There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In (7 page)

“The patrolman stopped by to warn us.”

“What the . . .”

“That we must not register you.”

“Ah, you . . .”

“Please. Of course we’ll register you. Of course.”

“Fuck that. I’m getting married. You know what you can do with your registration?”

“Who are you going to marry? These two?”

“Why? You think they’ll make bad wives?”

The girls brayed with merriment, revealing missing teeth.

“By the way, where’s Granny?”

“I didn’t want to put it in a letter. . . . Granny’s not well.”

“You mean dead?”

“Worse. Much worse. The worst that can happen to a person. Do you understand?”

“But where is she?”

“Kashchenko Asylum. Where else?”

“So you two got rid of her.”

He grabbed the suitcase, and they rolled out.

•   •   •

The time is night. Everything’s quiet. Only Niura, my neighbor, is pounding soup bones for her children’s breakfast.

What’s interesting is that Deza Abramovna, the chief at the psychiatric clinic, believes that inside the clinic are mostly normal people who simply lack something. The true lunatics, she told me, are outside. Big deal, I thought at the time, like an idiot. I, too, lack lots of things. Only later did I understand. I would come to her crying that my mother had left the gas on, or almost burned down our apartment, or left meat on the balcony while we were gone for two weeks—we came back and there it was, under the layers of flies and eggs, imagine the smell. That was a frightening time in our lives, when Andrey was summoned daily to the detective’s office (I went once and was yelled at), from which he ventured home yellow and lifeless. He was constantly getting calls and being dragged off to meetings—with the parents, I understood later, of his so-called friends, who wanted to convince him to take the blame.

My mother couldn’t wrap her poor old mind around what was happening and only repeated anxiously that the boy didn’t look well, that he must eat, or that the girl came home last night with a dirty spot on her coat, she must have laid on her back somewhere. Then her nagging stopped and she disappeared into her room, and Andrey left for yet another interrogation and didn’t come back. She didn’t even ask where he was. Months passed; she carefully arranged her teeth on a bookshelf, and one day she produced a plastic bag filled with bloodied cotton balls so I could see how many times she spit up blood. What for? Mama! Who, what committee is going to see this? Give it to me—I’ll throw it away! Look at yourself: What are you wearing? You have a closet full of clothes; what are you saving them for? For better times, as I understood, for that special day when the door will swing open and she’ll come out, young, in a beautiful new dress and everyone will swoon, and then—attention!—someone will marry her (but not some bed-wetting retiree, oh no). Instead, she invited me into her room and whispered that they had come.

“My God. Who?”

“They. The ambulance. Don’t yell.”

Outside, an ambulance was passing in the rain.

“Yesterday, when I stepped out, they followed. A policeman, too. I turned around and began walking right at him, grinning. I’m not afraid of them!”

My God. I stood frozen in the middle of the kitchen, then shuffled into Alena’s room and told her that Granny had lost her mind. She replied that it was I who had lost my mind. Don’t worry, I told her, it happens—heredity, nothing you can do. It happened to Granny’s sister, who lived a long time, incidentally. Alena rolled out of bed and went to talk to my mother, then came out in tears, shocked. I told her that she, too, needed to be examined, because it runs in the family. I didn’t mention to her that I had already invited a psychiatrist, who posed as a regular physician making a house call. During that visit Alena was rude; asked why she was in bed in the middle of the day instead of school, she marched into the bathroom and stayed there until the doctor left.

“You call yourself normal?” I appealed to her. “Look at yourself. Again you missed class. You read all night and can’t get up in the morning. This is psychosis. Hereditary. Please, honey.” But she just laughed hysterically and slammed the door in my face.

I only said that to shock her into action, to get her out of bed; my heart was bleeding for her. Imagine the horror my life had become: my son in jail, my mother on her way to a crazy house. I simply wanted to drive her out of the trance caused by bad grades, pimples, and some first love of hers, all described in her diary, which I’d read. Here it is.

Please don’t read this diary! Mama, Andrey, Granny: if you read this I’ll leave—for good.

Yesterday we had a seminar with Tatarskaya. S. sat in front of me and kept looking back, over my head, kind of wistfully, laughing. He and Lenka kidded around; I was just sitting there with a serious expression, trying not to swoon. In the cloakroom Lenka suddenly asked me, “Do you want to get together with S. for New Year’s? Because he does.” I could barely walk home. S. and I will be together on the thirty-first!

December 22. Again Lenka announced that S. must be in love with me because he often asks about me and refuses to go to the movies if they tell him I’m not going. She looked at me with suspicion, but I let on nothing. Of course I know she loves him; about me she isn’t sure. I was so happy I couldn’t sleep. Today S. wasn’t at school. I must discipline myself! I must stretch in the mornings! Last time S. told me that he got up at noon.

December 30. New Year’s Eve is tomorrow. Barely passed exam today. Cried in the hall. S. finished first and left right away. Gathered up courage and asked Lenka where she and S. were going tomorrow. To the club of the University of Transport, she told me, like it was nothing. S. declared that he hates all-nighters. Lenka bought them two tickets, which included a glass of champagne, a party favor, an American movie, a dance party, and a costume ball. The tickets are sold out, she said. She didn’t have enough money for three. I was invited to come along anyway; someone might have an extra ticket. But I’ll need a costume: she’ll be a gypsy, he a pirate. After this announcement I crawled home like a punished dog. Granny and Mama were fighting. Grandma was screaming that I don’t go to bed all night, can’t get up on time for my exams. They should be yelling about their precious Andrey, who smokes.

January 1. Sensational news. Lenka and S. weren’t at the club. I was there at ten sharp, like an idiot, in Granny’s black dress and with a rose in my hair: Granny had dressed me as Carmen. I bought a ticket without any trouble and then shivered in the half-empty hall, watching a so-called concert and a ridiculous dance party until almost midnight. Then bought a glass of champagne, drank it, and left. At home, Mama and Granny were finishing their annual brawl in front of the television. The subject, as usual, was Andrey: he hadn’t been home for three days, called earlier, Mama grabbed the phone and really gave it to him—that Granny was going to have a heart attack, they had to call an ambulance, and so on. He hung up, of course, and Granny didn’t get a chance to speak to her Only One.

January 5. Lenka showed up at the review before the dialectical materialism exam; told me she’d decided not to go to the costume ball, instead got on the train and spent New Year’s in Leningrad with her relatives: little kids squealed, not wanting to go to bed, and Lenka had to discipline them. Tears and misery all over our fair land. S. wasn’t at the review.

January 8. I received a C; will have to take it again. There’ll be screaming at home—I may lose my stipend. As always, S. answered first, got an A, and left. Lenka reports that S. called her and told her that he had been at his high school friend’s for New Year’s; Lenka says he must be gay. We had such a laugh.

January 15. S. came to the library with T.I., who is a junior. Everyone knows she’s a slut. They kept smiling at each other, and then S. put his coat over her shoulders. Lenka sat red as a beet, trying to smile. Later we smoked in the bathroom; she cried. I didn’t cry, just felt empty inside. Life is a bore, ladies and gentlemen. S., I love you, even though you don’t see me. I’d like to give him my photo with just one word: Remember. T.I. is an old slut, twenty years old. I turned seventeen in December. S. will be seventeen in February. He went to first grade at six. Lenka is nineteen. Life’s not going to be easy for her, because she’s so heavy. She’s on a diet now. She has pimples all over her forehead; I do, too, sometimes, but around my nose. She smokes a lot. And she’s already slept with boys. She says she knows just as much about sexual positions and such things as the slut T.I. Lenka’s convinced S. is gay.

January 18. I’m in bed, pretending to study. Am recording Mama’s conversation with Granny in the kitchen. It’s teatime.

Mama: You! You’ve broken all the dishes!

Granny: Me? Me? God help me! What dishes? When?

Mama: Here, look! This cup’s missing its handle! There is a plate missing! Where will I buy new ones?

Granny: It wasn’t me! Help! Somebody help! Here, I swear on my knees I didn’t break anything. (Slowly gets down on her knees.) Here. I swear!

Mama: Oh, stop it, will you. Get up, come on now, get up. It’s not a big deal, after all; it’s just a plate.

Granny: Help me! (Long moan.) What have I ever broken? (Gets up huffing and puffing, then continues tearfully.) When you broke my blue cup—

Mama: Here we go. Try to remember your difficult childhood, too.

Granny: The only thing I ever broke is the spout on the teapot. (The chair squeaks—she sits down to finish her tea.) That was me, I admit it, but it can be glued! I saved the spout.

Mama: What? What teapot?

Granny: The blue one. We’ll glue it on. . . .

Mama: What? The blue teapot? The best teapot in the house? How can we ever use it again?

Granny: You broke my cup, I broke your teapot.

Mama: Alena! Come here.

Me: Mom, I’m studying for the exam. . . .

To confuse Alena further I brought up the subject of pimples. “You see, if you don’t wash yourself there and under your armpits, you are bound to get pimples. At the very least you could wash your own underwear. I do the wash after both of you, but Granny has lost her marbles!”

“And I’ve lost mine,” said this pale, slightly pimply young heroine. Everyone is expected to kneel at her feet. But for that she must at least bathe regularly.

“At the very least, you should shower and wash your hair. And use contraception! Use contraception, since you are sleeping with them.”

Ah, the power of insults. She was crying now, but for herself, not her crazy grandmother.

That was seven years ago, a lifetime.

•   •   •

The time is night. Today there was a knock on the door. Who is it? Personal business. Great. What business?

Then: “Does such and such live here?” Naming my dear son. Southern accent.

“No, no, and no.”

“Where is he?”

“He is renting.”

“Give us the address.”

Right.

“Then open the door.”

“I don’t have to open my door without a warrant.”

Pause.

“You tell your son, woman, to be very careful.”

“Why? Are you a criminal?”

“He’s the criminal. We’ll find him.” Then they kicked the door a few times and scurried away. I counted at least six feet.

I didn’t leave the house that day and called Andrey, who was out of sorts and spoke to me in monosyllables.

“Morning!”

“. . .”

“How’s your heel?”

“Mm.”

“Are you looking for work?”

“Mm.”

“Why not?”

“. . .”

“Come on, stop it. Smile, will you? Why so down? What happened?”

“Mm.”

“You absolutely must get a job.”

“. . .”

“By the way, someone’s looking for you. Again.”

“Who? My friends?”

“That’s right. Your friends. Said they’d find you sooner or later.”

“Who did?”

“Your so-called friends. I told them to go away, that they were criminals.”

“And?”

“They answered that it’s unclear which of you is a criminal. Andrey! What have you done this time?”

“Me? You nuts? Why me?”

Something had clearly happened.

“Well. They are looking for you. There were six feet in all. Approximately.”

“You mean there were three of them?”

“They could be amputees. In any case, you mustn’t come around.”

“I was about to come for my money.”

“Money—from me?”

“Mom, you’ve made this all up, right?”

“You’re funny,” and I hung up.

The monthly tribute, which he imagines I owe him, has been paid twice. Now I’m a pauper! The first time he stole my precious childhood book
Little Lord Fauntleroy
. I was saving it for Tima, for when he’ll be able to accept the heartbreaking news that the little lord will get nothing. Just once I was able to read to him up to that point, just once. Then the book disappeared. Tima and I waited outside the hospital for Nina to come out after her shift. When she did, she was grumpy. She complained about Andrey, said she couldn’t put up with him any longer, that he had to go. It turned out they hadn’t paid their utilities for six months. Nina managed to keep the phone working, but their electricity had been shut off. In despair, Andrey came to rob me. Nina agreed to exchange the book for forty rubles. Forty rubles! I always suspected that Nina was one of those two sluts in sunglasses.