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by
Myra Thompson Winning story of the 2008 Nick Adams Short Story Contest |
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Return to: ... Nick Adams Contest ... Winning stories and authors ... ACM home page Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
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Gathering up his journal and pen, Pavel prepared to record the day's only call before the details of his friend's passing, seventy years old from a coma to the afterlife, were swallowed into the fog of a half-remembered existence. Pavel had been at the kitchen window watching a crew of workmen crouching and sharing beers on the other side of the street when the phone rang. He lifted his forehead off the glass, thinking he'd have to wipe it before Tanya got home, and shuffled down the hallway. "Allo?" he answered. "Pavel Grigorovich?" From the way the caller said his patronymic, Pavel understood that the taut female voice belonged to Lilya, Yuri's only daughter. "Speaking." "Yuri is dead." Although unsurprised, he had no answer prepared. "I'm so sorry for your loss," he said after a pause. Lilya sighed. "I'm sorry for yours." He heard heart monitors beeping. So Lilya had finally visited the hospital when it was too late. Only a week before, Pavel had been holding Yuri's hand at the sickbed ceremony of the Parting of the Soul from the Body while Yuri kept scanning those gathered around him and trying to sit up whenever he heard footsteps in the hall, only to close his eyes and sink back into the pillow as the footsteps faded without bringing Lilya. Pavel said, "Yuri was a good man." "Yes." "He had a hard life." "Yes." They had known different Yuris and had nothing else to talk about. The man who read Lilya bits of the paper every day that he could get one, at least until she took up with that bad influence of a boy, was not the same man Pavel had reminisced with about Soviet times. So, they'd hung up awkwardly and Pavel had started running his hands over the pages of his journal, feeling the texture of the words on thin paper, thoughts pressed into thoughts. Pavel had been his mother's memory once her own was lost; this collection of blue pen on graph paper was his insurance against that same fate. He'd begun writing in it daily during the perestroika, when he was five years away from a pension but suddenly unemployed. On the cover he wrote, "When these are no longer your memories, you have lived too long." The last few days, sitting in the kitchen with the warm honey light of late afternoon, waiting for Tanya to come back from teaching, he'd begun to suspect that the message on the cover was meant for him now. Yes, Pavel had lived too long. He had outlived his parents, Yuri, and even the remembrance of his own life. He still had some moments preserved, events he'd cradled in his mind, but what of the average days? What of the days that stacked one on top of the other somewhere between routine and monotony? There were inexcusable gaps. He couldn't remember what direction his desk faced in the office he had worked in for thirty years, carefully disassembling, diagramming, and reassembling foreign production line components. He couldn't remember how Tanya had done her hair before she had let it go gray, even though he was sure he'd seen her in the bathroom mirror doing something to it morning after morning. He couldn't remember what he had drunk tea from before his grandson, Seryozha, had given him a hand painted mug last New Year's. Pavel had begun failing his tests, further evidence that his own mind was leaving him. Once a week he took apart the stopped brass pocket watch from his father's army days and hid its components throughout the apartment, carefully marking in the journal where everything from the escapement to the hairspring had been hidden in case he needed a reference. A week later, he would look for the pieces to put it back together, only to start the cycle over the next day. Lately, he'd been checking the journal more and more. There were tally marks to prove it. On the last scavenging day, he'd had to look five times. *** |
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As Pavel gathered his thoughts to put on paper, he studied the sugar bowl on the kitchen table. About fifteen years ago, Yuri had come over to Pavel and Tanya's apartment with this flower-patterned bowl, explaining at the door, "It doesn't match the rest of the china, and, well ..." Yuri handed over the bowl and peeled off his jacket. "Lately I either have my tea black or get cubes straight from the box, and maybe it's not as refined, but there you have it." He nodded at the bowl in Tanya's hands. It was not the first item of his wife's that Yuri brought over in the weeks after she died-March 7, 1983, just before Women's Day-but it was the only one Pavel could recall. Yuri often presented these gifts with talk of Natasha, about how suddenly it happened, her being struck by a careless driver when she just wanted to cross the street and buy a little butter, and how her once-graceful neck had looked wrong, even after she was made up for the funeral and Tanya tied that elegant scarf about it. In those days, Yuri spoke of Natasha almost remorsefully, without any of the formerly typical outbursts about her soup not being served hot enough or her phone conversations with her mother being too lengthy. In those days, when the death was so recent, almost every conversation began and ended with Natasha. This time, however, Yuri opened with, "How is your Sasha?" once he and Pavel were seated at the kitchen table. Pavel shook his head. "We want him to study for exams, in case he changes his mind about University." "I wish things had worked. Between Lilya and him." Yuri studied his fingers where they rested on the plastic tablecloth. Pavel's son was only a year older than Lilya, but their mothers had never quite managed to pair them off. "How is Lilya?" "She moved in with that Pyotr. Left a note and no number." Yuri tapped his right index finger and watched its movements closely. "And before that she was coming home late, unlocking the door real slowly, as if I wasn't awake, waiting for her to come back." He stopped tapping. "With bruises that the makeup doesn't quite cover, and those eyes." Pavel, too, had noticed how Lilya's eyes flitted about, hovering on doors, windows, corners, shadows. But he placed a firm hand on Yuri's shoulder and said nothing. *** |
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Tanya came home and left her heels by the door, switching to slippers. Pavel didn't like to think about her walking around in those shoes that rubbed against her blisters and calluses. Oh, when she was young, she was a presence in heels; they sculpted her calves and punctuated each step. But now, she hobbled home and every night he cared for her feet, kneading away the memory of the walk to and from the metro. Taking off her coat, Tanya said, "Pasha?" turning around to look at him. "Yes." "Yuri is dead." "Yes." They didn't speak again until Tanya had heated the supper. Stirring their cabbage soup to let it cool, they talked about Tanya's coworkers at the Moscow Russian Language Institute. "Katya --" she began. Pavel looked up. "Alekseich?" "Yes -- she didn't come in today. Called saying she slipped and fell yesterday." Both knew they hadn't had a good snow yet and the mud was just beginning to harden. There wasn't enough ice to slip on. Pavel could see the concern stitching his wife's brow, the way it used to when she worried about Natasha. "Leave it alone." "I know." Tanya turned her head toward the window, eyes focused somewhere in the darkness beyond the curtain. "But it's the third time she's been out this month." "It's a private family matter," Pavel reminded her, as he'd once had to remind her that Yuri was Natasha's husband, not either of them. It was not their problem how other couples sorted out disagreements. "Yes." Her gaze reentered the room and rested on the tray of pelmini. "But our Sasha has his own apartment now. She could sleep where he did." "Let's hope he can afford the unit." "They've managed for years. He'll find new work." Tanya looked into Pavel's eyes. "He's a good son." "Yes." Pavel gazed at their living room to the right, the room that their son had slept in before he started a family. *** |
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Looking at the living room, Pavel remembered the last time the bookshelf, or anything else in it, had been moved. Tanya had insisted on rearranging the furniture that weekend, even though Sasha and a few of his classmates had taken a trip to Petersburg. She'd pointed out where pieces were to go then left the apartment in order to give Pavel more space to work with. Without the aid of their eighteen-year-old, he'd had to shove and grunt until his muscles were limp and his arms shook if he lifted even a teacup. To ease the soreness, Pavel was indulging in a little extra water for his Sunday evening shower when Yuri called. Tanya cracked the door to the bathroom and Pavel felt the cool draft. "Pasha?" she shouted over the spurting water. "Yes." He let his left hand, holding the showerhead, go slack, and he stopped lathering the bar of soap with his right hand. The water now struck him at the knees and the hose was warm where it skimmed his calf. "Yuri called. I think you ought to visit. Tonight." Tanya closed the door with a small click and Pavel, who wanted only to stand under that stream of forgiving water, put the soap back in its dish. He lingered only until his neck and shoulders were thoroughly rinsed. Pavel was waiting at Yuri's door less than an hour later, carrying in the crook of his aching arm an oversize jar of peach kompot that Tanya said would do Yuri good to drink. Pavel buzzed and surveyed the hallway -- two of the three doors had horseshoes near them and the electric-blue walls were cluttered by phone lines poking out of holes, by skis and fishing poles and scraps of lumber casting long shadows on grimy surfaces. After a long wait and no answering footsteps on the other side of the door, Pavel pounded on the leatherette padding the door and then put his ear to the crack. He heard plastic crinkling and glass colliding, as though bottles were being thrown into a trash bag. "Yuri!" he called, "it's just me." When the door still didn't open, he added, "You don't have to clean. Just let me in." Finally, he heard the scrape of a lock and was allowed inside. The wood-patterned laminate flooring was a mess of used dishes and empty bottles, with a knot of blankets and a pillow by the television. Pavel didn't let his eyes stray too long on any part of the flat, he just carried the kompot over to the table, setting it down with a dull thud. From the vantage point of the kitchen, he noticed Lilya's room. "Yuri?" Pavel said, crossing over to her doorway. Yuri followed and let Pavel look in at the prim bed, the empty shelves, the brighter squares of wallpaper where posters had been. Yuri said, "Things got bad with her boyfriend." Pavel nodded, although that did not explain her barren room. "Pasha, she moved to Kiev. She's not coming back." Then they sat at the table and mixed vodka and the kompot because they didn't know what else to do. The memory dissolved with the two of them hunched over the table, elbows nestled in between newspapers, crumbs, and glasses. *** |
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Tanya's voice was worn at the edges as she spoke from the doorway. "Pasha? Did Yuri ever talk to you about his wife?" Pavel nodded then set the article -- it concerned the effects of strong magnetic fields on human health -- next to him on the bed and looked up at her over his reading glasses. "Did he love her?" she asked. "Yes." "She died young. Never put on weight or colored her hair." Pavel wished Tanya could see herself with the light from the kitchen softening every edge, silhouetting the narrowing of her waist and the swell of her hips. Where the light came through her lacy shawl it was a luminescent wing. "She would have become more beautiful," Pavel told his wife. She smiled, and although he could barely make out her features with the halo around her, he knew that on her face were the lines recording an accumulation of smiles. Tanya came into the room and perched herself on the edge of the bed, laying a hand on the quilt over Pavel's shin. "If he loved her, then how did he do that to their only daughter?" "Do what?" Pavel picked up his article again, but didn't resume reading. "Lilya left him for that -- that hooligan, even when she knew he was in mourning." "Lilya was in mourning, too." Tanya folded her hands in her lap and looked to the door. "If only he had forgiven her." "If only she had apologized!" Pavel did not mean to sound so forceful, but Yuri was dead and someone had to defend his memory. When he looked up from the article, he noticed her eyes were the vibrant blue color they only took on before and after crying. "Tanya," Pavel whispered, "Tanyusha." He folded back the bedding and moved next to her, letting her head rest on his chest. He put an arm around her and felt her rise and fall with his breathing. *** |
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One of Pavel's favorite going-to-sleep memories was from sometime in his thirties. He could no longer place the exact year. Tanya had come to meet him at the office because they had tickets for Evgeny Onegin at a nearby theater. It was only her second or third time in the building, so he relished the chance to show her off to his colleagues. She came to his desk wearing her good dress, light material heavy with the summer rain. Pavel saw her chest rise, gathering breath to say, "It was sunny when I left!" The clinging cloth accentuated every perfect curve, transforming her into a Grecian sculpture somehow more explicit than naked flesh, and he had hurriedly put his suit jacket over her shoulders before introductions. After touring the office, they went down the hall to the elevator. While waiting, Pavel rubbed some stray hairs off of Tanya's temple with his thumb. He didn't want the water that had plastered them there to drip into her eyes or run down her flushed cheeks, cheeks that were finally full of life after what had seemed a week or a month of paleness. "You should have worn a coat," Pavel told her. He couldn't remember what color the dress had been, but he knew that even its worn color had looked brazen in the shabby, institutional hallway. "I had hoped it would stay warm." The doors for the freight elevator opened and she stepped in. She looked over her shoulder to say, "I wanted to feel a breeze without shivering." Pavel stepped in after her. "Then we will schedule a trip to the sea. I will talk to my supervisor." He pressed in the button for the ground floor, but had to press it twice more before it stuck. The doors came together, squeezing out most of the light except for the glow of the single working bulb overhead. The elevator was always dark, Pavel could say with certainty, and that day all of its feeble light was falling on Tanya's cheekbones. Their hands touched as the elevator jerked to life and Tanya threaded her fingers into his. Pavel turned toward her and put his free hand on the small of her back, on the worn wool of his own jacket, and their mouths came together. When the elevator stopped, they stayed in the embrace but looked to the doors. The doors stayed closed. Pavel stepped forward and bent down to look at the gap where weather stripping might once have been, but there was no light on the other side. "It's stopped," Tanya said. "Yes." Pavel agreed, standing to examine the call button. He pushed it and explained their situation, but there wasn't even the reassuring crackle of static. "Looks like we're stuck." Tanya nodded. "Yes." They resumed their kiss. Even as his suit coat was cast to the floor that had been dirtied by years of slushy boots, Pavel was glad of the shared space that was somehow theirs alone. *** |
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Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
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