Forty Rooms

by Olga Grushin

  “Of course. Here.” He splashed more wine into her glass. “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

  They talked of other things then, professors whose classes they had both attended, his job, his parents, her recent translation contract, but she was not listening to what he told her, or paying attention to what she told him, speaking mechanically, for a dark, superstitious voice muttered with increasing insistence inside her. All gifts have their price, whispered the voice. If you are indeed one of the chosen of the universe, and not just a poor deluded sap with an inflated sense of self-worth, what you ought to feel is not flattered but frightened half to death. And she knew that she was indeed frightened, deeply, irrationally frightened—frightened to leave this well-lit, solid, modern place with its polished expanses of stainless steel and its smells of good living, frightened to creep back to her underground, out-of-time life, the damp, the dark, the stillness, the solitude, the three-legged rat whom she had named Long John Silver in a reckless moment of despair, the feet always passing by her blind, naked windows, the growing gaps of silence in her telephone conversations with her parents, the unwritten poems whose ghosts haunted her nightly, the written poems she no longer mentioned to anyone at all, the memories of her lost love shooting through the dreary fabric of her days like threads of brightly colored silk, which turned brittle and hard and drew blood if she ran them through her fingers. Hers was a small and lonely life, a rigorous servitude in preparation for a bigger life, as she tried to see it; yet now, just beneath the thinning fabric of her existence, she sensed an invisible roiling of vast, terrifying, dangerous things—things that would play with you if you pleased them, things that would kill you if you proved a disappointment.

  And night after night she was alone with them.

  “Voilà,” Paul announced, stepping away from the stove and sweeping his hand in a theatrical gesture. “Sea bass in champagne sauce. Wait, don’t get up, I’ll serve us. Or we could move to the living room if you prefer—”

  “No, please, let’s stay here, I love the view. Do you know what I find so likable about you? You’re so sensible.”

  “Sensible, huh. Not a very sexy quality when you’re trying to impress a girl.”

  “Are you trying to impress a girl?” she asked, startled out of her thoughts. “I somehow thought you were . . . aren’t you with someone?”

  “There was Tiffany, yes, but that’s over now.” He carried the plates to the table. “As a matter of fact,” he said, and sat down, but instantly stood up again to retrieve the bottle of wine from the counter and refill her glass; his was scarcely touched. “Cheers. So. I was thinking, you know. Maybe, you and I—do you think we could—ever—”

  “Oh,” she said, putting her fork down on the table. “Paul. I’m not good at romance, it always ends badly, they stop talking to me, or I stop talking to them . . .” Or they die, screamed a panicking voice inside her. “I just really like having you as a friend. I have very few friends, and . . . and I’m counting on tasting that Casanova’s Delight someday—” She attempted a laugh, inwardly wincing at the dessert’s unfortunate name, hoping that he would make some joke in return. He was silent, and for an instant she imagined that his face bore the same look of mixed apology and hurt that she remembered having glimpsed on it six years before, in the library stacks, when he had sported longer hair and a Grateful Dead shirt. Stricken, she went on rambling. “Or . . . it doesn’t have to be you cooking, I can cook something for you too, though I should warn you I’m not a very good cook, in fact I’m dreadful, my rice always comes out lumpy, and I wouldn’t want you to see my place either, it’s a bit . . .”

  “Hey,” he said, briefly covering her hand with his. “It’s all right. I’m not asking you to marry me, you know. It was just a thought. Since we are both single at present. Not a big deal.” He speared some asparagus onto her plate, at ease again, a friendly giant who could whip up a three-course gourmet meal as readily as do your taxes. “Let’s not mention it ever again. Shall we dig in?”

  She picked her fork back up, took a bite.

  “It’s delicious.” She felt obscurely but deeply ashamed.

  “Just wait till you taste the crepes. Grandma taught me. My mom’s mom. A waif of a woman, but boy, she was like a force of nature in the kitchen. She had such a beautiful name, too—Cecilia. I don’t think there are many Cecilias nowadays, I guess it’s too old-fashioned or something. She died two years ago.”

  “Tell me about her,” she asked.

  While he talked, she looked out the window. It was dark now, and her reflection floated in the glass, pale and stark-eyed, distorted by slashes of shadow into a semblance of some mad medieval hermit. Beyond it, confetti of stars dotted the skies, while below, townhouse windows shone with the warm, tranquil glow of domesticity, trees rustled gently, and pavements gleamed white and soft with drifting blossoms. She remembered reading somewhere that people on mountaintops—people who enjoyed great, sweeping views—were supposed to live longer. Perhaps, she thought, if you lived in a place like this, you would get to live longer too, and you would then be more willing to forgive yourself any mistakes, any spiteful wishes, any wrong turns along the way.

  You would have more time to fix everything.

  13. Guest Bedroom

  The Silk-Covered Buttons

  The Christmas gathering was still in full swing in the living room, a cluster of uncles discussing the recent election over libations, a circle of cousins inspecting old photograph albums, two or three toddlers playing with crumpled gift wrapping in the shadow of the imposing tree, when she excused herself and slipped away. The noise of the party receded quickly, became a jolly hum diffused in the succession of high-ceilinged rooms. As she crossed a sudden strip of silence, she was conscious of the blunt clatter of her heels (bought used, just for the occasion, at her neighborhood thrift shop) against the hardwood floors.

  In the foyer, at the foot of the staircase, stood the second, smaller tree. When they had pulled up the driveway the night before, it had shone through the glass-paneled front door like a many-splintered, Cubist image of Christmas, each diamond-shaped pane bearing a burst of white light within a nest of dark green fir, all dusted with the snow of glass frosting. “Your parents have a glass front door?” she had cried.

  Paul had laughed, but she had been too astonished to join in his laughter.

  She had not known that houses like this really existed.

  The foyer was deserted now save for a little boy in a plum-colored velvet suit, the son of one of Paul’s many cousins, whom she had not yet learned to distinguish. His head tilted back, he stood staring up at the tree. She was about to slip past with a vague smile when the boy turned to her.

  “Our tree has lollipops on it, you can pull them off and eat them,” he said. “This tree is all grown up. Can you keep a secret? I have to whisper.”

  She nodded and crouched before him. Children made her nervous. He poked at a lower branch where a pinkish angel circled slowly, its brittle wings sparkling with illusory sugar, then breathed in her ear: “Angels taste dusty.”

  “Oh, but these angels are not for eating,” she said. “Every night, when everyone in the house goes to sleep, they leave their trees and fly to the bedrooms of little boys and girls to wish them sweet dreams and sing beautiful songs and—”

  “You talk funny,” said the boy. “I’m hungry. I want my mom.”

  She watched him waddle off, when a creak sounded above her, and, glancing up, she saw Paul on the landing, leaning over the curve of the staircase. Feeling embarrassed, as if caught in a small lie, she rose and went up to meet him. He pulled her into a bear hug, and for one instant they tottered a bit precariously at the top of the steps.

  “Everyone loves you,” he sang into her hair.

  Extricating herself, she inspected him in some surprise. He stood towering above her, chuckling and swaying, his shirttails un
tucked, his auburn hair plastered over his moistened forehead, his eyes glazed with elation that was ever so slightly unfocused. He looked very young, a bit blurry at the edges, perhaps, but just as wholesome as ever.

  “Never thought I’d see the day,” she said. “You’re tipsy!”

  “I’m celebrating,” he said. “You are so beautiful tonight. You should always wear diamonds. Everyone loves you. Uncle Curtis said you look like a porcelain doll.”

  His inebriation had an unmistakable quality of relief to it, of exhaling after the stiffness of tense expectation. She knew, of course, that his family had been nervous about meeting her, but it had not occurred to her until now that he had been nervous as well. Her smile wavered, as she struggled to ignore a minute pinprick of disappointment.

  The grandfather clock began to chime in the polished depths of the house. When the faint jingle of crystals in the chandelier overhead died in the wake of the tenth boom, she said, “I think I’ll turn in, I’m tired. I thanked your parents already. Everyone has been so kind. Come kiss me good night later if you think it’s all right.”

  Paul was staying in his childhood room; she had been given the guest suite.

  Once behind the closed door, she kicked off her shoes, sank down on the velvet vanity bench, and looked at the blue and silver room poised in the vanity’s mirror. The mirror room was flawless. The glossy silk duvet had not a wrinkle on it; the light blue curtains fell to the dark blue of the rug in beautifully sculpted curves; elegant flocks of lamps, vases, and clocks lined up in stately symmetry on antique tables and nightstands. It took her only one moment of contemplating the perfection to realize that things were not as she had left them. Seized by a childish suspicion, she turned around and stared at the room itself. As one would expect, the original was no different from its reflection, and therefore the silent dark-skinned woman with a feather duster whom she had encountered gliding on slippered feet in the upstairs hallway must have remade the bed she herself had made, rather haphazardly, that morning, as well as pulled the curtains closed and removed the chaos of lipsticks, tissues, and clothes she had strewn on dressers and flung among pillows while getting ready for the party some hours before.

  She faced the mirror again.

  The girl in the mirror, she saw, looked somehow different too, made subtly foreign by the sparkling of dainty teardrops in her ears and a brighter flash on her finger. She lowered her eyes. On the vanity’s surface, a half-dozen elaborately framed black-and-white photographs of unsmiling brides with wasplike waists stood sentry around an engraved toiletry set much like one she had once admired in the window of a fancy antique shop, with a price tag that had made her laugh. Picking up the heavy brush, she tried to read the initials but could decipher only the first, M, the other two letters choked past the point of recognition by the virulent proliferation of Victorian scrolls. She ran the brush through the tangle of her hair, once, twice, then set it back down; objects here were clearly not meant to stray too far from their allotted places. Next to the toiletry set, a round silver tray bore a precise arrangement of perfume bottles, some severely geometrical, others plump, still others twisted in flirtatious spirals, all crowded by their saffron, topaz, honey doubles in the mirror. She chose one at random, dabbed a bit in the hollow of her neck, and looked up.

  “Charmed,” she said, aloud, to the mirror girl.

  The mirror girl smiled back most graciously. She looked perfectly at home in her perfect Cinderella bedroom, if one paid no heed to the somewhat wild, startled look in her Scythian eyes and the pair of scuffed black pumps with soiled insoles, sprawled with all the indecency of peasant abandon in the middle of the lovely blue carpet.

  The scent was sweet with vanilla, and a trifle stale—an older woman’s smell. She took a cotton ball from a gilded crystal bowl and started rubbing at her neck, thinking of a poem she could write—each verse an enigmatic vignette reflected in the same mirror, a massive Renaissance mirror that would start out in some palace in Florence or Siena five centuries before and end up in an American suburb in the present day and age—when there sounded a delicate tap on the door.

  “Come in,” she called out, leaping to shove her unseemly shoes to the wall.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing,” Paul’s mother said, flowing across the threshold in her queenly, straight-backed manner. “Paul told me you were going to sleep soon.”

  “Thank you again, Mrs. Caldwell, the party was delightful.”

  “Please.” It sounded like a sentence of its own on Mrs. Caldwell’s lips. “Call me Emma. I wanted to give you this.” Carefully she lowered a large white box onto the bed and lifted the lid. “It was my mother’s, and then mine. It’s been in storage, but I had it cleaned just before you came up. It’s only a thought, you don’t have to use it if you don’t like it, perhaps you’d rather choose your own, or maybe you have something in your family already—”

  Over Mrs. Caldwell’s shoulder, she watched the creamy foam of vintage lace spill out of the box.

  “No, there is nothing like this in my family,” she said quietly.

  “You can see it full-length here.” Mrs. Caldwell pointed to one of the pictures on the vanity. When she moved, the sculpture of her gleaming blond hair did not move with her. “That’s my mother on her wedding day, she is nineteen here . . . Oh, which one? Ah, that was my grandmother, this toiletry set belonged to her, a present from my great-grandfather on her sixteenth birthday . . . No, no, you’re most welcome. I’ll leave it with you, unless you’d like to try it on tonight. But you’re probably too tired . . . Are you sure? I’ll be right outside then, just call when you’re ready.”

  When Mrs. Caldwell exited the room, she hurried to strip, anxious not to make her future mother-in-law wait in the hallway. Underneath her prim black sheath, she wore a racy red bra, the tiniest of thongs, and stockings with a garter belt; earlier in the day, she had nursed a halfhearted plan of paying Paul a tiptoeing visit at two in the morning. Now the appearance of a gartered tart amidst the bedroom’s blue-and-silver refinement made her avert her eyes from the mirror with something nearing shame.

  She looked again at the photographs on the vanity, at the solemn young bride in her luminous sepia fog. This must be Paul’s grandmother Cecilia, dead these three years, she thought—and felt suddenly, deeply touched. In the hazy warmth of her expanding emotion the palatial room itself appeared transformed: not a daunting museum exhibit with constellations of fussy trifles, where one was not allowed to indulge in the mess of living, but a cherished collection of family memories stored, preserved, and amplified in heirlooms made priceless with meaning. She touched the brush again, overwhelmed by a surge of affection (a poet’s affection, she said to herself) for all the old things that carried echoes of former lives. Her own family was rich in stories, of course, but theirs were mostly tales of dramatic upheavals and forbidden romance—wars, revolutions, secret trysts with gypsies and dukes—with only a few chance treasures and hardly any photographs surviving to provide illustration or offer proof; she had never even seen the faces of her great-grandparents. To her, family past was a misty realm of conjecture and imagination. The idea of mundane, practical objects—combs, vases, dresses—perpetuating the quiet remembrance of a different kind of life, the tranquil, linear progression of several generations’ worth of marriages, children, traditions, took her completely by surprise.

  All at once she longed to become a part of someone’s tangible history.

  The dress, when unfolded, proved long and narrow, with sleeves of intricate lace and a row of incredibly small silk-covered buttons all along the back, from the neck to well below the waist—no less than a hundred, she thought. Imagine some seamstress’s skillful hands encasing them in silk one by one, what infinite patience! She was glad, for the sake of her gratitude, to find the gown so graceful and simple, but the buttons—oh, she just fell in love with the buttons.

  She stepped into
the dress, instantly nervous—what if it did not fit? The neckline was modest but wide, and the straps of her red bra hung out slovenly on both sides. She shrugged the bra off, then fumbled for the buttons at her back.

  “How is it going in there?” asked Mrs. Caldwell’s voice from behind the door.

  “It’s beautiful, Mrs. Caldwell, I just need a few seconds,” she replied.

  The buttons were tiny and sleek and slipped out from under her fingers. After a minute of panting contortions, it became clear that not only could she not reach any of the buttons in the middle—she could not manage any of the buttons she could reach. Abandoning her acrobatics, she wiggled out of the sleeves, twisted the bodice around, and, ignoring the cold air on her naked skin and the sensation of her nipples turning into raisins, hastily traveled along the row of buttons, doing them up. Finished at last, she breathed a sigh of relief, twisted the dress back into place, and found—naturally—that she could no longer squeeze her way back into it. She felt like Alice before the locked door to the Wonderland garden, with the key forever out of her reach. Cursing her stupidity under her breath, she set about undoing the buttons, which grew agile like water bugs and kept skidding away from her increasingly frantic fingers. She counted them this time: there were forty-eight, and she hated each and every one of them.

  “Is everything all right, dear?” asked Mrs. Caldwell from the hallway. “Do you need help?”

  “No, no, I’m fine, I’m really done, just one moment—”

  It now occurred to her that she should indeed ask Paul for help; but he would not hear her shouts across the mansion, nor could she very well send Mrs. Caldwell on an errand to get him, and it would hardly do to go wandering in search of him while falling out of his grandmother’s nuptial gown. Yanking it all the way down, she stood half naked in her red wisp of a thong and bordello stockings, surveying the room, wondering where the maid had put the sweater and jeans she had worn earlier, the dress piled at her feet—and it was precisely then that Mrs. Caldwell chose to propel herself inside, saying, “Perhaps I could . . . ah, ah, so sorry!”