Real Life & Liars (6 page)

A gull caws in the distance, and Van startles at the sound of the Beaver Island ferry blowing its horn for the bridge.

Van says, “Barbara dumped me.”

“We know,” responds Katya, then regrets sounding so hard. She really is too tough on her brother. “Sorry.”

“What happened?” asks Irina, most likely by rote. She fiddles with the buttons on Darius’s jacket sleeve. They’ve been down this road many times before.

“I dunno,” he says, pulling on his ear with his non–beer hand. “She said she needed space. I think she wants enough space for another guy. I would have given her that. I wasn’t trying to marry her or anything.”

Katya slides her eyes over to Irina, who smirks at her behind Darius’s sleeve. They’ve heard that tune before, too. Van falls early and hard, and never, ever wants to share.

Katya finishes her wine and decides to go inside. It’s getting cold out, and too dark to see her siblings. She has a big day to
morrow, having to get her mother up and around first thing in the morning for a hairdo, and maybe a pedicure if she can talk her into it. She’ll have to get on the phone to confirm with the florists, the caterer, have to get over to the inn to supervise the setup. As she stands up, she has a sudden thought.

“G’night, guys. Reenie, let me ask you, do you love him?”

“’Course I do. I married him.”

“Just asking.”

Katya walks back to the house, casting a glance over her shoulder, half-expecting Irina to be sticking out her tongue, making a
nyah nyah
face.

IVAN RESTS BACK ON HIS CHILDHOOD TWIN BED AND CHECKS HIS
cell-phone voice mail. Three messages, all from Jenny.

One: “This is an EX PARROT!” into the phone in a perfect Brit accent.

Two: “Not much of a cheese shop then, is it?” in the accent again.

Three: “You bloody well better call me back, you lousy wanker,” her accent finally breaking up over “wanker.” She recovered after her giggles and said in her usual Midwestern voice, “Just wondering how your drive was, and I had a funny story to tell you about my class today.
Au revoir, mon frère.
”

Ivan smiles at her Monty Python references but can’t summon the energy to call her back. Anyway, it’s late. Though he knows she’ll be awake on Friday, reading or watching an old movie.

Much as he likes hearing Jenny’s voice, he was hoping for Barbara. Ivan has been somehow thinking by shutting his cell phone
off he would get messages, like a variation of Murphy’s Law.
The call you are waiting for will not come in if your phone is on.
But he knows by now you can’t fool Murphy’s Law. Doing something specifically to tempt Murphy means you will get the exact opposite result.

Ivan thinks of writing a song called “Tempting Murphy.”

He hears a low voice through the wall, apparently Darius. Irina and her groom ended up in the guest room just behind Ivan’s room, since Irina still has a twin bed in her old childhood room. No one was expecting an extra guest, so Max had to put sheets on the bed at the last minute, before retreating back to his office in the tower.

Ivan just hoped they wouldn’t start having sex right next to him, or he might fling himself out of the spire. He never expected to be the last one to find a mate. He has eleven years on Irina, and as ill-fated as this quickie marriage might be, at least she has somebody.

And Katya, with those three beautiful children in her fantastic brick house and a husband who provides her with every comfort. She fairly glows with self-satisfaction, and it’s almost too much for Ivan to stomach. He is happy for her, though. Academically, anyway. In theory.

A soft knock at the door tells Ivan his mother is out there. He walks to the door and opens it up. Mira is in a terry bathrobe over a nightgown, and without all her sparkly jewelry she suddenly looks like anyone’s grandmother. Ivan turns away from her sudden age as she follows in.

“You have everything you need?”

“Sure,” he says, answering only in reference to towels and soap and such.

“You want to talk about Barbara?”

“Not much to say. Ivan the Terrible strikes again.”

Mira laughs, a sound like a short burst of jingle bells. “Oh, honey.”

Ivan flops himself down on the bed, facing Mira again. “What is with these women? Don’t they want a guy who’s dedicated, who listens to them and wants to be there for them?”

“Sometimes I think you were born too late, like your soul was meant for the turn of the previous century.”

Mira crosses the room to him and rumples his hair, just like she used to when he was a little boy and only as high as her waist. “The right girl will know how wonderful you are. Just make sure you keep your eyes open.”

“Oh, they’re open, Mom. Wide open.”

Mira hugs him to her chest suddenly, as he sits on the bed, and she stands above him. Her clutch is tight, there’s a fervent quality to it that Ivan doesn’t understand. And just like that, she straightens up, blows a kiss, and walks out.

Ivan hears her in the next room with Irina and Darius. He rests back on his bed again and follows a crack in the plaster ceiling as it wanders across the room like a river on a map. Mira said the right girl would recognize his wonderfulness. Maybe, but Ivan’s tired of waiting for that mythical girl who will appreciate his quirks.

Against his better judgment—Ivan knows he has judgment, he just ignores it routinely—he speed dials Barbara’s number on his phone. As predicted, and to his great relief, voice mail picks up.

“Hi, it’s me. Look, I’m really going to be lonely at this party tomorrow without you. Maybe you’ve already made other plans, in fact you probably have, but anyway…I was really looking forward to seeing you.” The words “I love you” are in Ivan’s throat, but he chokes them back down, instead leaving his mother’s address, knowing Barbara could enter it in MapQuest and get directions in a matter of seconds if she were so inclined.

First order of business, Van tells himself. Stop saying “I love you” so quickly.

“
THAT WENT ALL RIGHT, I THINK.” IRINA PEELS OFF HER DRESS AND
slips a cotton nightgown over her head, sneaking a peek at her belly. Her waist might be a little thicker. Maybe.

“Sure, I guess so.” Darius hangs his clothes up in the standing wardrobe.

“Don’t worry about Mom. She’s just emotional today.”

Darius turns to her, his brow puckered and his mouth hard. “Why didn’t you tell them about the baby?”

Irina shushes him reflexively, remembering all too well from their youth how well sound carries in the old house. Darius turns away, throwing his shaving kit hard into the suitcase. “You’re ashamed of me.”

“I am not!” Tears spring into Irina’s eyes, surprising her. “I swear I’m not, I’m sorry, I just got scared.”

“Scared of what? You said they’re hippies, and they won’t care the child is biracial, so what’s the problem? They were perfectly
pleasant to me when they came back to the room and talked to us. I kept waiting for you to tell them about their grandbaby.”

Darius has finished hanging his clothes, and he stands still in front of her. Irina sinks down to the edge of the bed, unable to coalesce her emotion into words.

“You’re thinking of an abortion.”

“No!” she stage-whispers. “Of course not, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Darius drops his head and walks with a heavy step to the bed. He sits down, elbows on knees, and puts his head in his hands. “You don’t want the baby anymore. You’re going to have it, but you don’t want to.”

“That’s not it, I’m just nervous is all. Don’t forget I’m only twenty-one. You’ve wanted this your whole adult life, and I’ve just started my adult life. I guess I want to get used to being a…mom, before I let my whole family in on this. I have to sort this out in my own head without hearing Katya lecturing me about pacifiers or something.”

Darius sits back up, but Irina can see in the furrows of his brow that he’s unconvinced. “Yeah, she is a piece of work.”

“Sorry she grilled you.”

“I’m just glad I had the right answers. Though I thought about telling her I worked in ‘pharmaceutical sales’ just to get a rise out of her.”

In spite of herself, Irina laughs. “Oh God, don’t do that. Katya gets enough rises on her own without any help, really.”

“Your dad seems nice.”

“Sure, he is. He’s just always distracted when writing a new book.”

“What does he write again? Really, tell me.”

Irina sighs. She can’t remember ever running into a reader of her dad’s work, though supposedly they sell very well. Or used to. “He writes thrillers, you know, spies and international intrigue
and stuff. His hero is”—she swallows a giggle—“this is so corny, his hero is Dash Hammond. He’s got a villainess named Savoir Faire.”

“Oh, like Dashiell Hammett. A tribute, maybe.”

“Who?”

Darius brightens. “You know, I think I’ve seen his stuff. I remember picking up a book at an airport once about a Savoir Faire.”

“Yep, he’s big in airports.”

“But I don’t think the name was Zielinski.”

“It’s not. They always thought Max Zielinski sounded too ethnic. His pseudonym is Maxwell Playfair.”

Darius laughs. “Of course! Now I remember. Huh. Your dad, the famous writer.”

Irina shakes her head, looking at the floor. “Oh, I don’t know. Not hardly famous. But he does seem to be good at it.” Irina flops back onto the bed. “I wonder if I’ll ever find something I’m good at, like Dad. Something I enjoy so much I can’t stop doing it.”

Irina feels the bedsprings compress as Darius stretches out next to her. His low voice rumbles in her ear. “I can think of one thing that qualifies.”

In spite of herself and her faked morning sickness, Irina feels a delicious chill race over her skin, and she turns to him with a smile, eyes closed.

KATYA TOSSES HERSELF AROUND ON THE LUMPY TWIN BED IN IRINA’S
old room, where Irina would have been sleeping if not for her surprise new husband. The room was years ago adapted into a studio of sorts for their mother, because its view of the harbor is apparently just the thing for doing yoga or chanting or whatever the hell.

She gives up on sleep again, her head fuzzy with insomnia, repressed rage, and too much Pinot. She flicks on a lamp and flicks open her cell phone. She’d surreptitiously added Tom’s phone number to her cell, under an entry called
GYNO
.

His message for her left at her mother’s house was perfectly bland and innocent. He told Mira “it’s the craziest thing, I could have sworn that was Kat driving by, though it’s been years, so it probably wasn’t.” And then he left his number and Mira couldn’t
remember his exact wording that went with it, which is driving Katya insane in the wee hours of Saturday morning when she should be sleeping next to her husband in the hotel.

Did he say, “Please call?” Or “She can call if she wants to” or “I’d love to hear from her”? Her mother has no idea which and doesn’t understand why it matters.

It shouldn’t matter, Katya reminds herself. He’s an old boyfriend and you’re married with children and you’ve been driving by his house. She wonders if that’s considered stalking.

Katya walks to the window and looks out over the yard behind the house—just a dark expanse now, the night has gone cloudy—and the lights sprinkled around the harbor at piers and on back porches, and city lights in the park. A necklace of lights along the bridge connects the north and south ends of Charlevoix. She entertains a pleasant memory of making out with Tom in the grass, after the Venetian Festival fireworks, when he was supposed to have walked home, but instead hid out in the daylilies until everyone else went to bed.

Katya refuses to think, allowing her thumb to flip the phone open and hit buttons until a phone is ringing.

A baritone voice thick with sleep mumbles, “Hello”?

Katya snaps the phone shut and throws it on the bed, regarding it like a venomous snake.

Her face grows hot. So many people have Caller ID that his phone probably lit up with
KAT’S KRADLE DESIGN
or worse,
KATYA PETERSON
, and he’ll put that together with her drive by his house and run to the court for a restraining order.

Unless he would be glad to hear from her, assuming he can look past that whole stalker thing. She conjures him in memory, that athletic, wide-shouldered frame, blond hair that would never lie flat no matter how much he combed it, hazel eyes flecked with gold in the right light. She places her own arm across her chest and
imagines his strong arms ringed around her waist on prom night.

Katya’s body is seized by wanting, a desperate wanting she hasn’t felt since…She walks to the door, double-checks the lock, and lowers herself to the futon, where she reaches down to her panties and pretends that she’s not pathetic at all.

I STRETCH UNDER THE COVERS, ROLLING FROM ONE SIDE TO ANOTHER
trying to trick my brain into thinking it’s comfortable, wooing sleep. I’m almost in a cocoon with the sheets tangled all around me. Max is moving more tonight in his sleep than he does on a typical day when he writes in front of his computer. He keeps raking his hand over his face. In a slight glow from the hallway night-light, I can see his nose wrinkle up. He may be grinding his teeth.

I’m struck with a sudden vision: Max alone in this bed. Will he still sleep on the left side? Will he move to the middle? Will he remember to change the sheets?

Dr. Graham comes to mind, talking to me with her carefully modulated voice, a smile meant to be reassuring, but not so big as to be inappropriate during a diagnosis of a dread disease. I noticed she was about my age, her silver hair cut short in a fringe just over her icy blue eyes. She’d been sketching a breast, and a
tumor, and lymph nodes as she talked. Those eyes followed me, as I rose from my chair and backed out of the room. She held her card out to me, then to Max, when I didn’t take it, telling me to come back and talk next week. I was shaking my head, and she stared back at me, the smile gone, her face calm but serious, those eyes holding mine, right out the door.

I’ve never been a very good patient. I eschewed drugs for my labor before hospitals had birthing pools and whatnot. I rarely take an aspirin, and seldom do I darken my doctor’s doorstep. I don’t trust medical breakthroughs. One only has to look at a year’s worth of headlines to know why.

Then, of course, there was Ivan, that time he was so sick, and I said to the doctor that it doesn’t seem right, there’s something wrong, and my natural remedies aren’t helping like they usually do…Maybe that’s when they pegged me as a whacko and shut down. In any case, whatever remaining trust I had for industrial medicine fell away when I later had to carry my little boy to the ER, erupting with fever, wanting to scream,
See! I told you!

Give me Ayurvedic medicine any day, which has stood the test of centuries in India, whose cures are translated from ancient tongues like Sanskrit. Acupuncture. Meditation.

I watch Max’s chest rise and fall and wince with the memory of that day: the diagnosis, silent car ride home, what happened when we crossed the threshold into the kitchen, and I finally let him speak to me.

What they don’t understand is that I can’t control my death, I can only have a small influence over the timing. And really, not much of an influence at that. A drunk driver could plow into me tomorrow and render the whole thing moot. I’m going to die. Anyone can say that because it’s true for every last one of us. I don’t see why I should have to endure surgery and procedures that will sicken me, sap me, disfigure me, all when the final result is the same.

It’s my damn body, and I’ll let it go when I please.

Who am I arguing with? It’s dark, and I’m alone, and after that first morning, Max has assumed a deferential, almost reverent attitude toward me.

I feel something like grief well up in my chest. No matter what happens with the cancer eating my insides, I have lost the joyous simplicity that comes with life stretching up to the horizon, with an undetermined end.

I roll myself out of bed to go find my Sleepytime tea.

The morning sun finds me somehow. Our room faces west, but I sense the lightening of black night to the soft orange of dawn. Last night’s anxiety of loss and fear prods at my edges, but I shove it back: not today. Today is our anniversary; thirty-five years of marriage to my Max, and 120 people are coming to celebrate with us.

Can’t use my yoga room, Katya is in there on the twin bed, avoiding her husband and probably her children. I wonder if she knows how obvious it is, the distress she’s in. I see new lines on her forehead, and her hair is coming out, sandy brown threads on the shoulders of her pressed blouse. I used to rush in with advice and ministrations and fussing over her. When the boys were little and she didn’t stop their sassy mouths right then, and she was so brittle with stress I thought she’d break in two, I tried to help her see how a little discipline would bring some peace, at least in the long run. I may have hippie credentials, but being at peace with the universe doesn’t mean allowing children to treat their parents as galley slaves. But then, an icy wall sprang up between us. Now I know better than to try.

A mother feels pulled like taffy between the impulse to protect, coddle, and intervene, and the higher plane of knowledge that one’s children must experience some failure in order to grow. And then they get old enough to ignore you with conviction, and it all becomes pointless.

But then, it’s all pointless, isn’t it? I throw back the covers and swing my feet down to my wood floor, searching the floorboards with my toes for my fuzzy leopard-print slippers. I get off the bed slowly, partly because I’m stiff with nighttime, and partly not to wake Max. I peek behind the window shade to the harbor outside. The sun sparkles in the windows of the fancy condos across the water, and some fishermen are revving up their boats already, probably trying to beat the tourists and the Jet Skis out to the deep, still water of Lake Michigan. I try to slide the window open gently, but it comes open herky-jerky and loud.

Max doesn’t stir, and for a moment I stare at his chest to make sure it’s rising and falling. How would that be for irony, if he dropped dead first? But no, he’s breathing.

The window’s only open a few inches. I feel the heat already streaming in through the screen, rushing inside my old house, which was wearing the cool of night like a cotton nightgown. I push the window back down, knowing that when the sun gets high, it will steam up in here. Still, I’m not tearing apart my plaster walls to run ugly ductwork for central air.

My neighbor Patty says that’s only because I haven’t had her killer hot flashes. I credit all the herbal tea, then Patty calls me a lucky bitch and slaps me on the shoulder.

I peel off my nightgown and pull a sports bra out of my dresser. That’s all I’ll need for now.