by Megan Hart
They were at it again by the time Ilya got home from work, and something about this set Galina into another rage. Something about doing his own laundry. Paying rent.
“Niko doesn’t pay a damned cent,” Ilya shouted, loud enough for Niko to hear him all the way upstairs. “If I’m going to pay, he better pay, too!”
Niko couldn’t even be pissed off that his brother was throwing him under the bus. Three weeks past his high school graduation, Niko was already bored and tired of his job at the car wash. He’d quit two days ago. Hadn’t told his mother yet. Not sure he planned to.
But Ilya knew. “Of course he’s not going to be able to pay a damned thing without a job.”
Niko groaned, wishing he hadn’t told his brother about quitting. Things had been kind of messed up between them since Jennilynn died. It had been over a year, and Niko had started to think it was never going back to the way it was before. Nothing would. Across the street, the Harrisons functioned like a broken music box, playing a song that missed all the important notes. He’d hardly spoken to Allie since the night of the funeral and what happened between them. He wanted to, but he didn’t know what to say.
Now he lay in bed and listened to the sound of his mother’s screaming drifting up through the vents, and he turned to press his face deep into the pillow. He didn’t want to hear her. He didn’t want to worry about her. Didn’t want to think about his brother, or Allie, or anything else about this place.
At the sound of breaking glass he went downstairs, expecting to find someone bleeding. Ilya was gone. Babulya was locked inside her bedroom with the music turned up high so she could pretend she hadn’t heard anything. Niko found his mother on her hands and knees in the kitchen, weeping over a broken glass vase.
“This was a wedding present,” she sobbed.
“Mom, get up. I’ll clean that.” He bent to help her up, thinking he might catch a whiff of alcohol on her, but she didn’t seem to have been drinking. It might be easier if she was, he thought. She might be more predictable.
Still sobbing, Galina sagged against him. Her fingers clutched at the front of his shirt. Her breath stank, sour and stale. Snot bubbled in one nostril.
“Promise me, Kolya. Promise me you won’t leave me.”
Unsettled by her use of his grandmother’s affectionate nickname for him, and more so by this demand, Niko put her in a chair and moved away to get the broom and dustpan. He cleaned up the glass, too aware of her staring and weeping behind him.
“They all leave me,” she said.
He turned to dump the glass carefully into a paper bag that he would later take out to the trash. “Why don’t you go to bed or something.”
From behind him came a sound like rusted gears trying hard to move. A ratcheting, awful noise. He spun to see his mother’s fingernails raking lines in the varnish of the kitchen table. She was no longer crying. Her eyes had gone wide, her mouth gaping.
“Go to bed. You’re acting crazy.” Niko put the broom and dustpan away. Sick of this shit. Done with it. Done with her—and this house and his brother being a constant dick to him.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!”
Then, his mother began shrieking, wailing, flying at him with her fists and nails, and Ilya came through the back door to haul her off him, and Niko touched the place on his face where she scratched him.
There was blood, after all, but not from the broken glass.
He was gone by the next morning, taking only a duffel bag and the small amount of money from his savings account. First a bus. Then a night or two at the YMCA. He considered joining the military but saw a sign at the local Reform synagogue, a place he’d never been inside, although he knew Babulya was Jewish.
HERITAGE TRIP
The rabbi was more understanding than Nikolai deserved, considering he lied through his teeth to get the guy to put him on that plane. Yes, he’d always wanted to visit the Holy Land and find his roots. Yes, he intended to become more observant in the ways of his ancestors. Yes, yes, he would gladly come back and volunteer with the synagogue youth group.
All of it was lies, but it got him out of Quarrytown. He regretted only one thing: that he left without saying good-bye to Allie.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Theresa had changed.
The gangly, awkward girl with braces who Ilya remembered torturing with scary stories had become a poised, voluptuous woman, whose dark hair hung in thick ringlets halfway down her back. When she smiled at him, the years of orthodontia proved well worthwhile. She wasn’t smiling at him right now. She looked confused or concerned, or maybe amused. He couldn’t tell, because there currently seemed to be two of her, neither of them quite clear.
“Hey,” he said. “’Sup?”
“You’re drunk.” She shook her head and stepped inside the front door, closing it behind her.
“A little.” He’d had three or four beers, then lost track. He moved aside so she could bustle past him and into the kitchen, where she set the reusable grocery bags on the table. “Just a little.”
“What if you have to drive to the home?” she demanded, turning with a frown he could definitely see.
“I’ll call Allie. She’ll drive me. She lives across the street still. Right over there, where she always lived, except when she lived over here. Hey, you used to live here.”
“I did.”
He blinked, trying to focus. “Why are you here right now?”
“I brought food. It’s what you do when someone’s sick.” Theresa paused to look him over. “You look like shit, Ilya. When’s the last time you ate something? Or slept?”
It had been a rough few days; that was for sure. Learning that Babulya was failing had hit him hard. Hearing that his mother was on her way back to Quarrytown had been worse.
“Galina’s coming home,” he said by way of explanation.
Theresa nodded. “Ah. Well, I’d expect her to. Her mother’s dying.”
He didn’t want to think about that. Ilya peeked into the grocery bags, then at her. “Lots of salad in there.”
She laughed. “It wouldn’t kill you to eat a vegetable or two. Isn’t that what Babulya always said?”
“Eat some things green,” Ilya said, imitating Babulya’s Russian accent, and laughed.
Then all at once, he wasn’t laughing anymore. He wasn’t sure he was crying, but the world was blurring. Maybe spinning. He sat heavily in the chair and put his head in his hands.
Theresa’s hands came to rest firmly on his shoulders. “It’s hard, I know.”
She couldn’t possibly know. He shook his head without looking at her. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“It’s going to be okay, Ilya.”
Nothing much had been okay for a long time. He could say it was because of the divorce, but that wasn’t true. He missed being married to Allie when he tried hard to make himself wish he’d been a better husband, but truth was he didn’t miss being with her for all the reasons he’d been such a shitty spouse.
“No.” The word blurted out of him before he could stop it, and the pound of his fist on the table startled them both. “Everything’s going to shit. Nothing sticks. I’ve been trying to make it all work, and it’s not working. Couldn’t keep a marriage, can’t keep my business running . . .”
“Marriages end,” she said. “Seems to me you’re civil enough to keep working together, which says something, anyway.”
“Sure, sure, we work together until Go Deep goes so deep it goes under.” He tossed his hands in the air, thinking of the piles of bills, the dwindling number of students, the dip in the economy that had made the dive trips too much of a luxury to be a sure thing.
“What’s the matter with Go Deep?”
Ilya shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to talk about that, either.”
Theresa squeezed his shoulders, then stepped away from him. “You should have some water and something to eat. You drank too much.”
“So what
if I did? That doesn’t make anything less . . . true . . .” He thumped the table again but had run out of steam. “What do you know about it? What the hell problems do you have in your life?”
He peered at her, knowing he was poking hard but not seeing anything but blandness on her face. Not seeing much of anything. The world still blurred. He blinked, hard.
“Not a single problem,” Theresa said as she shifted into focus. “My life is just perfect. I couldn’t ask for a better life. Everything’s peachy keen.”
“Must be nice.”
Theresa moved around the kitchen as easily as if she’d been there last week to empty the dishwasher instead of half a lifetime ago. She filled a glass of water from the tap and put it in front of him. “Drink this.”
He half turned away, feeling the chair threatening to slip out from under him. Or no, that was just his body threatening to fall off it. He caught himself. Clearly, he wasn’t drunk enough. “I’ll have another beer.”
“Drink that first,” Theresa said firmly, and to his own surprise, Ilya did. “When is your mother going to get here?”
“Who knows? She said she’s driving up from South Carolina. It could take her days. It could take her a month. She could be here tomorrow, for all I know. Maybe she’s hitching a ride with a long-haul trucker. Maybe she’s coming on a broom.” Ilya shrugged. His mother’s arrival was like a colonoscopy. He knew it had to happen, but he hoped he could be mostly unconscious when it did.
Theresa laughed and glanced at him over her shoulder from her place in front of the fridge, where she’d started putting away the groceries she’d brought in. “She hasn’t changed, huh?”
No. His mother hadn’t changed. That was the problem with Galina; she never did. She called him up every few months and casually asked him for money, or she didn’t ask for money but kept him on the phone for an hour, spinning stories about her fantastic life, or she ranted about the alleged indignities she was suffering at the hands of whoever it was she’d decided was out to get her. Sometimes she threatened to come back to Pennsylvania, but this was the first time he believed she would.
He scowled. “She hasn’t changed. Most people don’t.”
Theresa had once slept in the room next to his, back when their parents had decided they were in love and couldn’t live without each other. That hadn’t lasted long. Love never did. She tilted her head, looking him over. Or maybe he was leaning in his chair again; he couldn’t be sure.
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Theresa put her hands on her hips. “I think it’s possible.”
Ilya rubbed at his eyes against the burn from lack of sleep. His stomach churned. He brought his thumb to his mouth, chewing for a second before remembering the bitter taste of the liquid Babulya had put on his nails to keep him from biting them. He curled his fingers into his palm, making a fist and cutting into his skin with the nails that had grown long enough to leave marks.
He found his voice. “Thanks for coming. It was a surprise.”
“I’m glad to be here.” She paused. “Let me make you something to eat, at least.”
He didn’t want to eat. “Nah. I should just go to bed.”
“I’m starving, and you’ll be sorry if you go to bed without something in your stomach. I’ll make grilled cheese.” She was already looking in the cupboard for a frying pan. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You want tomato on yours?”
“I don’t have any tomatoes.”
She laughed and twisted that mass of thick curling hair on top of her head in a messy bun. When she tucked a few stray tendrils behind one ear, he wondered what it would be like to touch it. Silky, he thought. Her hair would smell good.
She eyed him with a small smile and another of those curious head tilts. “I brought some. Drink the water.”
The beers he’d shotgunned earlier were settling. He still felt buzzy, woozy, warm, but it was becoming easier to focus. Not quite as easy to walk, but he made it to the sink and drew another glass of tepid water from the tap. He didn’t want to drink it, but he did while he watched her pull out the ancient cutting board and begin to slice the tomatoes.
“Babulya always used to put tomatoes on the grilled cheese.” Ilya closed his eyes for a few seconds longer than a blink. When he opened them, she was staring.
Theresa’s hand slowed for a second as she put down the knife. “I know. She’s the one who taught me how to cook. I’d never had grilled cheese made that way until I moved in here. It’s how I’ve made them ever since.”
The food was ready in a few minutes, and she slid plates across the table with a gesture for him to sit. He hadn’t been sure he wanted food, but once he took the first bite, his appetite roared, and he gobbled everything on the plate; then he went to the stove for another sandwich. She’d made extra, like she knew he’d want more.
“Will you be back tomorrow?” he asked, once he’d returned to the table.
Theresa wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “I’d like to see her again. The nurse there told me they thought she didn’t have much longer.”
“Are you going to go all the way home?” He realized he wasn’t sure where home was for her. For all he knew, she’d moved back to Quarrytown years ago, and they’d merely been missing sightings of each other. It was a small town, though. That didn’t seem likely.
“I thought I’d find a cheap hotel room close to the home . . . crash there. I have some work to do in the area, too.”
He also had no idea what Theresa did for a living, but despite the belly full of carbs and fat, he was still a little too hammered to figure out how to ask her without sounding like an idiot of the highest order. “There aren’t any hotels close to the home. They were talking about putting in a business-suite-type place nearby, but it never happened. You can stay here if you want. Your old room. It hasn’t changed much, if you want to know the truth. Galina made it into a sewing room after you and your dad left—”
“We didn’t leave,” Theresa said sharply. “She threw us out.”
Ilya didn’t say anything at first. His brain was still fuzzy at the moment—his memories faded even without the booze—but that had not been the way he’d heard the story. “Galina threw you out?”
“Yeah. She wanted to split up from my dad, so she told him we had three hours to pack our stuff and get out.” She tilted her head to look at him. “You didn’t know.”
He should have. It was exactly the sort of thing his mother would have done and turned around later so she could make herself look like the victim. He frowned, heat tickling his throat with embarrassment. “No.”
Theresa shook her head. “That was your mom, through and through. Anyway, I can get a hotel room. Don’t worry about it.”
Ilya knew he had his moments, but he’d never in his life been the kind of class-A bitch his mother could be. He wasn’t going to be one now. Ilya stood on wobbly legs. This seemed important. Really important.
“Shit, no, you stay here. She threw you out? You should stay here, in your old room. Yeah.”
“I don’t have to—”
It wasn’t going to make anything right, but he was so damned tired of everything being wrong. He shook his head and took her by the shoulders. “You lived here. This was your house—hell, it’s too big and empty with just me in it, anyway. You stay here.”
Theresa looked amused. “Okay. For tonight, anyway. In case . . . well. In case you need a ride.”
From the kitchen doorway came the scuffle of feet. “What’s up?”
Ilya and Theresa both turned to see Niko. Ilya greeted his brother with a clap on the shoulder and a chest bump. Niko looked past him at their former stepsister.
Ilya gestured. “I told Theresa she could stay here in the house, so she can be here when . . . well, she can be here for Babulya. I don’t give a damn what Galina says.”
Niko’s brow furrowed. “Why would she say anything? Oh, shit, she’s coming home? I mean, of course she is. When did you talk to her?”
&n
bsp; “She left a voicemail. Yeah, she’s coming. Sometime. I guess whenever she gets here.” Ilya shrugged.
Niko looked confused. “Did Mom say Theresa couldn’t stay here? Why?”
“Ilya, you should drink some more water,” Theresa put in. “Niko, do you want something to eat?”
“Drunk?” Niko asked her.
Ilya waved them both away. “I’m fine. Theresa says she threw them out, her and her dad. Did you know that?”
Niko looked uncomfortable and embarrassed, the way Ilya had felt when Theresa told him the truth about what had happened. The way he’d often felt over the years when he’d discovered his mother had been untruthful about one thing or another. It should have stopped being a surprise but somehow never did.
“I didn’t,” Niko said. “She told us they left. She cried about it, remember?”
“She lied,” Ilya said. “She lies all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Theresa,” Niko said. “You should definitely stay here if you want.”
Theresa looked from one of them to the other, before her gaze settled on Ilya. “It wasn’t your fault, either of you. It was our parents’ business, anyway. Not ours. And it was a long time ago. I saw some ice cream in the freezer. Anyone want some?”
CHAPTER NINE
Back in Niko’s adolescent bedroom, daylight cracked through the attic’s twin narrow windows in pale-golden stripes, exactly as it had done for all the years he’d lived there. The house was so quiet he couldn’t tell whether he was alone or whether Ilya and Theresa were still asleep, but he made sure not to make a lot of noise, anyway, when he went to the kitchen.
Someone had already been up. A plate of scrambled eggs covered in cheese, still warm, tempted him, and he noticed a stack of toast on a plate next to the toaster. He buttered some and made an egg sandwich, then took it into the living room to turn on the television. He didn’t have one at the kibbutz, and although there was a communal one, he hadn’t mindlessly watched anything stupid in a long time.
