A rest was once the distance after which a traveler must pause, which must be what I’m doing now, writing you this letter on the backs of all these pictures (by the way, this is a word I captured some time ago at the cemetery just across the street)—although, if I stop and think of sending them, it makes me sick

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Of the apparently infinite quantity of delights offered to Amy by her recent forays into the garden of Russian grammar, the single most fascinating fact is that in the present tense, the verb to be literally goes without saying, so that in order to express, for instance, Amy is in love, you would only need Amy in love, or at most a dash: Amy—in love. Sasha is my teacher would just be Sasha—my teacher

Of the apparently infinite quantity of delights offered to Amy by her recent forays into the garden of Russian grammar, the single most fascinating fact is that in the present tense, the verb to be literally goes without saying, so that in order to express, for instance, Amy is in love, you would only need Amy in love, or at most a dash: Amy—in love. Sasha is my teacher would just be Sasha—my teacher. Sasha is my friend would just be Sasha—my friend. Sasha is my boyfriend would just be Sasha—my boyfriend. I am Mrs. Sasha Doronyuk would just be I—Mrs. Sasha Doronyuk. And so on. In the past tense, on the other hand, and for the future, Russian offers no shortcuts.

The second most fascinating fact is that nouns in Russian get declined in the same way that verbs get conjugated—in the same way that I say but he says. These declensions are called cases. A noun’s case depends on what its role is in any given sentence. This makes every sentence like a play. Sometimes the actor dog plays one character; sometimes it plays another. If I see the dog (собаку), it is declined in a different way than if I do something with the dog (собакою), talk about the dog (собаке), or if the dog does something on its own, like bark (собака). The result of this is that everyone’s performance belongs so definitively to them and them alone that you no longer have to rely on any order in space or time to make a statement clear.

Amy memorizes the declensions with the same zeal she once applied and still occasionally applies to her Kumon. Amy loves clarity; Amy loves rules; Amy loves when things are perfect. Amy loves that in Russian there is a formal and informal way to address another person; Amy loves that she and Sasha use the informal way, even though technically he is still her teacher, and technically they do not know one another that well. Amy never realized how far removed she could feel from someone until she contemplated that formal form of address; now being close feels even closer. Amy loves that gender is always indicated; she gets excited when Sasha says an adjective that applies to her, in the feminine, as when he says an adjective that applies to him, in the masculine.

During the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer the girls do nothing else

During the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer the girls do nothing else. Riveted, they even manage to forget about Sasha for up to ten minutes at a time. Astonishingly, both girls win: Zoe, backing the Ukrainian Oksana Baiul, wins the gold in ladies’ singles, while Amy, backing the Russians Yekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, wins the gold in pairs.

Uncharacteristically, Amy admits that her sister’s skater did a pretty good job. She approves in particular of Baiul’s performance to the Camille Saint-Saëns cello solo about the dying swan. Both girls find it so mesmerizing that they rewind the tape over and over and practice flapping slowly like Oksana trying to see if they can get as graceful as her. They try and hold their legs up without using their arms. They try to do the splits.

Zoe’s favorite part of skating is the jumping, and accordingly, she leaps around the house a lot. Amy’s favorite part is spinning. In the swan performance Oksana Baiul starts spinning on one leg, bringing the other up from behind to meet her hands. Clasping her skate she forms a perfect backwards circle with her body and then leans in until the circle becomes parallel to the ice. She spins and spins. Amy closes her eyes and pretends that she is spinning, but you can’t really spin on the carpet. Mostly she just stands like a flamingo, like she used to when she was a little kid.

Zoe still has seizures, but not as often as before, and when she does they aren’t as bad

Zoe still has seizures, but not as often as before, and when she does they aren’t as bad. They’re more like little twitches. Her eyes twitch to the right and her right thumb moves back and forth, and she moves her lips but can’t talk. But then they’re over, and she’s okay, and they don’t have to go to the hospital.

She still has to have her blood taken and has to get CAT Scans, which now they call CT Scans. The Scans show the hole in Zoe’s brain, which looks like a moonscape after an asteroid strike, as though the doctors used an ice cream scoop to remove the tumor. Like when the Waluhili counselor got bitten by a black widow and kept space in her leg for secret messages. 

Amy writes letters to all of Zoe’s favorite celebrities and saves their responses for these moments, thinking if she can surprise her at exactly the right time, she won’t notice the needles or the noises or anything else that scares her. She gets an autographed picture of Oksana Baiul. She makes their dad take her to the drugstore and buy a clear plastic frame for a dollar fifty so it doesn’t get messed up. She thinks that this time it will work. But Zoe still gets scared and cries. Although then she spends a long time looking in silence at the picture.

Amy gets a type-written letter from Viktor Petrenko and a handwritten note from Paul Simon. She tries writing to Dr. Seuss, but it turns out he has died already, the girls just didn’t know about it yet.

The better Zoe does the more their parents leave them at home alone and for longer and longer periods of time. The girls tape songs off the radio and choreograph dances. For a long time their favorite one is Salt-n-Pepa’s Shoop. They puzzle over the words, trying to get to where they can lip-sync. Even when they can parse them out they don’t always know what they mean. Zoe likes to say the line that goes, Lick him like a lollipop should be licked, but nearly four years before Monica Lewinsky, neither Amy nor Zoe could possibly fathom the actual thing that is being suggested. They just know it has something to do with sex, and this is enough to obsess them.

Zoe develops other problems, though, like allergies to all different things. One evening she becomes allergic to grape juice, and her mouth swells up. Their parents accuse Amy of hitting Zoe when they first come home. For a little while their mother stands up very straight and says that they can’t leave Zoe alone with Amy anymore. Amy pictures stabbing their mother with the kitchen scissors, imagines the blood. She turns and goes to their bedroom and lies down. The dog goes with her and prowls around, sniffing at the squirrel cage.

Nonetheless there is no one better than Yekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, who are perfect at skating and also in love and also the most beautiful people in the world besides Sasha

Amy wishes she could be just like Katya and that Sasha could be just like Sergei even though Sasha is also already perfect. Yekaterina Gordeeva is the most beautiful woman in the world. She has a pure, simple face, with pretty blue eyes and smooth brown hair that is always pulled back. She is very petite. Amy would love to be that small. You could hide wherever you wanted and curl up much better.

The way they look at each other and how they manage to do everything at exactly the same time, even triples, and the way he raises her over his head, slowly, like he is relishing how much he loves her and like she weighs nothing, and the way she leans back like it has never occurred to her he could kill her if he dropped her on the ice on her head—everything about Yekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov Amy loves.

Amy would like to become Russian. Russia is very far from Oklahoma, though, and Amy does not know how she would get there. She receives an allowance from their parents of thirteen dollars per month. She knows her grandparents have a little bit more money, but she can’t ask her grandparents, who don’t approve of Russians.

Amy thinks and thinks without coming to any solution.