The two women sat in the kitchen until dark. Katya had the rare gift of talking about nothing in a way that filled the room and chased off silence. She told stories about her older son’s antics, the obnoxious neighbor with the truck, and the local grocery store somehow always being out of cottage cheese.
Alena listened and sometimes laughed too loudly, but the laughter always stopped too suddenly. At one point she burst into tears in the middle of a story about the store, and Katya simply put an arm around her shoulders. When her friend left, the house sank back into its frightening emptiness.
Alena went to bed at ten-thirty, but sleep would not come. Outside, a thin uncertain spring rain was falling, and the roof answered with scattered dull taps. Her hand found the bottle of cream on the nightstand, where she had moved it earlier that day.
She pressed the pump twice and began rubbing the lotion into her hands in slow circles, the way she always did. The light, slightly sweet scent didn’t bother her and quickly faded into the room. Her hands moved on autopilot, working the cream into her fingers while the rain kept ticking outside.
She didn’t fall asleep until close to dawn, still holding the bottle. Mike called a little after eight and said he had already stopped by Vera’s place. His voice sounded dry and strange, as if all the warmth had been drained out of it.
He said Arsen was calmly drinking goat’s milk and wasn’t crying. Alena asked with sudden hope whether the boy had looked for her, but all she heard in the phone was the noise of the road. Finally Mike said he would come by that evening and have a serious talk with his mother.
Alena snapped that he needed to talk to her, not Ludmila, and dropped the phone onto the table. For a while she stared at it resentfully, as if it were somehow to blame. Then she pulled on rubber boots and marched out into the damp garden.
The ground after the night rain was dark, soft, and made a wet sucking sound under her boots. Alena dropped to her knees by the onion bed and began yanking weeds with her bare hands. Mud packed itself under her nails and chilled her skin, but she kept at it stubbornly.
Nina called to her over the fence while hanging sheets on the line. Alena pretended not to hear the questions about how she was doing and kept digging in the dirt. Nina stood there awkwardly for a moment, then went back inside.
Alena weeded until her hands turned bright red from the cold. Back in the house, she washed them carefully in icy water and reached automatically for the bottle of cream on the shelf. That evening Katya came again, bringing a container of homemade meat patties and buckwheat.
They sat in the kitchen discussing the healer’s words about the problem coming through the mother. The two women guessed at what that frightening phrase might mean. Katya cautiously suggested maybe it was postpartum depression, or maybe some kind of hereditary issue.
Alena rejected the hereditary theory, remembering that Mike had once mentioned health problems on his side of the family. Katya set down her spoon and said maybe the old healer was just being vague to sound mysterious. There was no relief in Alena’s voice—only the deep exhaustion of someone who had already run through every possible explanation…
