Cruisers Read online

  “That’s good,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Deer season is coming up. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  The door closed behind him and she looked at the keys to the car on a little hook by the door. Out the window she saw Kohler as he walked through the field to the woods, as though he were whistling, his gait like a seafaring man. Then she looked at the car, parked behind the house. It seemed sharklike and powerful, more like a piece of military equipment than a car, but she realized it had come down to this moment: Either she was going to be able to drive it or she wasn’t. She took the keys from the hook and went into the bedroom, where she had in her drawer a hundred and ninety dollars that she had brought from Moscow. She took forty and went out to the car.

  The seats of the car were warm from the sunlight, and when she started the engine, the growl of it made her hesitate; it was nice to sit there, hearing the power of it before having to do anything. She was glad, at least, that she wasn’t going to have to back up. The seat made a little whir as she moved it up and forward. She didn’t know how to change the mirror at the side, but she reached up and adjusted the rearview. Then she put the clutch in, as she had seen Kohler do and as she had done in Moscow the few times she had driven. Then she let the clutch out and the car lurched forward and she felt as though she had been shoved. Her head jerked back. She began to shake, and her face felt hot as the engine died. She leaned forward, putting her head on the wheel.

  She remembered her father’s mustache and the stiff brush of it against her cheek when she was a child, the smell of his beer and smoked herring, the cigar smoke on the wool of his suit, and his pet names for her that made no sense, but still meant something to her. And when she saw anything made of gold, a piece of jewelry, a wedding ring, she instantly thought of that brushy embrace and then the sudden realization that he had died in a labor camp, in a gold mine. Now she remembered his look as she had last seen him. Well, he had probably meant that she should not be afraid, that she should try to get what she needed. She put the clutch in, started the engine, and let it out. The car jerked a little, but it went down the drive.

  At the end of the drive she stopped and looked both ways before she put on the turn signal, which clicked like a metronome. She wished she had a more definite idea about where she was supposed to go in town, but this was the way she had to live, and she had contempt for people who could afford the luxury of taking a setback in stride. What did such people know about the small tolerances by which she lived? A breakdown, getting lost in a strange town, taking an hour too long—it wouldn’t take much. The car stalled at the end of the drive, but she got it going again.

  On the way to the highway, Katryna came up behind a tour bus that was rattling as it left a black cloud of exhaust that showed the path the bus had taken. It made her queasy, like everything else, the smell of bacon, the cologne Frank wore, and as she started to pass, she saw, in the rearview mirror, that a state police car was following her. It had green and yellow paint and a rack of lights on the top.

  The speed limit was fifty, but she was pretty sure she had gone a little faster than that after turning out of the driveway, thrilled by the power of the car and the thrust of it toward where she wanted to go. She had probably gone sixty or more, since the car accelerated like magic. But had she done it in front of the police?

  The cruiser turned on its lights.

  Maybe she could pretend that she didn’t speak English, but what good would that do? Sooner or later they would discover that she didn’t have a license, and, surely the instant they found out who owned the car, they would call Frank. In Moscow you usually bribed a cop, and in fact, most of them preferred it that way when they stood on their little kiosk at an intersection and stopped you by pointing a baton in your direction. She wondered if twenty dollars would be enough? She would roll down the window and offer the money she had.

  As she began to pull over, the trooper went by. Then the cruiser trailed the bus, lights flashing in that stream of black smoke, and as she followed, sick with the stink and the fear of being caught, she saw the bus turn on its blinker and make a slow, lumbering movement to the side of the road. The cruiser stopped behind the bus, its front wheels turned toward the road, and then the trooper put on his hat and got out, glancing at Katryna as she slowly went by, making a bad shift and riding the clutch.

  In town she came up to a barrier where the street was closed for a fair. Kids were running around in animal costumes, rabbits and bears and foxes, and parents shepherded them with a weary good cheer. A small Ferris wheel went up and around, and the children waited in line, watching it go around and around. Katryna stopped the car just back from the barrier. The children, the bright colors of the Ferris wheel, the pink fluffs of cotton candy, seemed garish. A child came up to the window and waved a piece of cotton candy, like a small pink cloud, and beyond the airy confection more children shrieked. Then a policeman came up to her and motioned toward the lane that was open.

  She shifted into first. The policeman beckoned, using just his fingers. To her right, people threw balls at aluminum bottles, where teddy bears sat at the back of a shelf, and where she heard the steady, repeated, and oddly reassuring sound of the shooting gallery. People laughed a little too much, and a few of them were carrying stuffed animals that they had won. She let the clutch out slowly and lurched forward. The policeman gave her a quizzical look, but continued beckoning. She heard the crack, crack of the shooting gallery, and for a moment she could almost smell the gunpowder.

  But she managed to park the car, not perfectly, just a foot away from the pickup truck on her left. She got out, although there wasn’t much room, and then she buttoned her short black leather coat, and looked around. She took a deep breath.

  The front of the medical building looked like a greenhouse, and when she opened the door, she found herself in a room with two women behind a counter, each of them wearing a telephone headset and each looking at a computer monitor. The waiting room was to one side, the banks of chairs in it, all on one long piece of metal, looking just like the ones in an airport. The first thing she noticed was that her coat was wrong. It had been all right in Moscow, but here she could tell the collar was too wide and pointed. She stood up all the straighter.

  One of the women behind the counter was on the phone, and after glancing at Katryna, she held up a finger, as though to say, Just one minute.

  “Can I help you?” asked the receptionist.

  “Yes, I’d like to see a doctor,” said Katryna.

  “Which one?” said the receptionist.

  “One for women.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” said the receptionist.

  “No,” said Katryna.

  The receptionist looked to the other woman behind the counter, who shrugged.

  “I can wait,” said Katryna.

  “Do you have insurance?” asked the receptionist.

  “What?”

  “You know,” said the receptionist. “Health insurance.”

  Katryna opened her handbag to look for the forty dollars she had there.

  “You aren’t from around here, are you?” said the receptionist.

  A woman came through the front door and up to the desk, just behind Katryna. The receptionist looked at her and said, “Hi, Zofia.”

  “Hi, Darlene,” said Zofia.

  “I’ll let Dr. Basinger know you’re here,” said the receptionist.

  Zofia hesitated as she stood next to Katryna who was still holding the money out.

  “Do you have a card?” said the receptionist.

  “What kind of card?” said Katryna.

  “Insurance,” said the receptionist.

  “No,” said Katryna. “I have money.”

  “It would be better if you had insurance,” said the receptionist.

  Katryna held out the two bills. She did so as a way of stating the facts that weren’t going to change.

  “Here,” she said. She held out the b
ills.

  “That might not be enough,” said the receptionist.

  “I need to see the doctor.”

  The receptionist looked at the monitor.

  “I can give you an appointment next week. How about—”

  “No,” said Katryna.

  “Well,” said the receptionist, “it might be more than forty dollars.”

  Katryna still held the bills out, and she knew that the instant she put her hand down, she would be defeated. She stood there, her posture perfect in that unfashionable jacket, her head up.

  “I’ll make up the difference,” said Zofia.

  Katryna turned to face Zofia.

  “I didn’t know about the insurance,” she said.

  “It’s no big deal.” Zofia turned to the receptionist. “Why don’t you put her in for my time for Dr. Basinger. I just need a referral.”

  The receptionist shrugged. Then she typed and looked up and said to Katryna, “O.K. What’s your name?”

  “Katryna Kolymov.”

  “What?” said the receptionist.

  Katryna spelled it and gave her address, too. Then she went into the waiting room and sat down, her eyes on the door that led to the examination rooms. She picked up a magazine that had been handled so often by sweaty hands as to look like it came from a lending library in Istanbul in the cholera season. Zofia, who had gone to the bathroom, came back and sat down next to her. Katryna felt a kind of panic, in that she didn’t know if she could speak honestly if she had the chance. She had gotten used to lying, or at least protecting herself, and the possibility of doing otherwise left her a little disoriented. Maybe it was best to keep it for the doctor, but that would only be just the facts. She was used to denying herself ordinary pleasures, like speaking to people, and yet she was amazed that she sat there next to Zofia and thought, Please. Say something.

  Katryna remembered driving by the fair, the cotton candy, pink as a dancer’s tutu, the sound of the shooting gallery, the general hilarity of the place. It made her all the more ashamed that she didn’t have the card, but how was she to know she needed one? The noise of the fair, the movement, the ominous creaking of the Ferris wheel, lingered in her mind like an indictment. People glanced at her. She sat up straight.

  Then the nurse came out and called Zofia, who stood up and smiled at Katryna and then disappeared into the door. Then Katryna started to wait. There was a clock on the wall, and she watched as the second hand moved along, and wondered where Frank was now. Had he come into the empty house after seeing the car was gone?

  Then she picked up the dog-eared magazine again, which she looked at without seeing any of it, and as she turned the pages, she thought of the woman, Zofia, who had helped her. The woman was perfectly American: the way the blue jeans she wore fit her rear end, the perfect and yet subdued sexiness of the man’s shirt she wore, the beauty of her hands, which were strong and yet still graceful, the easy carriage and full-lipped smile, all of it vital and easy. Still, Katryna thought Americans had no sense of tragedy, no belief in the finality of fate, and if someone didn’t have that, how could you make contact with them? How could you make yourself understood? Americans didn’t have to look at war widows begging in the subway. Katryna looked around and saw that all the woman were wearing large gold wedding rings. Was it possible that the gold had come from Siberia? Maybe her father had dug some of the ore that went into these rings. Then she thought, Stop it.

  Still, Katryna thought again of Zofia. But instantly she knew that the desire to speak would get her into trouble, and so she sat there, resisting it, concentrating on what she would say to the doctor. Should she mention the cancer rate among young women in Russia? Was that what was wrong with her?

  Zofia came out of the door that led to the doctor’s examination room.

  “You’re next,” she said.

  The nurse appeared and Katryna stood up. Everyone in the room glanced at her, and then she disappeared into the door that led to the offices.

  “You’ll have to wait,” said the receptionist to Zofia. “You know, to see how much it’s going to be for her.”

  Zofia looked at the card she held in her hand, which had the address and telephone number of a place where she could get an abortion. All she had to do was make an appointment to have the procedure done, and as she sat there with the card, she went through the obvious reasons. But before she even got to the end of them, she wasn’t certain she was going to tell Russell about it. It was her decision, not his. But as she sat there, hearing the pages of those old, dead magazines being turned with weary exasperation by the other people in the room, she thought maybe that wasn’t right. Could she dismiss his interest so casually when she decided not to have a child and include him so completely when she did? And as she considered not telling him about it, just taking an afternoon off work and being remote about what happened, just pleading a bad period and cramps, she knew that part of what made her enjoy being with him would disappear. This, she knew, was the nature of a secret. Not only did it have its own effect on the person who kept it, but it also did something to the way the person who kept it saw the people who didn’t know. It was a cheap superiority she didn’t want.

  But all of that was on the surface. Underneath, there was another matter, which she tried to confront as she sat there in the relatively bland office with the people who were doing their best to seem indifferent. Wasn’t that what she was doing? Then she opened her handbag and put the card into her wallet, and as she did so, she thought of the night where Russell worked, the malice and danger of his hour-to-hour existence, which she supposed could be seen in what he had described to her once: how the colors at night were so bright and those during the day so bland. She was frightened by whatever made those colors bright, whatever seemed to exist in the speed and the chase, and in the uncertainty of those people he pursued, and all of this had another quality, a fearful imperative that took courage to face, although this came at a price, and that was a steady, increasing fatigue. Was this how one had a child? Then she thought of how she waited for him to come home, and what it meant to her when she heard the car in the drive: a sweetness so deep and complete, so utterly essential, that it was like the sun rising.

  Katryna came out of the door of the medical offices and walked through the waiting room with that same stately gait, at once mildly elegant and yet foreign. Zofia stood up and they both went to the receptionist’s desk, where Katryna handed over a slip she had from the doctor, and Zofia got out her checkbook.

  “Sixty dollars,” said the receptionist.

  Zofia wrote the check and ripped it from the book and handed it over. The receptionist reached up and took it while talking on the phone. Then Zofia and Katryna walked out to the front of the building.

  “I’ll get the other twenty back to you,” said Katryna as she passed over her forty dollars.

  “That’s all right,” said Zofia.

  Katryna stiffened. It was as though she was willing to take a gesture of generosity, but not the notion that she couldn’t ever pay it back.

  “O.K.,” said Zofia. “Here’s my phone number. Have you got some place to write it?”

  Katryna gave Zofia a small card, the same one that Zofia had for the referral, and on the back of it Zofia wrote her number. Katryna took it back. They stood there in the pale sunlight and then started to walk together into the parking lot, stopping in front of the low, black car, which was parked badly. Zofia looked at it.

  “Where are you from?” said Zofia.

  “Russia,” she said. “Moscow.”

  “Oh,” said Zofia. “Do you like it here?”

  Katryna shrugged.

  “Something is missing,” she said. “Everything looks good. You can get everything you want. Like a hair dryer. You can get a great hair dryer here.”

  “I know,” said Zofia.

  “Have you ever wanted a good hair dryer and not been able to get one?” said Katryna.

  “When I was a kid,” said Zofia.
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  “Me too,” said Katryna. “I used to cut my hair short so I wouldn’t need one.” She shrugged. She knew she should keep quiet. This felt too much like trying to explain a dream: all the objects were right, but the meaning, the import eluded her.

  “There are twenty or thirty hair dryers to choose from here,” said Katryna. “You can get the ones that look like a gun, or you can get one with a bag and a tube. Which do you think is best?”

  “The gun kind,” said Zofia.

  “But not if you put your hair up in curlers,” said Katryna.

  “We don’t do that so much anymore,” said Zofia.

  “Maybe not. But still a hair dryer is important if you want to go out and have a little fun. You know, maybe you go out where there are other people. Dance. Listen to music.”

  “Sure,” said Zofia. “Do you get to do that?”

  Katryna shook her head.

  “Maybe later.”

  “So, what’s missing,” said Zofia, “aside from there being too many hair dryers?”

  Katryna shrugged. “It’s stupid of me to think about it. It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “How can you miss something that was horrible and hard?”

  “I don’t know,” said Zofia.

  “See?” said Katryna. “You don’t know and I don’t know.” She swallowed.

  “Do you know how to back it up?” Katryna said, gesturing to the car.

  “Sure,” said Zofia. “I think so.”

  Katryna held out the keys.

  “Would you?” she said. “I don’t think I can.”

  Zofia got into the car, started it, and backed it up. Then she got out, setting the brake, and being careful to put the car into neutral.