Мария Кузнецова - Something Unbelievable

Natasha grabs the microphone and I panic, thinking what, are they going to announce their mad love? But of course not, she thanks the audience and her husband for their support, introduces Stas and so on, though what happens next is almost as awful.

“This may be a surprise,” she says. “But we have a special request. I wouldn’t have been able to tell this powerful story if it wasn’t for my grandmother, who graciously told us everything that happened to her before and during the Great War. Without my grandmother’s strength, well, I wouldn’t be standing here today. I wouldn’t be alive, let alone an actress. I wouldn’t be who I am. So please join me in welcoming her to the stage and give her a round of applause.”

Utter humiliation! Natasha says my name, and then Yuri helps me trudge up to the too-bright stage. I stand up there squinting at the audience, and everyone cheers and claps so loudly that I think it will knock me over, but I remain where I am until the crowd begins to rustle out of their seats, approaching the stage with flowers. Natasha gives me a hug and then studies my face.

“I hope—” she begins.

“It was fine, darling. I am not angry with you, you naughty girl. It was shocking, but a nice surprise, a nice surprise,” I tell her.

“Really? I was worried. I was going to tell you, but then I thought it would be fun to have you see it without knowing what to expect.”

“No need to worry about me, dear. I thank you for the tribute—truly. And the show itself—it was quite good. Your best work by far.”

“Thank you, Baba, thank you! That means so much.” I try to read her face—for what? To see if she is disappointed by the turnout? To see if she is madly in love with Stas? To confirm that I have failed to care for her after all?

“You were dynamite,” Yuri tells her as he hands her his flowers and gives her a kiss on the cheek. But I am uneasy now around these three, and I watch Stas watching him and feel even more convinced that there is something going on between him and Natasha. Yuri looks at him warily, or perhaps I am inventing drama where none exists, but I can say that this would also explain why things had been so tense around the household. I had assumed Natasha was just exhausted from mothering and play-mothering, but there seems to be more at stake.

“Thanks, babe,” she says to him, but she keeps her eyes locked on me. “You really didn’t hate it?”

“Of course not, darling. You did well for yourself. I am proud. And you too, my boy,” I tell Stas, though it hurts even more than normal to look at the creature, who has been surprisingly kind to me since my arrival. “I heard you helped out.”

“Only a bit,” he says with a bow.

“I hope I did your story justice, Baba. I wasn’t sure what you’d think,” Natasha says.

“As much as you could have,” I say. “You cut some of it out, didn’t you?”

“I hope you didn’t mind,” Natasha says, looking at Stas carefully. But he will not look at her: he only looks from me to Yuri.

“Not at all,” I say. “I thank you for it.”

But the admirers have lined up, ready with flowers and lavish praise for my girl, and I want to give her time to enjoy this moment.

Yuri and I return to the sidelines, sitting down again to watch the fans flattering Natasha, and only when I see her nervously tapping one of her heels do I understand that of course the girl is devastated, that she saw the half-empty seats in the audience, that she is waiting to be alone to give out an inhuman cry, to wonder what exactly she had worked for, and what unintended consequences it might have had. The poor darling! I may still be emotional over her play, and furious about her affair, but my heart still bleeds for her. Her face is glazed over in an expression I remember all too well from the summer after her mother died, when she and her father joined me in Sevastopol—how the girl joked around to lift her father’s spirits, though I was not oblivious to the makeup stains on her pillow every morning.

The girls from her former theater troupe pull her aside, and they seem to be begrudgingly paying her compliments, which she even looks slightly pleased to hear, because this is better than nothing, and maybe she has made a small peace with the made-up girls. She is gorgeous under the blinding lights, even if her face is still half-covered in old-lady makeup.

But her play’s reception, I remind myself, is not what is at stake here. I watch Yuri watching her and wonder: how much does he know? He puts his arm around me and continues to watch the stage with a bemused expression. Does he know he is in the thick of disaster?

“I know Natasha and I make a strange pair,” he says. “I know she has a wild heart and desires I cannot help her attain. I married her knowing that, because she was special, not like the girls my mother set me up with, who were perfectly nice but never made me feel a thing. I loved Natasha right away because she was so different from those girls, and so different from me. But I knew my choice could lead to problems down the line,” he said. “I’m not blind.”

“I never said she was a perfect girl,” I say. “But you have given her everything she has expected from you. And more. Do not be so hard on yourself. There have been many benefits for her, to be with someone like you instead of…” I trail off, gesturing at the undereducated aesthetes on the stage, making certain to avoid Stas with my gaze. But then Yuri sinks into his seat and returns to his standard tone. The man who had spoken moments ago has retreated.

“I’m so proud of her,” Yuri says. “She was amazing up there. Of course I want this show to open up more possibilities for her. But I wish she could see that she already has so much to be grateful for. She has me, she has our daughter. I wish I could be more than a professor at a community college, that I could give her more. But if only she would see that we already have everything we need, when it comes down to what’s important.”

“Of course she already sees that,” I say carefully. “She treasures her life with you, dear boy. Before you, she was so lost.”

“You helped her too,” he says. “I hope you know how much she loves you. All those summers she spent with you were not lost on her. She has learned all of her strength from you. And her values. You’ve taught her how to live.”

This makes me lurch back a bit. Is he speaking sincerely, or is there a tinge of accusation in his voice? Those summers indeed! Is it more than a tinge—a complete denouncement?

“Nonsense,” I say. “She has done it all on her own. Do not give me so much credit.”

I spend the last night of my visit on Natasha’s balcony with a glass of cognac and a cigarette long after Yuri has gone to bed. Natasha is still out at the bar, a loud, seizure-inducing faux-Russian place near the theater where I lasted all of twenty minutes, long enough to watch Natasha take three shots of vodka while Yuri and Stas had a somber conversation near the bathroom, and then Yuri drove me home with a tremendous pile of flowers in the backseat, to where Natasha’s former manager, Mel, was watching television while the baby slept. The flowers are in a pile by the door now, and I can smell them from where I sit.

Now old Sharik and I regard the street below us, its narrow sidewalks and teeming plastic garbage bins, scraggly trees that fail to disguise the ugliness of the dirty streets, and the lights in the building across from us lit up like buttons on a switchboard, so many strangers out there in the large and confounding world. It is well past midnight, yet a few couples and a gaggle of young women wander down the streets in search of fun, and I can’t blame them for chasing after it while they can. The balcony can barely contain the three neglected potted plants and empty bird feeder and me and the cat, and yet it has been my refuge since I arrived. The cat brushes up against me, as if he knows I am leaving.