Something Unbelievable

by Maria Kuznetsova

  Though I promised Yuri I’d take the summer off from auditions, when my agent said she had another top-notch prostitute audition for me, one that was even more prestigious than my respectable three-season gig as Katya Andreyeva, the telepathic crime-solving hooker on CBS’s Seeing Things, I couldn’t turn it down. When I got the text after spending the better part of the past three months getting my nipples chewed on, I thought I might blow my brains out if I couldn’t get out of the house and be someone other than a mom, even if that someone was a prostitute-spy conveniently named Natasha, as they often are. But seeing these younger, skinnier, smooth-skinned, perky-breasted women who have slept more than three hours in a row in the last month, I know I’ve wasted my time, that I would have been better off talking to my grandmother at our appointed time instead of rescheduling for later in the day for this bullshit.

  I take off my jacket and leather pants and bright-red lipstick in the bathroom, my prostitute gear which had gotten me plenty of hooker roles before I got pregnant, though now I just look like a plastic bag my cat, Sharik, ingested and threw up. My boobs are killing me so I squeeze some of my milk into the toilet and change into a T-shirt and leggings and flats, my default mom garb. But as I head for the door, I see I’m not getting off that easy. I spot Marianna, Sofia, and Vera, three girls from the Borsch Babies—or as I call them, the Borsch Bitches—who seem to haunt all the same auditions as I do and whose tiny asses and thigh gaps make it clear that they most definitely do not have babies of their own. And they’ve spotted me too—it’s too late to sneak away.

  For a while there, the Borsch Babies, a Russian-Jewish theater troupe, was basically saving my life. When I dropped out of NYU after a semester and was spending my time bartending and failing at auditions and hating my dead mother for saying I told you so, the only thing that gave my life meaning was meeting a bunch of equally dubiously employed Russian immigrants in the founder Vadim’s dim little theater in Brighton and trading immigration stories and then looking further back, to our parents and even our grand- or great-grandparents, talking about the collapse and perestroika and communal life and the purges and wars and pogroms, trying to make sense of that ancient rubble, asking how it made us who we were.

  None of our plays were very good, I can say that now, though we pretended otherwise, as if the people in the audience were there for art’s sake, not because they were related to or had fucked or wanted to fuck one of us. But talking about the poor dead Russians who had been royally screwed by the government to bring us here to live our strange uncertain lives did something so essential for our souls that we couldn’t see past it to the stiff accents and melodramatic plots we forced our audiences to endure a few times a year. Plus, we partied hard and had a good time. In fact, too good of a time, and once I got involved with Vadim while he was already involved with Sofia, and then, it turned out, also Marianna, things got too messy, culminating in an ill-advised foursome on a waterbed after too much blow that we were convinced would solve the awkwardness instead of making everything impossibly worse. After that, I left the Babies, traded my last name, Orlova, for Sterling, and then I got some money doing voiceover work for The Americans, basically just chitchatting in ’80s-appropriate Russian as background noise for three full seasons for an impressive hourly rate, and then I got my big break in an eco-friendly tampon company commercial for a brand called Lady Planet that was big for a while, where I paused in front of the camera to tie my shoe and declared, “It’s as easy as being a woman!” It didn’t exactly make me Flo from Progressive or the Mentos man, but people recognized me, for a while. Then I signed with my agent and booked Seeing Things, and sure, it seemed like I left the Babies for bigger things, but the timing of me leaving and then getting lucky with work was a coincidence. And now my former Babies costars are winding through the crowd just to be bitches to me, I’m sure.

  “Looks like Mamachka is back in the game,” Vera, the queen of the troupe, says as she runs a cold hand over my head. She still weighs about ninety pounds and her long black hair is impossibly thick and shiny. “But oh, she looks so tired. Unless you’ve had your eyes done recently.”

  “Have you slept since the baby was born?” says Marianna, the prettiest and meanest of the three. “We should come over, say hello. Bring you some bouillon and rub your feet.”

  “At least you’ve put on weight. That’s good. You were too skinny before. Now you look like a real woman,” says Sofia, the sexy one, squeezing my side while I try not to flinch.

  “Did you actually stop shaving your arms?” says Marianna, stroking my stubbly forearms.

  “Always a pleasure, ladies,” I say. She’s right about the forearms, but fuck her. “Really. So lovely to see you.”

  They cackle like little witches, Shakespearean cunts without cauldrons. “Natasha thinks she can be this Natasha,” Vera says. “We will see, won’t we?”

  “You know, the Borsch Babies are putting on a play about Chernobyl this fall. You are welcome to join us anytime,” says Marianna, and I know she’s keeping herself from adding, If you don’t think you’re too much of a hotshot for us.

  “Thanks,” I say, trying not to visibly cringe about this stupid idea. Who would actually give a shit about Chernobyl? It’s not exactly a sexy topic. “I’m pretty busy with the new baby, but I’ll keep it in mind,” I say.

  “Of course,” says Marianna.

  I nearly trip over her leather boot as I step away.

  “Oh, Natasha?” says Marianna, and I turn back to her steely smile.

  “What?”

  “Congratulations.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about. I have the crazy thought that she’s congratulating me because I somehow already booked Pen & Sword, but then I remember I have a newish baby at home. I mumble a thank-you and choke on hairspray all the way to the elevator.

  Outside, I catch my breath. I take a selfie and post it on Instagram: #backinthegame #auditionlife #threemonthspostpartum and watch the likes crop up on the screen, people I never see in real life telling me what a badass I am, a warrior, even, for going out for roles. I hate doing this shit, I’d literally rather have a screwdriver shoved up my ass while getting my teeth cleaned than write these dumb posts, but everybody else does it and if I don’t, then no one will remember that I exist. Anyway, it’s a nice change from posting pictures of Tally, though anything I share about the little rat gets more love than my posts about my career, such as it is.

  I’m never out in the wild anymore, so I don’t even mind the mean June heat or the garbage-sewer summer smell of the city. I strut to the subway because I’m in full makeup and feel human and smile at everyone I pass, hoping someone cries, “It’s as easy as being a woman!” at me or at least tells me I have a nice ass. As I round the corner, a guy in a suit leers at my tits, but as he gets closer I see he’s not turned on but horrified, and then he points at my chest. I look down and realize he’s trying to be a good citizen, telling me my boobs are leaking. But I just give him the finger and cry, “Fetishist!” and stride past the poor man. My face burns as I throw my prostitute jacket back on and skulk into the subway.

  * * *

  —

  Stas puts away the little black notebook he’s always scribbling his poetry in as soon as I walk in the door. Old Sharik is sitting on his lap and Tally must be sleeping in her crib, a small miracle. I peek in the bedroom to see the rise and fall of her chest. When Stas rolled in a few weeks ago, with his compact little body and ponytailed blond hair, wearing a tattered button-down shirt and black jeans though it was a hundred degrees out and the middle of May, reeking of cigarettes, flies practically swarming around him, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I hadn’t seen the guy since our wedding, when he got blacked out and boned sexy Babies Sofia in a broom closet, and he’s been a waiter-slash-poet-slash-heartbreaker ever since, according to Yuri. But then he held my girl and I had a hard time reconciling this fa
ke bohemian guy who called himself a poet with the sweet man holding my daughter, and I hated him a little less.

  He has experience with babies because he practically had to raise his kid sister on his own. His dad left his family to start a new one right after his sister was born when Stas was a teenager, and his mom was so depressed that Stas had to do most of the work when he wasn’t in school, or when Yuri’s parents, friends of his family from Minsk who lived in the same Boston suburb, couldn’t help out. Though Yuri was in college when this was going on, he came home on the weekends to check in on Stas, take him out for a burger and cheer him up, treating him like his baby brother. Now Stas’s baby sister is a teenager herself, and he’s obsessed with her, always facetiming her on our balcony. It’s a lifesaver that he’s showing some of that love for Tally.

  “You have the magic touch,” I say, nodding toward the bedroom.

  He smiles broadly. “She’s easy. How did it go?”

  “Complete waste of time,” I say, kicking my shoes off. “I don’t know why I bothered.”

  “You underestimate yourself.”

  “I think I have a pretty realistic view of things.”

  “If you don’t get this prostitute role, then you’ll get the next one. With that orange turd in office, there’s no shortage of them, I’m sure.”

  “That may be true,” I offer, because I can’t deny that there have been more roles as Russian prostitutes and spies since Trump got elected last fall, since everyone loves having Russians be the villains again like it’s the fucking Cold War. “But it doesn’t matter if there are a million parts like that right now. I’ve been out of the game too long and I look like ass on a stick. I don’t even think I’m good enough for the Borsch Bitches anymore.”

  “You don’t really miss them anyway, do you?”

  “I’d rather die than crawl back to them. But I’d also rather die than—not work,” I say. He looks like he wants to further pursue the topic of my train wreck of a career, but I am way too tired for that. I say, “Really, thank you so much. You’re saving my life.”

  “Likewise,” he says. “The pleasure is all mine.”

  I consider asking: What am I saving you from, exactly? But I don’t want to make it weird. All I know is that he told Yuri that he got into a “messy situation” with a girl back in Boston, which was so bad that he placed a desperate call to Yuri asking if he could crash with us, insisting that sleeping on a couch in a one-bedroom with a newborn in it was preferable to his current situation, and of course Yuri didn’t bother asking whether this was preferable for me. Yuri, Yuri, always eager to please everybody because he was the only child of parents who were impossible to please—quiet, distant people who drove down from Boston to take one look at Tally and told us they would return after the summer, when there would be more they could do—even if it was at my expense. Once I clean up a bit in the kitchen, the man himself is back, opening the door loudly enough to wake Tally up. He doesn’t wait, doesn’t give her a minute to settle, he just runs into the bedroom and picks her up from her crib and raises her in the air, the sunlight flooding her few feathery strands of hair.

  “There’s my baby girl,” he declares. “Let’s have a look at her.” He kisses her forehead, her cheeks, her little nose, and she gives him a smile, which obviously has melted his fucking simpleton parent heart, just as those early smiles are supposed to do. “Yep, everything is in working order,” he says, kissing me on the forehead like he’s a priest offering his blessing to a dying child. “We won’t have to take her back to the store for repairs.”

  “I did my best,” Stas says, saluting him.

  “You always do,” Yuri says. Once Stas steps out on the balcony to smoke, my husband turns to me and says, “How did it go?”

  He’s just come back from class so he’s in his adorable professor gear, with his khakis hiked too high over his button-down shirt and his plaid loafers that could have belonged to my dad.

  “It was fine,” I tell him. I don’t know why I don’t admit how awful it was.

  “That’s great,” he says, failing to read my level of enthusiasm, turning back to Tally.

  I could go on, but he won’t hear me. He doesn’t care about me at the moment. Talia is the apple of his eye and I’m old news. He cradles her and strokes her cheeks. “Little butterball,” he says, kissing her nose again. Right then, I could tell him my vagina split in half on the subway and he would just nod and smile.

  I stop and fix my hair in the mirror that hangs above the one photo I have of my great-great-grandmother Antonina, who looks so stylish in her long black coat and famous white boa, the only picture Baba had of her, maybe the only one ever taken, not long before her world was thrown into chaos. And sure, she was batty, but she’s also the last woman in my family who was glam in any way—not my practical-minded great-grandmother, or my tough grandmother and her plain matching cardigan and pants and simple pearls, and not my own mother, who never wore makeup and kept her legs hidden under ugly work suits, though there was no hiding her beauty, a woman whose gorgeous hair I saw down exactly once. None of the other women, as far as I know, ever wore a lick of makeup, while Antonina was inches deep in rouge and powder, Revolution or not, and bless her for it. I tell myself that the women in my family had made it through the Revolution, and the Great War, and that surely I can make it through the early days of parenting, which reminds me I have to call Baba in an hour. I turn back to my nearly bald, big-eared little girl who has the face of the man I love, the man who is now staring at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he says, and then he kisses me on the lips, a big improvement over the lame forehead kiss from a moment ago. “You look pretty, that’s all.”

  “Pretty?” What am I, a high school girl? I consider pointing out my leaking boobs, but no, this is sweet of him, he’s making an effort. It’s nice to know he can still see me that way. “Thanks,” I say, and I run a hand down his slightly stubbly cheek. “You’re not so bad yourself, Shulman.” He laughs before turning back to our girl.

  The kiss lingers, though, reminding me that there had been a point when we kissed all the time, when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, which kind of diminished when I felt too gross to hook up during my pregnancy and had totally gone away once Talia was born because I felt even more gross then. But I’m hoping things will change, even if it’s hard to imagine a sexy opportunity presenting itself anytime soon, what with Talia waking up every hour and Stas puttering about, though maybe we could exploit Stas for a night out when we’re feeling up to it, or when I am anyway.

  Yuri sits down with the girl in his arms and she is fast asleep again, like magic; well of course she sleeps in his arms, there’s no scent of milk to put her on high alert. I sit next to him and watch her resting there, as still as a pile of stones by a riverbed.

  But when Stas returns, she whimpers and opens her eyes, giving me her signature cranky face, like she smells something foul and is certain I’m the one responsible. Those are basically her two states for me, either annoyed or asleep. She saves all her heart-melting smiles for her papa.

  “Sorry,” Stas says.

  “No worries,” I say. “Girl’s gotta eat anyway.”

  I take her in my arms and am about to whip out my tit when I see Yuri’s eyes get huge and I realize that this is because while I’ve been nursing Talia in front of Stas when Yuri’s at work, I’ve never actually whipped it out in front of the two of them. Maybe it’s weird to just have my tits on display for a guy I’m not married to. Or maybe this is deeply anti-feminist, maybe I have a right to do whatever I want with my fucking blown-out body, and actually I have, I’ve done it at every park all over town. But now I look at Stas and Yuri again, and both of them are noncommittally looking around like something weird isn’t happening and then I say, “Excuse me,” and take Talia into the bedroom and whip out my boob just
for her. I’m kind of pissed Yuri acted all weird, but on the other hand, I see his point—his wife showing more of her body than he has seen in a while in front of some dude she’s not married to, fine, fine, fine. I’m just surprised he still sees me as a human woman at this point; after all, you wouldn’t tell a bag of Doritos or a porcupine or a shopping cart to cover up.

  Tally clamps down on me, hard, and I wince, but then I feel a sweet relief, my engorged, leaking boobs finally releasing some of their weight. It still takes me a moment to understand this is my life now, that this is as normal for me as it used to be to put on my heels and walk five blocks to the Lair, the bar where I worked for years, where I would do a shot of Tito’s before starting my shift like clockwork. Who could have imagined it, even a few years ago? Me—somebody’s fucking mom. One of the reasons I never wanted a kid, beyond my general too-fucked-up-to-have-one state, my lack of higher degree or money or maternal feelings toward anybody except Sharik and all my beloved long-gone former pets, was that I wondered, by the drawn-out end of my poor bitchy mother’s life, whether she was glad she even had me at all.

  What was the point? You spend all this time trying to get pregnant, and if you’re “lucky,” then actually getting pregnant. Then you feel like ass in a glass for nine months if you’re “lucky” enough to carry the baby to term, and then you push the little shit into the world, you give all your blood and sweat to the helpless thing and it saps your strength and resents you, makes you its enemy, doesn’t remember the nights you spent rocking it or holding it to your breast or changing its poopy diapers. Then you spend the next decade fighting, and if you’re “lucky,” you come out the other end with an understanding—but that’s like twenty years of work for a best-case scenario that doesn’t feel all that worth it to me. And in my mom’s case, she never got to the other end of it, because she fucking died, because the breasts that gave me life turned against her in the end, just like I did.