Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

had the disposition of a Russian, dour and depressive, with occasional flights of high-spirited gaiety. She could be giddy as a schoolgirl, but her physical complaints could fill a medical dictionary. If it wasn’t the lumbago in her back, it was the arthritis in her knees. She also enjoyed regaling Aleks with the health problems of her friends at the senior center. Illness was her chief conversational topic, and her eyes would brim with tears of delight as she reported the latest grim pronouncements her friends had received from various medical professionals.
    “Do you know that Mrs. Danek’s doctor told her that her heart valve could just pop like a grape? Like a
grape,
Sasha!” she would say, her eyes wide with amazement. She addressed him by his nickname but always called her friends by their last names, in the formal manner, which she thought indicated superior breeding.
    He left St. George as the last rays of the sun slid across the windows of McSorley’s Old Ale House, across the street. He resisted the urge to head straight for the bar — he would go there later, after his mother was in bed. He turned east and walked the half a block to his apartment, trudging up to the third floor on narrow, creaky stairs worn by decades of feet. The hall always smelled of boiled cabbage; the Polish couple on the second floor seemed to cook little else.
    He unlocked the door quietly, in case his mother was napping. He often found her asleep in the big green chair, their fat orange cat purring in her lap. He opened the door to the smell of homemade soup and the sound of snoring. After his father died, four years ago, Aleks invited his mother to come live with him — not that he had much choice. It was expected that a good Ukrainian son would look after his mother. After all, he wasn’t married and needed a woman’s touch around the place, as her friends declared over coffee and cheese blintzes.
    He hung his hat and coat on the rack and crept into the living room, where his mother lay in her usual position, mouth open, her snores rattling the windowpanes. Their orange cat was perched on top of the back of the chair and regarded Aleks through half-closed eyes. A white lace antimacassar had slipped from the top of the chair onto his mother’s head. It sat at a rakish angle, like a lace yarmulke, the edges fluttering delicately with each racking snore. He stood watching her for a moment, then tiptoed to his room. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
    It wasn’t long before he heard a soft tapping at his bedroom door. Aleks opened it to find his mother smiling up at him. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, but sturdy and stout, with the broad, rosy-cheeked face of a Slavic peasant. She wore her thick gray hair in a long braid, and her blue eyes were clear and sharp. In spite of her obsession with illness, Aleks felt she would outlive everyone around her.
    “Hello,
myla,
” he said, using the Ukrainian term of endearment. His mother liked that. “How are you tonight? It looked like you were having a nice nap.”
    She sighed dramatically. “I’m feeling badly today, Aleksander.”
    The heat rose to his face, and he fought to control his irritation. “You mean you’re feeling
bad
today. If you were feeling
badly
you would be having trouble with your sense of touch.”
    She waved him away impatiently. “Don’t carp at your sick old mother, Sasha. Lord knows I have enough to worry about with Mrs. Petrenko’s boils acting up. I shall have to get up early tomorrow to make her my special poultice. She is counting on me; the doctors can do nothing for her, you know.”
    Aleksander Milichuk had no idea if anyone counted on his mother for anything, and he murmured a vague response. Perhaps the ladies at the senior center were enjoying her ministrations whether her remedies actually worked or not. Sometimes it was just pleasant to have someone who cared enough to go out of her way for you. That was one reason he kept Mrs. Kovalenko on as his secretary. She was an incorrigible gossip and a busybody, but she fussed and clucked over him in a manner that both irritated and pleased him.
    Dinner tonight consisted of homemade split-pea soup, brown bread, and cheese. His mother was a superb cook and enjoyed cooking for her “little Sasha,” just as she had for his father. Aleks knew that the standard Ukrainian diet was not the healthiest in the world, but there was little hope of training his mother in new cuisine