The Post-Birthday World (30 page)

Before the small crowd, Lawrence looked striking in the suit he rarely wore, and having a partner considered an expert on world affairs was gratifying. He was so articulate and serious. In her humble seat near the back, she was proud of him with a determination.

Nevertheless, Lawrence was not a natural performer. The podium struck him midchest, and made him look short. He read verbatim from a prepared text, absent the biting asides that typified his conversation. The sentences were long and subordinated, and it was hard to follow the thread. Though he was a rash rhetorician at the dining table, here his points were qualified or hedged. She wished that he were able to integrate his irreverent, caustic character into his public persona—that he realized ideas were entertainment. It didn’t help that his subject matter was the deadly

Northern Ireland.
More than once after a hypnotic sequence of buzz-phrases like
cross-border bodies with executive powers, confidence-building measures,
and straight-faced allusion to something called the
Decommissioning Commission,
which sounded straight out of Monty Python, she caught herself: for the last five minutes she’d been trying to envision the next drawing for
The Miss Ability Act,
and hadn’t heard a word he’d said. She knew that the IRA had murdered nearly two thousand people, and that the prospect of such a “scumbag” strategy paying political dividends made Lawrence livid. Why didn’t that passion translate into his speech? In some intangible way, the failure was of a piece with the fact that Lawrence adored Irina herself with all his being, yet couldn’t quite translate that passion into bed.

After the lecture the applause was polite, the questions few. Only when one gentleman inquired after the possibility that a peace settlement would lead to the wholesale release of terrorist prisoners did the real Lawrence peek through. “Those dirt-birds?” Lawrence sneered. “Not a chance! Even Tony Blair will let them rot in hell.” Irina smiled. This was the Lawrence she loved, and that one answer infused her subsequent kiss on his cheek and whisper “You were great!” with genuine feeling.

A reception followed. Mostly Lawrence’s colleagues at Blue Sky, the attendees also included a few journalists and representatives from the Foreign Office and Irish Embassy. Irina had milled at similar gatherings before, and always felt a little in over her head. She may have been a newspaper reader, but these people were conversant with fine political details to a degree that made anything a children’s book illustrator might contribute seem obvious and dumb. She might have been happy to volunteer that Tony Blair’s cheesy “Cool Britannia” advertising campaign seemed unbecoming to the British; in a discussion about his Byzantine proposals for a “public-private partnership” in the London tube system, she was lost. When she got into a chat with some Foreign Office toff about Zimbabwe’s program to confiscate white farmland, she blanked on the name of the country’s president in the middle of a sentence, which was enough for the dignitary, after filling in “Robert Mugabe,” to excuse himself for a stuffed fig.

Everyone asked dutifully what Irina did for a living. She could see them struggling to come up with something to say about children’s books, and in this august environment the titles she’d published—

Bubble Boy Goes Camping, The World of Buh
—sounded preposterous. Inquiring after a woman’s career was an obligation these days, but after going through the painful exercise four or five times she came to wish that they’d skip it.

As a fallback, to rescue one think-tanker from flailing (“Do you use paints, or chalk?”), she managed to insert the fact that her mother hailed from the Soviet Union, at which point his face lit with gratitude. While Irina’s answers were disappointing—no, her mother was not a politically motivated defector, but a displaced person from World War II; no, she was not even Jewish—his questions became confident and more relaxed. Mention of Russia also facilitated a segue into sharing deep concerns about securing the former Soviets’ nuclear arsenal and chemical weapons, which was apparently these people’s idea of a good time.

For pity’s sake, they were supposed to be socializing! So why did no one in the room (well, the Irish Embassy folks excepted) dare to drink more than one glass of white wine? How about a few amusing anecdotes, a little playful, meaningless banter to lighten things up? Why did they feel obliged to be so weighty and grave, as if the fate of mankind would be imperiled if instead of anguishing over violations of the no-fly zones over Iraq they speculated on whether Niles and Daphne were ever going to get together on

Frasier
? After about an hour of this intellectually highprotein diet, the conversational equivalent of a sixteen-ounce porterhouse, her only remaining appetite was for sweets.

By happenstance, she discovered a magic bullet in her back pocket. Much as mention of

Northern Ireland
to Ramsey had triggered instantaneous narcolepsy, mention of
snooker
to these lofties brought their selfimportant discourse to a thudding halt.

“Is that so?” said a natty dignitary, after Irina said that she and Lawrence had gone to the Grand Prix last week. “Don’t follow the sport myself. Will you excuse me?”

As the gathering grew smaller, one merciful moment of levity ensued when someone raised the subject of Diana. In unison, the group rolled eyes, and a wag christened the crash in that Paris tunnel “the death that wouldn’t Di.” It was an enormous relief to laugh.

Unfortunately, the reception’s population was now sufficiently reduced that it would soon become impossible to avoid talking to

Bethany.
Thus far Irina had managed to position herself on the opposite side of the room from Lawrence’s supple colleague, while cutting eyes covertly in the woman’s direction. As usual, the pert little vixen was decked out in a perilously short skirt and tarty heels. She had a provocative habit of propping an elbow on a jutted hip, thus supporting her wine glass. The hand with the glass lolling so languidly that she might have dropped it, she leaned over the rim to take kittenish sips. It was much too chilly in late October to be wearing a sheer black sleeveless top that revealed a lacy bra underneath, but from the looks of those arms,
Bethany
spent hours in the gym every week, and must have needed to get her boredom’s worth. The rippling shoulders and veined forearms reminded Irina unpleasantly of her mother, who had bequeathed to her a gut aversion to exercise fanatics of any description.

Alas, Bethany crossed the room first, and so got credit for being the friendly one before Irina had quite resigned herself to the inevitable. “Irina,

zdravstvuy
!” Bethany kissed Irina on both cheeks and continued in Russian, “I save the best for last!”

One of Irina’s eyes began to twitch. Making her own bilingualism seem small beer in comparison, this to all appearances air-headed pixie spoke four or five languages. Bethany had explained her habit of talking to Irina in Russian as giving her welcome “practice,” which was nonsense. Bethany was fluent, and she was showing off. Further, her appropriation of Russian felt impertinent. Once long enough from Brighton Beach, Irina had begun to regard Russian not as the language of 200 million Slavs, but as Lawrence’s and her secret code, and now look:

Bethany
had cracked it.

Switching to English would seem standoffish.

“Privyet, kak dela?”
Irina said neutrally, reconciled to the fact that the rest of their chitchat would be in Russian.

“Wasn’t Lawrence erudite?” Bethany effused. “Two years ago he would have mistaken Paisley for a pattern on drapes. Now, with Northern Ireland, he’s knowledgeable about every twist and turn. And doesn’t he look dashing! I rarely see him in a tie. I tell him, you should dress up more. He hides himself under a bushel, your husband.”

At the word

moozh,
Irina flinched. But she wasn’t about to tell
Bethany
that she and Lawrence weren’t married. And somehow whenever Irina was at a loss for words, she blurted her most private reflections because she couldn’t locate the public ones in time. Owing to this exasperating reflex, she was prone to share her inmost thoughts with total strangers, awkward misfits, and people she disliked.

“Da,”
said Irina. “But I wish he’d employ his sense of humor more in speeches. And talk a little more off the cuff instead of reading from a script. It’s so dry.”

“Oh, I think the political puzzle is anything but dry,” Bethany differed. “And Lawrence’s design of an agreement prospectively acceptable to both sides is very astute.”

“Of course, I didn’t mean that it wasn’t a wonderful speech.”

“Konyeshno,”
Bethany purred with a smile. “You know, with your background, you must be so excited about Lawrence going to Russia!”
“Russia? . . . Y-yes, of course I’m excited,” Irina stammered.
“Lawrence is thrilled,” Bethany added, eyeing Irina closely. “Are you coming, too?”
“I . . . don’t know, we . . . haven’t decided. What’s the trip for again?”
“You know, this fact-finding mission about Chechnya. The funding came through from Carnegie over the summer. Lawrence has been working on his Russian in the office. I’ve tried to help over lunch at Pret a Manger, but as you know, he’s hopeless! He’s so intelligent, but in foreign language—”
“He’s a
moron,
” Irina finished fondly in English, slipping an arm around Lawrence as he approached. She always packed him a sandwich so that he could nosh at his computer after his workout at the gym. Since when did Lawrence eat out for lunch?

As they walked home from Blue Sky, Lawrence said heartily, “Listen, thanks for coming. I know Northern Ireland isn’t your favorite subject.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” said Irina. “Though at the reception— well, I don’t know these people. I don’t know much about politics. I hope I don’t embarrass you.”

“Of course not! Being with an artist makes me seem more interesting, whether or not you can blather about

decommissioning.
And you’re smart. If that’s not enough for any of those stuffed shirts, fuck them.”

“I liked your speech.”

Engaging with such a robust ego was relaxing—like dining with tumblers that won’t break if upset, and plates you can drop on the floor.
“Bethany said you thought it was humorless.”
“I didn’t mean—!”
“No, that’s okay. It was pretty humorless,” said Lawrence jauntily.

“I realize Northern Ireland isn’t the stuff of stand-up comedy,” she said. “But you might make the odd wisecrack. You’re funny. You should use it. That’s all I meant. I didn’t mean to criticize.”

“I don’t mind if you criticize me,” said Lawrence. “You’re right. I should loosen up a little. Was there anything else?”

So she mentioned shortening his sentences, going lighter on the jargon, and trying to keep from scowling all the time. Unoffended, he seemed to take mental notes.
“By the way,” he said, “I overheard some of your conversation, about PPP, and Iraq? I thought you held your own pretty well.”
“Thanks. But I run dry on those subjects in two minutes flat. They have no idea what to ask about illustration. What else can I talk about with these people?”
“Standard fallback? Just tell them that I’ve got a really, really big dick.”
She laughed. “
That’s
what I was talking about. Use that in your speeches.”
“My dick?”
“Metaphorically, yes.”
By the time they arrived at Borough High Street, Lawrence’s confidence in the triumph of his lecture had been restored. Yet if selfsatisfaction was his natural state, humility underpinned it. His expectations of himself were reasonable in scale. He had not stumbled in his delivery. His ideas were sound. The attendance had been reputable. That was sufficient. He was not going to rail at the heavens if he hadn’t, just today, changed the course of history, drawn prime ministers and presidents, and brought down the house with a standing ovation. Surely a key
to contentment, he appreciated modest success.
Walking up to the flat, Irina was about to ask, “What’s this about
your going to Russia?” and, on impulse, didn’t. As a matter of discipline,
Irina didn’t raise the subject for the rest of the evening, just to see if he’d
bring it up himself. The funds had been approved back in the
summer
?
And when was this trip to be? Would he ask if she’d like to go? Even if
she’d never been there, Russia was a country about which she naturally
felt proprietary.
As the night concluded, then the week, then the whole of November,
all without a peep from Lawrence about a prospective visit to her motherland, discipline gave way to scientific experiment. At Christmas, when
for once they begged off visiting Brighton Beach, Irina’s original proposal
that they honeymoon in Thailand got downgraded to a getaway in Cornwall. True, their ancient rental car dropped a hose-clip, and put Lawrence
out of sorts; yet nothing about a little automotive breakdown prevented
his using one of their long, coastal walks to broach the subject of an impending research trip. It was one thing to be independent, but independence could slyly morph to exclusion, and Irina felt shut out. Through
the following months, his omission grew tumorous, and she would brush
up against it like a lump on her breast in the shower. As many a woman
has done to her peril, she told herself it was nothing, in preference to
bravely palpating its dimensions, testing for a texture that might indicate
a discrete, cystlike aberration, or a growth more invasively malign.

�

The British Open was played in Plymouth across the Easter holidays. Increasingly prone to hiding out in their hotel room, Irina often watched the news. Though she’d been unable to raise even an “Oi, that’s a fair turn, innit?” from the snooker players down in the bar, every channel was chockablock with an occasion of “historic” magnitude: late into the night of Good Friday, politicians in Belfast had arrived at an agreement that would officially bring an end to the Northern Irish troubles, which had been festering for thirty years.