Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

Becky was twenty-six years old, a Williams graduate now enrolled in the NYU Tisch film school. She lived in a sprawling decrepit house in Bushwick, which she shared with her best friend, Martha, and a team of Polish construction workers who had come to renovate the house six months ago and stayed. The house was bought with Bob’s money. It was bought at a bargain price, because it was part of a group of houses meant for low-income people, and Becky, with her annual income of $12,000, easily qualified. Vica was close to having a heart attack when Regina told her about this. Even Vadik was outraged. Bob was the only one who didn’t see anything wrong with the arrangement. “She’s an artist trying to survive,” he said.

Regina had expected Becky to be spoiled and obnoxious, but she was surprised to find that she wasn’t that at all. If anything, she was too nice. “The innocence of privilege,” Vadik had said. He had asked Becky out once, but she answered with a very firm no. Becky was really welcoming with Regina though. She kept hugging her and saying how pleased she was to finally see her dad so happy. She was squarely built, like Bob, but she had softer, warmer features, and her hugs were forceful and affectionate at the same time. She was very impressed with Regina’s work and even more impressed with the roster of artist residencies Regina had attended. She was ecstatic when she saw Infinite Jest on Regina’s shelf. “It’s my favorite too!” She was awestruck by Regina’s samizdat books. “Those are incredibly important artifacts!”

When they first met, Becky showered her with questions. Regina made an effort to answer them all, but lately she couldn’t help but notice that when she talked, Becky’s enthusiasm for her seemed to be waning. “Regina is nice but a bit standoffish,” she overheard her saying to Bob recently.

“Why would she think that?” Regina asked Vadik, and Vadik, so proud of his expertise, rushed to explain. “So she asked you all these questions and you gave her detailed, honest answers?”

Regina confirmed.

“Did you ask her questions in return?”

“No! What would I ask a perfect stranger? And I was too busy answering.”

“There you go. You were supposed to skip the answers — Americans don’t really care about them — and ask her questions in return.”

“Wouldn’t that be rude?” Regina asked.

“No!” Vadik said. “Quite the opposite! Giving long answers is rude and arrogant.”

The next time Regina saw Becky she used some of Vadik’s strategy and found that it worked better. There wasn’t any real warmth between Becky and her but rather a solid goodwill. She could live with that.

The clock read 10:00 A.M. It was time to get up. Or not. What difference would it make if she slept just a little bit more? Regina turned onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow.

She dreamed that she and Bob had a baby. The baby was tiny, the size of a medium carrot. It appeared to be healthy though. “Do you think it’s all right?” she asked Bob. He laughed. “Of course it’s all right, it’s our baby, Regina!” “But why is it so tiny? Are babies supposed to be this tiny? Did your daughter used to be this tiny?” Bob laughed again. “Heck if I remember, Regina.” Then she tried to pick the tiny baby up, but it kept slipping right out of her fingers and falling onto the floor.

Regina woke up in shock. This was not the first time that she’d had a dream about some sort of weird or disfigured baby. Every time it happened, her heart was beating so hard that it took her ten minutes or so to calm down.

Regina showered and walked out of the bathroom. There was a whole day in front of her. The problem was that she had no idea how to fill it.

In Russia, her days had belonged to her job. She would tackle the most challenging projects. In fact, the more difficult the translation was, the more she loved it. But she had abandoned her work when her mother got sick. Taking care of her seemed to have eaten up all of Regina’s time, energy, and spirit. She would let the assignments pile up and then look at them and cry, because it was futile to hope to ever complete them, and the whole idea of work seemed pointless in the face of her mother’s impending death. Her favorite editor, Inga, who used to be the closest to a friend that Regina had in Russia after Vadik, Sergey, and Vica moved away, was very understanding. She kept offering to help, but Regina was too drained and depressed to sustain a relationship that required even a minimum amount of energy. Then after her mother died, Inga kept asking if Regina was going back to work, and Regina kept being evasive and vague until she finally called Inga and said that she was getting married and moving to the U.S., and that, no, she wouldn’t be returning. Even on the phone she could hear how shocked and offended Inga was.

When she married Bob, there was a chance that her editors would have let her work remotely, but she was so eager to be done with her Russian life that she broke all ties with them.

Regina started missing her job about three months after the move. She would have these violently real dreams about working on a manuscript, about missing a deadline. She would wake up and experience relief at first, because she hadn’t actually missed a deadline, but then feel disappointment.

She wrote to Inga and said that she wouldn’t mind an assignment.

“Don’t be a pig, Regina. There are people who actually need money,” Inga replied. The meanness of her reply told Regina just how hurt Inga still was.

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.