Real Life & Liars (14 page)

VAN TWIRLS A TINY BIT OF NAPKIN BETWEEN HIS FINGERS UNTIL IT
resembles a tiny Tootsie Roll, then he drops it onto the bar, where it joins a dozen other tiny napkin rolls. He’s hating himself for hiding from the girls in the hotel bar but doing nothing else about it. It’s a familiar position, and thus is not entirely uncomfortable. Like an ugly sweater that fits and always seems to be at the front of the closet.

At least the toast went well. He’d started with a bit about how his parents had met at the library, so appropriate for two people in love with the written word. Then he told the story of how in the heat of an argument that had cropped up while Mira was watering flowers, she squirted Max with a hose. They both started laughing and forgot what they were mad about. That got a laugh, and so did his closing line: “Maybe that’s the secret to a long, happy marriage. Never take yourself too seriously and always have a garden hose at the ready.”

So. That seemed to go okay. He’d been trying to seek out Jenny’s eyes in the crowd, but the light was too bright on him, and everyone around him looked like dark lumps.

“Another one?” the bartender asks.

Van nods. Paying cash at the hotel bar rather than drink the free beer up at the shindig is stupid, on top of cowardly and rude. But his nerves are shot from the anxiety of trying to keep both Jenny and Barbara happy. He needs a rest.

He glances up at the small television in the corner. A map of their bit of Michigan appears in the lower left hand corner, obscuring part of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Charlevoix County is in red. Severe thunderstorm warning.

The lights flicker as a thunderclap booms.

No shit,
thinks Ivan.

Katya had hurried off—as much as she could hurry, given that she was weaving around the room—to confer with their mother about aborting the party early. That left Ivan with the uncomfortable question of what to do with Jenny and Barbara. It was never really discussed where either of them would stay, to say nothing of both of them.

Would Barbara want to stay in his room?

Mira wouldn’t mind. She’s always been rather relaxed about her adult children’s sleeping arrangements, based on Irina getting to share a bed with the boyfriend-du-jour anytime she visited. Ivan hadn’t brought anyone home to stay the night in…never, actually.

Then, where would Jenny end up? Though Barbara is a quasi girlfriend, it seems wrong to relegate Jenny to second place since he’s known her for years.

But Barbara is the only one expressing much interest in him at the party. Jenny has been distant all evening.

Van’s head hurts. He drinks more beer and knows that it’s counterproductive to drink more when his head aches.

But it’s all he can think of to do.

“Ah. So here you are,
mon frère.
”

Van cringes in his seat and catches the bartender smirking at him.

Jenny hops up in the seat next to him.

“Sorry,” Van mumbles.

“Don’t apologize to me. Your girlfriend is the one in there prowling the place like a lioness on the hunt.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Jenny turns on her barstool to face Van. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, too embarrassed to look her straight in the face. She wears an ironic smirk, leans on the bar with her elbow, and says, “So what is she, then? First you were done for. Remember, you told me you were Ivan the Terrible? Now she’s here and going all moony-eyed over you, but she’s not your girlfriend? What brought about this miraculous change of heart, anyway?”

“I guess she changed her mind about coming at the last minute.” Van recalls Barbara’s mention of his famous author-dad, and her manuscript.

“And she didn’t tell you? She just—poof! Appeared?”

“Something like that.”

Barbara told him at the dinner that she felt rude dumping him just before the party when she’d agreed to go, and, really, he was very sweet, and she was rethinking this whole “needing space” thing. Maybe they could go away together next weekend? She batted her eyes at that. Literally.

When she said this, Van nearly plopped himself face-first in his salmon. She was damn gorgeous and giving him another chance. So what if his famous father tipped the balance in his favor? So what if she’d steered the dinner conversation to the identity of his father’s agent and whether he ever put in a “good word” for new writers?

“So, why are you hiding out here, then, if your ladylove is in there looking for you?”

Van straightens up and looks Jenny full in the face. She’s smirking in that way she reserves for school-administration debacles and “idiot parent” stories, the way she sneers when she talks about her stepsister’s latest dramatic caper.

“What have you got against Barbara?”

“What have
you
got against her? You’re the one hiding from her.”

“I’ve got nothing against her. I think she’s stunning, she’s beautiful, and…”

“And…?”

“She makes me feel like I’m not a loser.”

Jenny laughs, just once: “Ha.” She turns back and puts both elbows on the bar. “You mean the adoration of your best friend doesn’t do a thing for you?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Ah, I’m just busting your balls. I know what you mean. So go back in there and get her.”

“Huh?”

“Go back in and get your ladylove,
mon ami.
”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Nah. I’m going to finish this up and I think I’ll take off. If I get going now, I’ll make it home before midnight.”

Van stands up, and puts his hand on Jenny’s shoulder, nearly bare in her hippie sundress. “Are you sure you’re OK to drive? And in this?”

“Hey, I’m fine. I’ve only had two beers, and it’s only rain. I’ll be all right. You go on, have fun. I was just filling in, anyway, right? When Barbara wasn’t coming? You shouldn’t have to split your attention.”

Relief floods through Van. She’s solving his problem for him!
Such a good friend; she always knows exactly what he needs. No one else understands him better.

He leans in and kisses her cheek, catching her scent: something crisp and bright. He would bet anything she got it at some shop that sells crystals and incense. She smiles under his kiss, then turns to look him in the eye.

He notices her eyes are an intriguing shade of brown: light, caramel-colored. Almost gold, really, like those of a cat. He’s never seen them before like this.

“G’night, Van,” she says, giving him a light shove on his shoulder. “Go on.”

He floats out of the bar, ready to go enjoy his beautiful date properly, thanking his lucky stars the whole way, for such an understanding friend.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE, IRINA FINDS HERSELF IN ENVY OF
her older brother.

The band plays “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” and at the center of the floor, he sways along with Barbara. She is a looker. Wavy auburn hair, creamy skin, and a slender body with enough boobs to fill out her dress but not so much that she’s falling out all over the place. She envies Van not for his girlfriend—after all, Darius is smoking hot himself, and gets stares from women everywhere he goes—but because Barbara is only a girlfriend. At any time, he can walk away.

Oh sure, she can get divorced, and she most assuredly will. And she can even hand over the baby to Darius and wish him well. But, young though she is, Irina realizes she will be changed by this. In an elemental sense.

She’s already felt some primal urge to protect the baby, this baby she didn’t plan and does not want. Which means, no matter
how much she wants to carry on with her single, freewheeling life, some part of her will resist. Some part of her will cling to that bundle and not want it taken away. That thought fills her stomach with a heavy dread.

And Darius will never forgive her. She will inevitably feel guilt over that. Unlike what Katya seems to think, she doesn’t just screw everything with a dick within a twenty-five-mile radius, to hell with consequences.

Just that the consequences have never been steep before since she always made the guy wear a condom.

Stupid old condoms aren’t supposed to break. She should sue Trojan. At the time, they made a joke of it. “No condom in the world can contain me,” Darius joked, standing over her on the bed, flexing his muscles and posing like a comic-book superhero. She laughed until she cried.

Two weeks later, she just cried.

Darius, sitting to her side, tries kneading her shoulder, but she gingerly shifts it out from under his hand. She begged off from dancing, pleading exhaustion, which was partly true. And the music was too loud for easy conversation, so they’ve been sitting in silence, watching the party.

Irina fingers an ivory cocktail napkin, with gold script reading, “Max and Mirabelle Zielinski, 35th anniversary, June 2, 2007.”

Irina couldn’t conceive of it. She’d known Darius barely thirty-five days before he knocked her up, and already she wanted out.

Maybe Kat was right about her after all.

“Hell of a storm,” Darius shouts over the music.

She nods vaguely. She hasn’t been paying attention, since they returned to the party. Inside the reception hall, everything is twinkle lights and candles refracted in crystal. Easy to forget the turmoil outside. She has to give Katya that much. It’s pretty, and her big sister is really good at pretty.

“Reenie!” Irina turns to see cousin Angela with her daughter
propped on her hip. The kid’s name escapes her. Britney. Christina. Some pop-star name.

Angela plops down uninvited next to her. She’s wearing a dress that couldn’t be more unattractive if she’d gone out of her way. It’s the color of shit and hangs like a sack straight down from her shoulders. Angie’s hair is so flat to her head she might as well not have any. The kid has grabbed a fistful of it and is chewing on it. The sight makes Reenie’s stomach turn, especially when the candlelight glints off some fresh snot on the kid’s face.

“Congratulations!” chirps Angela. Reenie squints at her, and she says, “Oh, my mother told me after she heard from Grandpa about you fainting on the balcony. I take it you’re OK now and anyway, congrats!”

“Thanks.” An uncomfortable silence passes. “How’s your little one?” Reenie asks, hoping she’ll answer with the kid’s name.

“Oh, she’s great. Fifteen months now. She’s up way past her bedtime, and she’s so cranky because I won’t nurse her right now. She’s still loving the breast!” The band was just winding up a song, so Angie ends up shouting the word “breast!” across a nearly quiet hall. She doesn’t seem to notice.

Reenie looks down to adjust her shoe, which doesn’t need adjusting, because she’s afraid that her disgust at imagining a toddler sucking on Angela’s boob has registered on her face.

She steals a glance at Darius, who looks not one bit disgusted, and in fact, he’s playing peekaboo. The nameless boob-loving toddler buries her face in her mother’s hair, smiling shyly.

Irina finds she can’t stand to sit there any longer. “Restroom,” she says over the sound of the band, which has drifted into some other ballad she doesn’t recognize.

She parks herself in a stall and just sits there, like she used to when she worked at that horrible accounting firm with the boss and his roving hands, and the women with frosted hair and dagger-length nails who gossiped about her in the coffee room. So some
times she’d hide in a bathroom stall. If she balanced just right, she could almost nap that way. It was rejuvenating, anyway.

They probably all thought she had dysentery.

As she comes out of the bathroom, she nearly collides with Patty, her mother’s neighbor. Patty has teased her yellowy white hair into cotton-candy froth. Patty takes Irina’s arm and her grip feels wiry and clawlike. She wobbles in place, and though Irina knows some of that is age, it appears some of the wobble might have to do with the drink in her hand, which is almost empty but used to be pink and frozen. She licks some of the sugar off the rim and bites her lip as she looks into Irina’s eyes.

“Oh, honey. You’re going to have a baby.” Christ, she thinks. Everyone must know by now. Did Katya take out an ad or something?

Irina is about to say “thank you” when she realizes that Patty didn’t say “Congratulations.” She replies, “Yes, I am.”

“Take special care of your mother.” Patty squeezes Irina’s arm as she says this. Her watery eyes remind Irina of old Katharine Hepburn movies.

“What did you say?” Irina asks, in case she misheard over the band. Mira hasn’t needed anyone to take care of her in all the years Irina can remember.

“She’ll tell you when she’s ready, but just be kind to her. She needs your support.”

Irina plunges into a lie, unsure why she’s doing so. “No no, she did tell me. I just wasn’t sure I heard you right. Yes, we’ll have to take care of her.”

Patty makes a great show of sighing, her shoulders drooping. “I’m so glad you know, it’s awful hard to walk around with a secret like this. It must be terrible for Mira, after all these years of being the spitting image of health and vitality.”

“I know just what you mean.” Irina steps closer so she can hear
better, and puts a commiserating arm around Patty’s shoulder. Tell me more, she urges silently. What’s going on?

“It just seems wrong.” Patty gazes into Irina’s face, now just inches away. A tear drips from one eye, tracing a particularly deep wrinkle down the side of her face. “It’s never the rapist and warlords dying of cancer. It’s always the good people, like your mother.” At this, Patty wraps Irina in an awkward hug, one hand still clutching her drink. “Excuse me,” she says through a choking sob, and shuffles into the bathroom.

Irina stands with her arms still slightly open for hugging Patty.

Cancer?

Without realizing she’s doing so, Irina sweeps her eyes over the party, searching for Mira. She spots her mother talking to Paul, her old boss at the university, in front of the memory display Katya created, lined with photos of the family through the years. Paul bends over her like a tall, old tree. He has one hand on her shoulder, and Mira looks away, to one side, as if she can’t bear to meet his gaze.