The rest of breakfast is quite pleasant. Tally’s sitting in her new high chair, picking at a bowl of berries, smacking away happily, while Baba fusses with her. I stick my tongue out at her and she gives me a little monkey laugh.
Yuri and I chuckle back at her, but we can’t think of anything to say next. We have decimated everything on the table so there’s no food to distract us, so we just watch our daughter finishing up her food. Last night at the bar, he and Stas had words near the bathroom, and after that, Stas said he was leaving to see his family in the morning, that he wasn’t sure when he would be back. But I was okay with that. I told him to take his time, and I would take mine. But the rest of the night, after Yuri and my grandmother left, he was by my side, though Stephanie kept coming between us, raving about how I killed it onstage, but she eventually told me to take care of myself, took a shot of tequila, and went home. Stas and I closed down the place, and though we split an Uber, he didn’t ask me to come up when it stopped in Harlem. He just took my hand and lifted it to his mouth and gave it one long kiss. “Until next time,” he said.
My grandmother gets up and opens the fridge to unearth the chocolate cake we brought to the after-party last night, all covered in pink-and-white icing and far too sweet for more than one bite, though almost two-thirds of it was devoured. She carefully cuts herself a slice, plops it on a plate, and eats it standing up.
“What?” she says as Yuri and I watch her, mesmerized. I know what she’s going to say before she says it: “It’s never too early for dessert.”
Yuri laughs and says, “No, I suppose it isn’t.” He forks a piece of the cake in solidarity. The two of them are just standing in the kitchen chewing together, looking kind of forlorn, because it’s time for them to say goodbye. We had already planned this—he’ll head out and Tally and I will walk Baba to the train to say goodbye.
Yuri gives my grandmother a big hug. “Remember,” he tells her, wagging a finger, “you promised to update your will for me.”
“Of course, dear child. I will leave you all of my horses and carriages, and a room of Roman statues.”
“Anything else?”
“Chests full of gold. You’ll never have to work again.”
“Wonderful.”
I hate when they talk like this, but I don’t stop them for once, I let them do their weird morbid thing, though it hits too close to home. Who knows when—or if—we’ll see Baba again? I stand by the mirror and fuss around with my hair, with old Great-Great-Grandmother Tonya looking down at all of us, her gaze striking me as more bewildered than cold, right then, wondering what the fuck any of us are doing. Then I get Tally out of her chair and hold her chunky little body in my arms, feeling the weight of her head on my shoulder, which makes me feel less hungover and nauseous for one sweet second, like all is right in the universe.
Yuri lifts a finger and runs into the hallway and brings back a huge bouquet of flowers I advised him against buying, which are more majestic than the ones he gave me after my performance, though I can’t blame him.
“Some flowers to see you off,” Yuri says with a shy smile as he hands them to my grandmother. “Since we failed to greet you with them.”
“Foolish boy, you expect me to drag these all the way home?” Baba says, though she is pleased.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I say.
“These are quite nice,” she says, and she gives them a big long sniff. “And they will look great next to Natasha’s flowers,” she says, and she takes the bouquet and drops it on top of the flower pile by the door.
“Can’t blame me for trying,” says Yuri.
He gives my grandmother one more hug before stepping out the door, to begin a slew of errands to keep the house in order before he leaves for his fishing trip. Sharik skulks in from the bedroom, gives the new flowers one big sniff, and turns away, unimpressed. He plops down next to them, sitting right up, and begins going to town on himself. My grandmother and I laugh at the loud, sucking sound. I feel sorry for the old motherless cat, right then—nursing on his dead mom as a kitten, how could it not fuck him up? Still, I reach over to discourage him, but my grandmother lifts a hand and stops me.
“Let him be,” she says. “Why rob him of his pleasure? Here’s a creature who actually knows how to make himself happy. If only we all could be so lucky.”
I get Tally in her stroller and we walk Baba to the train. I tried one last time to convince her to get a cab, but she insisted on “riding with the people,” and there was nothing I could do to change her mind. Though there’s another week until Labor Day, it’s starting to feel like fall already. A crisp breeze fills the air as we pass old men playing chess in the park, women not much younger than my grandmother peddling apples and berries on the sidewalks, a coffee shop filled with people my age furiously typing into their laptops. We get to the platform well ahead of time. Three trains could go by before Baba is late, even on a Saturday morning. We sit on a bench and stare at the buildings in front of us, with only two teenage girls and a bunch of pigeons for company. Baba leans over and tickles Tally under the chin, and she gives her a little laugh.
“I have grown quite fond of this child,” she says. “Now that her rat face is gone, she is quite handsome, like her parents, I can see it as clearly as the sun in the sky.”
“I have too,” I tell her. I’m trying to hold back a flood of tears. I don’t want to spend our last moments together blubbering like an idiot. I want her to feel like I am in control, like I will figure everything out.
“It seems you have grown fond of someone else too,” she says without looking at me.
I feel my face shifting into an attempt to deny what she has said, but I decide there’s no point. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”
“There are plenty of things I have missed, my darling.”
I wipe Tally’s face just to stall. “You must think I’m ridiculous,” I say finally. “I think I’m ridiculous. But it’s like—this tide just washed over me and all I could do was drown.” I don’t add, Until recently. Until I read his dumb poem and saw how clueless I was. Then again, there was the feeling I had when he stood by my side the whole night at the bar, the hairs on my arms feeling electric from him, and I was back where I started.
“Who am I to judge? I know the feeling,” she says. I feel the tears stinging my eyes and only then does my grandmother look at me. “What are your plans, dear girl?”
I take a deep breath and say, “As if I know.” Then I add, “Can I ask you something?” I continue before she can say yes or deny me. “You had a nice long life with Grandpa Misha, even if it wasn’t perfect. But do you think—I mean, if you could go back and do it all over again, would you have chosen Bogdan?”
My grandmother sighs and shakes her head. “My darling, don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “If I had not married your grandfather, I would not have had your father, and he would not have had you.”
“Is that an answer?”
“My life would have been completely different.”
“But you might have had other children, other grandchildren.”
“I might have given birth to a one-eyed donkey, but I didn’t, so what is the point of mulling it over?” she says, and I feel her temperature rising.
“I’m sorry. I just…” I say. “So does that mean—do you mean to say you’re glad your life turned out the way it did?”
I imagine my great-great-grandmother standing on a platform over a century ago, with nothing to guide her but her intuition. What would she think of what became of my grandmother? What would she think of me? Baba and I both know that there’s a good chance this is it. She could certainly go on and live a few more years, maybe even to be a hundred, but she could also leave the world any day now, and who knows when we’ll have another visit. I want to tell her that she was everything to me, that those trips to Sevastopol were everything, that I didn’t judge her for having affairs, not really, that I never expected her to be perfect.