All the Lies We Tell (Quarry Road #1)(42)

To Niko’s surprise, Ilya didn’t argue. Maybe he also didn’t want to deal with Galina’s temper. Niko waited a beat or two longer before he went into the dining room to clear the table from the remnants of last week’s shiva. From the kitchen he heard the rattle of pots and pans. He smelled the tinge of smoke different from Galina’s cigarettes, and the underlying aroma of garlic and wine.

He looked up when she followed him into the dining room. She went to the antique china cabinet in the corner and opened the door. She ran a hand along the interior, leaning forward to look deep.

“Use these dishes, the good ones.” She glanced over her shoulder with a smile. “There’s no point in saving them for something special if we never make anything special, yes?”

“Sure. Okay.” He went to the cabinet while Galina bent to pull out a tablecloth from the lower drawer. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s good to have nice things, don’t you think?” She spread the cloth on the table, smoothing it.

Niko pulled out a couple of plates, gold rimmed and edged with flowers. He could not recall ever once using them. “Yeah, I guess so. Or it’s good not to have things you’re tied down to.”

“Hmm, is that how you feel? Is that because you don’t have anything of your own?”

He looked up to see her staring at him with a slightly twisted smile. “I have things of my own. Just not the same way you do. I don’t need fancy china I never use, because I eat in a cafeteria. I don’t spend my time or money accumulating stuff for the sake of it.”

“You know, I always liked the letters you sent from the kibbutz. I envied you that experience. I thought about going over there myself. I could be a socialist, sure, why not?” Galina gestured for him to put the plates on the table.

Niko settled two of them, then pulled out a few more, handing them over for her to place at each chair. “Oh, you think so?”

“Oh, yes. It seems like it would be good, you know? You work hard, you contribute, you don’t have to worry about where you’re going to live or how you’ll eat. That sounds very nice, to me. Very comfortable.” Galina shrugged and stepped back to look at the table, then gestured for more plates.

“It was all right for a time, but you wouldn’t like it long term,” he told her. “Not when you have to take what someone else determines you deserve to have.”

She looked at him thoughtfully as she finished setting all the places with dinner plates. “That’s what you think of your mother?”

“I don’t always like it, how about that.” Niko shrugged and looked in the cabinet for glasses or bread plates or whatever other fancy things might be in there that she wanted to use.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to visit Israel. Do you know that when Babulya came here to America from Russia, she almost went there, instead? But they weren’t letting anyone in. They’d get on the ships and be turned away—or worse, they put them in camps. It was near the end of the war, and, still, they wouldn’t let them in,” she said lightly. “She always told me she’d barely escaped the Germans putting her in a camp. She wasn’t going to let the British put her in one just so she could find a place in the homeland. You have to remember she wasn’t even allowed to be Jewish growing up in Russia.”

Niko pulled out a stack of smaller dishes and handed them over. “I never heard that story.”

“She didn’t talk about it much, not to you boys, anyway. She didn’t like to think about it. She came here instead, to America. And she met my father, and she had me. And I had Ilya,” Galina said. “And then you. And here we are now. But I always did envy you spending time there. I think how different my life would’ve been if my mother had made a different choice.”

“If she’d made a different choice, you probably wouldn’t have been born.” Niko waved toward the kitchen. “What are you making?”

“Smart-ass stew,” his mother quipped, and fixed him with a look he remembered well from his childhood. “An old family recipe.”

They finished setting the table together without a lot of small talk after that. It seemed she’d learned how to prepare more than breakfast at her diner job. It was a simple meal—roast chicken, salad, couscous with onions and garlic, and wine. Yet Galina plated it expertly and had it on the table with Niko’s help by the time Ilya finished with the shower.

“Just about blasted my balls off,” Ilya grumbled as he took his place at the head of the table, where Galina had told him to sit. “I thought you were fixing it. Hey. Fancy dishes?”

“It’s time we used them,” Galina put in.

“The shower’s on the list,” Niko said. “Sorry I’m not working around the clock to fix everything that’s been broken around here. Maybe instead of sleeping on the couch all day long you could pitch in, since you’ve apparently decided that you’re not going back to work.”

“I didn’t say I was never going back,” Ilya replied. “I just needed some downtime.”

“Downtime doesn’t pay the bills,” their mother said.

Ilya shrugged. “What’s the point of being your own boss if you can’t make your own hours?”

“It just seems like a shitty thing to do to Alicia, that’s all.” Niko took the bottle of wine his mother was handing him, along with the corkscrew.