“The snow brought down a lot of branches,” she says.
“Hell of a thing.”
“Yes. God’s way of making the trees stronger.”
“Do the trees really get stronger?”
“This is what I understand,” she says.
“Part of God’s plan?”
“A consequence of weather.”
“Not God?”
“It’s just an idiomatic quirk. It’s just the weather,” she says.
They have a glass of wine. He seems distracted. He can’t seem to look at her and Tulah asks if he’s okay.
“It’s been a long week,” he says.
“It’s Tuesday,” Tulah says, giggling a little.
“Work is difficult right now.” He stops. “But we don’t talk about stuff like this. Tell me something you care about right now. Tell me about what you’re reading. Let’s have another glass of wine.”
They swing into a banter that is serious but avoids anything resembling the routines of their daily lives. But she senses something is wrong. This meeting has none of the joyful dance. It seems forced and prodded. As if this affair, which is supposed to be an escape from the reality of their lives into something only about pleasure and bliss, has become an obligation. They make love in his hotel room with afternoon light slanted through the windows. It seems as if they’ve just begun when The Lover stops and rolls to his side and looks at her. “Do you know what Chaucer called this?”
“My vagina?” she says. She’s confused.
“Yes. In his Canterbury Tales he called it la belle chose. It means the pretty thing, or the lovely thing.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know. I just remembered it and thought you ought to know, if you didn’t already know.”
“I didn’t know,” she says. “But my belle chose would like some attention just now.”
Afterward, she does not feel weightless – like the times before this one – but rather, weighed down. She looks at The Lover. He is dressing, slowly, as if he is deep in thought. He picks up his coat, kisses her on the cheek and pauses. He sits at the end of the bed.
“Do you ever feel depressed?”
“Depressed? Yes. Sometimes.”
“What do you do about it?”
“Are you depressed, my dear? I’m sorry. I thought something was off. I’ve been thoughtless.”
“No. I’m fine. I’m just tired. I was wondering about you.”
“Oh. Well, yes. Sometimes I get depressed.” She wonders why he’s asking.
“And how do you handle it?”
“I count my blessings. I drink a glass of champagne that I can barely afford. I watch my daughters sleep. I get up in the morning and smile and breathe and move forward.”
“Does this happen often?”
Tulah smiles. “Do you mind me asking why you’re curious about this?”
“I just wondered. I have a sister…I have a sister who struggles with darkness.”
“Darkness? Darkness is not what I’d call my depression. I have periods of time when grey is everything. Nothing is defined. Everything is dull and grey. Which is different than darkness, I think.”
“Yes. Darkness is more serious. A bigger thing.”
“Is your sister okay?”
“Most of the time. It comes and goes.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister…”
“I have to get going,” he says, standing up.
When he is gone, Tulah looks at the shadows on the wall. She thinks about the lightness of a shadow – she would like to be a shadow of something beautiful – comprised of the absence of light, the negative of mass, the ephemeral shape of something solid.
* * *
They put the girls to bed and meet on the front deck. It’s cool and humid. The snow has dragged the temperature down and even though it’s mostly melted, it’s still chilly. Tulah puts on a khaki green jacket and Ray finds a grey sweater at the back entrance – it’s grey and ripped at its armpits but he can’t bear to throw it out.
“I do not understand this woman,” Tulah says. “She won’t let it go. I mean school is done for the year. You’d think she’d give it a rest.”
Ray smiles. He has no idea what she’s talking about.
Tulah can see his confusion. “That woman who wants creation taught in a science class,” she says.
“Oh, her,” Ray says. “What’s she doing, besides being irrelevant?”
“She’s presenting at the next School Board meeting. They’re giving her ten minutes.”
“And?”
“And it’s horrifying. This woman is going to spew her bullshit, flawed logic as fact and it will sound sane, because she’s just a caring mom. And more importantly, she will make it seem harmless.”
“And if she breaks it down to the unanswerable question of what was there before the Big Bang?”
“She won’t. For her, it was God. It was all God. Everything is God. God is the way and the answer to everything. This makes me want to drink. What do we have?”
“There’s a bottle of pinot-something in the fridge but I can’t remember how long it’s been there.”
Chapter 7
Anxious
“It is better to be slapped by the truth than kissed by a lie”
– Zhanna Petya
When Nancy was in the throes of sex, she was able to forget almost everything. The wings never came when she was making love and this was a good reason for her to take lovers. In coitus, the darkness pulled back and left her alone. Her husband’s need to have sex every day, no matter what, was in the beginning, a balm. There were no wings in that first year. But the monotony of his need began to wear thin for her. She was required to be there, her legs spread, or her ass in the air. She was required to be ready and to act willing. Even if she was sick, he would insist on fucking her. Soon, she was hearing the wings every day. Sometimes she heard the wings twice in one day, and she began to dread sex. She began to manufacture escapes. She found ways to remove herself from the house. A visit to New York to see her brother, or a yoga retreat in Mexico, always timed to happen at the busiest time of year for her husband; anything to get out of the house.
Slava did not come to her wedding. He was away on business. The company was expanding into South America and Slava was living, temporarily, in Venezuela. He called from Valencia and asked her if she was sure about this banker.
“Yes, Slava,” Nancy said. “He’s a good man.”
“How do you know he is a good man?”
“I know it has only been a few months,” she said, “but he makes me happy.”
Slava met the banker only once. He’d checked on him and found nothing out of line. He came from a decent family that had roots in Virginia, and he’d studied business at Stanford. His reputation within the banking community was spotless. He had no criminal record, but there had been some murmurings about an investigation into associations with an off-shore bank. The investigation died before the rumours could coagulate. The banker was clean but there was something about him that Slava didn’t like. There was an arrogance in the way he held himself and this rubbed him the wrong way. It was as if the banker cared too much about the way he looked.
“If at some point in the future, he stops making you happy, you will talk to me about it, right?” Slava said.
“Don’t worry, brother,” she said. “He’s one of the good ones.”
“I am sorry to have to miss the wedding.”
“Venezuela is a long trip,” she said. “It’s a small wedding anyway.”
“I’m sending a present.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s done. A man named Vladimir will drop off an envelope at the gallery tomorrow. You can use it on your honeymoon. He looks a bit scary but he has
the disposition of a kitten. Is that the right word? Disposition? Meaning his character, or personality?”
“Disposition is a good word,” Nancy said.
“I still struggle to tell a joke in English. It’s a horrible language for jokes. In Russian, I can be funny. In English, I am not so funny.”
“Your English is perfect to me,” she said.
“Listen, I must go now. I just wanted to say congratulations, dear Nensi. I am happy for you.”
“Thank you, Slava. When will you be home?”
“A few months, perhaps a little longer. Anytime you want to talk, you know how to reach me.”
They honeymooned in Hawaii, on the Island of Maui, and for the first months Nancy was in the light. Around month seven she crashed and wanted to hide. She could feel it coming and as much as she wanted to stop it, it always came.
“I’m too depressed for sex,” she said. “I’m just really down right now.”
“Nonsense,” the banker said. “Nobody is ever that depressed.”
“I am. I feel sad right now.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“No. I just want to be left alone,” she said.
“Are you my wife?”
“Yes, of course I’m your wife.” She smiled, trying to bring a lightness to the conversation. “But it’s okay to take a break every now and then, right?”
“Yes, of course, but once you start it could become habitual and that would ruin our marriage. You don’t want to ruin our marriage, do you? You don’t want to be unhappy, do you? Of course, you don’t.”
“No. I don’t want to ruin anything. I just feel sad right now.”
He rolled her over onto her stomach. “It’s okay,” he said. “Relax and you will feel better. I promise.”
But it was not better. As he was pushing himself into her, she heard the flapping sound of wings. For the following months, the banker prodded her to have sex each day. He insisted, for the sake of their marriage. Once a week, he sent flowers to her at work and each night he demanded sex. He was upfront about the potential undoing of their marriage if they didn’t have sex every day. He believed it and he wanted her to believe it too. Nancy moaned in all the right places and groaned in the appropriate moments and their life moved forward. Even when her darkness ended, the pall of the previous months hung over her and it was never again making love – it had become a release of endorphins. Or exercise. Or a distasteful job. She could not tell her brother about her sex life. He was her brother. And besides, he would not have understood that sometimes you have to do things that might not feel good – that even if you were not in the mood, it was fine to make your husband happy. Slava would want to do something; he would insist on trying to make a correction. Apart from the pigeon at school, she had never seen evidence of his protection, but she’d heard enough that she had no doubt about his capacity for violence, and she trusted his protection was always there if she needed it.
Nancy knew, intellectually, she should just say no, and only yes when she felt like it, but she was a little afraid of the banker’s reaction. He was so passionate about their marriage and the idea that it hung by the fragile thread of their daily intercourse. She considered this a weakness in herself, a flaw and she hated herself for it. But she could not muster a denial; she just let him do whatever he wanted.
* * *
Two months ago, Nancy was with her girlfriend, Sofia, at a café that was altogether too trendy for both of them, but in a convenient location. They steered their indifference through farmer-friendly coffee beans and a locally grown vegan menu, and found a window table. Sofia is normally well put together. She will come for coffee as if she is about to walk a runway in Paris. But today she has pulled her hair back into a ponytail and she is not wearing makeup. She told Nancy she’d looked on the floor for a sweatshirt that wasn’t too wrinkled and smelled okay, pulled on a pair of jeans and runners.
“I sprayed some perfume,” Sofia said, smiling. “It’s the time difference between London and here. I wind up working in the middle of the night. I’m fine at 3 a.m. but I’m a wreck during the day. I can barely make breakfast and drive Emily to school.”
Nancy knew Sofia was involved in some kinky cam stuff that was relatively lucrative and most of her clients were overseas. She had worked hard to develop a solid list of regulars. And she worked even harder to keep this life separate from her daughter.
Beyond London and 3 a.m., Nancy does not remember much of the conversation with Sofia. They shared a bottle of prosecco and Sofia told her about a client who lived in a place called Shiraz, in Iran, who wanted her to dress in a burka and talk dirty. Just talk. Not touch herself. Not play with dildos. Just talk.
It was the couple in the corner that distracted Nancy – they held hands across the table and looked at each other as if the café, the city, and the world were irrelevant. Nancy watched them as a melancholy envy expanded in her chest. She wanted what they had. She wanted that sort of magic, even if it didn’t last. She recognized it as corny and romantic but this did not matter. She wanted that out-of-time craziness with someone and when she thought about who she would want to sit across from her, she gasped.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m in love with Ray,” Nancy said, her voice low and lifeless.
“The married guy?”
Nancy nodded, slowly. This realization took the wind out of her. Why not the gorgeous man who leads her spin class, or the man with the beard who is often at the Select – the one who drinks a bottle of wine by himself over the course of the night? Or why not any number of other men in her life? Why did her mind go to Ray? She thought she was doing such a good job of stopping it at sex.
Nancy looked at the couple, who were still holding hands and talking. She had to get out of the café. She asked the waiter to add two flutes of champagne to her bill and to deliver these drinks to the lovers after she was gone.
* * *
“I think we should call your wife,” she says. “We can call her together. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Ray says nothing.
“Don’t you want to see how things will play out? I do. I mean, what if she doesn’t care that you’ve been banging some Russian woman? Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise? Then we could carry on being together. We could start again.”
“Do you know one woman on the planet who would be okay with this?”
Nancy pauses. She tries to put herself in Ray’s wife’s position. She’s married to a decent guy. They have two kids, and a house in the suburbs. They are happy, happy, happy and then along comes another woman who not only fucks her husband but wants to take him from her. Nancy can feel the anger in her gut, and a raging possessiveness.
“Rules always have exceptions.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, I still think we should see what happens. Let’s call Tuna.”
Ray hesitates. Did she do that on purpose? Has he ever mentioned his wife by name? Or has she always been ‘my wife.’ “Tulah,” he says. “It’s Tulah.”
“Really, Ray. That’s a name for a cat. That’s what you call your cat.” She mimics calling a cat – “Here, Tulah. Come on, pussy! Here, Tulah.”
“That’s hilarious,” Ray says. Something deep inside of him believed her when she said she was going to jump. There was a hard determination, and a resignation in her voice that was utterly believable – as if the string of her voice was pulled taut. He believed her but he did not want to believe her.
“Tell me why you just ran away.”
“I didn’t run away. I walked. And then there was the elevator ride…”
“Stop being a literal prick…You know what I mean.”
Ray glances at the building across the sidewalk. He looks up. The sky is grey and greyer and it’s reflected silver-grey in the building’s windows. It feels like snow.
&nb
sp; “Honestly? The idea of leaving my family was never on the table.”
“You might have told me that up front.”
“Yes, I should have.”
“So then why were you with me for so long? I thought…” But she does not want to say what she thought. She thought they were moving closer and closer to something real. She feels stupid again, for the twentieth time in the past hour.
“I thought things would change. I thought I would change. I didn’t.”
Her voice sounds distant and stretched out. “Well, that’s something, Ray. That’s something.”
“What are you doing up there? You sound funny. Please tell me you’re sitting on the couch with a drink.”
“Look up, Ray.”
“What do you mean, look up?”
“I mean look up. I see the top of your car. You should see me. I can see you. At least I think it’s your car.”
Ray steps out of his car and moves around the front to the sidewalk. He looks up and barely sees her leaned out over the balcony railing, waving both arms.
“Can you see me?”
“Yes,” he says. “I can see you.”
“Watch this.”
Ray watches as she swings a leg over and then the other, and she sits with her legs dangling. That railing is four inches and she’s perched like a bird. She’s holding the phone in one hand and holding the rail with the other.
“Come on, Nancy. Can you please not do that?”
“Why not? This makes me feel alive.”
“You’re making me feel alive too. But not in a good way.”
“Good. I want you to feel alive.”
“What are you doing, Nancy?”
“Flirting,” she says. “Whoa…” She slips. The phone clacks to the balcony deck and skitters across the floor. She twists off the narrow edge of the railing and smacks face-first into the glass. She hangs from the railing, her feet flailing, searching frantically for a hold – a hold that is not the empty space of falling to her death. Both hands on the railing above her head, she needs a purchase for her feet. She knows she will not be able to pull herself up without a foothold. She does not have the strength in her arms. Her right foot finds a lip, one toe in a crack, and this is enough. She pushes up and finds the ledge with her left foot. Then she is standing with both feet on the ledge, hands glued to the railing, facing the open mouth of her apartment. She stops to find her place, to catch her breath, to realize she is not falling. Her back is to the grey city and she is fine. She focuses on the balcony, the cool metal of the railing, the glass.
This Is All a Lie Page 22