and taking her out just as in those American movies that had taught police all over the world how to walk with the swagger that made them ridiculous and frightening, both at once. Baba Yaga would see the silliness; not knowing the accuracy and range of rifles with scopes, she would not have sense enough to fear them, too. The bloom of a bullet in her head, spraying blood and brains in a fan-shaped pattern on the airport floor - the mere thought of it brought back feelings that Mikola had not let himself feel in years. He could smell battle. And even though he would not strike the blow himself, it made him feel no less triumphant to know that Baba Yaga would never survive in a world where he had managed to preserve a niche for himself and his beloved Sophia.
The whole drive to the airport had been awkward. Ruth just didn't have that much to say to Ivan's parents. During Ivan's long absence in Russia, Ruth had tried to keep in close contact with her future in-laws, and at first it seemed to work, but as the months went by, she got more and more of a sense that they entertained her only out of a sense of duty. In fact, Ivan's father was always distracted - nice, almost too nice, for a few minutes, then anxious to get back to his work. Back to his books. How terrible, for the husband to work at home. Much better the way her parents were - leave the job at the office, come home and really be home. Of course, Ivan would probably expect to live like his father, since they were both pursuing the same career. And that would be fine, Ruth would learn to live with it, that distraction, that there-but-not-there coolness. Besides, unlike Mrs. Smetski, Ruth would have a job. A career of her own.
Mrs. Smetski. She was the problem. Ruth suspected from the start that Mrs. Smetski thought that Ivan could have found a better girl to marry. She wasn't distracted like Professor Smetski. On the contrary, she focused completely, almost smotheringly, on Ruth. But there was this sense of amusement in everything she said. A sense of irony. I know something you don't know.
Ruth had tried to point it out to Ivan, but he never saw it. "That's just Mom," he'd say. "She's always having an out-of-body experience. Looking down on everything from the ceiling. Never part of it. It's nothing to do with you."
But Ruth knew better. A woman knows these things - though of course she didn't say that to Ivan, he got quite testy when Ruth asserted her female power, as if her womanliness threatened him. Of course, he tried to sound like a doctrinaire feminist about it. "Either the only differences between men and women are cultural, or they're innate," Ivan would say. "So if you go for the women's intuition thing, then you have to take that whole package, pedestal and all. And if you want equality, then you have to give up that idea that women have secret ways of knowing."
As if.
But, for the sake of harmony, she allowed his threatened male ego to have its protected space, and didn't push the point. She simply knew, that's all, that Mrs. Smetski disdained her for some reason.
And during the months while Ivan was gone, it became more obvious. Ivan's dad had work to do; Mrs. Smetski had no such excuse. She would wander out of a room sometimes when Ruth was talking. And it wasn't an accident, either. Because when she came back in, she'd resume the conversation with a bland, "You were saying, Ruthie?" in that thickly accented English.
To her, I don't exist. Ruthie could reach no other conclusion.
Come home, Ivan, before your parents make me have second thoughts.
Well, the time had finally come. Of course Mrs. Smetski had hinted that maybe Ruthie should drive her own car, but Professor Smetski put the kibosh on that immediately. "We have to go together, it would be cruel to make Vanya choose between his parents and his bride-to-be. You know he would choose the bride, and then wouldn't we feel foolish!"
"I just thought it might be crowded on the ride home," said Mrs. Smetski.
Crowded? It wasn't as though their car was tiny. Like so many Russians, the Smetskis luxuriated in the American sense of scale. A big old Crown Victoria was their choice - cheap, for a big car; or