Falling in Love with Natassia

by Anna Monardo

  A girlfriend?

  He didn’t seem happy enough to be in love. Actually, he looked miserable all the time. When she saw him. Which wasn’t often.

  Nora knew she shouldn’t stay home alone all night. Eventually, she’d get really depressed. I wonder if Kevin is doing anything good tonight.

  And the phone rang. When Nora heard Christopher’s “Hi” she realized she’d been hoping it would be him.

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said.

  “You’re not bothering me.”

  “I’m not feeling so good. I got some kind of a cold.”

  “The weather’s changing. Everybody’s sneezing. Are you in Nyack?”

  “Yeah. I just wanted to leave you a message that I’m coming home tonight. Later. I need to lie down.”

  Did he want her to leave the loft? Did he want her to stay home because he wanted to see her? Was it a threat or a plea? Nora had no idea what Christopher wanted from her. “Well,” she told him, “I’m going out soon anyway. So you have the place to yourself.” That sounded snottier than she’d meant for it to sound.

  So now she had to go out. Somewhere. Just as well. If she sat at home, even a few more hours, she’d do nothing but get drunk.

  “Christopher,” she said, “Mary called a little while ago.”

  “Yeah?” His voice was utterly changed. Interested, hopeful. “Natassia’s all right?”

  “She didn’t say much, just that Natassia’s doing okay. She’s going to be all right. That’s what Mary said.”

  “See, honey, I told you.” Nora was repulsed by the satisfaction in Christopher’s voice. “I told you this was just a teenage-girl thing. I hope you can relax a bit now.”

  “You don’t feel a bit of responsibility, do you?”

  Silence, a hard, mean silence.

  “Do you feel anything?” she asked again.

  “I’ve got to get off, Nora. Someone else needs the phone.”

  “Christopher.”

  “I can’t now, Nora.”

  “Fine. Just fine.”

  “Listen, I love you, you know that. And, um, I don’t know—wherever you’re going,” he said, snotty himself now, “have a good time.”

  “Yeah. I hope you feel better.”

  Bye-bye.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, having changed out of her work clothes, Nora left the loft, not sure where she was going. Two minutes walking out in the chilly night, she realized she should have brought the movie listings with her. Stupid. As she walked up Broadway, then across Prince, then up West Broadway, everyone was rushing, ending the workday or beginning the night, scurrying like kids playing musical chairs, and it shamed Nora to be left standing alone. Anyone seeing her like this on a Friday night might think she was unattached, unloved, single. The shops and restaurants and the traffic were all throwing up light, creating in the streets the artificial, animated atmosphere of a movie set. As she got closer to Washington Square Park, the Friday-night crowds were more obnoxious, NYU students and couples in from the suburbs, so Nora turned east and headed uptown on Broadway again. The crowds were just as bad. Looking down at her feet, she watched one warm leather laced-up boot step in front of the other. For the first time this year, she had on her long camel-hair overcoat, and when her hands dipped into the pockets they found last winter’s Kleenex in one and her mittens in the other. A wind rolled down the avenue. Her ears were getting cold, but she felt so much better than she had sitting at home.

  It never failed; alone or not, Nora always felt better out on the streets. Since that first year when she and Christopher had arrived in New York from France, when they were staying in so many different friends’ apartments while they renovated the loft, the streets had been a consolation for Nora, a compensation for the claustrophobia she felt in the subway. Passing the Strand, Nora noticed a patient and his girlfriend standing out front going through the discount-book racks; she averted her eyes and quickened her pace to make sure he didn’t see her. Walking on Union Square West, she looked up at the studio window of a friend of theirs; her lights were on. A couple years earlier, Nora and Christopher had helped Tina move into the space. She was Brazilian and sexy; for the first time in all the years they’d known Tina, Nora wondered if Christopher had ever slept with her. What if he’s up there with her right now? What if that’s where he called me from? Nora found herself moving toward the buzzers at the door. Tina’s name was still there. Should I buzz? And then Nora noticed a shadow inside the door moving toward her, and before she could step away, the door was opening and there was Tina, saying “No-ra!,” all hugs and kisses.

  “Tina, I saw your lights on….”

  “Yes, I am in love, No-ra. He is up in studio. Marrr-co. Italian! I am going for snacks for us. We are just now making love. Do you believe it!” Tina’s manic energy always made Nora smile, but especially tonight, when Tina was in an amorous froth—and not with Christopher. Tina went on a while about Marco, and Nora smiled, loving the shushiness of the Brazilian accent. It sounded like an Italian speaking Russian, or vice versa. And then Tina was saying, “I must go. Now. Marr-co, poor man, is very hungry.” More kisses and hugs, and as they parted, Tina was walking backward, waving, calling out, “Christopher, how is he? Tell him for me a big kiss, eh?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Ciao, No-ra, ciao!”

  “Ciao, Tina.” Nora was still smiling a couple blocks away when she realized that for the first time all week the Na-ta-sha sounds weren’t battering her head. Thank God. The night really was chilly now, and she wished she could go inside ABC Carpet to look around. She turned back up Broadway and pulled on her mittens.

  After a few blocks, stopped at a red light, Nora found herself standing beside a pay phone, and the next thing she knew she was fishing a quarter out of her wool trousers pocket. For some reason, one of the few phone numbers she had memorized was Giulia’s work number at Time. Nora dialed.

  “Giulia Di Cuore. Copy Desk.”

  “Hi. It’s me. Are you busy?”

  “Hey, where are you?” Giulia asked.

  “I’m out walking.”

  “Come visit. There’s nothing much going on yet. Are you all right?”

  “No.” Nora almost told the truth—I had another fight with Christopher and I think we’re going to get divorced—but she caught herself in time. “No, I’m not all right. I’m just, you know.”

  “About the other night? Yeah, come over, we’ll talk.”

  Even before hanging up, Nora felt foolish, hiking to the Time-Life Building to purge herself in person to Giulia. Nora thought of calling back to say she wasn’t coming, but she didn’t have another quarter, just a ten-dollar bill. At least she hadn’t buzzed Tina’s studio demanding to know if she was having an affair with Christopher.

  I’m not in control of myself.

  The Na-ta-sha had begun again in Nora’s mouth, sinuses, head. She had to keep moving. Maybe she needed to eat something. Going with the green lights, she’d ended up walking crosstown on Twenty-second Street, and then she was looking in the windows of the baking-supply store where she’d bought Christopher’s Christmas gift four years ago: a lifetime supply of baking paraphernalia that made Kevin jealous (the guys’ competitiveness around cooking was so tedious, that perverse way they’d bonded as brothers). I’m buying Christopher nothing this year. They hadn’t even talked yet about Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t far off.

  As she got closer to midtown, the streets were noisier with traffic, and on the sidewalks she was dodging more and more couples. She hated her husband, didn’t like being married to him right now, but Nora could barely tolerate the thought of herself as potentially unmarried. Inside her left mitten, Nora was fumbling with her wedding rings, pushing her gold bands down and up and over her knuckle again and again.

  At a run-down deli, she bought herself a heated-over knish. Christopher would never have let her buy food from such a place. One block after she finished eating her knish, she stopped at another deli and bo
ught a small bag of potato chips and a medium-sized bag of M&M’s. Christopher would have given her grief about this, too. He said if you’re going to eat candy you should eat quality chocolate, not junk. She slipped the bag of M&M’s into her pocket and tore open the bag of chips. Right hand, salty. Left, sweet.

  Closer to Fiftieth, the streets got crazier with stalled traffic honking. Something big was going on at Radio City Music Hall. Nora hurried across the street to the Time-Life Building and was glad when she finally slipped into the revolving door.

  The lobby was a quiet chamber, just the muted machinery of big furnaces and fans—no people. The sleek chrome planters were full of chrysanthemums. Wide polished floors, marble walls, chrome elevator banks surrounded Nora with a sense of 1950s-era safety. A guard was stationed at the elevators. Nora got off on the twenty-fourth floor and followed her instincts down the hallway—years ago Mary had worked here—until she was at a doorway where new carpeting ended and scraggy carpet began—that had to be where they kept the all-nighters. Nora walked past a short row of inner offices arranged with side-by-side desks. The next-to-last office was Giulia’s. She was lying on her stomach across two desks, and a man was bent over her, giving her an enthusiastic back rub.

  Nora stood in the threshold. She heard herself say, “Oh,” like a shocked and offended parent.

  Giulia turned her head. “Hi! I’m getting my back rub.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “This is Abe, my partner. Abe, this is Nora.”

  Abe didn’t say hi, he didn’t look up from Giulia’s back. He said, “I could never get my shrink to make office calls, or even a house call. I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried.” There was something Southern in his voice.

  “Abe, I told you she’s a shrink, not my shrink; she’s my friend. And you’re hurting my neck. Over to the right, top of the shoulder.”

  Why hadn’t Giulia ever talked about this guy? He was using his palms, then his fingertips. He was tall, his presence filling the room in a more solid and dark way than Christopher’s ever would have. Then Abe glanced over—round glinting eyeglasses—and Nora saw he was sort of ugly, but in a magnificent way. Nora felt duped, feeling sorry for Giulia stuck here on Friday nights, no way to meet anyone. Abe—immediately Nora loved his looks, but he had his knee up on the desk next to Giulia’s hip, was pressing everything he had into her shoulder, and he wasn’t stopping even though Nora stood in the doorway. She had to do something. “So, Abe, are you a professional masseur?” Nora cringed. She kept sounding like a schoolmarm.

  “No, I’m a novelist.”

  “Massage is just a gift he was born with.” Giulia’s voice was slack. The room was so tiny, the three of them made a crowd. The lights were low. Nora stuffed her mittens into her coat pockets, pulled a chair out from under a desk, sat down, and realized she had potato-chip crumbs all over the front of herself. She unbuttoned her coat but didn’t take it off. Giulia was wearing a torn-up sweatshirt, and Nora didn’t want Abe to see the expensive cashmere sweater she herself was wearing.

  Slowly, Abe smoothed out Giulia’s shoulders where he’d been rubbing. “Okay, contessa.” He slapped her butt lightly. “You’re done. I’m hungry. I’m going to buy dinner. You want the chicken or the shrimp?”

  “You’re the best,” she told him. “If you get the shrimp, I’ll get the chicken and we can share. Nora, do you want anything from the Brazilian place?”

  “No. No, thanks. I ate dinner already,” Nora lied.

  “Okay, then, I’m going.” Abe finally turned to Nora. He really was something. Nora felt her attention quicken, the way she’d seen it happen for painters she modeled for in France: gaze and object meet, become vision. Abe’s eyes were huge and dark and muddy around the edges with sleepiness, baggy under-eyes extended beyond the rims of his wireless eyeglasses. He looked Eastern European and from a few generations back. In the way Christopher held on to his boy beauty, this Abe seemed always to have been a man, never a kid. Tall and wide, with long, straight dark hair combed back off his forehead into a leather-string-tied knot at his neck. His head, where it was balding, glistened. He wore a gold earring, a small hoop. His hands were beautiful, his fingers thick as tubes of paint. He was dressed in black jeans and beat-up sneakers. A mud-colored T-shirt. Boys’ clothes, like Kevin’s, but inappropriate on this man. If Nora had seen Abe on the street, at first glance she might have thought he was homeless, a wandering goon panhandling. On the street, she would have averted her eyes. A dirtiness, a beat-up-ness about him. But in the small room, Nora just looked at his arms, the perfect way the hair grew on his arms, left his wrists smooth. He wore a leather-strapped watch. She couldn’t look at his face, afraid of what would show on her own face now that he was finally looking at her.

  “So you’re a shrink,” he said.

  “Yes.” She usually didn’t let people get away with “shrink.”

  “Psychiatrist, analyst, M.S.W., what?”

  “Psychologist. What about your writing?” Nora asked. “What do you write about?”

  “The dark, gnarly heart of the South, the Jewish South.”

  “Time for your break, Abe,” Giulia said. “We need dinner.”

  “I’m out of here. Good evening to you, Nora.”

  He’d said her name. “Yes, nice meeting you, Abe.” Before he could get out the doorway, Nora would have to move her chair. She hesitated. “What do you charge for a massage?” she asked.

  “Gratis. You just have to do what Giulia does, spend the night with me.”

  Then he was gone.

  “So,” Giulia said, sitting in the chair across from Nora’s, “are you okay?” But Nora was listening to Abe’s big steps go down the carpeted hallway. Giulia wheeled her chair closer. “Nora?”

  “Well, I’m done feeling sorry for you. Who is that guy?”

  “Why’d you feel sorry for me?” Giulia asked.

  “You never mentioned him.”

  “He’s been here forever, came with the job, from even before Mary worked here.”

  “Did Mary go out with him and never tell me?”

  “Mary with Abe? Mary knows better.”

  “He gives you back rubs, he’s going to get your dinner.”

  “Sometimes I go get the dinner,” Giulia said. “One of us has to cover the phone.”

  “But he’s kind of great-looking, don’t you think?”

  “Abe? Yeah, he’s—I don’t know, he’s Abe. He published a novel a couple years ago. Now he’s working on another one.”

  “He must have a girlfriend.”

  “Abe Shulevitz is not an option.”

  “Shulevitz. Abe.”

  “Nora, stop. What’s wrong? What’re you doing wandering around without Christopher on a Friday night?”

  Nora sighed. “What can I say? He’s working. There’s nothing to say. Did Mary call you? She finally called me.” They chewed over the little they’d each heard from Mary. Giulia wanted to talk about the ER, but Nora needed to ward off Natassia Natassia Natassia, so she dared again: “Where’s Abe with your dinner?”

  “He’s taking his break. He won’t be back for an hour.”

  “Where’s he go on his break?” If Nora had known he had an hour, she could have invited him to have a drink with her. She could have followed him. She wanted to know everything about him.

  “Never mind. I’m sure it’s nothing we’d want to know.”

  “Tell me,” Nora insisted.

  The phone rang. “He wanders around Times Square, I guess.” Into the receiver, she said, “Hello, Giulia Di Cuore. Yep, I’ll be right there.” She hung up, pushed out quickly from her desk. “Nora, sorry, I’ve got to get to work. The cover story’s in.”

  Going down in the elevator, Nora reminded herself to ask Giulia next time they talked, Tell me, you have to tell me, what does Abe do on his breaks? Out in the streets, walking home, Nora was carried by her own buoyant energy, thinking, I’ve lived in New York all these years and I’ve never come across thi
s man, this Abe.

  Nora truly did love the city; it never stopped offering up its gifts.

  THE NEXT DAY, Saturday, Giulia called. “Nora, did you lose your wedding ring?”

  Nora looked down at her left hand. There was the diamond engagement band, the lapis band from Italy, the tiny white-gold band that was Christopher’s nonna’s, but the yellow-gold band he’d put on her hand at their wedding, it was gone.

  “I found a gold band on the floor of my office last night. Is it yours?”

  “Oh. Yeah,” Nora said, “it probably is.”

  CHAPTER 16 :

  OCTOBER

  1989

  “Excellent,” old Dr. Jonson said as he eased the bandages off of Natassia’s wrist. “Nicely healed. You’ve taken good care of yourself.” Natassia and Mary, having made it through their first week together upstate, were in the doctor’s office for a follow-up.

  Dr. Jonson poked a small beam of light into her pupils, pressed her fingernails. “You’re anemic,” he said, “you need to eat meat.”

  “Should I take her for a blood test?” Mary asked.

  “She doesn’t need a blood test. See that?” He lifted Natassia’s finger, pressed her nail again. “See how slow the blood’s coming in. Nothing a little liver won’t take care of.”

  But that hollow horror was still in Natassia’s eyes. Mary caught Dr. Jonson’s arm as Natassia walked to the waiting room. “She doesn’t seem to be getting any better,” Mary told him.

  “She’s worn out. I told you last time. Same thing today. Way too much emotional excess for a girl her age. She’ll probably be fine. But it’ll take time.”

  Out in the waiting room, he told Natassia, “Liver for dinner tonight, young lady. Steak!”