The day my son brought Svitlana home to meet me, I started a list. Not in a notebook — in my head, then on the back of a receipt from Walgreens, then in the notes app on my phone.
Baby names. Family names, mostly. My father’s name went at the top of that list, and it stayed there for a very long time.
His name was Mykola. We called him Nick here. My mother used to say he was the only man she ever knew who could fix a carburetor and a broken heart with the same set of hands. He died eleven years ago, the week before the Fourth of July. There was a heat wave that summer, and I remember standing in the parking lot of the funeral home in Skokie, watching the asphalt go soft under my shoes.
I always thought — I told myself, told my sister, told my friend Darlene at work — my grandson would carry his name. Andriy didn't say yes. He never said no, either. He did what he always does. He looked out the window and said, "Ma, we'll see."
That's how men in my family say no.
On the day of the hospital discharge, I got there early. Forty-five minutes early. I'd picked out a red blouse, the one with the little pleats down the front. I bought it the day Svitlana's first ultrasound showed a boy. The salesgirl at Kohl’s asked if it was for a party. I said, "Sort of."
I stood by the main entrance of the maternity ward at Rush, holding a balloon that said "Welcome Baby" in silver script. I'd ordered the good pastries from the Ukrainian bakery on Chicago Avenue — poppy seed, apricot — to bring over later. I wanted to be the first one to hold him after the parents. That's what I'd imagined. In the hospital room, I'd be the one they handed him to, and I'd hold him up to the light, and I'd say his name — Mykola — real quiet, so the name and the baby would know each other from the start.
Andriy arrived with a bouquet of white roses and a look on his face like a kid who left his homework on the bus. Next to him, Svitlana's mother, Oksana, in a beige cardigan, holding a little gift bag with blue tissue paper. I have no problem with Oksana. A quiet woman. We've had coffee three times in five years, and all three times she insisted on paying.
But standing next to Oksana were two girls. Early twenties. One tall with red hair and a bunch of pink balloons, the other one filming everything on her phone.
"Andriy," I said. "Who's this?"
He shifted the roses from one arm to the other. "That's Katya and Mari. Svitlana's friends. They surprised her."
"We said family only."
"Ma, they're already here."
The redhead came right up to me and threw an arm around my shoulders like we'd known each other since first grade. "You must be the grandma! Look at you, all dressed up!"
I took her hand off my shoulder. Gently. I can do that.
Darlene texted: *traffic on 90 is a nightmare, running twenty minutes late, so sorry.* Darlene was bringing a sign for the lawn. *WELCOME HOME, BABY MYKOLA*. She'd had it printed at FedEx. I texted back a thumbs-up and put the phone in my purse. The strings from the balloon kept tangling around my wrist.
The nurse came out first. Young woman, maybe thirty, holding the baby in a white hospital blanket. Behind her, Svitlana. Pale, smaller than I remembered, with that face women get after childbirth — like she'd been to some far-off country and wasn't all the way back yet.
I stepped forward. I don't remember deciding to. My arms just came up.
The nurse turned toward me with one of those practiced smiles they must teach in nursing school. "Grandma, hold on. Daddy first."
Oksana was hugging Svitlana and crying without making a sound. Andriy took the baby from the nurse. He held him up, and for one second I thought — he's going to say it. He's going to say *Mykola*.
Instead he looked at Svitlana.
Andriy and Svitlana had discussed this. I could see it in the way their eyes met. A whole conversation in the time it takes to blink.
"Meet Matvii," Svitlana announced.
It hit me somewhere high in the chest, like a door slamming in a room I was standing in.
"Matvii," I said.
"Isn't it handsome?" That was the redhead again, Katya, holding three balloons now because she'd taken one of Mari's. "An old soul name. Very cinematic."
The photographer finally showed up. Twenty-five minutes late. Plus, the sun was in the wrong spot — the assistant kept wandering into the frame with a light meter. He kept shuffling us around like cattle. Some of the family shots I never made it into, but Katya and Mari somehow did, because they were hugging Svitlana from both sides every time the shutter clicked.
Then Svitlana said it. In front of everyone. Clear as day.
"We decided together," she said. "Andriy wanted Matvii too."
I looked at my son. He was studying the parking garage across the street like it held the answer to something.
"Andriy," I said.
"Ma, it's a beautiful name," he said, still not turning.
That's when it happened. I don't know what exactly triggered it. Maybe the redhead's laugh — she had this laugh like wind chimes, like nothing bad had ever happened to anyone anywhere. Or maybe the way Andriy wouldn't look at me.
"You know what," I heard myself say, "I waited ten years for this day."
My voice came out strange. Too flat.
"Ten years. I mentioned the name — I mentioned Mykola, after his grandfather. Nobody heard me. Fine. But you invite friends I've never seen in my life, and they're in every picture. The photographer was half an hour late. And when I reach for my grandson — my grandson — some stranger in scrubs tells me to wait my turn."
I hadn't planned to cry. My makeup was running. I could feel it on my chin.
"I just want to know what I am here. A grandmother? Or did I stand in the wrong place?"
Oksana quietly moved toward her car. She didn't say a word. Just vanished from the frame, the way she always does — polite, invisible.
Svitlana faced me with the baby in her arms. No anger. Just this deep, bone-tired look, like I was the last item on a very long list.
"Mrs. Pawluk," she said. "Please. Not now."
"And when? At home? Later? It's always later."
"We're in a parking lot. There's a three-day-old baby here." She said it without inflection, scanning my face like a text she'd already read twice. "Please."
I wanted to say: *I buried my father. I'm not asking for the moon. I'm asking for a name.* But I looked down at the baby — at that small, serious face in the white blanket, totally indifferent to the entire situation — and the words dissolved in my throat.
We drove home in silence. Andriy and Svitlana went in their car. Oksana left without saying goodbye. Andriy called me that evening.
"I need to tell you something." His voice had that rehearsed quality. He'd been practicing. "We chose the name Matvii a month ago. I knew. I just didn't tell you. I kept putting it off."
"You were afraid of a scandal."
"Yes."
"And you thought if you announced it at the hospital, I couldn't make a scene."
He said nothing.
"You know what happened, Andriy?" I said. "I made the scene at the hospital anyway. In front of strangers and one ginger with pink balloons. Next time, have the fight with me in private. That's all I ask. One bad conversation in a kitchen. Not this."
"I was wrong," he said.
"You were weak. There's a difference."
"Ma —"
"Weakness is when you know the right thing and you do the easier one because you're scared. That's not the same as a mistake."
He was quiet for a long time. I could hear him breathing. In the background, the baby was crying. The sound came through the phone like static.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I hung the balloon on the back of the kitchen chair and watched it bob there. It had lost some helium. By morning it would be on the floor.
Darlene called. I told her to cancel the FedEx sign. She asked if I'd talked to Andriy. I said yes. She said, "Well, at least that's something."
"It's nothing," I said. "But I'm going over there Sunday."
I spent Saturday cooking. Hands needed something to do. I made the apple pie Andriy used to love as a boy — the one with the brown sugar and the crust that never quite holds together. I wrapped it in a blue dish towel my sister brought back from Lviv.
Sunday I drove to their condo in Ukrainian Village. I carried the pie up the stairs. I didn't bring the balloon.
Svitlana opened the door. She stood there in sweatpants with a burp cloth over her shoulder, and for a minute neither of us said anything.
Then she stepped back and said, "Come in. He just woke up."
She handed me the baby before I'd even set the pie down. Just placed him in my arms, like it was nothing. He was heavier than I expected. Fists clamped shut, face squished, head full of black hair.
I walked to the window. The light came through the crooked blinds and caught his face.
"Hello, Matvii," I said, and tested the name in my mouth. It felt like a stone you pick up and carry because it was given to you.
I sat down in the rocking chair. The one I bought them, the one I'd imagined myself sitting in, with a different name on my lips. The baby looked at me. Or past me. Newborns don't look at anything exactly.
His hand closed around my finger.
Svitlana was in the kitchen, cutting the pie. I could hear the knife scraping the plate, and Andriy saying something low and hesitant, and Svitlana answering in a voice I couldn't make out.
The baby's hand tightened.
I thought of my father. The smell of gasoline and leaves. The way he'd say my name — Ilona — with the accent on the first syllable, like it mattered where the weight fell.
And then I stopped thinking.
I can't tell you I forgave anyone in that moment. I can't tell you the name grew on me like ivy. But the baby's fingers were around my thumb, and there was pie in the oven, and my son was in the next room, hiding behind a cupboard door like he'd been hiding since he was twelve.
Tuesday, I called the florist on Western and sent a bouquet to the hospital. Pink roses, nothing too big. The card took me a long time. In the end I wrote: *Thank you for taking care of Matvii. From his grandmother, Ilona Pawluk.*
I sent it before I could change my mind. Then I walked to my bedroom, pulled the receipt from Walgreens out of the drawer — the one with the name list, the one I'd been carrying for ten years — and dropped it in the kitchen trash. The lid swung shut with a clatter, and a curl of onion peel floated down on top of it.
The baby's name is Matvii.
What isn't mine, I'm learning to set down. That's as close to an ending as I have. I set the pan on the stove and turned the burner off. The pie had already cooled.
I told my son I'd see them Thursday. And I meant it.
