Chapter 61: Not What I Thought It Was

March 26, 1983, West Monroe, Ohio

Vespers with Tasha next to me was positively weird. I had no idea what she was thinking or what she intended. But the MESSAGE she was sending was loud and clear to anyone who saw us and was very specific for three people — Janey, declaring I was STILL Tasha's property; Deacon Vasily, declaring she was still going to see me; and Mr. Orlov, stating that she didn't care about his opinion.

I could tell the message to Janey was clearly received when she looked daggers at me after venerating the cross at the end of the service. My conversation with her after Liturgy on Sunday was not going to go well, given she'd accused me of still wanting Tasha. The thing was, I hadn't invited Tasha to stand with me and trying to move would have only drawn attention, which I didn't need.

When I left the nave, I quickly scanned the narthex and didn't see Janey, which meant she had immediately walked out the door. I was tempted to do the same, but I was positive Tasha would follow me. I moved to the far end of the narthex and waited for Tasha to walk over to me.

"Good evening, Reader Michael," Tasha said when she walked over to me.

"Good evening, Natalya Vasilyevna."

"Will you speak with me?"

"You're the one who sent me away and told me not to call you," I said, doing my best to keep my voice neutral.

"I was very upset with what you told me."

"I understand that. But not speaking is not the way to build a good relationship."

I was sure of that because if there was one thing 'wrong' with my parents' marriage, it was that my dad often simply disappeared and didn't talk about whatever the problem was. I'd had to seek him out most of the time, something my mom hadn't often done, at least as far as I could discern. That was, in my opinion, the wrong way to handle things, and I was determined not to do it. I'd run away often enough in the past, but no more.

"I know. Will you accept my apology?"

"Yes."

"Thank you. I understand Vladyka ARKADY still intends to ordain you on Holy Saturday. May I attend?"

"Of course. Anyone is welcome to attend."

"No, Mikhail, I'm asking you if I may attend."

Tasha using only my first name in this way, was being just as formal as if she called me 'Reader Michael'. In Tasha's mind, that signified that she no longer felt close or even that we had a relationship, so she had to be formal. The nuances were small, but by leaving off my middle name, she was indicating she was an 'acquaintance', not a friend.

In the past, she'd almost exclusively called me 'Mishka', which matched my little sister's use of 'Mikey', and was a term of endearment. Well, at least when it was NOT from Liz, though it hadn't always been so. Mom and Dad usually called me Mike, though occasionally Mom would use 'Mischa', which was the Russian equivalent. Vladyka ARKADY had used that to express brotherly affection without the deep familiarity of 'Mishka'.

The fact that she felt it necessary to ask me for permission to attend a public ceremony was slightly confusing, but I wasn't exactly clued into the nuances of female thinking, especially when it came to teenage girls. As Fran had warned me, doing the right thing could often only be accomplished by accident, and I was beginning to believe her. The burning question in my mind was what Tasha's speech patterns and word usage were trying to tell me. And, of course, I had no clue.

"I'm not angry with you, Natalya," I replied. "But I am disappointed."

"Because I did not show Christian love," she answered.

"That's between you and Father Herman," I said. "I am disappointed you sent me away without any discussion and instructed me not to call you."

"I'm very sorry, Mikhail Petrovich," she said quietly, her words implying a desire to return to some kind of closeness. "Will you be at church tomorrow morning?"

"Yes. And Wednesday and Friday, in addition to next Saturday and Sunday."

"I will see you in the morning, then," she said, then turned and walked to stand by her mother and sister.

I stood and watched as Deacon Vasily came out of the nave and walked over to his family, and then the four of them immediately left. I wasn't sure what I'd expected to happen when Tasha came to stand next to me, but it certainly wasn't what had just transpired. All I could really do was wait and see what happened in the morning. I left the church and walked out to my car, where I removed my cassock and put it in the bag in the trunk.

"I knew it!" Janey growled angrily as I started to get into the car.

"I didn't DO anything except stand in my usual spot," I said defensively.

"You let her stand by you!"

"What was I supposed to do?" I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral. "Create a scene in church?"

"You could have moved," she said flatly.

"Again, to what end? Creating some kind of disruption of Vespers? I simply stood and prayed and paid no attention to what Tasha was doing! Which is exactly what I SHOULD have done."

"You talked to her afterwards!"

"For about a minute, yes. She apologized. That's all. And then she left. And I'm going home. I didn't DO anything, Janey!"

"God, you are SO dense! She stood next to you! She was claiming you again!"

"I'm not hers to claim," I said. "In fact, I WAS yours to claim, but you decided that if I wanted to put the relationship first and sex second, you didn't want me. So I took you home."

"You said you were going to stop having sex with me! How was I supposed to react?"

"I said no such thing," I replied, trying not to sound harsh. "I simply said we should just spend the day together and discuss our relationship. You took that, apparently, as a statement we'd never have sex. And yes, it was possible this coming week wouldn't work in our favor in that regard, but your reaction told me your main interest was sex, not the relationship! If you can't be happy just spending time with me, then I don't think we have a future."

"I do NOT get you," Janey said, shaking her head.

"No, actually, you don't," I agreed and got into the car.

I pulled the door shut, started the engine, put the car in gear, and pulled away. I saw Janey watching me until I turned out of the parking lot onto the road back towards West Monroe, and she was out of sight.

As I drove, I asked myself if I was running away from Janey and couldn't decide if I was or not. I had spoken to her, and we had reached a conclusion of sorts. It had seemed to me that there really wasn't much more to say except to continue what amounted to an argument which didn't appear to have a middle ground. Either the relationship was paramount, or sex was paramount. And, frankly, I was surprised by that.

I wondered, though, if I should be surprised. Janey had said, at one point, that we had four years to figure things out, and while that was true in a sense, it wasn't true the way she seemed to have meant it. For her, it seemed to be that we'd have fun and then figure things out later, whereas, for me, it was a combination of both. And as I thought about it, Tasha took the other possible course — decide things now and have fun later.

As I thought about it, the most successful relationships I'd had with girls were the ones where sex wasn't part of the equation — Jocelyn, Clarissa, Tasha, and even April. Things had gone south with Jocelyn, but all of that was related to the accident and its aftermath. Without that accident, she'd have been at Taft, and things would have been very different. And while my relationship with April had disintegrated, it wasn't because of sex. Tasha and I hadn't HAD sex, and Clarissa and I might never have sex.

Relationships which had things 'backwards', at least from my point of view — Melody and Janey — had fallen apart because we hadn't agreed on the correct order of precedence. With Melody, good sex was a prerequisite to a relationship, and with Janey, it was similar, in that she just wanted good sex until some future point when we'd decide whether or not we'd be together. My issue in Janey's case was that she wanted to put off the decision and not consider any stages between having sex and making a life-long commitment.

Then there were the relationships which were, for better or worse, simply about sex — Emmy, though that was over because of her dad; Sandy, though that, too, was over, because she was dating someone; Kristin; and Mindy, who I knew wanted to see me during the week. Ultimately, those had all worked out surprisingly well, with mutual pleasure and minimal drama.

That left four relationships that didn't fit the main patterns — Katy and Nancy, where, in each case, we'd worked on our relationship and sex had progressed as the relationship progressed; Sophia, with whom I had an odd, intimate relationship; and Becky, who defied easy classification. Had she lived closer, I suspected things would have been more like they were with Katy, but I wasn't sure.

The seemingly common thread was that sex was simple when there was no relationship and ridiculously complicated when there was, except with Becky, for some odd reason. The challenge there was that it was three years before we could even think about working on a relationship in any real way, as she was at Central Michigan in Mount Pleasant, and I was at Taft in McKinley.

As I backed into the driveway at my parents' house, I wondered what the way forward might be. I could simply accept Tasha's version of reality, but the problem with THAT reality is that it did not appear to include my lesbian best friend or my gay friends. With Janey, I could only go back with her if she was willing to at least put the relationship on par with sex; that was a compromise I could make.

"That was interesting," Mom said with a wry smile when I walked into the house.

"And 'hello' to you, too," I said shaking my head.

"I saw her come talk to you after Vespers. Come have some tea and we can talk."

I nodded and followed her into the kitchen, where she put the kettle on the stove and turned on the gas burner, then joined me at the table.

"She was VERY formal. I honestly can't remember a time in the past when she simply called me 'Mikhail'. She apologized and then asked permission to come to my ordination. Then she said she had to go, and left with her parents. Well, she also asked if I'd be at church tomorrow. It was almost as if things reset back to before Mrs. Orlova fixed us up."

Mom nodded, "That makes sense, if you think about it, doesn't it? She broke the relationship, and as such, you're Reader Michael, a boy she knows from church. You aren't Mishka, and she's not Tashenka."

"I never called her that because I was afraid it would send the wrong message."

"I believe there was only one message Miss Natalya Vasilyevna Antonova could receive from you."

"Which was the problem, I suppose. Of course, speaking of problems, Janey was angry about Tasha standing next to me and confronted me in the parking lot. I'm not sure what she expected because moving away from Tasha might have caused a scene."

"True."

"So riddle me this, Mom — if Tasha was so formal, and feels things reset, why come stand next to me as if we were a couple?"

Mom laughed hard, "Even my son isn't THAT dense. That wasn't a message to YOU, Mike!"

I chuckled, "A warning shot across the bows of Janey, Larisa, Valerie, and Anastasia, stating clearly that Tasha still has an interest to protect, even if there are problems!"

"Exactly. If she didn't do that, the other girls would get the idea you were 'in play'."

"Hmm," I said with an evil grin, "that sounds like it could be a lot of fun!"

"My son, the pig," Mom said, shaking her head. "But that is exactly the kind of thing Tasha wants to head off while she sees if she can fix things with you. What happened with Janey?"

"We exchanged words, though it wasn't heated, and when she said she didn't understand me, I agreed with her and then got into my car and came home. It's weird because it blew up because I wanted to talk about our relationship and work on it. I always heard it was guys who broke up with girls over that kind of thing."

"You don't have the usual male fear of relationship conversations, and I suspect you're learning some new lessons. Lessons you could only learn from experience."

"Sadly, yes."

"Don't be TOO sad about the lessons, Mike. Relationships are difficult, and long-term successful relationships are the most difficult of all. You are, in effect, practicing for the future. You learn how you respond to difficulties which arise and how the young women respond, and discover things about yourself in the process. And that's what will make you a good husband, eventually. You'll know you've found the right young woman when you solve problems together, and your relationship grows stronger because of that."

"You just told me that Janey isn't the right person," I replied.

"Not at all; well, unless you are giving up on her without giving her a chance to figure out how to move forward with you. I'm reasonably sure there is some potential compromise."

I nodded, "If she'd put working on our relationship at least on par with physical intimacy, we could probably move forward. She seems to think there's some binary decision we'll make in the future, rather than it being something we need to work towards. But she's angry, too."

"That usually passes with teenage girls."

"Jocelyn?"

"I'm not sure that's as much anger as it is despair, but I obviously don't know for sure."

The kettle whistled, and Mom got up and put tea leaves into the teapot, then poured the hot water over them. She turned off the gas, then brought the pot and two cups to the table and sat down again.

"Any advice about Tasha?" I asked.

"It all depends on your goal. It's simple if you want to marry her."

"Thank you for once again stating the blindingly obvious! That's ALWAYS been the case! But I'm not ready for that commitment. I can't make that decision now with Tasha any more than I can commit to Janey to wait four years to make that decision."

"Then you have a difficult path to navigate."

"Gee, thanks for your insightful advice," I deadpanned.

"I think you're on your own on this one, Mike. I honestly don't know what you might do given how Tasha and her family view what you refer to as dating, but it is really courtship."

"I know. All I can do is see what she says and does. She certainly didn't behave in a way that indicates we're courting."

"Think it through, Mike."

"She's sending me a message that I should ask her out again."

"Well, at least you're not a complete «глупец» (glupys)!" Mom laughed. ("blockhead")

"Gee, thanks."

The tea had steeped long enough, so Mom poured us each a cup.

"Have you thought more about the Summer?"

"At this point, I think it might be better to be in McKinley if I can find a job. I plan to go see Mr. Sokolov on Monday and ask him. If that doesn't work, I'll ask Father Nicholas for suggestions."

"What will you tell Mr. Orlov."

"If he asks? The truth — that after his call to me, I prefer not to work for him. Remember, he forbade me from setting foot in his store and said the same thing about Janey, though that part of it appears to be resolved. He hasn't approached me. If and when he does, I'll tell him the truth."

"I really wish you'd reconsider."

"Because you want me home?"

"Yes, of course, but also because it could impact your grandfather's friendship with him."

"Mom, Mr. Orlov fired me. This is HIS doing. I'm not going to go hat in hand to him and ask for my job back because, frankly, I don't want it."

"This isn't also because of what your dad said about Becky, is it?"

I shrugged, "I suppose that might also have colored my opinion. I actually think it's time for me to move out of the house."

Mom sighed deeply, "I knew that day would come, eventually. And intellectually, I get it. Emotionally, well, I'm still a mom."

I nodded, "I know. I promise to come visit, but really, I belong in McKinley. That's where my home parish is, where school is, and hopefully where medical school will be. The Summer RA position is flexible enough that I can work full-time without creating any problems, and if I'm away for a night, there are three other RAs who could cover for me."

"You're an adult, Mike. In the end, it's your decision, but there will always be room here for you."

"Thanks, Mom."

We finished our tea, and I headed upstairs and stopped to say 'Hi' to Liz.

"Alone tonight?" I asked.

"Maggie has church and her youth group afterwards, and Mindy had to do something with her parents. Did Janey talk to you?"

I smiled sardonically, "Oh, she did. After Tasha came to stand next to me during Vespers."

"Catfight!" Liz exclaimed gleefully.

"I actually don't believe either of them said a word to the other. But Janey was all over my case after Vespers. The thing is, all I did was stand in my usual place. I guess Janey felt I should have created a scene."

"Did Tasha say anything to you?"

"She apologized and asked if it was OK to come to my ordination. YOU are coming to my ordination, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't miss it! I invited Mindy and Maggie, though I don't know that Maggie would dare set foot in a building with icons and stuff."