Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307)

by Kadish, Rachel

  Mary looks annoyed. Then she continues as though she hadn’t heard me. “Her outpatient treatment is going well. But the doctor says Elizabeth can’t go back to work for two months. The department has already had to find a replacement for the section she was teaching. Elizabeth says she needs to show up to prove she hasn’t just vanished. You know she can’t go in there alone. She needs you to go with her.”

  “That’s—”

  “I’m afraid for her,” Mary interrupts. This is not a confession; Mary neither seeks nor expects sympathy. Nor, it’s suddenly evident, does she like me.

  I struggle to contain my hurt. Why should I care if Mary thinks me condescending? She has no understanding of the pressures I face. “My tenure committee meets a week from today,” I say. “I hope you’ll understand why I can’t be involved in this. I’ve extended myself more than—”

  “You’re the only one who knows the whole situation,” Mary continues. “In a week that faculty senate could already have kicked her out.”

  “They wouldn’t kick her out,” I counter testily. “They’d force her to take a temporary leave of absence.”

  “Which would turn permanent. Wouldn’t it? Probably?”

  I sigh a long sigh, then nod.

  I’m being asked to hold Elizabeth’s hand while she delivers an apology I’ve ghostwritten—even as she spurns me as her adviser. If there is something too raw about Joanne’s forgiveness of Elizabeth, the same might be said for my deepening involvement in this mess. By all logic, I should walk away. Yet I, too, have been seduced by something about Elizabeth, hooked in until her well-being feels essential to my own. I run my fingers through my hair, digging into my scalp, and take momentary refuge in well-trodden indignation: that Elizabeth has lost her grip is tragic enough; why did it have to be a goddamn tabloid scenario, the kind Eileen lives for?

  My thoughts drift longingly toward George; I wrest them away. Shutting my eyes, I ask myself: Why—honestly—am I so angry?

  Here is my answer: If the world stopped making sense—i f I heard voices in the midnight library stacks—I would have a choice. I could believe there were aliens who also happened to be literary giants—a belief that would be at once glorious and harrowing, upending my understanding of all I’ve ever known.

  Or I could believe there were no aliens, and I was losing my mind.

  Which would be less terrifying?

  Head in hands, I listen to the flush of the toilet and Elizabeth’s soft tread, and it occurs to me that there are two kinds of people: Those who, told they’re crazy, turn their opinions over to surer hands. And those who will pay any price, no matter how steep, to remain true to their own vision, without which the world is a sickening void.

  I’d choose aliens.

  I would not have been any more willing than Elizabeth to step back from the verge, to alert a friend, to turn myself in for treatment and shut my eyes to revelation. Recalling the Dickinson poem, I can hear it now only in Elizabeth’s low whisper: Most—I love the Cause that slew Me / Often as I die / Its beloved Recognition / Holds a Sun on Me. Up close, devotion and folly grow indistinguishable. Elizabeth’s courage, her choice to trust her mind in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is the sort of bravery that might under different circumstances have made her a Romantic heroine. Instead it’s made her tragic. I’m not furious at Elizabeth for clinging to outlandish visions, but for being wrong.

  I’ve read enough about bipolar disorder to know that her visions may yet kill her, that in such extreme, psychosis-inducing cases, the suicide rate is fearfully high. Elizabeth’s prospects terrify me. But my fear goes deeper than altruism. My own fate seems to rest obscurely on making sure she’s not burned at the stake for her beliefs. I can no longer deny how powerfully I see myself in her. How I’ve hated her vulnerability because I understand it; how I can imagine all too well the scald of her loss; the dizzying fear that she can no longer trust her judgment, that her choices were madness, that the vision that lit her world is gone forever.

  And I, like her, refuse to believe I was wrong. Contrary to every sensible friend urging me to declare my love for George dead and look to new horizons, I refuse to turn my back on the truth of what I saw.

  Nothing but luck separates Elizabeth from me. To suppose otherwise is hubris. The tenderness I feel, as I understand this, is powerful enough to make me break stride. I think: We are all just creatures swimming toward the light.

  Sometimes life is like this. Sometimes all the scrims drop at once: theory, professionalism, politeness. We stand, totter with loneliness. Brace ourselves. Fling fingertips to the sky.

  “What time?” I say to Mary.

  This is what happens when Elizabeth steps off the elevator: The air in the department ionizes. A heightened quiet settles over the corridor as I greet her with a squeeze of her shoulder and lead her to my office. We pause here inside my fortress of books, its floor-to-ceiling shelves dwarfing Elizabeth, who scans the spines with a darting glance. She is breathing shallowly.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. “I owe you big-time.”

  We walk to the faculty lounge, Elizabeth with a boxy, stretch-marked backpack riding high and empty on one shoulder. Inside the lounge she pours coffee, then warms her hands on the cup without drinking. We don’t have to wait long. Footsteps approach, the door swings wide. Victoria and Joanne enter, Joanne with a startled glare in my direction. It’s obvious Elizabeth didn’t tell her I’d be present.

  Victoria’s forehead furrows. She looks at Elizabeth with strained concentration. As I expected, the sight of her has wakened Victoria’s sympathy.

  Victoria’s voice is kind. “You didn’t have to do this in person.”

  “I wanted to,” says Elizabeth. Her voice catches on the words. Then, more steadily: “It’s important to express how sincere I am in my apology, and how dedicated to this department.”

  Victoria settles, with a watchful nod, onto the sofa.

  Elizabeth swings her backpack from her shoulder, fishes in its roomy cavity, and produces a single folded sheet of paper. She hands it to Joanne, who takes it with a rough gesture and leaves.

  During the ten minutes that Elizabeth, Victoria, and I wait in the lounge, a half dozen faculty members show for coffee breaks. One by one they enter, linger over the electric kettle or coffee machine, peruse the shelves in vain for an unaccountably absent volume. They murmur to Elizabeth—Good to see you, How’s it going. Empty queries, excuses for a few seconds’ searching gaze, enough to take in the fiercely ironed blouse and slacks, the peaked face and clenched hands. They leave tucking their impressions into their pockets, tender for barter at a later and livelier gathering.

  The door opens. Joanne is winded. Her grip bends the letter’s slim profile. She holds it, chest-level, like a trophy.

  Elizabeth’s struggle to lift her eyes is monumental.

  “The apology,” says Joanne, “is clearly sincere.” She swirls the air with Elizabeth’s letter. Her face is flushed. “I’ll grant you the right to continue in this program.”

  Elizabeth’s lids close in thanksgiving.

  “But forgiveness isn’t everything,” Joanne cuts in. “There’s the matter of your dissertation.”

  “I—”

  Silently I counsel: Don’t let her ruffle you.

  “I’ll get it done as soon as I’m able,” Elizabeth breathes.

  Good girl.

  “That’s not enough. You’ve already got one gap in your résumé. Just how long do you plan to delay before going on the job market? It won’t look good.”

  “Joanne, I’ve been meaning to ask you—” Elizabeth glances guiltily at me: we’d agreed she wouldn’t suggest this today, but like an affection-starved child she’s unable to refrain from giving all. “Will you be my adviser?” In her quavering voice the question sounds like a proposal of startling intimacy.

  Joanne lifts her chin. Without turning from Elizabeth or altering the substance of her words, she addresses herself directly to
me, and her message is one of unalloyed triumph. “Inefficiency,” she says, “is a luxury you can no longer afford.”

  “I think what Joanne means,” Victoria interjects, a distinct note of warning in her voice—to Joanne? to Elizabeth?—“is that this event has damaged your reputation. The more promptly—within reason—you can demonstrate that you’re capable of getting your work done, the better.”

  “I understand,” says Elizabeth.

  “Do you?” presses Joanne.

  In my thirty-three years I have never felt so strong an urge to punch another human. I catch Victoria’s eye. Her mouth is pursed.

  “We’re running out of time,” warns Joanne, as though she expects Elizabeth to start typing right here. “I’ll work with you. But if you don’t give us your final draft soon we’ll have to take it out of your hands.”

  No one can bring a dissertation draft before a committee without the author’s permission. Surely Elizabeth sees through this bluff?

  Joanne steps heavily toward Elizabeth, close enough for a private conversation. Under Joanne’s stare Elizabeth seems to lose her ability to focus. Her eyes widen but find no purchase.

  “I don’t understand what’s been taking you so long,” Joanne confides.

  And something in me turns to stone.

  Elizabeth’s speech is thick. “I’ll reset my defense-date as soon as I can. I’ll let you know. I want to tell you how grateful . . .” She cannot finish the sentence. Her face is saturated with abasement, and with an emotion I recognize even if she cannot: hate. Her eyes drop to the floor. After a long silence her head drifts up and, with a quick, admiring glance at Joanne, she leaves the room.

  Victoria turns to Joanne. “She’ll need time to recuperate.”

  Joanne shrugs. She folds Elizabeth’s letter neatly in two, and slides it into the pocket of her slacks.

  “You were hard on her,” Victoria persists. “Understandable, but—”

  “I see myself in her,” Joanne says evenly. “I know what she’s capable of.”

  “It’s a real gift to a student,” says Victoria, “when a professor takes a personal interest in her abilities. But let’s remember that for the moment Elizabeth is not as capable at living as she is at literature.”

  In the pause that follows, both women seem to become aware of my presence. I don’t budge. To move would be to jar a fragile new understanding: I’ve been wrong. Joanne does not want Elizabeth driven out of the department.

  “You need her here, don’t you?” I say.

  Joanne laughs aloud.

  “Like a house,” I say, “needs a lightning rod.” The words are spoken. There is no stepping back now, between us.

  She turns to me: face set, fists curling at her sides, stance defiant. Solid limbs chaining her to a crippled future. The statuesque body, the athletic grace and physical power Joanne has exerted all her life like a magnetic field, have betrayed her. In another universe she and Elizabeth and I would console one another—each in our own way bereft. But Joanne, heedless, hurtles toward vengeance. It’s to silence her own grief that she’s flagellated the department. And it’s for this that she’ll exact punishment of the department’s brightest star.

  I’ve read miles of gothic literature, in which demons embody the power of human malice. But I’ve never understood—have never even bothered to wonder—what draws the demon to its victim. Now I see it. Joanne’s relationship with Elizabeth, I understand, is the truest intimacy she’s got.

  In the stifling room, the ponderous bulk of Joanne’s isolation is all but overwhelming.

  With my eyes I condemn her to it.

  “Too bad about losing your advisee, Tracy,” she says. “And too bad about your engagement. I hear it was quite precipitous. Rash entry, rash exit. Next time maybe you’ll be more judicious.”

  Victoria stands. “Joanne Miller, that was cruel.”

  With a deliberate, luxurious motion, Joanne removes her glasses, blows a speck of dust off one lens, and puts them back on. “Terribly sorry to hurt you, Tracy,” she says. Then she gives a smile that chills me. She starts for the door.

  My voice, to my shock, is steady. “Elizabeth needs to recuperate before she can take on a shred of academic work. The doctor was adamant. Nothing less than six months’ complete rest.”

  Halfway to the door, Joanne stops. Without turning she says, “I’ll give her two.”

  They leave, Victoria with an uneasy nod to me.

  Alone in the lounge, I reach shakily for a volume of Arnold. I read.

  Listen! you hear the grating roar

  Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling. . .

  With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

  The eternal note of sadness in.

  “Hey,” says Joseph Yee. He sticks his head in the door and scans the room with a disappointed expression. “How’s it going?”

  In answer I lift the book and read. “We mortal millions . . . in the sea of life enisled.”

  Five minutes later I’m walking Elizabeth out of the department. Within ten steps of leaving my office her composure crumbles and she sobs violently in the deserted elevator.

  On the sidewalk Mary waits, cradling a steaming cup of coffee; judging by her stained mittens, it’s not her first.

  Elizabeth opens her arms and takes her mother in a fierce hug, which Mary returns guardedly, swaying with the force of her daughter’s sudden, giddy laughter. “Joanne accepted the apology!” Elizabeth sobs into her mother’s neck. “I can’t believe it. She says I can stay if I turn in my dissertation soon.”

  I watch Mary’s face. Uncertainty solidifies into a grim anger that heartens me.

  “I told Joanne that Elizabeth needed six months off,” I tell Mary.

  Elizabeth lets go of her mother. “But you know the doctor said I only need—”

  “Don’t you think I know my colleague?” I snap. To Mary I say, “Joanne agreed to two months.”

  “That’s until February,” says Elizabeth, as though Joanne’s counteroffer were the height of kindness.

  “That’s still enough pressure to bring you down, and don’t forget it.”

  Elizabeth’s tear-streaked face goes blank. But, to my surprise, I’ve earned a forceful nod from Mary: a first, spare gesture of appreciation.

  The two retreat along the avenue of gray stone buildings: the mute pollution-tinged bones of the city that appear, in this failing light, to embody stoicism.

  I slip inside the coffee shop. There, I buy an espresso as though the act were a religious devotion, and drink it George’s way—without sugar. Is there no bottom to missing him? No point at which I give up wishing for his return? Weeks have passed. I no longer call. The days of his absence stack one upon the other, throwing an ever more damning shadow against the count of our days together. Yet he can still walk into my thoughts without warning, order my coffee, decline sugar.

  In the crowded coffee shop I recall a time when I observed in safety, content to know all and risk nothing, cagey about what role love might play in my life. From this distance, my former musings about love seem like fatally flawed equations, physics problems calculated without factoring in a basic condition. Love has mass and volume. Put it into your life; it must displace something. As it has displaced my notion of what was good and important in the world, and substituted this: The knowledge that there is nothing more important than people willing to stand up for the truth of each other. The understanding of what it is to protect another fragile being. The understanding that I, too, will grow old.

  I could have done no different with George. But nothing prepared me for how much love would hurt.

  Is that it? Is that where my love story ends?

  Tragedy! says the dying father to his daughter in the Grace Paley tale. You too. When will you look it in the face?

  The daughter, gutsy and inventive, has a different idea. Everyone, she insists, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.

  The shop is bright and noisy and I
want to rivet it with a cry. I try instead to summon some vestige of postmodernism. The object, I counsel myself numbly, is fungible. “Love” passes on, and in its place come new and equally powerful “Loves.”

  Like a wave.

  I drink the espresso and burn my throat: a small act of truth.

  Hannah’s baby looks like a radiant, bright-eyed Winston Churchill.

  “She’s the make-out queen.” Hannah’s voice is suffused with unspoken delight. The air is thick with a sweet, waxy, new-baby smell. Hannah, propped in bed against a bank of white pillows, wears a girlish ponytail and the white granny nightgown that robes her like a maternal angel. “She gets this twinkle in her eye, then she just opens her mouth and sucks on my face. Ed’s too. When she’s older she’s going to get herself in trouble.”

  Ariel may weigh only seven pounds, the motions of her limbs may be confined to flailing and involuntary startles, her vocabulary may consist of mews. But every crinkle of her pinched face implies mischief. She’s going to keep her mother good company.

  Hannah wolfs a chocolate scone. “I can’t believe you traveled an hour and a half on the subway just to buy me these.”

  “Eat.” Yawning, I fluff the quilt around Hannah’s legs. I was awake until one A.M., reading. The restoration of my solitary, meditative evenings has indeed brought its pleasures. Only when I lie down to sleep does my body turn inarticulate, its recently learned language torn away—my hands so cold my belly flinches from them and I swathe myself in a cocoon of blankets and curl, immobile.

  Nonetheless.

  I woke this morning, dressed, and made the admittedly absurd trip uptown to Hannah’s favorite pastry shop. Hannah neither demands nor expects extravagant generosity. It’s what makes surprising her such an uncomplicated pleasure. I’m trying. No more Miss Havisham.

  Ariel’s head rests on Hannah’s knee, and I caress its oval top. The startlingly rapid pulse in the silky skull tattoos my palm in reward. I shut my eyes and relax into my place at this tableau. Babies have always made me the tiniest bit claustrophobic. But this one, for some reason, feels different. I could sit here forever, paying homage to the miracle of this tiny breathing body.