Chapter 4 Days I’m Gone
Days I’m Gone
“It would be good to wash the bedsheets next,” Mama said, absently stirring the pot of heavenly-smelling chicken soup.
The kitchen was still misty with flour from when we rolled out the dough for homemade noodles.
Maxim would be back from his swimming lessons soon, and undoubtedly starving.
For someone so small, he ate like a pig.
I took the heap of freshly washed laundry and slid the door to the balcony open with my foot. There wasn’t enough space on the clotheslines for bedding if hung up along with everything else.
I reached to grab the clothespins—and nearly dropped it all.
The courtyard had a narrow street, big enough for a single car to squeeze through, but not right then because a large, black Jeep parked at an angle, blocking the way, and it definitely took liberties with the sidewalks while getting there.
A tall man in a gray beanie stood beside it with his head tilted back.
“What are you doing here?” I yelled, bending over the railing. God willing, I sounded indignant and not giddy.
“I’m here to see you,” Vitali shouted. His words were a bit muffled by the street noise, but voice deep enough to carry. “Let me up.”
“No!”
“Let me up, Katya.”
“What’s all the shouting!” A neighboring balcony protested. “Fuck!”
“I’m not leaving,” Vitali said. “I’ll get a neighbor to let me in—that nice gentleman seems like it’s in his best interests.”
The other balcony said, “Blyat!”
“Go away,” I insisted.
“Who is it? Who is shouting?” Mama peeked out, brows furrowed, and immediately blaming me.
I sighed. Maybe the conversation could be had through a crack in the door instead. It was embarrassing enough.
“Mama, it’s Vitali,” I said.
I didn’t tell her I hadn’t been in contact with him in a month. She would either worry or curse him for all eternity, and I wasn’t sure which I preferred yet.
He must have heard her buzz him in shortly after, because he disappeared the next time I peeked down. Why he even bothered when he already knew the code was anyone’s guess.
I opened the wooden door but only cracked the metal one facing the stair landing, and waited.
The elevator’s trembling metallic whine paused on our floor.
I braced myself for all the anger that would undoubtedly spill out after the weeks of disappointment I spent by the phone—pathetic and pining over someone who didn’t give me two minutes to let me know they weren’t coming.
He somehow found my number—he somehow found my address—and he couldn’t dial the seven digits that would leave him in my good graces?
Obviously, it didn’t matter enough. It was surprising he even showed up now. And embarrassing. For both of us.
“Hello, Katya.”
I cringed and refrained from opening the door further, but God, his voice was so smooth. The kind that you can feel vibrate in your bones.
“I didn’t hear a word from you,” I said, the bitterness in my voice palpable. “Not a word, Vitali.”
“I had to leave on business. It was unforeseen.”
“They don’t have phones where you do business?” I opened the door a sliver to see more of him, including those ridiculous eyes. Or… eye… it wasn’t open that wide.
“I was out of the country. No international calls.”
“And you couldn’t have called before you left?”
“Katya—”
“No need to come back. Don’t call again.” I was angry enough that slamming the door seemed like a good option before he could convince me otherwise, because he was getting there without much effort. Letting him off the hook because he had good excuses was for stupid, stupid girls.
“Be mad if you choose, but don’t think that I forgot you for even a minute.”
Maybe I was a stupid girl after all.
“Katenka, is that him?” Mama poked her head out of the kitchen. “Come in, come in!”
“He’s leaving, Mama,” I said, adamant about the words carrying. “He can’t stay.”
“Come outside,” Vitali said evenly. “We can speak out here.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” I hissed. “A month—it has been a month. Do you understand how humiliating that is?”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“No!”
“Kotik.” The word came with a note of irritation. The audacity. “This is very heavy, and you need to open the door. I’ll leave after.”
“What is heavy?” I asked and got closer to the crack. I thought I saw flowers, as if that would fix everything. We weren’t in a committed enough relationship for flowers to make it all okay. I owed him nothing.
Perhaps it was my curiosity (it wasn’t), but I opened the door a little wider—just to see better—I told myself.
He raised an eyebrow in a ‘you really going to make me wait?’ fashion, and made sure I could see the ridiculously large bouquet of roses in his hand.
Yes, very heavy. So heavy. I rolled my eyes they were so heavy.
But he shifted, and a large box propped up with one arm against his shoulder came into view.
I was already pushing the door before I reasonably thought about it, and he stepped aside as it swung open.
“For you, this time,” he said with a grin that could melt Antarctica. I took the vibrant red flowers, but frowned, doing what I hoped was an adequate job of pretending I didn’t care.
Mama appeared again with an all too excited ‘ooh!’ The box caught her interest, but she didn’t bring attention to it until, at her insistence, he was already through the door.
“And what is that?” she asked as I bitterly walked down the corridor, the roses making it impossible for anyone to get past me in the narrow space.
He took his shoes off, his expensive, expensive shoes that looked so out of place by my mama’s winter boots and Maxim’s worn-down Nikes.
“For you, Olga Nikolaevna,” Vitali said, “which way is the kitchen?”
I laid the flowers down on a chair in the living room while I searched for a vase. As much as I wanted to throw them off the balcony (I didn’t), it was a shame because they smelled very nice.
Someone squealed.
The space wasn’t made for so many people to fit, and the stove was still hot and no one could be too close to it, so Mama and the too-big Vitali filled almost all the room when I hurried in.
His head was bent so it wouldn’t hit the tulip-shaped pendant light, which swung back and forth indicating he’d already done so once.
Mama fussed, tearing the paper, and he moved aside to let me get near the kitchen table where something large took up the whole space.
“What—” The words snagged on my pride and never made it out. It was a microwave.
A brand-new Panasonic microwave.
Mama looked like she was going to faint, and began her routine of ‘I can’t! Absolutely not! No, no—it’s too expensive!’ and Vitali humored her with exactly three rounds of insisting that she must, and ‘it was nothing.’
We were shooed out of the kitchen like a couple of children. The satisfied smile on Vitali’s face was unbearable, and as much as I hated admitting it, completely disarming. Again, his hand was on the curve of my back as he led me to the living room around the corner, as if it weren’t my home.
“This changes nothing,” I said, knowing it changed everything. The price on my soul was apparently exactly one brand-name, imported microwave.
He leaned against the table with the bouquet at his back and crossed his arms. “I’ll leave now if you tell me to.”
I lowered my eyes, because I never thought the way to my heart would be through my mama. “What do you want from me, Vitali?”
“One date.”
“You already missed our one date.”
“Katya, it was not up to me—if it were, I would have called. I would have sent you flowers, one for every day I made you wait.”
I glanced at the roses, and my chest grew tight. There were thirty… There had to be thirty.
“One date,” he repeated. “A real one.”
I bit my cheek. I knew nothing about him, and the grand romantic gesture was just another thing I could stack on the grave of my dignity the next time he decided to disappear. A month on business. Right.
Before I could give him an answer, the front door lock squeaked, and Maxim called out a ‘hello.’ We both snapped toward the hallway, where my little brother shortly appeared, saw Vitali, and froze.
“Oh… this is—” I started, but Vitali already (very professionally) extended his hand.
“Vitali Konstantinov.”
My brother hesitantly shook it, at first unsure, but gaining confidence in being treated so adult-like.
“Maxim Petrovich,” he said and pushed his shoulders back to appear larger, like a puffer fish.
I turned away and sighed. I had no time to prepare for the chaos that broke loose before anyone said another word.
Mama came thundering in. She ordered Maxim away to change clothes, instructed Vitali to pull out the table, and ushered me into the kitchen to get the ‘good’ dining set.
That was the one with the small blue flowers on a white background, which she didn’t even bring out on my birthday.
No one got a choice about having dinner together.
I forgave her because Vitali’s steel expression finally shifted into something resembling a startled child.
That’s a look no true Russian is exempt from when a mama starts giving orders like a four-star general going to war.
He was charming, infuriatingly charming.
After he complimented her cooking, Mama told him all there was to know about her life.
The sorts of things I would have never thought to ask, and I learned a lot that made Mama less ‘mama’ and more Olga.
Then, he and Maxim bonded over hockey and video games, and my brother nearly fell out of his seat volunteering every embarrassing detail about my life that anyone could want.
All I could do was sit, mushing a piece of bread and absentmindedly dipping it into the broth as details of my private self came spilling out of my traitorous family’s mouths. Never mind a date, this was much more intimate than that.
When dinner ended, he helped Mama with the dishes, and my insides burned up leaving only ashes, because I knew that now Vitali Konstantinov wouldn’t be leaving my life anytime soon.
This wouldn’t be the last time he’d be in that kitchen, and not the last time he would sit at that table.
Eventually, that too would end, but not for a while.
Mama finally let him go, allowing us a private moment as I escorted him to the elevator. He stopped me before the doors opened, and I didn’t realize in time that I was trapped against the wall with his arm over me and face too close for me to think of anything but his lips.
“One date,” he said, low—low enough to prickle the hairs on my arms.
“A walk,” I whispered, afraid of my voice cracking as his gaze dropped to my mouth. “You have to start from the beginning again.”
“No, Kotik. You wear your best dress. I’ll pick you up. I will take you somewhere you’ll never forget, and I’ll have you home past dark. That’s going to be the date.”
The elevator pinged, seconds away from arriving.
“When?” I asked.
The doors opened, and again I thought he would kiss me as the moment lingered, but he didn’t.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and left.
* * *
About Russia
About the gift: The availability of foreign goods (especially in the early 1990s) was almost non-existent, and very very expensive. It wasn’t just the price—stores simply did not stock them, and you had to know someone to get something as impressive as a brand-name electronic.