The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield

by Anna Fishbeyn

  Strength, I wanted to say, you offer me strength, which is everything.

  “Eddie, I need to—I need to tell you something—”

  Eric still buzzed in my ear and his threat hung in my mind like a knife periodically puncturing my abdomen.

  “I want to be honest with you about everything.”

  He leaned down and closed the statistics books sprawled on my lap.

  “I want you to paint,” he said. “Personal truths can wait. You were meant to do this—to create universal truths. I believe in you Emma.”

  Tears pricked the corners of my eyes and he took all the statistics and math books from my hands and stacked them neatly against the wall.

  “This,” he offered, straightening the pile, “we can send to your parents with a note: attention mom and dad—this is not my life.”

  His words reverberated in my head like battle cries, awakening me from my immigrant slumber. He took me from the humdrum of my parents’ practical ambitions to such grand terms as destiny, ability, debt to oneself, duty to one’s “God-given talent.” He took me from struggling and puffing angrily over my statistics homework to wanting to paint without respite, to paint through the night, to once again feel the pain in my joints, the knots in my back, the numbness in my fingers, the happiness.

  One night I returned to the dungeon to retrieve all my acrylic and oil paints, my pastels and blank canvases, my huge collection of brushes—I suddenly needed everything at once and it couldn’t wait.

  Natasha greeted me in the doorway.

  “Someone’s been calling you non-stop. Some guy named Eric.” She handed me a piece of paper with a number on it and I dialed.

  “Hello, Eric?”

  “Hello, Emma—so glad you called!”

  “What’s up?”

  “I was just wondering if you’re doing anything this Saturday night?”

  “I’m busy,” I replied.

  “Yes, you are, very busy. I just told Alex I’ll be coming to your wedding—how do you like them apples?”

  “I’ll ask him to disinvite you—”

  “He complained to me that you’re very busy. So I said to that dumbass, ‘Oh, I’m sure she’s longing for you—she never goes to bars or has fun, never!’”

  “Please leave me alone!”

  “That’s not possible,” he said. “You’ve had—oh, how should I put it—you’ve rocked my world!”

  “What do you want?”

  “You,” he said. “I want to try you—I want to sample you the way you sample a tasting menu—has Eddie taken you to these fucking pretentious restaurants—has he impressed you?”

  I remained silent, then in an abrupt threatening voice, he spoke again. “Drop Eddie.”

  “Why?”

  “Ever since you, he’s not the same. He suddenly cares. No more fun, no more strip clubs. What the fuck did you do to him?”

  “What—I—I didn’t do anything—”

  “Don’t play the victim card with me, you little Russian immigrant gold-digger, probably trying to see which of these two losers will make more dough and then you’ll decide! But I’d be careful if I were you. If I were you, I’d suck more dick to keep up the status quo—like my dick for instance and—” I don’t know what he said next because I couldn’t listen anymore. Perhaps I should have paid attention to his threats, to the shrill desperation in his voice, but I couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t stop replaying the words in my head: he’s not the same, he suddenly cares … I felt my heart swell and my mind burst and the colors on my palette start to dance, and the dungeon’s drab walls glow in a beautiful pink light. The world momentarily turned inside out and all the suffering I harbored in my past was swept away by this indescribable feeling of happiness, this exuberance for this other individual who seemed to possess within himself the key to my life.

  Eddie set up a semi-studio for me in his loft, demarcating the living area with an opaque burgundy curtain behind which I could store my supplies and work. I set up my world inside the curtain’s circumference, with all my acrylics and oil paints and brushes and various palettes arrayed on the windowsill and floor, and watched the sun set and rise from a sliver of window embraced by the curtain. He would awaken at four in the morning, and catch me bent, gaunt, crazed, with my paintbrush in one hand, yellow-purple-red stripes on my forehead and cheeks, muttering inscrutable incantations under my breath. He would watch me from the curtain’s edge, sometimes ten, twenty minutes at a time, waiting for me to feel him. But I never could. I was so lost inside. Only when he’d speak, when he’d say, “It’s amazing watching you work,” I’d turn, for an instant unable to recognize him, and then I’d smile in gratitude for throwing away the chains I couldn’t cut on my own.

  One night he appeared in the shadows, holding an enormous Nikon camera with a long thick lens protruding into space, and started snapping pictures of me. I was painting them, my mother and father fighting in that wooden cabin, their war reemerging on canvas as a child hiding under a mushroom tree. I called her My Secret Chanterelle.

  “You inspired me,” Eddie said, “I haven’t touched this camera in years. But every night, I watch you, I watch you and want to capture you.” I was wearing a long sleeve blue button-down shirt, one of his old relics, torn and worn out, unfit for the office, and nothing else. Specks of black and gold and red paint sat on my face and thighs and calves, even between my toes, and the shirt itself resembled a cheerful Jackson Pollock masterpiece.

  “I want to take you somewhere special,” he said, his voice quiet as though he was confiding in me.

  “A new swanky restaurant in East Village?” I cried with delight.

  “No, something even better—”

  “A wild discotheque in Queens?”

  “I want to take you to a special place—to my secret cottage in the wild woods of Maine—it’s like your Russia, like this painting.”

  Everything fell away, my heart grew quiet, my mouth watered, my tongue hung free. I imagined he only took his most prized lovers there, to swim in the freezing lakes of Maine, where water nymphs glow on waves and he, a satyr, stripped of his banker’s garb, clad only in verdant robes of nature, carries his Nikon over one human eye shooting arrows into goddesses—leaving their hearts—my heart—in tatters …

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

  “Are you still scared of me—Emma—is that it? Are you scared of getting too close to your secret goy?” He laughed as if we were a joke, treating our intimacy as we often did—like an ongoing project in ill-fated humor.

  “I’m just not ready, Eddie, for such a concentrated dosage of you,” I replied with an easy laugh.

  How long did I have to sow my oats, how long did I need to get it out of the system (as men so triumphantly claim) before I could enjoy jubilant domesticity with Alex? I couldn’t take this protracted fling, this ephemeral love-tryst, into the echelon of driving to secret cottages because if I did, if I did, I’d be leading Eddie to a dead end. I checked myself quickly, retracing my steps—didn’t I tell him that I enjoyed him like an addiction? Didn’t I plainly state my case: I can never marry you, you a hot gentile, me a sexy Jew, you a wanton fiend, me a temptress-feminist? Didn’t I try to tell him—only a moment ago the truth was sliding off my tongue: “I have not broken up with Alex—I am not free to love you!” I patted myself reassuringly, and yet I was aware enough to know that I was lying unremittingly, blatantly, willfully, lying through omission, lying to him, to Alex, to myself—that I was lying to keep him. How did I allow it to happen: how did my desire to make something of myself, something unique, staggering, satiating, become so bound up in him that I awaited him now with my whole self, not just that hackneyed animalistic pang between my thighs?

  As the taxi approached the restaurant, located directly opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art, my skin turned wet and prickly, and my stomach contracted from nerves. I took comfort in my outfit: black rayon pants, a silk white blouse, and a black blaze
r that I felt was conservative enough to survive lunch. Still, nothing on me ever closed properly, and the blouse cast a shadow around my breasts, its white waves lingering obstinately over my nipples.

  I wore tiny leaf gold earrings that belonged to my great-great-grandmother, who had hidden them in her mattress during Stalin’s collectivization raids, and periodically fingered the jagged spikes that cut into my earlobes; I’m Russian, I whispered in my head, I can take anything.

  I was buttoning my top button and straightening my pants when Eddie suddenly unbuttoned me. “Don’t—don’t play someone else with her. I want my mother to see you as you are—sexy as hell.”

  “I can’t believe I agreed to this!” I cried, wondering how I managed to say “no” to the secret cottage and “yes” to meeting “The Wicked Witch of the West,” his words, not mine.

  “Does your mother even know we’re practically living together?”

  “This is my world, Emma, not yours. And in my world, my mother is not my keeper. You can say and do whatever you want.” He said this with such belligerence that I suspected the truth was hiding somewhere underneath, mingling with this lie.

  “I want to get out of the car—stop the taxi,” I exclaimed with sudden horror. “I can’t do this—”

  “I thought Russians weren’t afraid of anything,” he goaded, but with a smile so wide and generous that it washed over my upper intestines like a gallon of Maalox.

  Across identical white tables and elegantly dressed women, I spotted a great head of light brown hair. The woman was looking out the window, her face turned away from her husband’s.

  We approached them briskly, urgently, like two cops who’ve spotted their suspects. “Mom, Dad, I want you to meet Emma!” Eddie announced, shattering her reverie.

  She twisted her long neck and languidly rolled her eyes over my body and face. “We’ve heard so much about you, Emma,” she murmured warmly.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Mrs. Beltrafio,” I said.

  “Please call me Cynthia,” she corrected me, the first of the many corrections to come.

  At close range, I could see that she was a woman of great height and perfectly sustained skin. She had an elongated face and her dark brown eyes were shaped almost precisely like Eddie’s. But her face, like a vacuum package carefully wound in wrapping paper, was the antithesis of Eddie’s expansive and gratifying expression. Each feature had too little room to maneuver, so that her speech and emotions were confined to scant millimeters of space, dooming her to one invariable state—grandiose politeness.

  I wondered if her cramped physiognomy was the result of Botox, which Eddie confided was one of her secret spa addictions, or something else, something more insidious.

  “I’m so happy you could make it, Emma,” she said. “Eddie was telling us you were very busy.” Then she relieved her face with a smile, a smile that like her other attributes was constrained at the outer edges of her jaws, leaving the impression that she hadn’t laughed in years.

  “Harold, but everyone calls me Hal, even my children.” Mr. Beltrafio stretched out his hand and shook mine. “It’s so nice to meet you.” He was an inch shorter than his wife, with an amicable easy smile, kind hazel eyes, and soft, round cheeks that smacked of a jolly childhood. Yet he resembled Mrs. Beltrafio, the way a dog might resemble its owner, not in the details, but in his peculiar stunted demeanor, as though he had been trained for years to keep his emotions within the boundaries of hers.

  The four of us looked at our menus for a long time before anyone spoke, an utter impossibility in my family. They flashed before me, my querulous, loud sextet, spouting their contradictory opinions and impossible demands on waiters, and I was struck with a sudden yearning for them. He’s not looking me in the eye, Grandmother sang in my ear, just because I don’t speak English doesn’t mean a waiter can’t look into my eye! Look at that contemptuous physiognomy! What kind of chefs are these—no one says anything, no one complains, that’s why the food is so horrendous—is this chicken or rubber? Her lively voice was drowned out by the silence of the Beltrafios. Their lifeless concentrated faces perused their menus with a sense of purpose—could I ever be a part of this?

  Mrs. Beltrafio was shrouded in several layers of yellow satin, bordered by a navy jacket. Its left lapel featured a gilded scorpion brooch that perfectly matched her blouse and added a glint to her invasive black eyes. She peered at me over her menu to assess my face, or was it my soul she was assessing? “I highly recommend the fish, it’s always fresh here,” she said, “and the scallops for appetizers.”

  “Mother is a fish aficionado,” Eddie remarked. “She is always eating fish in every restaurant.”

  “I love fish,” I trilled, attempting to please her. “I’ll take the tuna and the scallops.” Only moments passed before I realized that I had chosen the two most expensive items on the menu.

  “I’ll have the trout,” Mrs. Beltrafio announced, the trout being only twenty-three dollars, while my tuna was thirty-two fifty. “And I think I’ll skip the appetizer,” she added after pausing distinctly on the prices.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling as though my tongue was hanging from a scaffold, “perhaps I’m ordering too much—” Even when we were poor, living with cockroaches, my family never skimped on food. My mother made sure that the expensive items on the menu were tried by at least one member of the family, and if we were taking people out to dinner, it was a matter of honor that they would never feel our lack of resources, our private money woes.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mr. Beltrafio said, stepping in, “order as much as you want. Eddie is going to order an appetizer, aren’t you, Eddie?”

  “Yes,” he said, stroking my back as though for support, “I’m getting lamb, and the tuna tartar, and the scallops. I’m famished.”

  He met his father’s eyes and added, “Hal, this is my treat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Edward, your mother’s always dieting.”

  The silence resumed, only to be broken by her: “Isn’t it a lovely place? These paintings are really quite remarkable. I believe these are reproductions of Odilon Redon—how lovely!”

  “How’s work, my boy?” Hal turned to his son.

  “Good, we just closed a merger between Gladdon Oil and Exxon—I was in charge for the first time. The stress was incredible, Hal, like nothing I’d ever experienced before.”

  “But you did it—you succeeded,” his father announced as though this were an irrefutable fact about his son, a branch he could grab onto in a world where everything else wobbled and fell apart.

  “Ignatius, have you had any more thoughts about starting your own hedge fund?” Cynthia inquired. “Doris’s son, Nathan, said he’d be very interested—he’s like you, an ex-investment banker, and Andy could certainly use a more stable job than running your father’s business.”

  “That’s just it, son, your brother isn’t running the business—he’s getting a free ride,” said Hal.

  “Mother—we’ve had this discussion before and the answer is still the same: I have no intention of starting my own company and if I ever did, I would never hire Andy.”

  “Oh, but then you’d be on top of the world,” his mother went on, “instead of what you are now—just a cog in the wheel.”

  “He’s doing just fine, Cynthia, he’s doing great! You should concentrate your efforts on Andy. He’s the one who needs to grow up—”

  “Try to calm down darling, it’s not good for you,” Cynthia said this kindly, but her perplexed gaze seemed to chop off his tongue.

  “Nothing ever changes,” Eddie grumbled. “Why don’t you sell the business, Dad, and just retire? Or get someone else to run it for you—fire Andy, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Ignatius, please don’t take God’s name in vain,” murmured his mother, the rebuke carrying the same calm tone as her appreciation of Odilon Redon.

  “We’re making a profit this year, son, we’ll be all right. Don’t you go worrying about us�
�”

  “Your father’s a dreamer,” his mother remarked with a laugh. Her mouth remained suspended in a crooked smile that I knew she produced specifically for me, but her eyes stung Eddie’s face. “And where do you suppose your brother could go if your father fired him? What would his children eat? He has a family to support, you know—you’re the one without responsibilities.”

  “How long are you going to defend him, Mother? Andy has to learn to make his own way in the world.”

  “I’m not defending him, Ignatius, I see all his limitations. Oh, poor, poor, portly Emily—that woman has a heart of gold and of course, no dignity, practically hanging herself around your brother’s neck to keep him from running off to the city to be with some doe-eyed Barnard student. And imagine this—telling your father and me he’s making ‘connections’ for the company, building up ‘clientele’ in the city! Does he really believe your father is that naïve? We’re not the sort to interfere but Emily, poor girl, just doesn’t understand him. It’s not my place to educate—all Augustine wants to do is restore his manhood—”

  “Do forgive us, Emma”—Hal suddenly turned to me with warm smiling eyes—“for talking so rudely about our private family affairs. This lunch was really just to get to know you.”

  Cynthia nodded her great brown head at me and said, “Yes, we understand that you come from Russia—from where exactly in Russia?”

  “Moscow,” I replied as if I was at my own deposition.

  “Ah, my second favorite Russian city—I have always preferred Leningrad—to me, of course it will always be Leningrad.” She shifted in her seat, and the quiet, almost intimate disrobing of her jacket seemed to take me into her confidence. “You really don’t look Russian at all, your features are quite astonishing—almost American Indian I’d say—such excellent cheekbones and so skinny. Typically, Russians are rotund in their faces and a lot more voluptuous in the hips.”

  “Mother, please—must you air your racist views in the first ten minutes?” Eddie hissed.