Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
Alexei
At a little after six a.m., as the early morning sun dappled the knotted wood of my kitchen table, I took a sip of coffee and considered my wife.
Who couldn’t wait to remove the label.
Once I had realized we were married—the moment I woke beside her in that Las Vegas hotel room—I knew I had to do everything in my power to make this a reality. So I took a chance.
Well, first, I panicked and said nothing had happened, but once I left the room, I had resolved to tell her over breakfast.
But then I got the call about my father.
The next few months were a whirlwind of doctors’ appointments, care instructions, and planning for the future.
Not just my father’s but my own. I pushed for the trade to Chicago, knowing that the only way to make my marriage work would be to put down roots in her town.
I would woo my wife while I cared for my father.
Sasha’s illness would test me in ways for which I was not ready. I would eventually lose him. Losing Lauren as well, when we had found our way back to each other, would have killed me. So I fudged the timeline.
And now it looked like I would lose her anyway.
I picked up the divorce papers. For once, I hadn’t lied about sending them to an attorney for review. No alimony or custodial arrangements needed. Clearcut and easy.
It just required my signature.
The alarm on my phone went off. 6:30—time for my father to rise.
I knocked on his door and pushed it ajar. Since the day he attacked me, I was cautious about my entry.
“Papa, are you awake?”
He was already sitting on the side of the bed. He had put his shirt on, but it was unbuttoned, and seeing him there in his underwear, helpless as a child, made my heart pang.
His head turned toward me, slowly, almost robotic, and the familiar confusion flickered in his eyes. I waited, each second longer than the last.
Only this time, the clouds didn’t clear.
“Kto ty?” Who are you?
I responded in English. “It’s me, Papa. Alexei.”
He shook his head and asked who I was again in Russian.
I answered the same as before, but in our native language. “Ya Alexei, Papa. Tvoy syn.”
“Nyet.”
No.
There had been moments of bewilderment before, but usually something in his brain clicked into recognition. The last few weeks, it had been taking longer. I had comforted myself with the fact that as long as he still recalled who I was, then there was still hope.
Hope for what, I wasn’t sure. That he would still be the Sasha I knew?
That we could talk about hockey and books and all the things that bound us together as family?
If those touchstones were gone—if he could no longer acknowledge me as his son—then who were we to one another?
He would always be my father, but was I still the boy he had loved and raised?
“Gde Natalia?”
Natalia was my mother. I replied in Russian, “She is …” Was I supposed to tell him she had died over sixteen years ago? The cruelty of it made me a coward. “… at the market.”
He looked around, baffled by his surroundings.
“Let me dress you.” I reached for his shirt buttons, but he slapped my hand away.
“Natalia! I want Natalia.”
This, he spoke in English, which I took as a good sign. About the only one there was.
I heard the front door open below. Maya was here, thank God.
“I will be back in a moment, Papa.”
He waved me off impatiently, clearly not enjoying this stranger’s invasion in his life. Downstairs, I found Maya pouring a cup of coffee.
“Late start for you today?”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t know who I am, Maya. And he’s asking for my mother.”
She gestured to the kitchen table, encouraging me to sit. “It might be time to have that talk, Alexei.”
I didn’t want to sit. I wanted to rant and rave about the injustice of it all. I had just lost Lauren. I couldn’t lose my father.
“I want to think the man I love is still in there. Trapped, trying to get out.”
Maya considered that. I’m sure she had heard every attempt to bargain with this horrific disease.
“Sometimes, that man is there, knocking on the door. But the knocks will become less frequent, fainter, until eventually you won’t hear anything at all.”
Was that what awaited us? Slipping away underwater, bobbing his head above occasionally, but eventually losing the strength to stay afloat?
“It isn’t fair.”
Maya nodded. “No, it’s not. This seems like the end of the man you know, but it doesn’t have to be.
We tend to focus on the loss, especially because the past is so important to relationships—how we relate to people is often centered on the memories we have of them.
With them. When those memories are fractured or vanish altogether, it seems like the relationship disappears with it.
But think of it like this: you can still have a relationship with him now.
It’s an adjustment, but you can focus on this new phase in the present. ”
I shook my head, still in denial. “But that’s not my father.”
“It is. You’re feeling grief for the man you worshipped all these years. But he’s still here, Alexei. It’s just not the version of him you knew. He might not remember you, but you won’t forget everything he has meant to you. You’re the keeper of those memories now. Use that to build something new.”
Something new? But we were Sasha and Alexei, father and son. I was too old to make new friends, never mind relate to a stranger who looked like my father. He might not recognize me, but I wasn’t ready to say the same.
“But if he doesn’t remember who I am, why would he even want to know me?”
Right now, after my fight with Lauren, I didn’t even want to know me.
“Because you’re all he has, Alexei. He may not know that on an intellectual level, but he will in here.
” She touched her chest. “I know it’s not fair.
None of it is, but you have to play the hand you’ve been dealt.
You can’t change the destination, but you can make the journey as fulfilling as possible. ”
Jason pulled his ankle up to stretch his quad, then the other. We had just finished our lakeshore run and were cooling down outside the coffee shop.
“I heard about Lauren.” He had gone five miles without bringing her up.
“What did you hear?”
“That you lied your Russian ass off about being married. Naughty, naughty, Nazarov.”
“What was I supposed to do? She refuses to understand.”
“That’s what you’re going with? Cool, cool.”
I scowled at him. “You have never told a white lie to smooth things over?”
“Naz, this is a bit more than a white lie. And you have to know honesty is so important to her after what her dad put her through, and then Thad. You might have been well-intentioned, but the upshot is the same. You fucked up.”
He was right, but I had to make him understand. “I would have lost her, Jason.” My life right now was crumbling, and Lauren was the one solid thing I could hold onto.
Jason stared at me for a moment, then asked, “How’s Sasha?”
“He is speaking more Russian now than English.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“It is, when I have a nurse who does not understand him. I need to find a Russian interpreter.”
Jason looked puzzled. “But he understands English, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but that part of his brain is now affected. Because it is his second language, it is a skill that is easier to lose.” I blew out a breath. “He doesn’t know who I am.”
“Fuck, Alexei. I’m so sorry.”
I nodded my appreciation. “What concerns me most is how scared he must be. Right now, he knows who Maya is. When he saw her this morning, he started speaking English again. I thought it would help him recall me.”
“But no?”
I shook my head. “Before he might have been confused but he would eventually figure it out. Now … his memories are being stolen, one at a time, and when his mind is bankrupted, what am I to do?”
Jason looked aghast, and I realized this was a lot with which to burden him.
Besides, the only person I wanted to share with was Lauren, and that was no longer an option.