Two denials. One request he had spoken aloud for the first time in his life, and which had cost him more than any appeal. He regretted none of those days.
Artyom stood up after the plates had been cleared and tea was poured. He lifted a glass, not a shot glass, he hardly drank at all, still careful with his heart out of habit even though the doctors had said remission five years earlier. He raised the glass and looked around the table.
Long toasts weren’t his style. In that, he and Victor were alike. He paused for a second, as if choosing his words with care. “I want to say something about my dad,” he began simply.
“I’m not good at speeches, and neither is he, so this’ll be short.” There was a soft laugh around the table. Petrovich cleared his throat.
“I was five when he came to the children’s home to fix a fence. He could have left and never come back. Everybody else did.” A short pause.
“He came back the next day, and the day after that, and then spent two years proving to everybody that he had the right to be my father. Not because the law allowed it. Because he decided he would be.” Artyom looked at Victor.
“The doctors said I had a year to live. I’m twenty-three. I figure they just didn’t know about him.” The room was quiet.
Nina Stepanovna dabbed at her eye with the corner of a handkerchief, trying to do it unnoticed. Marina Sergeyevna looked down into her tea. Petrovich stared at the ceiling like a man studying a crack in the plaster.
Victor looked at his son. He didn’t nod. Didn’t smile. He just looked at him. Straight, calm, the way you look at something that doesn’t need explaining or proving.
Artyom raised his glass a little higher. “To you, Dad.” Victor raised his own.
Their glasses touched. Just glass against glass, softly. Then everyone started talking again. Petrovich said something loud and funny.
Nina Stepanovna demanded stronger tea. Marina Sergeyevna asked for the recipe for the main dish Artyom had made. Life returned to the table, noisy and ordinary.
And Victor sat there thinking about how he had been born in 1959 in a town that smelled like hot metal and had assumed he would become a steelworker like his father. Instead he became a welder, then a convict, then nobody much at all. And then he walked into a hallway with peeling walls and met a look that wasn’t afraid of his face.
He had lost a lot. His youth, his apartment, years he would never get back, and the belief that anyone needed him. In return he got one thing, but that one thing turned out to be enough for everything else.
He had not changed. He had become who he may have been all along. There just hadn’t been anyone to show it to before. That’s the story.
I don’t really know how to explain what I feel after reading it. One man, with no money, no connections, a record, and empty hands, simply refused to walk away. That’s all.
Sometimes that’s enough to change somebody else’s life. Maybe your own too.
