Still Here, page 31
And so far he hadn’t. “Vica, please, try to understand, it’s not that I can’t forgive you. I don’t exactly have the right to forgive or not forgive you. We were separated. But I can’t forgive the fact that it happened.”
Vica felt a strange satisfaction when he told her that. Perhaps she’d been compelled to confess to him because she wanted to test his love in some perverse way. If her confession hurt that badly, it must mean he really loved her, didn’t it?
When the ferry finally docked, there was Regina, tall, stooped, and so stricken with panic that Vica felt sorry for her.
“Don’t worry,” Vica said to her. “I invented a very efficient way of shopping here, so we’ll be done in no time.”
She dragged Regina onto the escalator and headed straight to the kids’ department. “We’ll only look for what you need and then you’ll just scan the barcode with your phone and you can take another look at each piece online.”
“I like the castle bed over there. And the tent bed,” Regina said to Vica. “Wouldn’t it be cool to wake up as if you were in the woods?”
Vica shook her head. “No, Regina, no! Don’t look for ‘cool’ things. Look for comfortable and familiar. That’s what this girl needs. You don’t want to make her life even weirder.”
Regina nodded. She looked very intimidated, the poor thing.
“Look at this storage system,” Vica said. “Now this is superconvenient.”
She wished she had the money to buy all this stuff for Eric. Perhaps one day she would. There was no guarantee that Virtual Grave would make any money at all, but she was hopeful. They were hopeful.
“You definitely want this desk! Look, there’s so much space for random crap underneath,” she said to Regina.
Regina went ahead and scanned the barcodes.
Later when they were drinking excellent Swedish coffee in the IKEA café, Vica asked Regina about Nastya.
“You know,” Regina said, taking a hesitant sip, “I think I miss her.”
“Already?” Vica asked. “That’s a good sign!”
“We had two couches close together in that rental apartment. And she would jump from one to the other and scream ‘Egina, look!’ She calls me Egina; she has this little problem with her r’s. Her jumping used to annoy me, because she wouldn’t let me read in peace, but now I miss that.”
“Egina?” Vica asked. “That’s funny! Does she listen to you?”
Regina blushed as if Vica had caught her on some parental incompetence.
“Not always, no. And she often lies.”
“Oh, that’s normal. Kids lie all the time. I would find all these candy wrappers in Eric’s schoolbag and he would insist that they weren’t his. ‘They’re Gavin’s. Gavin put them there.’ And I would say: ‘What about that fat on your stomach? Huh? Did Gavin put it there too?’
They both laughed, then Regina asked how things were going with Sergey.
Vica tensed. She had never trusted Regina and she suspected that she was secretly happy when she and Sergey had split up. Her first impulse was to lie, to say that yes, they were back together and happier than ever.
“Good,” she said, forcing a bright smile. “Really good. Especially since he sold Virtual Grave. He promised that if everything goes as planned I can quit my job and go to graduate school within a year.”
“Medical school?” Regina asked.
“Probably not. I’m fed up with medicine. I was thinking about a degree in marketing or business. You know that girl Cleo, the one who is developing our app, she says that I have some terrific business ideas. She actually likes my ideas better than Sergey’s.”
Regina nodded thoughtfully. She didn’t appear haughty or patronizing. On the contrary, she seemed as lost and insecure as a person could be. She was looking at Vica with kind attention, urging her to tell the truth. “Regina knows how to listen,” Vadik had told Vica once. “She has pulled me through a lot of shit by just listening to my rants. I’ve never met anybody as capable of empathy as her.”
Vica was hungry for empathy. She decided to be honest.
“Actually, it’s been really hard with Sergey,” she said. “We’re back together, yes, but he’s still struggling to forgive me.”
“Forgive you for what?” Regina asked.
Vica took a long sip of coffee and cleared her throat.
“I slept with Vadik and I told Sergey about it,” she said.
Regina put her mug down and stared at Vica.
“We were separated and I thought that Sergey was sleeping with somebody else.” She tensed, expecting something like incredulous judgment from Regina. What she got instead was a strained silence followed by hysterical laughter.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Regina kept saying, choking with laughter, which turned out to be rather contagious.
Honestly, Vica couldn’t think of a more fitting reaction to the story of her love troubles.
“So how did it happen?” Regina asked.
“Do you want to hear the whole story?” Vica said.
“Of course!”
“Let’s go out for drinks sometime soon. I know this perfect little place in the East Village with the best happy hour. Twenty bucks for two tapas and a glass of sangria!”
“I’d love to!” Regina said. “Let’s do it soon, before I leave for Moscow.”
And they got up and went to the exit.
“Listen,” Vica said when they got on that little IKEA ferry that would carry them back to Manhattan, “you can’t let Vadik and Sergey know that I told you, okay?”
“Of course not!” Regina said with a new spurt of laughter.
“And don’t you giggle!”
“I’ll mask it with a cough.”
Vica rolled her eyes in a joking way and took out her phone. “Reg and I are on our way,” she texted to Vadik.
“Cool,” he texted back.
Vadik thought that it was Regina he would miss the most. She was the only one who ever offered him true friendship. Vica and Sergey hadn’t. They were so eager to pull him into that vile complicated mess of their marriage only to spew him back out when he wasn’t needed anymore. Regina was different. She did care about him. Fuck, he had been such an asshole when he said to her that the only way she could take care of a child was to eat it. How could he possibly have known that she was actually considering becoming a mother? But even if he stayed in the U.S., he doubted that they could remain true friends now that she had a child. It was already clear that the child dominated most of her faculties. Well, he could understand that. There were so many ways to screw up a kid, you had to be in a state of constant alert. Vadik had always wondered why people even wanted kids. He didn’t. He had passed on his good sturdy genes, but no kid in the world needed him to pass on his doubts, restlessness, and insecurity as well.
He walked into the living room and surveyed the place. Most of his furniture was already gone. There were just a few pieces left along with a few items of his sports equipment. There was a sense of bareness and open space to the apartment that Vadik hadn’t had a chance to enjoy before. In two days, he would be gone to start his life anew in another foreign, unlived, perfectly clean space. He had never been to Singapore and he knew very little about it, which would make his fresh start even fresher. He had made the mistake of trying so hard to fit in, first in Moscow, then in Istanbul, then in New York. He would make no such claim on Singapore. He would just try to enjoy the foreignness of the place for as long as it was enjoyable.
Vadik counted his bottles of booze again. One, two, three, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift.
He went to the kitchen, defrosted the dumplings and the edamame, put them on a tray, and carried the tray back into the living room. He put it right in the middle of the rug.
There was a forceful ring of the doorbell.
Bob, Vadik thought. Nobody else rang the doorbell with such poise.
“Am I the first to arrive?” Bob asked.
“Yep,” Vadik said.
It had been a little awkward between them since Vadik announced his decision to leave DigiSly.
“Of course, man, I get it,” Bob had said to him. “You need a change of atmosphere.” But there was hurt and incomprehension in his eyes. It was clear that he struggled to understand how anybody could want to leave such a cool job under such a wonderful boss. They shared a common pain though, and that was Sergey’s success. Bob was suffering from a bad case of FOMO, even though he kept saying that he stood by his word that Virtual Grave didn’t have a chance to become hugely successful.
“It’s not a success yet, far from it,” Sergey said to Vadik when they were having drinks. “There is no way of knowing if there will be any revenue.”
But what had happened was better than financial success, and they both knew it. Sergey had created something from scratch, something he was passionate about; he had fought for it with all his might and he had won. While Vadik was back to square one, starting his life anew yet again.
“This looks nice and airy,” Bob said, walking into the living room and taking in the emptiness.
“Vodka?” Vadik asked.
“Sure!” Bob said.
“Is a coffee mug okay? I sold all my glasses.”
“A coffee mug of vodka would be very welcome!” Bob said. “With ice, please.”
Vadik handed him a mug with the words #1 BOYFRIEND. He couldn’t remember whether it was a gift from Rachel II, the sane Sofia, or Abby. He poured a generous portion for himself into a mug with a picture of the Empire State Building on it.
They sat down right on the rug and took a few sips in silence. Bob picked up a dumpling on a fork and bit off about half of it.
Both Bob and Vadik were visibly struggling to find a conversation topic.
“Did you find an apartment in Singapore?” Bob asked.
“The company found one for me.”
Vadik’s fortieth birthday was coming up a week after he was supposed to arrive in Singapore. He would have to celebrate it on his own. Fuck, that was depressing. He needed Bob to change the topic.
“So what’s the process now with that little girl?”
“Nastya? We’re working on her immigration papers. I have pretty solid connections, so everything should go smoothly on this side. Especially compared to the Russian bureaucratic nightmare. Regina is going back there in a week, and if all goes well, I’d say we could bring Nastya over in a couple of months.”
“Great!” Vadik said. “You must be excited.”
Bob swirled the ice in his mug and looked Vadik in the eye.
“To tell you the truth, man, I’m fucking terrified. Raising your own kid is tough. But a kid from an orphanage…”
“Regina said you’ve been very chipper throughout the whole thing.”
“Well, I had to put on a brave face for her sake.”
“But you are really sure this adoption is the right thing to do?” Vadik asked. He remembered Regina’s telling him that Bob strongly believed in doing the “right things.”
“The right thing?” Bob asked. “Do you think there is the right thing to do for every situation? I don’t! No, I’m not sure. Not at all! But that little girl, Vadik! My heart just goes out to her. And I think it’s what Regina really wants too.”
“It’ll be okay, Bob. I can feel that it will,” Vadik said, and they clinked their mugs.
The vulnerable, terrified Bob was somebody Vadik didn’t have the chance to know. They could’ve been closer. Vadik felt a momentary regret, which was interrupted by the sharp ringing of the doorbell.
Vadik got up to let in Regina and Vica.
“Vadik!” Vica said. “Look how thin you are!”
They hadn’t seen each other in months. Vica had felt that it was important not to aggravate things with Sergey.
“She’s right,” Regina confirmed. “Let’s hope they’ll fatten you up in Singapore.”
Vadik went to retrieve two more mugs: one that had the figure of a jazz musician leaning back with his sax, and the other that simply said MOMA. He poured some vodka into each and handed the mugs to Regina and Vica.
“Isn’t your birthday coming up?” Regina asked.
“Yep,” Vadik said. “I’ll be in Singapore.”
“We’ll make a virtual party for you!” Vica said. “We’ll go to a resturant together and you’ll be with us via Skype.”
Great, I’ll be like a ghost, Vadik thought. Fortunately, Vica found a diversion.
“What’s in there?” she asked, pointing to the huge plastic container in the corner.
“Random junk that didn’t sell. Take anything you want.”
Vadik dragged the container closer and put it in the middle of the rug next to the food.
“What’s that?” Bob asked, pointing to the wooden handle sticking out of the container.
“My first tennis racket,” Vadik said.
“It can’t be!”
Bob reached for the racket and took his time examining it.
“My father used to have one exactly like that. I’ve seen it among his things.” He stroked the rough surface with his fingers.
Regina leaned into Bob and kissed him on the cheek. “You should take it, honey. It will be a nice memento.”
“Can I?” Bob asked.
“Sure,” Vadik said.
“Thank you, Vadik,” Bob said and put the racket in his lap.
“And I’ll take these pretty dishes and this pot and—what is this, a vase?” Vica said.
“It’s yours.”
By the time Sergey arrived, they were all digging through Vadik’s stuff, getting a little tipsy and laughing.
“Drinking and pillaging, huh?” Sergey said. “I want in!”
Vadik handed him a mug with Warhol’s Marilyn on it.
“Hey,” Sergey said, pointing to the tennis racket, “isn’t it your first racket?”
“Is it? I thought Vadik was kidding,” Bob said.
Vadik picked the racket up and ran his fingers over the rough surface of the head. He bought it a few weeks after he had arrived in the country. Vica had explained to him that all middle-class Americans enjoyed playing tennis, and if he wanted to fit in, he would have to learn. Sergey had offered to teach him. “Rackets are expensive, buy one on eBay,” Vica had said. Vadik had had no idea what a tennis racket looked like. He had bought that one because it was the cheapest. Only twenty dollars.
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Vica said. “He brought it to our court on Staten Island so that Sergey could teach him. Here we are, all ready to play, and Vadik produces this monstrosity! I mean, he was really going to play with it!” Vica was laughing so hard that she almost spilled her drink.
“That’s right,” Sergey said, “I remember. And what about his first attempt to ski?”
Yeah, yeah, very funny, Vadik thought.
Downhill skiing was the other thing all middle-class Americans were supposed to enjoy. Vadik thought that he knew how to ski, because he had been an expert cross-country skier since he was a child and he could manage the steepest hills. So one day he just went to Shawnee Mountain (it was the cheapest and the closest), presented a half-off coupon, paid for his “after dusk” lift ticket, put on his rented boots, strapped on his rented skis, and took the lift to the top. This is spectacular! he thought, taking in the view of pink clouds at sunset. Within seconds, he made the rather painful discovery that he had no idea how to slow down or control his direction. He was zipping downward, gaining terrifying speed, sure that he would die and horrified that he would die a stupid, embarrassing death like this. Fortunately, he soon crashed into a snowboarder and managed to fall on the icy snow with most of his bones intact. He did break his wrist though. He had to abandon the skis and hobble all the way down in his ski boots, howling from the pain like some wounded wolf.
“Adaptation is a painstaking process,” Sergey had told him as he drove him to the hospital. “You keep trying to fit in right away and end up breaking your bones.”
And now Sergey was laughing at his haplessness. He could afford to laugh. He was a man who had finally made it.
The party went on for a while, each of them taking one of his things, stroking it, fondling it, telling yet another episode from the life of poor dear Vadik.
Am I the only one who thinks that this sounds like a memorial service? Vadik wondered. All these speeches, all these fond memories, all these jokes, as if he weren’t there. It was a relief when they all finally left. Drunk, wobbly, carrying their loot. Bob with his racket. Regina cradling a small potted orchid. Vica and Sergey hauling the rug and two garbage bags filled with everything from kitchen utensils to half-used shampoos.
I might be a loser in their eyes, Vadik thought, but none of the winners could resist my free offerings.
He didn’t feel sad though. Not at all. He felt better than he had felt in years. He thought about how much he had always liked leaving. Fitting in was humiliating and painful, but leaving was great, leaving was liberating. Perhaps he was really made for the road, perhaps it was a mistake to try to stop, to try to fit in. Perhaps what he was was a perpetual nomad.
He closed the door behind them and found himself alone in his thoroughly empty apartment. With the curtains gone, his denuded place was fully exposed to the passersby, their legs and feet fully exposed to him. Vadik took out his laptop and sat down in the middle of the bare floor. There was one more thing he needed to do before his departure. He had decided to delete all of his social media accounts. What he needed was to pull himself together, and how could you possibly do that if you had pieces of your soul scattered all over virtual space?
The first account he had ever created was on LiveJournal. He was surprised to find that it still existed. Reading his old entries was as embarrassing as listening to stories of his immigrant mishaps, like the one with the tennis racket. His entries were mostly about his adventures, some real, but most made up. There was the story of his meeting Rachel, told with light self-deprecating humor. It generated plenty of comments. Most of them from people eager to boast that the same thing had happen to them. Then there were his dating profiles on Match4U and Hello, Love! He actually had four different profiles on Hello, Love! He would tweak and change his profile every couple of months, when the existing ones failed to attract the women he thought he deserved. It made his skin crawl when he saw what a fake, cutesy mask he chose to present to the world.
