Menage

by Alix Kates Shulman

  HEATHER LOOKED AT HER watch. The children, off on a school trip, would be home soon, and the men were probably heading home. Sitting in the utility room among the recycle bins, garden tools, nature bowl, and newts’ terrarium, she’d been so intrigued by Zoltan’s crumpled pages that she’d lost track of the time.

  No wonder identity thieves searched the Dumpsters! No telling what fascinating information you could glean from the trash. Except for the telltale blue note, she’d found no other clues to Zoltan’s personal life, no names of dates besides E, not a mention of Maja. Yet studying the discarded pages yielded revelations no less valuable. Since Carmela had last emptied his wastebasket he’d evidently reworked and discarded the same basic paragraphs repeatedly, with only small variations and no discernible progress. What a surprising glimpse of the creative process of a genius! Both as an editor and as a writer she appreciated the necessity of refining the work; but at this rate, how would Zoltan ever finish anything? And why did he continue to write in longhand when he had access to an up-to-date laptop? In her search for clues to his achievement, instead she discovered in his tortured process a spark of hope for herself. She was probably deluding herself, but by comparison her own writing seemed crisp and efficient.

  She stood up and dumped Zoltan’s trash in the mixed-paper bin. To hide the evidence, she added a pile of her own office trash and topped it off with discarded scraps of construction paper from the playroom. Then she hurried to the kitchen.

  “SO TELL ME,” ASKED Mack, when they were out of the tunnel, “how’d the meeting go with the agent?”

  “She likes my idea but needs to see more pages before she can commit.”

  “Well, can’t you give her some then?”

  “Not yet.”

  Mack scowled. “Maybe I’m out of line here, Z, but as your business adviser I wonder why the hell not?”

  Zoltan stiffened. “I don’t have any yet ready to show.”

  “But why not? You’ve been working for weeks now. Tell me—aren’t the working conditions satisfactory?”

  Zoltan glowered, irritated and amazed at Mack’s complete ignorance of an artist’s needs and pressures. As Maja would say, his cluelessness–as clueless in his way as Maja. Perhaps he should never have expected better of a man like Mack. How could such a man, who toppled mountains, comprehend a writer’s ambivalence and hesitation, much less writer’s block? Still, Mack’s question could be the opening he’d hoped for; he swallowed hard and leaped. “No, no, my room is perfect. But—well, actually, the problem is more about privacy.”

  “The kids making too much noise? Are we—”

  “No, no, no. Noise does not bother me. Kids are practically invisible.” The authority Zoltan commanded through eye contact was worthless here, with Mack concentrating on the road. He lowered his voice. “May I speak to you frankly, Mack?”

  Just what Mack had been hungering for. Another dose of man-to-man, like that first exalted night of confession in L.A. “Shoot.”

  “It’s your wife.”

  Mack checked him with a fast glance. He’d never expected things to go perfectly, not with a woman like Heather, who had her own agenda. But he hadn’t expected her to fuck things up, either. Having Zoltan Barbu in residence was as much a coup for her as it was for Mack—and not one he was ready to give up. The leverage of having a wife like Heather—not only beautiful and talented but peppery, bold, unpredictable—had to be constantly balanced against the potential disruption. He’d briefly considered the possibility that her discontent would tempt her to go too far and seduce their guest but decided it more likely that Zoltan would go after her. Discontented or not, she had far too much to lose if she messed up, even more than he had. Still, Zoltan’s arrival had whipped up in her a gale of feelings he considered it his duty as a husband to monitor. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if she was crying or laughing; her sleep was turbulent and erratic; she was all paradox. If diplomacy failed and the worst did happen, if they actually launched an affair behind his back, he liked to think he was big enough to handle it. “What’s the problem? She interrupts you?”

  “Not exactly. She is actually rather scrupulous about rules. I assure you, Mack, I hope to give you everything you want from me, but I suspect she wants something I am not able, or not prepared, to give her.”

  “Which is …?”

  Zoltan had resolved to confine himself to speaking generally, working in only such details as might be required to show his good faith, his loyalty. “Shall we say, attention? Certain kind of attention. She is so … restless, you could say, so … distracting. Even with door closed I feel her there behind it watching me. Makes concentration very difficult. I expect this surprises you. I hope it does not also upset you, my man.”

  Mack slapped Zoltan lightly on the knee, hoping to appear relaxed. “I know what you mean, Z. Frankly, I have the same feeling about Heather myself sometimes—even when I’m hundreds of miles away. But you—in the house with her all day—it’s got to be worse. What would you like me to do about it? Formulate a comprehensive privacy policy with an opt-out option?” Seeing Zoltan straight-faced, he chuckled to indicate: joke. “Seriously, though, would you like me to talk to her?”

  “Whatever you think. She’s your wife.”

  As pivotal person, air traffic controller, Mack felt reassured. Zoltan would hardly be complaining if they were fooling around. Since he was complaining about something, Mack took it upon himself to reassure him. Whatever was needed to keep him from bolting. “I know she doesn’t want to interfere with your work or upset you. She means well. She just happens to be one of those women who always manage to make their presence felt—know what I mean?”

  “I suppose that is one way of saying,” said Zoltan, raising an eyebrow.

  “Try to look at it her way. As she sees it, it’s her house, she’s in charge of it, you’re both there all day long, so she keeps an eye on you. As she does on the kids. I’m sure she’s only trying to be useful—you can understand that, can’t you? Maybe if you could indulge her a little—”

  “I don’t see why she needs my indulgence when she obviously has so much of yours.”

  “Ah,” said Mack, with dawning comprehension, “you think she’s making a play for you. No, no, no, don’t deny it. I’m sure you’re getting mixed messages at the very least. But I know Heather. She may be coming on to you, but believe me, all she really wants is a certain amount of appreciation. She’s a woman, remember. Naturally, your work must come first, we all know that. But it probably wouldn’t take much time to give her a bit of intellectual companionship. Talk to her about your work. Your friends. Your past. The political situation back there. Talk about books—you see how she loves books. Take her into your confidence. If you lighten up a little she probably will too. All she really needs is to feel special.”

  Zoltan had been prepared for several responses from Mack—anger, gratitude, dismissal, even love—but nothing had prepared him for this closing of ranks, this all-out spousal support, elevating marriage über alles. It made no sense. No marriage did, but especially this one, which imposed upon him an impossible dilemma: to satisfy the wife without betraying the husband, to honor the husband without enraging the wife. He was beginning to think it could not be done. Unlike Heather, who acted as if it were possible to serve two masters, he knew it was not.

  “Hold on tight,” said Mack, shifting down. “We’re going up.”

  18 IT STARTED WITH PHONE calls—always polite, at decent hours, people with unfamiliar voices and sometimes vaguely familiar names asking please to speak to Zoltan. Then one day he turned up with a cell phone, and from then on Heather felt cut out. Cut. Out. After that at any time of day or night she might hear the low murmur of his voice, laughing, purring, or holding forth, behind the closed door of his room.

  The honeymoon was over.

  She was in the kitchen chopping onions the first time Zoltan announced to her that he would not be home for dinner. Afraid he might attribute her tea
rs and sniffles to something other than onion fumes, she stood with her back to him and continued to chop until he took the knife from her hand, laid it down, grasped her shoulders, and turned her around.

  She gasped. Before her stood an unimaginably dashing Zoltan in a new suit (black of course), pale peach shirt, elegant tie, even shiny new shoes. And his hair! Except for the long forelock, it was now shorter than on the day he arrived and stylishly cut.

  “Courtesy Mack. You like?” he asked. He pulled her toward him and, singing loudly in a foreign tongue, whirled her around in a parody of a waltz.

  “Zoltan, stop it!” she cried, pulling away. Not for her had he decked himself out like Dorian Gray. Why had Mack done this to her? She drove Zoltan to the station in silence.

  The next day, hoping to pacify her, as Mack had advised, Zoltan appeared suddenly at the door of Heather’s office to announce that he had brought her a surprise from Manhattan.

  “What?” she asked, softening.

  “It’s a surprise. Please wait five minutes, then I will call you.”

  He hurried to the kitchen. From a bag he took a jar of pitted lychee nuts and dished them into two small bowls. After setting the table with spoons and napkins he summoned her.

  “Please, sit,” he said with a sweeping bow.

  She looked skeptically at the four strange translucent balls floating in her dish in a pale yellow liquid. “What is this?”

  “First, taste.”

  Zoltan spent a gleeful moment watching her raise her spoon to her lips, chew thoughtfully, and swallow the first ball. “You like?”

  “Kind of. It has an odd texture but it’s sweet. What is it?”

  He leaned forward, twinkling. “You want me to tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  With a wild grin he cried, “Is the eyes of a large animal of my country, like moose. You don’t have them in America. For us they are rare delicacy.”

  “Eyes! Gross!”

  He threw back his head with a roar of laughter. “What is the problem, you don’t like?”

  “Come on, Zoltan. Tell me the truth. What are they really?”

  But he would not change his story. “Delicious,” he said, taking a spoonful of the syrup and smacking his lips.

  “You’re just like Jamie!” she said suddenly, and in a moment, she couldn’t help herself, she was laughing too. Which she did again every time he lifted her hair and whispered into her ear in a certain way his native word for “eye.” Even when he began to miss her dinners two, three, sometimes four nights a week, plunging her into a sullen gloom, he could usually manage to raise a laugh from her by bending down and whispering the mysterious word into her hungry ear.

  Mack was not inclined to laugh at the turn things had taken. Not that he didn’t welcome the occasional respite from their two- and three-o’clock bedtimes so they could catch up on their decimated sleep. He sometimes felt so exhausted that his bones ached. But he didn’t like what Zoltan’s absence was doing to his wife. His own frequent absences, which couldn’t be helped, upset her enough; he had invited Zoltan here in part to fill that void, in any case, to make it better, not worse. Yet worse seemed to be exactly where they were. He knew it was necessary for Zoltan to seclude himself in his room to write his book, but at night? Gallivanting around Manhattan at night was not part of the deal. The more Zoltan stayed away, the more moody Heather became. Mack felt responsible for her misery, as if, having given her Zoltan, he ought also to have prevented his defection, which filled the air like smoke, leaving a thin film of ash on everything, including their former pleasures. It wasn’t only on the nights Zoltan was absent that he saw Heather suffer; on the nights he graced their table it was hardly better. If he evaded their questions about his whereabouts she felt rebuffed; if he filled them in on his excursions, she felt excluded. Mack wished he could sweep her off to Harbor Island or St. Barts for a few days in the sun, but with upcoming trips to Chicago, Boston, and L.A., he couldn’t possibly spare the time.

  Feeling the strain, Zoltan did his best to soothe his hosts. He quoted Molière and Nietzsche, Plato and Proudhon, made frequent enigmatic pronouncements, and the next time he dined with them at home he presented them with an excellent bottle of Pomerol.

  “Hey, Heather! Look what Z brought us,” beamed Mack. He clasped Zoltan’s arms and said, “Good job, Z. How did you know this is one of my favorite wines?”

  Zoltan knew because the bottle came from Mack’s own cellar. Though he could not disclose this, that very morning, while Heather was delivering the children to school, he had extracted it from one of three cases of the same vintage stored in the pantry, confident that one bottle among so many would not be missed. He had been regularly slipping out more modest wines to present to his other hostesses, and no one had noticed. Even if his prank should eventually be discovered, it would be Mack’s responsibility, not his. Mack wished him to indulge Heather? Then he would indulge her and assume Mack would appreciate his efforts.

  As it happened, the Pomerol was exactly right for the duck breast Heather served, garnished with apples, on the Spode plates, as the centerpiece of that particular dinner, and they polished off the bottle just before dessert. Dessert was another triumph (prepared by Carmela, but still): a crisp made with newly ripened apples from the McKays’ own trees. Earlier, from his window, Zoltan had seen Heather and the children tramping off to the woods with a pole and buckets to collect them. Remembering his own boyhood pleasure in gathering windfall apples on his way home from school or choir practice as an offering to his mother, he’d briefly considered abandoning his (anyway futile) work for an hour or so to join the pretty family group, only to quash the impulse on second thought. Although in principle he appreciated children as much as the next man, in practice he felt awkward around them, a limitation he presumed would disappear should he someday produce his own. He supposed the McKay children were charming enough, but he was always glad when Heather or Carmela gave them their dinner in the kitchen in advance of the adults, making it easier for him to entertain his expectant hosts.

  When the meal was finished and the men were seated in their usual places in the living room, Mack took two cigars from his pocket, handed one to Zoltan, and said expansively, “You know, Z, you don’t always have to go to the city to see your friends. You’re welcome to invite them up here if you like. Put on some music, open some wine, make a fire.”

  Zoltan had come to this sanctuary to write, not to socialize. But he could not escape the conflict that dogged him wherever he went. In L.A. it was the movie crowd that seduced him from work; in New York there were the literary distractions. Naturally, it soothed his vanity to be publicly esteemed, if only for his early work, the new edition of which sported an appreciative preface by his MacDowell lover, Rebecca Shaffer; still, the backbiting rivalry that ruled New York was bad for his stomach and his sleep. Not only strawberries but other writers gave him headaches. No, he would never foul his Eden by bringing his rivals here; better to pacify the McKays by taking them there.

  Mack continued. “We’d be glad to pick them up at the station, or if you prefer, you could use one of the cars yourself. We wouldn’t intrude.”

  Across the room Heather, who had been just about to pour brandy, froze. Intrude—in her own house? Had she heard Mack correctly? What was the matter with him! She waited for Zoltan to demur, to say that of course they should join them, but instead he leaned into Mack’s proffered match and puffed.

  “Very kind of you, my man,” he said when he was lit, “but I must decline …”

  “Think it over,” said Mack magnanimously, after lighting his own cigar. “Might as well take advantage of all this space.”

  Heather was flabbergasted. The two of them! She tried to catch Mack’s eye, but he was too busy bonding to glance her way. Would either of these men, their heads clouded in smoke, egging each other on, give a thought to her? She had gladly rearranged her life to accommodate Mack’s whim. And after Zoltan had moved in, she had de
voted herself to him. For him she had sent Françoise back to Belgium, tabled her work, compromised her security, deceived her husband, even lied to her children. And when he had refused her his body, declaring himself a monk, she had accepted his terms, maternalizing herself to serve him: she dispensed advice, kept the children quiet, tailored her menus to his taste, became his laptop consultant and his chauffeur. But absent herself in her own house while he entertained? Somewhere she had to draw a line.

  “Funny you suggest this now, when I also have invitation for you,” said Zoltan, and he proceeded to invite the McKays to a holiday book party for Orville Lask at the Manhattan home of the literary critic and hostess Rebecca Shaffer. “That is, if you are free to come one week from Saturday.”

  “We’re not free,” said Mack, “and neither are you. We’re all going to Der Rosenkavalier that night, don’t you remember?”

  “Ah … yes. But afterward?”

  Heather considered it a fault of her essential Midwestern optimism that she was never able to hold on to anger in the face of any reasonable excuse to drop it. Now in the warmth of Zoltan’s invitation her resentment began to melt until, relieved of its burden, she forgave him, forgave them both. “Thank you, Zoltan,” she said, genuinely moved, despite a small residue of skepticism. And presenting him the opportunity to prove himself, she added sweetly, “But you really don’t have to invite us. We could just drop you off at the party after the opera.”

  Loyal Tina leaped into her lap and began to purr. She stroked the sleek gray fur as she waited to see what Zoltan would say.

  “No, it will be my honor. Rebecca particularly asked me to invite you.” (“Zoltan,” Rebecca had admonished, “you must bring along this mythical couple you say have adopted you so I will know what powers can trump mine.” “But my darling, you are married.” “And they are not?”) “There will be many people you might enjoy. If not, we leave.”