The Purple Mansion on Maple

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ukraine, early 1990s

Ukraine had been an independent state for all of eight months; Mykhail Korotsyupenko had already developed his business into a thriving enterprise. Near thirty years old, he was well-versed in the Soviet mindset of doing what was required, but had always known that doing what was necessary was infinitely more rewarding. He delighted in hard work; doing more than what was expected irritated more people than he could count, but Mykhail didn’t need many more people than his family.

He’d married older than most his peers; twenty six produced a chuckle from many, but he was constantly busy with his mother, his father, his sisters. The eldest had to be; while his sisters could easily run their home, a timid, sickly mother and an alcoholic, unpredictable father created more work than was typical in a home with few resources to begin with. So Mykhail waited, busily, and repaired their family home with what he could. They weren’t urbanized, but they weren’t farmers; they existed in the in-between that trades could have thrived in, if it weren’t for the heavy-handed approach to wealth distribution the Soviet Union employed. Mykhail ran his father’s construction business, but it faltered under strict supply regulation and then finally, state-run construction. It followed no strategy other than block after block of semi functional apartments, with the initially enticing idea of giving every family their own, for free. Mykhail could never accept it; it seemed unsustainable, unappealing. So they struggled on outside Sevastopol; independence felt near enough to taste when Mykhail asked his childhood playmate, Angelina, to marry. At twenty one she felt her time was running short to marry, and Mykhail was both kind and controlled in his drinking and work. She had felt his kindness during her own illness, which mirrored his mother’s. It was never a diagnosis or specific disease; physicians told her it was nerves, hysteria. He would help her home from school, and remained a companion after she left early. He took it upon himself to read with her when possible, knowing her vision was poor and her condition regularly required rest. They married shortly after his suggestion, both believing it an easy match for the overly ambitious worker and the resigned, delicate wife.

Angelina lived with Mykhail in the family home, until Mykhail built their own cottage near the water. They both knew children were unlikely, but delighted as married couples do in one another’s companionship, partnership, and affections. The cottage blossomed in the spring, with the Black Sea glittering in sunlight out their windows.

Mykhail would work tirelessly; his customers shocked and pleased with Mykhail’s insistence that their buildings, their homes, their projects were precise, perfect, and to their liking. He developed a reputation for honesty; for workmanship; and despite it being vaguely uncomfortable for some, an intense adherence to the idea that one could exact beauty from an idea. He never called in a specialist, never requested a different approach; outside Sevastopol, Mykhail’s unpretentious optimism brightened a post-Soviet Ukrainian peninsula. He differed from his neighbors continuously; one of fewer and fewer Ukrainians on the peninsula left him fewer friendly faces to talk meaningfully to--despite years of living in the same place, Russians and Ukrainians in Crimea found an unwavering conflict at Putin support and pro-Russian mindsets.

He drove his rumbling, occasionally smoking work van down the drive to the white cottage. He always took it in on the drive toward it; what could be fixed? Improved? Adjusted? He noted the flower boxes could use a repainting, but the house was solid. The white stone exterior, topped with red-brown tile roofing, sat square and symmetrical, facing him openly. Angelina stepped outside, surprising him, alarming him, as she typically enjoyed her time indoors, looking out. An enormous smile spread across her face as she lifted her hand to wave at her husband motoring up the drive.

Putting the brake on the van, Mykhail hopped down, carrying his leather toolbelt at his side. “Angelina, vse dobre?”

Her smile was infectious. “Mykhail, ya vahitna, I am pregnant!”

Mykhail laughed, and wrapped his arms around his tiny wife, gently holding her and resting his chin in her black hair atop her head. “Oh, Angelina, this is beautiful. You are healthy for this? Ty dobre sebe pochuvayesh?”

Angelina nodded confidently. “I am well for this. We will be a real family, Misha, my husband. All is well.”

The two celebrated privately, eating on the step and watching the water, and feeling like the spring brought all things new to the world.

That winter saw hard labor for Angelina. Already struggling with fears over her unborn child, she sweated through the night for the months before she was due. Her body ached, and expelled all but sips of broth and water. Mykhail would ply her with tea and rub her feet, her hands, her back; but even with his sisters stopping at the house to dote on her, Angelina’s mind and heart grew heavy with fear.

“I will die in childbirth, Mykhail,” she would whisper at night, her thoughts spinning.

“The baby is dead, Misha, I know it!” She’d cry, and weep until cool water and laying on her side brought a kick or a roll, from which she’d wake him excitedly, crying out it was a miracle.

“The baby will not suckle, Mykhail, or I won’t be able to feed it. What if I cannot give milk, Mykhail?” She’d whisper, laying awake next to him as he struggled to listen and respond, even as exhaustion would take him into slumber.

His work relieved him. These were walls, or pipes, or floors he could fix. He could see the problems, note them, cross them off. Heavy swings of a hammer, precise cuts of a saw, measurement after measurement could all provide relief, control. At home, he saw his wife in torment, and prayed for the baby to arrive safely and soon.

December had two months of accumulated snow already. They knew the baby would arrive early; Angelina’s contractions and sweats put her on bed rest by her seventh month. Even so, she toiled. She withered away, but would eat at Mykhail’s behest. He would search the stores in Sevastopol, hoping for chocolates to bring back, because it was the one thing Angelina would never refuse. When she finally cried out that the baby would arrive that day, Mykhail’s two sisters were already waiting in the cottage. Mykhail returned home to an atmosphere of careful expectation, and paced the floor while Angelina labored.

The snow fell, and the baby was delivered. Both mother and child lived; Mykhail had not known how terrified he was until the moment both were shown to him, breathing, tired, but full of life. He named his son Bodashka, gift from God, and felt complete.

The cottage was an oasis in the midst of a storm; while their neighbors were not overtly unkind, Mykhail felt they grew more and more distant with the growth from Kiev and rumors of joining the European Union. When Mykhail came home to see his neighbor’s small barn ablaze, he suspected it was not accidental. He walked to Oleksiy’s home to find him smoking a cigarette as his sons finished extinguishing the roof fire. “Shcho stalosya?” asked Mykhail. “Was this an accident?”

Oleksiy shook his head, and his three boys walked over to Mykhail, wiping the sweat from their foreheads and soot form their hands on their trousers.

“Pidpal. Sasha saw two men throw the bottles at the barn. They ran out immediately, this is why it did not spread.”

Mykhail shook his head. “This is not good, Oleksiy. It gets worse from here. There is anger about the EU, this place is becoming Putin country.”

Oleksiy shrugged. He remembered the Soviet Union; he remembered the people who vanished, the food shortages. He remembered with each line on his face, each pain in his hip, each time he woke, remembering Ukraine was independent at last. “Zabudʹkuvati, people are forgetful. Russia is not our friend, but maybe we are just not friend to Russia. We are leaving, Mykhail. My brother has a place for us in Kiev. Three weeks, then we are no longer your neighbor.”

Mykhail weighed Oleksiy’s words in his mind. Kiev would be a hard place to move his business, but it was possible. He thought of Angelina, and little Bodashka, and knew the decision was made before he’d formalized the thought.

Kiev was grey. The post-Soviet building were beautiful, to be certain, but the great hulking, soulless eyes of the Soviet structures still loomed about the city. Brightly colored and painted blocks of the buildings served only to sadden Mykhail, as he thought that painting over fascism’s scars only highlighted the darkness of the fascism further.

Even still, Kiev was alive. It bustled, it worked. Mykhail’s father was constantly in bed at home, shouting about one thing or another, and Mykhail’s mother shuddered and coughed as she tried to avoid his voice. His sisters, Yulia and Victoria, loved the city and it’s teeming youth. They had just finished school, and felt their duty was to attract a husband as quickly as possible; this would not be difficult, Mykhail thought, because of their beauty, their intelligence, but most of all, their resolve. He and Angelina were able to live fairly quietly in the primary section of the flat, with Angelina constantly fretting over Bodashka. Mykhail had started calling him Dashka, but Angelina refused to create a nickname for him. “He is perfect how he is, Mykhail.”

When Dashka was close to eighteen months, Angelina lay him down in the bed gently and sat with Mykhail for the first time since his birth. She leaned into his arms, and the two looked over their new home, filled with yellow-orange lights. Laughter floated up to the balcony, and they felt it was liveable, because it was safe.

In the morning, Mykhail woke to the shriek of Angelina. She stood cradling their son, rapidly rocking him, kissing him, patting his cheek. “Prokydaysya, Bodashka, wake up! Wake up!”

Dashka did not wake, and Mykhail and Angelina were broken.

Mykhail had his work, leaving in a numbed, silent state, needing the movement. He had no love for his work, but he had need of it. Angelina had sought every meaning of Dashka’s sudden, unexplained death, but was met only by the somber reality that it was every mother’s nightmare, and it had become hers. She wasted away. Never one to drink, she began sipping on vodka with Mykhail’s father in silence. No one said a word, because how could they? There is no way to comfort a mother who has buried her baby; and Angelina would spit venom at anyone who tried. Still, Mykhail loved her. But his love turned to the love he had before their marriage, and during her pregnancy: love as duty, as diligence. He would clean her, and beg her to eat, and hold her when she let him. She withered, and would look at the grey city below with emptiness, her eyes matching the windows of the buildings before her.

Mykhail’s father died a few years later, and his mother began coughing up blood. Victoria and Yulia were married, starting families of their own, and immersed in their new lives. Mykhail was alone in the flat with his fragile mother, his lifeless wife, and thought briefly about simply not existing anymore. Not a violent, shocking death; but rather, a fading from view. But then his mother would cough, or Angelina would call out, and he would remember his death was theirs as well.

In November of 2014, he saw the call to stand with the protestors at Euromaidan. He kissed his women, took the train to the square, and continued the vigil through the winter. He found others like him--interested, supportive, tired of pro-Russian influencers in his government. He found the energy life-giving, but all the while the feeling of doom lurked in his stomach. The people he spoke to, shivering and rubbing their hands together, were from all walks of life. A shopkeeper held signs, shared stories, showed pictures of his children on his phone with a young student, sharing a moment of suspended reality in the midst of something bigger than both of them. It woke Mykhail, and while he couldn’t help but note many of the students and protesters were only a little older than Dashka would have been, he felt a part of life once more. In January, the tensions grew. Each morning, on his way to work, he would bring bags of coffee and breads to the station between home and his workspace. In February, it was different; February 18th saw the first wave of violence. Suddenly, it was the Soviets again; Mykhail and the older men he’d sit with on Saturdays began sharing similarities when the Russians had set up “military exercises”.

“Brekhnya, it’s always posturing, or worse, preparation. This will erupt, my friends.”

The shooting began shortly after. The chaos erupted, and Mykhail helped the best he could. The streets would alternate between ghostly silent and hails of bullets. The young ones would ask “yak vony mozhutʹ tse zrobyty?! How can they do this?” and the old ones would shake their heads, and wring their hands, and wish they were more surprised.

Mykhail tended to Angelina. The shooting and fires alarmed her, put her in bed, windows shut tight. The last night of the fighting, Mykhail was hopeful; when Yanukovych left with his tail between his legs, Mykhail gave a whoop that startled his mother into a coughing fit.

He went to bed, gently sliding in next to Angelina, and touched her bone-thin shoulder. “Angelina, we have frightened the rat out of his hole!” He whispered happily. She did not answer. “Angelina,” he whispered. “Angelina,” he tried once more, but her small frame felt lifeless. Seeing Dashka again, he flipped on the light, scooped up his wife, and glanced at the bedside table. “Nerozumnyy, foolish, Angelina!” He threw the remaining sleeping pills at the closed window, and they hit with miniature impacts before falling to the carpet below.

At the hospital, the nurse briskly informed Mykhail his wife would live. Mykhail asked if he could help in anyway, to which the nurse gave a short “no” and went on her way. Angelina would not, or could not walk. She was awake, but not awake. Her eyes were looking at things, but saw very little; her once poor vision was now all but deteriorated to nothing. Mykhail looked at his mother, whom the doctors could not help. He looked at his wife, who would not be helped even if the help was there. “I will die here, too, my family. We must find another life.”

Victoria had moved with her husband Dmitry and their four daughters to Vancouver. His work in IT and programming allowed them citizenship within just a few years. Dmitry assured Mykhail he would be successful in Canada, and Mykhail hoped desperately he was right. He found the house in Surrey to be shockingly affordable, and was unafraid of the work. Thousands of miles away, he arranged to bring his design and construction work to British Columbia. In just a few months time, his mother and wife had the care they needed at home; modifications to it made it easier for both to get around, and they existed, quite comfortably, in the quiet solitude of a beautiful home. Neither spoke often, and Mykhail found that they seldom reacted when he came through the door. And so, in a quiet way, they found peace again.

But Mykhail, of course, was restless. He began chatting to himself when he’d inspect the houses he’d bid on; rich, ongoing monologues to the wood and the rafters, he tools in his hands. “Bozhevilʹnyy, you are crazy, Misha. You are an old man, with a young man’s energy. These beams are rotten, no good. This house is falling apart. Like you, stara lyudyna, but with weak bones. You can be restored, maybe. Not this house. It needs to be torn down, doesn’t it?” He’d note his thoughts on the house, create his report, make his recommendation. Then he would go home, and think of when he loved to find the beautiful parts of people’s dreams lurking just behind the broken, disrepaired pieces of their homes.

He would scroll through the pages of houses and projects, supplies and equipment, with moderate interest. His small room in the house, separate from the larger rooms of Angelina and mama, was bare. He kept one photo of Dashka, framed, on his desk. Angelina was smiling, and Dashka was smiling, and he grieved for the moment the photo was taken each time he saw it. It felt like two or three lifetimes ago, but he could still hear their laughter, light, bubbly, in his ears.

He hated the sound of the machines his family needed. The guilt was overwhelming, but the days his work could take him far from his home were the days he looked forward to most. The hissing and sighing of the oxygen, the bustling of the nurse aids, the constant sanitizing of each surface and bleaching of each linen gave him the impression he lived in a facility, run expertly by those he hired, but more theirs than his.

His eye caught a strange post, just over 60 miles from his door, across the border into the United States.

Wanted: Exchange of room and board for manual labor; construction, remodeling. Live on site. Ten hours per week of work, excluding assessment of construction needs. Owner lives on site. Please, serious inquiries only. Cascadia, old town area. Beautiful, unique home.

“Tsikavo,” said Mykhail aloud. “This is interesting.”

He typed back, deliberately pressing each key. I am experienced builder. I can arrive to examine the residence on Friday in the evening. My name is Mykhail.”

When he pulled into the drive in his blue pickup, he took in the purple color, light in most areas, worn away in others. The stone porch, the mammoth windows; the conservatory, the detailed work on the outside of the upper story’s exterior. He was dying to look inside, to see what the interior of such a fascinating, uniquely displaced house had in a neighborhood of average, well-kempt homes. The door was slightly ajar, oddly welcoming as the sounds of women’s laughter echoed across the house and out of it. The sound filled him for a moment. His sisters weren’t giddy women; they weren’t prone to fits of laughter. This sound would be a travesty to interrupt, and yet Mykhail’s desire to see the interior overcame him. He gave a soft knock, which was met with a chorus of four voices singing, “Come in!”

The woman who rose to greet him may well have risen from his own creation. Her eyes were still full of laughter, and her wide, becoming smile pulled him in from across the room. She was flushed from, he imagined, laughing with what had to be her three daughters. She strode across the room with grace and purpose. “You must be...Mykhail?” She asked kindly. The women behind her pretended to be busy, the red-haired one wiping the same area of window repeatedly with her ear cocked to the side to hear the conversation.

“I am Mykhail,” was all he could say. He reflexively stroked his beard, suddenly hyper-aware of his appearance, and shocked that in the first minute he stood in the magnificent house, all he had taken in was the woman.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It had to be two in the morning. The attic of the purple mansion still glowed with the white string lights; the silence that fell when Mykhail stopped talking was full of his words, echoing throughout the room.

He spoke once more, pulling them back to attention. “When I saw your mother, I could not remember why I was here. Each time I would go home, go to my work, go to mama or Angelina, I would be pulled back here by this house, by her love of it, by love of her.”

Rachel, typically above romance in favor of relationship, burst into tears. Maggie leaned over and hugged her little sister, leaning her head against Rachel’s and peering at Mykhail. “You definitely should have started with that, Mykhail,” she said. She rubbed Rachel’s back as she cried softly, and Mykhail found himself turning to Ellen, as she was his rudder to how Lou might be feeling.

Ellen couldn’t stop thinking about seeing Dinah or Margo still like that. She remembered each night she’d risk waking them to place her hand on their backs, ensuring they were still breathing. The first night Dinah slept in a crib in her own room, Ellen slept on the floor next to her, hand up through the slats, holding Dinah’s own tiny one. She placed her hand on top of Mykhail’s.

“There is still no solution yet, Mykhail, even if we believe you’re the man she thought you were,” Ellen’s pragmatism was laced with a soft affection, and Mykhail felt a small twinge of hope. If Ellen could forgive him, could understand, maybe Louise could as well.

Maggie was displaying a fairly lopsided smile as she took in the large man sitting on the floor of here mother’s attic. “It’s romantic. Damn, that’s romantic,” she said.

Rachel finally looked up, glistening tears, red-eyed, complete with a runny nose. “Yeah, but good luck with mom. She’s pissed.”

Mykhail drove home that night. The headlights flashing past him seemed constant and blurred; the border wait was brief and uneventful. Hearing the gravel crunch under his tires, he lifted a hand to wave at the nurse aid ending her shift. “Hi, Mister Mykhail. They are fine this evening,” she said in passing.

“Thank you, Marta,” he replied. “Cindy inside?”

“Yes, have a good night, nice to see you,” Marta replied, slamming the door of her small Honda shut and turning the engine. Mykhail walked into the house, lit minimally, and glanced at the clock. Four A.M. He considered staying away, but exhaustion took over. Mykhail walked up to his room, and slept in a bed he hadn’t called home more than a night or two in nearly a year.

“Mom, you need to talk to him, it’s important,” Rachel begged. Lou was busy making coffee, black, before heading out for a walk with Marcy. It had been three days since Mykhail left, three days without a word from either Lou or him to one another. Lou knew he was giving space, and she seethed at his ability to do so.

“He’s not the man I thought, Rachel, leave it alone.”

“No one is the person you think they are! Just hear him out!” Rachel was strangely upset, but Lou didn’t bite.

“Leave it, Rachel Madyson.”

A middle name in the kitchen and the clunk of a firm mug on the countertop would normally deter Rachel; but she persisted.

“You know what, mom? I’m not the person you thought, either. I didn’t get my paperwork in on time. I don’t have my scholarship. I’m in debt, I’m screwed, stupid boy-man broke up with me, my life sucks. I’m not amazing. Are you going to never talk to me, too?” She teared up once more, sat at the counter, and Lou’s resolve faltered.

“You forgot the application?”

“And the supporting letters.”

“That’s not like you, Rachel,” Lou murmured, wondering what kind of debt law school would incur in one quarter.

Rachel’s head snapped up. “That’s just it, mom, it is like me. I am a mess sometimes. Most of the time I can pull it out in the end--I can organize, prioritize, argue my way out. But sometimes I don’t, because I’m a FUCKING HUMAN BEING!” Rachel slammed out of the kitchen.

Louise sipped her coffee, flabbergasted. Rachel rarely swore; she never did so in conversation with Lou. Louise wanted to imagine Rachel’s PMS was playing a role...or her breakup, or the financial stress. Louise was more concerned, however, that Rachel was furious at her for the one thing Rachel always found dehumanizing. Lou wondered if she simply needed to listen to her daughter, and believe her.

She told Maggie about Rachel’s outburst over the phone that night. “Mags, it was kind of out of character. Think she’s ok?”

Maggie paused. “Mom...Rachel will be fine. And it’s not out of character, really. Remember when we had that neighbor girl staying with us? The one that was really strange, a little older than Rachel?”

“Yeah...yes, her name was Danielle,” Lou replied.

“Remember the chocolate syrup?” Maggie asked. Lou remembered--she’d accused the very sugar-centered eight-year old Rachel of eating all the chocolate syrup before the class ice cream party. She’d even found the container behind Rachel’s bed. Rachel endured a week of punishment for lying, missed the ice cream party, and railed the entire time of the injustice. She’d even taken to saying I DIDN’T DO IT in response to any question Lou had asked, finally erupting and screaming at her that it was Danielle. The next week Danielle had been caught hiding other containers and wrappers behind the dresser, and suddenly Rachel was understood, believed, and found justice. Lou suspected wryly it’s why she wanted to become a human rights attorney.

Rachel had one more evening with Lou before she went back to UW. Sitting in the living room, snuggled into a blanket, she tried one more time.

“Mom, it’s not my story to tell and I know you don’t want to hear it. But you have to talk to him.”

“Drop it, Rachel.” Lou continued reading her book.

“Will you listen to just two things? I think I can say two things. I’m not his attorney--even though I feel like it--but I think these are two things you’d want to know.”

“If I let you tell me two things, will you leave me alone?” Lou asked, setting her book down on her lap.

“Yes, maybe.”

“Ok, shoot.”

Rachel chose her words and opted for simplicity. “He said he loves you and when he finished talking I cried like a baby and Maggie had to hold me.” She let the words sink into her mother, and stood up. “I’m going to bed. I’m a hard sell, mom, you know this. That man made me sob like a preteen at a Justin Bieber concert when I simply listened to him.”

Louise never picked up her book again that night. As she sat in her bedroom, nestled into her covers, she stared at her phone. She kept starting her text; Please come to the house when you can. She’d delete it, start over. I think we should talk. Delete. This is impossible. Delete. I’m in love with you.

Her phone suddenly buzzed, and she yelled at it in a short shout of surpise. It was Marcy. “You ok?” her text read.

Probably not.

“Want company?”

No, thanks. Did you talk to girls?

“Bits and pieces. Won’t tell you what to do. Love you, Lou.”

Lou set her phone down. She lay back, fully expecting sleep to evade her for the duration of the night. It wasn’t until she heard a soft knock on her door that she startled awake, seeing the sunlight peek through. It was close to seven in the morning; she’d slept like the dead for at least nine hours. She knew Rachel was headed out. “Come in, honey, sorry, I’ll see you off,” she called. She took back her covers as the door opened, revealing not Rachel, but Mykhail.

She froze. He looked at her, steadily, keeping her eyes locked to his own.

“I love you, too,” he said softly. He held up his phone, showing her the text from last night.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, panicked. It had sent. Her text had sent, I must have hit send when Marcy text!

Mykhail saw her horror and confusion. She stood halfway up, wrapping her robe around her, bringing up memories of when they’d first connected, when they’d first let their guards down for one another. Her hair was a disheveled mess; her eyes had hints of swelling from what Mykhail suspected was tears. He hated that he was the cause.

“You did write this?” He asked, suddenly fearful that driving 60 miles to respond to a text was foolish.

“I did. I did write that. But...but I didn’t meant to send it.” Lou straightened her stance, and quickly pulled her hair into a bun on top of her head. Mykhail’s face crept into a small smile.

“You did write it,” he said once more. “Have the girls told you anything?”

“No,” said Lou, very aware suddenly that they were standing just feet from each other, and she the much more vulnerable. “And I have decided I will hear you, now that you are here in my house, my bedroom. But I want to dress first. Please go wait in the living room.” Her tone was brisk, but Mykhail didn’t care. She was willing to listen.

He made coffee, fixed Lou’s, and waited. She came out, freshly dressed and kempt, and accepted his offer of coffee. The cream and sugar tasted incredible, and she was once more reminded that to live without them was a ridiculous, self-inflicted torture. She waited for him to speak, sipping her coffee. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out folded pages of handwriting. His story, written out, painstakingly. He handed it to Lou.

“May I ask one thing of you, Louise?” He inquired. Lou squinted at him, but nodded. “While you read, will you sit with me? If you do not find forgiveness afterward, it will be at least a nice thing to have before I go.”

Louise was disarmed. Proximity had never been her friend with him, but he wasn’t pushing it and she longed to be close to him, even if he was untouchable. He’s the cream and sugar, isn’t he? Shouldn’t want to have him. But here I am, just needing to be close to him.

She settled into the couch, her stocking feet on the coffee table, and he sat back, sighing. She read his letter, sentence by sentence. He had written it as he had spoken it to Ellen, Maggie, and Rachel--but in the timely pace of writing, had been able to develop the prose and sentiments he’d run through haltingly with the girls.

Lou knew she had tears finding paths down her cheeks, but she wiped them absently, if not with a little annoyance. As the pages turned, Mykhail felt her leaning further into him, until the last paragraph emerged and he tentatively wrapped his arms around her. It was familiar, and foreign simultaneously. Lou felt her tense muscles give out, and the two sat as they did for the remainder of the hour. When Lou finally moved, it was to look at his resigned expression, in which she knew he knew her response.

“We are not the people to forget responsibility,” she whispered.

He nodded. “Yes.” He was split in two, ripped profoundly with his acknowledgement that if Lou had answered differently, if she had thrown caution to the wind and settled on romance instead, that she would not have been the woman he had grown to admire and respect. Lou’s thoughts mirrored his, and without speaking of it further, Mykhail and Louise packed his remaining belongings into the truck, embraced with a deep, lingering hold, and said their goodbyes.

Mykhail’s pickup proceeded to the stop at the end of Maple, and in his mirror Lou stood, on the porch of that magnificent, familiar home, backdropped by the purple hues. Her arms wrapped around her midsection, holding her stomach as she struggled to remain still, straight, and strong. Mykhail forced himself to look ahead, and drove in complete silence back to the house that was not a home.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It had been five weeks since Mykhail’s tail lights had faded from view, and spring was in full display. The vines, flora, and explosive rhododendrons revealed their colors for the first time, in matching purples and aggressive magentas that gave the freshly painted and groomed mansion an elaborate dollhouse appearance. Marcy waved as she walked her constantly yipping companion up the porch, and hugged Lou tightly on the stone steps. They rarely hugged, but in the days since Mykhail’s departure, Lou had sought embrace and Marcy and Lou’s daughters had obliged with enthusiasm.

There was little else to be done--the decision to part ways completely had been made, and while there was a degree of high honor, there was a constant belittlement of the choice by Maggie. Maggie was never one to shy away from romance, and repeatedly told her mother her unasked for advice as to what she would do. “Mom, I would jump. This is amazing. It’s such a beautiful story, it’s just...it’s sad that you are locked into these made-up marital structures that mean nothing, it’s just paper and it means nothing, not compared to love, mom, and your soulmate,” she’d say, running her hands anxiously through her hair as she tried to understand and convince her mother to call, to text, to drive up.

Finally, Lou had enough. “Magdeline, look at your lasting relationships. Look at the pain it brings to put yourself before those who deserve their place before you,” she’d all but seethed, and Maggie’s voice thickened, her eyes heating and brimming with tears. She hadn’t said a word, but grabbed her purse, sniffed once, and exited before her mother could see her sobbing to exhaustion on the steering wheel of the Volvo that was on the precipice of destruction. At it’s stuttering stop, Maggie gassed it mightily and swore, noting with derision the male symbol on the steering wheel.

“If you fucking die on me I will light you on fire, you pile of garbage. Please don’t die.”

Rachel was unusually silent about Mykhail and Louise. She sorted out her tuition, took both the responsibility and charge of her scholarship funds, and got back into the top of her class. She rented a room from her classmate, kept her head down, and Lou hadn’t seen much of her after spring quarter began.

Completely absent, however, was Ellen. Lou would call, but gave up leaving voicemails. Ellen would text after the missed call, “Sorry mom, busy, love you,” but was otherwise a ghost to Lou, Mags, and Rachel. Lou suspected trouble with Brian, but didn’t press. She didn’t want questions when she had considered leaving Ash, so she extended love without questions or intrusive concern. Ellen would tell her when she was ready.

Lou began to imagine what she might do with her newly renovated mansion. With spring came ideas, new beginnings, and she was determined to integrate the community around her into her new, elaborate home. She sat down, and began listing all the ways the purple mansion might fit into the neighborhood, starting with the schools. She made her lists, her reliable, goal-oriented notes.

After-school enrichment?

Community meeting center?

Events? Nonprofit fundraisers?

Even as she tapped her pen on the dot below her question marks’ curves, she thought of Mykhail. Of Angelina, of losing her child, and of how broken she had felt when her husband Ash had left seemingly without a thought. She saw Mykhail’s pain in returning to his wife, and wondered if Ash had felt anything when he boarded a plane to Mexico. In Lou’s mind, he had been relieved. No more family, no more nagging, no more responsibility. She had envisioned that some beachgoing woman with a pina colada would ask him, “On vacation? Where’s home?” and he would reply with some pithy comment like, “Home’s where I choose, baby.” She had never realized how ridiculous that thought was--or how laced with hurt, betrayal, and self-doubt she had been for thinking it. Ashton was never a heartless man--selfish, immature, of course--but she suddenly realized that he was probably living a life of regret, painful reflection, and a sense of loss mitigated only by his current distractions. But it was all she could do to guess at his mindset--he had never been a man of unwavering honor or resolve. She sighed as she drew endless spirals in blue ink around her list, and thought of how Mykhail truly did love her. And how it wasn’t enough.

Mykhail held his mother’s hand as the monitors near her head beeped, and the air compression hissed and and gasped. He knew mama was on to her next journey, and Angelina sat straight in her chair next to her bedside. This was how it was meant to be, Mykhail thought. The son and his wife there to acknowledge the life mama had given, united, so that she needn’t worry. His mother opened her deeply lined eyes and looked at Mykhail with affection, more so now than he’d seen before. Or maybe, he thought, now I see without distraction. He had been in the house more, caring for her in a tangible sense; with money, yes, but now with time. He helped her to her chair, helped her into her bed. He asked more specific questions of the nurses. Angelina had noted it, and had even spoken a few words to him in passing. It had both bolstered and injured his heart to hear Angelina’s voice. It’s absence had not been grieved as much as he believed it should have been; it made him think of Louise, and her energy; her forceful nature and her easily released laughter.

Angelina didn’t care too much about Mykhail’s presence in the house, but she noted it. Rather, she noted the reversal of habit in which he was away almost constantly. His sudden presence caused her pause, anxiety, and a desire to be left alone with her thoughts. Despite being in her chair nearly round the clock during waking hours, she had begun moving herself to and from her bed, the living room chair, and on rare occasions, to the porch outside. The last time, she had glimpsed a sunset’s beginnings, and suddenly the rush of memories came back with a vengeance. Her thoughts went from a sunset to her belly, to Mykhail’s strong arms holding she and Badashka, to her own pale arms shaking Dashka as he lay limp within them. She had shouted loudly, hoarsely, and Marta did not ask if she wanted to go outside anymore. Mykhail’s continued presence weighed on her. His insistence on helping her sparked an impotent rage that culminated in a glower and refusal of help. She would pull away sharply, and he would nod, and retreat, but was always there.

When mama looked at Mykhail for the last time, she smiled lightly and patted his hand with her fingertips. “Release me, Misha, I am done with this world.”

Mykhail held her hand, placed his forehead on hers, and within the hour, the machines were of no use. They unplugged, removed cords and IVs, and Mykhail sat next to Angelina as they covered and removed one of the remaining connections to where they had both come from.

Angelina looked older than her forty-some years. She rarely looked Mykhail in the eye, seldom spoke, and never touched him. She looked over at him now, though, and placed her frail hand on his own so lightly that if he were not seeing it, he would not have known or believed it was there. She opened her mouth, and said more than she had in years to the man she had known all her life.

“Misha, vidpusty mene. Let me go. I wish only to live away from the life we had. Please, let me go, too.”

Mykhail had never imagined Angelina would see a life beyond the life they had lost; he had a moment of clarity as she spoke, as she asked for her freedom. “Dorohyy, how selfish I have been. I have never thought I am reminder to you of Dashka.” Saying his son’s name out loud brought a tightening of her fingers on his forearm.

“Please, no, I wish to forget. Please, let me forget. Please go.” He stood, and knew Angelina had been with his mother more than she had ever been with him. They had weathered the loss of their beloved Dashka together, the demise of a husband and father-in-law that pained them both, and the presence and lack of presence of the son and husband that could not be settled after losing his own son. He embraced Angelina softly, kissed her as he had before they were married--with hesitant devotion, but now, with a goodbye.

Mykhail left through the hospital doors and sat in his truck silently. He looked straight ahead at the entry and exit of physicians, patients, families, pregnant women with urgent, helpless husbands, and watched the sky change with the movement of white clouds over a blue sky. He thought of the activity that happened, the life that bustled and bloomed, even when his mother’s body lay somewhere, in the bowels of the building, empty of it’s soul.

He had a sudden onslaught of thoughts as he turned the ignition, and stopped himself from shutting of the radio’s abrupt music that filled the cab. As it played, he considered his own reaction to that of Ellen, or Maggie, or Rachel; he thought of the sheer volume the women would reach saying goodbye to their mother, and not for the first time, considered the depth of a mother’s love and woman’s resolve to hold strong in the face of everything the world might throw at her.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he snapped the truck back into park, killed the radio, and dialed a number he had dialed only once before.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ellen pulled up to the purple mansion with the girls belongings nearly filling the back window of her Toyota Sequoia. Her own things had been slowly moved out of the house weeks prior, into a storage unit that was surrounded by other compartments of other people’s mistakes, grief, and transition. The girls were at their friend Laura’s for the weekend, a sleepover of epic proportions in that it lasted two nights and they got to spend it there together. When Laura’s mom saw the always-collected Ellen shaking in the kitchen, she shooed the girls out to the backyard, insisted on the story, and Ellen found herself blurting out how she’d sold the house and Brian wasn’t coming back from Chicago, and that there was likely a woman there he cared more about than his own family. She left out the parts where she was glad to be separated, overjoyed to be the only one making decisions, but terrified that she had driven him away and sentenced Margo and Dinah to a life of daddy issues and insecurity. She’d save that for Lou, as soon as she could get into the house’s warm interior and inviting kitchen.

As she pulled up to the side of road, leaving room for Lou to park in the driveway later, her phone rang. She jumped at it’s shrill chime, and gasped at the name on her screen. Mykhail Construction appeared, and she remembered putting the Canadian number into her phone to ensure both her mother’s safety and her own reassurance that she was a part of things at the mansion. She had delighted in it’s renewal just like the others, but now, it felt all the more vital that she was connected. How strange, then, she thought, that he calls as I park just outside of it.

She answered just before it jumped to her now nearly full voicemail.

“Hello, Ellen?” His voice floated over the miles to her ear, it’s familiar tenor and accent strangely comforting. She smiled tiredly, but happily.

“Hello, Mykhail. I’m so glad you called.”

The next four hours were unprecedented in Ellen’s life. She showed up, unannounced, at her mother’s office--hugely rude by Ellen standards but welcomed and delighted by Lou. She sat behind Louise’s closed doors and relayed everything about Brian, Chicago, her own fears and reliefs, and did so with the grace and pragmatism Lou had always admired in her daughter. She hugged her tightly, assured her the house was hers and the girls as long as they wanted, and felt selfishly joyful at the idea that Ellen was back in her life with a raw honesty she’d missed desperately.

“Sweety, do you want to go have an early dinner? Late lunch? I can leave early, I’ll just move some stuff around,” Lou offered, already grabbing her light grey jacket to throw over her black slacks and fitted tee. Ellen surprised her.

“No, thanks mom, but I’ve got to unload and settle, and I’d love to just make dinner for you when you get home. What time will you be home?” Ellen didn’t blink, didn’t give anything away.

“Five-thirty. Oh, Ellen, I’m so glad you’re here. Want to call your sisters? It’s a long weekend...or do you want to just have us time?” She used the phrase she’d used when Ellen was little; “us time” meant Mags was in school or Rachel was sleeping, and they could relive the feeling when it was just Ellen and mama, the only two people in the world. Ellen smiled broadly, and surprised her once more.

“I’ll call Mags and Rachel. I’d love us time,” she replied brightly. Lou grinned, and immediately felt overjoyed at the undeniably lovely distraction her daughters would provide. She hoped it was enough to push Mykhail out of her mind for long enough to get a full night’s rest.

Maggie was nervous as a colt, pacing and chewing her nails as she considered what Ellen had planned. “I don’t know, it’s weird,” she murmured. “I love it but I’m worried it’s like a circus or something and it’s going to be around mom and she gets so mad when she doesn’t know something is going to happen and then it does--” Ellen interrupted gently but firmly.

“I know. But I think it will be fine--it will work. They parted on this cliffhanger; I feel like it’s a good start to the next part of their--” now Ellen was interrupted as the front door opened suddenly. Rachel burst through.

“Did I miss him?!” She yelled, kicking off her sandals and running into the kitchen.

“No! Oh my god I’m so glad you’re here. Ellen is weirdly ok with like letting Mykhail in and surprising mom and I’m just...I am so fucking anxious,” Maggie said. She started opening cupboards haphazardly looking for, her sisters assumed, booze.

“Freezer,” both Rachel and Ellen said, simultaneously. Maggie pointed toward it and nodded. She pulled out the vodka, rummaged for orange juice, and poured all three a strong drink. They stood silent for a moment, sipping, ruminating over Ellen’s plan as the stove heated their dinner. Without preamble, without a knock, the back entrance across from the kitchen was filled with the outline of Mykhail, looking at the three women before him, heart full, face hopeful. He wore jeans and a blue flannel shirt, his beard trimmed and combed, his hair cut and styled expertly in a short, modern cut. Rachel raised her eyebrows at her sisters, to which all three agreed, damn.

“Girls, I…” he splayed his hands in front of him, and all three rushed toward him with smiles and adulations. Embracing each of them, delighting in their warmth and enthusiasm, he allowed himself to be ushered upstairs to The Space, where the string lights still hung. Where the dust had gathered lightly, but the floor had yet to lose it’s polished shine once the plug for the lights pushed into it’s extension cord mate. Two chairs had been moved up the stairs--Mykhail wondered if it was by Ellen or Lou herself--blue wing backs facing each other, angled toward the window, with the street below. He sat down, anxious in the chair, as he saw Lou pull up into the drive.

His breath caught, his stomach clenched, his skin prickled at the sight of her as she stepped from her little car below. She grabbed her purse, her bags, held too much all at once and had to close the driver’s side door with her rear. He chuckled. He felt intrusive as he wondered how she’d manage the door, but realized upon hearing her foot kick it’s base that she knew the girls would fling it open for their mother without hesitation or question. They were waiting for her, eager to see her, regardless if Mykhail were hidden upstairs.

He heard their muffled voices float upstairs, Maggie’s too-high laughter trilling as she tried to avoid revealing why she might want to be upstairs. Then he heard Ellen’s voice, calm, steady, and so convincing that Rachel judiciously found herself taking mental notes.

Lou marveled at her daughters’ insistence she sit and have a drink with them.

Maggie kept laughing at her own jokes, and Rachel drank her own drink as though each time the glass hit the counter she had to lift it again for a mouselike sip. Ellen as placid as ever.

“Mom, go upstairs. Go upstairs and know everything is ok, and then sort out the details later,” Ellen said. She stood her bewildered but intrigued mother up, and Lou turned to say something to the effect of, no, no, it can’t be.

“Go,” they all chorused, and Lou felt her blood rise to her temples as she mounted the staircase to the room she hadn’t visited since the night she told Mykhail he was not who he actually was. Since the night she had refused to believe his honor in how he lived his life. Since that night, that was supposed to be different.

There were chairs in The Space, tucked to the front facing the street. The chairs from the foyer below, moved up here, facing each other at angles inviting observation and communication all at once. And there he was.

Mykhail stood at her presence, the sun filling the room, casting his silhouette into an obscured vision of dark hair, blue shirt, jeans, brown leather shoes. His hair was short, cropped, cut perfectly. His eyes met hers as she walked toward him, drawn intensely to where he stood.

She stopped just short of their toes touching. “You’re here,” she breathed.

He looked at her, cupped her face, touched his lips to hers, his eyes holding hers. “I’m here,” he said softly. “I am home.”

She smiled deeply, returning her own lips to his.

“You are home.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The girls would move schools in a final push toward their life change, and Ellen had taken a job in a small northern city that she could see settling in should the time come. For now, they were happy on Maple St, where the purple mansion meant Grammy Lou, Papa Mykhail, and the constant traffic of aunties and neighbors.

Lou and Mykhail sat outside in the late summer air, watching Dinah and Margo hunt for pill bugs under the stones lining the yard. Mykhail held Lou’s hand like a teenage boy, examining it periodically, kissing the back of it absently as they enjoyed the warmth of the sun and green of the backyard. They heard Maggie’s Volvo shudder up the road and shut off, both chuckling that at each moment she killed the engine, it sounded like the last. The door creaked and slammed as Maggie rounded the corner of the house, kissing the girls on the top of their heads as she made her way to the patio.

“Maggie! Hi, sweets, how was your day?” Lou asked, as Maggie sank her torn jeans and flowing top into the chair, settling into it and peering at them through her dark sunglasses.

“Ugh. Good until ten minutes ago. Do you know there are three stop signs from the main drag to your street? Three,” Maggie said, holding up three fingers as she sighed. “I apparently ran two before the cop decided to pull me over. Nothing better to do than watch me rack up tickets.” She muttered, chewing her nails as she tucked one foot under her.

“Oh, Mags. A big ticket?” Lou asked.

“No, that’s what’s so humiliating. He just laughed when I said I didn’t see them, told me to pay more attention, there are kids around here. And--” she laughed a little despite herself--”they are less visible than six-foot red signs.”

Mykhail and Lou both chuckled. “Was Officer Lucas?” Mykhail queried.

“I don’t know. Light brown hair, blue eyes, looks like friggin Captain America?” Maggie responded. Lou smiled. Even when in trouble, Maggie always had a soft spot for an all-American typical good-looking man.

“Perhaps, yes. He’s a good man, his daughter is with Dinah--the scouting troop? I take her two days ago, and he is the only other man there, so we talk.” Mykhail loved taking Dinah to Scouts, despite the wary-eyed mothers that were only now coming round to talking with him. Lucas was the idol of the troup--mothers included--as the town bachelor, the good cop, and the doting father. If they weren’t trying to chat him up for themselves, they were angling for their daughters, nieces, what have you.

“Huh,” said Maggie.

“He is widower, you know, alone like you,” said Mykhail. Maggie rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses.

“I think I liked it better when you didn’t talk as much, Papa Mykhail,” she stated his nickname from the girls with a mock Ukrainian accent, and Mykhail smiled at Lou.

Lou ventured in. “Yes, Maggie, if you’re not married, you must be sad, and all alone, right, Mykhail?” She raised her eyebrows in challenge to her beloved next to her, and he held up both hands in surrender.

“I give in. Just thought he was nice guy, this is all.” He leaned his head back, his face taking in the sunlight and his hand returning once more to Lou’s.

Maggie crossed her arms. “The last thing I need, both of you, is a man who thinks handing out tickets and babysitting drunks is a good time. No thank you.” She stood and stretched a little, heading toward Dinah and Margo. “Hey, girls, want to play hide and seek?” she shouted, and both girls abandoned their search for bugs to join Auntie Mags inside.

Lou considered Lucas for Maggie. “You know, Mykhail, I actually kind of get where you’re going with that,” she said. He grinned, his eyes still closed, face to the sun.

“You see? Sometimes, the stupid man is right.” Lou playfully smacked his arm before squeezing it with affection.

“Oh, Mykhail,” she teased. “You aren’t stupid. You came back home, didn’t you?”

Mykhail let his face settle into a beatific expression. They sat outside the purple mansion, watching it’s shadow grow across the street filled with fluttering leaves. They both delighted in the leaves, holding onto their branches, despite the approach of fall touching their greenery as autumnal breaths carried their companions away.

Yes, Mykhail thought.

Yes, Lou mirrored. This is home.