‘Time changes things, doesn’t it?’ He rocked back on his heels, staring at her a bit too long, and then reached for Maksim’s head, attempting to stroke his soft hair.
Julia picked him up and moved him to the other side, hissing don’t touch him only loud enough for the two of them. ‘Many things change.’
‘Yes. Shame, all that.’—he waved his hand in her direction glibly.
‘Don’t.’ Julia’s face burned with anger. ‘Have you no shame for what you did?’
The side of his mouth lifted. ‘Do you? For opening your legs to another man?’
Julia’s face burned and her eyes raged. ‘How dare you.’ She bounced Maksim on her lap in direct contrast to the subject matter, to entertain him so he couldn’t sense the tension, but also to avoid feeding him in front of a man that had seen her breast before.
‘Life happens, sometimes. Desperate times, where we are.’ He stroked the side of her face with his index finger.
‘Get the hell away from me,’ she hissed.
He laughed. ‘Don’t worry. We are leaving anyway.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘Or maybe just me. I cannot bear to stay in this shit hole any longer.’ He looked at Julia and winked. ‘Shame, really. I began to like it here.’ He leaned forward and kissed the side of her face briefly. Before she could recoil, the moment was witnessed by another person who had walked over to the group by the pavilion and had watched the scene play out, only a minute before, and whose suspicions had now been confirmed.
Julia rolled her body away finally and looked up at him.
‘Either way,’ he stood up, and then stopped. ‘Nice to see you again.’ He smiled, and she remembered that smile, because it had been familiar, and now it destroyed her in so many miniscule ways, and an anger erupted inside her as he walked away, and then he inserted himself back into his group seamlessly, and they all moved together, their laughter dissipating down the road.
That moment kept hanging over her, the weight of panic looming on her chest, knowing that she had a part of her past that was indefinable. It existed, he existed, that night broke her and pieced her back together; she was unable to erase it.
She started packing up the pieces of the day into her bag, in a daze, not really aware of what she was doing, unaware that her world would soon be scattered in many pieces, like leaves on the wind that she now felt on her skin.
19
‘Julia, come inside, please.’
She heard Henry’s voice call her from inside the house, and there was something in the tone of it that made her hairs stand on her arm. The air felt quiet. It waited for something.
It was Saturday. Slava had been outside that morning, helping her mother weed the small garden at the back of the house, her hands caked in dirt, fistfuls of dandelions at her side. The twins were playing in one corner, on a flattened patch of brown grass, with some brightly-colored plastic toys had been brought over by one of the neighbors, they were happily engrossed and the laundry had been hung up and was fluttering in the breeze like the sail of a heeling boat. The sky was grey.
She looked up, the wind making her eyes stream. ‘Wait just a minute, I have to finish.’
She saw his face appear in the window and scan the perimeter of the garden. ‘No, you don’t. They will be fine.’
She turned back to Slava. ‘Wait here, I have to speak to your father. Look after Lesia and Maks.’ Slava watched her leave, she watched her all the time, and listened always, and Julia knew it. Julia didn’t turn back, and walked towards the front of the house, praying for a swift end to whatever mood was approaching.
When she walked in, Henry was leaning against the table in the kitchen, staring past her, and then at her. He was silent. His eyes were knowing. She looked back at the garden. The children would be alright.
‘Yes, what?’ Her hands were on her hips, trying to gauge his mood. She felt a bit exposed, standing that way. She waited.
‘So, you know what I heard?’ he asked her, and she knew he didn’t want her to finish.
She took the bait. ‘No. What?’
‘I heard that I married a whore.’ He carefully lit a cigarette, letting whore hang in the air between them. He inhaled slowly, and then exhaled. ‘Apparently.’
And all of a sudden, Julia felt like she was choking.
‘Oh, right, sure,’ Julia admonished and snapped herself out of her daze, though her thoughts were already a few steps ahead, searching. ‘And where, exactly, is this from?’
‘A friend.’
‘Well. Some friend.’
‘I trust them.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Well?’
The staccato of the words stopped abruptly, and Julia felt anger approach her chest, in fiery defense.
‘Wait, wait.’ Julia threw her hands up and closed her eyes as if to stop an army’s approach. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about and this ‘friend’ of yours is terribly mistaken.’
‘Mmm, right.’ He leaned forward, his palms gripping the table. ‘So, how should we talk about this, then? Are you going to tell me, and will it be a lie? Or should I tell you what I heard, and you can respond? Either way, it’s going to be damn painful for the both of us.’
She crossed her arms. ‘Go ahead. Go ahead and tell me this ridiculousness.’
‘So,’ he paused. He gathered his words. ‘I was told that you were with someone the other evening. Were you?’
‘Which day? Who??’ She chose her words carefully.
‘You didn’t answer my question. Were. You. With. Someone.’
‘Well, it’s a bit vague, isn’t it? I’ve seen people, yes.’
‘Julia,’ He leaned his palms on the table, gritting his teeth. ‘The thing that makes me sad here, is that I'm opening a door for you. I'm giving you the option to tell me what’s going on—’
‘No, actually,’ Julia interrupted, placing her hands on her hips. ‘You’re not. If you remember, you just called me a whore.’
He kept talking.
‘—and you’re not being honest with me. So, fine. I’ll tell you what I know. I know that someone told me they saw you in the park last week. Very comfortable, apparently, with you and the children. And that you apparently like to have a little meeting with that person, if I’m not around.’
‘STOP saying someone! Someone, someone, someone, you know you’re just trying to make me angry is that it?! What do you want me to tell you to make you happy?’ Her heart felt like it belonged to someone else in that moment, it felt foreign and pale and cold, like the center of her chest had a hole in it and she was about to crumble to the floor.
‘Go ahead. Lie to me.’ Henry looked at her with a distant sympathy, as if he didn’t understand who she was, but felt incredibly sorry for her.
‘Who, then?’ he was almost irritatingly calm in his demeanor.
‘Who, what? What do you mean?’
‘The other night, when I obviously wasn’t here, and in the park. What’s going on?’
She looked down. She’d forgotten to sweep the floor earlier. Specks of flour gathered around her toes. ‘That’s not what happened,’ she whispered, almost inaudibly and in a daze.
‘Excuse me?’
Her face was ashen as the memories of that night came flooding back. ‘You’re talking about Iliya, aren’t you?’
‘Well, then. You’re having an affair.’
‘No, no. That’s not true.’
‘What was he doing with you in the park?’
The park. How would Henry know about the park. And then it dawned on her. Elina. ‘He came over to me. I didn’t want to talk to him. He was trying to tell me—’
‘That he’s upset that he can’t have you? He can take you, for all I care.’
‘Henry stop, let me explain—’
‘Obviously you slept with him.’
She hesitated, and he saw it as admission. ‘No.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘I said no, didn’t you hear me?�
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‘You’re lying.’
Julia let herself feel angry. ‘You’ve already made up your mind, Henry, and it leaves no room for me to tell the truth.’
‘When did you start with this man,’ he hissed, pointing at her face. ‘Tell me.’
She covered her ears with her hands, pleading. ‘Stop. Please stop.’
He was standing a foot away from her, not letting her back away. He grabbed her and shook her violently.
She wrenched herself away and reached for the door, launching herself outside and into the light, the empty fields around her. She stopped, knowing he’d follow her, and she didn’t know what to say. The less she said now, the easier it would be, she realized. It’s a funny thing, truth. It can be more destructive than a lie.
And then she panicked as she looked back at all the times she had lied to him, and she felt her stomach lurch and a nausea erupt in the center of her.
She heard his footsteps behind her, and she turned around.
‘Henry, please,’ her voice was withered, raspy. ‘I can’t fix it; I can’t undo what happened.’
‘You still haven’t told me when it happened.’
‘Why do you have to know?’
‘Fresh pain, Julia.’ He spat. ‘For both of us. So I can see you humiliated.’
Her thoughts spun. Do you remember that I told you that Slava had bashed into me? Do you remember? And when I told you I was pregnant? Do you understand now?
‘July.’
‘It’s October. This past July?’
‘Last…July.’ Her stare was unflinching, a tear still caught in the corner of her eye. ‘Last year. It was that one time.’
He moved towards her, and then stopped. She thought it might be because he could forgive her. That one time. She walked to him. The leaves battled each other in the wind above their heads.
‘That was over a year ago.’
‘Yes.’
He looked back at the house and heard laughter. He turned back to her and she knew he’d counted. He’d calculated. She couldn’t stop herself; she had been released from her guilt, and shame, and anger had been bottled inside for far too long and began to set fire to the air around them. ‘Yes, after that, I found out I was pregnant. And it didn’t make me want them any less. I wanted them because we couldn’t have any of our own and my God you wanted them too, and you loved them just as much as I did, so what does it matter, please, what does it matter now… there is nothing to forgive, Henry.’
Henry’s face lost its color. The realization that his children were most likely not his own was devastating. Catastrophic. Incendiary. Heartbreaking. The words set off a chain of anger and disappointment in him that he had only once felt: for his father.
In the hours that followed the revelation, Henry chose (because it was the easier option and presented less difficulty navigating emotional obstacles that were the complicated results of an assault) not to believe his wife, and instead, began to convince himself that he was a betrayed by the one person he trusted. And the arguing possessed both of them in a kind of bottomless mire: Henry needing to believe that she had been unfaithful, and Julia needing him to accept that she had been assaulted, and to release the past of its pain.
‘No, are you hearing me at all?’ They were standing in the front of the house, the argument spilling out by the road, as Henry had started to leave to go anywhere but here. His world had been spun too far out of his reach and he was flailing. She had asked him if he was listening to her, and he had turned around to face her, walking towards her, a shaking index finger pointed at her face. ‘Are you understanding me?? You slept with someone almost two years ago, and now you’re saying that he raped you. And, guess what: those two sleeping children in that house, my house, those two children that I have loved, and wanted and held in my arms— ‘his voice broke at each admission— ‘are they yours? Yes. Are they mine? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Do you have any idea what that feels like for me?’ The tears threatened.
‘But...’
‘I don’t know whether to be angry, or sad, or shout, or break apart everything I own, or take Slava— my child, I’ll have you know-- of this house and leave you to your misery.’
She grew cold, staring at Henry, not really seeing him, hearing words coming and yet feeling like there was a transparent wall between them.
‘So, what if they are Iliya’s?’
Henry reached his arms to the heavens, dropping them down again in exhaustion. ‘Stop saying his name!’
‘Why can’t they be ours now? They’re here now. We’ve made a home for them.’
‘You’re asking me to love children that are not my own!’
‘But you love them.’
‘There are plenty of others who would love these children. I can’t fathom raising children that are not my own blood.’ He looked across at the house where they now were, the boy and the girl that were strangers to him, and yet his heart broke and yearned for them.
‘But we do. We have, wanted them. They are innocent in all of this, why would you punish them? Or me for that matter?’
He was shaking and walked over to the car and punched the metal with the meat of his fist, his arms tightening as he pressed down on the hood. ‘Are you mad? You’re asking me a question when, after almost two years with the belief that they were mine, the truth is that they’re most likely not, and you tell me he raped you, and how am I to believe you when you had said nothing, nothing, for so long. Why?! Why did you not trust me enough to tell me! I loved you and love you still, and you had no faith in me.’
‘But I was scared and I’m telling you now,’ she pleaded, wondering if he would back down; if she could actually get him to believe her. ‘You have to believe that it’s the truth.’
‘I don’t think you even know the truth anymore, Julia.’
‘Please just listen to me—’
‘— honestly, I can’t. This is madness. You’re actually asking me to take care of another man’s children? Absolutely not.’
He wouldn’t change course, and his voice had become a kind of still that felt too conclusive, so she pointed at the very weakest spot to see if she could break him open again. ‘Well, then, you didn’t love them really, did you.’
And oh, God, his anger flooded the space between them when she’d said those words. She meant them, and he knew it, and it broke his heart with more power than his father ever did (though he would never tell her that) and so when his palm came across her cheek, she’d expected it. She knew to brace herself when she saw his eyes widen and his hand lift. She clenched her jaw, her lips soft and closed, as his open palm connected to her skin; the sting and fire erupted like an explosion, repeated in burning waves, her eyes closed and tearing underneath. He had never raised a hand to her, and now he felt sick at the thought.
He bent his head, shoulders dropping, hurting for what he did and what she had done to him. Her eyes remained closed, and she became the center of where she was, pretended that it was all revolving around her. As long as she stood still, anything could happen; planets could revolve, the sun could rise and set, the children could play, and the world could go on perfectly fine without her.
‘You have a choice, Julia.’
She stayed quiet, unprepared as to what he would say.
He looked up at her. ‘Give them away, or I'm leaving.’
‘What?’ Her eyes widened.
His jaw pulsed as he set his teeth. ‘That’s right. Give them up. Or I’m taking Slava with me. Out of here.’
Julia shook her head. ‘Give them away? That’s impossible.’
‘There are plenty of families that are childless. They can have these… children.’ He stopped himself from saying bastards. His heart felt as if it were splintering into shards, there was too much for him to process.
Julia felt her skin grow cold, the hair on her arms standing, her heart falling to the bottoms of her feet, breaking at each corner inside her body. Impossible.
/> ‘No. No no no no, you cannot make me do that.’ Her voice strained through her throat as she spoke, she wanted to wail. ‘No. You’re just saying that out of anger. You have to stay calm; you have to believe...’
‘--What choice do you give me, Julia? WHAT. CHOICE.’ Henry’s voice cut through the air around them.
‘...that you can love them still.’
Henry clenched his fist and his entire body shook. ‘I did love them. I still do love them. And yet you tell me they weren’t mine. Can’t you even understand what that feels like? Can you see how my entire world has burned in front of my eyes? What truth can I believe now? What am I supposed to do?’
‘You cannot make me give away my children, the ones that we have loved, no no…’ Her voice began to rise, her lungs bursting as her breathing became erratic. ‘Our children. Please, please,’ she pleaded, and dropped her head into her palms, still speaking softly. ‘Oh God, Henry. Please, oh God what have I done to us…’ She began to sob uncontrollably, an animal-like sound coming from her; a keening from her exquisite, unhinged pain.
He was torn: the woman standing in front of him
was the woman he loved, but the betrayal, the secret, the unknown story that his children now were a part of. It was all too much for him to take, and so he turned away, though he wanted to hold her, but the pain was too severe, the cut too deep. He felt powerless.
Suddenly the door opened, and Slava ran out, gold hair shining in the sunlight, dress billowing in the wind. ‘Mama! Papa! Stop shouting!’ She began to cry, running towards them. ‘Why are you fighting??’
Julia held her breath to stop from crying, and was grateful for Slava’s body running towards her, pushing into the side of hers as she clung to her.
Henry looked over at Julia sharply, in admonishment, gesturing with a hand. ‘You see? This is what you’ve created.’
‘Oh, my love. I’m so sorry,’ Julia ignored his comment and spoke with an unwavering voice, though she was wounded beyond repair now. She knelt down, wiping the tears from Slava’s cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, everything is alright.’
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