He took in a deep breath when the ground beneath him didn’t give way and send him hurtling toward the pit. He gripped the fence’s rusty metal links with one hand and leaned forward with only that to hold him. Eyes closed, heart pounding, Niko considered letting go. Again and again he let his body swing forward, then back, with only his fingertips tethering him, until finally whatever was inside him that made him run had been appeased. Like a kind of dark demon, it ate something out of him and left him sort of shivering and empty, so that he stared at the marks of the metal fence gouged into his fingers, like he’d just woken from a dream. Shaking it off, Niko headed back to his house, which felt so different now that there was another man living there.
Barry wasn’t home when he got there. Neither was Galina. Niko could hear the faint sound of music coming from upstairs, some boy band that Theresa favored. Babulya met him in the kitchen with crossed arms and a frown.
“You’ve been stealing cookies.”
Niko was sweaty, with prickers and twigs scratching at him. Mud thick on his shoes that he’d tracked in on the clean kitchen floor. “I was hungry.”
His grandmother nodded once, sharply, and fixed him with a look. “You’ll always be hungry. You need to feed more than your stomach.”
“I’ll clean this up.” He gestured at the skid marks of mud, hanging his head, ashamed of having made a mess when he should have known better.
“Kolya.” Babulya put a hand on his shoulder and waited until he looked at her. She was so tiny he towered over her. “You don’t have to stay here forever.”
“Huh?”
Babulya shook her head. Her fingers squeezed for a moment, before she released him. “This house. This place. You don’t have to stay here forever, Kolya, moye solnishko.”
My little sun.
He’d only ever heard her call his brother that, and somehow even though he didn’t want to, Niko was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He didn’t cry, although his throat closed and his eyes burned. All he could do was sit there. His grandmother put the plate of cookies in front of him, along with a glass of milk. She rubbed the spot between his shoulders in slow, steady circles for a minute or so, then patted his shoulder.
“I just hate everything,” Niko said in a low voice, no longer hungry for cookies but taking one anyway.
Babulya laughed. “I know, you’re like your mother in that way. She hated everything, too.”
“I don’t want to be like her,” he muttered. The thought of it repelled him.
“We are what we are. That is the way it works.” Babulya shrugged and went to the sink to fill the kettle with water so she could make some tea. “Ilya—he likes to fight when he knows he can’t win. You like to win without fighting.”
“Whatever that means.”
He ducked away from her swat. When she hugged him, though, he closed his eyes and let her press his face to the front of her familiar scratchy sweater. Ilya was always her favorite, as Nikolai belonged to his mother. They wore the same lotion, Babulya and his mother, something the two of them shared, which they probably didn’t realize. The faint scent of flowers made him think of how it had been when he was a little kid who’d had a bad dream, and Galina had let him climb into bed with her until he wasn’t scared anymore. He was way too big for that now, too old for that comfort, though sometimes he believed his mother would gladly keep him that close to her forever.
Babulya hugged him tightly, then let him go. “It means that it will be all right when you run, Kolya. That’s what it means. One day you will run toward something instead of away, and then you will understand.”
Run toward instead of away.
His grandmother had been full of stories, fairy tales, myths, and fables, but of all the advice she’d ever given him, those words had been the ones Niko carried with him. She’d seen something in him back then that he hadn’t been able to see in himself, not until he was older and had started traveling the world, telling himself it was because he wanted to see and do and feel and live a life far beyond the tiny rural Pennsylvania town where everyone knew everyone else’s business. That had been a part of it, but it hadn’t been all of it.
He’d definitely been running away.
He wasn’t so sure what he was doing now. He’d come back to Quarrytown without intending to stay longer than he had to, but a certain lethargy had overtaken him. If he wasn’t running, it was because he’d started sinking back into the quagmire of this small town, this house, his mother and brother, and the girl next door.
Oh, her.
He shouldn’t have kissed her. It was going to come back to bite him. Or haunt him, the way he’d been haunted forever already by the memories of her. He was supposed to be smarter, but it looked like he’d only gotten older.
Everyone was leaving by the time he got back from Allie’s house, and since Ilya had disappeared, Niko was the one who shook their hands and accepted the condolences. With the front door closed behind the last of the guests, he took in a long, deep breath and thought about the mess of food in the dining room he was certain his mother wouldn’t be doing much to clean up. To his surprise, he found her there packing away the leftovers into a pile of mismatched plastic and glass containers.
“Theresa and your brother went for a walk. She’s trying to get him to sober up, but good luck with that.” Galina shrugged and stuck a handful of dinner rolls into a plastic baggie, then sealed it. She straightened and shook her head so the fall of her long, dark hair skidded down her back. The silver in it glinted from the overhead light.
“Mom, let me take care of this. Why don’t you go sit down?” Niko went to the table to start packing up the food.
“I’ve been sitting all night. It’s good for me to be on my feet.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Where were you?”
“I took some casseroles over to Allie’s house. No room in the fridge here.” When she didn’t answer him, he glanced up.
Galina’s expression was neutral, her faint smile not reaching her eyes. “I thought maybe you’d gone away already. So eager to leave again.”
At least she hadn’t said “so eager to leave me again,” although he’d heard the whisper of it in her voice.
Niko put down the small box of cookies that had come from the local bakery. Nobody had even opened it. “I’m not leaving right away.”
“So, you’re staying here? For how long?” His mother tilted her head in a familiar mannerism.
He’d been given two weeks’ bereavement leave, but the Beit Devorah council had also approved six weeks’ sabbatical time. It was leave meant to be used for study and travel, accumulated over the years he’d been a chaver, a full member of the kibbutz. He hadn’t made any plans yet; he only knew he wasn’t going back to Israel right away. He’d booked only a one-way flight. He didn’t feel like explaining any of this to his mother, though.
“I don’t know,” Niko said.
“It will be nice,” Galina said, “to have us all here for a while. It’s been a long time since we had any time together.”
Niko wasn’t entirely convinced it was going to be nice, but he nodded anyway. “Yeah. Sure.”