Still Here (15 page)

It was only on the way back—she chose to take a taxi this time—that it hit her that these were the exact words she had texted to Bob this morning. She pressed her forehead to the cold glass of the window and started to cry, not from grief but from shame and emptiness.

Regina asked the driver to take her to the hotel to pick up her luggage and then to Aunt Masha's.

“That's your address?” the driver asked, pulling up to the long, moldy, barely lit nine-story building. He sounded doubtful. “Yes,” Regina said. She remembered the building well. When she was a child, Regina's mother would take her to visit Aunt Masha every week or so. Regina was encouraged to call her “aunt” even though they weren't related, and Regina was used to referring to the neighborhood as the Aunt's place. “Are we going all the way to the Aunt's stop today?” she would ask.

The driver helped her to unload her bags and swiftly drove away. Aunt Masha had told her the downstairs entrance code, but Regina had trouble entering the right combination in the dark. The elevator was all scratched and dented, and there was a stench coming from the garbage chute. She hadn't expected the building to become so decrepit. Aunt Masha, who took a long time to open the door, looked decrepit as well, older than she was supposed to look. She wore a turtleneck and loose corduroy pants as she always did, but she seemed somehow smaller. Her white hair was shorter and thinner, with patches of pink scalp shining through. “Reginochka!” she exclaimed, pressing her skinny little body into Regina's, her thin fingers digging into Regina's back, her sharp chin poking into her shoulder, enveloping her in the smell of the cheap strawberry soap that Regina's mother used to buy all the time. She immediately felt the lump in her throat and the urge to escape. At least her nightmare proved to be wrong, and the apartment wasn't teeming with orphans.

“You look well!” Aunt Masha said.

“Thank you, so do you.”

“No, I mean it,” Aunt Masha said, leading Regina toward the kitchen. “I've always thought that you looked like Virginia Woolf. But your mother didn't see it at all.”

“People used to tell me that I looked like Julia Roberts.”

“What, like
Pretty Woman
? No! Virginia Woolf. Definitely Virginia Woolf.”

Regina followed Aunt Masha to the kitchen, where the tea had already been served. Aunt Masha had never been a fan of elegant meals. There was a greasy aluminum teakettle on the table, a whole loaf of bread, some butter in a chipped teacup, sliced cheese on a saucer, and a one-liter jar of pickled mushrooms. A little girl was sitting on one of the old square stools. She slid down and scampered past them out of the kitchen.

Oh, no! Regina thought.

“That's Nastya. From the orphanage,” Aunt Masha said.

Regina nodded.

Aunt Masha took out two little shot glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of vodka from the fridge. “Let's drink to Olga,” she said, pouring half a shot for each of them.

They took a few sips, then ate a mushroom each.

Another idiotic tradition, Regina thought. To eat and drink in memory of the departed. There was something gross about it. As if they were taunting the dead person. Hey, you're dead and gone, but life goes on, and look how well we're all eating.

“How was the cemetery?” Masha asked.

“Good,” Regina said. An empty answer to an empty question.

“I visit the grave often,” Masha said, “keep it tidy.”

She took a slice of bread and spread some butter on it, topped it with a slice of cheese, and handed it to Regina. “So, tell me about your life,” she said as soon as Regina took the first bite. “Are you content? Is he a good man?”

Regina smiled, noting the word
content
. Aunt Masha didn't believe in marital happiness, only in contentedness. She felt grateful for that phrasing. She did feel content.

“I am. He is a wonderful man.”

“He doesn't mind that you're Russian, does he?”

“No, not at all.”

“So you think he understands you?”

Regina nodded. Aunt Masha had always been very direct, but she hadn't expected a barrage of personal questions of such calculated precision. It sounded as if Aunt Masha had prepared the questions in advance and was reading them off a list.

“You wrote that he has a daughter?”

“A grown daughter from a previous marriage. He's very fond of her.”

“Good! So he doesn't mind that you can't?”

“No, he doesn't,” Regina said, and rushed to change the subject. “These mushrooms are very good. Did you can them yourself?”

“Nastya helped. She picked most of them, and she helped me clean them. Nastya, come here!”

Regina turned and saw that the little girl was peeking at them from behind the large cabinet in the hallway. She ran away as soon as she caught Regina's stare. Gawky, unpretty, in a dress that was too small for her. Regina didn't have a chance to get a better look.

“How's Sergey? Do you see him?” Aunt Masha asked. She never bothered with small talk. Always went right for the subjects that really interested her, no matter how awkward they were.

Regina told her about Sergey's marital troubles. Aunt Masha seemed surprised.

“I've always thought that pushy girl was a perfect fit for him,” she said.

“And I wasn't?”

“No, you weren't. And he wasn't a right fit for you. I would tell this to Olga again and again, but she wouldn't listen to me. She never listened to me.”

Oh, just leave my mom alone, Regina thought, but she couldn't help but ask: “Why didn't you think Sergey was the right fit for me?”

“He's too weak and too much of a dreamer. You need a manlier man.”

Vadik? Regina thought and was immediately ashamed. Why Vadik, when she had Bob? Bob was a manly man, whatever that meant. A wholesome man. Vadik was anything but wholesome.

“It was Olga who brought Sergey and you together. I remember how she called me all excited and said that her new student was perfect for you. She used to really rule your life, you know.”

“No, she didn't,” Regina said, helping herself to more mushrooms.

“Oh, yes, she did. Up until she died. I bet she still does in a way. I saw your piece on translation in the last year's issue of
Foreign Literature
. You could've written about your wonderful career, but you chose to rehash Olga's old works.”

“That was the idea; they'd asked me to write about my mother.”

“Right,” Aunt Masha said. “And how's your work? Anything exciting?”

Regina was getting very angry, but she didn't have enough courage to tell this old woman to stop pestering her. To just stop!

Aunt Masha drained her glass and poured herself another. Poured some more for Regina too. Her face became flushed and she looked younger and feistier, more like the Aunt Masha Regina remembered.

“Do you remember your back exercises?” she asked Regina. “You had to do your homework with a broom handle fixed behind your elbows to keep your back straight. I would visit and see you grimacing in pain, trying to lean over so that you could see your textbook better.”

There was a curling wisp of hair growing out of the right side of Aunt Masha's damp chin. Regina found it especially hateful.

“I had scoliosis! Those exercises were important.”

“No, you didn't have scoliosis. All you had was bad posture. A perfectly normal posture for somebody who preferred spending her days on a couch with a book rather than playing sports. Your dad had the same one. How's he doing by the way?”

Grateful for the change in subject, Regina told her whatever she knew of her father's life in Canada. Aunt Masha asked for more details. Regina realized that she didn't know that much.

“How often do you speak to him?”

“He calls me once a month,” Regina said. She neglected to add that she rarely picked up the phone.

“Poor man,” Aunt Masha said and drained another glass.

Regina didn't touch hers.

That poor man abandoned his wife and child! And Aunt Masha knew this. She had been Regina's mother's closest friend at the time. She had been her closest friend ever since college. Why had she decided to unleash this hateful attack on Regina's mother? Who had died? Who had died!

“He was an enormously talented writer, your father was.”

“Yeah, a great writer who never published a book.”

“Do you know why he didn't?”

Regina could guess where this was going. The evil Olga wouldn't let him.

“Olga was really jealous of his talent.”

Yep, Regina thought. She wished she had enough courage to just stand up and leave. But she realized that it wasn't only politeness that stopped her. She had a perverse desire to hear the rest of this bullshit. To hear how far Aunt Masha would go.

“Because Olga, even though brilliant as a translator, had never been really creative. She couldn't stand Grigory's success. So whatever praise he would get from his early publications in magazines, she would squash him with her ‘kindly' discouragement. And she always maintained that she had to be honest with him because she loved him, because she was the only one who truly cared.”

“You know, if he really were so talented, a little honesty from his wife wouldn't have ruined his career.”

“He was not a strong man. No, he wasn't. And look at you. Always in your mother's shadow. They asked you to write a piece, and what topic did you choose? Mommy dearest!”

Regina felt a quiet movement behind her back. Nastya had walked into the kitchen and was standing by the fridge. Her light blue woolen dress had some dark (chocolate?) stains around the collar.

“Nastya, come in, sit down,” Aunt Masha said, and this time Nastya came closer and climbed on a smaller stool across the table from Regina. Aunt Masha gave her a piece of bread with butter and cheese, and Nastya took a big bite and started to chew.

She was an unusually homely child, with pale unhealthy skin, a big nose, and mousy hair.

“How old is she?” Regina asked.

“Why are you asking me? Ask her.”

Regina had always hated talking to children. She wasn't that good at talking to adults either, but it was conversing with children that made her sweat. She could never find the right tone. She did her best to sound neutral, but it came out as either too cheerful or too cross.

“How old are you, Nastya?” she asked. Too cross.

Nastya didn't say anything. Just stared at Regina intently, making energetic movements with her jaws.

“She knows that she's not supposed to talk while chewing.”

Nastya made an audible gulp to swallow the bread mass in her mouth and then said that she was five.

“She is five, but she can count to one hundred,” Aunt Masha announced.

“I forget nineteen and forty-seven,” Nastya said and took another bite. There was something about her that made Regina uncomfortable. They made a nice pair, Aunt Masha and Nastya—Baba Yaga and her creepy little helper. Regina had planned to stay with Aunt Masha the whole day before her flight the next night, but now she saw that she wouldn't be able to stand it. She would stay the night, then go straight to the city center and spend the whole of tomorrow just wandering the streets.

After they cleared the table, Aunt Masha made Regina a bed on the couch in the large living room and took Nastya to the other room that served as their bedroom. It was 10:00 
P.M
., only 2:00 
P.M
. New York time. “Do you mind if I watch TV?” Regina asked.

“The TV's not working,” Aunt Masha said. “It broke a few months ago, and I decided not to fix it. Do you want a book? Come, pick a book.”

“I have a book,” Regina said and settled on the couch with her iPad. She had downloaded several books for her trip, but she found that she couldn't concentrate on them any better than when she read printed books. It was actually worse. That thing on the bottom of the page that showed the progress of her reading just wouldn't move past “1%.” This made it harder to pretend that she was reading and not just staring at the sentences. She lay on scratchy sheets with the iPad propped on her chest, its screen dark, listening to the sounds that came from Aunt Masha's room. They went to brush their teeth, then each of them peed and flushed the toilet. Then there were soft sounds of Aunt Masha reading a story to Nastya, Nastya's giggling. It was hard to imagine what Nastya looked like when she giggled. Then it was quiet. Regina turned the iPad back on, but she still couldn't focus. She made a few futile attempts to find a Wi-Fi signal. She badly needed to watch something. She couldn't understand why she hadn't downloaded any movies before she left. Regina got off the couch and walked to the bookshelves hoping to find an easier and more entertaining book. She noticed a framed picture of herself on the wall. She was about fourteen in it. Awkward, unsmiling. That was the age when she did those back exercises. Every day for more than a year. She had a vivid image of herself doing homework with that broom between her elbows. The terrible pain just below her shoulder blades. Biting her lips, willing herself to ignore the pain and focus on her studies. It never occurred to her to question the wisdom of that daily torture. Other kids wore braces. She had perfect teeth, but an imperfect spine—she wore a broom. And what was that nonsense about her dad? Could it be that he really was talented? It had never occurred to her to read any of his stories and judge for herself.

Another train passed by. The whole apartment seemed to shake. This was unbearable.

She heard a soft tapping on the wall of the doorway. There was Aunt Masha in her long white nightgown. Ghostlike in the dark. “Reginochka,” she said, her voice trembling. “Are you asleep?”

“No,” Regina said.

Aunt Masha walked up to her and sat on the edge of the sofa. “Reginochka, please forgive me,” and she started to cry.