The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

  While the sisters unloaded the food in the kitchen, Tatyana extolled, “From what I hear, Lawrence is doing sensationally in London! A neighbor of mine brought by a copy of the Wall Street Journal last month, and if it wasn’t Lawrence’s byline on the op-ed page, big as life! I was so impressed! And there I was, just piddling around in the kitchen over another Charlotte Russe. It must be awfully stimulating, living with someone who’s so learned.”

  “Stimulating is one word for it,” said Irina quietly, stashing the blini.

  “Well, aren’t you just busting with pride?”

  “Lawrence can be … a bit of a know-it-all. A bit of a show-off, intellectually.” She spoke under her breath. In the parlor, he was already rattling off the complications of Afghanistan to Dmitri. “This think-tank job may not have been great for his character. He’s become chronically condescending.”

  “Chepukha,” Tatyana dismissed. “He always treats you with respect. And he goes on about politics with such feeling! I find that kind of passion in a man terribly attractive.”

  Irina gave up. There was nothing more frustrating than venturing criticism of someone you were supposed to esteem, and getting no uptake whatsoever. She was left twisting in the wind, sounding like a bitch.

  So they retreated to territory that should have been safe, although cookery was also a minefield. Both sisters were cooks, but of radically contrasting types. Irina was prone to experiment; Tatyana followed recipes to the letter. Irina pushed flavors to their limit—never adding a clove of garlic but the whole bulb; Tatyana specialized in elaborate concoctions with lashes of cream and butter that were classically artful but lacked counterpoint. Irina found Russian cuisine dumpy; Tatyana enthusiastically reproduced their culinary heritage with tasteless authenticity. Where Irina was all very slam-bam (Tatyana would say careless), throwing dishes together with fistfuls of this and that in the confidence that all would work out in the end—which it did—Tatyana leveled exact half-teaspoons of cinnamon with a table knife. As far as Irina was concerned, in the kitchen she dashed off Kandinskys, while her sister dabbed paint-by-numbers. Since they’d had terrible rows in the past—Irina would add so much lemon zest to a birch-log icing that it was “ruined”—she settled on the most neutral substance she could think of.

  “I don’t understand this fad for salt mills,” said Irina, fetching the shakers for the zakuski table. “With pepper, a mill makes a huge difference. But freshly ground salt?”

  “Yes, you’re right, the flavor’s identical!” Tatyana agreed ardently. “Though you might get something textural out of the variations in the size of the grains, don’t you think? For example, I do like that shardy, crystalline quality of Maldon.”

  “Or how about gray salt!” Irina rejoined. “It has this marvelous mineral bite…!”

  While mutually forceful feelings on these subjects allowed for much-needed bonding, once they brought out the pirozhki and Lawrence had moved on to a conclusion to thirty years of brutal sectarian warfare in Ulster, Irina felt girly.

  Despite her professed appetite for learned discourse, Tatyana nipped Northern Ireland right in the bud. In no time she was regaling the company with the travails of redecorating their en suite bathroom, despairing that contractors tracked plaster everywhere. When Lawrence quizzed her earnestly about the pattern of wallpaper she’d chosen, then about the tiles, the toilet, and the taps, Tatyana responded in heartfelt detail, blissfully unaware that his encouraging comments were savage: “Little trumpets or little boats—that must be really hard to decide! … I can’t imagine the upheaval! How do you manage? … Yes, that’s the modern-day quandary—those silent flushers are civilized, but they just don’t get the job done!”

  Weary of his game with Tatyana, Lawrence tried to teach her two kids the bar trick of propping a coaster half off the table, flipping it up, and catching it in a single motion; they found his flawless repetition of the trick mesmerizing, though neither seemed to have the knack. His patience with adults was thin; with kids it was limitless. It occurred to Irina wistfully that Lawrence would make a good father.

  Alas, just when Sasha was getting the hang of it, he knocked a bowl of sour cream onto the carpet. Lawrence streaked to the kitchen and returned with an armload of sponges and spot-removers, feverishly expunging the stain. He admonished the kids, “Maybe we’d better not try the coaster trick around all your grandmother’s beautiful things.”

  Thus it was back to adult conversation. Irina asked Dmitri about his construction business and didn’t care, Tatyana asked Irina about her illustrations and didn’t care, Raisa asked the children about their schoolwork and didn’t care, and Lawrence, stuck in the corner with Tatyana, was ultimately reduced to asking more questions about her bathroom absent the spirit of sly send-up that had made the first set marginally entertaining. Everyone complimented the pirozhki, while Irina thought they didn’t have nearly enough onion, or enough anything, and tasted mostly like dried-out hamburger.

  So this was peace—which, according to their resident conflict studies expert, “beat the alternative.” No one got into an argument. No one said anything insulting. No one broke into rowdy song or raised a voice. While they were provided tiny lace-edged napkins with their appetizers, Irina excused herself to wipe her greasy hands on a paper towel just to be on the safe side.

  Yet once she returned, her frustration was building in combustible quantities. She was reminded of being gussied up in a pert pink dress and patent-leather pumps after church as a girl, having to hang around the house forever waiting for some hunk of meat to overcook, scolded the while that though she had to keep on the scratchy dress for Sunday lunch, she wasn’t allowed to draw pictures because she might get crayon on her outfit. What was the point of growing up if you didn’t earn yourself escape from Sunday Lunch Syndrome? It may have been the twenty-fifth of December, but Irina was not a practicing Christian, and it should have been within her gift, as Lawrence would say, to demote the holiday to just another day of the week if she chose. Why would she inexorably volunteer to shuttle dishes back and forth for an extravagant zakuski array that she didn’t even want? Why was she obliged to converse politely about Tatyana’s PTA work when she was not remotely interested? For years she had whispered dark vows about how when she was a grown-up she wouldn’t ruin half of every weekend trying to keep stains off her uncomfortable clothes and talking about the boring old PTA. Here she had finally clawed her way to adulthood, only to willingly shackle herself once more to other people’s hopelessly crap idea of a good time. Why didn’t she and Lawrence check into a hotel, order champagne and oysters, and fuck like bunnies? She was forty-three years old—why couldn’t she go color?

  Irina sidled over to Dmitri, even if he always seemed a little tongue-tied, because of the lot he looked the most companionably glum. Moreover, to ease himself through the occasion, with the excuse of good ethnic form, he had broken out the frosty bottle of vodka that he’d slipped into Tatyana’s cooler. He wasn’t knocking back shots like a Cossack; nevertheless, inroads had been made.

  “Would you mind if I had some?”

  “Da, konyeshno, Irina, let me get you a glass.”

  Bang, Lawrence’s black look was Pavlovian. It was two in the afternoon. But rather than suddenly demur that she preferred tomahto juice after all, she smiled encouragingly as he filled the glass to the brim, and toasted brightly to Lawrence, “Za tvoye zdorovye!” Then she drained the whole pour in one cold, glorious gulp like a real Russian.

  If the pirozhki were only teasers for the grand zakuski course to come, Irina was already full. The day before, being bullied to starve herself had driven her to overeat; being bullied to stuff herself had the corresponding effect of putting her off her dinner. She did help Tatyana lay out the zakuski in the dining room—herring and black bread, blini with smoked salmon, pickled beets, “poor man’s caviar” made of eggplant, hard-boiled eggs, cucumber salad, and that enormous kulebiaka (which, its decorative pastry delicately browned, did look
splendid)—but bustled dishes about as cover for not eating them. In sufficient quantity food grows repulsive, and all Irina could see when she looked at that groaning board was an oppressive array of leftovers. Aversion to the buffet made her second and third vodkas fiendishly effective.

  Once the main course was laid out—the whole roasted suckling pig on a bed of kasha, braised red cabbage, grated-potato pudding, and string beans with walnut sauce—Irina merely snitched a bit of crackling from the pork to go with her wine.

  In such abundance, a meal is less a feast than a mugging. The company staggered back to the parlor as if bashed on the head. Even Tatyana agreed that they might take a breather before dessert, and open their presents.

  The vodka had been primly whisked away before dinner, but the bottle was easily located in the freezer, and now seductively cold. As she returned to the parlor with her bracer, Irina’s face flushed with the high color of Christmas cheer. When the polite one-at-a-time unwrapping began, the extra shot helped to drown her sorrow when she handed off their present to her mother. Raisa put the choker on, and Irina purred about how well it suited her; much was made of Lawrence’s having brought the gift from Moscow. For once Raisa’s effusion evinced a trace of sincerity. But watching the choker leave her own life with finality pierced Irina with a grief all out of proportion to the scale of the loss—a monumental mournfulness that she herself did not quite understand, even as a lump formed in her throat at the very point where the enamelwork once had rested. Grim consolation, presumably she might inherit it when Raisa was dead.

  The abundance of the other gifts, however well-meaning, engendered that all-this-trouble-and-money-for-what? deflation of the average American Christmas. Tatyana’s heavy package for Irina contained a set of massive homemade candles that the kids had helped to cast; Irina’s foreign residence was an abstraction to her sister, and it would never have occurred to Tatyana that now she would have to drag ten pounds’ worth of gaudy paraffin back to the UK in zipper-strained luggage. Lawrence got two ties, when he hardly ever wore them; Raisa a synthetic shawl, a lumpy sweater, and some cheap costume jewelry from the children, appurtenances all destined for a bottom drawer. Since one compulsively buys people the last thing they need, Tatyana received mostly food. Nearly everyone had given Dmitri aftershave; the boxed bottles that collected at his feet, two of the same brand, were an embarrassment. Likewise Raisa persisted in purchasing her grandchildren toys designed for younger kids—the label on the doll for ten-year-old Nadya specified “For Ages 4–7”—and children never interpret such slips as ignorance, but as calculated insult.

  Toward the last, Irina shyly handed Lawrence an envelope, from which he pulled a postcard-size drawing. He frowned at first, and she was hurt that he didn’t seem to recognize it, for she’d gone to some effort replicating the illustration in miniature.

  “It’s the arrival of the Crimson Traveler,” she explained, “the first version, for Seeing Red. I told you, it was an odd man out, and in the end I couldn’t use it and had to draw the panel again. I framed the original for you. It didn’t make any sense to bring all that glass to New York … so I made you that little reproduction. You liked the picture so much, remember? You said the style was—bonkers.”

  “Oh, yeah…” he said foggily.

  “I thought you might like to hang it in your office.”

  “Sure, that’s a great idea!” he said, and kissed her cheek. But his enthusiasm felt pumped, like her mother’s, and she was still not convinced that he remembered the illustration at all. Moreover, her gift may have been a tad perverse. The unruly sensation that had taken hold of her when she scrawled that alarming panel had derived from a place that Lawrence had no vested interest in her choosing to revisit.

  In turn, Lawrence fetched his own present from under the tree, and Irina’s heart leapt when she saw that it was small. That’s why he’d gone shopping yesterday! If they would still give her mother the choker, he was determined to compensate her loss with a necklace equally lovely on this very day. He was so kind!

  Inside the package was a set of keys.

  “Merry Christmas! I bought you a car.”

  As she stared at the keys in dumbfounded silence, he went on. “Well, us a car, but I’ll still walk to work, so you can have it during the day. So you can shop at the bigger Tesco on Old Kent Road, and not drag bags from Elephant and Castle. It’s nothing flashy, a used Ford Capri, but the 1995 model was rated highly in Consumer Reports …”

  It would be impolitic to submit that she really wasn’t bothered about lugging bags from Elephant and Castle. Even a used car was a major financial undertaking, what with the insurance, petrol, and parking, and the present smacked of executive decision. It was nice to be surprised, but she might have preferred to be consulted. After she kissed him in thanks—and he mumbled, “Whoa, don’t light a match near your mouth!”—Irina grew further perturbed over the fact that she’d never dropped word one about wanting a car. Thus even more than high handedness the gift smacked of brute expenditure, as a substitute for something more precious, if not in the fiscal sense.

  Aside from the choker, tendered with regret, was there to be no present this Christmas that didn’t fall flat? She’d expected at least the Disc-man they’d bought the children to go down a treat. But Tatyana had whispered in the kitchen that the kids had been campaigning for a Sony PlayStation for months, and the platform was too costly; by the time Sasha unwrapped the Discman, the blanket under the tree was denuded, and it was crushingly apparent that no one had obliged. Sensing his letdown, Irina talked up the accompanying Alanis Morissette album, Jagged Little Pill, helping Sasha to fit it into the portable CD player while Tatyana laid out dessert—just in case there was anyone left in the family who didn’t yet want to throw up.

  Oh, Alanis Morissette was probably more up Irina’s alley than Sasha’s, who at twelve would be tepid on music by a girl. But Morissette’s go-it-alone fuck-you suited her mood at the moment. With the wrapping stashed for next year, booty stacked beside each chair, the carpet was clear. In a wild departure from her wallflower past—if only to shuck the pervasive disappointment with which the room was imbued, and to court a sensation of lightness after being surrounded by all that food—Irina began to dance.

  She was unable to entice Sasha to join her—he was at an awkward age, and shy—much less could she tempt spoilsport Lawrence to become her partner in the sense that the previous generation would have meant. But never mind them. What a waste all these years, to have ceded such an exhilarating pastime to her mother and sister, when for both it was primarily a source of suffering. True, she was a tad unsteady on her feet. Unschooled, and lacking even the latent muscle memory of a raucous youth, Irina jigged the parlor in an eclectic style, snatching moves from disco, jitterbug, and boogie. She sang along with the lyrics loudly enough to drown Lawrence’s grumbling on the sidelines, “Irina, you’re making a fool of yourself.” Mischievously, to punctuate one wailing refrain she extended a leg backwards into an arabesque.

  And knocked over the samovar.

  “Lawrence,” said Raisa in that spilt-milk voice over which, in defiance of the standard axiom, Irina had cried plenty as a girl. “Pozhaluysta. Could you control my daughter?”

  He could. And he did.

  16

  IF IN THE PREVIOUS year Irina had gloriously overthrown the tyranny of her own stinting, purposeful nature, in the year following she tried strenuously to reinstate the same strict, diligent woman whom she had once come to resent. As in most revolutions, creating chaos is a cinch, restoring order thereafter an undertaking both dreary and monumental. But however oppressive one’s own character can become, long enough as someone else, you begin to miss it.

  She had instigated a similar revolution in tenth grade. The summer before, her braces had been removed. When she smiled, her front teeth no longer shelved grotesquely over her lower lip, and the most agreeable-looking people smiled right back. Little by little she had learned to hold her h
ead high, to stroll from her hips, and to meet the gazes of upperclassmen with the brazen challenge of a budding vamp. Yet this revelation was destined to unfold in slow motion, for only that moment on the sixth of July when she leaned into Ramsey Acton and this handsome desirable kissed her back was the process of realizing she was no longer an eyesore complete.

  Since childhood pariahs often court compensatory approval from adults, Irina had always been a straight-A student. But now the cool people with lowslung jeans, long hair, and miasmic Indian cottons that had bled in the wash were enticing her to their basement stairwells, where they proffered joints as tight, slender, and tapered as Ramsey’s cue. She experimented wickedly with skipping class. Trading on her upstanding reputation with an embarrassed mumble to teachers about getting her period, she got away with it, too.

  But there came a time to pay the piper. Toward the end of sophomore year, her art teacher was organizing a field trip to the Museum of Modern Art, and qualification for the privilege required meeting a minimum academic standard. Voice steeped in disappointment, Mrs. Bennington had announced to the whole class that Irina McGovern’s grades were too low for her to qualify. As one, her classmates turned in amazement toward this hitherto goody-two-shoes, and whatever shred of street cred her newly disreputable GPA may have garnered failed to compensate for the shame. What had she done? Who was this tearaway fuckup, where once sat an honors student? Irina had bartered her dignity for fun.

  Thus her experience that January had an unpleasantly familiar texture. It had been mortifying enough for the straight-A student to ask Puffin for an extension. And while technically she’d met the deadline, deep down inside she knew those drawings were not “hasty.” They were terrible.