The Fortress

by Danielle Trussoni

  I put my head in my hands, massaging my temples. It was as if a dark fog had collected over my vision. My future, like the stairwell, had faded into darkness. I couldn’t see even two steps ahead. There was only the present, that very moment with Fly in my lap, fear flapping in my chest, and nothing beyond. Somehow I felt that I could follow this uncertainty. The not-knowing would guide me. It was the not-knowing that warned me to be careful, to be strong as I went forward. I was walking out onto a rope stretched tight between my two lives. On the one side, there was my past life with Nikolai, and on the other was my future without him. The walk between these places was treacherous, and I knew, even as I made the first step in my migration, that once I crossed a certain point on the rope, a certain point where balance and gravity met, I would lose my connection to all those things that had once been so natural to me. I would lose this life, this structure, that had held me—however unsteadily—aloft. What waited ahead was uncertain.

  —

  WE DECIDED TO meet in the upstairs kitchen the next evening. It was a neutral spot, yet private enough to keep the kids from overhearing. I wanted as little acrimony as possible, although after the fight in the bedroom the night before, it didn’t seem likely. Nevertheless, I sincerely hoped we could find a way to talk to each other. I hoped we could have a civilized conversation, a logical conversation, a conversation concerning what I had begun to think of as the dismantling of our relationship. Dismantling. It was a cold, practical word, but it was what kept coming into my head as we sat there. Dismantling. As if we were taking apart some rickety old structure, salvaging the stained-glass windows and the elegant moldings, lifting out the valuables to be auctioned off. We were splitting up, yes, but it didn’t have to be a destructive act. It didn’t have to be a total demolition. It could be a renovation. What had happened to me during my parents’ divorce wasn’t going to happen to my children. We would be smarter, Nikolai and I. We would protect our kids. We could plan away any possible damage. We could build a bridge over the moat, and they would walk across it all. With a little planning, we could focus upon preservation and reconstruction. If we were conscientious, we could go forward without destroying everything we’d made together. I was so disconnected from the reality of the situation—from how hurt and angry and aggrieved we were—that I honestly believed we could split up without a fight.

  A few minutes before Nikolai and I were scheduled to meet, I walked down to our wine cellar, a roomy, cold cupboard cut into the rock under the stairs. The door was old and swollen with moisture and had an ancient, rust-coated latch. Peering into the cobwebby space, I saw my bottles of wine stacked and organized, piled up in wooden crates. There were bottles from local vineyards, bottles from the nearby Rhône Valley, the occasional old Bordeaux and vintage champagne. I collected wine not because it was valuable—there were many more cheap bottles than expensive ones in my cellar—but because I had chosen each and every bottle myself, making a collection so personal and private that only I knew exactly where and when I’d bought the Hermitage or the Mas de Daumas Gassac. The wine was my way of organizing and preserving my time in France, keeping it safely tucked away for the future. I felt like this about one bottle in particular. Way in the back, in the box of wine meant to remain untouched, I dug out a bottle of 2002 Bollinger champagne.

  I placed the bottle of champagne on the kitchen table, and Nikolai narrowed his eyes, unable to ignore the symbolism of the gesture. Our wedding year was 2002, and this bottle of 2002 Bollinger was meant to be opened on our tenth wedding anniversary, which was two months away, June 5, 2012. When I’d bought the bottle, I’d imagined that drinking champagne from the year we were married would be like letting a genie out of captivity. I’d imagined that we would find something of our own beginning in the wine, maybe remember who we were back in 2002, when everything was so new and magical. I could never have imagined that we would be drinking it as we discussed the terms of our divorce.

  Ten years before, we had just arrived in Sofia. I’d just learned I was pregnant and that we couldn’t leave Bulgaria for two years. I had made a pledge to my not-yet husband to stay with him. I’m not going to leave when things get hard. What, I wondered as we sat down, would have happened if I’d turned around and flown back to Iowa? What if I’d taken a realistic assessment of the situation, decided it wasn’t what I wanted and left? How would my life—Alex’s and Nico’s lives, Nikolai’s life—be different now? Of course it was impossible to know, and such speculations were useless. But what I did know was that my promise to stay had kept me fixed in place, making it harder and harder to leave. It would have been much easier to go then, in 2002, than in 2012.

  I took two champagne flutes and set them on the table. I cut the foil and gave Nikolai the bottle, as was our custom, and he twisted off the cork, pop, and poured out two glasses of bubbling, golden-colored liquid. He sat on one side of the table, I sat on the other. The flutes sat between us, tall and elegant as soldiers on a battlefield.

  “You really are a masochist,” he said, nodding at the champagne.

  “This might be our last chance to drink it together,” I said, picking up a glass and taking a long sip, feeling a yeasty crispness in my throat. The alcohol would bolster me. The alcohol would get me through this. “We need to talk about what’s going to happen.”

  “We’re getting divorced,” he said. “That’s what’s going to happen.”

  “Yes, but how? What you said last night—about selling everything and taking Nico and Alex. That’s not possible.”

  “It is possible,” he said, pulling some printed pages out of his bag. “Read this.”

  I took the papers and glanced at them. There was information in French about something called divorce amiable.

  “Divorce by mutual consent,” he said. “French law divides everything in half. Fifty-fifty. But if we choose, if we agree, we can create the terms of our separation and custody and then ask a judge to approve it. It’s the fastest way.”

  “What exactly do you have in mind?” I asked. “Because it seems only logical that the kids stay at the house with me and you move somewhere nearby, so that they can see you regularly.”

  “That’s not going to work for me,” he said.

  “What part of that doesn’t work for you?”

  “Moving to France was your fantasy, not mine,” he said, shivering, as if the idea of France were too much for him to stomach. “You can’t force me to stay here.”

  “Force you?” I said. “Nobody is forcing you.”

  “If Nico is with you, I’ll have to stay,” he said. “I’m leaving this fucking place as soon as I can.”

  “Are you serious?” I said. “Where will you go?”

  “Back to Bulgaria,” he said.

  I almost jumped out of my seat. “Bulgaria?”

  “Why not?” he said.

  “Nico can’t live in Bulgaria.”

  “She’s half Bulgarian,” he said. “There’s no reason she can’t grow up there.”

  “Grow up there? You’ve never even taught Nico to speak Bulgarian, and now you want to raise her on the other side of the world? You’re always saying how much you hate Bulgaria. What in the hell is Nico going to do in godforsaken Bulgaria?”

  “I’m not going to listen to your racist diatribes,” he said, but he didn’t get up and leave. He stared at me, waiting, watching. This was not the calm, logical discussion I’d imagined.

  “She can’t go to Bulgaria,” I repeated. “I’m here. Alex is here. You can’t separate Nico from her brother. Or me.”

  “Alex can come to Bulgaria too.”

  “This is too extreme,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush with heat, my blood shot through with champagne and fury. “They can’t go live in Eastern Europe with you. Their lives don’t need to change so drastically.”

  “Divorce is drastic,” he said with a shrug, dismissing all the complexity of the situation with a single smug phrase. “Divorce amiable is the least drastic agreement
you’re going to get.”

  “Nico and Alex stay together,” I said. “Those are my terms.”

  “Listen,” he said, changing his tone, becoming suddenly conciliatory, diplomatic. “Under French law I can take half of everything. Half of the house, half of your book royalties. Half of everything.”

  I stared at him, taking this information in. We both knew that I had earned over 90 percent of our income through the duration of the marriage—our tax returns proved as much. That I’d also done a large share of the housework and child-rearing was less easy to prove, but true nonetheless. Now he was telling me that he could walk away with half of everything.

  “Not only that,” he said, his voice filled with triumph. “But because you are the breadwinner, I can ask for maintenance and future percentages of your earnings.”

  “That isn’t fair,” I said.

  “That’s the law,” he replied. He looked at his glass of champagne for the first time, picked it up and took a drink. “But as I said before, we don’t have to take that route. Divorce amiable allows us to change that equation. If we make an agreement, I can opt to take less. Financially.”

  “Take less than half?”

  “Significantly less.”

  Suddenly I realized what he was getting at. Nikolai would give me a break financially if I let him take Nico to Bulgaria. He was trying to buy me off. But it wasn’t going to work. I’d rather lose everything than lose her.

  “And what if I refuse to sign this agreement?”

  “In France everything is split in half. But I promise you: If you don’t sign, and this goes to trial, I will make sure there is nothing left to divide. I will spend everything we have before we make it to a judge. I will empty our savings. I will max out the credit cards. I will grind you down until you can’t fight anymore. Until there’s nothing left to fight for. Tell me: What is half of nothing, Danielle? Half of nothing is nothing. Nothing. If you fight me, you’ll get nothing.”

  I sat back in my chair and fixed my gaze on my glass of champagne. The golden color of the Bollinger had faded. I picked up the glass and turned it in my fingers, feeling a strong urge to hurl it at Nikolai.

  He stared at me, his eyes expressionless. “I’m offering you the best deal you’re going to get. We sign a divorce amiable, Nico comes with me to Bulgaria, and nobody suffers. You get her all summer and on holidays. It’s not the first time a father has had custody.”

  “And if I don’t sign this agreement?”

  “Then this is going to be a very difficult time for everyone.”

  “You’re really willing to go that far,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I knew him. He hated to lose. He would torch everything, burn the house down, squander our treasure, to win. I had been trying for so long to avoid this kind of malicious game, had so twisted myself up inside to avoid coming to this point, that now that the armies were being called up and the tactics were being drawn, I found myself unprepared.

  “Think about it,” he said, standing and pushing back his chair, leaving his glass of champagne half empty. “And let me know what you want to do.”

  —

  WITHIN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS Nikolai’s parents arrived in the village. He’d called them on Sunday night, after our big fight, and they had driven from Bulgaria to the south of France. It was a long trip, nearly two days of solid driving through Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, and the coast of southern France. But when Nikolai called, they came.

  The day before Yana and Ivan were set to arrive, Nikolai stopped by my office to tell me they were staying at the house. “They’ll sleep in the attic, in the playroom,” he said. But I knew this wasn’t a simple family visit. His parents would come to the house and take Nikolai’s side in the situation and try to convince me I was making a mistake. They would cajole me into coming around to their way of seeing things, or they would cut me out completely. I’d seen it before, in Sofia, when we had argued over how to care for Nico. Either I was with them or I didn’t exist.

  “Andy is here,” I said. “There isn’t enough room.”

  “Come on,” he said. “There’s more than enough room.”

  “They can stay at a hotel,” I insisted.

  “I’m not telling my parents to stay in a hotel,” he said.

  “Why do they need to come to Aubais in the first place?” I said, exasperated. “It’s totally unnecessary. We don’t need their help. We’re both adults.”

  “They’re coming,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest,” because they don’t want to leave me alone with you.”

  “Well, they’ve left you alone with me for the past nine years.”

  “They didn’t know about your violent tendencies,” he said.

  I almost laughed. “Violent tendencies?”

  “The other night,” he said. “When you attacked me.”

  “When I what?”

  “When you attacked me in the bedroom,” he said, his hand slipping over his left side. “You probably broke my ribs.”

  I stared at him, abashed. Yes, I had pushed Nikolai, that was true, but I had not attacked him, and I had not used enough force to break his ribs.

  “I can’t even sleep I’m in so much pain.”

  “Are you serious?” I said, astonished that he would say such a ridiculous thing. “I’m half your size.”

  He gave me a look. “I knew you would deny it.”

  “You were just fine earlier,” I said, looking at him more closely, as if I could X-ray his chest on my own. He’d been in perfect condition that morning, when he took the kids to school with Sveti, informing me that I was no longer welcome to ride along for the morning drop-off. He’d carried Nico on his back out to the car.

  “We are going to see a doctor,” he said. “My parents want to be with me for the X-ray, as witnesses. They want to stay with me, to support me. They’re worried that you’ll resort to violence again.” I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he added, “My parents didn’t know how mentally ill you are. I’ve hidden that unfortunate fact from them, just like I’ve hidden the physical and psychological abuse I’ve endured during our marriage, but now that I’ve told them the truth and they know who you really are, they’re coming to help me.”

  I listened, drawing the picture for myself: mentally ill, violent tendencies, physical and psychological abuse. His story was coming together, and although I was a character in the story, the heroine of it, the narrative was utterly strange to me. What had begun as a series of insults flung in anger in our bedroom had morphed into a living, breathing character. And that twisted character was me.

  “Are you done?” I said, glaring at him.

  “I’m going to set up the futon in the attic,” he replied.

  “Wait, this is not happening,” I said. “The only reason you’re bringing your parents here is so you can gang up on me.” I was getting mad. It was already horrible, passing each other in the kitchen or in the courtyard, horrible to feel the twisting of our partnership as it ground down into one of animosity and antagonism. It would only get worse if his parents stayed with us. Then I would be cornered.

  He stared at me a moment and said, “This is my house, too, and I’m inviting my parents to stay with us.”

  “If your parents sleep here,” I said, “I’m leaving.”

  “Leave, then,” he said, clearly glad to be rid of me.

  “Okay then, I’ll leave,” I said, realizing even as I said it that I didn’t have anywhere to go. I imagined packing a bag and showing up on the steps of Lord and Lulu’s maison de maître. Or I could give Jett a call. We could share a bottle of wine and bitch about men, and I would feel better. Then I had an idea. The main reason Andy had come to France was to help me with some repairs around the house. But Andy had also come to Aubais to babysit the kids for Nikolai’s birthday weekend. I’d planned a surprise gift for my husband: A long weekend at a music festival in Salzburg for the two of us. Everything had been arranged—hotel, flight, passes to the festival. Th
e trip was an extravagant surprise, another love offering, one more attempt to make things better. With all that had happened in Paris, I’d planned to skip the festival, but now that his parents were on their way to France, I could use my ticket and leave. Andy would take care of the kids, and I could have a few days to think things through. I needed a moment to breathe and decide what to do next. I needed some space to think clearly. It gave me a way to avoid the situation just a little longer before coming back to reality. It was my specialty, running away, and I wasn’t going to abandon it now, when I needed it most. And so I decided to go to Salzburg.

  —

  AS SOON AS my plane landed in Vienna and I turned on my phone, I saw the missed calls from Andy. I hurried into the airport and called him back.

  “Something weird is going on here,” he said, and I knew then, before he said another word, that going to Salzburg had been a big mistake.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “You know that Nikolai’s parents are here,” he said. “Well, after you left, they had this big to-do in the kitchen. They were really wound up about something.”

  “Where were the kids when this was going on?”