by Olga Grushin
There are five of them, one for each day of my working week. The Monday princess, the oldest and most resigned of the lot, met her husband when she was out for a stroll in the park, gathering flowers for her parents’ mantelpiece arrangement, and he a stag pursued by a vicious hunt. He bounded over for help, pleaded with her to give him her heart, for only thus would the enchantment be broken, only thus would he resume his true, his human, form, and she felt sorry for him because of the frantic rolling of his golden eyes, the foaming of his blackened lips, and chose to believe him. And once her heart was firmly in his possession, he did make one fine-looking, graceful man; but these days, almost two decades later, she often finds her ceilings scuffed by antlers and her rugs imprinted by hooves, so she has begun to suspect that he lied to her, is lying to her still, that his true form has always been that of a stag and he gladly reverts to his prancing, doe-chasing ways whenever her back is turned, then pretends to misunderstand her tired questions in the mornings—and three or four times now, she has stumbled upon her heart, once his greatest treasure (he said), lying forgotten on windowsills or in kitchen drawers.
The Tuesday princess, by far the richest of them all, is elegant and sleek, slinking about her suburban mansion on feet soft as paws, lying sprawled on sofas in sophisticated silk dresses, grooming herself, her eyes evasive and smooth, stacks of golden bracelets jingling up and down her skinny arms. She takes the longest to speak to me, and even then, she purrs with half-truths and omissions. Still, I learn that in her youth, she was a beautiful white cat, a royal cat, no less, but she fell in love with a broad-shouldered, happy-go-lucky peasant youth entirely indifferent to her charms—he was a dog person—and the less he cared, the harder the thorn of love pinned down her soul. She invited him to live in her palace, gave him fine wines to drink, delicacies to eat, velvets and jewels to wear, and still he preferred his slobbery romps with street mutts to an hour of refinement in her discerning feline presence. At last, in despair, she begged him to cut off her head—and when he did, a lovely woman appeared in place of the cat, so, rendered dumb by the shock, the youth gave in and married her right on the spot. And, fifteen years later, they are married still, but now she often snaps, scratches, and spits at him, for she feels poisoned by the hateful recollection of the ease with which he granted her long-ago wish to behead her—a shrug and “Sure,” carelessly tossed off—and, too, she often catches her ever-gorgeous husband looking at her with amiable speculation, as though wondering what kind of delightful new being might emerge and grace him with her effervescent presence if he cut off the head of his tiresomely nagging, aging wife.
The Wednesday princess, the youngest, married a wolf. He terrorized her neighborhood for many a season, powerful muscles rolling under his shaggy pelt, devouring maidens and, on occasion, their mothers (though not grandmothers, rumors notwithstanding, for their meat was too dry for his liking), when she came dancing across his way one sunny day, a basket of homemade provisions in the crook of her elbow. He treated himself to her roast chicken and her rhubarb pie, thinking to eat her next—and then, somehow, found himself intrigued, for she wore bright colors, sang happy songs, had a mouth the color of burst berries, and was not a whit afraid of him. And so he brought her home instead, and she was ecstatic at first—she knew herself special for taming a savage creature of the dark forest—and she went around his house singing “Tra-la-la!” and cooking delicious suppers. Yet she soon noticed that if she happened to cease her singing for even a minute or burn even one piece of toast, his eyes would narrow and his tongue would take a few saliva-drenched lolls by his great yellow teeth. The more it happened, the more apprehensive she grew, until her apprehension turned to fear. Some months ago, she happened to meet a young hunter, she confided to me shyly. She is now weighing her options.
The Thursday wife was rescued by her prince from the top of a tree in the heart of the forest, where she sat naked and alone, for what reason she herself cannot recall—it seems like a different life. He had not asked whether she wanted to be rescued. Had she been asked, she is not sure what answer she would have given at the time, yet now—now she misses her tree. But it is the Friday princess, the most beautiful of the five, whose story bothers me most. When she first married her husband, he was a beast under a spell, yet she loved the sad, shriveled seed of a soul that she sensed fluttering beneath his fur and fangs. Devotedly, she followed every last bit of advice she mined from fashion magazines—she perfected her housekeeping skills, splurged on his creature comforts, did not complain about her own petty troubles when her beast came home from work, but listened with avid interest as he grouched for hours on end; nor did she ever forget to take a few minutes to refresh herself before his arrival, putting a touch of lipstick on her mouth and a ribbon in her hair. She arranged his pillows, took off his shoes, and treated him as the master of the house long after he had stopped roaring at her—and, in time, her tender ministrations made him soft and gentle in her hands, a new, caring, sensitive man. Now they should be happy together, but she is getting bored—and gradually, she is beginning to understand that what she loved was not the man himself, nor the beast, but her own near-magical power to effect the transformation from the one to the other. She does not tell me that, not in these exact words, but over a glass of sherry, she whispers that she has undercooked his steak on purpose once or twice, has forgotten to sew on an occasional button, has met him, with some regularity, with curlers in her hair—and even though he has appeared patient and understanding so far, she thinks she might have detected a growl in his voice now and then, and it has made a small flame of excitement flare up in her heart grown lardy on tedium. Who knows what he might turn into next, if only she keeps at it, she says, smiling dreamily into her second sherry of the afternoon. After her third glass, she grows giggly and brings over an instructional book she was given by her mother as a wedding present, Married Life and Happiness, penned by a New York physician some three decades ago, and, slurring slightly, recites a paragraph: “Remember that the old idea that a wife is the husband’s chattel to do with as he pleases is going out of fashion. The idea that woman has no soul and should be treated on a par with imbeciles and idiots is also becoming antiquated. Women are really beginning to find out that they are human beings, almost as good as we are”—upon which she dissolves into peals of inebriated laughter, and I hasten to excuse myself under a pretext of another cleaning engagement.
I recount these women’s stories to Dr. Wand at our next session.
“And how do they make you feel?”
“I would have felt hopeless a year ago. Now I just feel impatient. Because they are all more or less the same story, and they all end quite badly. Are there no happy endings for anyone anymore?”
She muses for a moment.
“In Shakespeare’s times, did you know,” she says at last, “any story that ended with marriage was considered a comedy. Doesn’t that strike our modern sensibilities as ironic? I’d say the ending would depend largely on the beginning, and none of these beginnings seems particularly promising to me. You can’t have the right answer to a wrong question, you know. And expectations play a vital part, as well. Are you ready to talk about what happened at the end of your own marriage?”
This question is our weekly rite of passage. I shake my head, so we discuss the approaching meeting with my children instead—now that my court date has been set for the summer, my tough no-nonsense lawyer has arranged for me to see Angie and Ro for an hour every Sunday, under the supervision of Dr. Wand, who, it turns out, is a trusted old friend of my husband’s family and, too, specializes in treating childhood traumas. She cautions me not to be clingy, not to reveal my anxieties, not to badmouth their father, and, however I feel, not to cry. When I see them at last—we meet for a walk in Central Park on a beautiful March evening, mere blocks from their home (I can no longer think of it as mine, if ever I did)—I am overjoyed by the sight, by the smell, by the feel of them, the sheer p
hysicality of their presence, and stricken by how tall they have grown in the months we have spent apart from each other, and devastated by the slight formality with which they greet me, the detached stiffness of their first embrace, the awkwardness with which we struggle to find initial topics of conversation—but only for a few minutes, because Ro is already telling me about a puppy his daddy bought him (But I can’t compete with a puppy, I scream inside, then try to put the smile back on my face and listen to the sounds of my son’s cruel joy), and Angie reveals the gap in her gums where her last baby tooth has fallen out.
“But the tooth fairy forgot to come,” she says sadly, and even though she is plainly too old to believe in fairies, I clench my fists behind my back, stabbed by hatred for that self-engrossed, oblivious man.
They show me photos of their Christmas tree.
“But it wasn’t the same this year,” Ro says.
“Because I wasn’t there?” I ask, hopeful.
Dr. Wand shoots me a quick warning look, just as Ro replies, “No, because we had stupid white lights instead of the pretty rainbow ones, like we did before, and it was boring,” and then Angie kicks him in the shin and says, “But also because you weren’t there.” And they talk, and I talk, and we laugh, and we lick and rank one another’s ice creams, comparing flavors (Angie wins, as she always does), and somehow, for five full minutes, I truly manage to forget what things are, to stop stewing over their father, and I feel happy, and I feel whole—and then the hour is over, and suddenly I cannot breathe and am horrified to feel tears swelling into my eyes, but Dr. Wand puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I remember that in another week there will be another hour—and then a life, an entire life of puppies and ice creams and tooth fairies—and I can breathe again, at least a little.
In the City
This spring, the city is starting to change around me. Everything seems both familiar and endlessly new, as though my way of seeing has altered, my angle of vision has shifted. I look at the same throngs of people I have been passing on the sidewalks of Manhattan for most of my life, and I see stories, countless stories, behind the facades of their faces, just as I see interiors behind the facades of the buildings where I work—and sometimes the stories and the interiors are precisely what one would expect, sad clichés, trite romances with stale endings, princes and princesses leading dreary parallel existences past their happily ever after, vacuous rooms full of imposing furniture arranged in symmetrical flocks for the centerfold pages of design magazines, all in need of perennial dusting; but other times, more and more often as this strange spring draws closer to summer, the places surprise me, the stories unfold and intertwine in patterns that are delightfully startling, until I begin to believe, to hope, that there can be other plots, other joys, other ways of living—because life is changing, and so am I.
By April, the suburban Connecticut wives with their tight smiles, bouffant hairstyles, and handspan waists have faded into their well-mannered, color-coordinated misery, giving way to new city clients I have found, mostly through interventions of my older sister, Gloria, who travels the country as an art consultant to wealthy collectors and knows scores of musicians, sculptors, models, all those “on the fringes of genius,” as she likes to call them, half dismissively, half fondly. I clean airy lofts with virtually no possessions other than gleaming African masks or gigantic photographs of flat-chested nudes with sullen eyes. I clean houses with black-and-white zigzag floors and walls that slide open, letting in fresh, heady smells of balmy evenings, of city streets, of freedom. I sweep plastic wine cups and used condoms out of the darker corners of Soho galleries on mornings after openings. I meet people who love well, fully, with passion, but who do not live for love, or not for love alone—they live to create art, to quest after knowledge, to make friends, to walk the world. Not all of these people are happy, but there is an intensity, a vibrancy, an exuberance about them that seems to me better than happiness, or else an altogether different kind of happiness, that reminds me of some long-ago stories I used to hear, or perhaps fantasies I used to have. And though these people’s lives are not my life and I stand on the outside, peering in through the veil of my sadness, my worry, my exhaustion, now and then I feel that I, too, can break through, I, too, can will my life into some semblance of theirs, given time, given imagination, given desire, given work.
I meet a gorgeous fortysomething jewelry artist with a penchant for wearing loose, richly embroidered caftans, who, some years ago, was abandoned by her prominent politician husband for a sweet-faced girl with skin white as snow, lips red as blood, hair black as ebony, and the soul of a snake, young enough to be his daughter. Now the older woman lives in a loft with a terrace open to all the winds and seven muscular men for lovers, and they listen to dreamy music and paint flowers all over the walls and throw parties to which the entire city block comes to recite poetry and dance in the moonlight; and when her former husband, having tired of his new wife (who seemed to spend her days gorging herself on sugared fruit and sleeping), begged her to return to him, she smiled with pity and offered him a drag on her joint before her seven lovers escorted him out. I meet a prince whose father kept sending him portraits of suitable princesses and whose mother kept putting peas under the mattresses of overnight female guests, until the heir, fed up, escaped to remote lands (some said, by climbing a beanstalk), and there met a giant who refused to devour the passersby and, as a result, was ostracized by his traditional giant family; the two now share a penthouse apartment with a glass roof and work on making a mosaic map of the sky out of pebbles and crystals. I meet young, lovely witches. I meet old, wise imps. I meet tricky cobblers and homeless elves. I meet cooks who speak in foreign tongues and work magic in the kitchen, beautiful men who wear ball gowns better than any princesses ever could, trapeze performers who truly fly, taxi drivers who used to be kings and kings who used to be shoeshines, fatherless children who tame wild cats, dark-skinned pirates who write immortal verse, young girls who learn the secrets of the universe by peering into telescopes and kissing, then dissecting, frogs. The world is, all at once, so many worlds unfolding within worlds, and as I take Angie and Ro for our supervised weekly stroll, I start to see the three of us as three small spirits holding hands while we make our uncertain, brave, wondering way through the immense labyrinth of marvels and delights—and I want them to grow up to be a part of it, as I myself had not been.
In May, Gloria comes to New York to oversee an installation at a celebrated art gallery, and she insists on taking me out to lunch. I have not seen my older sister since the funeral. She looks much the same, though her edges are harder now, polished by her continued success in life, and most noticeably, her luxurious long hair, the pride of her adolescence, is gone, replaced by a severe rectangular cut that makes her look like a Modigliani portrait. The restaurant where we meet (she is ten minutes late, talking on her phone as she enters at a swishing, clicking stride) is much more expensive than anything I could now afford and much more fashionable than anything I ever cared to frequent; I am humbled by its black-and-white minimalism. Gloria, too, is dressed all in black and white, as though she chose the establishment solely to match her sense of style—and knowing my sister, I would guess that is just what she did. We sit at a tiny table, and shyly I pick at my three or four sprigs of some exotic herb crowned by flowers and arranged with flawless precision in the center of an enormous, barren plate, while Gloria talks of the early days of the feminist avant-garde movement, of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper reimagined with women as the apostles, of modern technology influencing art . . . And as I watch her red lips move, watch her black-and-white gestures multiplied by the mirrors, I catch myself puzzling over something. We have never been particularly close—even as a child, I found her formidable ways intimidating—but the lasting chill in our adult relationship, I realize now, has been mainly of my own making, caused by the offense I took at her behavior during my long-ago wedding. She wore a sour look throu
ghout the ceremony, and later, when her turn came in the receiving line, she spoke to me out of the corner of her mouth and spoke to my groom not at all; she never even said “Congratulations.” For years, I believed her to have been envious of me, of my brilliant match.
Now, I am not so sure.
“Gloria, what did you have against my marriage?” I blurt out when she pauses to take a sip of her martini.
She raises one elegant eyebrow. There is something of a bird of prey in the spare grace of her movements.
“Let’s just say, I did not think you two were a suitable match.” She waves her hand, and I follow the bright red trajectory of her glittering nails. A baby-faced waitress materializes by our table. “Another martini, my dear,” Gloria says, lightly touching her finger to the waitress’s bare arm, then shifts her gaze back to me. “You were too young. Too young to know yourself properly. Too young to know your fiancé properly. When I was that age, I didn’t even know what I liked.”
“What you liked?”
The waitress sails back across the black-and-white room with the new martini, swinging her hips, and a dozen more waitresses float through the mirrors on all sides of us, their eyes obliquely meeting the eyes of Gloria’s manifold reflections.
“Shortly after your wedding,” Gloria says, raising her fresh drink to her lips, “I met someone. A prince much like yours. Handsome, rich, all the right parts in all the right places. He wanted to marry me. But something felt wrong, so I just kept saying, ‘Perhaps,’ and ‘Let’s talk about it next month,’ and ‘Maybe after I’m done with my studies next year,’ and ‘Let me just settle into my job first.’ Eventually he got angry, tricked me into a tower, and, once I was inside, walled the door shut. For weeks, I sat by the only window, high off the ground, and his servants used pulleys to deliver my food so I wouldn’t starve, but I was allowed to talk to no one, to see no one—and every Sunday, right as clockwork, he would come to my window and shout: ‘Will you marry me now?’ And then I was angry, too, so there were no more ‘Maybe’ and ‘Later.’ I would just scream ‘No!’ down at him, and he would stride away in a huff.”