This is the Part Where You Laugh (25 page)

Oh, Anna Anderson, I don't care about DNA tests or the lies that came out of Prince Dimitri's mouth. You will forever be my Princess Anastasia, royal and blue-blooded in America or anywhere.

We'll grow old together. We'll have matching walkers and oxygen tanks. We'll both groan as we struggle to stand up from couches, from bus seats, from restaurant chairs pushed back. I'll stroke the sun-spotted skin of your neck with my arthritic fingers, feel the heft of the gained weight in your hips, feel your thick waist through the sequined dresses that you like to wear. We'll make slow love on our Sealy Posturepedic bed on Sunday afternoons, in your house in Los Angeles, the cricks in our bodies ticking in time with the titanium ball joint of my replaced hip.

You'll beg me to rub your sagging breasts and my hands will shake as I try to undo your enormous bra. We'll be like teenagers again, the expanse of your chest making me light-headed, my tongue thickening.

“I'm sorry about your family's execution,” I'll whisper. “I'm sorry that you had to lie still among your family's bodies, that you had to crawl and climb out of that mass grave.” I won't know why I bring that up when we're together like this, naked. Something about your nakedness reminds me of that history.

You'll be angry, but I'll settle you with my fingers, my body spooning you until your shaking stops. Then we'll start slowly again, gaining momentum, the sheets heating with the friction of our bodies.

Your dentures will fall out on your pillow as you cry, “Oh, oh, oh,” your mouth open so wide, your Russian accent hidden in those cries like the accents of British rock stars bent around the runs of a lead guitar.

You'll gum your pillow as I finish, your head turned, the images of the Revolution in your mind, each family member shot and thrown in the newly dug ground. You'll speak the names of your relatives as you fall asleep next to me, the last six tsars in order, their names as your daily rosary: Paul, Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II.

I'll say, “You are my princess, my last princess, my Anastasia. I believe in you. I believe in your story. You are my Russian girl forever, my Russian royal, my Anna, my Anai, the end of me, the end of this. You are the end of my Russian addiction.”

Thank you first and foremost to Adriann Ranta, my super agent, for stopping next to your rental car on that back street in Berkeley the day that we met and telling me that I needed to write something like this. I
guess
you were right. And thank you for the countless little things that you do, too.

To Katherine Harrison, the hardest-working novel editor I've ever met. 447 pages, edited by hand. Thank you for all of the penciled-in ideas, funny little reactions, and personal anecdotes. You made novel revision fun. But more importantly, you made this book better.

Thank you to my mother, the artist Pamela Hoffmeister, for your paintings, your storytelling, your love of history, poetry, and good novels, and for so many great conversations about making art.

To my father, Charlie Hoffmeister, who still models hard work to this day. A writer might have talent, but he better have a work ethic. And you've always inspired me to get up early and finish my work. Plus, baseball games are good, too.

Love to Zeb Rear for musical inspiration and humor. On a Tuesday. At the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

Thank you to the Joshua Tree National Park Association, particularly Caryn Davidson, for selecting me as writer-in-residence and giving me both the time in the desert and the Lost Horse Ranger Station to finish the revisions of this book.

On the copyediting team, thank you to copy editor Nancy Elgin, proofreader Amy Schroeder, and executive copy editor Artie Bennett. Your precise notes—back and forth, in different-colored ink—were the calculus that this big, messy pile of a book needed.

Thank you also to my managing editor, Dawn Ryan, for keeping things on schedule and running smoothly. The behind-the-scenes people truly make books happen.

On design, thanks so much to my cover designer, Angela Carlino, and interior designer, Kenneth Crossland. The book would be a big white nothing without you two, and big white nothings aren't as cool as they sound.

To Ruth. My Tortuga. Thank you for our wonderful early-morning writing-and-reading sessions. Your poetry. I love seeing your face come around that corner.

And to Rain. My coyote trickster. Thank you for the best bread and cookies ever baked by human hands. Plus circuits. Plus sarcasm.

Finally, as always, to Jennie Pam. You know that the bridge was real. All I wanted was to impress you so that we could be together forever. Is that too much to ask? You're worth a thousand failed backflips.