The girls from her former theater troupe pull her aside, and they seem to be begrudgingly paying her compliments, which she even looks slightly pleased to hear, because this is better than nothing, and maybe she has made a small peace with the made-up girls. She is gorgeous under the blinding lights, even if her face is still half-covered in old-lady makeup.
But her play’s reception, I remind myself, is not what is at stake here. I watch Yuri watching her and wonder: how much does he know? He puts his arm around me and continues to watch the stage with a bemused expression. Does he know he is in the thick of disaster?
“I know Natasha and I make a strange pair,” he says. “I know she has a wild heart and desires I cannot help her attain. I married her knowing that, because she was special, not like the girls my mother set me up with, who were perfectly nice but never made me feel a thing. I loved Natasha right away because she was so different from those girls, and so different from me. But I knew my choice could lead to problems down the line,” he said. “I’m not blind.”
“I never said she was a perfect girl,” I say. “But you have given her everything she has expected from you. And more. Do not be so hard on yourself. There have been many benefits for her, to be with someone like you instead of…” I trail off, gesturing at the undereducated aesthetes on the stage, making certain to avoid Stas with my gaze. But then Yuri sinks into his seat and returns to his standard tone. The man who had spoken moments ago has retreated.
“I’m so proud of her,” Yuri says. “She was amazing up there. Of course I want this show to open up more possibilities for her. But I wish she could see that she already has so much to be grateful for. She has me, she has our daughter. I wish I could be more than a professor at a community college, that I could give her more. But if only she would see that we already have everything we need, when it comes down to what’s important.”
“Of course she already sees that,” I say carefully. “She treasures her life with you, dear boy. Before you, she was so lost.”
“You helped her too,” he says. “I hope you know how much she loves you. All those summers she spent with you were not lost on her. She has learned all of her strength from you. And her values. You’ve taught her how to live.”
This makes me lurch back a bit. Is he speaking sincerely, or is there a tinge of accusation in his voice? Those summers indeed! Is it more than a tinge—a complete denouncement?
“Nonsense,” I say. “She has done it all on her own. Do not give me so much credit.”
I spend the last night of my visit on Natasha’s balcony with a glass of cognac and a cigarette long after Yuri has gone to bed. Natasha is still out at the bar, a loud, seizure-inducing faux-Russian place near the theater where I lasted all of twenty minutes, long enough to watch Natasha take three shots of vodka while Yuri and Stas had a somber conversation near the bathroom, and then Yuri drove me home with a tremendous pile of flowers in the backseat, to where Natasha’s former manager, Mel, was watching television while the baby slept. The flowers are in a pile by the door now, and I can smell them from where I sit.
Now old Sharik and I regard the street below us, its narrow sidewalks and teeming plastic garbage bins, scraggly trees that fail to disguise the ugliness of the dirty streets, and the lights in the building across from us lit up like buttons on a switchboard, so many strangers out there in the large and confounding world. It is well past midnight, yet a few couples and a gaggle of young women wander down the streets in search of fun, and I can’t blame them for chasing after it while they can. The balcony can barely contain the three neglected potted plants and empty bird feeder and me and the cat, and yet it has been my refuge since I arrived. The cat brushes up against me, as if he knows I am leaving.
“You will be lost without me, boy,” I tell him, and he brushes more furiously in response. He has been sleeping at my feet every night, and I will miss his warm and smelly presence in my sleeping quarters, even if he has some nasty habits. I put out my cigarette, drain my glass, and leave the balcony. Sharik follows me out and jumps on the couch as if to encourage me to rest along with him on the sad piece of furniture that is nearly as old and saggy as yours truly.
Though Natasha and Yuri had insisted I take their bed, I took the couch so they would have some privacy in their tiny bedroom. Besides, the living room is quite cozy, with its lampshades draped in scarves, holiday lights framing the windows, coffee table adorned by the stubs of purple candles and glass bowls of rocks, with a photograph of my nasty grandmother lording over it all. Natasha has tried to give the little place some character, reminding me how few are the things that truly belong to us, no matter how we try to dress them up. This is the kind of life I had pictured for her all those years when I did not send along vast swathes of money, the same way my father did not spoil me. In some ways, her big, open living room reminds me of my childhood apartment. And yet, the girl has found a way to get in trouble without extravagance. A girl who I hope is on her way home now, to her husband, avoiding an interloper’s charms.
The bedroom door is slightly open, practically beckoning me, and I approach, though I know it is a transgression. I rarely enter the room where Natasha, Yuri, and little Talia sleep, and it is neater in there than I expected, relatively spare compared to the cheerful chaos of the rest of their home. Talia’s crib is by the door, blocked off by a Japanese curtain as an attempt for some privacy for the happy couple. Yuri snores gently, a tempered man even in repose, one arm splayed out, as if to fill the gap where Natasha’s body should be. I lean over my great-granddaughter’s crib and stare at her sleeping form. Toward the end of Natasha’s pregnancy, she would cry out during our Skype sessions, her eyes large as she placed a hand on her belly, telling me how hard the girl was kicking her, and I was glad the child had some fight in her already. Though it should not seem like such a miracle at this point, the girl traveling from Natasha’s womb to this crib, it still fills me with wonder.
The girl has come a long way from the rat-faced thing she was the first time I laid eyes on her over the computer screen. She has hair now, little brown-red ringlets, and her eyes are big like her mother’s, dare I say a bit like her great-grandmother’s, and she is gaining a semblance of silly personality, a mischief around the eyes, even when they are closed. Perhaps this was why I was so repulsed when I first laid eyes on her. I knew I would never see her grow into a young woman or find her way in the mystifying universe, so I decided not to bother. And then, out of nowhere, her eyes pop open—I am caught! I hold my breath and wait for her to cry and rat me out, but she does no such thing. She simply holds my gaze. We are co-conspirators.
I reach into my pocket, pull out the velvet pouch, and, from that, the ruby necklace. I dangle it in front of the child. Imagine, a necklace belonging to the Empress Maria, passed on to my great-grandmother, in the reach of this American-born child, light-years ahead of the first known necklace owner, a serf-owning woman married to the second-to-last tsar of Russia, the mother of Nicholas, Russia’s final monarch. The baby girl I see is a universe away from serfs or tsars, and good riddance, and yet, her eyes light up as she reaches for the necklace. It is a heavy object, one that must have weighed down my grandmother considerably during the war, when her form shrunk from plumpness to skin and bones, and now it is the perfect bauble for a baby. The child’s face is flooded with so much delight I worry she might laugh.