At the End of the World, Turn Left

by Zhanna Slor

  ANNA

  ________________

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I could tell you that when I first got the message, the one that changed everything, I was sitting there at my desk trying to do homework. But this just isn’t true. Yes, I was sitting at my desk, and yes, I had my computer open to an Intro to Website Design assignment. But really, I was staring at the screen, listening to Regina Spektor and thinking about this cute drummer I’d been seeing and why I hadn’t heard from him that night. There, I said it. Lame, I know.

  I like to think that had I known our lives were about to get turned upside down, I’d have done something more…memorable. But I probably wouldn’t have. What memorable thing could I possibly be doing anyway, living in Milwaukee? A sophomore in college, I basically live in a bubble, all BYOB basement shows and coffee shop homework marathons. If it were up to me, I’d be painting giant canvasses in some warehouse loft in Brooklyn or waiting tables in Paris, but alas, because I’m the good sister, the one who didn’t drop out of school and leave the country, here I am, having to live out my parents’ dreams instead of my own. Which is to say: I never do anything memorable.

  This is unfortunately (or fortunately?) about to change.

  At first, the message seems like nothing. Like spam. It’s 2007, and I’m on MySpace, so a message from some girl named Zoya would more than likely be junk mail. There’s not even a profile picture up on her account. Normally I would delete it without thinking twice, but I don’t, only because it’s in Russian. That’s my native language, shared with many delightful historical figures, such as Joseph Stalin—who starved and murdered more people than Hitler—and Ivan the Terrible, so bad they put it in his name— and don’t even get me started on this Putin fellow. Because I know nothing about him other than he is also quite bad. Did I mention history and politics are not my strong subjects? I can memorize dates and names for a test, but they’re usually gone a month later. Apparently, my brain would prefer to use that space for other, more useful information, such as every line of dialogue uttered by Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If my high school Social Studies teacher Mr. Blankovich didn’t like me so much, I’m not sure I would have been able to keep my 4.0 GPA. All I know is that the USSR was pretty bad, so here we are, in the Cheese State, far more likely to run into a cow than an undercover KGB officer.

  Anyway. Jokes aside, I quite like the sound of Russian. Also, it’s a strange letter, so right away my curiosity is peaked. Above all else, I am a lover of strange things. If you don’t believe me, you should look inside my closet.

  “Dear Anastasia Pavlova,” the message starts. “Please forgive me for contacting you like this. I’ve known about you for a long time, but you don’t know about me. It would just be interesting for me to talk to you. If you are able, please message me back. Thanks!”

  Well that’s a ridiculous message to send a person, is my first thought.

  My second thought is that it is probably spam after all.

  But, no, that doesn’t quite make sense, for two reasons: first, the girl, Zoya, is from our hometown: Chernovtsy, Ukraine. Chernovtsy, just over the border near Poland and Moldova, is not a very large or famous city; its population is a third of Milwaukee’s. Almost no one has even heard of it, so that would be a strange coincidence for a spammer.

  My third thought is more complex: What if she is some long-lost relative? My grandma is the youngest of seven or eight siblings, all born in Chernovtsy. Although none have lived there since the 90s’ Ukrainian Jewish exodus, and hardly any are still alive, it’s definitely possible I have cousins I don’t know about, and probably a few that have entirely slipped my mind. How else would she know my patronymic? I haven’t used it on any documents since we moved here, and one would have to know my dad to guess it. (I mean, do you blame me? It brings to mind a dog, if you’ve had any sort of classes in psychology and have read about classical conditioning.)

  Which is all to say that I should probably just ask my dad. Either he will laugh it off or tell me she’s some long-lost distant relative. In either case I can dismiss the whole thing right away. It takes me about five minutes to find my phone, as it turns out I left it under the trash can. When I do find it, I call him right away.

  “Are you okay? Did something happen?” my dad asks, picking up on the second ring.

  “Does something have to happen for me to call you?” I ask, innocently. I move the phone away from my face and light a cigarette. Logically I know he can’t see me, but it still sometimes feels that way, and he would kill me if he knew I smoked.

  “You’re not coming Friday, is that it?”

  “No… I’m coming,” I reply, trying to remember what it is I am coming to. Is it someone’s birthday? Anniversary? It’s always someone’s birthday or anniversary. Russians really like to party, and they will find any excuse for it. I’ve been to one-year-olds’ birthday celebrations that could rival a wedding.

  My dad clears his throat, and responds to me in Russian, which means he must really be busy, or at least very tired. “Anastasia, what is it? I’m swamped here.”

  “Do I have a cousin or aunt or something named Zoya Oleynik?” I ask. As I have him here on the phone, the whole idea feels ridiculous. I take a quick drag on my cigarette, and stand to blow it out the window. It hovers in the thick autumn air before lifting up over Center Street.

  “No you don’t,” he says. “Not on my side anyway.”

  “I figured. She just messaged me, that’s why I asked.”

  My dad clears his throat. “What did she say?”

  “It was kind of weird, she didn’t really say anything, just that she knows about me and wants to talk.”

  There is a moment of silence on the phone that I will later find far too long. Liars pause like that. Well, bad liars do. I have since learned to notice these things.

  “Hello? Dad?” I ask.

  “Just ignore it,” my dad says finally. “I get messages all the time from Ukraine. They think we’re rich because we live in America.”

  “Does her name sound familiar at all?” I ask, to be sure. “Do you—”

  This time, before I can even finish getting these questions out, my dad interrupts. “Just forget about it. It’s nonsense. If you respond she’ll only ask for money, trust me.”

  “Okay…”

  “Don’t talk to this woman. Please.”

  This is when I start to wonder: Why does he care so much if I talk to her? The tiniest feeling of something isn’t right here starts growing in the back of my brain. I don’t follow this feeling to its source, or investigate it further, but it’s definitely planted there for later scrutiny, like a seed.

  “Okay, Anastasia?” he says. “I know you hate to listen to me, but I mean it.”

  “Okay, okay,” I tell him.

  Then he hangs up.

  Immediately my heart starts racing. I can’t pinpoint why—excitement? Fear? The pull of history? Whatever it is, I start pacing in the middle of the living room, around all my old paintings and my roommate Margot’s plants and the cool, bitter breath of Autumn, seeping in through the windows. I stick my head out and inhale, hoping that will do the trick. There’s this smell that only exists in Milwaukee in October. The thin smoky jet of laundry after the rain. Wet leaves half-drying, half getting wet again. Open PBR cans, cigarettes, leather. A mix of youth and nostalgia, of losing something as you’re living it.

  The feeling, both terrifying and comforting, that life would always be exactly like this.

  It’s this feeling I’m trying to focus on as I go outside and smoke three cigarettes in a row, before sitting back down at my computer and turning Regina Spektor on again. I forward to the song “Après Moi,” the most theatrical melody of the album. A little melancholy can be beautiful, and it distracts me from the impulse I have to answer this woman right away. It takes a while, but I manage to return to myself eventually. By the time I finish my homework assignm
ent, I am feeling relatively normal again. But maybe I’m a masochist because right as I have finally forgotten about the message, I return to MySpace and look once more at my inbox.

  This time, reading it again, I’m really sure it’s nothing but an Internet con. So she knows my patronymic; it can’t be that hard to find out. She would only have to research my dad’s name. And my hometown is listed in my profile, so that would be easy to investigate, too. My dad is right: the woman—if she is, even, a woman—only wants money. I’ve always been told I have a trusting face, maybe broadcasting it on the Internet is only begging for negative attention. I have the urge to delete all the profile pictures that I’ve ever posted and select one of the side-angle self-portraits I painted instead, which I do in a rapid haze, until there’s no more documentation of my face left online at all. Now only someone who really knows me in person will be able to recognize it, which is how it should be anyway. I should have never gotten on this website in the first place. It turns people into lazy voyeurs, fulfilling their need to socialize in a way that only leaves them wanting more, like a sugary treat you know you shouldn’t have because it won’t fill you up and it’s bad for you, too. I debate deleting my account entirely, but I don’t.

  Finally, feeling very grownup and accomplished, I close the message and move on with the rest of my day.

  ANNA

  ________________

  CHAPTER SIX

  As much as I try to forget about the message, I find myself staring at it again and again over the next few days. On Friday, after I get back from my Russian literature class and empty my heavy bag of its Turgenev and Dostoevsky—why on earth did I think this would be an easy elective because I’m Russian?—I sit at my desk and look at that message again for a long time. I keep re-reading the line It would just be interesting for me to talk to you. I can’t help but wonder: what does she want to talk to me about? Why would it be interesting? The only thing I can come up with is that she is somehow related to us. But I have no way to prove a relation without replying. And I’m not sure I’m prepared for the consequences of actually communicating with this person. Eventually, I am forced to stop thinking about it, because the door to my room slams open. I crane my head back to see my roommate and best friend, Margot, heading straight to my bed.

  “There you are!” Margot says. Without thinking, I minimize the chat window, as if she caught me watching porn or something. And maybe this would be equally as embarrassing, if it’s really a scam that I’ve opened myself up to. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Margot collapses on my bed, taking off her backpack—my backpack, that, like many things, she has acquired from my closet—and numerous layers of wool sweaters and bright scarves. The sight of her fills me with relief. With my best friend’s face there in front of me, I can put the MySpace message out of my mind. It’s hard to believe I found her on Craigslist, but I did. After high school, neither of us wanted to pay the outrageous sums of money UWM was requesting for a tiny dorm room, so we found this giant duplex instead, and spent the first school year studying and drinking and filling the upstairs to capacity with weirdos. It’s only two blocks from campus, so there’s the downside of having to live next to many drunken former football players and homecoming queens that view school as an excuse to party on their parents’ dime and have casual sex every other day. I’m not a prude or anything, but jeez, the conversations I’ve overheard while walking through the Union to get to Prospect Avenue. They would make anyone blush. They’re nothing like the conversations in our house, which do reach the topics of physical love on occasion but are mostly about feelings, or hours-long analysis about whether or not modern art has ruined art. (Which it totally has.)

  “Did you call me?” asks Margot, who doesn’t agree with me about anything regarding art. The uglier something is the more she likes it. It’s not totally surprising, if you’ve seen her paintings. Why would you want to admit the odds are stacked against you? It’s hard enough to be a successful artist when you have talent.

  I glance at my phone and open it. I can’t remember calling her. All that I see listed there is several missed calls from an unknown number and one from my mom.

  “No. I don’t think so. But I was hoping to see you.”

  “I know. I felt it. That’s why I came home,” Margot says. She leans back against the wall, in her plaid shirt and striped skirt and brown beanie we got together on a road trip to Chicago, and makes herself comfortable on my bed, where she will probably stay for the next few hours. She does this often, because her own room is such a jungle you can barely walk from one end to the other. I don’t mind it. The less time I spend alone, the better. I did enough soul-searching in high school, thank you very much. “What are you doing? Why is Abby running around the house naked?”

  “Do you want the logical explanation or the one she gave me?” I ask.

  “I think we’re gonna have to kick her out,” Margot says, not answering.

  “And the revolving door continues,” I groan.

  Margot reaches into her bag and haphazardly takes out a small purple glass pipe we once named Sylvia Plath and packs it with weed. I momentarily consider telling her about the strange message from Zoya but don’t. I’m not sure why; five minutes ago it’s all I wanted to do. Margot and I usually talk about everything. But something about the strange missive makes me quiet.

  “She keeps coming home at four a.m., and blasting country music like no one is trying to sleep,” Margot says, then taps the green nugget down into the bowl. A lighter surfaces out of her bag and she uses it to take a hit. As she lets out the smoke, she adds, “Then when I ask her to turn it down, she moves the knob back and forth until I leave. Not to mention all the homeless people she brings around. Can I wake up one morning and not find a stranger on our couch?”

  “Actually, most of them are just hippies, not homeless people…” I don’t add that I also like seeing people in our house in the morning; it makes me feel like we are at the center of something. The center of what, I don’t know, but I like it anyway.

  “—And why is she running around the house naked?” Margot interrupts.

  “Oh. She thinks she has scabies,” I explain. “She’s going to burn all her clothes in the yard.”

  Margot hands me the pipe, and I take a drag. “Jesus,” she says.

  “I don’t know about kicking her out, though. I like Abby. She’s fun,” I say, letting out the smoke. I hand the pipe back.

  Margot takes another hit before answering me. “I knew you would say that. Have you ever stopped to think if you are actually ever having this fun you’re so obsessed with?”

  I frown, because obviously I do have fun; if anything, a little too much. Lately, since we both got accepted to the Honors Department, Margot has been getting frustrated that she has to work harder to get an A, and can’t go out with me anymore most nights. She would never admit this to me, but she also doesn’t know how to be subtle, so she might as well have. Not that I care about grades. Who would ever look at them again? A finished degree is all you really need these days, and that’s only if you want a regular job teaching or in an office. If you don’t, you may as well skip the financial burden of school altogether. I would have done this myself if not for the extreme parental pressure to go.

  “Let’s just talk to her about it,” I say. Now that I’m feeling more relaxed—likely from the pot—I turn my body to face her. She’s knee-deep in her Art History 101 textbook. Correction: my Art History textbook from the first semester of freshman year, when I still thought I might major in painting. Just try telling a Russian immigrant that bit of news. “She’s probably only worried about scabies because Riley and Jackie had it at their house and she is secretly having sex with Riley. I mean, not so secretly, because it’s fairly obvious. In fact, this whole charade is probably to announce it to the world.”

  “So we can add home-wrecker to her list of wonderful attributes.” Margot rolls her eyes, t
hen grabs the pipe and the lighter, which says Gemini on it, and puts it on my windowsill. “Fine. I guess you better hope she doesn’t burn our entire house down,” she sighs with defeat.

  “...It’s literally the worst disease in the world!” I hear Abby scream from the other room.

  “Should we tell her about cancer? Or AIDS?” I ask, which makes Margot laugh.

  As if she knows we are talking about her, Abby opens the door and barges into my room, still naked and holding a giant garbage bag. “Okay, I got all my stuff. I found some gasoline. I have a lighter. I need your clothes now.”

  “Uh, no,” Margot says. She turns the page of her art history book from Lucien Freud’s grotesque impressionism to Francis Bacon’s even-more grotesque surrealism. I get a brief surge of excitement, like I always do when I see art to aspire toward, followed by a pit in my stomach, remembering that’s not what I do anymore.

  “Margot!” Abby screams, distracting me again from my roller coaster of emotions. It’s hard to think deeply when a naked eighteen-year-old girl is standing in your periphery vision, even if you are straight. “Come on.”

  “Do you want to borrow something to wear?” I ask, getting more concerned about her nudity now that it’s in my face. I’ve seen most of my friends naked, but it’s usually at a distance, in some body of water. Up close it’s more uncomfortable. Plus, her body is too perfect; stick thin down to her hips, where she curves out into an hourglass shape before thinning out again at the legs. Perfect, semi-tanned skin, not a blemish or pimple to be seen. I will never be that thin or have blemish-free skin; my hormones are too wacky. Looking at her—or, trying not to look at her—is starting to make me feel as grotesque as Freud’s portraits.

  But Margot, who is just as thin from playing competitive soccer all of her life, is only annoyed, not jealous. “Abby, you don’t have scabies,” Margot sighs without looking up. “Just take a shower for once.”