The Rest of Us

by Jessica Lott

  He began talking quickly, as if there were some personal offense he needed to smooth over. “It’s hard to tell from the one-way correspondence, but I think he truly loved her once. She was a real dark-haired beauty and a spitfire, too—gave a lot of backtalk, a flirt. From what I could gather, Marta was the opposite. Very shy. One of those who always spoke in a low voice, laughed into her hands. She was my father’s childhood sweetheart. He met my mother after. How carefully she rearranged those facts and then knitted a story around them to give me a sense of legitimacy.”

  “Do you think your mother knew he was never coming? That he was going to stay in Ukraine?”

  “At some point he must have made that clear, as much as she hoped to change his mind. An affair is a hard thing to hide in a small town. That may have been one of the reasons she wanted to escape to the U.S. to begin with. She probably got tired of raising an illegitimate child there.”

  I thought of the photograph of Rhinehart’s father inside its small silver frame, everything compact and orderly, his steel-rod posture, his clean uniform, and trimmed mustache.

  He said, “It’s hard to square this, Tatie. I didn’t even know my mother was capable of thinking these things. She was always so morally upright and honest. She’d smacked me once, the only time she hit me, when she found out I’d stolen a pack of gum from the store, and we marched back there together so that I could return it and ask for leniency from the owner. I remember her grieving. She used to lock herself in the bathroom, crying. I was on the other side of the door, crying for my dead father, too. But instead she was in there writing those terrible letters to his wife to try and shame her into releasing him.”

  “Your father was the one with two families. He’s more to blame than she is.”

  “They both are. The only one who’s blameless is Marta. Lazar told me she had died suddenly. Her cause of death was unknown, maybe her heart, maybe self-inflicted. It’s hard to believe that my mother had nothing to do with it. You read the letters. Did she even care? I don’t remember her crying the summer of 1958.”

  You stare at the ceiling like a dead deer.

  Rhinehart stood up and went inside. I followed. He was talking fast as if he shared the blame, too. “Lyuba was raised by my father after Marta died, not some stepfather I fabricated—my own father. No wonder she hated the sight of me.”

  “So your mother went a little crazy. She was suffering, too, and she let you hang on to the idea of your father. You would have lived your life believing only good things about him if you didn’t start investigating recently.”

  “She destroyed the relationship with my father so irrevocably that I had no chance of getting to know him at all. She implicated me in her hate.”

  “You were a child. I’m sure he didn’t blame you.”

  “He never sent for me after my mother died.” Rhinehart was sitting on the edge of the bed, his knuckles pressed into his knees. He looked, at that moment, like a child, one whose fate was in the hands of several bad decision makers. This was past, I wanted to say. What difference does it make now? But of course, it made a difference. It was the past that had brought him and me to where we were.

  I said, unconvincingly, “Maybe he didn’t send for you because he didn’t know your mother died.”

  Rhinehart dismissed this. “Gossip got back and forth to the old country quicker than mail. I would have gone to live with him. He was a loving man, I think, despite everything. Lazar knew him, said he had a great sense of humor. But instead I was taken in by Chechna, a woman who never liked children, and who always acted as if I were a burden.”

  “But this is past. Past. A million other decisions sprang from that one. Your life took shape. You became a poet and a teacher. You prospered here. This is where we met. You can’t go back to a decision that you were completely unaware of and had no say in and hope to reconfigure it. That wasn’t the way it went.”

  “It’s just so hard to assimilate this information. To account for a door that opened and slammed shut at the same time. Turns out I’ve spent my life in complete ignorance about my own family. Me—a researcher, a supposed intellectual. My father died in 1995. I was in my forties. All those years! I could have traveled over there, reunited with him, something. Why didn’t he ever try and contact me?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  “This period, when these letters were going back and forth, I’d always thought of as the happiest, purest time of my life. After my mother died, every night I’d walk myself through a memory of her to help me fall asleep. It was the only thing I had to hold on to when I was feeling so alone. This time.”

  I was picturing a ten-year-old boy carefully laying out his suit for a recital in which no one he knew would be in the audience. I’d never really understood Rhinehart, I realized. I’d always preferred to read my own distorted reflection on him, never fully comprehending how isolated he was or how much he relied on his independence to feel secure. How does one turn around and create a family from that place? I was paralyzed with the thought. Maybe this was why he’d never become a father. Not by any fault or lack of desire, but that in the end, he just wasn’t able to open himself up that much.

  • • •

  For the next couple of days, I had a routine. I went out in the morning for coffee and pastries, rehearsing how I would tell him. Riding back up in the elevator, I would become increasingly nervous. I’d walk in, unpack the bag, sit down, and say nothing, the high-speed anticipation fading into depression. I half-hoped he’d ask me about the letter I’d written and never given him, but he seemed to have forgotten about it. I called Marty to say that I wanted to extend my “vacation” by another week. “You must be having fun,” he said. “I don’t blame you. Florida’s terrific.”

  • • •

  “Why the furrowed brow?” Rhinehart asked one morning. “And when did you stop drinking coffee?”

  It was for the baby. Caffeine was thought to raise the incidence of miscarriages. I had this idea that I would completely change my diet, go organic, no processed foods, low sugar, but it was proving difficult to eat well down here. Just now I was helping myself to crumb cake.

  “I’m trying to be healthy,” I said. He was actually the one who was gaining a more robust, ruddy appearance. I asked him if he was sneaking beach walks.

  He sniffed. “What an odd thing to be surreptitious about. Odd and difficult.”

  “It would be like you to have me think you were still unwell.”

  “I’m feeling better, actually. The Atlantic is restorative—all the life in it, the kelp and shuddering jellyfish.”

  “We might as well go for a swim,” I said. “Since we’re here.”

  He went into the bathroom to change into his swim trunks while I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. His modesty was troubling. He didn’t get naked in front of me, and when I’d undressed in front of him—hyper-aware of my stomach, even though it didn’t look any different—he left the room. We slept in separate beds. I lay awake, brooding.

  • • •

  We headed out into a bright day with a strong wind. Rhinehart bowed forward, holding his hat down with one hand as we walked around the palm frond umbrellas, the sparkling pool. As we stepped onto the sand, he said, “How about we walk along the street instead and look in the shop windows. It might generate more lighthearted conversation.”

  We turned towards Washington Avenue, past the peach brick buildings with their flat roofs and glass Venetian blinds.

  Rhinehart paused at the shop fronts with the gaudiest wares. “This is what I like about Florida.”

  “What?”

  “This. These shellacked alligator heads. The canned sunshine.” He pointed to the back of the display. “That candlestick holder with the seashells in it. This is how all vacations used to be. Beautiful settings, cheap trinkets to remember them by.”

  His face was lit from the sun bouncing off the pavement, and he seemed pleased. “I always envied those Floridian coots w
ith the dyed hair combed back on their domes. They gave the appearance of being in the prime of their lives. If that were me, I’d wear my gold wristwatch every day, my high-belted shorts. Play golf during the week and bocce on Saturdays. I’d get a nice big car and drive it around everywhere.”

  This was not the vision of our future I was hoping for. He had on a white shirt that was ruffling in the wind. It was an old man’s shirt, cut in a boxy style to accommodate a large stomach. Hallie was right, I never looked at him honestly. I always saw him as a creative and academic powerhouse, exactly as he was in his early forties.

  He was going on, “The old guys in my neighborhood used to have those dreams. Those are immigrant dreams, paradise found in a nap and a beer. Academics don’t think that way, don’t retire.”

  We crossed the street, passed a big pink restaurant, a sushi place, and then turned back towards the beach. Palm trees were visible between the buildings and street signs.

  He said, “I’m sorry I haven’t been myself lately.”

  “Why don’t you want to sleep with me?”

  He had his face averted, was looking north, towards New York. “I’m afraid to.”

  My heart was beating at a galloping pace. “Why?”

  “I’m afraid. I can’t explain why. After my mother died I stopped talking for three months. I just didn’t want to talk. I couldn’t explain that either.”

  “At first I thought you were still angry at me because of Laura.”

  “It was wrong, how I handled that. I felt threatened. You have the right to be friends with whomever you like, and the two of you have an enormous thing in common in art.”

  “I’m not sure we ever were friends, in the traditional sense.” Laura, who had once loomed so large, now seemed as distant as a speck on the horizon. “At any rate, we’re definitely not now. I told her about us. You were right. It didn’t go over well.”

  “Ah,” he said, smiling to himself. He turned away, probably to hide it from me.

  I gripped his arms, stopping him in the middle of the sidewalk. “Does it even matter? Any of this? Me coming down here to that bad hotel, being here with you?”

  “Of course it does! Talking about the letters with you changed everything. But nothing gets miraculously better overnight. Maybe it’s ridiculous but I feel as if I’m mourning my mother all over again. Grief is a powerful force, Tatie. It’s shallow but it has a very strong current.”

  I was thinking about how we’re able to bear things we think we can’t—losing people that mean everything. My father driving an hour in a snowstorm in the middle of the night to retrieve me from a slumber party because the girls were being mean. I had snuck away to call him. He didn’t try and talk me out of it, he just got in the car.

  We were on the beach, and I removed my sandals. Rhinehart took my hand. “I was so relieved when you showed up here. And you brought the light with you. Deep down, I knew you would. So don’t worry about the intimacy. It will come back. I’m already feeling it. You’re looking so fresh and fecund lately, maybe it’s the sun, and the—”

  “I’m pregnant. I found out while you were away. The doctor confirmed it.” I paused. “The baby is due in November. November 10.”

  He had an astonished look, but I was unable to stop talking. “I’m going to have the baby. I know you think I’m afraid, but I’m not. This is no longer a decision I need to make—it’s past that point, it’s part of me. As much my future as my work.” I hadn’t known how forcefully I believed these things until I said them. This child, and the role I had in ushering it into the world, belonged to my purpose here. In this chaotic procession of events, accidental encounters, and fears that I’d struggled with, there had been an invisible plan. I was experiencing the rightness of my life, all of it, and it felt like lightning had hit me. I was trying to convey this, then I stopped and said, “How do you feel?”

  The way he was looking at me recalled a spring afternoon. We’d just gotten back together, and it seemed we’d never be separated again. The air smelled of new grass and mud. I had finished my exams and was excited with everything—being cut free in the middle of the day, the summer spreading out in front of me, meeting up with him—and feeling silly, I linked him and proclaimed I’d ride him back on my bicycle. He could sit on the handlebars. We’d go through town, and I’d ring the bell, and tell everyone how happy we were. I’d just been fooling around, chattering to hear myself talk, but when he looked at me his eyes were full of love, and I was shocked to see myself as he did, as beautiful.

  That’s how he was looking at me now. He said, “I feel like I’ve been given an enormous gift that I don’t know how to be thankful for.”

  “Do you mean that? Are we going to raise the baby together?”

  “Tatie, how else would it be? Did you really think I wouldn’t want to? That I’d take off like some sort of gigolo?”

  My body had been gripping so much fear that when it let go, all of the happiness drained out with it, and I bent over. He held me awkwardly around the shoulders while I coughed, like someone getting sick into the sand.

  He said, “I guess we both knew less about how our lives were going to turn out than we thought.”

  • • •

  We slept in the same bed that night, and Rhinehart made love to me in a sweaty, natural way, as if in deference to my new partnership with mother nature. Afterwards we lay staring out at the milky traces of the moon, listening to the distant slap of the ocean.

  Into my hair, he asked, “Why have you stuck with me through all this? I’m not even a young man anymore. You know, throughout my life, I’ve often doubted whether I was suited for a relationship. I worried there was something wrong with me.”

  When I was younger, I’d felt Rhinehart hadn’t loved me as much as I loved him. Our relationship and its changing moods had bled all over my life—I thought about him in class, at parties, while studying. For him, the concept of us was so neatly packaged, something he could slide away into a desk with many small drawers. It was a quality that had seemed to empower him.

  When I told him this, he said, “Maybe I was just afraid to risk that much of myself on another person after losing my mother.”

  I’d never felt that way. After my mother died, my father had doubled his affection and responsibilities. He hadn’t wanted me to feel alone. I’d been afraid in my life, but I’d never been too afraid to love.

  But I worried that Rhinehart still was. I asked and he said, “All the work I’ve done on myself over the years has led me here, so I must have finally gotten the internal lesson. Now I will be a father, and I will get to put my fearlessness to use in a new way.”

  It was as much a guarantee as I could offer at this point, myself. Quoting Rilke, I said, “for one human being to love another is the work for which all other work is mere preparation.”

  Rhinehart was smiling in the dark. I’d pleased him. “His marriage was more short-lived than mine. Do you want to marry?”

  The question called up a vision of myself. I was wearing nicer clothes and owned a big house and drove everywhere. I was irritable with all my obligations, and spoke sharply and did no photography. Although I wanted Rhinehart as my partner, I didn’t want to be a wife to anyone. But I also wasn’t going to say so right then. Rhinehart seemed vulnerable, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

  He didn’t pursue it. Perhaps he understood. “What a magnificent mother you’ll be. So warm and intelligent.”

  “Sometimes I’m a little worried I won’t have the natural instinct.”

  “Nonsense. You’re going to be knocked over by the force and the hunger of your love. Like Anna Karenina with little Seriozha, obsessed with the sound of his voice, the smell of his hair, while he was wriggling in her arms so as to touch his whole body on her. That joy.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Once we got back to New York, the first thing we needed to do was call Laura. She had left a message on my cell phone saying she would like an update on the
search now that she was “involved against her will.”

  Rhinehart would do anything for me lately, looking at me with spaniel eyes as if I were the most wondrous thing he could imagine, carrying around his child. It was a new feeling of power I had—even if everyone else disappeared, my job would still be to bring this baby into the world.

  Taking advantage, I said, “You be the one to call Laura.”

  He balked. “Do you think it’s necessary? I like to keep those phone calls to a minimum.”

  After a little bickering, he did call her, while I made myself scarce. Twenty minutes later, he emerged from his study, frowning.

  “How did she take it?”

  “She was pissed.”

  “About us or because she was worried you were really missing.”

  He shook his head. “Not that. She didn’t seem to care where I’d been. She was upset that you were pregnant.”

  “You told her! You didn’t have to go that far!”

  “I wanted to get it over with. I rarely talk to the woman. I wouldn’t even be talking to her now if it weren’t for you. We’d email, maybe.” He smiled. “And I’m proud. A proud father-to-be.”

  Part of me was relieved it was out in the open, so that I didn’t have to make any more confessions. “What did she say?”

  “That I’m too self-absorbed to raise a child. I didn’t even feel defensive. That’s how sure I am that I’m going to be a great father.”

  I smiled.

  “She also told me to tell you to call Clare Severeson. They have an opening in the schedule this summer, a cancellation or something, and she suggested you.”

  “Clare from George Menten? Really?” I had met her briefly when Laura was introducing me around. She’d been a curator at the Brooklyn Museum and had an intelligent, nonpretentious way of speaking about the artists the gallery represented. I’d actually just seen her picture in a profile spread for Elle on young, up-and-coming people in the art world—she was a short-haired African American woman, around my age. In the article, she’d talked a lot about contemporary painting, which seemed to be the gallery’s focus. I’d liked her when I met her, and she’d been polite, but she’d also been a little cool to me, and I’d just assumed she wasn’t interested in my work.