Seventeen years ago, my husband and I lived for a time in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, which was then only a short drive across the border from Mariupol, Ukraine, the city currently being decimated by Russian forces.

Beer was sold from carts on the street near our building, and many evenings, while waiting for my husband to come home from work, I would stand on our 11th floor balcony and yell, “Svinya” (swine) to the men below. Not every man, of course — just the noisy, drunken men who stumbled away from the crowd to relieve themselves on the wall of the adjacent building.

We lived on a well-maintained thoroughfare with mature trees, close-cropped grass and stone walkways where people gathered at dusk to socialize, drink and stroll. My husband, Neal, and I planned to live there for five years while he implemented an American retail model within a large Russian company.

It was also where I transitioned from an independent woman to someone who monitored public peeing while waiting on a man.

Six months earlier, Neal’s previous employer in the U.S., where he was a top executive, had eliminated his position. He was stunned to be jobless while responsible for college tuition for his two children from his first marriage, alimony payments, divorce debt, plus a recently unemployed new wife: me. I was also rattled, as I had just sold my home, quit my job and moved from one coast to the other to be with him. We had lived apart for the first two years of our relationship.

When Neal described the job offer, he emphasized the big monetary payoff at the end, saying, “We’ll be set.”

Russia was not a place I envisioned beginning my marriage, but I understood that Neal’s need to work was twofold: His career had been validation of his worth, plus we had mounting bills.

Our plane landed near midnight and the following morning, Neal began working as if he had something to prove. Twelve to 14-hour days, seven days a week became his pattern while I began exploring Rostov-on-Don alone. Few locals spoke English, and I spoke a few Russian words poorly, which was probably why cashiers looked at me strangely when I asked, “Skolka” (how much), as I handed them a notepad and pen to write down the ruble amount. The Cyrillic alphabet was daunting, but numbers were the same.

In the first two months I read the 15 books I lugged to Russia in my suitcase and would have savored each page had I known English books were scarcely available and internet access in our building was sporadic. In the beginning I would force myself out of bed each morning to move about our silent apartment cleaning things I had cleaned the day before. A few months in, I didn’t bother.

One afternoon I left for the grocery store, forgot my notepad, and doubled back to get it. There I discovered the building manager in our apartment, going through the dresser drawers. Despite her initial startled expression, she snapped at me as she explained it was a routine apartment inspection. As I furiously described the incident to Neal that evening, he put his elbow on the kitchen table, rested his palm under his chin and nodded off.

Lonely, isolated and aimless, I craved companionship, but our dinner conversations quickly became my monologues.

“Sorry, love, but I talk all day,” Neal said while halfheartedly pushing his favorite roasted chicken around the plate. An oven-browned bird was the only productive thing I had done that day, and I told him his lack of appetite was sadistic.

The building manager suggested I should feel honored because our new next-door neighbor was head of the Cossacks. I had so many questions, but assumed the uniforms had been updated. I gave Neal regular updates. I described how often the neighbor was home, the plume of pungent smoke his cigarette left in our shared foyer and the way he moved in and out of his apartment like a ghost. When weeks passed and I hadn’t seen him except through the peephole, I told Neal our neighbor was avoiding me.

“You’re alone too much. Too, too much,” he said in the same soothing tone I’d once heard him use to coax our panicked cat, Emmitt, back inside after he escaped the bonds of indoor living.

“Let’s go home,” I said.

Instead, he suggested I work with him, handling human resource tasks, mostly. The job kept me busy, but there was palpable anxiety radiating from the employees, and I didn’t need a translator to understand why.

The owner of the company had a managerial style some might say created a toxic workplace atmosphere. For example, after receiving an unfavorable report during a meeting, he leaped to his feet screaming obscenities and hurled his laptop through the glass window of the second story conference room.

I again talked to Neal about an exit plan. He wanted to stick it out.

As my husband began to take over day-to-day operations, the displaced owner would often call me to his office to initiate new projects. Sometimes he would shift the conversation as he wondered aloud why I would choose to work when I could travel the country or spend time as his wife did, enjoying the many nearby sanatoriums (which, in former Soviet states, are like spas with medical treatments).

Occasionally he insinuated I had an unfavorable opinion of his company and him. Both true, but I had never told anyone except my husband, privately at home.

It was the coldest winter in decades in what we learned was one of the warmest parts of the country. The pipes in our building froze and burst over the elevator, rendering it unusable. Each night we trudged up 11 flights of icy cement stairs to our apartment, often carrying bottled water we had been advised to drink and cook with.

We could see our breath indoors as we huddled together on the sofa under layers of blankets. The living room glowed orange from the four portable electric heaters I bought when our radiators stopped working. We watched the one channel we had in English: Animal Planet. “Meerkat Manor” was our big night.

Just before bed, we bathed together as our water heater accommodated only one bath. Neal would get out first, steam wafting from his body, and put on thermal long underwear. He would open a towel and I’d step into it and briskly dry myself. While I put on flannel bottoms, he held the bath sheet over my shoulders, and as I buttoned the top, he took slippers and pushed them on my feet.

To sleep, we had heating pads under the covers, two down comforters and three wool blankets. I always said the same thing as he wrapped his body around mine just before drifting off: “I love you,” and then, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

We had been there over a year when the company owner again mentioned my low opinion of him. Except on this occasion, he repeated back to me exactly what I had said: “You think I’m cruel and insecure and jealous of Neal.”

As he smirked and nodded, I felt a surge of adrenaline as my brain registered alarm at his ability to quote me precisely. Neal also became convinced that the apartment his company provided had been bugged by the company itself after the owner repeated back the exact derogatory words Neal had said to me about the owner while we were alone at home.

That was the final roundhouse punch. At last we were in agreement: It was time to cut and run.

We flew from Russia to New York City for what we called a vacation, but Neal had scheduled two job interviews. First stop stateside was an appointment with his orthopedist for stress-related sciatica that often flared up, but this time it had not subsided.

After many tests including a P.E.T. scan, we had a diagnosis that made all else insignificant. It was cancer that had metastasized to the bones of his lower back. Neal began treatment, but it quickly spread to his liver and lungs.

He died four months later.

I had been certain, since the moment I first saw Neal in a Pittsburgh airport bar, that I would spend my life with him. With the same certainty, I believed our time in Russia would shrink to being just a blip in our life together, a bad memory in the rearview mirror. I pictured toasts and laughter at anniversary parties to a marriage that survived our rough start.

Instead, those memories I yearned to diminish represent most of our story. That then-crumbling city I wanted so desperately to leave, in a country that is now the pariah of the world, has become, for me, a place of longing — of being able to spend a day, an hour, or even just another moment there with Neal.

Melani Robinson is a writer in New York City. She is working on a memoir about her time in Russia.

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