Still Here, page 7
Bob tried to interest her in politics, but all his efforts failed. Regina subscribed to Tolstoy’s point of view that particular candidates or even political parties didn’t matter, that historical process was shaped by the collective will of all people and not one single politician could possibly change anything.
“Okay,” Bob said, “we’ll let a nineteenth-century Russian writer guide you in matters of contemporary U.S. politics.” He then suggested that she “take up” something else. But the expression “take up” disgusted her. “Taking up” meant doing something fanciful rather than serious. There were wives in Bob’s circle of friends who had given up their jobs after marriage and now “taken up” photography or art or writing. Some of them were deeply engaged in motherhood, so they didn’t have the time to “take up” things; what they did instead was “dabble.” Regina had been a professional woman all her life—the thought of “dabbling” made her stomach turn. She would rather spend her time reading books than “dabbling” in anything.
But what frightened Regina was that she had stopped reading. In Russia, she used to read voraciously, both in English and Russian, but here she hadn’t yet finished a single book. Their entire den was crammed with unread books.
Today will be different. I’ll definitely read a book today, Regina thought. I’ll make coffee and start reading.
There were no traces of Bob in the kitchen. He didn’t like having breakfast at home. He usually bought some seriously enhanced smoothie on the way to his office and drank it there while listening to his assistant’s report.
Regina put the kettle on, sat down on the edge of the windowsill, and reached for her iPhone to check her messages while the water boiled. A confirmation for her ticket to Moscow made her squirm. The two-year anniversary of her mother’s death was approaching, and Aunt Masha—not her actual aunt, but her mother’s best friend—insisted that Regina come and visit the grave. Regina had missed the one-year anniversary because she had been sick. This time she didn’t have any excuse. She had gone ahead and bought the ticket for early November.
The next e-mail was from Aunt Masha. She was overjoyed that Regina was coming to Moscow! They would go to the cemetery together and then have a meal in Olga’s honor. She insisted that Regina stay with her during her visit. “It’s unthinkable,” she wrote, “for you to stay at a hotel in Moscow, like a tourist in your own city!” Regina groaned. It was hard enough to go to visit the grave, but to stay with Aunt Masha would be unbearable. Ever since Regina’s mother had died, Aunt Masha wouldn’t leave her alone. Even though Regina lived in America now, and was married to a kind, wonderful, and very rich man, Aunt Masha felt that her duty was to watch over Regina and take care of her. She would write her very detailed letters and ask embarrassingly personal questions about Regina’s new life. She would ask if Regina had found work, if she was happy with her new life in general, if she was happy with Bob, if she was in love with him. Did Bob have any children? Was he a good father? Did he want more children? Was he sad that Regina couldn’t have children? Would he consider adoption? Aunt Masha wasn’t subtle, no. She worked as a math teacher at an orphanage, and sometimes she would even go so far as to send Regina pictures of younger orphanage kids. Mostly babies, an occasional toddler. All had pleading expressions in their eyes, or was Regina just imagining that? She had to be firm and told Aunt Masha that adoption was out of the question, that the subject of children was painful and uncomfortable to her, and if Aunt Masha wanted to keep in touch with Regina she had to stop badgering her. The pictures and the questions did stop after that. Yet something told Regina that they hadn’t stopped for good. Aunt Masha often brought kids from the orphanage home. They would stay with her for days and sometimes even weeks. Regina could only hope that Aunt Masha’s apartment wouldn’t be teeming with adorable little orphans by the time she arrived.
The next e-mail was from a former classmate Alexey Kuzmin, who claimed that he was Abramovich’s business partner. He said that he lived in New Jersey now and wanted to get together. Kuzmin had been the sleaziest, most obnoxious guy in their entire grade. They had never been friendly; in fact, Regina didn’t think they had ever talked while they were in school. It was clear that he had heard that she was married to Bob and was now trying to get to him through her. Regina switched off her Gmail and turned to Facebook. Facebook was easy: a perfect stranger named Anita Lapshin who wanted Regina to like the page “Anita Lapshin.” Regina hesitated but didn’t “like” the page. She did “like” Vica’s photo of a smiling Eric though, just so Vica wouldn’t get mad. Vadik identified Regina’s social media personality as “the lurker,” because she rarely posted anything herself and almost never commented or liked. There was something unsavory in that description, as if she was spying on people, but she had to admit that Vadik was right. She thought of the drama unraveling in her friends’ social media as something like a TV series she could watch without participating. The idea of commenting and liking was foreign to her as well. Or perhaps she simply didn’t have the skill of responding to something that wasn’t addressed to her personally but released into the wild for everybody’s attention. Now, Vica was “the affirmer”: she “liked” everything and posted all these uplifting photos of their family trips, of Eric smeared with ice cream or pasta sauce, and especially of colorful breakfasts. Sergey was—she forgot what it was called. Sergey never posted anything himself, but he would often butt in on his friends’ discussions with an especially lengthy intellectual comment and then comment on his own comment, sometimes days later. Vadik himself thrived on social media, because it allowed him to try all those different personalities. He was witty on Twitter, charming on Facebook, philosophical on his Tumblr. When Regina shared Vadik’s social media ideas with Bob, Bob just shook his head. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Social media is meant for communication, it’s not supposed to be creative, definitely not supposed to be soul shaping.” Bob and Becky were model social media citizens. Their posts were not too frequent and not too long; they liked generously and commented sparingly; they radiated personal warmth and promoted their work in moderation.
There was a Facebook message from Vadik. He wanted her to help him interpret Sejun’s sudden idea to look for a job in New York so that she and Vadik could live together. Regina was so tired of interpreting Vadik’s love life! “But you’re so levelheaded,” he would say. Which meant what? Cerebral, coldhearted, incapable of love herself?
When Vica dumped Vadik for Sergey and Sergey dumped Regina for Vica, some people were hoping that Regina would take up with Vadik. The problem was that they weren’t attracted to each other. Well, Vadik definitely wasn’t. Everyone said he was still pining for Vica. It would have been disastrous for Regina. To be with another man who preferred Vica to her? No, thank you! So, yes, a romantic relationship between her and Vadik was out of the question, especially now that she had Bob, but Regina couldn’t help but hate it when Vadik came to her with his love puzzles.
Her relationship with Sergey and Vica was more complicated. After her breakup with Sergey back in Russia, Regina had never expected to become friends with him and Vica. She found herself forced into this friendship because she was friends with Vadik, and Vica and Sergey and Vadik kind of came as a package. And here, in New York, she didn’t really know anyone and couldn’t afford to refuse friends. She was especially starved for female company. Becky was there and Becky was smart and nice, but she belonged to a different generation and she was Bob’s family—you couldn’t be completely open with your husband’s daughter. So Regina did try to become better friends with Vica, but each of her attempts was met with spiky resistance on Vica’s part. And every time the four of them met, Vica kept darting sneaky inquisitive stares at Regina, clearly worried that she still loved Sergey. Sergey seemed to wonder the same thing. She didn’t love him! More than that, she now doubted that she ever had. But the worst thing about Vica and Sergey was that they constantly tried to push yet another of their stupid app ideas on Bob. They tried to exploit him, and she felt exploited as well. Regina cringed every time Vica made allusions to her frivolous lifestyle while complaining about her job, and her awful commute from Staten Island, and all those chores she had to do, and the fact that she basically had two children—Erik and Sergey. Was Vica trying to guilt her into helping them? That would be so unfair. Still, Regina couldn’t help but feel guilty because of the simple fact that Vica and Sergey had to struggle financially and she didn’t. Sergey kept asking her if it was possible to change Bob’s mind about Virtual Grave. No, she told him, it was not possible. And even if it was, Regina wouldn’t have lifted a finger to try. She hated the idea of Virtual Grave. Death was an ugly, stupid, terrifying joke. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could do to make it more meaningful, or more beautiful, or easier to stomach. The only way to deal with it was to ignore it for as long as you could.
The water started to boil. Regina put coffee into her French press, poured the hot water, stirred, let it it brew for a little while, and pressed down on the plunger. She poured herself a cup and carried it out to the terrace. To unlock the terrace door, Regina needed both hands, so she had to balance the cup against her stomach. Some coffee splashed—onto her stomach.
And then she was outside and blinded by all the light from the sky and the river, the boats, and the pretty disarray of buildings in New Jersey. The weather was perfect too—cool and delicious with an early September breeze.
“Did you even dream of living like this?” her father had asked when he visited. They were standing on her terrace together. He was short, shorter than Regina, thin wisps of his gray hair fluttering against his bald crown. He used to be a writer. “His very first short story was published in Novyj Mir!” Aunt Masha told Regina. When Regina was five years old, he went to Canada and decided to stay there, basically abandoning his wife and child. Now he lived in Montreal and taught Russian literature.
“A simple Russian girl like yourself. And look at you now—the queen of Manhattan.”
His words made Regina gag. She was neither simple nor Russian (she had Jewish, Polish, and a smidgen of French blood in her veins), and she definitely was not the queen of Manhattan. She was tired of explaining to people that Bob wasn’t that rich. When the news of the Occupy Wall Street protests reached Regina’s father, he called to ask if Bob was in the “one percent.” He was. Regina’s father couldn’t be prouder. He wasn’t nearly as excited when Regina told him about her latest translator’s prize. It was her father who had given Regina her stupid embarrassing name. He must have been hoping that she would eventually become a queen. Regina had never been very fond of her father, and now she couldn’t forgive him for the simple fact of his being alive, when her mother was dead.
She sat down on one of their pretty metallic chairs and took the first sip. The seat was still wet from yesterday’s rain, but she decided that she didn’t care. The huge letters on the other bank of the river spelled the word Lackawanna. She didn’t know what that meant, but the word fascinated her. She took another sip. The coffee hadn’t come out that well, but at least it was still hot and bitter. It was her mother who had taught Regina to drink black coffee: “Black coffee tastes like a punishment that makes you strong.”
Regina wasn’t nearly as talented a translator as her mother had been. She did her job well, but she couldn’t boast of any special gift. Her mother’s special gift was humor. She could find the smallest grain of humor in the novel and push it just a tiny bit more, so that it became suppler, brighter, but didn’t lose its subtlety. Regina had read the entire oeuvre by George Eliot in her mother’s translation, chuckling and grinning and sometimes even laughing like crazy. She was deeply disappointed when she read the novels in the original English. She found them to be rather moralistic and dull.
Not only was her mother a brilliant translator, she also seemed to have had a personal relationship with each of her dead authors. She would read all of their biographies, diaries, correspondence. She would call them by their first names and talk about them as if they were family members. “Did you know what Charlotte’s father did when she died? Charlotte Brontë?” she would ask at breakfast while stirring the kasha in her bowl. “He cut up her letters and sold the pieces to her grieving fans so that he could make more money!” And then hours later, when they were sitting at their adjacent desks working, she would cry out: “The bastard!” “Who are you talking about, Mom?” Regina would ask. Her mother would answer, “Charlotte’s father, who else!”
They’d lived in a one-bedroom flat on Lyalin Lane in Moscow. The kitchen was dark and moldy, and there were always pigeons on the window ledge, peeking in, tapping on the window. Her favorite room was the living room. At noon there was always a thick ray of sunlight coming from the locked balcony door into the middle of the room. When Regina was little, she loved to run into that ray and freeze there so that she could catch the sparkling specks of dust that flew around her like snowflakes.
There was the old sofa in the back, where her mother loved to sit with little Regina and show her family heirlooms. Photographs, letters, various old trinkets. Regina’s favorite objects were the buttons. They were kept in a large tin box, and what a treat it had been to open the lid—she had to push it really hard, as it sometimes would get stuck and then she would have to pry it with a butter knife—and plunge both her hands into a smorgasbord of shapes, textures, and colors. And then as Regina arranged and rearranged the buttons on the table—by size, by color, in ornaments, in artistic disarray—her mother would look at them and say: “Oh, I remember that one! It’s from my old blue jersey dress.” Or “This golden one is from your grandfather’s uniform.” That sofa was where Regina slept and where she spent long hours crying for Sergey. She cried so much that the wallpaper next to her pillow became damp and warped. It was her mother who nursed Regina through the heartbreak. She didn’t pester Regina with questions; didn’t say anything bad about Sergey; didn’t pressure Regina to confront Sergey, to get back at Vica, or to have a rebound, like all her friends did. She just took Regina on walks and fed her and gave her books to read, but other than that she let her be. She offered just one piece of advice: “Don’t show him how much you’re hurting. It won’t help and it will make you feel even worse.” And so Regina didn’t. She distanced herself from Sergey and Vica as much as she could, and whenever they met by chance, she went to great pains to keep it normal. And it did help. The effort it took her to pretend to be free of sorrow distracted her from her actual sorrow.
Regina learned to live in her work, to become submerged in her texts. There were days when she worked for twelve or even fourteen hours, until her vision started to get blurry and her butt would get numb and achy, pressing into a chair for so long that it felt like a frozen piece of meat. Perhaps this was the reason she had become so successful. Offers of teaching jobs followed and invitations to participate in panels and writers’ residencies. Writers’ residencies were the only places where she could have something resembling a love life.
She’d been to the French Villa Mont-Noir six times, where she drank bottomless glasses of free Bordeaux and had affairs with three different French writers.
She’d been to Swiss Maison d’écrivains at the Château de Lavigny four times, where she napped in the haunted library, ate excellent soups, and had an affair with a sweet German writer suffering from performance anxiety.
She’d visited Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers in Scotland twice, where she ate oatmeal for breakfast and had sex only once (her second time there), with Ben, an American translator of Russian literature who liked everything Russian and dressed like a character from Turgenev. They exchanged letters for months afterward, mostly helping each other with puzzling cultural references. Elephant tea? he would ask. What does it mean? And Regina would explain that the author was referring to the Soviet brand of Indian tea with an elephant on the label.
There were also Bellagio Center and Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. At Bellagio she ate and drank so much that she fell asleep as soon as her body made contact with the bed. Her lover, a warty and passionate Polish artist, complained about it. He told her that he was in love with her, then confessed that he was engaged to be married.
What a pain it was to return to Moscow after these trips. To step out from Sheremetyevo International into the darkness and the cold, shivering in her light Italian raincoat. To walk down smelly alleyways, stepping over puddles, her heart skipping a beat whenever she saw a suspicious stranger. Regina would feel depressed for weeks after she returned. Sometimes she would be depressed for a period of time that was longer than her term at a residency.
Still, there was something worse than the cold and gloominess of her surroundings. Back in Russia, Regina seemed to lose her sex appeal. Instantaneously and irreversibly, as if she were stripped of a precious layer of attractiveness by Sheremetyevo customs officers. Whatever it was about her that had seemed exotic and wonderful to her foreign lovers was thoroughly unexciting to Russian men. Regina had had occasional short-lived reationships with Russians, but outside those writers’ residencies, she mostly led a monastic existence. Sometimes her foreign affairs continued in the form of intense epistolary relationships, but those either bored or distressed her. The Polish artist kept sending her long passionate e-mails, but Regina couldn’t help imagining him pressing the Send button, closing his laptop, and then going to bed to snuggle next to his wife. It wasn’t the sex, but the snuggling that made her insanely jealous. Going to sleep next to a warm familiar body, opening her eyes in the morning to see a dear familiar face.
Being an introvert, she didn’t have that many friends either, almost nobody since Sergey and Vica and then Vadik left for the U.S. Her mother was the only person who kept Regina from feeling hopelessly lonely. She did enjoy their long walks together, drinking tea in their tiny kitchen, gossiping about long-dead writers as if they were acquaintances.
