David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories

— We have to decide this tonight?

— Yes. I can’t stay here and I can’t go home. There is no more home. My mother has left your uncle. I can’t live with her and I can’t stay with him. I have nowhere to go.

— What do you mean your mother left my uncle?

— I forced them to decide.

I put the suitcase back down.

— She made him sleep on the couch again. I went out to the living room. At first he was asleep but when he woke up and understood what was happening he didn’t stop me. He knew whose mouth it was. And then she heard and came out of the bedroom. He needed me to do it that way or he would never have gotten away from her. I wasn’t going to let her ruin his life. I wasn’t going to let her win.

Strangely, my first thought was about my grandmother. My next thought was that my uncle would kill himself.

— He let her insult him, embarrass him, steal his money. But he wouldn’t leave her. He was a coward. So I gave him a coward’s reason to leave. It’s funny, other men would have felt the opposite way. They would have taken it as a reason to stay and spent the next two years fucking me.

I helped Natasha back down into the basement and promised her that I would wake her before my parents got up. I gave her my bed and slept on the floor. When the alarm rang I dug out all the money I had and gave it to her. It amounted to a little more than a hundred dollars. I watched her drag her suitcase down our street, heading in the direction of the bus station and Florida.

When my parents woke up the phones were already ringing. My uncle had arrived on my grandparents’ doorstep at seven in the morning. His marriage was over. This confirmed my grandmother’s suspicions. From the first she had felt something wasn’t right with Zina. That her daughter was the product of a shaygets should have been enough. Now my uncle was without an apartment and he was financially obligated for Zina and Natasha because of the sponsorship papers he had signed. As to why the separation had to be so drastic, why he couldn’t stay in the apartment until he found a new place, my uncle was vague. They could no longer live together. Nobody in my family asked about Natasha or even knew that she had left home. As far as the family was concerned, once my uncle severed his relationship with Zina, she and Natasha ceased to exist.

For days afterward I stayed in my basement. I had no interest in going out, seeing my friends, making deliveries. I was compromised by everything I knew. I knew too much about my uncle. I knew things about him that a sixteen-year-old nephew should not have known. And when my mother invited him to our house for dinner — in an effort to bolster his spirits — I sat across the table from him and tried to suppress the feeling of an awkward bond. The bond two men have when they have been with the same woman. It wasn’t the sort of bond I wanted to share with my forty-four-year-old uncle, especially under the circumstances. But the feeling was more powerful than my desire not to feel it. It was too easy to picture him with her. Everything my uncle did during dinner — talking, eating, drinking — reminded me that he had been with Natasha. The mouth he spoke with, the hands he ate with, his physical self, were the same mouth, hands, self that had been with Natasha.

Of those first few depressing days after Natasha left, the dinner with my uncle was the worst. During that dinner he avoided the subject of Zina and Natasha entirely. It was the only thing on everyone’s mind and so, characteristically, it was the only thing nobody mentioned. Instead my uncle gave a very long and detailed history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arafat, Rabin, Ben-Gurion, Balfour, Begin, Nasser, Sadat. I wondered what kept my uncle going. What life offered him. Why he didn’t kill himself. Watching him, listening to him talk, I realized that there was nothing I could do for him. I felt better.

The following morning I ended my self-imposed seclusion and took the familiar walk to Rufus’s. Weeks remained in my summer. There were books to read and whatever else the summer still had to offer. During my seclusion I had avoided all phone calls. Rufus had left typically cryptic messages, as did some of my other friends. Something in their voices intimated that there was excitement in our world. Activity was taking place without me. Conversations, discoveries, all sorts of important new things. Because of Natasha, I had removed myself from the common equation, and I was ready to return and accept my place within the social order.

Approaching Rufus’s house, I wasn’t surprised to see the pool company’s van as well as a large truck brimming with dirt. Guys with wheelbarrows were carting dirt out from Rufus’s yard and shoveling it into the truck. Teams of six landscapers shouldered ten-foot-long Doric columns in the opposite direction. The strains of Bizet’s Carmen wafted from the backyard. The neighborhood had never seen anything like it.

In the backyard, I spotted most of my friends. Guys that had never held down a real job, guys like me who spent their days in basements reading, smoking, and engaging in self-abuse. They were fanned out across Rufus’s yard, straining, digging, smoothing, lifting, side by side with the landscapers and pool installers. They looked very happy. Intimately involved. And already they had succeeded in transforming Rufus’s yard. A massive hole, many feet deep, dominated the property. An orange plastic fence had been erected around the hole’s circumference to keep the workmen and stoners from accidentally falling in.

Up on the deck, seated with one of the pool guys I had seen on my last visit, was Rufus. A blueprint was laid out on the table and both of them were hunched over it as though it were a battle plan. I mounted the steps to the deck and stood behind Rufus and waited for him to acknowledge me. Over his shoulder I could see the detail of the blueprint. There were columns, cypress trees, a fountain, and Rufus’s hot tub. Rufus looked up as I bent closer to get a better look. For the briefest instant his face assumed an expression I had never seen before. At that moment I didn’t understand what it meant, but I later recognized it as pity.

— Berman, what’s the matter, you don’t return calls anymore?

He rose and had me follow him down into the yard. I felt the onset of dread. Something about Rufus’s posture alerted me to tragedy. It was then that I also realized that none of my friends had said anything to me. The yard was busy, but not so busy that none of them would have seen me. I had, after all, seen them. The sum of these impressions began to register. I knew that whatever it was, it was very bad and that I was trapped and helpless to avoid the damage. I sensed all of this as I descended from the deck and heard the screen door open. Using her hip, Natasha slid the door closed. She was carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and multicolored plastic glasses. Rufus watched me for a reaction and then took me gently by the shoulder and out to the front of the house.

— Berman, this is why I asked you to call. I wanted to tell you on the phone, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I could leave on an answering machine.

Another team of landscapers passed us with a Doric column. I felt a compulsion to stick out my foot and trip them. To start a brawl, draw blood, break bones.

— She doesn’t want to see you. I’m sorry about this, Berman. It’s just the way it is.

I made way for the Doric column.

— How much do those things weigh?

— Not as much as you’d think. They’re masonry and plaster, not marble. If they were marble I’d need slaves.

— I thought she was going to Florida.

— Come on, Berman, she’s a fucking kid. How is she supposed to get to Florida? She barely speaks English. Either she’s here or she’s on the street.