“He’s not good enough for you,” she said. “None of these men are. What do you want from them?”
Her question struck me as ridiculous. I looked up at the birds high in the sky, the crags sticking out of the water in the distance, and three blond siblings fighting over a sand castle. Men—they gave it all meaning. Without them, the world was fluff.
“Everything,” I said.
“But why, kitten? Your father loves you. Your mother loves you. Why do you insist on chasing after these deadbeats—what are you trying to prove?”
“You can’t love me like they can,” I said. “It’s different.”
“No,” she said, shifting her gaze away from me. “I guess I can’t.”
And then she looked at the water again, but it was clear she had nothing more to say, that she was embarrassed about having said anything at all, and even resented me a little bit for hearing it, as if it was my fault she had decided to talk about being suicidal or whatever. And then she put her hands on her hips and stared at me, like she was waiting for me to reveal something in turn, and for a second I even racked my brains for something embarrassing I could tell her to make up for her revelations.
But I wasn’t as dumb as she thought I was. I knew what she was doing, distracting me with her stories of sadness when we both knew what the problem was. She was the gatekeeper between me and my men, and she was determined that if she had to suffer, then I had to suffer too, that there would be no love in my life as long as she was clinging on to hers. We both turned to see my grandmother strutting toward us with her swim cap on, looking refreshed after her day of romance.
“What’s the matter—why are you two just standing there?” she said, shaking her head. “Isn’t it time for a swim?”
I don’t feel ready at all to see my grandmother by the time Yuri tells me to get up. I stayed up for most of the night, sweating and tossing and turning and feeding Tally once and thinking of Mama, of how cruel I had been to her that summer, caring only about what she said about my stupid boyfriends instead of hearing how hard it was for her, the whole fucking motherhood business in a new country. But how could she have expected me to understand then? There’s nothing to be done about it now, obviously.
I manage a shower-and-coffee resuscitation before we haul ass to JFK to pick up Baba in our rental car on a thankfully not-too-hot morning, to snatch her up before she does something stupid like take the train like she did the last time she visited, saying it was because she didn’t want to trouble us. But really she had done it out of her fake proletarianism, her need to be a woman of the people though she’s basically Kiev royalty. I’m hoping she doesn’t even think about it this time, that she knows she was way too old to pull that stunt before and is definitely too old now. I’m so nervous and strung out after the sleepless night and my talk with Yuri and then Stas and not knowing what the fuck I’m doing that I realize I’m actually saying some of this stuff out loud.
Yuri says, “I don’t think she’ll take the train at this point.”
“I hope not,” I say. I’m in the back with Tally, watching her gnaw on her plastic keys, relieved to be sitting away from my own husband.
“You haven’t told her about us, have you?” he says, and this nearly makes me choke.
“Of course not,” I say. “Plus, I’m not sure what I would say.”
“Me neither,” he says.
He turns onto the highway and as we crawl forward, I wonder if he’s going to tell me what I should have said, if he knows our status better than I do and has already made all the decisions. Since I told him about Stas, he hasn’t exactly stopped talking to me, but he won’t look me in the eye and only talks about Tally-related matters, like I’m one of his problem students that he’s just being cordial to because he’s stuck with her for the rest of the semester, except he knows he can’t get rid of me quite as easily. And it’s not like I’ve tried to have long soul-searching conversations either; I’ve just been working on getting the play right, hoping we’ll figure it out once it’s over.
“Listen,” he says. “Next week—”
“Can we not have some big serious conversation right now? Can we give it a few days?”
“Next week, after your grandmother leaves, I’m going to Lake George for the weekend.”
This cracks me up. “You’ve got your poles ready?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“I guess it’ll just be me and Tally,” I say, brushing some hair out of my girl’s eyes.
“If you say so.”
“Stas is visiting his family after the play anyway.”
“You don’t need to tell me that. You’re the one who said we should give it a few days.”
“Fine.”
I have an image of my father coming back with his fishing poles to his tiny Jersey City apartment, looking lovesick after hanging out with Yuri. I would ask him what they did there, what they talked about, but he would never tell me much, reminding me of the way I would act when I came home from a date and Mama gave me the third degree, though much less kindly of course. “We talked about life,” he would say. “What about it? Did you figure it all out then?” He would smile big. “For that, we’d need to fish at least a few more times, darling.”
As we cross into Queens, I stare at my daughter and the Hudson and wonder how I got to this fucked-up place, how I could have treated Yuri like such shit without even thinking twice about it. No, I can’t blame my hormones or weakened mom state, because there are millions of moms out there who don’t kiss and develop crushes, or worse, on their husband’s best friend. A guy who I’m more confused about than ever since he messed things up by giving me that stupid poem, making me wonder if I ever knew him at all.
I need to get back to where I was, to the person I used to be before I had this fucking baby, the baby who is sweetly sleeping in the backseat, just minutes away from meeting her great-grandmother. And actually, I do think she looks like her a bit—when she’s fussing over something, I can see it, that look on her face that so reminds me of my baba. The girl has become a wonder this summer, rolling over, babbling a bit, shaking rattles and chewing on everything in sight, even eating bananas. She’s come such a long way from the human puddle I gave birth to, though she’s got a long, long way to go. And yet, there are so many things my daughter can do that I wish I could—sleeping through the wild street sounds, facing the brutal, cold world with absolute wonder, smiling for no reason at all—but I have unlearned all of her survival skills, and one day, she will unlearn them, too, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
She opens her eyes but doesn’t cry out, she just stares at the cars flying by the window. Such a patient little thing, a girl I’m starting to feel somewhat connected to, a girl whose hair is getting a gorgeous fiery tint to it, beginning to cover up her enormous ears. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve been busy working on my play and have actually had a chance to miss her, or if it’s my hormones returning to normal or what. At least there’s somebody around me who I feel somewhat certain about.
As I stroke Tally’s hair, Yuri puts his face in his hands at a red light. “Fuck,” he says.
“What?”
“I forgot to get flowers,” he says. “How could I have forgotten the flowers?”
“That’s all right,” I say, and for some reason his genuinely distressed face over this non-issue when I am contemplating how cosmically I have failed makes me laugh. “She won’t care.”
Standing at arrivals with Tally strapped to me, I’m anxious as hell about seeing my grandmother, because she’ll be able to tell that something is off. During our Sevastopol summers, she could always tell if I had snuck off in the middle of the night for a liaison, though she didn’t make a big deal about it. One time, when I returned to the cottage after spending all night hooking up on a sandy blanket with a lifeguard, I thought my grandmother was asleep. But as I crept toward my room, her sharp voice pierced the darkness. “You might want to shower first, darling,” she had said.