"What-UncleGorby" - читать интересную книгу автора (What Leslie)

into its counterpart. "Doesn't he wonder who his father is?" she asked.

"What's to wonder?" Noni said. "Anyway, we think of him as the donor, not the
father."

Then Anther asked, "Think I could watch your fish while you're gone?" Katya's
stomach twisted. She understood what it meant to practically grow up without a
father.

"Feed him once a day, but not very much," she said.

"Oh I will. If you want, I could even change his water," Anther said.

The trip to Death Valley had been a bust. She had not met anyone interesting,
and the thought that maybe men weren't necessary in the scheme of things had
kept her awake several nights. Katya told herself now that she was right to have
let the boy care for her fish. Anther would have been scarred for life had Vlad
starved to death in her absence.

"We've had a lot of interest in those dolls," called out the woman from behind
the gift shop counter. "Especially after Gorby bit the dust. Collector's item,
you know."

"Really?" Katya asked, torn between wanting to keep the dolls or give them to
her father. He had left Russia as a young man, abandoning his elderly mother to
come to America.

Katya often wondered if there might be other relatives still living. Her father
was quite secretive, and if there were relatives, he had never mentioned them.
Katya didn't even know his real last name; he had been given another at Ellis
Island. She had not seen him much since her parents divorced when she was only
ten. Then five years ago her mother died, and her father remarried someone not
much older than Katya.

She looked at her Gorbachev doll and stared into the painted eyes, the dimpled
cheeks, the balding hair pattern shaped like a U from the back. The painted
birthmark lay in exactly the same place on his forehead as the place where she
remembered her father had a brown mole. She suddenly realized that Gorby was the
spitting image of her father. The two men were related, as sure as there were
little green apples and children conceived with kitchen tools. Uncle Gorby.

She paid for the doll and held the package cradled in the crook of her elbow.
Then she heard a voice over the concourse loudspeaker, telling her to pick up a
white courtesy phone. She found a phone on the rental-car counter near the
baggage claim.

"Hello," Katya said, and gave her name.

"Your stepmother has been trying to reach you," said the operator. "She knew
that your flight came in today. We asked that she call you directly, but she