My daughter is staring out at the sunlight, the people passing by, the boats chugging down the river, the taxis honking, the surly girl at the overpriced vintage boutique on the corner arranging the mannequins in the windows to lure customers in. I never woke up before ten in the morning until my daughter was born, and never went to bed before two, but now, I have to say I like this schedule. There’s a hopefulness to the mornings, the day spread out before you like a cozy blanket, the sense that there’s plenty of time to do it all, to make some decisions. Time to start over, to unfuck everything you had fucked.
I don’t realize how far we’ve gone until I see the water, the Hudson gleaming in front of us. We’re miles from the apartment now, but it doesn’t matter, I could use a long walk home. I push her up to the rocks that overlook the dark-blue water, a few sailboats drifting along as the sun rises higher in the sky. It’s not swimming water, no, but a teenage couple kicks at it, their shoes piled up behind them. A big cargo ship passes by, covering one of the sailboats for a moment. Usually, when I take her this far out, my daughter gets tired and starts to fuss. But this time, she’s not complaining. This morning, as I push her toward the water, she likes it. She looks from my face to the sun and back at the water again.
“What do you think, darling?” I ask. And then I stop to watch her taking it all in.
After Mama’s first and only trip to the sea with me and my grandmother, we returned to Kiev to see my grandfather, but we got off to a rough start. When he picked us up at the station, he gave my grandmother a once-over and said, “That’s a lovely bracelet,” and she clamped a hand to her wrist like she had been burned, because she had forgotten to take off what was no doubt a gift from her latest suitor. “Just a silly thing I got from a stand by the water, it’s nothing,” she had said, charging ahead with her suitcase.
But that evening, after a stilted dinner in the formal dining room with the too-big chandelier instead of the cozy kitchen just to please my grandfather, he and I were alone on the gold-framed balcony while Mama and Baba cleaned up. I thought he must definitely know about Baba’s affairs and worried that he might even ask me about it. He was quiet for an interminable amount of time, watching the apartment buildings across the street and the Dnieper in the distance and the sky turning this beautiful pink and orange as the sun inched toward the horizon like he could do it until I was an old woman myself, while we heard the clanking of my grandmother and Mama clearing the plates on the other side of the glass door.
“Your mother loves you, Natasha. You must take care of her,” he said.
“How?” I said. “How exactly do I do that?”
“You do what anyone can in this situation,” he said with a shrug. “You do your best.”
A moment earlier I had felt sorry for my grandfather, but now I was angry. I thought of all of his thoughtful critiques of my acting, and expected him to tell me what to do in the same way. “More feeling at the end,” he could have said. “Give those tears everything you’ve got. But also, honor the complexity of your role.” But he came up empty this time.
“That’s it? That’s all the advice you have for me after, what, seventy years of living? Mama’s going to die, and all I can do is—my best?”
He winked at me and laughed. “If I live any longer, I’ll have even less advice to give.”
Now I laughed, too, forgiving him, feeling choked up all of a sudden. We looked over our shoulders to where my mom was throwing back her head and cracking up at something my grandmother said. Mama stopped in her tracks and looked right at me, her smile disappearing like she was caught doing something. Then she stuck her tongue out at me and laughed again. She was stunning with the dusky light falling on her wavy hair, her face suntanned and fresh from the sea, and I knew I would never be half as beautiful as she was, even if I spent my whole life trying. I turned back to my grandfather.
“One more thing,” he said, and I thought he’d come up with some profound advice at last, something meaningful about the eternal bond between children and their parents, but he didn’t say another word, he just pointed at the sky, where the sun was finally setting below the buildings, casting the river in its early summer evening glow. He opened the door and Mama and Baba stopped what they were doing to join us, and we all watched the sun dip down until we could only see a hint of its bright, burning light.
Dedication
Acknowledgments
This novel wouldn’t have been written if my grandmother, Lana, hadn’t stoked my imagination with stories of her Soviet upbringing. After she passed away five years ago, her sister, Tanya, and niece, Natasha, continued to tell me stories that kept me going. My parents, Olga and Alex, read through several drafts of this book and gave thoughtful feedback about historical inaccuracies, and I am very grateful to them for this, and for raising me to be fascinated by the place we came from, and so much more. My brother, Andrew, supported me in countless ways as well.
I’d also like to thank everyone at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which made it possible for me to share a short version of this project in Ethan Canin’s Long Story Workshop. Ethan and my sharp classmates helped shape the project and made me see that it had potential to be a novel. My agent, Henry Dunow, read many drafts of this novel and put it in good hands, keeping me sane along the way, and Andrea Walker and Emma Caruso, my tireless editors, helped it find its final form. Emma was a superhero, particularly in the home stretch of this project. Jess Bonet and Carrie Neill were always there to answer my endless questions and helped in endless ways. Cindy Berman helped this book fall into place.
My husband, Danny, offered tremendous support to me as I plugged on with this project in ways that leave me speechless. And my daughter, Dasha, kept my spirits high as I wrote, both in utero and in this unbelievable world.
BY MARIA KUZNETSOVA
Oksana, Behave!
Something Unbelievable
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maria Kuznetsova was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and moved to the United States as a child. Her first novel, Oksana, Behave!, was published in 2019. She lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her husband and daughter, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Auburn University. She is also a fiction editor at The Bare Life Review, a journal of immigrant and refugee literature.
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