee.

“We already drove by. It’s just a couple blocks away,” she said. “And they’re home.”

Gabe’s parents’ house looked like a poor man’s dacha: dark-stained wood with blue trim, a tiny screened porch, and a vegetable garden surrounded by more wire than a camp. There was a loved, labored-over feel to the place—in the potted herbs that lined the steps, in the rocking chair on the porch, which had been painted to match the trim. There was a truck in the driveway and from somewhere inside Ilya could hear the churn of a washing machine.

As Ilya climbed the steps to the front door, he turned and looked at J.T. and Sadie, who were parked on the other side of the street. The duffel was on Ilya’s back, the tape player inside, already recording. Sadie lifted a hand and J.T. nodded, and Ilya pressed the doorbell.

For a second the sounds inside did not change, and then he heard Frank’s voice, just as it had sounded on the phone, say “If it’s that lady again, I’m going to—”

“Just let me get it,” Ida said. She was whispering, but they were somewhere close to the door, or the walls of the little house were thin enough that Ilya could hear every word. “I don’t know why you get so worked up about it. She just wants to see how he is.”

“She wants to gawk is what she wants,” Frank said, and scared as he was, Ilya was comforted by the ordinariness of their bickering. There was the clatter of one plate against another, and then brisk footsteps, and then the door was open.

Ida had a resolute smile in place for whatever lady she’d been expecting. It stayed there, evolutionary baggage, for the second it took her to examine him, then it was replaced by an expression of gentle skepticism, as though she knew he was here for no good reason, but she hoped that he might prove her wrong.