Anne Tyler: Vinegar Girl

“Just like the women ,” Kate said reprovingly.

“Yes, they also. The grandmothers and the aunties.”

She gave up on him. “Father,” she said, “will you tell Bunny she has to stop leaving such a mess when she has her friends in? Did you see the TV room this morning?”

“Yes, yes,” her father said, but he was heading back into the lab as he spoke. He returned, pushing a high stool on wheels. He parked it next to the table. “Have a seat,” he told her.

“I need to get back to my gardening.”

“Please, Kate,” he said. “You never keep me company.”

She stared at him. “Keep you company ?”

“Sit, sit,” he said, motioning toward the stool. “You can have part of my sandwich.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said. But she perched awkwardly on the stool, still staring at him.

“Pyoder, sit. You can share my sandwich too, if you want. Kate made it especially. Peanut butter honey on whole-wheat.”

“You know I do not eat peanut butter,” Pyotr told him severely. He pulled out one of the folding chairs and settled catty-corner to Kate. His chair was considerably lower than her stool, and she could see how the hair was starting to thin across the top of his head. “In my country, peanuts are pigs’ food.”

“Ha, ha,” Dr. Battista said. “He’s very humorous, isn’t he, Kate?”

“What?”

“They eat them with the shells on,” Pyotr said.

He had trouble with th sounds, Kate noticed. And his vowels didn’t seem to last long enough. She had no patience with foreign accents.

“Were you surprised that I used my cell phone?” her father asked her. He was still standing, for some reason. He pulled his phone from a pocket in his coveralls. “You girls were right; it comes in handy,” he said. “I’m going to start using it more often now.” He frowned down at it for a moment, as if he were trying to remember what it was. Then he punched a button and held it in front of his face. Squinting, he took several steps backward. There was a mechanical clicking sound. “See? It takes photographs,” he said.

“Erase it,” Kate ordered.

“I don’t know how,” he said, and the phone clicked again.

“Damn it, Father, sit down and eat. I need to get back to my gardening.”

“All right, all right.”

He tucked the phone away and sat down. Pyotr, meanwhile, was opening his lunch bag. He pulled out two eggs and then a banana and placed them on the flattened paper bag in front of him. “Pyoder believes in bananas,” Dr. Battista confided. “I keep telling him about apples, but does he listen?” He was opening his own lunch bag, taking out his apple. “Pectin! Pectin!” he told Pyotr, shaking the apple under Pyotr’s nose.

“Bananas are miracle food,” Pyotr said calmly, and he picked his up and started peeling it. He had a face that was almost hexagonal, Kate noticed — his cheekbones widening to two sharp points, the angles of his jaw two more points slanting to the point of his chin, and the long strands of his hair separating over his forehead to form the topmost point. “Also eggs,” he was saying. “The egg of the hen! So cleverly self-contained.”

“Kate makes my sandwich for me every single night before she goes to bed,” Dr. Battista said. “She’s very domestic.”

Kate blinked.

“Peanut butter, though,” Pyotr said.

“Well, yes.”

“Yes,” Pyotr said with a sigh. He sent her a look of regret. “But is certainly pretty enough.”

“You should see her sister.”

Kate said, “Oh! Father!”

“What?”

“This sister is where?” Pyotr asked.

“Well, Bunny is only fifteen. She’s still in high school.”

“Okay,” Pyotr said. He returned his gaze to Kate.

Kate wheeled her stool back sharply and stood up. “Don’t forget your Tupperware,” she told her father.

“What! You’re leaving? Why so soon?”

But Kate just said, “Bye”—mostly addressing Pyotr, who was watching her with a measuring look — and she marched to the door and flung it open.

“Katherine, dearest, don’t rush off!” Her father stood up. “Oh, dear, this isn’t going well at all. It’s just that she’s so busy, Pyoder. I can never get her to sit down and take a little break. Did I tell you she runs our whole house? She’s very domestic. Oh, I already said that. And she has a full-time job besides. Did I tell you she teaches preschool? She’s wonderful with small children.”

“Why are you talking this way?” Kate demanded, turning on him. “What’s come over you? I hate small children; you know that.”

There was another hooting sound from Pyotr. He was grinning up at her. “Why you hate small children?” he asked her.

“Well, they’re not very bright, if you’ve noticed.”

He hooted again. What with his hooting and the banana he held, he reminded her of a chimpanzee. She spun away and stalked out, letting the door slam shut, and climbed the stairs two at a time.

Behind her, she heard the door open again. Her father called, “Kate?” She heard his steps on the stairs, but she strode on toward the front of the building.

His steps softened as he arrived on the carpet. “I’ll just see you out, why don’t I?” he called after her.

See her out?

But she paused when she reached the front door. She turned to watch him approach.

“I’ve handled things badly,” he said. He smoothed his scalp with one palm. His coveralls were one-size-fits-all and they ballooned in the middle, giving him the look of a Teletubby. “I didn’t mean to make you angry,” he said.

“I’m not angry; I’m…”

But she couldn’t say the word “hurt.” It might bring tears to her eyes. “I’m fed up,” she said instead.

“I don’t understand.”

She could believe that, actually. Face it: he was clueless.

“And what were you trying to do back there?” she asked him, setting her fists on her hips. “Why were you acting so…peculiar with that assistant?”

“He’s not ‘that assistant’; he’s Pyoder Cherbakov, whom I’m very lucky to have. Just look: he came in on a Sunday! He does that often. And he’s been with me nearly three years, by the way, so I would think you would at least be familiar with his name.”

“Three years? What happened to Ennis?”

“Good Lord! Ennis! Ennis was two assistants back.”

“Oh,” she said.

She didn’t know why he was acting so irritable. It wasn’t as if he ever talked about his assistants — or about anything, in fact.

“I seem to have a little trouble keeping them,” he said. “It may be that to outsiders, my project is not looking very promising.”

This wasn’t something he had admitted before, although from time to time Kate had wondered. It made her feel sorry for him, suddenly. She let her hands drop to her sides.

“I went to a great deal of effort to bring Pyoder to this country,” he said. “I don’t know if you realize. He was only twenty-five at the time, but everybody who’s anybody in autoimmunity had heard of him. He’s brilliant. He qualified for an O-1 visa, and that’s not something you often see these days.”

“Well, good, Father.”

“An extraordinary-ability visa; that’s what an O-1 is. It means that he possesses some extraordinary skill or knowledge that no one here in this country has, and that I am involved in some extraordinary research that justifies my needing him.”

“Good for you.”

“O-1 visas last three years.”

She reached out to touch his forearm. “Of course you’re anxious about your project,” she said, in what she hoped was an encouraging tone. “But I bet things will be fine.”