by Dana Arama
Who is she? I thought. Sergey's wife? Surely not. Her honest concern was not compatible with Sergey’s personality. I was not unhappy with her presence at this moment. The loneliness felt unbearable now. "I just want to wash my face and sit down."
"Come," she said soothingly and led me to the sink. I washed my face. With a damp cloth she pulled from her bag, I cleaned up my smeared makeup. She never left my side until I felt ready to go, and then walked me to one of the empty seats in the lobby.
"Are you here with anyone? You want me to call them while you wait here?"
I thought a moment about what she said and was tempted to accept the soothing arrangement, but I felt the need to look in the eyes of the redhead next to Sergey and see if she was the redhead in question. I gave myself a moment to recover and thanked her.
"I am Natalia." She reached out a hand with a warm smile.
"Thank you, Natalia. I’m Gabriella." I reached out a hand and pressed hers warmly. "Gabriella Korman." Her expression did not change, which just made me like her even more. "I'm sorry. You’ve missed a great concert because of me. Please return to your seat. I feel much better." The tremor in my voice made her pause. I glanced toward the hall. I then gave her a smile that promised recovery. She was convinced.
"I was glad to meet you, Mrs. Korman. Goodbye."
"Goodbye, Natalia. Thank you so much for everything."
Natalia left. I inhaled deeply. I folded the tie with trembling hands. I got up and opened the heavy door that led into the hall. The emcee was on stage, introducing the competitor who had won third place last year. Applause accompanied him on his way to the piano. I rushed to my place. On the way, I checked out the women with Sergey. The brunette was still in place, as was Sergey, the redhead still beside him, her long legs crossed. I tried to read her body language to determine if she was there with him or the man on the other side. She was wrapped in a large red shawl that made it impossible to see which way her body leaned. I looked carefully. There was something familiar to me about her. No doubt I had seen her before. Where?
If I was as skilled as her, I would have known that you need little more than a wig to disguise your identity.
***
"It was a courageous decision." The quiet voice broke the silence in the car.
"What decision are you talking about?" I was lost in thought about the redhead. Did she come with Sergey? I tried to remember the moment when I saw her next to him. I could not read her body language, but what about his? Did they exchange a look? Were they touching arms beyond the unavoidable touch of a stranger in close proximity? I could not suggest anything beyond what was created in my imagination.
"Your decision to finally return to the world and introduce me as a partner. I understand that this is the only way to broadcast ‘business as usual,’ but maybe there was something externalized too?"
"So basically, you knew the whole time?" I felt another mask fell off my conduct in front of him. I clutched my purse tight. The tie inside it was like a loaded gun. I found it strange how it was natural for me to return home with him.
"I knew when I agreed to work for you.” He gave me an understanding glance. I wondered when he managed to get to know me so well. Was I more obvious than I thought? "I realized that there’s no immediate threat to you, but you’re traumatized. I want you to know that I'm here, and I'll be by your side - any way you want to introduce me."
In reflex, I put my hand on his arm and took it away. I remembered my mother's hot iron, which had I touched as a child. I knew that only bad things would happen if I continued in this direction. I fought the urge to return to living my life with the passion that characterized it before the disaster. I hated myself for what I longed to feel, for I wanted to go back to sculpting, indulge my yearning to touch and create things.
"I'm not sure you’ll be happy about this decision tomorrow morning. It’s too late to warn you, but I think it's going to be ugly. The more outrageous the headlines, the more newspapers are sold.”
"That’s tomorrow. In a week, we’ll be old news, but your training will continue. In the end, you’ll be able to leave the house with confidence. That’s our real goal. With respect to what they have to say about us, I personally I don’t care one iota.”
But by the next day, he cared a lot.
Chapter 12
In the morning, I went through the events of the previous evening. I went over my relationship with my family in my mind. There was so much venom beneath their feigned fairness. The two princes of the family both had bad reputations with the girls. I knew of at least three abortions that Nathaniel funded. For years, I thought that Dan was saved from a similar fate only because of our marriage. I knew what made them hate me so much: I stood in their way; I took care of Dan. For reasons they did not understand, he was deeply in love with me, and I aggravated Nathanael, the chief troublemaker.
Now I remembered the competition between Nathaniel and Dan, which was known to everyone and began in childhood. Nathaniel, the youngest, was his mother's son, Dan, the eldest, was a copy of his father - not in his looks, but in his haughty demeanor. It was not recklessness, which characterized the other two.
One day in July, when Dan was in Russia, I went to his parents' home. We had been married for three years and I had started a course of hormone therapy as part of a fertility treatment. The hot flashes I suffered were unbearable. We had not yet installed air-conditioning, and I hoped to dispel the heat by swimming in their pool.
I was showered, dressed, and ready to go home. I had just closed the door to Dan's room when I heard Nathaniel’s voice. "It’s been much too long since you fucked in this room..."
This opening did not bode well. "Why not say 'Hi, sister-in-law?" I asked, trying to remind him that I was not the same girl who had pushed him away from her at a party when I was seventeen.
"Hi, sister-in-law. How about we finish what we started - how long? Fifteen years ago?" He put his hands on both sides of the door frame and leaned into me. I was trapped between him and the door.
"We didn’t start anything so there’s nothing to finish. Nathaniel, let me get out of here!" But my firm voice seemed to only spur him on more.
"Too bad.” He ran his thumb over my breasts. “Right now, I can enjoy you more."
"Don’t touch me!" I yelled at him.
At first I regretted that Lily was not home. I tried to push him away, but the door opened up behind me. I stumbled back into the room, which until then contained only good memories. Nathaniel grabbed my shirt and pushed me onto Dan’s old bed. I tried to run, but he grabbed me and ripped off my shirt and slapped me. I lay beneath him, frozen and frightened. I could feel him pulling off my skirt and panties. I could not believe that he would go so far… when he entered me I closed my eyes, as if by doing so, I could hide from him.
After he finished, I sat on Dan’s bed, cringing and crying. My cheeks still burned from Nathaniel’s slap. He was wiping his cock with the shreds of my ripped shirt when the door opened. The stunned look on Lily's face offered me no consolation.
The next two months were nightmarish. The hormone shots worked me up to new heights of sensitivity. I considered complaining to the police, but I could not appreciate the implications, or take responsibility for them. At the end of the two months, two things happened: the first was Nathaniel’s vasectomy; the other was Dan’s joyous announcement one Friday, after three years of futile attempts for me to conceive, that I was in the second month of my pregnancy.
Avner and Lily froze in their places. Their eldest son, they knew, offered no hope for grandchildren, and their second son was now sterile and would not have any offspring. To everyone - except Dan - it was clear that I had become pregnant as a result of Nathaniel’s rape two months earlier.
On the Sunday morning, I received a surprise visit from Avner. "Lily told me what happened," he began.
"I haven’t told anybody," I replied. "Yet.”
"What about the pregnancy? Have you decided
to go on with it?" he asked, adding, "Dan looked really happy."
"Dan will only know that it was a miscarriage," I replied coldly. I could not find warmth or empathy for him. "It’ll solve the problem for all of us."
"Let's be honest," he said, squirming. "Dan won’t give you children."
"Let's be honest," I imitated him sarcastically. "The problem isn’t with me. I’ll have another child someday. If my relationship with Dan goes on as it is, I'm not sure that you’d be the grandfather.”
Looking down, his expression different from the arrogant one he always projected, he offered to give us the house and rein in Dan’s behavior, if I promised not to terminate the pregnancy. By the end of our meeting, I had a home, a child, and a husband who would turn over a new leaf, and not raise his hand at me anymore. The rest of the family saw me as a bone in their throats. Do not swallow and do not spit. Now that Dan and Robbie had ceased to be part of the equation, I had just become plain unnecessary.
I stretched in bed and thought about what awaited me downstairs. The Friday headlines tended to be particularly shocking. I had been through many of their juicy iterations and I did not wish to experience it again. With great difficulty, I pulled myself out of bed. Since my days of hiding were over, staying in bed was not an option. I decided that some black type spread on a white page would not stop me. Not even the mafia or the Korman family.
On my way to get my morning coffee, I looked through the big glass windows. Guy was sitting on the patio. There was something very manly in his posture, in the way he stroked his long hair, gripping a mobile device, one ankle on the opposite knee. There was something impatient in the way his free hand was moving between the knee, chest, and hair. I longed to listen, to understand what was bothering him. Could it be the same thing that, only last night, had been of no concern to him at all?
I moved slowly by the open doors and caught a bit of the call. "So stop believing everything you read in the newspapers, okay?" I heard clear distress in his voice. He pressed his free hand to his head. "Mom, calm down. It's part of the job. I'm not going to talk to you about it." He paused, listening to his mother reluctantly. "I'm not sure I’ll make it to dinner. We’ll see." He hung up and immediately got a new call. I left him to deal with it in private and I turned to look at what had been written about us in the paper. With all my heart, I hoped it would not prove too embarrassing.
The most humiliating of all the headlines was that of the gossip column: "After losing her husband and her son, Gabriella Korman has found a replacement in the form of a mysterious young man who accompanies her these days." I wondered if the headline gave cause to sue the newspaper, but the two images accompanying the article - one of us at the restaurant, and the other at the concert in Tel Aviv - backed up the text. I continued reading until the phone interrupted me. I figured this would happen this morning. Gossip was outrageous, and I knew that everyone that gossiped would call me to try to pry out more information to share.
"Good morning. Can I talk to Mrs. Korman?" It was a woman’s voice speaking in a refined Russian accent.
"Speaking.” Although I suspected who it was, I preferred to find out if my assumptions were false.
"Natalia. We met yesterday, at the concert. I got your number from Lilia and I wanted to find out how you are."
Out on the patio, Guy was also fielding phone calls.
"Natalia, I'm so glad you called. I never got to thank you properly yesterday.”
"No need to thank me. You sound a lot better. I'm happy for that.”
With half an ear, I heard Guy laughing in embarrassment. “It's part of the job, man. Just work. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
"Maybe next week we could go for lunch?" I asked Natalia, "I'd love it if you’d say yes.”
"That’s a great idea.” I could hear the smile in her voice. "I'll call you and we’ll coordinate the final details. Does Monday sound good?"
"Sounds great. I’m looking forward to it."
I loaded a tray with a fresh cup of coffee for Guy, a cup of coffee for me, and the last pieces of Esther’s pie. "This is to sweeten the morning," I said as I put the tray on the table on the patio.
"You know you can just unplug the phone, right? It would be sensible, given the situation.”
"That's what you're doing?"
"Absolutely. I'm not going to let anyone ruin my weekend.”
"What else are you planning for the weekend?" Now he had turned his attention to me. "Anything that involves leaving the house is out of the question, of course. The paparazzi will be unbearable..."
"They’d follow us?"
"It’s likely," I confirmed.
"I’d be totally irresponsible if I brought photographers to my parents’ door, right?”
"When you look at it like that, you're absolutely right.”
"So what alternative plan do you have?" He sipped his coffee and took a piece of pie.
"To evade the paparazzi, or for the weekend?"
"The weekend."
"I thought about a James Bond marathon or a box set of romcoms." I had never done it before – I did not watch movies while I was in hiding - but I thought he might enjoy it.
"I like the sound of James Bond."
"I'll make the popcorn."
He smiled. "We got away with it.”
"I wish you were right. From my experience, this may be just the beginning.”
***
I was looking forward to Monday.
I expected new, social pressure-free information. I could practice the social skills that I feared I had lost and I was delighted by my meeting with Natalia.
"I wasn’t a top model,” Natalia admitted with a humble smile as we sat on my patio. "My look is pretty regular, just like every well-groomed girl in Moscow. Really nothing special."
"And I was sure you were a ballet dancer," I said, smiling at her. "Because of your wrists. You’re very delicate."
She laughed. "Like any good girl, I did ballet from a young age. I got into modeling by chance. I was looking for a job that would suit my school hours. Sometimes it seemed to me that all my life’s been like that. No planning. That’s how I met my husband, and that’s how I came to Israel. Coincidence.”
"And the children? Born in Israel?”
"Oh... you’ve hit a nerve. The oldest was born in Russia, the little one in Israel. This is a good enough reason for them to fight all the time.”
"That’s children… they always find something to squabble about.”
"How many children do you have?”
She does not read the Friday newspapers, I thought with relief. I loved and hated her for raising the question. I wanted to note that I had one child, but he was no longer with me. Instead, I said: "I made do with one child."
"Really? You don’t seem to me like a woman who’d be content with just one. You’re such a warm person.”
Her openness was unexpected. "I always wanted a big family, it just didn’t work out." All my friends knew about my years of effort to have children, but Dan’s very low sperm count forced us to settle for the only ‘miracle’ that ever happened to us.
She was just finished telling me about her two children when I got a call. "Gabi?" I heard Dalia’s nasal voice ask from a distance.
"Dalia? It’s been a long time!" I said in amazement. "Excuse me," I whispered apologetically to Natalia, "this is a call from overseas." My childhood friend was one of the last people that I expected to call for the latest juicy information.
"Gabi, honey, it’s the middle of the night for us. I read the news about you and I’m so glad you found a new love. You’ve left your troubles behind, especially… you’ve come out from the shell you’ve been hiding in.”
I thought of A at the restaurant, of Sergey staring at me in the concert hall, the Kormans besieging me with their threatening, poisonous words, the letter from the lawyer in Paris. "Troubles are never over, Dalia, they just replace an old one, and what you read isn’t a
lways true."
"What are you telling me? You got a problem? Pack your suitcase and come over - we don’t have a luxury mansion, but we’re relaxed here.”
"Thank you, you’re a real friend. But, you know me. I'm not the type to run away. The last three years were resolved. I’ve started to get out and I won’t be deterred.”
"Because I know you, I’m telling you - don’t try to fight the whole world! If you have problems, it's okay to avoid them… and not only have you never run away from trouble - you’ve looked for it often enough.” The smile in her voice reminded me of when I had shared some rash decisions with her in my childhood.
"Recently the situation’s become quite the opposite - unfortunately.”
Natalia got up and went to the stone that was lying by the side of the path. This was the first statue I had made after returning from Paris. In a square stone with a rough-hewn frame, a body poked out from one side of the stone, and a face from the other. What it lacked in skill, it made up for with humor.
"And because troubles also find you," Dalia’s voice continued to crackle in my ear, "I think that if you change where you live, you change your luck. Come over. You’ll feel calm and safe. Kobe’s lying next to me. His head’s going to fall off in a moment because he can’t stop nodding."
I laughed with delight. The tranquility I would get if I moved suddenly was as promising as a white beach after a stormy night. “Don’t worry. I’ll get away for a few days, but not to the States. I have to go to Paris soon. It’ll be far enough away from here.”
"Going to see Pierre?” she purred. “You naughty girl! Planning on two weddings at the same time?”
I laughed. "Not all white dresses lead to a wedding, and here’s another sentence I’ve adopted: 'Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.’”
"Who reads? Who? You know I just look at the pictures! Speaking of which, I must say, you look very happy. I'm satisfied with that. ’Night, hon. The invitation’s open. Bring your partner, too, whoever you decide he is.”