CHASING FRIENDSHIP

One night Svetlana and Alan paid us another visit, although no one dared to mention marriage in the presence of my father while he was still in mourning.

Half that night I spent twisting in my bed to stay awake until everyone else went to sleep so I could sneak to the kitchen phone and call Mom. Even after the guests had left—the whir of their car unzipping the tightness in my rib cage—I could hear the staccato of Olga’s voice chased by Dad’s powerful bass for hours. It’s worse than living with vampires, I thought when their bedroom door closed at dawn. I slunk into the kitchen, where the wooden tick of the clock was the only sound on the planet. Then there was the shrill of the phone ringing, and I grabbed it before it woke anyone up.

“Doch (Daughter)?”

“Mom? Is that you?”

“Who else?” She chuckled. “My shift just ended. Got home a few minutes ago, but I’ll wait to get Roxy from the neighbors until at least eight, you know. Everybody’s probably sleeping still.”

“Are you okay?”

Knots of silence marked by a swift gurgle going down the neck of a bottle.

“Mom? I was about to call you.”

“Gotta tell you. I bought a brand-new fifty-four-inch RCA yesterday. Roxy helped me pick it.”

“Mom.”

“I swear, it’s the size of a car.”

“You can’t watch the programs on a smaller TV?”

“Soon I’ll get my raise, a dollar a year, you know, and then we’ll get out of this one-bedroom matchbox and buy a house.”

At this point Mom still thought that purchasing a house in the States was like purchasing one in the old country, where you paid it off all at once. The concept of credit cards and loans was foreign to her.

“I have to go. We’ll talk later, okay?” When you’re sober, I almost added.

“Talk about what?”

Everything rolled out of me in one hot whisper.

“You father wouldn’t dare,” she said.

I pressed the receiver closer to my chin. “This is serious, Mom. I’m not ten. I know what’s going on.”

“I’ll talk to him, but I think you’re overreacting.” And she was gone.

It was my own fault, I knew. Had I not brought Cruz home, Olga’s alarm never would’ve gone off. She’d have been too busy making money vanish to worry about me. The funny thing was that nothing was happening between us. Nothing tangible. Our connection was a rush, a flurry of wind out the car window. We soared in a perpetual state of foreplay. Caught in a trap of my own devising, I spent days thinking up ways to get Cruz out of our house. Not that I didn’t enjoy watching him lean over his guitar, strumming those strings with his clever fingers. On the contrary, during lesson time the living room called to me in a siren voice. Before long I’d find an excuse to dust a shelf, polish a table, or do any other kind of housework in the area so I could enjoy the view.

But after Alan’s whackathon, I was convinced the only way to stop Olga’s husband-hunting was to pretend Cruz and I didn’t associate. Surely then she could point her guns elsewhere.

It proved surprisingly difficult to feign indifference. Cruz’s presence made me clumsy and absentminded. If I happened to glance at his hands, my face burned as if he’d touched me. My eyes followed, in slow motion, as he turned the pages of his sheet music. I could even tell his footsteps from everyone else’s.

Meanwhile, my stepmother made a list of families with brand-new cars.

Cruz had to go.

I rehearsed my speech all the way to his cousin’s house. I’d ask him to stay away for a while, not disappear completely. He was my best friend. And that I recognized as something to protect.

The person who opened the door took a large bite of a banana with lips painted tar black. “Hi, sweetie,” he chirped. “You looking for Cruz?”

I nodded, taking in the black lacy dress and the makeup.

“In here,” he said, crooking one purple-nailed finger. “I’m Brandon.”

“Oksana.”

“Oh, I know. You’re only the most talented Gypsy in school.” We went through a dimly lit hallway toward the sound of a booming TV and ended up in the living room. “Well, the only Gypsy I know.”

Annie, Cruz’s cousin and a fellow magnet student, sat up on the couch to say “Hi” before slumping back down. A cloud of smoke lingered around her, unmoving, even as two albino ferrets scurried off her chest and under the couch. I’d seen the little creatures before. Romeo and Juliet. Annie often brought them to school, hidden in her backpack or coat.

Brandon waved one graceful hand at the couch. “Sit. Don’t be shy.”

I didn’t at first, too busy wondering why both of them were eyeing me with such blatant interest.

Brandon finally spoke. “So, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to ask. How long have you been practicing?”

“Practicing what?” I asked.

“Being a Gypsy.”

I laughed a little until it became obvious that he wasn’t joking.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Brandon said, exchanging glances with Annie, who stayed peculiarly mum. “I’ve always been fascinated with the whole bohemian-lifestyle thing … and when I heard about you, well, I couldn’t wait to meet you.” When I said nothing, he continued. “I know. I’m being totally rude, but I’d rather ask someone who knows, you know?”

He had a point.

“It’s okay,” I said. “But I don’t think I can be of much help if you’re looking for the bohemian version. I’ve never lived in a caravan or anything like that.”

“No?” Brandon cocked his head to one side, and it was his turn to look puzzled.

“Ahhh, no,” I said. “Most of us have become pretty domesticated, you know, like cats.” I was trying for a joke to keep the mood light. “Listen, I really need to speak with Cruz. Is he here?”

“I’ll go grab him,” Brandon said, and disappeared into the back of the house.

Annie offered me the skinny joint and, when I refused, took a deep pull herself. “Come on,” she said, blowing out the words slowly between her lips, eyes half-closed. “Don’t be a geek. I have something with less pollution if you’re picky.”

In my parents’ line of work, almost everyone got high on something. I remember during one concert, Dad came out of the dressing room already late for his stage entrance.

“Dad, you have sugar on your mustache,” I said. He wiped it and shambled past. Behind drawn curtains, the MC was announcing the song, trying to stretch his words until one of the guitar players signaled him that Dad had caught up. When the curtains opened, my father was sitting at the piano, pulling off his shoes and socks and draping them on the instrument, shouting into the microphone, “It’s so fucking humid here in Odessa.”

Central Asian opiates were the most popular substances because they came cheap and were not yet regulated by the government. Once, in Kyrgyzstan, while our tour bus was passing a field of crimson poppies, I’d unknowingly witnessed the harvesting of hashish. I remember someone on the bus exclaiming that now they could finally score some top-quality anasha, or maybe even plan (a derivative of opium). Outside, several men, wearing nothing but underwear, were running through the flowers, their bodies glistening in the sunlight. Before taking to the field they had been slathered with sunflower-seed oil so that the flower pollen would collect on their skin. Later the women would roll the pollen off with their fingertips, then either dry it to be smoked in a cigarette or shape it into squares small enough to fit into a pipe. I grew up around many addicts. I can’t remember the number of times an ambulance screamed its sirens into my dreams, jolting me awake to see my parents running in and out of our hotel room because a band member had overdosed on coke or was doped up enough to crawl up the walls.

That said, I wasn’t about to lecture Annie.

Moments later Cruz came into the living room, his white T-shirt wet around the shoulders, snug above a pair of faded jeans. “Hey,” he said, smiling.

Neither one of us spoke as he led me to the door at the end of the hallway. Nothing but a mattress and a small desk with a chair occupied his room, yet it invited me in. Pinned above the mattress hung a small photograph: a close-up of a young woman with pixie-cut blond hair and enormous green eyes.

A dark blanket covering the windows cast a shadow over the surroundings, but not so much that I didn’t notice the stacks of cassette tapes and books piled about. Many of the books had yellow Post-its peeking out.

“Sorry for the mess.” He shut the door and the room went black. The smell of him, something like falling leaves, drifted in the air. How was I going to do this? “Hold on,” he said. A moment later a floor lamp went on. “Do you want to sit?”

“It’s okay.”

“What’s the matter?” he said. He raised his hand to accept mine, but I took a step back.

“We have to talk.”

“Yeah?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Is that asshole still coming around? Someone should remind your parents they don’t live in Transylvania anymore.”

My fingers itched to touch his hair, dark at the ends where water dripped. “You have to stop the lessons,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because we’re lying, and when they find out we’ll both be in deep shit.”

“And?” He waved a hand, waiting for me to continue.

“And Olga’s convinced something’s going on between us. She’s husband-hunting to save me from you.”

He looked at the floor and laughed softly. His shoulders shook with it. “I don’t believe this.”

“You think I can do whatever I want, but I can’t.”

“Because I’m not a Gypsy? It’s not like we’re living in the twentieth century or anything. Did you ever think that your stepmother’s doing all this to piss off your mom? What if it has nothing to do with you?”

When I didn’t answer he went on, his voice louder, sharper, his accent thickening. “Maybe if we went out a couple of times you’d find something worth standing up to your family about. Why are you afraid of this?”

“You’re the closest thing to a friend I have—”

“There’s more than friendship between us. But you won’t even give us a fucking chance without expecting the worst.”

“I’m trying to be logical—”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

My thoughts scattered out of reach. I couldn’t bear to upset my father by choosing a boy with no past and no future, like I had done with Ruslan. Every mention of Cruz’s family flashed in and out of our conversations like a streetlight passing by a car window.

“I can’t,” I finally said, and studied the tapes at our feet with utmost interest. He was staring too hard, as if to catch the thoughts spinning webs inside my head. “You’re making me uncomfortable.”

“Merde! Finally, a little honesty.”

“My family will never agree to let me see you. Do you want to sneak around like criminals?”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “Why are you making such a big deal out of nothing?”

“Because it is to me.” I moved to leave, but he barred the door.

“Okay. Let’s try it,” he said. “We’ll be friends—fuck, it’s not like we’re anything more now—but on one condition. I’ll prove that I’m right, that we should be dating, and the moment you admit it, all these bullshit rules are off the table. No matter what your family says.”

As promised, the lessons stopped. Cruz told Dad that he was failing several classes and was required to attend after-school tutoring to get back on track. My father sulked for about two hours. But as he lived in a world most of us didn’t occupy, he got over it. I couldn’t read Olga as well, but having experienced her bloodthirsty nature firsthand, I kept myself on guard.

Meanwhile, to uphold my part of the bargain, I hung out with Cruz and his gang. Remaining friends with him proved tricky because I liked him even more now that I couldn’t have him. I looked at him and imagined wrapping my arms around his neck like the monkey Olga compared me to. Only three things kept our friendship from spilling over into something more intimate: Olga; a friend of Annie’s named Alison who tagged along after Cruz; and school, where I spent so much time I should’ve had my own cot in some corner.

The band teacher had taken me under his wing, becoming my mentor and champion. The music wing of the school auditorium building was never empty, not even hours after the last bell. And that was where I went to escape life. But I wasn’t alone. The students who went hungry at home or came to school with bruises on their faces had also found their makeshift home on the carpeted steps of Mr. North’s band-room stage, books and homework folders out, pencils scribbling. A kid with tribal body piercings once confessed that he slept in the band equipment room whenever he could sneak in unseen. “It’s the only place my father can’t yank my pants off,” he joked once. Mr. North tripped over him one morning, all bundled up in the red-and-white marching-band uniforms of the Hollywood High Sheiks, but never reported him.

Sometimes after school, I sat in the chair closest to the teacher’s desk, piled with dog-eared paperbacks, and listened to Mr. North quote the inspirational authors he loved. He’d balance on the edge of his desk, feet up on a chair.

“Paulo Coelho once wrote, ‘Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.’”

“But I have a dream. I am learning how to be a real American.”

Mr. North slapped his khakied knees with amusement. “Slow down, Pinocchio. How about you be what you already are.”

“Like what?”

“Figure it out. Pretend you’re holding a block of clay yay big. Now make something out of it.”

Music was the only clay I knew. I started to perform as much as possible: recitals, concerts, school band recordings. We even made an appearance on one of Dennis Miller’s TV shows (I played cymbals, since my piano was too heavy to haul to the studio). My self-confidence soared, and before long, even my family’s theatrics didn’t faze me so much anymore.

Whenever someone looked at me as if to say “Are your parents for real?” I reminded myself that this was how exotic people lived, so suck it.

Cruz turned up at every performance, as a good friend might, sometimes with Alison tailing him to make sure we spent as little time alone as possible. The girl was Marilyn Monroe to my Carol Burnett. She knew it and I knew it. After a while I desperately wanted to ask Cruz if they were together. Friends asked questions like that, right? Annie and Brandon came, too, flanked by other Goths. They intrigued me; I liked the idea of their darkness in the face of color-coded normalcy.

Secretly I’d yearned for friendship all my life.

Mom had several best friends back in Russia, and the way they brought over groceries or the latest perfumes freshly smuggled in from across the border, and assembled weekly inside our smoky kitchen, convinced me that friends are family. That was the kind of care these women put into their relationships: if you came over, my mother would have the tea brewing and the stew heating up and her ear open before you’d taken off your shoes. She got that quality from Grandma Rose, for sure.

There was this place in Kirovakan, up on a hill near the town’s rim, where people gathered to collect mineral water from several elaborate drinking fountains built on a natural spring called Sour Water, or Tetoo Dzhoor in Armenian. Grandma and I took plastic jugs up that path several times a week during my summer visits. We usually went at night, when the air blossomed inside our lungs. People made their way to the spring from all over town, the tips of the men’s cigars and pipes like a stream of lights in motion. “Just a quick trip,” Grandma promised every time. But once at the fountains, old friends and neighbors accosted us and the conversations filled hours. You’d think Grandma was everyone’s relative, not just mine. “Rosik tota. Let me help you carry the water home?” Tota in Armenian means “auntie,” and younger generations will use it as a respectful address for elders. Men call each other akhper (brother), women khirik (sister). The Armenian language is designed for kinship. I sipped the mineral water straight from the fountain and let it flow down my throat like a cool fizzy firework, and I sat on one of the many benches and waited while Grandma made inquiries of Artem Petrosyan’s legal woes, and Ani Ovsepyan’s family troubles, and Florik Mahachetryan’s ability to have that ninth kid without complications even if she was past fifty and should start thinking about herself instead of her husband’s lustful nature. She never appeared bored or impatient, her face open, voice compassionate. Grandma and Mom bickered over countless things, but maybe it was because they resembled each other so much.

My father, on the other hand? Well, most of Mom’s friends avoided him. Something about his guarded manner.

Dad used to warn me regularly against trusting the gadjen. But despite his voice of vigilance ringing in my head now, I began to open up to my new friends and crave their company.

It turned out that the house Cruz lived in belonged to Annie’s mother, Delma. She worked a night shift at a local hospital and slept most of the day, unseen until the weekends, when she’d grill steaks the size of Frisbees and sing catchy tunes in Portuguese along with Annie and sometimes even Cruz. Brandon and Alison practically lived at Annie’s, and they had free run of the house.

I knew more about Annie’s mother than I did about Cruz’s parents, but every time I asked him about them, he changed the subject. How was that fair? He asked me to relax and let him in while he kept me out. It seemed that the details he’d shared about his dad and Benedita were as much as I’d hear of his past, as if he’d left himself unguarded for that one bus ride, then barred the doors before too much escaped. Annie had volunteered some information, but nothing specific, only that Cruz had often come to stay throughout his childhood and that I should refrain from asking him about his family. But Brandon let it slip that Cruz’s mother left home when he was a little kid and that he’d been obsessed with finding her ever since.

I had plenty of time to figure out a way of making Cruz talk.

Thanks to Dad’s preoccupation with his musical arrangements, and to Olga’s disappearing acts, I finally had the freedom to come and go as I pleased. At seventeen I felt adult enough to act as irresponsibly as they did, and old enough to recognize that Dad had been wrong about friendship.