My Sergei (19 page)

At our wedding banquet.

Sergei and I were the last to leave. I drove us back to our apartment. I remember thinking, Look at me, chauffering my husband
home from
my
wedding. But it was fun, actually, because I was so used to Sergei driving me. It was one more step of married life.

I also remember thinking how much fun it was to be coming home, just the two of us, to our own apartment. How lucky I was
to have someone to come home with, someone who would take care of me. That night, for the first time, I really felt married.

We didn’t go on a honeymoon. I don’t know why. I don’t remember sitting down and discussing it, but I probably thought it
was more important to get back onto the ice as soon as possible. That would be typical of the way my mind worked. The way
it still works, if I am honest with myself.

The day after the wedding, something sad happened. My mother and I were cleaning the apartment after the party, and a white
pigeon flew in through the open window. My father managed to get it out again, but it is a very bad omen in Russia to have
a bird fly in your house. It means someone will die. The whole day, my mother was somber and pensive. And that August my dear
Babushka died of cancer. She was sixty-two.

We didn’t have luck that week. Not a bit of it. Three days after the wedding, I managed to wreck the beautiful Toyota I had
bought in Japan, a car that had the steering wheel on the wrong side. Wrong for Russia, anyway, where cars drive on the right
side of the road, as they do in America. I am not the world’s best driver, I admit. It took me five tries to pass my driving
test. But this was an extraordinarily inept performance, even for me. The accident occurred on May 1, which is a big holiday
in Russia. Many of the roads are closed, and there are almost no cars on the streets. In fact there was, I believe, only one
other driver on the street that morning, and I found him. He was moving too slowly for me. Actually, he was stopped at a red
light, but I didn’t see it. Maybe I was blinded by the sun. Or the wedding bliss. I don’t know, but I crashed right into this
car.

The man in the car came to see who was this crazy person who had hit him, and I burst into tears.

“Why are you crying?” he asked. “Did you hurt yourself?”

I told him I hadn’t.

“You’re okay? Good.” Then he said something odd. “Let’s go to my car. I have a little TV inside, and we can watch cartoons.”

He didn’t seem very upset that I had wrecked his car. I said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s all right. It’s my friend’s car. You know, I looked up and saw you coming, and I tried to move forward, but you got
me anyway.”

He was right about that. My car was no longer drivable, so I found a phone and called Sergei. “Serioque? I hit a car.”

He was silent a moment. “Where did you find this car? The parade is now. No one is on the street.”

“Yes, I found the only car. Can you come get me?”

When Sergei arrived I was sitting in the other man’s car, watching cartoons on his TV. The man was very apologetic, but since
it was his friend’s car, he thought he should probably get it fixed before the man returned next month. None of us had insurance.
I don’t think there was such a thing as insurance in Russia. So Sergei and I paid to have the car fixed, and my father, who
had retired from dancing, repaired my Toyota. Fortunately he sold it before I could drive it again.

T
wo weeks after the wedding, Sergei’s shoulder felt good
enough for him to get back on the ice, and by mid-May we had joined Tom Collins’s 1991 tour. The fifteen shows we did with
Tommy, whom we had come to regard as a friend, were lovely, almost like the honeymoon we never had time for. Life began to
move at a faster, more hectic pace. Immediately after the completion of the Collins tour, we went with Tatiana’s Russian All-Stars
to South Africa, doing twenty shows in Cape Town and Johannesburg. That’s where I did the shopping for a lot of furnishings
for our new apartment—plates, chandeliers, lamps, sheets, comforters. We also visited a shantytown—very depressing—and
went on a safari, where we played with some baby lions. Sergei loved this. He loved all animals. Holding one of the cubs,
his face would light up like a child’s.

We earned thirty thousand dollars on this South African tour, and I remember Paul Theofanous told us to give the money to
two ladies who worked for IMG, and they would transfer the money back to the United States. That way we wouldn’t have to pay
duty on it back in Russia. We had never met these ladies before. They came to our hotel in Johannesburg, we gave them the
money, and they left without even giving us a receipt. Sergei and I just looked at each other in disbelief. What did we just
do? our expressions said. But it turned out all right. The money got home. But Sergei and I were not at all experienced in
financial matters. We had no training, and no one was offering it.

That summer Tatiana created a
West Side Story
program for us. For the first time, she was making Sergei act. He always did choreography, the movements with his arms and
his hands, but he had never acted before. In
West Side Story,
he had to pretend to die. That was a huge step for Sergei. Me, I liked to act. I’d been acting since I was a little girl
at the dacha, creating productions like
Borahtino
for our neighbors. But not Sergei, and he definitely didn’t like it. He’d say to me, “Next thing you know, she’ll make me
kill someone on the ice.” But he respected her enough to do it.

Another time she made a terrible program for us from
Opera Piazza,
sung by Placido Domingo, in which we both dressed up as clowns, all white, even the faces. I painted Sergei’s face, and made
it with a tear rolling down his cheek. It was our artistic program for one season of professional competitions, and I still
can’t believe Sergei agreed to go along with it. He had no pretenses when he skated. There was nothing false about him, and
he never let us drop to a level lower than he thought we could skate. Graceful and understated, he used to say, “I am a skater.
I don’t want to make a joke on myself.”

On the ice, everyone may have been watching me, but it was only because Sergei showed me off. He was so proud of me. Yet he
was always the stronger person, the one who never missed an element. His skating had both honesty and subtlety. He showed
the audience no more than it needed to know. To dress such a man up like a harlequin, to paint his face like a clown’s, was
to mask all his best skills as a skater and artist. Somehow, however, he was able to pull this program off. I was worried
everyone would laugh at us in these clown suits, but they didn’t. And we won with this program, too.

Tatiana had so much life experience and skating experience. She was like a mother to her skaters, a little like Galina Zmievskaya,
and Sergei and I were at a time in our lives when we felt we needed someone who would care about us and our health. When we
were amateurs, it was always you need to do this, you need to do that. No one ever asked us what we wanted. But Tatiana did.
She had started to coach when she was just eighteen or nineteen, and she was always teaching us new steps, giving us new things
to try. When she created a program, she had it all visualized before even stepping out on the ice. I don’t know if this was
good or not, because if you can visualize it in your mind, you’ve probably already seen it. It may not be entirely original.
Marina never worked this way.

Around this time, we had heard that Toller Cranston, the Canadian skater, coach, and choreographer, wanted to create a program
for us. We still needed a free-skating program for the 1991 Professional Championships in Landover, so we flew to Toronto
in the fall to work with him. He already had music from
The Nutcracker
picked out, and we liked it immediately. I have always liked to skate to Tchaikovsky. Then it was, do this, do this, maybe
do this. We were so surprised at the way he worked. He also sketched the costumes for us. But after only two days, he had
to leave to go to an exhibition. We couldn’t believe it. We’d paid all this money to fly there, more money for ice time and
the hotel. Then two sessions and goodbye. We were pretty upset.

But Ellen Burka, who was Toller’s assistant, said, “Don’t worry. I’ll finish the program for him.” And we ended up winning
the World Professional Championships with this
Nutcracker
program, in 1991 and again in 1992.

Christopher Bowman was also training with Toller at that time, and one day he came to practice with a big bruise on his eye.
It made all the papers how he’d been beaten up under mysterious circumstances, and there was a lot of speculation about drugs.
But that day Ellen made him skate with his swollen eye, all black and blue, and was telling him he had to “smile like a million-dollar
bill.” Ellen was putting on his music, and I was thinking, Why are you bothering? He’s totally out of it. He doesn’t even
know his program.

Sergei and I always heard rumors about drug use, especially during the tours, but I can truthfully say I never saw anyone
use drugs in front of me. I didn’t care what was going on with Christopher Bowman, but because Sergei was friendly with him,
one time I asked Sergei if he had ever tried drugs or not. He said no, that he had no interest in them.

Training in Toronto that fall was fun. Difficult, but fun. We had to figure everything out by ourselves—how to take the
subway, where to do our shopping. No one was there to translate for us. My English had gotten much better, but it was still
not very good, and because Sergei didn’t speak English at all it was quite stressful for me. But we liked this feeling of
independence, of looking after each other.

Nineteen ninety-one was a year of big changes for us. We hadn’t really known what stress was before. Pressure, yes. But stress
is different from pressure. Now suddenly I was in charge of airplane tickets, the passports, the cash. I was afraid we might
board a plane and fly to the wrong city. I worried what would happen if the airline lost our bags.

I especially worried every time we flew to the Frankfurt airport, which was where many flights connected both into and out
of Moscow. I hated this airport. One time I lost my silver fox fur coat there when it fell off my pushcart. I don’t know how
I could have walked right over it, but I did. Some nice people picked it up off the floor and brought it to the nearest cafeteria,
and when Sergei and I retraced our steps, the cafeteria manager was holding my coat for me. Very lucky. Another time I left
my wallet at a shop in the Frankfurt airport, and they had to page me to return for it. Also lucky. Once I even lost Sergei,
for heaven’s sake.

We were supposed to meet at a certain place at a certain time, since we had a plane to catch for Moscow. I went to this place,
the time passed, and there was still no Sergei. I started looking for him. I searched and searched the airport. The thoughts
that came into my head began to get very weird.

Why does Sergei want to stay in Frankfurt? I wondered. Why doesn’t he want to go with me? He had taken his passport with him
shopping, which was unusual, and also his airplane ticket. Usually I held onto those. The more I thought about it, the worse
it began to seem. Why does Seriozha want to leave me? I asked myself. I finally found him at the gate just before the plane
took off for Moscow. They had been paging me. Sergei told me to never, ever go looking for him. “If I tell you a place for
us to meet,” he said, “just stay there until I find you.” I was so relieved that he wasn’t leaving me after all that I didn’t
mind that he was angry. He could have said anything.

That was the first year we skated with Stars on Ice. We began rehearsing in the fall in Aspen, and it was an exciting change
to be working with all the other skaters: Brian Orser, Scott Hamilton, Debi Thomas, Rosalynn Sumners, Peter and Kitty Carruthers.
We skated in several group numbers, and I had to translate for Sergei during the rehearsals. Everyone was friendly and very
relaxed. If you wanted to, you could go wild on the ice during rehearsals, which was quite a new thing for us.

The thing we liked most about Aspen was a bookstore we found that was also a library and a place where you could get something
to eat or drink. We had never seen a place like this. Sergei loved all bookstores. Since he didn’t read English, he would
spend entire afternoons looking through the beautiful coffee table picture books. But in this place, Sergei could go upstairs,
where there was a fireplace, and spend an entire evening looking at books and magazines. They had couches and armchairs to
sit in, very comfortable and cozy, and every night we would order a glass of port, maybe a dessert, and just relax.

Sergei and I were learning a new program created by Sarah Kawahara, and there was one tricky part where I had to do a back
flip with Sergei’s help. While we were practicing it, my skate blade hit Sergei in the head, and he began bleeding quite badly.
I got so scared I started to cry.

“Why are
you
crying?” Sergei asked me.

We took him to the hospital, and before they would fix him, they began asking us questions. Of course Sergei didn’t understand
any of these questions, so I was translating for him, and it was taking a long time. I kept interjecting: “Why can’t you help
him? He’s bleeding all over your hospital.” But no, the questions must come first. I didn’t understand medicine in this country
at the time.

The saddest thing about that fall was that Rob McCall was very sick with AIDS. He was the Canadian ice dancer who had won
a bronze medal with Tracy Wilson at the Calgary Olympics. Brian Orser had to leave rehearsals a couple of times to go visit
him in the hospital. I remember that Brian and Rob used to sit in the back of the bus when we were on tour after the Olympics,
which is also where Sergei and I liked to sit. We sat there out of habit from the days when Zhuk coached us, because Zhuk
always sat in the front of the bus, and we wanted to be as far away from him as possible. Brian and Rob sat there because
they were always the last two on the bus. They were always laughing, and I remember Rob used to get so excited whenever he
bought new clothes. He had a fun personality. I used to like to watch him skate in practices because he was always creating
new steps for himself and Tracy, just for the joy of it. He loved skating, and never felt as great as he did when he was on
the ice. Rob died before the show opened, and when the tour got to Toronto, we did a benefit in his memory for a hospital
specializing in AIDS research.