Page 7 of Deception

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All the windowsand balcony doors are open, letting the end-of-summer breeze gust through the room. A welcome escape after the last three hours I spent in my father’s office. With the high vaulted, painted ceilings and a prayer corner, it could almost pass for a chapel room. It’s what Mother wanted. Ever since she started intensive chemotherapy to slow the breast cancer down, she hasn’t left this room.

“Luchik,” her hoarse voice sounds from the balcony, so small that it’s a genuine wonder how the wind can carry it.

Pausing behind her wheelchair, I attempt to piece back the torn shred of my shirt. I should’ve freshened up as normal, but today, I needed to see her. The last day of chemo is always the worst, and I know that one of these days I’ll walk in here and she will be gone. The glue that holds us all together will cease to exist, and it will be chaos. It’ll be up to me then to find the glue that will hold the next generation of Vassilys together.

“Mama.” I stop myself from touching her with a squeeze of the push handles.

“Luchik,” she drawls as I round her to sit on the stone balustrade, taking her in from top to toe as she pulls up the thick blanket on her legs.

“Stop calling me that.”

A smile tugs at her lips, making the knot in my gut unwind a little. When I smile back at her, she mouths the silly pet name at me again.

Luchik—sunbeam.

She’s always been playful, a complete contrast to her husband. Mother has more than lived up to her name. Luda—love of the people.

“Would you rather she called you a criminal?” Vanya smarts from the corner of the balcony, where she’s reading one of her Russian classics again.

“You don’t talk to your brother like that.”

“Sorry, Mama,” she says sweetly, putting her book down to level me with a glare.

Fucking women.

They can’t even look at you without conveying what they’re thinking. She’s always got to yap, yap, yap. Especially this one. Considering she’s the fucking family princess and has never had to lift a finger in her life, Vanya likes to paint herself as a saint. All the hours she spends on her knees praying to God clearly haven’t enlightened her to the raw facts of her existence. She wouldn’t have the life she has without this family or our business. Maybe Father was right when he tried to insist that she go to America and study business like I did instead of Russian Literature at Moscow State.

“You see the irony, don’t you?” Vanya curls her lip up at me, before telling our mother, “You call him a ray of sun while he shows up looking like he’s the lord of darkness.”

“Did you get that from your book too, or is it just your flawed sense of piety?”

“Humanity isn’t piety.”

The anger that sparks from her ridiculous comeback translates into a burst of acrid laughter that whooshes from me.

Fucking humanity! Is she for real?

“Humanity,” I repeat her remark so that maybe she can get a better picture of her stupidity. Of course, she doesn’t. She couldn’t because it’s not her hands that are dirty. “You think humanity pays for your tuition? Do you think that it’s what pays for your shopping sprees? Or maybe it’s fucking humanity that’s keeping your mother alive…”

Fucking humanity.

“Tomasz.” Mother tries to reach forward and grasp my hand, but the sight of my dirty nails has me pulling back from her.

“This is your fault, you know?” Standing, I swallow back the deluge of reality that’s swelling in my throat. One day, I’ll show her precious daughter the true measure of it in this fucking world. However, one day is not today. Not in front of our dying mother. “He’s right. You fill her head with too many stories and not enough truth.”

I start inside, only to pause when she grasps my hand and weakly tugs on it to bring me closer to her.

“Mama,” I groan at her recklessness, trying to free my hand from her frail one.

It’s small and pale, and her rings jingle around her thin bones, and for a small fraction of a second, my thoughts go to Red—to her dainty bones and dainty face and dainty neck. How they feel in my grasp.

Every part of her I’ve laid eyes on is perfectly petite, filling me with an overwhelming need to break her. Even more so now than that night at the club because she’s slithered her way into my head. And now and then, it’s as though I still feel her slight weight on my shoulder. The heat of her body when she was beneath me.

“Who is that?” Mother asks, drawing me from my dark, bludgeoned thoughts.

The moment I turn to find who my mother is talking about, I curse my memories and the girl’s existence. Even in the setting sun, her eyes gleam like sapphires begging to be plucked from their sockets. Her pale skin is as lustrous as the sheen of the white silk rag she’s wearing.

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