The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield

by Anna Fishbeyn

  “How many times have I told you, Ignatius, that I’m an observer of human nature, like say a botanist—I’ve never claimed to be its judge!”

  “I’m Jewish,” I said suddenly.

  Appraising me with her narrow brown eyes, she replied warmly, “Of course you are—you didn’t think I was so ignorant as to believe that you defected here like that ballet dancer—what was his name—Godunov?”

  “Our exit was just as dangerous—”

  “Well, certainly, but from what I understand, Jewish people were being legitimately released by the Soviet government on account of the many people in this country who fought for your freedom—I think our accountant Gary Schneider wore a bracelet that said Free Soviet Jews, and even marched in Washington. Isn’t that right, darling? Wasn’t Gary just such a maudlin, sappy liberal—everything he said—” Her face suddenly underwent a perceptible shift in color. “I’m sorry—do you know what ‘maudlin’ means, Emma? It’s like dripping with sentiment, exaggerating one’s feelings.”

  I felt her thoughts running under her skin: my impoverished vocabulary, my backward immigrant mentality, my potential grammatical errors, my lack of familiarity with her favorite Mother Goose rhymes, like “Sing a Song of Sixpence” and “Mary, Mary Quite Contrary.”

  “You’re quite right, Mrs. Beltrafio, about me not looking Russian.” I spoke too soon, my old immigrant indignation rising to my throat. “I think my features changed when I became more fluent in English. My jaws sharpened from working the mouth too much. I believe the Russian language is interveludian.”

  “Do you mean antediluvian? I’m not sure you sure you’re pronouncing that correctly,” Mrs. Beltrafio noted, her countenance pinched from some deep internal discomfort.

  “No, no, I didn’t mean antiquated. I meant interveludian,” I went on with a crooked smile. “It’s an old British usage; it means that the words operate on the inside of your mouth rather than the outside, the way English does. When you speak Russian, your tongue and teeth stay hidden from view, sentences are formed within almost closed lips; but in English the lips are open, the facial muscles work constantly, the tongue dances in plain view.” Interveludian, my ass! I had my own unique dictionary, in use for several years now to confound fools: largodick (pronounced as it’s spelled; translation: large ego, small dick), fantasmobullet (meaning fantastic bullshit) and idiopanarama (self-explanatory).

  “That’s very interesting,” Mrs. Beltrafio remarked, appraising me anew with what I guessed was a modicum of respect. “Very, very insightful! I’ve always loved the French language—but until now it hadn’t occurred to me that their lips get all bunched up, like they have a little mouse dancing on their upper lip. I wonder if there’s a special word for that?” Then she smiled, but the sharp corners of her lips cut into me, and my heart accelerated with fear. “Hal and I used to go to Paris all the time, when we were still traveling to improve ourselves. Now we just sprawl on some Caribbean beach and drink strawberry daiquiris.”

  “We haven’t been to the Caribbean in over ten years,” Hal said.

  “I know, darling, you’re too tired now to go to Australia or Africa, I know—I’m not complaining.” She appealed to me again. “You see, Emma, the flights wipe my husband out, and so he prefers Jamaica. For me there’s nothing there but a kind of heavenly deadness. Moscow is a wonderful place to visit—do you remember it much?”

  She propped her pale manicured fingers under her chin and flashed me a sliver of motherly anticipation.

  I didn’t know what to say. The three of them looked at me with throttling curiosity, and the question, posed in this emptiness of context, hung before me like a strategically looped rope.

  “I remember the street I was born on,” I spoke with sudden candor, “our neighbors’ white poodle barking in the mornings, the dark elevator in my building that always broke, the walk to school in the snow—strange things. Here and there something will come to me: the five-year-old girl whose parents were drunk all the time, a golden-headed little creature always naked, pressed against the window pane, crying. Behind her we could see her parents throwing books, vases, chairs at one another. And we’d watch, crouching on our knees, the whole building, because the parents were so loud and violent but no one dared to call the police. The fear, I remember the fear.”

  “Yes, that’s the way memory is,” Mrs. Beltrafio murmured in a mellifluous voice, “that’s the way it is for me, you know. I can remember as if it was yesterday my sons squirting each other with those toy green guns—they were all the rage then. I don’t think there were any siblings on our block who got along quite so splendidly. Ignatius excelled at math and Augustine in the verbal department, although neither really lagged behind the other in any subject.”

  “That’s terrible,” Hal said to me, “what you remember, what you must have endured in that awful country.”

  “Russia was miserable,” I said to Hal, “but I have good memories too: memories of fresh strawberries and raspberries I picked with my own hands at our dacha.”

  “How I loved our raspberry shrubs—do you remember them, Hal? We had them in our old house. It was a mansion, really, a magnificent piece of luck that Mrs. Luftcourt sold it to us.”

  “I’m afraid, Emma, my wife tends to idealize the past.”

  “Do I? Perhaps Emma should know the truth about us,” Mrs. Beltrafio announced, her expression undergoing a stark, terrifying change.

  “Oh, don’t start, Mother,” Eddie said.

  “We’re a broken vessel, that’s what we are. We’re the remains of what once was; fossilized artifacts of a happy family. Do you really think, Ignatius, that the money you’re sending us can make up for the pain I endure every day—every minute of every day?”

  “Stop—stop this, Cynthia—you do this to all his girlfriends,” his father blurted out.

  Eddie glared at his father but the latter merely hung his head like a man depositing his already severed head at the guillotine. I wanted to cup it and force him to look at me, to show him that I too felt his powerlessness—a weakening of limbs, the separation of mind from flesh, the easy floating of one’s consciousness above the conversation below. But I was caught in their family’s trap: a series of tests administered to every girlfriend like tiny vials of poison where the end result, without exception, known to all the participants, is that no one survives.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Hal murmured, his pale lips shivering. “I was only trying to get us back to you: we tend to forget, you know, other people …”

  Cynthia swirled her head to face me, and her eyes thickened with tears. “Perhaps you’ll have better luck with Ignatius, Emma, than I’ve had. Easter just came and went, and I had to figure out a way to split the festivities in half. Ignatius refused to come to church with us—he doesn’t go to confession anymore—he’s given up on God.” The accusation turned into a plea. “Andy is willing, he’s forgiven you; all you have to do is say the word!”

  But Eddie merely frowned in her direction. His gaze was clear and unflappable, and it occurred to me that her tears and pleas were familiar to him, like a play he’d had to endure for years. “Dear Mother, you know very well that reconciling with Andy is not an option for me.”

  “So, Emma, we hear you’re in some confusing program,” his mother interrupted, her entire being reclaiming its serene stateliness, “but that you really want to be a painter—what a wonderful aspiration it is—to be an artist!”

  “SPASM,” I announced proudly, “that’s my program: it stands for statistics, probability, and survey modeling.”

  “Why, that’s like swallowing a suitcase.” Mrs. Beltrafio giggled with pleasure.

  I couldn’t understand why despite the fear of my family’s disapproval of Eddie, I wanted her to fall in love with me, why I then made this desperate stab to defend myself: “There are so, so few women in math and science—that’s why I want to be part of it.”

  “So you thought you’d sacrifice yourself for the gre
ater good?”

  “I thought—if I have the talent for numbers, why not? I felt like I owed it to women to tip the balance of power. In my Intro to Statistics class, there were forty-eight men and four women, and I was one of the four. And in my program, all the other women dropped out—except for me.”

  “Impressive,” she returned with a strained laugh. “No, no, not that you’re in statistics, but that you’re so passionate about something you don’t really want to do—it demonstrates serious willpower.”

  The table fell into its habitual silence again. Only this time it was as if something terrible or profane had been uttered, as though Mrs. Beltrafio had reported on someone’s untimely death. In the absence of language, I took it all in: her keen evaluation of my soul, my soul splayed open like the trout she was meticulously chewing, and the sensation of myself being chewed.

  “Emma is an extraordinary painter. Each piece takes your breath away,” Eddie broke in.

  “Parents must never force their children to give up their dreams,” Mrs. Beltrafio noted absently. “It just so happened that Ignatius chose a very practical career, but I’d have certainly supported his every endeavor, even if he decided to become a trombone player like he dreamed of when he was twelve—”

  “My parents didn’t force me into anything either.” I offered my parents like pork chops on a skewer. “They don’t even know that painting is my dream.”

  “It must have been freezing in Moscow!” Hal quipped cheerfully, but I knew that he simply wanted to save me.

  “You must forgive my husband for his ignorant remarks,” she said. “He seems to be under the erroneous impression that Moscow is Siberia.”

  “Yes.” I was grateful for some juncture of commonality with her, and so, betraying Hal, I said, “Most people don’t realize that Moscow winters are dry and not that windy. It’s much colder in Chicago.”

  “Russian winters always make me think of Dr. Zhivago, that excellent movie with Omar

  Sharif and Julie Christie. Love only works when people can’t be together. But when they’re together they want to rip each other’s throats out—are you a fan of Taming of the Shrew, Emma?”

  “I am.” I nodded.

  “Why, I’m surprised, given your feminist bent—do you remember when Petruchio plans to deprive his wife of sleep and meat? Do you remember what he says?” She paused, giving my mind a chance to assemble itself and awaken from its shock. Then, clearing her voice and acquiring an actor’s precise aplomb, she leapt into it: “‘And if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl/ And with the clamour keep her still awake./ This is a way to kill a wife with kindness/ And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour./ He that knows better how to tame a shrew/ Now let him speak …’ Wonderful, isn’t it? What a flawless meditation on marriage!”

  My brain felt hollow, emptied of all the books I had read, and the play itself, which I vaguely recalled from my senior year of high school, surfaced, its words like multi-shaped forks now scoured my subconscious and dug up memories I had long since drowned. How many hours did I stare into that dictionary, the Webster’s, the Oxford, the English, sleep with it, coddle it, loathe it, throw it against walls, wrestle with its parade of meanings—ancient and modern, colloquial and formal—until it grew on me like fungus, like a lover I could never discard. I conquered Shakespeare eventually, in college, swept through him like a wildfire, scorching the rabbit holes of their double-meanings.

  “My favorite play is Anthony and Cleopatra,” I chirped suddenly. “Now there’s a woman I could bank my theories on … ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale/ Her infinite variety.’”

  Mrs. Beltrafio grinned and turned to her son. “You’ve always had taste, my dear Ignatius.”

  “Emma is my girlfriend, mother, not an escargot.”

  She reached for my hand and squeezed it, but her eyes stayed squarely on her son’s face. “My darling son, I would never dare compare your Emma to any food group—she’s like a magnificent bird.”

  The waiter finally deposited the check upon our table, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We’ve got to go, Mother,” Eddie said, grabbing the check even as Hal loudly fumbled with his own wallet.

  “You are truly a delight, Emma,” Mrs. Beltrafio murmured, picking up the mercurial voice reserved especially for me, her eyes lucid and angelic. “I’ve had such fun bantering with you about Shakespeare—so few people nowadays care for the classics—”

  “I hope we see you again, Emma,” Hal said, cutting her off.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you both.” I nodded meekly at them.

  “No, indeed, the pleasure was all ours,” Cynthia returned. I wanted to say something more, my mouth hung open for her, but Eddie had pulled me—dragged me, really—out of the restaurant and manually fit me into a cab. There, for the first several minutes, I sat in a daze, staring at other cars clogging our passage forward. I thought of our first days in America, days that dragged in murky silence, when we couldn’t speak or hear, when we woke up as mutes, when the world around us was a choir of unfathomable, grating sounds, when the faces we encountered on the streets were objectively human, but not human like us. We were no longer visiting other countries, no longer passing through Vienna or Italy; this alien planet was our new home.

  It was only when I heard my name, “Emma, Emma, what are you thinking,” that I remembered that I too lived on this planet, that I spoke its tongue.

  Eddie was grabbing my thigh and maniacally caressing it.

  “We must have sex as soon as possible,” he said, “otherwise the bad taste she’s left in your mouth will remain for weeks.”

  “She wasn’t so bad,” I remarked without facing him.

  “You don’t have to be polite about her.” He stuck his hand between my thighs and began to rub feverishly like a man about to be carted off to prison.

  “Is it true that you send them money?” I asked, pulling his hand out of my irritated thighs.

  “It’s not a big deal—I give it to them for emergencies. My father refuses to take it, but my mother makes him feel that they don’t have a choice.”

  “Do they?”

  “My parents used to be rich—that’s their Achilles’ heel. Mother talks about it now like she’d been a movie star, about her furs and cars and reserved seats in fancy restaurants, and her beloved country clubs. She never recovered after they lost their wealth. My father’s best friend, partner, our godfather—Russell Walters—decided that he had had enough of civilized life. He started funneling funds to Switzerland and God knows where else, stealing from the company, planning his escape. He had been in charge of the books. We still don’t know where he is, though he’s been on the FBI most wanted list for fraud and counterfeiting for years.”

  “That’s terrible,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry, Eddie.”

  “Oh, it was years ago. I don’t care now. I have shitloads of money. That’s the stink of it for my mother—to feel that she—she—the Grand Duchess of Larchmont is at my mercy.”

  He turned to me; his face was open, decisive. “When my parents lost all their money, my father had a nervous breakdown. That’s what you witnessed between them. She can’t help exercising her muscles once in a while—her reign, you could call it, over him. My father had an honest-to-God meltdown; he spouted inanities, laughed at inappropriate times, cried randomly and walked around the house with shorts on his head, singing the national anthem. It sounds funny, I know, but believe me, it wasn’t. My brother and I were starting high school, and my brother wanted to bring girls home but couldn’t. And my mother became cruel. She couldn’t take it. She strove to control her environment; her days to the tiniest minutia were always carefully planned. It wasn’t just the loss of money, it was the loss of everything she held dear—no more parties, no more socializing, no more late-night cocktails on the porch with her country-club friends. She told people Father was ill with cancer—she would have done anything to keep it a secret. But our world was
small and my father—well, he didn’t know left from right anymore—there wasn’t a mall or a grocery store where he didn’t end up pulling some stunt or bellowing an incomprehensible rant, and they’d call my mother to take him home. She almost had him committed to a mental institution. The psychiatrist placed dad on antipsychotic drugs and he got better. But my brother and I were certain it wasn’t the drugs that did it—it was Mother and Mother alone who forced him to snap out of it. With her kind intentions!” He let out a bitter laugh. “My father has been like this ever since: quiet, submissive, a pathetic sight, but indisputably normal.”

  “Have you brought other women to meet her?” I asked.

  “I was once engaged—”

  “Always a fiancé,” I said, laughing, “never the groom!”

  “That’s the way my mother likes it,” he muttered as if to himself.

  “Then why—why did you bring us together—”

  “Are you so blind? You had to meet her—because, because I thought if there was ever going to be anything between us, if there’s any hope for us”—he paused, lowering his eyes—“you’d have to meet her. You’d have to know that if you ever wanted to be with me, you’d have to deal with her.”

  My face collapsed into his shoulder and melted into the beige cotton of his shirt; tears effaced my lids, brows, nose, cheeks until there was nothing left but raw exposed flesh. “Ya lublyu tebya,” I whispered. I saw it writhing before me—this feeling of being tethered, trapped, of love reduced to its colorless, flavorless essence. I wanted to say it in English, for “I love you” seemed kinder, gentler, more humane, less fatal in its demands on my soul, but it stayed on my lips in Russian—Ya lublyu tebya—searing into my skin its heavy, metallic texture, desiccating my tongue.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “Nothing, it was nothing,” I replied and shut my lips.

  The Caged Iguana

  When I entered the dungeon, it appeared darker, smaller, more claustrophobic, in the grip of loneliness. The walls seemed to have grown muddier, yellower, and a rotten-broccoli stench emanated from the living room. Natasha was lying on the fake Oriental rug next to the iguana. Her red-rimmed eyes went through me as if I had become transparent glass. As I came closer, I heard her chortle bitterly, “The iguana is dying from insanity—schizophrenia reptilian style.” “What does that mean?” I asked, approaching the animal. “Poor thing doesn’t know she’s caged—thinks the metal bars are tree stumps and all she needs to do is just burrow through them with her teeth and nose until—well, take a good look at the carnage—for the metal never bends, the freedom never comes …” Natasha appeared drunk or high, her eyes partly closed, breathing heavily through her mouth. I could smell her and the iguana swimming in some strange communal odor. But upon closer inspection, I realized that it was the iguana’s breath whirring, spreading, sucking every last bubble of air into her heaving, malfunctioning lungs. Her blue scales were peeling, unveiling the dull gray hue beneath, her ribs were protruding, her red tongue was parched and now hung loose from her jaws. Her habitual frenetic hissing and violent purple tail appeared anesthetized. The most telling sign of her emotional state was a mangled lacerated bloody nose, fatally injured by her inexorable attempts to break free of the cage.