Menage

by Alix Kates Shulman

  “Take your time thinking it over. Zoltan has lots of loose ends to tie up in L.A., and he can’t come till I send him a plane ticket. Meanwhile, you might want to read this.” He handed her the book.

  Heather turned the volume over slowly. Mack knew how to get her attention. On the back jacket she saw a picture of an intense, foreign-looking man, dark and brooding, staring straight into her eyes. Impressive blurbs, including one by Susan Sontag, compared his work to Orwell, Kosinski. On the title page was an inscription to both her and Mack that might or might not contain a cryptic message, one she couldn’t yet decipher. She blushed at the strangely stirring prospect of waking each morning to find such a person captive in her house, ready to talk to her at breakfast—a prospect that fed every romantic fantasy she had dutifully abandoned on her wedding day.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “What makes him think he can live with us when he couldn’t live with Maja?”

  “That was different. Maja was always distracting him and making impossible demands. But we won’t demand anything.”

  Heather knew Mack was not one to give away something for nothing. The situation was loaded; she wondered if he wasn’t perhaps setting her up for some devious test. Whatever he had in mind, she was up for it. “How long would he expect to stay?”

  Mack shrugged. “Everything’s open. We’ll see how it goes. Naturally, if it doesn’t work out, he leaves.”

  Suddenly Heather smelled something more demanding than opportunity. “The artichokes!” She leaped up and ran to the kitchen, with Mack close behind her.

  Despite the burned pot and acrid smell, Heather and Mack sat at the kitchen table stripping away the blackened outer leaves and letting melted butter disguise the faint smoky taste that had penetrated clear to the hearts. As the leaves piled up on their plates they began to explore possibilities, debating what to tell the children and where to put Zoltan. Mack assumed they’d settle him downstairs in one of the guest rooms, but Heather wondered if he wouldn’t be more comfortable upstairs in her study, with more privacy and the better view. That intimate hour making plans, with the children asleep and morning still hours away, reminded Heather of the times they’d once had sitting at the kitchen table in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment on East Ninety-second Street night after night (Mack had just begun his first ambitious complex and she was still working as an editorial assistant at a self-help magazine), planning the house they would one day build. Everything they fancied Mack drew into the plans—dream kitchen for her, workshop for him, music room, playroom for the children they would have (why not?), maybe wooded acres, spa and hot tub, solar panels, and a view. Somewhere they knew it was dangerous to pluck dreams from the air and build them of lumber and glass, like the poor fairy-tale woodsmen and fishwives who stole magic and thoughtlessly wished for what they couldn’t afford. But dreams seemed innocent when they were only dreams.

  Though it was after two when they finally descended the stairs to bed, they celebrated their new hopes by an intense interlude—rare since the children came—of making love.

  9 ON THE SUNDAY ZOLTAN was to arrive, Heather and Mack were up at dawn, like irrepressible children in the hours preceding a birthday party. Before breakfast, Mack drove down to the hangar and took his plane up for a quick turn to dissipate some of his excess excitement. The sky was cloudless, the air bright with the crisp edge of autumn. Mack felt buoyant and powerful, as he always felt in the cockpit. His plane was too light for a long journey, but he had plans to upgrade to a small jet once the L.A. deal was consummated, Heather be damned.

  When he returned home a couple of hours later, he found his wife and children outdoors collecting mums, wild asters, and maple leaves to decorate the house. Breakfast was over. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos, smeared cream cheese on a bagel, and sat down at the kitchen table to watch them through the window. Against the wooded backdrop with sunlight filtering through the yellow leaves, they looked like some misty painting of autumn, or of dancers romping in a garden, he thought, trying to see them through Zoltan’s eyes.

  Jamie walked toward the house carrying something in his small, cupped hands. Mack opened the kitchen door for him. “What you got there, James?”

  “Newts.”

  “Let’s see.”

  Jamie lifted one hand just enough for Mack to see two delicate red salamanders with tiny black spots nestled in his palm. Quickly Jamie snapped the cup of his hands closed.

  “Whoa, pal, not so tight. You could crush them. What are you planning to do with them?

  Chloe ran through the doorway. “Mommy says we can put them in the old aquarium we used to keep the fish in, with a screen on top so Tina can’t get them and they can’t get out. We’re going to feed them flies and fish food. Would you like me to find some newts for you, Daddy?”

  “Why yes, Chloe, I’d love that. Thank you, babe.”

  She tugged at his hand. “Come on. I’ll show you how to catch them.”

  “Not now, though,” said Mack. “We have to get ready for our houseguest. But we can go out and look as soon as we get back from the airport.”

  Heather emptied an armful of flowers into the big kitchen sink and turned on the water. “Mack! Please! Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  “Okay, maybe tomorrow then,” said Mack, backing down.

  “Promise, Daddy? Promise?”

  “Tomorrow’s Monday,” Heather reminded him. “Or were you planning to come home early?” She resented being forced to intervene.

  Mack sighed. The day had just started and already she was criticizing his parenting. As if he would fail to do right by his own kids. She was irrational on the subject: urging him to spend more time with them yet not allowing them up in his plane. He lifted Chloe in his arms, hugged her. “I promise it’ll be as soon as I can, babe.”

  Heather kissed him on both cheeks. Today was not the day to bicker. “I know what,” she said. “Why don’t you guys go out and get some pretty pebbles for the newts. Jamie, here’s a pot you can put the newts in until I bring up the aquarium. Now go on, you two.”

  She looked at her watch. Only four hours until he’d be here.

  Seeing Heather check her watch, Mack checked his. “I have to leave for the airport pretty soon. Do you want me to lay the fire and set up the music before I go? Glenn Gould? Monk?”

  “Whatever you think.”

  “Okay. Then when you hear us drive up you can just light a match and throw a switch. I’ll take the Porsche. Would you like me to pick up anything?”

  “Some of those chocolate truffles they sell at the airport?”

  She was glad Mack was going by himself. She needed the time to get ready. It would be easier for her, of course, if he took at least one of the kids along with him. When they knew she wanted everything tidy, they were usually at their most rambunctious; but she and Mack had agreed that a child in the car, even a quiet one in the back seat, might be too much family for Zoltan all at once. First impressions counted for so much.

  BACK WHEN THEY STILL lived in the city, Heather and Mack had sometimes hosted witty dinners on weekends for their friends, with her startling pastas and his flaming desserts, but all that ended when they moved. Their friends from the city, reluctant to go all the way to New Jersey, preferred to meet them in a restaurant in town, and the few people who did come to visit, Mack’s associates, were not friends enough to be invited to dinner. But tonight Heather was happy to devote her talents to the table. In the seldom used dining room, she set the table with linen napkins, the good crystal, a lavish centerpiece of autumn leaves and flowers, and tapered candles, as if for a party. The children were excited and impressed—enough, she hoped, to be on company behavior.

  When everything that could be done in advance had been done—the bar set up, the wine breathing, the heavy cream whipped and chilling in a glass bowl, the children settled down with a movie in the playroom, and the fire, music, and lights awaiting the mere flick of a match or swit
ch—Heather went downstairs to dress.

  After wasting precious minutes trying to tame her unruly hair, she tied it back with a band and walked into her closet to pick out the right clothes. But which? From the start she had imagined herself meeting Zoltan in her burgundy silk outfit with the loose pants and fitted jacket that made her feel glamorous and bold. But now, having read Zoltan’s novel, she wavered. How should she present herself? How to decide, with so little to go on? The hero of Zoltan’s novel was a man assaulted by successive political upheavals and all the confusions of modernity who, in a series of adventures in the mountains of an unnamed country—as forest guide, fire watch, and pilot—manages to overcome his adversaries through defiant gestures and vigorous actions. The only significant female character, the love interest, was a powerful seductress named Ursula. The image of her, buxom and maternal, with dark eyes, small waist, smooth black hair, and a musical voice, described by the author as “bewitching,” left Heather, with her small breasts, wide hips, pale eyes, masses of light wavy hair, and soft voice, unsure of her powers to bewitch. On the other hand, Ursula fails to capture the hero in the end.

  Heather’s only previous experience with a living writer (not counting her professors or the guys at work) had occurred the summer after her freshman year. Back home in Topeka, she’d joined a tiny group of literati who had hand-set type for both issues of a new literary quarterly in the garage of the publisher/editor, a recent Princeton graduate with a small trust fund. One day while she was setting a difficult story, its author, a friend of the publisher/editor, stopped by to make sure there were no errors in his text. A native of the town, he was something of a local celebrity because, though still in his twenties, he had already had several stories published in prestigious magazines. Because of this, she had found herself unable to speak to him, blushing like a child when he addressed her, which only compounded her embarrassment, though he was friendly enough. That encounter probably marked the beginning of her own unspoken ambition to write. From then on, she was awestruck in the presence of writers, her awe tinged with lust. She missed no opportunity to watch them promote their books on talk shows or at book signings in nearby malls, once committing the folly of submitting to a man who had roomed at college with an eventual winner of a Pulitzer Prize. (It seemed that even in the Midwest, every community of a certain size boasted, along with its legendary mass murderer, its native son or daughter who would one day head for a coast and publish.)

  Finally Heather opted for an innocent look, hoping to disarm Zoltan. Before the full-length mirror she slipped on a pair of well-cut black pants that slenderized her hips and her tailored jade green blouse (a favorite), and inserted through her earlobes the intricately cut jade pendants, a gift from Mack, that he said brought out the color in her eyes.

  10 ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE, THE leaves flanking the highway were already in high flame. Mack decided to give Zoltan the royal treatment by driving home the long way around the mountain, past the most ravishing stands of maples and oaks. Instead of taking the service road directly to the back entrance, past the hangar and the neighbors’ property, he would let the house appear suddenly above, regal, spectacular, and serene, even though it meant they would have to carry the bags up the long stairway from the turnaround.

  While Mack walked back to the trunk for the bags, Zoltan stood up, shook out his pant legs and gazed up at the wood-and-glass edifice perched majestically just below the rounded peak. He’d known from the photo that it was more than a conventional suburban house in a wooded setting, but never had he imagined a place as grand and elegant as this. The grandeur of it, and the way the roof reached toward the sky, reminded him of the cathedral where he’d been an altar boy, only modern. He whistled long and low.

  Mack stood triumphant. It was for this he had taken such risks, moved his family to the country, founded his firm, gone for the MBA, struggled through Yale, and apologized through humiliating tears to his sixth-grade teacher Miss Harrington for having scaled the auditorium rafters. For this he had sought out Zoltan, courted him, won him east from California to enrich their lives. Zoltan’s whistle filled his head like birdsong, raising new hopes of transformations.

  As soon as Heather heard the car trunk slam she removed her smock and ran to the living room to light the fire. Mack had taught her the standard tricks of showing real estate: maximum light, soft music, multitudes of fresh flowers. In her nervousness she scorched her hand as the flames leaped from the kindling, but she ignored the pain to flick on the lights and music. Coltrane. Count on Mack to know how to impress a European. On the way back to the safety of the kitchen, she paused at the hall window to watch Mack’s familiar bulldog frame followed by a tall slim figure in a black cloak—dramatic, operatic—mount the steps from the terrace.

  At the top they rested the bags. Mack watched Zoltan’s eyes follow the beams of the overhang into the foyer, on into the semivaulted living room, and out the far glass wall to the sky. “Go on in,” he said, holding the door. “Heather! We’re home.”

  Zoltan stood inside the door hearing the lush sound of jazz, inhaling the rich aromas of cedar logs and roasting lamb. The view was all that Mack claimed. And was that a Hockney on the wall? A genuine Hockney? And the books! An entire wall of them, floor to ceiling, with a ladder for access to the top shelves. “You didn’t say you live in a library.”

  “Ah yes—the books. I didn’t tell you? They’re Heather’s.”

  Heather turned off the cold water tap and gently blotted her burn with a towel.

  “Honey,” said Mack as she entered. He pecked her proprietarily on the cheek. “Come. I want you to meet Zoltan Barbu. Zoltan—my wife Heather.” Like a shaman, Mack lightly touched a hand to an elbow of each, then stood back to admire the meeting. His best work, people said, used first-rate materials in unusual combinations to create surprising new effects. Yet all functional. A room with a view for Zoltan to work in, and for his wife an author, a book in living flesh.

  And for himself? For himself? To be the one to make it happen.

  Zoltan, adept at entrances, bowed over Heather’s hand and lightly brushed her knuckles with his lips, her arm with the glossy lock that had fallen over his right eye. As his fingers came dangerously close to her burn, Heather braced herself but did not wince or pull away.

  “Where are the kids?” asked Mack.

  “In the playroom. They’re staying up tonight to have dinner with us. Want to get them?”

  “Not yet. Let’s get Zoltan settled first. Why don’t you show him his room while I bring the bags.”

  She led Zoltan to the study, where the last rays of sunset cast a brick-gold glow on the ivory walls.

  “This will be your room—if it suits you.”

  Zoltan stopped and slowly turned to take in the grand view, the bouquet of mums and asters on the desk, the laptop, thesaurus, dictionary. “If!” he repeated, as the clenched fist of his life seemed to open into airy opportunity.

  Heather began opening drawers and doors, like a hotel porter, displaying the bureau, the closet. “This sofa converts to a bed. I hope it’s long enough for you,” she said, taking in his body, immediately embarrassed at her words.

  “I’m sure it’s perfect. Thank you.”

  She led him into the sparkling bathroom with its fresh towels and small bowl of floating mums. “This is your bath.”

  “My own?”

  “Yes. Mack used to be known for his bathrooms,” she tossed off amiably.

  “Splendid, splendid.”

  “Downstairs near us there’s a guest room larger than this, but you’d have to share a bathroom with the children and our cat. This room may be small but it has the better view.”

  At MacDowell too there were trade-offs, Zoltan recalled. One cabin was small but had a porch; another was a long walk from the main house but had a large picture window; one was drafty, another cozy, another had a flagstone fireplace. “Yes, view is splendid.”

  Mack puffed in, carrying all three s
uitcases, and set them heavily on the floor. “Well? Will it do?”

  “I hardly know what to say,” said Zoltan.

  “Then don’t say anything. Come on, babe. Let’s let Zoltan wash up. He’s probably exhausted from the trip.”

  Mack wrapped his arm around Heather’s waist to guide her toward the door, but she quickly slipped out of his embrace.

  “CAN I SERVE?” ASKED Chloe when Heather began ladling soup into bowls.

  “Can I?” asked Jamie.

  “Not the soup,” whispered Heather. “It spills. Later, maybe.”

  For several minutes the smooth soup of white beans and cress was ingested in contented silence. “Splendid soup,” said Zoltan finally, inaugurating a slow blur of table talk.

  Every time Zoltan spoke, Chloe, seated beside her mother, stared at him with widened eyes. His beard, his accent, and his daring to leave chunks of bread on the table, kept her silent and rapt. “Soup okay?” whispered Heather, to remind her daughter of its existence. But no soup could begin to compete with the absorbing stranger talking to her father, and despite sporadic efforts, Chloe barely ate, failing to respond even to Jamie’s rhythmic under-table kicks.

  With the main course (roast lamb accompanied by fettuccine with a lemon-flavored sauce copied from a restaurant in Rome, and olive bread, to be followed by a salad of baby greens) came the main topic. Zoltan dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin, European style, and began. “I will try to be as little trouble as possible. You probably won’t see me till late afternoon.”