Still Here (14 page)

It was probably Sergey's enthusiasm that annoyed Vadik the most. His ability to enjoy the same things that depressed Vadik proved that there was nothing wrong with Vadik's surroundings, but that, instead, there was something wrong with Vadik himself.

“Look at it, it's really good!” Sergey insisted.

“I can't see,” Vadik said.

“I'm worried about your eyesight. You should seriously check it out.”

Was it just Vadik, or was Sergey starting to sound like a wife?

It was such a relief to finally reach the subway and part ways.

He had to prepare himself to reject Vica though. He hadn't heard about Hole in the Woods before, but the name sounded peculiar, and he imagined that it would be dark and romantic and they would be sitting in a booth, and at some point she would touch his hand. Would it be rude if he moved his hand away? Would she take the hint or continue with her advances? Wouldn't it be better if he told her right away that they couldn't possibly be a couple? He thought about it all the way to the Union Square stop.

He couldn't find the damn place. He checked Fourteenth Street and Seventeenth Street, the east side and the west side. The restaurant wasn't there. He even asked a few passersby—nobody had heard of it. He thought for a second that it was some stupid prank. He felt like a fool. Then he got a text from Vica. “Where are you? I'm already in.” “I can't find it,” he texted back. “It's right off the south side of the square.” He walked back to the south side. There wasn't a single restaurant there. Just Burlington Coat Factory, Forever 21, and the huge Whole Foods.

Then it dawned on him. Whole Foods! That was what Vica had said. She didn't mean to meet him in a dark romantic place. She meant the fucking salad bar at fucking Whole Foods.

He saw her right away, standing at the counter with a little paper container in her hand, dressed in a nondescript pantsuit and looking wan in the harsh fluorescent lights. She didn't appear to be happy or excited to see Vadik. “Hi,” Vadik said, leaning in to hug her. She had the sad smell of a medical facility hanging about her, drowning out her perfume.

“Are you coming straight from work?”

“Yes, I signed up for a weekend shift since Eric's not here. Grab some food. I'm starving.”

There was a pile of dry spinach leaves in her container and a large pile of shrimp that she must have picked out of the big vat of paella.

“Are you still eating according to your formula?” Vadik asked.

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. She forced a smile.

“Yes, kind of.”

Eight years before, when Vadik first arrived in the U.S., Vica shared a few personal survival rules with him, just as he did for Regina six years later. One of Vica's tips was about choosing food in a salad bar.

“If you want to get the best value, pick the items that cost the most and weigh the least. Don't pick a piece of meat that has a bone in it, like a chicken drumstick, bones give it extra weight. Don't drown your salad in dressing, it's both heavy and unhealthy; skip the gravy; pick the shrimp out of the pasta dish; pick the octopus out of the octopus and chickpea salad; leave the carrots and potatoes in the stew.”

Vadik quickly put some salad into his container and followed Vica to the cashier.

They picked a table by the window overlooking the square. It seemed squashed by the surrounding buildings.

“Don't you just love Whole Foods?” Vica said. “So many choices and the best salad bar in the city!”

Vadik saw that she hadn't intended to offer herself to him. In fact, it was clear that the thought of offering herself to him hadn't even occurred to Vica. He felt relieved, but a little bit annoyed too. The idea of dating Vica suddenly seemed filled with irresistible narrative logic. A guy makes a clean break from his past, goes away, explores another country, has adventures, overcomes setbacks, only to make a full circle and return to the woman he loved in his previous life. He imagined telling all this to Regina and seeing her approving nods, her admiring smile. “Yes, Vadik, of course! That's how it's supposed to be.”

But the woman he loved in the past wasn't even looking at him. Vica kept piercing spinach leaves with her fork as if she wanted to see how much she could pick up in one go.

“So tell me honestly now. How is he?” she asked.

Just last night Sergey had confided to Vadik that he was able to envision his future for the first time in years. Before, every time he tried to picture it, he felt as if he had opened a door and there was nothing but dark stinky smog outside. Now, he could see some vague but cheerful shapes.

Vadik couldn't bring himself to tell this to Vica. He sighed and looked away.

“That bad, huh?” Vica said.

She put her fork on the table and ran her fingertips over the tines.

“It was the right thing to do, right?” she asked. “It's been hell for the last few months. You have no idea. He would walk in the door and I would immediately start fuming, because he didn't shut the door well enough, or he slammed it too hard, or he didn't put his boots in the right place. Or, you know, I would look into his eyes, and his expression would be so harsh, as if he couldn't stand the sight of me. And I would get so angry, so angry that I would try to do something to make him hate me even more.”

She kept talking, picking up her salad with her fork, putting it back, looking up at Vadik as if begging him for support. She seemed to want some reassurance that she hadn't made a horrible mistake. She looked thinner and younger in her distress. Less like American Vica, more like the Vica he remembered from their days in Russia. He had never been nostalgic for the past before, but now he found himself missing not just that Vica but his college days, his time in Moscow.

Vadik felt like reaching for Vica's hand and pressing it to his face, to his lips. He imagined the tart taste of her skin. He looked away, afraid that she would read his mind.

They ate in silence for a minute or two. Then Vica said, “Okay, so I need your advice.”

Vadik nodded.

“I keep thinking of Virtual Grave.”

“Uh-huh,” Vadik said.

“You see, Sergey is a quitter. I'm not.”

Vadik didn't have the heart to tell her that Sergey was actually working on the app like crazy, because it would reveal that he wasn't pining for her all that much.

“Bob turned us down, because the idea was too morbid,” Vica said, “just as I'd predicted. I'd always wanted to make it more optimistic and upbeat. I actually had some great ideas. It was Sergey who wouldn't budge. So I'm going to try to rework it. It doesn't even need to be an actual app, just a service for people concerned with their online legacy. I was thinking of writing a business proposal and then maybe approaching some people at work. But it has to be more palatable. No more Fyodorov! What do you think?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Vadik said. “No more Fyodorov!”

He wondered if he was wrong to encourage her about Virtual Grave, especially since he knew that Sergey was working on it too. The fact was that neither Vica nor Sergey had a chance to succeed. So what was the harm in their trying? If anything, it would distract Vica from her pain.

Vica smiled. She still had that tense closemouthed smile, a leftover from the era of crooked teeth. Vadik had forgotten how much he had always liked that smile.

“Do you want to go listen to some music?” Vadik asked after they scraped the last of their salads off the bottom of their Whole Foods containers. “There are some excellent venues around here.”

“No,” Vica said, “I have a bottle of sauvignon blanc waiting for me in the fridge. I'm going to drink the entire bottle as I browse through Hello, Love! I've been looking forward to doing that for ages!”

Vadik squirmed. The idea of Vica on Hello, Love! seemed offensive to him. Disgusting. Unbearable.

“What's wrong?” Vica asked.

“Nothing. Just something in my teeth,” Vadik said.

When Vadik hugged her before they parted, he was overcome by that smell again. The sharp, chemical, merciless smell.

The smell haunted him all the way back to Williamsburg and for hours after that. It was barely nine when he got home, but he went to bed right away.

He woke up around eleven with a dull headache and exasperation over a wasted Saturday.

He sat up in bed and called for Sergey. There was no answer. He walked into Sergey's room, but he wasn't there. This was unusual, because Sergey started his day at six and didn't like to stay up past ten thirty. He dialed his number, but there was no answer. Should I worry? Vadik wondered, then decided that he shouldn't. Not yet.

He went to the living room, plopped onto the couch, turned on Netflix, and browsed for a long time until he found what he wanted to watch.
Doctor Who,
the series with David Tennant. Vadik was on episode six of season three when he heard some commotion at the door. Did he forget the key again? Vadik thought and went to open the door.

There was Sergey leaning against the wall kissing a girl. When Vadik opened the door, the girl moved her face away from Sergey's mouth and said, “Hello.” She was small, with large, widely set brown eyes, a pale face, and long dark hair highlighted with yellow. Her smile exuded unwarranted friendliness.

“Hi,” Vadik said and stared at Sergey.

“Rachel, meet Vadik. Vadik, meet Rachel,” Sergey said. He looked a little scared and a little embarrassed.

Rachel #3, Vadik thought, even though for Sergey it was Rachel #1.

“Pleasure!” Vadik said.

“Likewise!”

Then they all fell silent. Sergey was the one to break it.

“I've had a very nice time, Rachel,” Sergey said. “I'll call you soon.”

She looked a bit disappointed.

“I'm going out of town for a while. But call. Sure, call. Or, you know, message me on Facebook.”

“Sure,” Sergey said, and he and Vadik went into the apartment.

“Here, I brought some food for you,” Sergey said and handed Vadik a large paper bag. Then he went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

The paper bag had the words
FETTE SAU BARBECUE
on it. Inside there were three pork ribs, half a pickle, and a chicken drumstick with neat round teeth marks on it.

Vadik turned the TV back on and bit into the chewed-on drumstick, marveling at the degree of his discontent.

On her sixth day in Moscow, Regina woke up at six
A.M
. There was a message on her iPhone. “Good morning, honey. How are you? Love, Bob.” She texted back: “Everything's fine with me. I miss you. I love you very much.”

She tried to go back to sleep, but the sticky anxiety she felt about the task she had to accomplish today wouldn't let her.

Her flight back to New York was scheduled to depart in thirty-six hours, but she hadn't seen Aunt Masha yet or visited her mother's grave. “I will definitely do it today,” she would say to herself every morning, and late every night while she undressed to go to bed, she would say to herself: “I will definitely go tomorrow.”

Regina didn't feel like going to the theater or visiting any of her favorite museums either; what she did was wander around Moscow neighborhoods all day, then return to her hotel room, order dinner, and eat it while watching old Russian movies. She talked to Bob on Skype every night, but these conversations were so tame and boring compared to what they used to do when she was still living in Russia. Back then they used Skype for sex. She thought of the thrill of seeing their bodies on-screen. They both appeared to be longer, softer, more mysterious. The best part for her was watching Bob hold his breath while she unbuttoned her blouse.

And now it was more like “How's the food?” “Is it really cold over there?” “Is the traffic as insane as it used to be?” Bob said that he missed her, but he was also too engrossed in his business to seem convincing. He had come up with an idea for an app that allowed you to find people with similar genomes in any crowd. He thought it had the existential value of breaking the void of loneliness, of making strangers feel connected. There were actually tears in his eyes when he first described the idea to Regina. He'd been talking to Dancing Drosophilae for a long time, but now it seemed like they were ready to sign the deal with DigiSly.

“That's exciting, honey!” Regina said, even though she didn't really understand Bob's obsession with genetics or his pride in his supposedly Tudor lineage. Last night though, while they talked on Skype, Regina opened an image of Holbein's
Henry VIII
and looked for similarities. She thought she could see some. If you mentally erased Henry's beard, you could see that both Henry and Bob had thin lips, sharp eyes, and a perfect oval face. The padded shoulders of Henry's royal costume actually reminded her of Bob's old football uniform.

Regina's phone buzzed, announcing another text message. This one was from United, reminding her to check in for her upcoming flight back to New York. Today would have to be the day to visit both Aunt Masha and the cemetery. She couldn't possibly postpone it any longer. What she could do was try to start the day as late as possible.

Regina turned on the TV, but everything on the screen struck her as demanding and loud. There was none of that sweet pampering that American TV provided to its viewers. Russian TV aimed to goad its customers rather than soothe them.

There was nothing to do except get dressed and go downstairs to the restaurant.

The Sheraton breakfast was a buffet boasting bizarrely international offerings—miso soup and croissants vied for guests' attention with porridge and blini with red caviar. The few patrons in the room were all grave-looking Russian businessmen. One of them raised his eyes at Regina, winced, and looked away. She was reminded once again of how utterly unattractive she was to Russian men. Regina heaped her plate with a little bit of everything and went to her table. She had forgotten how unbearably boring chewing your food was unless you did it while watching TV.

She reached for her iPad. There was a long e-mail from Sergey. The first since he and Vica had split up. Sergey apologized for avoiding her, explained that he'd needed some time to sort things out. The detailed analysis of what went wrong in his marriage to Vica followed. He started with a long paragraph meant to convey that Regina had always been the only person who truly understood him, then switched to an in-depth analysis of Vica's person. Regina didn't have the patience to read the entire thing; she skimmed through the long descriptions of Vica's materialistic passions and obsession with power and prowess in most of its forms—physical, sexual, financial, although not spiritual. She was very smart. Really smart. She wasn't well read, no, but she had this incredible ability to grasp the most complex ideas better than anybody he knew. And it would be wrong to say that she had an emotional intelligence rather than an intellectual one. Emotional intelligence was what Vica lacked. If anything, she was emotionally obtuse. She didn't understand him at all. Sergey ended with an admission that marrying Vica had been a mistake. That he had been blinded. Blinded by what, Regina wondered, Vica's “obsessive sexual prowess”? Which Regina apparently lacked. She half expected Sergey to conclude by admitting that he should have married the spiritual but bland Regina instead. He didn't. Regina wasn't sure if that made her depressed or relieved.

The next e-mail was from Vadik. He wrote that there was some crazy shit happening with Sergey and he was getting plenty sick of him, and it was time she took him off his hands.

“No, thank you,” she wrote and put her phone back into her purse.

Regina left most of her food uneaten, checked out of the hotel, left her luggage with the concierge, and went out on Tverskaya Street. She decided to visit the cemetery first, then go to Aunt Masha's and spend the night with her. Regina checked her watch—she didn't have to go right this minute. There was still time for a little walk.

Early November always brought her favorite weather. The trees stood bare and the air stung her cheeks, but it wasn't bitingly cold yet, and the sun shone bright and strong, creating a dry, aching clarity that usually came a couple of weeks before the first snow. Moscow had barely changed in the two years that she had been gone, and for some reason Regina found herself reluctant to look up and savor the view. Nor did she want to look into the eyes of the passersby, because the newly increased level of anger and discontentment in the Muscovites' expressions frightened her. She just walked and walked, circling, zigzagging, shortcutting, thrilled by the fact that she never made a wrong turn. She knew Moscow so well that its maps seemed to be imprinted in her footsteps.

Regina walked to the Moscow River, strolled a long stretch of the embankment, then turned away from water toward the city center. She didn't realize how tired she was until she reached Chistye Prudy. She had been avoiding this area on her previous walks, but there she was—just a few feet away from her former home. Regina sat down on the bench facing the lake and stretched her legs. They ached and throbbed and all but hummed some unhappy tune. The water in front of her looked fake as if there were no depth to it, just a thin layer of mirrored glass. She had sat in this very spot so many times before. She made an effort to bring up the most intense memories of her past so that she could feel an exquisite pain followed by the inevitable release.

Here she was in her dad's lap when she was three or four, waving to the ducks…the pleasure of his strong grip, his hand pressing into her ribs. With her mom when she was five or six and her legs were so short that she couldn't bend her knees—her legs clad in thick winter boots stuck out at a ninety-degree angle. Her mother reciting a poem about snow: how the falling snow put everything in turmoil, and it was as if the sky itself came down like an old man in his patched-up winter coat. Regina's face was smeared with smelly kids' cream that protected from the frost, and her forehead itched under her woolen hat. She remembered that sensation so well, but she couldn't remember how her mother looked as she read the poem. All she saw in her mind's eye was her mother's emaciated body and glassy eyes as she lay dying. As a teenager Regina would come to the bench by herself. She would sit here with a book, hopelessly homely, but desperately hopeful. Princess Maria from
War and Peace
was her favorite heroine. So ugly, so serious, so pious, yet she dreamed of carnal love. Princess Maria did find it at the end, with a good, solid, if a little dumb man. Sergey was anything but dumb. Regina smiled, recalling the many times when they had sat in this very spot, and Sergey wouldn't shut up about Fyodorov while she willed him to kiss her. And when he finally did, she found his kisses too wet and kind of disappointing. As was her makeshift nostalgic therapy. The images in her mind were feeble and loose, incapable of producing enough intensity to result in catharsis.

Regina got up off the bench and walked toward her old building on Lyalin Lane. When she moved to the United States, she had asked Aunt Masha to sell the old apartment and what remained of the furniture and donate the money to an orphanage. But Vadik told her she was crazy. “What if it doesn't work out with Bob?” So Regina put the money into her bank account.

Their old street looked statelier than Regina remembered, and cleaner, too clean. Most of the buildings were painted soft pastel colors. One of the buildings had a hotel sign on it. A taxi stopped and a young, well-dressed couple got out and walked toward the entrance dragging their bright suitcases, the wheels rapping against the pavement. It was as if whatever messy marks her and her mother's lives had made there were now removed, cleaned away, painted over. Regina didn't feel like seeing her building anymore. And it was time to go to visit the cemetery anyway. Aunt Masha had insisted that they go together, but Regina said no. She had to visit her mother's grave by herself.

She considered a cab, but the thought of sitting in endless traffic jams was unbearable. She walked to the subway station. At the entrance there were a couple of kiosks selling fast food and Regina bought a little meat pie and ate it right there by the kiosk even though she was still full after breakfast. The cemetery, Nicolo-Arkhangelskoye, was situated in one of the newer developments at the far end of Moscow. It was Aunt Masha's choice, because Regina had refused to have anything to do with the funeral arrangements. She had been drugged out of her mind during the funeral—she could barely remember the ceremony or the place—so this would be like visiting her mother's grave for the very first time.

The subway ride took forever and then Regina had to take a bus to get to the cemetery. After the first few stops the bus emptied out, with most of the passengers getting off at the treeless new residential complex. White and blue buildings, pristine malls, large empty lots with some construction equipment on them. The cemetery was the last stop on the route. The few remaining passengers on the bus were all women, sullen, withdrawn, resigned. Dutiful daughters, wives, possibly mothers. Most of them were clutching bouquets. Regina had forgotten about flowers. She wondered if it was necessary. You were supposed to either plant or put flowers on the grave, but why? As a remedy for your guilt? To make the grave a nicer place to visit? As a tradition you didn't question? As a simple means to feel less horrible? Or was this part of some complicated ritual that allowed you a fleeting moment of contact with the departed? Regina hoped that they sold flowers by the cemetery gates. It would be crazy not to. But of course they didn't. There was a long stone fence connecting the main entrance with the gates reserved for funeral corteges. Not a single flower in sight. “Is there a flower shop inside?” Regina asked one of the women. She glowered at Regina and shook her head. “You should've thought about flowers before you boarded the bus,” another woman said. She was proudly carrying a bouquet of imported roses. A younger woman tapped Regina on the shoulder: “Take a few of mine.” She had a large bunch of pale carnations. Regina thanked her and took three. “Take some more,” the woman said with a grin. “I'm sure Misha won't mind.” Regina took a few more. She felt light-headed and empty as she went through the gates. Once inside, she saw a vast field—she estimated that it was half the size of Central Park. She didn't remember the grounds being so big. Stone slabs rose like crops in neat endless rows. Regina took out a piece of paper where she had written down the section and lot number and went to consult the map. The map was mounted right on the fence next to hundreds of flyers advertising various services: people offered to fix your loved one's gravestone, to take care of your grave, to say a prayer in church, to bring flowers and send you timed photographs of those flowers to assure you that they were fresh. The largest flyer warned that the fee for decorating the grave with pine branches didn't include the cost of branches. And to the right of it was a handwritten sign that asked: “Are you heartbroken because you haven't visited your loved ones' graves in a while? Do you feel so guilty that you can't breathe?” And then it reassured: “Now you don't have to!!! GrieveForYou will take care of everything.” Regina felt a sudden bout of nausea and hurried away from the fence into the depths of the cemetery. She found her mother's grave sooner than she'd expected; there it was in the far left corner, exactly as promised on the map. She had expected to be overwhelmed, but what shocked her was how little she actually felt. There was a black granite slab with her mother's name on it. There was her picture on an oval ceramic plate. None of that stirred Regina. None of that made her feel closer to her mother. If her spirit still existed in some form, it certainly wasn't there. Regina kneeled by the headstone and put her flowers on the little shelf attached to it. “Hey!” called an old woman a few feet away from her. “Put your flowers in the soil, as if you were planting them; they will keep longer like that.” Regina dug a little hole in the ground with her bare hands—the soil was cakey and cold and somehow revolting. She planted her dead carnations and secured them in a little mound of soil. They looked ridiculous standing up. “But they will keep longer,” Regina said to herself, wondering what was the point of them keeping longer. She stared at her mother's photograph. Her mother was looking away from the camera, as if she was avoiding Regina. People were supposed to talk to the dead. Regina had no idea what to say. She cleared her throat, terrified that she would sound fake. “Mamochka,” she whispered, “everything's fine with me. I miss you. I love you very much.”