She knew a little park near her building that was always full of pigeons; as she stood in line that afternoon, she considered walking over as soon as she was free, tossing crumbs on the ground, letting the feathery waves lap and flap and scramble at her feet. Then she thought of something else. Turning, she looked at the boy behind her.
He did not resemble the children in school.
“Do you like sweets?” she asked.
He said nothing, only nodded. He had been silent of late; the sky in his eyes had grown overcast. “I have something for you, then,” she said with an odd sense of relief, and added in a low voice, so as not to be overheard by the bright-mouthed woman before her (they had avoided speaking to each other since the dates incident), “I’ll give it to you once we leave here.”
The boy nodded again.
At five, she asked him to wait while she met with her husband. The afternoon was gray and quiet; as she hurried toward Sergei, she could hear his footsteps at the other end of the street falling in with hers, as though she were being approached by her own echo.
“Any news?” he said, stopping. It was his day off, but he looked tired, his eyes washed out, deeper shadows beneath them; within his absent, preoccupied face, the animated, handsome face of a man she had once known lay obscured as if by a layer of thin, translucent wax. It’s the line, she thought again, and looked away, pained, saying with a small, insincere smile, “Everyone says it will be soon now,” holding out their number. He exhaled—dismayed, she knew, that another afternoon passed and it wasn’t yet over—then moved beyond her; and immediately her chest felt hollowed out by a gust of panic, a sense of something precious escaping her, perhaps forever—
“Wait!” she cried, catching his sleeve.
He paused. “What is it?”
Hesitating, the bag with the tart heavy in her hand, she glanced back. The boy was where she had left him, standing on the corner, his eyes cast down, dragging his foot back and forth along the pavement, drawing some figure in the dust. Her heart twisted inside her.
“Nothing,” she said, releasing him.
“Well, don’t stay up for me tonight. I might be late. The line, you know.”
“I know,” she replied after a pause, and turned away slowly.
They walked, she and the boy, until the kiosk was out of sight; then she halted.
“I baked it myself,” she told him, taking out the wrapped tart and offering it to him. “You could invite some friends over for a party. Is your birthday anytime soon?”
“It was last month,” he said without moving.
“Well, then, just have a nice cup of tea with your parents.”
“Mama won’t be home for a few hours.”
She waited, but he did not add anything about his father, and she was conscious of standing before him like a supplicant, her hands outstretched, the hush closing in on her.
“You could come with me,” the boy said, staring at his shoes.
She thought of the meal she was expected to start preparing in another half-hour, as the spring’s transparent wings beat wildly against the kitchen’s steamed-up windowpanes—and was surprised to hear herself reply: “Thank you. I’d like that.”
They did not talk on the way. Beyond the sour depths of an alley with its plaster gouged out by vandals, the robust aromas of other families’ suppers reached her with efficient clicks of utensils through windows opened to the first warm evening of the year. At the end of the next street, the boy showed her inside a gray building lowered like a gloomy brow, and on, through the dim confinement of a foyer lined with darkened rows of mailboxes, to the elevator, which seemed only slightly larger than a mailbox and into which they squeezed like two letters through a narrow mail slot. He pressed a button with a tentative air, then waited, his head tilted; after a long pause, ancient cogs jerked moaning into reluctant motion somewhere beneath them, and the box shook upward, going dark, then light, then dark again as they passed the floors. Released onto the landing of the fourth floor, Anna inhaled a whiff of sour milk, glimpsed a blue-rimmed saucer, the darting streak of a homeless cat; then the door squealed inward.
“This way,” said the boy, gesturing, though there was only one way to go.
The living space beyond was small, badly kempt, driven into tight corners by the advance of heavy brown furniture, bulky tables, deep armchairs, all much too large for it. “I sleep on the sofa here,” he said as he switched on a lamp. In the blotchy light, she was startled to see photographs gleaming under glass amidst the faded floral garlands of the ancient wallpaper, each frame now containing a small, blinding image of the squat orange lampshade. Hesitantly she approached, found herself looking at two stiffly attired lanky youths, the older one smiling, the younger serious, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
“That’s grandfather with a cousin,” the boy explained, intercepting her glance. “They both studied music, a long time ago.”
She saw the elaborate, old-fashioned scroll designs in the margins of the picture, a child’s fingerprints glistening darkly along the edges of the dusty frame, and moved away in discomfort. She had been taught, though in such circumspect ways she was not even sure when or by whom, that old photographs possessed a vague air of menace, holding as they did a troublesome invitation to peer into thumb-sized, out-of-focus faces lined up in solemn tribute to forgotten occasions, family anniversaries, diminutive triumphs better left to lie concealed in the decaying obscurity of albums, nibbled by silverfish that scurried past.
“And who’s this?” she asked, pointing.
The boy considered the laughing thin-faced man for some moments, as if seeing him for the first time.
“My father,” he said then. “This was seven years ago, we don’t have any recent pictures. And that’s Mama… Here, I’ll show you the way.”
Anna followed him into the kitchen, which did not smell of food. He watched her with an odd look, shy yet avid, as she filled the teakettle with water, found two cups, got the tart out of her bag. “Only we don’t have a plate big enough,” he said. “Just some saucers.”
“We’ll cut it into small bits, then,” she announced. “Where do you keep your knives?”
She felt awkward opening and shutting cupboards in someone else’s house. Their insides breathed staleness; she caught a glitter of tarnished silver hidden behind a stack of mismatched dishes. The kettle would not boil for the longest time, minutes and minutes of waiting (she recognized the clock on the wall, big and round, its black-and-white face awash with excess blankness); when it did so at last, it whined like a forlorn provincial train, and the kitchen departed with a rickety, unsteady wobble for the nightly shadows.