Red Flags by Jens Lyon

Author:Jens Lyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: figure skating, ice skating, Soviet Union, Cold War, Olympics
Publisher: Jens Lyon
Published: 2016-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The first time Vladi saw Larissa on TV, it felt like a dream, or like he had somehow jumped into Milla's head. It couldn't have been his thirteen-year-old daughter jumping and spinning and gliding across the screen at the World Figure Skating Championships; it was some other girl who looked like her.

Yes, Vladi had known in advance that Larissa was going to be on television. Still, it didn't seem real until he went to work the following Monday and his mistress, Alyona, congratulated him. She had seen Larissa on TV, too. So had her friends, and the ladies who worked with Milla.

Vladi was used to watching Larissa on TV now. Nationals, Europeans, Worlds... Every year, she skated in these events. Every year, she moved up in the standings. At her first World Championships, she came in fifteenth— not bad for a junior skater who had been sent as a last-minute replacement. The next year, Larissa became the Soviet National champion and jumped up to tenth in the world. Last year, she came in first at Nationals, third at Europeans, and eighth at Worlds. During her most recent visit home, Larissa said she was hoping for a sixth place finish this season and a top five placement at the Olympics the following year. Then, after the older skaters retired from competition, she would be in a position to win.

Vladi didn't understand why she wasn't winning now. Who cared about those loopy-shaped tracings called compulsory figures? Who cared if the older skaters had more mature "artistic impression"? This was a sport, and Larissa was faster and stronger than everybody else. And of all the skaters, she was by far the prettiest. That blond girl, Cassandra from the United States, was supposed to be so beautiful, yet her sour expression couldn't match Larissa's impish grin.

It was a smile Vladi seldom saw away from the TV screen. Over the years, Larissa's three week summer vacations had been shortened to two weeks, then to ten days. During that time, she sat sullenly at the kitchen table or on the couch with Milla, looking nothing like the skater on TV, let alone the toddler who used to turn cartwheels in the hallway.

Why couldn't she enjoy her success? Didn't she realize how much better off she was compared to her childhood friends? Petya's oldest son was in Afghanistan and the younger one was running with a bad crowd. The kid downstairs called Big Bear had tried out for several elite hockey teams, didn't make any of them, and was now in the Army, stationed somewhere in Siberia. Across the hall, poor Evgenia was in a state of despair over Dasha and Nadia's rotten taste in men. "You are so lucky," she had told Vladi. "You will never have to deal with any of this. At the rate my girls are going, I will be taking care of my mother and raising a passel of grandchildren!"

It had been five years since Zoya Alexandrovna's stroke. Since then, she had been hospitalized twice for influenza and three times for pneumonia.

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