Lights All Night Long - Lydia Fitzpatrick Page 0,54

wanted children of their own, whether that was something they’d had to give up on.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Ilya Alexandrovich,” Dmitri said. “You’ve made Maria very proud.”

“I hope I do as well as she expects,” Ilya said.

“You’ll do wonderfully,” she said. “I have a surprise tonight—besides the macaroni and cheese—I’ve gotten the surname of the host family.” She waited a second, her eyes bright. “The Ma-sons.”

“Ma-sons,” Ilya said.

“It’s spelled like ‘ma’ and ‘sons’ put together.”

“What are their given names?”

“Cam and Jamie. Only I can’t figure out who’s the man and who’s the woman.” Maria Mikhailovna giggled.

“Come-on jam-eee,” Dmitri said. “There are no patronymics?”

“No, sweetheart,” she said. “That would certainly make it easier, wouldn’t it?”

“Jamie has to be the man,” Ilya said. “A diminutive for James. Like James Bond. King James.”

“Maybe, but ‘Cam’? It’s manly for a woman, no?” Maria Mikhailovna said. “And they have three children.”

Ilya had tried over and over to imagine what his host family might be like. Sometimes he pictured Michael and Stephanie waiting for him in the airport. Stephanie would be holding a picnic basket, her breasts as pointy as ever in her sweater, and she’d suggest that they go to the beach for the day, and Michael in his glasses would agree. Sometimes it’d be Jean-Claude and his girlfriend from the unlabeled VHS, their lives happily domestic now that Jean-Claude had defeated the mob boss. He’d never imagined kids, though, and he didn’t know whether the idea thrilled him or terrified him.

“What are the children’s names?” Ilya said.

“They didn’t say.”

“Probably equally ugly,” Dmitri said. “Are you hoping for girls? Full immersion, right?”

Ilya’s cheeks prickled at the thought of living in a house with an American girl and all the intimacy that entailed: eating off the same plates, showering in the same shower.

“Dmitri,” Maria Mikhailovna said. “He’s not there to meet girls.”

“Of course he is,” Dmitri said.

In the kitchen, a buzzer sounded, and Maria Mikhailovna leapt up and ran for the stove.

Dmitri leaned toward Ilya and put a hand on his thigh, and his posture reminded Ilya of pictures he’d seen of politicians in the thick of deals. “I bought us frozen pelmeni,” he said, “just in case the macaroni doesn’t work out.”

Ilya laughed. “Whatever it is will be better than what my mother makes. She cooks everything ’til it’s carcinogenic.”

“That sounds like my mother, which is probably why she has cancer. That or the cigarettes,” Dmitri said. His expression was the same: still that jolly, cherubic look that made Ilya feel in turns relaxed and like he was somehow a source of amusement. “You know I’m from here too,” he said, “not like Maria, not a cultured city kid.”

“You were born here?”

“Born and bred.” He hummed a few notes of “My Berlozhniki” with false bravado, but Ilya could tell that his voice was good.

“I still had to leave people behind though. That’s a fact of life now. Simple. Some people are dead weight.” He made a “plop” with his lips, like a rock dropped in a pond. “I went to School #17. It was a better school back then, only there were no teachers as beautiful as my Masha.”

“Stop it, Dmitri!” Maria Mikhailovna yelled from the kitchen.

With a start, Ilya realized that Dmitri was the reason Maria Mikhailovna’s voice was different. They were in love, these two. Truly in love, and maybe that was why the air and the light felt like they did. Ilya finished his kvass, and Dmitri filled his glass with beer. It was bubbly and tart on his tongue, and his chair was incredibly soft. It seemed to have molded around his buttocks and spine, like it was meant for him. He imagined getting under the covers at home that night and having Vladimir smell the alcohol on his breath the way he’d smelled it on Vladimir dozens of times, and a sort of sprightly pride came over him. He had not felt so good since the day Maria Mikhailovna had told him about the exchange. In this chair, he could forget that Vladimir had not been home for more than a month. He could forget krokodil and the way his mother and Babushka looked at the door like dogs sometimes, hoping for a knock, for Vladimir to come home spun or sober or however. He felt like he was in a different world already, like the happiness he felt here was a preview of America. For dinner he had two helpings of macaroni and cheese, and enough beer