by Mick McCoy
He waited, his body stiff, the bucket at his feet and hands deep in his pockets. When the truck had arrived that first morning, its tray carrying rows of beaten wooden barrels and kegs, their contents refrigerated only by the weather, no one needed to be told there’d be no milk in the shops. Since then he’d been responsible for the daily milk run because it was he who complained the loudest about cold sausage for breakfast, or cheese on dark rye. Food that tasted the same whether it was fresh or weeks old. The cheese – he didn’t know what it was called – had the consistency of lightly bubbled rubber, and the bread was as dry and fibrous as a doormat. A little fresh milk to stretch the tap water, mixed with oats or wheat germ, warmed in a pot on the stove and sweetened with a spoon of sugar, was so much better than rubber and doormat. Better still, since coming home from boarding school for mid-term break, Peter had stood in line for the milk yesterday morning and would again tomorrow, alternating days with him. He shared Alex’s dislike of the cheese and sausage.
He scanned the line towards the milk truck. No other boys had been sent out by their mothers. Russian boys wouldn’t do it, any more than Russian fathers. Not even the boys of expat fathers like his would do it. And oh, how the Muscovite hags mocked him, the frail boy sent out on women’s business. He cursed his mother and he cursed the filthy old babushkas with their shawl shrouds and hunched backs and acid tongues. You could see it in the way their heads inclined together, hear it in their chatter. He tried to ignore them, staring at his bucket where it rested on the bitumen, cradled either side by the instep of his boots. If he lifted one foot and tilted the bucket on its side, its flat bottom drew in the weak light from the street lamps, thin and wan and yellow, swilling around among the silver scales of tin and mixing with the pearly film of yesterday’s milk. The light sloshed against the bucket’s walls and shone back up at him, warmer and more inviting. He dreamed of hot summer’s days spent at the pool at the back of the Moscow Lyceum, the sapphire water wide and deep, surrounded by cool grassy slopes dotted with towels and piles of discarded clothes, the midsummer sun delivering everything and everyone to a gently toasted slumber. He’d prop himself up on one elbow, his chest and arms and shoulders more muscular than in real life, his skin more tanned. He’d cast an eye around his fellow sunbathers until it grew hot enough to summon the energy and amble loose-limbed to the pool’s edge, aware of the girls watching his approach as they whispered to their friends, taking in his casual but athletic plunge beneath the surface.
The milk bucket scraped along the bitumen as he nudged it with the toe of his boot. He’d been to the pool twice and hated it. Not even Peter, the water baby, could find a way out of hating it. Nobody lolled in the sun. There were no grassy banks, no girls, and the water was a cloudy swill. People got into the pool, bobbed about for a moment and got out. They didn’t actually swim. The beach at Odessa was what he should’ve dreamed about, but it was over a thousand miles away. Last summer they drove there. The swimming and sunbaking. The unwalled limitless ocean, the untiled sandy beach. Peter was never out of the water; his mother was never in it, except once. Alex was asleep in the sun, his towel spread on the sand when drops of sea water began to rain on him.
‘Are you coming in?’ Peter said, flicking water from his hands across Alex’s back.
He opened his eyes enough to see Peter’s feet at the edge of his towel. ‘Piss off.’
‘I will,’ their mother said.
‘You don’t swim.’
‘Much.’ She fished about inside her bag and pulled out a white rubber swimming cap embossed with small flowers.
‘Has that bathing costume ever been wet?’ Conrad said. He was sitting up on his towel, folded arms ringing his knees.
‘If you want me to swim more often, you might be more encouraging.’
‘Whoo hoo,’ Peter said, laughing. ‘C’mon, Mum.’
They ran to the water’s edge, barely slowing as the waves crashed. Peter was expert at running through them, swinging his feet wide to clear the white water, but their mother’s inexperience had her tumbling face first into the shallows almost instantly. Alex and Conrad laughed from their towels as Peter doubled back to pick her up, holding her hand as they stepped more gently towards the deep. Ruby squealed as a wave broke in front of her, knocking her backwards and submerging her except for her feet.
‘You’re no use,’ Alex heard her say to Peter above the noise of the sea. ‘Hold me tight.’ And they set off again, out past the break, where they breaststroked with heads high above the clear water. They stopped about thirty yards offshore, possibly talking, possibly just drifting close about each other in a slow, floating dance for the longest time, until they made their way back in. They dried themselves and spread their towels across the sand. ‘That’s it for me for another year,’ Ruby said, lying on her stomach, eyes closed.
Peter lasted ten minutes before he nudged Alex’s shoulder. ‘Are you coming in?’
Days like that might happen all the time under an Australian sun, but not in Moscow. In the dark and rain at the back of the milk queue, surrounded by bitumen and concrete, Alex pulled in the lapels and collar of his jacket. He’d be nineteen in six months’ time and if his parents weren’t interested, he’d find the money somehow and go back home to Australia without them. Just him and Peter. He’d finish uni, get a night job. Peter could go to a decent school with teachers who gave a shit and wouldn’t treat him like a halfwit. And they’d live with Uncle Curtis until there was enough money to rent a flat. Uncle Curtis would take them in for sure.
For the next fifteen minutes, as drizzle swirled and gusted, he glared at the unbroken row of squat, boxlike apartment blocks, all mustard and tan, stucco and brick and concrete slab, on the east flank of Leninski Prospekt. Square, stark. Fast and cheap to build. Whole neighbourhoods of them. Five floors high, five apartments wide and two deep, open stairwells and claustrophobic central corridors and narrow balconies. Small homes with small rooms and stingy windows and hollow doors, just like the one his family lived in. They continued to appear, these blocks, clustering into new neighbourhoods before the streets they lined were sealed or had names. They seemed old and timeworn as soon as they were built.
Finally, it was Alex’s turn to hand his bucket to the truck driver. After he received his half-pail of milk, which always smelled of cow shit, he dug a five-kopek coin from his pocket and gave it to the milkman, whose reply was to jab his fingers into Alex’s chest.
‘Chto? What?’ Alex said. But he knew what and handed over another two kopeks. It wasn’t enough for the milkman’s palm to be withdrawn. ‘The last half-pail was seven kopeks,’ Alex said. ‘Just two days ago. Why should this one be any more?’
‘Potomu chto ty pytalsya uyti s pyat’yu. Because you tried to cheat me with five.’
Alex knew he should’ve just walked away then.
‘Do you want milk tomorrow morning?’ the milkman said. ‘I know what your mother looks like. I’ll tell her when she comes that you kept the money for yourself to spend on some whim, instead of paying a fair price for the milk your family are all at home waiting for.’
Of course he was bullshitting, but Alex emptied his pockets all the same. ‘Another two kopeks,’ he said. ‘That’s all I have.’
‘That’s enough.’ The milkman scooped the final coin from Alex’s hand, throwing the money into a small wooden box perched atop the truck’s flat bed. ‘But next time,’ he said, delivering a final jab to Alex’s ribs, ‘byt bystreye, ili v drugom meste … be quicker, or else …’
Alex was sure the milkman had picked him for a Westerner and he wondered how. He’d spent most of his life on those streets but the locals all knew. Was it his clothes, or how he wore them? Was it his face or the shape of his head? The way he walked? He tried to convince himself again that his voice sounded as Russian as any. But were his eyes too blue? Maybe it was his attitude. Maybe he lacked the resilience needed to imitate the locals. The experience to call their bluff and turn on your heel, you
r last two kopeks saved for whatever else you cared to spend them on.
Next time he’d stand his ground, tell the milkman five kopeks was all his milk was worth. Or he’d hand over all the coins straight away and trudge home.
RUBY
She had to admit, Alex was a lot like her. He stewed on things, let them fester. It was their similarities at the heart of their bickering. When she was around him, she was afraid to be free enough to enjoy herself. Oftentimes she couldn’t see how to be, and if she tried it would only inflame him, make him resent her more. He was usually suffering from some perceived injustice, and in his company she didn’t think she had the right to happiness. Whereas Peter gave her that right, with his smile so easily worn and sunny. He found ways to be happy regardless of what shitty thing might be happening, and that rubbed off on her. Or it had until this last visit home.
After Alex left for the milk, Peter appeared at the dining table and pitched his reading books across the red and white laminate. The school supplied the Russian text, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and asked parents to find an English text. Ruby had chosen My Brother Jack. She watched him pull back a chair, its missing rubber feet leaving the ends of the steel-tubed legs to catch on the linoleum floor. He shook it, as if it dragged its heels intentionally.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m tired.’ He slumped into the chair.
Although a good six inches shorter than Alex, Peter was more muscular, more filled out, particularly in the legs. And the height difference was shrinking fast. Ruby could swear he grew a half inch each week he was away at boarding school. He had Ruby’s thick, wavy brown hair and her brother Ryan’s widow’s peak, although it was much less pronounced, thankfully. His green eyes were livelier than hers, except on that morning.
She sat with him. ‘You don’t feel sick?’
‘It’s the holidays, Mum, and you’ve got me up before daylight to read.’ He opened the Chekhov.
Ruby heard the emphasis he put on read, as if he wouldn’t mind being out of bed this early if he were playing chess, or ice hockey, even standing in a cold and dark milk queue. ‘It’s what your teachers want you to do.’
‘It’s not what I want to do.’
Some weekends back he’d heard a marine scientist on Voice of America say that in twenty years’ time there would be whole cities built under the sea. Peter had decided there and then he wanted to build them, the first time he’d verbalised any such ambition.
‘Even deep-sea construction workers need to read well.’
She could see there were things he wanted to say. The muscles of his jaw flexed and bunched as if he were chewing at his thoughts, rather than utter them. He began to read aloud, but he had none of his brother’s ease with the local tongue, tripping on unfamiliar words that should’ve been old friends after so much repetition. Now into his final year of middle school and despite having spent his whole school life in Moscow, Peter found reading Russian like walking barefoot on a stony track. Although he went to the same boarding school Alex had attended, one specialising in language skills – both Russian and English – he had to carefully pick his way through text, but would soon come up hard against some sharp Cyrillic phrase. He was no better reading English, or at maths or science or geography or history. She may as well withdraw him from the boarding school if it wasn’t doing any good. At least then she’d have him home for more than weekends and holidays. His mood would shine again. She’d have the old Peter back.
They were still at the table when Alex came through the front door and slung it closed. He crossed the living room swinging and rolling the bucket of milk, making sure it bumped against the back leg of her chair as he passed. Milk spilt on the floor but he didn’t break his stride. She kept her attention on Peter’s reading.
Alex hoisted the bucket onto the bench beside the kitchen sink and draped a tea towel over its mouth. ‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Gone already,’ Ruby said. ‘To fill the car with petrol so we can leave early tomorrow morning.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Mushrooming, you know that.’
‘It’s too cold. They’ll all be frozen.’
‘Well, then we’ll just enjoy the fresh air and the countryside.’
‘Can I drive? At least part of the way?’
Mushrooming was achingly boring and his resistance to being dragged along would normally be fiercer. He must so desperately want to get his driving licence. ‘I’m sure your father would love you to do some driving.’
‘Once we get out of the city,’ Alex added. ‘Once we’re free of the traffic.’ He leaned against the sink. ‘Will breakfast be ready after I’ve had my wash?’
‘And you remember what’s on tonight, of course?’ Ruby said. ‘Peter, Alex, I’m talking to both of you now.’
As Alex walked into the bathroom, Peter slowly raised his head from the pages of his book, his expression glassy and faraway. ‘No.’
‘You’re going to see your father receive his award.’ She could hear water running.
‘The water’s cold,’ Alex called.
She turned back to Peter. ‘You do know. I’ve told you twice, three times.’ From his blank face, she couldn't tell whether his forgetfulness was real or put-on.
Alex wandered back in to the living room with a towel in his hands. ‘Mum, how could we possibly forget?’
‘He’s very anxious about it, that’s all,’ Ruby said.
‘Who’s anxious?’
She grabbed the book from Peter and pressed her hand against the open pages, flattening the binding against the table, its glued spine cracking dryly. ‘Not anxious,’ she said. ‘He’s proud, and feeling justified about the reasons he brought us all here.’
Ruby had no intention of celebrating those reasons. She’d already had that argument with Conrad, when the boys weren’t around to hear it. But her own hypocrisy made her irritable. ‘Sit down then!’ she said. ‘Just sit down and I’ll get the breakfast.’
Peter stacked his books. ‘And what are those reasons, Mum?’ he asked. ‘Tell me again why we’re still here and not back in Australia?’
Alex took a chair beside Peter, stuck out his crossed legs and waited.
Ruby busied herself preparing their breakfast. ‘It will mean a lot to him to have the two of you there tonight. You know that.’
‘If it’s such a big deal,’ Peter said, ‘why aren’t you going?’
‘Peter, please don’t behave like that just because your brother does.’
Ruby could feel her sons grinning behind her back. She scooped three handfuls of oats into a pot, ladled in milk from the bucket and added water from the tap. ‘I already told you why I’m not going.’
‘Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense,’ Peter said.
‘It makes perfect sense. Three tickets, four Murphys. One of us has other responsibilities and that’s me.’
Ruby lit the gas under the pot, pulled bowls from the cupboard and carefully poured the remaining milk into two glass bottles. Alex and Peter cleaned dirt from under their fingernails, biting those that needed it.
‘You don’t want to go to a block committee meeting,’ Peter said. ‘Sit and listen to everyone moan. You can have my ticket and I’ll stay home.’
Ruby watched the heat rise up through the porridge in fat, lazy bubbles. No one spoke. Wind and icy drizzle hissed outside the window. ‘You’re going, Peter.’
‘I could do some more reading.’
‘You’re going.’
‘It’ll be so boring.’
‘Peter.’
‘You know it will. That’s why you’re not going.’
Ruby switched off the stove. ‘This evening when your father gets home from work he’ll find two enthusiastic sons, ready to accompany him to receive his award.’ She stirred the porridge to creaminess. ‘You’ll be excited for him. I would appreciate it if you could at least pretend to be.’
‘But Mum …’
‘Enough!’ Bowls of porri
dge landed heavily in front of Peter and Alex, their spoons duelling for first access to the sugar.
‘Is he well enough to go?’ asked Peter. ‘Out into the cold night air and everything?’
Ruby grabbed a milk bottle from the window sill and carried it back to the table. ‘You don’t ask that when he goes out to work in the morning.’
‘I bet you didn’t sleep much last night. I know I didn’t.’ Peter gazed at Alex, who’d poured too much of the milk over his breakfast before handing it to him. ‘We didn’t.’
‘Don’t even think of using your father’s health as an excuse.’ She pointed a finger at Alex. ‘And you keep out of this.’
Alex kept eating.
‘That’s not what I meant!’
‘I should hope not.’ Back in the kitchen she rinsed the milk bucket.
‘It’s not. Has he been back to the doctor yet?’
‘What will make him feel infinitely better is having the two of you there tonight when he gets up on the stage to receive his medal.’ She stowed the bucket under the sink, rewet the tea towel, wrung it and draped it over the lip of the sink. ‘Being able to look into the crowd and see your faces would relieve him of anything.’
The only sound was the clinking of spoons against emptying bowls.
‘So are we agreed then?’
‘Yep.’ Alex sighed.
Peter stood up from his chair.
‘Where are you going?’ Ruby asked.
‘To clean my teeth.’
‘Not before I have an answer, you’re not.’
Peter stopped at the bathroom door. ‘All right, Mum. I’ll be there. With bells on.’
‘Thank you, Peter.’
CONRAD