Millie
It feels like I’ve been driving for seventeen hours, but it’s only been five. The adrenaline caused by Stepan’s hostility has finally started to wear off, and I’ve gone from being impossibly jittery to feeling like I’ll fall
asleep at the wheel any moment.
Before I hurt myself or someone else, I decide to pull off at a roadside motel to sleep for the night.
I’m still wounded by the fact that I spent so much time making a meal for Viktor when he might not even want this baby in the first place, but I’m not so certain that I can trust Stepan. I just need to get to somewhere safe and figure this mess out.
If I wasn’t so close to Katya, I’d have no idea that Stepan has been obsessed with the idea of marrying her off to Viktor since she was a little girl. The whole idea is nauseating, especially since she’s grown into an individual who considers herself to be her own person and not an extension of her parents’ wishes, desires, and ambitions.
However, because I do know all of this, I’m under the impression that what Stepan said might be closer to a fabrication or exaggeration than I’d been led to believe. I’m not so quick to trust a man who hates me.
I pull into the cracked parking lot of a small motel, noting the flickering neon in the dark of the night and feeling a sense of longing like I’ve never known. Longing for a place in the world, for stability, for assurance of any kind. For tonight, I’ll have to create all of that myself because I have nobody to run to until I arrive at my aunt’s house in the morning.
The air is brisk against my skin as I exit my rental car, and I curse myself for not bringing a heavier coat in my haste to leave the apartment. I can picture exactly where my red winter coat is, hanging up on a hook near the elevator door where I’d always sling it haphazardly after a drunken night out with Viktor.
Damn, even thinking about my coat makes me sad.
I pull my sweatshirt tight around me and cross my arms as I walk quickly toward the front desk office. When I enter the office, a bored middle-aged woman with a perm and heavy fake pearl earrings glances up at me from her computer screen. She looks unamused at my presence in her workspace, as if I’ve interrupted a coffee date rather than her thirtieth game of solitaire.
“Hi, I just need a room for the night. I have cash, if that’s okay,” I say sheepishly, feeling intrusive just by virtue of existing in an unfamiliar place.
“We only have smoking rooms available, is that alright?” the woman asks, putting her head in her hands and looking up at me with a bemused, agitated expression. She reminds me of the receptionist at my old high school who would give me infractions for my jeans being too tight.
I think carefully. If I was the only person to be accounted for, a smoking room would be only a slight annoyance. Being pregnant makes the decision much harder.
There isn’t another motel for another forty miles or so, and even standing here in this office, I can feel my eyelids failing me. I’m afraid I’ll just have to take the risk.
“Yes, that’s fine,” I say, and I hand her seventy-five dollars.
In the most scripted, inhuman way possible, the woman hands me a key with a yellowed tag attached featuring my room number. “Here, have a good night,” she says, immediately returning to her game.
While I’m taken back by her untoward behavior, I’m relieved that the interaction is over and that I can settle in for the night.
I find myself on the second floor in room 205, and as I approach the front door, I see a group of men smoking on the balcony a few rooms down. Immediately, I feel a chill rush up my spine and into my scalp that tells me I’m not safe here.
“Hey sweetheart, you staying here alone tonight?” says one of the men, his voice raspy from his childhood smoking habit.
I don’t acknowledge him beyond a passive glance, and all of the men begin to snicker as I open my door.
My stomach feels like it’s filled with hot lead as I deadbolt the door. I’m not used to being harassed anymore; Viktor’s imposing enough that I’ve never had to deal with it while I’m around him. Feeling this vulnerable without him has me sick with worry.
The room is cold and dimly lit, with an old radiator hovering menacingly in the back corner. I’m hesitant to even take off my clothes in a place like this, and I curl up on the bed in my hoodie and jeans, feeling the pointed absence of Viktor’s warmth beside me.
I consider allowing myself to cry. How could somebody behave as if they loved me without meaning one word of it? How does someone sell that role so well? I feel as if I have no idea what love actually is and that I wouldn’t recognize it if it ever came my way again.
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing tears to form that never do.
I feel dead inside. I can’t cry.
Sleeping through the night is nearly impossible, but eventually, I drift off into a half-asleep state where I’m capable of dreaming in the most viscerally realistic ways possible.
I dream first of the apartment, watching the walls slowly shift position until the living room has taken on a ghostly, dark cast. I’m not even sure if it’s the same place anymore, like I’ve walked into a dark alternate reality that I can’t escape from.
Maybe it’s hell.
My second dream is much more pleasant but no less heart-wrenching. I see Viktor standing over me in the same motel bed, reaching down to stroke my cheek as he always did when he woke up before me. I take his hand and turn my face to kiss it, tugging his arm to pull him closer to me.
He lies on top of me, taking my face into his hands and kissing me sweetly. I can feel the bulge of his cock through the blankets, and suddenly I’ve been overtaken by a fevered need for his body when I’m startled awake by the sound of shouting outside the door.
My heartbeat races uncontrollably in my chest as my eyes shoot open, listening as closely as I can to my surroundings through the sound of blood rushing in my ears. My whole body is rigid, and it takes a considerable amount of convincing myself to loosen my muscles in order to assess whether or not I’m truly in danger.
“Cammie, let me the fuck in! Come on!” I hear directly outside of my door, possibly a door down. The voice is male, possibly drunk and disgruntled.
I hear indistinct female shouting on the other side of the wall, equally belligerent and possibly influenced by some kind of substance.
“Cammie! For fucksake! I didn’t even mean it like that!” shouts the man, pounding his fists on the door in an increasingly aggressive way.
The woman in the next room over screams even louder, and I can feel my adrenaline kicking into full force again even though I’m not in any immediate danger.
So much for going back to sleep.
The fight between the drunk man and the woman rages on for what feels like hours until the police show up, possibly called by one of the neighbors or the woman herself. I hear the struggle ensue right outside my window, and the venom in the man’s voice as he’s taken away by the cops is palpable.
Is this the reality of what my life would have been like with Viktor? Would we be reduced to drunken screaming matches, pressured into substance abuse by the stresses of the mafia life on top of a baby to care for?
It’s not out of the realm of possibility, and I know that the woman in the next room is probably feeling the same exact void that I’m experiencing without Viktor. We’re not so different after all.
The next morning, I feel just as tired as I was the night before, but I figure I’ll have an easier time staying awake with the sun in my eyes and the heat turned down. It sounds like a miserable journey, but once I’m at my aunt’s, I’ll finally be able to properly rest without worrying about Stepan or Viktor or Cammie’s asshole boyfriend.
I quickly pack up what little I have, noting how much grimier the room looks in the daylight and shuddering at the thought of what has taken place in here. My mother always taught me to check under mattresses for bloodstains in motels and hotels, but I’m too scared to even find out based on morbid curiosity. What’s important is that I’m leaving and getting further away from anybody who wants to hurt me.
I drive for a few more hours, cursing the rules of pregnancy as I crave a cup of coffee to push me through the remainder of my journey. I’ve never even liked coffee before, but now that I can’t have it, I’m craving it like no other.
Couldn’t I have gotten cravings for something more predictable like chocolate ice cream or pizza rolls?
When I start to see signs for Rochester, I perk up just a little bit, knowing that I’m close to the safest place in the world for me.
I haven’t been to my aunt’s house in ages, and I’ve missed her cooking dearly. I’ve never been able to properly replicate any of her recipes, and the taste of her double chocolate chip banana bread is absolutely sinful.
After another thirty minutes of navigating the city, I find her house, and she’s outside getting ready to leave when I pull up. I park the car as quickly as I can before I miss her, and she seems shocked to see me.
“Millie, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. I thought I had more time to prepare,” she says, knowing full-well that her house is immaculate and requires no preparation whatsoever.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t really have a choice,” I reply, feeling tears forming in my eyes as I finally allow myself to fully experience the gravity of my circumstances.
She wraps me in her arms, and I break down into heavy sobs as the reality hits me. I have to make a whole new plan for my life. I have to close down my bakery permanently, raising a child on my own in a world where women are accosted by men like Stepan regularly.
I feel scared and small, like I’ve lost all of my confidence.
“Hey, we’re going to figure it all out, okay?” she says, and as much as I want to take reassurance in her words, I just can’t tell the future.