by Megan Mulry
Jesus. This is bittersweet news. My parents actually loved each other at one point? Yay.
My arrival was the wedge that drove them apart? Ugh.
I wipe away tears. “Oh, Mom.”
She is weeping quietly also. “He was too stubborn!” she says with angry vehemence. “Why didn’t he leave all those stupid Russian people to clean up their own messes? Well.” She clenches her jaw tighter and swipes at her tears as if they are making her cross. “No point in despising the very thing you adore about someone, eh?” She looks so young to me in that moment. So vulnerable.
I reach my arm around her waist and hug her close. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
“Oh, honey. It all seemed to make sense at the time. He wanted to protect you from that world. It was so dangerous, and your father was right there in the thick of it, both at the KGB and with the paper company. I don’t think you can really even imagine it. After Brezhnev died, before Gorbachev, it was just a mess. And then after the wall came down and you were able to go visit him in the summers, and political tensions had eased, well, I just couldn’t forgive him, I suppose.”
“Oh, Mom.”
She stares into my eyes. “He loved you so much, Miki.”
“He loved you, too, Mom.” I get up and walk around the bed to pick up my handbag. I come back to where she’s sitting and riffle through the crowded bag to pull out the small red leather photo case from my father’s apartment in Saint Petersburg. “I found this in his bedside table. I have a feeling he was never with anyone else.”
She takes the leather and rubs her fingertips lightly across it, remembering the feel of it, before she opens it. She gasps and covers her mouth when she sees the picture of herself in his arms, laughing and free, in love.
It’s a bum deal. If I am really a love child, why wasn’t there more love to go around?
She hands back the photos, and I hold up my hand. “No, you keep it.”
She gives me a watery smile, then stands up and opens the drawer in her bedside table. She lifts a false drawer bottom, which I never discovered in all my years of snooping, and pulls out an identical red photo case.
“Oh,” I say. There isn’t really much else to say.
She opens it and shows me what’s inside. The one that I found in Russia has the hugging picture on the left and Simone on the right. In the one that she’s pulled from her bedside table, the left-hand photo is the same, but the right side has a picture of my father. It’s probably weird of me to think so, but he looks incredibly handsome. He is looking up from a sun lounger, probably in the South of France, and his face shows the delighted surprise of someone who is very happy to see the person taking the picture. His hand is partially covering his eyes, the shadow slanting across his face. But his smile is glorious—wide and adoring.
“Oh, Mom.”
She’s crying again. “I know. So silly of me, after all these years, to still pine for him. Isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t. But . . . why all the foolish liaisons? Why Jamie? Why didn’t you settle down with another man after you and Dad split? Or why didn’t you reconcile with him?”
She shakes her head again to clear it. “I could never love another man the way I loved your father. I tried. And I could never forgive him.” She sounds bitter, as if it were my father’s fault she was never able to love anyone again with the same passion. In her mind, it probably was his fault.
I have a flash of myself blaming Rome in the same way. I am starting to feel like it is his fault that I fell for him so quickly and easily. He didn’t need to be that wonderful, after all. He shouldn’t have been so alluring if he didn’t want me to be lured in.
“So. In the absence of a good man,” she says, clearing her features again, “I settled for boys. Jamie was just the last in a string of . . . diversions.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Yes.” She smiles weakly. “I liked Jamie. Of course I liked him. But when we were in Acapulco and I learned that Mikhail had died and Jamie caught me sobbing in the bathroom . . . well, it turns out Jamie had actually fallen in love with me, and it didn’t sit well with him that I never really stopped loving your father.”
Here’s the thing: The whole illegitimacy issue never really mattered to me one way or another—I had a mother and a father, after all. I had two parents, and they each loved me in their way, and I never wanted for anything, so I knew I was far better off than many other kids out there. I forced myself to be grateful. But I grew up believing my parents hated each other and that I was the result of an ill-advised, short-lived affair; I didn’t realize until this moment how much I internalized all that strife.
They are both guilty of perpetuating that stupid story about how frivolous and foolish and deluded they were when they met in France, in the ’80s. What else was I supposed to think? When your parents tell you things about your childhood, you tend to believe them.
“I’m not going to make the same mistake,” I say.
Simone is instantly angry. She grabs back her photo case. “You would see it that way, Mikhaila. Here I am, trying to be honest with you at last, and you are as self-satisfied and arrogant as your father.”
I sit with my mouth open. “Mom.” I reach for her forearm and speak softly. “I didn’t mean it like that at all. I meant I don’t want to have the regret that you have right now because I didn’t try hard enough to be with Rome. I am agreeing with you.”
Her shoulders fall. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m terrible. You make me so nervous sometimes. You’re so much like him with that mechanical brain of yours; you terrify me.” She grips the photo case more tightly. “All that damned conviction.”
I know she is upset, because even after all the speech coaches and years of mastering every nuance of the English language, she still lapses and turns her th into a z—“all zat damned conviction”—when she is losing control of her emotions.
I laugh darkly. “I am so far from conviction, you have no idea.”
She calms and pats my leg. “All right. We both have a lot to learn about each other. For now, some of it is clearer, yes?”
I reach for her and pull her into a hug. “Yes.”
She pulls back and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear with rare maternal tenderness. “Paris, here we come.”
I smile in return and then help her finish packing.
Leaving my car in Bel Air will be safer, with my mom’s caretaker to look after it for me. He also drives us to my place in Venice, and he and my mother help me sort through everything that needs to be dealt with in my absence. In the end, just like it was at my office, it’s kind of unnerving how easy it is for me to close up my sweet house.
The gardener is happy to stop by more frequently to check on the plants and the yard; my mother’s caretaker is happy to drive over every day or two to pick up the mail and forward everything to Paris. I pack up two big bags with clothes and toiletries and all my electronics. My mom informs me that she will be throwing most of my mousy clothes into the incinerator when we arrive in Paris. I think her first glimpse of the new-and-improved, spontaneous Miki is like a maternal dam bursting for her. She is completely enamored with this idea of going on some wild Miki-makeover shopping spree when we arrive in France.
I realize I’m not totally opposed, either. I call my friend Margot from the airport lounge at LAX and give her a very truncated version of events. She’s thrilled that I’m able to attend her wedding after all and is sweet enough not to ask a bunch of difficult questions when I tell her that Landon and I have broken up and I’m no longer working at USC.
She gasps slightly, then sounds really happy for me. “I have to say, you sound really good, despite all that. And, selfishly, I can’t wait to see you, Miki, whatever the circumstances.”
I call Alexei next, and, as I expected, he is delighted that I’m on my way to Europe and we will get to work togeth
er in person. He promises to meet me in Paris the next day, and his enthusiasm is actually quite contagious. As I settle into my luxurious first-class seat an hour later, I take a sip of champagne and realize I’m going to work in Paris! In my company’s offices! And this is my new life!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My mother and I are both tired when we arrive at her three-bedroom apartment near the Musée d’Orsay the next night. We order in a light supper and then sleep through to the next morning, until we are awoken by the sound of insistent knocking on the front door.
Mom wraps herself in a long ivory silk robe and saunters down the front hall. She looks through the peephole, then pulls the door open and grabs Alexei into a fierce hug. I stand at the far end of the hall that leads back to the bedrooms.
“Hi, Alexei.” I wave.
They both turn and stare at me, and I can tell immediately that something is going on. Alexei shuts the door behind him, takes off his trench coat, and hangs it on the antique coatrack.
Simone speaks first. “I’ll make coffee. You two go into the living room.”
I walk down the hall, and Alexei pulls me into one of his big bear hugs. He mumbles all sorts of apologies in Russian near my ear.
“Slow down.” I pull away and then tuck my arm through his. “What’s going on?”
It sounds pretty bad. Pavel Durchenko claims my father signed a transfer agreement for the Segezha plant, with Kriegsbeil serving merely as the front so Durchenko isn’t publicly involved. But it’s still his in his mind. And Alexei is claiming there is no such agreement.
Durchenko is pissed, to put it mildly.
“Alexei . . .”
He looks guilty. “Yes?”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Is there an agreement?”
I can see the wheels turning in his Cold War head. He tries to be all reassuring. “Don’t worry about it.” He pats my knee.
I move his hand away. “Are you crazy?”
He opens his mouth to speak, and I hold up my hand. “You know what, don’t answer that.” I get up and walk over to the front hall and pick up my computer case. I pull out my phone and scroll to the private number Durchenko gave me at my father’s funeral service. I don’t have any reception in this part of my mother’s apartment, so I reach for the old black telephone on the antique side table. “I’ll simply tell Durchenko there’s been a misunderstanding and we accidentally mislaid the document.” I start to dial.
“Miki, no!”
I continue dialing.
“I shredded it!” he blurts.
I set the phone back down slowly. “You did what?”
“When we were going through your father’s desk that last day you were in Saint Petersburg,” he says quickly, as if saying it really fast could make me skip past my rising fury. “It was in one of the private files I was sorting through, and, well, I shredded the agreement. It wasn’t notarized or anything. It was just a handwritten—”
“Damn you, Alexei,” I interrupt.
At least he has the good grace to hang his head in shame, but only for a few seconds. “I knew you would be mad at me.”
I shake my head, because me being mad at him is the least of our worries. Durchenko killing us, on the other hand, might be more of a legitimate concern.
Then Alexei fists his meaty hand and punches his own thigh. “No! Damn Pavel Durchenko! Your father—” Alexei’s voice catches on the emotion, and I think he is about to cry. Then he shakes his head. “Your father was being practical. Just give me two weeks.”
“Two weeks to do what? To figure out a way to cover up your lies?”
“To reason it out?” he asks tentatively.
I’ve been feeling the power dynamic changing between us over the past few weeks, but his tone just now makes it feel official. Alexei is asking my permission, in a way he never would have—and obviously didn’t—a month or two ago.
“Alexei,” I say with a sigh. “You of all people know Durchenko is not reasonable.”
“Two weeks—that’s all I’m asking. Come on, Miki. I know I can get a better deal sorted out by then, and we also have Clairebeau to think about now.”
I stare at him. “Is Clairebeau in on this with you?”
“What? No. You negotiated that deal with Clairebeau.”
“With your encouragement, if I remember correctly. You’ve been trying to mess with Durchenko this whole time, haven’t you?”
He looks mildly guilty but hardly remorseful. “It all presented itself.”
“My negotiating my first deal with one of the most powerful publishing conglomerates in the world—under false pretenses—just presented itself?”
“Miki, we—”
“You totally used me, Alexei. Which I get . . .”
He smiles like he did this really clever thing.
“No!” I yell, then calm my voice. “I mean, it’s fine because no one is dead yet. It’s not fine that you manipulated me into negotiating that deal with Rome de Villiers when you knew Durchenko already had a claim to the property—”
“I didn’t technically know that . . .”
I stare at him with as much disdain as I can muster.
“I mean, I didn’t find the document until after . . .”
“Alexei, just stop. You got what you wanted. You threw a wrench into Durchenko’s plans by using me and Clairebeau.”
“Just two weeks, Miki. Kriegsbeil is almost ready to deal without Durchenko.”
I scoff. “Well, they’re idiots if they cross him. I’m sure he’s thrown people out of planes for less.”
“Those stories are highly exaggerated,” Alexei tut-tuts.
“You realize what you’re asking, right?” I stare at him for a few seconds. “Exaggerated or not, Durchenko is a man who can tap my phone, break into my house . . . kill me! And you’re asking me to wait around while you try to cook up some backroom deal with one of his silent partners?” I’m beginning to sound shrill. “And to keep Rome de Villiers in the dark as well?”
“This has nothing to do with Rome,” Alexei snaps.
“I suspect he’d take a different view.”
“Look.” He rests his palms on his knees and tries to calm down. “It’s just a small factory in Segezha.”
“Exactly. So what is this really about, Alexei?” My voice has softened, too.
“It’s ours, Miki. Your father and I built that plant. We hired those workers and the workers’ children. We have kept it running all these years, through so many lean times. And that man—”
“Stop making it personal.”
He sighs. “Fine. I’m sentimental. I admit it. I don’t want Durchenko to have it. He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t care about people.”
“Then why did Mikhail make the agreement with him?”
“Your father saw the future of the business in our timber holdings, in the land and the trees.” Alexei sighs again. “We had a major disagreement before he died. Mikhail was going to phase out all the paper factories.”
“But, Alexei . . . I agree with my father.” My voice is even gentler, because I wish there was some way to soften the facts, but he knows that’s what I intend to do.
“I know.” He looks like he is almost crying. “I know in time that’s what we will have to do, but please let me have this one thing. For a short time longer.”
“Oh, god, Alexei. Please don’t get emotional. You’re going to make me cry.”
Alexei looks so tender that I don’t say anything more.
“Eventually Durchenko will get his hands on everything, but please, let’s at least try. If I can get Kriegsbeil to get on board—which I think I can—and Clairebeau is already in, then it will be as if the document between your father and Durchenko never existed. He can still be in on the deal, but he won’t b
e able to shut down the plant and sell it off in pieces.”
“Regardless, what you’re suggesting is completely unethical. The agreement was real.”
He furrows his brow and shakes his head, as if ethics are such silly, childish things at a time like this. I think he’s actually convinced himself that shredding the contract was the ethical thing to do. “Two weeks, Mikhaila. That’s all I need. Let’s not be overly dramatic.”
My mother has returned from the kitchen and is standing in the arched entry to the living room. She listened to the tail-end of our conversation, and that last bit makes her break into infectious laughter. “Oh, Alexei, you are the one who needs to quit being such a drama queen.”
Unexpectedly, I burst out laughing, too. The man is the epitome of brawny, scowling, hirsute manhood, and the idea of his being a queen is priceless. His thick beard and heavyset stature make him look as if he could fight a bear without a weapon. But I have to hand it to my mother—she’s right. It is as if Alexei wants this caper to remind him of the “good old days” of his Cold War heyday. Simone is having none of it.
“If anyone can get to the bottom of this,” Alexei continues, “it’s Jules Mortemart.”
I raise an eyebrow for further explanation, feeling like the name rings a bell, though I’m not sure from where.
“He’s a brilliant attorney who practices here in Paris. Your father and I have had him on retainer for a few years.” He hesitates for a moment in that sheepish way of his. “For when we have issues that we don’t want to handle in Russia. You probably saw his name on one of the old deal memos.”
It turns out Jules Mortemart is thrilled to take on the top-secret investigation into whether our company is obligated to Durchenko in the absence of a cosigned contract. He is also willing to pursue our various options and work with us for the next two weeks.
