When love changes in the flash of an eye

It leaves people burning by the side of the road.

You stand there, you've got nothing to hold.

For the first time, you are alone.

"Love Changes" by Stevie Nicks

Chapter 10

Sitting across the cramped visiting room table from Dmitri, Red struggled to recall exactly when her husband had become a stranger to her. She supposed it happened when she stopped being able to remember his face. Not his face as it was now, the too-big nose, the blue eyes that were and always had been the only handsome thing about him, the wrinkles around the mouth and etched into the forehead, all of it topped by a fringe of retreating dark-brown hair. That face, the face that Dmitri wore now, was nearly the same as it had been twelve years ago when she got put away.

The face that she couldn't call up now was the one from their youth. Red gave her husband a small, tight smile, then closed her eyes for a moment, trying to force herself back more than thirty years, to Arkhangelsk. It was summer, and in her youth Red had always thought it too hot, because she didn't yet know what warm weather could really feel like. She remembered the bakery, her hair in its tight auburn bun, her back straight as she passed a broom over the floor, not twisted and shot through with pain as it was now.

And she remembered Dmitri's eyes. She remembered his eyes burning into her own as he talked about America with the only small spark of true passion she'd ever seen in him. His eyes on her while he watched her sweep and serve pastries and clear tables, almost every day until Red got tired of it and told him to either make his move or stop bothering her. His mild eyes as they made frenzied but humdrum love in the backseat of the car he'd borrowed from a friend to take her out in.

The eyes were always the same, but the face changed. Sometimes the man in her memories was a faceless outline, and sometimes he looked the same way Dmitri looked now, but that wasn't right and Red knew it, and she was ashamed of the fact that she could not remember her husband as he was all those years ago.

"Galya?" His voice cut through her incomplete memories. "Ty v poryadke?"

"Huh? Oh, da. Yes. I'm just tired."

She tried to smile at Dmitri again, but the smile didn't reach her eyes, and he noticed. His hand reached across the table to take hers, and she gave it willingly, enjoying the feeling as his thumb caressed her palm. Red told herself that it was because she wanted his touch. This was, after all, the man she had married, the man she loved. She never had been good at denial, though.

Her reaction was less desire for this man in particular and more a product of never being touched, except for the hugs from her family every two weeks on visiting days and the occasional embrace from one of her adopted daughters. At this point, she'd been without human contact for so long that if a man, any goddamned man, brushed up against her shoulder she'd probably climax on the spot.

After that grim realization, she could only muddle through her visitation with Dmitri, and afterwards, she went back to her cube to reflect. It hit her like a shotgun blast, the realization that she no longer loved her husband. Always, she had loved him. She had never desired him, she'd married him for selfish reasons, because she wanted to go to America and knew she'd never get there alone. But she'd loved him, in her own way. It was a soft, behind-the-scenes love that lived not in their bed or in any kind of tempestuous and primal need for one another, but in the things that he did for her, how he was with their boys, the way his voice softened when he said her name.

But she didn't feel it anymore. Red supposed that she hadn't for a while, but this was simply the first time she'd allowed herself to know it. Because, now that she did know it, she didn't know what to do. It didn't matter in here; her family was always the anchor that kept her fixed and steady, and she still had her boys. Nothing in the world could make her stop loving them.

But they were men, all of them now, men with their own lives and homes and problems. When she got out, she wouldn't be going home to them. There were fewer than three years left on her sentence, which meant that in fewer than three years, she'd be back with Dmitri, and she would have to see him every day, because she'd nowhere else to go. Her home, her children, her market…everything was tied up in him.

Red ran a hand through her eggplant-colored hair, then looked up. Her best friend, her silent shadow, had appeared at the front of her cube without Red's even realizing it. This was their late-afternoon ritual; it was time to get up, stop feeling sorry for herself, and turn her sights to the task at hand. There was dinner to cook, a prison to feed, and, with a sigh, Red lifted herself from her cot and followed Norma out of the dorm. If she had nothing else, then at least she could rest assured that she had a purpose, and people who depended on her and appreciated her.

...

Red, the pockets of her hoodie filled with yogurt cups and her feet feeling as though they might fall off, approached the table. Taking a brief look around and seeing the guards otherwise engaged, she took a yogurt from her pocket and slid it towards Nicky, then another for Yoga Jones and one for the nun, as well. Feeling as though her knees were going to give out, she collapsed on the table bench near Yoga Jones, stretching leisurely. She barely heard the chatter of the other women, but saw, out of the corner of her eye, the lumbering figure approaching.

"Hey, Red," Big Boo said, "Got one of those for me?"

When Red turned to the other woman, she wore her world-famous bitch face. "You got what I asked you for?"

Big Boo, of course, did not, and Red quickly sent her on her way. Fucking ingrate, she thought. She'd been on her feet for two hours preparing dinner, she was already having a bad day; the last thing she needed was any of Boo's bullshit.

"How hard is it to get me a board from the woodshop?" Red asked no one in particular, "Ugh, people!"

Coming out of her own world, Red turned to the table at large, taking note of the unfamiliar face. The new inmate was too blonde, too pretty, too delicate-looking for Red's taste, but Nicky had obviously taken a liking to her, so how bad could she be?

"Who's this?" she asked.

"Oh, this is Chapman. She's new. Self-surrender. Thinks she's fancy," said Nicky.

Red nodded, then stood, handing over the last of the yogurt cups she'd smuggled in her hoodie. It was gratifying, to see the way the new girl's face lit up at this simple act of kindness. At least I still have this, Red thought. At the very least, she could still provide for people, nourish people, make people happy and earn their gratitude in return.

And then, Chapman said it. "The food here is disgusting," she whispered confidentially.

Red felt her face fall. In the second it took for her to process Chapman's words, she realized that she was too sad now, too damn miserable, even to be angry. All she felt was numb. With not another word, Red stood up from the table. Almost as an afterthought, she paused near Yoga Jones, leaning over the slim woman to face the girl who had, however innocently, insulted her and driven the final nail into the coffin of Red's heart.

"Honey," she said, "I know you just got here, so you don't know what's what. But I'm going to tell you. You don't like the food? It's no problem."

With that, she left Chapman looking awestruck, and Nicky shaking her head.

Red made a beeline for her kitchen, passing the serving station and the girls who were cleaning off the last of the dishes from dinner and going straight for the freezer. She walked in almost without thinking, and found it too cold; she was shivering in just under a minute. But this was the only place in the prison where she could be alone right now, truly by herself without anyone interrupting her.

She sat down on a crate that had once held produce, looking down between her knees at the logo on the plastic. Neptune. Fuck them.

Her head fell into her hands, and just for a split second, Red thought that she might very well cry. But no tears came; her body just shook, whether from the chill or from her combined anger and sadness, she didn't know.