Elliott Holt - You Are One of Them

“I wanted to see you again,” she said.

It was what I’d longed to hear. But I’d always imagined hearing those words from the Jenny I knew. I’d been holding on to my fossilized idea of Jenny. The woman beside me—who claimed to be the former Jennifer Jones—seemed like a stranger. And it wasn’t just Jenny I’d suspended in amber. I’d turned myself into a fossil, too.

“What about my letter?” I said.

“What letter?”

“My letter to Andropov,” I said.

“ I wrote the letter to Andropov,” she said.

“You wrote the letter that he received,” I said. How could she not remember? “Mine ended up behind your bulletin board.”

“What do you mean?” she said. She looked genuinely confused. Maybe she never knew that my letter was tucked behind the bulletin board. Her dad could have hidden it and then told her he’d mailed both. Although I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t have destroyed my letter. Weren’t spies in the habit of eliminating evidence?

The woman before me could have been Jenny. Or she could have been an impostor who’d been briefed by Svetlana. Jenny had told Sveta a lot about me in the summer of 1983. She told Svetlana that my parents were divorced, that my sister was dead, that I was sad. But she had obviously neglected to mention that I wrote a letter to Andropov, too. She never told anyone that the letter that made her famous was my idea. She never gave me the credit. I’d never told my story. Why would anyone believe me?

“Do you remember ... ?” Zoya said. “The magnolia tree in your backyard? The way we used to touch the petals to see how fast they would turn brown?”

I had forgotten it until that moment. “Yes,” I said. My mother had warned us that the oil in our fingers would ruin the flowers. Don’t touch, she said. Don’t touch. We couldn’t resist.

“How much money do you need?” I said.

“For starters? Twenty thousand dollars,” she said. “I owe the creditors ... I don’t know who to turn to. You’re the only one who can help me.”

“I don’t have that much,” I said.

“How much do you have?” she said. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it out with her left foot.

I didn’t have to tell her, but I did. “Ten thousand,” I said. “I have ten thousand.”

She said I could deposit the money in a bank account she had set up. “I’ll give you the account information.” Then she hugged me. It was a hungry embrace. The appetite in her limbs—arms that held me for a beat too long, legs locked close to mine—was the strangest aspect of this Jenny. The girl I’d known didn’t need me. I could feel her slide a piece of paper into the pocket of my corduroys. “You are a lifesaver,” she whispered. She released me from the hug and clasped her hands together, the way Jenny’s mother used to do. “You are saving my life. Do you know that?”

“Are you really happy here?” I said.

“I dream in Russian now,” she said. “This is home.”

BACK IN THE HOUSE, Zoya resumed her cover.

“So?” Svetlana said, expectation cresting in her voice. “It was a good walk?”

“A very good walk,” Zoya said.

Svetlana poured the tea and set a plate of cookies on the coffee table. Andrei claimed the leather recliner. I was next to Zoya on the couch. Our conversation returned to its stilted conventions.

“We wanted to make you a cake,” Zoya said. “A birthday cake. But in Russia it’s bad luck to celebrate a birthday early. You have to wait.” It was November 5. My birthday was in two days.

“Perhaps you will come back,” Svetlana said. She and Zoya exchanged a look.

“When I was a child,” I said slowly to test their reactions, “my friend and I wrote letters to Yuri Andropov. We were worried that he was going to start a nuclear war.”

“The newspapers never said anything about you writing a letter,” said Svetlana. She shot Zoya a nervous glance.

“No,” I said. “Newspapers are not necessarily truth.”

“We were all writing letters,” said Andrei. “Post for Peace, we called it. Children here were urged to write to President Reagan. We thought you were going to bomb us.”

“You wrote letters?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Everyone did. Children were used for propaganda.” And just like that, my experience was flattened into something generic, off the rack. Nothing about my story was special.

“Spasibo za kompaniyu,” Zoya said when she showed Andrei and me to the door. Thank you for the company.

“Was it worth defecting for?” I whispered.

“What can you mean?” she said.

ANDREI AND I DIDN’T TALK on the way back to the city. I was cold, and he handed me a blanket to spread across my lap. We were on a road without streetlamps; the headlights pioneered through the night. It was too dark to see the birch trees, but I could hear the wind in their branches. “Tikha zoloto,” he said. Silence is golden. I didn’t answer.

When he finally pulled up in front of Corinne’s building, he said, “Chto ti dumayesh?” What do you think?

“I’m still not going to sleep with you,” I said. But I pondered what would happen if I did. Would I rifle through his wallet while he slept? It was hard to know who was in on what. I could seduce him for information, I thought. But I could picture the morning after, the awkward first look at each other in daylight. I’d play it cool while he pulled on his clothes and pretended he wasn’t in a rush to leave. He’d pretend I mattered to him, and I’d pretend to believe it. He would tell me I was beautiful, but it wouldn’t change anything. We’d still be pretending. I was holding out for the real thing.

His finger crawled up my arm. I pulled away. “Don’t,” I said.

“Have you found the friend you were looking for?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Ochen stranno,” he said. Very strange.

“I’m a strange girl,” I said.

“I like you anyway,” he said.

“You don’t know me.”

“Let me get to know you. Have a drink with me.”

“Not tonight,” I said. “We’ve been drinking all day.” Until I got to Moscow, I didn’t believe the stories about how much Russians drank.

“Another night?” he said.

“We’ll see,” I said. “I’m starting a new job. I’m going to be busy.”

“Americans love to be busy,” he said. “So many to-do lists.”

“You’ve got us all figured out,” I said.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing.”

IN MY ROOM THAT NIGHT, I pulled out the piece of paper that that Zoya/Jenny had folded into my pocket. It was typed, so there were no handwriting hints.

S,

As soon as I can pay you back, I will. But I need the money by December 1st. Please. I’m desperate. See account number below.

J.

P.S. Burn after reading!

I thought again of Zoya’s hug. Did she feel that fierce need in me when we were kids? Did she feed off it until, like too much sugar, it made her sick?

I didn’t need the money. I could transfer it into Zoya’s account and pretend I’d never had it. It seemed fitting in a way, that the money my dad had given me should go to the friend who’d filled the space he left in my life. It was a relief to know that the money wouldn’t be there, tempting me away from self-sufficiency. But that was assuming that Zoya really was Jenny.

There was only one way to find out.

ZOYA SAID SHE SWAM laps at the Olympic pool in the mornings. So the next day I got up early and took the Metro there. I showed my spravka to the desk clerk, paid my admission fee. In the locker room, I soaped my private parts before anyone could yell at me.