The restaurant is still festooned with garlands and red-and-silver baubles, some hand-painted with traditional figures. Someone added a silver garland that winks in the lights, bright against the deep-green velvet, dark wood, and low light that somehow reminds me of my father.
He has yet to call or ask Marco about me, not even over the holidays my brother and sister spent with us. Nor does he acknowledge me when I pick up or drop off Katie to spend time with me and to get her away from our father and his downward spiral.
And now I’m here, standing among Evgeny’s “family.” Russian floats around me, and a musician wanders with a balalaika, singing folk songs.
It’s like something out of the movies, with tables loaded with plates of food, champagne and vodka flowing freely, tough Russian mobsters with tattoos and scars talking and laughing. Evgeny made them toss their cigarettes and cigars the minute we arrived, and everyone obeyed with only a few grumbles.
Evgeny holds absolute sway here. I’ve watched him most of the night and seen how everyone skirts around him with friendly deference, respect, and a bit of apprehension. They extend those same courtesies to me.
“Ponchiki?”
An older woman whose name I think is Maria offers me little cheese donut balls, but I’ve been introduced to too many people tonight to remember them all.
“No, thank you,” I say. I’ve spoken more Russian tonight than I have in a long time.
I’m exhausted, but I’m enjoying myself.
“You should eat. Keep up your strength for the babies.” She pushes the tray at me, and I finally take one of the donuts. She smiles and turns away to press food on someone else.
“That was wise.”
A man stands beside me. He is old, his tattoos faded and wrinkled, his hair wispy, his Russian accent still thick as the snow my father talks about in “The Old Country.” He offers a broad smile of yellowed teeth. “Maria’s one goal in life is to make sure people eat.”
“It’s how she shows love,” I say.
“It’s how Nikita grew to look like that.” The old man tips his chin toward the portly, bearded man across the room talking with Dmitri.
I can’t help but giggle.
“You are Eva, are you not?”
“I am.”
I’d seen the old man holding court in the corner of the room, the only other person aside from Evgeny whom people visited instead of the other way around. But Evgeny, swept up in the festivities, has yet to introduce me.
“I am Ivan,” he says, holding out his hand. His hand feels frail when I take it, his skin soft and thin.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I reply.
“I have heard much about you,koshecka.”
“You have?”
“Indeed.” His watery gaze turns toward Evgeny, both hands resting on his cane. “The boy needs someone like you. He was alone.”
“Have you known Evgeny a long time?”
“I knew Ev when he was only a gleam in his father’s eye. I earned my stars under his grandfather and served as his father’s second-in-command, as Dmitri does now.”
“He’s not alone,” I point out. “He has Vasya and Dmitri. And you?”
Ivan chuckles. “Oh, he comes to me for advice and to convince himself his choices are correct. But he won’t let anyone in. Not Dmitri, not Vasya. Not to those parts of himself that need someone to see them. To care for them. He’s hidden those since he was a boy.”
“When his mother passed away?”
Ivan nods his assent. “Partly. But to bepakhan, you must bury those parts of you. It is a job I never envied him, or his father, or his grandfather before him. We all bury parts of ourselves in this world, but to bepakhan, you must bury them so deeply that sometimes they are lost, and you become a shell of a person. A haunt. A dark specter. It was that way with his grandfather, and I saw it happen myself. His father, God rest him, found someone to share those deepest, darkest parts of him, and to lose her shattered him.”
The old man still stares at Evgeny, and I see regret in his eyes. It’s clear Ivan cares a great deal for him, and I suspect he still sees him as the boy who suffered so greatly. I can also tell he still sees himself as Evgeny’s protector, and I wonder if it’s a job Evgeny’s father gave him, one he still keeps, even now, old and tired as he is.
