The Ladies' Lending Library

by Janice Kulyk Keefer

  He was a magician with words, that Peter Metelsky. He could recite poetry by the yard, in Ukrainian and in English. He had presence, that’s how everyone put it: “sex appeal,” and something more. He was a natural for the lead in the play that the Cultural Society was putting on that spring. And of course they cast Nadia Moroz as his opposite number, Nadia about whom no one could invent or imagine anything that wasn’t proper, chemna: Nadia, offspring of a Saint and a Broomstick. This was important: the Cultural Society had commissioned a dramatic adaptation of Kateryna from Pan Mudry, who’d been a theatre director in Kyiv before the war. The audience would be made up of respectable people who loved and knew their Shevchenko. Only Nadia could play a girl seduced by a Russian soldier, a girl who bears a child out of wedlock and who then, expelled from her village, wanders off, babe in arms, in search of the lying Muscovite who’d seduced her. In short, only Nadia could play such a role without giving the audience ideas. And only Peter could carry off the role of the heartless hussar, making almost every woman in the audience fall shamelessly in love with him.

  Whether Nadia fell for him or not, nothing stopped her from accepting Jack Senchenko’s proposal. Jack was an up-and-comer, a man who would go places, who had only to look at a dollar bill for it to multiply and spin off in a dozen different directions. She married him because of her father’s illness, and the medical fees that had plunged the Morozes into the kind of debt that made their former finances appear as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. But it’s Peter Metelsky’s belief that Nadia married Jack Senchenko because she was afraid of her own feelings, because she didn’t love Jack, and would therefore be perfectly safe with him, at no risk of losing herself. For it had been Peter’s obsession, all through the rehearsals for Kateryna, to convince Nadia Moroz that she should have no fear of losing herself, if he was the one to find her.

  Jack and Nadia married three months after the night of the play, Peter and Zirka a year later, by which time Nadia had given birth to her only child, a son, Jack Jr. She’d carried her child the way she always carried herself: so that nothing showed outside the lines of what was expected, acceptable. She was a master at pulling herself in, vanishing into herself, so that her thoughts could be off in some other space while with her body she was shaking someone’s hand, lifting a fork to her mouth, pressing her face against Peter’s and Zirka’s in the receiving line at their wedding. Where did she go when she performed her vanishing act? Maybe nowhere very far away, but straight overhead, like the dove hovering over Christ’s head at the Baptism. When Peter kissed her a moment longer than he should have, when Zirka hugged her so tight she seemed to be trying to crack her ribs, maybe Nadia could see it all as if it were a film projected in an empty cinema instead of a church hall dense with wedding guests and streamers and whisky-laden tables. As for when she went home and lay down in her husband’s bed, who could tell where she was then, what she was or wasn’t watching?

  So that’s how it went—Nadia keeping her distance, making Peter keep his, their dancing, their acting together nothing more than a joke remembered, it being understood by all that anything between them could only be a joke. After some years of trying, Peter and Zirka had had two sons. The business the two men had set up together fell apart, as Jack went into real estate, and Peter—who had a genius for bad investments—joined company after company, each time at a lower salary, with less and less responsibility. Gradually, the family gatherings tapered off, and finally stopped happening, the Senchenkos and Metelskys having moved to very different sides of the social tracks. Until, if it weren’t for Kalyna Beach, Peter and Nadia would hardly have seen one another at all, in or out of the water.

  What does it look like to Sonia, or Sasha, or to any of the other ladies at Kalyna Beach—a pure accident or a game of chicken? Especially after what happened not so long ago at the Plotskys’ party. Does Jack even care? He’s such a confident man, so bluff and large and generous that he seems to be above anything as small as suspicion.

  Isn’t it just like Jack, showing off, taking his wife and sister and brother-in-law for a spin on his new speedboat, SVOBODA—FREEDOM painted on its side in heavy, gilt-edged letters? True, Peter and Zirka are here as replacements for the business associates from the city, who’ve cancelled their visit at the last minute; they are stand-ins, invited to ooh and ahh over the speed and power of Jack’s latest toy. What’s surprising is that Nadia has come along too, a scarf tied round her head, dark glasses on—the expensive, prescription ones that make her look like Jackie Kennedy at Hyannis Port, only this is Kalyna Beach, and her husband is president of no superpower, but of Senchenko Enterprises Ltd. Zirka’s as excited as a child, so delighted with Jack’s urging her to sit up front, where she can have a turn at the wheel, that she neglects to consider the implications of Peter settling himself in the back seat, beside Nadia. They say not one word to one another, Nadia and Peter, there’s too much noise for that, for Jack’s intent on showing off, zooming across the lake like some maniac horsefly.

  It’s Nadia who leans forward, calling out, “Slow down, for heaven’s sake. There’s no need to go this fast, you could cause an accident. There are swimmers in the water, can’t you see?”

  Jack just keeps grinning and gunning it, as if his wife and their guests and all the people at the beach have asked to be given the show of their lives. Peter is about to stand up, stand over Jack and physically force him to slow down, when Nadia rises from her seat, clutching the side rail, the wind whipping the scarf from her head. And before Peter can begin to comprehend what’s happening, she makes a spring and tumbles overboard, into the wake they’ve torn up behind them. Even before Jack kills the engine, Peter is jumping in after her, Zirka screaming at him to stay put, to think of the children.

  That rough, sudden silence as he hits the water, the breath nearly knocked out of him. Somehow he is swimming out to her, strong, swift strokes, though each wave is a glass door to be crashed through, over and over. The look on Nadia’s face as he approaches: not terrified, but pitiless, that is what amazes him. As if, instead of reaching out to grab hold of him, she is inviting him to come drown with her. Somehow he hoists her on his back, somehow he manages to swim back with her to where the boat is waiting, its lack of noise as jolting as its stink of gasoline. His arms round her waist, her thighs; hoisting her up to Jack who hauls her in, one eye on the shore—who is watching, what has been seen? An accident, of course: disobeying the rules, standing up in a speeding boat. Who wouldn’t have fallen in, entirely, irresponsibly, by accident?

  Anyone who thinks otherwise, Sonia had protested, has been reading too much Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann. Or watching films like Cleopatra, reading the movie magazines Darka’s addicted to and that Sonia confiscates, which she only manages to do when Darka leaves them lying about like empty banana peels. Sonia doesn’t want her daughters coming across such trash, she tells herself: she doesn’t, however, throw the magazines out, but takes them down the road to her sister-in-law, as a guilt offering. For Sonia has failed in her sisterly role: failed wholeheartedly. She doesn’t invite Zirka over for coffee or dinner, not when Max and Peter are here for the weekends, and certainly not when they’re off in the city. She does her best to ignore Zirka both on the beach and on Sasha’s veranda. And she isn’t nearly as attentive to her nephews as she might be. Her excuse is that she knows nothing about boys, which, as Zirka points out to her, is nonsense: didn’t she grow up with a brother, after all?

  There’s much that Sonia could say by way of reply to this question, should she so choose. The fact is that she’s reserved, or, as Zirka likes to put it, cold, proud, and holier-than-thou. Very much like Nadia, as a matter of fact, but without the inestimable advantage, as Zirka sees it, of being married to Jack Senchenko. Still, Sonia brings her sister-in-law the movie magazines with which Darka had filled her suitcase on coming up to the cottage. Zirka, of course, would rather die than be seen buying a Hollywood Stars or Movie Times; she has her reputation to thin
k of, after all. Movie magazines are for ignorant sixteen-year-olds like Darka, and not for sophisticated married women, the mothers of sons. Still, she’s not averse to thumbing through the copies Sonia hands over without a kiss or a hug since, as everyone knows, it’s the worst kind of luck to embrace across a threshold.

  On this evening, as on all the others, Sonia refuses Zirka’s invitation to come in for tea and honey cake: she has to get back to the children, she says. As usual, Zirka warns her sister-in-law that she’ll wear herself down to nothing if she doesn’t eat. The medivnyk Sonia’s just refused is one of the specialities Zirka is famous for; pepper and rum are the secret ingredients—not that Sonia would care to find out, she is the only person Zirka’s ever met who seems to be allergic to the very thought of food. She’s not skinny, exactly—Nadia Senchenko’s skinny—but Sonia has a perfect figure, if you like small-breasted women, that is. She seems immune to age, childbirth and the bad habits induced by motherhood. Zirka has just finished her own dinner and the half that Yuri left on his plate before running outdoors to meet the Vesiuk boys, who are waiting for him on the porch.

  So it’s with Andriy, her youngest, her favourite, that Zirka sits down to tea and slightly boozy honey cake. He leafs through the old Maclean’s that have piled up on the end tables, while she goes for one of the magazines Sonia’s brought her, the one with SYBIL’S ANGUISH in letters two inches high on the cover. She’s a terribly impatient reader, Zirka: she can’t follow any kind of plot or argument, but looks through each article for what she calls “items” she can lift and plunk into whatever context pleases her. What she’s gleaned from the cover story reassures her. Mrs. Richard Burton, it would seem, has been through this kind of emotional tornado before: her husband may be notorious for “forming attachments” with his leading ladies, but—and Zirka straightens her spine as she reads this—he always comes home to his wife and two kids and “the life he has made with them”—that “made” sounding to Zirka’s ears like the making of bread or borshcht, something serious, beneficial, nourishing for all concerned.

  But it’s the feature on the current cause of Sybil’s Anguish that Zirka saves for the moment she’s alone at last, once Andriy has had his bath and been tucked into bed, and Yuri’s come home from his visit with his friends. The visit has made him impossible: slamming doors, refusing to answer when spoken to, sticking out his tongue. “Your father will hear about your behaviour when he comes up on Friday, don’t think I—” but Yuri’s slammed yet another door, cutting off his mother in mid-sentence. “And don’t wake your brother,” she yells, as if Andriy were a cranky newborn instead of an eleven-year-old known for the soundness of his sleep and the mildness of his disposition. Zirka shakes her head, cuts herself another big piece of medivnyk, stirs two spoons of sugar into her tea, and curls up in her nightie on the sagging sofa.

  Elizabeth Taylor: Starlight All the Way! reads the title of the longest story in the magazine, stretching far beyond the centre page, with plenty of the glamour shots that Zirka loves. There’s something so glossy, creamy, sweet and sumptuous about the photographs—they make her think of pale-pink-and-green meringues, or the sugar roses on a birthday cake. She devours the pictures: from teenage starlet to teenage bride, from wife to divorcee to widow to wife; from El Mocambo to Egypt and the set of Cleopatra. Of course she knows what some gossip columnist once wrote: “There isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t want to look like Elizabeth Taylor, or a man who doesn’t want to sleep with her.” Zirka brings the magazine closer to her face; stares at the beautifully arched brows and the dripping, violet eyes. Well, she’s the one in a zillion, she tells herself. She wouldn’t want to look like Elizabeth Taylor; not for anything would she want to look like that temptress, seductress, man-eater.

  It’s not, she decides, letting the magazine fall from her hands and picking cake crumbs from the nylon of her nightie, the looks she’s after. It’s the life—the life! For, as she has just learned, never, ever has Elizabeth Taylor had to wash a dish, iron a dress, slice an onion, take out the garbage or rinse a stinky diaper—though it’s true, she has a zoo of pets who run in and out of the house, leaving God knows what kind of a mess behind. The point is, Liz Taylor never has to pick up after anyone, even herself. It can take her three hours to put on her makeup and get dressed for a party; as for her jewellery, she’s got diamonds bigger than her boobs, from what the story says.

  Zirka doesn’t bother looking down to the ring digging into her finger: Peter had to borrow the money for the diamond from Jack, and even so, it’s no bigger than a baby tooth. Grace Kelly got a friendship ring of diamonds and rubies just for posing for a magazine cover with Prince Rainier. He was no looker, that’s for sure, but then what do a man’s good looks do for the wife in the picture? What had they done for Sybil Burton—or, more importantly, for Zirka Metelsky? It’s just as Father Myron has told her, over and over again: marriage is a cross to be carried the way you carry home loads of groceries or carry baskets of laundry from the basement to the yard. Unless you’re Elizabeth Taylor, that is, and can simply let go of what you’re lugging, let it crash to the ground and walk away as if the law of gravity applied to everyone and everything but you.

  If you’re a Hollywood star you can do exactly what you want, whenever you want, with anyone who takes your fancy. If you’re Zirka Metelsky, née Senchenko, you’re stuck with the bed you’ve made, the stew you’ve cooked—there’s no getting rid of the mistakes ringing your neck, higher and higher. Zirka Senchenko, she’d been once: senchenko, another word for millionaire, zirka, meaning star. Some starlight she’d stumbled on, marrying a man with pockets like sieves and an allergy to an honest day’s work—or a dishonest day’s, at that! Liz and Dick: The Romance of the Century. If Jack hadn’t been there to care of things, if Jack hadn’t stepped in, again and again, to make sure the Metelskys didn’t end up on the rubbish heap—

  Two boys, she’d produced; two bouncing boys, unlike that tribe of girls with which Sonia’s stuck Max Martyn. Four girls to marry off! Forever giving herself airs, Sonia, with her delicate this and her fragile that, and the headaches—not common garden headaches but migraines—she brings on herself. Elizabeth Taylor—now she’s a delicate one, what with the meningitis and the pneumonia, the crushed disks in her back, the tracheotomy. You could see the scar on her neck, the article said, when she limped up to get her Academy Award, limped up on crutches—although, Zirka recalls, the cleavage was completely unassisted, no doubt about that. Well, who is she to fault a pair of knockers—isn’t that her own strong suit? Zirka of the over-the-shoulder boulder-holder. If Peter had fallen for some Daisy Mae type, if he’d even tried to feel up Darka—and the way that girl flaunts herself she wouldn’t be surprised if all the husbands up for the weekends have got the hots for her—well, she could handle that. But to carry the torch for Nadia Moroz, that holy-holy titless wonder of a Mrs. Magoo!

  Tears are rolling down Zirka’s plump, flushed cheeks; tears are soaking into the faded pink of her nightie and onto the crumpled pages of Hollywood Stars. She lies back on the scratchy sofa, remembering the time she first met Peter, when Jack had brought him home for supper and he’d fallen on the food she’d prepared like a famished man, lavish not just with appetite but with compliments. Remembering but rearranging those memories so that she appears thinner, prettier, and Peter attentive, if not downright smitten, calling her Zirochko moya. She hugs herself, and mops her face and falls asleep with the lamp still burning, only to wake an hour later in the thick of a dream.

  She is standing naked, on the corner of Bloor and Yonge; naked except for a stack of wide golden rings around her neck, forcing her chin up from her goggling breasts, higher and higher until she can’t see the ground at her feet any more, or the people passing by, gawking and laughing at her. She can’t see her husband’s dark, handsome head walking straight past her, walking away from her, whistling as he always does. Not walking but running, running away from her, she knows this, knows exactly how
far he will get from her, though all she can see, all the rings around her neck force her to keep seeing is the bright blue sky overhead—not clear, not cloudless, but like her head now that the dream has flashed through it: aching and empty.

  All families have hierarchies of the heart: from the moment Andriy was born he was Zirka’s joy. In Zirka’s defence, you had to admit that there never was and never could be any sweeter baby, boy or girl. Andriy’s huge blue eyes and the blond buttercup curl on top of his head enchanted everyone; instead of turning to dirty blond as he grew up, his hair stayed flaxen and curly, so that his mother hadn’t had the heart to cut it short. Alone of all the boys at Kalyna Beach that summer, Andriy sports no crewcut, but wears his hair long—almost as long as Darka’s pageboy.

  Andriy has spent much of his time in Zirka’s company: he happily helps her to do housework, vacuuming being his specialty. He can be counted on, his mother claims, never to vacuum up the littlest Lego pieces, or the buttons, safety pins and paper clips that somehow, always, find their way to the floor. He is a careful boy who likes to please, whereas Yuri has been a troublemaker from the time he was born. When Sonia considers her nephews she tells herself to be glad she’s only had girls: Yuri is so wild and rough and always getting into mischief, a hundred times worse than Katia. And Andriy, though he’s so milky-mild—oh, she doesn’t know, but she would have found it shameful to have turned any son of hers into a mother’s help.