Author: Dane Lowell
Submitted by: redadmin

Chapt. 15 - 1323 words
Columns :: Ann Landers Gets Deep-Sixed

MOSCOW, Oct. 14, 2003 -- Comments:   Ratings:
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Misha’s leaving – and that’s that
He packs
Ann Landers gets deep-sixed
When I get through crying for Misha…



MOSCOW, Oct. 12, 2003 -- Misha was awake and lying on the couch watching television this morning when I went in to tell him that I can’t live without Yegor, and that when Misha comes back, he could be the hozyaika, the boss of the apartment; but I would not, could not, live here without Yegor.

“I’m not coming back,” he responded tartly.

O-kay.

“Incidentally,” I added, “Yegor called Dima yesterday, and he’s still assuming you’re going to be staying with his friends in Prague. Nothing has changed as far as he’s concerned.

“How can I stay with his friends? I don’t know their address and I’m not having anything more to do with Dima.”

“If you don’t come back here, where can you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“But I can’t keep giving you money. You can’t expect to come back from Prague and call me and say, ‘This is an emergency; I need 0.’ I’m giving you 0. When you see you’re down to your last hundred, that’s the time to start doing something about it. Don’t wait till you’ve run out of money.”

“I won’t be asking you for any more money.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Misha, I don’t want to see you throw your life away.”

“I’ve already thrown it away. I threw it away when I created the scene a month ago. I quit school. I turned down a job. I’m going to Prague, and I won’t come back here.”

“It’s your choice,” I shrugged in resignation.


Misha’s head is as hard as a piece of Russian malachite. Once he makes up his mind, there’s simply no reasoning or arguing with him. Compromise is not possible for him. Everything is black or white. What he believes, or thinks he believes, let no man put asunder.


He spent the rest of the morning packing things up to give to Tanya, his babushka friend and our former cook. He gave some things to Yura, who was watching the process – a jacket, some shoes.

“When I leave, nothing here will be mine. You can do what you want to with it,” he said. “I will have nothing to come back to.”

I was both elated – Yegor and Zhenya and Anton and I can continue and develop our family – and crushed.

What Misha is doing is so self-destructive.

I’ve spent the afternoon on a crying jag. All I can think of is how helpless and vulnerable he’s going to be in a strange city, in a strange country, no one to look after him, nobody to advise him. I want to take care of him, but I can’t. All I can do is give him money and that hasn’t helped over the past four years. He seems mechanical, without feeling. It’s almost as if I’m watching him prepare methodically and systematically for his own funeral.

He’s planning a celebration here Wednesday night before he leaves for the train station, with his few good acquaintances – he admits he has no friends. And now that he’s alienated Dima, he has even one less acquaintance. It will be like nothing so much as a wake presided over by the deceased.

What can he do? Nothing. Where can he live? Who can he turn to. Me. But he won’t. Who else can he turn to? I think nobody.


Maybe this will have a storybook ending. Maybe he’ll find another American – a rich one this time, who will love him and only him and whom he can pretend to love and live happily with ever after, or at least until another Valera turns up.

In fact, Anton just told me that Yura told him that Misha said he had a new rich boyfriend with a yacht in Switzerland who is going to create a new life for him in the Czech Republic. How I wish that were true. It tells me how little I really know about my little orphan with the tragic past. I’ve gotten snippets and pieces of exaggerated reports of his fantasy life, but never anything quite so blatant as this. I don’t condemn him for it. I see his fantasy world merely as a mark of the desperation he feels for a real life of ease and happiness. How bitter the pill of reality must be for him.

He could have lived here with us and been a part of our family. But if he can’t accept that Yegor and I love each other and want to make a life together, and if he refuses to live here with anybody but me, even though he and I don’t have a romantic relationship, then it seems I have no other choice but to let him go into whatever dark night he insists on.

But I just know he’ll be robbed, raped, mistreated, taken advantage of, turned into a prostitute, forced to rob a store to keep from starving, and…and…and.

Is this what being a mother feels like?


Well, what happened to all my good advice from Ann Landers? What happened to the leg I wasn’t going to let go over the cliff?

It met the same fate as most good advice: In the end, it got ignored.

The happiness I’m experiencing with Yegor is not something to be taken lightly. I think it’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime relationships. It’s the relationship I’ve waited 70 years for, and when all is said and done, I’m not about to toss it overboard for Ann Landers, Vanya, or anybody else.

And while Vanya’s giving advice, why doesn’t he advise me to dump him? He only comes here once a month to collect money; he contributes nothing to my life – except occasional headaches from the scrapes he gets into when he’s drunk, and occasional good advice that gets ignored anyway.

And the stern warning I gave Anton yesterday that he’d have to leave within a month?

After my talk with Misha, I told Anton I had changed my mind -- again. He could stay. Since Misha’s not coming back, there’s no need to empty out the apartment for him. Furthermore, Anton thinks the company he works for is going to fire all the merchandisers soon anyway. How could he find a new apartment when he couldn’t pay rent?

When I told him he could stay, he and I were standing face to face. He started laughing. I kissed him on the lips. “You knew I’d change my mind, didn’t you?”

He was very happy. So was Yegor. “I didn’t want to lose my twin.”


Yegor and I had magic sex again last night. As we were petting and fondling and caressing this morning I asked him if he wanted to come again. He shook his head. “I can’t come very often.” But a few minutes later he came again anyway!

Yegor was supposed to get up bright and early this morning. He had to go back to Tver to retrieve the briefcase he left there last week when he went to initiate his citizenship process. It seemed only fitting that, since he forgot his passport to begin the day, he should end it by forgetting his briefcase. But somebody found it, called his lawyer, who called him, and Yegor will go pay the finder a reward and come back with his briefcase full of papers.

But after our marathon night, “bright and early” turned out to be 11:00.

Before he left today, he thanked me for last night. “I’m so glad you like having sex. I could have sex with you every five minutes.”

Is that a promise?


So after I get through crying for Misha, I think my life will resume its normal state of Pollyanna bliss.

But I will always be thinking and worrying about Misha. And I’ll be crying a lot too. It’s one of the souvenirs that deep, abiding love – even one-way deep, abiding love -- inevitably leaves behind.