We watch the rumpled travelers descend with their small bags, rushing into the arms of the people who love them. There’s a man in uniform, a tiny pink-haired woman hugging a surprisingly large dude with all her might, and a mother and her two children reuniting with a husband in a sweater that looks out of place in late August. And there she is, my dear grandmother, looking much frailer than she does over Skype, descending from the escalator like a spirit from the heavens, her silver braid still silky and falling past her shoulders, her pearls on, a grim little frown on her face, looking like she means business. My only blood besides my daughter, who is curled up against my chest in her carrier, a little dazed as she blinks up at the bright lights. The tears well up in my eyes, not just because it’s been two years since I’ve seen her, before I was pregnant and when she and my grandfather were both healthy and happily eating at the little kitchen table I miss with all my heart, before I had fucked everything up. She really is the one soul on Earth who knows me, who knew Mama and of course Papa, who was proud to see me come out of my dark, dark twenties, though I’m doing no better now than the younger, flightier girl I was back then.
And in her face, I see Papa’s, and just a touch of my own, and yes, even my daughter’s, confirming that all of our genetic soup is as intermingled as I imagined. I rush toward her, forgetting, for a moment, that my daughter’s strapped to my body, not understanding that the joy and wonder on my grandmother’s face is reserved for her, this new miracle, not old-news me. She hunches slightly to get a good look at her.
“She looks better in person, actually,” she says, stroking the top of her head, turning to the left and the right to inspect the girl. “One ear is a bit smashed in, have you noticed that? She was probably all jammed up, down there,” she adds, gesturing at my lady parts, and for the first time in a while, Yuri and I both laugh. Tally, meanwhile, is staring at Baba with an open mouth, a black O of incomprehension. She looks up at the bright lights of the airport, the people rushing about, hugging loved ones and dragging suitcases and whipping out tickets, all of them with someplace to go, reminding me that I haven’t left town since I played a runaway who was found belly-up in a lake in Chicago before I got knocked up.
“You made it,” I say, giving my grandmother a big hug, smelling her thick perfume, and my eyes sting as the tears fall down my face.
“You haven’t aged a day,” Yuri says as he embraces her, and when he emerges from her grasp, she takes a step back and inspects us with the same suspicion she gave poor Tally. I know my hair’s a mess, my last night’s makeup is smudged, there’s spit-up on my too-tight T-shirt, and my sandals are caked in playground muck. Baba is soaking all of this in, rearing her head back like I’ve stepped in dog shit.
“The child looks good,” she says. “But what happened to her parents? Look at you—an old lady comes halfway across the world, and you don’t even bring her flowers?”
PART IV
SUNSET
Larissa
My arm is linked with Yuri’s as we stroll to the theater. The poor boy parked two blocks away and repeatedly asked if I was comfortable walking, as if I were some kind of invalid. And while it has been more and more difficult for me to walk lately, I am determined to make the most of my final trip to America, to welcome the challenge. I have spent so many days sitting by the sea, lapping at the waves, reading under the sun, waiting for my soul to regenerate. Of course, I loved being on the shore with a good book, but I had delved back into Onegin and it all just seemed mannered and silly to me, Onegin was just an old dunce for trying to get Tatyana back after all that time; he would have been better off staying home. I had already begun to feel—to say the least—a bit restless.
But my week in America isn’t quite lifting my spirits either; it has been a strange one. I knew Natasha would be busy with her rehearsals, but she was not only busy but utterly distracted, barely even looking me in the eye, giving me far less attention than she offered during our Skype sessions, which did make me wonder once or twice why I even bothered going across the ocean for a face-to-face encounter. Though baby Talia! I must admit I’ve had a few fair moments with her, which is partly because I had been asked to watch her more often than I expected. In fact, the six-month-old child has been smiling and even laughing at my antics and generally giving me more attention than her distracted mother. Though her father, darling Yuri, had been as affectionate as always, just as he is at this moment.
“A gorgeous day, isn’t it, Larissa Fyodorovna?” he says, gesturing at the ocean with the flowers in his other hand.
“Indeed,” I say. “I will not have many more of them. When the play is over, you can bury me right on the beach.”
He laughs and says, “But what about the after-party?”
“I suppose we can scope it out first, see how good the drinks are….”
Natasha and her vagabond Stas have been preparing at the theater since morning. Talia is at home with the manager of Natasha’s former bar for this special occasion. I am finding it hard to catch my breath, but I am happy to be out and about with a handsome man by my side.
Brighton Beach hasn’t changed much since my husband and I visited my son in America just before his untimely death. The storefronts still boast their names in Russian. Occasional food wrappers and plastic bags float through the streets. The sand on the beach is dark and filled with branches and women who are too old to be showing so much of their sun-bronzed bodies. Women not much younger than me sit on their stoops, gossiping loudly. “I told my Marina one million times, Boris is no good for her, no good at all, but does she listen?” one of them says, and we pass them before we can hear a response, though I can well imagine it.
The last time I was here, my son had taken me and Misha to sit by the water at a restaurant with a slatternly name like Tatyana or Ruslana, and we were served warm beers in tall glasses and a perfectly decent meal. Though I had to do most of the talking, as usual, I remember enjoying myself, feeling as if there was nothing else in the world I wanted, even if the sanguine middle-aged man I had birthed across from me seemed to lack for everything as he picked at his meal, mayonnaise from Salat Olivier stuck to the corners of his mouth, without a woman to reach over and wipe his face for him. He did not soar like a rocket, my Tolik—he did not even come close. A man whose sadness predated his birth, whose movements even in my womb were so infrequent that I was surprised and delighted every time I felt another flutter in my abdomen after a long respite, relieved he was still alive.
My husband looked a bit melancholy as he gazed at the water, and I wondered if it was because he found the beach to be an inferior specimen, because he, too, pitied our poor boy and wondered how we could have raised such a lackluster being, or if he was just afraid of dying. I asked him about it later that night, as we settled into our son’s puny guest room. “Oh, Larissa,” he said. “You read too much into everything. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I was perfectly happy to be there. It must have been a bit of indigestion.” I did not believe him for a second, but I did not press on. I only went back one more time after that—for Natasha’s wedding—and I told my husband to stay home, citing his health, though to be honest it was because I did not want him to bring down my mood. Staying cheerful at my age was a hard enough business as it was.