Vaclav & Lena Read online

  For Oleg, in America, it was worse. He didn’t have the right license to be an architect in America; he would have to go to school, take tests to prove that he knew what he already knew. He told her that he would drive the cab until he could pay for it, but all he ever spent his money on was the satellite on the roof for the Russian TV channels and vodka to drink while he watched it. He hated going out; he hated when the store clerk treated him like an imbecile because he didn’t know words for drain cleaner or cotton balls. Rasia remembered the Oleg she fell in love with, who was a charmer, who was famous in a small-town way, flirting with old ladies, always giving gum and toys from his pockets to children, who sang songs to make her laugh. She knew now that she would probably never get him back.

  LENA IS IN A MOOD OF LAUGHING

  …

  Vaclav counts the steps as he walks along Avenue U, from Thirteenth Street, to Twelfth, to Eleventh, all the way down to Seventh, where he turns the corner and sees Lena sitting on the stoop outside her house, swinging her string-bean legs. He is always excited to see her, but today he is especially excited, because he has a big plan to share with her. Vaclav smiles, and waves, and trips a little bit on the sidewalk right in front of her, but he does not fall down.

  Lena tries not to, but she laughs very loudly at Vaclav. Vaclav is glad that Lena is in a mood of laughing, because this will make it easier for him to persuade her of the new big plans.

  “Did you get permission?” Lena asks Vaclav, as she hops off the ledge.

  “Is very good English, Lena!” says Vaclav. Lena rolls her eyes at his flattery, hands him her stack of books, and they begin their walk together toward Public School 238.

  “Okay, okay. Sheesh. Tough audience. Getting permission is not the best way to go. Getting permission is not for this. This, which is part of destiny. Not permission needed.”

  “You no get,” Lena grumbles.

  “I can have this permission if I want, but it is not the way. This is a test, of the universe for us, and we must prove ourselves and overcome this adversity. We should be thankful for adversity, for giving us chance to forge our strength, like Houdini, who never gave up trying, and was always adding to his escape act more chains and more locks.” Lena rolls her eyes again, because Vaclav is saying this about Houdini and adversity and destiny all the time.

  “We do by ourselves. Is less trouble. Is better, okay?” Vaclav stops walking and pleads with Lena with his eyes. Lena plants her hands on her tiny hips.

  “No. Your mother must give permission.”

  “Lena!”

  “I will not do without permission. Is trouble,” Lena says, and stomps ahead of Vaclav.

  “Lena, no trouble, will not be trouble,” Vaclav pleads. “We will plan by ourselves. No one will know. We will have secret show, on Coney Island, with secret acts, and we will plan in secret. No trouble. None.”

  Lena likes to have secrets, this Vaclav knows. She slows down her walk and tilts her head just a little. Sunlight glows around the black fuzz of hair that has escaped her French braid.

  “Lena, since you are the best secret keeper, of course, you will be in charge of the secret planning of the secret act. You will be the master.” Vaclav knows that this will please Lena, that this is the key. Vaclav also knows that he will still be the master of the secret planning.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “You are thinking that you will still be boss. No, is fake, I will not do.”

  Vaclav quickens his step, thinking about this worst-case scenario. This is a list that he did not write down but a list that he composed only in his head.

  WORST-CASE SCENARIOS:

  1. Permission is not given to have show on boardwalk

  AND

  2. Lena will not agree to show without permission of parents

  Vaclav thinks about doing the show without Lena, but the show cannot go on without Lena, even as the show must go on. There is no show without Lena. Lena is necessary for all the illusions; they have already accomplished so much together. Lena is irreplaceable. Even if Lena was replaceable, no girls at school will replace her; none of them even speak to Vaclav or look at him in the hallway.

  “Plan is not good, Vaclav.…” Lena says, trying to be gentle but interrupting Vaclav’s thoughts anyway.

  “Don’t think now. We’ll talk later. No more talking now,” says Vaclav.

  Lena makes a grumbling in the back of her throat, and they continue down Seventh Street toward Avenue P, toward school.

  THE WAY THINGS ARE AT SCHOOL

  …

  P.S. 238 is a school that was built very long ago, with big bricks and enormous doors and windows. There is a huge door in the front of the school, where parents and teachers and visitors can enter. The students, including Vaclav and Lena, must use the side doors.

  Each morning, students play on the side playground, which is just blacktop with lots of lines drawn in different places for hopscotch, and four square, and basketball, and marbles. Kids also play cards, sitting on warm asphalt. When the bell rings, the boys line up at the boys’ door and the girls line up at the girls’ door. The boys’ door is on the right, and above the door there is a stone plaque that says boys. The girls door is on the left, and above the door there is a stone plaque that says girls. The school hasn’t used the separate entrances in an official capacity for years, but the boys still refuse to walk through the girls door, and though the girls dare one another, giggling, to walk through the boys door, no one ever does.

  When Lena and Vaclav arrive this morning, they have missed all the playtime because they dawdled on the walk, talking about the act. Vaclav joins the end of the boys’ line, and Lena joins the end of the girls’ line. The lines slowly feed into the building single file. Vaclav and Lena look at their feet. There is no girl for Lena to talk to and no boy for Vaclav to talk to.

  Inside, they both climb two flights of stairs to the third floor. Vaclav goes to Mr. Hunter’s room, and Lena to Ms. Walldinger’s room. They will not see each other until ESL class, when they will both descend two flights of stairs, with all the other kids who have stinky lunches.

  In Mr. Hunter’s class, Vaclav is the only stink-lunch ESL kid at the green table. The other boy is Ulysses, and the two girls are Nachalie and Genesis. Each table has two boys and two girls; no table has more than one stink-lunch kid.

  On the table is a Do It NOW! worksheet. There are always four Xeroxes of the Do It NOW! worksheet on each table, and the children are to begin work on them immediately as they enter the classroom.

  Vaclav thinks this must be the best part of the day for Mr. Hunter. During this time, Mr. Hunter stands outside the door to the hallway, one foot in, one foot out, looking for straggling students, even when everyone is already sitting in the classroom. Next door, Ms. Troani also straddles her classroom threshold, and they talk to each other like people on TV, with lots of jokes and gestures and winks and laughing.

  Vaclav focuses his mind, trying too hard not to think about Lena or about getting permission, and reads the Do It NOW! There is a paragraph about fires. Then there are questions about fire safety. There are directions to the children to discuss with their group what they would save from their homes in case of a fire.

  Vaclav knows what he would take, and it does not help at all to distract his mind from his problem with Lena.

  “Hey, V! What would you bring?” The kids in Vaclav’s class don’t say his whole name, just the first letter. Vee. Vaclav doesn’t know for sure if this is a friendly thing, a familiar thing, or a bad, mean thing. It doesn’t seem very bad, if it is bad at all.

  Vaclav decides to give a dishonest answer to the question, because the real thing that he would save in a fire is embarrassing to say. The real thing he would save in a fire is Lena.

  “Collection of David Copperfield videos, I would save. Of course.” Vaclav thinks that this is a safe answer, because all the other kids talk about videos. Immediately, he knows that he is right, because th
ey all smile. “Or my favorite book, Harry Houdini: Famous American.”

  “I thought he was gonna say some Polish thing or something,” says Genesis.

  “My family is not from Poland. My family is from Russia,” says Vaclav. “You might be confuse because my name is Polish, because I am named for my great-grandfather, who was Polish and was called Vaclav. But I am Russian.”

  “Sorry. Russian, Polish. Whatever, same difference anyway, right?” says Genesis.

  “No …” Vaclav begins, and trails off, because Nachalie is already interrupting to take his side.

  “Genesis, it’s like that time that boy said you were a Mexican and you cried because your dad is just from Mexico but you’re Dominican like your mom, right? And plus, it’s like everyone’s American, right?” says Nachalie.

  “Who’s David Copperfield?” asks Ulysses.

  “David Copperfield is most amazing living American magician since Harry Houdini,” says Vaclav, with pride.

  “I think David Blaine is cooler. Isn’t David Copperfield like an old guy? David Blaine froze himself in ice. That’s crazy. I could do that if I wanted to, I would just never want to,” says Ulysses.

  “Is that what you want to do? Freeze yourself in ice? That’s disgusting, my mom said. Like, he just makes a scene and stuff,” says Nachalie.

  “No, I practice magic and the art of illusion.” Vaclav looks at his tablemates, watching him so intently as he explains about the art of magic, the art of illusion, and he becomes excited and invigorated, and he decides to do something he has never done before; he decides to take a risk, in front of these, his first possible fans.

  “This,” says Vaclav, pulling open the zipper of his backpack, “is video of famous David Copperfield show of illusions and magic.”

  Vaclav places the case dramatically on the center of the table. He has it with him because its newness has not yet worn off; he continues to be excited by the sight of it in his backpack, though he’s had it for months. He sometimes likes to slide his hand into his backpack during class and feel the plastic case.

  Nachalie laughs. Genesis laughs, but she doesn’t know why she’s laughing. Ulysses picks up the case, opens it, and takes out the disk.

  “This is so bootleg!” He laughs.

  Vaclav grabs the disk from Ulysses’s hand and reaches out to grab the case, but Ulysses pulls his hand out of reach. Ulysses gives him a look like Whoa, man, patience! Like there is no reason at all for Vaclav to be even just a little bit upset, which he is.

  Holding the case away from Vaclav, Ulysses opens it and shows it to the girls. He points to the label.

  “Look, this label is handwritten! This DVD is totally bootleg.” He hands the case back to Vaclav.

  “What is this bootleg?” Vaclav asks.

  “Oh, you know, like when in the tunnel to the B train there’s that man with a blanket out on the ground, and DVDs all over it …”

  “Faw fuh fie dollah!” Genesis imitates the call of the man, the underground man, the video hawker.

  Yes, thinks Vaclav, he has seen this man before, in the subway, on the way to Coney Island. Like all adults he meets on the subway or the bus, he behaves toward him as per his mother’s instructions—he points his eyes at the ground and continues on his way, never staring but always keeping his wits about him, never, ever letting his wits get away.

  “This is from that guy, or from some other guy like that guy,” Ulysses says. Mr. Hunter clears his throat; class is starting. Ulysses lowers his voice to a whisper. “They just make a copy of the real thing, and then they sell it real cheap, like on the street or whatever.”

  “But my father bought this for me.…” Vaclav says.

  “Yeah, he did,” says Ulysses, “from the bootleg guy.”

  Vaclav decides to do much research, to get to the bottom of this, this bootleg issue, as he is not trusting Ulysses, and to find out why the great magician David Copperfield could be so taken advantage of.

  In the meantime, Vaclav must get through the day. Vaclav must try to quiet his thoughts of Lena and her big no, thoughts of his mother and the terrifying conversation, and especially thoughts of his father, who tells on his son instead of talking about things or being fatherly and sharing adult secrets like fathers on American television.

  But it is especially hard to stop thinking about how the video that his father gave him as a gift may not be a real video but may be even a video practically stolen from Mr. David Copperfield, which is not the way of the magician and is to Vaclav very disturbing, because he must go around the world earning everything so that one day he will earn the trust and the belief of the nation and his many fans, and also, this video, which might be a terrible thing, was, until now, the best thing his father had ever done for him in his whole entire life besides giving him the opportunity to come as a human being into the earth and into existence, which is not something that Vaclav feels he should be in particular thankful about, because what else was he going to do?

  STINK-LUNCHERS

  …

  Vaclav is excited to see Lena during ESL class, to tell her about the bootleg DVD, because she will make him feel better, either by saying something smart about the DVD or just by listening to him. This is something Lena does for Vaclav; she makes everything better just by being there. This is something that Vaclav hopes he is also able to do for Lena.

  On the door of the ESL room there is a poster that says WELCOME in many different languages, including some languages, like Russian and Japanese and Chinese and Korean and Arabic, that use their very own alphabets.

  When Vaclav walks into the ESL class, he sees, written on the blackboard, Welcome! Please take out your homework and compare your answers with a partner’s. Suddenly, Vaclav feels terrible. He has not completed his homework. This is unusual for Vaclav; he always finishes his homework. It is a half-truth, or a lie, to say that Vaclav has not completed his homework. The whole truth is that Vaclav has not even started his ESL homework and that he has not finished it. The truth is that Vaclav forgot about his ESL homework altogether. When his mother asked him if all his homework was finished, he fudged the truth a tiny bit, and said yes, even though he had just one more thing to do: an ESL worksheet. He had planned to do it later, but then so many things happened, and he forgot.

  Now Vaclav’s bad feeling of forgetting to do his homework is mixing in with the bad feeling about the bootleg video and the bad feeling of Lena’s no and the bad feeling from the terrible conversation with his mother, and these feelings, all mixed together, are pushing hot tears into Vaclav’s eyes.

  “Seats! Everyone take your seats!” says Mrs. Bisbano.

  This sentence, which Mrs. Bisbano uses frequently, is confusing to Vaclav, because he knows she means for all the students to sit in their seats and she does not mean that all the students should take their seats, and besides, where would they take them?

  Now Vaclav does not have time to tell Lena about the bootleg video. Also, he would like to quietly and privately tell Mrs. Bisbano about forgetting, for the first time all year, to do his homework, and he would like to tell her that he will bring it in to be checked tomorrow, but it is too late now to do anything at all.

  Lena walks into the classroom with Marina and Kristina, the only popular girls who are also in ESL. They have blond hair, and they both wear it exactly the same, in ponytails on the side of their heads that look as if they should make them tip over. Marina and Kristina are talking to Lena, and Lena is smiling. Vaclav waves at Lena so that she will see him and come over to him, because he wants so badly to tell her about the bootleg DVD before class starts. He would also like her to sit next to him, or in the seat in front of him or behind him, as she usually does.

  Lena looks quickly at Vaclav, but it seems as if his calling her over is not strong enough, and the pulling of Marina and Kristina is stronger, because Lena follows along behind them and then sits with them. Vaclav is still watching Lena sitting across the room, far away from him, when Mrs. Bis
bano comes up from behind.

  “Vaclav, where is your homework?” She says this in a regular tone of voice, as if it is not the most frightening thing to say, ever, in the whole world.

  “Uhhhh …” says Vaclav, which is really not a thing to say and is actually just a sound to make.

  “Where is your homework, Vaclav?”

  Vaclav tries to tell Mrs. Bisbano how sorry he is, and how he will make it up as soon as possible, how he will even stay inside during lunchtime just to make it up, but when he tries to open his mouth to say these words, only crying comes out.

  Mrs. Bisbano leans closer to Vaclav and says, “It’s okay. Go to the bathroom and blow your nose, and we can talk about this after class is over.”

  Vaclav tries to say that yes, that is okay, but his voice is interrupted by more crying trying to come up in his throat.

  Vaclav looks over at Lena, and she is looking away. Everyone else is looking at him. Lena is looking away.

  ESKIMOLOGY

  …

  After Vaclav came back to ESL from the bathroom, Mrs. Bisbano told him that he could get a free pass for his homework if he brought it in the next day, since he had never missed an assignment before, and Vaclav felt much better. He didn’t get a chance to talk to Lena, since Lena wasn’t in his group for projects, and after class, she left really quickly with Marina and Kristina, before Vaclav could even pack up his pencils and erasers.

  The rest of the day goes by very slowly, and even though Vaclav tries to pay attention to the teacher, his eyes keep wandering to the clock. When school is finally over, Vaclav waits outside for Lena. He stands in a spot where he can see everyone coming out of both doors and they can all see him. He knows that from this spot he will see Lena when she comes out. Vaclav always waits for Lena outside her house in the morning, and outside the school in the afternoon, and this is how he makes sure, every day, that they will walk together. Vaclav wonders now for only a moment if Lena would wait for him if he did not wait for her, but he knows that this is silly, and that yes, of course she would.