Elliott Holt - You Are One of Them

“Even the icicles in Moscow are dangerous,” she said. “I’ve read about it. Long icicles like daggers hanging off ledges of buildings. They fall and kill people. It happens all the time.”

“I won’t walk under any ledges,” I said.

“The rates of HIV infection are alarmingly high,” she said. “Lots of intravenous-drug users sharing needles.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said. I feared losing control so much that I never did drugs. I didn’t like altered states.

“Thank God you’re not flying Aeroflot. Their safety record is deplorable.”

I said nothing.

“And the radioactivity levels ...”

“Mom!” I said. “Breathe. Do your relaxation exercises.”

I had my own packing list, and in addition to the obvious necessities (passport, visa, long underwear), it included Svetlana’s letter and Jenny’s book. I couldn’t bring my full Jenny archive, but I took a few photos and clippings. I sealed them in a clear plastic sleeve and stowed it in my suitcase beneath my sweaters. By the time I set out for Dulles Airport in early autumn, most of the flowers in the Joneses’ old yard were gone. With my mother’s reluctant blessing, I finally boarded a Finnair flight bound for Moscow.

During my layover in Helsinki, I curled myself into one of the chairs near the gate and tried to sleep. I wrapped the strap of my carry-on around my leg, so that a thief couldn’t wrest the bag away without disturbing me. But I couldn’t drift off. It was the middle of the night to me, but it was morning in Finland, and the airport was stirring to life. I could hear the grind of espresso machines and the click of flight-attendant heels on the polished floor. The Finnair flight attendants impressed me with their efficient cool. On my flight from New York, their brisk offers of “Kahvi? Tee?” had the ring of commands. They had none of the painted-on charm I was used to seeing on the American airlines. I’d traveled a lot during college. I spent a year in Rome and made the requisite Eurail journey across the Continent that summer, bunking at hostels and awaiting mail via poste restante along the way.

At the end of my trip, I spent a few days in London, where my father and Phillipa were installed in a large house in Holland Park. It was my first visit and the first time I’d met Sebastian. He was ten. They called him Sebby.

“Why does my sister have an American accent?” he asked our dad. We were in the breakfast room, and Sebby was spreading Marmite on his toast.

“Because her mother is American,” my father said.

“Because I’m American,” I said.

“So you are,” my father said, as if this were news.

“I’ve been to America,” said Sebby.

“Have you?” I said, and realized I was picking up their British inflection. My father had never mentioned bringing his son to the States. I’d seen my father just three times in six years. Business took him to New York sometimes. During college I met him once in Boston, when he shuttled up from La Guardia and took me to dinner at the Ritz Carlton, and once for a weekend in Manhattan, where he put me up at the Harvard Club. These visits retained the formality of job interviews; my father asked me questions, and I tried to come up with the most impressive answers. During one dinner I ordered a steak and he said, “You’re not a vegetarian anymore?” But I was never a vegetarian. He had me confused with someone else.

“We went skiing,” Sebby said. “On holiday. In Vail.”

The girls at my school skied in Aspen and Vail; they’d return from Christmas and spring breaks full of stories of running into each other on the slopes. I’d never been to Colorado.

“There are no direct flights from London to Denver,” I said.

“No,” said my father.

“Did you fly through New York?” I said.

“Yes,” said Sebby. What kind of name was Sebby anyway?

“I could have met you in New York,” I said. “I could have gone skiing with you.” I was not a good skier, but I wanted to be. Good skiers weren’t afraid of speed. I was so nervous that I made wide, slow turns down the mountain.

“I didn’t want your mum to worry,” my father said.

“I’m in college,” I snapped. “I don’t live with Mom.” I was startled by the anger I heard in my voice. I was tired of being lumped together with my mother in the same fearful box. I felt trapped.

My father registered surprise at my outburst, but his upper lip remained stiff. We hardly knew each other. “How’s your mum’s foundation?” he said.

The sneer in his voice made me jump to my mother’s defense. I knew he thought her efforts were misguided, but I wasn’t about to let him insult her. “Great,” I said. “ Washingtonian magazine profiled her on the fifth anniversary of Chernobyl.” I didn’t mention that the profile was really just a paragraph and that in the intervening four years there’d been no press coverage at all. The foundation hadn’t sent an American student to Moscow since 1991.

“She’s always chasing ghosts,” he said.

“What kind of ghosts?” said Sebby.

My father ignored him. “Your mother does love a memorial. She would have set up a foundation for your sister if she could have done. If she hadn’t been such a wreck.”

“Do I have another sister?” Sebby said. It was the first time he had looked directly at me. I noticed that he and I had the same eyes.

“No,” I said. It was astonishing to realize that my father had never told him about Izzy. I wasn’t about to tell him; I didn’t want to share anything—even my grief—with him.

“Do I have another sister, Dad?”

“No, Sebby, you don’t,” my father said.

My father had always been generous: he paid all my tuition over the years, and he never failed to send alimony. He didn’t make it to my graduation because Phillipa had a riding competition, but he sent me a check. He was so enthusiastic about my plans that it was clear he was giving me money only because I was going abroad. “You’re young; you ought to be exploring the world,” he wrote to me. It was the first letter I’d received from him in years. “Don’t let your mother keep you at home. You’ve got to live your life.” The check was for ten thousand dollars. All summer it lay on top of my dresser, pinned in place by a snow globe. An elementary souvenir from my first trip to New York. I still liked to stir the storm, watch the flakes fall over the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t want my dad’s money. It made me think of Phillipa, who inserted herself into everything with the determination of a tapeworm. I couldn’t bring myself to cash the check until the day before I left for Moscow. I deposited it in my savings account. In Russia I vowed to use only my own hard-earned cash.

IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON when my plane touched down in Moscow, and the Russians on board—many of whom had been drinking heavily throughout the flight—burst into boisterous applause. The clapping terrified me: celebrating the routine as miraculous didn’t bode well. Inside, the airport was eerily quiet. I followed the mass of passengers down a flight of stairs to passport control. Outmaneuvered by seasoned Russians, I found myself at the back of an interminable immigration line. It must have been two hours before I reached the front. The officious woman who inspected my visa proved to be the warmest person I encountered that first day. At baggage claim I was amazed to see people smoking, flicking the ash from their cigarettes onto the floor and the rubber luggage belt. We waited for what seemed like an hour for the carousel to crank into action, but in the end our bags were carried in, two at a time, by a disgruntled handler.