Something Unbelievable

by Maria Kuznetsova

  “I didn’t post it on Facebook. I just thought it would be nice to, I don’t know, pay some kind of tribute to your mom—”

  “You didn’t know her,” I say, taking a few steps away from him. “You aren’t family.”

  He follows me and then stops in his tracks. I see how much I’ve hurt him, but I don’t care. “I wasn’t trying to be your family. I was trying to be nice. To share my work—”

  “It isn’t your work.”

  “It’s a compilation,” he says, reaching out for that phantom strand again. He swallows hard and his face gets all pale, as he really gets how much he fucked up. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this. I was trying to do something nice for you.” I look at him, into his eyes, and wonder if he’s really the man I kissed. If he knows anything about me. If he did, then he never would have done anything so stupid.

  He comes toward me, brushes hair out of my face, but I don’t feel like kissing him anymore. I feel sick, actually. Like I have eaten all the old pizza in the kitchen and need to puke it up.

  “Please,” he says. “I’m sorry about the poem.”

  “Let’s clean up this mess,” I say, nodding at his kitchen. I don’t have the energy to discuss it further. Then, when he looks genuinely hurt, I add, “Thank you.”

  “Thank you?”

  “For trying,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I did try.”

  I wash the disgusting dishes and he dries them, and then he sweeps his tiny kitchen, I feel tense when he’s right behind me, brushing up against my back. As I’m finishing up with the dishes and asking myself why the fuck I’m still here, his phone rings, and at first I wonder if it’s Yuri, but when I see him smile at his screen, I know it’s his sister.

  “Answer it,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to meet her.”

  “Fine,” he says, and a cute chunky little preteen appears on the screen. She has his pretty eyes. “Sonya, this is Natasha. Natasha, Sonya.”

  “Hi,” she says. “She’s pretty,” she tells him.

  “I know it,” he says.

  “You should have seen me before I had a kid.”

  She laughs and says, “Are you ready for your big show?”

  “Sure,” I say, but I’m lost, I’m not thinking of the show exactly, I’m thinking of my grandmother, of her own sister, Polina. It’s so obvious my grandmother misses her every day, that she would give anything to be with her again, but she doesn’t see it. So I look at Stas’s sister. “Are you ready?” I ask her.

  “For what?” she asks, and her brother gives me a big nervous look.

  “For your brother to visit you when it’s over,” I say.

  I can feel his spirit falling, but he gives her a big smile, and directs that smile at me with hatred in his eyes. “That’s right,” he tells her. “I can’t wait.”

  The girl is so excited, the joy on her face is so real, that I don’t regret what I’ve done. She shrieks and squeals and says oh my God she can’t believe it, she’s missed him so much, and then he tells her he’s gotta go.

  “I love you,” he tells her, and she says, “You have no idea.” He hangs up and I refuse to meet his gaze.

  I just shrug and say, “Only trying to help.” I imagine this was what he was thinking when he told Yuri about the play idea before I had decided to go all in on it. But he doesn’t seem mad.

  “It’s fine, Sterling,” he says.

  Then he puts his arm around me and I let him keep it there. I know it’s not going to go any further than that, this time. I thought he’d be livid after what I had just done, but he just seems tired. “Are you really ready for the show?” he asks.

  And I just stand there, I can’t even think of an answer.

  “Sure,” I tell him. “Sure I am.”

  Then I see he’s still clutching that stupid poem, and I’m mad at him for writing it but also sorry for being so mad, so I snatch it out of his hands and walk away without even looking at him. He doesn’t say anything as I stumble out. All I hear is Mama laughing at me all the way out the door.

  * * *

  —

  I was livid the summer Mama decided to invade me and my grandmother’s trip to Sevastopol, or rather, when she finally accepted my grandmother’s standing invitation to join us, because why the fuck not, she was starting chemo in a month, and it was her last summer on Earth, just a few months before I would catch her singing and bury her not long after that—though we didn’t know any of that at the time, of course. Not only was Mama encroaching on my very sacred grandmother time, but I was also particularly mad at her then because she basically ended my latest relationship. My college dropout drummer-slash-poet boyfriend Jake, the non-cunt-punter, and I were making out in his car outside our house when Mama yanked open the door in her stupid bathrobe, looking beautiful and furious, and declared, “It’s past your curfew.” The comment scared him off for good, reminding him that I was still in high school, after all, adding poor Jake to the list of men Mama had gotten rid of as swiftly as she killed those poor sick animals of my childhood, clobbering them with a frying pan in the yard during the night while I watched from my bedroom window, too scared to say something because, what—I was afraid I was next?

  Cut to two weeks later, when Mama and I got to my grandmother’s seaside cottage after the boy stopped returning my calls. There I was, alone and drummerless on the Black Sea, gritting my teeth around my mother, trying to enjoy myself around my grandmother, but mostly ignoring her too as a result, finding refuge with Ivan the bartender on the beach, a hairy bear of a man who barely spoke a lick of English, which was just fine for my purposes. I hated Mama for ruining Jake for me but was also freaking out about her impending procedure, wondering if that was what she thought about anytime she looked out at the ocean, but I was too afraid, or maybe just too self-absorbed, to ask her.

  Most of the time that trip, she was laughing away at one thing or another with my grandmother, but one morning, my grandmother said she was taking a few hours to “meet a friend,” and went off on her own. Though I hated her for being disloyal to my grandfather, I knew there was nothing I could do about it; if hosting a dying woman didn’t stop her from running off to one of her men, then nothing would. Mama and I exchanged glances but did not say anything about it, and until then I didn’t realize that this wasn’t just a secret I had kept. My parents had long known about it too. And I was sad for my grandfather of course but happy that Baba was still able to chase after a bit of joy. Except this meant I was alone on the sea with Mama for basically a lifetime, hours and hours of just getting baked by the sun and saying almost nothing, until Mama stood up, as if summoned, to stare out at the water.

  I watched her at the edges of the waves, just staring out with her long soon-to-be-gone wavy black hair falling on her pale back, like she was the last person on Earth. I followed her to the water, though I didn’t have anything to say. And she turned to me with a big smile, like she had been waiting for me to come to her, even if she had spent all morning beside me on a towel saying nothing.

  “When you were a little girl, I was out of my mind with sadness,” she said. “It took me years to find work in America because I had such a hard time learning English. It was just full-blown depression, I see that now, but at the time, I just felt like my thoughts were the truth, that I needed to take myself out of the equation and that you and your father would be better off. Thank God we didn’t have guns lying around! That would have been the end of me….” she said, laughing a bit.

  I could see how the general coldness I remembered from her when I was a kid was more like sadness, but the whole suicide angle was too much and I was both horrified and annoyed. Who wants to talk about almost-attempted suicide on vacation, let alone her own mother’s? I was still feeling pretty sorry for myself, after Jake dumped me, and
having a mother with cancer and all, so this was just too much to take. I was glad, after a moment, when I saw that she was not waiting for me to say anything, that she was just thinking.

  “Your grandmother saw how upset I was, more than your father, I think. Remember that first dump where we lived in America, that awful-smelling apartment next to the big dirty swimming pool? She would see how sad I was and would say, ‘Oh darling Valentina, why don’t you just go for a swim in the pool?’ Like that would solve anything! I never set foot in that dirty pool, it was beyond me, but your grandmother swam in it every day when she visited….”

  I laughed a little bit. “I do remember that,” I said. “She had a big smile on her face the whole time, keeping her head above water.”

  “Exactly,” Mama said. “And then, one summer, we took her to Wildwood, but I didn’t think she’d actually go in the dirty water, though she did. And you followed her! I trailed along and I watched you going into the water. You were maybe nine and a good swimmer, but I was still nervous as you walked farther and farther into the choppy waves. The sun was beating down on me, everyone was in a good mood. But there I was, thinking, no, I can’t kill myself, Natasha still needs me, I still have to look out for her, I can’t let her drown. But then you swam on just fine, right toward your grandmother, and I thought again, no, Natasha’s a big girl now, she can take care of herself, she doesn’t need her mother anymore after all…and, well, that fall, your grandmother knew someone who knew someone who got me my first part-time accountant job, and she basically saved my life. No, no, she did save my life, I see that now.”

  I was standing there, tears streaming down my face, while the sun was shining down on us just like in the story, mad that I was feeling so much, that I never knew the depth of the pain I had caused her until that moment, wishing I could help. What was I supposed to say—what difference does it make that she saved your life if you’re just going to go and die anyway?

  “The water’s pretty warm today,” I said pointlessly, but Mama looked at me directly now, the spell was broken. She was no longer reminiscing, and she was maybe even mad that she had let herself reveal so much, let her guard down instead of being tough, tough, tough.

  “What happened to your drummer?” she said, a bit meanly even.

  “You scared him away,” I said, swallowing down everything she had told me.

  A thin smile crept along her face. “Good.”

  “Why do you like seeing me get my heart broken?”

  “He’s not good enough for you,” she said. “None of these men are. What do you want from them?”

  Her question struck me as ridiculous. I looked up at the birds high in the sky, the crags sticking out of the water in the distance, and three blond siblings fighting over a sand castle. Men—they gave it all meaning. Without them, the world was fluff.

  “Everything,” I said.

  “But why, kitten? Your father loves you. Your mother loves you. Why do you insist on chasing after these deadbeats—what are you trying to prove?”

  “You can’t love me like they can,” I said. “It’s different.”

  “No,” she said, shifting her gaze away from me. “I guess I can’t.”

  And then she looked at the water again, but it was clear she had nothing more to say, that she was embarrassed about having said anything at all, and even resented me a little bit for hearing it, as if it was my fault she had decided to talk about being suicidal or whatever. And then she put her hands on her hips and stared at me, like she was waiting for me to reveal something in turn, and for a second I even racked my brains for something embarrassing I could tell her to make up for her revelations.

  But I wasn’t as dumb as she thought I was. I knew what she was doing, distracting me with her stories of sadness when we both knew what the problem was. She was the gatekeeper between me and my men, and she was determined that if she had to suffer, then I had to suffer too, that there would be no love in my life as long as she was clinging on to hers. We both turned to see my grandmother strutting toward us with her swim cap on, looking refreshed after her day of romance.

  “What’s the matter—why are you two just standing there?” she said, shaking her head. “Isn’t it time for a swim?”

  * * *

  —

  I don’t feel ready at all to see my grandmother by the time Yuri tells me to get up. I stayed up for most of the night, sweating and tossing and turning and feeding Tally once and thinking of Mama, of how cruel I had been to her that summer, caring only about what she said about my stupid boyfriends instead of hearing how hard it was for her, the whole fucking motherhood business in a new country. But how could she have expected me to understand then? There’s nothing to be done about it now, obviously.

  I manage a shower-and-coffee resuscitation before we haul ass to JFK to pick up Baba in our rental car on a thankfully not-too-hot morning, to snatch her up before she does something stupid like take the train like she did the last time she visited, saying it was because she didn’t want to trouble us. But really she had done it out of her fake proletarianism, her need to be a woman of the people though she’s basically Kiev royalty. I’m hoping she doesn’t even think about it this time, that she knows she was way too old to pull that stunt before and is definitely too old now. I’m so nervous and strung out after the sleepless night and my talk with Yuri and then Stas and not knowing what the fuck I’m doing that I realize I’m actually saying some of this stuff out loud.

  Yuri says, “I don’t think she’ll take the train at this point.”

  “I hope not,” I say. I’m in the back with Tally, watching her gnaw on her plastic keys, relieved to be sitting away from my own husband.

  “You haven’t told her about us, have you?” he says, and this nearly makes me choke.

  “Of course not,” I say. “Plus, I’m not sure what I would say.”

  “Me neither,” he says.

  He turns onto the highway and as we crawl forward, I wonder if he’s going to tell me what I should have said, if he knows our status better than I do and has already made all the decisions. Since I told him about Stas, he hasn’t exactly stopped talking to me, but he won’t look me in the eye and only talks about Tally-related matters, like I’m one of his problem students that he’s just being cordial to because he’s stuck with her for the rest of the semester, except he knows he can’t get rid of me quite as easily. And it’s not like I’ve tried to have long soul-searching conversations either; I’ve just been working on getting the play right, hoping we’ll figure it out once it’s over.

  “Listen,” he says. “Next week—”

  “Can we not have some big serious conversation right now? Can we give it a few days?”

  “Next week, after your grandmother leaves, I’m going to Lake George for the weekend.”

  This cracks me up. “You’ve got your poles ready?”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “I guess it’ll just be me and Tally,” I say, brushing some hair out of my girl’s eyes.

  “If you say so.”

  “Stas is visiting his family after the play anyway.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that. You’re the one who said we should give it a few days.”

  “Fine.”

  I have an image of my father coming back with his fishing poles to his tiny Jersey City apartment, looking lovesick after hanging out with Yuri. I would ask him what they did there, what they talked about, but he would never tell me much, reminding me of the way I would act when I came home from a date and Mama gave me the third degree, though much less kindly of course. “We talked about life,” he would say. “What about it? Did you figure it all out then?” He would smile big. “For that, we’d need to fish at least a few more times, darling.”

  As we cross into Queens, I stare at my daughter and the Hudson and wonder how I got to
this fucked-up place, how I could have treated Yuri like such shit without even thinking twice about it. No, I can’t blame my hormones or weakened mom state, because there are millions of moms out there who don’t kiss and develop crushes, or worse, on their husband’s best friend. A guy who I’m more confused about than ever since he messed things up by giving me that stupid poem, making me wonder if I ever knew him at all.

  I need to get back to where I was, to the person I used to be before I had this fucking baby, the baby who is sweetly sleeping in the backseat, just minutes away from meeting her great-grandmother. And actually, I do think she looks like her a bit—when she’s fussing over something, I can see it, that look on her face that so reminds me of my baba. The girl has become a wonder this summer, rolling over, babbling a bit, shaking rattles and chewing on everything in sight, even eating bananas. She’s come such a long way from the human puddle I gave birth to, though she’s got a long, long way to go. And yet, there are so many things my daughter can do that I wish I could—sleeping through the wild street sounds, facing the brutal, cold world with absolute wonder, smiling for no reason at all—but I have unlearned all of her survival skills, and one day, she will unlearn them, too, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  She opens her eyes but doesn’t cry out, she just stares at the cars flying by the window. Such a patient little thing, a girl I’m starting to feel somewhat connected to, a girl whose hair is getting a gorgeous fiery tint to it, beginning to cover up her enormous ears. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve been busy working on my play and have actually had a chance to miss her, or if it’s my hormones returning to normal or what. At least there’s somebody around me who I feel somewhat certain about.

  As I stroke Tally’s hair, Yuri puts his face in his hands at a red light. “Fuck,” he says.

  “What?”

  “I forgot to get flowers,” he says. “How could I have forgotten the flowers?”