"What-UncleGorby" - читать интересную книгу автора (What Leslie)

She hated airports, filled with people leaving without saying goodbye to one
another. She traced the Matryeshka's outline through the paper sack, her fingers
lingering on the crease where the parts fit together. At least now, there seemed
no reason not to keep the doll.

Katya looked around her living room, somehow different than one week ago. Anther
had piled her mail on the coffee table beside Vlad's bowl. Vlad picked up his
pace and swam the circumference of the bowl, greeting her with the goldfish
equivalent of tail-wagging. She looked through his glass to watch the red blink
of the answering machine's reflection in the water. She sucked in her breath,
then exhaled slowly as she sat on her couch and reached to press the button and
listen to her calls.

The Singles Warm Line called to ask how she had enjoyed birding with their
group. Could she come to a potluck in one week? Her secretary called to let her
know the office was running smoothly. The next call was from her stepmother
telling Katya what she already knew.

"Honey," her stepmother said, "I have very bad news. Call me when you get in,"
followed by another call that said, "Sweetheart, I don't know how to tell you
this. Something terrible has happened." And the last call: "The funeral is
today. You've never been there when he's needed you."

Her father dead? On top of that, the lost luggage, and now the horrible
realization that the last thing she had to remember her father by were these
calls from his widow. Katya played the messages back, then flipped off the
machine to prevent the tape from being accidentally erased.

"Did you miss me?" she said to Vlad without emotion. She had not missed him. She
unscrewed the fish flakes cap, but accidentally spilled in half the container.
"Eat up," she said, beginning to feel hungry herself.

Katya unwrapped Gorbachev and set him on the coffee table. She heard a child's
voice and looked out her living-room window, where she saw Anther, home from
school. Soon she heard the familiar clatter as he set his bike on her stoop,
then knocked on her door.

She hurried to answer with a chipper "Hello."

"Here," he said, thrusting a handful of snapdragons he had picked from the
flowerpot on her stoop.

"Thank you," she said. "Would you like to come in for some ice cream?"

Anther walked inside. He was very clean, except for a little mud on the bottoms
of his sneakers. She thought of asking him to remove his shoes, but clean
carpeting no longer seemed to matter.

A question burned within her: "Don't you ever wonder about your father?"
Instead, Katya asked, "Chocolate, or vanilla?"