Divide Me by Zero

by Lara Vapnyar

  “Why?” I screamed.

  “He’s leaving for America next month. For good. Like your uncle Grisha.”

  I couldn’t, wouldn’t believe him.

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “He told me himself after class. They are all leaving. His wife and his baby too,” he added with a nasty smile.

  So this was it? I would never see him again? He would leave just like that? Without talking to me? Without saying goodbye? This was inconceivable.

  I begged Sasha to give me B.’s phone number, but he wouldn’t. He said he didn’t know it himself, and I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.

  I started skipping school and going to the park every day, hoping to see B. as I had that one time, with his baby and his dog. This was the end of March, a strange month, when you’re so tired of winter that you want to pretend it’s spring, and you go around shivering in your light coat and thin boots, hoping for a bit of sunshine to fall on your face, to at least warm up your nose a little. I would walk and walk and walk down the barren alleys, the thin soles of my boots slurping in the slush covering still-frozen ground, until my toes started to feel numb. Sometimes I would exit the park and walk around B.’s neighborhood, circling the streets, entering random stores to warm up, hoping that B. would happen to be shopping there at that precise moment. Once I spotted little Mark’s stroller at a fish store called the Ocean. It wasn’t B. pushing the stroller, though, but an imposing older woman wearing crimson lipstick who must have been B.’s mother or mother-in-law.

  Around that time I got a school report card that was so bad that I had to fix it before showing it to my mother. I did a rather crude job of it, with razor scratches and ink stains all over it, but my mother, who had broken up with Sergey, was morose and distracted, and didn’t notice.

  “We need to talk about your future,” she said.

  “I’m applying to the university with Sasha and Yulia,” I said.

  “Don’t you need to study a lot?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  She said, “Okay.”

  I prayed to God, or rather to Something, that I’d get to see B. I begged and begged and begged, and I finally got my wish.

  I saw B. at the large supermarket somewhere in between our two neighborhoods, in the long line to get so-called Bush’s thighs.

  The year was 1990, perestroika was in full swing, and the enormous slow country couldn’t keep up with the speed of the changes, political as well as economic. One of the changes that was hard to ignore was that food had started to disappear from supermarket shelves. The late Soviet Union couldn’t boast of a food bounty either, especially in the remote regions. But in Moscow, we could always count on the staples, like bread and meat, and dairy products, and basic seasonal vegetables and fruit. We were used to standing in huge lines to buy delicacies when and if the supermarkets had them in stock, but the bread lines were something new. As were the lines to buy vodka. My mother had to spend hours to buy two bottles of vodka—they wouldn’t sell more than two. Nobody drank vodka in our household, but we kept a solid supply in the back of the kitchen cabinet, because it was precious currency in those times. You could ask a neighbor to move heavy furniture for a bottle, or to fix a leaking faucet for two.

  Flooding the struggling Soviet Union with American chicken thighs was a brilliant idea. We liked to believe that the idea belonged to George H. W. Bush himself. It was a win-win situation. The US could unload unpopular chicken parts, help stabilize Gorbachev’s West-friendly regime, and display the patronizing generosity of Cold War winners. And we—we got the thighs. Bush’s thighs. Dream thighs. Twice as big as the thighs of underfed Russian chickens, plumped up with antibiotics and hormones, with buttery fat pushing through their pale skin, promising gastronomic delights of an unprecedented degree.

  People hunted for them in stores all over the city and stood in long lines to get them. My grandmother established a whole network of friends who promised to tell each other whenever they spotted Bush’s thighs on sale.

  “They are selling Bush’s thighs in the big store!” my grandmother announced one morning in April.

  “I’m busy,” my mother said. “Take Katya.”

  I groaned. The big store was far away, way outside of our neighborhood, and I had just come home after fruitlessly roaming the streets in search of B.

  “I’m busy too,” I said.

  “But Bush’s thighs!” my grandmother repeated, and my mother glared at me. Everybody knew that missing the chance to buy Bush’s thighs wasn’t just insane, it was criminal.

  I had to go. My grandmother insisted on coming with me, which would make the trip twice as long, but I couldn’t say no. Ever since Grisha had left and my grandfather had died, my grandmother had been getting progressively weaker. Recently she had developed bouts of dizziness and my mother wouldn’t let her go to the store alone anymore, stripping her of her favorite activity.

  We walked very slowly, making frequent stops so my grandmother could catch her breath. By the time we finally made it to the store, the line had spilled out onto the street and was stretching along the entire length of the store. People kept peeking into the glass window, trying to get at least a glimpse of the Bush’s thighs. It took us a while to make it inside the store, and it was then that I saw B. He was approaching the cashier with a large block of frozen thighs in his arms. At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d been searching and searching, and there he was, at the same store, in the same line, buying the same thing. He paid, put the thighs into a large shopping bag, and headed to the exit.

  “Grandma, I’ll be right back,” I said and ran after him.

  “Boris Markovich!” I yelled. He stopped and looked at me in surprise.

  “Katya?”

  I said that I needed to ask him something.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Is it true that you’re going to America?”

  My heart was beating so hard that I wrapped my coat tighter as if it could help to hide it from B. He looked at me for what seemed like a very long time, then asked if I had some time. He knew a café nearby where they served hot chocolate.

  Yes, he said after we sat down at the café, it was true. They were leaving in two weeks. They had the tickets and most of their things were packed. There were six duffel bags on the floor of their living room, of the exact size and weight allowed by the airline, two for each of them. His wife and her mother kept repacking them. They would think of something essential to add, but that would wreck the weight balance, so they would need to remove something of equal weight to restore it. And they kept arguing, and fighting, and crying. And every time he looked at those bags, B. would be paralyzed with dread. Because he knew something now. He knew that it didn’t matter what they packed, because the whole idea was a mistake. It was a mistake to leave. He had wanted to go for a long time, he was the one who had to talk his wife into going. And now she was so excited, and he now knew how wrong this all was. How unhappy they would be there. And to leave now, at the peak of perestroika, when so many exciting things were happening in Russia? This was insane, right? A friend had just offered him a job at a brand-new TV channel. He would be a producer. He would have a license to create his own show. Something modern and cool about film. Instead of the old and tired Kinopanorama. He kept thinking about his show, fantasizing about possible topics and guests, coming up with witty lines of dialogue in his head, even as he knew that he was leaving. Leaving in two weeks!

  I got hot chocolate on my nose, and B. flicked it with his fingers, making me laugh. This was real hot chocolate, not the weak American version. It was silky and dark and viscous and so sweet that it made me high. We drank two large cups each.

  “Stay!” I said.

  And B. looked at me as if I had just offered a simple solution that hadn’t occurred to him before.

  “Stay? Just like that?” he asked.

  I eagerly nodded.

  “Because nobody can make m
e go, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “You know what, Katya, you’re right. They can’t make me!”

  Before we parted, B. kissed me on the cheek and told me that I was his favorite girl in the world!

  I walked all the way home with a delirious smile on my face.

  “Poor Mamochka!” Nathalie said. “So, so stupid.”

  This was the point of telling the story, to make Nathalie feel smarter, more together than I was at her age. But still, her words hurt me a little bit.

  “What about your grandmother?” she asked.

  “Who?” I asked. The thing was, I completely forgot about her. Both now, as I was telling this story to Nathalie, and then, when I left her at the store.

  I remembered about her only when my mother opened the door for me and asked where my grandmother was.

  “Oh, no!” I said. I looked at the clock. Almost three hours had passed since I left my grandmother at the store. My mind was flooded with all these scary images. My poor grandma waiting for me in vain, starting to walk, bending under the twenty pounds of Bush’s thighs, trying to make it through the slush, down the slippery path, getting dizzy, slipping, falling, lying on the ground, moaning and crying for help, whimpering, panting, dying. Dying because of me.

  Fortunately, we didn’t have to worry for long. The doorbell rang, and my grandmother walked in. There was a quiet drunk by her side, dressed in a filthy overcoat, smelling of either urine or pickled cabbage, holding the bags of chicken thighs in both hands. My grandmother sat down on a little chair and began removing her boots. She was breathless, but she sounded victorious. Apparently, she had waited for me for a long time, before figuring out that she was waiting in vain. Then she spotted this wonderful man, Stepan. “Semyon,” the drunk corrected her shyly. She had promised him a bottle of vodka to get her and the thighs home. My mother groaned, but went to get the bottle.

  “Here!” she said to the drunk. But he wasn’t leaving.

  “What?” my mother asked. He cleared his throat and whispered without raising his eyes: “The dinner?”

  “What dinner?”

  “The woman said the bottle of vodka and a dinner ‘worthy of the tsars.’”

  My grandmother nodded with a guilty expression.

  “Wait here,” my mother said. She went to the kitchen, cut a thick slice of rye bread, spread it with butter, slapped bologna on top, and gave that to the drunk. “Many thanks!” he said. He was almost out the door when he suddenly stopped and took a long, skeptical look at his sandwich. “Would a tsar eat that?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” my mother said. “That’s exactly what they served Nikolai II on special occasions.”

  How she yelled at me afterward!

  I didn’t really care. My grandmother was fine, and my mother could yell all she wanted. I was so happy that B. was staying that I was invincible. I shut the door on my mother and called Sasha to tell him the good news.

  My happiness lasted for the entire week following the Bush’s thighs episode, until Sasha dropped by and told me that B. had called to invite him to his going-away party.

  “You must have misunderstood!” I said.

  “Do you want to come with me?” Sasha asked. “Yulia’s coming too.”

  “Did you go?” Nathalie asked.

  I nodded. She cringed and said that she had a feeling she wouldn’t like the rest of the story. Then she asked what I wore.

  I didn’t remember. I remembered what I wanted to wear—one of my American T-shirts—but I couldn’t find any. They must have all made it to Yulia by that time, one by one. Then I remembered one of the photos and imagined that I looked exactly as I had in that photo. Dressed in a short checkered dress that made my legs look painfully skinny, hair gathered in a messy ponytail, eyes glowering.

  I became deeply embarrassed for that girl, as if she were someone separate from me, as if she were my daughter. I had an impulse to warn her of what was about to happen, to shield her from the imminent pain even if I knew that it had already happened and there was nothing I could do, except maybe tell the story to my real daughter in hopes that it would warn and possibly shield her.

  I walked into B.’s apartment together with Sasha and Yulia, but there were so many people that I lost them almost right away. I craned my neck, but I couldn’t see B. anywhere. I made my way forward, cutting through groups of people I didn’t know, tobacco smoke and noise. I still couldn’t see B. I saw Max thrashing about the apartment, bumping into people, his voice all coarse from barking and excitement. I saw little Mark in the arms of the older woman sporting crimson lipstick, both looking terrified. I saw B.’s wife, whom I recognized because she was the only one who looked like an actress. She was sitting on the edge of a windowsill, fixing her long shiny hair into a braid, laughing at the jokes of all these men who crowded around her, shaking her head to undo the braid.

  I finally saw B. on the small balcony, drinking in the company of five other men who barely fit there. There was no way for me to approach him except from the back.

  I made my way to the back, which was a mistake, because while I was squeezing between all those people, the crowd shifted, cutting me off from the balcony. I found Sasha and Yulia though. They stood between a large buffet and a TV cabinet, giggling and sneakily drinking vodka from the same glass, Sasha’s hand on Yulia’s waist. I did register this as a betrayal, but an unimportant one, compared to the tumult of my feelings for B.

  I had my eyes on the balcony door. Any minute now B. would emerge from the balcony and announce that he wasn’t going to America. He had decided to stay. He was staying. And there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.

  Here he is! Opening the balcony door, stepping into the room. Stumbling from all those vodka shots, grabbing the edge of the gleaming buffet to keep his balance, in an untucked shirt with missing buttons, smiling stupidly. His neck is so thin. He’s so young.

  He pushes past all those people, walks up to his wife, squeezes her in a big hug, and lifts her off the floor. She squeals, and B. lets her go, because she is heavy, and he is so skinny and weak and also very drunk. Somebody hands him a shot of vodka, B. raises it up and yells: “To Oksana and me! To our new life!” There is applause. Drunken yelps. Everybody cheers.

  And I, I stand in the middle of the room, stuck among all those drunk sweaty bodies. I’m shocked, overwhelmed, gasping for breath. Nobody warned me that the pain could be that intense, that scary.

  “But in fact it was a three or four on the pain scale?” Nathalie asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “As I see it now. But back then it was a perfect ten. Worse than my father’s death, way worse than my grandfather’s.”

  I didn’t know how to handle this. What to do.

  So here is what I did. I screamed: “Boris Markovich! You’re a coward and a fool!” and shoved my way through the crowd out of the apartment.

  I ran and ran and ran through the dark park. There was only one person I desperately wanted at that moment.

  “Grandma?” Nathalie asked.

  Her question startled me.

  “My grandma,” she said. “Your mom.”

  “Yes,” I said, “my mom.”

  Bonus problem. List all the embarrassing things you have done for the sake of love and place them on the scale of embarrassment, where 1 is mildly embarrassing, easily remedied with a chuckle, and 5 is so embarrassing that you hesitate before committing it to paper.

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  EIGHT

  In seventeen years of my marriage, I have spent 330 happy days with Len and 6,240 days ranging from desperately unhappy to simply uncomfortable.

  I wonder if this math is terribly sad or if this is how most marriages work.

  Bonus problem. Please calculate the percentage of happy days in my marriage. Then do the same with yours

  Len and I met in August of 1994 on the chipped slippery staircase of one o
f those old Saint Petersburg buildings that seemed to soak up history like a sponge. They had known tsarist-era splendor, the tumult of the revolution, the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi siege, and the quiet abuses of the stagnation period.

  Len was climbing up, I was skipping down. He lived in Saint Petersburg. I had come to Saint Petersburg to visit. Len was twenty-two, a recent graduate of the Electronic Engineering School. I was twenty, a junior at the Moscow Pedagogical University.

  We couldn’t really see each other, because somebody had taken out the lightbulb a few days before. Len loved to say that he fell in love with the light and cheerful sounds of my steps.

  “Do you live in the building?” he asked. I said that I was visiting from Moscow. He didn’t live there either. He had come to fix his aunt’s TV.

  “Do you want me to show you around Saint Petersburg?” he asked.

  He had a deep voice with occasional high nervous notes. He sounded protective and in need of protection at the same time. I liked him right away.

  I had planned to go to Saint Petersburg with my mother—a distant relative had offered us her empty apartment—but my mother changed her mind at the last moment, saying that she was exhausted and the trains were too drafty anyway.

  The past few years had been cruel to her, especially since my grandmother had died and my mother had gotten fired from the ministry. My grandmother had had a stroke at the peak of perestroika, and my mother had been too distracted by her illness and death to keep up with the changes at the ministry. She still had her university job, but she seemed to have lost both her confidence and her spark. She spent most of the time at home, either reading or composing long letters to Grisha, wearing a knitted hat and a scarf because it was “too drafty” and sipping tepid tea because hot tea “burned her throat.” She was turning into this sad old woman right in front of my eyes. Her huge brilliant eyes had become dull and narrow, hiding behind bags of flesh. Her white hair had acquired a yellow tint.

  I couldn’t bear seeing her like that, because I suspected that I was pathetic too. Perestroika, along with glasnost and the sexual revolution, was raging on, and students everywhere, especially at the better schools like the one Sasha and Yulia attended (they had both chosen the psychology department), listened to exciting lectures, went to rock concerts and protests, experimented with sex and drugs, while I was stuck in a school where most professors were hopeless retrogrades still droning on about the many advantages of the socialist economic system. This was nobody’s fault but mine. If I wanted to get into a better school, I should’ve studied instead of chasing B.