Real Life & Liars (13 page)

IRINA LUXURIATES IN THE SOLITUDE LIKE IT’S A DOWN BED WRAPPED
in silk sheets.

It’s too hot and muggy for comfort, and her stomach still quivers with a seasick kind of nausea, but she’s alone.

Outside the open windows of the house, she hears the
chugchug
of boats motoring to their docks, the merry braying of the gulls. The hum of tourist chatter melds with the traffic on Bridge Street into a white-noise hum that’s not unpleasant. The slicing light of midday has been blunted with dusk and clouds. Everything feels candlelit.

Thunder cracks and even that, though startling, is a welcome sound, because it brings the promise of change—cool air, refreshing breeze.

Then a baby cries.

On the sidewalk, a family must be walking by. Irina can’t see them, but she hears the shrieks of an inconsolable child pierce
the evening. The baby screams like it’s being scraped with sandpaper. At first the wheels of the stroller, or carriage, or whatever it is, stop, and she hears some murmurs from the parents. Then they apparently decide to just keep moving, and the stroller wheels roll more quickly. The keening and wailing recede into the evening. Rain has begun to slap the windowpanes in the wake of the thunder.

As the screaming child fades out of the range of her hearing, Irina notices her heart slamming into her breastbone. She’s clenched her fists, and her fingernails have dug creases into her palms.

She pulls herself up off the bed and sips some of the water Katya left on the side table, steadying the glass with both hands. She’ll have to get back to the party and face Darius. She feels a pang of guilt that she abandoned him there without knowing anyone. Van is probably reciting the “I Have a Dream” speech to convince Darius they’re not bigots.

Also, she’s probably missing dinner, and her hunger is overpowering her nausea.

She hears the downstairs screen door
whap
shut and footsteps coming across the screened-in porch.

Now her heart pounds for a new reason. She doesn’t recognize the footfalls. No one is calling out to announce themselves, like her family would. The steps are tentative and unfamiliar in the house, cautious, rather than deliberate.

Fear seizes up her throat, and she freezes with her hands on the glass. She could climb out the window, but she’s on the second floor. She would survive the drop, but what about the baby? The footsteps are coming up the stairs now, slow and halting. It’s the sound of sneaking.

Irina moves off the bed and winces as the springs creak. Still holding the glass—fearing she won’t be able to put it down soundlessly—she fumbles with the knob on the old wardrobe in
the room. She could fit into it. The door flings open and Irina screams, letting the glass fall and shatter on the hardwood.

“Irina! It’s just me!”

“Goddamn it, you asshole, why are you sneaking up on me?”

Darius grasps the doorframe with both hands, his eyes wide. “I didn’t want to wake you up. I just wanted to check on you.”

“All I hear is someone creeping through the house, and you’re not supposed to be here…For fuck’s sake.”

Darius finally comes into the room, stepping around the glass. He folds Irina in his arms, but the adrenaline won’t let her relax, and she stands stiff as a coatrack in his embrace. “Baby, it’s OK. I’m sorry I scared you. I shouldn’t have let you come back to the house alone.”

“I didn’t want you to come. I wanted to be alone.”

“You don’t always know what’s best, do you?”

Irina wants to slap him for that. Instead she slumps into his chest. It’s true; she doesn’t know. She hasn’t ever known.

They decide to wait out the cloudburst together, hoping the rain will let up—or at least slow down—long enough to walk back to the party. Irina had been starting to feel guilty about ditching her parents on their big night. Also, she’s still hungry and all Mira has in the house is muesli and a whole lot of flavor-sapped hippie food.

So, they lie down on the bed, with Irina curled in the crook of Darius’s arm, to wait for the storm to end.

Irina watches the white filmy curtains in the storm breeze. They look like dancers twisting their way around the room. Darius’s heart thrums reassuringly under her hand.

“Irina? Do you want to be with me?”

“Of course,” she answers quickly.

“I don’t mean ‘of course,’ I mean, do you really?”

“I married you. And I didn’t have to do that.”

“Hmmmm.”

Irina can feel his muscles taut under her arm. He doesn’t believe her, and why should he? She hasn’t exactly been brimming with joy since their honeymoon.

Irina pulls herself up on one elbow so she can look Darius full in the face. She studies the slight creases near his eyes, and that close she can see slivers of gray among the curls of his hair. It makes her feel tender and caretaking toward him.

She is jarred by a sudden image of elderly Darius bedridden, mouth slack, with a vacant stare, and she’s at his side, old beyond her years.

Why didn’t she ever think of that? How he’ll be old while she’s still in her prime? Who is she kidding? She never even thinks more than a week ahead, obviously, which is why she hadn’t refilled her birth-control prescription. Katya pops up in her head now, wagging her finger and yammering about safe sex. Not that Irina has ever known her to wag an actual finger. Still, it would be just like her.

Sex is never safe, though. Irina knows that better than anyone.

Darius hasn’t relaxed. The tension in his body spreads through the room like vapor, until she can no longer stand it. She breaks off staring at his hair and face and closes her eyes. At her first kisses, he doesn’t respond right away—not frozen exactly, but not active, either. She ignores the frisson of anxiety at this change in him and carries on. Finally, he yields and returns her kiss. His arms wrap more tightly around her and in a smooth movement, he hoists her body on top of his. She feels like a hood ornament; she’s so small compared to him.

“Is this OK?” he asks in his voice that only goes husky like this when they’re about to make love.

“Oh yes.” She moves over his body to demonstrate how “OK” it is. He is a beautiful man.

“No, I mean for you, with the baby. Are you comfortable?”

At “baby,” it’s Irina’s turn to freeze. The baby can’t be bigger
than a field mouse, and it’s already invading their most private spaces.

“It’s fine. I feel fine.”

Irina kisses him deeply again, but she can only think of that screeching baby on the sidewalk, as if it was right there in the room with them.

Irina switches on her inner porn star, moaning when she should, moving as if someone stood in the wings to direct her. “Push here, touch there, arch your back just so…”

It’s enough for Darius. Irina fakes a good loud orgasm in sync with him, and they fall back to the bed. They’re both slicked with sweat.

She never would have guessed that she’d have to fake it with Darius.

When she walked into the BMW dealership, her breath caught in her chest. He cut an impressive figure in a light tan suit, and he was standing behind the main reception area, on the phone. His face lit up when he saw her, as if he knew her. In fact, Irina looked behind her to see who he was smiling at. He finished his conversation with his eyes trained right on her, that smile never leaving him.

“Well,” he said, hanging up. “What can I do for you?” He put the emphasis on
you.

Irina tucked one piece of hair behind her ear and shifted her weight to one hip, one of her most coquettish gestures. “I’m here about the receptionist job.”

“Let me get you an application,” he said, still smiling. Irina was pleased to note that he continued his warm gaze, even after realizing she wasn’t there to buy a car and thus not worth a commission to him.

She left him with her phone number, and she left the blank application sitting on the counter.

They met for sushi the following Saturday. Irina had a few
too many Sapporos and couldn’t stop giggling at her failed attempts with the chopsticks. She was also entranced by the grace of Darius’s hands as he deftly clicked his chopsticks around the platter, even picking up the smallest bit of rice he might have left behind.

He didn’t call every weekend, and it was three more weeks before they slept together, after a night at a club. Irina was having fun, but Darius had looked bored until he finally suggested they head back to his place for a nightcap.

Irina had never had such an attentive lover, and she thought that night that she’d be spoiled for sex with anyone else.

She never imagined she’d end up married to him, without a chance to test that theory.

Darius stirs next to her and strokes her belly, which still lies flat when she’s on her back. Irina starts to push his hand away, realizing at the last moment how that will look. Instead she clasps his fingers.

She wants to say “I love you,” because that’s what a wife would say. It’s what a mother should say to the father of her child. She takes a breath in, preparing to say it, feeling like she’s bouncing on the highest diving board, moments from springing into the in-substantial air.

“Oh look,” Darius says. “The rain stopped.”

“Huh,” Irina says, propping up on one elbow and searching for her crumpled yellow dress. “So it did.”

THE CLINKING OF GLASSES AND MERRY CHEERS OF THE CROWD STILL
ring in my ears as Max breaks off the kiss. I can hear his thoughts broadcast by the scrunched-up forehead, the way he bites his lip.

After that one terrible argument, he hasn’t breathed a word about it. He hasn’t pressed, suggested, guilted, or pushed me toward getting my breast sliced off. Which saint was that? Oh yes. Poor martyred St. Agatha, walking around in medieval paintings with her tits on a plate.

I’m no saint, nor am I Catholic or any particular religion. I was raised in a general Christian way, but to
Maman
, church was social convention, a place to wear pretty hats on Sundays. Papa didn’t care for it, and never attended, though my mother still asked him every single Sunday for the whole of his life, as if it were really an open question. Was that optimism? That would be unlike her. Or just her way of needling him?

“How is your meal?” asks Max.

I have barely tasted it. I suppose it’s exquisite, because everything Katya does is exquisitely perfect. She looks perfect tonight, truly. She probably thinks I don’t give her any credit, and maybe I don’t say it enough out loud, but she always was a beauty. No, I wouldn’t choose those same clothes, or hairdo. But I’m not blind.

Now Ivan, he is the blind one. From my vantage point I can see nearly every table, and this Barbara girl is stuck to him like lint. When just yesterday she wanted nothing to do with him? Something is rotten, as the bard said.

But Jenny. A girl after my own heart. Anyone with eyes could see she loves him. And she ends up relegated to a rear table next to Darius’s empty chair.

Darius could be good for Irina. He seems stable. “Unflappable,” is the word that comes to mind. Just the right person to take care of my youngest baby. Irina has always seemed so loosely moored. One wave will rip her away and toss her into the open water.

I’d almost feel good about leaving the world if I knew Darius would stay, watching over my Reenie.

Ivan stands up to give his toast, pulling on his ear. I look down at my plate and push it away. I try to listen, I should concentrate on the speech he’s crafted just for us, likely agonizing over every phrase.

But…A new grandchild. Just when I’d marshaled my defenses against Max and the anticipated arguments of my children, as I’m holding off the doctor and her knife.

The knowledge of this new life causes the sand to shift underneath my stone-carved resolve.

I smile at the memory of cradling baby Charles Jr., tiny Chip. I felt none of that new-parent panic, none of that trepidation and coronary over every little pimple and whimper. It was like joy shot right through my veins. There’s no love like the easy rapture of grandparent love, at least in those early days.

Later, as the grandchildren grew more remote and frustrated with my lifestyle and boring, no-cable-TV house, the love became tinged with sadness. They wouldn’t sit still for me scooping them up for hugs anymore. And they’re all too big for that, anyway.

Now Irina brings me another chance.

Laughter ripples through the crowd as thunder claps behind us. Rain, which had been sputtering through the evening, is again rapping at the windows in earnest. I catch a glimpse of canary yellow at the back of the room, and see that Darius and Irina are coming back in. She’s smiling, and much more rumpled than when she left. Maybe that’s just from her nap. Or, maybe not.

The crowd applauds, and they all raise their glasses to us, beaming like little candle flames in the room now dimmed by the outside dusk and the inside ambient lighting.

I think of those who aren’t here, not because they RSVP’d with a decline, but because they’re dead. My parents, some aunts and uncles. Max’s brother Stephen, dead of liver disease. Patty had a melanoma removed last year and casually mentioned another appointment to get a funny mole checked.

Control is an illusion. I may not have religion, but I do believe our time is up when it’s up. We can’t choose when to go, but some of us are lucky enough to choose how.

The toast is over. I should have listened. It was probably beautiful.

KATYA MISSES MOST OF VAN’S TOAST TO HER PARENTS BECAUSE
she’s hissing orders at her children, sotto voce.

“Chip, put that phone away, so help me God.”

“Tay, get the spoon off your nose.”

“Kit! Sit up!” She’d slouched so far under the table Katya thought she would slide completely out of sight. It was disrespectful, plus, her dress was riding up on her thighs.

She looks away from Kit as the toast winds up. She’ll assume Van did well enough because people laughed, and the laughter didn’t sound mean.

She exhales and gulps more of her martini, feeling its sting all the way down her throat. She’d never been good at hard liquor, but tonight seemed to be as good a time as any. Charles would drive them all home, as he always did, and now that the toast was done, all the official parts of the party were behind her. It was up to the band to play for a couple of more hours.

“I love this song!” Kit jumps up from her torpor and skips to the dance floor. How she knows “Mustang Sally” is beyond Katya’s comprehension.

Her daughter rolls her hips in rhythm, and lifts her thin wrists skyward. This also hoists up her dress, which was far too short, but still better than some of the others she campaigned for. Katya had exclaimed, “Who makes such slutty clothes in little kids’ sizes!”

Kit had dropped a handful of clothing to the floor and dashed into the mall, forcing Katya to run after her, an awkward proposition in her heels. They were shopping between the Rotary Club luncheon and a client meeting. In the red-faced screaming battle that followed, Kit ran down a litany of suffering under her mother, the recent being calling her a slut—her protestation that she was talking about the clothes, not Kit herself, fell on deaf ears like those only a preteen girl can have—and then referring to her as “a little kid.”

Katya had burst out crying right then, adding another tick to Kit’s list of mortifying mother moments.

You
are
a little kid, she’d wanted to say, but couldn’t articulate, because she was too busy trying to pull herself together in front of the gawking shoppers.
You are my little girl, my last baby, and you’re in such a hurry to grow up and leave me.

Then she went home and called the doctor about perimeno-pause. She needed hormones, stat. She couldn’t afford to be having meltdowns because she had a business to run, thank you very much.

Irina has no idea what she’s in for, and that’s probably just as well, Katya reflects. If anyone really knew what they were in for, there would be a run on vasectomies and tubal ligations.

“Kat, you’ve hardly talked to me.” This from Charles, to her left. She looks up, hardly more shocked than if he’d jumped on the table to sing a show tune.

“What?”

“You insisted I put away my phone, insisted I drop everything to be here, and now you will barely look at me. You’ve been bossing everyone around and now we’re at dinner and you’re staring at your drink. How many of those have you had, anyway? Point is, am I your husband or am I a prop?”

“A prop?” Katya tries to shake off the sense that her brain is wrapped in wool. She can’t make out what Charles is trying to tell her.

Charles shakes his head and takes a long pull from his beer. “I don’t know what you needed me for.”

“It’s my parents’ anniversary.”

“I know the date on the calendar. As I said, you’ve barely said two words to me. Even when I asked you to dance, you were so busy studying the crowd you didn’t look me in the eye.”

Katya slaps her martini glass down on the table. “I can’t believe you’re talking to me about feeling neglected. When was the last time you and I spoke three sentences that didn’t have to do with the house, kids, or logistics? You’ve been ignoring me for years now, and suddenly I’m a little distracted at a party I spent months organizing, and you’re the one who’s wounded? Give me a fucking break.” At this she seizes her glass again and sucks the rest of her drink down, though her throat tries to fight her on that effort by giving her a few hearty chokes.

She probably went too far with that “fucking break” part.

Charles sets his beer slowly back down on the table, with exaggerated care. He uses his cloth napkin to dab at his mouth, places that back on the table, and pushes his chair away.

“I don’t know why I’m here.”

He strides off across the dance floor and disappears into the men’s room.

Katya looks up at the table. Kit is still on the dance floor, jumping up and down to “Shout,” and Chip has wandered off somewhere, maybe texting on his phone, though she told them all to
leave their phones at the hotel. But Taylor is gaping at her, his eyes rounded and mouth opened in a little “O.”

“I’m sorry, Tay…”

“Are you and Dad getting a divorce?”

“What? No! We just had an argument. We’ve had arguments before.”

“You never swore at him before.”

Not that you heard,
Katya thinks. “I’ve had a long day, honey. That’s all. Honest, it’s just fine.” Kat comes around the table to hug Taylor, but he ducks her arm and says he wants to get another piece of cake.

Katya heads off for the bar. Taylor doesn’t need to worry. She’s not going to be a Mrs. Peterson with a tan line where her diamond ring used to be, schlepping the children to and from visitations and splitting up which holidays she gets to spend with her babies. Going out to noisy bars dressed like a harlot half her age, trying to hook a new man.

Katya remembers her own cell phone, which she set to vibrate this morning after the hair appointment and after Tom’s surprise call. The bartender makes her another drink, winking as he says, “You must like the way I make these, ma’am,” and she spirits her drink away to a corner table, where no one is sitting. Suit coats are resting on the backs of chairs, half-consumed drinks dot the surface, and wine spills have marred the linen tablecloth. A digital camera and a handbag have been abandoned, but no sign of the partiers. They’re probably up there dancing to “Old Time Rock and Roll,” now that the male singer has taken over the band.

A muted rumble of thunder crescendos into a sound that cracks the air, and somewhere, a girl screeches, then laughs.

She listens to her voice mail and she indeed has one new message, from Tom: “Kat, our call must have been dropped. I hope you get a chance to call me back. It will be fun catching up with you.”

Katya checks her watch. Not late at all. She wishes she could go out on the patio.

She opens her phone and scrolls through the messages to where she’s hidden Tom’s number under
GYNO
.

“Nothing wrong, I hope?”

Kat snaps her phone shut. “Hi, Mom. No, I’m fine. Are you enjoying yourself?” Katya turns to face her mother, whose silvery hair glows in the candlelight like something out of an oil portrait. If Kat overlooks the age spots across her mother’s chest and her saggy neck, Mira looks radiant in her old wedding gown.

“Yes. Thank you for the party. It’s really beautiful. Much nicer than anything I would have done for myself.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble.” Katya realizes she’s told two of her most popular lies, right in a row.

“It certainly was a lot of trouble, but it’s beautiful.”

“I just hope it’s memorable.”

Mira glances down at her lap, then surprises Katya by taking her hand, and squeezing it. Katya fights an urge to pull away.

“I wanted to tell you that I think you’re beautiful. And I’m really proud of you. You’re so competent, and capable, and smarter than I ever was. You work so hard for your family. I just wanted you to hear that.”

“Um. Wow. Uh.” Katya sips her drink, having been reduced to monosyllables.

Mira releases her hand, then pats it, awkwardly, as if she’s not sure what to do now. “I just thought I should tell you. I’m going to find your father now.”

Mira hoists herself out of the chair and drifts off through the crowd, the short train of her gown winding behind her.

Katya searches through the crowd herself until she finds Ivan, looking typically miserable and fraught, half-hidden behind a large potted plant covered in twinkle lights.

He startles as she seizes his wrist.

“Hey, Kat.”

“What’s wrong with Mom?” she asks him.

Van frowns at her and shrugs. “What do you mean?”

“She’s just being weird.”

“I’d worry if she were normal. Are you drunk?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that? And why are you hiding in a plant?”

“I’m not in the plant. I’m behind it, sort of. It’s the two girls. I started out not having any date, and now I have two, and it’s killing me to divide my time between them, but it’s like driving toothpicks under my thumbnails to talk to both of them at once.”

Katya laughs and sloshes her drink. “A bit dramatic, aren’t we?”

“They have nothing in common. I talk to Jenny, and Barbara starts sighing and fidgeting. She even started filing her nails and checking her e-mail on her phone. I talk to Barbara, and Jenny goes silent and eventually wanders off, until I find her again because I feel guilty for leaving her alone. But Barbara sticks right with me, so it’s three of us again.”

“Vicious cycle.”

“Then I bumped into Darius, and I can’t think of anything to say to him. Geez, Kat, does that make me a racist?”

“Of course not.” Katya pats his arm, giving it a little squeeze. “But it does make you a moron. So how’d you shake the girls and end up behind the plant?”

“They both had to go to the bathroom.”

“Keep the faith. Less than two hours and the band will wrap up and we can all get on with our lives.”

“You might want to consider wrapping up early. I haven’t seen the weather or anything, but it’s looking bad out there. Maybe people should get out before we have to build an ark.”

Katya turns from Ivan to face the window. To get a better view, she stands close to the glass and cups her hands around her eyes
to block out the light from the room. In the struggling red light from the lighthouse, she can discern waves crashing into spray. Lightning flashes brighten the scene to daylight for just a moment, then it’s black again, except for the weak lights along the channel and the red glow of the lighthouse. This time, the thunder cracks so loud Katya gasps and jumps back from the glass.

A voice from her memory says, “It’s just noise, Katya. Noise can’t hurt you.” Her mother. The memory is blurry, but she must have been very young, because she can’t remember Ivan’s being there. Max was out somewhere, and there was a storm. It must have been serious because they were in the basement, a spooky, cobwebby place that Katya never liked at the best of times.

She blinks and now sees only her reflection in the glass. Her chignon has started to come undone. Katya looks down at herself. All else seems in order.

But she sips her drink again because an uncomfortable feeling has started to creep up her spine, and she can’t find the words to explain it.

She flips open her phone to check the weather.