by Pamela Morsi
She swallowed, not quite able to meet his gaze.
"I made up a story in which I was the heroine," she said. "All the things that I dreamed of doing, I did in this story. I walked around turning people into what I wanted them to be. In my little scratchings, I allowed myself to live a kind of life I was too frightened to attempt in reality."
She sighed with weariness, as if the burden she carried weighted her down, and faced him squarely.
"One day, I'm not even sure quite when it happened, the world I created crossed the line into the world where I lived. There were things there, things that belonged to other people's lives that I took over. Ultimately I trivialized them."
She shook her head with guilt as her heart pleaded for him to understand.
"That is the worst thing a human can do to another human, you know. To trivialize their reality."
"And this is what you fear, that you will trivialize my reality?"
"Our . . . our time together is time out of real life. That's what we both said that we want."
Mikolai glanced down the hallway. She saw him looking at the walls, the ceiling, the carpet. Then his gaze returned to her.
'To have you here with me is a chance I am willing to take," he said.
"But what if—" she began.
"What if Teddy never plays football again?" he said. "What if he and Claire never marry? What if George does not become Sublime Kalifa? We can deal with those things when we find them. We do not have to solve our problems before we make them." He gripped her hands tightly as if he could hold Gertrude to him by physical means alone.
"Please stay this night with me," he pleaded.
How could she deny him? She loved him.
Bravely, she gave her Mikolai a smile. "Of course, I will stay," she said.
He smiled back. A broad, warm, welcoming smile that went straight to her heart and welled her eyes with tears.
"It will be good to have my zona in my home," he said.
She knew then, like a lightning flash of understanding, she knew. She knew that more than any other reason, and there were many, she knew why she should not stay. It was because she wanted to too much.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Mikolai was nervous. Pacing to and fro across the front parlor was not helping at all. Upstairs, Teddy had awakened from his nap and he and Claire were playing cards. Gertrude had gone over to Barkley House to pack a satchel of clothing for herself and her niece. His heart beating with anxious excitement, Mikolai told himself to remain calm. The silent, stalwart Polish demeanor that had always worked so well for him was nowhere to be found. Gertrude Barkley was to spend the night in his house and he was unrealistically thrilled.
Shaking his head with disbelief, Mikolai walked the short distance to his library. He plopped himself down in one of the tufted leather armchairs and stared thoughtfully at nothingness. He realized with some surprise that he was smiling. Smiling. Alone in his very serious gentleman's study of his richly appointed eclectic manse, he, Mikolai Stefanski, was grinning like a fool. With some hesitation he searched his thoughts to find out why.
Certainly having Gertrude with him in the house tonight was a pleasing thought. But it would not be as if she were really here. He would have to guard his speech and actions toward her for the sake of the children. He would not be allowed to sleep with her, although the mere idea of holding her close in his big mahogany four-poster had the same effect one might have imagined if she had run her hand along the front of his trousers. And they would both be aware that her venture into the life of the Stefanski household would be a temporary one.
It was a start, he insisted to himself. Rome was not built in a day and Gertrude Barkley would not be won in a night. But it had to begin somewhere. Mikolai was ready to begin. He need not rush her or frighten her. He had the rest of his life to make her his own.
He paused in his ruminating to look around him. Something had changed. Something inside him had changed. Only a few weeks ago, he was a man whose memories and regrets outnumbered his plans for the future. He had danced a simple sad waltz with a woman he'd known for years and he had changed.
He thought about the question she had asked him the other afternoon about his guilt. He hadn't lied. It seemed that love, his love for Gertrude, had truly made it fade away.
Purposely he allowed his mind to drift back to thoughts of Poland. He picked up those memories with great care and examined them as if they were made of spun glass. The golden fields of autumn were almost as close to his heart as if he were there again, there in Poland. Not the Poland that he knew it to be in 1915, a Poland of warring armies and mixed loyalties, but the Poland of his childhood. The one that existed only in memory.
With the eye that dwelled in his heart, he saw Tatus in the field of grain. It must have been a good year. The wheat was nearly as high as the man's waist and was ripe and glistening in the afternoon sunshine. His father swung the big scythe back and forth, moving in that earthly cadence so intrinsic to yeoman farmers. His step never faltering, his stroke never halting; the strong, dependable father of five cut his field with the optimism of a man who would live forever and with the knowledge that he certainly would not.
Mikolai let his thoughts drift to his mother. The images came flooding in. She was making bread in the kitchen, the baby, Rhysio, her favorite son, forever frail and pale and pretty, tugging at her apron. She was hanging laundry upon the fence with such pride in its cleanliness it was almost sin. She was kneeling upon the hard dirt floor in the little church clutching her well-worn beads and praying. Praying, Mikolai knew, for her children.
Matka was silent and often sullen as he was sometimes himself. But Tatus would make her laugh. He teased her about her cooking. Pretended to forget her name, claiming he'd had so many wives, it was hard to keep track of them. And he would look down the long table at his family and exclaim in horror that she must be taking in orphan children, he knew he had never fathered so many of his own.
They would all laugh and Matka would slap him on the hand with the wooden spoon, as if he were another of her errant youngsters.
In the night sometimes Mikolai would hear them in their bower. They would be whispering, telling tales, sharing secrets. Tatus would say something low and suggestive. Matka would giggle like a young girl. And then there would be silence. Sweet, soft silence, or very near it, as they sneaked through their private, intimate moments with deliberate effort not to awaken the children.
The children. His brothers. His sister. Himself. He let his mind follow those paths. In his thoughts once more they were all alive and all together. He and Bartos and Dawid out in the snow searching for the most perfect Christmas bough. Their breath coming out in great clouds of warm air. They broke off twigs and fashioned them into would-be pipes and pretended that they were men out for a smoke.
He remembered his sister, Edda, during one spring masquerade when it was tradition for boys to pester girls. He had come up behind her and shorn off the end of her braid with the wool cutters. Even though he'd covered his face with soot and wore a self-fashioned wig of broom straw, she'd recognized him and instead of bribing him with colored eggs to leave her be, she'd whacked him across the nose with the soap ladle. He'd bled all over his dingus costume and his nose was never shaped exactly the same way again.
He remembered her also with a bride's wreath upon her head. She was brave and beautiful, her chin held high as she sat for a wedding supper with a man twice her age.
How was she now? he wondered. She must have had children of her own. She had wanted children. Certainly she would have been a good mother. She had been a good mother to his little brother, the best he could have had save his very own. Yes, she must definitely have children of her own. She might even have grandchildren. Or perhaps she did not. She was the same age as his Lida. Perhaps she had been dead for just as long.
"Lida."
He said the name aloud and waited for the pain, the guilt to envelop him. It didn't come. His brow furrowed.
/> He tried harder. He forced himself to picture her as he had seen her so often. She was glaring at him, accusingly. They were in the stinking, crowded bowels of the Swedish ship. The seas were too heavy to be out on deck. And the air in steerage was close and foul with sickness and humanity.
"It will be better in Amerika, I promise," he had told her. It was something he had told her many times over that next, that last, year of her life.
It had been the truth, but not all that he should have told her. He should have told her before they wed that he was taking her away from everything that she knew. He should have told her that her body intrigued him more than her soul. He should have told her that he hadn't loved her, that he only needed her beside him so he wouldn't have to face the new country alone.
Cringing in his heart, Mikolai waited for the guilt to fill him. He waited for the self-hatred that was well deserved to steal upon him like the blackness of night.
It did not happen. His thoughts were of those last moments. Those last moments of her short, unhappy life when the doctor had shaken his head and had gathered his things back into his bag.
She had lain so pale and wan upon the narrow cot. Her hair, her beautiful cornsilk blond hair, was mussed and lifeless, plastered to her brow from the sweat of her labors.
"The baby is crying," she whispered.
He had looked down into her pale blue eyes, disconsolate. "Don't worry about him, Zona" he had answered. "Our little one is a strong boy."
"Yes, I hear him," she said. "Will you call him Teodor? Teodor, for my father."
"If that is what you wish," he answered.
"Yes," she said. "I do wish it. It is all that I will ever have to give him."
"You have given him life," he told her.
She smiled. Just a tiny smile, so small Mikolai had almost not seen it through the tears that filled his eyes.
"Yes, I have given him that, I suppose. And you will give him Amerika."
"Yes, I will give him Amerika."
She had reached for him then. The grasp of her hand was weak as she held his. "I have loved you," she said. "I have followed you here because I loved you. And my saddest regret in dying is that I leave you alone."
"I have our Teodor," he said.
"He cries for me," she said, glancing over toward the cradle on the far side of the room. "And you cry also." She was looking up at him, deeply, intently, as if she knew it was the final sight that she would see. "My last wish," she whispered. "My last wish is that your tears may dry and that you love as I have loved."
"I do love you, Lida," he lied.
"No, not—"
Her words were never finished. Mikolai saw the light, the soul, disappear from her eyes. In the tiny upstairs room of a crowded Chicago building, a child lay crying and a father, mired in guilt, sat weeping for his dead wife.
Mikolai took a deep, cleansing breath in the solitude of his study. A tear trickled out of his eyes and he wiped it hastily upon his sleeve. Now the feeling would come, the familiar, almost welcome feeling of guilt and self-loathing. His wife had wanted him to love her. He never had. He never would.
He waited. He waited for the blackness to sweep him. But it did not.
"My last wish is that your tears may dry and that you love as I have loved."
He heard the words again as clearly as he had that day so many years before.
"I do love you, Lida," he had lied.
"No, not—"
Mikolai continued to stare into the nothingness. Suddenly his eyes widened and he came to his feet.
"No, not—"
He had misunderstood and she had tried to correct him. Like a bolt from the blue, understanding shot through him. She had not wished him to love her. She had wished him to love as she had loved him.
"Lida!" he said aloud.
He smiled. She had known love. Even when it had not brought her the dreams that she had wanted, she had known it. She wanted that for him.
And he had found it. After all these years of grief and guilt he had found it. His life was not behind him in deeds undone, people lost, and regrets of the past. His life was all ahead of him. He was in love. Truly in love for the very first time. It was what his first sweet, sad wife had wished for him. And now it was true. His life was just beginning. Now all he had to do was convince the woman he loved to live it with him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
"I COULDN'T SLEEP." Gertrude's quiet words were loud in the empty room. She'd left Claire curled up in the bed that they shared and had come downstairs to find Mikolai. She knew he would be here. She wanted to see him. Yet she hesitated, uncertain, in the doorway.
He looked strong and certain and substantial sitting in the heavily stuffed and upholstered sofa chair. He was dressed casually in gray striped trousers and a white shirt. He wore no vest or necktie, and his cross-back suspenders emphasized the width of his shoulders and the strength of his back. He was a formidable man. And, to Gertrude's adoring eyes, a very attractive one also.
It was late, very late. The big German clock in the front hall had sounded only moments earlier that it was two in the morning. The house was silent and dark except for the small lamp in the front parlor where they stood.
"I couldn't sleep either," Mikolai said quietly as he rose to his feet. "It's silly, isn't it? So many times we've fallen asleep in each other's arms. Cursed our exhaustion because we knew it was time wasted between us. But now because we are in the same house, and because the oblivion of slumber is what we need most, we cannot sleep at all."
Gertrude stepped forward into the room and accepted his outstretched hand. "I just can't seem to stop thinking. It's as if my mind simply will not take a rest. Just when I feel certain that I'm not thinking of anything, I realize that I'm thinking about not thinking about anything."
He smiled at her. "I know. I lay awake for more than an hour and finally decided that I would be happier getting up and dressed."
"I felt the same way," she admitted.
They stood facing each other. She wanted to kiss him, to have him hold her once more in his arms. But this was neither the time nor the place, she reminded herself. If they began to caress each other they would find it hard to stop. And they simply could not let anything happen, not here in his home, under the same roof with the children.
"I suppose Claire finally got to sleep," he said.
"Thank heaven," Gertrude said with a sigh and a shake of her head. "I was afraid she would insist on staying in Teddy's room. I don't know what we would have done if she had."
Mikolai shrugged. "I suppose we would all have spent the night there. Though I doubt that would have been the best thing for a young man with a broken knee."
"How is Teddy?" she asked. "Is he sleeping?"
"Fitfully," Mikolai answered. "His leg is throbbing pretty badly. The doctor left a bit of morphine for him to chew, but he says he'd rather do without it."
Gertrude nodded. "I can't blame him for that. In my estimation, what morphine does best is give the patient bad dreams."
Mikolai agreed. "It's almost better just to be awake. As there are already enough of us who can't sleep."
She smiled at his light humor, but made no comment.
"Come sit with me on the divan," he said, taking her arm. "That's surely safe enough, don't you think?"
She agreed readily, but in her heart she wasn't certain. The evening had been a long one. Just being near Mikolai made her want him. And she was very much convinced that he felt the same.
They had eaten dinner alone together. Teddy, not ready to attempt the stairs, was taken a tray. And since Claire refused to leave his side, Gertrude had taken up a tray for her, too.
Together in the dining room, Gertrude had attempted light inconsequential conversation. The type of unsubstantial talk that would have served for the most distant of acquaintances. Mikolai, unfortunately, would have none of it.
"You should have seen Oleander Wentworth at the game," she had said to him with chatt
y exuberance. "She jumped and screamed and cheered for the team as if she were sixteen rather than sixty. Then after everything was over and the game fairly won, her face got red as a beet and she had to lie down, right there on the grass."
Gertrude's expansive gaiety was observably forced. "The ladies of the Algonquin Society came running with her smelling salts. And all the time Claudy Mitts kept saying, 'Oh dear, oh dear.'"
Mikolai nodded. He appreciated the humor, but looked beyond it. "Well, you can understand the ladies running to help her," he said. "Mrs. Wentworth and the Algonquin Society are very much tied together."
"Well, yes, I suppose so," Gertrude agreed.
"So they came running when she needed them. Just as you wanted to come running when I needed you."
Gertrude gazed down at the creamed corn on her plate and didn't reply.
"You and I are tied also," Mikolai continued.
Clearing her throat, Gertrude adroitly changed the subject, commenting positively on the fine dinner.
"I don't believe I've ever tasted better," she said.
"Mrs. Thomas does a fine job," he admitted. "She's a very dedicated employee. I could hardly find one better."
Gertrude smiled, thinking that she had discovered a safe conversation path.
Then Mikolai added, "Only a meal cooked with love could taste any better."
He was looking at her closely, assessingly. Hurriedly Gertrude moved on. "It's funny that you should mention that," she tried once more. "One of the characters in my book, Weston Carlisle, finds that the first thing he really appreciates about Alexandria—that's his stepmother—is her fine cooking."
"And doesn't he fall in love with her? Isn't that what you told me?"
Gertrude's eyes widened. "Why yes, yes, he does. I'd forgotten that I'd mentioned the book to you."
"I remember that he fell in love with her," Mikolai said.
"Of course that has nothing to do with her cooking, I mean ultimately," Gertrude explained. "He simply falls in love with her."
"He falls in love with his stepmother," Mikolai considered thoughtfully. "It must be a very desperate match."