Alexei’s eyes took on a hard glitter. “You should be thanking me, kroshka. Who else is going to make this puppy of yours into a man?” A glance down at Slavka. “I remember when he was a baby and I’d come back from twelve hours of surgery to find him still awake and crying. He can’t sleep, you kept whimpering, he can’t sleep. Not like me, I can sleep anywhere.” A glance at me, and Alexei dropped his voice to a murmur, just between us. “What does that tell me, Mila?”
“I can’t imagine what you mean.” I could feel Slavka trembling as he pressed against my side, uncomprehending but nervous. He wanted his toy train, I could tell—he wanted his grandmother’s cramped, cozy apartment, the gleam of the samovar, the spoonful of jam she’d give him off a ladle. I just wanted him out of here, and I began to hand Alexei the Melkashka so I could leave, but his words stopped me.
“This boy doesn’t sleep like me, that’s all. Doesn’t have my hair either, or my eyes . . .” Alexei shrugged, still speaking softly. “A man might wonder things, about a child like that.”
“He takes after my father,” I said icily.
“He takes after someone.” Alexei sank his hands in his pockets, airily unconcerned. “Maybe that’s why you want to get rid of me, Mila. Not a new man in your life; maybe a man you’ve had in your life since before we met—”
“Go get my coat, morzhik,” I interrupted sharply, sending Slavka toward the back of the room with a little push.
“—because I look at that boy with my name, and I wonder.” Alexei watched our son—our son—drag off uncertainly toward the row of pegs again. “I really do wonder.”
I still had the Melkashka in my hands, birch stock sticky from Slavka’s nervous fingers. I felt my nails digging into the wood and wanted to sink them into Alexei’s high-cheekboned face. I wanted to scream that I’d had no one before him and he knew it, because I’d gone straight from the schoolroom to his bed to pushing his baby out of me. But I knew the moment I lashed out at my husband, he’d seize my wrists and squeeze just a little too hard, chuckling, Women! Always throwing tantrums . . .
“Your face!” Alexei shook his head, grinning. “Kroshka, it was a joke! Don’t you know how to laugh?”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I know how to shoot.”
I raised the rifle, spun, aligned my aiming eye and front-sight and rear-sight with the farthest wooden target across the range, and squeezed the trigger. My ears rang, and as I lowered the Melkashka I imagined exactly where I’d sunk my shot: the bull’s-eye, inside every one of my husband’s shots. But—
“Good try,” Alexei said, amused. “Maybe next time you’ll even hit the target.”
A burst of hoots from his watching friends. My cheeks burned. I know how to shoot, I wanted to lash out. I’d gone to the range a few times with the factory shooting club, and I’d done just fine. I hadn’t dazzled anyone, but I hadn’t missed the target either—not once.
But today I’d missed. Because I was flustered, angry. Because I’d been trying to wipe that smile off Alexei’s face.
“Look at you, serious little girl with your great big gun.” Alexei clipped the Melkashka out of my hand, chucking me under the chin like I was a naughty child, only this clip snapped my head back hard enough to sting. “You want to try again, kroshka? Jump for it!” He held it far over my head, smiling, a glint in his eye. “Jump!”
Other men along the firing line began laughing, too. I heard someone call Jump for it, coucoushka! Jump!
I wouldn’t jump for the rifle. I turned to Slavka, coming back to the line with my coat, and began shrugging into it. “I’ll let you know when I get another appointment, Alexei.”
“Have it your way.” Shrugging, he began to load the Melkashka again, flashing a smile at the two girls on the watching line. I saw them smile back. That’s the thing with young girls: they’re easily impressed. By lean height and golden hair, lofty ambition and devouring dreams. I used to be like that. But now I was twenty-one, an angry mother with the smell of gunsmoke on her hands and cheeks that burned in humiliation, no longer impressed by surface shine on bad men.