Miles Page 4

  Mom had already left for the hospital.

  I nearly panicked when the photo album slid out of my coat and landed on the carpet in front of my bedroom door. I spun around to see if either Dad or Nicolasha were near the stairs, which, thank God, they weren't, and hid the album in my school bag before swinging it under my bed.

  I took the recording of Thais from one of the boxes and headed downstairs, where Nicolasha was being suitably impressed by my Dad's house tour and his free blended malt scotch. I held the record set behind my back as they approached from the kitchen hallway.

  (You know, they actually seemed to complement each other? There wasn't much comparison between their respective Eastern European features, Dad with his thin, good family lines, and Nicolasha with his pudgy, indistinct, peasant face, or in their build or appearance, Dad still in combat fitness, Nicolasha soft and slight, or their ages. What was it, then? I looked closely at them both. Despite the grins and chatter and all, my Dad looked hard and ruthless, like an ex-sailor, someone who had been fighting in life's swamps too long for their own good, forgetting there's sunlight above all the murk. Nicolasha looked tender and kind and was impressed by it all, formal and polite, sensing Dad's mettle, naive where Dad was seasoned, too young and warm to understand there was quicksand out there in the first place. I couldn't put a finger on what I was feeling, seeing them together for the first time. It was weird.)

  "I was just showing Nicolas around." Dad smiled at me again. Huh! He seemed to approve of my teacher. Who knows? Maybe it was the scotch.

  "Your home is very, very nice, sir." Nicolasha raised his glass with respect to my paternal unit, and finished the ghastly drink.

  "Can I get you another, for the road?" He reached for the glass, an expensive crystal with Northwestern's crest frosted on the side, the only glass Dad took his poison in. Not everybody got a drink in one of those.

  "I would actually love to, but I am already late meeting someone downtown." In this cold, it would have to be another Russian, I thought.

  "Can I give you some money for gas, for your trouble?" Dad's tone was too damn nice. Suddenly, I realized I was being girded up for something.

  "Oh, no, sir, that's very kind, but it was my pleasure."

  "Please. I insist."

  Nicolasha bowed his head reluctantly. Dad grinned and headed back into the kitchen, where his wallet was usually tossed. I hesitated, wanting to give Nicolasha the record and get a hug back when Dad returned with a scowl on his face, his natural look, if you asked me.

  "I must have left my billfold upstairs."

  "Please don't bother, sir."

  Waving him off, Dad bounced up the stairs and down the long hallway to his bedroom, away from us. Nicolasha turned and winked at me, touching my cheek and smiling lips with a mock fist. I took the opera out from behind me and handed it to him. Surprise, little father. His mouth and eyes opened a bit as he stared at the flamboyant, over-decorated belly dancer on the box cover, swallowing audibly in his astonishment.

  "What's the matter, Nicolasha? Doesn't anybody ever buy you a gift?" He looked like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out. "That's for being a great teacher, and a friend, too." I giggled quietly as I held my arms open. Nicolasha practically jumped into them. I rested my face sideways across his chest, while his cheek touched my hair, his arms and the opera pressing against my back. He kissed the top of my head and gave me a last squeeze.

  "Here it is," Dad called out from his room. We took an immediately step back from each other. Nicolasha glanced nervously between me and the staircase, shifting on his feet. He looked so afraid and so alone, all of a sudden, like he was about to be locked outside in the cold for a year.

  I wanted to leave with him. I wanted to go back and see the Hammer film again. I wanted to sit next to Nicolasha. I wanted to listen to all of his records, and sit in his lap.

  Hell, I wanted to take a Comrade Bubblevitch bubble bath with him.

  I reached forward and took my teacher's arms in my hands, holding him still as I leaned forward and put my lips on his for a soundless, full clock second, followed by a silence so deadening it would make the falling snow sound like a Shostakovitch symphony.

  "My kind of woman." Dad smiled at the belly dancer, nudging the wide-eyed Nicolasha in the side as he handed him a twenty-dollar bill. "I don't think I've ever heard that one before. Have you, son?"

  "Nope. Mister Rozhdestvensky will have to lend it to me after he's had a listen." I smiled at him, my voice and gaze strangely confident in Dad's presence, as if I had just proved something to somebody.

  Nicolasha stumbled through his good-byes and thank-yous and see-you-on-Mondays and careened out of our little big home into the safety of his Volvo. He sped away from us like we were a pair of devil worshipers.

  The front door closed. The house was left as quiet as a crypt. Dad's hand touched my shoulder. I turned around and stared at him impassively, the only real defense I had left.

  "I'm sorry about last night." He didn't look me in the eyes, the coward.

  "So am I."

  "Your mother and I...we've run out of answers. It's all gone wrong, son."

  "No, it hasn't. You both have." My voice was soft and level, quite an achievement, I thought, considering how I felt at that particular moment.

  He finally looked back at me, his eyes bloodshot and wet. "I've decided to take a job with some outfit in New York. I'll be moving there just after Christmas. Your mother wants to stay here, in the house. It's up to you where you'd like to go."

  I knew where I wanted to go. I wanted to go out, far out.

  *

  There were no lights on in the room except for the fireplace, which blazed away. I huddled myself into the corner of our over-stuffed couch with my arms around my knees, staring out at the cold, blue picture of our moonlit yard. I hadn't heard my drunken father stumble about upstairs for a while.

  I kept picking up the phone to call Nicolasha, but kept hanging up halfway through his number. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. It felt like he was my only friend in the world. Anyhow, I didn't know if that was what I really wanted to say. I wasn't sure how that felt, either.

  My mind began to blur, flashing back throughout my life, remembering all of the things me, Dad, and Mom used to do together, when we were still a sort of family, careful to omit about two years worth of meals at home.

  Like my first helicopter ride over Cape Hatteras. It was a flimsy Bell 25; Plexiglas bubble, bench seat, and engine. This was the way to see the spectacular Outer Banks scenery. Mom was petrified, but I loved it, especially when the ex-Marine pilot veered the bird to the right, leaning me over the rough sea below.

  Or being "absent" from school whenever the new James Bond film opened at the Woods Theater downtown. 1971 came to mind. We loved "Diamonds Are Forever" so much, Mom took me with to buy her first brand new car, a fire-engine red Mustang Mach 1, just like the one in the movie. It was the coolest car anyone's mom drove. But 007 only came every other year, while my beloved White Sox were an annual "he has a slight fever" event.

  My favorite "fever" was 1973. We were getting killed by the Oakland A's (again), but we all were having a good time, because our entire row was taken by the old Congressman's friends and cronies. Mom set fire to a senile Cub fan's pennant (which hopefully taught him to stay on the North Side where he belonged), and Dad got thrown out of the park after tossing his beer at some guy's head when the silly ass stood up for the Oakland seventh.

  And then there was our Road Trip from Hell (no family should be without one) to Rock City and Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Despite rainstorms, Ford Motor Company water pump engineering, and cartographic illiteracy by Daddy dearest, I enjoyed all the Civil War stuff, but not as much as charging across a steel suspension bridge to shake up my terrified Mom and Dad.

  Of course, there were all the times the young couple from next door to our Roseland bungalow, Scott and Roberta, would take me off of Mom's hands to go to
the drive-in to watch classic Hammer, Amicus, and AIP horror movie double features from the roof of their old Impala two-door. Scott lived off of the sort of food they served at the concession stand, and would overstock the car with dry hot dogs, soft Raisinettes, tasteless popcorn, rock-hard frozen Heath bars, badly carbonated cola, and out-of-date Dolly Madison fruit pies throughout the movies, which weren't nearly as chilling as the Halsted Drive-In's bathrooms, next to the projection booth.

  There was going tubing down Wisconsin's Apple River with a bunch of Dad's weekend-warrior buddies from law school. We had separate tubes for the sandwich basket, and for the Point beer and Tahitian Treat coolers, the gooey Canada Dry fruit punch I was addicted to for a few years. Most everyone got sunburned to death, but me and this young stoner (that Dad hated) who took up law to figure out how to break it (Dad's description) were the only ones with enough balls, or stupidity, to sail through the rapids at the end. I was actually pretty scared, but I was determined to show up all the future shysters, even if I did almost drown myself in the process.

  Of course, I'll always remember my collection phase, when it seemed like I collected collections. We went hunting for sea shells in Miami, man-o-wars be damned, and took pictures next to every spacecraft at Cape Kennedy. We scoured the undusted corners of the country in search of small breweries and beer cans. I had to have every Hot Wheels, Johnny Lightning, Matchbox, Dinky, Corgi, and Solido car ever produced. Then I moved on to matchbooks, just so Dad had to spring for dinner at every high-class restaurant downtown.

  I drove Mom and Dad nuts one summer, demanding to see the White Sox play at every American League team's home park. They saw me so little, they agreed to split the difference and take me to see the whole American League visit the Sox at home. Most of the games were at night, all the better to see our scoreboard explode when the White Sox rustled up a home run. We sat at third base side upper deck railing seats provided to us by old Congressman Kasza, who became the grandfather I never had in those days, lavish and affectionate, sizing up every player and every pitch and every swing as we sat next to each other with our eyes locked toward home and our arms crossed over the railing.

  Papu would let me run from aisle to aisle at Bargain Town on my birthday, picking out whatever I wanted, until the cart was full. He got off easy the year I went for Tonka trucks. He got hit pretty hard the year I discovered board games.

  He would take me and Mom and Dad for weekend trips up to the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva. Mom liked to go horseback riding, while Dad studied in the lounge. I still wonder if it had anything to do with all the illuminated pictures of Playmates behind the bar. Papu always went fishing, winter or summer, rain or shine, while I hung out in the indoor pool. One time, Dad and Papu bought me a leopard-print silk bathing suit and had two young bunnies cuddle up to me on top of the game room's pool table for a picture that never fails to gall my buddies or Uncle Alex.

  I know I cried more than anyone else at the funeral home when Papu died a few years back. I was too distraught to go to the funeral. I wish he was still here.

  A couple of winters ago, when the sniping started, I got shipped off to Uncle Alex's Minnesota farm for Christmas. I hated it at first, because Uncle Alex had moved from gin to LSD by then. One morning, two older teenagers saw me ice fishing from across the lake. They rode over on their snowmobiles, introduced themselves, and invited me to go sledding with them. We went out every day for a month after that, tearing the lake and the nearby golf course to shreds, before coming back to spend the evening playing with Unc's pinball machine while he tripped out in the privacy of his bedroom.

  I was sent back the following summer, as things continued to get worse with the parental units. This time, I didn't mind. Unc was dried out, had sold a painting, and decided to spend a lot of his money on me, that is, whenever I wasn't playing baseball with Kevin, Joel, and the rest of their friends, all of whom were pretty nice to me, considering I was barely fourteen and they were all pushing eighteen. You know how the age caste thing works with kids.

  It was even fun running away from Dad and getting lost on Danger Island on my first trip to Disneyland. I cried a little bit when I misplaced my stuffed Shere Khan Bengal tiger. For us six-year-old tykes, "The Jungle Book" was the big movie that year.

  Our yearly pilgrimages to the Adler Planetarium (to make sure Jupiter was still there) and Marshall Field's (to see their massive Christmas tree, pick out beautiful new tree ornaments, and to have lunch at the Walnut Room) were staples to me.

  I broke down. I began to cry for my lost family, hard and loud, and cried myself to sleep on the couch, still in my clothes, weakened with shame for having cried in the first place.

  *

  I woke up later that morning, feeling like I hadn't slept at all. A few embers remained in the fireplace. The harsh, pale sunlight I associated with winter poured into the living room. It looked like another cloudless, and, no doubt, bitterly cold day.

  I peeked into the garage. Mom's station wagon was there. I checked the driveway, confirming Dad's Stingray was not. Perhaps sacrificing your family on Saturdays was the price you had to pay for a six-figure income.

  It was every bit as cold as I figured it would be.

  Soundlessly, I climbed upstairs, made sure Mom's bedroom door was closed, and headed to my own room, locking the door behind me. Kneeling down at my bed, I pulled out my school bag and opened the leather album to the first photograph of my teacher and stared at it for many minutes, with my hand pulling at my jeans to give my erection some room. I stripped to my t-shirt and socks, and turned to look at myself in the dresser mirror. I wrapped my arm around my lower abdomen and perched my left foot on my desk chair, mimicking Nicolasha's pose. My upper thighs were more muscular than his.

  I sat down on the floor with my back against the side of my bed, took off my t-shirt and socks, and leafed through the rest of the album, the immediate chill over my body roundly ignored. If I was groggy before, I was wide awake by then. There were five more black and white photos of Nicolasha. Clearly, the pictures were the work of a professional: both the lighting and focus were soft, and the composition chillingly distant. I began rubbing one hand over myself while turning the pages of the album with the other. My feelings flailed from stimulation and desire to sadness and confusion. This was my teacher, for God's sake, facing the camera with a bizarre smile, wrapping the front of his dago-t over his fingers to show the camera his crotch; naked and standing straight, a hand on a hip, looking at the cameraman with a hint of impatience; laying on a blanket and the edge of a bean-bag, partially erect with his legs spread out and arms folded over his head, staring off into the distance; sitting on a bar stool with his hands on the inside of his thighs, his face covered with the utter boredom of a commuter; and the fifth, another detached, absent glare, his arms crossed behind his neck, his knees raised toward his face, exposing the bottom of his rear end and balls.

  Who the hell took these, anyway?

  My breaths became shorter. I began to tense up. I flipped to the next page and stared down at two color pictures of my teacher. The first was taken from behind him. He was wearing a dark blue denim jacket with a tall collar, with his thick hair wet and ragged, like he had just gotten out of the shower. Again, he was staring into the distance, this time, affording "the audience" an incredible profile shot, his unlined, pale orange face set against the dominant shadows in back of him, his sky-blue eyes and full lips plain and uninterested. His perfectly shaped, bulbous rear was accented by the position of his legs, which were spread outward, braced like he was about to lunge forward with a sword. The lighting revealed a hint of a soft tan on his bare legs and face, which told me these hadn't been taken before school began, since Nicolasha sported no trace of sun when we first walked into his classroom.

  But it was the last photograph made me take pause. I picked up the album in both my hands, staring closely at Nicolasha's peasant features, one side of his face obscured by a shadow, his thin, bare chest expos
ed from breast to breast inside the denim jacket, his fingers resting on the edge of the jacket and his hips, and his thick penis pointing downward between his legs. But I was drawn into Nicolasha's heartsick expression, and away from my own stimulation. What was he thinking as the camera went off? What was he feeling, deep inside of his heart, where he told us all true music flowed in and out of?

  Anyone would find this body in this pose an object of desire and beauty. What I couldn't imagine was that this was Nicolasha, my beloved little father, the young, caring teacher from Russia who brought so much warmth and so many feelings to all of us at school. I just couldn't accept what I was looking at. I had burned every inch of his face and body into my mind, flown reconnaissance over him every day in class, pictured us holding hands and hugging while I took my morning shower, dreamed about seeing him perform with the Chicago Symphony, but...this?

  In all of these pictures, he was standing there almost naked, staring at something nobody else could see, ready to have sex with whomever, smiling at a joke nobody else could hear, but he wasn't really there. Nicolas Mikhailovitch Rozhdestvensky was off someplace else, perhaps back at home in Gor'kiy, or being held in someone's loving arms, or wandering between the chords and stanzas in some overture, maybe.

  Look at that last picture - he was challenging the rest of the world to look and stare at his bare, young body, to try and touch him, to reach through his eyes and into his soul. And he was sad, either because he knew no one could, or was afraid no one would.

  I was suddenly cold. I returned the album to my school bag and buried it beneath my other books and papers. I slipped back into my t-shirt and socks, found some long johns, my maroon University of Chicago sweat pants and hooded sweatshirt, and a down ski vest so I could go jogging for the next couple of years.