Enchantment (33 page)

Mrs. Smetski.
She
was the problem. Ruth suspected from the start that Mrs. Smetski thought that Ivan could have found a better girl to marry. She wasn’t distracted like Professor Smetski. On the contrary, she focused completely, almost smotheringly, on Ruth. But there was this sense of amusement in everything she said. A sense of irony. I know something you don’t know.

Ruth had tried to point it out to Ivan, but he never saw it. “That’s just Mom,” he’d say. “She’s always having an out-of-body experience. Looking down on everything from the ceiling. Never part of it. It’s nothing to do with you.”

But Ruth knew better. A woman knows these things—though of course she didn’t say that to Ivan, he got quite testy when Ruth asserted her female power, as if her womanliness threatened him. Of course, he tried to sound like a doctrinaire feminist about it. “Either the only differences between men and women are cultural, or they’re innate,” Ivan would say. “So if you go for the women’s intuition thing, then you have to take that whole package, pedestal and all. And if you want equality, then you have to give up that idea that women have secret ways of knowing.”

As if.

But, for the sake of harmony, she allowed his threatened male ego to have its protected space, and didn’t push the point. She simply knew, that’s all, that Mrs. Smetski disdained her for some reason.

And during the months while Ivan was gone, it became more obvious. Ivan’s dad had work to do; Mrs. Smetski had no such excuse. She would wander out of a room sometimes when Ruth was talking. And it wasn’t an accident, either. Because when she came back in, she’d resume the conversation with a bland, “You were saying, Ruthie?” in that thickly accented English.

To her, I don’t exist. Ruthie could reach no other conclusion.

Come home, Ivan, before your parents make me have second thoughts.

Well, the time had finally come. Of course Mrs. Smetski had hinted that maybe Ruthie should drive her own car, but Professor Smetski put the kibosh on that immediately. “We have to go together, it would be cruel to make Vanya choose between his parents and his bride-to-be. You know he would choose the bride, and then wouldn’t we feel foolish!”

“I just thought it might be crowded on the ride home,” said Mrs. Smetski.

Crowded? It wasn’t as though their car was tiny. Like so many Russians, the Smetskis luxuriated in the American sense of scale. A big old Crown Victoria was their choice—cheap, for a big car; or was it big for a cheap one? Plenty of room.

Too much room. Professor Smetski tried to get Mrs. Smetski to sit in back with Ruth on the way there, “to keep her company,” but Mrs. Smetski just laughed and said, “You know I get sick in the back seat,” and that was that. And when Ruth tried to engage them in conversation, Professor Smetski was the only one who seemed to be paying attention, and not very much at that. Mrs. Smetski just looked at the scenery. Trees were trees. Ruth knew that Mrs. Smetski was looking at them just so she didn’t have to talk to Ruth.

Ivan, we have to have a talk. Your parents don’t like me, or at least your mother doesn’t, and that’s a problem. Then he would kiss her and reassure her that it would never be a problem, Mom likes you just fine, yadda yadda.

Maybe the whole thing was a mistake. Maybe Mrs. Smetski was right. Ivan was charming, smart, fascinating with his sultry foreignness, that fragility hidden within the muscular, lithe runner’s body, the sensitive eyes in a sculpted face. But charm, intelligence, and good looks, did they add up to love? As Ruth’s own mother kept saying, What kind of boy is it asks a girl to marry him, then he runs off to Russia for long enough to get a girl pregnant and watch it be born before he comes home to his fiancée?

She didn’t even want to think about that. Ivan wasn’t that kind of boy, damn his shyness. It was so embarrassing to tell the girls at college that no, they hadn’t slept together, Ivan believed in waiting—the whooping and laughing! “He’s gay,” they all said at once, and when she assured them that she had ample reason to believe that he was not, they treated her like she was in love with a cripple. “Did he have a childhood injury?” one of them asked, and then it became a joke. Ruth’s fiancé’s tragic childhood injury. They kept thinking up some new malady to explain his lack of sexual drive. “He has elephantiasis of the testicles”—that was a favorite—“his balls weigh thirty pounds each.” Or “he was just one of those kids who slides down every banister, even the ones with those cruel little spikes every few feet.” Or “his parents left him alone with the cat and without a diaper, and you know how cats are when they find something to play with.”

The thing is, some of their joking was genuinely funny. Ruth felt disloyal to laugh at such crude talk about her future husband’s private parts, but wasn’t it his own fault? She had done everything but strip naked and hide in his bed, and he just laughed and kissed her and said, “Plenty of time for that when we’re married.”

Here’s a news flash, Ivan. The reason I wanted to sleep with you was not because I thought we were going to run out of time later!

But it was also kind of sweet. After all the boys who had tried to get into her pants from the time she was eleven, or at least so it seemed in retrospect, Ivan was an entirely different creature.

No, he couldn’t be gay.
Damn
them for making her wonder.

If Mrs. Smetski had only been willing to talk, Ruth wouldn’t have been thinking about all these negatives. About how Ivan’s letters grew rarer and rarer as the months went by. How he wrote romantically at first, but more perfunctorily later. You’d think he’d be getting hornier, wouldn’t you? Unless he found somebody else.

Somebody Russian. Somebody from his childhood. Some woman who’d set her cap for him the moment he arrived, since he represented a ticket to the States. Long walks along the river—there was a river in Kiev, wasn’t there?—talking in his beloved Russian, discussing Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy or—who was that poet? Eugene Onegin? No, that was the name of the poem. Pushcart? Pushpin?

Pushkin!

Or maybe he was just into his research and there was no woman. This was Ivan, after all. Not the ordinary man. She wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if he were the kind of man who couldn’t keep his word to the woman he loved. Not that he’d actually given his word. Ruth could imagine
that
conversation. “No getting laid in Ukraine, my love.” “Oh, really? That would bother you? All right, my pet.” “No kissing either.” “But in Russia, we kiss for greeting!” “No tongue.” “Definitely no tongue. Thank you for providing me with moral guidelines for traveling fiancés! You think of everything!”

“Good flying weather,” said Professor Smetski as they got out of the car at the airport.

“A clear day,” said Ruth.

“I mean, no wind,” said the professor. “Safer for landing.”

“The USAir terminal is this way,” said Mrs. Smetski. Then she took off, and Ruth and Professor Smetski had to make their way as best they could.

So there they stood, making small talk—smaller even than usual—watching the gate to see him the moment he appeared. Like a contest—I caught first glimpse of him, so I love him more! And then he appears, bearded, suntanned—definitely a scholarly look! Oh, he was hard at the books, wasn’t he!—and he was helping a woman up the ramp, wasn’t he? How nice.

Only she didn’t leave him when they reached the door. In fact, his arm was around her waist, guiding her along. She was . . . she was
with
him.

Ruth felt sick. The woman was Russian, but not in that exaggerated wide-faced almost-Mongolian way that gave you a pretty good idea what the Golden Horde was doing all those years they ruled the steppe. She wasn’t Nordic, either. Something else. But one thing was certain: Definitely not Jewish. Not that Ruthie was politically incorrect, of course; it was her duty to pretend that you couldn’t tell a Russian Jew just by looking. But in this case, you could certainly tell that she was
not
a Jew. In fact, if she had been born to a Jewish mother, this girl would constitute proof of adultery.

Someone he met. That’s all. Some scholarly woman who was coming to America anyway and he accompanied her because . . . because . . . her English wasn’t good!

Surely he wouldn’t bring her home, though, as a guest. Well, what if he did? This stranger wasn’t Ivan’s fiancée, Ruth was—and Ruth would make sure that Ivan had very little time to lounge around home with this shiksa princess. If the girl wanted to speak Russian, Ivan’s parents would be
excellent
company for her. While Ruth would make sure that she was Ivan’s constant companion.

They came closer, and there was something in the way that Ivan looked. A shiftiness. He saw Ruth, smiled at her sheepishly, but then he looked down, looked away. Looked at his mother and father. Anywhere but at the girl. Pretending that he didn’t know she was there. But still, his arm around her waist. Ushering, sheltering, protecting. That is not her place, you bastard. You let somebody else into my place.

Don’t get angry. You don’t know yet.

Yes you do.

Katerina? Oh, what a pleasure, says Professor Smetski.

And back comes a string of Russian.

Only it isn’t Russian, is it? Or if it is, it’s some weird accent, anyway, because Professor Smetski asks her to repeat what she said, and when he answers her it’s with a different tone from the way he usually speaks. And his eyes are wide and he’s absolutely
fascinated
with her language.

But Mrs. Smetski,
she’s
completely wacked out. Smiling. Like a kid who won the prize. Doesn’t try to talk to the shiksa, but just
loves
her. Hug hug, kiss kiss kiss, hug again. Can’t take her eyes off this goyishe princess.

And princess is right. The way the girl holds herself. As if the space around her for about six blocks belongs to her. As if Ivan belongs to her. And not like a man, either, but like a . . . servant. She thinks she
owns
him. Like Nancy Reagan, that’s what she looks like, beaming because this man is hers. Defiant, arrogant.

And all the time Ruth was thinking this, Ivan was talking. “I met her near Cousin Marek’s place. She wanted to visit in America, but she never studied English, so I volunteered.”

Ruth wanted to scream at him, “That’s a lie, you moron! She’s obviously more than some neighbor girl you’re doing a favor for! Tell the truth, tell it right away, and have done with it!”

Instead, Ruth went hug hug, kiss kiss kiss, and hug again. “What a lovely girl,” she said. “Are you Ivan’s niece?”

Ivan laughed awkwardly and translated.

Only when the translation was complete did Katerina’s full attention turn to Ruth. And the look on her face—what
was
that look?

Pity.

She thinks she’s got him. She thinks she’s already won, and she’s feeling sorry for me.

Well, save your little pity-eyes for somebody who gives up easily. Maybe Ivan got all gooey-eyed over you there in Kiev, but I can hold my own, thanks a lot. I can definitely outdress you, you poor thing. Where did you get those clothes? Hand-me-downs from some farmer’s daughter?

“I must take her shopping,” said Ruth to Ivan. “Please tell her—we must spend an afternoon together at the mall.”

“Oh, definitely not,” said Mrs. Smetski, intervening before Ivan could even translate. “You and Vanya will be together all the time. I find American clothings for Katerina.”

If Mrs. Smetski had ever looked at me the way she’s looking at this shiksa, I would never have had a moment’s worry.

And then it dawned on her. Mrs. Smetski
always
wanted a shiksa for her boy. For her Russian boy. She was one of those self-hating, anti-Semitic Jews! Hadn’t Ivan told her that it was entirely his father’s idea to become serious Jews and emigrate from Russia on a visa to Israel? Mrs. Smetski never wanted Ivan to become serious about his Jewish identity. She wanted him to marry a nice Russian girl, and . . . he-e-e-e-ere’s Katerina!

They were speaking Russian together, all of them, as if Ruth did not exist, as if courtesy were an old legend that no one believed in anymore.

Ruth felt a momentary twinge of despair. I’ve already lost. They’ve formed a closed group now. Ivan’s already got his protective-male thing going with her, and his father is fascinated by every word she says, and Mrs. Smetski is absolutely in
love
with her. Mrs. Smetski looks so smug. As if she had defeated me. And maybe she has. Definitely she has. I’m gone. If only I had my own car and could just get out of here and drive home by myself and . . .

Mrs. Smetski already knew. That’s why she wanted separate cars. She
knew
that the Crown Victoria would be way too crowded on the trip home because she knew this shiksa was getting off the plane. Ivan must have told them. But no one bothered to tell
me
.

Ruth couldn’t let this deception go unchallenged. “So, when did you call your parents and tell them Katerina was coming?”

They all looked at her like she was crazy. “He didn’t call,” said Professor Smetski.

“
I
didn’t even know I was bringing her till the last minute,” said Ivan.

He certainly didn’t seem to be lying.

Only Mrs. Smetski said nothing. Because she knew. Somehow, even without a phone call,
she
knew. And, dear sweet compassionate loving gracious woman that she was, she had tried to spare Ruth’s feelings by giving her an escape route so she wouldn’t have to suffer the long ride home from the airport trapped in the back seat with Ivan and his . . .

On impulse—on damnable, uncontrollable impulse—Ruth asked him point-blank. “So, are you and Katerina engaged already, or are you waiting to make it formal until you’ve had a chance to get rid of me?”

The embarrassment on all their faces. How inconvenient of her, to lay it on the line like this. To demand that they face up to what was obvious to all of them. Oh, is this making you uncomfortable? You poor dears.

“Ruthie, don’t be silly,” Professor Smetski was saying, “Vanya is just helping her on the—”

Ivan held up his hand to stop his father. “I don’t know, Ruth, I don’t know how you—I wanted to have a chance to talk to you alone, I didn’t want it to be right here, but . . .”