Oksana, Behave!

by Maria Kuznetsova

  “Let me guess. You never got a parking ticket before you met me. You’re not a bad person.”

  He looked away. “I never said I was a saint. This is different. I think you know that. Since the day we met, I knew you were important. I knew you weren’t just some—”

  “Just some slut,” I said, rising from my seat. “Maybe I am.”

  I stormed away. I hated his wife for having him at night, and then I felt sorry for her for not fully having him. Then I felt sorry for myself for being the other woman the one time it mattered, and then I hated myself and thought this was retribution for all the times I didn’t give a fuck who I hurt. I made it all the way to the Berkeley campus before I realized I needed a ride home. I walked all the way back to where I had left him, and he was still waiting for me there.

  * * *

  —

  Anatoly Petrovich approached me on the beach three days before Baba and I planned to leave. I was writing Roman’s name in the sand with a stick. Baba was passed out under her umbrella with a hint of a smile on her face, her bare-chested-man–covered romance novel splayed open on her stomach. Her suitor was growing desperate. Even his dignified mustache was wilting in the heat. He put a hand on his heart and grimaced and I worried he was having a heart attack, but he was just emphasizing his amorous intentions.

  “I need your help,” he said.

  “Do you love my grandmother?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  His plan was to cover our room in rose petals and chocolate, light some candles, and leave a letter on her bed that would make her swoon. But I needed to butter her up before the romantic nonsense.

  When she woke up, I followed her into the sea and pretended the jellyfish weren’t there. I got stung on my calf and acted as if nothing had happened; I just kept treading water. When we returned to shore, I asked her to read me more choice passages from her novel and agreed that they were very evocative. By the time we packed up, she was in a good mood. Still, I knew Baba needed more than chocolate and a good day at the beach to change her mind, though I was charmed by Anatoly Petrovich’s simplicity.

  “What a lovely day. A lovely day with my granddaughter,” she said. “I can’t believe I lived to be so lucky….” Then she went off on a tangent about how the Nazis had burned the buildings to the left and right of hers during the war, that only two other families in her apartment had survived intact, that it was amazing she was alive at all.

  “It was a great day, Baba. I’m lucky to have you,” I said. I stopped her on the way to our room. “You know, Papa loved Anatoly Petrovich. He called him his second father.”

  “I know that, child.”

  “One time, just after your final visit, he mentioned you two….”

  “Oh?”

  “He said he was happy you were doing so well on your own, but he wished you would just be with Anatoly Petrovich already, because it was obvious how much you loved each other.”

  “He really said that?” she said.

  I nodded, letting her soak in my lie. Of course, Papa could have said something like that, or thought it, at least.

  She composed herself again, and I led her to our room. When she opened the door, she gasped at the candles, the flowers, and the chocolate, and put a hand on her heart. I had not let her suitor down. She read his letter and her eyes filled with tears. She said, “I’m afraid you’re on your own tonight, my dear. Can you keep yourself entertained?” I told her I was a grad student and was used to spending many hours alone, but she was already heading for the shower.

  I woke up from a short nap to find Baba facing the mirror, trying to put her necklace on. Her hands were shaking. I rose from bed and stood behind her and helped her to clasp it, admiring her image: her rosy cheeks, her silver dress and bright-red hair. We didn’t really look like each other, so I was surprised to find two matching pairs of big eyes staring back at us.

  “Gray eyes aren’t so bad after all, are they?” she said.

  I laughed. “Blue eyes or gray, you don’t look a day over fifty.”

  “You little liar,” she said, pinching my side. “How I love you.”

  I escorted her to meet her suitor and she kissed me on the cheek. I watched as she walked toward the embankment outside the Oreanda. Jellyfish bites ran up and down the backs of her legs, garish swollen stings. Anatoly Petrovich emerged from the hotel, took her arm, and turned her in the other direction, toward the vast sea. I saw that they had no idea what they were doing, no more than I did. I ran my hand over the sting on my leg and no longer minded the pain. And then I turned away from my grandmother and her soon-to-be lover and decided to go for one more dip in the sea.

  * * *

  —

  I had tried to stay away from Roman after he told me he was married. The academic year was nearly over, and I walked around town peering into all the bright, clean restaurants filled with bright, clean people, thinking it unfathomable that anyone had ever felt despair in any of these places. The edgiest person in town was the guy who ate fire outside the froYo shop on Thursday nights. I kept thinking of jokes I’d tell Roman. “If we’re together we could open a coffee shop called Grounds for Divorce,” I would say. I ran almost every morning, before it got too hot, until I reached the farms north of town, where I would finally stop to watch the cows chewing grass. I spent too much time skyping Baba, who tried to convince me to visit her in Yalta. “This is my last summer there, child,” she kept repeating. “I’m getting old.”

  I visited Dr. Vainberg’s lair to see if there were opportunities to study abroad or transfer or finish the remaining five years of my degree remotely. The best he could do was offer me the summer-travel grant money that Marnie the Mouse had freed up when she’d dropped out. I jotted down some nonsense about going to Yalta to study how Chekhov’s impending death affected his perspective on the lovers in “The Lady with the Dog.” It was a feeble idea; it was common for writers to become obsessed with death in their later years, as Tolstoy had with Ivan Ilyich.

  Vainy loved my pitch. He took my hands in his and said, “You must return to us. You’re the last underground woman. And your teaching evaluations were above average….”

  I promised to stay and asked him for Roman’s address, saying he needed me to drop off some books. Then I took the train to Sacramento.

  Sac was even hotter than Davis. My shoulders were singed as soon as I stepped out of the train, and I wished I had brought some sort of cover-up. I wasn’t good at sneaking around. I wasn’t even wearing sunglasses. I found Roman’s cute yellow house and stared at it from a bench a block away. I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there when I heard Roman’s voice.

  “You came here,” he said. “That means you still care.”

  He wore a gray T-shirt and jeans and had a tiny white dog at his side. He didn’t seem mad that I had invaded his space, only surprised.

  “That’s Fedya?” I said. “I thought he would be big.”

  “Hey,” he said, crouching down and covering the dog’s pointy ears. “Don’t say that about my man. He’ll get a complex. He considers himself quite large for his breed….”

  I watched him petting his runty pet and understood that spending two weeks away from him had not changed a thing. My feelings were stronger than ever. I couldn’t say why. He was handsome, but I had been with men who were better-looking. And I had been with other men who loved books. I had been with other men who were good in bed. I had been with other men who’d appreciated my sense of humor. Even if I had never found all these qualities in one person, I knew this was too simple, that there was no explaining away how I felt. I just loved him.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Fedya,” I said, and the dog growled at me.

  Roman laughed. “He’s very protective.” We stared at each other while the dog tugged on hi
s leash.

  “Let’s go somewhere and talk,” he said. He entered his house to drop off his dog and left me on the sidewalk. I was dying to follow him but also relieved that he did not invite me in. I didn’t think my heart could take it, seeing photographs of them together, the furniture they sat on, the drab contents in their fridge, the contours of a life that did not include me.

  We got in his car and drove to the edge of another park. He said, “Don’t worry—Julia’s at work.” Then he swallowed, realizing he had said her name. I wanted to unlearn it.

  “I’ve missed you like crazy,” I said.

  “I’ve missed you too.”

  That was when I stopped being innocent in the matter. I straddled him and ran my hands through his hair.

  “The problem is, I can’t stop thinking about fucking you,” I said.

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Not this second,” I said, and he laughed as I unbuckled his belt and started fucking him, hard, to remind him how amazing I was. I couldn’t look in his eyes. It was all too much. When it was over, I felt disgusting and I collapsed in the passenger seat, panting like his gross dog. I had not conveyed the proper message.

  “I want you to be with me,” I said. “I want you to leave your wife.” I wasn’t planning to say it. Until that moment, I wasn’t even certain it was what I wanted, but once the words came out, I knew it had to happen.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said, which surprised and scared and excited me.

  “You have?”

  “Of course I have. But it’s complicated. It’s not like I don’t care about her. We have a history. I just…I need to know you’re sure about me, Oksana.” He looked down at his hands.

  “Why wouldn’t I be sure?” I said, slipping my underwear back on. I didn’t notice how awful he looked until then. There was a heaviness under his eyes. His usually neat beard was bushy and uneven.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, meeting my gaze. “But you hated college. You hated your job in New York. You said you hated our program the day we met. I just want to make sure—that you really love me. That you’re sure about us.”

  Of course I was sure! What did he think I was doing in Sacramento? But his list didn’t help. I felt my soul unraveling. Why should I trust myself? What if I was breaking up the marriage of two nice people—just because of a feeling?

  “How can I prove how I feel?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked at my purse, as if there were an answer inside it. Like there was something I could give him to prove how I felt.

  “I’m going to Yalta for a month,” I said. “Maybe being away from you will help me think clearly. We can talk when I get back. Or never talk again, I don’t know.”

  I could see how crushed he was that I was leaving and how happy he was that I was coming back.

  “I’ll see you in a month, then,” he said.

  “Unless I fall in love with a Crimean stud and never return.”

  “I hate you sometimes.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t.” Then I added, “I’ll get you a souvenir, all right?” This got him to smile.

  We kissed one more time and I got out of the car. I turned around at the end of the block and saw him lower his head on the steering wheel.

  Back home, I realized I could stalk his wife on Facebook now that I knew her name. Roman didn’t have an account, but she was easy to find. She had short hair and thick arms and I wished she were prettier so it didn’t mean that something deeper connected them. I clicked through her pictures, watching her age in reverse, until she wasn’t posing with injured cats and was just a Berkeley undergrad looking at Roman with sad eyes, as if she had already lost him. I hadn’t realized that they had gone to school together, that they had fallen in love there, and then I understood what Roman was crying about that day on the street when he saw the gutted bookstore.

  * * *

  —

  I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, ordering two bowls of borscht with pampushki, one after the other. I was moved by my grandmother and Anatoly Petrovich’s love and wondered what changes this turn of events would bring. I didn’t want to give myself full credit, but I knew my story about Papa had helped. I wanted to call Roman, to tell him all about it.

  The waiter cleared my second bowl and said, “I hope you enjoyed your meal.”

  I considered how much of our lives we wasted by exchanging foolish banter. How was I supposed to answer? “My soup was delicious, but my heart is ripped to shreds because I’m in love with a married man, because every breath I take only makes me think of him, makes me think not of his presence but of his absence, of how every wave that crashes on the shore, every drop of wine I drink, every spoonful of fucking borscht I eat, means absolutely nothing because the man I need more than the air I breathe isn’t here”?

  I had not given the man the answer he needed. “My soup was delicious,” I said. “But my heart…craves a third bowl.”

  “Very well.”

  After dinner, I returned to the room and put ice over the sting on my leg. I picked up Chekhov’s story again. I skipped all the way to the end, to the part after Gurov tracks Anna down and the lovers realize they cannot live without each other and have to figure out the rest. Chekhov wrote, And it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.

  I threw the book across the room and tried not to think of myself. I should have been glad that at least my grandmother was grasping at a bit of joy; she certainly deserved it. But my life was still my life, and I curled up in a ball, wanting Roman.

  I ate Anatoly Petrovich’s chocolate, iced my leg again, and masturbated to a random passage in Baba’s romance novel, but nothing worked. I picked up my phone and dialed. It rang twice.

  “Oksana?” Roman said. “Is it really you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “I’ve missed you like crazy. I’m so glad you called—you got my email?”

  “What email?”

  “So you called on your own,” he said, his voice weak. “Listen—I’m ready to leave my wife.”

  “I’m ready too,” I said. “I know you doubted how sure I am, Roma, but I’m absolutely sure, do you understand? I’m sure because I know what it’s like not to be sure, because I’ve spent my entire life not being sure about anything until I met you.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “I think I’m going mad.”

  “I know. It’s awful.”

  “I didn’t even ask you. How’s Yalta?” I could hear relief and giddiness flooding his voice.

  I outlined the situation. “You know, just hanging out with two horny geriatrics,” I said. He laughed, so I kept going. “The sexual tension is so thick you could cut it with a cane.” But he didn’t laugh again, a sign I was trying too hard.

  “It’s lonely here,” I said.

  “Here too….” he said, and he began to cry.

  “I know you’ll miss her,” I said. “I know this won’t be easy.”

  “Of course I’m going to miss her. But that’s not it. I didn’t really think about it until this moment, but this means she’s going to take Fedya. Of course she’s going to take Fedya…” he said, crying more than I had ever heard a man cry, angry, jagged, childish sounds that made me wonder if I knew him at all. And all this over a dog! Had he ever cried this hard over me?

  “We can always get another dog.”

  “What are you talking about?” he said, sounding horrified, as if I had suggested he drown the poor runt. “I would never, ever do that. Do you understand?”

  “Not really.” I looked out at the sea and saw how stupid our argument was, how much he meant to me. I thought of more dumb jokes
I could make. “I guess you could call this our Yalta Conference,” I could say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I got you a souvenir,” I added pointlessly, though of course I hadn’t yet. When he didn’t respond, I said, “I wish you knew how much I love you.”

  “I have some idea.”

  “I’m scared, Roma.”

  “Me too. All right, then. Give me a few days. I’ll call you when the dust settles.”

  I couldn’t sleep. I kept sweating and tossing and turning and imagining Roman telling his wife everything. I wanted to know what she’d said, whether she’d already known about me or if she’d tried to change his mind, and if it worked. I kept checking my phone and my email—though it cost a fortune—but I heard nothing beyond his original email, which only said, I miss you. Worst of all, a song that had come on in his car when we’d driven to Berkeley, Thin Lizzy’s “Cowboy Song,” kept playing over and over in my head, and it was ridiculous and did not echo the hysterical and life-altering things I was feeling, and yet as I sweated and worried and wondered and stepped out on the balcony to stare at the murky sea, it became a dirge.

  Roman was right. Dostoevsky was perfectly rational. I was overheating and insane and I would have tried to fight somebody if I hadn’t been alone. How was I supposed to know what to do now or after the dust had settled? How?

  * * *

  —

  When I opened my eyes, sunlight flooded the room and Baba was fussing around in the bathroom. I’d expected her to be giddy, but she only looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept all night. That could have been a good thing, of course.

  “You’re finally up,” she said as she secured a sun hat to her head. “Good. Today we visit Chekhov’s house.”

  “Is Anatoly Petrovich coming?”

  “No,” she said sharply. “He’s staying behind.”

  I knew not to ask further questions. Maybe they’d had a fight, maybe he’d begged her to move to Moscow and she wasn’t ready. Maybe she was ready but was waiting to tell him so.