Chapter 20 The New Normal
The New Normal
Every day felt slightly warmer, and the sun remained a glimmer longer, promising spring.
Mama was due to come back from the hospital in three days, and Maxim and I scrambled to prepare the home she hadn’t yet seen.
It would’ve been responsible of me to unpack, but her room was still stacked with boxes and heaped with plastic bags.
But, in my defense, I’d done a fair job of making sure Maxim stayed alive.
Surprisingly, he had no issues switching schools.
Within days, my brother met boys his age from the surrounding buildings and spent most of his time in the courtyard.
Of course, this was the opportunity to run wild in the evenings, so everything had become a battle from homework to bedtime.
Miraculously, he settled the moment Vitali arrived.
I should have found this insulting, but by then I was so tired that I’d take any help I could get.
And then, something happened.
“Here is my cellphone number.”
I stared dumbly as the pen moved in perfectly controlled strokes across my address book.
“And here is your cellphone number,” Vitali continued.
The thing was bulky like a military radio.
Though I’d never really paid attention to them before, holding one in my hands was the threshold into a different future.
Before, I could live anywhere and do anything, but the telephone was always in the kitchen or in the phone booth.
I would always take the bus. I would pass by the expensive stores with tinted glass window fronts, but I wouldn’t go inside—because why would I?
This new life I was already living came rushing at me in the form of that heavy, awkward object in my palm.
“Why did you change your mind?” I asked.
He shrugged and adjusted his scarf, readying to leave. It was early and he had only come by for a minute. Maxim was still asleep.
“It is more important that you can contact me. I’ve got a busy few days coming up, so if I don’t answer, continue to call Misha. I’ll try to be back in time to bring Mama home—but I can’t promise it.”
“Are you leaving town?”
“Maybe.”
“How many roses am I going to get?” I sighed, a wave of regret trailing my words as I caught the brief flash of pain on his face.
“I’ve done a lot to be around here as long as I have, Katya,” he said, pulling on his gloves. “I don’t think you understand how much. This is how it has to be. I cannot change the nature of my work.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and wrapped my arms around his waist. He flinched.
It didn’t happen every time, but it happened. I reminded myself that touching him unexpectedly wasn’t affection the way I thought.
He still spared my feelings and kissed me.
How dearly I wished I could be a better person, but I couldn’t help the gnawing resentment come out as a sigh.
“A dozen at most,” he told me, pulling me tighter against his chest, then reiterated, “I’ll have the phone on me, but do not call unless you absolutely have to, Kotik. Call Misha first.”
“Does he not go with you, ever?”
He shook his head. “He doesn’t speak English, and he keeps my affairs in order when I’m not around. Someone will always be here for you.”
“English,” I repeated. The only detail I got about the trips, and I was learning that wasn’t a bad thing.
Vitali left, and I patiently waited for Maxim to get ready for school. He was grown enough to walk there on his own, but Mama wouldn’t have it. It was up to me to uphold those rules while she was gone.
Besides, it was a new school in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I needed to learn the routes as much as Maxim.
It snowed the day before, and everything otherwise gray and lifeless took on a fairytale glamour as it waited to be dirtied by cars and people’s boots. Walking through the park was much more pleasant than along the busy roads at our old apartment—
Old apartment. Not home, but ‘old apartment.’ It hadn’t taken me long to accept the new district and the luxury of having working electricity.
When I hugged Maxim goodbye, I saw the dark figure leaning up against a divider wall in the distance.
Roman wasn’t following me anymore; now, he watched over my brother.
I still hadn’t met Roman, but I bitterly thought that maybe it would save me time if he just took my brother to school.
It was on his way to work, technically speaking.
There were still a few things of Mama’s to unpack, and the floors needed scrubbing before she came home.
I spent a couple of hours crawling around the apartment and catching up on all the cleaning I’d neglected to do, and then braced myself for the three boxes and two suitcases of shoulder pads and fake-pearl sewn dresses.
The bedrooms were bigger than our old ones, but not by much, and I had to find somewhere to put away the bulky bags.
Most Soviet-built apartments had very little room for storage.
The main available space was integrated into the ceiling in the entrance hallway and could be accessed via a cabinet-like door facing the kitchen.
One could only reach it with a chair or ladder, and up to that point, I avoided climbing up there—mostly because it was a pain in the butt.
But the hour had come.
The door hadn’t been used for a long time, and by then, someone painted over the whole thing more than once, including the latch. I got a kitchen knife and dug at it for a good five minutes before I could make it budge.
The cracks in the paint resisted my prying as long as they could, but in the end, I’d won my war against the simple architectural feature. And wished I hadn’t.
There was no room for the suitcases, because the entirety of the space was crammed with guns.
“Oh…” I breathed.
They were large—like the ‘fun’ ones we never got to shoot—and stacks of ammo, and bulky items further back that I couldn’t quite make out.
No wonder the apartment was ready for us so quickly—this was a God-damned cache house.
I had the cellphone in my hand and the shaking address book in the other before the latch fell closed. To hren with not calling Vitali unless I had to.
It rang.
He didn’t answer.
I dialed again.
“Katya.”
“What are they doing here!” I tried not to yell, but I yelled. “Vitali!”
“Katya, now is not a good time.” Calm. Like I should be.
“What if Mama had found them? God save him—what if Maxim did?”
“Katya.”
My next words were just frustrated growls, and I could tell he pressed his palm over the speaker on the other end with muffled voices briefly discussing my interruption. Then, the crunch of snow, and Vitali was back on the line.
“Kotik. I need you to breathe. Now is not a good time, but if we can figure this out fast, I can have someone by tonight to get rid of it.”
A ping of ‘it gets worse’ touched the hairs on the back of my neck. “Get rid of what? What exactly are you getting rid of?”
“Whatever you found.”
“And what did I find?”
“I’m not playing this game.”
“What did I find, Vitali!” I seethed.
He sighed. “Send Maxim to a friend’s house by six. Go shopping—go to dinner. Give me until eight.”
“Not until you tell me what you’re keeping here!”
That’s when his tone changed. “I don’t have to tell you shit, Katya. You’re not in a place to be making demands. Do what I tell you. Don’t touch anything else. I don’t care where you go—be out of there by six and don’t come back until after eight.”
“Maybe I won’t come back at all…”
“Well, that’s up to you to try, isn’t it, Kotik? I have to go. Don’t call Misha about this. Just be gone by six.”
I was.
The fight lasted days.
He called twice, but by that point, the idea of Maxim finding something and hurting himself had boiled my blood for long enough that nothing he said defused me. I hung up on him both times. Then, there were no calls.
Misha came to get us, and we picked up Mama from the hospital.
There were a lot of gifts and flowers, and she took all the attention with the humility of a martyred saint.
They’d kept her there longer than needed, and she was eager to be up on her feet and do everything she could all at once.
She loved the new apartment, although every praise was followed by a mournful comment about the one on the Left Bank.
Happiness did not exist without grief, but there were enough people shoving happiness at her to make up for it.
Misha hovered around for an extra hour after everyone left. He was putting his shoes on when I caught up to him and out of Mama’s hearing.
“Mish,” I called.
“What?”
“Is Vitali back?”
“Don’t you think he’d be here if he was?” He pulled the black beanie over his melon-like head, and opened the first door, letting it drop when I hurried after him.
“Listen—we had a fight.” I hugged myself, suddenly too aware I’d gone out without a coat.
“And?”
“And I want to talk to him, but…”
“But you’re still mad because you found my stuff in the walls.”
My mouth fell open. “Your stuff?”
“I’m in charge of inventory. Didn’t exactly give me a lot of time to go through it. How the hren was I supposed to know you were going digging? I was going to bring some guys by and get it all, but you got ahead of us, apparently.”
“… did Vitali know?”
“He knew this was a decoy place, not that it wasn’t empty. Couldn’t be choosy on account of you freezing to death in your little foxhole,” he said, shrugging. “It’s meant to be temporary anyway.”
“What do you mean ‘temporary?’”
“Listen, Katya,” he let out a heavy breath, his foot tapping, “I’m tired of being in the middle of your relationship. You want me in the middle so bad, start sucking my dick too. Ask him what I mean, or better yet, just wait for him to tell you so he doesn’t beat my face in for ruining surprises.”
A pause.
“Sorry about the dick part,” he muttered.
“It’s alright…”
“You mad at me about the… stuff?”
I considered it. I was, but what’s the point? I took it out on Vitali already, and he hadn’t put it there in the first place.
“I am,” I said anyway.
“Well, sorry. You’re in this now; things happen. This isn’t the worst thing that could happen.”
No, the worst thing (in that apartment) would take place a week before my birthday.