Invitation to a Bonfire

by Adrienne Celt

  So we carried on, me reluctant, you cocksure. I saw what I saw, I met who I met. And it wasn’t until after the sun had set that I learned Felice had gone into an unexpected second printing. Surprise bestseller. Five-star reviews. An instant classic. By then the contracts had been signed for the year, and it was too late for us to leave New Jersey—exactly as you intended, I suppose. You took the call. I came back to our house after my walk and slouched into a chair, where you ran a hand through my hair and—did I imagine it?—gave a quick tug. A shadow passed over your face when you told me the news, having first made sure I was equipped with a glass of scotch. Triumph, Vera, at steering me just as you’d planned? Or remorse? I never knew. Perhaps first one, and then—much later—the other.

  Zoya

  27.

  There is such a thing as too much foreplay. I learned that while waiting for the administration to decide about giving me a raise, early in my fourth year as a Donne School employee. I admit I didn’t need it—I had my house, some serviceable work clothes, and enough money to keep me in books and sardines. I usually cultivated a few extra plants to make sure I had fresh food all winter, a couple of tomatoes and a huge pot of basil, the exotic purple swell of an eggplant, which I liked to put in soup. Tweak free a lemon or two for tea, which I took with local honey that I got in trade from a nice older woman named Maureen Finnegan who lived on the edge of town and wore Wellington boots on every occasion that we met.

  But my tastes had changed. After a few months of fixing scrambled eggs for every meal, I lost my appetite for them entirely. Sometimes I’d pick up an egg and start to cry: because of the blank slate of it, and because I was so very tired of cracking them, mixing them, eating them. On a budget, eggs are the perfect food, until they’re not.

  I’d also become more selective about who I let John O’Brien fix me up with: now I made him run the boys past Siobhan, who picked slightly older fellows. There weren’t as many of them available, so I had maybe two or three dates a year, but they took me out in earnest. Movies, yes, but dinner too, and sometimes dancing. Instead of a diner or a small café, we went to proper restaurants with cloth napkins and dim lighting. Chandeliers. Like the men, there weren’t many such restaurants in town, and I quickly developed favorites. There was in particular a dish of stewed rabbit with mushrooms and wine that I sometimes dreamed about. That I dream about, even now. I thought it would’ve been nice to take myself there, without the feeling I was offering anything in exchange for the meal, and to go whenever I wanted instead of waiting to be asked.

  Still, I would never have considered asking for more money if John hadn’t given me the idea. It happened one day while I was inspecting a tray of herbs that had been seeded by students the previous year, and the pot holding a sprig of parsley came apart in my hand. I cradled the small root ball and blew a lock of hair out of my eyes, biting back a yelp of frustration. John was with me, taking inventory as part of a larger effort to catalogue the current growth on campus, and he noticed.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” he said.

  “It’s just stupid.” More hair fell across my face, and I had to spit it out of my mouth as I spoke. “Those girls pay how much in tuition every year and the school can’t afford a few dollars for new pots and spades?”

  “Not to mention, well, have you looked at your clothes lately?”

  I glanced up. “What about my clothes?”

  “Nothing! Nothing. Just,” he puffed his cheeks and shrugged, as if changing his mind. All the while staring pointedly at the tear in the knee of my pants, which I’d patched up years ago, after Kay tripped me.

  “So nice that you noticed,” I said. “Girls like that sort of thing.”

  “All I’m saying is, you deserve more for yourself, too. You’ve been here long enough. Proved yourself, so to speak.”

  “That’s—true. I guess.” It was hard for me to place a particular value on myself, but he had a point. Above me stretched a canopy of greens, yellows, reds. Things were trimmed back at the moment, to encourage new growth for Welcome Day. But the greenhouse was thriving, and clearly so.

  Later that afternoon I talked to Peggy in the Office of Human Resources, and she helped me submit a formal letter requesting a salary adjustment for cost of living and performance excellence. John had already walked me through the appeal for an increased project budget; that money, it turned out, was in the bag. He’d been planning to ask for it himself if I hadn’t brought it up, and the arbiter of the funds was a friend of his.

  The raise, on the other hand, required a catalogue of all the tasks I performed on a regular basis, broken down by category and expertise. I had to show growth and improvement and flexibility. Too bad, I thought, that I can’t list my new talent at putting awful little girls in their places. Since Kay graduated, my relationship with the student body had improved, though each new generation seemed to inherit at least a modicum of her spunk and spite. The difference was that now, when I was taunted, I was able to pull a mask over my face, porcelain and still. When they pinched me, if there was no one around, I jabbed them with my finger and walked off looking innocent as a flower. Nothing that would impress the administration, unfortunately. But it made me feel better.

  After making my request, the school scheduled a series of meetings for me: a walk-through of the greenhouse, a conversation with my immediate supervisors, and a final decision to be reached and relayed to me by the office of the provost, a Mr. George Round. By the time the last meeting came up, I’d been circling the prospect of new money—my new money—for weeks, and it had crept beneath my skin. I found myself looking critically at things like dish towels and tea cups, thinking about color schemes and bookends that might improve the atmosphere of my home. It wasn’t as though I’d be swimming in gold if the raise went through, but I would be able to take myself out to eat now and then. I could, as John so kindly pointed out, replace my torn jeans. There was, deep within me, still some trace of that undernourished girl who clung to the rail of a ship and dreamed of America, and I wanted so badly to impress her. To show myself how far I’d come.

  Sitting outside Mr. Round’s office, I smoothed my skirt over my knees and tried to keep from hyperventilating. A secretary perched nearby, typing. Her method was peculiar—she’d stare at the paper, taking measured breaths, fingers poised—and then with no warning burst into motion. Then she’d stop to think again. It was difficult to listen to, in my condition; I spent the silent periods in tense anticipation of a new surge of keystrokes, and when they came each one resonated in my head like the blow from a hammer. I had no idea what the provost was likely to say. My initial bluster had worn off, but in the meantime I’d grown attached to the idea of being comfortable—something I couldn’t remember ever having been before. I clasped my hands tight, and looked at my shoes. Scuffed, of course.

  The telephone rang.

  “Yes? Yes. Alright.” The secretary looked up at me and smiled. “You can go in now.”

  This, then, was it. I walked through the large oak doorway into a corner office, brightly lit by two enormous windows. Another desk, bigger than the secretary’s, was stationed ten paces away in the rear, and behind it sat a frowning gentleman in a perfectly pressed suit. I smiled to myself—George Round was not round. He was slender, and had a nice lavender tie. There were, I noted, three separate houseplants in the room, an African violet, a philodendron, and some type of fern. Obvious choices, probably selected for him by the secretary or some unseen wife, but still—well cared for. Positioned for sufficient sun. George Round looked up from the paper in his hands, and motioned for me to sit down.

  “Miss—”

  “Andropov,” I supplied, unnecessarily.

  “Yes, of course. Well.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me—” I leaned forward into his pause, prepared to defend my understanding of soil types and inflation rates and educational horticulture. My significance as a human being. “Do you have lilies in your greenhouse?”

  “I’m sorry
?” The simplicity and directness of his question caught me off guard.

  “Lilies,” George Round repeated. “Do you have any?”

  “I do.”

  We both waited for the other to continue. George Round twitched his moustache.

  “And what—”

  “I have several—”

  We laughed.

  “Well, that’s lovely.” His glasses must’ve fogged, because he took them off and cleaned them, using the underside of his pretty tie. “I care a great deal for lilies. Such an elegant flower.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Most people prefer roses. Which—I like them well enough, but there’s something ordinary about the shape of them, I think. People are familiar with roses. Whereas lilies—”

  “A simpler profile, but somehow more elusive.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a brief silence. George Round picked up the stack of papers in front of him, and straightened them out, clearing his throat again. A tick, I wondered, or the precursor to our real conversation? Perhaps now he’d question my core competencies, or bring up my behavior towards Kay. As far as I knew she’d never ratted me out, but I couldn’t be sure what was written there. Dark marks in the file cabinet.

  “This all seems to be in order,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, I think I have everything I need. It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Andropov.”

  “Sir.” Not knowing what else to do, I stood up. “And my salary increase?”

  “Oh! Approved. Heartily approved.” He beamed. “Unless you’re unhappy with the amount?”

  “Not at all,” I said quickly. Later, I would wonder if this was a mistake, if I could’ve asked for more. A skill I’m still learning. “Thank you.”

  “It will be reflected in your next paycheck.”

  I nodded and thanked Mr. Round again, and when I walked out into the antechamber I gave the secretary a dazed smile. That was all? That was all. I’d thought of nothing else for weeks, prepared my arguments for days, and now it was over. I had done well. The sun was shining; early fall. Practically still summertime.

  As I pushed out of the building, I wondered if George Round knew to water the African violets from the bottom, and whether he remembered to spritz them when the furnace dried out the office air. Probably so. And if not, what did it matter to me?

  It was hot, I realized. The good pair of stockings I’d worn to look chic were now sticky with sweat, so I ducked behind a tree and peeled them off, rolling them up into my purse. I walked to the ice cream parlor and got myself a scoop of strawberry, then wandered around until the cream melted down onto my fingers, and threw the half-eaten cone away. Despite being happy, there was a strange feeling in my fingertips, toetips, the top layer of my skin. Unresolved energy, sparking. I thought about wandering until I found Colin, my unfortunate old flame, and throwing him against the side of a building to see how he liked it. Probably he would, probably too much.

  What had I hoped would happen? Perhaps that my life would change. But people walked by and no one congratulated or admired me. My body just kept going, like a well-wound clock. I took a taxi to the department store and picked out a new blouse and new dress and new pair of work pants—reinforced duck cloth instead of denim. In the dressing room I paused to feel the weight of the fabric against my skin, slightly different with each garment. I took another taxi home and tipped the driver well. We passed a moving truck at one point, which of course I gave no thought to at all. In the pivotal moments of your life, how often are you really paying attention to what matters? I’d like to ask Vera that: I suspect her answer would be different from most people’s. Different from mine, absolutely. She’d probably wrapped every item on that truck herself, with cleverness and care. Her own innovative solutions. And perhaps what I felt was not just the glow of a job well done, but some subconscious glimmer of anticipation.

  The next day, all our lives would change, every one. In a couple of brief sightings: a man peering into a greenhouse, hat in hand. A girl, breathing against the glass to clean it, startled by the closeness of his face. I know it was Vera’s idea to bring them to Maple Hill, and so now, looking back, I wonder how much of the future she might have expected. Reason suggests: almost none. But when did Vera stoop to reason?

  Lev

  28 June 1931, later

  Airmail via [Redacted]

  One more thing. I’ll send these letters together, and hopefully you’ll feel the tug of time between them, how I set down my pen and folded the paper, and then was bowled over by the sense of you, present. I often get this feeling at home, when we’re separated by a wall or a few city blocks; some whiff of you walks into the room behind me, brushes its fingertips over my shoulders, reaches a hand down the top of my shirt to caress the tough nub of my breastbone. I never want you more, Vera, than in those moments. When the distance between us is but a clarion cry, a note on our closeness. Tonight you crawled up onto my knees, pushing my chair back several inches and nearly toppling both of us over. I could feel the weight of you, could almost make out your outline. Your fingers scattering themselves over my skin, as if setting spells from some private grimoire, a book of incantations built to my exact specifications. Bring in the clear and cloudless wife. Her invisibility irresistible, my brain all woolen with desire.

  Were those hands my hands? The ones that pulled at me, put me in my place. Was it my hips that pitched and rolled until the inevitable cataclysm? Hull of a ship, breached. Cheek of a woman, brushed by cheek. I know what most people would say about lonely Lev in his lightless cottage at the end of the land. Lantern kicked over, fire brewing in the dirt of the floor before fizzling out. Self abuse, heavy use. But I have more faith than most people. In you, especially.

  Tomorrow night I’m meeting again with the courier, Vlad, so he can secret me across the heavily patrolled border back to the home of my birth. Our births. From there I’ll have twenty-four hours, along with my own sense of momentum and the hand spade I picked up—an ingenious contraption that can be folded in two so as to look less like a knife if one’s possessions are tossed by suspicious soldiers. Today I found a small hillock and practiced shooting into it, getting used to the kick of the Italian pistol and fumbling my fingers through the process of a quick reload. I won’t write you again until I’m homeward bound, or perhaps I won’t write again at all. Whether due to hasty retreat or an untimely bullet in an unlikely place (forehead, home of dreams, kaput, et cetera), this may be the last missive you receive from my misadventure. I pray that fate not let those Marxist thugs derail me—I could not stand the sovietskii sabor on my tongue forever, flavor of a lost country. You know they’d keep me if they could, writing incompetent manifestos or moldering in an early grave. With any luck you’ll see me soon, manuscript in hand, all triumph.

  But if not, at least I had one last taste of you this evening, and I wanted you to know it, that your distant body was as nourishing as any meal. Salted radishes. Stewed pear. White wine. Red blood. I bit your unseen lip and into my mouth there came an iron tang. Back in our house, in our bed, by your candle, I’m sure you cried out and then reached for a tissue to wipe away the stain. Touched a finger to your newly bruised mouth. Settled back into the pillows, content.

  Zoya

  28.

  The next day I was flush with my financial success, reorganizing succulents to make room for a new display—a small pond for water lilies, which seemed an appropriate homage to the tastes of my new benefactor. When I heard something scuffling at the building’s rear, I thought, Already? It was early for the girls to be harassing me on my home ground. Most weren’t even moved into their dorms, so where had they found the time to come creeping? What eager devils, I thought. What pretty witches. Let’s get started, if you wish.

  Taking care not to crush the water lines or kick over any vital terra-cotta, I picked my way to the sound’s point of origin. A window, tapping. A stick outside, giving up with a snap. I thought I might g
ive them a bit of a scare, these interlopers, but even after pushing aside several jungle plants I couldn’t see a soul. The glass was fogged up and lightly mildewed—annoying after the deep clean John and I had done, but this particular pane stood behind a bushy palm, and the fronds hid the worst of the mold. Since my shirt was already filthy, I breathed onto the stain and wiped it away with my sleeve.

  Then I screamed.

  In that scream: terror, surprise, embarrassment, and then—a tiny trill of pleasure. For there was no pert girl waiting to wiggle her fingers at me in some impertinent hello. Just a long nose, a raised eyebrow. A man bent over and trying every bit as hard to see my face as I was trying to see his. And what’s more, I knew this man’s name. It was Leo Orlov, beyond a shadow of a doubt, though his hair was combed differently from as was usual in his photographs. Lev Pavlovich, I would come to call him.

  He stood up and gave me a genial nod, then walked off across the campus lawn as if he did so every day. And, in time, of course he would. I put a hand up to my heart, then touched the cold glass. Not a hallucination. Thirty paces away he stopped and wiped something off his shoe on the grass.

  But what did it mean? An imagined Orlov could have been chalked up to the same bout of magical thinking that had led me to strip off my stockings while standing a stone’s throw from the Hall of Science the day before. Dreamy lust, bodily volition. But a real Orlov, a flesh-and-blood incarnation? Perhaps he was just passing through. A road trip with some fellow expatriate, on the run from an agent of the Soviet secret police, the dreaded NKVD. A book tour with a signing at the local shop. I knew vaguely that he was married; perhaps his wife liked maple trees. Perhaps they were visiting someone, an old shut-in astronomer who was helping Lev map the rules of a new star system. Two planets orbiting the same sun in an infinite double ellipse. That kind of thing.

  It was lunchtime. Taking a moment to wash my hands and de-smear the green matter from my clothing, I went to the cafeteria in search of answers. Hilda and Nadine both waved from the kitchen; they looked more and more alike these days. Returning students bubbled around me, oohing and aahing at the new ice cream freezer and pulling their parents away from the salad. It was nice to go unrecognized; I had been right before, it was too early for the girls to pay me any mind. Glancing behind myself to make sure I wasn’t followed, I slipped into the kitchen and stage whispered.