Part 11 (1/2)

”That's it. You're grounded for the whole d.a.m.n summer: no money, no car, no Taya. And don't look at your mother like she'll save you. I'm sick of your manipulative bulls.h.i.+t.”

”Whatever,” Cheri said, turning her back to go upstairs.

”Where do you think you're going, missy?” Her father stood up; despite the expensive tailoring of his clothes, his legs looked like tree trunks in slacks. The word elephantiasis sprang to her mind, forget phlebitis or gout.

”You think you'll laugh when you have to pay for your own college?”

”Solomon, no,” Cici said, standing in front of him.

”f.u.c.k you and your money.”

Sol stood like a soda can that had been shaken and was just about to be popped open. He let out a sound, not quite a growl but close. Even Cici was silenced. Cheri slammed up the stairs. She was sleep-deprived, hungover; her emotions turned on a dime. She was suddenly overwhelmed with thirst. Going into her bathroom for a gla.s.s of water, she was infuriated to see her mother had fluffed-there were now expensive lotions, perfumes, and soaps on every available surface. Cheri hurled everything onto the floor with one sweep of her arm.

”You're going to pay for everything you break.” Her father was suddenly by her side in her bathroom. ”I'll keep a list.”

”You've probably got a list of everything you've ever bought me since I was a baby. Do I get the bill when I move out?”

”You ungrateful...” Sol's hands were pressing into his sides like he was trying to stop himself from using them. ”We have done everything for you. Do you think I can't see how you turn your mother against me? You've done it since you were a child and you're still doing it, even when you're old enough to know better.”

”Why is it a compet.i.tion? Why does it have to be a contest with you over who Mom loves more? I'm the child, you're supposed to be the adults! You think I don't see how you look at me? Like you don't want me here? Well, that makes two of us! I can't wait to get out of here. What's most f.u.c.ked up is that you think I want her suffocating me. You're pathetic. A pathetic f.u.c.king freak.”

He moved toward her surprisingly fast, given the condition of his legs, hand raised. She stumbled back and fell against the toilet, slipped sideways off its smooth surface, and smacked her head against the tub. Seen from this angle, her father looked enormous. She had a pooling feeling in the back of her throat. One of her ears buzzed and a throbbing pain began where she'd hit her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the blow to fall. But when she looked back up, her father was gone. Suddenly she was retching into the toilet bowl. The last thing she heard before she falls asleep on the floor was Jim Morrison droning, ”This is the end, my only friend, the end.” She hates The Doors.

Without Gusmanov, the pa.s.sion Marco D'Ameri sparked in Cheri might never have flourished. When she got back from Italy and told Gusmanov that she'd gone hunting, he was dismayed that she'd shot at birds without proper training. Gusmanov wouldn't let her fire one of his guns until she could identify all the parts and how they worked, determine the muzzle velocity, clean, a.s.semble, load, and unload. He'd hold up his father's old pocket watch and time her taking the gun apart and putting it back together as he banged and clanged things in the garage to distract her. Then, when he felt she was ready to shoot, he taught her how to use her breath to keep her mind and body focused. He told her not to peek, but she peeked and saw the makes.h.i.+ft firing range he'd created for her at the old junkyard a few miles outside Montclair. He had her make her own targets, drawing circles or spattering paint, and he displayed them like artwork from school, being careful to take them down and hide them in his toolbox at night. When it was apparent that Cheri had talent, Gusmanov came up with the idea of having her don the green Girl Scout uniform because he knew Cici couldn't say no to sashes, pins, and an American Inst.i.tution. It was the perfect cover for him to take her to shooting lessons at the 4-H and, later, to state junior riflery compet.i.tions. Gusmanov said he inherited his aim from his dead Russian mother, who hid from n.a.z.is in the forest, eating bark and squirrels she killed with a slingshot. ”Where did I get my aim?” she'd wondered. Certainly not from Sol, who would never approve of Cheri's love of guns and didn't understand why she was always hanging out with ”that handyman,” as he referred to Gusmanov.

Target practice was her only refuge that summer, stolen under the guise of a project Taya and Cheri were doing for NYU. Just stepping into the 4-H firing range calmed Cheri. Precision shooting wasn't just her sport; it was her sanity. Even before she put on her ears, she tuned out the rest of the world and was fully focused. While Cheri found absolution in her secret sport, she acted as confessor to Taya, whose father was involved in what was soon to become a public scandal instigated by his secretary, who alleged he'd fired her when she broke off their long-term affair. Cheri preferred listening to talking, especially about herself, and never guessed that Taya's drama would cut close to her own father bone.

Cheri packed up her room, vowing to return to Montclair as infrequently as possible. She had two agendas upon entering NYU: to live in the East Village and to lose her virginity. Soon she was juggling a full course load and a bartending gig-making good on her vow to use none of Sol's money beyond the necessary cost of tuition-but it didn't take long to find her first real lover, a ba.s.s player who happily relieved Cheri of her burden.

”Well, at least one of us is getting laid,” Taya said when Cheri called her from a pay phone at Was.h.i.+ngton Square Park. Cheri was sharing an apartment on West Twelfth and Sixth with an Israeli graduate student who had a grand piano and a seemingly endless stream of relatives who needed a free place to stay. Look, here is Tamar's third cousin twice removed and his two friends who just happen to be in the neighborhood at three a.m. with their sleeping bags, hummus, and blind dog-no problem, we'll make room for them in the living room. Tamar's early-morning piano practice failed to rouse the crashed backpackers but drove Cheri to the great outdoors.

Was.h.i.+ngton Square Park became Cheri's de facto study hall/crash pad. It had some of the city's best speed-chess players, including an old Ukrainian man named Yure who reminded her of Gusmanov with his patience (he taught her to play chess) and stories of his war-torn life in the Old Country (in Yure's case, tales of fleeing the Cossacks). Yure gave her the lowdown on who was who in the park and brought her stuffed cabbage his wife made for their restaurant on the Lower East Side.

Cheri rarely saw her parents. NYU was far enough from the Upper East Side that, even if her parents were in the city, she could beg off getting together, citing her course load. And while Cici kept Cheri's room in Montclair exactly as she'd left it, the last thing Cheri wanted was to return to the place she'd spent eighteen years waiting to flee. So it was a great surprise when, toward the end of her freshman year, Cheri saw her father coming out of the library by the park.

”Solomon?” Since their fight, she's taken to calling her father by his first name because it irritates him. He is wearing a dark, pin-striped suit and a bow tie; his rusty gray hair raked across his head looks as if it might spring up at the slightest provocation. ”What are you doing here?”

”I was looking for you,” he says. ”Your mother gave me your schedule. You've got a cla.s.s in there at ten forty-five, yes?” Since when did his voice lilt like a Canadian's?

”What, you're thinking of auditing? Spending a little father-daughter time?” She lights a cigarette. Sol's nostrils flare in disapproval but he doesn't say anything.

”No to auditing and yes to the other,” he says, resisting the urge to wave the smoke out of his face. ”I'm a full-time student here. At the law school, right down the street by the gymnasium. Have you checked it out? Great tennis courts and the swimming pool-outstanding.”

”Law school,” Cheri says with incredulity. ”Here at NYU?”

”It certainly disproves the adage you can't teach an old dog new tricks.” He laughs uncomfortably. ”I'm on an accelerated program. Should be a cakewalk compared to med school. It's not a career change, more like an expansion.” Sol's eyes squint in the sun, making him look like a mole.

”And you're telling me all this because...?”

”Because I thought we could spend a little time together. I wanted to tell you personally, and we haven't crossed paths at the house very much lately. Let me take you to lunch,” Sol says. ”After your cla.s.s. One o'clock at Cicero's in SoHo?”

”Can't. I have to get to comparative religion. Sorry to ruin your reunited-and-it-feels-so-good moment but I'm late. See you around campus.”

”Cheri,” Solomon calls as she's walking away. She turns around. ”I'd like to believe that it's never too late-or too early-to learn something.”

But his overture was too little, too late. The last thing Cheri wanted to do was revisit the fallout of their fight. The idea of seeing her father at school infuriated her. It wasn't as if he needed another degree on his wall. How dare he follow her?

”Why, why, why can't you be nice to your father? Please, he came with the olive branch in his beak,” Cici begged when Cheri finally deigned to answer the phone one day just as she was heading out of the apartment. As Cheri suspected, her mother was behind all of this.

”Right. And if I sent him doves, he'd send them back stuffed with olives and capers and ask you to cook them.”

”You are tearing my heart,” her mother said.

Cheri finally agrees to let her father take her to lunch. That phrasing bothers her. She feels like she's a briefcase that her father carries into Le Cirque, throws down on the chair next to him. The briefcase will have the snails. Actually, he says, ”Let's start with some snails for the table.” Because the table really enjoys mucus-producing garden pests. Her mother thought her father was manly when he ordered for her. Cheri didn't.

”Well, then,” he says after the waiter leaves. ”Let's chat.”

”About what?”

”Tell me what your life is like. What courses you're taking, other than the prerequisites. How do you like your professors? Who are your friends? Do you have a significant other?”

”Significant other? Who says that in normal conversation? You think you're going to catch me off guard so I'll admit I'm gay?”

”Okay, let the record be amended: Do you have a boyfriend?”

The waiter arrives with their snails and Cheri fixates on the garlic b.u.t.ter pooling in the indentations of the snail tray. The risk factor is at red. Her father has never met a condiment that didn't somehow end up on his face; sauces were also fair game.

”So, where were we?” Sol asks. ”You were going to tell me about college life. You found a major yet?”

”I'm thinking about comparative religion. And yes, I have male friends, some of whom I've slept with.”

Sol ignores the thrown gauntlet.

”Religion? Where did this interest come from?” A portion of snail b.u.t.ter drips out of the corner of Sol's mouth and dribbles chin-ward.

”Well, not from you guys or that Catholic elementary school you sent me to.”

”But what are you expecting to do with a religion major? The job field after graduation has to be pretty narrow.”

”Isn't a liberal arts education supposed to be about learning?” Cheri answers emphatically. ”If I just wanted a job, I'd go to trade school. Religion is actually one of the broadest fields. It intersects with history, art, language, politics. Wars are always being fought over religion. People are adamant that one is better than the other but they're all kind of saying the same thing.”

Sol nods. ”Organized religion is just another political system, especially Catholicism. The whole point is to create a hierarchy that is sustainable over centuries and, of course, offer the promise of salvation if you follow A, B, and C. I always found the history of the church surrounding the Council of Nicaea especially interesting.”

It's shocking, but Cheri thinks she may actually have something to talk to Sol about. ”Since when are you so interested in the Catholic Church? Religion is Cici's thing. It always seemed like she was dragging you along at Christmas and Easter.”

”I had to learn about it when I converted,” Sol says, looking around for the wine steward. ”To marry your mother.”