Laura Jane Faulds

Tatiana, January 23rd

I just went outside for a cigarette and ran into Tatiana. She is very old. I live in her house. She and her husband and her son, Alex, who has multiple sclerosis, live on the bottom floor; me and Litterbox and another girl live on the top. I’ve been pretty obsessed with trying to get Tatiana to love me for the past four months I’ve lived here. She wears a camel wool coat and a leopard beret. 

At the beginning of January, I left for the gym and there was an ambulance outside our front door. I forgot about it and assumed everything was fine. 

Tatiana told me her daughter will be arriving from London any minute now. I told her I want to live in London one day. “Why?” she asked, and I answered honestly, because I love her. I said that everybody has a place in the world where they fit the best and London is mine. I told her my mother is from France, I told her about going to France and England when I was a kid. Here is everything she told me: 

She was born in Poland in the twenties, but raised in the Russian tradition. Her family had run away from Russia. She is an only child. I told her I’m an only child too. During the war, she was sent to Buenos Aires, where she fell in love with an Argentinian playboy. After the war, her mother called her up and told her she would now be going to school in London to learn English. Her first Sunday in London, she met Eugene. Eugene is the old man I see around my house raking the leaves. It hadn’t occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Eugene since the ambulance came, I guess because it’s winter, when no one rakes leaves. The Monday following the Sunday she met him, Eugene took Tatiana to the cinema, to see a movie- she forgets the name, but Cary Grant was in it. He took her out every day that week. For dinner, for drinks, dancing, to a concert. He was seven years older. She was twenty-two. The next Sunday, he asked her to marry her. She said yes. He told her he wanted to marry her tomorrow. She said “Give me some time!” They were married three weeks later, and have been married for fifty-eight years. Same as my grandparents. I told her about my grandparents. 

At the beginning of January, she went to London to spend some time with her daughter. A few days into her trip, Alex called to tell her Eugene is dying, in the hospital. She immediately came home. She told me if she loses him she doesn’t know what she’ll do. All I could say was that I’m so happy her daughter’s going to be here. I hugged her and I told her that if she ever needed anything to please remember that I’m here. Her daughter’s cab pulled up in front of the house and I could see she was so happy. I told her that’s so good, go spend time with your daughter- thinking of my mother and I. As I walked in the front door she said, “Laura, I will always remember your kindness” and we both touched our hearts and I honestly don’t know how I ever let myself get into headspaces where I think anything in the world fucking matters except for this.