Halfway House

By W. Thomas Leonard

Halfway House is a romantic thriller set in New York City in 1968. Alex Kazakov, a working class Russian immigrant meets Meredith Townsend, a Park Avenue socialite, at a Russian art exhibit at the Guggenheim museum. They both have an interest in art and start dating. As their friendship evolves into genuine affection, Meredith's parents become alarmed that their daughter is becoming involves with some stranger, not of their class, a Russian no less. They are determined to stop Meredith from seeing Alex, but to no avail; Alex and Meredith plan to get married, but fate intervenes and alters everything. The story ends many years later at Halfway House, a community-base center in Brooklyn, of which Alex is the Director. A poignant read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667807959

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© 2021 W. Thomas Leonard

ISBN: 978-1-66-780795-9

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

In October of 1967, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York held the most comprehensive, and significant exhibition of Russian art outside of Russia since the end of World War II. Works from The Hermitage, and The Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg, and The State Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, never before seen in the West, would be on display. The unique art exhibit drew unusually large crowds. Outside a steady, fine drizzle fell on the long lines of people wrapped around the block. Despite the weather, and the long wait, people were calm and patient; they were anxious to see the Russian masterpieces dating from the 13th century up through the modern era. Also included in the exhibit were first-class Western European paintings, and sculptures from the imperial art collections assembled by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Czar Nicholas I in the 18th and 19th centuries .

Mrs. Kazakova and her son Alexei had taken the train from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn to be here. Mrs. Kazakova wanted very much to see the old icons, specifically Our Lady of Yaroslavl which she had a replica of in her apartment. Mrs. Kazakova always held a special reverence for this icon depicting the Blessed Virgin Mother tenderly caressing baby Jesus; it had sustained her through immensely difficult times, and now, for the first time, she was going to see the original which had been painted in the second half of the 15th century. Her deceased husband Mikhail, had promised to take her to the State Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow to see it, but they remained rooted in St. Petersburg, and never got to Moscow.

As she shuffled along, holding onto her son’s arm, through the front entrance, she recalled the religious chants of the Russian Orthodox priests, and began to feel a sense of calm despite the arthritic pain in her hip. Alexei bore the wait, and the crawling crowds with restrained impatience. It annoyed him to no end that the privileged, wealthy classes always had first access at private showings. They dined first, often accompanied by musicians playing classical music. They would then sip champagne before leisurely surveying the art of Imperial Russia. Alexei was not interested in the icons of old; he wanted to see the paintings of the great social realist painter, Ilya Repin. Repin, who often painted the great writer Leo Tolstoy, depicted with a keen psychological insight, the tragic face of humanity. Alexei wanted to see the faces of the Russian people, particularly someone who resembled the father he had never known. His mother would show him what Mikhail Kazakov looked-liked. Even though she described Mikhail many times to Alexei, he was now, for the first time going to see a face, a person who looked like Mikhail Kazakov, the iron worker. All the pictures of his father with him when he was a baby, were lost when their house was destroyed during the siege of Leningrad.

After paying the admission fee, Alexei picked up a guide and saw that the exhibit unfolded chronologically upward through the Guggenheim rotunda and galleries; it would be a long, spiral walk up, and he became concerned about the strain on his mother’s legs and hip. The exhibition began on the ground floor with The Age of the Icon: 12th – 17th Centuries. The crowds were civil, restrained but thick. Alexei felt as if he, and his mother were still in the crowded subway. As they inched toward the old icons, Alexei kept his arm around his mother’s shoulder to keep the crowd from bumping into her. Mrs. Kazakova felt the upward incline of the floor, and gripped her son’s arm. Slowly the old icons came into view: Archangel Michael, The Virgin, Christ in Glory, St. John the Baptist, and Archangel Gabriel. A long, dormant sense of spirituality swelled in Mrs. Kazakova’s soul, and she forgot the pain in her tired-thick body. In her mind she saw the faces of her grandparents, parents, and all the many friends she left back in St. Petersburg. Alexei helped her maneuver through the crowds and she approached each icon with reverence. She didn’t have the words to express it, but the icons of Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints moved her into a state of spirituality. The painted faces of yellowed gold and cinnabar communicated a philosophical calm that seem to soothe the broken souls of her vast country.

There it is Mom, Alexei said pointing to the icon of Our Lady of Yaroslavl up ahead. It took Alexei a half hour to get his mother to the spot where she wanted to be, directly in front of her revered icon. As she blessed herself, she burst out crying. Alexei held her tight whispering, It’s all right Mom, and his words soothe her painful memories. Gazing at the tender-faced Virgin caressing baby Jesus, Mrs. Kazakova vividly remembered that gray-cold day back in Leningrad when she, and her husband found an old replica of it in a small store on the Nevsky Prospect. Clear as a bell she heard Mikhail’s ringing laughter delighted that he found what she had been searching for; she gripped her son’s arm for support. People, crowded behind Alexei and his mother, started grumbling about them not moving. Mrs. Kazakova stared into the face of Our Lady of Yaroslavl and saw the somewhat sad expression of pure love. She recalled how this icon sustained her through the four years Mikhail was away fighting with the Russian Army against the Germans in World War II. She had placed it, on a small, candle-lit table next to her infant son’s crib. The icon, and Alexei were her close companions during the 900-day siege of Leningrad where a million people died from starvation and the cold. She remembered the dead littering Liteiny Prospekt after a German air-raid, how she use to draw water from a hole in an ice-covered street, a woman pulling a sheet-wrapped corpse on a child’s sled, another old woman trying to pull her still alive, skeleton husband on a sled to the food storehouse, soon destroyed by Nazi incendiary bombs. She remembered one day approaching a man, half covered in snow, sitting beside the Summer Gardens fence, to ask him if he had any food he could spare for her baby, but he was already dead. Every night through the long blockade she would sit by a brick stove with a teapot on it, praying for her family’s survival. Their fate was in the hands of God. When Mrs. Kazakova shifted her gaze to the face of baby Jesus returning His mother’s affection, gently supporting her chin, she remembered how her prayers were answered; Mikhail returned home from the front,