The sun is already peeking through the window, and Tally starts whimpering, which means it’s six and time to start my day, though I’m pretty sure I haven’t slept a wink. As I nurse her, I’m thinking pointless thoughts like how long did Mama even nurse me for, why don’t I even know this most basic thing, would Baba know, why did it matter how long she stuck it out for when she’s nearly twenty years dead? And I can’t help but wonder: how would Mama take it, me putting on this play? Would she tell me to start shoveling cat shit instead, or would Mama—the late, final-days singing version of Mama, not the cold, college-application-focused Mama I remember from most of my days—be proud of me for trucking on?
Then again, Mama was always opposed to my pursuits of anything vaguely artistic, or even literary, and wasn’t particularly thrilled when Baba gave me a stack of books every year on my birthday and set a date for when I would discuss each one, from the plays of Chekhov to Tsvetaeva. Mama found this to be a distraction from my studies, not understanding that they would be neglected anyway. She would see me reading Baba’s books and would raise a brow, saying, “For hours you’ll read Chekhov, but you can’t be bothered to study for your biology exam….” “Chekhov was a doctor,” I told her once, which actually got her to laugh and even stick out her tongue at me, throwing her hands up at the situation, one of the rare times anything I said to her was met with approval.
After Tally’s done nursing I do my mom things, trying not to wake up Stas, I down a banana and take my girl out for a stroll, my head in a fog the whole time. Tally is sleepy and full and smiling at me, so utterly content from something as simple as milk from my boobs. When we get back, Stas is having his breakfast cigarette on the balcony, preparing to listen in on my Baba call. I put Tally down in her crib while Yuri still sleeps like the dead, and curl up for a bit next to him before it’s time for Baba, though I need to brush my hair, at least. But there’s no time, my Skype is dinging already, so I just run a hand through my hair and sit at my little desk and answer, ready to spend some time away from my own shit.
Baba looks put-together as usual, her hair in a long braid and pearls on, and she squints at me, like she has smelled something foul beyond the cigarette smoke around her.
“What’s the matter now?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I tell her. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“Who can?” she says, and this manages to make me smile.
I’m already emotional as fuck and seeing my grandmother at that kitchen table makes me want to weep, especially because she’s leaving Kiev for good tomorrow, and the furniture will be gone for good too. That wobbly little table is the only plain piece of furniture in her apartment, where I would sit with her and Dedya whenever I visited, eating our kasha and eggs, though there was a big dining room with a glass table around the corner my grandfather liked more. My grandmother insisted the little table was more cozy, and I didn’t mind, I liked it, how we all knocked elbows as Baba pushed more sweets on us, all that morning light flooding our faces. “More sweets for my sweet,” my grandfather would say, while I would wrinkle my nose and tell him, “It’s too early.” Would it have killed me to eat a jam-filled pastry or two instead of being a surly, weight-obsessed teenager? It would have made my grandfather so happy, though I guess it doesn’t matter now. “Never too early for dessert,” my grandmother would always say.
“Are you ready for your big move?” I ask her.
“As much as one can be, I suppose.”
“You won’t miss the apartment?”
“There is always something to miss about a place,” she says, and I know she means the kitchen in particular.
Tally’s crying again, and I take her out of the room where Yuri is blissfully sleeping; he wouldn’t bat an eye through Armageddon, that bastard. I sick her on my boob and stroke her cheek as I watch Baba watching us. Stas is on his phone on the balcony, but I won’t wait for him.
“A good little thing,” Baba says, gesturing at my girl.
“You could see her in person,” I try again. “You can see what a good girl she is. You can see me and Yuri too. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” I know it’s pointless, but you can’t keep me from trying. And if I really do put on this play, then she really has to come.
She smiles slowly. “It would be something unbelievable,” she says, but she’s not really listening.
Then her face relaxes, her eyes softening as she looks away from the screen, out her kitchen window, easing into remembering.
PART III
HAPPY WIFE
Larissa
Uncle Pasha arrived about a month after Licky’s death to embark on his journey to find food in a neighboring village with Papa. Two years had passed since I saw him, and he was, of course, greatly diminished. I’d always thought of him as a diminished version of my father, but now he was objectively smaller, like a boy playing dress-up in a man’s clothes, his broken nose even more severe because the rest of his face had sunken in so much. Papa clung to him for a long time when he and I greeted him at the station, and as they spun and hugged, for a brief moment, they were restored.
My uncle arrived to our apartment in a buoyant mood, and all of us were cheered in his presence. Even Polina deigned to leave the bed where she had been moping ever since Licky died to join us. My uncle could see the dire state my sister was in. “My darling princesses are more radiant than ever,” he tried, gesturing at us both, but my sister barely mustered a smile.
Polya hardly spoke to any of us except my grandmother since the Licky incident. While the rest of us fattened up on her cat’s meat, she spent most of her time curled up in bed, vomiting air, moaning, clutching her stomach, and pulling at her hair and sweating as if the spirit of her cat were still contained within her body and she was desperate to exorcise every last bit of the creature. Occasionally, she would step out on the balcony, as if she spotted her resurrected cat wandering out of the woods once more, eager for another trot around town with her. But since her cat would not come back from the dead, my sister did her best to avoid the living.
Uncle Pasha got her to eat her dinner, at least, and she seemed genuinely amused when he jumped up and down like a child, demonstrating a performance he and my father had put on when they were kids in the orphanage. But Mama was not amused by his antics, for once. She was quiet that evening, pulling out strands of her already-thinning hair. She was worried about their trip.
“We had the whole dance perfected,” Uncle Pasha said, jumping around and clicking his heels, oblivious to my mother’s fragile state. “We could have taken it on the road.”
“You should have,” Polya said, giggling as he danced like a nincompoop, shocking all of us with her laughter.
“The reward was seeing the joy on the children’s faces. There was no price on that,” Papa said, and then he laughed sadly. I understood it: he had a better time in the orphanage than he did here, because there, he was able to help the other children by cheering them up. Or at least to feel like he had done something for them. Now he hardly felt equipped to help his own family.