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Talia didn’t know. It had been over a day since she last texted the love of her life, Mischa Bachinski, which was odd considering he was always on his phone, but not too odd. In their last conversation, he told her that he was at the fair with his school choir. She hoped he was having a good time. A choir - he was so cute! They met when she stumbled across his YouTube channel, so she already knew that he had the most beautiful voice. Idly, she wondered if he won the choir competition he had mentioned.
She checked their last messages:
mischa? are u there? u haven’t been seeing my messages, hope ur ok <3 я тебе люблю.
Sent around 2am Talia’s time, just before she went to bed. It was noon now, and he hadn’t even read her message. She assumed that he was having a sleepover with his choir friends, or something. She met his friend Penny on video call once, and she seemed very sweet.
Either way, it wasn’t normal for him to go so long without answering. But what could have possibly happened to him? Uranium was supposedly the most nondescript, boring town in all of North America. He was so excited to get out of there. Talia drew up a mental image of the house she wanted, that she had described countless times to Mischa. Tucked away in the countryside, with ivy spilling over the wooded, sloped roof, and chickens.
Tugging at the sleeves of a hoodie he sent her, Talia decided to consult some of Mischa’s YouTube friends. She swiped to her chat with Piotr Nowak, an amateur rapper from Poland.
hey piotr do you know if something’s up with mischa? he hasn’t replied to me in a while
She went back to her prior activity of playing Animal Crossing until her phone buzzed. Piotr’s name was written across a notification on her screen. She didn’t cast a glance at what he sent before opening her phone-
talia you haven’t heard
Her heart stilled.
i’m so sorry
he died
And a link to a news article about five dead teens in a Saskatchewan rollercoaster accident.
Talia’s world stopped spinning.
…
They were the longest months. Days stretched on like decades, lying in her bed, inhaling Mischa’s smell that clung to everything he sent her. Rereading their messages. Listening to his music. A glimpse, a snapshot into what could have possibly been.
She could barely drag herself to school. She didn’t, for a while. She stayed at home and sobbed and sobbed and failed to explain to her family that yes, he lived in Canada, and yes, they were engaged. She clutched her ring to her chest like it could bring him back to life.
In the endless evenings, Talia started to sew her wedding dress. It was the only hobby she could sustain. Everything she touched withered and died. Friends who mercilessly teased her about her ‘imaginary boyfriend in Canada’ faded out of her life. Anger boiled up within her for no reason when she spoke to anyone. The world was to blame for Mischa’s death. They were supposed to have a life together.
She was supposed to wear the wedding dress.
At some point, the only member of the choir who didn’t board the doomed rollercoaster emailed her. It was the sweet girl who Talia met on video call, Penny. She had mousy brown hair kept in two short braids. She said that Mischa wrote their wedding vows, and she wanted Talia to see them.
My Divine Talia,
When I look into your almond eyes, I do not see the boy I am, but the man I must become to possess you. I want to take all the pain from your soul, and in the passion factory of my heart, transform it into functional joy. I want to take your hand by the Cheremosh River and with all Ukraine as witness, take you as my wife. And we shall sing and dance and drink... And then I shall whisper in your ear, "let rivers run wild, or let them be damned". My perfect Talia, I lay my masculinity at the altar of your maidenhood.
She screamed. That night, she finished the wedding dress.
Talia grieved the future.
…
Orbit started once again. Talia graduated high school that year. The whole time, all she could think about was the fact that Mischa would never get his graduation. She woke up in the night, and her throat felt like sandpaper.
Her parents pestered her about higher education. To be honest, she hadn’t applied to any universities, not even colleges. She had been barely surviving for months. She got a job as a tailor in her hometown; she figured she ought to sew something someone might actually wear. Her wedding dress collected dust. She wore her engagement ring on a string around her neck. In the year she was a tailor, she developed a reputation in her town. Дівчина-вдова, they called her, the girl widow. The reminder of what she lost dug into her skin like nails, but she grew to find a certain comfort in it. It sounded like she had a husband once. Like she was a wife.
The girl widow. Natalia Bolinska.
She saved her money and packed her things, and a year after graduating, she made for the west. Online she found a middle-aged couple who had recently come into a lot of money and wanted to ditch their shabby cottage. Talia found it perfect, like something out of a folktale. It was outside Vashkivtsi, by the Cheremosh River. She thought the vows Mischa would have made to her, about marrying her by the riverside. She had drafted her own, a thousand times, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
When she arrived at the cottage, the couple was already gone. There were a few pieces of furniture left over, but mostly, the place was a decrepit, unlivable mess.
Oh well. Talia needed to stay busy anyway.
There was a town near her new home, with a market, and she quickly decided that she could grow and sell vegetables there. And eggs. She would raise chickens. She spent some of her left-over money on secondhand furniture and moved it into the house on her own.
There were broken windows, rotting and busted wood planks, drafts everywhere. She had picked up some tools in town as well. Talia got to work.
…
The years passed, and Talia got her chickens. It took time for her to settle into this new life, this life of strange solitude she had never imagined would be hers. After a prolonged period of grieving, she took partners now and then, but it never felt right. They were all nice. A boyfriend, the town baker’s nephew. A girlfriend, a kind woman fresh out of university. Another boyfriend, who visited the market frequently from Vashkivtsi. She was with him for two years before something silently fractured. He did nothing wrong. He brought her flowers and made her breakfast and never commented on the wedding dress in the living room. But she had no interest in marrying him, no interest in seeing him anymore.
Her mind wandered, one of the many afternoons spent in her garden. Was she being childish, clinging to Mischa? Letting his ghost in her house haunt her, prevent her from committing to a relationship with someone perfectly lovely? She had not met him or felt his embrace. The townspeople probably thought she was a bit mad. Дівчина-вдова forever. The delusional, lovesick widow, never married at all.
She let those notions roll around in her head all night, keeping her awake. It was only later that it clicked for her. There was something in her heart that meant she could never love someone as she had loved Mischa. It wasn’t grief’s follies, and she wasn’t dramatic at all. If she had never met Mischa at all, her love would have moved in the same ways. She would attach her propensities for romance and devotion to one person and be unable to let go. It truly could have been anyone. But Mischa Bachinski took her love with him when he died. She pictured herself in a grave beside him.
What fools they were, the two of them. Lovestruck until the very end, Talia thought.
…
Time and nature continued on, cyclically. Talia noted the seasons changing, the moon’s phases. She kept a journal and described that time of year when the bugs came back. Her tulips grew. She collected the eggs at the same time every day. She once imagined that a life repetitive and alone would be the worst kind of life. But she somehow felt so whole. A void inside of her filled, a feat accomplished by no substitute lover. She bought her bread. She braided her hair. She sewed. She paved the road. She patched up her house, whenever storms would thrust tree branches into the roof. Дівчина-вдова became дика вдова, the wild widow. She kept her ring nestled at her bosom, and Mischa’s picture hung in her cottage, but she did not spend her days pining or grieving. She was a widow, but she was a woman first, a tousled and passionate and free woman. She visited her family frequently. Maybe they were disappointed in her, that she never became a high achiever or bore them grandchildren, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Talia was unimaginably happy.
…
One September, as the anniversary of Mischa’s death approached, the gray shawl of sadness descended over Talia’s shoulders. Years progressed and evenings dwindled and Talia had to tell herself once more that she was not crazy for feeling his absence still. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, she decided to fly to Canada.
It was a long and heavy flight. Talia would see his grave, for the first time. Feeling like a teenager lost in her intense emotions, she packed her wedding dress. She attempted to write her vows again on the airplane. Nothing came of it.
Uranium City was like if a sick old man was a mining town. The air seemed slightly darker, and the town carried finality in every sidewalk, every shuttered Mom and Pop. Talia checked into her dull motel, walked down the hallway with the flickering lights, and attempted to sleep off the time difference.
When she woke, it was the afternoon of September 14th. The clouds had split that night, and it was dreary and drizzly. Some ache in the pit of her stomach, Talia got breakfast at a nearby café and probed the curly-haired cashier about the rollercoaster crash, maybe 30 years ago. She asked where they were buried.
He averted his gaze. “There’s only one graveyard in town. You’ll find it behind St. Cassian’s. My, um, older sister was one of the casualties. I was only a toddler.”
Talia nodded, and swallowed hard. “I am so sorry. Have a nice day, sir.”
She tipped extra, with the Canadian money she had exchanged some hryvnia for before leaving home, and made her way to the graveyard.
It was a short walk - they were all short walks in such a small town. Talia weaved her way among the beaten, rainsoaked headstones until she came across a section with a plaque reading Our Five Saints. That was what Mischa and his choir friends were called by the press, just nameless tragic facts, another reason to be afraid of leaving the house. Our Five Saints. Her saint.
Talia studied the names on the graves. Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg. Ricky Potts. Noel Gruber. Constance Blackwood. Blackwood. That was the name of the café she went into that morning, with the employee whose sister died in the crash. This was her. Constance Blackwood. Mischa had mentioned her, Talia recalled, saying that she was one of the only people who was nice to him when he first moved to Uranium. She had a family, parents who would have been able to mourn her even though her brother was too young to remember.
Talia lost a soulmate. She imagined losing a child. It was unfathomable.
Mischa Bachinski. His gravestone was beside Constance’s. Talia touched his name. She felt the grooves of where it was chiseled in. Who paid for this? His adoptive parents may have been rich, but they never loved him. Would they have spared such an expense on his death?
Why was he buried here, in this dead-end town? He was supposed to have a plot next to Talia. They were supposed to be laid down together. They talked about everything, when he was still alive. What flowers they would like at their funerals. Mischa said tulips. Talia wondered if he got tulips. She would have torn up the world to get every last tulip by his coffin. She would have grown them herself, she would plant the seeds in her own chest, water them with her tears.
She was in his town. His fingerprints and blood were up and down the streets, at the café, on the way to the mega-mall. She was walking through his tomb. A monument to a life he yearned to escape from, a living museum. All he ever wanted was to go home to her. He never made it.
A strangled sob escaped from Talia’s throat as she grasped at his gravestone. He would come home. He wanted to marry her by the Cheremosh. She could send him away there. Bury him in her garden. They could be home together at last. Her nails scratched at the granite. The tears on her face were indistinguishable from the rain.
She hiccuped and leaned back. What was she doing? What was she doing? Her shoulders set back with futility. What had she spent her whole life doing? Living even though Mischa couldn’t? What was she doing now? Still grieving the past?
She had forgotten her raincoat. She was drenched now, her hands too slippery to wipe her face with. If only she had managed to write her vows on the plane. She could try to get the words out, but her mouth slipped and stumbled around them. The rain pelted her skin. Talia laid down in the graveyard.
…
In her older age, Talia met a woman who reminded her of a sadder version of who she used to be. Sofiy Kravets was young, flustered, and recently bereaved. She showed up on Talia’s doorstep with red cheeks, and a baby girl bundled in her arms.
“дика вдова?” She said, voice broken but sweet as apple cake. “They told me to come here. I-I didn’t know where else I could go…”
Talia invited her in. She breastfed her child while Talia reheated some varenyky and put the kettle on. Sofiy tearfully told her story, and Talia, like any wild widow, listened.
“I lived in Kyiv,” She cried, straddling her daughter, who was named Kateryna. “I’m not a country girl. Is there even any Internet out here? I don’t know what to do. I lived in Kyiv, and I got married last year, when I was nineteen. My husband was called Olek, and he was so perfect. But his family was horrible. I loved him, though, and he loved me, so I moved in with him, near his family in Chernivtsi. He said they would help look after us until we could get on our feet. Because I was pregnant already. I had our lovely little Kateryna, and we were happy all together.”
Sofiy sniffed. “Then, two months ago, and he was healthy as ever, my Olek caught the flu. Obviously the flu is no problem, but there was some medical anomaly that made his heart seize up, and it stopped beating, and…”
Her snuffles broke off into sobs. Talia moved away from the stove and embraced the girl, cradling her head. Wordless comfort, just keeping Sofiy from crumbling. In between the arms of the two women, Kateryna began to cry.
After Olek’s death, Sofiy had to rely on his family. It turned out they hated her just as much as she hated them. For a while, they made it work, though Sofiy had to walk on eggshells, constantly berated and denied. A week ago, an ongoing argument about where to sprinkle Olek’s ashes spiralled, and Sofiy and Kateryna were kicked out. They had spent days sleeping on a friend’s couch until said friend couldn’t deal with the needs of the mother and the child. Sofiy’s parents were eight hours away and they weren’t on the best of terms, so Sofiy looked up ‘hospitable towns in the west’, and ran with Talia’s town. The villagers directed her to the wild widow. And now Sofiy Kravets was sleeping in Natalia Bolinska’s guest room, with no definite plans to leave.
It had been sixty years in this cottage, alone with the chickens and sounds of the earth. Maybe it would be nice to have someone else around. Talia decided to build a crib.
…
The wind blew colder and the days became nights, and so on and so forth. Talia had never been lonely in her own company, but as the silence of her cottage was replaced with the bustle of a silly single mother, she felt her heart glow.
Windows in the village were golden. The moon was an arc of light in the inky sky. Sofiy made good tea and even better conversation. Inside, she was chasing Kateryna, who was almost two now. In the stillness of the world, Talia noticed peace.
…
Talia knew. She could glimpse it in her view of the Cheremosh River. She could taste it in every pot of borscht she made. She observed it in Sofiy’s sparing silver hairs. Time had been kind to Talia, and she could feel its hand on her shoulder now.
The illness seized her swiftly. End-stage congestive heart failure. She was given just under a year, and she knew it was almost up.
She wasn’t in much pain. It had gotten worse over the past couple months. She was rarely hungry, frequently coughing, and always running out of breath. Her heart would beat too fast and her mind fogged up, like the windows that 13-year-old Kateryna drew hearts on.
Doctors hadn’t given Talia a specific day. But she felt that it would be her last time walking through the cottage, on her way to her bed.
She took in all the details of the home, her home, that she had created. It was comfort. It was sitting down by the fireplace with a mug of coffee, as the snow fell outside. It was her own. Hers to share. Hers to live and love and now die in. With a last look at her wedding dress in the living room, dusted weekly by Sofiy, who loved the dress, Talia made her way upstairs.
Her bed was inviting. Her bones were old and used. Her skin was stretched and wrinkled because she had been alive. She was messy and eternally passionate and wild. She imagined the townspeople showing up to her funeral.
Talia dozed and waited for Sofiy and Kateryna to return from the market. They had taken up Talia’s stand where she sold vegetables and eggs. Kateryna begged for bees years ago, and Sofiy had since become a very adept beekeeper. They sold honey, now, too.
Downstairs, the door opened, and laughter carried up the stairs and into Talia’s palms. Talia heard it fade when Sofiy realized what was undoubtedly happening. Within seconds, the woman and her daughter were entering Talia’s room, perching by her bedside.
Kateryna’s voice was small. “Grandma Talia…?”
Silent tears were tracking their way down Sofiy’s face. She held Kateryna close to her. “It’s alright, люба. It’s alright.”
Kateryna clutched Talia’s sheets. Talia smiled, once-blonde hair falling in front of her face. “Sofiy, come here, please.”
Sofiy leaned towards the old woman. “Are you really going to die, baba?” She sounded like a child.
Talia nodded. “I am. It’s okay. I’m not afraid. I lived the happiest life someone could live. And I know you will be just as happy.”
Sofiy let out a small choke. “Okay. Okay.”
“Listen to me now,” Talia told Sofiy. “My affairs are in order. The house goes to you, to raise Kateryna in. You have already done a wonderful job. I know she will become the brightest young woman. Once my онуко is grown, you can do whatever you wish with the house. If you sell it, sell it to another struggling girl. For cheap.”
She winked at Kateryna, who grinned through wet eyes.
“As for me, here is what you must do,” Talia said. “Please cremate me, and sprinkle my ashes in the Cheremosh. Put my picture up beside Mischa. Put my ring with my wedding dress. And if you or Kateryna ever marry, wear the dress. I laboured over it for hours when I was just a girl, and I knew I would never wear it. Remember me, but do whatever you must to be happy in this life.”
She took the hands of Sofiy and Kateryna. “My girls. Don’t spend your lives waiting. Please spend it being happy. я тебе люблю.”
Talia closed her eyes. Murmurs of ‘I love you’ floated from Sofiy and Kateryna.
“I left a piece of paper downstairs,” Talia murmured. “You may not know the significance. But I have been trying to write those words my whole life.”
Neither Sofiy nor Kateryna could ask what she meant. With a content smile on her face, Natalia Bolinska let go for the very last time. Sofiy felt her heart come to a halt.
Talia’s world stopped spinning.
…
The paper read:
My lover, my Mischa, I could spend lifetimes trying to capture your likeness in these vows like you captured my heart. It would all be to no avail. I miss you more than any poet or playwright could wish to describe. I love you more than it is possible to say. We were once to be married by the Cheremosh River. That is where I created my home. In truth, my incomparable Mischa, I created my life in your image, because I know I would have been happiest with you by my side. You are my home, my heart, my perfect song, the prayer on my lips, my cup that never runs dry. My Mischa. I lay my life at the altar of our love.
…
Soft brown hair. A hint of alcohol. A singular word spoken. The most beautiful word Natalia Bolinska had heard in all of her existence. An incantation, spoken by the most beautiful person Natalia Bolinska would ever know.
“Talia.”
And within an instant she was home again.
Finally, Talia knew.