Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307)

by Kadish, Rachel

  “George?”

  He looks up at me from the sofa, his eyes dark and undefended.

  Straddling his thighs, I kiss him firmly. I draw him to his feet and bring him to his bedroom, where, hugging him with one arm, I reach with an icy hand for the telephone.

  “Tracy,” says my mother. To my father, presumably in the next room, she announces emphatically, “It’s Tracy.”

  Drawing George with me, I sit on the bed, receiver against one ear. My temple rests against George’s neck. His steady pulse radiates peace.

  “George’s sister called ten minutes ago,” says my mother. “She was very pleasant. We figured you two were off celebrating and had forgotten to phone us.” My mother, ascetic among her kind, manages to say this with only a minuscule dollop of reproach.

  “Mom.” I clear my throat. It remains tight. “I’m going to marry a wonderful man.”

  “We know that.” The last time my mother’s voice had such lift in it I’d brought back all A’s on my first-grade report card. “George sounds terrific. You’re very lucky.”

  “I am lucky,” I say.

  A long pause follows, during which a petty, childish neediness raises its hand and will not be ignored. Reluctantly, with the sensation of dredging ancient history, I voice it. “Do you maybe also think he’s lucky?” I ask.

  “Of course he is. I’m going to call Rona. She’ll want to help plan the wedding.”

  “Whoa, Mom.” Hearing my voice rise, George puts an arm around me. I pull away from him. “No plans. Not yet. No Rona.”

  “Nobody’s making plans. Rona and I will just talk.”

  “No planning.” I don’t understand. I have never in my life heard my mother enthusiastic about planning a social event.

  “Your father wants to speak with you.”

  My father gets on the phone, his voice oddly constricted. “Tracy, we’re proud of you,” he says.

  It’s a physical relief to hear him on the line: the father who telegraphed unspoken trust in me all my life, pursed his mouth with satisfaction each time I took up a new challenge, tacitly urged me toward my goals. Who helped me reason through bungled geometry exams, dropped softballs, the mysteries of parallel parking. “Dad,” I say, “I—”

  “Hi, Tracy.” My mother is back.

  That’s it?

  “Your father and I want to say hello to George,” my mother says.

  George holds the receiver to his ear. Twice he starts to speak, then demurs. He nods vigorously at one point, and thanks them three separate times. Clearly my parents have saved up thirty-three years of parental advice for a son-in-law. Every mystery they never revealed to me they are now imparting to him. They are crooning ballads of derring-do, reading him the secret codex of their marriage.

  When George speaks at last, he says only: “I’ll take good care of your daughter.”

  “Yes,” I mumble. “She can’t cross the street by herself.”

  George doesn’t hear me. He listens for a while longer before saying a warm goodbye and setting down the phone.

  “Put on your jacket.” His words brim with pleasure. He looks as though he might levitate.

  “Let me clean the dishes—”

  “Later!”

  There is a midafternoon jazz hour downtown. The music tastes like cardboard. I can’t finish my mimosa. George holds my hand, only letting go of it to applaud hearty approval of the soloists. We stroll along Broadway. I receive his solicitousness like a zombie. My voice sounds, to my own ears, strangled. High-pitched. For the first time since we met, George seems oblivious to my mood. He treads beside me on the bustling sidewalk, his gait unsteady, struck down by happiness. He leads me to the door of a jewelry store and sweeps it open.

  “I picked out a few favorites,” he says. “They’re all pretty simple—as you know, my salary isn’t princely, and we’ve got to have something left for the wedding. But I’m hoping you’ll like one of them. I didn’t want to make a final decision without your approval.”

  The row of velvet-lined cases shines in the depths of the store. I balk like a mule: head down, legs planted on the sidewalk. “I can’t think about a ring yet,” I manage.

  “Okay.” Disappointed but good-humored, he lets go of the door. “It’s been a big day already. You’re looking a bit glassy-eyed.” He takes my hand. “I’m sure I am too.”

  Dinner is at Pequod, a crowded, elegant restaurant. George has reserved a corner table and the champagne arrives as soon as we do. The waiter inishes pouring and leaves. George, watching me, wears the fervent expression of the man in the movie who’s just pledged to defend his wife and kids against the invading armies, even if it means forfeiting his life.

  “We know only a little about each other,” I venture in the same tight, vacant voice I’ve heard all afternoon and evening, speaking from somewhere just behind my head.

  “True. We know only the most important things.” He raises his glass. “Don’t we?”

  I let my confusion bloom on my face. But for once he doesn’t seem to see it.

  “And I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life getting to know you better, Tracy Farber.”

  If our glasses make a sound, it’s lost in the restaurant’s din.

  We settle in for the night at George’s apartment. There are phone messages from Aunt Rona and Uncle Ted. Rona’s congratulations are strained.

  “She’ll get over it when I convert.” George chuckles.

  It is shockingly easy to get by without replying. Nothing seems to require an answer beside the one I gave this morning. Our conversation is a frictionless surface. George hasn’t yet come down from the day he planned for us: music, dinner, romance. A palette of experiences offered to seal his pledge. He’s lit from the inside, drunk on our future. We make love with the lights out. I try again and again to pierce the darkness, to apprehend the man caressing my body, whispering my name. But it’s as though some passivity bomb—ticking away silently in my innards through girlhood and years of education and competent professionalism—has detonated. Afterward we don’t speak. I slow my breathing. I might be asleep.

  George kisses my shoulder. Then, one arm cradling my head, he lies still for a very long time, facing the ceiling. An hour seems to pass, the quiet unrelenting. Then George whispers slowly, tasting each word. “The best day of my life,” he says.

  At first I think he’s speaking to me. Then I understand he’s speaking to himself. To the hope that suffused his face on our first date. To the path ahead of him, embodied in my sleeping form.

  His breathing deepens. Tears slip down the sides of my face. I love him. Save that, there’s no room for a single clear thought.

  During the night I wake three times. Once to a feverish hope that dashes about the dark room like a moth. Once sweaty, with heart pounding from a dream of some dizzying terror. Once to grief: I never thought having a romantic engagement mattered to me; yet accompanied by the quiet rhythm of George’s breathing, I mourn the surprise, and the glimmering velvet jewel cases, and the champagne, that had nothing at all to do with me.

  Part II

  “YOU’RE what?” says Jeff. He sits back, palms flat on his desk. “You want to get married to a man you hardly know?”

  I lean against his closed office door, barricading it. “I love him,” I say miserably.

  Jeff’s brows form an offended V. “Irrelevant. You don’t know him. You don’t know how this relationship will weather. You don’t know what this guy is like when the novelty wears off, or what moods he gets into in the dregs of winter, or whether he turns into a werewolf after the first six months. This relationship hasn’t had time for the warranty to wear off. This is what, five days you’ve been dating? Look at you, you’re seasick.”

  “Just under two months. There was this . . . voice. I don’t know. I just knew I needed to say yes—I mean, go along with it, the engagement, the phone call with his family.” I gesture uselessly. “Does that mean it’s right? Even if my rational mind is taking aw
hile to catch on?”

  “A voice?” He folds his arms. “I make decisions with my rational mind fully engaged, and this, my dear, is not rational. It’s heterosexuality-induced madness. What’s the big rush toward matrimony? What is this, nineteen-fifty? Next you’ll be dropping babies.” He leans forward, setting his elbows on the table and steepling his hands. In someone else it would be prayer position. In Jeff it is a posture for argument: the greater the tension in his precisely aligned fingertips, the fiercer his points. “I take no issue with your making a commitment. I just don’t think a person—especially a straight woman—should ever rush into anything. Tracy, we all know heterosexual marriages are unhealthy. It’s Western culture’s open secret. You’ve read the stats, correct? The ones that document how married women are more depressed than single women? That shit is real. If you want emotional health, your surest bet is to get away from the old gender game. Women are happier with women, men with men. The healthy straight marriage is possible, but a rarity. And takes time to develop. In sum: I’ve got nothing against Tabouli, but what’s his rush? And speaking of which, what the fuck is yours? Seems goddamn suspicious.” His argument complete, he sets his chin on his fingertips. ”Has ‘danger’ written all over it.”

  There is a long silence. I don’t budge. “I love George,” I say carefully. “He and I love each other. That’s very clear to me. It’s just . . .” I draw a deep breath. Each word is an island. “It’s just fast.”

  “You want to know what I think you should do?”

  I open my mouth. Then, firmly, I shake my head.

  Jeff goes immobile. He is a bust of the Academic at His Desk: cut in marble, perfectly posed, aghast. “There’s something very nineteenth-century about you,” he says.

  He turns back to his papers. I don’t imagine he’s reading—the tension in his jaw belies his calm flipping of pages—but he doesn’t look up again.

  Back inside my office, door closed, the tightness in my throat is so painful I let out a whimper. What is supposed to be my happiest moment, the start of the rest of my life, has gone dreadfully wrong. I know what this means. I’ve seen it in movies, read it in novels: I’m cursed. I’ll marry him and it will be disaster. Or we’ll break up and I’ll grieve for George forever. My breathing gets uncontrollably louder—surely Jeff can hear through the wall?—my chest shrugs, my chin rises as though there might be better air in a higher stratosphere. Small black spheres begin to bobble through my vision.

  Professor Dies of Un-Broken Heart in Bizarre Office Incident.

  Having no paper bags, I seize a hardcover volume of Mark Twain from my shelf, open it on my lap, and sink my face into the tent of pages.

  In a short time the hyperventilating subsides. I take a first normal breath, then another. My wet eyelashes bat the black lettering that parades across the creamy page, each letter bold and expansive as though seen through a magnifying glass: the last paragraph of “My Literary Shipyard.” I raise my head slightly. To start right is certainly an essential, says Twain. I slam the book shut.

  “Professor Farber?”

  At the second knock I open the door. A sophomore from my twentieth-century course, a sleepy-faced, dimpled late-teen in sweatpants, steps inside and hands me a paper.

  “I’m here for our revision conference? About the Didion paper?”

  “Ah yes,” I say, with such force that she startles. Sniffling as I settle into my chair, I gesture at the box of tissues on my desk. “Allergies,” I explain.

  “Oh my God, that sucks,” she declares.

  Thereby proving once more that students are smarter than they seem.

  Before venturing to the mailboxes I wash my face and apply makeup. I pass down the corridor without encountering a soul, collect my portion blindly from the honeycombed mail slots, and scan the bulletin board for new announcements. I’m quick, but not quick enough.

  “Congratulations, Tracy,” calls Eileen from her seat, the greeting a lasso to hold me until she’s free for an interrogation.

  Victoria, standing at Eileen’s desk, turns.

  As I expected, some offhand comment of Jeff’s has already radiated from the faculty lounge to the central gossip artery of the department. I wave to Eileen, make a vague gesture at my wristwatch, and start toward my office. But Victoria calls my name and signals for me to stay put. I wait with mounting agitation while she accepts a folder from Eileen and files it in her briefcase.

  When Victoria steps toward me it’s with an approving smile. “Who’s the lucky fellow?”

  “George,” I say. “Beck,” I add, then don’t know what else to say.

  “Oh?” prompts Victoria.

  “Yes. George. He’s . . . great.”

  “I should hope so.” Victoria’s amusement expresses itself in a slight compression of her lips. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or laugh along.

  “I wish you a long life with Mr. Beck, full of great happiness.” Victoria’s voice drops; behind her I see Eileen lean forward over her desk on the pretext of watering a plant with a mug I’m certain has no water in it. “My husband and I were lucky with the happiness part,” Victoria says. “We didn’t have so very long together, but what we had was good. We kept each other on our toes. Marriage can be a wonderful, mutually energizing arrangement.”

  I don’t know how to reply to this, but, bless Victoria, she’s said her piece and with a firm pat on my shoulder—the first physical contact she’s offered since a welcome-to-the-faculty handshake five years ago—she leaves.

  “Well,” sings Eileen, smug as a clerk catching a customer shoplifting. “Who’s been keeping secrets?”

  The first door off the corridor opens and Joanne emerges from her office, a small stack of pages in hand. “No secrets,” I answer sharply.

  “When’s the date?” prods Eileen.

  “No date yet.”

  “Where’s your ring?”

  “No ring yet.”

  Eileen’s brows shoot toward her hairline. Her fingernails tap a polished disapproval on the surface of her desk.

  “The photocopying for the CC,” says Joanne, dropping the pages on Eileen’s desk. Core Curriculum, or maybe Coordinating Committee. If you have to ask what Joanne’s acronyms stand for, you’re not part of the club.

  “Tracy’s engaged,” says Eileen slyly, paper-clipping the pages.

  “I know,” says Joanne without a glance at me. She pokes the top of the stack. “This one goes to Manning, and I want these in triplicate to send out with individual notes.”

  As Eileen pencils these instructions on a pad, Joanne swings her head toward me. For a second she looks nauseated; the very sight of me, I am given to assume, makes her ill. Then, in a voice calibrated for broadcast, she offers her own congratulations: “Jeff says you hardly know the guy.”

  After lecture, during the fifteen-minute break between student conferences and seminar, I will murder Jeff.

  “Maybe what Jeff said is I haven’t known George for long,” I correct Joanne. “Maybe that’s what he said. But I know George well enough to be sure he’s the guy for me.”

  “That’s beautiful,” chimes Eileen, with the sort of lascivious spectatorship that reminds me why certain types of romance novels deserve a spot on the porn shelf.

  “Sometimes you just know,” I add. And sometimes you are piercingly terrified: a piece of information neither Joanne nor Eileen needs.

  “Good, then,” declares Joanne. “Good.” She folds her arms, consigning me to my fate like a C-student who has just informed the university of her decision to drop out. “If it were done when ’tis done,” she says, with an abstracted gaze past my left ear, “then ’twere well it were done quickly.”

  “That was nice,” says Eileen after Joanne is gone.

  Though I hate to play into this obvious fishing expedition—Eileen’s attempt to divine my feelings toward Joanne—I have to set the record straight on this account. “It certainly wasn’t nice. That was a quote from Macbeth. It’s Macbeth
talking about committing a murder.”

  Eileen’s flat brown gaze meets mine, and I register a flicker of recrimination for my failure to deliver my personal romantic gossip gem directly to her desk. “Still,” she says doggedly. “It was nice.”

  “And?” says Yolanda.

  “And it’s like we’re on some satellite audio-link since he proposed. There’s just this . . . gap. Between me and him. Between what I say and what he hears. It’s like dealing with a stranger. It’s like having a Mack truck driven over our relationship.”

  “And?” says Yolanda. “Don’t hold back now. Give me your worst, sweets.” Both arms braced on the table, she goads me with a nod, ready for any hurricane-force wind I might unleash in the mirror-spangled diner.

  I’m too tightly wound for irony. “How could he have proposed so fast?”

  Hands to her skull, Yolanda pantomimes Munch’s The Scream.

  “Yol, George obviously doesn’t even know me well enough to know I’d need time to think about marriage. To talk a few more things through with him, and live together, and learn how we fight and make up, and get used to the whole idea. He doesn’t even know me that well yet, and he wants to marry me. What does that say about him?”

  “Maybe that he’s in love with you?” She unfolds her arms and grips the tabletop. “You two are just doing this the old-fashioned way. You got engaged, and now you’ll get to know each other.”

  “Maybe,” I breathe. “But I didn’t want to do it this way. I lie in bed next to him and spend half the night quietly freaking. And he and I have barely spoken in the last forty-eight hours, because we’re on the phone all the time with our public. I didn’t know we had a public, but evidently we do. Mostly our parents’ cousins. And they’re very gratified about this engagement. I don’t even want to be engaged, I just want to be with George, like it was before Sunday. But I can’t get un-engaged without bringing my life down around my ears.”

  “Which is fantastic. Tracy, I’ve got to tell you, I see that you’re suffering, I see that for you this is catastrophic, but I have no idea why. I’m trying to comprehend that you think this is the worst thing that has happened in your life, when it looks to me like the best and most romantic, and frankly I’d like to be in your shoes.”