Marja preferred answering to her nickname, but she only allowed her family to use it. Didn’t even mention it to anyone else. They had enough trouble with Marja. For the outsider, “Marysia” became nothing short of an unrewarding, gabled tongue-twister.
“Well, whether or not they acknowledge it, I’m out of there the second Natalya says ‘I do’ to Mike. I’m not even going to stick around for the reception,” she said loftily, licking her fork to get the last of the lo mein, “just hitching the U-Haul to Sasha’s car and bringing my stuff over.”
Finished, she crossed back to the kitchen to throw the empty container out and toss the fork into the sink.
Natalya and Kady exchanged glances, shaking their heads. Marja might have graduated at the top of her graduating class, but she still had a bit of growing up to do.
Sasha grinned. As if leaving the house where she was born were that easy. One by one, they had moved out of the house in Queens, to be closer to the hospital where they all ultimately worked. Her parents had gone through the experience four times already. The fifth and last time was definitely not going to be a piece of cake, not if she knew Mama. Or Daddy, who was more versed than most about the kind of lowlife that was known to sometimes walk the streets of New York.
“Daddy will probably want to supervise,” she told Marja. “You know how he is.”
Marja sighed, planting herself beside Sasha on the love seat. “Yes, I do, God love ’im.” It wasn’t that she didn’t have the utmost admiration and respect for her parents, and she did love them to death. She just wanted the opportunity to miss them once in a while. And to leave the house occasionally without verbally leaving a detailed itinerary in her wake. Whenever she tried, her father made it a point of telling her that he was asking because, just in case she went missing, they’d know where to start looking for her.
“Girls, they are going missing all the time,” he told her with feeling. “You, we will not have missing. So, where is it you are going?”
Marja knew the dialogue by heart—and wanted to put some distance between it and herself until such time as she could hear it without having it set her teeth on edge.
She glanced from one sister to another, looking for support. It wasn’t as if this was something new, a phase their parents were going through. This was everyday life at the Pulaski residence.
“I just really need some time away from them. A vacation,” she added because it sounded less harsh.
Natalya nodded, feigning sympathy. “Yeah, I know how it is. Hot meals, clean sheets, no rent to worry about, laundry done.” She sighed loudly, shaking her head. “Must be hell.”
“Oh, like you didn’t leave the first chance you got,” Marja reminded her.
“I had to. Sasha was lonely.” She glanced toward her older sister. “Weren’t you, Sasha?”
“I was too busy to be lonely,” Sasha deadpanned.
“It’s not that I’m not appreciative,” Marja persisted. “It’s just that I want them to stop looking at me as if I was their little girl.” The others might not have thought so, but it really was no picnic, being the youngest.
“News flash.” Perched on the arm of the love seat, Tania leaned over and pretended to knock on Marja’s head. “You’ll always be their little girl.”
“We all will,” Sasha interjected. “Even when we’re in our nineties.”
Marja shivered at the very thought. “Well, we need to fix that.”
Sasha curved her hand protectively over her abdomen that was just beginning to swell. “Can’t. It’s a fact of life, Marysia. I’m already beginning to feel extremely protective and the baby’s not even here yet.”
Marja leaned over her older sister’s stomach, cupping her hand to her mouth as she addressed the tiny swell. “Run, kid, run for your life. This is your aunt Marysia speaking. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Idiot.” Sasha laughed, thumping her youngest sister in the head affectionately.
If she didn’t move this along, they’d never get to the reason they were all here. Kady looked at the last arrival. “I thought you said you were coming straight home to fall into bed.” She’d all but had to twist Tania’s arm to get her to agree to this get-together. It was called at the last minute because all five of them were very rarely off at the same time and she wanted everyone’s input.
Tania’s mouth curved in an enigmatic smile. She’d almost forgotten about that. “I was.”
“Last-minute emergency?” Though their areas of expertise were all different—Sasha was an ob-gyn, Natalya, a pediatrician, Kady a cardiovascular surgeon, Tania was leaning toward spinal surgery while Marja thought about being an internist—they all knew how that was. One moment they could be walking out the door, the next they were being paged or button-holed to work on a patient who’d just been escorted in with flashing lights and sirens.
She wouldn’t say that Jesse Steele constituted an emergency, but in some people’s opinion—women people—he might be seen as a five-alarm fire. Still, she inclined her head and murmured, “Not exactly.”
“Then what ‘exactly’?” Natalya asked, exasperated.
Kady leaned forward on the sofa, her eyes narrowing as she carefully peered at Tania’s face. “Wait, I know that face.”
Tania drew back. “You should. I’ve had the room down the hall from you for—”
But Kady wasn’t about to get distracted by an avalanche of rhetoric. She waved her hand for Tania to stop talking. “That’s your I’m-going-out-with-a-new-guy face.”
Intrigued, Natalya moved Kady out of the way and took her turn studying Tania’s face. “You’re right, it is.” She looked properly impressed as she glanced back at Kady. “Boy, you’re good.”
Tania was on her feet. She wasn’t in the mood to be teased. “You’re all crazy. I expect this kind of thing from Mama, not you,” she complained, slanting a glance to Kady and then Natalya.
As she began to turn away, Kady put herself directly in Tania’s face. Of the five of them, Kady and Tania were the ones who looked most like one another. They all looked different. Their father was fond of saying that it was as if someone had given him a rose garden with five very different roses. Sasha had hair the color of midnight, Natalya was a vibrant redhead, while Marja’s hair was golden-brown with red highlights shot through it. Natalya and Tania were both honey blondes.
“I’m afraid it’s hereditary,” Kady said with as straight a face as she could manage. “Something that’s passed on from mother to daughter—”
“Like nagging?” Tania countered.
Natalya shook her head. “Uh-uh, don’t let Mama hear you say that she nags. You will never hear the end of it.”
“Which constitutes nagging,” Tania declared. She spread her hands. “I rest my case.”
“The hell with your case. Spill it,” Natalya ordered. “Who is it this time? You dumped poor Eddie less than three weeks ago.” Eddie Richards was a fifth-year resident in pediatrics. “His body’s not even cold.”
“No,” Tania agreed with a smile that Sasha had often called inscrutable, “but then, his body never was.” And then she shrugged, as if tossing aside that part of her life. “But it was time to move on.”
Like her parents and her sisters, Sasha worried about Tania, about the fact that Tania had had more boyfriends than the rest of them put together. There were times when Sasha felt that Tania acted more like a moving target than someone looking for a meaningful relationship, something that had, up to this point, never been part of her life. They all knew why and they gave Tania her space, but that didn’t mean they weren’t concerned.
If she wasn’t careful, Sasha thought, Tania could very easily wind up on a self-destructive path. “You don’t move on, you move around, like someone who—”
Tania shot Sasha a warning look. “Don’t start, Sash. I’m too tired to go ten rounds with you, okay?” And then she looked at Kady. “I thought we were supposed to get together to hold your hand and help you make decision
s about your wedding. I think we should do it quick before your groom comes to his senses and decides to head for the hills.”
“Nobody’s running anywhere,” Sasha said in a quiet voice, purposely looking at Tania. “Running was never a solution.” She let her words sink in before defusing any protest Tania might offer by saying, “I should know.”
Sasha was referring to the way she was after her fiancé was killed right in front of her. Before Detective Tony Santini came into her life and they healed one another.
Well, things had worked out for Sasha, but that didn’t mean that they worked out for everyone, Tania thought with a sigh. “If we’re going to get serious, I’ll drag out the tissues.”
“Why isn’t Mama here?” Natalya asked suddenly, realizing they were short one very vocal participant. “She likes to be in on these plans.”
That would be her fault, Kady thought. “I just want to have a few things in place before Mama takes everything over.”
“Mama doesn’t always take over,” Sasha said, defending the woman they all adored. Their mother meant well, she just was accustomed to doing things faster than waiting for someone else to do the task. She tended to be a little overzealous.
Tania laughed, shaking her head. “Right, and Napoleon ran a day-care center because he was so easygoing.”
Just then, the doorbell rang. The five sisters all exchanged glances.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Tania asked Kady, but her question was meant for the others, as well.
“No,” Kady answered.
“Not me,” Marja chimed in, getting up again for another go at the refrigerator.
“You owe me dinner,” Tania told her.
“Bill me,” Marja said cheerfully, rummaging around again.
Natalya was on her way to answer the door. “Well, since none of us has X-ray vision, maybe someone should answer the door.”
“Since you’re on your feet anyway…” Tania let her voice trail off as she waved her older sister on.
“No respect for your elders,” Natalya lamented, pulling the door opened.
“My thoughts exactly,” Magda Pulaski agreed, walking in. As she passed her second child, Magda gently placed two fingers beneath Natalya’s chin and pushed upward. “Close your mouth, dear. You are catching flies.” She looked about at her other daughters. No one could tell if she was hurt, angry or just taking advantage of the moment and the element of surprise. “Why are you all leaving me out? Have I done something to offend you? Have I been a bad mother?” she asked. “Sasha, were you not happy with the wedding I helped you make?”
“It was a wonderful wedding, Mama.” In truth, Sasha would have been satisfied exchanging her vows in whispers in the middle of the New York public library as long as her family was there and Tony was by her side.
“And you, you are not happy with the plans for your wedding?” she asked Natalya.
“Super plans, Mama,” Natalya responded. It had taken about eight go-rounds, but now they were pretty super.
Kady slipped her arm around her mother’s shoulder, stooping just a little because Magda was so short. “We’re not leaving you out, Mama, we thought we’d do some of the preliminary work before taking up some of your valuable time and asking you for your opinion.”
Magda frowned. She was versed to a greater or lesser degree in a dozen languages, but there were words in her adopted country that still eluded her. “I do not know what this ‘preliminary’ is, but if there is work to be done—” The look she gave Kady made her meaning clear. She meant to roll up her sleeves and pitch in from the very beginning.
Tania bit the side of her lower lip. A sign that she was uneasy. “We thought you’d be bored after planning two weddings.”
“Bored?” Magda eyed her incredulously. “Bored is sitting at home, listening to your father tell the same stories over and over again.” Sasha slipped behind her and handed her a glass of merlot, her mother’s favorite variety of wine. Magda took it without skipping a beat, nodding at her oldest daughter. “I love that man, I really do. But he can be boring.” She sighed. “So boring.” And then she beamed. “Planning weddings for my girls is not boring, it is heaven.”
Something wasn’t adding up for Kady. Only the five of them knew that they were getting together. She’d gone out of her way to make sure the word didn’t spread. “How did you find out we were having a meeting here this afternoon?”
Tania was on the receiving end of a beatific smile, as mysterious as it was amused. “I am a mother. Mothers always know when their children are up to something.”
“And this all-seeing thing hits when?” Marja asked. “Right after the water breaks?”
Magda merely smiled. “I will let you find that out for yourself, Marysia,” she promised. She sat on the sofa, taking a spot beside Kady. “All right, what have I missed?”
“Not a thing, apparently,” Marja murmured under her breath.
Magda turned to look at her youngest, her line of vision straying toward Tania, as well. Rather than respond to what her youngest had commented, Magda’s gentle hazel eyes widened.
“Oh, Tania, another one?” she asked. Surprise, dismay and sadness all mingled in her voice. “You are seeing someone new?” It wasn’t really a question so much as a request for confirmation—or better yet, denial.
Stunned, Tania threw up her hands as she looked at her sisters for an answer. “How does she do that?” she cried helplessly.
The only answer she received was the concerned expression on her mother’s thin and still remarkably unlined face.
The next moment, the previous moment was quickly swallowed up by chatter as catalogs were produced and questions and comments about the upcoming wedding flew back and forth across the room.
Magda Pulaski didn’t believe in wasting time.
The next evening, when her shift was over, found Tania staring into the contents of her closet, looking over her clothing options. Her mind was elsewhere.
The ritual was always the same. An internal argument tantamount to an emotional tug-of-war would ensue every time she was about to go out with someone.
Every single time.
It didn’t matter if it was the first date or the tenth—it had never gone beyond that number and rarely, if ever, even came close to it—she went through the same motions, the same wavering, undecided whether or not to go forward. If she canceled on the date, decided not to go through the hassles involved, then ultimately it meant that Jeff had won. Won because his presence, his memory, intimidated her.
Won because he made her afraid to live.
So, to “show” him, Tania would usually go ahead with her plans for the evening. Because she was so attractive and so seemingly outgoing, she wound up going out with a great many different men. Never becoming serious about any of them.
She’d laugh, perhaps even have a good time. But she was always split about things. So split internally that she never could fully experience anything that was happening. If she went to bed with a man, if her desire to negate Jeff’s hold on her took her that route, it was only her body that was there. Emotionally, she always slipped away, too afraid of what the consequences of her actions might entail.
And her mental game of Ping-Pong always began here, in the bedroom, as she pondered the sanity of what she was undertaking while she moved hangers about in her closet, trying to pick out something to wear.
Just as she took out a dark blue sheath, she cursed under her breath.
No, damn it, she wasn’t going to keep doing this. Jesse Steele was a nice guy, gave off nice-guy vibes, and it was just dinner, anyway. The man didn’t even know where she lived and as long as she went to a crowded place, she’d be fine. They’d meet, eat, talk and then, for tonight, go their separate ways.
And then she would think about her options.
Nothing to worry about, she told herself sternly as she slid the zipper up the back of the sheath.
She didn’t set out to like him.
Wasn’t prepared to like him.
Didn’t want to like him.
Liking someone only complicated things. You didn’t have to like the person you were physically attracted to. Liking them got in the way of the sex and, when she came right down to it, that was as far as she ever planned things. To cap off the evening with sex. Sex that would—maybe this time—somehow disintegrate the memory of that other time. That time that had smashed her soul into tiny pieces.
But all that would come—if it came at all—later. She never, ever allowed herself to be coaxed into bed on the first date. She might be lost, but she wasn’t easy. And things were done according to her plans, not anyone else’s. She made the terms, she called the shots. She only allowed the man to think he was the aggressor. He wasn’t. She was. And as the aggressor, she had the right to end it whenever she wished.
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