Laurie Boris

At first, Feodora ignored the call from her mother. She’d been stretched out on the living room sofa, scrolling through fashion photos on her phone, hunting down a few items to refresh her wardrobe now that winter was finally behind them and had just found the perfect top to wear with the—

“It’s grandmama’s song!” said Anya from the living room floor, where she was coloring with crayons on big sheets of paper. The four-year-old knew all the important ringtones and never let Feodora forget them.

“Yes, it’s grandmama’s song.” Feodora didn’t look away from her screen. “We’ll talk to her later, after Mommy finishes buying pretty clothes to wear when Daddy comes home.”

“No, now!” The girl got to her pink-socked feet and pulled on Feodora’s arm. “Grandmama!”

“Ugh, okay, okay!” Feodora answered on speaker and said brightly, “Good morning, grandmama! Someone here very much wants to talk to you.”

Her mother’s voice sounded small and faraway. Ten minutes later, Feodora and Anya were in the car.

—–

“Mama, what did the man say?” Feodora had sent Anya upstairs to play with the dolls her mother kept in the guest bedroom for their visits.

Seated beside Feodora on a fussy antique love seat, her mother fought back tears with a kind of vengeance. Feodora had seen her mother cry exactly twice, both times happening upon her distress by accident. Both times her mother had shouted Feodora out of the room.

“There were two men who came here,” her mother said. “Party men. Black suits. They said your father will be remembered as a hero. A great man who gave all for his country.” Her eyes narrowed. “This fucking country.”

Feodora gasped. Such a word had never come out of her mother’s mouth, let alone in relation to Russia, to which her parents had always been loyal. “Mama, you don’t mean—”

“I knew it,” her mother said. “I always knew this day would come, but… It is enough now. We have given enough. They said to call this number, talk to his lawyer, so many things but… I can’t. I just…can’t.” Her voice trailed off. She pressed her fingers to her left temple. Then rose with regal elegance, went up the stairs, and closed the bedroom door behind her.

Feodora stared at the surface of the coffee table. There sat an ornately framed picture she knew well: a younger version of their family. Papa in his uniform, Mama straight backed and proud, Feodora, not much older than Anya, in the French braid she’d thrown a fit to have done for the photo. Next to that was a square black velvet box and a crisp white business card for a lawyer’s office.

“Mama, what’s a hero?”

She hadn’t even heard the girl coming down. Feodora’s lower lip trembled, thinking about how to answer this question. Nobody close to them had died in the years when Anya would have been old enough to notice. Mikhail forbade pets in the house, so there was no dead hamster or belly-up goldfish as an introduction to the concept. Anya adored her grandpapa, and he adored her back. It was so different from the way he had been with Feodora when she was young—he’d be gone for long stretches with the military and then stern with her when he was home, as if to make up for his absence. Sometimes, when she saw the two of them together, Anya giggling on his knee, Papa making faces at her, Feodora felt a stab of jealousy.

Jealous of my own daughter, Feodora thought. How pathetic is that.

She reached out and pulled Anya onto her lap and held her tight, kissed the top of her blond silky head. “My sweet little zayka. A hero is a person who is super strong and gets the bad guys but is very kind to good people.” She sniffed, picked up the velvet box on the table. “Like your Grandpapa. Look. He got a medal for being such a good hero.” She opened the box. The medallion was a shiny gold star, the ribbon was striped white, blue, and red, the colors of the Russian flag.

“Pretty,” Anya said, and reached for it.

Feodora pulled it beyond the grasp of her daughter’s crayon-scented fingers and set it on the table. “It is very pretty, but it’s just for looking.”

A few moments went by while Anya stared at the medal. “Grandmama got in the bed. Is she sick?”

I cannot. I cannot do this now. I so badly want a pill. But I promised Mikhail… “No, honey, Grandmama is just very sad and tired.”

She looked into Feodora’s face for such a long time Feodora had to look away. She is pulling the secrets from me, my sometimes too-smart girl, she’s piecing them together. “Are you very sad and tired, Mama?”

Feodora dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “A little bit, yes.”

“Want to play dollies with me?”

“Sure, sweetie.” Relief washed over her at the question the girl didn’t ask. “Just give mama a few minutes to fix her pretty makeup and I’ll come upstairs.”

The girl left, ponytail bouncing behind her. When her daughter was out of sight, Anya sighed. It was so familiar to her, the living room in the house where she’d grown up, yet suddenly so foreign, something from another century with its heavy brocade and gilded frames. Nothing like the sleek modern condo Mikhail had purchased for them, where there were no pets and no shoes allowed on the hard shining floors.

She picked up the lawyer’s card. It was a name she knew. Perhaps he’d been to the house before, for one of her mother’s parties. She called the lawyer’s office and made an appointment. He would know what came next.