Part Seven: The Evening
Vera left at three in the afternoon.
She left with two bags and a composure that was the composure of someone who has decided that the available dignity is the dignity of leaving without argument. She did not say goodbye to Masha. She did not say goodbye to his mother. She said something to Aleksei at the door — something brief, in the specific register of someone who is not conceding but is also not fighting, who is performing the exit with as much control as the exit will allow.
He closed the door behind her.
He stood in the hallway of his daughter’s apartment — the apartment he had registered in her name three years ago with money he had borrowed, in the specific act of a parent who is preparing for contingencies and who hopes, simultaneously, that the preparation is unnecessary.
The preparation had been necessary.
He was glad he had made it.
He went to find Masha, who was in her room — which had remained her room, which Vera had apparently not attempted to repurpose, which was something. She was drawing. He stood in the doorway and watched her draw with the focused intensity he had watched through phone screens for two years, and the watching now, in person, in the actual room, with the actual light and the actual sound of the pencil on paper, was entirely different from the watching on a screen. Fuller. More real.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
She looked up. “It’s your house,” she said.
“It’s your house,” he said. “But can I come in?”
She moved over slightly, the gesture of someone making room.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at what she was drawing: a building, he thought, or a house, with a tree beside it and several figures of different sizes in front of it. He did not ask what it was. He watched her draw.
His mother appeared in the doorway after a while, with two cups of tea and a plate of something she had made — she had apparently gone to the kitchen while he and Masha were talking and had produced food from whatever was available, which was her way. She set the things on Masha’s desk and went back to the doorway and stood there with her own cup with the expression of a woman who is exactly where she wants to be.
“Mama,” Aleksei said.
She looked at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For leaving.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said: “You left to come back. That’s different.” She paused. “You came back.”
Masha had looked up from her drawing when he spoke. She was listening.
“What are you drawing?” Aleksei asked her.
She turned the paper so he could see. The building with the tree. The figures in front — two of different sizes, he saw now, one tall and one small.
“That’s us,” she said, pointing to the two figures. “Outside.”
“Outside where?”
She thought for a moment. “Somewhere good,” she said, with the specific decisiveness of a nine-year-old who has not decided the details but has decided the essential thing.
“Somewhere good,” he said.
“Can we go tomorrow?” she said. “To the park, maybe. The one by the river.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And can we get food from the place with the red sign? The one that was there before you left?”
He tried to remember. There had been a small café near the river with a red awning, a place he had taken her occasionally on Saturday mornings before everything had fallen apart. He was not certain it was still there.
“We’ll find out if it’s still there,” he said. “And if it’s not, we’ll find somewhere else.”
She considered this. “Okay,” she said, with the acceptance of someone who has learned that certainty is not always available and that good enough can be enough.
She went back to her drawing.
