CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Niko had taken his lunch to eat at the café table in what had once passed for the backyard garden but had now become a patch of scrubby grass littered with weeds. The garden shed had never been in good repair, but over time the roof had partially collapsed, and the door hung on one hinge. If it were his decision, the whole thing would come down, but he wasn’t up to the task right now. He’d have to get Ilya out here with a couple of sledgehammers. It would be fun, the brothers knocking down the rotten wood.
For now, though, he was content to sit in the warming spring sunshine and enjoy a thick sandwich of sweet Lebanon bologna on white bread slathered with mayo. The combination was as disgusting and delicious as he’d fondly remembered from childhood. He’d traveled around the world and eaten meals ranging from basic to gourmet, but nothing had ever matched the satisfaction of the local delicacy.
He hadn’t been looking for his mother, but she was there. Incredibly, because she’d always been the sort to flip through gossip magazines but never to spend much time with novels, Galina was already at the table reading an oversize hardcover book.
She closed it when she saw him, and bent to tuck it into the giant tote bag on the ground by her feet. “Kolya, my heart. What are you eating?”
He showed her as he took the seat across from her. The chair wobbled, but so did the table. Everything around this place was falling apart. “What are you doing?”
She stretched and closed her eyes, leaning back to let the sun cover her face. “Enjoying the day. I’m not used to being cold anymore.”
“Weather’s better in South Carolina, huh?” He’d cut the sandwich in half, but it was still a mess to bite. Mayonnaise squirted. He offered her the other half, but she made a face and shook her head.
His mother made a tut-tutting noise and dug in her bag for a crumpled tissue, which she handed him. “Here.”
Niko supposed he should be glad she hadn’t licked her thumb and used it to swipe away the mess the way she’d done many a time when he was kid. He eyed the tissue before he used it, but it seemed clean enough. He wiped his lips and chewed slowly with a long sigh of delight.
“I missed Lebanon bologna like you wouldn’t believe. Scrapple and souse I could do without,” he said, naming a couple of other local favorite foods. “Shoofly pie I could go either way on. But, man, there’s nothing quite like a good, sweet bologna sandwich on white bread with some mayo.”
Galina wrinkled her nose. “I missed fresh corn on the cob. Nothing better than a crisp ear of corn covered in melted butter, with salt and pepper.”
“They don’t have corn on the cob in South Carolina? That’s weird.”
For a moment, Galina gave a soft, embarrassed laugh and shook her head. “Of course they did. I just . . . well, I didn’t realize until just now how much I was looking forward to having some. The roadside stands will be opening soon. I’ll get some then.”
Niko took another bite and pulled out his phone to check his messages. There were a few from friends back in Israel, but when he looked up as he was replying, his mother’s expression stopped him. “What?”
“I thought we could sit and talk, that’s all. Put your phone away.”
He hesitated, thinking of how he’d been looking forward to a simple lunch in the sunshine while he checked e-mails and followed up on some possible job leads. He set the phone on the table. “What’s on your mind?”
“Do I need to have something on my mind?” She reached into her bag and pulled out a package of cigarettes, lit up, and blew the smoke off to the side. “Can’t I just enjoy some time with you?”
“I guess so. Sure.” He concentrated on his sandwich, anticipating that whatever his mother had to say, she was going to get around to it no matter what he wanted, anyway.
“You could put some hives back here.”
He paused. “What?”
“You could put some hives back here.” Galina gestured at the yard. “Nobody would be bothered. Nobody would know.”
“First of all, it wouldn’t matter if anyone knew. Beekeeping isn’t illegal. But, second of all, I don’t want to add any hives here,” Niko said. “What made you think of that?”
“You spoke so fondly of your bees, that’s all. I thought you’d want some here at home.”
“They weren’t pets.” He had liked beekeeping, at least more than he’d liked any of the jobs he’d cycled through on the kibbutz until being assigned to the apiary. “You can’t just toss up some boxes and throw some bees into them. It’s more work than that. And here, the winters get cold, which makes it even harder to keep them alive from season to season.”
“Oh. I thought they just did their own thing.”
He laughed. “No, they definitely don’t just do their own thing. Not in man-made hives, anyway. And what would happen to them when I’m not here anymore?”
“Where do you plan to go?” his mother asked.
“First, Alicia and I are going to do some traveling. After that, she’s going to put her house on the market, and we’re going to look for a place together.”
“Ah.” She nodded as though she wasn’t surprised, but her fleeting look of disappointment made Niko give an inward sigh. “So it’s like that with her.”
Niko wiped his mouth once more with the crumpled, shredded napkin. “Yes, it’s like that with her.”
“After all this time I’ve been gone, and now when I come home you want to leave?”
“You can’t expect that I’d live here forever,” Niko said. “And let’s face it. You didn’t move back here so you could suddenly play house with me and Ilya.”
Galina frowned. “Have you ever thought that I might be trying to make up for lost time?”
“You can’t make up for lost time. It’s lost. There’s nothing you can do about it.” Niko stood and took his plate, going back into the kitchen to put it in the dishwasher.
Of course she followed him. Once his mother had something in her head, she was never likely to let it go. She went to the freezer and began rustling around inside it, shifting the many frozen casseroles left over from Babulya’s shiva.
Niko put his hands on his hips, watching her pull out several storage containers with labels, look at each one, and put them back. “What are you doing?”
“I thought I would make a nice dinner. You could invite Alicia if you wanted. Theresa, too. She’s staying next door now. We’ll tell your brother to join us. It could be a nice night,” Galina said, but wistfully, as though she already knew it was unlikely to happen. She closed the freezer and settled two containers on the counter, then put a third in the microwave. She pushed a few buttons. “Like when you were kids.”
The funny thing was that Niko could remember lots of good times spent with Alicia and Ilya and Jennilynn and, for a short time, Theresa, too. But most of them had never included his mother, who’d almost always been at work or, if she wasn’t working, sleeping. There’d been few family moments, at least not ones he thought of fondly. Their family dinners had been set around the table with meals his grandmother had cooked. If Galina was there, arguments had often erupted between her and her mother, or between Galina and Ilya. Ilya and Barry had sometimes clashed, too. Family dinners at the Sterns had definitely been more of a dysfunctional family drama and not a sitcom.
“How about you be up front with me,” Niko asked. “What’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You come back from South Carolina and tell us you quit your job at the hospital to get one at a diner—”
“What’s this about a diner?” Ilya had come in from the front door, wearing a bright, broad grin.
Galina waved a hand. “Your brother is grilling me. Yes, yes, Kolya, I quit my nursing job to work in a diner. What’s the problem?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot.” Ilya pushed past Niko to get at the fridge, where he bent to pull out three beers. He handed one out to each of them and lifted his. “Cheers. I have news.”
Niko cracked the top on his bottle and drank, watching his brother. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“I bought Zimmerman’s.”
“The diner?” Galina had set her bottle on the counter and looked at Ilya now, her face a mask of surprise. “What on earth? You don’t know anything about running a diner, Ilya.” Galina shot Niko a glance. “Tell him.”
Niko clinked his bottle to his brother’s and grinned. “I’m not going to tell him anything. If he wants to buy a diner, let him. Hey, maybe you can work there.”
“Bite your tongue,” Galina said with a frown.
“I thought you liked working for the diner,” Ilya put in. “But, relax, I’m not going to ask you to work for me.”
“Thank God,” their mother said.
Ilya’s look turned serious. “I might ask you to help us figure some things out, though. If you worked at a diner, then you’d have a better idea of how it all works than I do. Or Theresa.”
“Theresa?” Galina asked, tone sharp. “What does she have to do with it?”
“She’s going in on it with me. Kind of a silent partner,” Ilya said. “Sort of. Not silent. Just not half and half. But she’s going to get us set up to serve good old-fashioned Babulya recipes.”
Galina took a step back, clearly shocked, a hand over her heart. It was a reaction that seemed both feigned and forced. “What? My mother’s recipes? Ilya, what are you talking about?”
“Good diners serve burgers, fries, open-faced turkey sandwiches. That sort of thing. Great diners,” Ilya said with a grin so infectious Niko couldn’t stop himself from grinning, too, “serve something special. Greek salads, gyros . . . well, my diner’s going to serve the kind of food Babulya cooked for us.”
“Nobody in this hick shitstain of a town is going to eat that,” Galina said flatly. “You’ll be out of business and broke within six months.
Ilya’s grin faltered, then faded. “Wow, thanks for the vote of support.”
“I’d eat there,” Niko said. “Are you going to have matzoh-ball soup?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m in,” Niko said. “Sold. Especially if it’s from Babulya’s recipe.”
“How do you have my mother’s recipes? You boys never bothered to learn to make anything more complicated than cold cereal or disgusting sandwiches.”
Ilya shrugged. “Theresa says Babulya taught her how to make a number of things. I remember her in the kitchen a lot, cooking.”
“I don’t remember that at all,” Galina said.
“Maybe that’s because you weren’t around,” Ilya replied, but lightly, in the way he and Niko had both adopted over the years to keep from starting drama with her. “Almost every day after school, they’d be cooking something. Just because you weren’t there doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“Because I wasn’t here?” Galina’s shriek rose up and up, her voice cracking. “You say that like I was out gallivanting around, whoring myself! I was working! To support the two of you! You think sports equipment was cheap? You think those new jeans and sneakers you always had to have just grew on trees? No! I had to work to pay for those things to support the two of you—and that old woman! You think I liked being gone so much? You think it was easy for me?”
The microwave beeped.
Nobody moved.
She turned to Niko. “Will there be a wedding, do you think?”
Niko frowned. “I have no idea. We haven’t talked about it.”
“I could get a mother-of-the-bride dress. I didn’t have one the first time around. Same daughter-in-law, but this time with a dress. Unless you decide to run off and elope the way they did the first time.” Galina gave him a small but vicious smile.
“How about,” Ilya said conversationally, “you keep your damned mouth shut about anything that ever had to do with me and Alicia.”
Galina threw the beer bottle into the sink where it shattered and fizzed. She turned on her heel and stalked out of the kitchen, leaving Niko and Ilya to stand in silence.
“Well, that went well,” Niko said finally when Ilya didn’t seem like he was going to say anything.
“She’s crazy.”
“You pushed her buttons.”
Ilya rolled his eyes and took a drink from his beer. “Are you kidding me? She was acting like we were in a freaking elevator and she needed to stop on every single floor. Pushing buttons? Please, man. She’s the queen of that. And you weren’t going to say anything to her about it, because you never do.”
“I don’t need you to defend me,” Niko said.
Ilya shrugged. “You haven’t been here, Niko. You haven’t had to deal with her, remember?”
“You haven’t, either,” Niko pointed out. “She’s been gone, too.”
“And now she’s back.”
The brothers looked at each other, both of them solemn.
“She was reading a book in the garden,” Niko said.
Ilya made a face. “What kind of book?”
“I couldn’t see, and she put it away when I came out. But something’s going on with her, for sure,” Niko said, and added after a few seconds, “We haven’t talked about getting married. I want you to know that.”
Ilya shrugged. “You’re going to do what you want to do. So is Galina.”
“And what about you?”
“I just bought a diner,” Ilya answered with a grin.
“With Theresa Malone.” Niko looked at his brother’s expression, noticing the shift in his gaze. “What’s up with that, anyway?”
Ilya muttered under his breath. “Nothing. She’s pretty.”
“Dude.” Niko shook his head.
Ilya looked defensive, embarrassed, but not quite ashamed. “Don’t worry. I’m not a total idiot.”
“You into her like that?” Niko took a drink, relishing the crisp flavors of the craft beer but really using the drink as an excuse not to say more than he just had. When his brother didn’t answer, Niko held out the bottle and frowned. “Dude!”
“No. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?”
Niko shook his head. “It wouldn’t be smart, that’s for sure.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not like I’m going to be a dumbass and get myself into some weird situation with someone who’s kind of related to us, sort of, like, oh, say . . . a sisterish sort of thing,” Ilya said sarcastically. “That sure would be stupid.”
Niko put down his bottle on the counter. Holding one hand out in front of him, middle finger pointing downward, he said as he twisted his wrist to reverse the gesture, “Oh, hey, is this too quiet for you? Do you need me to turn it up?”
“It’s just a business thing,” Ilya said when they’d stopped laughing. He looked serious. “She thinks I’ll be good at it. It’s been a long time since anyone thought I could be good at anything.”
Niko lifted his drink. “All right, then. Mazel tov on your new adventure.”
They clinked their bottles together.
“Hey,” Niko said after a pause, “you want to help me tear down that garden shed?”
Ilya grinned. “You’re on. Let’s go.”