Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (29 page)

Oxen laboring through the mud, slipping and struggling to their feet, raising dumb eyes to the unremitting heavens.

I hate my brain.

“Apparently,” says George, “there's hope for both of us, but
only on Jesus' terms. I told him I thought it likelier we'd be equally yoked under Judaism.” The laugh he emits is hollow. ”Turns out it wasn't even my father's idea to reach out to me now, but the minister has been reminding him no trouble is too stubborn for the Lord. Only it seems the Lord is used to more obedient sons. My father announced, after three minutes of conversation, that he knew I wasn't worth the effort.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

I listen to his silence. I imagine George in my bed. George in his apartment, rolling me over his back, settling me on his sofa, raising his beer bottle. Daring me. The man I'm risking all of this for.

“Hey, lover,” I say softly. “How you holding up?”

His voice yields, warms, readmits a trace of humor. “Managing,” he says. “In accordance with time-honored tradition, I borrowed a car this afternoon from one of my less nosy colleagues, and I drove until I'd driven the knots out.”

I finger the telephone cord. “I can't imagine that.”

“Driving doesn't soothe you?”

“Of course not,” I say. “You know me—”

But of course, he doesn't. He doesn't know me at all, doesn't know simple things my best friends know—like the fact that my single recurrent dream involves piloting a car along the highway and looking ahead, only to see another car come tumbling across the divider: head over tail, a silent ballet of metal and glass. That as the other car rushes toward me there's no overcoming the passivity of my hands on the wheel. And I drift wide and sail off the curve, my own car now tumbling, rushing toward the verge, the rocky cliff, and, far below, the surf: the endless, dark, frigid, impossible weight of the water, and I call out
no
as though the word were not a command or request but a state of being.

“You don't like driving?” George repeats.

I stare into the blank air of my apartment. I can't answer his question. Neither can I say without doubt that I know a single thing about him.

“Tracy?”

I'm numb. “My parents reserved their flights for Thanksgiving,” I murmur. My parents, who have been east only three times in all the years I've been here. “They didn't want to wait any longer to meet you. They want us to plan a quiet getaway, something out of
the city.” I'm dangerously distracted, still lost in my dream. ”I'm sorry,” I say, ”that you're having such a tough day.”

“That's fine about your parents. I'm looking forward to meeting them. Any place you want to go is fine.” He hesitates. “The weirdest part, with my father, was that at the end of the conversation he said we'd speak further about my life choices. This, after telling me I wasn't worth his time. I'm guessing the only thing that's keeping him tuned in is the prospect of grandchildren soon.”

I rouse myself. “George . . . leaving your father out of this for a second, don't you think it's early to plan children? I mean, do you honestly think we're ready for that?”

He's silent.

“Besides, what sort of lifestyle changes would you make—to accommodate these children you want to have so soon? What on your busy schedule are you willing to give up?”

He's still silent.

“George?”

“These things work out,” he says with emphatic innocence.

“They'll work out better,” I say, “if we take them slowly.”

“But why not dive in? Doesn't it all go together? Getting married, maybe buying a place for the sake of stability, having kids?” George reasons like a traveler who's signed up for the package deal. “If we're going to do it, we may as well—”

“Why are you pushing me?” I snap.

There is a deep pause, a pause that goes on and on. I hear George breathing.

A shrilling pierces the silence. Beneath the dire cry of my fax machine our “damn it”s mingle, indistinct sounds of dread.

He arrives from the airport angry. His suitcase hits the bed, jolting the mattress. His kiss is brief. On the shuttle bus he had two calls on his cell phone. One was his boss, Joel, and George has promised to call back.

He goes into the kitchen. His voice is low and heavy. The conversation lasts several minutes. When it's over, I hear the refrigerator door.

“Joel thinks I need to be drumming up more business,” George says, opening the beer bottle as he drops onto my sofa.

While Joel is technically the head of George's consulting group,
he and George interact more like college roommates, playing Nerf basketball in the office and notching the results of their rivalry into a wooden paperweight on the office's center table. From what I know, they've never had more than mild differences of opinion, easily patched. Now Joel is suggesting that George raise the number of his consulting engagements in the next few months.

“I'm starting to think it's time to move on,” says George. “The salary is too low for the long term.”

“But you manage fine as you are. And this job is what you love, right?”

“That may be, but it's no excuse for Joel to treat me like a workhorse. I don't get paid enough to go running all over the country.”

It's the first time I've heard him voice dissatisfaction with his salary. “Can you talk to Joel?”

George shrugs, then yawns, eyes averted.

The second phone call on the shuttle bus was from George's father. Civility didn't last three city blocks. For the first time in years, George's father berated him. George flared as well. An utter waste of energy, excepting whatever thrill the other passengers got from hearing a grown man say
Let's leave Satan out of this.
The two went head to head for about half an hour, then lapsed back into their customary silence. Perhaps a bit worse. Pointless to expect more. Pointless to stir that pot. Nothing more to say on the topic.

Paula is excited to meet me.

After George falls asleep I lie with my head on his chest. The angle of my neck is uncomfortable, but I don't move. I wait, as though listening for direction. His sleeping pulse enunciates a steady, unseen labor. In the dark, I set Woolf's words to its rhythm.

. . .
she
[Orlando]
lay content . . . Indeed, she was falling asleep with the wet feathers on her face, and her ear pressed to the ground when she heard, deep within, some hammer or an anvil, or was it a heart beating? Tick-tock, tick-tock, so it hammered, so it beat, the anvil, or the heart in the middle of the earth
. . .

I want to sleep seven days and seven nights and rise a new person. New thoughts, new hopes. A perfect love that casts out fear.

“Can't you just close your eyes,” says Yolanda, “and jump? I mean, can't you just
ignore
his talk about kids? You're not going
to have one until you decide you're ready, right? So why confront him on it? It will work out over time.”

I trail Yolanda between the racks of feathery apparel like a pet begging scraps. This is her favorite dress shop, where she tries on outfits she can't afford and lies in wait for sales. I've met her here on a quick break between lectures. Already I'm checking my watch, gaming the subway route back to my office and how much of my prep time I can skip without the students noticing.

She hands me a black cocktail dress, which I hold for her while she searches out another. “Because something's different,” I insist. “The words are the same, but the music's changed. Yolanda, if we love each other, shouldn't it be okay to tell each other the truth?”

Yolanda pauses, one hand sunk in a bloom of aubergine taffeta. “All these years, Tracy, I've thought
I
was the flighty one, and
you
were the pragmatist. I never dreamed I'd say this to you, but you're completely unrealistic. Nobody's totally honest in relationships. Okay, so you're terrified—you'll deal with it. I mean,
we'll
deal with it—I'll help you. But you need to flow with romance, not dissect it.”

“Maybe romance is the enemy of love.”

“Then fuck love,” pronounces Yolanda. She rifles the rack for a long while, leaving me empty-handed.

Abruptly she pulls a low-cut spangled number from the bar, sweeps it in an admiring arc, gathers it against her body. She sashays to the mirror, where she tosses her head like one of those haughty magazine models you'd never want dating anyone you know. Then she lowers her chin and scrutinizes her reflection, its lovely face etched with spider lines and craving.

Posters featuring a black-and-white photograph of Yolanda alongside a review quote in which a critic called her “haunting” have already gone up outside the theater where
Why the Flower Loves the Rod
is due to reopen in a few days. She's getting calls from casting agents who never before gave her the time of day. Bill, however, is still Bill.

“Maybe you ought to try therapy,” she says.

“It sounds as though you're experiencing some difficulty adjusting to the concept of marriage.” The therapist nods so steadily she
reminds me of the wave tanks used in high school physics experiments. Ripples of all-purpose compassion emanate from her bobbing head.

She stops nodding. From beneath her glossy blond bangs she evaluates my expectant silence. She fingers the slim gold band on her left hand. “Maybe you ought to say more about that.”

The clock strikes three. I write a check for one hundred and fifty dollars.

Tuesday morning my office phone rings. It's an outside line, a relief: I'm dreading a reprimand from Joanne. I've been skipping meetings, neglecting nonessential departmental duties, barely keeping up with book-order forms for the spring term.

“Aha!” says Rona. “So she
does
answer the phone.”

My head swimming with fatigue and irritation, I glance at the clock. “Hi, Rona. I've been busy. Listen, calling me at my office isn't actually so good.”

“Of course. But we do need to talk planning. Time is ticking.”

I finger the top sheet on the pile of untouched work on my desk. “This isn't a good time to talk about weddings, Rona. I'm at work. I'm in the middle of something.”

“Just tell me, have you set a date?”

“Not yet.”

“Well,” she says. Her voice drops. “Honey, it's natural you would hesitate.”

I rest my hand on the stack of papers. “It is?” I ask.

“Well, of course it is, Tracy love! After all, you're making the bigger commitment.”

“But George is making the same commitment I am.”

“Tracy sweetie, you're the woman. Believe me, you're making a bigger commitment.”

Have I just learned more than I ever wanted to know about Aunt Rona's marriage? Or is she trying to tell me something about marriage in general?

“Anyway,” she says, “we should talk flowers.”

Jeff appears in my doorway. I raise a hand to hold him.

Rona is still talking. “Your mother asked me to think about flowers and food. You know your mother never had a big wedding.”

“Rona, I—”

“So I think a big, beautiful wedding could be important to her.”

I signal Jeff to wait another minute, but he shakes his head, indicating my clock. Striding to my desk, he pulls a silver pen out of his breast pocket and writes for a moment on my notepad. By the time I spin the pad to read, he's gone.

Signed w. Atlanta. Moving in 2 wks. Grub's shock a thing of beauty for the ages. Joanne choking b/c bailing right after a paid leave Simply Isn't Done. Tis. Bequeathing you coffee mug
/
Brad Pitt button
/
antacids
/
Joanne. Congratulate me.

“Okay,” says Rona, “so I'm not pressuring you about a date now. Just one thing. Do you like tulips?”

I grip the notepad.

“I've always thought tulips were
lively.
” Rona caresses the word like a lucky pair of dice. “You
will
want floral arrangements, right?”

“Rona. We don't even have a date.”

“Well, I was just thinking, and I had this idea. Tulips aren't traditional, you know. But I think they're lively.”

“Rona, I'm at work right now. Tulips are just fine, for whenever the wedding happens. I'd just need”—this conversation is surreal—“to ask George.”

There's a long pause. “I don't see what anyone could have against some nice tulips.”

“I'm not saying—”

“Well, you ask your George if you like.”

Her hurt reverberates in my silent office.

Outside in the unremitting rain, I curse the weather, my balky umbrella, my aunt, myself. Rona, I know, will echo my mistake back to me into the indefinite future. Rather than indicating my personal tulip friendliness, I should have punted the question, asked George what he thinks of fucking tulips, and come back with a united-front response. If this man and I marry, and if the ceremony does not involve tulips, years from now Rona will still be asking what sort of man—callous, unwholesome, obdurate—doesn't like her beloved tulips. The relationship between
my husband and aunt will begin strained, burdened by Rona's offense.

We.
I was supposed to say
we.

George's father and sister spend one night in New York. We arrange to meet at a midtown restaurant: a tasteful, moderately priced sample of a Manhattan that Earl and Paula indict in George's kidnapping. George spends the afternoon with them. When he phones from Paula's room at the Mayflower to fill me in on dinner plans, he greets me with a tense “Hey” that makes me want to carry mace along to the meal.

When I meet George at his apartment he's alone; his father and sister, who wanted to rest after the afternoon's walk in Central Park, will take a cab to the restaurant.