“Mom, I’m literally just here for the evening!” Inna pushed the heavy stroller into the hallway, nearly crushing her mother’s foot.
She burst into the apartment so quickly and abruptly, as if bailiffs were chasing her. However, given her daughter’s chronic inability to manage money, Galina wouldn’t have been surprised by such a turn of events.
Inna frantically pulled the bulky scarf from her neck, studiously avoiding direct eye contact. Her movements were jerky and angular.
Only then did Galina notice the thick aroma of cheap hairspray, mixed with the pungent scent of mint gum. Inna always chewed packs of it when she was trying to hide her nervous tremors.
“He’s already asleep, he’s had enough of the playground. I’ll pick him up tomorrow for lunch; I have a vitally important meeting today!” her daughter blurted out.
She leaned over, brushed her lips somewhere near her mother’s ear, and immediately jumped back.
Galina sighed heavily. At fifty-eight, having spent half her life as a senior nurse, she had become accustomed to treating her daughter’s panic attacks like seasonal allergies. Annoying, but incurable.
The door slammed loudly, leaving behind only a draft in the stairwell.
Galina carefully unzipped the thick jumpsuit on two-year-old Misha. The boy didn’t even stir, snoring evenly in his sleep.
Transferring her heavy, warm grandson to the fold-out sofa, the woman turned off the overhead light. A deep, long-awaited peace settled over the apartment. She was genuinely glad for this rare Friday evening without the bustle of others.
Saturday morning began with the monotonous ringing of the phone. Galina called her daughter at ten in the morning, then at noon, then after lunch. The only answer was the cheerful voice of the answering machine. By two o’clock, Inna’s phone was completely switched off.
Galina shrugged irritably. Her daughter’s irresponsibility had long ceased to surprise her, becoming simply an unpleasant character trait, like flat feet.
Misha, who had just woken up, needed to be changed. Galina walked over to the huge gym bag abandoned in the corner of the hallway and tugged hard on the metal zipper.
The zipper snapped open with a sickening crack, revealing inner chaos. A sharp, sour smell immediately hit her nose.
At the very bottom, under a pile of carelessly crumpled baby clothes, lay a plastic bottle. The formula inside had long since curdled into thick, yellowish lumps.
Next to it lay a half-eaten cracker, coated in a fluffy, bluish coating. But worst of all was the tightly packed bag of used diapers, tossed right on top of the clean onesies.
Galina wrinkled her nose in disgust. Judging by the state of the things, this garbage had been there for at least two days. Inna hadn’t packed her bag in a hurry—she’d been throwing things in with a frightening, mechanical indifference.
A white spot flashed in the narrow mesh pocket to the side. The heavy mailing envelope Galina hadn’t noticed yesterday in the dim hallway.
She wiped her hands on her apron and tore open the paper. Inside lay a neat stack of official papers.
Misha’s glossy birth certificate. A medical insurance policy, a plastic green taxpayer identification number, a thick medical record from the district clinic.
On top lay a thick sheet of paper with an official seal. A notarized power of attorney in Galina’s name, granting her the right to represent the child’s interests everywhere. For exactly three years.
A scrap of notebook paper fell from under the power of attorney. Familiar, jagged handwriting.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I can’t cope. I’ve left. Don’t look for it. He’s better off with you.”
Galina didn’t cry, didn’t collapse on the floor, or call her friends. She simply stood in the middle of the hallway, clutching the notebook paper painfully in her hands.
On Sunday morning, a short text message arrived on her phone from an unknown international number. “It’s arrived. Don’t call. It’s better this way.”
Years of experience as an operating room nurse had taught Galina the most important rule: emotions are a luxury, and the algorithm is salvation. In any critical situation, you simply follow protocol.
Early Monday morning, she began a methodical round of the authorities. Guardianship, legal advice, social services.
Galina acted with surgical precision. Temporary preliminary guardianship was the first, easiest step.
Then, the hired lawyer prepared documents for a major court hearing to terminate parental rights. The mother had abandoned the child voluntarily, leaving irrefutable written evidence.
Misha’s infantile father, Stas, had vanished into obscurity six months earlier, hiding from microloans. Galina had officially reported him missing, desperately hoping to get the necessary paperwork for the bailiffs.
At work, she immediately headed to the head physician’s office. She gave up her usual shifts in surgery and transferred to a quiet day hospital.
She negotiated a convenient schedule and quickly found a place for Misha in a good departmental crèche at the hospital. Life quickly settled into a new, tightly organized routine.
Two weeks later, having firmly closed the door behind her sleeping grandson, Galina entered her daughter’s room.
Inna had lived here before her marriage and often returned here to spend time after yet another row with Stas. The room retained an atmosphere of eternal, drawn-out
The room retained an atmosphere of eternal, drawn-out adolescence. Posters half-peeled from the walls. A shelf of textbooks no one had opened in years. A dried corsage from some forgotten school dance pinned above the mirror, brown and brittle as a pressed insect.
Galina sat on the edge of the bed and looked at it all for a long time.
She had spent two weeks not thinking about Inna. There had been too much to do, too many offices, too many forms, too many signatures. The algorithm had held. It always held, if you trusted it.
But now, in the silence, with Misha finally asleep and nothing left to organize, she let herself sit still.
She thought about a girl of seven who used to crawl into this bed during thunderstorms. A girl of fourteen who’d locked herself in this room for three days after her first heartbreak and slid plates of untouched food back under the door. A girl of twenty-two in a white dress, laughing so hard at the wedding reception that mascara ran down her face and she didn’t care.
Somewhere between that girl and the woman who packed used diapers with the indifference of someone throwing out old receipts — Galina had missed something. She didn’t know what. She had replayed it many times in the last two weeks, in the margins between guardianship appointments and pharmacy runs, and she still didn’t know.
She picked up the scrap of notebook paper from the nightstand. She’d been carrying it from room to room without realizing it, the way you carry a stone in your pocket and forget it’s there until your coat pulls heavy on one side.
I can’t cope.
Galina had spent thirty years in operating rooms. She had watched surgeons lose patients and walk directly into the next procedure. She had learned that grief, like bleeding, had to be managed — pressure applied, source located, damage contained. You did not have the luxury of collapse when someone needed you.
But Inna had never learned that. And perhaps, Galina thought slowly, staring at the faded posters, perhaps that was something a mother was supposed to teach.
She folded the note once, carefully, and placed it in her cardigan pocket.
Then she turned off the light in her daughter’s room, pulled the door shut behind her, and went to check on her grandson.
Misha was sprawled on his back the way small children sleep — arms thrown wide, entirely surrendered to the dark, as if falling were the most natural thing in the world.
Galina tucked the blanket around his shoulders. He stirred, made a small sound, and settled again.
She stood over him for a moment in the doorway.
Outside, the city went about its enormous indifferent business. Somewhere, on a number she didn’t have, her daughter was living whatever life she had chosen.
Here, in this apartment, a two-year-old boy breathed steadily in the dark.
Galina turned off the hallway light and went to make tea.
There was tomorrow to prepare for. There was always tomorrow.
