Real Life & Liars (10 page)

IN THE MIRROR ON THE BACK OF THE BEDROOM DOOR, IRINA TRIES
to imagine her belly swollen with child. Instead of this sunny yellow dress fluttering smoothly from her bosom to her knees, there would be a huge…mass. A growth.

She flops down on the end of the bed. Her bare feet just skim the wood floor. She swings her legs, brushing her toes across the varnished surface, picking up grains of sand that may have been brought in by her own siblings years before, after a trip to Ferry Avenue Beach.

What kind of mother refers to her unborn child as a growth? That’s one step shy of tumor. Irina nods; she’s right to give this baby over to Darius completely. She’s still a child herself and doesn’t even own a cat because it’s too much responsibility.

Irina hears a knock, and she can tell it’s Ivan. The knock is soft, hesitating, as if the knock itself is asking,
Can I come in, if it’s not
too much trouble? I’m sorry to bother you…
Sometimes Irina thinks that Katya got the balls in the family.

“Come in.”

Indeed it is Van, wearing khaki slacks with a ballpoint pen smudge on the thigh, and an unbuttoned shirt that looks yellowed from too many bleachings. His tie is loose around his neck. His black hair sticks up spiky, not in the current fashionable way; just because it does that. Irina would like to smooth it down, but she’s too comfortable on the bed, and anyway, Van is too tall for her to reach his head.

“Hey, Reenie.”

“Hey.”

“You look pretty.”

Irina smiles down at herself. Big brothers are good for the ego even if they are blinded to flaws like chicken legs and limp, flat hair. “Thanks. What’s up? Need me to tie your tie?”

“Nah. I’ll figure that out eventually for myself. It’s just too damn muggy to get fully dressed yet. Have you seen those clouds? Kat’s having a seizure over the weather report.”

“What does she care? The party’s inside.”

“There’s a balcony, though, and she wanted the sunset to backdrop the toast.”

“Well, she can pass around a petition against God for making it rain. Jesus.”

Any two Zielinski children’s favorite pastime is gossiping about the third. Irina has no doubt this includes her when the older two are together.

“What’s up? I should finish getting dressed.”

“Are you OK?” Van chews his lip and pulls on his earlobe, a habit that’s persisted ever since Irina can remember, and from years before her birth, according to family lore. Mira likes to joke that his right earlobe is longer than his left from all the nervous tugging.

“I’m fine. I’m just worn-out from my whirlwind wedding.”

Van sits gingerly down next to Irina, as if he’s afraid of jostling her too roughly. “Are you really?” He squints at her on the “really,” and Irina almost laughs. But she knows he’s in earnest. Van always is.

“Yes, really. What’s your problem?”

“I’m just worried about Darius. He seems so…bossy.”

Irina frowns, trying to remember when Darius has even been around Van except for their first meeting. Then she recalls the incident with the coffee and Darius concerned about the caffeine.

“Oh, that. He’s just concerned about me. I don’t take care of myself very well, you know.”

“Seems to me you’re doing OK.” Now Van folds his arms, and Irina knows what he’s thinking about. So unfair; Alex was an aberration.

“Look, I would think you’d be pleased that I have a decent guy who wants to look out for me.”

“I just don’t like his controlling behavior.” His voice drops to a theatrically low register. “Has he ever…pushed you? Or anything?”

Irina jumps up. “For fuck’s sake! Leave it to Ivan to take one tiny thing and turn into battered-woman syndrome. If this is the way you act around girls, no wonder they freak out and bail on you.”

“I’m not going to apologize for worrying about you! Speaking of romantic pasts, you don’t exactly have a sparkling record yourself.”

“How dare you bring that up!”

“You started it!”

“Oh, very mature. Get the hell out.”

“You never did answer my question.”

Irina’s heart flips over when she hears a low voice say, “Answer what?”

Darius stands in the doorway, his textbook dangling from his
hand, his thumb marking a page. His body is angled forward and taut.

“Nothing,” Van says. “Forget it. Minor sibling squabble. You’ll get used to it if you hang around here long enough.”

Van hurries past Darius, but there’s not much room in the doorway, and the effort of squeezing by makes his loose tie fall from his shoulders. He keeps going down the hall.

“If
I hang around here?” Darius shouts after him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

MAX’S HAND PRESSES AGAINST THE SMALL OF MY BACK. HE WANTS
to urge me forward, through the double doors into the dining room at the Lighthouse Inn, where 120 of our family and friends await our entrance, to celebrate thirty-five years of marriage.

Through the frosted glass on the doors, I can see the indistinct forms of the guests. The buzz of party chat rises and falls like the humming of a lullaby.

I can’t explain my hesitation. I glance at Max, and he’s knitted up his eyebrows, probably wondering if I’m having some sort of attack.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, and duck away from his hand and into the ladies’ room to my left.

I lean against the row of sinks and meet my own eyes in the mirror. I had to wash that ridiculous style out of my hair. All those pins and twists hurt my head, and anyway, when I sneaked off to
have a joint before getting dressed, the smell was trapped in my hair, so I needed a shampoo.

Are those age spots in my décolletage? Or maybe they are tiny skin cancers. That’s it, let’s have a race to see what kills me first. I’d put my money on the melanoma as a long shot. I always had a soft spot for the underdog.

Katya will have a hissy fit about me washing out my hair. I’ll offer to reimburse her for what she spent at the salon, and that will shut her up. I have an excuse about the dress, though. I accidentally (on purpose) spilled tea all over the front of it when I was getting ready.

Because after I slid on that ivory-linen frock, so suitable for my age and the occasion—it looked like something they would choose to bury me in. My knees buckled, and I knocked a hand mirror off my dresser trying to grab for something solid.

I can’t explain that to Katya, though, so I spilled on it, then found my old wedding dress, which looks pretty nice, even with a yellowed champagne stain near the hem.. Now, I look like me.

Why should I spend one single minute looking like anyone else? Or worse, like a corpse.

Good thing I had that joint. That vague sense of panic I had this morning has retreated to something like a mild itch in my palms, and I can ignore that readily enough. I have extra provisions in my purse, too.

I better get out there before Max recruits one of the girls to come in and see if I’ve dropped dead.

And yes, he does look relieved as I step out. He extends his elbow toward me. Max is wearing a sensible dark suit, much like he did the day we got married, except without that god-awful ruffled shirt.

I reach up to his head and gently remove his reading glasses from his balding crown. I fold them up and slip them into his
inside pocket, patting his jacket over his glasses and his heart. I give him a quick kiss, then a longer one, before I step back so he can open the door.

And, oh, it is lovely.

Dozens of family and friends turn at once to the music struck up by a trio of musicians. The singer—a brunette with dynamite legs—is talking into the mic and probably announcing us or something, but I can’t hear her because my ears are stuffed with congratulations and greetings, and I’m gulping in all the happy smiles and delighted waves.

Over all their heads, past the display of photographs spanning four decades of our lives, beyond the bar, is a huge window that spans nearly the whole west side of the room, framing Lake Michigan, which ripples like an emerald swath of silk. A cottony haze has wrapped itself around the sun, turning its painful midday glow into something like candlelight. Sailboats on the horizon make me think of origami cranes, which mean good luck to the Japanese.

Paul made me one of those, on my first day as a teaching assistant at the university. It was on my desk when I first arrived, perched in a nest of wadded Kleenex, and I almost threw it away in my distraction. That was years before he became department chair, but only minutes before the genesis of our friendship.

It’s my night with Max, though. It’s with Max that I’m celebrating thirty-five years of marriage, forty years of couplehood. So I grab Max’s face and mash my lips against him. He’s too surprised for a proper pucker, so it feels like I’m attacking him more than kissing, but he wraps me in his arms anyway, while a tender chorus of “aaaaaah” envelops us.

KATYA TURNS WITH EVERYONE ELSE WHEN SHE HEARS THE SINGER
announce the arrival of Mirabelle and Max Zielinski, “thirty-five years married and still in love like the day they met!” It was a slight derivation from the script Kat had given her, but nothing worth fighting over.

“Shit.”

“Oooooh, Mom said a swear.” Taylor had appeared at her elbow, already sporting a mustard stain on his collar.

“Sorry, Tay.” She pats him on the shoulder—he’s getting too tall already to ruffle his hair like she always used to—and watches him head for the appetizers before turning back to her spectacle of a mother. Of course she would wash out that hairstyle for which Kat paid a ludicrous sum. Of course she wouldn’t wear that tasteful suit that Katya spent weeks hunting down in just the right size.

No, instead she’s got her hair straggling down her back like she
hadn’t even bothered to comb it, and she’s squeezed herself into her old wedding dress, for the love of God. Extra flesh squishes out of the dress at its edges, around the neckline, and armholes. A large stain mars the front of it, presumably a champagne spill never touched in thirty-five years. Mira probably smells of mothballs, unless she doused herself with her hippie oils like she sometimes does. The dress is floor-length, but Kat wouldn’t be surprised if her mother was barefoot underneath it. She can’t be wearing heels because the hem is dragging on the floor in front.

Why had she expected anything less? Why did Mira ever pretend to go along with her plans in the first place?
Ha! Fooled you, Katya. Made you think your opinion mattered.

Har de har, Mom
. Katya turns away, examining the sky outside. The haze gathered all day, and now it’s right down on the ground, wrapping itself around the building, seeping in each time someone opens the balcony door. The Lighthouse Inn’s air conditioner hums nonstop, and still the room gets warmer with each new arrival. At the horizon, Katya detects some darker clouds and bites her lip. The weather forecast had changed throughout the day, each time she checked, the chance of storms grew higher, and the last time she looked, while on Charles’s computer, instead of a cartoon sun partly obscured by cloud, there was a storm cloud with a yellow lightning bolt.

That’s when she saw that odd e-mail from Tara. She sounded desperate to talk to Charles, and something about the language was overly familiar. Too many slang words, maybe. The way she signed it with only her initial, “T.”

Once before there was another girl in Charles’s life. They were dating, but temporarily broken up. Over what, she could no longer remember. She was stung by how quickly he took up with another woman, but as he coolly pointed out later, she had dumped him. So that wasn’t even technically cheating.

Charles touches the small of her back, and the jolt is electric. A bit of her martini sloshes onto her bosom.

“Nervous?” Charles sips an Amstel Light and smiles at someone across the room, handing Kat a handkerchief from his inside pocket without meeting her eyes. Kat recognizes his business face, all smiles and winks and backslapping, his mind all the while calculating the cost-benefit ratio of each conversation.

“No, just lost in thought, I guess. It’s a big night.” She can’t help herself. “I’m surprised you’re not on the phone.”

“I didn’t plan a crisis for this weekend, and no, I’m not on the phone. I shut it off.”

Kat turns to him and raises one brow. “Off?”

“Vibrate, anyway. And look, I have voice mail. I promise not to interrupt any conversations by answering my phone. Instead, how about a dance?”

The question flummoxes her so much that she’s briefly stymied about what to do with her drink. Charles takes it from her hand, places it on the nearest table—half-occupied by university types from the English Department—and then pulls her with both his hands toward the dance floor.

Kat tries to read his face, unable to remember the last time he’d asked her to dance, and it’s been years, even though they usually attend three weddings every summer, and the Peterson Enterprises Christmas party is always a big affair.

Though he has yet to look her in the eye.

When they reach the dance floor, he pulls her close, closer than she feels comfortable in such a crowd. She feels jittery at such a display and takes her hand off his shoulder to tug at her dress in case it’s riding up to show that one prominent vein behind her knee. She tries to conjure a view of herself last time she glanced in a mirror.

As Charles guides her across the floor, her eyes gliss across the crowd.

The sight of her mother demands her attention. She’s laughing loudly, hanging on to Max’s elbow in that ratty old dress. With only a little more wear and tear, she could be that crazy jilted bride from
Great Expectations
. She lifts her hem to show off her shoes: Birkenstock sandals. Not even new ones. Katya had last seen them on the back porch, exposed to the elements.