The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein Page A

were then treated with a double coat of frosting and sprinkled with M&M’s to distinguish them from the everyday cakes. His father wasn’t good at remembering dates, and the birthday cakes had often been a few days late. No gift had ever arrived early. Third warning.
    “Are we going to a show?”
    “You could put it that way,” said Vassily.
    Yasha took the envelope from his father’s hands and studied the tickets. They were one-way flights, New York to Moscow, departing the following Thursday. There were only two.
    “I have been thinking,” Vassily said.
    “Graduation,” Yasha said, the first excuse that came to him. “On the twenty-ninth.”
    “It was a bad mistake,” said Vassily, sitting on Yasha’s bed. “I was thinking of the last day of school. I thought, Let’s go fast. Wednesday school is out, Thursday we are out. What did I know about a graduation?” he said with some light in his eyes. “I never did one of those.” He patted his thighs, and small clouds of flour erupted. “When school was out, I figured, it was out.”
    Yasha loved his father. When his father spoke, Yasha understood what he said. His father was sometimes eccentric, but never insane; not terribly attractive, but adorable, easy to adore. He smiled when he had amused himself and shouted when he was mad. His pants were yellow from dozens of broken eggs. His hair was gray and long around his ears. His core, Yasha suspected, was made of peace.
    Out, I figured, was out, Yasha repeated to himself, hoping his mother would never show up again. “Let’s go,” Yasha said, “I don’t need to go to graduation.” If she did come again, they would be gone. Let her miss me, Yasha thought. “Saves a hundred dollars, no cap and gown,” he said.
    “So what, you can have ten caps,” Vassily said, “with fur, even with earflaps.” The wind made Yasha’s blinds rattle against the window. Vassily said he would find Olyana, kiss her bare hands, show her his gray hair and their good-looking son. Vassily touched his own lips. He said he imagined his body growing thinner and his heart growing thicker until it all ended, at which point he wanted his wife at his side. He said they were low on juice and milk, and he would not go about replenishing. “Think of it as a vacation,” Vassily said. “And when we come back,” he said, grinning, “the doctors will cut my chest open.”
    •    •    •
     
    At lunch hour on Monday, Olyana was standing at the school door. It was sunny, and she leaned against a pillar, fanning herself with one hand. Yasha had come outside for some air and a turkey sandwich. He was about to have a precalculus exam. He couldn’t remember telling her where he went to school.
    There were so many questions he would have to ask to begin understanding anything, questions of such different magnitudes: How did you know where I go to school? and Why didn’t you want to raise me? and Do you know what we’re about to do? She was wearing an orange dress today. When she saw him, she started waving jubilantly with her whole arm. He didn’t want to go over there and be happy with her. He wanted a turkey sandwich, and to use the bathroom, and to study the law of cosines.
    “Yakov!” she shouted, making a few kids on the street look at him.
    He hurried over to keep her from shouting more. “Be quiet,” he said.
    “Heavens, why? Look, I’ve gotten us a few apples.”
    “I told you to come this weekend, and you didn’t, but you’re here forty minutes before my final exam, for lunch?”
    His mother handed him a yellow apple. “Where can we find a good sandwich?” she asked.
    Yasha closed his mouth and twisted it up. He felt tall again, and over-aware of his own arms, and hungry, and at war.
    “You can find a good sandwich at the Gregoriov Bakery,” Yasha said, “where your husband and son work.” She was already eating her apple.
    “Yakov,” she said, “if I storm right in and talk to your father, with his