#nightshades

Pittsburgh was miserably muggy that day, so much so that it felt as though she were muddling through soup broth instead of the open air. Had she been in a better mood, it might have gone without bugging her so- unfortunately for Anya Robinavitch, the weather’s misery merely reflected her own. Just in the five minutes it took her to slip on a pair of flip-flops and sulk over to the Abbot residence, her curls were absorbing the moisture and popping from the elastic that had held them in a bun so much so that she’d given up on trying to contain them in the battle with the humidity, swiping a thin layer of sweat from her forehead before arriving at the front door and giving a customary knock. No answer was needed, so she immediately stepped inside and discarded her shoes by the door.

“Hey, stranger.”

Anya exited the front hallway and looked towards the source of the first hello. Her uncle Jack was perched on the lounge chair of the living room sectional, leg propped against the side of the couch and a beer in hand. Infuriatingly- expectedly- his eyes assessed her. The way she shrunk into herself; the distant fog in the dark brown eyes. His gaze was not the only one fixed upon her, evidently, for a woman had appeared in the slider door to the garden.

With a smack of a closing screen door, two women made their way towards Anya. The first to put their hands on her was, naturally, her lifelong best friend, though her aunt spoke before Mia had even crossed the room. A question her and Jack both knew the answer to already, but was worth asking all the same; “What’s up? Sit at the table, we just finished dinner, it’s not even wrapped up- thanks Jack- and-”

“They’re fighting again.”

The nine (almost ten, as she’d been adamantly reminding people) year old’s bottom lip trembled something fierce. Marisol and Jack shared one look while their daughter wrapped Anya up in her arms and forced her downcast head onto her shoulder.

“It’s gonna be fine, Anya-”

“No, it’s not!” She pulled back from Mia with all the tears she’d held at bay while sneaking out of the house (hardly sneaking, and the tears hardly held back) streaming down her flushed cheeks and shook her head. “They’re breaking up for real this time, she’s gonna fully move out and everything!”

“Hey, hey.” Mari swooped in and placed a hand on each of the girl’s shoulders. She navigated the pair onto the couch and went on. “Not everything is fine, Mia, that’s not a very comforting thing to say.”

“But-”

“Ah!” A snap of Mari’s fingers and Mia clamped her mouth shut, though not without a vicious eye roll she could only have gotten from her mother. Having taken a seat between her husband and niece-slash-bonus daughter, Mari went. Her hand remained firmly on Anya’s back tracing small, gentle circles inches above where her daughter’s arms were still clasped around their best friend’s waist. “Anya, do you want to talk about what happened?”

A sob wracked her chest and she immediately turned her head left to right in a frantic, fleeting ‘no’. Her head raised from staring down into her lap to gaze blankly forward at the now muted living room TV for the sake of distraction. With a warbled voice she croaked; “I don’t want Heather to go.”

And nobody had a response to this. Not when every single person in that room felt the same way.

Jack knew when to leave the comforting to Mari. There was a bond between women he’d long known to respect rather than intrude upon. This was especially true with Anya- he loved his niece more than words could ever describe, but the only way she’d ever be closer with Jack than with Mari was if Mari wasn’t around at all. Thankfully for all involved, this would never be the case.

What Jack also knew was Robby. Better than anyone else, in fact, including Heather if the fighting was any indication. Comforting Anya might be a Mari job, but when it came to the many quirks and specificities of Michael Robinavitch, it was Jack’s turn to step up to bat.

“Kiddo,” Jack grunted, turning himself in the lounge chair to face her. “You know your dad- and Heather, for that matter- care about you more than anything in the world, right?”

“Then why is he breaking up with her?! I don’t want her to leave.”

“Wait-” Jack said at the exact moment Mari sat ramrod straight and said, “Woah, woah- stop it. He’s breaking up with her?!”

“Yes!” Her posture further deflated. In wake of this shocking revelation Mia had pulled back, and Anya took the space to sink back into the couch back. “Maybe. No? I don’t know. But they’re done. Like, done done. And she told him she didn’t want to, but she didn’t have a choice, and now she’s gonna leave and she said she’s not coming back. They weren’t even loud or anything. So I think it’s for real this time.”

Over her shoulder, Mari locked eyes with her husband. This information would be the topic of a particularly juicy (albeit depressing) pre-bedtime gossip debrief between the two, but for now, they had to stay trained on their sole objective of comforting their niece. A hefty task while they also came to terms with Heather understandably, no doubt, reaching the final straw in her long-strained relationship with her emotionally unavailable partner.

“Just because they break up, doesn’t mean Heather’s gone forever, kiddo. You know how important you are to her.” Jack said. His phone buzzed with a response he didn’t bother to check; he’d fulfilled his obligation to inform Robby that his child was safe and accounted for.

“I don’t know. I argued with her the other day and I really upset her.” Anya sniffled. “And I heard her tell my dad after I went to my room that he was making me just like him because- because she thought I was being selfish, which I was, and I don’t know why I say what I say or do what I do-”

“Hey! Hey, you stop that, okay?!” Mari’s order was stern and swiftly delivered. “You are not whatever terrible person you think you are. You are a lovely young woman, and Heather knows that. Everyone knows that.”

“But I yelled at her because-”

On the other side of his wife, Jack shook his head. “That doesn’t change a thing. That one yells at us basically every day-”

“We’d be worried if she forgot.” Mari chimed in, earning a glare from her daughter.

“-And we love her. Even when she’s selfish. We’re all selfish sometimes. You’re not a bad person for,” Jack searched for the right words in the right order, recalling his therapist’s words to the best of his ability, “ feeling things deeply.”

“And that includes fear,” Despite initial hesitance, Anya leaned into the feeling of Mari’s hand combing through her hair as she spoke. “And loneliness. You’ve always been such a kind girl, Anya. You need to be kind to yourself, too. Don’t feel guilty for being a normal kid.”

In an attempt to join in, Mia helpfully added, “I bet Heather will still hang out with you, like your dad still hangs out with Jake. She loves coming to our dance competitions, right?”

It worked. Anya shrugged one shoulder halfheartedly, casting her best friend a nod. “Yeah, I guess.”

Mia pressed onwards. “So, it’s not like she’s leaving you if she’ll still be in Pittsburgh!”

With a still-wobbling lip, Anya clenched her eyes shut, allowing herself to revel in the feeling of Marisol’s slender digits raking through her locks of chestnut hair.

“I mean… Jake doesn’t really hang out with me anymore, though.”

“Oh, he’s just a teenage boy. They’re all like that. Heather isn’t, though. And for what it’s worth, Jake should hang out with you. You’re a fun kid,” Mari’s hand slithered out of her hair and once out of Anya’s view entirely, she jerked her head. Immediately, Mia caught on. She scooped her best friend up into her embrace and whisked her away to the dog bed in the corner of the family room where an apple-head chihuahua trembled atop her throne. Through the wiry fur ran the tip of Anya’s fingernails, the neon blue polish long chipped off. Beneath her Chumpi let out a cartoonish squeak-grunt of delighted annoyance. Enough to let the humans know she enjoyed it, while still letting them know they were beneath her and therefore an overall nuisance.

Hushed murmuring from the adults in the kitchen melded with Chumpi’s fun-sized grunts and gurgles. It took one minute for her to turn on her side and expose a perfectly bubblegum belly, her tongue blissfully lolling out the side of her mouth. Mia joined her friend in showering the pint sized dog with affection and waited for her to speak on her own time.

“I wish I had your parents,” Was all Anya said when that time arrived.

“You do,” Anya raised an eyebrow at her response. “Well, you know what I mean. You’re basically their kid, too.”

“Not the same.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Anya’s vision was focused intently on the dog- the type of focus only made possible when somebody was trying very hard not to cry. “I hate that he’s all I have. And I know he hates me, too. Or, like, hates that he has to love me,” Her breath caught. Mia predicted what she’d say before the words came out her mouth, as it was a sentiment expressed a thousand times before, a thousand different ways, whispered at slumber parties, in math class, over a crackling bonfire at a cabin deep in the Pennsylvania woods. “I wish I wasn’t me.”

“Anya-”

“‘Cuz, like, I am a bad daughter sometimes. And I think if I were smarter, and prettier, and quieter, and friendlier, and more talented, then we’d both be happier, right? And what kills me- what kills me is that I could be working on all those things, but mostly I just sit around on my phone, or hanging out with you, or fighting with him and then sitting in my room and… not really doing anything.”

The minutes-long rant came to an end. A single tear escaped down Anya’s cheek and plopped an inch away from Chumpi’s head. The canine shot up and stood on the edge of her bed. She gave a great shiver and cough, making her displeasure known, then stretched her front legs. Her back legs followed with a lunge forward. Then she fell onto the thighs of Mia’s bent legs.

To her credit, Mia was doing a better job of holding tears back than her almost-sister. It was far from the first time Anya had said these awful things about herself. Even her earliest memories of little miss Robinavitch were of a woefully quiet girl. Mia was predisposed to whimsy, prone to bouts of flitting and fluttering around from activity to activity, challenge to challenge and unwavering in the face of social interaction. Whenever her latest grand idea or scheme fell through it was Anya, whether or not she’d been dragged into it herself, who would be sitting with a look of silent contemplation far beyond their age, and pat the spot beside her for Mia to take it.

What Anya was predisposed to was something else entirely. Something that, in her nine years of life, Mia had not yet found the words for. And it was- predisposition, that is. Mia’s parents greeted her with hugs and kisses (or scolding, which a child like Mia warranted plenty of) and sent her off into the world the very same. When he greeted Anya these days, Uncle Robby simply sighed. Looked down at the wide brown eyes tracking his every movement; begging, screaming, apologizing, though Mia had never understood what for. Then, on the good days, Uncle Robby reached out a hand to hold hers or smooth her hair. He struggled to touch her and struggled even more to let her go, all without a syllable spoken. It read as though their blood prevented them from admitting they needed the other; in greetings and farewells alike they jointly treaded a paper thin line: Need me. Please know that I need you. I want to be someone you need. I don’t know who I am if you stop needing me. I’m terrified that I need you and I hate that you need me and I am you and I hate me and please love me please please let me be somebody worth loving starting with you.

The Robinavitches were nightshades. Jack explained it to his daughter after her sixth birthday dinner: everyone from the dance studio had come, and girl scouts, and some of her cousins and the kids from the cul de sac and, quite frankly, plenty of people she didn’t know and probably weren’t invited but knew Marisol would have food prepared anyways. It was extraordinarily fun, and the cake tasted wonderful as she and Anya watched Marisol try to set Robby up with the first single auntie she could get her hands on. When Robby pulled Marisol into a sad excuse of a dance instead, teasing Jack over the blaring music and giving an exaggerated, off beat sway of the cackling woman in his arms, Mia turned to Anya and beamed a blue frosting-stained grin her way.

“You should have a party like this! You never have parties. Mom says everyone should have parties all the time.”

Anya was still scraping a satisfactory amount of frosting off her cake. She tried to get a middle piece instead of an edge with the hopes of getting less frosting, but no dice. Robby apologized when he handed it to her minutes prior, but didn’t lie and say he tried his best.

Smearing the once carefully piped buttercream onto the lifted edge of her paper plate, Anya began to cut the slice into smaller, bite sized squares. Still without speaking. Thinking over every letter, every breath, before saying, “We’ve never had a party.”

“Not even your dad?!” Mia asked once the shock wore off. Of course Anya had never really had a party- she would’ve been invited, thank you very much- but the idea of a grown man who’d never once had a party? Everyone deserved a party. Everyone deserved their own cake.

In response Anya shrugged, depositing half of her cake slice onto Mia’s empty plate and then stabbing her fork into the first of 6 grid like squares of cake. The words came quicker this time, instinctual: “We don’t like them.”

And that’s how Anya had ended her first night as a six year old sobbing in her dad’s arms. She tripped over her words, struggling to take in a breath between barklike cries, especially after Jack confirmed Robby had never thrown any sort of party or party-adjacent gathering for himself as long as they’d known each other. Now, Anya was ushered into the same life, whether or not it’s how she truly felt. This had greatly depressed Mia, and no comfort had eased her cries. Faced with the reality of his daughter crying herself to dehydration, he’d told her the Robinavitches were nightshades.

“Think of your mom’s garden. Most plants grow in the sun, right?” His hand scratched between her shoulder blades, lurching with every sharp breath, and he did not continue until getting a nod. “Well, that’s you. And your mom. But some plants don’t grow in the sun.”

She sniffled. “They don’t?”

“Some plants grow in the shade, so they do best at night. That’s the Robinavitches.”

This quieted Mia. Over the next several minutes she returned to regular breathing, cuddling the dog that Jack had allowed onto her bed for the night. After a bit more talking, and a quick kiss on the cheek from mom, Jack pulled his leg back on and began putting his exhausted post-cry daughter to bed. He tucked her in, wrapped her blankets around her like a burrito, told her to dream about him and not mom (and got yelled at from down the hall for it) and finally closed the door.

Mia turned her dad’s words over in her mind. Nuzzling her nose into the wetness of Chumpi’s, she shared a secret. Dogs could keep those, surely. Into her whiskers Mia whispered what she’d pinky-sworn not to tell a soul: “Anya hates the dark.”

Nearly three years had passed since then, yet Anya’s propensity for sorrow had not wavered. In fact, it deepened. In moments like this Mia was struck with the feeling that she’d never understand Anya’s bone-deep gloom. All she could do was be with her, and hold her, which she did. Now, and often, and without knowing the bittersweet feeling it caused in the parents that overlooked the scene from the kitchen island.

Anya’s eyes bore into the diamond embroidery of the dog bed’s fabric, flinching and closing them altogether when the arm wrapped around her. She tensed, warred with her resolve, then relaxed. Her head sank down with her eyes still shut. Maybe she’d open them and she’d have swapped places with the girl beside her. The thought had her feeling exceptionally guilty as soon as it crossed her mind. She knew better than anybody that Mia didn’t deserve it, whatever ‘it’ was.

Almost two hours had passed since they’d gravitated from the family room- that’s what the Flores Abbot household called the living room- to Mia’s bed. Her mother had deposited a plate full of snacks, even the unhealthy ones she didn’t like Mia eating after lunchtime, and the girls laid with Chumpi perched between them. A cheeto puff between her lips, Anya stared up at the ceiling and stretched her legs until her feet came into view. Not even the pearlescent polish now donning her toenails could distract her from the inevitable finality of her father’s breakup, though she commended her second family for putting in such effort.

Even now, she was blessed beyond measure to be with Mia. If she had nothing else in life, she had Mia. She let Anya exist in her misery. Had done so since birth. She knew when to push Anya and when to let her be silent and sad; just like she was at present.

“Mia,” She broke the quiet, still looking upwards at her painted toes. There was no response. It wasn’t necessary- Anya knew she’d heard. Yet, no question followed, for too many ran through her head. She knew she needed to ask Mia something, but hadn’t the slightest idea what. Just out of reach. Am I annoying? Do you think I’ll ever have a husband? Do you promise not to let me turn out like him? Do you promise not to let me turn out like the women who date him? Do you promise not to let me become what I’ll become? What I know I will become?

All that spilled forth was a shaky declaration: “I hope my dad gets married before he dies.”

Mia still didn’t respond. This time, however, was due to the sudden opening of the front door. Anya shot up before Mia could even make eye contact with her, scrambling off the bed with the flexibility she could never muster during ballet class and creeping towards the door. Her nosiness was rewarded: she overheard the adults speaking on the main level.

“-crying, but nothing you wouldn’t expect,” Marisol said.

“Yeah, I think Mia calmed her down,” Quiet. “You good, brother?”

“She tell you?”

Quiet.

“Yeah. She right?”

“Yep,” Robby grumbled. Mia watched from behind as her friend’s shoulders sank. “She’s comin’ over to get the rest of her things on Thursday. Think Dana’s letting her crash until she finds a place.”

The unmistakable clink of a Flores-Abbot wine glass being set down ended the next bout of silence. “Is Anya staying the night?” Marisol questioned with a firm undertone of accusation.

“She okay?” Anya turned over her shoulder and the girls jointly rolled their eyes. Asked purely out of obligation, of course.

“Not sure. You could ask.”

“Mari.”

“No, Jack, it’s fine. Yeah, I’ll take her home, talk to her. Probably shouldn’t leave her with you on a school night, finals coming up.”

“They’re in fifth grade.”

“Yeah, but she’s in a prep program for college prep next year.”

“I can’t believe you’re preparing her for college prep.”

“Mari, name everything Mia’s enrolled in?”

“That’s different. Mia was born with too much energy, she was sprinting at eight months. She celebrated her first birthday by breaking out of her crib and cartwheeling into our bedroom. We have to keep her busy to keep her alive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jesus, do you two ever stop bickering? Girls, get down here!” Jack boomed, adding as they trudged down the staircase, “Before your moms start fistfighting.”

“James.”

The girls arrived just in time to catch Mari glaring at her husband. Mia pitched in with a helpful: “You’re the mom, dad. They’re the dads.” And ignored Jack prying his wife’s crossed arms apart to try and pull her close to him.

Anya slowly came to stand before Robby. Their identical eyes locked on one another and just as quickly looked away- few things unnerved a Robinavitch as much as a mirror.

“C’mon, kiddo,” Robby said. Head angled down to avoid any more eye contact with anyone in the room, she stepped into her sandals, hair cascading down into her face. Her father’s hand raised to brush her curls behind her shoulder while the other popped the front door open. “Thanks for watchin’ her, guys.”

Bitterness flooded her system. Anya contained it, barely: leave it to Robby to imply she needed to be supervised, when he’s the one who went and got broken up with without his daughter there to correct him. She mumbled some sort of thank you to the Flores Abbots, unsure of the exact words she actually ended up uttering, and helped Robby accept the tupperwares of dinner shoved into their arm by Marisol. With a side hug from Mia, they were off to make the ten minute trek back to their apartment. As they walked Anya lagged a reliable step behind her father; a combination of his long legs and her unwillingness to stand beside him. He batted a moth away from his face under the rays of the cul-de-sac’s streetlights and then hooked that hand behind her shoulder, pulling her next to him.

“You getting kidnapped between the lights,” Robby chided, "Is the last thing I need on my plate right now.”

The first words he’d said to Anya all night, and it was condescension. She snapped without warning, planted her feet and cried, bewildered, “That’s what you’re gonna say?!”

“Anya-”

“You didn’t even ask how I was, Mia’s mom had to- you don’t even care. You should’ve just left me there!”

“-quit making a scene,” Robby hissed, jaw clenched. His head moved side to side, swivelling to ensure there were no onlookers beyond the bug-ridden hue emanating off the streetlights. “Would you stop-”

“They actually like m-”

“Jesus, would you stop being so,” He bit back a cuss word, “Stop being such a kid, Anya, for one second?!”

“I am a kid! I’m your kid, idiot, I’m almost nine!” She cried.

“Hey, hey! Anastasia Robinavitch if you don’t watch your mouth-”

“But it’s true! You are an idiot. Because if you weren’t, then she wouldn’t have left!”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not sure it helped having a bratty kid in the mix.” Robby’s jaw snapped shut immediately. The lamps buzzed and flickered. In such quiet, the two of them heard crickets chirping all the way on the opposite side of Pittsburgh. She regretted saying it at once, and her lips wobbled with equal parts guilt and remorse.

Resigned, Anya backed up several inches and fell onto the bench that eventually pressed against the back of her thighs. Sucking a big breath of air in to stuff down the sob threatening to rip from her chest, she toed her sandals off and on over and over again, eager to do anything that meant looking anywhere except towards her father.

From a factual standpoint, Robby was right; she was a brat. Having inherited at least trace amounts of her father’s intelligence, Anya knew that. She was as picky an eater as he was, got nervous in public and begged to go home when it got too loud and she started to feel each particle of air against her skin, refused to leave the house without triple checking their dust-collecting oven was entirely shut off even though Robby they were already running late.

She didn’t know why. She didn’t like it, either. Knew something was off, wrong, ever since she was four years old and had first cried an hour’s worth of apologies into Robby’s pyjama shirt. Nobody hated it more than Anya when she snapped at him these days if he attempted to snag a hug before they started their walk to her school. Nobody stayed up longer at night swearing to be better for the people- person, really- in their life than Anya, the first girl to ever be born with a guilty conscience.

Traitorous tears freely trailed down her splotchy cheek despite an honorable effort to contain them. Each droplet that rushed from waterline, to jaw, to lap or ground, served as a knife through Robby’s heart. The words shouldn’t have left his mouth. It wasn’t the first time he’d resorted to such petty cruelty, and it was far from the last. Robby sighed and took one slow step in front of his daughter.

“Kiddo, if this is about your mom-” Her eyes flashed red beneath the lids, furious, defensive over someone she never knew.

“It’s not about mom, it’s about you,” She sniffled. “Mom’s not here, you’re here. You’re supposed to be here!”

“Anya-”

“So what did I do?! What did I do that made Heather leave?!”

“You didn’t do anything,” Robby roared, a sharp contrast to the question she’d posed in the quiet, trembling voice of a child who’d believed his outburst; who’d believed that it had been her fault. “She just left, Anya, it’s not about you!”

“What did you do?”

In response, Robby hooked his hands at the nape of his neck. He turned away from Anya and paced one, two, three steps forward, then paused and remained with his broad back facing her. With his weary head slumped towards the cement, Anya watched his fingers flutter from where they intertwined above the curve of his shoulderblades. Stomach turning over after a mere ten seconds, she looked away, eager to fixate on anything other than her father and their mirrored deterioration.

It had been impossible not to notice the uptick in arguments the last two months. Not even arguments, entirely; let downs. Frustrations. Dad’s voice had started to rise more often around the apartment, while Anya learned to fall asleep to the hushed tones of his and Heather’s concerned and disappointed conversation. It wasn’t wholly dissimilar from the leadup to them moving out from Janey’s house. Of course, Anya at least had Jake on her side- good old Jake, who would catch the young girl lingering in his doorway and knew it was because of another heated conversation between their parents before ever having shed his gaming headset. Dad had always gotten along with Jake far more than he got along with Anya. When she thought Anya was asleep, Heather had once seethed that he hated his own daughter because he hated himself. Something about shared DNA- genetics, she said. It had stopped Anya dead in her tracks and spun her back towards her bedroom, no longer thirsty for the late night cup of water she had been seeking out. She tossed and turned with a parched throat, facing away (as always) for the inevitable moment her bedroom door opened and she would once again convince her father she was asleep.

Anya often wondered if she had been right to tell Heather on one of their first daughter-girlfriend outings that Jake proved Robby was a great Dad, provided it wasn’t his daughter he was parenting. In one of their worst arguments prior to tonight’s, Heather had let that little quote slip past her lips in the heat of the moment. The resulting sting of betrayal had been a fleeting one- Anya couldn’t, for too long, hold such an error against another one of the few women on Earth who mothered Michael Robinavitch in their day-to-day- but the damage had been done. On his darkest, most genetically Robinavitch days, he was quick to hurl it back in Anya’s face.

Robby ran his calloused hand over his face, resting at the beard he’d adopted in the last year as his regular look. Scratching at the stubble he gave another weak shrug of defeat.

“I… wasn’t good enough for her. Wasn’t doing good enough,” He corrected himself, coughing to clear his throat before taking a seat next to Anya and finishing with a soft, “Nothing out of the ordinary, huh? You’d know better than anyone.”

Thwack. A miniature smudge of mosquito blood was now on top of Anya’s knee. She watched as Robby’s hand lifted to his mouth, his tongue wetting the pad of his thumb, and then entered her line of sight to reach out and wipe it off without a thought or a word.

His hand lingered, then moved upwards until he wrapped a slender arm around her shoulders. “I like Heather,” Anya said and sunk lower in her seat.

“Yeah,” Robby sighed, “Well, she’s a great woman. You should like her. I’m sure she’ll still want to see you-”

“It’s not the same.”

Silence. The sky was officially pitch black outside the reach of the streetlamp bulbs.

“Why couldn’t you be good enough for her, dad? I really liked her. I thought you guys were gonna get married. We didn’t even finish our show.”

The flicker of a smile, laced with bittersweet nostalgia, lifted the corners of his mouth at the mention of all the nights he’d been sandwiched between his girls as they watched ‘their’ show. “You’re probably too young to be watching M*A*S*H anyways, kiddo.”

“That’s not the point,” She faced him with tears of anger, and frustration, and disappointment and loneliness and begging and love and confusion. This man was, despite her best efforts, her hero- the person she loved more than anyone on the face of the Earth. Why, when it came to Heather, or Janey, or Anya herself, couldn’t he be half the man he was in her eyes? “Why do you always let them break up with you? Why don’t you… you could’ve done something about it! You could’ve stopped fighting with her, and-”

“Would’ve happened anyway.”

“-you could’ve stopped yelling or, or, I don’t know, stop picking up shifts when you don’t have to, and you could’ve spent more time with me. Her. Us,” Anya paused after her fumble and once again looked away. “And, and, now you’re sitting here, acting like there was no point in trying! Why?!”

“I don’t know,” Robby’s voice cracked, “I don’t know. I don’t know how to be good at this.”

“That’s not a good enough reason, dad!” He flinched at her raised voice.

“Anya, my mom didn’t even love me enough to stay with me. Neither did my dad. I’m not- I’m not someone who’s meant to be loved by other people. It’s not easy for people to love me. They don’t want to stay with me, and I don’t want them to-“

“I love you! I want to be with you! Probably lots more people do. Janey did. Heather did! That’s why she wanted you to stop being… being… how you’ve been.”

“And how have I ‘been’?”

“First off, you’re always yelling. You get so sad, you either shout at us or you don’t talk at all. And if you’re not saying sad stuff, then you’re angry! Plus,” She sniffled, the fight slowly dissipating within her, “you never hang out with me anymore. You don’t like being around me, so I don’t even get to try and help. That’s how all of us feel.”

“All of us?!”

“Uncle Jack, Aunt Mari, the people you date, literally everyone at the hospital,” Anya gulped before adding, “Grandma told me you’ve always been like that, too-“

What escaped him and cut off her sentence was a bitter, seething laugh. Realizing the hatred in his voice, mistakenly aimed towards his daughter, he took a shallow breath and attempted to reel himself back in. “My grandma’s dementia was already bad when you were born. She didn’t know what she was saying.”

(She definitely did.)

Slinking even further until her chin dug into the air above her collarbones, she bit back her own vitriolic words in a show of maturity that Robby hated she’d learned so early. Traitorously, and very unhelpfully, her mind now replayed the best of Heather’s time with the Robinavitches: one such memory involved “Grandma”.

Grandma wasn’t really Anya’s grandmother, but her great-grandmother who, along with her husband that had passed before Anya’s birth, raised Robby since childhood. Her age nearly crossed over into the triple digits and she was riddled with rapidly worsening dementia in the two years before she passed, right before her great-granddaughter's sixth birthday. Before it progressed to the point that Sofya Robinavitch was put into a nursing home and had no idea who or where she was, she lived with them in the very apartment dad had been raised in. Anya remembered being surprised at her foreboding nature; even as she shrunk and withered with age, with thinning white hair and wrinkles to match, she had fleeting memories of the woman croaking out for Robby to sit up straight and visit more than just once a day. She spoke in a mixture of English and Russian (Anya didn’t realize the languages were different until she heard her dad describe her to a teacher as “loosely, barely bilingual”) and often wore a cloth around her head.

Two years after grandma died, Heather was standing over Anya holding a tattered note. It was from the basket full of handwritten recipes she’d procured while they cleared out her room and Anya, just as much as Heather, craned her neck and squinted as if it would make her understand the paper’s contents any more.

“C’mon, you’re seven! You read, right?”

“I read lots, but my Russian sucks now,” Anya explained when she was egged on to translate, “And that’s cursive!” She flipped through a handful of other recipes and concluded, “Actually, I think they’re all cursive.”

With a groan, Heather fell back to lean her hip against the table. She’d explained to Anya several times now that she wanted to make him one of his grandma’s dishes, especially with his birthday approaching. “Okay,” She reasoned, slowly, “Okay. Can you think of anything? Maybe we can just search up a recipe. Has he ever mentioned a specific dish?”

She glanced up from her math homework. “Can I have a pop?” Anya asked, quirking a brow. Heather barely contained her eye roll.

“Yes, Anya, I will get you a soda. But I want the name of a dish. And you can’t tell your dad I gave you one!”

“Obviously, geez,” She scribbled out her last fraction and sat her pencil down, raking her memory while Heather dug into the fridge and retrieved a Sprite. “They ate a lot of poor people food, so dad likes that.”

“Poor people food?”

“Well, Soviet stuff. Cold boiled potatoes with no seasoning. Kolbasa on rye bread- have you ever had real rye bread? Dad likes it, but you probably won’t. Solyanka, lots of fish actually-” Heather snapped.

“That one! That sounded… authentic.”

“Solyanka’s good. The grocery store probably has some, or else you have to pickle a bunch of stuff.”

“Does your dad like it?”

Anya sipped the Sprite, closing her eyes to savor it. After this brief interlude she replied, “I think so.”

“You know,” Heather sat next to her, sighing, “My grandma liked hamburger patties without anything but ketchup on them because they ate it during the depression. I tried it as a kid because I saw her doing it and sometimes, I still eat it like that. What about,” She showed Anya a recipe on her phone, “This?”

“Herring under a fur coat? No, never heard of it.”

Deep in thought, Heather zoned out and stared at the fraction worksheet. Finally, she grabbed Anya’s pencil and a piece of scrap paper.

“Cold, unseasoned potatoes… What else?”

Three days passed. Dad was due home any minute and in the meantime, Heather and Anya stood over a vast array of platters and bowls giggling and cleaning a mess of sour cream off the floor tiling.

“I- how did you- you dropped an entire tub of sour cream!” “I was distracted! The potatoes were boiling over!” “How?!”

The women howled with laughter as they lobbed sour cream covered paper towels into the garbage can. They were still crouched on the floor when the front door swung open to reveal a bone-tired soon-to-be-birthday boy, backpack slung over his shoulder and a long empty coffee tumbler in hand.

Taking in the sight before him- his girlfriend and daughter giggling over a shared mess, a table full of surprisingly beige looking food and pickled vegetables, a sink full of pots and pans- Robby inhaled a long, deep breath, feeling (for the first time that day) a notable amount of relief. He slipped his shoes off, kicked them onto the front carpet, and approached.

“Do I want to know what’s going on?” Heather laughed harder and heaved herself up to greet him with a kiss on the lips.

“Go,” She said, ushering him out of the foyer and down the hallway in an attempt to hide the feast they’d assembled. “Take a shower. Dinner’s almost ready.”

The food was plated for dinner when Robby emerged twenty minutes later, the dishes even halfheartedly scrubbed down and left to soak. He finally gazed over the assembled dishes and allowed a smile to wrinkle his weary features.

“This my birthday dinner?”

“Yeah, I tried to find find fancy dishes, but Anya said-”

“It’s perfect,” He said, “All my favorite comfort meals, and lots of sour cream. You know,” He directed this towards Anya, instinctually teaching her about his grandparents. Heather’s heart warmed at the sight. “Before I lived with my grandparents, when she would check up on me, my grandmother always brought food. With that food, I’d always get an unlabelled mason jar or empty tub full of sour cream. ‘Cuz my parents,” He lobbed beef liver and onions onto his plate, automatically putting a smaller portion onto a plate for Anya, “Would forget to go grocery shopping for me.”

Before the offhanded memory could register enough to do any mood-killing he handed Anya her dinner, a habitual gesture. “Thank you both.”

“You really like this? You’re sure? Because we can always order some pizza instead of,” Heather gazed over the food she’d helped prepare, “Cow intestine soup.”

“Meat was hard to get back then. Which is why I’m really, really curious about this,” Robby dangled a single sad, plain looking hamburger patty from his fork.

“That’s courtesy of my grandparents,” Heather said. He took half the patty, slathered cooked onions onto it, and retired to the couch. There, as Robby ate and shared with them the foods that flavored the memories of his grandparents, they watched two episodes of an Anya-friendly (mostly) show. After a small cake was presented, blown out, and quickly devoured by the trio, her and Heather teamed up once again to clean the kitchen up. They caved into his demands to help and one hour later than her normal bedtime Robby opened the door to her room, turning her light on for one moment to bid her goodnight, and thank you. Heather echoed the thanks from the bedroom she’d begun to frequently overnight in.

Anya considered, not for the first time, that the issue between her dad and Heather was the same as the issue he had with Anya herself, or any other woman- hell, even with Grandma, though she’d been quick to get him in line once he mellowed out in his teenage years. His mother had been his first heartbreak; after losing her, he never came to fully understand how to love a woman without reserve, or why anybody would be stupid enough to. The pain of his mother and father’s departure was a tough shot to swallow on its own, but to then be followed with a ‘you will now be raised by your elderly grandparents who you will watch die and then inherit the house you grew up in with all of their ghosts and all of your memories and the knowledge that they broke their backs far longer than they were supposed to so you could be provided for’ chaser?

Robby didn’t understand love because love had never come without unspeakable amounts of pain for him, but realizing that never erased Anya’s heartache the way she thought it would.

With the keen sense that she was not the only occupant of the bench that had been reminiscing on memories of his grandmother, Anya turned to look at her father again. He glowed against the light some distance behind him. She loved his browbone, his hair, and his nose. She adored his eyes, especially loved that hers got compared to his because they were so expressive and haunting and beautiful, even (especially) when he laughed or was trying not to laugh or, like now, was on the verge of tears. That had been happening more and more the older she got, or he just stopped hiding it as much. Anya wished she could swap brains with him to see what it was like being the smartest person alive; maybe while she had it, she could fix up all the bits of it that made Robby unable to see how lovely he was to her.

“Do you wish you thought differently?” Anya asked. He seemed to have momentarily forgotten she was there, jumping slightly as he was pulled from the throes of his memory.

“Wha, why- what do you mean?” He stammered.

“Do you wish our brains were different?”

“Ours? Anya- no, I don’t want your brain to be different.”

“But we have the same brain.”

“No,” He chuckled, “Trust me, we do not. You are,”

Anya tensed, waiting for whatever adjectives were to follow. Bratty, insensitive, over dramatic, weird, annoying, particular- all true, she believed.

“You are so brilliant, Anya, and you’re so much better than me. I don’t know how because I’ve… I’ve never known how to do this, and I wish I did,” He gestured between the both of them. Fatherhood. She got his point just fine- same brains and all.

Anya picked at a hangnail for a full minute, until Robby reached over and separated her fingers. It was then she finally spoke.

“I think we were made more sad than we’re supposed to be.”

Again, Robby huffed out a laugh. A tear spilled over. He angles his face away before anything could be said about it by his unusually talkative daughter. “You’re ‘made sad’ too?” Anya nodded, brief confusion flickering across her features. It was far too obvious a question to her, a fact which settled itself like lead in his chest. Robby chewed on his lip and gave one slow nod. “Well, maybe that makes us the perfect family.”

The two of them sat for several minutes longer in a silence broken only by the occasional sniffle. When Robby finally stood and extended a hand to pull her towards him, finally making the adult decision not to have his daughter out on a dark street past midnight, Anya just stared back without moving. Finally, she repeated, “You never hang out with me anymore.”

The tears hadn’t left his eyes. This certainly did not help. He chewed on his chapped, split lip again, and gladly pulled her onto the sidewalk with a ‘c’mon’ when her hand finally rested in his. Robby didn’t drop her hand until they were in front of the bathroom and he was ushering her in to brush her teeth. Heather’s shoes were missing from the front foyer as they entered.

Anya had laid in her dark bedroom for fifteen minutes, yet was no closer to sleep than when she had tucked herself in. The hallway light flickered on, socked footsteps approached her door, and it hardly opened all the way before a tall shadow of a man was dancing towards the edge of her mattress to sit beside her.

“You were made very good, Anya, and I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything. If you didn’t know that- if you never knew that you are the most beautiful thing in this world,” He cut himself off. Stroked her hair. Took exactly two crackling breaths and groaned as he laid down beside her. “I would never forgive myself,” He finished, wrapped a lanky arm around him. Dad smelled like their toothpaste and laundry detergent and his beard tickled her shoulder and she wished to bottle this moment up and never forget it as long as she lived.

“You promise I’m very good?” She questioned. It sounded childish even for a 9 year old. Without hesitation he gave a hum of confirmation. Anya snuggled into her father, wrapping her arms around him the best she could. “Then we are made the same.”

Robby let out only one sob. He buried his face where his daughter’s shoulder and neck made way to cotton bedding and squeezed her too tight. She smelled like toothpaste and detergent and flowers, and stroked his hair, and, when she thought he couldn’t hear, whispered that she loved him right before falling asleep.