The Imperial Wife

by Irina Reyn

  “Those bells belonged to the schooner that brought Armand’s relatives from the Old World. So you see, you and Carl are both immigrants of a kind,” she says. She is gesturing toward a cabinet, a glass shrine to silver. “These over here are Paul Revere.”

  “Paul Revere,” I repeat, squinting at a creamer and a pair of sugar tongs, the words conjuring some vague horseback figure from high school history. I realize I will have to brush up on its significance with Lucas in Early American. “How wonderful.”

  She is telling me about some ancestral privateer who helped with the blockade of Boston, but then a voice drifts in from the living room, from a place that seems miles away. “Drinks, Cece, bring Tanya around, will you?”

  “Tanya,” Frances says, ushering me out. “Is it short for anything?”

  “Tatiana.”

  “Ah, of course! I always loved those indexes in the back of long Russian novels where the various names are explained. Everyone had so many different names. Every time a character popped up, you had to consult the glossary to make sure you haven’t met them before. Remember, Skip?”

  From what seems like entire countries away, Armand calls back, “Ask your son. He’s the Russian scholar. Do you know how old I must have been when I read War and Peace? Nineteen, twenty? And how old am I now?”

  “Okay, we get it. You’re old.” Frances winks, two ladies making the best of their men’s shortcomings. “Wine or something more interesting?”

  As the evening progresses, I stop wondering why a man named Armand is called Skip. After some initial small talk about Russian literature, they don’t ask me questions about the immigrant experience or about my parents in New Jersey. They drink and nibble, and discuss recent auctions and reminisce about fabulously rustic summers in Maine where reams of cousins hike, wait in line for the outhouse, and jump-start cocktail hour at four. And I feel bold enough to peel off the heat of my Chanel jacket with its carefully pinned price tag and laugh along with them at experiences I could only faintly imagine: pool parties where no one swims, with names I am expected to recognize, after-hours charity shopping to benefit children’s foster care, family lacrosse games, a sport that never made sense to me, a house in Maine that sounds romantic even if I imagine my mother wondering why rich people like this couldn’t afford a house with indoor plumbing. It is wading into a beautiful, cold pool, the water bracing and shimmering. But Carl hasn’t said a word.

  I notice a vagueness in the man I’m besotted with, as if Carl’s not related to them, as if we’re two arbitrary couples socializing. On our way back from the tour of the apartment, Carl and his father sit at an angle on their chairs across the extensive dining room table. Carl’s only contribution is about the foster children’s organization he and his mother oversee. He asks about the funds, about particular kids, if they have remained with their families, if there had been successful adoptions, which ones have aged out of the system. He insists on photographs and smiles only when he recognizes the faces of the kids, beaming or wearing tight smiles of artifice, flashing their baby teeth. He plays basketball with two of them on Saturday mornings, but only now does the importance of the organization in his life become clear to me.

  How different it is compared to my raucous family dinners, where everyone’s business is splayed out on the table next to the food, where I’m teased about finding a “normal job” or a “husband, finally.” How different this Vandermotter exchange on culture and outdoors and sport compared to the drunken squeals of the Russian wives, the costume parties where the men dress as women in wigs and fake boobs, the swaying guests belting accompaniment to an impromptu piano recital. I’d been embarrassed by most of that, actually, by an immigrant lack of polish and sophistication, by its clannishness, the simple, peasant food. I find I like the coolness, the calm way Carl’s father has of putting together drinks, deliberately, ice cubes first, the careful splash of lime, the neat shaving of citrus peel, and the way his mother wafts from room to room with her narrow, limpid eyes replicated in Carl.

  “Another?” his father asks by the bar, and I say yes, yes to everything offered, and I hear my own voice colonizing the space, making it mine.

  “You know, speaking of names, Carl tells me I’m an expert namer,” I say, and launch into the story of how we met.

  “Really? We had no idea. Whatever can that mean?” His father announces this as if relieved that somebody’s talking, that they can all pave over Carl’s silence with their chatter.

  “I name paintings.”

  “You mean those titles are made up by people like you? I thought the artist named his own painting.”

  “Sometimes, but many times they come in untitled so it becomes our job. Titles sell paintings.”

  “Yes,” Frances says. “I’m sure they do.”

  “Your internship sounds fascinating.” Armand pops an oyster cracker in his mouth, scalloped and dotted with salt. “When we come by Worthington’s next, we’ll be sure to look you up.”

  “Oh, yes,” Frances says.

  “I’m actually not an intern. I’m an assistant cataloguer.”

  “Oh?” Armand says and, through the murk of wine, I’m convinced they’re impressed, that my position has been elevated in their eyes.

  And when they plant good-night kisses, I say a million thank-yous and return to the cherry stateliness of the elevator, I feel Carl coming back to himself, returning to focus.

  We emerge into the night, and I admit to relief at being free of that building, at chucking my shoes and gingerly navigating the warm concrete with bare toes. “I think that went well. They seem nice.”

  “Well, it’s what I got,” is his odd reply. He hails a cab to drop me off at Penn Station and no amount of pressing convinces him to elaborate. It’s the first time he disengages from me like this, barely a peck on the lips and then he waves to me from the corner. But he shows up at my office the following day with a warm falafel sandwich from my favorite Middle Eastern place. He’s the same enamored Carl.

  A week later, we’re engaged.

  * * *

  “Gor’ko, to the happy couple,” my uncle cries, and Carl and I are made to kiss, an exchange of pomegranate-infused vodka on the tongue. The guests are once again shoveled around a table built for half the bodies, the music loud enough for the merriment of forgetting. “Turn it down,” someone is directed and then ignores. The television competes in decibels, kids swirling underfoot, a cousin’s younger daughter smudged with poppy-seed jam from head to toe.

  It’s instantly apparent that at my parents’ house, Carl comes alive, transforms into more of himself. The men are winking at Carl, pressing vodka shots on him. He brays at every punch line even if he later admits that he didn’t entirely understand the content of the joke. Women rib him gently, eyebrows plucked thin and high. They speak English out of deference to his nativity, his conquering of their adoptive land. The house steaming with herring buried under thinly sliced onion and tongue fanned out next to marinated cabbage, buttery baby potatoes and singed beef and chopped beet salad. And Carl helpless before the refilled shot glasses placed before him, his hand unsteady after the next toast. By the end of the night, he becomes disheveled from exertion.

  “Watch out, Carl, hope you know you’re dating the CEO over there,” a cousin named Mitya calls out. “That Tanya always ordered us around, even when she was a little girl.”

  Inevitably, my mother arrives to the rescue—“Don’t say that, Mitya”—afraid that the suitor will be scared off.

  No man wants a daunting woman.

  No man wants a woman who earns more than him.

  No man wants a woman who is too opinionated.

  No man wants a woman who values career over family.

  No man wants a woman who is vocal about being confident, who makes the first move, who picks the date activity, who makes a reservation, who has male friends, who does not greet him in full makeup, who serves her own food first, who wears sneakers, who admits to being hungry, wh
o reads too much, who drives while he’s in the passenger seat, who doesn’t cook, who’s messy, disorganized, complains, confronts, acts like a martyr, plays sports, watches sports, lounges, remembers past slights, fails to forgive. Women are very particular things here.

  As the night deepens, Carl appropriates the term himself. “Come here, CEO,” he says, pulling me closer, confronting the approving hoots of the guests with a bashful smile. “What? I like that she’s the boss. That’s why I asked her to marry me.” Those words still so fresh, so tentative, feel like bathing in the petals of the most aromatic of flowers. It was a proposal as simple and unexpected as Carl himself, a nighttime excursion to the top of Rockefeller Center after hours, a buddy of his pulling strings to keep the deck open. The entire city was enflamed before us.

  “This is where you belong, on top of the world,” he said, before pulling out his grandmother’s sapphire. It didn’t fit, the oval was roomy enough to accommodate two fingers.

  Right there, in front of my parents, I embrace my fiancé tightly, bury my nose in his neck. I’m afraid he doesn’t really know me and might be mistaking me for another woman inside his own head, but right now it doesn’t matter. I might detonate with all that love, all the excitement for the life that awaits.

  And I watch my mother gulp down her protests, pass us the plate of chicken thighs sprinkled with dill. Her hands worrying the edge of the tablecloth, clumping it in her fists and then letting it go.

  Catherine

  FEBRUARY–MARCH 1744

  Less than a week at court in this strange land and Sophie already knows to proceed with caution. All around her is plotting, whispers behind corners, sometimes within earshot. She can hear her name reverberating in the halls in harsh, foreign Russian. That Sophie. Have you seen that bony, oval-faced Sophie? That pale, raven-haired Sophie? That provincial princess? At least that is what she imagines is being said about her in Russian. She is aware of how her fleshless shoulders pop out of sleeves, aware that her dresses are far from the latest style. She has only three or four in a court that changes gowns three times a day. She perceives her hair to be wrong here, is convinced the maids spread word that she uses her mother’s bed linens. She is probably deemed not pretty enough, plain and Germanic.

  The place is impossibly cold, impossibly foreign. Outside her window is perpetual winter, stark and thick, the wind so strong it barrels into her room. If it were not for Katerina, lovely, loyal Katerina, her friend in the silver dress, she would be lost, awash in a sea of solitude. She calls for her. Katerina! Is Katerina near?

  And here she comes, her Katerina, whom she already calls Katya. A kindred spirit who speaks German, who understands her jokes. Whose eyes she can trust. How lovely she looks rushing into her chambers in that unassuming way, her simple unadorned gown, a single strand of pearls, the modest chignon. She brings with her the sewing that is their pretext—the court must believe their many meetings are about practicing her Russian or sewing a decorative pillow for her groom. It is best not to admit confidences; already she knows the empress’s temperament, her watchful eye. The empress may not want Sophie to have allies, she may want to isolate her, keep her far away from outstretched, helping hands.

  “What are they saying about me today?” she murmurs to Katya as soon as the girl settles into the love seat with the sewing.

  “That they are still hoping for the Polish Saxon Marianne.”

  “They want to get rid of me.”

  “If they only knew your temperament and tact, how lucky they would consider themselves.”

  “Bestuzhev is at the helm of this thought, I suppose?”

  Katya keeps her eyes fixed on the stone floor. The cold, unforgiving floor.

  “Never mind,” Sophie says, hurt. She steers the subject to fashion, a topic she cares little about herself but knows her friend follows with interest. “Let us discuss your mantua for the banquet. It can be trimmed with silver silk.”

  Only Katya knows her worries about her future husband, her role in this vast unknowable land. That her future husband is beginning to repulse her. Peter, pronounced Pyotor. She has to practice saying it, her lips curling with the unpleasant maneuver of it. Pyo-tor. Vashe Velichietvo, Pyotor Tretii, His Highness.

  But the girl is tactful and allows Sophie to change the topic. “I adore silver trim. It is elegant, especially on one of those dresses where the drapery parts to reveal the skirt. But my mother warns it is too naughty.”

  The wind laps against the window, fierce and swirling.

  “I cannot go back, you know,” Sophie says. The thought has just formed itself inside her; if Bestuzhev’s campaign succeeds, she will be redundant. “I will not go back to Zerbst.”

  Katya looks up from the fine underlay of lace. “Oh, my dear.”

  They hear steps outside the door. The girls look up and it is Sophie’s mother who has descended into an armchair, her powdered hair smoothed over her left shoulder. “I demand to know what they are saying about us at court. I’ve only a minute.”

  There is a long silence, the girls look down at their sewing again. There is only the wind rattling against the drafty windows. “I am sure I have heard nothing but admiration for your ladyship,” Katya says. She is shrewd, Sophie thinks. Is it possible to encounter a sister in just a short month? As her mother closes her eyes, presses her fingers to her temple, the girls exchange a brief look.

  Sophie says, “It is remarkably cold in here.”

  Katya smiles, her fingers dancing over the needlework.

  * * *

  “I detest that woman.” Peter leans over the carcass of his fowl. The discarded bones are barely stripped of their flesh. Sophie drags her attention away from his plate but then she becomes aware of his too-long fingers on the table, the curvature of his spine, the outline of his thin mouth. For the sake of the long table of guests watching them, she is careful to retain her smile.

  “Which woman do you speak of, Your Highness? My mother?”

  He picks up a wing, then flings it back to the table. “My aunt, of course. The wretched empress. If not for her meddling, I would still be in Holstein. This country is backward, loathsome, filled with rude, parochial creatures. I detest it. You will find it to be so.”

  “Oh.” She thought she was finally making an impression on him. She ascertained that her body was angled toward his.

  The musicians enter, begin the process of unsheathing their instruments. The empress leans over to one of her ladies, whispers in her ear, and the woman scurries to fulfill some command.

  Sophie follows the empress’s every move. The woman’s gaze slides over each guest, missing nothing. “I find there is much beauty in this land, this language. I look forward to being fluent very soon. I’m studying with your tutor.”

  “I am proud to say that despite his best efforts, Teodorsky taught me nothing. Nothing! And I would fight it too if I were you. Hold on to your German and your religion. The Russian language is ugly and so is their crude, backward Orthodoxy.”

  She wonders if the future king should speak this way of a realm he will someday inherit. Outside the window, she hears the first sign of fireworks and she longs to ignore propriety and run out to watch the show.

  “In that case, I shall interpret Russian for both of us.”

  Peter slumps down in his seat. “I suppose I will have to marry you since She wishes it. But I want you to know I love another. Her mother was sent to Siberia as soon as the witch found out about my affections.”

  Sophie pretends to take great interest in his confidences, the pickled goose oily and slick inside her belly. She can see the empress turning to watch them, so she bends closer to her husband-to-be, inhales his sour breath of wine. Another firework explosion startles the party. The sound is sharp, sudden, tinting the window green with artificial light.

  He says, not unkindly, “I hope you understand that I confide in you because you are my second cousin and I am simply being truthful.”

  There are needles
poking at her heart. Her tongue is momentarily trapped in the cave of her mouth. “You are very right to do so.”

  “Would you look at them together, how perfect they are in each other’s company,” her mother says, bending toward the empress. Her breasts are in danger of spilling out of her gown’s décolletage. “What a handsome pair they make.”

  Sophie sighs. So many meals to attend and the empress demands they drag on into the morning hours and turn into dance parties. She is dizzy from exhaustion. Birds arrive whole and return carved. Plates whisked away. Music followed by cards followed by gossip. The empress can outstay the entire court, reluctantly retiring to her bedchamber as dawn breaks. “Rouse yourself,” she commands, to anyone that dares nod off in her presence. Sophie wonders when the actual governance of the kingdom takes place.

  Now that she examines the castle more closely, all the furnishings, so opulent on first inspection, reveal their flaws. Chairs missing legs, doors hanging off hinges, the bottom of drapes dirty and fringed, bronze handles of cabinets broken. Glossy on the outside, rotten underneath. Marred, decaying.

  * * *

  The next time she sees Peter, it is only ten in the morning, but he is already trembling with two glasses of wine and has lined up his toy soldiers for the practice drill. They are made to stand at glassy-eyed attention in their blue military uniforms. “We’re drilling formation today,” he explains. Sophie drapes herself over the settee the way she saw her mother do, examining her pale arms, the light hairs dotting her forearms. She tries not to look up at the ceiling where a row of rats dangle by their necks, poor creatures executed for unwittingly playing the role of disobeying officers.

  Peter is marching back and forth. Without his wig, he appears even slighter, barely more imposing than his toys. They make kings of men like these? But she is starting to understand that simply waiting for a spark in his affections is foolishness; she must play her own game, parallel to his.