My sister was pale and dead-eyed, with her short limp hair wilting below her ears, though its fiery color could not be denied. She looked like a bedraggled, slightly unstable boy. I recalled the old Polina with two braids in her hair, hugging the three Annas goodbye in our courtyard the night before we left for the mountains, looking absolutely lovely as she wept for them, a porcelain doll in mourning. When her friends parted, she sank to her knees to emphasize her struggle, in case any stray men were watching. I never denied her beauty, though she drove me mad with her vanity, but now I wondered if she could have used just a bit of it.
I cupped her pale face in my hands. “You are still beautiful,” I told her. “Just—take care of your hair a bit more….”
“Beautiful?” she said with a cruel little laugh. “You think I still care about any of that?” She gave me a steely gaze, studying the new shoes and sturdy wool coat Misha had procured for me; I was eight months pregnant, for heaven’s sake, not some elegant starlet, but it was true, my clothing did look nice in comparison to my sister’s worn coat and scuffed boots.
“You can care a little bit about appearances,” I told her. “It won’t kill you.”
“Is that right, Larissa? Our grandmother cared about appearances, didn’t she? And look where it got her.”
Her point was valid, but why did she have to bring it up now? Our grandmother, who threw herself under a train just like the one that had stopped before us over a dumb necklace. My sister peered at it like she could see through it, like she was the newly hardened girl standing at the edge of the tracks looking down on our mangled grandmother. And if she were still with us, then who knew, perhaps Polina would have remained frivolous and avoided getting caught up with Bogdan’s antics. Her eyes bore into me and I took a step back, not wanting to end our last meeting for a long time on this sour note. I looked back at the parents, who thankfully didn’t seem to hear us over the bustle. Bogdan and Misha, who did hear, did nothing.
“You’re breaking Mama’s heart,” I said.
“Soon enough she’ll have the baby to play with. She’ll be fine,” she said.
I moved toward her, feeling choked up, all because of the baby, no doubt. “You know it won’t be the same,” I said, and I felt her softening momentarily too.
“Look,” she said, “I need to go. Ever since the war—well, I just need to get out of this city. I’m not the same person I was when we left here. Everywhere I go, I see Papa and Baba Tonya. I need a fresh start. You can understand that, can’t you?”
I looked back at the parents. Of course I understood. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get out—leaving the shadow of Papa and Baba’s deaths and our tumultuous country. I wondered what Papa would have made of my sister, who strangely had come to hate frills just as much as he had; the difference was that he believed that the state had done its best to serve him, while Polina saw the state as hypocritical, noting that not all people were surviving on the bare minimum. But Polya didn’t want to think of him anymore.
I would be the one to stay in Kiev, haunted by Papa and Baba’s ghosts. I wasn’t allowed to leave, and never would be. It had been our duty to leave for the mountains to help our country, even if it almost killed us. And now we needed to stay put for our country’s sake.
“It’s our duty to stay,” I said solemnly, and she sighed, thinking I was just another mindless organ of the state, no doubt, but I had run out of ideas.
She cupped my face in turn. “You are more beautiful than ever,” she said, but this did not sound like a compliment. “Look out for my letters,” she added.
She leaned in to give me a stiff hug, taking a far wider berth than necessary, as if the thought of brushing against my enormous belly disgusted her. Well, that was that. I knew she judged me for the life I led now, but it was not something I had strived for, the nice coat and bureaucrat husband: it was just what happened to me. But there was no point in trying to tell her this. She had already made up her mind about me. Bogdan, meanwhile, treated me with his usual smugness, never failing to make me feel thoroughly uncomfortable.
He finished saying goodbye to his brother and patted me on the back. “Take care of yourself,” he said. It was hard to believe there was a time when he and I spoke nearly every day. I hardly knew him. And I tried to hardly think about him.
They got on the train and did not look back, and I turned toward the parents and my wet-eyed husband; he and his brother were like ice and fire, but he would miss the rascal. I was in a fog for the rest of the day. I tried not to think of the last time I was on a train, during our return to Kiev, when Bogdan kissed me. What if I had truly returned the kiss? Was he just trying to torture me after he heard about my nuptials, or was he giving me one last chance to be his? If I had acted differently, would I be the one running off to Rome, starting anew? These pointless thoughts vibrated through me for the rest of the day and into the night, when I felt my first contractions.
I gave birth to my son almost a month early, likely as a result of the stress of my sister and Bogdan’s exit. After my Tolik was born, a tiny, fragile creature who never grew full size, to my mind, I was utterly consumed by caring for him and had no time to care about things like my husband giving up literature or my sister leaving the country or even Bogdan’s self-satisfied smile when he announced their departure.
I read to the helpless being in my arms, my boy who happily suckled my breasts; I was delighted to find that, unlike many women of my generation who had suffered during the war, I had no shortage of milk and didn’t have to send my husband to the milkman twice a day. Misha would stand over me during this sacred process, as awed as if he were standing before the dawn breaking over a dark sky. So what if we had stopped our nightly reading sessions, or if I was utterly exhausted with my boy, but too stubborn to follow my husband’s suggestion of taking on a nanny? We had a good life, overall. Not the most exciting life, but we had decent clothes for ourselves and the child, a dacha outside the city and seaside vacations to boot, access to foreign goods.
Did I think of Bogdan from time to time? When I drank tea, I thought of him pressing those cups to his eyes under the train to make little Yaroslava laugh. When I saw boys shuffling in the streets, I thought of the rascal I knew before the war. And when I saw that my husband was a tool of the state while I had my doubts about the way the country was run, I remembered Bogdan and his critiques of Stalin, and thought he was safer abroad. But did I think of him—that way? I can’t say. Sometimes. I’m not certain.
Polya and Bogdan were never married, and all I learned of them came from Bogdan’s occasional letters addressed to Misha and me—so much for looking out for Polya’s letters! He claimed the happy couple had found more opportunities in Rome than Kiev could provide, that they were thriving in a romantic land filled with pasta and olives and sunlight, but Misha read between the lines. It seemed Bogdan worked for the black market, likely peddling goods, while my sister involved herself in another stinky animal shelter. There was no mention of children, which I thought a bit strange, but then again, my sister and Bogdan fancied themselves iconoclastic bohemians, and perhaps they would hold off on that venture. As the years went on, though, I wondered if my sister had been so ravaged by the war that she was unable to bear children, though I chastised myself when I spent too much time fretting about my careless sister, who only sent me “health and kisses” at the end of Bogdan’s letters.