"Papa had been the USSR Math Olympics champion when he was sixteen, but all he’d managed to achieve was working for Goldman Sachs. He had competed all over the Soviet Union, from Tallinn to Vladivostok, and had even gotten to shake Brezhnev’s hand in a big ceremony when he won. But nobody cared about the Math Olympics in America. Mama loved to remind me of all of Papa’s sacrifices for our family and told me to go easy on him, especially when he did things that were “good for his soul,” like blasting classical music in his car as loud as humanly possible without caring about his passengers—namely, me. That morning, I massaged my temples, hoping Papa would get the picture, amazed that even classical music could be offensive at a high volume."