“That would be nice,” he replied; at least it might throw her off the scent for a while. She had nagged him about his drinking in the past, but he had cut down recently — partly because of the headaches. She busied herself gathering the honey and cream, bustling about the office happily humming a Ukrainian folk song. He knew she didn’t speak a word of the language, but she liked to impress people with her knowledge of the culture, and had picked up a few songs and phrases here and there.
“I just bought this tea last week,” she said as she poured him a steaming cup from the ornate ceramic pot, decorated with chubby, beaming angels. She had found it at the weekly yard sale on Avenue A and had presented it to him with great pride. Father Milichuk gazed at an especially porcine angel and sighed. He hated angels. The angel leered at him with a self-satisfied smirk; he yearned to smash the pot and erase the grin from its fat little face.
He made a point of telling Mrs. Kovalenko how delicious the tea was. “What’s it called?” he said, taking a sip and smacking his lips.
“It’s Russian caravan!” she declared, clapping her hands with delight. “From the new tea store around the corner. I’m so glad you like it.”
In truth, it tasted like turpentine. But nothing tasted good right now, not even the butter cookies from the Polish bakery he usually adored. Still, to make Mrs. Kovalenko happy (and less suspicious), he choked down several cookies with his tea. They tasted like dust.
And yet when evening came, he left the church reluctantly. It would be even worse at home, when he had no happily bustling secretary, only his aged and morose mother. His father used to joke that his mother cooked like a Ukrainian but had the disposition of a Russian, dour and depressive, with occasional flights of high-spirited gaiety. She could be giddy as a schoolgirl, but her physical complaints could fill a medical dictionary. If it wasn’t the lumbago in her back, it was the arthritis in her knees. She also enjoyed regaling Aleks with the health problems of her friends at the senior center. Illness was her chief conversational topic, and her eyes would brim with tears of delight as she reported the latest grim pronouncements her friends had received from various medical professionals.
“Do you know that Mrs. Danek’s doctor told her that her heart valve could just pop like a grape? Like a grape, Sasha!” she would say, her eyes wide with amazement. She addressed him by his nickname but always called her friends by their last names, in the formal manner, which she thought indicated superior breeding.
He left St. George as the last rays of the sun slid across the windows of McSorley’s Old Ale House, across the street. He resisted the urge to head straight for the bar — he would go there later, after his mother was in bed. He turned east and walked the half a block to his apartment, trudging up to the third floor on narrow, creaky stairs worn by decades of feet. The hall always smelled of boiled cabbage; the Polish couple on the second floor seemed to cook little else.
He unlocked the door quietly, in case his mother was napping. He often found her asleep in the big green chair, their fat orange cat purring in her lap. He opened the door to the smell of homemade soup and the sound of snoring. After his father died, four years ago, Aleks invited his mother to come live with him — not that he had much choice. It was expected that a good Ukrainian son would look after his mother. After all, he wasn’t married and needed a woman’s touch around the place, as her friends declared over coffee and cheese blintzes.
He hung his hat and coat on the rack and crept into the living room, where his mother lay in her usual position, mouth open, her snores rattling the windowpanes. Their orange cat was perched on top of the back of the chair and regarded Aleks through half-closed eyes. A white lace antimacassar had slipped from the top of the chair onto his mother’s head. It sat at a rakish angle, like a lace yarmulke, the edges fluttering delicately with each racking snore. He stood watching her for a moment, then tiptoed to his room. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
It wasn’t long before he heard a soft tapping at his bedroom door. Aleks opened it to find his mother smiling up at him. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, but sturdy and stout, with the broad, rosy-cheeked face of a Slavic peasant. She wore her thick gray hair in a long braid, and her blue eyes were clear and sharp. In spite of her obsession with illness, Aleks felt she would outlive everyone around her.
“Hello, myla,” he said, using the Ukrainian term of endearment. His mother liked that. “How are you tonight? It looked like you were having a nice nap.”
She sighed dramatically. “I’m feeling badly today, Aleksander.”