Chapter Fifteen Max

Back on the train, I pass the lounge car that’s swarmed for afternoon tea, the atmosphere like New Year’s, with patrons already turned out in satins and silks, certainly not in their finest REI like me. I mosey down the hall, doling out smiles to passing guests and waitstaff—must be the Midwesterner in me, but I love a wholesome stranger smile exchange. At my suite, I greet my steward, who is standing outside the ornate door, lifting his blue cap to scratch an itch on his scalp.

“Francesco!” I clap his shoulder, and he swiftly returns his cap to his head. Then he launches his shoulders back and beams, as I’ve learned that a person does when you speak his name aloud, showing you’ve remembered it, showing him you value his individuality, that his name is worth paying attention to, even if—especially if—he is working for you.

It was once difficult for me to remember faces, names. Perhaps because there is often a lot going on in my head that diverts me from the things right in front of me. Papa was always pushing me to get out of my comfort zone—he convinced me to enroll in a Dale Carnegie class after graduating college. In one memorable class, we each had to pretend to be a wild animal in front of our silent, seated, watching cohort. I drew a tiger and had to roar, roar, roar around the room.

It was awkward as fuck. I felt all eyes deboning me, judging me. I decided right then and there that one day I would be the boss, so no one would ever be able to tell me I needed to fake being a tiger again to prove I had what it takes.

It’s more than that, probably. I was fated to be the boss from the start. From when Papa started calling me Maximillions long before a magazine splashed it across its cover.

“You have cornetti inside.” Francesco holds the door open for me. “With local citrus jam.”

“Amazing! Thanks! I really appreciate it.”

“Anything else I can do for you? You have dinner later in Palmaria, I understand.”

“Yes, thank you, Francesco. I’ll freshen up a bit now. Check in with the office. Ciao.”

The door clicks behind me. I cross the room and flake off a cornetto. Yum. It’s almost a cross between a croissant and a brioche, with flecks of vanilla bean that dance on my tongue. Amazing to have your smallest satisfactions anticipated, pursued.

Yes, I have millions to my name now, on paper at least, so one might think I was practiced at luxuries in the vein of the nouveau riche. I can’t say I dislike the money that comes along with my company. I’ve worked for years, hundred-hour workweeks, high stress. I deserve it. But money does not drive me. I am happy wearing the same shirt over and over. I don’t need five houses or yachts.

What drives me is expunging a horrific disease from the face of the earth. It is being the person who did it. Who saved Papa. Like Jonas Salk before me. Louis Pasteur.

Maximillian Aronov.

I quickly text Katerina in the office, then unload my backpack and continue to munch on the cornetto. Then I shed all my clothes, deposit them in the laundry bag Francesco pointed out yesterday, and change into the luxe white robe hanging in my bathroom.

It’s even softer than the one on Jay-Z’s yacht.

I head to the bathroom, swish mouthwash for my usual ten count, and then sprawl out on my bed and think about the day. It’s wild that Rory knows she is adopted—a fact I’d pushed to the recesses of my mind so that mostly I’d forgotten it’s even true. Uncanny how brains can do that, compartmentalize things, ingenious storage facilities of pretty crazy shit.

I feel guilty that I kept it from her. Even though she’s forgiven me, I’m not sure I’ve forgiven myself. It never sat right with me that Papa asked me to keep it from her. I figured he had good reasons, though, so I let his own judgment substitute for mine.

Maybe it’s better it’s in the open. I am curious, like Rory, who her birth mother is. I wonder if it’s in that book—The Cabin on the Lake. It wasn’t in the part I read, but I didn’t get through the whole thing. I still don’t get how Ginevra even knows. And if it is indeed in the book, it’s going to be painful for Rory. I didn’t tell Rory—didn’t want to make the whole thing more painful—but I’m furious at the author for opening this can of worms. She’s dangerous. She’s playing Rory, and Rory doesn’t even see it. And we don’t know what’s coming next.

Still, despite my misgivings about Rory’s being clued in as to her adoption, for a moment I experience a twinge of jealousy that Rory’s birth mother might be out there now for her to find. I know my mother—have one picture at least, gorgeous, her smile unassuming but warm, like she would have held me and kissed me and loved me, her hair dark like mine, her brown eyes big and curious. And I know her name. Sandra Lowenstein. But I never got to have her. Somehow it feels like Rory gets yet another leg up—a mysterious birth mother who might be alive to boot.

It’s the worst shame to feel jealous of someone you love. But I’d love to have a mother alive right now, to help me, to hug me. To tell me she was proud of me. That she was certain things were going to work out.

When we were kids, Papa would always imagine our futures, like he had a great, infallible crystal ball. Really, he had a conch shell, found on the one international vacation he took us on, when I was twelve and Rory eight, and he scrounged up some money—I have no clue how—for tickets to Jamaica.

Papa would pretend to listen to the conch.

“Max will be a scientist—one of the names that go down in history. Curing an important disease, like Jonas Salk.”

Jonas Salk featured prominently in the lore of our household because Papa’s father died of polio when Papa was seven. He’d been sick, but still, in the cruel laws of the Soviet Union, workers had to report to their employment in any condition, unless endowed with a doctor’s note, otherwise risk being sent to jail or Siberia. My grandfather’s doctor misdiagnosed him and refused to excuse him from work, so my grandfather reported to his blacksmith shop and collapsed under his horse at the collective farm at which he was employed. My father’s family—really just consisting of him and his mother now—already very poor, was made destitute.

So Jonas Salk acquired a reputation of legend in our home. Did I desire to follow in his footsteps because Papa planted the seeds? Or by my own natural volition—because I gravitated toward the sciences? Or was it later, when I began to associate the first of Papa’s symptoms with dementia?

As with anything in life, it is difficult to parse the root.

For Rory, Papa’s conch shell had markedly different predictions. “You will be an actress, like Elizabeth Taylor.”

For Papa, Elizabeth Taylor personified the pinnacle of success and stardom, first glimpsed in illegal movies he managed to watch in the Soviet Union. He had many American idols, mythical as they were in the Soviet Union, where anything Western was verboten. You could be shuttled to Siberia if found with a copy of the American Constitution in your possession. Papa was always good, though, at working under and around the system. He wanted to be a cowboy like John Wayne, a photographer like Ansel Adams—the latter of whom became Papa’s chosen namesake.

“I want to be something more important than an actress,” Rory said. “Something that helps people.”

I remember being surprised at Rory’s conviction at age eight, to know she aspired to more. Even to contradict Papa, whose word was gospel in my head. And maybe I burned a bit inside that Papa found Rory so magnetic and beautiful as to be able to be a famous actress if she wanted.

Then Papa groaned, shook his head. “Yes! Of course. You’re right! I was wrong. Rory, you are destined for something much greater than Elizabeth Taylor. You’ll achieve far more than fame alone—acting is too small for you. You could be an actress, though, because you are a natural star.”

At this I bristled further. Does any child ever hear a compliment to his sibling without internalizing the negative—that the compliment was not bestowed upon him?

“You’ll be a news anchor,” Papa said decisively. “You love the limelight, you shine in it. But your most beautiful quality is that you have such a tender heart. You want to help people. In the Soviet Union, the press wasn’t free. You will bring truth to the people. You will tell the stories that sit in your heart, that will inspire others and get them through dark times.”

Rory beamed as Papa filled her up with all his fluff, making her sound like Mother Teresa. But that’s how Papa always saw Rory, I guess.

“And, Max… I named you Maximillian for a reason. Maximillions, that’s what you’ll be, my son. One day you’ll be supremely wealthy.”

I sank into the prediction, felt how much I wanted it to come true, not for the money in itself, not for the stuff—but for the power money provided, which at age twelve I already understood. “The block party, that’s what I’ll do.”

“The block party?” Rory asked.

“Yeah! I read about it. There’s this hockey player or—”

“Basketball,” Papa said. “I read about it, too.”

“Oh.” I blushed. I didn’t really follow or get the appeal of sports, but still I was embarrassed I’d mixed it up. “But anyway, when this guy became rich, he bought houses on the same block for all of his family and friends. That’s what I’ll do one day.”

“Cool!” Rory said. “I’ll take a free house.”

Papa looked bursting with pride, as if his imaginings had already contracted with the future, locked it in place. He surveyed us both tenderly. I remember exactly where we were—in the bare-bones hotel room that felt like a palace because we were on vacation. A concept that rolled off the tongue of the rich kids at school but was impossibly foreign to me. We were all sitting eating beef patties that Papa had picked up from one of the street stands, as always, declaring it the best meal he’d ever eaten. Even when we all got food poisoning the next day from said patties, Papa still declared them worth the consequence!

Perhaps it was blind optimism. When overdue bills filled our mailbox, and Papa would sing that the little money fairies would take care of things, don’t you worry, kids, Rory would bite her nails down to nubbins. No matter what, though, I trusted in Papa. Trusted in good people getting taken care of. Things working out. That if you were essentially kindhearted, if you tried your relative best, little troubles would fritter away, be subsumed by good intentions.

My mind tugs Jamaica back to the forefront, pans in on the two double beds with eighties-floral coverlets, the three of us eating our empanadas, moaning with pleasure. Papa then continued orating his lecture on our futures, mine and Rory’s. “Whatever you both do, you will be successful. But remember, sometimes you have to take risks. Get out of your circle of comfort. So if I’m not around to remind you—”

“You’ll always be around,” Rory said, licking her fingers of grease.

Papa smiled sadly, like he knew something we didn’t. “I won’t always be around, Rory. And I can’t sugarcoat that for you. That’s why you have to try the thing you’re scared to do. Dare to love. Take risks. Take the risks that feel right in your soul. And whatever happens, you will always have each other. I never had a sibling, you know? You both are so lucky to have each other. Always be honest with each other.” His eyes got faraway, sad. “As long as you don’t lie or mislead, you will always be a safe harbor for each other, even after I am gone. Promise me,” he said, transfixing my eyes with his. “Promise me you will always tell each other the truth.”

“Promise!” I remember how Rory said it cheerily, tossing her plate in the trash can like a Frisbee, raising her arms in a V when it swooshed in.

“Promise,” I said, too.

Suddenly my phone buzzes with a call, blinking me back from the memory. I don’t answer, just stare at the screen with mounting dread. Then I quickly text, Call you back in a few.

I roll my eyes toward the ceiling, hoping a piece of wisdom will drop into my head. Tell me what to do.

What do I do, Papa?

My whole life I relied on him to give me sage advice that I would inevitably follow. I trusted him, but maybe even more—I found it easier to listen to his yes or no than mine.

And now he can’t tell me.

I need to help people, too.

Maybe Papa knew always, though, that my greatest motivation would not be the limelight or conventional success, things I have inadvertently now conjured. I’m grateful for them—enjoying them, too—but still my motivation remains quite simply, him.

Making Papa proud. Saving him and protecting him, like always he did me.

But guilt and shame and love all flow together in the same stream. They can’t be separated, no matter how Hallmark movies try to convince us they are separate beasts.

Then there’s a knock—three terse raps—that I’ve been expecting.

I open the door. Sure enough, it’s Caro, hair damp and rumpled, no makeup, her blue eyes like arctic lakes I have always wanted to sink inside.

I smile, feeling my anxieties settle. “What brings you to these parts—me or this insane suite?” I ease the door open farther, and I notice her eyes flit behind me, taking in all the hand-carved timber, embossed leather, and sumptuous rugs.

Caro doesn’t answer, and I try to remain calm. I know she wants to tell me a lot of things, and I’m readying myself to listen, but I already quite know the entirety of what she’ll say. We’ve been playing tug-of-war, and it’s inevitable. She knows it, and I know it: I’m going to win.

I open the door wider and her bare arm brushes against mine as she slips inside.