“Wait!” Gideon dives heroically and catches the framed ketubah that Baba is about to shatter. He scrambles to his feet and again offers his gift. “This is still your original marriage license—I just prettied it up. There are your names, and here is your wedding date, July 18, 1974. That’s almost exactly one year before you left the Soviet Union, right?”
Baba stares at the ketubah as if everything on it is new to her. And then she does the most surprising thing of all. She grabs Gideon’s face in her hands. She kisses him—first one cheek, then the other. She pulls him into an embrace. She murmurs, “Thank you, thank you, you lovely boy.”
This is definitely not how Zoe expected this night to go. Alex clearly didn’t, either. That was his “Thank you, you lovely boy” going astray. Zoe can’t figure out if Alex looks more pissed or confused. Everyone else looks befuddled.
Baba takes a break from embracing Gideon to approach the microphone. A respectful hush falls over the room.
“Life has never given me what I wanted,” Baba commences her version of an anniversary toast. Some people grin, waiting for the punch line. Deda shifts from foot to foot. He’s already heard it. “But it has, once in a while, given me what I needed.”
Deda’s head bobs up, his eyes wide. This part is new.
Baba looks over her shoulder at Balissa. “It’s been that way for all the women in my family. My grandmother, Daria.” The assembled titter, so Baba explains. “It was Dvora. Her mother made her change it. She thought it would make a difference.” Now the crowd really laughs. There’s a Russian expression: They don’t punch your passport; they punch your face. No name change could pass a Dvora off as a Daria. “Baba Daria didn’t want to be banished to Siberia. But it shielded her from the war. She left Odessa just in time. Baba Daria got what she needed, not, maybe, what she wanted, because of two men. My grandfather, Edward Gordon.” Baba says the name with meaning. After Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s exposure of his butchery, Edward Gordon was rehabilitated. His recordings were again available, and every Jewish child forced to suffer through piano lessons had been compelled to listen to them. “He’s one of us!” their parents touted. Edward’s name was returned to a place of honor at the conservatory where he’d trained, the metal plaque reinstated to the wall where it had once been ripped off by crowbar, his death date added after his birth date. The ballet school where he’d accompanied the dancers put up a plaque, too. According to Baba, Balissa attended the ceremony because she had been required to. But she never set foot in the school again and forbade her Natasha from taking lessons there.
“Mama didn’t want her cherished papa to die.” Baba puts words in Balissa’s mouth, though the tears in Balissa’s eyes suggest Baba knows what she’s talking about. “But his sacrifice saved her life. His sacrifice, and the actions of her stepfather. Whom Mama certainly didn’t want. Whom Mama certainly didn’t like. But whom she needed, nonetheless. Not to mention, this stepfather, he gave Mama her beloved baby brother!”
Baba waves to an elderly man standing off to the side, clutching the hand of his nurse—the one with the chatty relatives. Despite pushing eighty, and having shrunk some, he’s still the largest member of the family, not in height—Deda is tall, though slight—but in width. Plus, he has an amazing head of hair. White now, but they say it was a bright red in his youth.
Uncle Igor waves back at Baba, playing along with her shout-out. But his eyes are not playful, they’re worried, and they’re not on her. His attention is focused on Balissa. She smiles sorrowfully over the guests’ heads, followed by a melancholy shrug in Uncle Igor’s direction. It confirms the verity of what Baba said about the man who whisked them from Odessa, and the man who made their departure possible. How much Balissa didn’t want it, despite needing it desperately.
“It was the same for me,” Baba continues. “A man.” She points at Deda. “This man, my Boris, he showed me that life does eventually give you what you think you want. Except maybe not in the way that you think you want it.”
Is that a compliment? No one is sure. Baba is not known for her compliments. Zoe hears a few whispers, a few tentative claps. A few raised glasses and murmurs of “Hear, hear!” Deda takes a step toward Baba, his lips puckered to kiss her, but whether it will be mouth, cheek, or air isn’t yet clear.
She’s not done. Before Deda can zero in on his target, Baba abruptly turns to where Zoe is standing, between Alex and Gideon, one of whom understood her words, but seems eager for her to wrap it up already, and one who hasn’t understood a thing, but appears in no hurry to escape. “I hope my granddaughter learns from my example. I hope, when it comes to choosing the right man to spend her life with”—because any other option isn’t an option, obviously—“she will have what she wants and what she needs, both.” Baba hesitates for so long that some believe her speech over and start to clap. She cuts them off with a terse shake of the head. Quickly, before she changes her mind, Baba adds, “I hope she will be brave, also. You must be brave. So you can know truth about yourself. So you can to tell difference between the wanting and the needing, my Zoyenka.”
Everyone is looking at Zoe now. A response is required. She can’t stay planted at the edge of the stage, blinking in confusion. So she reverts to propriety. Zoe finally understands why Mama and Deda are committed to following rules. It makes coming to a decision in difficult situations simpler. Zoe does what is expected of her. She steps forward and kisses Baba, then Deda. Mama actually looks pleased. Finally, it would seem Zoe has done something right.
The band begins playing again, prompted by the emcee, who knows an emotional cue when he hears one. At Baba’s stern urging, the dancing resumes, more frenzied than before. Mama rises to join the group hug. Everyone is happy.
There is no way it can last.
Zoe takes advantage of the fleeting truce to disentangle herself and make a run for it, Alex and Gideon following.
They get far enough up the scarlet velvet stairs, past the mirrored walls and toward the front door, that they can hear each other without screaming and English is no longer a foreign language. Rabbi Rose sweeps by, barely calling goodbye to Alex and best wishes to Zoe and Gideon before she’s on the boardwalk, speed-walking toward Coney Island Avenue for a cab.
Alex grumbles in Rose’s wake, “Your grandmother could have shown a little gratitude. I went through a lot of trouble to get Rose here.”
“Nobody asked you to. Baba didn’t want a Jewish wedding. You blindsided her.”
“Please. She was just doing that keep-saying-no-so-they’ll-keep-asking bit.”
“Maybe instead of constantly talking about your app, you should use it to really listen to what people are saying. Or”—Zoe looks at Gideon, wondering if he remembers—“what they’re not saying.”
Gideon smiles. He definitely remembers.
And another thing. “What are you doing here, anyway, Alex?”
“You invited me!”
“You never accepted!”
“I didn’t know until the last minute if I’d be available.”
“You mean you didn’t know until the last minute if something better would come along.”
“I tried to make it up to you. Why do you think I went through this nonsense?”
“To show off.”
“Isn’t that what these parties are for? Everyone tries to come up with the better song, the best poem. I knew you wouldn’t have anything prepared like you’re supposed to. Your family would be so disappointed, you’d never hear the end of it. I thought I’d help you out. Get everyone talking about how great the Rozengurts’ granddaughter was, earn you a ton of Brownie points. Honestly, you could stand to be a little grateful, too.”
How can somebody be so right—because Alex is totally right about everything—and yet so wrong at the same time?
“And I certainly didn’t expect you to bring another date.”
Alex sighs. Not for his sake, but for Zoe’s. He feels sad for her, making such an avoidable mistake, choosing an obvious outsider over an ideal candidate like him. Doesn’t Zoe realize what she’s setting herself up for? The hysteria from family, the gossip from neighbors, the censure from kids she grew up with, the community cold shoulder. He knows she’ll come to regret it. He tried to save Zoe from herself. She was just too foolish to listen.
Except Zoe knows something Alex doesn’t. If Mama could survive it, so can Zoe. Because it’s the right thing to do.
At the same time, Zoe realizes why Alex was ever interested in her. It’s not the financing. Financing, he can get anywhere. It’s because dating an on-paper ideal candidate like Zoe made his life easier, too. She wonders how many times a day his mother texts him about not letting Zoe slip through his fingers.
“Sorry you came all the way out here,” is the closest Zoe will get to apologizing.
Alex shrugs. “It’s cool.”
Zoe believes him. Alex won’t hold a grudge. Not against her, not against Gideon. To hold a grudge, you’d have to care.
Just before he takes off, Zoe taps her phone against Alex’s. “That’s my friend Lacy’s number. You should give her a call. You guys will really hit it off.” Zoe pictures them being optimistic about everything. Even Lacy’s mother regaling Alex’s parents with how great socialism is. “Tell her I said so.”
Alex salutes two fingers against his hairline and melts into the crowd. Like he belongs there.
Zoe realizes Gideon hasn’t said anything. She realizes he trusted her to handle Alex. And he isn’t haranguing her about doing it wrong. Zoe meets his eyes. “What happened in there? Why did my grandmother—”
“Let’s go outside,” Gideon says.
On the boardwalk, they are instantly surrounded by shirtless guys zipping around on bikes; polyglot families wrapped in towels with clumps of sand clinging to their butts; couples clutching cheap trinkets won on Coney Island; Russian-speaking pamphlet wielders insisting Jesus was the Jewish messiah; and electric organs, guitars, and drum sets erected without permits to blast amateur compositions and wring coins from softhearted visitors. Also dozens of elderly couples strolling, arm in arm—women, men, long-marrieds, and lifetime friends. Some have gone native, making their evening appearances in tracksuits and windbreakers. Others stick to the old ways, dressing up for a promenade, skirts, hose, silk scarves, salon-styled hair tucked under jaunty berets, heels, and makeup. Children pedal alongside on miniature BMWs and Mercedes, the girls with huge bows in their hair and the boys in vintage Red Army caps their great-grandfathers died to earn, which now can be bought on every Brighton corner.
Zoe and Gideon walk over to the metal barriers keeping the beach from the boardwalk. The air smells of the sea. It’s why so many love it here. “Like Odessa,” Deda says.
Zoe and Gideon sit on a wooden bench, looking both ahead and at each other.
Gideon says, “You told me your grandmother didn’t want an anniversary party. She offer any hint why?”
“Beyond general disdain for anything and everything, no.”
“Forty-fifth, right?”
“Right. Sapphire, Exodus, you heard Alex.”
“When your grandfather visited our office, we talked about a programming language he once used. Ratfor. He said he dabbled in it before he got married.”
“So?”
“Ratfor was invented in 1975. Forty-four years ago.”
Zoe sees what he’s getting at, but . . . “Isn’t it possible he just got the year wrong?”
“Of course. It’s also possible that your grandparents got married in 1975, not 1974. Which would make your mother . . .”
“A touch illegitimate.”
Zoe realizes she should feel shocked. And she does. But not in a bad way. She’s actually kind of tickled at the idea of Baba, who just a few minutes ago described Deda not as something she wanted but as something she needed, so overwhelmed by passion that she’d break the ultimate good-Komsomolniks-don’t-engage-in-such-activities taboo, and that Zoe’s very righteous Mama was the result of it. Of course, Zoe could be the naive romantic of the moment. The actual situation could have been more prosaic. Baba could have been bored, or scared she’d end up an old maid at the ancient age of twentysomething, or a whole host of other reasons to which Zoe would never be privy. But whatever Baba’s motives, it led to Mama, which led to Zoe, which led to sitting here now. With Gideon. As Baba mused: “What happened is what happened, no going back for anyone. What’s the point of combing through the past? That’s not the direction time moves in.”
Gideon speculates, “I figured your grandma didn’t want to deal with your mother finding out. Not to mention the rest of Brighton Beach.”
“But that’s . . . so . . . stupid.”
“To you and me, sure. Around here, though, sounds like a pretty good reason not to want to draw attention to your wedding anniversary, doesn’t it?”
“So you dummied up that ketubah.”
“I thought your grandma would like concrete proof of the date she’s been lying about for forty-four years.”
Now Zoe wants to kiss Gideon on the cheek and call him a lovely boy.
“Funniest part is, Alex and I were on the same track to show off for you; we just went about it in different ways.”
A lovely boy kiss on the cheek isn’t enough. Not for Zoe, not now. She leans in and kisses Gideon on the lips. She’s not expecting him to pull away this time. She’s actively hoping he won’t.
He doesn’t. He kisses her back like this is the kiss Gideon’s been expecting Zoe to initiate all along. Like he’s been waiting patiently. And like it’s been worth the wait. He kisses her like he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing, like he can’t imagine anyone finding anything wrong with what they’re doing, and, if they do, how sad that will be for them. He kisses Zoe like he never intends to stop.
Then there’s a tap on their shoulders.
Balissa is standing there, leaning on Baba for support. It’s several yards from the restaurant to their bench, so it couldn’t have been easy for her to navigate. But when Zoe’s great-grandmother has something to say, nothing can impede her. And Balissa has quite a bit to say to Zoe and Gideon.
Thanks to Alex’s earlier sigh and Zoe’s understanding of what it meant, she braces herself for the tirade that must follow, especially when Zoe spies Mama in hot pursuit of the runaway pair. But it’s Baba who speaks first.
“You have never listened to me, my Zoyenka.”
She’s speaking English, so Gideon can comprehend her disapproval. Will Baba open with the general inappropriateness of Zoe making out with a near-stranger in public (lovely boy aside), or will she zero in on who exactly the near-stranger is? What he is. Which will come first, stories of how Mama was treated in school by those hooligans, or the time a mamzer ripped Balissa’s purse off her shoulder and skateboarded away? Maybe Baba will trend political. African revolutions. Savages, that’s what those people are. Not because of the bloodshed, but for thinking Communism could be the solution to anything. Not merely savages, fools, too. Then again, Baba might settle for highlighting what people will say about Zoe. Doesn’t Zoe care what people might say about her?
“Listen to me now. Please.” Baba points to Gideon. “This is very good boy.”
Perhaps Baba took the ketubah incident into account, after all. But as Balissa lectured, “No such thing as good man. Only man in a good time.” Zoe presumes that applies to good boys, too. And now is definitely not a good time for a good boy like Gideon to be standing next to a could-always-be-better girl like Zoe. Now is the time for Baba’s compliment to be followed by “but not here, not now.”
“Good, yes, so important,” Mama echoes.
“Especially when life not so good,” Baba struggles to explain. “The Alex boy, he is . . . he is . . .” She makes a shape with her hands like she’s encircling a balloon. “He is empty. He flies high; he flies away. He has many big dreams, and that is where he will always be first. This boy”—she pats Gideon on the shoulder—“this boy stays on ground.”
In America, land of “give a child wings so he can fly,” her metaphor would be an insult. But to Zoe’s family, dubbing someone strong enough to tether you to the ground so that you don’t disappear in the middle of the night into a Chaika limousine is the height of compliments.
“My Boris,” Baba tells Gideon, “is man who does no fly away. He like you. He sees problem, he fixes. I not smart enough, too stubborn, too proud, to ask for help; he fixes anyway. And he does not, at the end, say I told you so. Can you believe this? Not once does he say this to me. That is what real man is, yes?”
Zoe realizes Mama is the only one on this stretch of boardwalk oblivious to the problem Gideon fixed for Baba. Zoe realizes they all intend to keep it that way.
“Zoya’s papa,” Baba, after knowing Gideon a few minutes, fills him in on family history Zoe pried out of her only the other day, “if born in USSR, what he do with his little deceits, it would be necessary. He like Balissa’s stepfather, man who can do favors, get favors. In America, is not time and place for these things, we do not need same. Time and place, my mama tell me, they matter when it come to what man is good and what man is bad. She is right. I realize this after too long.”
Zoe sneaks a peek at Mama to check how she’s responding to Baba’s declaration. Mama’s face remains neutral. It’s not the time or place to push.
“I no have choices when I am younger. I no can choose job, I no can choose man, I no can choose life.” Baba turns her attention to Zoe. “But like Balissa also say, sometimes no choice is best choice. No choice gives me Deda, and he is what I need. You, Zoyenka, you are not like me. You have many choices. So many choices in America. You will to make wise one, yes?”
“You trust me to make wise choices?” Zoe double-checks. “On my own? Without your input?”
Gideon says, “Listen to your grandmother, Zo-yay-enka.”
His attempt to pronounce her nickname the Russian way makes everyone laugh.
“And you will be brave, yes? You will not look at outside of person.” Baba rubs Gideon’s arm appreciatively. “You will look at inside. Inside yourself, too. Look honestly, see what is really there, not what you wish to be there.”
Hearing Baba echo the words Zoe’s babbled at Lacy how many times over the past few weeks brings Zoe up short. The idea of Baba understanding something Zoe assumed was unique to her is disconcerting. She thinks back to the day she first realized there might be more to her family than she previously believed. Between the fudged wedding date and now this, Zoe’s oblivion is starting to feel embarrassing.
But then Baba continues issuing instruction on how Zoe should live her life, and she’s back on familiar ground. “You must to look that other person will give you what you really need. Even if you not know what you really need and ask for nonsense you think you want. Do you to see this?”
Zoe smiles at Gideon. Zoe smiles at Baba. Zoe says, “I to see this.”
“Good.” Baba leans back, studying them both happily. “You will be better than me. Braver than me. Smarter than me. Better and braver and smarter than all of us.” And then, of course, she has to add, “Do not make fun of my English. When you are old woman, we will listen how you speak language you must to learn as adult.”
Balissa nudges Baba. The rise of her eyebrows reminds Baba of why they came out in the first place. And it wasn’t so Baba could chastise Zoe. Baba takes the plate Balissa is holding in her hands and offers it to Gideon. “My mother, she was to be worried you leave party with no food. She bringing this for you.”
On the plate is a little bit of everything from the buffet. Including a potato.