Vadim’S Life
VADIM’S LIFE
Three months later
A video diary? What do you mean, a video diary?
Keith seriously seems to take me for one of those troubled teens who refuse to talk to their shrink, who hurt themselves by carving lines into their arms until they bleed, and who desperately need to pour their hearts out, to get it all off their chests.
Okay, that might have been me once.
I have nothing against them; I don’t judge them.
But now? Now, I’m fine.
I’ve got no problem talking about my life—I just don’t want to.
And anyway, I hate writing. The pen never moves fast enough, and all the words stumble into each other, while my ideas have already rushed ahead, a tangled mess, impossible to contain or put in order.
And besides, what for? To leave something behind?
To reread it all and find myself pathetic?
To publish my memoirs? I’d rather go to confession.
At least there, I could have a little fun shocking the priest, or the pastor, or whatever they call them.
I’d still be curious to know who actually makes the worst listener: the religious types, the social workers, or the therapists. All these “great men” who are supposed to guide you through life but who are simply convinced they can think for you.
Well, tough luck, because in this crazy world, I drew the “orphan” card.
And apparently, when your parents are gone, your caseworker decides everything.
Even when you’re twenty years old. Just because he’s been looking after you since you were little, just because he found you a place at college to get you out of the foster home, and just because he got you a scholarship by filling out the right paperwork. Suddenly, you owe him everything.
But I’m the one who worked to buy this camera.
It’s what I used to make the film I submitted with my application so I could get into this program.
It really was my own little brain that saved me.
Not him. So, he can shove his diary where the sun doesn’t shine.
I’m going to do the only thing I like to do.
Make films. Tell stories. And put a little part of mine in there.
Keith says it could help me “make peace with my past” and bring me some calm when I have the urge to throw it all away. It won’t do any of that—I already know it—but at least it will give him a clear conscience. And he’ll get off my back a little.
***
If I’m going to start at the very beginning, I need to film the only photos I have of my parents.
They’ll do. Camera in hand, I make a few adjustments before clearing my throat and starting the voice-over.
There’s no written script. I’ll improvise.
The photos are all worn out from being stuck on and pulled off of every wall of every place I’ve ever lived. But they’ll do.
“So, this is where I come from. The people I owe my life, my first name, my last name, my face, and part of my story too. My parents: Volodia Arcadi and Jane Howard King. Well, the people they were then. It’s been seventeen years since I saw them, so I have no idea what they’d look like today.
They both died at twenty-four; they would be…
forty-one now. That’s right between young and old.
I think my mother would still be just as beautiful, but maybe I’m idealizing her.
She and my father met on a film set by pure chance.
Him, the Russian who came to the United States searching for a better future and ended up becoming an actor.
Her, the American pin-up who also had a brain and was starting to break through. ”
“I have very few memories of them. Just my father’s deep voice and my mother’s gentle touch as she stroked my hair until I fell asleep.
But maybe someone actually just told me those things, and I’ve told them to myself so many times that I started believing I remembered them.
Memory is clever: it selects, it creates, and it nurtures, without you ever asking it to.
“In the few films I’ve managed to track down, my father has a heavy Slavic accent, and he always plays the bad guy. The token Russian. My mother’s roles were generally the na?ve, young girl batting her eyes. The complete opposite of what they were, I think.”
I press myself against the wall and turn the camera lens on myself, to film my face next to the three photos hanging on the wall.
The result will probably look terrible, but I’m not aiming for an Oscar.
I’m just making a navel-gazing documentary about my fascinating, little life to justify my social worker’s paycheck. What a plan.
“The other day, when Alma came here for the first time, she told me I looked a lot like my father. It’s probably a pretty ordinary thing to say, but no one ever says it about me.
I mean, naturally, since no one in the United States knows who Volodia Arcadi is, and you can count on one hand the people who have seen me next to him.
It’s strange, being the son of a man no one remembers.
But back then, the newspaper articles described him as a handsome man.
It’s true, he has a striking face. Slightly atypical features, a distant look, a somewhat cold presence, and eyes that looked like they’d seen a lot.
So, I don’t really know what Alma meant, but maybe coming from her it was a compliment. ”
But who cares whether I look like him or not? And since when does her opinion matter to me?
This video diary was the lamest idea.
Alright, I’ll talk about the other two photos, and then stop. Keith will have to be satisfied with that.
“Here, I’m two years old, and it’s the year before my parents died.
From what I’ve read, my mother got pregnant by accident, and my father married her because that’s what you did back then.
But I think he was already crazy about her.
In my case file, which I was able to access when I turned eighteen, there were some old love letters my father wrote to my mother, just a few sentences in broken English.
But he was a true poet. At least he dared to try.
“Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked…
“They had my brother soon after that; there are two years between us. I think he was planned. And a year later… Nothing. They were gone. Dead and buried. The film career, the passionate love story, the sweet, little family—all gone. Blown apart. Off to the orphanage for Roman and me. He was adopted almost immediately. I just remember being told he was going on vacation with this nice lady and gentleman, and I fell for it. He never came back.”
I don’t know why it still hurts this much.
I move the camera back up to the photo of my parents holding each other. Beauty can be tragic sometimes. Often. I guess the more love there is, the more pain there is. Two best friends, together until death.
“That’s when everything fell apart for me. Too much abandonment all at once, I think.”
I grit my teeth and swallow the lump in my throat that makes me want to bawl. “Abandon” is one of the words I hate most. It’s not usually part of my vocabulary. I take a breath before continuing.
“I went crazy. I refused to eat, which drove the ladies at the orphanage crazy. I would go for days without speaking, but I told myself all kinds of things in my head. I just didn’t need to say them to anyone.
When a couple came to meet me with a view to adopting me, I would rock back and forth, staring into space.
It always had the same effect. The fathers, generally, would start freaking out.
But it broke the mothers’ hearts; they wanted to whisk me away and save me.
So, suddenly, I’d start screaming like a wild animal and running around in every direction.
The women looking after me would try to catch me, and I’d fight them off and run away.
Quite the little performance… And always the same result in the end: my potential new parents would run away, too.
After a while, I got too old to appeal to adoptive parents.
That was when the foster families entered the scene.
People paid by the state to take care of you.
Some do the bare minimum; others start to love you a little along the way. ”
Sighing, I rummage through my memories. I didn’t keep photos of any of the foster families.
I don’t even know if there were any photos—I never stayed anywhere long enough.
I walk over to my apartment window, throw it wide open, and point the camera at the street to film the passersby.
Empty, soulless filler footage, with no faces and no feelings, just like the people I’m about to talk about.
Keith is probably going to love this highly emotional moment.
“I’m sure there are foster parents who do it for the right reasons—good people, loving people, ordinary people— but I wasn’t lucky enough to get placed with them.
In my foster homes, I came across two kinds of temporary parents.
First, the older couples whose children had left home and who wanted to stave off boredom while doing a good deed, convinced they were the best parents in the world.
They went everywhere with you, watched you constantly, kept such a close eye on you that you hardly dared breathe without their permission.
You became their little plaything, the doll they dressed up and paraded around to show their neighbors they had saved an orphan.
I’m sure they meant well, but for me, it was too much.
I suffocated. It was impossible to exist with these self-proclaimed saviors. ”
I let out a little laugh and film the sky before returning to the strangers on the street.