When she opened her eyes again, she saw Anfisa. The neighbor reached out and gripped Natasha’s elbow. “Come over this week,” Anfisa said. “The boys can distract each other while we take an hour or two to ourselves.” In her cat’s smile, there was something small, recognizable, and secret, speaking to Natasha, saying: You are not alone.
Anfisa’s apartment was in the same row of buildings as theirs, only a few entrances away. Two days after the skating trip, Lev tramped across their parking lot toward that door. “Slow down,” Natasha called after him. She had Yulka by the hand to guide the girl over hills of unplowed snow. Under her arm, Natasha carried a box of chocolates, swirled dark and milk and white, each in the shape of a different seashell.
Her son overshot the entrance and had to double back when Natasha shouted. Since exchanging numbers on Sunday, she and Anfisa had been texting: first little things, hellos and how are you holding ups, and then jokes, memes, a picture Anfisa took of herself frowning next to a bottle of Soviet champagne. You and Lev should come over, Anfisa had written this afternoon. Misha needs someone to play with and so do I. When, fifteen minutes later, Natasha sent an apology—we’re trying to get out the door but my daughter—Anfisa said to bring Yulka, too, just come already.
A buzz, and the building’s door unlocked for them. Lev ran up the stairs. Natasha, climbing after, heard voices echo. By the time Natasha and Yulka reached the right landing, Anfisa stood alone, wearing a cream-colored sweater and leggings patterned with swirling galaxies. “They’re in Misha’s bedroom,” Anfisa said to Yulka. “Down the hall, second door.” The girl pulled off her boots, dropped her jacket, and dashed inside. Once Anfisa and Natasha were alone, Anfisa said, “Finally.”
While the kettle heated, they sat at the kitchen table. The gift box lay between them. Anfisa held a white-chocolate nautilus; with one leg propped up on the chair, she looked like a teenager. Her eyes were outlined in gunmetal powder. “Tell me how long they’re visiting,” she said.
“Until the eleventh. Not that long.”
“Long enough.”
“It feels like forever,” Natasha said. “When I got your invitation, I threw Lev’s jacket on him so quickly I probably ripped a sleeve.”
Water chugged in the kettle. Down the hall, the boys shouted what sounded like military commands. Anfisa popped the chocolate in her mouth and unfolded herself to get two mugs. “I get it, believe me. Last New Year’s was the first we didn’t spend at my parents’ place.”
“What excuse did you use?”
“Misha’s music school. I can give you its name.” Anfisa stirred their tea at the counter. The spoon chimed against the side of a mug. Below the hem of her sweater, her legs emerged narrow and dark. “It won’t help you, though. Your family’s already in the habit of coming down.”
Natasha buried her head in her arms on the place mat. She only lifted her face when Anfisa put the teas down. “I slipped some whiskey in there,” Anfisa said.
A lemon slice floated alongside the needles of tea leaves in each drink. “Thanks. Listen, I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of ungrateful monster,” Natasha said. “I’m just having an off week.” She thought. “An off past few years.”
“Don’t worry about what I think. I’m a monster born and bred.” Anfisa inhaled the steam off her mug. “Have you had lunch? Do you want something?”
While Anfisa microwaved two plates of rice and fish cutlets, while she spooned out salad from a bowl kept in the fridge, Natasha told family anecdotes. They came surprisingly easily. That morning, for example, Lev had interrupted one of his uncle’s recitations to ask, “Why do you act like that?” And when Denis fell silent, mournful, Lev said, “See? There. Like that.”
Anfisa shut the refrigerator door. “What was your brother trying to talk about?”
“You heard him.”
“Only for a minute.”
Natasha rounded her shoulders and widened her eyes. “Photographic evidence from London shows three unidentified ships. Three lights in a row in the sky.” Thin guilt rippled through her. But she was having too good a time to stop.
“Oh, you’re excellent,” her neighbor said. “Keep going. What’d Denis say back?”
“He pretended it wasn’t happening, I think.”
Anfisa put their plates down. She fetched paper napkins and utensils. “Too bad, because it’s a good question.”
“It’s rude. I made Lev apologize,” Natasha said. The room smelled like dill, butter, warm salmon. “But yes, obviously, yes. It’s not like I haven’t wanted to say that to him myself.”
“Invite me over before the eleventh. I’ll ask him.” Anfisa scooted her chair in, turned her chin up, and did a little playacting of her own. “Why are you the way you are? And can’t you stop?” Natasha laughed, surprised, at the face across the table. Anfisa looked very young and very lovely. Very, for one instant, like Lilia.
Natasha had not ever noticed the similarity before. They had completely different coloring, and Anfisa was much taller, but there was some angle of the eyes, some bend of the neck, in common. Lilia, too, had been skinny, high-cheeked, funny. “How old are you?” Natasha asked.
“Talk about rude. Twenty-six,” Anfisa said. She drew her head back and the overlap melted away. When Anfisa lifted her mug, Natasha raised her own, remembering. “May we get the answers to all our good questions,” Anfisa said.
Natasha toasted to that.
The spiked tea spread through her. It tasted like pine and honey. Walking back across the lot in the black evening, snow crystals crunching under her feet and traffic passing in a hush on the other side of their building, Natasha felt loose and beloved. Yulka and Lev chattered alongside. Out in the Pacific, Yuri was going off watch, going on maintenance, and Natasha did not envy him his lonely holiday. A person needed company. She carried a sense, wrapped in whiskey, that someone once more understood where she was coming from.
Over dinner, the kids told their grandmother about Misha’s gaming system. Lev raised his arms to mimic the hold of a weapon in Call of Duty. Still warm inside, Natasha scooped mashed potatoes onto everyone’s plates. She looked up to find Denis staring at her. Nothing in her was against him. Thanks to Anfisa, that necessary outlet. Natasha met his eyes and smiled.
The next morning, Natasha drove her mother and brother to the city ski track, where a cousin who moved to Petropavlovsk decades earlier had agreed to tour them around the cross-country trails. When they parked, Natasha’s mother swiveled in the passenger seat to look at the kids. She was covered in nylon and fleece so she rustled. “Are you sure you don’t want to come along?”
“They’re going to their friend’s house,” Natasha said.
“To play that game again? It’s not right to stare at a television set all day. You need some fresh air.”
“Don’t you keep saying this air isn’t good for them?” Natasha leaned over her mother’s lap to open the car door. “Bye, Mama.”
“The harbor air isn’t good for them. This is mountain air,” her mother said. But she was already getting out of her seat. Denis, in the back row, climbed out in his snow boots.
“I’ll pick you up at four,” Natasha called.
Back in Anfisa’s kitchen, the whiskey out, they talked about men. Like Yuri, Misha’s father had been a military man, Anfisa said. She brought a photo album from her bedroom: he was a teenager, really, with buzzed hair that revealed big ears and a neck rising too skinny out of a student uniform. Anfisa turned the album’s pages tenderly. All the photos had that yellow fuzziness that came from film. “Is that you?” Natasha asked, pointing to a pigtailed girl in a knee-length skirt. Anfisa said, “Fifteen when I got pregnant,” and spun the album in place so Natasha could take a better look.