There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In

by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

  ANNA SUMMERS

  The Time Is Night

  Awoman called me, a stranger. “My mother”—she paused—“has left some papers. She was a poet. Can I send them to you? No? I understand.” Two weeks later I received a folder full of scrap paper, pages torn from school notebooks, even telegram blanks. There was no address or last name. The handwriting on the folder read, Notes from the Edge of the Table. Here they are.

  • • •

  My little boy doesn’t know how to behave at other people’s homes: he touches everything, asks for seconds at the table; he finds a dusty toy car under a bed and wants to keep it. “Look, Grandma, I found myself a present!” The rightful owner, a tall boy of nine, wants it back, and an argument ensues. I drag my Tima to the bathroom; he is crying inconsolably. We came to borrow a few rubles; next time they won’t let us in. Even tonight my dear Masha took her time at the peephole, and all due to Tima. I carry myself like the Queen of England and refuse Masha’s offer of tea with crackers, but my belly rumbles loudly and I sneak pieces of baguette from my shopping bag. I need to feed Tima: I stuff him with the offered crackers and ask for extra butter—they forgot to hide their butter dish. Oksana, Masha’s daughter, interrogates me about my eternal pain—my Alena—right in front of Tima.

  “Does Alena ever visit you, Aunt Anna? Tima, do you ever see your mommy?”

  “No, dear, Alena is home with mastitis.”

  “Mastitis?” Oksana raises her eyebrows. Whose baby exactly has caused Alena’s mastitis?

  I grab Tima, plus a few crackers, and we flee to the living room, to the television. Oksana follows on our heels. She tells me I must complain to Alena’s boss that she deserted Tima. So leaving him with me means desertion? I remind Oksana that Alena is not working, that she is at home with a new baby. Finally Oksana asks me about the baby’s father. Is it the same man Alena told her about when she called to borrow for a down payment but they were buying a new car and renovating their dacha? The one who makes her weep with happiness? Him? I tell her I don’t know.

  The implication is clear: we shouldn’t come around anymore. They used to be friends, Oksana and my Alena. We took a vacation together to the Baltic—me, young and tanned, with my husband and both children, and Masha with her Oksana. Masha was recovering from an especially tumultuous affair with a certain professor of Marxism-Leninism, who, even after Masha had aborted his child, wouldn’t give up his wife and other girlfriends, including a fashion model in Leningrad. I stirred the pot further by telling Masha about another woman of his, famous for her wide hips, whom I once saw running after his car as he tossed her an envelope with some cash—dollars, it turned out, but not very many. In the end Masha stayed with her Oksana, and my husband and I entertained her that summer, and she let us pay for her drinks despite her large sapphire earrings. Even all those years ago, I’m trying to say, even before I was fired, Masha and I occupied different rungs on the social ladder. This will never change.

  Right now her son-in-law is trying to watch soccer; her grandson, Denis, is bawling, demanding his nightly cartoon—the scene repeats itself every evening, apparently; that’s why everyone’s so tense. Tima, who watches this program at best once a year, appeals to the son-in-law, “Please, I beg you!” and drops to his knees—he is copying me. Alas.

  The son-in-law dislikes Tima and is clearly tired of Denis. Between you and me, Oksana’s husband is on his way out, which explains Oksana’s venom. He is writing a dissertation on Marxism-Leninism—the subject seems to cling to this family. Masha, true, publishes pretty much anything. She threw me a few crumbs in the past, some odd jobs, although it was I who covered her back when she urgently needed a piece on the bicentennial of the Minsk Tractor Plant. My fee was surprisingly small—I must have had a coauthor, some chief engineer from the plant. That piece, however, was the end of me. The next five years I was told not to show up at that publisher, for someone had made a comment along the lines of, What bicentennial? Have we all lost our minds? Do we really think the first Russian tractor came off the conveyor belt in the eighteenth century?

  Tonight’s an important soccer game. Denis is on the floor, weeping. Tima rushes to help, pressing buttons with his clumsy fingers, and the screen goes black. The son-in-law runs to the kitchen to complain; Denis quickly restores the screen’s picture, and the two are sitting on the floor watching peacefully, while Tima laughs with strained eagerness.

  The son-in-law must have threatened divorce, for Masha enters the room with the expression of someone who has done a kindness and now regrets it. The son-in-law is peering over her shoulder. He has a handsome face, a mix of gorilla and Charles Darwin; at the moment gorilla dominates. The women are yelling at Denis; by yelling at Denis they are, of course, yelling at us. Two women yelling—that’s nothing new for my poor boy. He just stands there, his mouth twitching—a nervous tic.

  My poor little orphan. It was even worse at the house of a distant acquaintance, a former colleague of Alena’s. They were having dinner when we barged in; Tima squawked that he was hungry. I hurried to apologize—the child is hungry from all the walking, we’ll leave in a moment, just wanted to see if there was any news from Alena. But they offered us borscht, thick, meaty borscht, and then the second course. More gratitude on my part—nothing for us, thanks; well, maybe just a little for Tima; Timochka, do you want some meat? At this point a giant German shepherd jumped up from under the table and bit Tima on the elbow. Tima bawled, his mouth stuffed with precious meat. The father of the house, who also looked like Darwin, yelled at the dog, but in fact he was yelling at us, for barging in. An ugly, ugly scene. That’s it, there’s no going back for us. I’ve been saving this house for the rainiest day.

  Alena, Alena. My faraway daughter, where are you? There is nothing more precious than love. How I loved Alena! How I loved Andrey! Infinitely, absolutely. What have I done except love them both?

  It’s too late now, my life is over, although the other day someone called me “young lady” from behind. I turned around: a fatso in a tracksuit, unshaven and sweaty. “Sorry, ma’am, I’m looking for this address. Can you help? We need to spend the night somewhere; the hotels are full.” Right. I know the type. For a pound of pomegranates he’ll want a bed with clean sheets, hot water for tea, a million other things. I can see five moves ahead like a chess player. But I’m a poet. Some prefer poetess, but both my idols, Marina and Anna, called themselves poets, so on the rare occasion when I give a reading I ask to be introduced as poet Anna—and my married name. And how they listen, those children! I know a child’s heart. Tima is always with me; he refuses to sit in the audience, wants to be onstage next to me. . . . Very soon they’ll stop inviting me altogether; again, because of him.

  • • •

  My happiness, my little one. So quiet at times. A difficult, unhappy childhood you’ve had so far. You smell of flowers. When you were little I used to say that your potty smelled like a wild meadow, your unwashed hair of phlox. After a bath a child’s scent is impossible to describe. Silky hair, silky skin. I know nothing lovelier than a child. Where I used to work, this one idiot used to say that baby cheeks would make a great handbag. She absolutely adored her son and used to say that his bottom was so perfect she couldn’t stop looking at it. That perfect bottom is now serving in the army, his days of adoration long over.

  How fast everything wilts! How helpless I feel looking in the mirror. I haven’t changed, I’m still the same, but here is Tima telling me, Grandma, let’s go—wanting us to leave the moment we arrive at my reading, jealous of my so-called success. But I must work, my little one—your Anna needs to provide for you, and for Granny Sima; Alena, at least, is using your child support and doesn’t bleed me for more. But Andrey, my beloved son, what about him? I must give him something, mustn’t I? For his injured foot (more on this later), for his life ruined in prison. Eleven rubles a reading. Sometimes seven. But still, even twice a month, it’s somethin
g. Thank God for Nadya, this angel of kindness who throws readings my way. Once I sent Andrey to take my invoices to her, and imagine, the scoundrel borrowed ten rubles from the poor woman, who has a paralyzed mother on her hands! How I wagged my tail, how I begged her forgiveness! I know, I whispered to her in a room full of people, my mother, too, in a hospital all these years.

  How many years? Seven. Seven years. Once a week I go there to feed her; she gulps down everything, cries, complains that her roommates steal her food. But how can they? None of them walk, the head nurse told me; and you, she added firmly, you are muddying the waters here, agitating the patients. After I hadn’t come for a month—Tima was sick—again she told me: Don’t come anymore. Don’t.

  Andrey won’t leave me alone. He comes every month and demands his share—of what? Why, I ask him, do you keep robbing me and the little one and Granny? Then, he tells me, I’ll rent my room out for x amount. What room? I demand for the hundredth time. What room? Who is registered here? Myself, my mother, Alena with her two children, and only then you, and you live at your wife’s. You can claim fifty square feet here, that’s all. In that case, he replies, I want the price of those square feet. In that case, I reply calmly, I’ll sue you for alimony, as your mother. In that case, he retorts, I’ll report that you already receive alimony—from Tima’s dad. He doesn’t know I receive nothing—Alena takes it all! If he knew, he’d do something stupid like go to her office and file a complaint. Alena understands this and stays away, stays quiet, and rents a room somewhere for herself and the baby. What does she live on? I can tell you exactly. Tima’s child support is x; as a nursing mother she receives y from the state; as a single mother, z. How she lives on this sum I cannot fathom. Does her baby’s father pay rent? She doesn’t tell me whom she lives with or even whether she lives with anyone; she just cries. Since the birth of baby number two we have seen her twice. On her most recent visit we reenacted the famous scene from Anna Karenina—Anna’s reunion with her son. I played the evil husband. The visit took place because I’d asked the “girls” at the post office to tell Alena, when she showed up, that she had to leave Tima’s money alone. On the day the money arrived, Alena showed up on our doorstep, purple with rage, pushing a red stroller (So we have a baby girl flashed through my mind). That’s it, she yelled, pack him up; we are getting the fuck out of here! Tima started whimpering like a puppy. I’ll never forget, as long as I live: the child swaying on his thin legs, wailing in misery, torn between the two of us. I spoke calmly to her. I told her she had abandoned her son, leaving him with me, an old woman; that for fifty rubles I could see her checking her son into a mental institution. You, she interrupted, you gave your mother away; your mother is in an institution. And why did I do it? I asked her. Because of you and yours—a nod toward Tima. Then her new fatherless brat started wailing. Breaking into sobs, my daughter enumerated the sums she lived on, as if to say that we, Tima and I, were living here in luxury, while she was homeless. A home for her, I told her calmly, should come from the dick that knocked her up and then skipped off because no one can stand her two days in a row. She grabbed the tablecloth and threw it at me, but there was nothing on the table, and a tablecloth cannot kill anyone.

  That was right before my pension, which arrives two days after Tima’s child support. I can’t have Tima’s money, Alena announced, because it won’t be spent on Tima. On who then? I wailed back. Go to the kitchen and see for yourself what’s in our pantry: half a loaf and fish chowder. So I wailed, wondering in a panic whether she had somehow found out about my gift of pills to a certain Stranger, who had approached me two weeks earlier outside the Central drugstore. Tall, with graying temples, face swollen and dark. Help me, he whispered, my horse is dying. What horse? His favorite horse, it turned out. He was a jockey, and his horse was ill. The drugstore was sending him to the vet pharmacy, which was closed. And the horse was dying. He needed at least some Pyramidon, but they wouldn’t sell him enough pills. At this he swayed, grabbing my shoulder to steady himself, and I felt the weight of his hand, a man’s hand. I flew up the steps to the second floor, where I lied through my teeth to the young pharmacist about three sick grandchildren, for whom I needed triple the allowed amount. I paid with my own money—a trifling amount, but still the Stranger couldn’t come up with it. Instead he carefully wrote down my address on a matchbox with the pen I gave him, and then kissed my hand, which smelled, oh, shame, of the cooking oil I use in lieu of unaffordable creams. As I was placing three sheets of pills in his swollen hand, another man appeared out of the blue and pulled the Stranger away. Before they reached the corner they’d swallowed all the pills from one sheet. Strange, indeed. Who consumes Pyramidon in such doses? Or had I been duped? Was it possible that the horse didn’t exist? The mystery will be solved when the Stranger appears at my door.

  On whom, I wailed at my daughter, on whom do I spend money? “Him, of course,” she replied, choking back bitter tears. “Always him: your darling Andrey.” What was there to say? “Eat with us.” We finished the last scraps of food, and hurray, my daughter forked over a few rubles. Then she took her most recent fatherless creation and nursed her in my room, among the books and manuscripts. I peeked in: a fat, ugly child—a replica, it appeared, of her deputy director, who happened to be the father. I learned this heartbreaking fact from her diary, which I discovered by chance among my old notebooks. Alena looked into every nook and corner of my room—I worried that she might take my books to sell. But she was looking for this, for ten pages of the worst news.

  • • •

  I beg you: don’t ever read this, even after I die.

  Last night I fell so low, I wept all morning. For the first time I woke up in a strange bed, put on yesterday’s clothes. He even asked what I was being so shy about. What, indeed. Everything that was part of me last night—his smell, his skin—became alien and disgusting after he told me that, begging my pardon, he had an appointment at ten, he had a train to meet (with his wife on it, I guessed). I lied that I also had an appointment, at eleven, and went into the bathroom to cry. I wept in the shower, washing him off my body. Inside, everything swelled, burned, and ached.

  • • •

  (Nine months later we knew why.)

  • • •

  This is the end, I thought. He doesn’t need or want me, but I cannot live without him. All that’s left to do is throw myself under some train.

  • • •

  (Because of this?)

  • • •

  I called Mom last night as soon as I got here. I told her I’d be staying at Lenka’s, and she replied, “Which Lenka this time?” and said I was welcome to stay at this Lenka’s, since I liked him so much.

  • • •

  (What I actually told her was, “How can you? We need you here—you are a mother, after all! Your baby’s sick, etc.” But she interrupted me with “okay, bye” and hung up.)

  • • •

  I put down the receiver with a polite grimace, but he didn’t notice my embarrassment. He was pouring wine, looking as though he were trying to come to a decision. I shouldn’t have told him so directly that I was staying, that I wanted to give all of myself to him, a stupid cow.

  • • •

  (Exactly!)

  • • •

  He stood there, frozen, while I didn’t care anymore. It wasn’t like I’d suddenly lost control, no. From the beginning I knew I’d follow this man. I knew he was our deputy director of research—I’d seen him at staff meetings. At lunch at the cafeteria, I was shocked when he, an important figure in our institute and much older than I was, chose to sit next to me. He was joined by his best buddy. (Girls from this weirdo’s lab told me that in the middle of intercourse he suddenly yells, “Don’t look!” then hides in the corner; what it means they don’t know.) The buddy immediately began to work on me, while the deputy director just sat there and then suddenly stepped on my foot.

&
nbsp; • • •

  (I can feel my hair going gray. And this is my daughter writing! That night, I remember, I woke up because Tima had a terrible, hacking cough. He was turning blue before my eyes, unable to breathe; then, terrified, he began to cry. I had gone through this with my children: acute pharyngitis. The first thing to do was to sit him down, submerge his feet in warm water, and call an ambulance. But one person cannot do everything at once. The line is always busy, it takes a second person to get through, and look what the second person is up to in the meantime!)

  • • •

  Then he pressed my foot again, smiling into his coffee. I felt hot and almost choked. It’s been only two years since my divorce, but nobody knows that Shura hadn’t touched me after that one time. We slept in the same bed, but that was it.

  • • •

  (What nonsense. What matters is that I saved the boy that night. I calmed him down, told him to take little breaths through his nose, then ran very hot water in the shower, and we sat in the steamy bathroom, all sweaty, but it helped. My love! I’ll always be by your side. A woman is timid and indecisive when she alone is concerned, but she turns into a tigress when something threatens her children. And what is your mother telling us here?)