A Watershed Year (25 page)

thirteen

B
y the time they returned to the Best Eastern, Mat had fallen into a fitful sleep punctuated by an occasional hiccup. Lucy carried him into the lobby from Lesta’s car, his head bobbing against her shoulder. She was grateful to avoid dragging a screaming child through the hotel, but even more grateful for the chance to hold him, to support his slight weight and feel his warm breath on her neck. Lesta followed into the elevator and down the carpeted hall, holding her paperwork. He stood in the hallway outside the open door as she laid Mat down on one of the double beds and came back into the hallway to collect her papers.

“I wait here for you,” Lesta said.

“For what?”

“For getting ready. The chicken Kiev.”

“But look at him. He’s exhausted. I think we better stay here.”

“This is too bad, Lucy McVie. This mean many leftovers.”

“I’m so sorry. Tell your wife I’m sorry, too. I just don’t think we’re up for it.”

“You make flight back to Moscow. I take you to airport tomorrow.”

“Thank you for everything. You’ve been so wonderful.”

Lesta hovered, turning to go several times but failing, as though his feet were not cooperating. Lucy finally realized what was happening and ran back into the room for her purse.

“Here, Lesta,” she said, handing him five bills. “I wish it could be more.”

He looked down at the money in his hand, the last of the crisp hundreds she had withdrawn from the bank when she had emptied her savings account. He seemed pleased by what was there and nodded his head as she looked back to make sure Mat was still asleep. The fear she had felt when they left the children’s home had subsided only slightly, leaving a film in her mouth. She longed to brush her teeth.

“Best of good luck for you, Lucy McVie,” Lesta said from the hall.

She stretched her hand across the doorway, but Lesta wouldn’t take it.

“No, no,” he said, backing away. “Bad luck to shake over threshold.”

Instead, she stepped out into the hallway, threw her arms around him, and hugged him tightly, and he hugged her back, kissing her quickly on each cheek.

“I go home now,” he said. “Call when you know time of flight.”

When he left, Lucy sat down on the edge of the bed to watch Mat as he slept, still buttoned into his cloth coat. His hiccupping had stopped, and he seemed to be in a near coma, too distraught to cope with consciousness. She rested her palm on his forehead, pressing it against the short stubble on his hairline. She imagined another time, maybe only weeks from now, when she would take him to Arnold’s drugstore and scoop up a little bag of candy for him. If he was like Paul’s kids, he’d go for the Gummi Bears or something else that adhered to the back molars. That’s all she wanted for him, the opportunity to eat too much sugar like every other normal American kid.

Of course, her idea of “normal” was her own upbringing. So that meant being loved by people who had very little understanding of her accomplishments—the articles published in obscure journals, the fellowships, the teaching posts—but bragged about them anyway. It meant having a brother who threatened to beat-up the joker who pointed and laughed when her towering stack of books spilled all
over the floor of the school bus. It meant having a father whose eyes watered every time he saw an American flag and who taught her that most people working for the government weren’t crooks. It meant having a mother whose love comforted and smothered her at the same time. Could she be all those things for Mat? Would he let her?

She couldn’t help but wonder, for a moment, what Harlan would have been like as a father. Before his illness, he once told her that he loved children, but only between the ages of five and eleven. “Before and after, they’re self-centered and whiny,” he had said. “If you get six good years out of them, you’re lucky.” She had responded that it’s not the same with your own children, but he had shaken his head and grinned. “Six good years, as I say, if you’re lucky.”

Mat stirred as she took off his sneakers and cautiously unbuttoned his coat. She couldn’t figure out how to remove the coat without waking him, so she pulled up the edge of the thin bedspread and draped it over him. It was past dinnertime, and she was starving. She thought about running down to the restaurant, but she couldn’t risk the chance that he would be further traumatized by waking up alone in a strange room. She couldn’t imagine trying to negotiate room service, if it even existed. Instead, she found another crumbled granola bar in her carry-on and ate that, drinking lukewarm water from a bottle she had brought on the plane.

She dared herself to be happy, but there were too many obstacles. She was hungry, tired, and unable to share her news. On the other hand, Mat was there with her, and within days they would be home. She took one last swig of the water, feeling the warm trickle run down her throat and into her stomach. She called the airline, arranged their flight for the next day, and then called Lesta. Then she brushed her teeth, curled up next to Mat under the blanket on the bed, and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, she woke up at the sound of a heavy thud. Mat had rolled off the bed and was now lying dazed on the floor. She ran around the bed and tried to pick him up, but he scooted
back on his rear until his head hit the nightstand. She reached for him, but the terror in his eyes stopped her.

“It’s okay. You fell off the bed,” she said softly, making a rolling motion with her hands.

He shouted some words in Russian and began to cry, clearly upset that she couldn’t understand him. She finally noticed he was clutching the front of his pants.

“You need to use the potty?” she asked, realizing how many questions she had failed to ask at the children’s home. She walked toward the bathroom, and Mat slowly followed, holding himself with both hands. He made it to the toilet and pulled down his pants, but he wasn’t standing close enough, so much of the urine ran down the front of the porcelain bowl and onto the floor. She threw down a smoke-scented towel and turned on the water to have Mat wash his hands, but he was already gone. She left the mess in the bathroom and found him lying on his side on the floor, crying, wrapping his coat tightly around him.

“It’s okay, Mat.” She touched his shoulder, but he shrugged her away. She pulled the spread off the bed to cover him, tucked a pillow under his head, and curled up on the floor herself under a blanket. She could only hope he was young enough to forget all this miserable confusion, that he would eventually thaw under her patience and understanding. If they were very, very lucky, she thought as she drifted off, he’d just repress the whole thing.

BY MORNING, Lucy’s back refused to bend in the ways it had always bent before. As Mat continued to sleep, one arm thrown over his face, she untangled her blanket, got on her knees, and stretched her aching limbs before standing up. She had never liked sleeping on the floor; even as a child during sleepovers, she had always begged for a couch or a chair, needing some kind of buffer, some platform for dreaming. She dragged herself into the bathroom, which smelled of
urine, and pushed the towel into one corner. She was brushing her teeth when Mat appeared at the doorway, still in his coat, pointing into his open mouth.

“Oh, you’re hungry,” she said, relieved they had performed a simple act of communication. “Let’s wash up and go get breakfast.”

She left the bathroom, opened her suitcase, and found a little toothbrush kit she had brought for Mat, along with a new set of clothes: a pair of sturdy size-four jeans, a long-sleeved polo shirt, and a pair of small blue-suede work boots. She tried to get him to brush his teeth, but he threw the toothbrush on the floor.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s get dressed.”

Mat drew his coat closer around him and let out a high-pitched scream when Lucy tried to take it off. His face and ears grew bright red. Anyone passing by the room might think she was poking him with pins.

“Okay, okay. Leave it on,” she said. “Let’s just get something to eat. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

He stopped screaming but shook his head vigorously as she tried to put on the sneakers he had been wearing the day before. Instead, he kicked one across the room and pointed toward the blue boots, which she could already see would be several sizes too large. She put them on anyway and laced them as tightly as she could. He flapped toward the door, pointing again toward his open mouth.

“A little food, and we’ll both be happier,” she said. “Here we go, Azamat.”

At the sound of his full name, he let out a string of Russian that she tried her best to interpret based on the tone of the words. She nodded along as they walked down the corridor, though she had no idea what he was saying, hoping she hadn’t just agreed to take him back to the children’s home, or to see his father, or to visit Disney World. She tried to hold his right hand as they stepped onto the elevator, but he pulled it away, jammed it into his left armpit, and stood in the corner, his wide eyes telling her as they descended that this was a new experience for him.

Once in the lobby, they entered the small café where Lucy had been getting her coffee and sat down at one of the two empty tables—the six or seven others were occupied by businessmen reading newspapers or by couples examining brochures. When the waitress came, Lucy pointed to a random assortment of items on the menu, hoping she had happened on something edible, and mimed the pouring of coffee.

She tried again to get Mat to take off his coat, but he refused, twisting the buttons on it until she was sure one would fly off, half wondering if that was his intention. When the food arrived, he went straight for the
blini
and began shoving the folded pancakes into his mouth with both hands. She had to pound him on the back more than once to prevent him from choking.

“Slow down, slow down,” she said, afraid to take any food for herself. She sipped her coffee, which tasted like instant Nescafé, until he began to decelerate. “At least you’re not crying,” she said, fully aware that he couldn’t understand her but unable to stop herself. “When we get back to the room, we’ll pack up. Then Lesta will pick us up, and you’ll get to fly in an airplane. Have you ever seen a real airplane?”

He kept eating, dismissing the foreign words as so much background noise. When he finally seemed finished, one of his blue boots fell off underneath the table. As she bent down to retrieve it, he kicked off the other boot, letting it drop on her head.

“Hey, mister,” she said, allowing herself to sound just slightly stern as she emerged from under the table and tied the boots back onto his feet. Several of the businessmen looked her way, then went back to their newspapers. She thought she saw one of them smirking.

“I think it’s time to go, Mat.”

He looked at her quizzically, then knocked a half-eaten bowl of milky cereal off the table. It splattered all over her clothes and shoes, the bowl landing several feet away. A clerk from the counter came over, tsk-tsking and frowning, to clean up the mess, and the businessmen shook their heads. Lucy apologized profusely in English, reminding
herself to look up the word “sorry” in Russian, because she sensed she would need it again. She left a big tip on the table and ushered Mat out of the restaurant and back up to the room, where she sat him on the edge of the bed to watch a children’s show on television while she showered and changed. The television as babysitter. Now it made perfect sense.

Several hours later, they checked out of the Best Eastern, and Lesta picked them up in his blue sedan for the ride to the airport. She tried to use the drive as a final chance to explain to Mat, in Russian, how much she looked forward to being his mother. Her adoption guidebook had recommended bringing photos of her home and Mat’s new room, but she hadn’t had time to get all that together before she had to leave. Instead, she tried to describe them through Lesta.

“So your room has these nice yellow walls and your own big bed, and you have your own bathroom with fish wallpaper, shiny little fish right on the walls. Are you getting all this, Lesta? And there are lots of toys, and your grandmother is buying you a whole mountain of toys. Does that sound good?”

Mat seemed to perk up a bit at the suggestion of a mountain of toys. She regretted saying it, but it had slipped out, the need to please him causing her to run at the mouth. Despite all the warnings in the guidebooks, she had envisioned this warm bond, this instant rapport, Mat sitting on her lap and clinging to her all the way home. Now she just wanted him to like her a little bit, to refrain from screaming, to stop acting as though he’d rather go off with a passing stranger. Was the prospect of being with her all that terrible?

Lesta parked and led them inside the crowded airport terminal, helping them check their luggage and find the proper gate. He patted Mat on the head and gave him an order: “You be good boy.” Mat held his monkey tightly and stumbled forward in his too-large blue work boots to pick up a cigarette butt from an ashtray in the waiting area. Lucy took it away and kept her hands on his shoulders, even as he tried to pry them off.