The Cosmopolitans by Nadia Kalman

all; music was an easy major, wasn’t it? At least he’d rowed crew.) his internship with Harold Krasner, and, at his insistence, his “abiding interest in Klezmer music.” She needed a few more sips of wine before resuming with Milla. “An accountant’s assistant —”
    “— Assistant accountant,” Milla said. “I mean, sorry, that’s my official title.”
    “Oh, I didn’t know that was important. What do you want me to write again?”
    “It’s not so important.…” A little shrug.
    “What should I write?”
    “Assistant accountant.”
    “Isn’t that what I had? Oh well, ‘assistant accountant at Lazar Partners, a Big Ten firm in New York. She graduated magna cum laude.’” She had remembered; Milla should be flattered. “From Southern Connecticut State,” Malcolm added.
    “I don’t think I have to put that,” Jean said. “If I just say she graduated, right after I talk about you, people might think: Yale.”
    Milla was widening her eyes at Malcolm. What message was this inept Russian spy transmitting now? She didn’t like prestige?
    Malcolm said, “Southern Conn is a great school for accounting. Everyone knows that.”
    Milla gazed wetly at Malcolm. Pauline had been rescued.
    “Trust me,” Jean said. “I’m more experienced —”
    “More experienced?” Malcolm said.
    “Not like that, you child. I have more experience in the world than you do, and thinking Milla may possibly have gone to Yale will give her that je ne sais quoi in people’s eyes. Milla, you know what I mean, don’t you?”
    Milla pointed at her mouth again, as it were too full to speak, but it didn’t look all that full to Jean.
    Malcolm said, “Aren’t we supposed to put in something about you, and something about Milla’s parents?”
    “How did you know that?”
    Malcolm reached for the last prawn and put the whole thing in his mouth, even the disgusting tail. “I read Sunday Styles sometimes.”
    “I thought only homos did that.” Jean loved to tease him about being a homo, because he so clearly was not one, although he was not as muscular as she would have liked. “But anyway, I can write that without you. Your father, founder of a law firm, Harvard magna cum laude, blah blah, me, maybe I’ll put in that I represented Michael Landon — do you think I should put that in? Do you think anyone would care?”
    “Sure, put it in, why not?” he said.
    “I don’t want it to take up space if no one cares. Do you kids even know who Michael Landon is? Milla, do you know?”
    Malcolm said, “Put it in, Mom, it doesn’t matter.”
    “Fine. I’ll leave it out.” Malcolm sighed and sprawled his legs outwards, as if he were sitting on an exercise ball at the gym, rather than a century-old Louis XV style dining chair, complete with claw feet, that Jean had discovered at an auction in (of all places) Truro, Massachusetts.
     
     
     
     
    Yana
     
     
    The wedding was in eight days. Milla combed her hair a different way every half hour and stuck a veil on it, stared at herself in the bedroom mirror, refused to emerge. She was becoming a vainer, dumber version of Uncle Lev, not that telling her that made any difference.
    From an undisclosed location in Santa Barbara, Katya tortured their mother with her indecision about attending the wedding, bringing Stalina to such a state that she had staggered back from the mall that afternoon cradling a strapless orange prom dress some commissioned witch told her was perfect for a hot M.O.B. Now, the dress lay in wait in its plastic bag at the bottom of Stalina’s closet, where she’d let it fall — a very uncharacteristic gesture, alarming in itself — while describing to Yana a dream in which Katya had been a bird playing the piano.
    Publicly and politely, as she had done for months, Stalina argued with Jean over expenses, offering to pay for any item Jean happened to mention, be it tuxedo alterations, the rabbi’s fee, the entire catering bill (which Yana knew they