Still Here

Chapter 6: Bury Your Mother

On her sixth day in Moscow, Regina woke up at six A.M. There was a message on her iPhone. “Good morning, honey. How are you? Love, Bob.” She texted back: “Everything’s fine with me. I miss you. I love you very much.”

She tried to go back to sleep, but the sticky anxiety she felt about the task she had to accomplish today wouldn’t let her.

Her flight back to New York was scheduled to depart in thirty-six hours, but she hadn’t seen Aunt Masha yet or visited her mother’s grave. “I will definitely do it today,” she would say to herself every morning, and late every night while she undressed to go to bed, she would say to herself: “I will definitely go tomorrow.”

Regina didn’t feel like going to the theater or visiting any of her favorite museums either; what she did was wander around Moscow neighborhoods all day, then return to her hotel room, order dinner, and eat it while watching old Russian movies. She talked to Bob on Skype every night, but these conversations were so tame and boring compared to what they used to do when she was still living in Russia. Back then they used Skype for sex. She thought of the thrill of seeing their bodies on-screen. They both appeared to be longer, softer, more mysterious. The best part for her was watching Bob hold his breath while she unbuttoned her blouse.

And now it was more like “How’s the food?” “Is it really cold over there?” “Is the traffic as insane as it used to be?” Bob said that he missed her, but he was also too engrossed in his business to seem convincing. He had come up with an idea for an app that allowed you to find people with similar genomes in any crowd. He thought it had the existential value of breaking the void of loneliness, of making strangers feel connected. There were actually tears in his eyes when he first described the idea to Regina. He’d been talking to Dancing Drosophilae for a long time, but now it seemed like they were ready to sign the deal with DigiSly.

“That’s exciting, honey!” Regina said, even though she didn’t really understand Bob’s obsession with genetics or his pride in his supposedly Tudor lineage. Last night though, while they talked on Skype, Regina opened an image of Holbein’s Henry VIII and looked for similarities. She thought she could see some. If you mentally erased Henry’s beard, you could see that both Henry and Bob had thin lips, sharp eyes, and a perfect oval face. The padded shoulders of Henry’s royal costume actually reminded her of Bob’s old football uniform.

Regina’s phone buzzed, announcing another text message. This one was from United, reminding her to check in for her upcoming flight back to New York. Today would have to be the day to visit both Aunt Masha and the cemetery. She couldn’t possibly postpone it any longer. What she could do was try to start the day as late as possible.

Regina turned on the TV, but everything on the screen struck her as demanding and loud. There was none of that sweet pampering that American TV provided to its viewers. Russian TV aimed to goad its customers rather than soothe them.

There was nothing to do except get dressed and go downstairs to the restaurant.

The Sheraton breakfast was a buffet boasting bizarrely international offerings — miso soup and croissants vied for guests’ attention with porridge and blini with red caviar. The few patrons in the room were all grave-looking Russian businessmen. One of them raised his eyes at Regina, winced, and looked away. She was reminded once again of how utterly unattractive she was to Russian men. Regina heaped her plate with a little bit of everything and went to her table. She had forgotten how unbearably boring chewing your food was unless you did it while watching TV.

She reached for her iPad. There was a long e-mail from Sergey. The first since he and Vica had split up. Sergey apologized for avoiding her, explained that he’d needed some time to sort things out. The detailed analysis of what went wrong in his marriage to Vica followed. He started with a long paragraph meant to convey that Regina had always been the only person who truly understood him, then switched to an in-depth analysis of Vica’s person. Regina didn’t have the patience to read the entire thing; she skimmed through the long descriptions of Vica’s materialistic passions and obsession with power and prowess in most of its forms — physical, sexual, financial, although not spiritual. She was very smart. Really smart. She wasn’t well read, no, but she had this incredible ability to grasp the most complex ideas better than anybody he knew. And it would be wrong to say that she had an emotional intelligence rather than an intellectual one. Emotional intelligence was what Vica lacked. If anything, she was emotionally obtuse. She didn’t understand him at all. Sergey ended with an admission that marrying Vica had been a mistake. That he had been blinded. Blinded by what, Regina wondered, Vica’s “obsessive sexual prowess”? Which Regina apparently lacked. She half expected Sergey to conclude by admitting that he should have married the spiritual but bland Regina instead. He didn’t. Regina wasn’t sure if that made her depressed or relieved.

The next e-mail was from Vadik. He wrote that there was some crazy shit happening with Sergey and he was getting plenty sick of him, and it was time she took him off his hands.

“No, thank you,” she wrote and put her phone back into her purse.

Regina left most of her food uneaten, checked out of the hotel, left her luggage with the concierge, and went out on Tverskaya Street. She decided to visit the cemetery first, then go to Aunt Masha’s and spend the night with her. Regina checked her watch — she didn’t have to go right this minute. There was still time for a little walk.

Early November always brought her favorite weather. The trees stood bare and the air stung her cheeks, but it wasn’t bitingly cold yet, and the sun shone bright and strong, creating a dry, aching clarity that usually came a couple of weeks before the first snow. Moscow had barely changed in the two years that she had been gone, and for some reason Regina found herself reluctant to look up and savor the view. Nor did she want to look into the eyes of the passersby, because the newly increased level of anger and discontentment in the Muscovites’ expressions frightened her. She just walked and walked, circling, zigzagging, shortcutting, thrilled by the fact that she never made a wrong turn. She knew Moscow so well that its maps seemed to be imprinted in her footsteps.

Regina walked to the Moscow River, strolled a long stretch of the embankment, then turned away from water toward the city center. She didn’t realize how tired she was until she reached Chistye Prudy. She had been avoiding this area on her previous walks, but there she was — just a few feet away from her former home. Regina sat down on the bench facing the lake and stretched her legs. They ached and throbbed and all but hummed some unhappy tune. The water in front of her looked fake as if there were no depth to it, just a thin layer of mirrored glass. She had sat in this very spot so many times before. She made an effort to bring up the most intense memories of her past so that she could feel an exquisite pain followed by the inevitable release.

Here she was in her dad’s lap when she was three or four, waving to the ducks…the pleasure of his strong grip, his hand pressing into her ribs. With her mom when she was five or six and her legs were so short that she couldn’t bend her knees — her legs clad in thick winter boots stuck out at a ninety-degree angle. Her mother reciting a poem about snow: how the falling snow put everything in turmoil, and it was as if the sky itself came down like an old man in his patched-up winter coat. Regina’s face was smeared with smelly kids’ cream that protected from the frost, and her forehead itched under her woolen hat. She remembered that sensation so well, but she couldn’t remember how her mother looked as she read the poem. All she saw in her mind’s eye was her mother’s emaciated body and glassy eyes as she lay dying. As a teenager Regina would come to the bench by herself. She would sit here with a book, hopelessly homely, but desperately hopeful. Princess Maria from War and Peace was her favorite heroine. So ugly, so serious, so pious, yet she dreamed of carnal love. Princess Maria did find it at the end, with a good, solid, if a little dumb man. Sergey was anything but dumb. Regina smiled, recalling the many times when they had sat in this very spot, and Sergey wouldn’t shut up about Fyodorov while she willed him to kiss her. And when he finally did, she found his kisses too wet and kind of disappointing. As was her makeshift nostalgic therapy. The images in her mind were feeble and loose, incapable of producing enough intensity to result in catharsis.

Regina got up off the bench and walked toward her old building on Lyalin Lane. When she moved to the United States, she had asked Aunt Masha to sell the old apartment and what remained of the furniture and donate the money to an orphanage. But Vadik told her she was crazy. “What if it doesn’t work out with Bob?” So Regina put the money into her bank account.

Their old street looked statelier than Regina remembered, and cleaner, too clean. Most of the buildings were painted soft pastel colors. One of the buildings had a hotel sign on it. A taxi stopped and a young, well-dressed couple got out and walked toward the entrance dragging their bright suitcases, the wheels rapping against the pavement. It was as if whatever messy marks her and her mother’s lives had made there were now removed, cleaned away, painted over. Regina didn’t feel like seeing her building anymore. And it was time to go to visit the cemetery anyway. Aunt Masha had insisted that they go together, but Regina said no. She had to visit her mother’s grave by herself.

She considered a cab, but the thought of sitting in endless traffic jams was unbearable. She walked to the subway station. At the entrance there were a couple of kiosks selling fast food and Regina bought a little meat pie and ate it right there by the kiosk even though she was still full after breakfast. The cemetery, Nicolo-Arkhangelskoye, was situated in one of the newer developments at the far end of Moscow. It was Aunt Masha’s choice, because Regina had refused to have anything to do with the funeral arrangements. She had been drugged out of her mind during the funeral — she could barely remember the ceremony or the place — so this would be like visiting her mother’s grave for the very first time.

The subway ride took forever and then Regina had to take a bus to get to the cemetery. After the first few stops the bus emptied out, with most of the passengers getting off at the treeless new residential complex. White and blue buildings, pristine malls, large empty lots with some construction equipment on them. The cemetery was the last stop on the route. The few remaining passengers on the bus were all women, sullen, withdrawn, resigned. Dutiful daughters, wives, possibly mothers. Most of them were clutching bouquets. Regina had forgotten about flowers. She wondered if it was necessary. You were supposed to either plant or put flowers on the grave, but why? As a remedy for your guilt? To make the grave a nicer place to visit? As a tradition you didn’t question? As a simple means to feel less horrible? Or was this part of some complicated ritual that allowed you a fleeting moment of contact with the departed? Regina hoped that they sold flowers by the cemetery gates. It would be crazy not to. But of course they didn’t. There was a long stone fence connecting the main entrance with the gates reserved for funeral corteges. Not a single flower in sight. “Is there a flower shop inside?” Regina asked one of the women. She glowered at Regina and shook her head. “You should’ve thought about flowers before you boarded the bus,” another woman said. She was proudly carrying a bouquet of imported roses. A younger woman tapped Regina on the shoulder: “Take a few of mine.” She had a large bunch of pale carnations. Regina thanked her and took three. “Take some more,” the woman said with a grin. “I’m sure Misha won’t mind.” Regina took a few more. She felt light-headed and empty as she went through the gates. Once inside, she saw a vast field — she estimated that it was half the size of Central Park. She didn’t remember the grounds being so big. Stone slabs rose like crops in neat endless rows. Regina took out a piece of paper where she had written down the section and lot number and went to consult the map. The map was mounted right on the fence next to hundreds of flyers advertising various services: people offered to fix your loved one’s gravestone, to take care of your grave, to say a prayer in church, to bring flowers and send you timed photographs of those flowers to assure you that they were fresh. The largest flyer warned that the fee for decorating the grave with pine branches didn’t include the cost of branches. And to the right of it was a handwritten sign that asked: “Are you heartbroken because you haven’t visited your loved ones’ graves in a while? Do you feel so guilty that you can’t breathe?” And then it reassured: “Now you don’t have to!!! GrieveForYou will take care of everything.” Regina felt a sudden bout of nausea and hurried away from the fence into the depths of the cemetery. She found her mother’s grave sooner than she’d expected; there it was in the far left corner, exactly as promised on the map. She had expected to be overwhelmed, but what shocked her was how little she actually felt. There was a black granite slab with her mother’s name on it. There was her picture on an oval ceramic plate. None of that stirred Regina. None of that made her feel closer to her mother. If her spirit still existed in some form, it certainly wasn’t there. Regina kneeled by the headstone and put her flowers on the little shelf attached to it. “Hey!” called an old woman a few feet away from her. “Put your flowers in the soil, as if you were planting them; they will keep longer like that.” Regina dug a little hole in the ground with her bare hands — the soil was cakey and cold and somehow revolting. She planted her dead carnations and secured them in a little mound of soil. They looked ridiculous standing up. “But they will keep longer,” Regina said to herself, wondering what was the point of them keeping longer. She stared at her mother’s photograph. Her mother was looking away from the camera, as if she was avoiding Regina. People were supposed to talk to the dead. Regina had no idea what to say. She cleared her throat, terrified that she would sound fake. “Mamochka,” she whispered, “everything’s fine with me. I miss you. I love you very much.”

It was only on the way back — she chose to take a taxi this time — that it hit her that these were the exact words she had texted to Bob this morning. She pressed her forehead to the cold glass of the window and started to cry, not from grief but from shame and emptiness.

Regina asked the driver to take her to the hotel to pick up her luggage and then to Aunt Masha’s.

“That’s your address?” the driver asked, pulling up to the long, moldy, barely lit nine-story building. He sounded doubtful. “Yes,” Regina said. She remembered the building well. When she was a child, Regina’s mother would take her to visit Aunt Masha every week or so. Regina was encouraged to call her “aunt” even though they weren’t related, and Regina was used to referring to the neighborhood as the Aunt’s place. “Are we going all the way to the Aunt’s stop today?” she would ask.

The driver helped her to unload her bags and swiftly drove away. Aunt Masha had told her the downstairs entrance code, but Regina had trouble entering the right combination in the dark. The elevator was all scratched and dented, and there was a stench coming from the garbage chute. She hadn’t expected the building to become so decrepit. Aunt Masha, who took a long time to open the door, looked decrepit as well, older than she was supposed to look. She wore a turtleneck and loose corduroy pants as she always did, but she seemed somehow smaller. Her white hair was shorter and thinner, with patches of pink scalp shining through. “Reginochka!” she exclaimed, pressing her skinny little body into Regina’s, her thin fingers digging into Regina’s back, her sharp chin poking into her shoulder, enveloping her in the smell of the cheap strawberry soap that Regina’s mother used to buy all the time. She immediately felt the lump in her throat and the urge to escape. At least her nightmare proved to be wrong, and the apartment wasn’t teeming with orphans.

“You look well!” Aunt Masha said.

“Thank you, so do you.”

“No, I mean it,” Aunt Masha said, leading Regina toward the kitchen. “I’ve always thought that you looked like Virginia Woolf. But your mother didn’t see it at all.”

“People used to tell me that I looked like Julia Roberts.”

“What, like Pretty Woman? No! Virginia Woolf. Definitely Virginia Woolf.”

Regina followed Aunt Masha to the kitchen, where the tea had already been served. Aunt Masha had never been a fan of elegant meals. There was a greasy aluminum teakettle on the table, a whole loaf of bread, some butter in a chipped teacup, sliced cheese on a saucer, and a one-liter jar of pickled mushrooms. A little girl was sitting on one of the old square stools. She slid down and scampered past them out of the kitchen.

Oh, no! Regina thought.

“That’s Nastya. From the orphanage,” Aunt Masha said.

Regina nodded.

Aunt Masha took out two little shot glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of vodka from the fridge. “Let’s drink to Olga,” she said, pouring half a shot for each of them.

They took a few sips, then ate a mushroom each.

Another idiotic tradition, Regina thought. To eat and drink in memory of the departed. There was something gross about it. As if they were taunting the dead person. Hey, you’re dead and gone, but life goes on, and look how well we’re all eating.

“How was the cemetery?” Masha asked.

“Good,” Regina said. An empty answer to an empty question.

“I visit the grave often,” Masha said, “keep it tidy.”

She took a slice of bread and spread some butter on it, topped it with a slice of cheese, and handed it to Regina. “So, tell me about your life,” she said as soon as Regina took the first bite. “Are you content? Is he a good man?”

Regina smiled, noting the word content. Aunt Masha didn’t believe in marital happiness, only in contentedness. She felt grateful for that phrasing. She did feel content.

“I am. He is a wonderful man.”

“He doesn’t mind that you’re Russian, does he?”

“No, not at all.”

“So you think he understands you?”

Regina nodded. Aunt Masha had always been very direct, but she hadn’t expected a barrage of personal questions of such calculated precision. It sounded as if Aunt Masha had prepared the questions in advance and was reading them off a list.

“You wrote that he has a daughter?”

“A grown daughter from a previous marriage. He’s very fond of her.”

“Good! So he doesn’t mind that you can’t?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Regina said, and rushed to change the subject. “These mushrooms are very good. Did you can them yourself?”

“Nastya helped. She picked most of them, and she helped me clean them. Nastya, come here!”

Regina turned and saw that the little girl was peeking at them from behind the large cabinet in the hallway. She ran away as soon as she caught Regina’s stare. Gawky, unpretty, in a dress that was too small for her. Regina didn’t have a chance to get a better look.

“How’s Sergey? Do you see him?” Aunt Masha asked. She never bothered with small talk. Always went right for the subjects that really interested her, no matter how awkward they were.

Regina told her about Sergey’s marital troubles. Aunt Masha seemed surprised.

“I’ve always thought that pushy girl was a perfect fit for him,” she said.

“And I wasn’t?”

“No, you weren’t. And he wasn’t a right fit for you. I would tell this to Olga again and again, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She never listened to me.”

Oh, just leave my mom alone, Regina thought, but she couldn’t help but ask: “Why didn’t you think Sergey was the right fit for me?”

“He’s too weak and too much of a dreamer. You need a manlier man.”

Vadik? Regina thought and was immediately ashamed. Why Vadik, when she had Bob? Bob was a manly man, whatever that meant. A wholesome man. Vadik was anything but wholesome.

“It was Olga who brought Sergey and you together. I remember how she called me all excited and said that her new student was perfect for you. She used to really rule your life, you know.”

“No, she didn’t,” Regina said, helping herself to more mushrooms.

“Oh, yes, she did. Up until she died. I bet she still does in a way. I saw your piece on translation in the last year’s issue of Foreign Literature. You could’ve written about your wonderful career, but you chose to rehash Olga’s old works.”

“That was the idea; they’d asked me to write about my mother.”

“Right,” Aunt Masha said. “And how’s your work? Anything exciting?”

Regina was getting very angry, but she didn’t have enough courage to tell this old woman to stop pestering her. To just stop!

Aunt Masha drained her glass and poured herself another. Poured some more for Regina too. Her face became flushed and she looked younger and feistier, more like the Aunt Masha Regina remembered.

“Do you remember your back exercises?” she asked Regina. “You had to do your homework with a broom handle fixed behind your elbows to keep your back straight. I would visit and see you grimacing in pain, trying to lean over so that you could see your textbook better.”

There was a curling wisp of hair growing out of the right side of Aunt Masha’s damp chin. Regina found it especially hateful.

“I had scoliosis! Those exercises were important.”

“No, you didn’t have scoliosis. All you had was bad posture. A perfectly normal posture for somebody who preferred spending her days on a couch with a book rather than playing sports. Your dad had the same one. How’s he doing by the way?”

Grateful for the change in subject, Regina told her whatever she knew of her father’s life in Canada. Aunt Masha asked for more details. Regina realized that she didn’t know that much.

“How often do you speak to him?”

“He calls me once a month,” Regina said. She neglected to add that she rarely picked up the phone.

“Poor man,” Aunt Masha said and drained another glass.

Regina didn’t touch hers.

That poor man abandoned his wife and child! And Aunt Masha knew this. She had been Regina’s mother’s closest friend at the time. She had been her closest friend ever since college. Why had she decided to unleash this hateful attack on Regina’s mother? Who had died? Who had died!

“He was an enormously talented writer, your father was.”

“Yeah, a great writer who never published a book.”

“Do you know why he didn’t?”

Regina could guess where this was going. The evil Olga wouldn’t let him.

“Olga was really jealous of his talent.”

Yep, Regina thought. She wished she had enough courage to just stand up and leave. But she realized that it wasn’t only politeness that stopped her. She had a perverse desire to hear the rest of this bullshit. To hear how far Aunt Masha would go.

“Because Olga, even though brilliant as a translator, had never been really creative. She couldn’t stand Grigory’s success. So whatever praise he would get from his early publications in magazines, she would squash him with her ‘kindly’ discouragement. And she always maintained that she had to be honest with him because she loved him, because she was the only one who truly cared.”

“You know, if he really were so talented, a little honesty from his wife wouldn’t have ruined his career.”

“He was not a strong man. No, he wasn’t. And look at you. Always in your mother’s shadow. They asked you to write a piece, and what topic did you choose? Mommy dearest!”

Regina felt a quiet movement behind her back. Nastya had walked into the kitchen and was standing by the fridge. Her light blue woolen dress had some dark (chocolate?) stains around the collar.

“Nastya, come in, sit down,” Aunt Masha said, and this time Nastya came closer and climbed on a smaller stool across the table from Regina. Aunt Masha gave her a piece of bread with butter and cheese, and Nastya took a big bite and started to chew.

She was an unusually homely child, with pale unhealthy skin, a big nose, and mousy hair.

“How old is she?” Regina asked.

“Why are you asking me? Ask her.”

Regina had always hated talking to children. She wasn’t that good at talking to adults either, but it was conversing with children that made her sweat. She could never find the right tone. She did her best to sound neutral, but it came out as either too cheerful or too cross.

“How old are you, Nastya?” she asked. Too cross.

Nastya didn’t say anything. Just stared at Regina intently, making energetic movements with her jaws.

“She knows that she’s not supposed to talk while chewing.”

Nastya made an audible gulp to swallow the bread mass in her mouth and then said that she was five.

“She is five, but she can count to one hundred,” Aunt Masha announced.

“I forget nineteen and forty-seven,” Nastya said and took another bite. There was something about her that made Regina uncomfortable. They made a nice pair, Aunt Masha and Nastya — Baba Yaga and her creepy little helper. Regina had planned to stay with Aunt Masha the whole day before her flight the next night, but now she saw that she wouldn’t be able to stand it. She would stay the night, then go straight to the city center and spend the whole of tomorrow just wandering the streets.

After they cleared the table, Aunt Masha made Regina a bed on the couch in the large living room and took Nastya to the other room that served as their bedroom. It was 10:00 P.M., only 2:00 P.M. New York time. “Do you mind if I watch TV?” Regina asked.

“The TV’s not working,” Aunt Masha said. “It broke a few months ago, and I decided not to fix it. Do you want a book? Come, pick a book.”

“I have a book,” Regina said and settled on the couch with her iPad. She had downloaded several books for her trip, but she found that she couldn’t concentrate on them any better than when she read printed books. It was actually worse. That thing on the bottom of the page that showed the progress of her reading just wouldn’t move past “1 %.” This made it harder to pretend that she was reading and not just staring at the sentences. She lay on scratchy sheets with the iPad propped on her chest, its screen dark, listening to the sounds that came from Aunt Masha’s room. They went to brush their teeth, then each of them peed and flushed the toilet. Then there were soft sounds of Aunt Masha reading a story to Nastya, Nastya’s giggling. It was hard to imagine what Nastya looked like when she giggled. Then it was quiet. Regina turned the iPad back on, but she still couldn’t focus. She made a few futile attempts to find a Wi-Fi signal. She badly needed to watch something. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t downloaded any movies before she left. Regina got off the couch and walked to the bookshelves hoping to find an easier and more entertaining book. She noticed a framed picture of herself on the wall. She was about fourteen in it. Awkward, unsmiling. That was the age when she did those back exercises. Every day for more than a year. She had a vivid image of herself doing homework with that broom between her elbows. The terrible pain just below her shoulder blades. Biting her lips, willing herself to ignore the pain and focus on her studies. It never occurred to her to question the wisdom of that daily torture. Other kids wore braces. She had perfect teeth, but an imperfect spine — she wore a broom. And what was that nonsense about her dad? Could it be that he really was talented? It had never occurred to her to read any of his stories and judge for herself.

Another train passed by. The whole apartment seemed to shake. This was unbearable.

She heard a soft tapping on the wall of the doorway. There was Aunt Masha in her long white nightgown. Ghostlike in the dark. “Reginochka,” she said, her voice trembling. “Are you asleep?”

“No,” Regina said.

Aunt Masha walked up to her and sat on the edge of the sofa. “Reginochka, please forgive me,” and she started to cry.

Regina sat down next to her, horrified. “No, Aunt Masha, no,” she said, stroking her bony shoulder.

“Reginochka, I’m such a fool. I shouldn’t have said all those things about Olga. It’s just that I felt I had so much to tell you. And I kept rehearsing it all these years. And now you came, but we have so little time to spend together that I had to sort through all those things and pick the important ones. I felt rushed and it came out as cold and awful. I hurt your feelings. Please, please, forgive me!”

Regina nodded.

“You know how much I loved Olga. You must know that!”

“I know,” Regina said.

“Do you?” Aunt Masha asked. “Do you really?”

“Yes, yes, of course I do. She loved you too.”

“She did. I know she did. But she would never admit it. Not as she lay dying. Olga Zhilinskaya — always straight as an arrow.”

Aunt Masha started to sob again and left the room.

Regina went to the bathroom and found some Tazepam on the shelf. She took a pill and went back to the couch. She was out in about five minutes.

She was awakened by a quiet rustling sound. She opened her eyes and saw Nastya sitting at the table with a big children’s book, the sun streaming through the windows. It was hard to tell if she was reading it or just looking at the pictures.

“Good morning,” Regina said. Her head felt unbearably heavy, as if somebody had put a huge sack of potatoes on top of it. That Tazepam was a killer.

“Good morning,” Nastya answered and flipped another page.

“What are you reading?”

“Buratino.”

“Do you like it?”

“I don’t know how to read yet,” Nastya said. “I’m looking at the pictures. There is a boy with a long nose who looks like Pinocchio from the movie.”

Regina was about to explain that Buratino was in fact the Russian version of Pinocchio, shamelessly stolen by Alexey Tolstoy, but decided not to.

“I used to like Buratino too. In fact, it was the first book I read by myself.”

Nastya was unimpressed. Regina wondered if it was more appropriate to leave the child alone or to continue talking to her.

“Bring it over, I’ll read it to you,” she said.

Nastya carefully climbed off the chair, walked to the couch, and sat down in the corner. Regina took the book from her, placed it on her lap, and opened the book to the first page. The inscription in black ink sprang at her: “To Reginochka, on the day when she stops being a Little Puppytail and becomes a schoolgirl.” It was her book! It was the book her mother had given her.

“Oh, my God!” Regina exclaimed.

“Shh!” Nastya said.

Little Puppytail was her pet name all the way through babyhood and preschool.

“This is my book! My mom gave it to me when I was your age,” Regina whispered.

“Masha gave me this book,” Nastya said and started to cry. Regina released her grip on the book, but it was too late.

“Of course, it’s yours now. Of course! It’s just that it used to be mine. But that was a long time ago. Hundreds of years ago.”

Nastya took the book away from her and retreated into the bedroom. There was a long silence, followed by quiet voices, and then puffy-faced, disheveled Masha appeared in the doorway.

“Fighting with a little girl over a book? Seriously, Regina?”

Regina was mortified. “It was a misunderstanding.”

But Masha smiled and said that she was just kidding.

“I’m making farina for breakfast. Do you like farina?”

Regina said that she did.

Nobody talked much over breakfast. Masha looked tired and Nastya was still sulking, and Regina kept adding spoonful after spoonful of cherry jam into her bland kasha.

Regina was about to say that she was leaving when Aunt Masha asked if she could watch Nastya for an hour or so, while Masha went to a doctor’s appointment. Regina had a quick paranoid thought that this was a setup, that Masha would just disappear and Regina would be stuck with taking care of the girl forever. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? And so far Aunt Masha hadn’t even mentioned the subject of adoption. She must have finally accepted Regina’s objections.

“There is a suitcase with a few of Olga’s things under my bed,” Aunt Masha said before she left. “Look through them. You might want to take something.”

Aunt Masha’s room was long and narrow, with a door opening onto the small glassed-in balcony, filled with some old boxes, burlap sacks, and dusty jars. All the furniture was put in two rows lining the walls. Bookcases on the right side. Masha’s rickety desk, her narrow brass bed, and a small couch that must have served as a bed for Nastya on the left. In the little corner by the door, there were a kid-size table and chair, a toy piano, a tiny makeshift dollhouse, and a few easy-to-reach bookshelves. Most of the books there used to belong to Regina, but she knew better than to comment on it, especially since Nastya was crouched by the shelves with a defiant expression. She seemed to be prepared to guard her belongings. Regina noticed that she had moved her little table so that it now blocked access to her corner.

“Nastya,” Regina called, but she turned away from her.

Fine, Regina thought.

She reached under Masha’s bed and dragged the large leather suitcase out. When she opened it, the smell of mothballs was so strong that her head started to hurt.

“It smells like rats,” Nastya said.

There was her mother’s old fur hat on top. Faded to gray now, but still fluffy. Regina pressed it to her face, trying to ignore the smell.

It was really soft, achingly soft.

She buried her face into the fur and moaned. “Mama.”

“Is that your mama’s hat?” Nastya said. She was standing right next to her.

“Yes, it used to be my mom’s hat,” Regina said. “She died.”

Nastya furrowed her forehead and looked at Regina intently.

Was she not supposed to say that to a child? She wasn’t! Clearly she wasn’t. Perhaps Nastya didn’t know what “died” meant. How could she possibly know that? But it turned out that she did.

“I know,” Nastya said, “Masha told me. She is in the grave. My mama is in the grave too.”

Regina reached out her beret-clad hand to Nastya. “Do you want to pet it? It’s soft like a kitten.”

Nastya edged over, touched the beret with the tips of her fingers.

“No, like a bunny,” she said. “We had a bunny, where I lived before. It got sick and then it got dead.”

“Do you want to see what else is in there?” Regina asked, pointing to the suitcase.

Nastya nodded and knelt on the floor next to Regina. “What is that?” she asked, pointing at the round tin box buried between two sweaters.

“Let’s look,” Regina said.

Nastya took the box and tugged on the lid. It wouldn’t budge. This was an old blue and white tin box with the golden letters BELUGA CAVIAR. Something jingled inside.

“Pirate coins!” Nastya said.

Regina couldn’t open it either. She got a knife from the kitchen and hooked it under the edge of the lid. The lid gave in and jumped off the box and onto the floor.

“Ah!” Nastya cried as if she had discovered a much better treasure than either diamonds or gold coins. “Buttons!!!”

Nastya climbed off her chair, took the box from Regina, and set it on the floor. She then sat cross-legged down next to the box with her back very straight. Her thin greasy hair was done in a braid, so short that it stuck out on the back of her head. Her neck was long and skinny and not very clean, with a hollow in the middle that made her look especially fragile.

Was that how I had looked to my mother when I sat and played with those same buttons? Regina wondered. She sat down next to Nastya and stroked her thin shoulders.

That was what Aunt Masha saw when she came back from her appointment. The two of them sitting on the floor together playing with buttons. She couldn’t have been more pleased.

“Let’s go for a walk, girls,” she said.

Regina looked at her watch. “Twenty minutes, and then I’m leaving.”

“Suit yourself,” Aunt Masha said.

Nastya had a virtuoso way of dressing. She sat down in the middle of the floor, pulled on her boots, stood up, and stomped on each foot to make them fit tighter. Then she put her knitted hat on, tied the strings, and made a neat bow, centrally located under her chin. The next step was to put on her coat, which had a system to it too. She pulled on the ends of her sweater sleeves, squeezed them in her fists, and only then started pushing her arms through the sleeves of her coat.

“Good, Nastya, good,” Aunt Masha said. “You don’t want your sleeves all bunched up inside your coat.”

In a few seconds Nastya was all buttoned up and standing by the door, holding her sand pail, her slightly battered Barbie, and an assortment of sand tools.

In the daylight, the neighborhood looked even worse. The entrance of the building was half blocked by the overflowing garbage bin, and there were three stray dogs picking at the garbage without much hope in their eyes. One of the dogs growled at them. Nastya grabbed onto Regina’s thigh, hurting her.

“Regina, take her hand!” Aunt Masha ordered.

Regina was amazed at how light Nastya’s hand turned out to be. Warm, weightless fingers, so thin that Regina was afraid that she’d accidentally squeeze them too hard. She realized that she had never led anyone by the hand before. She marveled at how much intuitive precision was required to make this simple action work. You had to communicate direction by the tiniest pressure of your fingers, and you were entirely responsible for the person you led.

They crossed the street and walked to the neglected playground, with a couple of rusty swings, a broken seesaw, a sandbox, and a strange contraption that looked like a huge rotating birdcage. There were two small children in it, and another older child was pushing the thing counterclockwise, producing a horrible screech. Nastya let go of Regina’s hand and ran toward the sandbox.

Aunt Masha went to sit down on the bench; Regina joined her. It was strange how she could still feel the warmth of Nastya’s fingers in her palm. One of the stray dogs ran up to them, and Aunt Masha reached into her purse, took out a piece of bread with cheese, and fed it to the dog. Then she stroked its grateful muzzle, and the dog lay down and curled at her feet.

“Are you sure you have to leave tonight?” Aunt Masha asked.

“Yes, I have my ticket.”

“I really hoped you’d spend more time with us.”

“Well, I need to get back,” Regina said.

Aunt Masha took a large handkerchief out of her pocket, blew her nose, and folded it back into her pocket.

“Then we will have to talk now,” she announced. There was an ominous note in her voice and Regina didn’t like it one bit.

She turned to Regina and took her hand. “Regina, I want you to adopt Nastya.”

Yes, up until that day Regina had been expecting something like this. But as her time in Moscow was coming to an end, she’d stupidly allowed herself to relax. She’d allowed herself to think that the danger was past and Aunt Masha wouldn’t bring up the subject of adoption.

Regina was shocked and she reacted as she always did when shocked. She started to laugh. Right there on that stupid old rusty playground she was shaking with an idiotic, sputtering, unstoppable laughter.

Aunt Masha chose to ignore the laughter and proceeded with Nastya’s story.

“She was sent to our orphanage about a year ago. Her mom died in a car crash. No dad. No relatives. Apparently her mom was an orphan too. A young girl, she was only twenty-two when she died. And Nastya was in a bad shape. Sobbing all the time. Refusing to eat, refusing to talk. Then there were these fights with other kids. Nastya didn’t get along with them. The teachers complained that she would bite other children. They nicknamed her Mad Dog.”

There was that indecent sputtering laughter again. And again Aunt Masha chose to ignore it.

“There was talk of transferring her to an institution for mentally challenged children. You can imagine what happens to kids there. And I just knew that she was a perfectly normal kid, and a smart wonderful kid at that. I could see it in her eyes.”

Regina still wasn’t registering what any of this had to do with her. She sat there nodding, shaking her head from time to time, as if she were listening to a radio play.

“Look, I’m digging a grave for my Barbie,” Nastya yelled from her sandbox.

“Good girl,” Aunt Masha yelled back. “Dig her a big one.

“So I would take her aside,” she continued, “and try to comfort her, play with her, read to her, and she started to respond to me. She got better. But then every time my shift would end, she would break down crying, and sometimes I would just bring her home with me. Our director didn’t mind. Tatyana Ivanovna, you must have seen her at your mom’s funeral. A nice woman. Not very bright, far from it, but with a heart. So I would just bring Nastya home, and then I would let her stay during vacations, and then gradually she just started to live with me unofficially.”

“That sounds like an ideal situation for both of you,” Regina said.

“No, Regina,” Aunt Masha said, her voice turning low and grave. “The situation is not ideal. They won’t let me legally adopt her, because I’m too old, so this whole arrangement is hanging on Tatyana Ivanovna’s goodwill. What if she leaves? What if they take Nastya away from me? And then what if I drop dead tomorrow? Look what happened to Olga, and she was healthy as a horse her whole life! While I have high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney problems. Regina, you have to take her!”

Aunt Masha took Regina’s hand and squeezed it so tightly that Regina cried out in pain because her wedding ring cut into the flesh of her little finger.

No, she wanted to scream. No! No! No!

It took enormous effort for her to answer in a normal voice. “No, Masha, I can’t do this.”

“And why the hell not?” Aunt Masha asked. She was getting flushed and angry again, and a little bit crazy. Regina remembered the violent fights she and her mother sometimes had. There was even that one time when Aunt Masha had slapped her mother across the face. She looked as if she was ready to slap Regina now.

“You’re young, you’re healthy,” she said, “you’re happily married. Your husband sounds like a kind, responsible man. You have plenty of money. So why don’t you do a single unselfish thing in your life and save this little girl?”

Now it was Regina who felt like hitting Aunt Masha. “I can’t,” she said. “I simply can’t.”

“Tell me why.”

Regina wanted to say that Bob wouldn’t go for it. But that wasn’t true. In fact, she was almost sure that Bob would welcome the idea. The problem was her and her alone, and Aunt Masha knew this. Then a thought of salvation occurred to her.

“Well, what about Dima Yakovlev’s law? We are Americans so we can’t adopt a Russian child.”

This law was named after an adopted Russian boy who died in a parked car, left there by his adoptive American parents. The law imposed by Putin’s government in 2012 prohibited American citizens from adopting Russian children. It was an ugly hypocritical law. It was designed to hurt Americans, but it actually robbed Russian orphans of their chance to have a decent future. When she first heard about it, Regina was infuriated. Now she felt almost grateful.

“I’ve thought about Dima Yakovlev’s law,” Masha said. “And there is a way to get around it. You’re not an American citizen yet?”

“I have a green card.”

“Yes. But do you still have your Russian passport?”

“I do,” Regina said reluctantly.

“There you go. They can’t refuse a Russian citizen, can they? Especially one like you, who can afford a really large bribe. I happen to know just the person to bribe. And nobody needs to know that you’re planning to live in the United States with the child.”

Regina looked at Nastya squatting in the sandbox, building a sand mound with a focused expression on her face. She tried to imagine Nastya living in their Tribeca loft. They would have to outfit their guest bedroom as a room for a child. Buy the furniture, buy clothes, buy toys. She would have to learn how to care for a child. There were books on the subject. There were people to help her. Bob knew how to care for a child. Vica and Sergey knew. Nastya would go to school. She would go to doctors. She must have been deeply damaged — just look at her digging that grave — but there were child psychologists for that. All the little practicalities were doable. And yet there was something that made the whole thing impossible.

She could imagine taking care of Nastya and even doing it well, but she couldn’t imagine loving her. A parental love was the craziest, the most incomprehensible of human emotions for her. You had to love somebody ferociously, absolutely, no matter what. Look at Vica and Sergey, who seemed to be competing for the worst parent award (both negligent, permissive, easily annoyed, preoccupied with themselves), and yet they were both crazy about their boy. And look at her mother, forcing her to wear a broom, with her fierce attempts to rule her love life, with her violent fight to keep Regina at her side. No matter how misguided, that was real love.

“I don’t think I can love a child,” Regina said. “I’ve known this for a long time. I don’t have the capacity for that. And a child deserves to be loved fully and absolutely.”

Aunt Masha’s features seemed to soften. She reached out and stroked Regina’s hand in the same way she’d stroked that stray dog.

“Look at it this way, Regina. Suppose you take Nastya and you can’t love her the way a mother would. You would still take care of her, you just won’t love her enough. She’d be fine, just slightly underloved. Now, compare this fate to the fate of somebody destined to spend a lifetime in a state-sponsored Russian orphanage.”

As if on cue, Nastya smiled and waved at them with her little shovel.

“Listen,” Aunt Masha said in the softest voice she was capable of. “You don’t have to decide now. Think about it, talk to your husband. Spend some time with Nastya just to try it out. We won’t tell her anything until you decide.”

Regina felt a numb horror. A well-planned trap. A horrible, sticky, suffocating trap. If she refused, she would be saddled with a horrible guilt for the rest of her life. She hadn’t done anything wrong and yet she would have to carry that guilt. And if she agreed…But she couldn’t agree! She couldn’t! And since the only impulse of a trapped person was to try to escape, that was what Regina did.

“I can’t! You can’t do this to me. It’s unfair!” she screamed and stood up with such force that the stray dog under the bench jumped up in fear.

“Masha, what is it?” asked a scared Nastya from the sandbox.

“Let’s go,” Aunt Masha said. “Regina has to go to the airport.”

They walked back to the apartment. This time it was Aunt Masha who was holding Nastya’s hand. Regina packed her things in a hurry and picked up the suitcase with her mother’s things.

“Good-bye,” Nastya said, “come again.”

Regina leaned down to kiss her on the top of her head, and Nastya’s little braid brushed against her cheek.

“Good-bye, Nastya,” she said. “Good-bye, Aunt Masha.”

Aunt Masha nodded silently.

“Wait,” Nastya said, “take your buttons.”

“You can have them. I want you to have them.”

Nastya smiled a happy, but slightly embarrassed smile, as if she had been given an undeserved treasure.

It took Regina forty minutes to find a cab, and when she did, she asked the driver to take her straight to Sheremetyevo. She thought she’d just wait the remaining few hours there in the airport. She had absolutely no desire to spend any more time in the city. She sat in a gleaming leather seat in the business-class lounge watching TV but not really seeing it. She dialed Bob’s number, and when he answered it, his voice was so dear and so kind that she couldn’t speak for a moment. She was gasping for breath.

“Baby, what is it? What’s wrong? Baby, are you okay?” he kept asking her. It took her a few minutes to get ahold of herself and find her words.

“I’m fine,” she finally said. “I just can’t wait to come home.”