Something Unbelievable

by Maria Kuznetsova

  I hear the jingle of Sharik’s bell, and the boy jumps on the couch and then starts the predictable suck, suck, suck that means he’s going to town on himself. I had three perfectly good cats, some who died even before he did—of all of them, why did the dick-sucking one have to survive? Or was there something about the dick sucking that helped him survive? These questions are beyond me right now.

  “Foo, foo, disgusting!” I say, kicking him off the couch, which still smells a bit like Stas’s cigarettes. When he sneaks off to his litter box in the bathroom, I regret it, getting rid of my only friend in the world, but he has to learn his lesson. I don’t know what else to do so I scroll through my phone. Babies Vera is posting about booking one line on Victims Incorporated, as if anyone gives a shit. I like it and even congratulate her.

  Yuri returns from the balcony looking even madder than before. In fact, he’s not walking, he’s more like marching toward me, his fists balled at his sides, looking like a little boy determined to deliver his big line in the school play. The last time he looked like that, his brow furrowed with such intense determination, was when he asked me to marry him, just after we visited my father’s grave on his birthday, in the parking lot outside the cemetery on a cold gray winter day. I couldn’t help it then, I burst out laughing as I watched him go down on one knee because it was such a funny time to ask someone to marry you and he laughed too and said, “I know, I know, I was going to ask you this weekend, but I couldn’t wait another second,” and I said, “I know that, and neither can I.”

  But obviously no proposal is currently forthcoming, though I am genuinely curious about what he will say to me with such determination, given our circumstances. He takes one, two steps closer to me and his lips part. You can imagine my surprise when the words, or rather, the word that comes out of his mouth is a woman’s name, and not mine either.

  “Evgenia,” he says, fists still clenched. I move closer to him, tilting my head, hoping this encourages him to elaborate. But he only says it again: “Evgenia,” he says, moving closer to me. “Evgenia,” one more time, his hands unfisted by then. I try to rack my brains—do we know any Evgenias? Maybe a second cousin on his mother’s side? A long-forgotten friend of my mother’s? My father’s former teacher?

  “Normally,” I say, “I go by Natasha.” This fails to make him smile.

  “Evgenia Kupershteyn,” he says, sternly. “Do you know who that is?”

  “I would guess she’s no American.”

  “After your father’s funeral, when you asked if I was seeing anyone, I said no. But this wasn’t true. I was seeing Evgenia Mikhailovna Kupershteyn, a nice girl I met at a faculty mixer, a biologist from Moscow. We had been seeing each other for six months at that point. Though it wasn’t the most passionate relationship, we had a good time together and she was a smart and serious woman. But one kiss from you—and I broke it off with her the next day.”

  “You’d have to be smart, with a name like that,” I say. “And?”

  “And, I could have been with Evgenia, but I chose you. I have made my bed and now I must lie in it. I knew what you were, I knew you would break my heart, but I just had to have you. Being with you was the only exciting thing I had ever done.”

  He even raises his voice at the end of this little speech. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him raise his voice before, especially not when Tally is sleeping. It’s enough to make poor Sharik slink into the other room, tail raised in objection.

  “So that’s all I am to you, some exciting thing?”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “And now you regret it. Now you wish you had formed an alliance with Evgenia what’s-her-nuts—Mikhailovna Kupersburt.”

  “Kupershteyn,” he says, looking utterly defeated. “And that’s not exactly what I’m saying. I just want to tell you that I’m not mad at you. I’m surprised it took this long for you to get sick of me. At least, as far as I know—”

  “Yuri, please—”

  “I was standing at a crossroad and I took a step toward you. Nobody forced me to do it. Even if you are utterly magnetic, I could have turned you down. I didn’t have to see this through. And now—”

  “I made one mistake, all right? That doesn’t mean I’m going to run away.”

  Yuri sighs and puts his head in his hands. Though I feel terrible, I’m also annoyed by his little martyr act, like I’m some wild, hopeless creature who couldn’t hold herself back. Even if that is how I feel, I wanted him to expect more from me.

  “You could blame me at least a little bit,” I say. “I deserve it.”

  “Or I could blame him,” he says, his lips set in a firm line. “He’s always fucking around like this. He fucked around with every girl in the neighborhood, just so you know. A real heartbreaker—of course, I was off at college, but I heard all about it. I love the guy, but he’s kind of a joke.”

  “Maybe it’s because nobody ever gave him a fair chance.”

  “I see that you think you have a lot in common, but you don’t, Natasha, not anymore.”

  “Maybe not,” I say as his eyes flash with anger.

  “So what are you going to do?” he says, and only then do I realize I have no idea.

  We hear Talia stirring, a welcome distraction. Though she should be able to get back to sleep on her own, I walk into the bedroom to look at her and Yuri follows me. She looks up at us and her lips form an enormous smile, and her fat cheeks rise up to her big ears and her fists come up to her face. As both of us smile and I stroke her now-fluffy little head, I consider that hey, if I was a baby, I, too, would be as happy as a pig in shit because why not be happy when you haven’t yet chosen your family, you haven’t learned to walk or seen any places outside the city or tasted solid food, you don’t know who the president is, and you have no idea that one day, hopefully long after all of your bad decisions have been made, you will be swiftly erased from the planet.

  * * *

  —

  I stand outside Stas’s Harlem apartment for centuries sweating like a beast, that garbage-pizza scent rising through the air as the subway rumbles below me, waiting for him to let me up. The perfectly made-up, ponytailed, Uppababy-stroller gentrifying moms pass me with their coffees, laughing to each other like they are gliding on ice, like they never had to wipe shit off their feet or blood off their nipples. Mom friends, mom friends, Yuri and Steph have hinted that I should make mom friends, but what the fuck for? I already spend my time thinking about changing diapers and nap schedules, and why exactly would I want to spend time with a bunch of women talking more about the things that are driving me crazy? To each his own, though, I guess, but now I have to focus on talking to Stas and then checking out the stage again, while Yuri’s running errands with Tally, which is maybe a nice distraction from hating me.

  When Stas finally opens the door, I feel like I’m his mom, showing up at his dorm unannounced, as if he had actively tried to cover up the smell of cigarettes I just walked into. He reaches out, as if he’s going to run a hand through my hair, but then he just strokes my shoulder and I reconsider, no, no, I am definitely not his mother.

  “Hey,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Sorry if it’s too early.”

  He laughs. “You’ve probably been up half the day already.”

  I follow him up four flights of stairs and walk into a dumpy studio with pizza boxes stacked in the kitchen, towers of thin little books of poetry, and a few plants wilting by the door. The bed is unmade, and there’s a pile of clothes by it, and I try to remind myself what the shithole studios I lived in ten years ago looked like and that it was much worse than this, and yet, I can’t believe I’m lusting after a man-boy who lives in this place. But by the bedside, I see it, a framed photo of a girl who could only be his sister, standing with him by a lake, looking deliriously happy, a girl
with big cheeks and goofy hair. She reminds me how happy I am not to be a preteen anymore.

  “Your sister,” I say, holding it up and putting it back down.

  “Is that what you came here to talk to me about?” he says. He has his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt, and he looks kind of guilty and ill at ease.

  “I told Yuri about our kiss,” I say.

  He takes a step back, and looks terrified and then a bit excited. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

  I shrug. “I didn’t plan on it. I just kind of—felt like he should know.”

  “It couldn’t have waited until after the play?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t mean to. It just came out.”

  He sighs. “I guess we’d have to deal with it eventually.” This is the first time he says we and it makes me dizzy. Not to mention the fact that he said eventually—that he didn’t think this would blow over.

  “We?”

  He sighs and sits down on his rumpled bed and puts his head in his hands. “You. And me. I don’t fucking know, Natasha,” he says.

  “I don’t know either.”

  “Look, if you want me to fight for you, it’s not gonna happen. If you want this, you can decide. But I can’t convince you I’m the right person for you or that you should ruin your life for me. I can tell you my feelings for you scare the shit out of me, but what difference should that make to you? I can’t predict the future.”

  “All right then,” I say.

  “All right,” he says. “I wish I could say more. But I have no fucking clue what will happen a month from now, let alone a year or a lifetime. I can say I think I’ll feel this way, but I can’t ask you to blow up your life on a feeling.”

  “I never said I wanted you to,” I say.

  What did he expect me to do, tell him to run away with me and Tally? Where would we go, exactly? How could we make it work? How could we even afford a place in New York? Anyway, I have no plans to leave Yuri because I’m not a delusional psychopath, and it’s nice to hear he doesn’t exactly think we’ve got long-term potential either. And yet, I move toward him, remembering the smoky taste of his tongue. It would have been nice if he had tried to make a plan, even if I had to shut him down, I guess.

  “I think I’m losing my mind,” I tell him.

  He nods slowly. “I lost mine a long time ago.”

  He takes two steps toward me, and I take a few away, until I’m near the tiny balcony, and I open the screen door to get some air. I stand out, looking at the Columbia campus in the distance, a few hopeful students passing through the side gates. I turn from the balcony and see a photo he taped to the wall, of himself standing on some kind of hiking trail. It seems likely that his ex took the picture in question.

  “What happened with the girl in Boston?”

  “What girl?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what girl?’ Yuri said you left because of a girl.”

  “That’s what I told him. I left because of my sister.”

  “You what?”

  He sighed and sat down. “Our mom—she just can’t really take care of her, like I said. She had a bad few weeks where she was in bed almost the whole time and my sister and I had to do everything for her. Well, she climbed out of it and went back to work, but my sister, she—she asked if she could move in with me. For high school. And I know I should have said yes, I know that was the right thing to do, but I just started to panic. Like, who am I to take care of somebody? And how do I live my life with her always around? Our mom isn’t a danger to her—she’s just kind of out of it. I chickened out and made up some lie about my lease running out, and then really did break my lease and said I was leaving town for a while, but that I would figure out a plan for us soon. And we still talk every day like she never asked, like it never happened, but I know she’s waiting for me to come back. I’m a coward, right?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. I take a minute to process this, to understand there was no mystery ex, that he escaped from something bigger than that. “I think it’s okay to want space for yourself. It’s a lot to take on. But I know you don’t want to leave her alone out there either.”

  “I miss her like hell.”

  “I bet you do,” I say. “It’s okay to take time to figure this out. You’re not an asshole.”

  “I called myself a coward, not an asshole,” he says, but he’s laughing a little.

  “Same difference,” I say. I try to think of something brilliant to say about his shitty situation, but he seems to have cheered up a little.

  “I’m glad I told you that,” he says.

  “Me too.”

  Then he runs a hand through his uncombed hair, trying to look presentable for whatever it is he has to say, and I feel nervous. “I wrote you something,” he tells me. He opens a drawer in his nightstand and pulls out a piece of paper.

  “You did what?”

  My heart is so full, I might die from it. Had Yuri ever made me feel this idiotically giddy? It’s hard to remember. Of course, that wasn’t the feeling I was chasing when we got together, but here I am, hungry for it again.

  “A poem,” he says. “I was going to give it to you after the show. But, well, fuck it, why wait?”

  “I don’t believe it,” I say. I didn’t think I would ever see a poem of his. When he was passed out in our apartment, I might have searched once or twice but came up empty.

  He cringes a bit. “I didn’t say it was a good poem. I just—well, here,” he says, and then I snatch the poem out of his hands and he starts frantically cleaning up his filthy kitchen, plunking dirty dishes in the sink. He looks so sweet, doing it, so sweet and vulnerable and a little bit filthy, and I feel pretty vulnerable and filthy, too, and wonder if this is it, exactly what I need, right in fucking front of me. But then I scan the opening line and a sickness washes over me.

  My heart bleeds and bleeds for you, darling

  Rivers of the blackest darkest blood

  My heart bleeds so sweetly, my darling

  That the world is a wild, mad flood

  The flood is endless, like my love

  It makes the seas rise and the streets fill

  It reaches the treetops and the skies above

  But for you, my heart is bleeding still

  It will bleed forever just for you

  Until it bleeds up to the stars

  It will bleed forever just for you

  And in the end, I’ll be left with scars

  But that’s okay, that’s all right

  I will bleed for you all night

  I will bleed for you all night until I erase your misery

  I will kiss your eyes until you sleep like a baby, baby

  I will kiss your lips until you’re never thirsty again.

  I will kiss your forehead until you forget

  Anything that caused you pain

  * * *

  —

  The first thing that sucks the air out of me is how shitty the poem is. I’m no literary expert, but I’ve read some Yesenin and Tsvetaeva and even remember old Bobby Frost, with his stupid two paths, from high school. I’ve read my share of plays and well, I know good writing when I see it, and this reminds me of something a high school boyfriend would pass to me in the halls. Actually it reminds me of a drummer named Jake, who was already a college dropout by the time I met him outside my high school, who would leave little notes in my backpack, these humorous little sexual ditties that actually cracked me up, with choice lines like I would be a rube/to not touch/your boob and I would never punt/your cunt, but actually those were better than this garbage. But the garbage writing is almost beside the point, because he has not only sinned by writing crap but by stealing the song my mother sang, by daring to reference the private moment I told him about, right there with his dumb words.
Though then again—I told him about it ages ago, at the beginning of this endless summer. The fact that he remembered who sang the damn song—it’s not nothing. But then he had to top it off by butchering the Tsvetaeva poem my grandfather gave my grandmother when he proposed to her—what was the point of that? Why was he trying to combine the messes that all the women in my family had made?

  As I meet his gaze, his poor, anxious waiting-for-a-reaction face, I can hear my mother laughing at me, laughing the nasty laugh I remember when I wore an extra-slutty dress to prom, a tight red Forever 21 number I put on just to piss her off. I was only a freshman and going with a senior who called himself Axel but was really named Alex, wearing a dress that was all ass, which happened to rip down the middle as I stepped out the door. My date and I stared at each other, bewildered, as a terrible shriek erupted from Mama’s mouth. It was one of the most awful sounds I had ever heard, a delighted shriek no daughter’s mother should ever make at her expense, but I deserved it completely, because she had been right about the dress. It was too cheap and too tight and it would not last the evening, let alone the night. And now I hear her laughing again because I’ve gotten in over my head with this twenty-nothing idiot.

  I don’t want Stas to mistake the tears in my eyes for love or fucking sentiment.

  “What the fuck is this?” I say, tossing him back the poem like it’s on fire.

  His face shifts. He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear and realizes it isn’t there. But I say it again, I don’t care how it makes him feel.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought—”

  “I tell you something about my mom, something really private, and you put it in a poem?” I say. I don’t even bother with Tsvetaeva.