The Rest of Us: A Novel (16 page)

Out on the street, I chastised Rhinehart for enabling Frank’s alcoholism. “If you really care about him, why don’t you get him into a shelter, AA, or something?”

Rhinehart said, “That man’s been living on the street for close to fifty years—it’s his choice. He wouldn’t even take me up on my offer of a bed. No need to worry.” This last part was said for my benefit. He often quoted Auden to me, “In headaches and worry, vaguely life slips away,” as if I were the only one to whom this applied.

•  •  •

There was something strange about the conversation Rhinehart was having with the man in the green army jacket and cap, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until I got closer and saw that they were talking simultaneously, as if they were reciting lines from a play. Rhinehart was gazing in the direction of 16th Street, while the other man was staring down at his shoe.

Rhinehart waved as he saw me approach. Was this the translator? He was much younger than I’d imagined, seemed to be in his twenties. He had slightly concave shoulders, as if he hadn’t quite grown into his frame yet, and a spotty complexion. Something about his
face, the cruel, thin lips maybe, instantly reminded me of my long-dead great-uncle, who had once called me a piglet when I’d reached across the table to get a roll from the bread basket.

Rhinehart slapped the man on the back, as if they’d been friends forever. “This is Fedir. He’s going to be my guide to Ukraine.”

Fedir grinned and enthusiastically shook my hand so maybe the cruel mouth was an accident. Rhinehart, who most likely had already decided where we were going for lunch, said, “Let’s just wander along and see what we find.”

On the street, Fedir lagged behind half a step. I slowed down so that he could walk beside us. Every time I slowed, he slowed.

Rhinehart took my elbow. “Don’t worry about him.”

Behind us, Fedir said something.

I turned around. “Excuse me?”

Fedir looked down at the ground, and repeated it. He was mumbling, but I caught the word “idiot.” I stopped dead under the construction overhang, so that people had to squeeze around us. The traffic roared past on 14th Street.

“What did you just say?”

Rhinehart said, “It’s Ukrainian, Tatie. He’s translating.” Half a beat later, Fedir clamored in gruffly. Rhinehart raised his own voice, so he was practically shouting. “It’s so that I can get accustomed to hearing the language again. I remember some words from when I was younger, but I’ve forgotten most of it.”

“He’s translating everything?”

“Yes.”

I turned back to Fedir, who met my eyes and said,
“Tak.”

•  •  •

Rhinehart had chosen his favorite overpriced deli restaurant on Second Avenue, which he claimed was his favorite.

While Fedir was over at the coat rack, carefully hanging up his jacket, Rhinehart whispered, “I haven’t quite got him figured out. He’s a circumspect man. Ukrainians tend to be rather open but he—”

“That’s going to drive me crazy, you know. That constant talking.”

He frowned. “I keep tuning it out, unconsciously. A bad habit. Comes from living in the city.”

“Everyone within three blocks can hear him. Do you know how loud he is?”

He opened the menu and glanced through it, even though, as he said, he’d been coming here for more than twenty years. Fedir returned from the restroom and slid into Rhinehart’s side of the booth, so I was looking at both of them. He was very tall. His beanstalk legs extended into the aisle.

The waitress appeared, a cute blonde, younger than me, who’d done her hair in a bouffant that made her look both retro and stylish. She greeted Rhinehart warmly, calling him Rudy.

He asked what was good today and then ordered the pastrami. I suspected the portions were enormous, and I offered to split it, but he waved me away. I looked for something small and light and settled for a Caesar salad. Fedir pointed to the matzo ball soup, which made me wonder if he’d been able to read the menu.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom, but the women’s room had an “out of order” sign. I didn’t have to go that badly, but still it was annoying. I had wanted to go to one of the cute little French bistros along the way. Walking by, I was envious of the couples sitting in the warm light inside. Rhinehart said he preferred no European to fake European, and since 1992 it had bothered him that Starbucks had the audacity to sully the Italian espresso culture with its use of the word “venti.” He always did that, annexed one grievance to another to build a case. What was I doing here, not even his lover—a resentful sidekick, another stray he’d picked up, like Frank.

When I returned to the table, Rhinehart said, “So quick?”

I took a sip of coffee that had appeared even though I hadn’t asked for it. “The ladies’ room is broken,” I informed him.

“So use the men’s. They’re single-person restrooms.”

“I don’t like the men’s room.” I glanced at Fedir, who grinned—it
had sounded like he was translating me in a slightly higher-pitched voice.

“So what are you going to do then?” After another minute, Fedir grumblingly stopped. They both sat looking at me.

“Why do you need to be worried about it? It has nothing to do with you. Worry about yourself.”

I could tell he was miffed. He said stiffly, “You shouldn’t let your fears restrict you.”

It annoyed me how he was echoing my language from last night. “It’s not a fear, it’s a preference! Last I knew, you wouldn’t go into drugstores!”

“That’s an ideological stance. There are too many of them, one on every corner—it’s an indicator of how we’re being railroaded into pharmacology. They used to serve ice cream sodas and headache medicine.”

“You’d feel differently if you actually had a medical condition that needed treatment.” I looked across the street. Inside the Chinese restaurant, one of the cooks was slumped in the window, his uniform creased against the glass. I identified with the silent defeat in his posture.

The food arrived, Rhinehart’s piled high on his plate. The sight of this excess made me lose my appetite.

“I don’t know if I
would
take pills if I were sick,” Rhinehart was saying. “No point in gilding the lily.”

“That’s such an antiquated expression. I’m not even sure what it means.”

He turned to Fedir. “I talk too much in aphorisms—I’m going to have to stop that.”

Fedir put down his spoon to translate. “It’s okay,” I said. “You can take a break to eat.”

“My own mouth dates me,” Rhinehart said. “It’s funny how we get stuck in one time and place like that. I knew a man on the block, an old guy, who had stopped buying clothes thirty years back. Why not? He took care of them, and his body wasn’t going to change drastically.
I’ll be like that. People will talk about how wide ties used to be in style when they see me coming down the street . . .”

All this talk about old men—I wondered if he was feeling sensitive about his age. Maybe afraid to sleep with me because of it? But I’d pulled this mental trick before, ascribing phantom emotional motives to him. Most likely he didn’t want to get too close because he was leaving. He was leaving me, yet again—his feelings should be ranked at a lower priority than mine. I cut him off. “You’re digressing.”

“Yeah, so? We’re just sitting here. What else do we have to do?”

“
I
have things to do.”

“What things? Tell me about them.” I searched his face, but it was all innocence.

Instead I redirected us to the one topic I was beginning to resent. “How’s the family research coming?”

“Not bad. I’m doing it mostly on my side for now.”

“Did Lyuba ever meet your maternal grandparents? That could be helpful.”

“I asked her that. She said no. I don’t think my aunt had contact with them.”

“There seems to have been a lot of fallouts in your family. Your aunt must have been a difficult person.”

“Actually Lyuba speaks about her as if she were a pushover. My mama, on the other hand, was very sensitive and tended to cling to old hurts, even if it hurt her double.” He gave me a meaningful look.

“What about Lyuba’s father? What was he like?”

“She said he was a very gentle man, affectionate. He was the one she’d go to with her problems. But sometimes he could be withdrawn. He suffered from depression was my guess. But again, I’m reading into that. She in no way suggested it. At any rate he outlived my aunt, who died before my mother did. He only passed away about ten years ago, I hear.”

“It’ll be interesting to see those letters back and forth with your mother. To see the connection.” And verify it.

Rhinehart nodded, motioning to Fedir to let him out of the booth.
“I’m going to the restroom now.” He turned to me. “Do you want to go first?”

“No, thanks.” I wanted to get Fedir alone to see how competent his English was. I’d been watching that churlish upper lip, which had started bothering me again. There was something lazy and yet cunning about his face that I couldn’t quite pin down. This was the person Rhinehart would be traveling with, depending on, and I needed to know he’d be with someone reliable.

Alone with me Fedir was shy. He tapped one knuckle nervously against the table rim.

“So how long have you lived here in the U.S.?” I asked.

He seemed confused about whether to answer or translate.

“English,” I said.

“Six years.”

“Wow,” I said. “You must miss the Ukraine.”

He nodded.

“Do you have family there?”

He looked past my shoulder to the door. “Yes, a wife and three children. A house and farm with two horses. The whole thing mine.” He smiled, revealing surprisingly small teeth. The front incisor was gray, the root dead.

“You must want to be with them,” I said, and he shrugged.

“I need to send the money. I make better here, a little this, a little this, I send. My wife likes that I am not always under her footsteps.”

I wasn’t sure how to take this—I would assume, with three children, she’d want him present. In my purse next to me, my phone buzzed. I unzipped the bag and looked down to see who it was. Manhattan number. I didn’t recognize it.

Rhinehart came back to the table. As I got out of the booth, he said, “It was really very clean in there, Tatie.”

As Fedir was getting up, he bumped me by accident, and said, “Excuse me, Teresa.” He gave my name, my grandmother’s name, a heavy Eastern European inflection that I preferred to my own pronounciation.

Back out on Second Avenue, we passed a bookstore and Rhinehart
lifted his hand in greeting to a dark-haired girl waving passionately from behind the register. I felt another skip of jealousy. Rhinehart was talking about Ukrainian art. One of the few types of art I knew nothing about. To Fedir he said the Met’s Ukrainian collection was embarrassingly poor. There was a pause, then the translating began. I was dying to be free of them.

Rhinehart, still talking, asked a blind man if he’d like assistance crossing. The man accepted, and we crossed together. Rhinehart walked with him to the bus stop on the corner while I checked my voicemail. It was a friend of the painter who lived in my building. She was organizing a group show of New York photographs at a temporary exhibition space in midtown, heard my work was good, and wanted to know if I’d like to put in a couple of prints. She bartended at the Otheroom, and I could come by any time tonight or tomorrow to discuss.

Rhinehart had stopped in front of the Ukrainian museum.

“I have to go back to Brooklyn,” I told him.

“Why now? There’s a great Archipenko exhibit here that I want you to see.”

I was curious, but resisted. “Another time. I just got invited to be in a group show. I need to get my portfolio together to meet the curator.” Rhinehart started to respond too enthusiastically, so I had to explain that she hadn’t even seen my work yet.

He was hailing me a cab. “This is great, great news. I told you, didn’t I? Just a matter of time.”

He was so genuinely pleased for me, I felt guilty for tainting the afternoon. “I’m sorry if I seemed upset today. This morning, I was—”

“You were fine. Go home. Get your work together. We’ll talk later this week.”

In the cab, I had the feeling that we wouldn’t be discussing that night again.

R
hinehart didn’t call me later that week, and I was hurt and had too much pride to call him. What was there to say? If he hadn’t wanted to be with me then, when I was sitting right in front of him, why would he want me now, a week later? It was as if all the warmth and desire I’d been sending in his direction had been blocked by something, a sheet of metal he was holding up, and so it boomeranged back with doubled force to burn up inside of me, pointlessly.

Since I couldn’t prevent myself from thinking about him, and knew little about his trip, I researched it on my own. I read about the country’s political structure, “constitutional democracy that regained independence in 1991. Twenty-four oblasts each with a capital”; the country’s size “slightly larger than France but smaller than Texas”; I corrected my previous mistake (“Ukraine,” not “the Ukraine”), heard about the famine from 1932 to ’33 when the inconceivable number of six million people starved. I flipped through photos of the lovely old chestnuts along the Dnieper River. In the
Times
I read about Viktor Yushchenko, who had been poisoned with dioxin by the rival Yanukovych’s party during the election. It was really the photograph of Yushchenko’s face, a grayish color and broken out in pustules, that had stuck in my memory, the fact that an ingested poison could do this. From guidebooks, I learned about the major sightseeing spots that I assumed Rhinehart would be hitting: Shevchenko’s grave, as well as Rabbi Nachman’s—the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement—before a final destination of Lyuba’s house. I imagined his
excitement at the prospect of meeting her and reading the correspondence that would cause his mother, fifty years dead, to chimerically appear, revealing the secrets of his past.

•  •  •

Eventually I did call him, and he answered as if he’d been expecting me. We talked about his trip preparations, the research he was doing, far more advanced than mine, for the essay he was writing about Ukraine. I largely concealed my new knowledge of the country. It was hard talking to him without being able to see his face.