by Matt Dean
Chapter 26
In the 700s, a girl in a plaid jumper was sitting cross-legged on the floor, paging through a book as large and square as the top of an end table. When Corinne stepped around the girl to reshelve a survey of Renaissance frescos, the child glanced up. Corinne smiled and nodded hello—absently, already thinking ahead to the next batch of books on her cart—and then realized she’d met the girl before. Lorelei Thủy, manicurist’s daughter, alleged resurrector of birds.
“Hi,” Corinne said. “Do you remember me?”
The girl nodded with great solemnity.
Whenever Corinne had thought of her earlier conversation with Lorelei, she’d tended to remember it going on and on. In truth, it had barely been a conversation at all. Corinne had asked two or three questions, the girl had answered mostly with silent gestures, and the whole thing had lasted less than a minute. Maybe Lorelei was a strange child. Maybe Corinne was no good with kids. Either way, there was no point expecting some long and friendly exchange. Better to get on with the day.
By way of farewell, Corinne said, “Got everything you want? Need any help?”
“I can use the catalog,” Lorelei said. “I’m not a baby.”
“All righty.” Corinne stepped away. She got as far as the end of the aisle, and then she had to come back again. She had to. “How’s your bird?”
“He died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You couldn’t raise him up twice?”
“I don’t know. I mean, he wasn’t heavy or anything.”
“No, not— Wasn’t there a miracle? Couldn’t you do a second miracle?”
The child clucked her tongue. “There’s no such thing as miracles.”
“Your mom, though. She was on TV.”
“I told her the bird was just sleeping, but she thought he died, so we put him out on the sidewalk and we were going to bury him later.” Lorelei spoke with unutterable weariness, like a character in a fin de siècle comedy. “But then the bird woke up and my dad said we should call it a miracle. For, like, ratings.”
“You mean publicity?”
Lorelei nodded.
“What did he die of for real, then?”
“Some bird disease, I guess. I don’t think you should be talking to me. Strangers—”
“Right,” Corinne said, backing away. “Strangers aren’t supposed to talk to you.”
She usually loved reshelving books. Sometimes she’d run across a volume that a real librarian had shelved incorrectly, and it tickled her to return it to its rightful place. Today, though, as she finished emptying her cart of books, she had little appetite for the task, and even less appetite for the company of eldritch children with staring black eyes.
When all the books were in their places, she was done for the day. She gathered her purse from her locker, said goodbye to the librarians and Merry Christmas to the volunteer at the information desk, and rode the elevator down to the parking level. She crossed the garage, her heels clacking on the concrete, and searched her purse for her keys.
“Hey, beautiful,” someone said.
She already had her keychain in her hand—the ring clutched in her fist, the keys bristling out between her fingers like tiny knives—when she looked up and saw that it was her husband who’d spoken. He’d parked his car next to hers. Grinning, arms open, he came toward her.
“Andrei,” she said. “What are you—?”
By then he’d begun kissing her. It was, even by Andrei standards, an excellent kiss. Her hands went limp, and her keys dropped to the floor with a clank.
“Wow,” she said, blinking up at him. “What’s— Um— What’s up?”
“I got the job,” he said, stooping to fetch her keys.
“Pittsburgh?”
“Pittsburgh. Let’s celebrate. Lunch. Anywhere. Name a place. Eighty-two Queen. Blossom.” He stopped, looked at her, twirled her keys around his finger. “You’re not happy. Why did I think you’d be happy?”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “It’s not that I’m not—”
He clapped his hand over his mouth. “It’s your mother, isn’t it? Of course. I’m so sorry.”
“No, Andrei, don’t—”
“It’s not that I forgot or anything,” he said. “It’s just that it’s such a fantastic opportunity, For us, not just for me.”
“Me too,” she said. “But—”
He sat on the bumper of his car with a flump. “Your mother, though. Less than a month ago, and here I am trying to ‘celebrate.’” With two fingers of his right hand, he made half-hearted air quotes around celebrate. “I’m such a selfish pig.”
“Andrei, no, really,” she said gently, prying her keys from his hand. “It’s not that at all. It’s just— Well, I’m a Southern girl, Andrei. I never pictured myself living above the Mason-Dixon line.”
“Oh,” he said. “I can’t commute by plane, Corinne. I can’t fly every week. I hate flying. You know I hate flying.”
“You do?”
He looked at her with disappointment and sadness, as if she’d never bothered to learn the correct spelling of his name, as if she’d failed to notice something as crucial and basic as that. To be understood, to be known perfectly, she thought—if that was was the essence of love, she’d fallen short.
She said, “I guess you do.”
A woman came out of the elevator lobby with an armload of books and three kids in tow. The youngest child was crying, but the woman moved along briskly, seeming to ignore him. They all climbed into an old SUV. The mistuned engine sounded like a battalion of drummers beating out of time. The boom and bumble of it reverberated through the garage.
“I saw that little girl,” Corinne said. “The one with the bird? You know, at the nail salon? We saw it on TV?”
He nodded. “I remember.”
“There was no resurrection. It was just like I said. The bird didn’t really die.”
“She told you this,” Andrei said. “The little girl.”
“She said her dad made it up as a publicity stunt.”
“Huh.”
“I don’t believe in God the way you do, Andrei. I don’t believe in angels or the intercessory power of Mary or the wine turning to blood. I don’t think I have the genes for it.”
“So when we have kids, you don’t want to raise them in the church.”
“I don’t know.” She flung her hands in the air. “I don’t know.”
Andrei was quiet for some time. Finally, he said, “When I was in school, I always heard about girls who were there for an ‘M-R-S degree.’ It meant they didn’t give a shit about academics—they only wanted to meet their future husbands. I always thought it was sexist—you know, a way of saying pretty girls couldn’t be smart. I mean, it’s a private school. Who’d spend forty thousand dollars just to meet a husband?”
“Only forty thousand,” Corinne said. “Those were the days.”
“Since the wedding, I feel like maybe I gave you your M-R-S degree. Maybe you don’t want to be married to me. Maybe you just want to be married.”
She looked at him.
“I know,” he said weakly. “It’s probably not true.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “I feel like you want a mother for your children, and—oh, well, whatever—it might as well be Corinne.”
“Here we are then,” he said.
“Here we are.”
The air was clammy. Corinne’s teeth began to chatter. Andrei stood up and pulled her toward him. He opened his coat and she huddled against him. She thought of getting into one of the cars and turning up the heat, but the damp chill seemed suitable, even perversely satisfying.
“When Mama left Daddy, she tried to take me with her.”
“She did?”
“You didn’t see it,” she said. “At my granddad’s house. He had this little shrine.” She described the photos, the clippings, the recital programs. Andrei listened with his chin propped on top of her head. “He dedicated part of a room to
making this apology, this wall-sized apology, so if she ever came back to the house, he could show it to her and say, ‘Here. Look. I understand now. This is your life and it’s important to you. I’m sorry I didn’t see it when you were young.’”
“Sounds like a reasonable interpretation.”
“But at the same time, I feel like he was right all along. He didn’t think she could make a living as an opera singer, and—what do you know?—she couldn’t. Three supporting roles, and then she quit. Why? I mean, just— Why?”
Andrei held her at arm’s length. He was half-smiling, as if ready to laugh with her at some joke. As he searched her face, his smile faded. “It never occurred to you? The simplest answer?”
“Simplest answer?” She frowned at him. “It seems like— I— I can’t see anything simple about it at all.”
“She missed you,” he said. “She missed her child.”
Corinne backed away from him. Plucking at her lower lip, she gazed into the distance. She missed you. Could that be the entire explanation? She missed her child.
All at once she began to felt queasy. She clutched her stomach. It was difficult to breathe.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Do you need to sit down?”
She shook her head and waved him off. She thought she might vomit. She stumbled to the wall and laid her forehead against the cool concrete. It helped. Andrei came up beside her and smoothed her hair away from her face. Her breathing slowly returned to normal.
“That had to be a panic attack,” he said.
Corinne didn’t turn from the wall. “I was a shitty daughter and I’ll be a shittier mom.”
“Corinne.”
“I know I’m almost twenty-nine years old and I should have everything figured out and be more than ready to live in the suburbs in a gigantic Georgian house with toile curtains and a dozen Catholic babies, but I’m not ready. I’m not ready.”
Andrei said nothing. He rubbed her shoulders.
“That’s it, then,” she said. “We’re at an impasse.”
“How do you figure?”
“You want babies, I don’t want babies.”
“Well, but I thought—”
Now she turned around to face him. “You talked me into quitting school so I could have a baby,” she said. “Don’t pretend that—”
“No, no, no,” he said, his hand in the air. His face reddened. He took a step back. “No.”
“You said, ‘Well, Corinne, I don’t want to be my kids’ grandparents’ age.’ You said, ‘Well, Corinne, you don’t want your water breaking in the middle of defending your thesis.’”
“You remember everything I said, but nothing you said? You said you couldn’t plan a wedding and conduct research at the same time. You said you hated Public Administration because it wasn’t wonky enough. You said you’d rather start over somewhere and get a Master of Economics. You said, ‘Andrei, your job is to talk me into or out of quitting school.’ When I asked you which way you were leaning, you said, ‘Okay, your job is to talk me into quitting school.’”
Corinne slumped against the wall. Here it was again, the one fight to rule them all, the one fight to bind them. She advised him, cajoled him, convinced him—and then when he did what she wanted, she turned it against him.
“There’s no impasse,” Andrei said. “I mean, maybe we’re at odds over Pittsburgh. Maybe that’s an impasse. But if you’re not ready for babies, then how can we have babies? If you think I’m the kind of a guy who’d try to”—he swallowed hard—“make a woman have a baby, then I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
She looked at him from under her eyebrows. “We’re not talking about the rhythm method here, are we? Because—”
Laughing, he pulled her to him. “Not even my mother is that Catholic.”
Now, she thought. Now would be the time to tell him about Plan B. That she’d taken it in October. That she would’ve taken it again in November if they’d been apart. That she wasn’t sorry she’d done it—even if, at the same time, she wished she hadn’t needed to do it.
She laid her head on his chest and listened to his breathing and the thump of his heart. Even though they’d been married for half a year, she wasn’t sure she was any more ready to be a wife than she was to be a mother. And if there were evidence at all that Andrei was well-suited to husbandhood, it was scant evidence indeed. In truth, they’d barely lived together since their wedding. It was no comfort to remember either their few days together each month or their many days apart.
Still, for now, here they were, she and her husband, in exactly the same place.