The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

At the time, those days felt so long and specific; but thinking back, they all blend.

“Lubyanka, of course. They say you can see all the way to Siberia from the basement.”

was twenty when I first saw an optometrist, but by that time, I was so used to life’s dulled edges, when I finally saw the world as it really is, everything was far too vivid.

I found myself preferring things as one fuzzy whole, not broken down by their clear parts, and so rarely wore my glasses. Or maybe I was just stubborn—I had an idea about how the world was, and anything contrary made me uneasy.

When she shook my hand, I noticed a band of white skin on her ring finger. She noticed me notice the missing ring and held my gaze for an uncomfortable moment.

She was telling me for the second time that day a story she’d read in the Post about a woman who’d given birth to a baby girl on the Key Bridge. “They couldn’t make it to the hospital in time, so they stopped the car and delivered the baby right there! Can you believe this?” she called out from the next room. When I didn’t answer, she repeated the story, but two decibels louder.

“But how on earth are we supposed to understand unless a man thoroughly explains it?” she asked, doing her best Scarlett O’Hara.

“It can always get worse,” Linda said. “You can’t let that little stuff get you down. You have to save the headache for the bigger stuff. Like the fact that they haven’t filled the Kotex machine since Truman was in office.”

He preferred that we call him Walter, so we called him Anderson.

Norma had this recurring gag where she’d hesitate before going through the heavy wooden doors into the lobby. “I won’t go,” she said that Monday, holding on to a bald cherry tree next to the door.

the power that came from being a keeper of secrets. It was a power that some, myself included, found more intoxicating than any drug,

I think I would’ve liked to die there, in that place that felt as if it were conjured from Borya’s dreams.

after his dacha was winterized with a new bathroom and hot water, Boris still prefers to bathe outside, the cold water a pleasant shock to the system.

Comforts are a trap

People give away a lot more than they know.

I wanted to dig into that space between the contradictions.

“Trick or treat!” Sally said. “Which do you prefer?” “Neither. I prefer broccoli.” “Doesn’t everyone?” The man opened the door and ushered us in, locking the door behind us before disappearing back into the crowd.

Next party

The problem with that type of ambition is that it requires constant reassurance from others, and when that assurance doesn’t come, you falter. And when you falter, you go after the lowest-hanging fruit—someone to make you feel wanted and powerful. But that type of reassurance is like the brief buzz of alcohol: you need it to keep dancing, but it only leaves you sick the next day.

intellectuals—those who believed in the long game of changing people’s ideology over time.

Anger is a poor replacement for sadness; like cotton candy, the sweetness of revenge disintegrates immediately. And now that it was gone, what did I have left to keep me going?

we were struck by both how much the world had changed, and how much it hadn’t.