Real Life & Liars

by Kristina Riggle

  “Irina! Is the baby OK?”

  There’s a gasp behind her, probably Katya.

  “Oh, shit,” Irina says, and closes her eyes again.

  Darius insists on carrying her back inside until she screams at him to “put me the fuck down.” Her family zoomed to her side like someone lit the Bat Signal, and now they flutter behind her, murmuring and concerned and she wants to beat them all with her shoe.

  “I just want a place to sit and a glass of water and for everyone to please shut up!” she cries. The buzz subsides, but only for a moment.

  Irina slumps into a corner chair and wraps her hands around a glass of ice water, already wet with condensation. She looks up from the water and sees her family, pressing in on her from all sides. “Everyone go away! Please!”

  Katya walks away first, her lips pursed in that prissy disapproval face Irina has seen so often, saying “If you say so.” Ivan walks away pulling his ear, trailed by a pretty girl in white and some other chick. Max and other hangers-on follow behind. Darius hovers by the door to the balcony, probably still scared off by the burst of profanity.

  Only Mira remains. She’s studiously quiet, staring past Irina at the lake beyond, her hands resting lightly on the back of a chair.

  “Mom, could you give me a minute?”

  Mira doesn’t answer. Instead, she sits down at the table, not right next to Irina. There remains one empty chair between them. Mira still hasn’t met her eyes. She clears her throat, and asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Irina notes her voice seems more husky than usual and that her mother has clasped her hands in a way that seems loose and casual, but her white knuckles reveal the strain.

  “No. I’m going to walk back to the house for a while.”

  “You nearly fainted on the balcony. It’s too hot out there for you to be walking alone to the house. Let Darius drive you.”

  “We both walked. Most of us did, didn’t we?”

  “Katya drove.”

  “I’m not getting in a car with her right now.”

  “And I don’t want you to collapse on the sidewalk halfway there. If you thought there was an embarrassing fuss just now, imagine an ambulance ride. Believe me, I know how tired and sick you can be in a pregnancy. And unexpected pregnancies always seem to be the hardest.”

  Irina cringes, reminded again that her family was not prepared for her. The huge age gap between her and Ivan always made that obvious. Then there was the tremendous distraction of her parents the whole time she was growing up, both so involved in their careers. Max was pumping out books at a frenetic rate, and Mira was president of the faculty association and forever in meetings, if not grading papers or preparing for class. Irina was routinely passed off on the older siblings, or Patty next door. Mira never said “no” to a sleepover at someone’s house. Irina could detect the relief in her voice as she no doubt thought, “Ahh, one less child around.”

  “Reenie? Let Katya drive you back. I’ll make her promise not to hassle you.”

  “You’d have to staple her lips shut.”

  “I’ve got a sewing kit in my purse. Will that do?”

  In spite of herself, Irina smirks. She dreads the trip, no matter how short a drive it is, because she doubts Katya will contain herself. Even the way she sits in the car will betray her disappointment. But the big empty house calls to her. The alternative is remaining at the party, the subject of family gossip, multiplied to include cousins and old friends and Uncle Frank and Aunt Petra. A black surprise husband, a secret pregnancy, then a dramatic fainting episode.

  You sure outdid yourself this time, girl.

  “Fine. I’ll take the ride. But you go ask her.”

  “Deal.”

  Irina does a double take as her mother gets up from the table. Mira seems to stumble as she stands, and her hands shake.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mira

  IRINA WAS GRINDING HER TEETH WHEN I HELPED HER INTO THE passenger side of Katya’s huge truck, and Katya herself pursed her lips so far they’d disappeared.

  But Kat promised to chauffeur only, with no commentary, and at least Irina can lie down in a quiet place for a time.

  I need a quiet place now, like a drowning person needs air. It’s not to be, though, not at my own party.

  Darius is at my elbow, watching them drive off. Droplets of sweat have gathered at his temple. He wears the face of a man standing at the gallows.

  “Why doesn’t she want me with her?”

  “Pregnancy does crazy things to your emotions. Try not to take it personally. In fact, that’s a good rule for the next year of your life, at least.”

  “It’s more than that.” He turns to face Mira, and says forcefully, “It’s more than that, for sure.”

  I reach up and pat Darius’s elbow, where he has it crossed tightly in front of his chest. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I suspect he’s probably right. Despite their short courtship, he probably knows Reenie better than I do anymore. Until the planning for this party, I hadn’t gotten a spontaneous call in months, and when I called, she would never answer, instead returning my call from her cell phone in the car, cutting me off when she arrived wherever she was going.

  “Darius, I’m sorry about this weekend.”

  “What for, Mrs. Zielinski?” He’s staring off in the direction of the Escalade’s path.

  “We haven’t exactly been welcoming to you. With the party, and the whole family in the house…” I trail off, not sure where I’m going with this. But I remember meeting Max’s parents for the first time. I felt lost and heavy with the weight of pretended perfection. I was never any good at that. It makes me sweat to recall it even now. “We’ll have you to dinner after this weekend, and meet you properly. For what it’s worth, you’re making a very good first impression.”

  I’m not even sure he’s heard me. After a moment he smiles down at me, but it’s a distant expression of a businessman putting on a face for clients. “Thank you, I’d like that. Excuse me.”

  Back in the air of the Lighthouse Inn, not cool exactly, but less oppressive, Max greets me in the lobby. His glasses are back on his head and his tie has gone all herky-jerky.

  “So she is pregnant! I’m shocked!”

  “I know.”

  “We’re going to be grandparents again.” This is a phrase that should be joyous. It should be followed by an embrace, some enthusiastic whooping, maybe. But Max reaches for my hand and gives me his beseeching look again. I know what he’s asking me by staring at me like that, wrinkling up his face. He clutches my hand tighter than I think he knows, like he’s trying to squeeze the right answer out of me.

  I can’t bear it.

  “Max…” I pull away and dash into the party, and in doing so, come face to shirt buttons with Paul.

  “Congratulations!” he says, and reaches down to peck my cheek.

  Oh, I want to tell him. I want to tell him why this is no time for joy. But I can’t, here. Not now, and not with Max, who I can tell is staring at me through the door to the ballroom. I have no doubt that he knows, even through that wavery glass on the door, that I’m speaking to Paul.

  So I say, “Thank you. It’s a surprise, but wonderful, anyway.”

  “I was talking about thirty-five years married to the same man, actually. But yes, congrats on the grandchild as well.”

  I just nod. To avoid looking Paul right in the eye, I look past him to take in the party. The room has dimmed as the sun has settled toward the lake and become obscured by some darker clouds that are pushing in from the horizon. These clouds are not the wispy dollops of this morning, nor the smooth grayness of the afternoon. No, these new clouds are roiling and heavy. Could be a soggy dash home.

  “Mira? Are you all right?”

  “Those clouds look bad.”

  “That expression on your face has nothing to do with weather.” He places his hand on my elbow. Certain people can touch you in a way that’s the very soul of innocence—a
pat on the shoulder, a simple handshake, maybe—and it will still send a guilty twang right through your gut.

  I step slightly to the left, away from his arm. He looks for a second at his hand, like he’s wondering what’s wrong with it, then places it in his hip pocket.

  I still haven’t answered, so he tries again. “This isn’t such bad news, is it? Irina has never done things the conventional way. And you and Max didn’t wait to have kids.”

  My mother told me once that I should never cry in public. It’s vulgar, she said. She felt the same way about loud laughter, angry words, and hiccups. Belches and farts didn’t exist as far as she would admit.

  So it was from her that I learned this trick: to stop oneself from crying, look up with your eyes. It’s physiologically impossible to cry when looking skyward. Also impossible to cry when swallowing something, so taking a drink will work, too.

  Since I don’t have a drink right now, I look up.

  “No, of course that’s not it, Paul. I just can’t talk about it.”

  He steps closer and lowers his voice. “Is it Max?”

  He means, is there trouble with Max? Have we been fighting? Yes, and if he only knew why. And it’s not just Max, it’s the kids, and now this grandchild on the way. It’s all of them, Dr. Graham, and probably Paul, too, when he knows. It’s all of them, wanting me to do something I can’t do.

  To take up arms against a sea of troubles, as Shakespeare wrote. Except he was referring to Hamlet, who wanted to put himself out of his misery. Someone else finished him off several scenes later. Lucky bastard.

  “No, it’s not Max. It’s just…I’m emotional, change of life shit.”

  Paul has known me for more than the thirty-five years I’ve been married. And, in the spirit of Hemingway, he has a shockproof bullshit detector. So he only says, “We’ll talk later, when you feel you can. Can I get you a drink?” But then he looks up, and says, “Oh, here’s Max.”

  “I’ll get you a drink, honey, what would you like?” Max wraps his arm around my waist, and pulls me close, the way he might if a car drove by too close as we walked on the side of the road.

  “I’ll see you two later. Congratulations, Max.” Paul nods and strides away. It’s only when Max relaxes his arm a little that I realize he was even tense.

  “Well?” Max follows Paul with his gaze for a moment before turning to face me fully. “I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.”

  “Sure, babe. See if they’ve got a Pinot Noir. Otherwise Shiraz. Something red.”

  Max kisses my cheek and is absorbed into the crowd on the dance floor.

  More well-wishers and friends throng around me, faculty friends and parents of my kids’ friends, who remained close to me even when the kids moved away and grew up. I suppose my face is probably animated and happy, as my shock is receding, and the tension in my hands unwinding. At least I don’t seem to be in danger of crushing the goblet when Max hands me my wine. He stays with me for a few minutes but as the chatter turns to university shop talk, he fades away again.

  All this happens on my surface level, but in my own head I’m reviewing my life as Paul’s friend, though “friend” is far too simple a word.

  We met the day he put that origami crane on my desk. He was a new professor already, having been some kind of grade-school wunderkind. He was my age, but leaps and bounds ahead of me professionally, which turned out to be lucky for me, later.

  I had just met Max and was dating him whenever he pulled his head out of his manuscripts, which at the time were earnest stories about young blue-collar kids coming to terms with things. But between Max’s job ringing up groceries, his studies, and his writing, I didn’t get to see him much. So it was not unusual that on a sunny autumn Thursday, when I had finished my graduate assistant office hours and talked one panicky freshman out of jumping off the clock tower over the grade on his composition, that I had nothing else to do. So of course I said, yes, I’d love to join you for a coffee.

  Coffee somehow became a beer or three, at a bar whose name is lost in my memory now, but it had outside seating along the sidewalk. Fabulous for people-watching, and avoiding the eyes of your companion. I found myself doing that quite a lot with Paul.

  His hair was a deep, shiny black then, and he had a moustache and sideburns. His eyes were startlingly pale in contrast to his hair, the pastel blue of marbles and Easter eggs. He kept his eyes locked on me in a way I found unnerving, and I hoped Max wouldn’t happen by.

  I repeatedly assured myself this was only a drink with a colleague. Max did the same from time to time. Perfectly innocent.

  Over the years, I came to understand the phrase “perfectly innocent” only applied when the situation was anything but.

  That day, with the hot smell of burning leaves in the bright clear air, Paul reached across the table and took my hand. It startled me so much I froze and let my hand lie in his like an artificial limb.

  “You’re lovely, you know,” he said.

  I think I gasped, but I can’t remember exactly. I reacted with surprise in some physical way before I took my hand back. “I am seeing someone.”

  Paul simply said, “So? You’re still lovely.”

  To this day, I’m amazed at his composure, after I’d just rejected his bold advance. It was like he was juggling plates, and one of them had just been shot out of the air and he carried on, never losing eye contact with the adoring crowds.

  I spent the next several days in the fog of indecision. Max was so affectionate and sweet when I could get time with him. It was easy to laugh with him, easy to cuddle up with him, simply easy to be in his uncomplicated presence.

  Paul was something else. I couldn’t relax for the maelstrom that brewed whenever he came near. It was a soup of lust and anxiety and Max-provoked guilt plus attraction, but I couldn’t sort out whether that attraction was only physical or, perhaps there was something else there…Not that I was so hung up on rules and restrictions, but I didn’t want to hurt Max, especially for the sake of a simple rutting. If I were to leave wreckage in my wake, I at least wanted to have gotten something worthwhile out of it.

  Then I saw Paul with his arm around another woman at a birthday party, and saw him kiss her neck. I tasted the relief of a decision that had been made for me, tinged with a sinking disappointment that I never had the chance to feel his lips on my neck.

  Around this time, Max finished his screed and came out of his torpor, and that’s when I started leaving a spare toothbrush in his apartment.

  Paul and I remain friends to this day, very good friends in fact, but there is an unanswered question between us that only seems to grow more prominent with time. I have been hoping that with his retirement from the university and my constant proximity, that question would at last recede.

  I drift away from the current cluster of party guests to find out if Katya has returned from dropping off Irina at the house.

  It seems to me that growing older means a growing collection of paths not taken. More and more “what-ifs” left behind.

  As the band strikes up another tune, oh Lord, it’s “All Along the Watchtower” done by a wretched wedding band, I’m waylaid by the last person I want to see short of Dick Cheney.

  It’s Roxanne, the new department head, who happens to be half my age and in her mind, twice as smart.

  “Professor Zielinski!” she calls out, striding toward me. Her hair is swept up in a bun and she’s wearing glasses with dark, severe frames. She’s got a baby face, and I can tell the hairdo and glasses are her attempt to appear managerial and authoritative. Maybe someday she’ll learn that authority is intrinsic, not a costume you put on in the wings. Her use of my title is irksome. It’s unnecessary, and patronizing, going out of her way to pay me respect, which implies that I don’t automatically get her respect. She has to make such a display of it.

  Oh hell. I miss my hippie days when I was going to antiwar protests in bare feet and long skirts that got muddy along the hem. Who gave
a shit about office politics then? There was only one kind of politics that mattered. At least to me.

  “Hi, Dr. Sutton,” I answer.

  “Lovely party,” she says, and I loathe speaking to her now. I want to smack that pink drink right out of her hand and tell her to get the hell out of my party. If she doesn’t want me on the faculty anymore, I sure as hell don’t want her in my face on the weekend.

  “I haven’t read that memo yet, but I will,” I say, getting it over with because I’m sure she’ll find some subtle way to bring it up, as she has every time we’ve run across each other in the last weeks.

  “Oh, this is a party! No need for talk about that,” she says, turning her gaze to the collage of family photos along one wall, assembled in a frantic weekend by Katya, who raided my shoe boxes full of old photos. “Though, it would be nice to spend more time doing fun stuff like that.” She gestures with her glass toward the pictures. Just like her to use my memories against me.

  I should have told Katya not to invite her. To hell with what she thinks. But she insisted. To be polite. For appearance’s sake.

  “Oh, we’ll see. I still like teaching, you know.”

  “Even though the kids send text messages under their desks? You mean all that doesn’t get to you after a while?”

  “In my class, that doesn’t last longer than the first day. My grades are tough enough that the slackers drop it fast, and only the interested and dedicated students remain.”

  “Indeed.” Roxanne smooths a lock of hair back into her bun. “Your classes are so small, really. That’s why it’s so problematic for the budget.”

  “The budget is not my problem. My problem is quality education.” This is why Paul was such a savior for me, because I could mouth off to him, and he would let it slide. He was a buffer between my surly remarks and the administration, the only thing standing between me and forced early retirement.

  “It’s everyone’s problem, Mira. The state is cutting our funding to balance the budget, and we’ve got to cut costs. The faculty contract isn’t up for a few years yet, so we’re stuck with that. We’ve got to shuffle around courses to make the most efficient use of staff. You might be expected to carry a bigger load this fall, and we need some help teaching freshman comp.”