Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (27 page)

I stepped between my sister and the boy.

“Anya! No!”
my baby sister screamed.

My dad, you see, had taught me a thing or two about guns, and this kid’s handgun didn’t have a clip. In other words, no bullets unless there was one in the chamber, and I was betting that there wasn’t.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I asked the boy. In point of fact, the boy was three inches shorter than Natty. Up close, I could see he was younger than I had thought—maybe eight or nine years old.

“I’ll shoot you,” the boy said. “I’ll do it.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “I’d like to see you try.”

I grabbed his gun by the barrel. I thought about tossing it into the bushes, but I decided I didn’t want him terrorizing any more people. I put it in my bag. It was a nice weapon. Would have done a heck of a job killing my sister and me. Had it been functional, that is.

“Come on, Natty. Get your stuff back from the kid.”

“He hadn’t taken anything yet,” Natty said. She was still a bit teary.

I nodded. I handed Natty my pocket handkerchief and told her to blow her nose.

At this point, the would-be mugger had started to cry, too. “Gimme back my gun!” He lunged at me, but the kid was weak with hunger, I’d guess, and I barely felt him.

“Look, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna get yourself killed waving that broken gun around.” This was true. I wouldn’t be the only person who would notice he didn’t have a clip and, likely as not, the type of person who noticed such a thing would shoot the kid between the eyes without a second thought. I felt a bit bad about taking his gun, so I gave him what money I had on me. Not much, but it’d keep the kid in pizza for a night.

Without even a moment’s reflection, he took my offerings. Then he yelled an obscene name at me and disappeared into the park.

Natty gave me her hand, and we walked in silence until we were in the relative safety of Fifth Avenue.

“Why’d you do that, Annie?” she whispered as we were waiting for a walk signal. I could barely hear her above the city noise. “Why’d you give him all that stuff after he tried to rob me?”

“Because he was less fortunate than us, Natty. And Daddy always said that we have to be mindful of those who are less fortunate.”

“But Daddy killed people, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Daddy was complex.”

“Sometimes, I can’t even remember what he looked like,” Natty said.

“He looked like Leo,” I said. “Same height. Same black hair. Same blue eyes. But Daddy’s eyes were hard and Leo’s are soft.”

Back at the apartment, Natty went into her bedroom, and I scrounged around for something for dinner. I was an uninspired chef but if I didn’t cook, we’d all starve. Except for Nana. Her meals were delivered to her via tube by a home-health-care worker named Imogen.

I boiled exactly six cups of water per the package’s instructions and then threw in the macaroni. At least Leo would be happy. Macaroni and cheese was his favorite.

I went to knock on his door to tell him the good news. There was no answer, so I opened it. He should have been home from his part-time job at the veterinary clinic for at least two hours, but his room was empty aside from his collection of stuffed lions. The lions looked at me questioningly with their dull plastic eyes.

I went into Nana’s room. She was asleep, but I woke her up anyway.

“Nana, did Leo say if he was going anywhere?”

Nana reached for the rifle she kept under her bed, and then she saw that it was me. “Oh, Anya, it’s only you. You scared me,
devochka
.”

“Sorry, Nana.” I kissed her on the cheek. “It’s just Leo’s not in his room. I was wondering if he said he was going anywhere.”

Nana thought about this. “No,” she said finally.

“Did he come home from work?” I asked, trying not to sound impatient. Clearly, Nana was having one of her less cogent days.

Nana considered this for about a million years. “Yes.” She paused. “No.” She paused again. “I’m not sure.” Another pause. “What day of the week is this,
devochka
? I lose track of time.”

“Monday,” I told her. “The first day of school, remember?”

“Monday still?”

“It’s almost over, Nana.”

“Good. Good.” Nana smiled. “If it’s still Monday, that bastard Jakov came to see me today.” She meant bastard literally. Jakov (pronounced Ya-koff) Pirozhki was my father’s half brother’s illegitimate son. Jakov, who called himself Jacks, was four years older than Leo, and I had never much liked him since the time he’d had too much Smirnoff at a family wedding and tried to touch my breast. I’d been thirteen; he’d been almost twenty. Disgusting. Despite this, I’d always felt a little sorry for Jacks because of the way everyone in my family looked down on him.

“What did Pirozhki want?”

“To see if I was dead yet,” Nana said. She laughed and pointed to the cheap pink carnations that were sitting in a shallowly filled vase on the windowsill. I hadn’t noticed them. “Ugly, aren’t they? Flowers are so hard to come by these days, and that’s what he brings? I suppose it’s the thought that counts. Maybe Leo’s with the bastard?”

“That’s not nice, Nana,” I said.

“Oh, Anyaschka, I would never say it in front of him!” she protested.

“What would Jacks want with Leo?” I had only ever known Jacks to ignore or show outright contempt for my brother.

Nana shrugged, which was difficult for her to do considering how little mobility she had. I could see that her eyelids had begun to flutter shut. I squeezed her hand.

Without opening her eyes, she said, “Let me know when you find Leonyd.”

I went back into the kitchen to tend to the macaroni. I called Leo’s job to see if he was still there. They said he’d left at four as usual. I didn’t like not knowing where my brother was. He might be nineteen, three years my senior, but he was and would always be my responsibility.

Not long before my father was killed, Daddy made me promise that if anything ever happened to him, I would take care of Leo. I’d only been nine years old at the time, roughly the same age as that little mugger, and too young to really know what I was agreeing to. “Leo is a gentle soul,” Daddy had said. “He isn’t fit for our world,
devochka
. We must do everything we can to protect him.” I’d nodded, not quite understanding that Daddy had sworn me to a lifelong commitment.

Leo hadn’t been born “special.” He had been like any kid, if not, from my father’s point of view, better. Smart, the spitting image of Daddy, and best of all, the first born son. Daddy had even given him his name. Leo was actually Leonyd Balanchine, Jr.

The year Leo was nine, he and my mother had been driving out to Long Island to visit my maternal grandmother. My sister and I (ages two and six) had strep throat and had to stay behind. Daddy had agreed to stay with us, though I doubt it was much of a sacrifice as he’d never been able to tolerate Grandma Phoebe.

The hit had been meant for Daddy, of course.

My mother was killed instantly. Two shots through the windshield and straight through her lovely forehead and honey-scented chestnut curls.

The car my mother had been driving slammed into a tree as did Leo’s head.

He lived, but he couldn’t talk anymore. Or read. Or walk. My father had him sent to the best rehabilitation center followed by the best school for learning disabilities. And Leo certainly got a lot better, but he would never be the same. They said my brother would always have the intellect of an eight-year-old. They said my brother was lucky. And he was. Though I knew his limitations frustrated him, Leo managed a lot with the intellect he had. He had a job where everyone thought he was a hard worker, and he was a good brother to Natty and me. When Nana died, Leo would become our guardian—just until I turned eighteen.

I had added the cheese sauce and was considering calling the cops (for all the good that would do) when I heard the front door open.

Leo bounded into the kitchen. “You’re making macaroni, Annie!” He threw his arms around me. “I have the best sister!”

I pushed Leo gently away. “Where were you? I was crazy worried. If you’re going out, you’re supposed to either tell Nana or write me a note.”

Leo’s face fell. “Don’t be mad, Annie. I was with our family. You said it was okay as long as I was with family.”

I shook my head. “I only meant Nana, Natty, or me. Immediate family. That means—”

Leo interrupted me. “I know what that means. You didn’t say
immediate
.”

I was pretty sure I had, but what ever.

“Jacks told me you wouldn’t mind,” Leo continued. “He said he was family, and you wouldn’t mind.”

“I bet he did. Is that the only person you were with?”

“Fats was there, too. We went to his place.”

Sergei “Fats” Medovukha was my father’s cousin and the owner of the speakeasy Gable and I had been at the night before. Fats was fat, which was less common in those days. I liked Fats as much as I liked anyone in my extended family, but I’d told him that I didn’t want Leo hanging out at his bar.

“What did they want with you, Leo?”

“We got ice cream. Fats closed his place, and we went out for it. Jacks had…What do you call it, Annie?”

“Vouchers.”

“Yeah, that’s it!”

And if I knew my cousin, he’d probably made those vouchers himself.

“I had strawberry,” Leo continued.

“Hmmph.”

“Don’t be mad, Annie.”

Leo looked like he might cry. I took a deep breath and tried to control myself. It was one thing to lose my temper with Gable Arsley but behaving that way around Leo was completely unacceptable. “Was the ice cream good?”

Leo nodded. “Then we went…Promise you won’t be mad.”

I nodded.

“Then we went to the Pool.”

The Pool was in the nineties on West End Avenue. It used to be a women’s swimming club back before the first water crisis, when all the pools and fountains had been drained. Now, the Family (by which I mean the
semya
, or the Balanchine Family crime syndicate) used it as their primary meeting place. I guess they got the space on the cheap.

“Leo!” I yelled.

“You said you wouldn’t be mad!”

“But you know you’re not supposed to go to the west side without telling someone.”

“I know, I know. But Jacks said that a lot of people wanted to meet me there. And he said they were family so you wouldn’t mind.”

I was so angry I couldn’t speak. The macaroni had cooled enough to be eaten so I began to serve it into bowls. “Wash your hands, and tell Natty that dinner is ready.”

“Please don’t be mad, Annie.”

“I’m not mad at
you
,” I said.

I was about to make Leo promise that he would never go back there when he said, “Jacks said maybe I could get a job working at the Pool. You know, in the family business.”

It was all I could manage not to throw the macaroni against the wall. Still, I knew it was no good getting mad at my brother. Not to mention, it seemed excessive to commit two violent acts with pasta in the same day. “Why would you want to do that? You love working at the clinic.”

“Yeah, but Jacks thought it might be good if I worked with the Family”—he paused—“like Daddy.”

I nodded tightly. “I don’t know about that, Leo. They don’t have animals to pet at the Pool. Now, go get Natty, okay?”

I watched my brother as he left the kitchen. To look at him, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong with him. And maybe we made too much of his handicaps. It couldn’t be denied that Leo was handsome, strong, and, for all intents and purposes, a  grownup. The last part terrified me, of course. Grownups could get themselves in trouble. They could get taken advantage of. They could get sent to Rikers Island, or worse: they could end up dead.

As I filled glasses with water, I wondered what my
padonki
half cousin was up to and how much of a problem this was going to be for me.