HOW MUCH FOR THE VIRGIN?

Over the next few weeks arguments between Dad and Olga escalated. Some of these had to do with the fact that she suspected him of cheating with clients, specifically Sherri; others with Dad trying to bring his parents over from Russia now that the country had fallen apart. As my Bolshevik great-grandfather once predicted, rubles now could be used for toilet paper. My grandparents had nothing left but their flat and Grandma’s stage jewelry. Neither Roxy nor I had any contact with our grandparents, which really confused both of us, but I recall thinking that if only they moved to America, we’d come together again and rejoice. Olga had refused to even consider it.

The bulk of the problems between Dad and Olga sprouted from her inability to hold on to money. No one knew where it went, only that as soon as it appeared, it would promptly vanish. Olga claimed she was so busy guarding her husband from the female population of Los Angeles that she didn’t have time to keep track of the finances.

Just as she couldn’t prove my involvement with Cruz, she kept missing the opportunities to catch my father cheating. “How is it that you have so many female clients?” she would ask. “Because women are more prone to demonic influences,” he’d answer. “Their mind is not as strong as a man’s.” Olga was also busy sneaking out of the house and behaving suspiciously herself: a trip to the bank, for example, at eight in the morning when Dad snored the loudest. (Much later I’d glimpsed the name of this “bank” on a crumpled-up receipt: Big Papa’s Pawn.)

Equally bereft of evidence, they yelled at each other instead, both having something to hide and someone to blame. The “honeylambshank” and the “little sparrow” were replaced by huesos (cocksucker) and padla (whore).

On January 14, the day on which many Eastern Europeans celebrate the departure of the old year, pagan-style (another excuse to get drunk, some say), Dad and Olga laid down their weapons in a temporary cease-fire. Christmas trees remain decorated until this time, and on the evening of the fourteenth, a table is set, toasts are given, and people share memories of the previous year, which they hadn’t given much thought to until that fifth or sixth drink.

“Oksana needs a husband,” Olga had told Dad a few days before the Old New Year’s celebration. She had decorated the Christmas tree herself a month back, and ever since then it had remained in the throes of a most festive death, choked with garlands and drowning in tinsel.

“No, I don’t.”

“Be quiet,” Olga said. “Nobody’s talking to you.”

“Stop pestering me, woman. I still have three song arrangements to finish for the Bobrov wedding,” Dad said.

“She won’t stay a virgin forever.”

“Shut up, Olga. I’m not marrying anyone to make you feel better.”

Mom had always voiced her gripes with arranged marriages. Had she stayed in Armenia, she told me, her own engagement probably would go something like this:

A boy in town fancies her. His parents pay a visit to her parents and they discuss the advantages of their offsprings’ union while they drink coffee and eat Belgian chocolate. Mom’s parents pry about the other family’s financial stability, and in return the boy’s mother inquires after the regularity of Mom’s menses to assure favorable childbearing genes. All the while Mom makes, pours, and takes away coffee. Mom’s parents ask for several days during which to consider the offer, and then they decide. Without Mom.

I never thought that could happen to me because my father, happy not to be in charge of much, agreed that an arranged marriage was out of vogue. Until Olga started to whisper her fiendishly outdated notions into his ear.

“Our reputation is all we have, Valerio,” she said. “God only knows what Nora’s doing in Vegas. Probably teaching Roxy about grubbing for tips and dressing in casino uniforms. If you ask me, Roxy’s place is here, where we can raise her properly.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Dad said. “But she won’t budge. What am I supposed to do?”

“Do something for Oksana before it’s too late. Make her obey me. I can teach her the trade. Then pick a family who can provide a large bride-price. Svetlana just bought a brand-new Nissan, you know. You could use new recording equipment.”

That bitch, I thought. Diverting attention from herself by plotting my downfall, using the promise of a TASCAM multitrack recorder to reel my father in. My protests were ignored. Dad listened to her suggestions; his plan for fame involved a recording studio and major CD distribution of original music he liked to call “smooth Gypsy jazz” or “Gypsy fusion.”

A few days later Dad asked me to set the New Year’s table, telling me what an important night this would be. Then he disappeared into the back of the house again to practice, while I felt a cold dread settle deep into my bones.

Clearly January 14, 1992, was a poised guillotine. As I watched our guests arrive, the beginnings of a migraine thrust through my head. They took plates and exchanged jokes. I could well be married by the end of the month, hitched to a freckled Gypsy computer geek with strange body odor.

While everyone was catching up on the neighborhood gossip, I sneaked away and knocked on Dad’s studio door. He opened it only far enough to see who it was and stood in the doorframe, one hand around the doorknob. Behind him a drum machine clipped away at a waltz.

“Tell Olga I’m almost done.”

“Dad—”

“You need to learn to listen. Nobody says you have to marry the guy, but talk to him.”

“I don’t want to talk to him. He smells. And I don’t want to be like Olga, telling fortunes for money.”

“It might do some good, learning the craft. Not like you have so many options. What else are you going to do with your life?”

As kids Zhanna and I used to play at the abandoned church cemetery down the road from our house. The land was overgrown with stinging nettle, the graves grassy mounds we tripped over and then crossed ourselves so as not to anger the dead. Every time we came home, our arms and legs bloomed with hives. As if stung by nettles, my skin prickled once more with my father’s words.

“If you and Mom were together this would never happen,” I said.

He locked himself in again. Nothing new there. As long as he had his music, the world remained a pink-clouded festival.

He was still absent (incredibly rude by Roma standards of hospitality) when Alan moved his chair closer to mine—too close—later that evening. Dad, please stop tinkering with your guitars, I thought. Would you really sell me for a recording machine? The C-sharp scale rang across the house, then arpeggios, then the latest arrangement of “I Will Survive,” with salsa rhythms pulsating in the hardwood floor beneath our feet.

Igor, as the only adult male at the table, raised his glass. Four glasses joined his, one belonging to my potential husband. He didn’t have sexy sideburns or long, beautiful fingers. He was Alan—a cologne-soaked, thin-haired, big-lipped, nail-chewing mess of adolescent hormones.

Since no one was openly discussing marriage thus far, I grudgingly entertained the notion that perhaps I had overreacted. Grandpa Andrei used to say that a teenager’s emotional state resembles a busted compass with the needle spinning. Knowing Olga, the entire thing could’ve been a farce to make me squirm.

I took a pile of dishes into the kitchen, planning on staying for a while, maybe even washing a few plates.

“Hey,” I heard from behind me.

I set my load on the counter, breathing deeply.

He stood too close, and so did his Brut.

“Crazy stuff, huh, this marriage business,” he said.

Relieved to hear a sensible opinion, I turned around. “I know. Maybe we should tell them together.”

“Tell ’em what?”

“That we don’t want to do it.”

“But I do … wanna.” His eyebrows wiggled and he placed a hand lovingly over his crotch. “It’ll be good for us, for both of us. I’ve got mad skills.”

It wouldn’t do to burst out laughing. I stared at his face, unblinking, ignoring the stuff happening below his waist, but the movement of his hand was unmistakable.

“What are you doing?” I said. “Stop it.”

“I’m hung like a horse. That’s why I don’t wear briefs.”

Was he trying to shock me? He didn’t seem intelligent enough.

“Good to know,” I said finally, turning back to the dishes.

He grabbed my arm. The bulbous part of his nose reddened. “You don’t believe me.”

“I’m not interested, Alan.”

“I can prove it.” He reached in the back pocket and took out a scrap of paper.

“What is it?” I said. There were names and numbers of three girls written in surprisingly neat handwriting.

“My exes. They can vouch for me.”

Out in the living room the gossip had moved from local to international. “You remember so-and-so from Moscow? I heard they had one of those surgeries that make a penis out of a vagina.” “Now I’ve heard it all.” “Oh, you think so, do you? Listen to this one. My mother’s neighbor Artem was walking down the street when an icicle broke off the roof of a nearby building and impaled him straight through the skull.” “What a way to die.” “He lived!”

The carefree banter continued even when Alan and I joined the table, though I didn’t miss Svetlana’s knowing nod and a pat on her son’s shoulder as he sat down. I had a sudden urge to run for Vegas, get lost in it the way my mother had.