“You’re the best, Daisy. Don’t worry about being forgetful. I forget stuff all the time,” Lindy said.
Daisy straightened up, her purple daisy flopping. “So we have to shoot the creepy monsters who are trying to take our home away!” She grabbed a silver gun from between her boobs and held it straight up. “If they take one step on this dock—kaboom. They’re gone. I’ll disappear them. I know how to do that, you know.”
“We know,” we said together.
The thing was, we figured she probably did.
Daisy sang on the dock that night. The notes sailed around, like a song gift, then out to the rolling river, toward the thunder of the ocean waves. This time it was “Ave Maria,” followed by Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” “Silent Night,” and “I Will Always Love You.”
* * *
Valerie, Ellie, and I met at the restaurant about ten on Wednesday night. We sat upstairs, near a window, and prepared to eat what our mother decided we should eat. No arguing, no requests, no complaining. Ralph saluted us and smiled; Charlie saw us and started playing Beethoven’s Fifth. He knows I love that one.
“I’m sorry I pushed you into the river, Valerie,” Ellie said.
“I’m glad you did.”
“Why?”
“I needed to cool off. You’re right, Ellie. I am bull-headed. I am a human shark. I am a cold robot sometimes, and I do like the power in the courtroom over criminals. I’m sorry that no one can breathe around me and I suck the air out of the room. I’m sorry I’m not as gentle and kind as I should be. But you were wrong about one thing you said to me.”
“I know. I said a lot that was wrong—”
“There was only one thing you were wrong about. You said that I don’t care about anyone else. You two, Dmitry, our family, Kai, the kids, you’re my whole life.” Valerie teared up. “My whole life. And I do love and care about all of you, and I will listen more and shut my trap more.”
“Oh, Valerie,” Ellie squeaked.
We had a lovely sisters hug and, on cue, we said, “I love you more than Mama’s Russian tea cakes.”
“Ack!” my mother shouted, bringing our dinner in on trays. “What? You no love my Russian tea cakes?”
* * *
Ricki and I poured over the first copy of Homes and Gardens of Oregon on the conference table in the middle of our office, along with Kim, Shantay, Zoe, Penny, and Jessie.
The magazine would come out next week. The first home we were featuring, which was also on the cover, was a home I had found driving through an older street in Portland. It was pink. It was small. It had a black-and-white checkerboard door, and black shutters with hearts cut out of them.
I’d knocked on the door and had been delighted by what I’d found. The husband was a master carpenter, the wife was an artist, and they had transformed their tiny home.
The kitchen island was a former apothecary table with tons of drawers and a granite countertop. An ancient card catalogue from a library was painted bright red. They kept spices in it.
The walls were different bright colors, the curtain rods were made from long tree branches sprayed silver, and three metal colanders dripping with crystals, turned into light fixtures, hung over the table. Old shutters, painted lime green, formed a table with a glass top. A wagon wheel on a wall held photographs. Three small antique tables were stacked on top of each other, painted blue, and used as a bookshelf.
People would love it, especially the woman’s paintings, which could only be described as color-blasting dream scenes. It was eye-catching, but there were ideas there on how to inexpensively reuse and recycle to make new décor and furnishings.
Kim had a two-page spread featuring a garden in the country, complete with a blue bridge across a wandering stream, a koi pond, and a shed that had been remade into a reading room with a red couch. There was a seven-foot-tall blue woman made of wire, a collection of birdhouses, and cement blocks that had the words LOVE, PASSION, DREAMING” carved into them.
We also had stories on how to start your own vegetable garden, the world-themed home that I wrote, and a column by Ricki introducing Homes and Gardens of Oregon in which she didn’t swear at all or mention tequila. Kim wrote a column on gardening that was funny and amusing and informative.
My column, “Living on a Tugboat, Talking About Homes,” was on the last two pages. There was a small picture of me in the corner, with a photo of my yellow tugboat, my kitchen with the glass backsplash, the wheelhouse and the red bench with the pillows, my bedroom with the French doors, my downstairs deck and view, the spiral staircase, Mr. and Mrs. Quackenbusch, and Dixie the blue heron in full flight.
We had a calendar of events, and a florist’s bouquet of flowers that readers could win by signing up.
We were all exhausted. The hours had been relentless.
We stared at the pages in silence.
Finally, Ricki said, “Not bad, ladies.”
We all nodded. “Not bad at all,” I murmured. “Pretty dang good.”
“Drinks on me,” Ricki said.
We were ready for drinks on her.
* * *
Nick and I had dinner together, then we flopped into bed and talked about the book we were both reading. It felt very intimate. Book sex, I’d call it. I liked it.
* * *
I could hear Valerie in my head the next morning. One word: Toni.
I called her from my desk at work. I was eating a donut hole for energy and nutritional value.
“The Bartons left a dead rat underneath my car.”
“Valerie,” I moaned, clutching my phone, that chilly snake wrapping around my spine again.
“Right behind the front wheel.”
“A dead rat.”
“Yes. It’s disgusting. It’s sad. Poor rat.”
We sat in silence, phones to ears. We both sort of whimpered.
“The police talked to all the Bartons. They all denied it. They know how to lie. They don’t care about the law. The police are trying to prove it. The scary thing was that I was parked at the grocery store.”
“They followed you.”
“Yes.”
“You need security people around you at all times.”
“I’m getting it. Kai’s on it. So is my boss. I’ll be glad when the trial is over.”
Kai was a saint. He was also a police captain, and he would be raising the roof. “How’s it going?”
“Relentless evidence. Tyler’s going to jail for a long time.”
“If you could round up that band of merry sociopathic thieves who are following you, all the better.”
“I have never felt threatened like this.”
“I’m scared for you.”
“I hate being scared, Toni. I hate it.”
“I do, too. We had enough of that as kids.”
“And I thought this type of fear was over.”
“I don’t think fear ever ends,” I said.
“I think you’re right.” She paused. “But I will keep fighting. They will not scare me off this trial. I will get justice for his victims and their families.”
“I know you will. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
* * *
On my way home from work, I drove by the white house with the red door. It was raining, but the husband was in his garage again working on the tandem kayak. It looked like he was still sanding it down, getting rid of the chipped red paint. I saw his boys running around in front, chasing each other, their black curls bopping about. The mom walked out with glasses of lemonade.
They were a happy family. I was happy for their happiness. But it hit me in the gut, again, so I stared straight ahead and tried not to think about them and their red kayak.
* * *
My mother called Sunday afternoon. “You girls, I need you to work at restaurant. Tonight. Got reservation I forgotted about.” Under her breath she swore in French.
“You forgot about a reservation?” I had to bug her about it. “You?
Svetlana?”
“I forgotted. So, fifty people. Please. I beg on you, my love.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll be there in fifteen. But punish Ellie and Valerie, too.”
“Ah yes. They come. No one say no to Mama, right?”
I saw my sisters thirty minutes later.
“I cannot believe I’m agreeing to do this,” Valerie said. “I’m in a trial.”
“I have an order to fill that will have me up all night now,” Ellie said.
“I have a deadline,” I said.
We headed upstairs to the private room. Fifty people. Noisy. We knew a bunch of them. When the three of us walked in, the ones who knew us shouted, repeatedly, “Kozlovsky! Kozlovsky!”
We laughed, we raked in the tips.
Afterward, my mother served us a salad that she named “Three Daughters. All Trouble.” It’s popular, but I often have people asking me what I did to cause my mama trouble.
My mother told us, “I know three thingies today. Three.” She held up three fingers in case we were in doubt about the number three. “One, save your money. You never want to run out of the money, and then you starve to death. Two, women must be boss of their life, I knows this, I do. Don’t let the man boss. Three, always put on the lipstick and earrings before you leave the house unless the house on fire. See? And three again, another three, your father. I say this to you now, when will he slow down? I don’t know.” She threw her hands up. “You would think, he old man, that I could get peace in the bedroom—”
“Okay, Mama,” Ellie said. “Check that.”
“Mama, please,” Valerie said. “I’m eating.”
“He’s a firecracker in the bedroom, we understand,” I said.
“Firecracker? In the bedroom?” My mother was baffled. “Why let a firecracker go boom boom in the bedroom when your father he already boom boom me and I so tired?” She sighed again, so dramatic. “It is this, what can I say?” She waved her hand from bust to hip. “You girls have it, too. The va va zing zing on the body, no?”
I finished my wine. So did Valerie. Ellie poured us another glass.
“I’m going to pretend,” Ellie said, “once again, that I am not hearing about my parents’ love life.”
“Cheers to that,” Valerie said.
“Ah, cheers,” my mother said, holding up her wineglass. “To God. To family. To the Kozlovskys. And may those who wish us harm”—her voice rose, vengeful—“be struck by thunder and blinded by lightning and eaten by ants.”
What a vision! We clinked our glasses together.
* * *
Homes and Gardens of Oregon launched. It went out on a Thursday, and by noon we had tons of names for the bouquet drawing. E-mails streamed in, people loving the magazine, a few hating it. One woman wrote, “I don’t need to read about homes. I need to read about aliens.” Another wrote, “I hate the home that was featured. Pink. Really? Everyone hates pink. It’s menopause pink. It’s little girl pink. It makes me feel like hitting someone.”
But the compliments were effusive, too.
We got a call from Shirl, the advertising lady. “I’ve finally come up for air. You’re getting reams of ads.”
I told Ricki. She said, “I knew we’d kick some tail around here. How could we not with all these high heels and brainiac women running around?”
I had a story to turn in on a home that was built on stilts. I was also working on a story featuring the home of a local actor, who I knew through Anya. His home in the country was almost all glass.
But at six o’clock we closed up shop and went to O’Malley’s, the whole Homes and Gardens of Oregon gang. Heckuva party. Ricki paid for it, and we toasted her as she yelled, “To the Hooters of Homes and Gobblers of Gardens, let’s party, people.”
So we did. I sang karaoke with Kim. I sounded like a frog with a seagull stuck in its throat. She sounded like an off-tune drunk nightingale. Our cohorts on the magazine about fell out of their chairs laughing. We made Ricki get onstage next. She did a Bette Midler song. She had the figure, not the voice. We about wet our pants.
* * *
About ten o’clock that night, I went over to Nick’s.
He smiled, handed me a huge bouquet of pink roses, pink peonies, and baby’s breath; a fancy gold pen that came in a box because “I love what you write”; and a picture of my tugboat, on a white mat, with a frame. “So you’ll always remember your first column.”
He is a manly and masculine cupcake.
Moscow, the Soviet Union
In our neighborhood in Moscow, there were the usual kids one finds in every neighborhood. The bullies, the quiet ones, the smart ones, the ones with wild imaginations, the leaders who organized everyone for games.
What was different there, as compared to our new neighborhood in Portland, was how grim it was. We all had so little. Few clothes, cold apartments, worn-out soles on our shoes, not much food. There were loving parents, doting parents, but vodka ran through the block, with the usual and expected problems. Drunken fathers, fathers who hit, mothers who had nowhere to go, mothers who sobbed. Families that struggled.
But kids are kids, and we played hide-and-seek and tag, horses and riders, and Cossacks and robbers.
My mother told us not to hang out with two of the neighborhood kids, Bogdan and Gavriil Bessonov. She said their father was a criminal and muttered something about the Russian Mafia, “may God have mercy on their black souls, and may He strike them down before they get to us.”
We were intrigued by her warning, especially since Bogdan and Gavriil were funny and fun, daring, brave and bold. My sisters and I displayed an early attraction to the bad boys.
We watched them fight back when another kid picked on them or anyone else, we watched them wrestle, and I smiled into Bogdan’s eyes. I was nine. He was eleven. I thought he was so handsome with that dark hair and green eyes. Two years of my childhood by then had been dedicated to daydreaming about Bogdan.
We disobeyed our mother and we hung out with the Bessonov boys. We walked partway to school with them, as they waited for us on the corner. We walked home with them. We played at the park together when we could arrange to, secretly, meet.
The five of us were walking home from school together one afternoon, commiserating about my strict teacher who made us memorize reams of information, especially about the Communist government. Valeria skipped ahead of us, her white bow bopping around, eager to get home because Mama had made a bread and apple pie. It was snowing, light, fluffy, but it made the gray of Moscow, the darkness of the river, the dull sheen of cement block apartment houses, less threatening. Whiter. Cleaner.
It was the beginning of winter, and we were young enough to still be excited by snowflakes. Elvira and I hung back with Bogdan and Gavriil, catching snowflakes in our mouths.
In the midst of laughing at one of handsome Bogdan’s jokes, I heard Valeria scream in my head. Help me, Antonia!
“Where is Valeria?” I said, interrupting him, spinning around, trying to find her, people all around, buses, cars. I searched for her uniform, the same one I wore, a black dress, a white apron, a bow.
“What? Why?” Bogdan said.
“She needs help, she needs help!” I started to run toward home, knowing that was the route she would take. I dragged Elvira with me, holding her hand. Bogdan and Gavriil ran beside me, confused, but they were our friends, and they were coming with us to find Valeria.
“She said they’re hurting her!” Elvira cried. “They hit her in the face. There’s blood.”
“How do you know that?” Bogdan hollered.
“I can hear her!” Elvira yelled back as we ran around a group of people heading to the subway, slipping on the snow. “I hear her.”
Antonia! I heard her calling me again, but her voice was weak this time, tearful. Get Bogdan and Gavriil.
“She’s telling me, run!” Elvira said. “They ripped her dress! She said to get Bogdan and Gavriil.”
In my head, I said to Valeria, Where a
re you? Where are you, Valeria?
Alley. By the bakery.
“She’s by the bakery,” Elvira screamed.
“She’s in the alley.” I ran as fast as I could, but Bogdan and Gavriil were faster, whipping around the corner, their faces hot and livid.
It was three older boys. Two of them were holding Valeria back against the wall, one in front, his pants down to his ankles, his butt out. Her dress was ripped in half, her underwear down, her hair a mess. She was crying, blood on her face. One of the boys hit her and told her to shut up, shut up, shut up.
Gavriil and Bogdan had a lot of roving, raging anger in them. Their father loved them, but he was strict and could be scary. More than that, the five of us were friends. As tight as young friends can be.
Gavriil and Bogdan flew at two of the boys like hell had lit itself on fire. I flew at the third boy, the one standing to the side, egging his friend on, making fun of Valeria. That boy was bigger than me, but I caught him by surprise, and my fear for Valeria’s safety sizzled through. When we fell, his head hit a rock and bled, and he didn’t move for a second, which gave me the opportunity to punch him in the nose.
Valeria, sobbing, but now vengeful, pulled up her underwear, jumped between his legs behind me, and kicked him in the balls. He curled up, emitting a high-pitched scream. I took the opportunity to punch him in the nose again, blood spurting, and Elvira took the opportunity to grab a rock in her small fist and smash it in his face.
Valeria stumbled over to the other two boys, who were on the ground, straddled and being repeatedly pounded by Gavriil and Bogdan. She kicked them in the balls, too, as hard as she could, holding her dress together with one hand.
When the boys were beaten and curled up on the ground, Gavriil and Bogdan both pulled out knives. Short, sharp, jagged-edged knives. Those three boys froze, on the dirt, blood all over.
“If you ever,” Gavriil said, almost calmly, “come near any one of the Kozlovskaya girls again I will kill you.”
“I, too, will kill you,” Bogdan said. He dug his knife into the boy’s neck, enough to draw blood and make his point. He smiled, almost sweetly. “And I will enjoy it.” Bogdan moved to the other boy, straddled him, knife to throat, a small cut.