There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In (16 page)

•   •   •

Many years, I’ll repeat, passed over our peaceful Friday gatherings. Andrey the informer turned from a golden-haired Paris into a father, then an abandoned husband, then the owner of a condominium bought for his new wife by her father the colonel, and finally an alcoholic. But as in college, he remained in love with Marisha, who knew and appreciated it. All other women in his life were just replacements. Once or twice a year Andrey performed a sacred ritual, a slow dance with Marisha.

Zhora grew from an unruly undergraduate into a penniless research fellow with three children, a future star of his field, but his essence remained unchanged, and that essence was his ardent love for Marisha, who had always loved Serge and no one else.

My Kolya also worshipped Marisha. All our boys lost their heads over Marisha in our freshman year, and their competition continued up until the shocking moment when Serge, who was married to Marisha and alone had rights to her, suddenly up and left her for another woman, whom he had adored, it turned out, since grade school. It happened on New Year’s Eve, in the middle of the charades: he simply got up with an announcement that he must call his beloved, to wish her a happy New Year. Just like that.

We were all deeply shaken, for if the boys worshipped Marisha, we all of us collectively worshipped Marisha and Serge as a couple. Many years ago Serge fell in love with Marisha and offered her marriage, but Marisha was seduced by a charming scoundrel, a certain Jean, and rejected Serge’s pure first love. After Jean had left her, she crawled back to Serge and proposed marriage to him, forever rejecting the idea of erotic love on the side. She used to say that Serge was a sacred crystal vessel. (“Not easy to make love to,” I would remark.)

In those early days we lived for camping trips, drinking by the bonfire, mocking everything and everyone. The only aspects of the sexual sphere that caught our attention were my white swimming suit, which turned transparent in the water, and the absence of a lavatory at our camping site, because Zhora complained that in the ocean poop didn’t swim away. Romantic Andrey walked three miles to the TB sanatorium to dance with the patients; Serge expressed his masculinity through scuba diving. At night I could hear rhythmic knocking coming from their tent, but her entire married life, Marisha remained a jittery creature with shining eyes, which didn’t speak well of Serge’s abilities.

The sexual flame that flickered around Marisha in combination with her inaccessibility held our circle together for so long. The girls loved Serge and wanted to replace Marisha, but at the same time pitied Marisha and wouldn’t betray her. Everything and everyone was full of their undivided, irresistible love, but Serge, the only one with the right of access to the beautiful Marisha, was restless with anger, and one time this ulcer partially broke. We were sitting at the table discussing sexual themes—innocently, for we were pure people and could discuss anything innocently. Someone mentioned the book
Sexopathology
by a Polish author. Now, that book was an entirely new phenomenon for our society, where every citizen lived as if on a desert island. In the book, I announced, sex is divided into three parts: in the first, the spouses arouse one another by stroking their earlobes! Did you know that, Serge? Everyone froze, and Serge began to shake and sputter and scream that his attitude toward me had always been deeply negative—but what did I care? I knew I had hit the mark.

•   •   •

All this had taken place before Serge rediscovered the love of his life and before the patrolman Valera began his vigils on Stulin Street, and also before I found out that I was losing my eyesight, and definitely before I realized that Marisha was jealous of my Kolya. Suddenly all the knots became untied. Serge stopped sleeping on Stulin Street; our Friday gatherings moved to the room Tanya shared with her teenage son, who was pathologically jealous of her and who had to be moved to Stulin Street, where he spent the night with Sonya. I remarked that it would do them both good, they should get used to sleeping with each other, but as usual no one paid me any attention.

In between Fridays we were overtaken by a wave of tragic events. Marisha’s father was run over by a car outside her house—he was heavily intoxicated, as the autopsy showed. That night he had had a conversation with Serge, man to man, about his decision to leave Marisha. The conversation took place early, when Sonya was still awake. They were keeping from Sonya that Serge had left the family. Serge came home after work and stayed until nine to put Sonya to bed, then went back to his childhood erotic ideal. Poor Marisha’s father, who himself was onto his second family, walked in on them right in the middle of this fake family time, said some useless things, and uselessly perished under the car at nine thirty, when there is no traffic.

During that time my mother melted from 160 pounds to 70. She held up bravely, but right at the end her doctors decided to look for a nonexistent ulcer: they opened her up, then by mistake sewed a bowel to the stomach muscle, leaving her to die with an open wound the size of a fist. When they rolled her out to me, dead, crudely stitched up with a gaping hole in her belly, something happened: I couldn’t understand how this could have been done to a human being, let alone my mother, and began to imagine that my mama was somewhere else, that this couldn’t be her.

Kolya wasn’t with me that day. He and I had separated five years earlier but didn’t pay for the divorce and continued to live like roommates, as is often done. After my mother’s funeral, though, he informed me that he had paid his share and suggested that I pay, too, and so I did. Three months later my father died from a heart attack, in his sleep: I got up to put a blanket over Alesha and saw that Papa wasn’t breathing. I went back to bed, waited till morning, and saw them both off: Alesha to school and Papa to the morgue.

•   •   •

So I missed several Fridays, and then came Easter, when by tradition we congregate at my house. My parents used to help me with the cooking; then they and Alesha would travel for ninety minutes to our allotment, where they would stay the night in an unheated shack so my guests could party all night in our house. This year I told Alesha that he was going to the allotment alone: he was big enough—seven years old—and knew his way there perfectly. I also forbade him to come back and ring the bell under any circumstances.

That morning I took Alesha for the first time to visit my parents’ grave. He helped me carry water; we planted some daisies. Alesha overcame his initial fear and took pleasure in planting flowers in our clean, dry soil—I had my parents cremated, so there are just urns with ashes, nothing to be afraid of—and then we washed our hands and ate our bread, apples, and Easter eggs, leaving the crumbs for the birds. Everywhere around us people were drinking and eating at their family plots—we have preserved the tradition of visits to the cemetery on Easter, when the air smells of early spring and the dead are lying in their neat graves, remembered and toasted; and we will all go down the same road, everything ending for us with paper flowers, ceramic portraits, birds in the air, and bright Easter eggs on the ground. On the way home, on the subway and bus, everyone was tipsy but in an amicable, peaceful way, as though we had just peeked beyond the grave, seen fresh air and plastic flowers, and drunk to them.

From the cemetery Alesha set out without rest for the allotment, and I went back home to start dough for cabbage pies—all I could afford that year. A cabbage pie, a pie with Mama’s jam, potato salad, boiled eggs, grated beets, a little cheese and salami—good enough. My salary is small, and I couldn’t expect Kolya to chip in—he had practically moved in with his parents and on his rare visits yelled at Alesha that he didn’t eat right, didn’t sit right, dropped crumbs on the floor, watched television all the time, didn’t read anything, and was growing up to be God knows what. This pointless rant was in fact a scream of envy inspired by Sonya, Marisha and Serge’s daughter, who sang, composed music, went to the elite music school where the competition was three hundred students per slot, read since age two, and wrote poetry and prose. At the end of the day Kolya did love Alesha, but he would have loved him a lot more if Alesha were talented and handsome, good at his studies, and popular with his peers. Right now Kolya saw a version of himself, which drove him up the wall. Like Kolya, our son had poor teeth, which hadn’t come in completely. Also, he had never adjusted to his orphaned status after losing my parents, and ate sloppily, without chewing, dropping large pieces on his lap and spilling everything. In addition he began to wet his bed. Kolya flew like a corkscrew out of our family nest in order not to see his little son drenched in pee, shaking in wet underpants. When Kolya saw this for the first time, he slapped Alesha with the back of his hand, and Alesha fell back into his filthy bed, relieved to be punished. I just smirked and left for work. That day I had an appointment with an ophthalmologist, who diagnosed the same hereditary illness that killed my mother. (She didn’t name it, but she did prescribe the same drops and the same tests.) So how could I care that Alesha was peeing himself and that Kolya had slapped him? New horizons opened up before me, and I began to take measures toward saving my son from the fate of an orphan.

•   •   •

That Easter day, after coming back from the cemetery, I baked my pies, extended the dinner table, covered it with a tablecloth, arranged plates and wineglasses, salads, cold cuts, and bread. In the evening, with Alesha gone, I received my slightly embarrassed guests. They all came because of Marisha, who was too brave and too proud not to show her face. Serge was there, too, and my newly divorced husband, Kolya, with his ruined teeth. He went straight into the kitchen to unpack everyone’s contributions to the table: boiled potatoes, pickled cucumbers, and many bottles of wine—clearly, they planned to party all night. And why not? There was an empty apartment at their disposal, plus the titillating fact that Marisha and my Kolya had been married the day before. Serge behaved as usual, only a little ravenous for booze; he and Zhora immediately retreated to celebrate. Lenka had long been gone; someone saw her on the subway wrapped tightly in a shawl: she said she had delivered a stillborn baby but didn’t complain, only mentioned her breast milk arrived. Andrey the informer put on a record; his underage wife, Nadya, began to play mother of the family, telling me in detail how much child support Andrey was paying, and that he didn’t want to defend his thesis because his entire raise would go to his former wife and daughter and so on. Tanya the Valkyrie walked in, flashing her eyes and white teeth at me; I asked if her son was sharing Sonya’s bed, but she just brayed.

“For you, Tanya, it’s nothing, but Marisha has a daughter—have you taught her how not to get pregnant?”

“What’s going on?” Nadya jumped in.

“Nadya,” I asked her, “is it true you have a glass eye?”

“She’s always been like that,” explained shining Tanya, and Andrey added that his attitude toward me had always been deeply negative, but I ignored the informing scum.

Serge and Zhora, already drunk, emerged from the kitchen, and Kolya stepped out of our former bedroom—God knows what he was doing there.

“Kolya, have you finished selecting sheets for your new marital bed?” I addressed him. I knew by his reaction that I was right.

“Marisha,” I continued, “do you have enough sheets to sleep with my husband? Mine are all ruined. Kolya decided to wash the sheets for the first time in his life, and he boiled them: all the sperm cooked, and now it looks like clouds in the sky.”

They all laughed and sat down to eat. Then it was Serge’s turn. Mumbling drunkenly, he argued with Zhora about the theory of a certain Riabkin: Serge attacked it viciously, and Zhora defended it, but without enthusiasm. Finally Zhora grew tired and agreed with Serge with obvious condescension, and suddenly we saw that our genius Serge was just a failing, unrecognized scholar, while bedraggled Zhora was a true rising star, for nothing betrays success like condescension toward one’s peers.

“Zhora, when are you defending your doctoral thesis?” I asked him at random, and guessed correctly, for Zhora took the bait and told us excitedly that his pre-defense was on Tuesday and the actual defense whenever they could find a slot in the schedule.

For a moment everyone was silent, and then began to drink. They drank to the point of blacking out. Andrey began to complain that his local Party committee wouldn’t allow them to buy a three-room apartment, to the displeasure of Nadya’s papa, who was recently promoted to general and wanted to shower her with presents—if she agreed to study and hold off on a child. Nadya pouted that she wanted a baby, but no one listened to her. Marisha and Kolya were talking quietly, probably deciding when Kolya should pick up the rest of his things and where they were going to keep them while Marisha’s apartment was being exchanged for a room for Serge and a small one-bedroom for Marisha, so that Sonya could have a private room for her music, and Serge could have somewhere to live with his childhood love, and Marisha could sleep with my husband.

“Marisha,” I asked her, “how do you like my house? Do you want to move in here? Alesha and I will live where you tell us—we don’t need much. You may keep all my things, too.”

“Idiot!” Andrey yelled. “All Marisha thinks about is how not to take anything from you!”

“But why not? Go ahead, take it. Alesha’s going to an orphanage. I’ve made arrangements—I found one in Borovsk, a long way from here.”

“Let’s get out of here. I’m sick of this show,” protested the informer, but as Andrey got up to leave, the others didn’t stir—they wanted to stay for the curtain.

I reached for the papers on the bookshelf and showed them to Kolya. He took one look and tore everything up.

“Idiot, shameless idiot,” spat Andrey.

I leaned back in my chair. “Help yourselves, dear guests,” I told them. “I’ll be right back with the pies.”

“Fine,” said Serge, and back to drinking they went. Andrey put on another record, and Serge invited his former wife, Marisha, for a dance. Marisha blushed and threw me a guilty glance. So I had already become their collective conscience, I thought.