The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield

by Anna Fishbeyn

  I’m confronted with an image of four arms—our arms—how had he managed it?—entwined on the opposite wall. I catch sight of a small empty room beyond the one we’re standing in and I grab Eddie’s arm and pull him there and close the door. The room is entirely white and empty, nothing stands, hangs, lives on its walls.

  “Your mother is our puppeteer—our invisible master of ceremonies!” I say, with a shrill sadistic laugh. The two of us face the pristine white surfaces in the enclosed square space. I think in wonderment of all the secret rooms and bathrooms and galleries Eddie and I have used as our battlegrounds in love and war. “My mother?”

  I feel calm again, the inner deadness spreading through my center, cooling my blood. “I don’t want to say anything now unless it’s the truth. The night we were together—the night of the drying and washing machines—” My voice winds down and I look at him, wondering if I should go on. “I got pregnant.”

  “You got pregnant,” he repeats mechanically, as if he somehow knew.

  “Of course, it took me a while to figure it out. I’d start vomiting every time I’d take out a tube of acrylic paint. But I figured it was because I couldn’t get you out of my system. Literally, of course. When I went to the doctor, I thought he’d say, you’re dying, your asthma is acting up; instead he said, ‘you’re not ill, my dear, just pregnant.’ There was no one else—it was yours. My family went haywire. They were ready for another grandchild, but for me to have the baby alone was outrageous—a sacrilege. What would people say?” I erupt with sudden joy at the thought of their simplicity.

  “Grandmother said that if I still wanted Alex, he’d take me back. No one wanted to hear my proposal: that I have the baby on my own as a single mother. It was the ultimate expression of my feminist ideals. I’d deny myself men altogether, I’d become an ascetic. Pregnancy made me strong, invincible, gave me the courage that my stupid single life never could.

  “There were other men, Grandmother insisted, that we could fool; if they fell in love very quickly, that is, we could fudge dates of my conception. It was December 24th, Christmas Eve that I got pregnant, it was surreal. I even went on two or three blind dates, but at the end of each evening I would announce, ‘I had such a lovely time, and I want you to know—by no fault of your own, I’m pregnant.’

  “By then I was sporadically dating Aaron. He was so in love with me he didn’t care that I was pregnant. He wanted to take care of my baby, to marry me instantly. But part of me was terrified—part of me kept thinking, if I have this child with Aaron, I’ll be locked in, forever locked in—” I stop myself, fearing I’ve said too much, then keep going.

  “But instead of making a decision,” I go on, “oh, you know how I am: I procrastinated, and with pregnancy that’s as good as saying I do. So by virtue of doing nothing I reached five months. Five months, Eddie—by then I was so in love with the baby I talked to him every day, and that’s when—” I pause, and Mrs. Beltrafio appears as she was then, her serene face superimposed upon Eddie’s.

  “That’s when I saw your mother at the Calm, on the Upper East Side. I went to get a prenatal massage—my back was already killing me—and of course it turned out to be your mother’s favorite spa.” It was the best place in the city for microdermabrasion, glycolic resurfacing, Botox. “If you think about it, it was inevitable that out of the thousands of spas in Manhattan I would pick the one that was your mother’s.”

  The moment rushes at me with sudden hysteria and grit. I see her again: naked, confident, unembarrassed by her small breasts and bulging manly thighs, but her body is taut, young, perfectly sustained like her face. An air of satisfaction emanates from her gaze, exposing her signature smugness. Lavender oil glows on her stomach and forehead, and I’m bewilderingly drawn to her polished surfaces, imagining that if I peel them away, I’ll discover a magical cave containing all the secrets to my soul. Why, why, I wanted to ask her, why didn’t you like me? It was so simple and childish, this desire of mine, that I felt my whole being perspire with the need to know, with the shame of having been rejected by her. I tried to recall what Eddie said that night when he came to offer me his truth and salvation: “she liked you, she just doesn’t like Jews.” But it made me feel the rejection even more strongly, like a spear rammed deeper in my stomach, a warning to my baby that the world is callous, and without heart. The child kicked me as if he already knew.

  “I hid behind the locker like a guilty teenager,” I say, turning to him after a long pause. “I in my underwear, and your mother—in all her naked glory.”

  He stares at me with open lips that fail to emit sound.

  “Your mother dressed slowly, methodically; she seemed in no great hurry until she saw me. Our eyes met and then she caught it—my protruding belly. But she looked only for an instant—an instant of recognition between us—and then, with that kindly smile she wears, she turned her head away.” I breathe, I remember. “‘Mrs. Beltrafio,’ I cried at last, ‘Cynthia, Cynthia.’ I ran after her, hugging my towel to my chest, but she had vanished into the incense-thick air and I wondered if I had merely imagined her.

  “But I couldn’t have, you see, I couldn’t have!” I keep talking even though it’s becoming more difficult to enunciate words, thoughts. “She was everywhere, you see, her scent, her face—I felt her on me—did we speak? I can’t remember now. Did she say, ‘Oh Emma, what a surprise to see you here. Congratulations are in order! How many months?’ I could feel the baby grow so still as if he had already guessed his future. The pain of having lost you came back to me—and it stung again and again—how unfair life was, how stupid we were, how this baby was bigger than that, bigger than us. The magnitude of it all overcame me and I held my head in my hands with a full understanding of what I—then someone tapped my shoulder and asked if I needed a glass of water—I was dizzy—so dizzy with all these realizations—”

  “But why didn’t you come to me? Why did you let her in?” he cuts in, but I only see a stranger trying to cough my entire life out in one breath.

  I begin to speak but my voice cracks and tears cloak my eyes. I want to tell him that this skin, my skin isn’t skin but gauze—permeable silk that doesn’t sheathe my body but acts as a conduit for the world outside, letting it stream in: there are no barriers or blockades here. There’s fear too, my curse—my truest Russian emotion, palpitating in red, so grotesque and hidden, so deep-rooted that I don’t recognize it anymore. Like a stingray, it sits dormant in my blood and when it strikes I’m unconscious, unable to intercept its deadly sting. Only later do I understand, only later do I imagine a different life.

  But I suck my tears in and with sudden calm I explain away this, this unchangeable life: “What’s done is done.”

  “Where’s the child?” he asks.

  “Child?” I tap my tongue on “d,” hoarsely, barely. “Oh, Eddie. That night there was a terrible wind—a typhoon, really. It was June, a warm summer storm had descended on the city and I wanted to walk a little. I always loved rain, you know. But suddenly trees started to bend and trashcans flew through the air and the tiny drizzle turned into blinding rain. I couldn’t see anything—a yellow cab came out of nowhere and I was lifted off the ground, I was flying … then I looked up and I was splayed on the ground in spectacular pain, bleeding. That night I lost the baby.” I pause for a moment to let him absorb it, then without tears I sum it up. “Who knows why it happened! Was it my weakness—my weak fucking mind? Grandmother blames the cab driver, my mother your mother.

  “I’ve gone over it a thousand times, but it doesn’t change the fact—the pain—”

  Pain contracts my stomach with the intensity and horror of that night, and I’m losing it again. The white walls of the hospital reappear and I’m there again in the emergency room, on the operating table, suspended in my comatose sleep. When I opened my eyes, they tell me it was a boy.

  The wind blows at me now and the cab I never saw honks and Mrs. Beltrafio cradles my head in her immortal arms, and I bla
me them all for the cell, the embryo, the child I lost out of frailty and weakness, out of the powerlessness of youth. But most of all I blame us, him and me, for the pain we couldn’t put aside. Hatred curdles upon my gauze-like skin. He meets my gaze without flinching, and only when I see his pain, crawling like black tar over his gleaming pupils, do I forgive him with a kindness and ease I’ve never known before.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. His head hangs and his entire torso collapses, sliding against the wall. “I had no idea.”

  “I wanted it that way,” I say. “I couldn’t have borne it—first you returning to me out of guilt, then even worse, out of pity.”

  “Is that why you turned me away at your showing—because you thought I didn’t truly love you?”

  “Why couldn’t you love me just for me, not the Russian-Jewish-me but for the Americanized-me—for the Emma-me, for what we alone had between us?”

  “How can you say such a thing—I loved you for all of you—I still love you.”

  “It doesn’t matter”—my voice splinters—“it doesn’t matter now because I’m here—I’m here only because I know nothing of you remains.” I point at my heart.

  “Are you painting now?”

  “In a sketchbook, I make notes, paintings I’m planning—planning as I plan the wedding.”

  “Back to your old cage?” he thunders. His eyes lift for an instant, then retreat to the floor. “Why are you marrying this person—this person who has zero insight into you?”

  I clear my throat. “I came to you once—to your building. It was after you had come to me. I had a perverse curiosity.”

  I recall the whiff of the sultry spring air as I pried my window open and saw him approach. At first I imagined he was lost, but he sat down directly beneath my window, three floors up. He remained in a perfect stillness, as if gripped by some apocalyptic epiphany. Only minutes passed but they felt like hours before he rose and faced our buzzer. He pressed the button next to my last name, scrawled next to Aaron’s. The sound rang through the apartment like an ambulance, its persistence smothering me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t lift my arms or legs, couldn’t pick up the phone—Aaron was on call—I was alone and alone I neither ate nor drank; I sat at the window watching him till he left.

  The next day I broke up with Aaron. “I’m too wild,” I announced, “I can’t commit—I can never be the wife you need or want.” “You’re being preposterous,” Aaron repeated again and again as if my resolve had turned him into a drone. I packed my bags and went to stay with Stone, and during that week when my very breath seemed to have been allotted to my body in stingy rations, I went to Eddie’s building to see him. I only managed to touch the glass door with my nose when I saw him with another woman in the lobby. She had brilliant, fiery red hair, the sort of red that appears flammable, that’s all I remember of her. They were laughing and leaning coquettishly into each other, and he appeared to my stunned eye to be unapologetically happy—happier, I thought bitterly, than me. No, he had not come for me! He had come for more forgiveness, more truths, for yet another salve to lay across the ancient wound between us; only his was still festering and bloodied by guilt, the guilt his mother wrought and that he now bore on her behalf because she had none.

  He was engaged again, or perhaps he was married, I berated myself, and ran from the lobby. I didn’t want to ruin it for her the way I had ruined things for Melanie, ruined it for Sylvia, and within a few short hours, I had returned, breathless and contrite, to Aaron.

  “Who was the redhead?” I reveal myself, wearing my jealousy like a turban on my head.

  “What redhead?”

  “I saw you with her in your lobby—after you had come to me, only a week later, only a week later you were with someone else,” I accuse him now despite a renewed commitment to calm, “and you looked so happy!”

  “Redhead, redhead—I can’t even remember—I didn’t date anyone for a while after that. I was happy—happy because I was finally free—free to be with you. I wanted to run and tell you everything. I finally confronted my mother and my brother—we fought and yelled and said all the things people never recover from. Then I left and haven’t returned since. I’ve never breathed easier, never felt better. You were right—to liberate me.” He steadies himself as anger overtakes him. “Did you ever consider the possibility that this redhead was just someone who lived in my building? Or someone else’s guest? Why didn’t you come up to me? Why didn’t you ever trust me? For God’s sake—your stupid pride!”

  “Yes, I thought the worst—”

  “Because you always think the worst—because—because—why couldn’t you see that I loved you—why were you so blind?”

  “Doesn’t matter anymore, does it? None of it matters. I’ve come tonight to say goodbye.”

  “You’ve come because you want me to let you go,” he says with sudden rage, “you want me to say I am moving on.”

  “You owe me that.”

  “For what—for having kept the most important fact away from me, for not giving me a chance to make a life with you—to have that child? I would have wanted our child!”

  He’s on the verge of something more, but nothing comes—nothing but a groan, some kind of strange animal sound that I can’t name. I rush at him as he manages, “Why—I—I—” and pin his wrists against the wall. My mouth is on his lids and lashes. I drink his tears as they swim over my nose and cheeks and like transparent serpents run down his neck. I can’t see him anymore; I only feel his moist breath permeate my skin. And our lips, from habit, from memory, from ancient longing, find each other with alacrity and ease. We cling to each other in agony. And as we sway in the airless white room, I see in my mind my own eyes glaring at me from the empty walls—accusatory pools of black—and pull away. “My sweet Ignatius,” I say, pulling further and further away, “we’ll be all right.”

  “We’re past everything, you and I”—he speaks with urgency as if I might dissolve—“guilt, marriage, family, even—what did you once call it—our little spheres of suffering! We’re past everything, Emma, and that’s why we can do anything now—”

  “You’re free, but I’m not,” I say quietly.

  “Because you’re engaged again,” he reproaches me, laughing brokenly.

  “I have to go,” I say, my heart drumming. I open up the door of the small square room and burst out into the white purified space of the gallery, where my body parts—legs, breasts, pelvis, mouth, hair—stare at me from walls. I nod at myself and run out and down the corridor, down the winding staircase, I tip-tap-tip-tap-top down in my red stilettos, hoping not to tumble or fall. He runs after, his feet are tapping too, echoing my footsteps. We’re downstairs where we began, in neutral corporate space, squashed between people.

  He stares at me with defiance. “Can’t you see that we’re stuck in a circle—we keep repeating our mistakes—” He grabs my hand and, on the invitation that seems to have been welded into my palm, writes out an address. “After the show, meet me here—it’s my new place. I don’t live in the loft anymore. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Waiting—how long is that?”

  “We’ve been given another chance. It wasn’t closure you sought, it was me. Tonight is our chance to rewrite the past.”

  “To rewrite it? No, that’s not possible!” I protest. “Why would I even want to—these are my scars to wear upon my face—”

  “You’re even more beautiful now than I remember,” he whispers.

  But I’m immune to flattery now—it only glides on the surface but doesn’t penetrate my heart. I take a breath and end it. “Nothing you say will make a difference. I will not hurt Aaron. I’m getting married in a matter of months.” A debilitating melancholy cuts off my speech and the black-and-white images dissipate into a blinding grayness. I smile at him and shift unsteadily and click my heels with sudden resolve and walk across the wooden gallery floor and out the glass doors I run. I’m on the dusty street and trucks honk and cabs swerve maniaca
lly and he is behind me, here, catching his breath.

  I stop and turn to look at him and listen.

  “It doesn’t matter if you marry Aaron or anyone else because ultimately you will always be with me. The year we met something incredible happened and it has bound us for life—”

  “Your mother would have sent me to the gas chambers if she had a chance! Can’t you see how that makes everything still impossible?”

  “Haven’t I made it clear? I’ve cut my mother off. You will never need to see her again. I will always, always protect you!”

  “You don’t get it. I don’t want your protection. Do you know what I didn’t tell your mother at that lunch? My favorite Shakespearean play is actually The Merchant of Venice. ‘Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions … If you prick us do we not bleed? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?’ What babkus! What about the end, the fact that Shylock’s daughter is marrying the guy who wants to ruin him, and a gentile at that. As if Shylock would feel honored by such a match! What supercilious, superiority-ridden gentile bullshit! Shylock wants to be merely acknowledged as being human but by no means equal. That’s not enough for me—that’s a pittance if you ask me. I don’t want these degrading sympathies! I want to be the one wearing the crown and the armor. I am the queen and the soldier all in one, choosing my life, my path—I am no one’s servant girl in need of proving myself—”

  “Are you sure about that? This new blissful domesticity you’ve mapped out for yourself—with this Aaron character—does he know any of this about you? You’ve withheld and manipulated and sugarcoated for him—you’ve told him nothing! What a fantastical creature you’ve given him! You’re lying once again on a large scale—by omitting the truth.”

  “No, I’ve merely laid down my weapons. I’ve said yes to simplicity, contentment, to the normal life.”

  “Ah, again the fear of humanity—of trust—rears its ugly head! Is this your so-called reign? As far as I can see you’ve indentured yourself for life.”