Nine Perfect Strangers (20 page)

“You mentioned losses,” said Masha. “Tell me about those losses.”

“My father died when I was very young,” said Frances.

“Mine also,” said Masha.

Frances was taken aback by this unasked-for personal revelation.

“I'm sorry,” said Frances. She thought of her last memory of her dad. It was summer. A Saturday. She was going out to her part-time job as a checkout girl at Target. He was sitting in their living room playing
Hot August Night
, smoking a cigarette, eyes closed and humming along with deep feeling to Neil Diamond, whom he considered to be a genius. Frances kissed him on the forehead. “See you, darling,” he said, without opening his eyes. For her, the smell of cigarettes was the smell of love. She dated far too many smokers for that reason.

“A lady driving a car didn't stop at a pedestrian crossing,” said Frances. “The sun was in her eyes. My father was going for a walk.”

“My father was shot in a market by a hitman for the Russian Mafia,” said Masha. “Also an accident. They thought he was someone else.”

“
Seriously?
” Frances tried not to look too avid for more exotic detail.

Masha shrugged. “My mother said my father had too common a face. Too plain. Like anybody's, like everybody's. She was very angry with him for his plain face.”

Frances didn't know whether to smile. Masha didn't smile, so Frances didn't either.

Frances offered up, “My mother was angry with my father for going for a walk. For years she said, ‘It was so hot that day! Why didn't he just stay inside like a normal person? Why did he have to
walk
everywhere?'”

Masha nodded. Just once.

“My father should not have been at the market,” she said. “He was a
very
clever man, he had a very senior position for a firm that made vacuum cleaners, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, when inflation went …” She made a whistling motion and pointed up. “Our entire savings, gone! My father's company could not pay him cash. They paid him in vacuum cleaners. So … he went to the market to sell the vacuum cleaners. He should not have had to do that. It was beneath him.”

“That's awful,” said Frances.

For a moment it felt as if the giant chasm that separated their different cultures and childhoods and body types could be bridged by the commonality of the loss of their fathers, through terrible chance, and their bitter grieving mothers. But then Masha sniffed, as if suddenly disgusted by some unmentionable behavior. She closed the file in front of her. “Well. It has been nice to chat with you, Frances, to get to know you a little bit.”

She made it sound as if she now knew everything there was to know about Frances.

“How did you end up in Australia?” asked Frances, suddenly desperate for the conversation not to end. She didn't want to go back to the silence now that she'd experienced the pleasure of human interaction, and it was fine if Masha didn't want to know more about Frances, but Frances most certainly wanted to know more about her.

“My ex-husband and I applied to different embassies,” said Masha coldly. “The U.S. Canada. Australia. I wanted the U.S., my husband wanted Canada, but Australia wanted us.”

Frances tried not to take this personally, although she had a feeling that Masha wanted her to take it personally.

Also, ex-husband! They had divorce in common too! But Frances could tell she wouldn't get anywhere trying to exchange divorce stories. There was something about Masha that reminded Frances of a friend from university who had been both deeply egocentric and deeply insecure. The only way to make her open up was with flattery: ex
tremely
careful
flattery. It was like dismantling a bomb. You could accidentally offend them at any time.

“I think it's a very brave thing to do,” said Frances. “To start a new life in a new country.”

“Well, we did not have to travel the open seas in a rickety boat, if that's what you are thinking. The Australian government paid our airfares. Picked us up at the airport. Paid for our accommodation. You
needed
us. We were both very intelligent people. I had a degree in mathematics. My husband was a talented, world-class scientist.” Her eyes looked back into a past Frances longed to see. “Extremely talented.”

The way she said “extremely talented” didn't make her sound like a divorced wife. She sounded like a widow.

“We're lucky you came then,” said Frances humbly, on behalf of the Australian people.

“Yes. You are. Very lucky,” said Masha. She leaned forward, her face suddenly alight. “I'll tell you why we came! Because of a VCR. It all starts with the VCR. And now nobody even has a VCR! Technology …”

“The VCR?” said Frances.

“Our neighbors in the flat next to ours got a VCR. Nobody could afford such a thing. They inherited money from a relative who died in Siberia. These neighbors were good friends of ours and they asked us over to see movies.” Her gaze became unfocused, once again remembering.

Frances didn't move; she didn't want Masha to stop this sudden sharing of confidences. It was like when your uptight boss goes to the pub with you and loosens up over a drink and suddenly starts chatting to you like you're an equal.

“It was a window into another world. Into a capitalist world. It all seemed so different, so amazing, so …
abundant
.” Masha smiled dreamily. “
Dirty Dancing
,
Desperately Seeking Susan
,
The Breakfast Club
—not that many, because the movies were insanely expensive, so people had to swap them. The voices were all done by the same person
holding his nose to disguise his voice because it was illegal.” She held her nose and spoke in a nasal voice to demonstrate.

“If it wasn't for that VCR, for those movies, we might not have worked so hard to leave. It was not easy to leave.”

“Did the reality live up to your expectations?” asked Frances, thinking of the glossy, highly colored world of eighties films and how bland suburban Sydney would feel when she and her friends emerged blinking from the cinemas. “Was it as wonderful as in the movies?”

“It was as wonderful,” said Masha. She picked up the glass ball that Frances had put down and held it in the flat palm of her hand as if daring it to roll. It stayed completely still. “And it was not.”

She put the ball back down decisively. Suddenly she seemed to remember her superior status. Like when your boss remembers you have to work together the next day.

“So, Frances, tomorrow we will officially break the silence and you will get to know the other guests.”

“I'm looking forward—”

“Enjoy your evening meal because there will be no meals served at all tomorrow. Your first light fast will begin.”

She held out her hand in such a way that Frances found herself automatically rising to her feet.

“Have you done much fasting before?” Masha looked up at her. She said “fasting” as if it were an exotic, delightful practice, like belly dancing.

“Not really,” admitted Frances. “But it's just a
light
fast, right?”

Masha smiled radiantly. “You may find tomorrow a little testing, Frances.”

24

 

Carmel

“You have already lost some weight, I see.” Masha opened Carmel's file to begin her counseling session.

“
Have
I?” said Carmel. She felt like she'd won a prize. “How much?”

Masha ignored the question. She ran her finger down a sheet of paper in the file.

“I thought I might have lost some—but I wasn't sure.” Carmel heard her unused voice tremble with pleasure. She hadn't dared to hope. It seemed that Yao deliberately stood in such a way that she couldn't see that dreaded number on the scale each day.

She put a hand to her stomach. She had suspected it was getting flatter, her clothes looser! She'd been secretly touching her stomach, like when she was pregnant for the first time. This retreat was just like that euphoric time: the feeling that her body was changing in new and miraculous ways.

“I guess I'll probably lose even more when we start the fast tomorrow?” Carmel wanted to demonstrate her enthusiasm and commitment to the retreat. She would do whatever it took.

Masha said nothing. She closed Carmel's file and balanced her chin on her folded hands.

Carmel said, “I hope it's not just fluid loss. They say that in the first few days of a diet you mostly just lose fluid.”

Masha still said nothing.

“I know the meals here are all calorie-controlled. I guess the challenge will be maintaining my weight loss when I go home. I'd be really grateful for any nutrition advice you can give me going forward. Maybe a recipe plan?”

“You do not need a recipe plan,” said Masha. “You are intelligent woman. You know what to do to lose weight, if that's what you want. You are not especially fat. You are not especially thin. You want to be thinner. That is your choice. I find this not so interesting.”

“Oh,” said Carmel. “Sorry.”

“Tell me something about yourself that is not related to your weight,” said Masha.

“Well, I have four daughters,” said Carmel. She smiled at the thought of them. “They're aged ten, eight, seven, and five.”

“I know this already. You are a mother,” said Masha. “Tell me something else.”

“My husband left me. He has a new girlfriend now. So that's been—”

Masha waved that away irritably as if it were of no relevance. “Something else.”

“There
is
nothing else right now,” said Carmel. “There's no time for anything else. I'm just a normal busy mum. An overweight stressed-out suburban mum.” As she spoke she scanned Masha's desk for family photos. She must not have children. If she did, she would know how motherhood swallowed you up whole. “I work part-time,” she tried to explain. “I have an elderly mother who is not well. I am always tired. Always, always tired.”

Masha sighed, as if Carmel was not behaving.

“I know I need to work more exercise into my schedule?” offered Carmel. Was that what she wanted to hear?

“Yes,” said Masha. “Yes, you do. But I find this also not so interesting.”

“When the kids are older I'll have more time to—”

“Tell me about when you were schoolgirl,” interrupted Masha. “What were you like? Smart? Top of class? Bottom of class? Naughty? Loud? Shy?”

“I was mostly near the top of the class,” said Carmel. Always. “Not naughty. Not shy. Not loud.” She thought about it. “Although, I
could
be very loud. If I felt strongly about something.”

She remembered a heated argument with a teacher who wrote “the thunder boomed, the lightening flashed” on the blackboard. Carmel stood up to correct the teacher's spelling of “lightning.” The teacher didn't believe her. Carmel wouldn't back down, even when the teacher yelled at her. She was all-powerful when she knew without doubt that she was in the right. But how often did you know for sure that you were right? Hardly ever.

“Interesting,” said Masha. “Because right now you do not seem like a very loud person.”

“You should see me in the morning when I yell at my kids,” said Carmel.

“Why have I not seen this ‘loud' Carmel? Where is she?”

“Um—we're not allowed to speak?”

“That is a good point. But see—even then, when you make a very valid point, you said it like a question. You put this questioning sound at the end of your sentences. Like this? Your voice goes up? Like you are not really sure? Of everything you say?”

Carmel squirmed at Masha's imitation of her speech patterns. Was that really how she sounded?

“And your walk,” said Masha. “That is the other thing: I don't like the way you walk.”

“You don't
like
the way I
walk
?” spluttered Carmel. Wasn't that kind of rude?

Masha stood and came out from behind her desk. “This is how you walk right now.” She rounded her shoulders, dropped her chin, and did
a scurrying kind of side step across the room. “Like you are hoping no one sees you. Why do you do that?”

“I don't think I exactly—”

“Yes, you do.” Masha sat back down. “I don't think you always walked like this. I think once you walked properly. Do you want your daughters to walk like you walk?” It was obviously a rhetorical question. “You are a woman in the prime of your life! You should march into a room with your head held high! Like you are walking onto a stage, a battlefield!”

Carmel stared. “I'll try?” she said. She coughed, and remembered to turn it into a statement. “I will try. I will try to do that.”

Masha smiled. “Good. At first it will feel strange. You will have to fake it. But then you will remember. You will think, ‘Oh, that's right, this is how I talk, this is how I walk. This is me, Carmel.'” She knocked her closed fist against her heart.
“This is who I am.”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I will tell you a secret.” Her eyes danced. “You will look thinner if you walk like that!”

Carmel smiled back. Was she joking?

“Everything will become clearer over the next few days,” said Masha, with a gesture that made Carmel stand up quickly, as if she'd outstayed her welcome.

Masha pulled a notepad toward her and began to write something down.

Carmel hovered. She tried to put her shoulders back. “Could you just tell me how much weight I've lost so far?”

Masha didn't look up. “Close the door behind you.”

25

 

Masha

Masha studied the large man who sat on the other side of her desk, his feet planted solidly on the floor, his hands curled in meaty fists on his thighs, as if he were a prisoner hoping for parole.

Masha remembered how Delilah had implied there was something unusual or secretive about Tony Hogburn. Masha did not agree. The man was not especially complex. He seemed to her to be a simple, grumpy fellow. He had lost weight already. Men who drank a lot of beer always did lose weight when they stopped, whereas women like Carmel, who had much less weight to lose, took much longer. In truth, Carmel hadn't lost any weight at all, but there was no benefit in Carmel hearing that.

“How did you come across Tranquillum House, Tony?” Masha asked him.

“I Googled ‘how to change your life,'” said Tony.

“Ah,” said Masha. As an experiment, she sat back, crossed her legs, and waited for his eyes to travel down her body, which they did, of
course (the man was not dead yet), but not for very long. “Why do you want to change your life?”

“Well, Masha, life is short.” His gaze moved past hers to the window behind her head. Masha noted that he seemed much calmer and more confident now than when he had complained about his contraband being confiscated. The positive effects of Tranquillum House! “I didn't want to waste the time I had left.”

He looked back at her. “I like your office. It's like you're on top of the world up here. I get claustrophobic down in that yoga studio.”

“So how do you hope to change your life?”

“I just want to get healthier and fitter,” said Tony. “Drop some weight.”

Men often used that phrase: “drop some weight.” They said it without shame or emotion, as if the weight were an object they could easily put down when they chose. Women said they needed to “lose weight,” with their eyes down, as if the extra weight was part of them, a terrible sin they'd committed.

“I used to be very fit. I should have done this sooner. I really regret …” Tony stopped, cleared his throat, as if he'd said more than he wanted.

“What do you regret?” asked Masha.

“It's not anything I've done. It's more everything I
haven't
done. I've just kind of moped about for twenty years.”

It took a fraction of a second to translate the English word “moped”—a word she didn't hear much.

“Twenty years is a long time to
mope
,” said Masha. Foolish man. She herself had never moped. Not once. Moping was for the weak.

“I kind of got into the habit of it,” said Tony. “Not sure how to stop.”

She waited to hear what he would say next. Women liked to be asked questions about themselves but with men it was better to be patient, to be silent and see what eventuated.

She waited. The minutes passed. She was considering giving up when Tony shifted in his chair.

“Your near-death experience,” he said, without looking at her. “You said you no longer feared death, or something like that?”

“That's right,” said Masha. She studied him, wondering about his
interest in this subject. “I no longer fear it. It was beautiful. People think death is like falling asleep but for me it was like waking up.”

“A tunnel?” said Tony. “Is that what you saw? A tunnel of light?”

“Not a tunnel.” She paused, considered changing the subject and putting the focus back on him. She had already revealed too much of her personal life earlier to that Frances Welty, with her bouncy hair and red lipstick, nearly knocking Masha's glass ball off the desk, like a child, asking her greedy, nosy questions, making Masha forget her position.

It was hard to believe Frances was exactly the same age as Masha. She reminded Masha of a little girl in her second-grade class. A plump, pretty, vain little girl who always had a pocket filled with Vzletnaya candies. People like Frances lived candy-filled lives.

But she did not feel that Tony had lived a candy-filled life. “It was not a tunnel, it was a lake,” she told him. “A great lake of shimmering colored light.”

She had never told a guest this before. She had told Yao about it, but not Delilah. As Tony ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, considering her words, Masha saw again that incredible lake of color: scarlet, turquoise, lemon. She hadn't just seen that lake, she had experienced it with all her senses: she had breathed it, heard it, smelled it, tasted it.

“Did you see … loved ones?” asked Tony.

“No,” lied Masha, even as she saw an image of a young man walking toward her through the lake of light, color streaming off him like water.

Such an ordinary but exquisite young man. He wore a baseball cap, like so many young men did. He took it off and scratched his head. She had only ever seen him as her baby, her beautiful fat-cheeked toothless baby, but she knew immediately that this was her son, this was the man he would have and should have become, and all that love was still within her, as fresh and powerful and shocking as it had been when she'd held him for the first time. She did not know if it had been a precious gift or a cruel punishment to have experienced that love again. Perhaps it was both.

She saw her son for what could have been a lifetime, or what could have been a few seconds. She had no concept of time. And then he was gone, and she floated near her office ceiling, above the two men working on her lifeless body. She could see a button on the floor where they had ripped open her silk shirt. She could see one of her legs splayed at a strange angle, as if she'd landed there after falling from a great height. She could see the top of another young man's head, the white part in his dark hair revealing a tiny strawberry-shaped birthmark, the dampness of his forehead as he sent electrical pulses through her body, and somehow she felt everything he felt: his fear, his focus.

Her next conscious memory was the following day. She was back in the drab confines of her body and a tall beautiful nurse was saying, “Hello there, sleeping beauty!” It was like being returned to jail.

Except it wasn't a nurse. This woman was the doctor who had performed her heart surgery: a quadruple bypass. In the years to come Masha often considered how her life would have been different if her heart surgeon had looked like the vast majority of heart surgeons. Her prejudices would have made her dismiss everything he had to say, no matter the accuracy. She would have put him in the same category as the gray-haired men who worked for her. She knew better than all of them. But this woman made Masha snap to attention. She felt strangely proud of her. She too was a woman at the top of her profession in a man's world, and she was
tall;
it somehow mattered that she was tall like Masha. So Masha listened attentively as she talked about reducing her risk factors when it came to diet and exercise and smoking, and she listened when the doctor said, “Don't let your heart be a casualty of your head.” She wanted Masha to understand that her state of mind was just as important as the state of her body. “When I was on the wards in my first term of cardiac surgery we had something called the ‘beard sign,'” she said. “Meaning that if one of our male patients was so miserable he couldn't even be bothered to shave, his chances of recovery were not as good. You must take care of your whole self, Masha.” Masha shaved her legs the very next day for the first time in years. She went to the cardiac
rehabilitation exercise program suggested by the doctor determined to top the class. She
attacked
the challenge of her health and her heart in the same way that she had once attacked challenges at work, and naturally she over-achieved beyond all expectations. “Good God,” said the surgeon when Masha went to her for her first checkup.

She never once moped. She re-created herself. She did it for the tall attractive doctor. She did it for the young man in the lake.

“My sister also had a near-death experience,” said Tony. “A horse-riding accident. After her accident, she changed. Her career. Everything about her life. She got right into
gardening.
” He gave Masha an uneasy look. “I didn't like it.”

“You don't like gardening?” said Masha, teasing a little.

He gave her a half smile, and she saw a flash of a more attractive man.

“I think I just didn't want my sister to change,” he said. “It felt like she'd become a stranger. Maybe it felt like she'd experienced something I couldn't understand.”

“People are frightened of what they don't understand,” said Masha. “I never believed in life after death before that. Now I do. And I live a better life because of it.”

“Right,” said Tony. “Yeah.”

Again Masha waited.

“Anyway …” Tony exhaled and patted his thighs, as if he were done. Masha would get nothing else of interest out of him. It did not matter. The next twenty-four hours would tell her so much more about this man. He would learn things he did not know about himself.

A glorious sense of calm settled upon her as she watched him leave the room, hitching up his pants with one hand. Those last remnants of doubt were gone. Maybe it was because of the thoughts of her son.

The risks were calculated. The risks were justified.

No one ever ascended a mountain without risk.