Falling in Love with Natassia

by Anna Monardo

  “Christopher,” she said.

  He took her hand. “Talk to me, sweetheart, what?”

  There were tears. Her eyes were swollen, her gorgeous high cheekbones bloated.

  “Nora, before you start, can I just say something? Can I just say how much I love you, how much I miss you. Nora, you’re the only person I’ll ever love.”

  “Christopher, Mary flipped out on me. Mary and Natassia both flipped last night. We had an argument, a bad one. Yelling, everything. Christopher, I told them.”

  “About David? And they got mad at you?”

  “I told them about France. I told.”

  He thought he understood but wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to appear to be stupid. “France, you mean.”

  “The baby. When Natassia was a baby. When you—”

  “When Natassia was a baby and they visited.”

  “I told them, Christopher.”

  “And now?”

  CHAPTER 37 :

  MARCH

  1990

  David’s dead was one thought Mary couldn’t shake that Sunday morning as the Communicar sedan taking her and Natassia into the city from Hiliard was speeding down the Saw Mill River Parkway; the other thought was more shocking: I can’t trust Nora anymore. The driver was in the passing lane; the road was bendy and sad, lined with winter-dead brown trees. Mary recognized the road as the one David used to drive to their country house—Mary had gone as infrequently as possible, only when Natassia begged. This was the road where Lotte nagged David, telling him it was the worst road he could have picked. And he’d grip the steering wheel and scream, “I’m trying to goddamn drive, can you see that? This is the fucking last time, Lotte, these weekends aren’t worth it.”

  And Lotte would say, “I’ll take the train next time. I’ll take the bus.”

  And David would yell, “Good, take the bus. Ride in the bus like the goddamn peasant you are.”

  They had done it for years, and now he was dead.

  Mary looked over at Natassia huddled into the maroon corner of the sedan, staring out the rain-specked window. “You okay?” The kid just nodded. She was sucking her index finger. Her violin case was on her lap. Natassia hadn’t touched the violin once up at Hiliard, but she wanted to play it at her grandfather’s funeral. Earlier that morning, as Nora was leaving the cottage, Natassia had told her, “Don’t you and Christopher dare come to my grandfather’s funeral.” Mary wasn’t going to disagree with that. Mary wanted never to see Nora or Christopher again, except maybe in court, to send them to jail.

  Up front, the driver lifted his radio speaker and said, “Dropping off in ten.”

  Mary dreaded the moment when the Communicar would pull up in front of the building and she and Natassia would have to get out, see Lotte, do stuff, say things. And the whole time, Mary would have to be guarding Natassia, monitoring the telephone. But what a joke, the idea that Mary was capable of protecting her daughter. She had failed so long ago and failed so seriously.

  Fuck.

  Inside herself, Mary could not catch up with everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. First David died. Then Nora showed up. Then Natassia was molested when she was a baby. Then it was Christopher who had done it.

  Jesus.

  Mary tried to think it through again, reordering the events. First Nora had shown up at the door of the cottage. The thing Mary noticed was that Nora looked even heavier and more worn out than she had last fall. Mary had thought, Nora! And then, Do I owe her more money?

  Nora had stepped inside the cottage, taken off her coat. She sat down on the couch, asked, “Where’s Natassia?” just as Natassia came out of the bathroom tying her sweatpants up under her Hiliard School T-shirt. “Hey, hi,” Natassia had said. Nora stood up. Mary remembered watching them hug, feeling that jab of jealousy, but, more than that, feeling relief to see Nora not angry anymore and wrapping Natassia in a good, long hug.

  Then Natassia stepped back and raised her arms to gather up her loose, wild hair into a scrunchy, and Nora said, “Natassia, there’s no good way to say this.”

  Natassia’s hands stayed raised, holding up her hair. “Daddy?” she asked in a panicked voice. Nora shook her head. Quickly, Natassia demanded, “It’s not Grammy?”

  “It’s David. Sweetie, he had an attack of some kind this afternoon. He was in his office. He passed away…instantly.”

  “Pop-py,” Natassia whispered as her hands let go of her hair and slid onto her face. She pressed the polka-dotted scrunchy to her mouth.

  Then Nora said, “Lotte called me and asked me to—”

  “Who’s going to tell Daddy?”

  Oh, shit, this is going to make her want to call the BF again. Damn it, David.

  “Your father is on his way home,” Nora told Natassia.

  “Poor Daddy. He can’t take this.”

  “He’s traveling with Harriet, so—”

  The scrunchy slipped from Natassia’s hand, and her fingers went into her mouth. Mary could see Natassia’s teeth biting her fingertips, and no one seemed to know what to do. Natassia pulled her fingers out of her mouth and reached for Mary, grabbed her sweatshirt sleeve, and Mary covered Natassia’s hands with her own—clumped together, their hands were tremoring. (Mary was aware of feeling, oddly, not sad about David, but she did feel afraid.) And then Natassia shuddered, started to cry, lowered her head to Mary’s neck, and Mary’s face was covered by Natassia’s hair. “I didn’t see Poppy at Christmastime. I never saw him after—”

  “Sweetie, there’s no way you could have known.”

  And then Nora said, “Natassia, I’m afraid you’re going to have to try…”

  And then the weight of Natassia’s head was gone from Mary’s shoulder. Mary would never forget that lightning-fast transition, that transfer of weight. She had had to work with the Hiliard students for weeks and weeks to get them to make a move that clean: on-off, on-off. The rage in the kid’s voice was a shock, one more thing Mary wouldn’t forget for a long time. “Don’t you,” Natassia said, with more of a grunt than a voice, “tell me what I have to try to do.” And then Natassia continued yelling, and the bad news of David’s death was over and something worse began to happen. “Nora, you’re such a bitch to everybody. Like, why’d you drive my mom so crazy about that phone bill? You have so much more money than she ever will.”

  Natassia snatched a box of Kleenex off the coffee table, pulled out a handful, swiped at her face, and threw the cardboard box hard onto the floor, very close to Nora’s feet. “You’ve always been so mean to me. You always”—Natassia retrieved the Kleenex box, grabbed more tissues, and pounded the box against the edge of the table—“always tell me what to do, you watch everything I do, it’s like you’re looking for bad stuff and you can’t wait to tell me about it. You’re so superior. You don’t care about anybody else. You treat my mother like shit. You even treat your own brother like shit. You stood him up for Christmas. You drive Christopher crazy. I don’t know how he puts up with you.”

  “Hey, hey,” Mary said, “enough of that.” Mary had stayed out of it as long as she could—recently Dr. Cather had been pushing the point that Natassia had relationships with lots of other adults besides her mother, and it was important for Mary to step back and give Natassia room to work things out on her own—but the kid could get so insulting, just like Ross, just like David. “Apologize to Nora,” Mary demanded.

  Natassia said, “No fucking way,” and left the room. Mary followed her into her bedroom, where Natassia knelt on her bed and rolled her head to her knees and started crying full-speed. “Pop-py. Pop-py.”

  “It’s not Nora’s fault.”

  “I didn’t see him, I didn’t…” Natassia’s words were muffled into her mess of sheets and blankets. The thin, sharp bones of her spine raised the back of her white T-shirt into a tent.

  “Honey.”

  It took almost an hour. Mary went and got the mobile phone and they tried to call Lotte, but the line was b
usy and busy and busy again. They dialed Ross’s number in Spokane and left a message on his machine. Natassia cried. It had been months since Mary had held Natassia the way she had to hold her that night, supporting Natassia’s body to keep her from shaking, rocking her, saying over and over, “I’m sorry, Natassia. I’m so sorry.” At least now Natassia’s limbs felt more substantial, her body was a bit heftier, which was not to say that she wasn’t still skinny, but there was more to her now than when Mary had held her in the fall. When Natassia finally wore herself down and was asleep, Mary lowered the kid’s head onto the folded quilt she liked to use as a pillow, covered her feet with blankets, tucked a bed pillow up against her back, left the door open, and went down the hall, back to Nora, who was in the living room with her feet up on the couch and her chin resting on her raised knees. She, too, was rocking. Mary was sitting down next to her, pulling out a cigarette, before she realized that Nora’s face was wet with tears. “I’m sorry she said all that shit to you,” Mary said.

  “It’s all right.”

  “No,” Mary said, “it’s not. It’s rude. I’m getting a beer. Do you want a beer?”

  “No.”

  Walking into the kitchen, Mary was thinking about asking Nora, Why are you so hard on Natassia? Do you just not like her, or what? But what could Nora say? Your kid bugs me and she always has. Nora would never admit that. Even if it was the truth. This was exactly what Mary was thinking as she sat back down on the couch with a cold Rolling Rock, so it really weirded her out when Nora said, “Mary, I want to tell you. About Natassia, I want to tell you the truth.”

  “You don’t have to, Nora. She can be a brat. I know that.”

  “No, she’s not a brat. I’ve always felt—”

  “Nora, not now.”

  “I have to, Mary. It’s time.”

  Silence.

  Mary yawned a big aching yawn. When Nora got on a psychology talking binge, there was no stopping her. The beer didn’t taste that good after all. Mary put the bottle on the coffee table, picked up a notebook, found a blank page, and started a list of what she’d have to take care of for her classes before she left for the city in the morning. There’d be a funeral and sitting shivah and who knows what else. She’d have to tell the office, “Death in the family,” and “I’ll be gone a few days.” Just a few weeks earlier, she’d signed a new three-year contract that gave her a raise and expanded her duties (“Good,” Ross had said, “the more they’re depending on you for, the less likely they are to fire you”), so she didn’t have to worry too much anymore about losing her job, but she did have to take care of business.

  Nora, not far from Mary on the couch, kept insisting on talking. “In a way that’s difficult to explain, I’ve always felt, well, close to Natassia, too close.”

  Mary was writing: (1) type up research homework assignment; (2) make copies, leave with secretary; (3) call substitute for studio classes.

  “Christopher used to tell me I was hard on Natassia, but I couldn’t see it. I was so worried about her, wanting to look out for her. Always. Christopher said I was turning…harsh.”

  Still writing her list, Mary asked, “Does Natassia just get on your nerves?”

  “No.” Nora began rocking again, which shifted the pillows on the couch, made it difficult for Mary to write. Nora kept rocking.

  What the hell did David have to go to his office on Saturday afternoon for, anyway?

  Nora said, “I think I have to tell you now.”

  “Oh, Nora, don’t worry about it. You and Natassia, maybe you’re just too much alike to get along. Maybe it’s a two-peas-in-a-pod thing.”

  “Mary, when Natassia was a baby”—Nora turned and faced Mary, forcing Mary to look up from her list—“do you remember how beautiful she was, how sweet? Remember when you and Ross hitchhiked with her all the way to France from Rome?”

  Mary was lighting another cigarette, wishing for a pipe, but she smiled at the memory, even though she’d heard a little accusation in hitchhiked all the way. Mary was thinking, I never told Cather about that trip, did I? “Christopher’s loft.” Mary’s hand shooed smoke away. “That was a really good time.”

  “Do you remember how—God, I don’t know—how we were? So…loose, happy, free, in love. So totally in love—”

  “You and Christopher, man, you were—”

  “No, but you and Ross, too, and all of us, with each other, and with ourselves, and we were totally in love with your amazing baby—”

  “She was a little pumpkin, wasn’t she?” Mary inhaled deeply.

  “And we were—”

  “Young.” Mary shook her head. “So, so, so young. And dumb.”

  “Lately, when I think about that time, I just keep thinking that we were in love. In every possible way, we were in love. I mean, there you were in Rome, performing. I was on the beach in France. Mary, we’d finally got past Albany. So much past Albany and all that misery when we were kids. Mary, you and I, by twenty, we’d been through hell.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “And then there we were all together in France, and it just felt like—well, to me it did, anyway—that we’d managed, we’d survived, and we’d found these great men who were good to us. For a change. You had Ross and the baby. And Christopher was so—”

  “He still is, Nora. You got a great husband.”

  Nora’s tears started up. “Do you remember how beautiful he was, so absolutely gorgeous to look at? And I just…I liked watching his eyes when he talked. His lips.”

  “Oh, Nor.” Mary got up on her knees and crawled over to Nora’s end of the couch, sat next to her, put an arm around her. Nora really was crying hard now. She had to breathe deep to keep herself from gasping. Eventually, she reached for Mary’s cigarette and took a drag.

  “Are you going to tell me something,” Mary asked, “about what’s going on with you and Christopher? I’ve been trying to mind my own business, but, Nora, something big is not right with you two. Even Kevin feels like something’s wrong, but you won’t tell him. It’s really pissing him off.”

  Nora looked at Mary. “Do you talk to Kevin a lot? Is he okay?”

  “He’s worried about you, Nora. But, listen, just tell me, are you guys going to divorce or something?”

  Mary lit a new cigarette with the butt of her old one, and handed the new one to Nora, who took it and smoked.

  “You look good with a cigarette, Nor. I think you’d feel better if you started smoking.”

  They looked at each other. Nora wouldn’t laugh, not even a smile. Mary felt cold air and smelled the orange-blossom smoke from the bathroom candle. The bathroom window must have been opened, spreading the scent of the orange-blossom candle, and Nora was saying, “I do want to tell you about Christopher and me, but what’s going on now has to do with something that happened a long time ago, that summer in France. It was that week you visited us.”

  The cottage was undeniably full of something that was just about to happen. Mary suddenly understood that she needed to defend herself. “We came because you invited us.” She had an urge to say, Don’t tell me! She knew she was going to hear something bad, and not just about Nora’s marriage. Quickly, Mary tried to psych out the possibilities. “While Ross and I went away those couple days? You were mad at Christopher when we got back. Something happened.”

  “I didn’t know what to do, Mary. I did everything wrong.”

  Mary took the cigarette from Nora’s hand, stubbed it out in the ashtray on her lap. She turned sideways and sat cross-legged facing Nora, needing the distance, needing to make sure their legs and arms and hair weren’t touching.

  Nora could barely whisper as she said, “I’m really sorry.”

  “Something happened to Natassia while we were gone. What? Did you drop her?”

  Nora shook her head no. She said, “Christopher.”

  “Did Christopher feed her something bad and you had to take her to the hospital? Was her stomach pumped? Goddamn it, Nor, what?”
By now Mary was rocking, mimicking Nora’s rocking. Nora was sobbing, and Mary wanted to slap her. “Nora, she was only six weeks old. Did he hit her, did he beat her or something?”

  “I didn’t know what to do, Mary.”

  Inside Mary’s body, everything was turned on high, heart pumping crazily, blood pounding. Before she could stop herself, she reached out and slapped Nora on the arm. Not a smack, but a solid slap, fingers on arm flesh. “Tell me. Tell me.”

  “He didn’t know what he was doing. He was taking care of her, changing her diaper.”

  Mary had no breath.

  “He molested her, Mary.”

  Mary scampered up onto the arm of the couch to get away from Nora.

  “He kissed her. That’s all I saw. That’s all I know.” Nora’s eyes left Mary’s face. “I walked in from the bathroom, where I was getting her bathwater ready. We were trying to do everything right. And I saw him holding her up to his mouth, and she was naked.”

  Mary whispered, “And?”

  “I screamed at him,” Nora whispered, “to stop.”