Story 4 - Person under construction. Part 2.

Spherical conversation

The first time she felt something off was around Christmas.

 A few months later, the evening before her 20th birthday, she was coming home from a long day full of lectures and classes she taught herself, and instead of a familiar tinge of excitement, she stood in front of the door to the apartment complex, hesitating to walk inside.

She came in, finally, pecked Andrey on the cheek and felt his face slightly tense. He also knew. They silently had a quick dinner, and she started washing dishes with a fervor that felt almost like a relief. As if clearing up the leftovers of the food was also meant to bring order to her blurred up perception of what was going on.

Andrey touched her wrist gently, while she had just sat down, having finished cleaning up, and she rose suddenly in one fluid motion as if burned from a stove. Her muscles tensed and hardened and she hastily took the first drag of the cigarette. She wished she had known what exactly was happening to them, and why she had had the terrible numbness inside her that felt as if it was about to swallow her up. There was no drama, and no tears, but also no tangible feeling of anything. Her whole body also felt the same numbness the mind had experienced, as an arm you sleep on awkwardly at night to wake up to only a tingling feeling of discomfort.

“What does one say to make a start to a conversation

that resembles a sphere, round and seemingly with no end or beginning”.

She took another drag, and shrugged. The day was unusually cold for the middle of spring, and the open top part of the window let quite a drought through the small communal apartment kitchen. She wrinkled her nose. How does one break such loud, knife-sharp silence? What does one say to make a start to a conversation that resembles a sphere, round and seemingly with no end or beginning. After a while, words did come flowing like a strong, stubborn river. She was not sure whether school and work and having a partner all matched in one patched blanket of her life, she was not sure what she wanted to do after graduation, she was not sure of basically anything including why she was even speaking. At no point did she doubt that they needed this conversation.

“…pulled him close and breathed him in,

filling her lungs with the smell of his cologne, strong cigarettes and just his own self”.

Endings and beginnings

Andrey stood up and left. She stayed in the kitchen, alone, quiet, and lit another cigarette. She closed her eyes for a second, and watched their life together unfurl before her, through time, milestones they would go through, the way she would change and grow next to him. She opened her eyes abruptly. This was the life she did not want.

Andrey came back and walked through the apartment straight to the kitchen. He stood in the middle of the floor, silently, a thin dark-brown sludge slowly dripping from his shoes on the cheap light-lemon coloured linoleum.  It was a gray rainy spring evening, nothing special for St.Petersburg in April. She wished he said something, screamed, or just did anything really. He stayed still.

She walked over and put her arms around him, pulled him close and breathed him in, filling her lungs with the smell of his cologne, strong cigarettes and just his own self. For a long time afterwards, she’d go on remembering that smell. The memory of the touch and the way his muscles tensed on his cheekbones when he thought hard of something would fade, she wouldn’t really remember the way his voice had a hoarse crack in it either. But the smell would linger. Even now, if she closed her eyes tightly, and took a deep breath, she would feel the hint of that smell combination. This is the peculiar part of first times, they stay more vividly in your memory, they say. Like the first time you ever speak in public before an audience, or the first time you ski, or see the ocean, or eat an onion. Or the first time she fell in love.

“She’d get better at reading other people’s feelings,

but also at reading her own and would be less scared of them. She’d just generally get better”.

First water

There were more times like this ahead of her. She would manage some better than others. Some she would be absolutely terrible at and would afterwards play back in her mind over and over again. Andrey would go on sulking in his heart break for months, and then find his passion in photography again, take off all the photos of her in his bedroom, change the bedroom, change a haircut, quit smoking and find a nice polite girl from Belarus. He would often think what would have happened had they not had that kitchen conversation, what path they would have taken. He also wondered what person she would finally become, and in which places her path would wind and bend.

That evening, she sat on the old couch in the living room of their shared communal apartment, with a large dent in the middle, and greasy-stained handles branded with smudged circles from beer glasses. She sat with her sharp knees pulled high up burying her face between them, terrified that she had failed in this whole love thing.  There were no tears again, just very empty feeling, like when you move houses, and all the furniture is gone, all the treasured belongings are taken out and you are walking through the empty rooms remembering the good days you had had. It did not feel great.

Through the years, she would go back to this feeling with different people, but also places, and jobs. With every reiteration, it would get easier to adjust and the time she would need to recuperate and catch breath would shrink. Every time it would happen, she would grow further and harden her personality in the necessary places, and soften her feminine touch in others. She’d get better at break ups, but also better at preempting them, sometime recognising the familiar numbness before anything romantic even started. She’d get better at reading other people’s feelings, but also at reading her own and would be less scared of them. She’d just generally get better.

She of course could not know all of this the evening before her 20th birthday. She could only know that moving forward was the only option she now saw. She felt the soft feeling of assurance cover her shoulders. She would get better, and her Andrey also would. She decided to go to sleep. This time she would tuck herself in the blanket on her own.