Forty Rooms

by Olga Grushin

“Oh,” she said a little later. “So the oncologist will be there when?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course. We’ll be waiting for your call.”

  “Yes,” she said then. “Thank you. I understand.”

  But she did not understand, not at all. Her eyes still, she repeated what the doctor had told her.

  “So they don’t know,” Paul said fiercely. “They don’t know for sure. Honey. Listen to me. Listen to me. This doesn’t mean—”

  She sank to the floor, the telephone slipping onto the carpet. The carpet was green, and all along its border, monkeys, elephants, and giraffes with tails sticking up trudged clockwise one after another. The nursery had a jungle theme. There were blue monkeys climbing up and down the vines on the curtains, and green and orange monkeys on the sheets, and the clock was the grinning face of a lion with two thrusts of jaunty whiskers for hands. The clock showed eleven minutes past one. The lion grinned as its longer whisker moved down a notch, and now it was twelve minutes past one, and the lion’s grin looked evil, and its eyes were demented slits. Fifteen minutes, the doctor had said. Shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. Half an hour at most.

  The demented lion’s whisker moved down another notch.

  There was a swarming of hot wasps in her head. But I don’t understand, she thought dully. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t— With dry, feverish eyes, she stared around the nursery, at the two matching cribs, one of them empty now, sliced in half by a slanting ray of sunlight; she could hear George’s giggles bouncing like spilled peas somewhere downstairs. In the other crib, Rich slept peacefully. His pink lips were partly open, and his shirt rose and fell with his slow, even breaths. He lay on his back, as he often did, his arms and legs spread out wide, as if he had fallen into a tranquil doze while making a snow angel—or a bed angel—or an angel soon to be.

  No. This isn’t happening. Why him, why me, why? It was all a mistake. It made no sense—like opening a gift wrapped in cheerful floral-print paper to discover some rotting horror inside, something vast and nameless from the underside of reality that reared up and swallowed you whole—the nursery’s stuffed animals with their vapid button-eyed faces and blue plush hides turning on one another, tearing out one another’s innards in the hot darkness of the jungle, the reek of guts and feces in the air, the vicious pulse of life and death, and her children, her own flesh and blood, wandering lost and frightened, so sweet, so innocent, so defenseless—

  Her jumbled thoughts rose to a pitch inside her, a hot silent howl. This isn’t real, if this happens, life will be over, nothing will matter, time will drag on and on from year to year, empty, empty. A phrase Hamlet liked to repeat in some unimaginable past fell like a cold little pebble into the turmoil of her mind: Art is a haven from misfortune for mankind. Some ancient had said it, Seneca or Menander, one of those stoic philosophers or sage playwrights who strode about wrapped in their neatly pressed togas, proclaiming that nothing human was alien to them. She felt she was choking. Haven from misfortune—what mockery that was, what mockery . . . No, if this happens, I will be silent forever, for this suffering will not fit into any words, into any poetry—who can even think of poetry when it’s Rich, my Rich, my special Rich, so full of life, so full of future, why? But the horrifying knowledge had already stirred inside her, uncoiling its slithering length. I did this. I did this. This is my punishment—my punishment for always thinking this isn’t enough, my punishment for always dreaming of a life I will lead once I am free, once I am an artist, once the children are gone. This is the gods throwing it back in my face, this is the gods, yet again, granting the most evil of my wishes, answering the darkest of my prayers. You wanted your children gone, and so they will be, one by one by one, so now go stuff yourself full of your fucking freedom, full of your fucking art . . .

  She grew conscious then of her sobs, and of Paul on the floor next to her, gripping her shoulders, repeating, “Honey, please, honey, we don’t know for sure—” With a jolt she remembered him, her big, safe, cozy giant of a husband who always knew just what to do, whose love for her had always been there. Something deep in her seemed to give way at last, and her soul rose in her mouth, heavy with gratitude and love and terror. Gods, oh gods, I swear, if only you avert this, if only you take this cup of suffering away from me, I will be happy, I will never want anything more, I will never ask for anything more, just this life, just this small life, because it isn’t small, I understand that now, it is enough, it is all I want, this family is all I want, all I ever wanted, my husband and my children and my home, I swear, I will prove it to you, I swear, just let it be the way it was and you will see, please, please, if you let me, I will even—I will even . . .

  They sat on the floor, holding each other, while the lion whiskers crept forward on the wall, and the telephone lay inert and deadly between them, and their baby slept in his crib with the orange monkeys, and outside the closed door their other children squealed with laughter, and spots of bright sunshine slithered like fat yellow slugs across the giraffes on the carpet, and some other, normal life slipped farther and farther away, sliding over the edge, year after year, decade after decade, falling into nothing.

  The lion’s whiskers now pointed to twenty-nine minutes past one.

  The telephone rang.

  They looked at it.

  “Paul,” she mouthed. “I can’t. Paul. Please.”

  He answered, his face blank, his voice a wire.

  “Yes? Yes, Dr. Peck. Yes. Yes.”

  She held his free hand, crushing his fingers, watched his face split open with relief. She felt herself going slack, and hid her own face in his shoulder, and cried with happiness unlike any she had ever known. They were reprieved, the door that had cracked open onto the monstrous blackness had swung closed, this time at least—but she would never let there be another time. And when he finished telling her, and when they stopped laughing and shouting and kissing the bewildered, sleepy Rich long enough to catch their breaths, she snuggled deeper into his arms and whispered, “Let’s have another baby.”

  The expression on his face was suddenly hard to read.

  “We have a wonderful family already,” he said a long moment later, and leaned over to kiss her—but she knew by the way he looked at her that he would change his mind in time, that she would change his mind for him.

  26. Guest Bedroom

  The Only Poem Written at the Age of Thirty-five

  “Naturally, these are all important decisions,” the decorator said, shutting her purse—a hard-edged affair taut with some reptile’s skin. “And while most of our options are not inexpensive, you must keep in mind that, if done properly, they will last you forever.” In the doorway she paused. “Also, Mrs. Caldwell, you should consider cutting down that tree in front, it makes the room quite dark.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Caldwell. “Thank you for coming, Felicity.”

  Alone, she dreamily stroked the rise of her stomach and contemplated the two bare windows, dimmed by the oak’s giant shadow. Felicity’s right, I should call our tree service, she resolved—and was, for the briefest of moments, visited by a disorienting sensation, a memory, or perhaps a thought, brushing by her only to flee out of reach. Just then, on the exact same spot in a neighboring dimension, a woman who looked much like her, but who had no baby with glowing pink fingers close to her heart, stood gazing out of her study window, thinking about a poem she would write next. It would be a long poem set entirely in an old tree, even bigger than this one—like the magnificent oak that grew in a forest clearing beyond her childhood dacha. There would be fairies living in its vertiginous upper reaches, elegant, haughty, and treacherous, weaving subtle byzantine intrigues over sips of pollen-sweetened dew from perfumed petal cups; and nameless birds, bees, and squirrels working their lives away in the middle thicket, scurrying in and out of nests and hollows, storing honey, gathering acorns, raising their y
oung, ensuring by the daily accretion of minute labors the eternal rotation of the seasons, the steady passage of time; and, in the damp, black interstices of the underground tunnels and roots, secret societies of gnomes pursuing with dark obsession some mysterious, closely guarded purpose of their own, and a lonely mole scribe entrusted by generations of moles before him to continue the Sacred History of the Tree, to record with diligent devotion each drought, each near strike of lightning, each furry death, each feathered birth, to write the world into existence while himself remaining blind, unappreciated, and unknown, year after year after year. But the most marvelous thing about the tree would be its leaves, for the leaves—the leaves . . . And just as the woman at the window of that other, haphazardly furnished, much smaller house reached for her pen, Mrs. Caldwell looked once again at the notes she had jotted down in her agenda, under the heading “Convert study into guest bedroom”:

  Curtain rods: fluted or smooth?

  Antique pewter or ancient gold?

  Double-pleated or double-ruffled?

  Finials: square or round?

  Rings: leaf-carved or plain?

  Paint: Inner Balance or Paris Rain?

  And what width should the rods have?

  And what shape should the brackets be?

  And how much will the tassels cost?

  Eugene’s school bus screeched to a stop outside their gate. But I shouldn’t rush into anything, Mrs. Caldwell thought as she set her notebook aside and went downstairs to meet him. Because whatever choices I make, these window treatments will be forever.

  27. Master Closet

  The Secret Life of Mrs. Caldwell

  The large walk-in closet, upholstered in striped damask of pale beige and cream, had a satin-covered settee at one end, beneath a wall of precisely arranged shoes, and a second settee at the opposite end, by a floor-length mirror. On the left, Mr. Caldwell’s suits and shirts hung in a neat procession of muted grays and blues; on the right, somber bags of sturdy plastic concealed the bright plumage of Mrs. Caldwell’s evening dresses.

  Her most recent acquisition, a long gown of crimson velvet, had matching high heels, which sparkled with tiny crystals along delicate crisscrossing straps. Mrs. Caldwell finished struggling with the left clasp and took a tentative twirl in front of the mirror. She had chosen the dress for an evening of gambling at a Monte Carlo casino: the dark red velvet would look dramatic, she thought, against the backdrop of green-clothed tables and tuxedoed men. “Shaken, not stirred,” she said in a throaty voice to her reflection, narrowing her eyes in the manner of a dangerous woman who might or might not be an enemy secret agent. After taking a few more twirls, she stepped out of the heels, pulled the gown off in fits and starts, and, somewhat flushed with the effort, ran her hands down the luxurious fabric before zipping the plastic cocoon back up. Then, sipping at her vodka tonic, she listened for baby cries or toddler steps.

  All was thankfully quiet.

  She looked with renewed deliberation down the long row of garment bags, selecting her next outing, her next adventure. Should she have cocktails under palm trees on a Caribbean beach (the light silk sheath hand-painted with flowers, and the pineapple-shaped bag that cost a small fortune)? Or go yachting off a Greek island (the turquoise beaded tunic, with the golden gladiator sandals)? Or indulge in a romantic evening at a Paris restaurant where soft jazz would mix with the aroma of lobster bisque and she would look so enticing in a tight black number with a plunging neckline?

  Ever since Cecilia’s birth, Mrs. Caldwell found herself engaging in fervid bouts of late-night shopping, compulsively clicking the “Complete your purchase” button after Paul had gone to bed. She bought only special-occasion dresses, stiletto heels, evening bags—fancy things of useless, extravagant beauty, of which she had not the slightest need (and which hardly even fit her properly: she chose all her clothes two sizes too small, for when she was thin again). She liked to envision a specific occasion before each new acquisition, the particular place and time she would use it if she led the kind of life that called for the use of such things; and she was then free to imagine the outings in the privacy of the closet, a well-deserved drink close at hand, posing before the mirror in that short, blissful interval after her five children had fallen asleep and before Paul returned from the office and one, or two, or three of the children awoke, wailing with wordless hunger, or asking for water, or frightened by a nightmare, or needing to pee.

  Sometimes she thought: Perhaps, when I am ninety years old and my mind is failing, I will find a trunk crammed full of chiffon and glitter in the attic. I will stare at the moth-eaten gowns and the dusty shoes with dimming eyes, and I will mistake my long-ago closet fantasies for actual memories. For what, after all, is the difference between a memory and a fantasy? Are not both a succession of imprecisely rendered images further obscured by imprecisely chosen words and animated only by the wistful effort of one’s imagination? And who is to say that a vividly imagined moment of happiness is not, in the end, more enriching to the spirit than a hazy semi-recollection of some pallid pastime?

  She had just squeezed into a full skirt of iridescent peacock-blue taffeta (she had to leave the zipper half undone) and was searching for a suitable top when the telephone shrieked. Frantic, she groped in the pile of discarded shoe boxes. One ring, two rings—and, panting, she grabbed at the receiver, gasped a breathless, slightly slurred “Hello?”

  The woman’s accented voice on the other end was unfamiliar.

  “Wrong number,” she said curtly, and was hanging up already when the voice resolved into Olga’s briskness.

  “Did I catch you at a bad moment?” Olga asked.

  Mrs. Caldwell felt a sudden surge of hostility. She has all the time in the world, she thought, so why must she intrude upon what little time I have to myself? But the house lay still; the children, mercifully, went on sleeping; she resigned herself. Clearing the nearby settee of gauzy accumulations of scarves, she settled down and, clutching her half-finished drink, spent a few minutes taking stock of her life. Paul was well, the children were fine, Emma was reading far beyond her years, Eugene enjoyed science, the twins really did have their own language, Celia had not yet begun to sleep through the night. Having dispensed with the obligatory questions, Olga plunged into chatter. Her latest relationship was over but she had just met someone new, she was planning to quit her job and travel for a while, go to Egypt, to Argentina . . . Mrs. Caldwell barely listened, as ever on the alert for the sounds of her children waking; and when, in an offhand, “Oh and I nearly forgot” manner, Olga delivered her real news at last, Mrs. Caldwell caught only the tail end of the sentence.

  “What do you mean, three years ahead of schedule?” she had to ask.

  “With my novel,” Olga replied. “Remember how I always said I’d write one when I was forty? Well, it’s coming out next spring.”

  “Really? That’s great, congratulations . . . Oh no, the baby is crying, I must run . . . Talk soon!”

  She finished the vodka tonic in one gulp and sat frowning at her half-dressed reflection in the mirror, and in another minute Paul strode in, shrugging off his jacket. She had not heard him come home.

  “God, what a day!” He bent to peck her cheek. “They fired two more guys, and now Mark’s worried that—”

  “Paul,” she said. “Remember how we were going to go to Thailand or Greece or China for our honeymoon, but my passport still hadn’t arrived, and anyway you had too much work, so we just went to that bed-and-breakfast in the middle of nowhere instead, and you told me we’d do the real thing later? We never did, though.”

  “You got pregnant,” he said, inspecting his tie for stains.

  “I know.” She glanced at her reflection, gave the skirt’s zipper a surreptitious upward tug. “Do you . . . do you ever think about that place?”

  “What place?”

  “The bed-and-breakfast. We were th
ere for three days, and we never even left the room, remember, we had all our meals brought in . . . Well, no, we did drive down to the only bar in town on our first evening, but we were afraid to show our faces there again after we beat all the local high scores on their trivia machine. Oh, we had such a wonderful time—do you remember, Paul? The bed was too soft and too narrow, and it made the floors creak, but we didn’t care.” She laughed a small laugh, gave her empty glass a shake, watched the ice cubes shift and resettle. He was busy sorting through a cluster of suits. She sighed. “And the railroad, remember the railroad?”

  “What railroad?”

  “There were railroad tracks running just a street away, surely you remember. And I’ve never told you this, but every night, after you’d fallen asleep, I stayed awake for hours listening to the freight trains go by. They were so loud, like huge metal boxes being dropped again and again and again. Of course, you slept through everything. But every time one of them rattled by, I wanted so badly to wake you up. I imagined us dressing in the dark and sneaking outside and hopping on one of the cars together, leaving all our luggage behind, not even bothering about the final destination, because anywhere out there would be new, anywhere would be thrilling. I never did wake you, though—I didn’t want you to think I was disappointed. But maybe I should have. I mean, who knows where we’d be now if we had really done it . . . Paul, are you even listening?”

  “I’m sorry, honey, I’d love to reminisce, but with this work crisis, my mind just isn’t . . .” He had finished surveying his clothes and was now pulling shirts and jackets off hangers. “Besides, take it from me, travel is overrated.”

  “Wait—are you packing your bag?”

  “Honey, I’ve just explained to you, I have to go to Texas tomorrow, back on Friday . . . Shall I fix you another drink? I’m going downstairs to make one for myself in a minute. If ever I needed one—or three—”