Katya snatches the phone out of her hand and punches buttons until it stops. It feels good, and she decides to have martinis more often.
“Hey! That’s my phone!” Barbie snatches it back, cradling it to her chest like an infant.
“And that”—Katya points to Ivan—“is my brother, and I’m not going to sit by while you humiliate him.” Katya stretches across Barbara, nearly prone in her lap, to reach the door lock on her side. She flips it open and sits back up with some effort. “Maybe you’d better get your car. Just across the street is a motel. Once you get past the shag carpet and fake wood paneling, it’s quite a cozy place.” Katya smiles into Barbie’s searing glare. “I’m sure there’s a vacancy.”
Barbara cries out to Van. “You can’t just send me out in this rain! Are you going to let her talk to me like that?”
Van rouses himself from his slump long enough to say, “It should be perfectly clear by now that no one has control over what Kat does and does not do.” Katya leans again to slide the Escalade door open. The furious rain sends a damp mist into the car. Barbara looks around, as if searching for an ally, and is greeted only by silence and muted giggles from the children. So she releases a disgusted snort and jumps out into the downpour. Katya slams the door.
Katya catches Van’s eye just long enough to see a faint, sad smile before he turns back to face forward.
No one pushes around Kat Peterson, nor her family, thank you very much.
“Mom?” Kit says, her voice sounding smaller and more girlish than usual. Katya prepares for her to ask for something outrageous.
“What, honey?”
“Can we come to Grandma’s, too?” Too? For a moment Katya forgot that she decided to stay at the house instead of the hotel.
Katya turns to face her daughter. In the darkness of the car, she can only see her in silhouette. But Kit’s shoulders are hunched around, and she’s sitting close to her big brothers.
“We? All of you?”
“Yeah,” says Chip, without elaborating.
“Well, of course, if you want to.” Kat can’t keep the skeptical note out of her voice. Since when do they want to spend time at Grandma’s?
Kit might be afraid of the storm, but she doesn’t know why her boys want to hang around.
“Charles? You going to stay at the hotel, or are you coming to the house with the rest of us?”
A silence falls. The noise of the rain has almost disappeared in the way that constant noise does. Now, the whap-whap of the wipers is discernible. In the rearview mirror, Katya catches a reflection of Charles rolling his head around, stretching his neck. Considering his answer. What is he weighing? In one hand, family togetherness, in the other hand…what? Solitude. Work. Maybe a porno flick on the pay-per-view. He’d pay the bill, and she’d never know.
Katya shakes her head. Her mind does wander after a bit of liquor.
“I’ll just drop by the hotel to pick up my stuff. Meet you back there.”
Katya rests back in the seat. Tonight seems to be the night for family surprises.
CHAPTER 38
Ivan
IVAN RESTS SPREAD-EAGLED ON HIS CHILDHOOD BED, IN HIS CHILDHOOD room, doing the math on his weekend. Friday equaled “no date.” Saturday dinner equaled “two dates.” Saturday night was back to “one date” but here, in the real nighttime hours, he’s alone.
Again. Stop the presses.
His eyes trace a crack in the plaster ceiling from the corner of his room, wandering across the middle like a river on a map. The river seems to be longer and wider than he remembered from his childhood habit of gazing at the ceiling. The house is getting older, along with everyone and everything else. Little Reenie getting married, soon to be a mom. Mira is a little slower in her step these days, his dad even more distracted.
Katya was seemingly born old, though. Always so organized with everything color-coded and filed and lined up. Even had her colored pencils arrayed in the color spectrum. What kind of artist is so anal retentive?
And yet, here’s Van. Still operating on a school-year calendar, still single, still plucking away at his guitar. Still getting upstaged by his domineering older sister with the fabulous home and beautiful family and successful business of her own.
Bartleby saunters in through the door he left cracked open and meows beseechingly. Van pats the quilt, and the old cat backs up on her hindquarters, wriggling her little cat butt, taking all the time in the world to gather up her strength, then pow! She unfurls and lands lightly next to him. Then she turns her butt to him and plops down, as if she couldn’t care less he was there. Her and every other woman he knows.
In the SUV on the way back to the house, Van slumped into the seat, wanting to throttle Katya for butting into his life, yet collapsing with gratitude that she’d solved his problem for him. The call Barbara took in the SUV from some other guy was just the topper. Any illusion that Barbara genuinely liked him had already flaked away by the third time she tried to drag him across the dance floor to accost his father.
Barbara must have had other plans with some other guy, and they fell through, and still Van was not appealing enough until she decided he could help her get her stories published. He was just a pawn. Not even a pawn. The chessboard? Lower yet. The little felt feet that keep the chessboard from sliding across the counter.
Only, marginally less useful.
A soft tapping at his door. Must be his mother or Irina. Katya would pound. Even when she tries to knock softly, Katya pounds.
“Come in.”
“Hi.” Reenie slips into the room. She’s changed from the yellow dress into a tank top and pajama pants with pink stripes. It’s like she’s leapt backward in time to her preteen years, and Van half expects a gaggle of girls to follow her in, slumber-party style. Then Van is surprised to see Katya slip in behind her, carrying a plastic cup, still wearing her party clothes. “Got a minute?” Reenie asks, closing the door.
Ivan snorts. “Gee, lemme see if I can fit you in between, hmmm…No One and No Body.”
“Isn’t that a poem?” Katya mumbles, squinting as if the light is glaring from the small forty-watt bedside lamp, which it’s not.
Van looks back at the crack on his ceiling. “‘I’m Nobody, who are you? Are you nobody, too?’ Emily Dickinson.”
The rain has eased up outside, but lightning flashes come so close together, the effect is strobelike. Once everyone made it back to the house, Mira had sent Max and Charles off to search for flashlights and candles. The Big Tree’s branches has taken out power lines more than a few times in its long life.
Irina perches on the edge of Van’s bed, almost teetering off. She strokes Bartleby absently. Katya leans against the door and folds her arms. “Reenie said she wanted to talk to us.”
“Reenie, what? What’s on your mind?”
“I think Mom has cancer.”
Van props himself on an elbow. “What? That’s crazy.”
Katya nods. “Yeah, nuts.”
Reenie tells them about Patty and the conversation, including her tipsiness. Kat just rolls her eyes and sips from her cup.
Next to her, Van sits all the way up. “She must have gotten her wires crossed. She always was a little daffy.”
“Wires crossed how? How do you imagine that your friend told you she has cancer? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t make sense that Mom has cancer,” jumps in Katya, her voice dripping with irritation, as if no one could be so stupid. Van thinks she’s probably right, but he could do without her nasty tone. “Has she seemed sick to you at all? Has she even seemed worried? If anything, she was in a better mood than usual.”
“Except when I brought Darius home.” Irina juts her chin at Katya.
Van says, “Well, even Mom has her limits. That was a bit of a shock.”
Irina rubs her bare arms and hugs herself tight. Van slides over and wraps his own bony arms around her. “Hey, look, she’s fine. If anything I bet it’s a skin cancer or so
mething. A spot on her nose. They never used sunblock back then, you know.”
“She sounded pretty sure. I think we should ask her.”
Van stands up and crosses the room to the window. “No, definitely not. If she has something to say and hasn’t told us, there’s a reason. We need to respect that.”
“Yeah, don’t hassle her, Reenie. Not tonight,” Katya says, already edging toward the door.
“Even if she’s dying?”
Van catches his breath. In the yellow lights along the harbor’s edge, he can see boats and yachts pull away and slam back into the docks. Thunder growls, the next crash beginning before the first one dies off.
“She’s not.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“You can’t be sure…”
“Look, Reenie. Don’t ask her. This is her anniversary. She’s trying to have a good time. It must be minor, whatever it is, or she would have told us. Don’t bug her with it.”
“Van…”
“Promise.”
“OK, Jesus. I guess you’re right. Patty was probably being a bit dramatic, being drunk and all. God, I could do with a drink right now. Or six.”
“There’s wine downstairs.”
“Speaking of,” Katya says, looking into her cup and slipping out of the room.
“Hello? Pregnant? Bun in the oven and all that? My fun is over.”
Van returns to the bed and nudges her with his shoulder. “Ah, come on. It’s not over. You’ll have fun again. And anyway, the baby will be fun.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure she and I will be doing Jell-O shots in no time.”
Van lets himself fall backward across the bed. “Jell-O shots. Grow up, Reenie.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve had your fun.”
Van props up on his elbows and squints at her. “Oh yeah, that’s me, living the high life. Eating pizza straight from the box alone, six out of seven nights.”
“Don’t dump your hang-ups on me because you wasted your twenties.”
“Shut up.”
“Where did Jenny go, anyway?”
“Home.”
“All the way home? That’s like a three-hour drive!”
“She left a while ago.” Van looks at his watch. “She’s probably halfway home by now.”
“In this?” Irina gestures to the window. “You let her leave in this? Your head is so far up your ass.”
Ivan puts his indignation on pause to think about Jenny struggling down the road in her fifteen-year-old Cavalier.
“Well, she said she wanted to go, I didn’t think she needed my permission.”
Irina stands up and rakes her fingers through her hair. “You are one piece of work, you know? This Barbara chick so much as hints that she likes you and you’ve got stars in your eyes and you’re drooling down your chin. Jenny, who you say is your best friend, goes out into a monsoon to drive three hours home, and you’re like, ‘Bye, have fun!’” Irina goes to the door and pauses with her hand on the doorknob. “You better call and check on her at least. Dumb-ass.”
Irina leaves him alone, and a guilty flush creeps over Van’s ears at the ring of truth in her words. No one can spell out his screwups so vividly as his angry sisters. He looks for his phone and speed dials Jenny.
Ringing. Still ringing. Ringing some more.
Jenny’s voice mail. Van hangs up because he can’t think of anything to say. He pulls on his earlobe and tries to remember other times he might have shoved Jenny aside for the interests of a fickle girl. Might have? Must have.
Now there’s pounding on his door.
“Come in, Kat.”
She stands in the doorway again. Her hair has gone all askew, and her makeup is smeared or faded off. She’s still in her linen party dress, but barefoot. “There’s a tornado watch, still. ‘Conditions are ripe’ they’re saying on the radio, and advising everyone not to drive. Just thought you should know. We’re all going to have some more cake downstairs. You coming? Might as well, no sense in hiding up here all alone.”
She leaves without an answer, with full confidence that he’ll do her bidding. And of course he will because otherwise he’ll lie in the dark thinking about Jenny white-knuckling her way home.
CHAPTER 39
Irina
IRINA CURLS UP IN AN OVERSTUFFED LIVING-ROOM CHAIR, A PIECE of cake balanced on her folded-up knees, trying to replace an alcohol buzz with a sugar high by eating a piece with frosting flowers the size of brussels sprouts.
Darius laughs at a story Max is telling, one of the favorites in the Zielinski repertoire, about the time his Uncle Lukasz convinced Van at a family picnic to try the hot and spicy salsa. Van, about eight years old then, scooped up a huge chunk of it and chomped it right down. This resulted in Van streaking toward the lake, mouth wide open, as if he was going to dive in and drink the whole thing. Max’s impression of Van never fails to get a laugh, though they’ve all heard it six thousand times. Having a new face in the crowd makes the story seem new again.
Irina licks her plastic fork and watches her husband laugh. It’s a warm, smooth sound. Bass guitar in a jazz band, syncopated rhythm.
She steals a glance at her mother, who has changed into a purply pink tie-dyed dress, and braided her hair into pigtails, which might look ridiculous on any other sixty-five-year-old woman, but Irina can’t imagine her looking any other way. She’s reassured that Van and Kat are right. She seems just fine. Perfectly normal. She must not have remembered properly what Patty said.
Charles is laughing, too. His presence here is the biggest surprise of the night. Instead of his usual business suit, or Dockers-and-golf-shirt combo, he’s wearing flannel pants and a T-shirt from some road race. His feet are bare, propped on an ottoman. Irina doesn’t believe she’s ever seen the soles of his feet before. Nor his teeth, for that matter, for how little the man smiles.
Not that Katya is enjoying herself. It’s like she’s trying to hide behind her wineglass. She’s not even sitting next to her husband.
Irina squeezes Darius’s hand and tries to catch Katya’s eye. See? She wants to say. Look what I’ve got. A handsome husband who truly loves me.
Irina puts her empty cake plate down on the floor. So it’s hypocritical to gloat about a husband she intends to divorce. She doesn’t get many things over on Katya, with her big fancy house and successful business and rich man.
As she glances around again at her family, Irina thinks that everyone looks happy. Together, contented, relaxed, all that sappy stuff. It won’t last, she knows. They all know that.
“At least they’re not dull,” she murmured to Darius on the plane on the way back to Michigan, after she’d complained through a whole time zone about their various offenses. And he replied with the gravity of a guru, “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
“My, aren’t you profound,” she said, staring out the window at the flat glaze of white cloud.
“It’s Tolstoy,” he said, opening one of his textbooks. “From Anna Karenina.”
Irina catches Van staring at their mother. For all his confidence in his room about how nothing was wrong, he seems worried now. But then, when isn’t he worried? He’d worry if there was nothing to worry about, just to fill the time. Irina was just a kid, but she could remember him pacing the house, tugging on his earlobe, and holding his notes or a textbook. He liked to walk and study at the same time. How he didn’t crash into walls was a mystery for sure.
Van’s cell phone bleeps, and they all pause in their conversation. He flushes pink and looks at the screen, then the color drains from his face. He scurries from the room.
In the silence that settles after him, the storm takes up residence, crashing and roaring like a fairy-tale giant.
Katya sighs. “I wonder where the kids have got to.”
She weaves a little getting up from her chair. For someone who normally polishes every aspect of her appearance, she looks like s
omeone mopped the floor with her at the moment. Still wearing that dress, no shoes, runs in her nylons, makeup smeared all over. Hair coming loose from its updo.
All of a sudden, Irina can’t look. Katya looks old and more than a little wrecked. Her step is heavy as she passes into the kitchen.
Bartleby the cat dozes on Max’s lap. Her father’s gaze is a million miles away, like always, but there’s something different about his face. It’s not slack, as it usually is when he’s thinking over one of his books. It’s got a tightness to it that Irina is not used to seeing.
Van appears back in the living room. His cell phone is so loose in his hand he could drop it any moment. The shock in his face exaggerates the long, gangly look of his body, and he seems almost spidery.
“There’s been an accident.”
Mira bolts straight up in her chair. “Who? What happened?”
“Jenny.” Van tugs his ear with his free hand. “I have to go get her. She slid off the side of the road on 66. She’s not even to East Jordan yet.”
“Will you need any help?” Darius stands up, seeming very strong and tall to Irina just then.
Van stuffs his phone into his pocket and stands up straighter. “I can handle it.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I was just offering to keep you company. Maybe you’ll need help pushing the car completely out of the lane.” Darius stands with his weight on one leg, arms folded loosely. The picture of coolness, the flip side of Van.
Van cringes, still yanking the earlobe like he’s going to pull it right off. “Sorry. No, it’s fine. From what I gather, it’s completely out of the lane and halfway in some guy’s yard. She was calling me from some gas-station convenience store. She’d walked up the side of the road.”
Irina chews on her tongue, wanting to say, “Told you so, moron,” but she’d sound like her big sister, and, anyway, Van has figured out his mistake all by himself by this point.
“Take it easy,” she says instead. “We don’t want to have to come rescue you, too.”
Real Life & Liars Page 16