The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield

by Anna Fishbeyn

  “Tell me the truth, why can’t you just answer me—”

  “I don’t want to—”

  “Why?”

  “Because don’t you see—it’s your mother’s question.”

  “It’s still a legitimate one—”

  “Then you understand nothing. You still know as little about me as you did when we first started—”

  “You’re a fool—I was willing to do anything for you, anything. I would have converted if you had asked, never spoken to my mother if you had asked. I wanted to know everything about you but you’re always one step forward and ten steps back, always concealing. How could you lie in my bed, fuck me, and not tell me what bothered you—not tell me the truth! We lived together, for Christ’s sake, looked into each other’s eyes—and you were planning to marry him? Were you fucking him as well? It’s unbelievable, like some daytime soap except the cuckold is me!”

  “I tried to tell you—you can’t imagine how many times I tried but I kept thinking I’ll end it with Alex soon enough, when he calls … Then I thought—no, it’s better to say it in person, but I didn’t want to see him in person. When I was with you, I forgot about him, forgot about everything, the wedding, my grandmother; I forgot they all exist. You were the only reality I had, the only reality I wanted.”

  “So what made you break up with him at long last?”

  “Because the thought of losing you was unbearable, the thought of losing you made breathing an ordeal, made living an ordeal, made, made everything else irrelevant—” Tears rose to my throat and then burst from my eyes in torrents. But he didn’t seem to see them.

  “Why would you tell me this ugly truth now? Why not tell me before when I was at peace and in control of my faculties? When we were alone? But here I’ve been railroaded—why here—in front of your parents and my mother—why this humiliation now?”

  I should have told him about his mother at that moment; I should have told him what I heard. But my memory was slipping so that I could no longer recall with indubitable confidence the extent of her venom.

  And why would he believe me anyhow—me—a veteran liar with no excuses save for the country where she was born? For lying was our daily sustenance there, our breathing tube. There was no reprieve from lying—it was the simplest, most expedient way to survive, a self-protective layer against cruelty and torture, ridicule and exile.

  Yet what irony it was that my own women, like oracles of ancient Greece, always spoke the truth! They harangued and tormented you with the truth: how you looked, how stupid you sounded, how you shouldn’t do that, how and what you should eat and drink, and whom you should fuck; you knew their opinion on everything. When you were on your own, you were still entangled in their cobwebs: you knew exactly where “you” stood.

  Yet here in America, in the country where honesty was so highly prized that when you cheated on a test in high school, you got an F; a test in college, you were expelled; a test in law school, you could never practice law; and if God forbid you lied on the witness stand, you went to jail. And if you were the President of the United States, you were going to be impeached for lying—not for the screwing in itself—but for lying to the American people. But when you got together with well-meaning friends at a barbecue and saw someone in an ugly dress, you lied, lied to preserve civility at all cost, lied to preserve the status quo.

  I opened my mouth to say, Because of your mother! Because I don’t know if it’s possible for me to love you … But instead, rage greeted me like an old friend.

  “All you care about are the petty aspects of life: the little lies,” I shouted, “why I said something or when, or why didn’t I say it at the right time. You’re so outraged by your little sense of justice that you can’t see the real truth, the big truth. You want to rewrite the past because you’ve discovered something ugly in me, and you can’t handle that—you can’t handle any ugliness in life. Your unhealthy idealism doesn’t allow for any glitches in the road—”

  “‘Glitches in the road,’ ‘glitches in the road’—is that what you call this, this?” he cried. “If only the problem was your family’s disapproval of me! Your family would have accepted me eventually, even your grandmother! But the truth is that it was always about you: you couldn’t decide, in spite of everything we had, you couldn’t decide on me. You still can’t!”

  “No, that’s not true. I did decide. I loved you—from the start—it’s always been you. There was no decision to make. I was late in acting on it but inside I always knew, always!” I looked at him now, fearlessly, and added, “That’s not what this is about. This is about more.”

  “What more could there be, tell me?”

  “It’s about them.”

  “No, no, I don’t believe that! Maybe you enjoyed it: me and Alex together, the juggle, the double life, the lies—I get it! I’ve dated, I’ve been the player, I know the thrill of two lovers. Maybe this was your experiment of two men—your feminist theories set into motion—just to see if you could pull it off—to see if you could avenge centuries of male oppression on us—do you feel liberated now? How does it feel to be a man at last?”

  “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong—you assume desire belongs only to you, to you, the men! You assume desire is the male province, but I’m here to tell you that it’s mine too, that it’s as much a woman’s sphere as yours, if not more so! Playing you and Alex was a thrill! Loving you did not detract me from wanting both of you!” I screamed, and I wanted to scream more: I wish I had slept with Alex, I wish I had slept with Eric, I wish I had it in me to sleep with everyone I longed for and everyone I loathed, without fearing the stamp of “slut” and “whore,” without dreading my family’s judgment, his mother’s reproof, without needing or wanting his fake forgiveness. I don’t need it! I don’t need any of you!

  “I’ve told you—I don’t care about that—I forgive you—all I want to know is if you slept with him after Maine? That’s all I want to know.”

  “No—that’s not what you want to know—you want to know if your mother is right about me! If I’m her—the girl from your past, the betrayer, the whore!” It came to me in that instant that he had never mentioned the girl’s name.

  “I don’t understand—what was this supposed ‘love’ of yours? I still don’t know why you even use the word! Was it all just within the context of inaccessibility, of that edge you like so much?” He breathed in, then let it out. “In telling me the truth you meant to end it!”

  “That’s not true—I meant to come clean—”

  “If only that were true—if only there were such a thing for you as coming clean. But you didn’t come clean—you were forced into it by your grandmother.”

  “They weren’t going to reveal anything—I—it was I who wanted you to know the truth!”

  How desperately I wanted to say yes, yes, it was I who never wanted him to know the truth. I would have kept it hidden, through the arduous year leading up to our wedding, zipping my lips at the altar before God, and then with each year of marriage, I’d forget to tell him. The memory of my engagement to Alex would fade—a mere blip on the rich quilt we’d weave together—and with time, I’d dismiss it as that thing, that thing you do when you’re young and reckless with other people, and with time I’d free myself of its parasitic guilt. And one day when we were old, decrepit, barely breathing, I would tell him and he would laugh. Laugh without bitterness or vengeance—laugh out of love.

  “What is the fucking truth? Tell me! Don’t be a coward now—not now after everything we’ve been through! Don’t be a coward without guts!”

  Isn’t that redundant, “a coward without guts,” I wondered? Did he love me that much? Or did this question in itself mean that he had stopped loving me? I couldn’t see clearly; his expression blackened, the room swam in bleak brown blobs, the bookcases floated through the air. I felt as if I were going temporarily blind. I tried to think of what to say next. Would it have been “guts” to prostrate myself on the floor and beg
his forgiveness and speak a truth: I do love you—I have always loved you, I am so madly in love with you I can die. Or would it have been “guts” to straighten my back and indignantly state, no I did not sleep with Alex—ever—is that the truth you’re seeking, will that mollify you? No, “guts” was something else entirely. For these words would never be uttered inside my family’s home: here, my love and loyalty swung heavily to their side. How could he ever match up to them? What I did next took guts.

  “I slept with Alex,” I lied calmly. “I slept with Alex—after Maine—because he asked me for a favor. He was a virgin!”

  “You what? He was a what? After Maine?” He stuttered, seeming at once struck and lost like a child. I wanted to reach out and hold him and seal the wound I had just opened, but he went on incomprehensibly, bleeding. “But—but—I don’t—I don’t quite understand, but before you said—that you—you said that you broke it off before, before Maine?”

  “I lied.”

  “You lied—again. Just now. You lied again?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings again,” I went on, not comprehending my own self.

  “You’re not making any sense. At all. Nothing is making sense.”

  “Maybe this will make sense: I slept with him to compare the two of you—and yes, I stayed with you because you turned out to be a better fuck.”

  He stared at me with such hatred his arm twitched at his side, as if itching to hit me. Hit me, I pleaded in silence, then out loud. “Hit me, why don’t you hit me? You’ll feel a lot better!” And then, shockingly, I smiled.

  Bitterness glowed like oil on his face, and he quickly came back at me. “I am not interested in your games, Emma. Nor am I interested in being a truck stop for you—a service boy for your personal refueling.”

  “Exactly what I was for you,” I swung back.

  “Don’t confuse us, Emma. When I met you, all the women I had known before you disappeared—no one could compare. I couldn’t be with Sylvia after I saw you again—couldn’t stand the sight of her—because I fell in love with—with—you—”

  “Because I was a good fuck,” I came riding in, to save him from further humiliation.

  “No, no—because you were complicated and beautiful, because you were Russian and Jewish—”

  “Because I was different—because I was your rebellion as well—still am—because you thought you couldn’t have me—”

  “I could have you. I can still have you. I just don’t want you anymore,” he retorted, smashing each word through the wall I had built around myself.

  He stormed past me into the living room like a tornado that raised me up and hurled me down against the earth. No, no, don’t leave, the impotent voice inside me screamed, but I couldn’t move a finger or toe, much less my mouth. I heard hangers clanging, his blazer rustling, arms reaching into sleeves and heels clicking, Hal Beltrafio saying, “It was very nice to meet all of you. Thank you for dinner,” and Mrs. Beltrafio’s voice singing triumphantly, “thank you for the lovely evening,” and the door slamming shut.

  “Well, that requires a drink,” my father swooped in, with his booming voice, as though here, finally, was his chance to save the family.

  “I must get going,” I heard Mrs. Bagdanovich say. “I’d love to stay and drink but Fima is threatening to buy another car if I don’t cook him dinner every day.” After throwing her black shawl over her shoulders, she lingered on the doorstep. “Don’t let it get to you, Lena,” she called out from the living room. “Marrying for love is a luxury most women can’t afford. We settle on the middle ground, not to be terribly happy but to live normal decent lives. All right, I’ve said my piece, now I must go.”

  My mother and father and grandmother and Bella filed into the library like a procession of confused psychologists, preparing their incoherent speeches. Igor showed up a few minutes later, and the five of them fixated on my blank stare. There was no concept of privacy in our world. Pain was a collective experience, and talk wiped tears out. I wanted to scream GET OUT, but I looked at them helplessly from the floor as my father prodded, “Come, Lena, have a drink with us! You’ll feel better.”

  “Are you all right?” my mother asked. “You look a little swollen and red —are you having an allergic reaction?”

  “I’m sorry—so sorry about the way I acted,” Igor mumbled.

  “Well, good riddance,” Grandmother muttered. “I could tell his mother was a bitch from her stinking perfume!”

  “Be quiet!” my father yelled. “You’ve done enough!”

  “I—I—what have I done?” Grandmother shot back. “She didn’t have to tell him anything—we would have all kept our mouths shut.”

  “Don’t worry,” my father said, leaning toward me, “he’ll come back to you, I promise. Love, real love is difficult to shake off.”

  I looked at him helplessly, thankfully, but somehow his words induced even more pain.

  “Oh God, she’s losing breath—give her some Benadryl! She can’t breathe! Get a brown paper bag!” Bella cried. They looked at me, awaiting a word, some response, a twitch on my face, but I couldn’t speak. I was flat matter, devoid of self, only my mouth was open, ready to swallow death. But Bella stuck two pink tablets on my tongue and held cold water to my lips, then held a paper bag to my face. “Breathe, Lena, breathe! Now!” I closed my eyes, put my mouth inside the bag, and swallowed gulps of air, forcing it through the closed passages of my lungs. I don’t remember time moving, only my eyes opening and seeing my mother, her blue moist eyes, her soft arms cradling me, her fingers running through my hair.

  In the Warm Pouch of Failure

  I lay on my bed with the windows flung wide and warm fall air gushing in. Every once in a while a cool gust would intercept and seep inside my ribs—whispering of October, November, December, of the impending winter hurrying to rob us of this deceptive heat. I felt a freezing wind rattle in my lungs. Intermittently the tears would return and I’d let out a muffled wail. A blanket sat in a heap on the edge of the bed, and I crawled inside, compressing my body into a tight ball like a snail burying itself in her shell. My mind whirred around one thought: could it be possible that all my suffering in Russia signified nothing? How did I let it come to this gridlocked silence, to this abysmal lie, to this anticlimactic, thoroughly unsatisfying end? I’d changed nothing, fought for nothing, my paralysis taking root, invading every cell in my detestable organism. I repulsed myself.

  “What have you done?” A figure appeared in the doorway. “You’ve ruined everything!” It was Bella. Her blistering red dress swam inside my head, and for a moment, I imagined she was a Communist flag swaying over the horizon.

  “So I have,” I said after a long silence.

  “Why?”

  “Because there was no other place left to go. I couldn’t stand her—”

  “His mother?” Bella seemed surprised.

  “She’s a rabid anti-Semite,” I said.

  “That’s Grandma talk,” she admonished. “I think she did her best, given the situation—I just thought she was a weird cookie, that’s all, kind of charming even—”

  “I overheard her; I went to the library and listened—she said things about Jews.” I wanted to give evidence but I couldn’t remember a single sentence Mrs. Beltrafio had uttered.

  “But maybe, Lenochka, you’re just being overly sensitive—I mean, it can’t be easy with what you went through, but you must remember, this isn’t Russia.”

  That’s when I realized that I had kept the truth from him not out of fear but out of shame; I was so ashamed for Mrs. Beltrafio that I began to feel her heinous blunder to be mine, to be his—I needed to wipe it clean.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter anymore,” I whispered, half-dead.

  “You’re too far gone—that’s the real problem.”

  “Gone?”

  “In love,” she offered.

  “Yes, in love,” I echoed, emptiness stretching before me.

  “You’re so stu
pid,” she said.

  “Yes, I am, aren’t I?” I looked up at her, and through tears, I smiled.

  “I’m going to tell you something right now, something I’ve never told anyone. Not because I have an overwhelming need to reveal the truth, it doesn’t really matter, but because you—you need to hear it. That year I spent in New York auditioning—”

  “That mysterious year you never talk about?”

  “So everyone—you, Mom, Dad, Grandma, you all thought I failed, right?”

  “We just assumed.”

  “Wrong. Yes, it was very hard at first, there were plenty of rejections, but there were also acceptances—you know, little roles here and there in small theaters. I took acting and singing classes, met people, networked at parties. I created a portfolio of songs, Broadway and pop, became proficient in jazz and modern dance, and had all my monologues memorized like a good little Russian soldier, sad ones, funny ones, emotionally stunted ones. And then there were the endless open calls where I’d sit in a room with hundreds of other beautiful struggling actresses and I’d have two minutes in front of the casting directors to sing and do my monologue, and like clockwork, the words, ‘Thank you, next!’ would ring in my head for days afterward. I always had to recover after those, but I went back again and again. I wasn’t sure how much stamina I had in me, how much longer I would last, but I thought maybe it’ll happen this time. Except that I knew nothing! It wasn’t until I started dating this guy in one of my acting classes, not just some guy, but someone whose uncle was a talent agent and who had connections. I didn’t know any of that when I slept with him, but after sex, he said to me, ‘you’re really very talented and you have an excellent voice.’” She laughed uproariously but it was tinged with an implacable bitterness.

  “He took me to something called a ‘closed audition.’ It was for a little Broadway musical, perhaps you’ve heard of it: Les Misérables!”