Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307)

by Kadish, Rachel

  “So what?” Her husband brandishes a cleaver. “After a few years your spouse is just a force you maneuver around.” He takes aim at a chicken breast.

  Stepping out of the deli onto the sidewalk I take refuge in my headphones. The radio is tuned to an R and B station. “Wedlock,” Laura Lee wails into my ears,

  is a padlock

  when you’re married to a no-good man.

  I try to cross the street, find the traffic signals unintelligible, freeze amid the flow of pedestrians.

  Girl, when you cut the cake don’t make a big mistake

  Make sure of who you love

  Honey, I’m telling you it’s easy to get into

  But hard to get out of

  A sledder whizzing down the snowless avenue slows to offer me a lift. It’s Ethan Frome. Hop on, he says.

  Adam strides along Riverside Park, bare hands jammed in the pockets of his jacket.

  “Thanks for meeting me in the middle of the day,” I say.

  He shrugs, then blows on his hands and slaps them together. “What’s going on? I’ve only got twenty minutes ’cause we’ve got some damn meeting.” Pulling a pair of drumsticks from his back pocket, he breaks stride and raps a sharp riff on the metal-pipe fence. “How’s the fiancé? He still the man?”

  “I’m not sure, Adam.” I slow my words: a vain attempt to steady my voice. “The way I fell in love with him was just different, from everything else before. But so much feels just wrong now.” It’s the last of November, the air snappy. I shiver despite my gloves and coat. “And there’s a ton, a ton I don’t know about him. And I wasn’t ready to get engaged. And now this last month has been Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Suddenly I’m supposed to just leap into a wedding gown, beaming. Nobody’s acting normal. Including me.”

  Without glancing at me, Adam drums along the fence.

  “I just don’t get why he proposed so soon,” I add.

  Adam strikes a sharp chime on a post, then resumes a tattoo on the top rail. “He thought you two had an understanding.”

  “But listen—” The mountains laid low, the valleys upraised: I am turning to Adam Freed for advice. “How could he have missed the fact that I wasn’t ready to get engaged yet?”

  “He thought you were just being shy.”

  “Shy? Why would I be shy about my own engagement?” But even as I protest I see Adam is right. I was shy. George raised the issues of children and long-term commitment for weeks, and I kept myself ignorant for fear of overreaching. I was afraid—this a full generation after feminism was declared victorious—to break the magic by being too assertive. I was cowed by love, terrified I’d want more than he was willing to give, terrified I’d want less.

  With a whirl, Adam brings down his sticks and crashes them on the roof of a trash bin; this proves so satisfying that he braces his sneakers against the bin’s broad base and executes a solo loud enough that two patrolling police officers stop to listen from a distance.

  I raise my voice. “He’s acting just . . . not like George.”

  It’s hard to make out Adam’s words over the din. “Something must be up.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Suddenly he says he’s self-doubting or something. He’s afraid he won’t be good at supporting us, or some damn thing. It makes no sense. Plus, all of a sudden he’s wrapped up with his father again—he’s got this icy fundamentalist father he’d given up on, only now George seems to care what he thinks.”

  Adam shrugs without missing a beat. “All that could flip a guy out,” he says. “Married guys think they have to know how to run the farm. And fight off intruders. And do CPR on the manual transmission. The dinner check’s gonna get handed to them for the rest of their lives. They think they have to be action heroes. That’s why I’m marrying”—a crash on the metal bin—“a weightlifter millionairess.”

  “But why wouldn’t—” My words are drowned out.

  “Is the deal that you’re not sure about George altogether”—three enormous crashes followed by a drumroll crescendo—“or is it that you know he’s your guy, but you just don’t want the whole marriage deal yet?”

  My voice deflates. “I don’t even know,” I say shakily, doubtful Adam can hear. “All of a sudden he’s like another person. He gets where he’s not even talking to me . . . it’s like he’s talking to this . . . agenda. I can barely remember who he is.”

  Adam stops drumming. “Then you should break off the engagement.”

  I search his face: he’s not kidding. “I don’t want to,” I shoot back, surprising myself. “I don’t want to lose him. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Jeez, Trace, you sound fucking scared. You seem to be under the impression that George can just marry you.”

  “Can’t he?”

  “Not without you marrying him back. You have power. What’s this with the sudden wet-noodle act? You can tell him you want an eight-year engagement, and you want to get married on Lake Serenity on the moon, and”—his eyebrows bounce—“you want me to perform the ceremony. You can tell him anything you like. I mean, he’ll either go for it or not, but you get some say in this too. This is your damn engagement, right?”

  I hesitate, then nod.

  “What does George say about this freak-out of yours?”

  “He doesn’t exactly know how bad it is.”

  Adam looks appalled. “You’re joking.”

  “Everybody said not to push him too hard, or he’d bolt. Everybody said it would leave a scar.”

  “Everybody. You mean, women?”

  I nod, suddenly embarrassed.

  “You mean my sister?”

  Another nod.

  “Crapola. My sister’s smart but she’s also a moron. She thinks men are made of glass. If this guy loves you, it’s not going to break him in half to hear you’re fucked over by the engagement. I mean, he’ll be fucked over, but he’ll deal. And if he doesn’t, you’re better off knowing that’s the kind of life you’d of been signing on for. Besides, if you don’t tell him what’s up, you’re doomed. Either you’ll start foaming at the mouth and you’ll break off the engagement the day before the wedding, or else you’ll be, like, Mrs. Robot Wife.”

  I start to cry, but it feels like relief. I feel like hugging Adam. He seems to know this, and resumes walking. I say, “This is the most helpful conversation I’ve—”

  He flings out his arms to form a great Y, drumsticks piercing the heavens in acknowledgment of the multitudes’ adulation.

  George meets me at the entrance to the park. He wears a navy sweater under his black wool jacket. His shoulders are broad, his cheeks rosy, his breath a white plume in the new-hatched cold. He looks indisputably, wondrously solid. I tell myself: trust this man.

  He takes my gloved hand. Our fingers, too thick to interlace, settle into a loose, insensate hold. We set off along the edge of Sheep Meadow, past a scattering of pedestrians dressed in dark colors, collars raised against a chill deep enough to make your ears glow with pain.

  “I’m lost, George,” I say.

  “I know,” he says. His voice is strained. “I don’t understand what’s gone wrong.”

  Squeezing, I find his hand in the depths of his glove. “These last weeks have thrown me. I can’t breathe.”

  We walk for another moment before he answers. “I assumed going quickly was the best thing.”

  We pass a steaming pretzel cart. A man whirs by in a wheelchair, propelling himself with long scoops of his arms. With a synchronous absent-mindedness we turn deeper into the park, past the shuttered façade of the carousel. We walk in silence. George doesn’t speak or look at me. His glove clasps mine so loosely it hardly feels like his hand is inside.

  “George, I’m asking you to tell me honestly. What’s your rush?”

  He does not answer. We pass the dairy, pausing to allow a few rosy-cheeked toddlers in moon suits, shepherded by their stunned-looking parents, to amble across the path in front of us. When they’ve passed I start forward, but George has
n’t moved. He gestures wordlessly after the toddlers. I turn to him; his face is tense with longing.

  “Yes. I can imagine it, too,” I say. “But we haven’t even figured out the marriage thing yet. We haven’t even learned how we solve problems together. Why jump ahead? Since you started pushing, it’s like you’re a stranger.”

  He emits a strangled sound: the sound of someone about to override his better judgment and say something he shouldn’t. “Tracy,” he says. “Life is a lot easier if you don’t overthink everything. If you just take some leaps.”

  I speak softly. “Imagine the leap I just took for you.”

  “We both took a—”

  “George, like it or not, this is who I am: someone who wants to consider each step she takes. I can’t quite understand why you’re so surprised by my taking marriage seriously. I start to worry about how unseriously you seem to take it.”

  “Tracy.” He turns to me. His face wears the loneliness I’ve glimpsed there before. This time, though, it is distilled into a plea for my understanding. His gaze leans into the words as though he’s struggling with a foreign tongue and doesn’t trust his speech to communicate all he intends. “There has never been anything more serious in my life.”

  I set my hand on his arm, and nod.

  He continues. “I think, Tracy, that this is harder for men than you realize.”

  I touch his cheek with my gloved fingertips. “You know,” I murmur, “that’s what Adam said.”

  George’s expression solidifies. “You talked to Adam?”

  “Just about how I thought engagement was affecting your outlook—”

  “You said that?”

  “I told him a little about our recent conversations, but—”

  He pulls away. His silence is more alarming than any retort.

  After a minute he says, “You talked about what my father said? And my concerns about finances?”

  “Why is that bad?” I ask. “He thought it was totally understandable. We’re talking about Adam here.”

  His words are clipped. “That was a confidence I entrusted to you. You repeated it.”

  “I’ll keep secrets for you, George. I’ll keep any secret, anything at all, if it’s reasonable. But I won’t keep the secret that you’re a human being.”

  He shakes his head roughly, then takes a step away from me. He wears a look of pure shock—as though he’s undergone a sudden amputation without anesthetic. “Tracy, this throws our trust into question.”

  “It’s not a matter of trust, George. It’s just . . .” My hands rise to plead my case but have nowhere to go. “It’s just that I don’t think you need to feel shamed. I have a different sense of—”

  “Don’t tell me what to feel.” His voice quakes, his face registers vertigo. “Don’t try to control me.”

  Some red line has been crossed. This man may be my soul mate, but something is holding him by both shoulders.

  We walk. As we near the back of the zoo I picture them as though they were right before me: the polar bears in their concrete arctic dioramas, and their dirtied fur raises inchoate objections in my throat. Slowly I’m filling with rage at marriage: the alien language in which George and I now struggle to communicate. Trailing George, I shut my eyes and try to imagine myself without him. I discover that I can. I can picture going back to a solitary life, a life of predictable comforts, intimate friendships, and invigorating projects.

  But I don’t want to. And there is only one way to restore breathable air to this abruptly suffocating park. Every love—I see this as clearly as if it were written across the frigid sky—comes down eventually to the issuing of a dare. Try to change me, and I will leave you. And everything hangs on how this challenge is played out.

  I stop walking, as does he. “You know what I want?” I say. “I want you to be with me. Not with some hypothetical blushing bride. You’re acting like you’ve gotten engaged to an idea, not a woman.” I look to the park benches, the passersby, the little children in snowsuits, as though to corral them as witnesses. When I continue my voice is softer. “I want to be with you more than anyone I’ve ever known. But not if we’ve got to be two figurines on a wedding cake.” I hesitate. “Remember, George? Remember what we’re like together?”

  His lips are pursed in thought, his face turned down. My hand floats to his shoulder and then, when he does not respond, to his cheek. I do not pause to consider what I’m about to do. There seems, at this moment, nothing to consider. “We’ve got to start over,” I say. “I can’t do it this way.”

  I pull off my left glove. There is a sharp, buzzing sensation in my head, like the loud protest of a loose wire. I finger the ring—sparkling, understated, exactly what I would have pictured had I ever dreamed myself an engagement ring. “This is beautiful. And I want to wear it because it’s from you. Please give it to me when you want to be my partner.”

  I unfurl George’s gloved fingers. With a quick prayer that Adam is right and Hannah a moron, I set the ring in George’s motionless palm.

  “Until then,” I say, “let’s spend every day together. Let’s move in together, George. My place or yours, I don’t care. Let’s figure out every step together as lovers and best friends.”

  He looks up. His eyes are quiet and clear, as though something has at last penetrated the fog of the past few weeks.

  “I love you,” I say.

  He shuts his eyes and keeps them shut. I have a long time to read his face, which seems more handsome and honest than ever before. He breathes evenly, as though relieved of some great weight.

  After what seems like minutes, he opens his eyes with an unreadable expression. He pockets the ring. Then, without another glance at me, he turns his back and walks away.

  Part III

  I STALK MANHATTAN for hours, fueled by a tumble of urges, turning east, west, south, or north as WALK signs dictate. If I stop moving—so goes my thinking—something terrible will happen. In this manner, following Broadway and its tributaries into the mid-Nineties, I ignore the fact that something terrible already has. I watch the sidewalk, noting as for the first time Manhattan’s topography. How easy it is—the thought seems to take several blocks to form in my mind—to forget that there’s geology under all this concrete, until it rears up beneath you. I stride the hills and contours of Manhattan’s scarified face. Crossing Broadway, I fall in behind a teenaged boy walking two huskies. An old man crossing opposite us glares as he nears the trio, then points a finger at one of the huskies in ferocious accusation. “You owe me a beer!” he shouts.

  If George were here, he’d think this was hilarious. And this—the picture of George wagging his head with laughter, squeezing my hand as we make our way down the sidewalk—is what rends the spell that has held me together since afternoon. The cabdriver listens without comment as I sob for seventy blocks. I stumble into my apartment, its white walls liquid, and fall asleep on the sofa with a comforter pulled over my face.

  I wake at five in the morning, my head ringing with silence. Lying still is intolerable. My apartment is stifling. I dress in sweatpants and sweatshirt, throw on my coat, and take the elevator to the street. The morning is cold and cloudy. I make my way to Twenty-first Street and lap Gramercy Park with the bundled dog walkers and insomniacs, pausing at random, drifting mindlessly around the locked fence. The sun inches higher in the white sky. Schoolchildren and their parents begin to appear, lunch bags in hand. I wheel at the sight of a tall man walking down the sidewalk toward my building.

  Not George.

  I continue my circuit.

  Seated on a bench along the downtown side of the park is an ancient-looking woman. Her face reminds me of melting wax, and her chin and neck—i f they can be said to be two separate features—exhibit the same glacial flow downward as the mound that is breasts and belly. Her cheeks are soft with wrinkles; her eyes rheumy, suggestive of some capacious sympathy.

  Drawn to her slumped figure, which looks as if it’s traveled the earth, I hesitate
beside her bench.

  Her eyes meet mine, their soft gaze sampling my face. She works her jaw for a moment before speaking. “Welcome to the patriarchy,” she snaps.

  Maybe Tolstoy was right. We’re doomed.

  Hannah prepares tea in my kitchenette. She arranges mugs and spoons on my coffee table deliberately, saying nothing until I reach the bit where I mentioned to George that I’d spoken with Adam. Then her hand flies to her mouth.

  “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

  Which clearly means it isn’t.

  “I think, Tracy, that the mistake was to tell George you spoke to Adam.”

  This makes me feel so sick I can’t answer.

  “Did you apologize?”

  Reluctantly I shrug: I don’t exactly recall.

  “You’re dealing with a man, Tracy. Men might talk to women about their doubts. But they don’t tell each other. And they can’t bear being outed to other men as unconfident.”

  “Oh right, I forgot.” I sound hysterical. I sound bitter. “Not unless they’re drunk and have just survived being gored by bulls while escaping a sinking ship. Or unless they’re on the battlefield and at least one of them is bleeding to death. And even then they can only refer to each other by last name and they have to pound each other on the back until someone cracks a rib. Is that it?”

  Hannah sets a soft hand on my shoulder.

  Jeff leaves me three phone messages, two on my office line, one at home. He needs to speak with me. Urgently.

  I wait until an hour when I know he won’t be at his desk, then telephone his office and leave a message. “Been a little busy here. Nothing much, you know. George and I seem to have broken up.” I draw a ragged breath, irony failing. “I think I ended it, but . . .” I hesitate, then set down the receiver.