There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Read Free Book Online Page A

shocked. “You do? How can you?”
    “Don’t worry, it’s just a form of protest against her. You know how we live here, like bulls in the ring.”
    The young parents drooped like wilted flowers and slinked into their room. Andrey resumed eating. I perched opposite him.
    “Andrey!”
    “Mama!”
    “Two minutes, Andrey. It’s serious. She wants to register him in our apartment. If she does, he can get a room later, through the courts. That’s all he wants, that bastard. She’s just a springboard for him, nothing more.”
    “He’s got his looks going for him.” (Strange laughter.)
    “That he does. He could have anyone—and he will! If it were not for my witnesses . . . But never mind. He’ll get something off her—a Moscow registration, at least—and then he’ll leave her!”
    I was speaking loudly, for I was right. Everything happened exactly as I predicted. But to prove it! To prove it took a lot of effort. For he became attached to Tima, took pride in him, took him for walks, showed him off to their hungry so-called guests. How complicated everything was.
    And me? I was left with nothing.
    “Keep it in mind,” I said to Alena one night, “your husband has the makings of a pedophile. He loves the boy.”
    Her jaw dropped.
    “He loves the boy, not you,” I explained. “It’s unnatural.”
    She laughed with relief, even though a moment ago she was crying—it was eleven, and the dud wasn’t home yet. She grabbed the phone and dragged it to her room, leaving the door half open. I was the favorite subject of her conversations, endless like winter evenings.
    But how old was I then? I was only fifty. Andrey was twenty, Alena nineteen. I had two of them in two years. I had just been fired from the paper for having an affair with a married poet, the father of three children, whom I had every intention of raising myself, stupid idiot. Naturally the wife went to the editor in chief to complain, and almost immediately they received a long-promised three-room apartment. Until then they had all lived in a single room, including his mother-in-law, and he would work in my room, while my own mother loudly berated him for taking advantage of me. . . . So I resigned and joined a remote archaeological dig, just to get away, and the result was Andrey and Alena. We lived four of us in my room, with my mother behind the wall, while a divorce drama unfolded in my husband’s hometown. Then his wife decided to pay us a visit. The doorbell rang; I opened the door, heavily pregnant; and there they were, the wife and his teenage son. Next, the wife smashed the window, slashed her wrists with a shard, my husband tried to grab her, the son squealed, “Don’t touch my mama.” My mother rushed over with some gauze, then took them to her room to revive them with tea. . . . It was actually a stroke of luck, the wife’s visit. Between us things were deteriorating rapidly: he missed his son, worried about finding work in Moscow, chafed under alimony and child support, and plus there was my swelling belly. But then she shook everything up. Women like her, with an instinct for destruction, they create a lot in the end. I’m one of them, alas.
    •   •   •
    It all seems like yesterday. I look back on my life—men are like road signs; children mark chronology. Not very attractive, I know, but what is, if you look closely? To Alena, I know, my habits, my verbal expressions are deeply distasteful. Especially the question “Is he good looking?” which I used on the rare occasions when she’d open up about her best friend Lenka’s admirers; that was back when she was in eighth grade. All I meant was who in their right mind would approach that Lenka of hers, who at fourteen smelled like army barracks, wore size-ten shoes, and sported a mustache? My Alena (all girls born that year were Elenas in different variations; this year they are all Katyas) was head over heels for that girl, and strained as our relationship