Regina Saxony

Emelia Saxony wasn’t like the Russian women, she was a Saxon from the (bland) moors of Dorset, England. She carried this Edwardian stiffness about her, demanding things be proper, things be in order; Emelia Saxony held a grand estate just a ways out of the city alongside Regina’s step-father. Russian that spewed from Emelia’s mouth was stressed unnaturally, Regina loathed her excessive guttural assaults, learning to shiver each time her mother would talk to her as a child with that modulating voice.

They shared the same eyes—and that was about it.

Upon entering the apartment, Emelia Saxony only gives a wrinkled, upturned nose to her daughter in some kind of proper (and, thus, polite) disgust. Dabbing a silk handkerchief on her pristine, powdered nose, she exhales in an expected disappointment, “It could be worse.”

Regina simply laughs, gesturing with her open palms to the walls plastered with large stretched canvases, “Oh, well, I hope the gallery makes up for the lackluster of everything.”

“Oh, Regina, these are…” Her mother examines the paintings through squinting, scrutinizing slits. Regina only grins, finding pleasure in the most awkward of encounters, loving to watch her rigid mother squirm with discomfort. “They’re very, free form.”

Her mother turns back to face the rest of the home. It is a home to Regina. It’s where she lays on her bed and reads her volumes upon volumes of literature, where she scrawls notes that later form into entire letters for her Ilya, it’s where she does the little mundane things like stir her tea and chop cabbage. It’s her haven where she wildly deconstructs and reconstructs what she sees (beyond what is actually there and beyond what the mind can conceal.) It is hers. “Is that coffee?” Her mother eyes the steaming, whistling kettle with a hunger in her eyes.

“Oh no,” Regina breathily chuckles as a heat rises to her cheeks, “You can’t buy coffee in the city. And besides, I can’t afford it.”

“Shame.” A scowl settles on the older woman’s face framed by faded cinnamon ringlets. The tight grimace has left lines and indentations among her lips, forever embedding a sign of coolness and extreme structure.

“Sit, sit,” Regina insists, noticing her mother’s tapping foot and expectations, “You are my mother after all, do what you wish,” She beams, trying to promote an air of fun-lovingness.

Emelia gently smirks, it’s matronly and completely unexpected as she sits upright in the creaky old chairs. Regina hustles around the small kitchen, removing the tea and taking down her only two white porcelain tea cups and saucers. “How do you like your tea, matushka?”

Removing her lace trimmed gloves and lying them daintily on the table, she fold her hands and delightfully answers, “With sugar and lemon please, dear.”

Regina bites her lips, the sudden rosy flush returning. Her mother is helplessly clueless to the life they lived not so long ago. “We don’t have lemons in the city, matushka,” Regina politely giggles even though she wishes to belt and scream, “It has been a long time since you lived in the city.”

“Maybe my ptichka has lived in the city too long,” Emelia gently laughs in a disdainful affair, “I had something before I left this morning, so no thank you, dearest.”

Silently nodding, Regina stirs in a pinch of the cinnamon she stows away in the top most cupboard and she scrambles to the seat in a very loose mannerism. Her mother is staring down onto the streets, watching the snow refract into a thousand different iridescent rays, like diamonds, it was.

“Why don’t you come back home?” She sighs.

Sipping her tea, she ruminates on clever, snide responses to rebut that statement. Instead, she settles for a substitute, “What was father’s last name?”

“You can’t say you’ve forgotten.”

“Certain things fleet me,” Regina frowns.

“Zhestakov. Alexsei Zhestakov.” It rolls off of her tongue in a choppy, but strictly unemotional, manner. As if she was talking about a dead pet or a childhood toy.

Regina Zhestakova. It skips around her brain for a few minutes. It’s a pretty name with a certain fluency. “And you called me Regina Saxony because you wanted to…”

“Keep the name alive,” Emelia nods in agreement. “You can still go to England, a pretty young woman like yourself, you’d be a charmer there. The men would adore you.”

“I have someone here, matushka. He’s not here right now, but he’ll come back to me.”