The Lovers - стр. 11

Dina did not want to upset her mother so she did not ask any more questions about her dad. If any friends living nearby or at the kindergarten asked her, “Where is your dad?” she told them what her mother had said.

One day, her mom came home with a new man and said to Dina,

“This is Uncle Tolya. He’ll live with us now.”

Dina was very excited and asked, “Can I call him Daddy?”

Uncle Tolya was delighted by this and said, “Of course, Dinochka, call me Dad.”

Everything was wonderful at the start, they went to the movies together, to the zoo, and skiing.

Dina was proud of her dad and happy for her mom, who laughed a lot and dressed up.

Then Uncle Tolya started disappearing somewhere for a few days at a time, while Mom went around with red eyes and her hair uncombed, and told Dina that she was sick and that Uncle Tolya had gone away on a business trip.

“Dad, not Uncle Tolya,” Dina corrected her mother.

Dina’s mom would give her a strange look, not say anything back, and disappear into the kitchen or bedroom for long periods of time.

One day, Dina came back from school and found Mom in tears, and Da– Uncle Tolya yelling at her mother, also with tears in his eyes. He was holding the kitchen towel and kept wiping his eyes with it.

“Opening your legs for other men, that doesn’t count either?!” he was shouting.

He repeated those words two or three times so Dina remembered them for the rest of her life. But she did not know what they meant.

She also remembered how a strange oppressive tension settled over the apartment after that. As if Uncle Tolya’s yelling could suddenly appear from any corner, or from behind any curtain.

When she was left home alone, Dina tried to air the apartment, she opened all the windows and even sprayed the air with her mom’s perfume or Uncle Tolya’s cologne, but nothing helped. The feeling of hurt, the tears and the destroyed happiness, were stuck in the apartment like an unbearable load. Her mother laughed less and less, and Uncle Tolya took them to the cinema or the zoo less and less often. Then he did not come home for a very long time, and Dina’s mom said that he had gone away.

“Forever?” asked Dina.

“Forever,” said her mom. “Never ask me about him again, it upsets me very much.”

So Dina did not. She never had a Dad after that.

Dina stopped to think about where she should go. The girls at the dorms were preparing for the exam that she has just passed. Aunt Ira was at work, Anya and Kolya were at university. It was cloudy outside and the rain could start at any second, and she did not want to get wet. It was rather boring to eat ice-cream alone in a cafe…