Rescuing Julia Twice Read Online Free PDF Page A

concierges who are only too happy to arrange tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet or make a dinner reservation. After arriving at our room, I stand in the shower for twenty minutes, washing away days of discomfort and compromised bathing. I rotate my neck and let hot water penetrate into my shoulders. I stay in the shower until I’m light-headed from the heat and steam. Everything about the heat and the lovely little complimentary shampoos and the marble tiles distances me from where we’ve been. Because I like to think in metaphors, I picture Novosibirsk as a labor pain. Birth mothers, of course, must go through excruciating pain to have a child. Is this process my equivalent? The pain I must experience to know joy?
    Right now, though, I don’t want to think about Novosibirsk or Olga or ammonia-scented orphanages or the fact that we’re going to have to come back and do this all over before we can bring Julia home. Right now I want to be a tourist. I want to read about Russia in the travel books I’ve brought on the trip and plan our days ahead.

    Ricky and I dress for dinner. It’s still necessary to wear layers because Moscow is cold, too. It’s about zero degrees, maybe ten degrees warmer than Siberia. Ricky is wearing lined cargo pants, a turtleneck, and a black sweater. He looks handsome tonight. I have put on a dab of makeup for the first time in forever, though I still feel laden because I’m wearing long underwear under my pants and three layers of wool on top. We put on our coats, hats, and gloves, and the concierge hails us a cab to take us just a few blocks to the restaurant. It is snowing.
    It is a trendy place, large and angular with abstract art on the walls and candlelit tables.
    â€œThis is a step up from New York Pizza,” Ricky quips, referring to the pizza restaurant in Novosibirsk where we went every night seeking familiarity.
    I doubt there are places like this in Siberia. In fact, Ricky and I haven’t been to a hip restaurant anywhere recently because we’ve been living on an austere budget. This meal—in fact, this entire diversion to Moscow—is a treat that makes me feel uneasy, but Ricky has helped persuade me that the expense will not break us.
    One year ago, Ricky lost his job. He had been working for his brother Jeffrey at a Brooklyn company his father started in the 1960s that sells nuts and bolts. Ricky took the job, one he viewed as beneath him, because he desperately needed to escape financial ruin and an ex-wife in Florida. When he arrived in 1998, he probably thought working for his brother would be a temporary respite from practicing law or at least a reprieve until he figured out what to do next. But when we got together in 2000, he was still there, bored, underutilized, and restless. He made decent money, and although he dreamed of one thing or another, he took no concrete steps to extricate himself. Jeffrey helped him along when he fired him in January 2002. We were shocked—but not really. Jeffrey offered to give him back his job at half the salary. Ricky and I agreed he’d refuse that offer and face the unknown. I knew I could continue to cover our meager expenses with my freelance writing work, and his unemployment checks would help. But we were still undergoing fertility treatments, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was unable to conceive because in my heart I didn’t feel like we could support a child. We were thirty-nine years old: ticktock, ticktock.
    Since August, Ricky has been building a tea business. He sells loose-leaf teas and herbals and tea-related accessories such as clay and iron pots on the Internet, and he goes to flea markets and corporate venues, too. He’s been working hard and the business shows promise, but it doesn’tfeed us. I’ve been toiling harder than ever, though writing assignments have dried up since 9/11. It is not a time in our life or in the world at large that feels bountiful