Chapter 7 The Noose
The Noose
The water was icy and my hands turned blue as I scrubbed the pan free of hardened buckwheat.
A tune I couldn’t place had been running through my mind all morning, and I hummed it just to see if I could remember the lyrics after all.
Something noisy was always happening in the apartment, so passively picking up on it wasn’t out of the question.
But right then, it was silent except for the running water and the metal clanking of dishes in the sink.
Mama had taken Maxim to school because the first snow had fallen, and she worried about him getting there on his own.
I worried about her more, with her bad leg, but trying to convince Mama to take it easy was a waste of time.
All of these were very normal, rational thoughts.
Until I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
The tears gushed suddenly; I didn’t have a moment to prepare.
I hadn’t even let go of the pan, I just sobbed, uselessly bracing my shaking arm against the counter.
I’d been so brave all week, held it together so well.
Didn’t tell Mama. But they told us—the budgets department told us.
There was no money. No one was getting a ruble more, and there would be no back pay.
Things were bad, but now…
I just didn’t know what to do. That was it—I didn’t know what to do.
Mama couldn’t work. Maxim was nine, for God’s sake.
I saw boys his age on the street every single day, stealing and peddling whatever electronics they could for whatever money they managed.
I imagined him out there and cried harder until the suds in the sink flattened out.
I had enough to keep us going for a month or two, but who knew how long this would last?
Nightmare. I was in a nightmare. My heart was breaking, and the pieces swirled down the drain alongside the murky city water.
Those damn pants. What was I thinking?
I pulled a chair over to the fridge, to the dusty cupboard no one had touched since Papa died.
My hand trembled as I reached. He left behind a half-bottle of some cheap vodka, and I didn’t have the heart to throw it out.
But God… if there was ever a time. I couldn’t be crying when Mama came home.
I just needed to go to sleep. To calm down.
Just as my fingers brushed the little, thick painted door, the phone rang. I let out a bark-like cry and stumbled off onto the floor, steadying myself shakily against the table.
Did Elena find out?
Still sobbing, I tried to get myself together enough to sound like a confident adult who wasn’t losing her mind in the kitchen and side-eyeing a two-year-old bottle of vodka thick with dust. Yekaterina Petrovna did not crumble. She didn’t show weakness. She didn’t cry. She would be alright.
I grabbed the receiver, and my eyes unconsciously fell on the microwave when I said, “Allo?”
“Katya, hello.”
I forgot about the movies…
It had been two weeks since I saw Vitali and I’d forgotten about the movies.
“Hi,” I squeaked.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing, how was your trip?”
“Katya.”
“I’ll hang up,” I warned.
The other end of the line vibrated with a deep grunt and the rattling of wind pummeling the plastic glass of a phone booth. “We’ll discuss it later, then.”
“There is nothing to discuss—how was your trip?”
“Long,” he said. “Too long to be away from you. Movie tomorrow? At eight.”
“I can’t,” I sniffled before I could stop, and immediately pressed my palm to the receiver, cursing myself, the weather, and Vitali. “I have to be here; a doctor is coming to look at Mama’s leg. We had it scheduled for a while. Can you please give me more notice?”
“What’s wrong with Mama’s leg?”
“Day after?” I suggested irritably, as if I had any right to be.
It wasn’t right to take it out on Vitali, but I still considered hanging up.
My family came before him, and I was dealing with enough that watching Americans prance across the screen wasn’t even the top one hundred on my list of priorities.
“Vitali, I can’t be out so late all the time. They need me here.”
Silence. I waited, twisting the cord and nervously glancing toward the hallway as if Mama would come in at any minute and read my thoughts.
“They only play children’s films earlier than that,” he said after a while. “But it has to be tomorrow. That’s when I get back. You may choose between Beauty and the Beast or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. What time are you off work? I can come directly to you.”
I breathed in and squeezed my eyes shut, but despite my best efforts, he heard the hard gulp of my repressed tears.
“I see,” he said, and I died right on the spot because he didn’t see. Whatever he thought he understood, he didn’t. “The matinee is at two.”
“Alright.”
“Katya,” he said, the question poorly disguised as a statement.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I murmured.
“I’ll pick you up at noon.”
“You said two?”
“Be ready at twelve o’clock. I’ve missed seeing you. Bye, Kotik.”
He hung up before I could protest, and I held the receiver a moment longer before I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and tried to be a big girl.
A big girl going to see a matinee of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (or Beauty and the Beast).
I didn’t try to get to the vodka again, but I did wash my face, then put on Mama’s favorite record.
She wouldn’t want to turn it off when she came home, and I could take my time crying out whatever tears I had left while holed up in my bedroom. I had to be better by morning.
I was not better by morning.
We received notice that the school would have a delayed start, although no one specified why.
Mama and Maxim left to catch the bus around eleven, and I sat by the window and blankly stared at the muddy snow in the courtyard.
I should have been getting ready, but my heart was dead and I felt nothing—no excitement to see Vitali—no dread at facing the next day—nothing.
If I had known how to get in touch with him, I would have already canceled.
But he’d always called from a payphone and annoyingly never bothered to give me his work number.
It wasn’t noon yet when the knock came, and there was only one person who would come knocking.
I looked down at my wool-knit pajamas and a bathrobe. Absolutely not.
I cracked the wood door, and only the wood door.
“Who is it?”
“Vitali. Open the door, Katya.”
“You’re early, I’m not ready,” I said.
“I just got into town; you were on my way. Come with me, I don’t want to drive back across the bridge later, there’s traffic.”
I groaned. There wouldn’t be time for makeup. There wouldn’t be time for anything. Not even to wiggle my way into the leather pants.
“I’m not dressed,” I said.
“I’ll wait out here.”
He wasn’t leaving, and arguing would only eat away my time.
I dashed to the bathroom to brush my hair, then to the wardrobe where I talked myself through fitting my thighs into the tight squeeze of my emergency fund.
Thankfully, my high-necked cream sweater was clean.
I could smell his cigarette wafting in from the hallway like a watch ticking. Hurrying me along.
The leather choker fell off the shelf where I’d hidden it from Mama, and I stared at it for a moment.
He wouldn’t be able to see it under the sweater unless I folded the collar down. I could probably do it so casually he’d never know I wore it just for him. ‘Oh this? It’s nothing. I wear it all the time.’
I left a note for Mama and stepped outside.
Vitali didn’t look very cheery. He had bags under his eyes and a shadow of stubble across his jaw that I’d never seen before. Somehow, it made him even better looking. There was something so authentic about him being disheveled.
“How long were you driving?” I asked.
“Through the night.”
“What?” I dodged his hand as he tried to place it on my lower back, the way he did when he wanted me to walk forward (or anywhere really, it was a favored place). “You haven’t slept?”
“I’m fine, Kotik.” He sighed and put out the cigarette. “I’ve done longer, and never with a reward that could match you at the end.”
“I’m not going anywhere. We can go tomorrow,” I protested, and he gave me this look that said he took it as a challenge, almost like he wanted to bite me to rid me of the attitude.
“We can stop by my place, I’ll change, and we’ll grab a cup of coffee before the movies,” he said as the elevator door closed on us, and I found that I was, in fact, going somewhere after all.
“It’s an early showing. I have plenty of time to go to sleep.
It’s not good to break your sleep routine anyway. ”
I had little to counter that.
Still the BMW. We were already on the icy streets when his words sank in. My place.
So many thoughts spun through my mind, I forgot to speak for half the ride, and he didn’t try either, as he had a cigarette on his lips the entire time and that seemed like enough.
In my mind, the apartment would be something out of the movies if his clothes were anything to go by. Would he have me wait in the entrance hall? Was there an entrance hall or did it just open up into the wide space of the living room, as American houses did?
What did it mean that he was taking me there?
This felt intimate, and I thought that intimate with him meant he’d kiss me, possibly more, but this was his living space, and he hadn’t even hesitated when he’d said it. Did he even live alone?
Was he tidy?
Was I going to find out something I didn’t want to know yet?