Boomerang of Happiness - 4

Anna's parents were happy she was spending so much time with Alex. Since Anna was single, she still lived with them. She was the only child; her father still called her “my doll” and spoiled her like she was a little girl. By the time Anna met Alex, her father rose high up in the party ranks and was the deputy Communist Party chief for the entire station. “Big Party shot,” everyone called him. He couldn’t wait for Anna to get married and give him some grandchildren. When Anna told her parents she was dating Alex, the famed engineer with a brilliant future in store for him, Anna’s father couldn’t be happier. Once in awhile, he would ask Anna how things between her and Alex were going, and when she invariably said “fine,” he was quite satisfied.

Her mother, however, was more concerned. At first she was excited, too, but then just like Anna became puzzled that there was no obvious progress in their relationship. Each evening when Anna came home from work, her mother would ask her loads of questions about their lunch and evening walk, and Anna gladly retold her mother all her chitchat. Her mother, a shrewd and experienced woman who devoted her entire life to her husband and daughter by being an exemplary home-maker and a pillar of support for her little family, was not satisfied that Alex did not take the due interest in her daughter as a woman. So she decided to check him out for herself, to see what was wrong with him. One day in mid-May she casually suggested to Anna, “Let’s invite Alex for dinner.”

“To our home, you mean?” Anna clarified.

“Of course, where else?”

“Well, I don’t know. I thought maybe some fancy restaurant…”

“Where did you see a fancy restaurant here, at the station?”

“Not here, Mom, in Novosibirsk. There are lots of good new restaurants there, I hear my co-workers talking about them all the time.”

“Oh, there,” her mother said and thought about it a little. “I guess we could do that, too, but perhaps later. For now, why don’t you just invite Alex to our place? I’d really like to meet him. I’ll cook something nice…”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Anna responded hesitantly. “He may get scared. I don’t want to spook him. I don’t really know how he feels about me, and the last thing I want to happen is for him to get scared away.”

“Why would he get scared? Not like we are going to force him to marry you right here.”

“But that’s exactly what he may think, Mom! And I don’t want him to be put off so that he stops seeing me altogether.”

(At that time in the Soviet Union meeting your boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s parents did not automatically mean that your relationship got serious and is on a path to marriage. This notion came a lot later, with the flood of American movies in the late 1990s. Soviet boys and girls met their romantic interests’ parents just to get acquainted and show that their relationship was safe and serious, but not necessarily leading to a marriage.)

“Nonsense, since when meeting the parents became a sign of marriage?” Anna’s mother said. “But if you are so afraid, just tell Alex your father would like to meet him.”

“But that’s even worse, Mom! Everyone at work knows who my father is. Alex may think Dad wants to probe him or something. And you know how Dad can get, with all his questions. Even I feel being investigated and intimidated when he asks all his questions.”

“Well, you could tell Alex your father would like to discuss some Party issues with him, as a potential leader of the new generation of scientists. Is Alex a member of the Communist Party, do you know?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think so. He never mentioned it, anyway. I’m trying to remember, but no, it never came up in our conversations.”

“So, why don’t you find out then, and I will discuss this with Dad. We’ll think about how to invite Alex for dinner without scaring your precious and vulnerable ‘boyfriend’ away.”

Next day at lunch, Anna asked Alex if he was a Party member. He said “no” and when Anna asked why, he couldn’t even explain it to her. As someone with a vision of the future, he knew that soon Party membership would not matter. He felt that the Soviet system started to fall apart when the Berlin wall fell in 1989, but he didn’t know yet how it would affect him personally. When he had turned 28, the last year to be a member of the Young Communist League, the Party chief at the station in Kazakhstan interviewed Alex about his intent to join the Party. During the Soviet era, it was nearly impossible for a young promising scientist to build a meaningful career if he was not a member of the Communist Party. But Alex had just lost Irina then, he was completely spaced out during the interview and they left him alone, understanding that he may need some time to recover from his personal loss. Later Alex started to move around for work and no one pushed him to join the Party anymore. He was quite happy about it.

A day later, Anna invited Alex for dinner at her place, and he agreed without asking any questions. He just remembered their conversation the day before and, knowing who her father was, decided that it was going to be about his Party membership. Alex knew that sooner or later the day when they’d push him to join would come, so he put the pieces together and decided the dinner was to be about that. Anna was surprised that he agreed without any hesitation or questions, but was happy at the same time that she didn’t have to give him any explanations.

The dinner went fine. Anna’s mother cooked a big meal consisting of several delicious courses and a fruit pie for dessert. Alex ate everything she put on his plate with great pleasure, praising every dish and savoring every piece, making loud and happy purring noises and clicking his tongue with delight.

“I like the way you eat. Makes me happy as I put so much effort into this dinner,” Anna’s mother said.

“Yes, yes! Your zest for food is contagious. Makes me want to eat more, although I really shouldn’t,” Anna’s father chimed in, chuckling while rubbing his distinguished beer belly.

“How come you never eat like this at the cafeteria?” Anna asked, smiling at Alex.

“Are you kidding me?” Alex was genuinely surprised by the question. “The food at the cafeteria is all right, but in no way it can compare to your mother’s cooking. My mother cooks like this, too. I wish I had learned from her, but I can’t really cook myself. This is why I am so happy tonight: I haven’t had a good home-made meal in ages!” Alex wanted to say “for over two years” at first, because Irina was an excellent cook, but reconsidered and paused.

“Awww, you are too kind,” Anna’s mother said. “But Anna, dear, I don’t think the cafeteria is a good environment to eat like that, either. Too many people, too many eyes.”

“That’s true,” Alex confirmed. “I don’t know why people stare at us when Anna and I sit together for lunch, but it happens all the time.”

Anna’s father shot a quick “are-you-really-that-clueless?” look at Alex. As a man, he knew how annoying Anna’s chatting could be. In fact, he was sure that several of his daughter’s relationships failed exactly for that reason: Her young men could not stand her talking all the time. He even told Anna several times that her chitchat was off-putting. But Anna was his daughter and he loved her no matter what. Besides, while observing Alex during the dinner, Anna’s father realized that her talking did not seem to bother Alex. For that, he liked Alex even more.

At dinner, Anna’s parents were extremely attentive and expressed great interest in Alex and his work. They both asked a lot of questions about what he was doing and what his next project was going to be. They also asked him about his parents and siblings. Alex was a middle child in a large family: he had an older sister and a brother and two younger brothers, so he could talk about them for hours. Especially his youngest brother, a 15-year-old prodigy who had won all possible high school Mathematics and Computer Science Olympiads, including the most recent all-Union one in Moscow.

Anna’s parents seemed to be interested in his family stories and his life, and dinner turned into a pleasant conversation. Alex answered all questions honestly and straightforwardly, especially those coming from Anna’s father. Because Alex thought the dinner was a semi-official interview about his advancement into the Party, a job interview of sorts. He could see that his answers produced the desired good impression on Anna’s father, who seemed to like Alex. And this is why Alex was taken aback at the end of the dinner, when already bidding good-bye at the door, Anna’s father suddenly asked, “So, what do you think of my daughter?” He hugged Anna’s shoulder and looked at Alex, as if saying, “Look, how fine she is! I’m such a proud dad!” In an instant, Anna’s face became beet-red with embarrassment.

“Anna?” Alex asked, a little confused about the question and Anna’s reaction.

“Yes, Anna, my daughter,” her father confirmed. “Do you like her?”

“Yes, I like her a lot,” Alex said after an awkward pause, thankful he could look down as he was putting his shoes on. Then he looked Anna’s father straight into the eye and said, “She is a good friend. In a way, she is bringing me back to life.”

“What do you mean, back to life?” Anna’s mother asked, not knowing what to think.

“Oh, it’s a long story,” Alex mumbled, “I wouldn’t want to burden you with it. And it’s late already, I don’t want to take advantage of your hospitality. I really should go home now. Thank you for the wonderful dinner.”

When the door behind Alex closed, both Anna’s parents said simultaneously, “A good friend!” and then Anna’s mother exclaimed, “That explains everything!”

“What explains what?” asked Anna, still embarrassed by her father’s stunt.

“He doesn’t think of you as a woman. You are a pal to him! No one ever marries a pal. Well, maybe some losers do,” Anna’s father explained.

“Ah, that makes sense now!” Anna seemed genuinely surprised, although not upset at all. “Well, I guess I will have to work on that and make him think of me as a woman, not just a friend,” Anna said and then added, looking at her father, “Dad, I can’t believe you asked him that! Such an embarrassment!”

“You should thank me, at least now you know where you stand,” Anna’s dad snapped back. “And I thought it was Alex who was clueless,” he added, clearly disappointed with his daughter’s cluelessness, and headed to the bedroom, leaving the mother and daughter to talk about what just happened.

To Part 5

Back to Part 3