What Changes Everything (8 page)

       "A Mikhail Shemyakin book. Came in yesterday, and in mint condition." Stela pushed to her feet—she‟d put on more weight than she wanted lately, and she wasn‟t even sure how. It seemed only yesterday she was the lithe girl who loved dancing, and then the young mother sprinting after her sons. She moved to the third aisle, finding immediately the volume she wanted, bypassing the new volume on Russian icons, which she knew Yvette wouldn‟t like.

       Yvette took the book eagerly and flipped through the pages. "What a carnival

Shemyakin‟s work is."

       "I know you love him. Too ghoulish for me."

       "You have to look at the work without the laughter drained from your soul," Yvette scolded. She turned to the inside cover and read aloud. "„To Grandfather Georgi, Merry Christmas with love from Sasha, December 2003.‟ Oh, Stela. Another estate sale? Georgi who? Do I know the family?"

       Stela shook her head. "He lived in St. Louis. His nephew brought it to me."

       Yvette looked at Stela skeptically. Then she returned to the book. "I hate the way you get your books; that‟s what‟s ghoulish. But this is a beauty. How much?"

       "Eight dollars for you."

       "Stela. How are you going to stay in business that way?"

"Let me worry about that."

       Shaking her head, Yvette rummaged in her purse and pulled out a ten. She rose, placed the bill on the desk and then gestured toward Stela‟s cellphone.

       "Any calls?"

       "I‟ll let you know if there is." Stela found cellphones ridiculous. She kept a cell for one reason only.

       Yvette leaned forward and tapped the two stacked books. "So?"

       "What?" Stela reached into a lower drawer on the desk and pulled out a green metal box. From inside, she selected two one-dollar bills.

       "Who‟re you writing to now? The president? Another author? The head of the Veteran‟s Association? Who?"

       Stela held out the money to Yvette, who shook her head. Stela sighed and put the dollars on the table. "Every time we have to argue over the change," she said. "You‟d think it was two hundred dollars instead of two."

       "Someone I‟ve heard of?" Yvette persisted. "Or someone obscure this time?"

       "Not that it‟s your business."

       "Oh no. Not your son again?"

       "Yvette, please."

       Yvette raised a hand skyward. "I‟m taking that as a no, Stela. And I‟m hoping not, because I don‟t want to see you suffer more."

       "Okay," Stela said. "Thanks."

       "How much can one mother‟s heart take? Besides, haven‟t I known him since he reached here?" She put her hand on her waist. "I know what I‟m saying. He‟s our
haroshi malchik.
He‟ll come around in time, so you don‟t need to take years off your life fretting over it."

"Okay," Stela said.

"Water flows, but the rock remains. You are his rock."

"Hmm."

       Suddenly Yvette jumped; Bulgakov had rubbed himself against her legs. Stela couldn‟t help herself; she chuckled. "My sharpest cat," she said.

       "Not so sharp if she thinks I want to pet her."

       "I think she specifically realizes you don‟t."

       "Wish you‟d thin out some of these cats." Yvette settled back into the armchair. "So. If it‟s not Danil, who is it?"

       "Who says it‟s a letter? I‟m practicing my Mandarin."

       Yvette laughed. "You could just say you don‟t want to tell me."

       "I don‟t want to tell you."

       Yvette sighed. "But then I‟d be forced to remind you that I am not for nothing your closest friend. Here for the easy times and the hard. Always have been. I‟m exactly the place to deposit secrets.
If t
his is going to be a secret."

       "Okay, okay. I‟m writing my memoirs."

       "Oh right, Mrs. Haha. As private as you are?"

       The bell clanged again. Stela turned to see Jenni, her long blond hair swinging, her lipstick redder than maraschino cherries, already in mid-sentence. "Had to run right over and tell you, Stela dear. Feelin‟ good, yes ma‟am," she said, drawing out the last word as if she were an auctioneer. "We have a buyer. At least," she chuckled, "I think we do. They don‟t want to go quite as high as we‟d like—the financial climate, you know, the uncertainty in your line of business—but I think it will come in as a not-too-bad offer. I shouldn‟t be talking out of school since I don‟t have the details yet," and here, she actually giggled, which Stela found unbecoming in any case, but particularly in a middle-aged woman. "But I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I‟d stop in and personally give you a whisper. I‟ll call later, as soon as I get some numbers, and if you like them, well, we‟ll shout the news from the rooftops. I want you out of this dusty old store, dear Stela. And then maybe you‟ll let me talk you into selling that old threebedroom of yours and buying a cute little condo with a view. There are some good deals out there—I know, I know, you don‟t want to change your addresses in case friends come looking for you, but we can deal with that, Stela dear. Oh well, one step at a time. No, can‟t have coffee," she said, though Stela hadn‟t offered any, hadn‟t even spoken yet, "Sorry to be on the run. But you have to work twice as hard to make half as much money these days." She kissed the air. "Talk to you soon, darling," she said, waving a hand at her shoulder as she turned away.

       The door closed behind her and the store seemed for a moment as if the air had been sucked out of it. Yvette stared at Stela, and then opened her hands to the sky. "The shop? Such a big decision as this, you were keeping from me?"

       "There‟s no decision, Yvette. You see how she is? Not a second to get a word in edgewise."

       "You put it on the market and you didn‟t breathe a word. I told you even before I told my ex-husband when I got pregnant."

       "Your ex-husband, that k
akáshka? I‟m no
t sure that qualifies—"

       "What will you do if it sells?"

       "You think all I can do is own a used bookstore?"

       "I think this has been your life for the last twenty years. And there would be trouble if the

cobbler started making pies."

       "I‟m neither cobbler nor cook," Stela said lightly. She rose and idly straightened some books near the door. She didn‟t really want to go into this. But she turned back to find Yvette staring, demanding with aggressive silence that Stela explain. "Some days this shop is like my prison, Yvette. I imagine the books falling from the high shelves and suffocating me. It‟s possible, you know. Have you looked around here? Books are living everywhere. I even have them on the back of the toilet in the bathroom now. More than I‟ll ever be able to sell. So when I die, what‟ll happen? Someone will come, take them to a recycle center? Labor spent to turn literature into trash: I don‟t want that to be my legacy."

       Yvette shook her head. "Who‟s talking about dying?"

       "It doesn‟t hurt to think."

       "Stela, this is not the moment to sell. Danil needs to know where to find you, and the beaten path is the shortest one."

       "Thank you, Yvette. I‟m done discussing this now."

       "Besides, who will I talk to over morning coffee if you move away? What are we, if not family by now?"

       Stela, silent, stacked up four books on the counter, arranging them so the smallest one was on top.

        "We‟re just a couple girls from the motherland—we always said that—and we have to stick together." Yvette put down her empty cup and picked up the Shemyakin book, tapping her fingers gently on its cover without speaking for a few minutes before reaching over to squeeze Stela‟s hand. "You‟re not healed yet. You‟re not ready to make a big change. You hear me?" Stela shrugged.

       "Okay. Okay. I‟m getting the silent treatment. I have to get going anyway." Yvette stood up. "You‟ll do what you want in the end. But don‟t do anything before tomorrow, Stela, promise me that much. We need to talk more, after you‟ve found your tongue again."

       Stela ducked her head gruffly in reply.

       When the door closed behind her, Stela let out the sigh she‟d been holding. She wished she‟d been quick enough to figure out a way to cut off the real estate agent before she began spouting information like a busted water pipe. How could she discuss this with Yvette before she was sure herself? The shop sometimes felt like a prison hut in Siberia, as she‟d told Yvette. But she‟d also loved these old books longer and more deeply than she‟d loved most people—yes, the stories themselves, but even more, the history of the hands that had smoothed these covers, bent back a corner, underlined a series of words, dripped ligonberry jam on a page. She loved the estate sales that made Yvette recoil. Buying volumes others had tucked beneath their arms and then bringing them back here to her new home made being in her bookstore like a trip to the ocean; it gave her a sense of timelessness. It reminded her that she was nothing more than a comma in a sea of endless sentences. It made her feel less alone. It sucked the salt from her wounds.

       She slid the books off the note she was writing. She should have been a writer—she knew how to tell a story, and she loved words. But it was too late for that; all she had now was the letters, so she kept at it, buying stamps in an age of emails, using the Internet solely to track down street addresses, sending out letters to everyone she thought of, and never really hoping for a reply. Except from Danil.

       And no letters were more futile, probably, than the ones she wrote to her son. But she couldn‟t stop, no matter what she told Yvette. He was still angry with her, she suspected. He might not open her letters, if they even reached him via the only address she had. And yet, he was her son; of course she wrote. She kept no copies of her letters, but she suspected if she could look at them as a whole, they would parallel the path of her grief.

       It was crazy: the dead son she could visit. She could rant and cry over his body below the ground and try to come to terms with the loss. The other one, alive, had slipped entirely from her reach. Sometimes even, immediately upon awakening, she confused in her mind who was gone and who remained; she imagined calling the youngest to lament over the passing of the oldest.

       "Yvette just came in," she wrote now to Danil. "She asked about you as always. She is moving more slowly, but has the loyalty of a collie, though please don‟t mention that comparison to her. If you—" She crossed out the last two words and rewrote: "When you come home, I‟ll make you
pirozhki an
d invite her to dinner."

       She put down her pen and went to pour herself another cup of coffee, placing a sugar cube on her tongue; she still found it comforting to drink coffee in the old way. "We are having an Indian Summer, which Yvette calls a St. Martin‟s Summer, and she‟s explained why, but I‟ve forgotten. I am grateful for this last breath of—" She crossed out the last line. Why should she discuss the weather and dance around the real topic? This was her son; he‟d come from within her own body.

       "Oh Dani," she wrote. "We are left behind, you and I. There is no one else with whom I can recall that decade and a half of years rich with your childhoods, that time for which I feel such nostalgia. No one left but you who I can love in such an unprotected way. I miss you."

       She paused, chewing on the end of her pen, and began again. "I wish you could have seen the face of the staff sergeant who gave me the details. I cannot believe he lied to me. Besides, Dani, if I accept this as a lie, how much else would I have to question?" She stopped, reread the last three sentences and, hating them, wadded up the paper. She would start over. Which was fine. Famous authors spent years perfecting their books, after all, and now those books surrounded her, making a lasting impression. She could spend a few more weeks on a letter to her last remaining son.

       Grief had changed her. The old Stela had vanished, erased by a war "over there," though in a different way than her sons. First she‟d been angry, and that anger had driven Dani away. But she‟d understood at last that if she was to get on with what was left, she had to stop clinging to the past. And that‟s what she needed to tell her son, that alone, if she could find a way to slip the other differences between the pages of a forgotten book.

       She remembered how frightening it was to be young and be forced to imagine the inner lives of one‟s parents. There they were, crazy or disappointed or bitter, sagging in spirit as well as body. Who wouldn‟t run from that? She empathized with Dani; she could understand why he fled.

       But who else did she have to explain things to? Sitting there, surrounded by words, searching for the right ones, she took another clean sheet, and tried again.

       Danil heard the doorbell ring, but he chose not to acknowledge it. He couldn‟t have been sleeping more than a couple of hours; he needed more. He willed his eyes to stay closed even as he heard a key in the door, and then Joni‟s voice.

       "Morning, Dani. Or actually, afternoon."

       He groaned and rolled over.

       "Time to get up," Joni said.

       "Give me a pass, Joni," he said. "I worked late."

       "I‟m not sure it‟s work unless you get a paycheck," Joni said lightly.

       "Remind me again why I gave you a key?"

       Joni laughed and sat on the only comfortable chair in Danil‟s apartment. "A cup of coffee," she said, extending her arm, then setting the cup on the rickety table when he didn‟t acknowledge it. "You‟re welcome. And here are the latest three letters from your mom." She shook her head. "These letters…but that‟s another topic, Dani. Today I come bearing news, and I don‟t have much time. I‟m on lunch break."