There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In (14 page)

A year after the birth of the girl—whom Nikita’s mother and sister didn’t accept, either—Nikita left for another woman. Lelia’s upstairs neighbor and friend, Tamilla, saw him once with a tall woman from the next building.

5

Dessert

L
elia was hiding on the stairs above her floor.

Her husband’s lady friend continued with her reprimand.

“How can one live in such conditions, like a beggar, and call oneself a mother? How could you trust her with your children?”

“They are not my children,” replied Nikita.

“You can’t be too sure. You must take the test.”

They disappeared into the elevator. Lelia waited another five minutes, then tiptoed into her apartment. First thing first: take the poisoned chocolates to her hospital lab.

Stunned, Lelia stared at the empty “Teatime” container. So he knows. He knows that all the chocolates weren’t eaten and that his family is alive and hiding somewhere. Good thing she hadn’t gone to Sergiev, where it’s easy to stage a fire. She must remember to ask their local electrician to replace the old wires.

Lelia caught herself thinking like a criminal. What could she expect, after living for seven years with someone like him? Thank God the children weren’t his.

With shaking fingers she packed some clothes and quietly left the house. She walked up to the next floor and pressed Tamilla’s bell. Occasionally Lelia took in her eight-year-old son; Tamilla didn’t want him to be home alone after school, even though they had a magnificent German shepherd, Jerry.

Lelia refused the offer of tea and asked if Tamilla was taking Jerry for a walk—she was afraid to walk alone in the dark and needed to administer a shot to a neighbor.

“Look at yourself,” sighed Tamilla. “All you do is work, work, work. . . . You look like a war victim. There’s a decent secondhand store nearby—go and buy yourself something.”

“You are so right, dear! Thank goodness, it’s vacation week. As for thinness, it’s just my old friend gastritis,” Lelia managed to joke.

Tamilla got dressed and leashed the shepherd. Jerry was a truly frightening beast who attacked other dogs without warning. But he adored Lelia and her children.

The courtyard was empty. Lelia took the bus to the Children’s Hospital, where she spent the evening in the waiting room. All night she slept on the cot in the procedural room, which wasn’t used after hours. By then, she had learned every nook in that hospital.

Ten days later, the children were discharged.

Pale and thin, they looked like little bums in their wrinkled clothes and shapeless shoes, which Lelia had stored in the hospital locker. There was nothing to do but travel to Sergiev, to the unheated house. But then Lelia thought, Why so far? If he wants to finish them off, he’ll come to Sergiev; that will be even easier. So what’s the difference? And so she took the children home, maybe for the last time.

In the elevator she lost her nerve and pressed Tamilla’s floor. No one was home, to her horror; only the dog was clawing at the door, greeting the children. Gleb and Anya waited listlessly; they didn’t even have the energy to greet Jerry.

Again, Lelia didn’t have the nerve to take them home and instead left them at the playground in the courtyard. Under Tamilla’s mat she left a note, asking her to pick up the kids on her way home from work and saying Lelia would get them in the evening.

With trembling fingers she unlocked her door. Familiar smells hit her in the face. But that was all that remained of her home.

Everything—every closet, shelf, and drawer—had been turned inside out, the contents spilled on the floor. In the middle of the kitchen stood a dirty cardboard box filled with her pots and pans. What were the thieves trying to find in her poor dwelling?

Shedding tears, she began to clean with skilled hands. Her entire childhood she had cleaned up after her alcoholic mother and her guests, when the mother couldn’t move a limb. Her mother didn’t need much—that new husband of hers killed her with a bottle a day, as Lelia found out years later from the neighbor. That neighbor was terrified of the fruit seller and his jolly family: her mother-in-law once yelled at him about the noise and filth, and in reply he slammed her head against the wall, and a week later the old thing passed away from a stroke. (They kept her death quiet, hoping to get a three-room apartment when their communal flat was broken up, but in the end they didn’t.) The fruit seller sold Lelia’s room and now resides in a cottage outside the city, or so they say.

For a long time Lelia crawled through the mess. At the same time she was glad that the children didn’t see what had been done to their home, and prayed that Tamilla had taken them inside—the weather was extremely cold.

Nikita’s hour was approaching—another reason Lelia couldn’t bring the children home. Tamilla knew about his visits and occasionally let them sit out the two hours at her apartment.

At a quarter past seven, when Lelia was about to go upstairs to fetch the children, she heard the key turn in the keyhole. Lelia grabbed a butter knife from the kitchen, turned off the lights, and stood by the door. The door opened, and the light from the stairs fell on the heavily painted face of Nikita’s sister. She saw the shadow by the door and froze. Automatically she half-closed the door behind her and turned on the light.

Lelia stared at her, seething with rage. Nikita’s sister did the same.

“How come you’re still alive?” the sister gasped. “Here I am, running around collecting inheritance papers, and you’re still kicking. Nikita assured me you were all goners!”

“What inheritance?” Lelia muttered.

“Ours!” The sister yelled. “Get out of here while you still can. I’m going to call my boys.” And she took out her cell phone.

Here Lelia produced the knife, issued a long, multilayered expletive, and promised the sister she’d cut her up like a hog if she didn’t explain what was happening.

The woman, who was stocky and fat and could overpower Lelia with one hand had it not been for the knife, dropped the phone back into her purse and told her that yes, she and her mother were the heirs, and there was a will, with stamps and signatures.

“Whose heirs? Your grandmother’s?”

“What grandmother, you idiot? Nikita’s! Before he died he signed everything over to us. This apartment, that is.”

“I see. . . . So it was you. You were looking for papers and turned my home upside down.”

“What do you think—I’d be tiptoeing around your shit?” And the woman nodded to someone behind Lelia’s back. When Lelia turned around, the woman pushed her back against the wall and stepped on the knife, which had dropped to the floor. Lelia kicked wherever she could reach. Upstairs Jerry heard the commotion and barked loudly. He knew something was happening but couldn’t unlock the door.

“Help!” Lelia screamed, then stopped. God forbid Tamilla should bring down the children. The woman pressed the knife to Lelia’s throat and commanded her to put her hands behind her back. Blood streamed down Lelia’s neck. The woman tied her hands with the phone cord and pushed her toward the bathroom.

“Keep walking,” she was saying, “I don’t have all night. Mommy and I found a villa on Cyprus, a ten-minute walk from the beach, with orange trees in the yard! We have buyers for this shithole; they agreed to wait six months as the inheritance law requires. After that we will be the rightful heirs! We just need to get rid of your crap and then renovate the place. Can you walk any faster?” And she smacked Lelia on the head with the knife.

Lelia fell. Blood flowed in thick waves. The woman kept talking, trying to get Lelia up.

“Up you go, I said! Anyway, we are Nikita’s heirs. Tomorrow, movers are coming to throw everything out. For my own apartment I’ll strangle anyone—or hire a boy to do it. It doesn’t cost much.”

She kicked Lelia in the face.

“By the way, your house in Sergiev is ours, too. Last week Nikita came to see us with his new wife and told us about his new dacha. We asked about your funeral, but he said he wasn’t going to collect you and the brats from the morgue. Do you know he had been married for a year? They both died suddenly. The corpses looked like some monsters from
Jurassic Park
.”

The woman took a breath.

“So you broke into my house in Sergiev, just like that?” Lelia asked weakly.

“Not yours—ours! They were bringing out a casket with some Lida when we came.”

“Lida? That’s my aunt!”

“Her family was all over the place. They cleaned you out: bookcase, refrigerator, everything. We shooed them away.”

“Poor Lida must have accepted a box of chocolates from my husband. . . .”

“Not your husband! Your marriage was fake; the children weren’t his. We can prove it; we can do the test.”

“How did he die?” Lelia whispered, dreading the answer.

“Ah, you want to know everything before you go! Listen up, then. The last thing he told me was that he regretted not killing me and Mom. So I wished him a bon voyage. I didn’t believe him, thought he was drunk. Wife’s already dead, he screamed. She and Nikita both gobbled down some chocolates, from his freezer, the wife admitted before she croaked. He said he didn’t have an antidote. Like in Edgar Allan Poe, he said. ‘The Cask of Amontillado.’”

Lelia gasped. Nikita’s “wife” must have taken the chocolates from the freezer that night when she heard them leave.

“Well,” continued the horrible hag, “he got his punishment for Grandma, didn’t he?”

“You mean, he poisoned your grandmother, too?”

“That’s nothing. Do you know how many have died recently at his department? Two. Why? They had an opening for a senior fellow, but Nikita didn’t get it because of them.”

“But why did it come up, that opening?”

“Their chief died, an old dude. But that was without my brother’s help—the old man was at the sanatorium.”

“Where Nikita visited him? I remember.”

“You got it, finally? You should’ve stayed away from our family. Here, I’ll drag you.”

The hag bent over Lelia and tried to grab her ankles, but her fat belly was in the way. She was panting loudly.

“Listen to me, Sveta,” whispered Lelia with her last bit of strength. “I know he gave you three pills of poison to be tested. He kept saying that he owed you three thousand dollars. So you gave him one of those pills?”

“Stupid cow,” Sveta yelled back, unbending with difficulty. “My own brother! That’s it. I’m not going to soil my hands with you. I’ll just throw you in the tub and tell the boys to finish you off. . . .”

She was looking around for something to tie Lelia’s feet with.

“Listen to me: my children are alive, and they are your only heirs. You’ll never have a husband; your boyfriends want only your money, like that Valera of yours. . . .”

“It’s you, stupid whore, who’ll never marry! What children are you talking about?”

“My son and daughter are alive and being watched by friends.”

“Yeah, right.” Sveta grabbed Lelia by the ankles, but Lelia kicked her in the shin and the killer jumped back.

Gasping, Lelia continued her prophesying.

“It’s too late for you to have children, obviously; plus, consider your syphilis.”

Sveta’s tongue froze. Nobody was supposed to know about her illness, except her mother, who let it slip to Nikita.

“I’m getting my boys,” she screamed, and reached for the phone, but her fingers were sticky with Lelia’s blood, and she kept missing the buttons.

Lelia got up slowly and advanced toward the killer, screaming that she knew nurses at the venereal clinic that treated Sveta (unsuccessfully).

“I know nurses everywhere,” Lelia screamed, “so take care when you’re getting your shots!”

Sveta choked with indignation. “Ah,” she finally breathed out. “You made me all filthy. Into the bathroom.
Now!
”

Poking Lelia with the knife, Sveta shoved her into the bathroom and locked the door. Then, with bloodied fingers, she began dialing the number.

At that moment they heard Tamilla’s voice in the hall. “Lelia! The children are tired and want to go home! I need to take Jerry out!”

Of course. The killer forgot to lock the door.

“Help! Police! Don’t come in! Help!” screamed Lelia in the dark bathroom, her hands tied behind her back. “Don’t bring the children! Help! Murder!”

She couldn’t see what happened, but heard Sveta’s bloodcurdling scream. In a single motion the huge beast leaped across the hall and knocked the killer to the ground.

Among Friends

I
’m a direct person, always smirking and poking fun when we all get together at Marisha and Serge’s on Fridays. Everyone comes. If one of us misses a Friday, it must be because he or she couldn’t get away, or has been banished by the enraged Marisha or the entire gang. Andrey the informer, for example, was banished for a long time after socking Serge in the eye. Can you imagine? Serge, our bright star, our precious genius! Serge has figured out the working principle of flying saucers. That’s right. I looked at his calculations: some universal point of departure, some this, some that—a bunch of nonsense, if you ask me, and I’m very smart. You see, Serge doesn’t read about his subject; he relies on intuition—a mistake, in my opinion. Some time ago he intuited a way to increase the energy efficiency of a steam engine from 15 to 70 percent—a miracle. He was feted, presented to the members of the Academy of Science. One academician finally came to his senses and pointed out that this very principle was discovered a hundred years ago and described in a college textbook on page such and such; the same textbook explains why it doesn’t work. The miracle was canceled; 70 percent became 36, also purely theoretical, but by this point a special unit had been set up at the Academy to study Serge’s so-called discovery, and Serge was invited to be the head. A mass rejoicing among our friends followed—Serge didn’t even have a PhD! But Serge chose to stay at his miserable job in the Oceanography Institute, because they had been planning an expedition with stops in Boston, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Montreal—six months of sun and freedom—and Serge hoped to go, too.