The Imperial Wife (39 page)

“Let me get this straight,” Carl says, looking at me in that rare dangerous way he had, an unblinking glare. “You just rewrote in five months the novel I've been working on for six years. And you think this will get me a job.”

“I told you. Whatever I did was minimal. You really did most of it.”

I didn't tell him that for me, there was nothing tormenting about funneling a life story through this marvelous woman. I found the words streaked across the page as if by their own design, carried forward by my anticipation of Carl's relief. There was the feeling of satisfaction at solving a problem, at jiggling a key into a recalcitrant lock and hearing the click.

“That's totally fucked up,” Carl said, picking up the pages. “I have a doctorate in Russian literature. And you just decide to write your own version of my book?”

“Sometimes a doctorate gets in the way. I just pruned some of the hedges, or whatever. Make your intentions clearer.”

Our lamb arrived, congealing between us on a plank of potatoes. He flipped through the manuscript, skimming it through to the end.

“Oh, and I see in your version, she has him killed. I never wrote that. No texts verify with absolute certainty that she was responsible for Peter's murder.”

“She's not, she didn't,” I said, flushed. “The Orlovs killed him on their own. In my tweak, they just took her silence to mean she was onboard with the plan. I can make it less ambiguous if you don't like it. Or you should. I mean, it's yours now.”

“It's mine now,” Carl repeated.

“Is everything tasting okay?” The server in her white apron hovered. “Didn't you like the lamb?”

“It's delicious,” I said sharply. The woman retreated.

Carl folded his hands on the table. “How interesting, your creative choice. Killing the ineffectual husband.”

“Darling, you're reading way too much into it. He's not ineffectual.”

“Give me a break. That's what you think of me. In your mind, I'm Peter.”

“Of course not. That's ridiculous.”

“Why don't you listen to me for a change? Think about why you do things. You're afraid. If I don't get a job, your perfect life's ruined. I'm a terrible reflection on you.”

“Nice try, Mr. Ph.D.”

“Oh, so I'm wrong again?”

“Catherine feeling guilty about the murder was for drama's sake. Not to mention many sources say she condoned his murder. But that's not the point.” I tried to bring my defense back on track. I was afraid of where all this was going. “Let's talk about your ending.”

How could I say this tactfully? Nothing interesting happened in the end. In his hands, Catherine was superhuman, a fortress of wisdom and strength. An angel without flaws. It was as if he'd spent six hundred pages giving her the Look.

A specialist's job is to understand your client's psychology better than he knows it himself. You need to know the kind of person he is, whether he cannot stand losing, whether he will back away at the first sign of conflict. Some people can't stop bidding. They need to win. Of course, often, it's the specialist herself who needs to win.

Carl was silent the entire subway ride home. That night, for the first time in all our years together, he slept on the couch. I wondered if I'd gone too far this time, but waited to see what would happen next.

In any case, I told myself later, Carl could have chosen not to publish
Young Catherine,
he could have not accepted the Word file I e-mailed him, he could have forwarded it directly to trash. He did not have to send it to an agent who'd taken an interest in his work from a short story he'd published in a literary journal the year before. He could have decided not to sign with that agent when she offered representation. He could have kept the book out of submission. But too many people were waiting for it and his career depended on it. In going forward with the book, didn't Carl settle with me into a tacit agreement? Didn't he give me permission to solve the problem? I hoped my apprehension would pass by our simply going on with our lives, the exchange buried inside us. He would be a star and I, a happy ghostwriter. In taking care of him, I've taken care of our little family.

We never spoke of the creation of the book again. Until the Order arrived in my office and it was actually hers, the entire dangerous subject of Catherine the Great was closed between us. And I was all too happy to absolve myself of any involvement and graft the book onto him. Because in my mind, the novel belonged to him in the same way a gift belongs unequivocally to its recipient. Wasn't this what Russian women did every day? Pass off their own accomplishments onto their husbands, so the men remained above them as saints to be admired? The rightness of it was etched past my collarbone, into the moral center of my heart.

*   *   *

A few sleepy writers look up after I punch in the code for the Urban Writers Space. They clearly didn't expect a woman in a long black ball gown, a floral silk clutch, a diamond-encrusted relic wound around her neck, to burst into such a space. They gape at me curiously from the rims of their laptops as I inspect all the cubicles one by one, rule them out for Carl. A triangle of women freeze over their microwaved dinners in the kitchen. “Can we help you?”

Hermione peeks her head out of her office. “Are you looking for the workshop your husband's taking? It's just ending.”

“You mean the one he's teaching?”

“No,” Hermione said, cautiously. “The one he's taking. He's a participant, a student.”

I feel that stab of intuition, the kind where the outcome only needs to be verified. I walk down the hall and peer through the window at the class. Among people spanning their twenties to sixties, Carl sits around a long table, listening. The very same animated, gray-haired instructor from the Web site is wrapping up a point and the class is following along with her in their own paperbacks, a few underlining a cogent phrase or two. On the board is a map of a novel structure. Why would my husband, an M.F.A. from Columbia, author of a best-selling novel, be a student in this introductory writing class? I focus on Carl again, at the careful way his pen etches across lines. Then, of course, it crystallizes. Carl is here to start over. Learning to write again to cobble back what's left of his shattered self. The self I helped shatter.

I step away. My entire bag is vibrating, it seems, has been vibrating almost the entire cab ride downtown. Without looking at the phone's face, I turn the device off. In the classroom, papers are fanned out on desks with markings in the margins. Laptops are shutting down. I rap on the window a few times until he looks up and realizes it's me. Then I press the face of the Order against the windowpane. I'm gesturing like an idiot from the Order to Carl, then back to the Order, raising the absurd gold chain in a pantomime of a ceremony, a commemoration.
Touch it,
I'm trying to mouth.
Let's share its power.
Also as if to say,
I'm sorry. Now you know who I am.

I can't delay the call to Marjorie for long. If the police are not already waiting for me at the apartment, then as soon as I push into the revolving glass doors of Worthington's, I'll be stripped of my ID and keys to the safe. I'll be detained until I produce the thirty-one-million-dollar object.

The class is a mixture of well-meaning confusion, as everyone looks around.
Is she waving to me?
But Carl's blinking at the Order. I can see him making sense of what I'm showing him, tabulating—didn't the auction happen already? Aren't I risking my job? I think I can make out a flash of worry on my behalf. Our eyes latch and I ransack them for the famous Look.

Here's what I find in his eyes: a woman torn into two pieces as a child, then scattered further into the tiniest of shards. A woman fighting her innate pessimism, her innate Russian-Jewish soul. A woman who thought that hoisting her husband above her would even the playing field between them. A woman who believed in even playing fields in the first place. For Catherine, there was a fate inscribed in a great comet. So what if my fate may contain only sky sprinkled here and there with the faintest of stars, and nothing more extraordinary than that?

He smiles, and I remember the complicity of marriage. It's an unfamiliar peace, a present-tense, radiating, explosive peace. I have no idea what will happen next, and it is this I've never allowed myself: operating without a larger plan, not stretching toward the next rung on some mythical ladder. Embarking on a path that simply meanders at will, and then might—maybe, possibly—lead me back to him.

 

Acknowledgments

I was extraordinarily lucky to have so many generous friends who read early drafts of this novel. Many thanks to them: Allison Amend, Sonya Bekkerman, Gabriel Cohen, Katie Crouch, Angie Cruz, Laurence Klavan, Phillip Lopate, Claire McMillan, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Lizzie Skurnick, Peter Trachtenberg, Joel Whitney. Karen Kettering at Sotheby's provided me with crucial details pertaining to the Order of St. Catherine on its journey from Empress to auction house. Professor Marcus Levitt at the University of Southern California helped resolve a question of politics surrounding the young Sophie in Empress Elizabeth's court.

I wrote a lot of this novel at the Brooklyn Writers Space, a welcome refuge from all the noise.

It seems as though the road from your first to your second book is as rocky as they say. Time and time again, many friends offered a hand or talked me back into the light. There are far too many to list here, but special thanks to Paul W. Morris, as well as Kim Beck, Jessica Anya Blau, Mitch Hoffman, Stephanie Hopkins, Skip Horack, Jonathan Hsu, Dana Levin, Dawn Lundy Martin, Maud Newton, Karolin Shoikhet Obregon, Daphne Retter, Anya Ulinich, Natalia Vayner-Heyraud, and Josh Weil. Thanks to Gary Shteyngart, who is finally making up for not inviting me to the seventh-grade dance.

Kim Witherspoon and David Forrer at Inkwell are incredible champions of literature. I feel so lucky to have them on my side. Thanks to Laurie Chittenden, who buoys my Russian soul with her cheerful passion and fierce talent. Also at Thomas Dunne, many thanks to Melanie Fried.

This book is dedicated to Sonya Bekkerman, best friend and muse for thirty-five years now. This book could not have been written without her.

Without the love and support of my parents, Mark and Gina, I would never have had the courage to pursue the writer's life. I thank them for urging me to embark on any road of my choosing. My sister, Elizabeth, inspires me daily; when I grow up, I want to be just like her. Thank you to my grandfather, Yakov Kreychman. Thank you also to the other half of my family, for all of their support: Ed Lowenstein, Paula Friedman, Jane Lowenstein, Ron Wendt, and Noah Lowenstein. This book carries within it the memory of dear relatives who have passed away, who have indelibly shaped me.

Finally, thanks to my beloved husband, Adam Lowenstein, whose unflagging love and support nurtures me and sustains me through any challenge, whose daily presence by my side is the greatest adventure of my life. And to my tiniest guiding genius Simone, a master storyteller in the making, who is up every morning before dawn in expectation of a glorious new day.

 

ALSO BY
IRINA REYN

What Happened to Anna K.

Living on the Edge of the World:
New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State

 

About the Author

IRINA REYN
is the author of
What Happened to Anna K: A Novel
. She is also the editor of the anthology
Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State
. She has reviewed books for
The Los Angeles Times,
the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
the
Star-Tribune, The Forward,
and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in
One Story
,
Tin House
,
Town & Country Travel
and
Poets & Writers
. She teaches fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

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