The Company You Keep

by Tracy Kelleher

  “So what about now? I don’t really know what you do.”

  “You really want to hear this?” He looked doubtful.

  She nodded. Her head rubbed against the wool fibers of the blanket.

  “My father, like his father who came from Poland, was a mason. He laid tile floor, stone walls, Carrera plazas like the one at Allie Hammy.”

  “Cool.”

  “But pretty backbreaking. I knew that after business school at Stanford my family expected me to come back East, preferably close by, preferably in the family business. But there was no way I was going to build stone walls for a living—as honorable as that is. Instead, I looked at the market and saw the incredible boom in natural stone finishes—all those granite kitchen countertops, marble bathrooms and restaurant floors, all those corporate buildings. Marble, granite—they signify solidarity, timelessness, natural beauty—lasting wealth. And you gotta remember this was still when the economy was chugging along.”

  “So you grew the business?”

  “Not just grew it. Shifted focus from fabrication to supply and distribution. Golinski Sons International, GSI, is now the leading distributor of natural stone in North America with ten distribution centers in the U.S. As our website states, we offer an extensive line of natural stone products quarried in thirty-five countries on four continents, and our purchasing agents are located in China, India, Brazil and Turkey. Sorry, this is all very boring.”

  “Not at all. I know nothing about stone. And all this expansion and stuff came under your leadership?”

  “I suppose, but it’s a family effort. My dad is pretty much out of the day-to-day operations, but you can’t keep him out of the warehouse in New Jersey, and he personally supervises the showrooms, laying some of the stone himself.”

  “Ah, a perfectionist like his son.”

  Vic didn’t deny or agree. “Then there’s my younger brother, Joe. He’s a senior VP and head of sales, though I’m not sure he’s totally committed.”

  “Ah, not like his older brother.”

  “Well, we all have our strengths. Business is still good, not gangbusters anymore thanks to the dip in the economy. But God bless the women of America who all want granite countertops.”

  “You should see the acres of granite in my family’s kitchen.”

  “What color?” he turned and asked.

  He was serious, she realized. “Kind of streaky gold and red, maybe brown.”

  “Yellow Bamboo. It’s from our Platinum collection. Top of the line.”

  “Nothing but the best for the Lodge family.”

  Vic rolled on his side and faced her. “Anyway, I’m sure that’s as much as anyone wants to hear about stone.”

  She turned on her side, a mirror image of him. If they were any closer, they could kiss. Almost.

  “It’s really kind of fascinating. How many people are actually in the business of making things, as opposed to merely manipulating numbers on a computer screen. You can actually walk into somebody’s house or some business and say, ‘Hey, I helped do this.’”

  “You make me sound so virtuous.”

  “That’s not such a bad thing,” she confided.

  “But it’s not exciting.”

  “Excitement isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.” She picked at a twig that had landed on the blanket.

  “Excuse me, aren’t you the one who covers wars and mass uprisings? That doesn’t sound like you do a lot of sitting at a desk or going to lunch in fancy restaurants.”

  “True, but I haven’t done all that for a while now.” She drew circles on the blanket with her finger. “Not since…ah…since…”

  Vic reached out and laid his hand on Mimi’s to still it. It was the gentlest of pressure, more warmth than force. “Listen. You don’t have to talk about—the whole kidnapping thing. I understand. I’m the last person in the world to advocate baring your soul about something painful. And in your case, I can’t even imagine how awful it was.”

  Mimi stared at his hand atop hers—the bond. Normally, she would have denied any need for a connection, for help. But now…here…with the candles sputtering their last gasp, Roxie’s rattling breathing, the velvet-black of night—the motions of the heavens and the stirrings in her heart anchored by Polaris—she wanted that connection. Needed it. With this man, this normal, sexy soul lying next to her.

  She inhaled deeply and took, what was for her, a leap of faith.

  “I can’t really talk about the time they held me. I was so scared. All those months—the fear, the mix of kindness and cruelty from my captors, the uncertainty. The uncertainty was almost worse than the physical and emotional pain. I wish I could be strong, not still have nightmares about it, and be able to put the whole thing behind me.”

  “It’s not a competition. No one’s judging whether you’re strong or not. That’s irrelevant. Bad things happened. It takes time to get over it. The important thing is you’re home and you have time.”

  “I suppose you’re right. I mean, I know you’re right. But the way it ended was all kind of anticlimactic—so sometimes it’s hard to grasp that it’s really over. You see, there wasn’t some dramatic raid to free me, and I certainly wasn’t clever enough or brave enough to figure out how to escape.”

  “Please, if anyone could have escaped, it would have been you. I’m sure of it.”

  “Thanks.” She fisted her hand and slipped it away from his. Then she stroked her throat slowly. “As I understand it, because really—I was totally outside the loop—the network’s insurance company found a company that specializes in negotiations, you know, recovering family members who have been kidnapped by drug czars or oil company execs taken in some remote jungle by revolutionaries. Anyway, they used a consultant on the ground in Chechnya. He contacted a trusted local, who then handled the communications with the kidnappers.”

  “It must have taken forever.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think these things are exactly speedy. More like the kidnappers proposed some ridiculously high figure—like twenty-five million plus the release of some rebels or criminals who were in jail. It was never totally clear if they were rebels or just lawless criminals or some combination. Then there was a counter offer of less money—which the kidnappers refused. Weeks went by. Agony for everybody, I’m sure. Then finally an agreement.” Her voice shook. “Whatever the TV network paid was, I’m sure, still enormous, and I can never repay them.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. The network made a ton of money off your work.”

  “That’s kind of you to say.”

  “It’s not kind. Securing your return was a major story in and of itself. I’m sure they feel a moral obligation to protect their employees, but bottom line it’s just good business.”

  “When you put it that way.” Mimi chuckled philosophically.

  He frowned. “What I don’t get is why you went there in the first place. If the History Channel serves me right, the war in Chechnya has been over for a bunch of years now, and you’re a war correspondent, right? I mean, I know the place is still dangerous, especially for correspondents—especially correspondents who try to talk to people who don’t agree with the current government. But why go there now?”

  Even in the darkness, Mimi could feel the intensity of his stare.

  One more step. One more leap of faith with Polaris as her guide. “The truth? I went looking for my mother.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  VIC WASN’T EXPECTING that one. “Your mother?”

  Mimi sighed. “Actually, I went looking for her memory. She’s dead.”

  “I’d heard. I’m sorry.”

  “Why do people always say that—that they’re sorry? You didn’t know her. You weren’t responsible.”

  “But I can empathize with your loss.”

  “It was a long time ago. And in some ways, I almost think my mother was never here—I mean, here in Grantham. Not really. She was originally from Chechnya, you see.”

  Vic
shook his head. “I never would have guessed. I always figured you for this Mayflower descendant.”

  “That would be the Lodges, my father’s side of the family. The family that never knew what to make of my ‘ethnic’ mother—even though she came from a diplomatic background.”

  “But she was obviously a big force in your life. Otherwise you wouldn’t have risked so much.”

  “To be more precise, she’s like the ten-ton elephant in the room,” Mimi admitted. “How can I explain?” She thought a moment.

  “My mother, Raisa Tlisova Lodge, was this incredible, ethereal beauty—all high cheekbones and pale skin against dark hair.” Mimi mimicked the description with her hands. “My mother’s father had been a member of the Soviet diplomatic corps posted to Washington, D.C., during the Cold War. Then one day, he marched into the State Department and declared he could no longer support the Communist government. The story goes it was April First—you know, April Fool’s Day?”

  Vic nodded.

  “Anyway, it took a while for the American officials to decide it wasn’t a joke, but when they realized the intelligence value that he had as the military attaché, they whisked him, his wife and only child, Raisa, to a safe house. Chechnya, their homeland, became history since they could no longer travel back there. Not only that, they couldn’t contact their Chechen family and friends. There was always the possibility of reprisal, and my mother used to tell me how her father trained her to look over her shoulder, memorize faces in a crowd, be alert for possible enemies.”

  “Sounds pretty paranoid,” Vic commented.

  “True, but you gotta remember the times. It was the height of the Cold War. Terrible things were going on. Anyway, while my grandfather may have been trying to protect my mother, his actions fostered this sense of isolation and fear in her. Her way of dealing with it, when I look back on my childhood, was to seek the approval of her adopted community and family—things like serving on school committees, joining the gardening club and baking pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving.”

  “They say converts are always the most devout.”

  “Yes and no.” Mimi held up her finger. “You see, her wish to adopt a new lifestyle ran counter to her desire to memorialize, to romanticize the past that she’d lost. I remember her telling me bedtime stories about her remote mountaintop village or aul. How it was this magical place full of traditional music and colorful peasant dances, with spectacular gorges and dense forests. She was especially proud of the hospitality the people showed toward all visitors.”

  “It sounds like a fairy tale.”

  “Exactly. It wasn’t real. So, not only couldn’t she go home, she created a home that never existed. I mean, it was a doomed situation.” She paused, then a slight smile covered her face. “But I don’t mean to paint her as this dark, constantly depressed person. There were times when she was so much fun—the way she’d suddenly dance around the room to music or liked to jump in piles of leaves. Her laugh—it was contagious. And her sense of humor kind of snuck up on you—very subversive, really.” She glanced over at Vic. “I think that got to my father more than almost anything. He had this sneaking feeling that deep down she was making fun of him—which, of course, she was. And his all-consuming ego could never take that.” She set her mouth. “She was unique. Beautiful. But fragile. Terribly fragile.” She breathed in slowly.

  “So what happened in the end?” he asked softly.

  “In the end?” she repeated. “In the end, she committed suicide. Right after my parents divorced. She was living alone in an apartment. I’d left with my father for Maine. I should have stayed, though. I knew she was going through a rough time.”

  “But how old were you at the time?”

  “Ten.”

  “You were just a kid. You couldn’t take care of someone with serious emotional issues.”

  “I know, I know. If anyone’s to blame it’s my father. The man dumped her for a younger woman. So, okay, they fought constantly, and my mother would go into these dark moods and refuse to come out of her room—but was that any reason just to end a marriage when there was already a kid?”

  “Mental illness is difficult to deal with even under the best of circumstances.” He saw Mimi start to bristle. “Whoa, I’m not trying to defend your father, merely point out the obvious.”

  “The obvious is that my father never had an empathetic bone in his body. There was no way he could not be the center of attention, let alone deal compassionately with someone less than stable.”

  Mimi raised herself to look at Vic, still lying next to her on the scratchy plaid blanket. “So you asked me why I went to Chechnya?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I went because I wanted to get some understanding of just who my mother was—and to put her ghost to rest. Because this is the really astonishing part. As luck, or fate—my superstitious mother would have definitely said fate—would have it, the village deep in the mountains where the rebel was supposed to be hiding from the Russians? The one I was going to interview? That village? It was my mother’s.”

  “All right, I can see why you wanted to go. So, tell me, did you find the colorful peasants and the deep gorges?”

  She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “What do you think? I mean, even if they existed at one time, after two wars for independence this particular village had become synonymous with bloodshed. But I had to see for myself. Make this connection, find something that helped explain my mother.”

  “So what did you find?”

  She nervously drew a line with her finger on the blanket. Back and forth, back and forth. “I never got there. I was in Grozny, the capital, on my way to set up the meeting when I was kidnapped in broad daylight, hundreds of people looking on as they were rushing to work. After that, I was moved from one remote location to another, blindfolded the whole time and then kept in windowless rooms. I could have been in my mother’s village at one time, but I’ll never know. And as far as getting any insights into her psyche from a ruthless bunch of thugs? That would have been a stretch—not that I didn’t have lots of time to think about it.” She laughed bitterly.

  “At least you had the courage to face your demons. How many people can say that? Most people run away or go into denial, compromise their lifestyle so as to keep those nagging, painful memories at bay.”

  Vic should know. He was a master of compartmentalizing, of keeping his life so orderly, so busy, that it was devoid of any emotional extreme. It left no window to deal with things beyond day-to-day issues. That was why pro football—with all its physical and emotional highs—would never have been a healthy long-term option.

  The way he’d fashioned his structured, focused life kept the sadness in check, the guilt tucked away and the anger under control—all remnants from the events of his childhood that he kept buried, hidden from mind. Besides, it wasn’t as if he lacked for simple pleasures. He read, he worked, he played with his dog. His emotional capital was tied up with keeping the whole Golinski boat afloat financially.

  But this wasn’t about him. It was good that Mimi had opened up, but her vulnerability was obvious. He had always pictured Mimi Lodge—and, believe you me, on more than one occasion during and after college—he had pictured her in various states of clothing and lack thereof. Anyway, he’d always envisioned her as one of the eternally lucky ones, a person whom the world blessed with a confident glow, someone who came from privilege and felt entitled to nothing less. To find out she was more—much more complex—shook his carefully ordered world, unmoored him from the steadiness of her internal North Star.

  But he had no intention of giving her up. Not when he was just beginning to scratch the surface. True, he might have gone into this whole Reunions deal with her father as a rational business decision, but Vic knew there was nothing rational about his dealings with Mimi and his yearning to see more of her. What this involvement would do to the even-keeled world he had created for himself was yet to be seen. Somehow, some way, it felt right.

  �
�You know, this might seem trivial and all after what you’ve just been through—” He started slow.

  She gave a sputtering laugh. “Please, I could use some triviality right now. I sound more morose than a Russian novel.”

  “In that case, a propos of nothing, I was just thinking how I really resented you after the whole panel water-dumping fiasco.”

  “As opposed to thinking what a nut I’ve become now?”

  He waved his hand back and forth to deny her comment. “No, now you sound perfectly sane to me, a lot better than I’d be if I’d gone through what you’d experienced. No, back then—in college—it was your whole attitude. The whole certainty that you were right and that anyone who didn’t agree with you was a dope of the first order. The fountain episode was just the icing on the cake.” He was being truthful.

  “I suppose that’s true. Back then, I lacked, shall we say—”

  “Tolerance?” he suggested.

  “Okay, for lack of a better word—tolerance.” She didn’t seem offended. “But as to the fountain thing, I’ve got to confess—I don’t know what came over me back then. I mean, I remember having this overwhelming urge to rankle you. It was so easy, and I couldn’t resist. And when I saw the fountain, I had this vision of La Dolce Vita. You know, the Fellini film? Anita Eckberg splashing away in the Trevi Fountain? I realize I’m no Anita Eckberg—even back then.” She looked down at her boyish figure.

  He stared off into space. “Actually, you really turned me on,” he confessed. “Jumping in the fountain. Daring me to follow you.”

  “And you did, didn’t you?” Mimi smiled.

  “You bet. I was so mad and so horny all at the same time. And, boy, did I pay for it.” He chuckled.

  The Grantham cops had arrived and arrested him for criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. Yet somehow in the course of getting his particulars, they had merely handed Mimi a towel and clucked on about how they didn’t want her to get a cold. Clearly, they’d recognized a member of the storied Lodge family, and were giving her special treatment.