Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(22)

“What do you want?” she asked him.

“I came to offer apology.”

“Oh.”

“I fear Dr. Battista and I have offended you.”

She felt both gratified and humiliated to know that he comprehended this.

“Was inconsiderate of us to ask you to deceive your government,” he said. “I think Americans feel guilt about such things.”

“It wasn’t just inconsiderate,” she said. “It was piggish and self-centered and insulting and…despicable.”

“Aha! A shrew.”

“Where?” she asked, and she spun around to look toward the shrubbery behind her.

He laughed. “Very comical,” he told her.

“What?”

She turned back to find him smiling down at her, rocking from heel to toe with his hands in his pockets. Apparently he imagined that they were on good terms now. She picked up her sandwich and took a large, defiant bite and started chewing. He just went on smiling at her. He seemed to have all the time in the world.

“You realize you could be arrested,” she told him once she’d swallowed. “It’s a criminal offense to marry somebody for a green card.”

He didn’t look very concerned.

“But I accept your apology,” she said. “So. See you around.”

Not that she had any intention of seeing him ever again.

He let out a long breath and took his hands from his pockets and stepped over to sit beside her on the bench. This was unexpected. Her plate sat between them and she feared for its safety, but if she picked it up he might feel encouraged to move closer. She let it be.

“Was a foolish notion anyhow,” he said, speaking to the lawn in general. “It is evident you could choose any husband you want. You are very independent girl.”

“Woman.”

“You are very independent woman and you have the hair that avoids beauty parlors and you resemble dancer.”

“Let’s not go overboard,” Kate said.

“Resemble flamingo dancer,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Flamenco.”

Stomping the floorboards. Made sense.

“Okay, Pyotr,” she said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“You are only person I know who pronounces my name right,” he said sadly.

She took another bite from her sandwich and chewed it, staring straight out across the lawn now the same way he was doing. But she couldn’t help feeling a little stab of sympathy.

“And Dr. Battista!” he said, turning to her suddenly. “Why your name for Dr. Battista is ‘Father’ but your sister calls him ‘Papa’?”

“?‘Father’ is what he told us to call him,” she said. “But you know our Bunnikins.”

“Ah,” he said.

“While we’re on the subject,” she said, “why do you call him ‘Dr. Battista’ when he calls you ‘Pyotr’?”

“I could never call him ‘Louis,’?” Pyotr said in a shocked tone. (“Loov-wiss,” he made it sound like.) “He is too illustrious.”

“He is?”

“In my country he is. I had for many years been hearing about him. When I announced that I am leaving to assist him, there became a great outcry in my institute.”

“Is that a fact,” Kate said.

“You did not know his reputation? Ha! Is like a proverb we have: ‘Man who is respected in rest of the world is not—’?”

“Right; I get your gist,” Kate said hastily.

“Is true he is sometimes oligarch, but I have observed other men so important act much worse. He does not ever shout! And see how he tolerates your sister.”

“My sister?”

“She is empty-head, yes? You know this.”

“Airhead,” Kate said. “No kidding.”

She felt filled with a certain airiness herself, all at once. She started smiling.

“She is puffing her hair and blinking her eyes and abandoning animal proteins. And he does not point it out to her. This is very nice of him.”

“I don’t think he’s being nice,” Kate said. “I think he’s being predictable. You see it all the time: those mad-genius scientists who go gaga over dumb blondes, the ditzier the better. It’s practically a cliché. And naturally the blondes are crazy about them; a lot of women are. You should get a load of my father at my aunt Thelma’s Christmas parties! All these women flocking around him because they think he’s so unreadable and unreachable and mysterious. They think that they’re the ones who might finally crack his code.”

There was a certain liberation in talking to a man who didn’t have a full grasp of English. She could tell him anything and half of it would fly right past him, especially if the words came tumbling out fast enough. “I don’t know how Bunny got this way,” she told him. “When she was born I more or less thought she was my own; I was at that age when kids like tending babies. And she looked up to me so when she was a little girl; she tried to act like me and talk like me, and I was the only one who could comfort her when she was crying. But after she reached her teens she kind of, I don’t know, left me behind. She changed into this whole other person, this social person, I don’t know; this social, outgoing person. And somehow she turned me into this viperish, disapproving old maid when I’m barely twenty-nine. I don’t know how that happened!”