My dad clears his throat, and responds to me in Russian, which means he must really be busy, or at least very tired. “Anastasia, what is it? I’m swamped here.”
“Do I have a cousin or aunt or something named Zoya Oleynik?” I ask. As I have him here on the phone, the whole idea feels ridiculous. I take a quick drag on my cigarette, and stand to blow it out the window. It hovers in the thick autumn air before lifting up over Center Street.
“No you don’t,” he says. “Not on my side anyway.”
“I figured. She just messaged me, that’s why I asked.”
My dad clears his throat. “What did she say?”
“It was kind of weird, she didn’t really say anything, just that she knows about me and wants to talk.”
There is a moment of silence on the phone that I will later find far too long. Liars pause like that. Well, bad liars do. I have since learned to notice these things.
“Hello? Dad?” I ask.
“Just ignore it,” my dad says finally. “I get messages all the time from Ukraine. They think we’re rich because we live in America.”
“Does her name sound familiar at all?” I ask, to be sure. “Do you—”
This time, before I can even finish getting these questions out, my dad interrupts. “Just forget about it. It’s nonsense. If you respond she’ll only ask for money, trust me.”
“Okay…”
“Don’t talk to this woman. Please.”
This is when I start to wonder: Why does he care so much if I talk to her? The tiniest feeling of something isn’t right here starts growing in the back of my brain. I don’t follow this feeling to its source, or investigate it further, but it’s definitely planted there for later scrutiny, like a seed.
“Okay, Anastasia?” he says. “I know you hate to listen to me, but I mean it.”
“Okay, okay,” I tell him.
Then he hangs up.
Immediately my heart starts racing. I can’t pinpoint why—excitement? Fear? The pull of history? Whatever it is, I start pacing in the middle of the living room, around all my old paintings and my roommate Margot’s plants and the cool, bitter breath of Autumn, seeping in through the windows. I stick my head out and inhale, hoping that will do the trick. There’s this smell that only exists in Milwaukee in October. The thin smoky jet of laundry after the rain. Wet leaves half-drying, half getting wet again. Open PBR cans, cigarettes, leather. A mix of youth and nostalgia, of losing something as you’re living it.
The feeling, both terrifying and comforting, that life would always be exactly like this.
It’s this feeling I’m trying to focus on as I go outside and smoke three cigarettes in a row, before sitting back down at my computer and turning Regina Spektor on again. I forward to the song “Après Moi,” the most theatrical melody of the album. A little melancholy can be beautiful, and it distracts me from the impulse I have to answer this woman right away. It takes a while, but I manage to return to myself eventually. By the time I finish my homework assignment, I am feeling relatively normal again. But maybe I’m a masochist because right as I have finally forgotten about the message, I return to MySpace and look once more at my inbox.
This time, reading it again, I’m really sure it’s nothing but an Internet con. So she knows my patronymic; it can’t be that hard to find out. She would only have to research my dad’s name. And my hometown is listed in my profile, so that would be easy to investigate, too. My dad is right: the woman—if she is, even, a woman—only wants money. I’ve always been told I have a trusting face, maybe broadcasting it on the Internet is only begging for negative attention. I have the urge to delete all the profile pictures that I’ve ever posted and select one of the side-angle self-portraits I painted instead, which I do in a rapid haze, until there’s no more documentation of my face left online at all. Now only someone who really knows me in person will be able to recognize it, which is how it should be anyway. I should have never gotten on this website in the first place. It turns people into lazy voyeurs, fulfilling their need to socialize in a way that only leaves them wanting more, like a sugary treat you know you shouldn’t have because it won’t fill you up and it’s bad for you, too. I debate deleting my account entirely, but I don’t.
Finally, feeling very grownup and accomplished, I close the message and move on with the rest of my day.
ANNA
________________
CHAPTER SIX
As much as I try to forget about the message, I find myself staring at it again and again over the next few days. On Friday, after I get back from my Russian literature class and empty my heavy bag of its Turgenev and Dostoevsky—why on earth did I think this would be an easy elective because I’m Russian?—I sit at my desk and look at that message again for a long time. I keep re-reading the line It would just be interesting for me to talk to you. I can’t help but wonder: what does she want to talk to me about? Why would it be interesting? The only thing I can come up with is that she is somehow related to us. But I have no way to prove a relation without replying. And I’m not sure I’m prepared for the consequences of actually communicating with this person. Eventually, I am forced to stop thinking about it, because the door to my room slams open. I crane my head back to see my roommate and best friend, Margot, heading straight to my bed.
“There you are!” Margot says. Without thinking, I minimize the chat window, as if she caught me watching porn or something. And maybe this would be equally as embarrassing, if it’s really a scam that I’ve opened myself up to. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Margot collapses on my bed, taking off her backpack—my backpack, that, like many things, she has acquired from my closet—and numerous layers of wool sweaters and bright scarves. The sight of her fills me with relief. With my best friend’s face there in front of me, I can put the MySpace message out of my mind. It’s hard to believe I found her on Craigslist, but I did. After high school, neither of us wanted to pay the outrageous sums of money UWM was requesting for a tiny dorm room, so we found this giant duplex instead, and spent the first school year studying and drinking and filling the upstairs to capacity with weirdos. It’s only two blocks from campus, so there’s the downside of having to live next to many drunken former football players and homecoming queens that view school as an excuse to party on their parents’ dime and have casual sex every other day. I’m not a prude or anything, but jeez, the conversations I’ve overheard while walking through the Union to get to Prospect Avenue. They would make anyone blush. They’re nothing like the conversations in our house, which do reach the topics of physical love on occasion but are mostly about feelings, or hours-long analysis about whether or not modern art has ruined art. (Which it totally has.)
“Did you call me?” asks Margot, who doesn’t agree with me about anything regarding art. The uglier something is the more she likes it. It’s not totally surprising, if you’ve seen her paintings. Why would you want to admit the odds are stacked against you? It’s hard enough to be a successful artist when you have talent.
I glance at my phone and open it. I can’t remember calling her. All that I see listed there is several missed calls from an unknown number and one from my mom.
“No. I don’t think so. But I was hoping to see you.”
“I know. I felt it. That’s why I came home,” Margot says. She leans back against the wall, in her plaid shirt and striped skirt and brown beanie we got together on a road trip to Chicago, and makes herself comfortable on my bed, where she will probably stay for the next few hours. She does this often, because her own room is such a jungle you can barely walk from one end to the other. I don’t mind it. The less time I spend alone, the better. I did enough soul-searching in high school, thank you very much. “What are you doing? Why is Abby running around the house naked?”