pate of foie gras from its tin and slices fresh bread while directing her to wash salad leaves at the sink.
“Dressing?” she asks.
“I have homemade vinaigrette from last night. Or shall I make fresh?”
“That is fresh. You’d die if you saw what bottled stuff I throw over my salad.”
They transport their meal into the living room, spreading everything over a table that sits between the armchairs, and then they discuss the details of the business sale.
“Uncle Alex, are you sure you’re ready to sell?”
He has thought about this point a lot during the last few weeks. He sips the wine appreciatively.
“You know that after Katya, this work, building this company became everything to me. But for the last few years, I haven’t really felt driven. Not the way I used to. Maybe I’m just getting old. But at my age, I don’t want to spend even another month doing something I’m not excited about. I don’t have to.”
“So what are you excited about now?”
He shrugs. “For now I’ll be happy just cooking, and taking it easy. I’m tired, Lauren. Maybe you can teach me more about art too. How long have we been meaning to go around all the museums and galleries together?”
Lauren nods in acknowledgement. The warmth of the fire and the wine have seeped into her muscles, loosening and soothing them, and her head feels heavy. To shake off the feeling, she stands and walks about the room. Her gaze catches, as always, on the photograph of Katya that sits on the piano. Her aunt. The younger sister of Lauren’s father, Yuri. Lauren was a late and completely unexpected arrival for her parents, at a time when they had long assumed that they could not have children. Her mother was thirty-seven, her father already fifty when she was born. As a small girl in a crowded, slowly decaying area of South Boston, her father would tell her stories about his old life in the Soviet Union; and often these stories were built around his memories of, and longings for, his own parents and his sister Katya. In these tales, she came to know her aunt as a lively, spirited young girl who always outwitted her more pedestrian older brother. Through her father’s stories, Lauren had found in Katya a vivid character for the imagination, to be cheered on in their childhood escapades, in the quiet side streets of a Moscow suburb. She was a heroic, colourful figure in an exotic setting, made up of those qualities that mattered so much to the young Lauren – daring, defiance, laughter, and sophistication of a sort.
It had been a considerable time later that the deeper, more mature knowledge of her aunt had come from Alexander. She remembered only a little of her aunt’s husband from her childhood – he had been a quiet, kind presence, but one without much impact in her life until her parents’ deaths. In quick succession, Yuri had suffered a heart attack, and then her mother died of cancer, and when she found herself flailing in the ensuing void, she had found that Alexander was there, holding out a hand and emotional sustenance, and she had gratefully allowed him to step in, and confide in her, trust her and love her.
She had understood that at least some of his initial interest in her teenage self had stemmed from the fact that she was related to Katya, that she was a strong blood link to that great love of his. But it took very little time for him to come to know her on her own terms; their relationship had deepened quickly, and he began to love her as if she were his own child. If the line of her chin, or the colour of her eyes, or the tilt of her head offered him an occasional, fleeting, aching suggestion of his late wife, then that was only to be expected and understood. Lauren has never felt that she bore a great resemblance to her aunt, but her hair and eyes are dark, very dark. These features, combined with the simple fact that Katya died young, at around the age that Lauren is now, probably continues to make the occasional
“Dressing?” she asks.
“I have homemade vinaigrette from last night. Or shall I make fresh?”
“That is fresh. You’d die if you saw what bottled stuff I throw over my salad.”
They transport their meal into the living room, spreading everything over a table that sits between the armchairs, and then they discuss the details of the business sale.
“Uncle Alex, are you sure you’re ready to sell?”
He has thought about this point a lot during the last few weeks. He sips the wine appreciatively.
“You know that after Katya, this work, building this company became everything to me. But for the last few years, I haven’t really felt driven. Not the way I used to. Maybe I’m just getting old. But at my age, I don’t want to spend even another month doing something I’m not excited about. I don’t have to.”
“So what are you excited about now?”
He shrugs. “For now I’ll be happy just cooking, and taking it easy. I’m tired, Lauren. Maybe you can teach me more about art too. How long have we been meaning to go around all the museums and galleries together?”
Lauren nods in acknowledgement. The warmth of the fire and the wine have seeped into her muscles, loosening and soothing them, and her head feels heavy. To shake off the feeling, she stands and walks about the room. Her gaze catches, as always, on the photograph of Katya that sits on the piano. Her aunt. The younger sister of Lauren’s father, Yuri. Lauren was a late and completely unexpected arrival for her parents, at a time when they had long assumed that they could not have children. Her mother was thirty-seven, her father already fifty when she was born. As a small girl in a crowded, slowly decaying area of South Boston, her father would tell her stories about his old life in the Soviet Union; and often these stories were built around his memories of, and longings for, his own parents and his sister Katya. In these tales, she came to know her aunt as a lively, spirited young girl who always outwitted her more pedestrian older brother. Through her father’s stories, Lauren had found in Katya a vivid character for the imagination, to be cheered on in their childhood escapades, in the quiet side streets of a Moscow suburb. She was a heroic, colourful figure in an exotic setting, made up of those qualities that mattered so much to the young Lauren – daring, defiance, laughter, and sophistication of a sort.
It had been a considerable time later that the deeper, more mature knowledge of her aunt had come from Alexander. She remembered only a little of her aunt’s husband from her childhood – he had been a quiet, kind presence, but one without much impact in her life until her parents’ deaths. In quick succession, Yuri had suffered a heart attack, and then her mother died of cancer, and when she found herself flailing in the ensuing void, she had found that Alexander was there, holding out a hand and emotional sustenance, and she had gratefully allowed him to step in, and confide in her, trust her and love her.
She had understood that at least some of his initial interest in her teenage self had stemmed from the fact that she was related to Katya, that she was a strong blood link to that great love of his. But it took very little time for him to come to know her on her own terms; their relationship had deepened quickly, and he began to love her as if she were his own child. If the line of her chin, or the colour of her eyes, or the tilt of her head offered him an occasional, fleeting, aching suggestion of his late wife, then that was only to be expected and understood. Lauren has never felt that she bore a great resemblance to her aunt, but her hair and eyes are dark, very dark. These features, combined with the simple fact that Katya died young, at around the age that Lauren is now, probably continues to make the occasional
Similar Books
