Self Inflicted | Chapter 2

"Mr. Sokolov waited only for his better half to touch the rounded top of the spindle-backed kitchen chair before launching into an extensive operation on his lasagna, a spoonful of which he held hovering in front of his mouth for the previous three minutes."

“Finally not in business casual 🌺🌴,” followed images of a girl Alexi once met at a costume party posing on a beach, geotagged Hawaii.
“We comin for the shogun 🇯🇵,” came after an image of one of Alexi’s classmates from college and his friends in full samurai regalia.
“Me and bro #motivation #dragonball #reelitfeelit,” followed a supercut of two Dragon Ball characters eating and laughing.
Alexi started watching the next video on his Instagram feed but got annoyed when he realized it was an ad. He tossed his phone aside and turned over in bed, pulling the covers tight around himself. He searched for sleep in the backs of his eyelids.
“Pumpkin!” a familiar voice yelled, “It's almost 12!” 
Alexi maintained his already fruitless attempt at sleep.
“Pumpkin!” his mother continued, “Come down for lunch!” She added a loving fermata to the final syllable of each sentence.
“I'll be down in a minute!” He shouted back with eyes still shut.
For three seconds more he checked again if it might be at all possible to go back to sleep. It wasn’t. He groaned, stretched and wiggled in bed as he tried to kick the covers off. He sat up and immediately felt a pang in his tailbone from last night's escapade.

Looking around the room, Alexi was reminded of the change 8 years had had on him. He was a senior in high school when he last put any effort into making this space his own. There were two posters opposite his bed, hung side by side with no margins between. His current aesthetic sensibilities aside, the content of the posters no longer resonated with him. On the left, a beautiful Swiss highway meandered down a mountain, with a bright red LaFerrari racing across the page. On the right, on an ever so slightly smaller poster, across the spines of four books sitting in a row of shelves, in huge obvious lettering, were the words “HOT. GIRLS. READ. BOOKS.” Alexi snorted at that memory. His still-best friend Tanooj, got it from a book fair back in sophomore year and secretly pinned it up in Alexi’s room, one of the countless jokes that characterized his friend’s unabashedly playful personality. Alexi’s closet still had a door, which he was surprised to be surprised to see. Years of tiny apartment living made him forget such suburban luxuries even existed. There were two push up bars on the floor and a dresser against the wall, filled with his old socks and topped with the various accolades he gathered as a child: a spelling bee regional champion certificate, a karate black belt folded into a roll, and a framed silver pin of The President’s Volunteer Service Award. On a desk facing the window sat an old desktop and monitor, loaded with all the games he used to play online with his friends. The bed sheets were new, a simple creme linen color. He used to have solid black sheets and pillows, but his parents must have swapped them out at some point.
“ALEXI! COME DOWN FOR LUNCH,” his father shouted from downstairs.

The bed-headed boy stomped down the stairs and smiled a foamy smile at his mother and father. He continued brushing his teeth as he stood behind his dad’s chair and patted him a hello.
“I made your favourite, vegetable lasagna,” Mrs. Sokolov announced, forgetting that Alexi’s favourite was the spicy corn soup she had made when first trying to convince the family to join her in her veganism. They didn’t bite, but were content to eat vegan at home since she was the main chef. 
“Ooks wummy,” Alexi responded as he rushed off to spit out his toothpaste.
Alexi sat down in his mother’s usual chair, right next to his dad. His father looked at him questioningly but said nothing of it. As he went to serve himself the lasagna, Alexi passed the spatula from his right hand to his left. He struggled to cut a slice with his off hand but managed to ferry it above the table to his plate with no broccoli or onions falling overboard. His stomach growled. He shoveled the food into his mouth with all the zeal of a 26 year old, ignoring, at times, even the tried and tested strategy of chewing.

“Do y’all ever think about why exactly we live like we live?” Alexi asked his dad who was impatiently staring at his wife, hoping to telecommunicate to her to stop puttering around the kitchen so they could eat together before the lasagna got cold.
“Like, we could be a family that wears matching pajamas or, I don’t know, we could all eat in the backyard or in front of the TV.”
“Let’ s not start eating in front of the TV, we barely spend time together as it is,” his mom chimed in.
“Not eating in front of the TV exactly, but like every single decision! I brushed my teeth starting with the inside instead of the outside, for example. I could totally just do that and no one could stop me.”
“Make sure you brush well, don’t miss any spots,” his dad counseled.
“Hello? Are y’all listening? Not just about brushing, but all of our choices! We have a set of actions that we are familiar with and those are the ones we most often do, but we could just as easily do something else. Like mom, you could start jump roping every morning instead of the yoga thing you do. Or even smaller decisions, like when doing yoga you could lift your left leg first instead of your right leg. At every single decision we make, we could potentially make a totally different one, you know?”

Mr. Sokolov waited only for his better half to touch the rounded top of the spindle-backed kitchen chair before launching into an extensive operation on his lasagna, a spoonful of which he held hovering in front of his mouth for the previous three minutes. He and his son were equally voracious eaters. Alexi continued to try and explain his revelation to his parents, that they didn’t have to live the way they were. That, at any moment, they could instantly change into people who did things completely differently. And then at the next moment, change again. Nothing bound them to who they were yesterday. He played to their younger selves. Maybe his mom could start drawing again and his dad could become a soccer player—or at least a manager. Just by choosing something different, old dreams could be realized or, more likely, new dreams could be found. Something as simple as choosing to use the opposite hand when brushing our teeth, could set us on an unforeseen path. That small shift might lead to increased dental hygiene, as we lose the complacency that comes with our more dexterous hand, perhaps preventing a root canal some years later. The course of our lives would be fundamentally different. The day that would have been spent under the operating table would now be spent doing something else. Each of the million decisions we make every day have the power to ripple outward, compounding in effect a million times until we are somewhere totally unique. But what matters more than the new place we find ourselves is that from there, we remain free to go anywhere we choose. We are not beholden to any of the ways of being that got us there nor can we predict where we might end up next.

His mom laughed and picked up her fork with her left hand at Alexi’s insistence, but ultimately neither found the idea to be world changing. His father leaned back in his chair and patted his gut.
“There's no time for all this. We already have so many things to worry about, I don’t want to start adding whether I should breathe in first or out. In fact, the only thing you should try to change is your job,” his father jabbed.
Alexi rolled his eyes.
“It does sound stressful pumpkin, are you doing alright?”
“Not you too mom, come on! Why does every conversation come back to this? I do not want to come and work for y'all.”
“Well, this is the third time you’ve had to take a vacation just to catch up on sleep. I don’t know, it just seems way too stressful. Coming home for three or four days won’t restore you. Maybe we can help? Want me to call Uncl—”
Alexi jumped from his seat and stormed back up to his room.
“Oh ho, so he runs away with his right foot first. Think of your future! WHEN WILL YOU HAVE TIME TO DRINK KVASS? TO FIND A WIFE?” His father yelled after him. “Pah, the devil with him,” he muttered and started for another square of lasagna. 
Alexi’s mother swatted her partner’s hand away and shot him a mean look.

Maryann Lee Sokolov, originally Gallagher, sat often in Alexi’s empty room in the years since he had moved away. When sitting on the bed one day, she noticed its edges weakening, and immediately sent her husband to purchase a new mattress. On another day, she mindlessly smoothed the bed sheet around her and, feeling her fingers catch in a small hole, grabbed her darning tin and patched it over that very moment. These were interruptions to her original purpose. She missed Alexi. She would reminisce in his room, recalling the excitement and curiosity of a younger Alexi, wonder at what he might be facing all alone in his new home, and at what hardships he might yet face. Eventually, she’d regain awareness and look around the room. If she caught cobwebs threatening the corners of the room, she’d get straight to dusting. Maryann felt dissatisfied if things were out of order. The world didn’t need to be perfect, but if she realized there was something to improve, she would spend the ten minutes needed to make it happen. Usually that's all it took, just ten short minutes and things could be neater, taken care of, made more efficient. All the more so if it would also make for a comfortable return for her darling boy.

She didn't seek out efficiency in her life, things just struck her as obvious and needing doing. She responded promptly to emails, put the next dental appointment in her calendar when asked, and took every opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. When she turned 16, for example, and the other girls in her class spoke of their fears of scaring away their dates with their bad dancing, she asked her parents to hire a ballroom dancing instructor as the main attraction of her birthday party. Almost the entire class showed up, and she collected their myriad presents as a reward. A similar story happened with Mr. Sokolov. They met in a required theatre course, bonding over a terrible production of The Glass Menagerie. After college, their friendship continued but mainly consisted of questions Sergey Sokolov had about new fiscal regulations or how to file taxes for his budding import/export business. She grew sick of his inability to provide basic information and told him frankly, “just hire me as your accountant if you need my help.” And she was very convincing. It was through this partnership that Mr. Sokolov fell in love with Mrs. Sokolov, with her rationality, with her prudence, and with her curled red hair.

She felt certain that there was more going on than her son let on. No one talks so fervently about unfocused sweeping changes to their lives without at the same time revealing a dissatisfaction with the present. Her husband saw it too, and together they strategized that he would take a stab at starting a conversation tomorrow, if her attempt went poorly today. She knocked softly at his door and then opened it. Mary Lee saw a lump under the covers and was momentarily shocked by the sound of an overexcited British man shouting about something. Alexi pretended not to notice she was there. The YouTube video continued to play from his phone’s speakers within the lump.
She opened with, “Why were you limping up the stairs?”
He kept up his tantrum of silence, leaving the Brit to respond, “Fucking ‘ell, did you see that!”
“Are you hurt?”
She went over and sat at her usual spot on his bed and asked again, “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Alexi finally responded, “I just fell down last night.”