The following is an excerpt from the opening chapter of 'Masha', Hayden's 2021 Novella.
“Quick! Quick! Rene! It’s gonna’ happen again! It’s gonna’ happen again!” Amy exclaimed in an excited whisper intended to catch the attention of her boyfriend, while not waking their newborn baby or alerting the neighbors to her intrusion on their privacy. Rene was the father of their one-month-old daughter Audrey, next to whose crib he had been standing. Amy’s whispered call rang out just as he was watching, with great relief, Audrey drift off to sleep after a long struggle to get her to return to her prior state of rest. Hearing Amy’s faint but passionate invitation, he turned quickly from the beautiful sleeping baby in their bedroom.
Shutting the door gently, he began to hustle out and across the apartment to meet his elegant girlfriend. Amy stood on their light grey couch facing the beige wall that marked the end of their unit as she awaited Rene’s arrival. Standing in her loose pajamas, the ones Rene found so adorable, she had uncovered her little left ear from the shiny, raven hair that normally fell over her beautifully structured face. Tucking it behind her ear, and leaning her head just inches away from the air vent they’d painted to blend in with the wall, she listened attentively. The vent was built into the plaster wall about 2 inches below the ceiling, providing an opening between their apartment, 5B, and the neighboring unit, 5A. Their neighbors, Jack and Maria, occupied the slightly more spacious corner apartment, and the young couple’s relationship had become a point of extreme interest to Amy in particular.
Hearing Rene’s light closing of their bedroom door, Amy excitedly turned her line of sight to welcome him, causing her long hair to fall loose as she craned her neck and upper body. Rene entered the room, tiptoeing across the faded blue carpet and dodging an unopened mega size box of diapers sent by his non in-laws (“they say mega size, but you’ll run out in two weeks!” Amy’s mom had presciently advised with a knowing laugh). He then stepped over a small stack of dog-eared parenting books, and caught the scent of baby powder that masked the oral aroma with which Amy’s candles once filled the room. Finally, after evading Amy’s half empty bowl of cereal, Rene arrived accomplishing the dual tasks of not waking Audrey and not alerting the neighbors to his and Amy’s “intrusion” into their, if past were precedent, soon to turn explosive nightly conversation.
Like clockwork, it seemed, their neighbors would break into a verbal argument right around nine thirty each night, and this night offered no reason not to be trusted to provide them with their anticipated dose of voyeuristic entertainment. “Come up, come up.” Amy whispered lightly, glowing from her new role as a mother and smiling from ear to ear with excitement as she stepped gently to her left over to the center of the large left couch cushion, one of the three that made up their aging, but comfortable, couch’s seating area. Amy extended her right hand backwards and toward Rene, ostensibly to help him onto the couch — but really for the purpose of feeling closer to this man with whom she had recently created new life. He accepted, taking hold as he climbed up and assumed the position directly to her right on the middle cushion. Lovingly squeezing her tiny, smooth, feminine right hand, Rene proceeded to attempt to also take hold of her left.
As he held Amy’s hands, he felt the fingers of her right hand, which were lined with rings two or three to some fingers. Though many were received as gifts from him, none of those rings made up for the one she truly wanted. Rene never drew any connection, but Amy quite intentionally refused to line a single finger on her left hand with a ring, so as not to remind herself of the one that was missing. She slipped her left hand out of his and leaned it on the wall to offer the appearance of using it for balance, though she was protecting herself from being reminded of the ring she so desired but still lacked. Things had been great since Audrey’s birth, God forbid that peace only last a month.
Amy’s ringless finger had caused her such frequent heartache, but in the early moments when their listening session began, heartache felt like such a distant, alien emotion. It seemed as though all the pain in the world lay within the relationship that was deteriorating just past the thick wall separating their dwelling from Jack and Maria’s. Amy and Rene leaned toward the vent that had, as of late, faithfully carried the sounds of their neighbors’ deeply personal and fascinating conversations. Amy tilted to rest her left shoulder against the wall as she removed her hand, which she then used to recapture her hair behind her ear, the scent of her fruity shampoo filling her nose as the hair swept across her face. She leaned until her left ear was nearly touching the vent, and Rene did the same with his right until their foreheads touched lightly. Their two outside hands remained clasped down below as they prepared for the inevitable reworks to begin.
With perfect peace now obtained in their living room, the couple began to hear together what Amy had begun to hear just a minute prior with a shout from a person she believed to be Jack, but who had only been a neighbor making his way down the hall. As they tuned in, the vent started carrying the sounds of Jack sighing. He was inhaling in an unnaturally slow fashion followed by a long, exhaustive and audible exhale, which gave the impression that he was somehow fighting his body’s biological urge to breath. It was as if the concerns on his mind were causing such pain that they had led him to wish for an escape, even the type that a sudden death of his own doing, would provide. He knew, however that there was no escape to be made.
Jack’s pain was largely of his own making. In recent months he had convinced himself that in order to achieve his goals he would first be required to create dramatic change in his life. He had grown certain that the initial step down that path involved ending things with Maria. The failing of their relationship had been a tremendous burden on his mental state, which was in turn impacting his work. Even his ability to plan for the future had felt blunted. Without a supportive significant other, he knew success was likely impossible, and even if it was attainable, it would be impossible to enjoy upon its achievement without feeling bitter towards the unsupportive party.
Jack, like countless men incapable of putting in the requisite work and focus needed to achieve fanciful dreams, had pointed his finger towards a loved one as the cause for his repeated failures. In his partially deluded state, Jack had convinced himself of the range of green pastures that awaited him in life once he gathered the courage to loose himself from the weight of his relationship. He had visions of endless possibilities, as though he were an explorer taking in the unmolested plains of the west for the first time with non-native eyes. Wit
h his mind made up and strength gathered, the night of his escape had arrived, and it would begin by breaking up with Maria, painful as that was certain to be.
Maria, Jack’s longtime girlfriend, was a beautiful and brilliant Ukrainian immigrant who was known affectionately as Masha to Jack and her family, but to Jack’s family, her coworkers and the outside world, simply as Maria. Masha had a warm, almost innocent appearance aided by her nicely rounded cheeks, which had slimmed down from the chubbiness they exhibited in her youth. She lacked the high, prominent cheekbones common among many Eastern Europeans, but still possessed a unique face, one that gave its viewers a hint of her distant origin, even before her accent could confirm their suspicions. She had the height of a model, and certainly the legs, but for better or worse she lacked the cheekbones, dark hair, tan complexion, and desire for fame required to become a star in the modern modeling world. Masha had the ambition and brains to be someone special, and her law degree and legal accreditation proved that she was able to put them to use with efficiency. Yet, still, nearly everyone who met her – though not those in the know – asked what type of modeling she did. While she had tried a couple of shoots, the endeavor felt pointless and offered none of the complexity that her curious mind required in order to feel properly utilized.
Masha never grew insulted by those who attempted to relegate her to a career based solely on looks rather than brains. She was beautiful, and she knew she was. There was nothing in the frequent questions about her nonexistent modeling career to which she could take offense. Unfazed, Masha kept her focus on her legal career, and took the frequent modeling inquiries for what they were, high compliments not worthy of generating anything more than a simple, “Thanks, but no thanks.” A stranger’s desire to persuade her to walk any path other than the one she intended on traveling was never going to prove fruitful or more than momentarily distracting. While the opinions and affection of outsiders mattered little to her, Jack’s thoughts, words, and emotions held tremendous weight. In recent months this weight was suffocating her ability to experience joy. She blamed him, almost completely, for the complex predicament that they then found themselves in, and knew, just as well as Jack did, that the struggle must meet its inevitable climax.
While Jack sat breathing deeply, engaged in painful contemplation, Masha’s own thoughts barely varied from his own. At this point in their relationship Masha hated Jack and the loud way that he was breathing. Though she noticed nothing peculiar in the patterns, she felt frustrated when he exhaled, and equivalent was her disgust at hearing him inhale. She was not a hateful person, so why did she hold in disdain this man who she once, perhaps still, loved? She wondered this and more, pondering how the fiery passion wrought from their initial falling in love had cooled, even frozen, in a rapid succession of events that she was still trying to piece together. “Well,” she thought, “Perhaps it wasn’t so rapid, but the downfall had begun so suddenly, that awful, awful day.” She occasionally found the ability to forget or block out that day, but would always return to and relive it as a reminder of the offcial beginning of their present situation.
“And what was it that even began the downslide?” She continued to query herself in Russian, one of her two native tongues, and one of the four in which she maintainedfluency. She always spoke to Jack in English, her accent heavy, though her vocabulary was nearly as robust as it was in Russian, Ukrainian and Italian. “Ah, that woman. Whoever she was!” Masha slid her light, but not platinum blonde hair behind her pale, but not ghostly pale, ears and tied it into a ponytail. She always liked to have her hair out of the way when she thought, and especially when she fought with Jack. “A woman must always have the appearance of control even when she is without it.” Her mother, a loving, but serious Ukrainian doctor, used to intone back when the occasional unfairness of her youth in Eastern Europe would periodically poison her feelings toward the world.
Having her hair in order made her look calm, and when she noticed it, it made her feel calm as well. But that night, and in fact throughout that past half year, she had been anything but calm when she was around Jack. “But why do I let him get to me this way? Why do I not leave him? I am an attorney! I have the means!” She reminded herself, temporarilyfinding inspiration in her own internal monologue. “But ah, I look at him and still, through the hate, I do love him. I cannot help but to love him. And I know he loves me, though I know he is no longer in love. And God would not want me to hate, but does God not know what hurt this man has caused me? Surely he must hate him too! Oh, God please forgive me.”
On that regretful note, her internal soliloquy ended. She then lifted her eyes from a dog-eared Russian language copy of some classic book that Jack would not recognize, and glanced over at him. Jack was sitting just two feet away with his upper back and head leaning against the wall. She noticed in that moment that he seemed extremely distant despite his close proximity. Jack sat on top of the covers of their queen size bed that had once served as a place of refuge, comfort, and love. As she stared, Jack sensed Masha’s gaze, in the way one can always feel their significant other observing them. Jack twisted his neck and turned to face her, his light blue eyes meeting her own dark blues. For a moment, that moment, they both felt a spark. The same spark that they had once experienced so strongly rekindled.
Jack continued to take in her pretty, lightly rounded face, and then as his mind finished processing what his eyes were taking in, he was reminded not of their love, but of their present situation. The spark was asphyxiated promptly with that realization, disappearing as quickly as it had returned. He knew theirs was a situation he had helped to create. His racing heart, which had kicked into high gear while back in love with her for a moment, continued to pound. However, it was continuing to race from adrenaline, not romantic passion. He knew a fight was about to begin, indeed had likely already begun based on the look that Masha was directing towards him. Her deep blue eyes, once shining, appeared as cold as the sentiment a painter could use their color to represent. Jack leaned forward, taking his upper back and head offof the wall that their bed was pushed up against. His scalp had grown sore from the hard wall that separated the two of them from their air vent intruders. As he sat up straight, Jack looked at Masha, and to her, his change in posture implied that he was about to get up, get out of bed, and get away from another painful conversation. He looked at her, as if he was about to speak, but the only words in the room were in his head. “What am I supposed to do here? I know I’ve added to this, but I’m not the only one!”
He iterated and reiterated through these and similar thoughts, looking away from Masha and staring at the opposite wall, its cold, light blue paint matching his eyes, which seemed so sad and hollow. “I know we-I need to end this,” he told himself, continuing his internal monologue, “but I swore to her, I would always fight to work things out. She was so in need of absolute support! How can I leave her? I promised her I’d always fight for us.” Jack’s thoughts continued on in this fashion as Masha carried out a parallel debate in her mind. The parallel, but completely separate nature of their debates showed why they were in such a predicament. If they were thinking in either diverging or converging directions, things would be simple. They would either separate smoothly or reconcile joyously, but neither was willing to budge an inch, and so they had carried on.
“How could I actually end things?” Jack asked himself. He knew Masha had been so in need of support, of something steady — something she had never really known in America — and he reminded himself once more that he had promised unconditional support. He had also promised his love and she had returned his offer with her own affection and loyalty. Sure, she had not been perfect, she had promised to stop doing many things he disliked, and failed at times, but she tried, or at least she used to. He knew Masha’s self-distancing and frequent neglect of his feelings were killing their relationship. Yet, he also knew that his reaction to her failure to be more thoughtful, despite her promises to the contrary, had contributed just as much to the relationship’s demise.
He wondered whether or not he too had contributed to the issues beginning in the first place. She would read her Russian books and become inaccessible during some nights back when they first met. He never liked it, but he hadn’t noticed its full impact or even asked her to stop until they lived together for years. And who was he to tell her to stop? Who was he to make someone change? Jack asked himself that question often, but always reminded himself that she had proven incapable of change, or at least unwilling to follow through on her promises to be there for him, for them. And still, he had irrationally held out hope that somehow, perhaps by an external force, the entropy would cease.
In Masha’s absence, or rather in her incomplete presence, Jack violated his own promises of unceasing loyalty, and had strayed. No, he hadn’t cheated, at least not physically, he had never said more than good morning to the other woman in his life, but in his mind he had violated his promise of loyalty, and Masha noticed the change in his demeanor almost instantly.
Though unable to pinpoint what had happened to cause the change in Jack, Masha recalled exactly the moment when her realization crystallized. They had been out grocery shopping on a Sunday a few months prior, and though for years she had known and felt herself to be the complete object of Jack’s attention, on that day something had shifted in her world. They walked the aisles casually, she picking out produce – he couldn’t be trusted to do so successfully, Masha had reminded herself with an internalized giggle – and him pushing the cart at a pace determined by her instinct to thoroughly inspect each potential item considered for purchase. Normally, Jack would watch her unceasingly as she walked elegantly in front of him, her ballerina-length legs gliding and dancing along the dull tiles that lined the floor, adding life to the otherwise bland place. He would offer his loving gaze whenever Masha turned around to place an approved selection into the cart that Jack pushed. With each gentle turn it was as though she were seeking both his approval and affection, and he had been trusted to grant each in kind.
On that day, however, she grabbed a head of cauliflower and turned, anticipating his loving look, but when her face rose to meet his with wonderful expectations, Jack’s eyes, typically sparkling, and mind, typically focused, were somewhere else altogether. “Where is he?” She asked herself immediately as her heart began to race. She could not know where, but she knew his mind and heart were not present. Masha knew in that moment that something had changed, that her world had shifted. It was an instant realization, not one formed in hindsight and marked as the one that changed things hours, days, or years later. No, this change was as sudden as a car accident and it was felt in full the moment her mind acknowledged that something was off. It was clear that the firm foundation on which she believed their current life was built had exposed itself for sand, and sand no less that was sliding away underneath her feet. The slide was slower than the time it took her to figure out that she was losing Jack, but it continued relentlessly. The combination of her worries about Jack, their love, and herself grew in unison with the deterioration of his previously uninterrupted focus on her.
The truth, unbeknownst to, but felt by Masha, was that Jack had met someone else...
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