Until Tomorrow

Vera gave her father the less burnt toast.

“I like mine crunchy.”

“That's load-bearing,” he said, examining what she'd kept.

Sonya sent a photograph of lecture notes obscured by her thumb. Vera replied with a photograph of her breakfast. They'd been exchanging unhelpful information since they were seven.

On her desk, yellow scissors lay beside the fleece she'd cut into bedding for the shelter cats. She brushed a scrap off her bag.

Fourth-year lectures lasted until three. Vera helped Sonya with a calculation; Sonya found the mistake in her answer. At lunch they discussed a charity veterinary clinic that had told Vera to apply after graduation. She saved the email.

At the shelter, Bublik wouldn't eat alone. Vera stayed an hour after her shift. She showed the new volunteer where to sit so he could see the door, then went to buy bread.

Across from the bakery, a man in a black overcoat and fedora waited for the crossing light.

Her father called. He'd bought bread too.

“Dinner's sorted for a week.”

The streetlamp blinked. Light returned to the pavement a moment before the bulb came on.

She looked up.

Her alarm rang.

March 12 again. No email. No photograph of Sonya's thumb.

She laughed about it over breakfast. That evening she searched her bag for bread she hadn't bought.

Ten days later, Bublik was adopted. Vera washed his bedding, passed an exam, broke a saucepan lid. On Thursday Sonya admitted she couldn't bear another animal dying. They sat on Vera's bed until she could speak without crying. On Friday they bought socks. On Saturday they ate too much cake.

A shelter photograph showed Bublik leaving. Behind the fence stood a black-coated man, hat in hand. Vera enlarged it, looking at the dog.

Sunday, a terrier's body fitted between a gate and a wall where there was room only for its shadow.

Vera woke at 7:05. She'd silenced her alarm at seven.

Bublik was still waiting.

“When you came over Thursday—”

“I was at my grandmother's.”

“You wound a thread round your finger. From my blanket.”

Sonya looked uncomfortable.

“You said you couldn't leave in fourth year.”

“Vera. I don't want to leave.”

She stopped reminding Sonya before Sonya stopped sitting beside her.

* * *

Her mother died in April.

For the funeral photograph Vera cropped away a slice of watermelon. It was the only picture her father liked.

Among the mourners stood the man in the fedora. She saw his nose, eyes, mouth, but afterward couldn't fit them together. She forgot him while looking for her father's coat.

People washed cups, went home. On the ninth evening her father began asking her mother for the salt. Neither of them finished eating.

Vera returned to the shelter too soon and forgot to report a sick dog. It died. The vet spoke carefully. She heard that careful voice long after she stopped attending lectures.

Summer came. Her father learned to cook three things. He stopped asking whether she wanted dinner and simply left some in the pan. He told her things her mother had known: why he'd changed jobs, which bills he worried about. She learned to leave pauses in their conversations. Sometimes he wasn't finished, only deciding whether to go on.

Sonya brought notes, then stopped bringing them. They went for ice cream instead. Once Vera made a joke, and Sonya laughed without congratulating her.

In October Sonya's sister called. An accident on the ring road.

At this funeral Vera wore her mother's coat. Someone handed her flowers. She held them until her fingers cramped, trying to remember where they'd thrown the ice-cream wrappers.

By December she no longer reached for her phone to tell Sonya something. She used her mother's hand cream. Her father bought a new tablecloth without asking what her mother would have thought.

In February they ate dinner and watched a bad television program. Vera complained about the ending. Her father agreed. They went to bed.

While brushing her teeth, she lowered her hand. Her reflection took a moment to follow.

She woke smelling onions.

Her mother was making soup. Vera held her until she turned off the stove. Sonya answered the phone with a complaint about her cat.

Until lunchtime Vera was happy.

Then her mother asked her to stop watching her eat.

The old tablecloth was back. Her father couldn't find a saucepan she'd watched him use all winter. She stood between them with answers to questions they hadn't learned to ask.

That night her mother came to say goodnight. Vera had to look past the funeral makeup to find her face.

“See you tomorrow.”

At the bus stop next morning, a man adjusted the brim of his black hat.

* * *

The psychiatrist listened, discussed stress and sleep, arranged tests.

“But they're alive,” Vera said. “Why am I still like this?”

“Knowing doesn't undo what you remember.”

Vera dated diary entries, photographed her desk, asked her father for a number to repeat next morning. He always remembered.

In May the charity clinic interviewed her. In June she graduated. Her father's bouquet hid his face in the photograph. She kept it alongside the better one.

By August she had her own patients. An elderly client stopped calling her “the girl” and asked for her by name. She learned which cupboard door needed lifting to close, which supplier would wait another week for payment.

Ilya brought in a cat whose carrier was tied shut with a shoelace.

“It does lock. I just don't trust him.”

On their first date he talked about ventilation systems until he caught himself.

“You can leave.”

“I was waiting to hear about the duct.”

She missed her bus.

Her first apartment smelled of old wood and someone else's shoe polish. They ate pizza on the floor among boxes. Before sleep he kissed her fingers, which still smelled of pizza.

He turned mug handles inward to spare his elbows. His cat moved in before he did. At Sunday dinners he learned where her parents kept the plates.

Their toaster broke. Ilya took it apart on the kitchen table, ordered the wrong part, ordered another. They ate cereal around it for twelve days. Vera complained; he said she could put it together herself, then came home with pastries. Neither apologized properly.

In the clinic window, a black coat and fedora briefly reflected over Vera's shoulder. A client asked about his dog. She turned back.

In November she missed dinner with Ilya's friends. She hadn't called.

“Nobody dies at your job,” she said.

He closed a container carefully.

Next evening she sat beside him while he peeled potatoes.

“That was a horrible thing to say.”

“Yes.”

He nudged a stool out. They weren't all right yet, but they were going to eat together. Afterward she sent a potato emoji if she'd be late. Once she sent it to her supervisor instead. Ilya laughed about this for weeks.

Her parents retired. Her father let his hair grow; her mother stopped looking at the clock during stories. Sonya found laboratory work and got engaged. In January Vera caught a cold. Ilya left water by the bed. She heard the cat playing with a bottle cap, slept again, got up to make pasta.

One evening he called from the supermarket to ask which bread they bought. She told him. He stayed on the phone while he looked, talking about work. She sorted laundry, listening. He was still talking when she heard his key in the door.

In spring they stripped wallpaper. Underneath was a child's penciled height mark. They covered it over. Vera could still put her finger exactly where it was.

At Sonya's wedding her father held her mother's handbag while she danced. The man in the fedora stood beyond the tables, letting a waiter pass.

Sonya stopped turning.

Her shadow completed another turn.

Vera looked away.

The lights. Several lights. Someone walking behind her.

“Take me home.”

Ilya bent close. Cheap citrus shampoo, dried paint on his thumb. Tomorrow they were visiting his sister. The frying pan needed washing. She told him these things.

“Yes, I remember.”

“Hold me.”

She gripped the seam down his back. Her mother was calling her father to dance.

The bed was too narrow.

* * *

Fourth-year notes on her desk. Her parents getting ready for work.

Ilya existed online. In his photograph he wore the gray shirt she'd mended. The hole was still there.

Where are you?

Eleven minutes.

Sorry, who is this?

She knew how his breathing changed before sleep. Her thumb rested on the call button.

Wrong person. Sorry.

No problem!

She closed the conversation so he wouldn't see her lingering. Then realized he wouldn't care, and opened it again.

She remembered the clinic's computer password. Her application hadn't been accepted. She got off the bus beside the chestnut tree, remembered the entry code, couldn't ring the bell.

At six she opened the empty conversation to tell him about her day. Once she bought his favorite yogurt and waited until it expired before throwing it away.

“The diary was there too,” she told the psychiatrist. “The photographs. Dad remembered the numbers. I came here. You asked how I was sleeping.”

The doctor waited.

“What am I supposed to check?”

* * *

Two cars passed through each other outside her bus. She shut her eyes.

Nothing changed. The man in the fedora rose to let a woman sit.

“Where did that man go?” Vera asked.

“There was no one there,” the woman said. The passenger beside her nodded.

She tried to trust the people who said she'd misjudged what she'd seen.

Days passed. The stairs at home returned to the same landing. Her father asked the same question three times, then thanked her for three different answers.

A truck struck her bus. She woke with her arms raised to shield her mother.

Later, her bedroom door opened into her old school. She spent twelve days there, calling for help, sleeping in a classroom. At the far end of the corridor, a man waited in a black coat.

She remembered the truck.

The yellow scissors on the teacher's desk became the last thing she could write about afterward. Below that she put: Woke up.

She told the psychiatrist. Her father slept beside her bed. Sometimes his reassurance lasted until morning, when he had never been there.

At first it took days. Then hours. Later, minutes. The word dying disappeared from her diary.

A wrong face in the mirror. Morning.

Snow through an open kitchen door. Morning.

A black hat across the street. Morning.

Once she checked whether she was late for her appointment before remembering what she'd done.

* * *

Then nothing happened.

A month. A summer.

She arranged extensions, returned to lectures, washed bowls. Bublik ate for the new volunteer. Vera went home early.

Sonya worked at a clinic, not the laboratory.

“You were happy there.”

“I'm sometimes happy here.”

Vera learned to ask about the life Sonya was having.

Mikhail helped them move books that autumn. On their third date Vera told him.

“How are you now?”

“Better.”

“Want to keep talking about it?”

She didn't. He called next evening.

He kept his glasses in his right shoe. He sometimes wanted an evening alone; she learned that this didn't mean he wouldn't want her tomorrow.

Once she accused him of not listening. He repeated what she'd said, word for word, and she laughed reluctantly. Later she explained that sometimes she needed him to turn toward her. He explained that sometimes he was simply watching a film.

She graduated in winter. Her father couldn't get away from work. They celebrated on Saturday. She took an ordinary clinic job and complained about the printer.

In February they rented an apartment above a shop. The sign went dark at closing time. She stopped noticing. In the window of the laundromat opposite, a customer folded a black overcoat beside his hat.

They couldn't afford a sofa. She put a reminder in September, then a visit to his parents, then Sonya's birthday. Mikhail asked what she was smiling at.

“Nothing. Move your foot.”

She sat beside him.

On Sundays they ate breakfast late. Sometimes she remembered the diary in its drawer. She'd put it away herself. She knew where it was. There was no need to get up.

In April she argued with her mother about curtain colors for twenty minutes before realizing she hadn't once thought of the funeral.

She hugged her beside the samples.

“So, the green?” her mother said.

* * *

Sonya raised her hand to brush hair from her face.

Six fingers.

Vera felt tired. Mikhail had gone to buy cream. She should finish before he returned.

“Where are you going?”

“Won't be long.”

She went into the bedroom.

And woke there.

Mikhail held her while she cried. Only a few hours, then. Everything else was safe.

An eye opened beneath the hair at his temple.

She stepped away.

Then her alarm. May 24. Fourth year. No Mikhail in her phone. No sofa reminder. Her mother hadn't bought curtains.

Vera remembered learning to apologize to Ilya. Learning to give Mikhail an evening alone. She couldn't become the girl who hadn't learned those things.

A door opened into rain. Morning.

Her father's voice came from a mouth she didn't recognize. Morning.

The man in black stood closer each time.

* * *

“Sonya. Breakfast.”

The woman at the door had known her since she was seven. Sonya's mother.

Vera sat up. Hair fell against the wrong side of her face. Her tongue found a crooked tooth she didn't have.

The phone opened to Sonya's face. Sonya's messages. A student card bearing Sonya's name. In a photograph, two girls, maybe eight, stood arm in arm. She remembered the shoes on the other girl's feet, how they'd rubbed her heels.

“Your father can't take you today,” the woman said.

Behind her, in a chair, sat the man in the black coat. His fedora rested on one knee.

“You can stop being her,” he said when the door closed.

“I'm Vera.”

“Vera knew what she wanted. Her parents loved her. She stayed with animals. You wanted to know what being needed felt like.”

He spoke gently, allowing her time.

“Remember the conversation on the bed? Sonya wanted to quit. Vera got to comfort her. Why does your name know what hers doesn't?”

He glanced at the textbooks.

“Why always fourth year? Your friend is about to graduate. You don't know how to go with her.”

She looked at the student card. She knew that photograph. She remembered helping Sonya choose it.

“She was happy. At her wedding.”

“You wanted happiness for yourself too. Becoming Vera didn't mean Sonya had to suffer.”

Beyond the door someone called her Sonya again.

“And when being Vera hurt, you killed her and started over.”

Her thumb traced the card's edge. Even the scar on her knuckle was Sonya's. Vera remembered the broken glass that had made it. She'd been the one fetching a towel.

“That isn't where I was,” she whispered.

He didn't argue.

She reached for the only way she knew to leave.

* * *

Her own hands. Her own room.

“Vera?” Her mother, from the kitchen.

She answered so loudly her throat hurt.

Then saw the chair.

“Of course you came back,” the man said. “You couldn't bear being Sonya.”

His face had features. She could look directly into his eyes and immediately forget their color.

“You needed someone beneath you. Someone to help.”

“I love her.”

“You need to be someone who loves her. The girl who stays after her shift. Who gives away the better toast.”

Vera looked toward the kitchen.

“You needed that dog to need you.”

She remembered showing the volunteer where to sit. Bublik eating without her. The relief of catching an earlier bus. She hadn't needed to be there. She'd needed him fed.

“That's not why,” she said.

“Would you be able to admit it if it was?”

Whatever she said would fit. Even silence would become something he could name.

On her desk lay fourth-year notes. She was twenty-two according to the form beside them. She could remember getting older. She couldn't find where any of it had happened.

“How do you know about Sonya?”

He looked toward the kitchen.

“I haven't told anyone. I just woke up.”

The kitchen tap stopped running.

“You were at the wedding. Before I came back here. Who are you?”

His face seemed almost recognizable.

“You asked me that last time.”

She tried to hold his features together. They wouldn't stay.

Here was someone who remembered both rooms. Someone who should have disappeared with the unwashed frying pan, with Mikhail's glasses in his shoe.

She knew what that meant. Her body had already begun to turn toward the desk.

Yellow scissors lay across a strip of fleece.

Her mother asked whether she wanted tea. Vera wanted tea. She wanted to sit with her until the cups were empty and still have a mother afterward.

The man watched without moving to stop her.

“In a minute,” she called.

Her hand closed around the yellow handles. Somewhere in the room she hoped to wake in, a kettle was already beginning to sing.