by Shamim Sarif
“Meaning, she doesn’t have the guts to follow anything through. My father only has to have a moment of drama, and she drops everything. I mean, look at him. He’s had the passion and drive to follow his love of literature all his life – even when it’s been at our expense. I’ve always wanted a career in business, and I’ve built one. But she’s never really followed through on anything. Sometimes I wonder how much she really wants to be a writer. If you can’t get started by this age, when will you?”
Lauren stands to get some water from the complimentary bar. The collecting of bottles and glasses gives her time to collect herself, so that she will not have to embark on a week’s trip by losing her temper.
“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?” she asks when she returns to their table.
“No, but you do.” The grey eyes smile.
“Yes, I do. Maybe it would help her if your father and even you were encouraging about her writing. No drama, no sarcasm, just some positive feedback.”
“Maybe. But at the end of the day, she shouldn’t need it. Either she really wants to write, or she doesn’t.”
“Oh, to live in your world, where everything is so black and white. Must be great. No trouble figuring out work, family, relationships…”
“I didn’t say it was easy,” Melissa returns. “I’ve found a way to get through the mess of everyday life, that’s all. At least with work and family.”
Lauren considers whether to ask the next question.
“And relationships?” she says.
“Haven’t had one for a while,” Melissa says simply. “When you’ve had your heart broken, you don’t necessarily feel like jumping back into the fray right away.” She shifts in her chair and pours more water for them both.
“Anyway,” she says briskly. “Explain it to me. About my mother.”
“I just think that she might not have the confidence to write. Especially if your father is busy judging her all the time. And also, it’s understandable that she might not want to upset him. Or her marriage of however many years. Seems to me like she gets the burden of keeping things together in your family.”
Melissa waits.
“Think about it. You and your father are busy doing exactly as you like, no matter what the cost to your relationships. So who keeps you all together?”
Melissa checks a monitor that hangs above them.
“Well, maybe you have a point. About my mother. I’m not sure, but I’m going to think about it.” She points at the screen. “They’re calling our flight. Now you’ve made me feel guilty, maybe we can call my mom and check in on her before we leave.”
Estelle hangs up the telephone, sits at her desk, and starts crying. For the duration of the call from Melissa and Lauren, she has managed to convey brightness and excitement for them and their trip. But as soon as the receiver is back in its cradle, she cannot hold the tears from edging out. There is nowhere else she wanted to be on this day than boarding that flight to Moscow with them. She has pictured it all in her mind ever since Lauren suggested it, has hoarded the anticipation that she felt to herself in the dark hours of the night when she would wake up, bubbling over with excitement. After a couple of minutes, she stops crying, wipes at her eyes and nose. Leaning back in her chair, she looks out at the hallway. She can see one half of her husband’s door at the far end of it, closed to the world and to her. But behind that door, he is happy, or comfortable at least, pleased to know that she is there in the apartment with him.
“You old fool,” she says, to herself. The desk before her is clear and clean, and the computer is switched on. There are no emails, and no bills waiting to be paid, and no reason for her not to sit here and try to type out a chapter, or a few pages at least. Except that she has decided, at last, that she will not bother any more. She opens a fresh document, and watches the cursor blink. With a sudden, decisive movement, she picks up the telephone and dials Alexander’s number.
“Alexander Ivanov.”
She hangs up and is immediately mortified by her own behaviour. She dials again.
“Alexander Ivanov.”
“Alexander? It’s me.”
“Estelle! I was worried about you. Lauren told me you weren’t going to Moscow, and I called you, but you never called me back.”
“I’m sorry about that. It’s been a crazy few days.”
“Are you well?”
She feels like crying again. She realises that she is rarely asked that question, and the realisation strengthens her brand new resolve.
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Listen, Alexander, I was wondering. My Fair Lady is playing at the Colonial Theatre. Frank doesn’t want to see it, so I wondered if you’d be interested?”
“I’d love to. When were you thinking of?”
“How about tomorrow? There’s a matinee at three.”
“Sounds good. I’ll pick you up at twelve.”
“That’s early,” she says.
“Well, maybe we can make a day of it?”
“Okay,” she says. “But don’t pick me up. How about if I come to you?”
“If you prefer,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When he opens his front door to her the following day, he greets her with a shake of the hand, a formality that seems incongruous now that they know each other so well, but one that he almost cannot help. Since his meeting with Frank Johnson, he has been on edge, questioning his own motives in pursuing a friendship with Estelle. She looks at his hand for a moment and then takes it.
“Enchanté,” she says, with a half-curtsy. When they look up, her eyes hold a familiar half-laugh. Alexander smiles, and leans to kiss her on the cheek.
“Is that better?”
“Yes indeed,” she replies.
“Shall we?”
“Sure,” she says. “Do you mind if we walk? Or take the T? I feel like seeing the city a little.”
They stroll to the nearest station, to catch a T to Beacon Hill. Across from them, as they walk down to the platform from the busy, Saturday afternoon street, they can see the overland station. She looks over at it, remembering. She recalls waiting at different Boston stations, for her husband to come home. He would travel all around the country on lecture tours, and once they had Melissa, Estelle rarely joined him. He loved to take the train. He always hated the individual concentration on the mechanical, and the reliance on the ability and good will of others that came with driving. Trains, he liked to say, were much more civilised. Someone else worrying about steering and braking. A night on a train could leave you with a new novel read and absorbed into the mind, a good dinner, eaten and digested, and time for a sleep. A night in a car got you to a destination with nothing else accomplished.
She smiles to herself. She sees herself down there on the platforms, waiting, waiting for his train, walking down with it, watching for the doors to open. After the first couple of times, she knew that he would never be among the few eager young men hanging out of the windows. He was always busy inside, in the shaded carriage, putting away books and papers, shrugging on a jacket, waiting by the door. He was not a hanger out of windows. She never stopped looking up at those train windows though, for she liked to see the joyous faces of those boys, the breeze shifting through their hair, their tanned arms waving. Her husband was not boyish. She had met him when he was thirty-six, but even in the few photographs that he possessed of himself as a teenager, he had a dark, heavy look that precluded any real sense of youth. He had loved her, but there was never any trace of puppy-dog adoration or young, eager passion about his love. It was mature and reasonable, with a depth that showed itself now and again when he found himself caught off guard.
Alexander walks on beside her in silence, for a glance at her face has revealed that she is far away. When at last she looks back at him, with a sudden movement of her head, he smiles and gives her a querying look.
“I was thinking about my husband,” she says.
“I see.”
A few minut
es later they are walking through Beacon Hill. The tall, imposing houses of rich red brick, the ornate streetlights, the quaintly cobbled streets – all of these form the backdrop for distant memories for both of them. Estelle walks a half-pace ahead of him, her eyes clouding with recollection. Without speaking, he follows her through the narrow streets, and into a broad, cobblestone road; the type of street that he remembers well from his early days in Boston, delivering food in those first months and years, building his catering business from his brother-in-law’s kitchen.
“It’s here,” she says, and she turns to him with a smile of delight.
“Your house?” he asks, looking around.
“My father’s,” she nods. “They’d moved here by the time I finished college, and I lived with them for two years. It was a fun couple of years, let me tell you. My parents loved people. They were always entertaining. The parties! And dinners.”
“Sounds like a lot of cooking.”
She does not answer. Her eyes frown and she shakes her head vaguely, then continues walking up the street towards her old home.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. We had a full time cook,” she says, turning to him. She stares at Alexander for a moment, with a look of concentration on her face, and then she shakes her head, as though throwing off a wild idea, and as she stands before her old front door, she begins to tell him stories of her father and mother.
She is remembering those Beacon Hill dinner parties. The light, the abundance, the enjoyment. She realises now how much she misses the bustle of guests, the casual, lively inflow of people into the house for tea or drinks or dinner. Her mother did not cook. Few people did, when entertaining. They had a cook, or a housekeeper at least. And then, from time to time, her mother would engage a caterer. Someone she had found whose food was incredible, or so she told them. Estelle does not remember who it was, or even when it was, but a moment steals into her mind as Alexander asks her those questions. A moment of memory that she feels may not be real after all, may perhaps be an imaginative extension of what she has learned about Alexander’s early work here. She sees in her mind the quiet excitement of the early evening, just before one particular party. She sees herself in a pale blue satin dress (can her memory be that good?) walking into the kitchen where Perpetua stands at the stove, stirring, and arranging. Picking up a canapé. She remembers that, and complimenting Perpetua on it.
“Not me, Miss Estelle,” she can hear the cook saying. “That gentlemen there.”
She had looked at the back door, which hung open to the night, a block of black in the white, light wall of the kitchen, and she had seen the smudged, soft silhouette of a young man. That was all. She had not looked into his eyes, or seen his face, or spoken to him, and he nodded and was gone in a moment, leaving her with a polite smile on her face, before she turned to go back to their arriving guests.
It crosses his mind, briefly, that he may even once have catered a party at her parent’s house; until she tells him that they had had a cook. In truth, he cannot remember a single doorway or alley that he walked through all those years ago. Many of the houses look familiar in some respects, but many are also similar to each other, and the details have long been lost to him.
“We should go, Alexander. We’ll be late for the show.”
He offers her his arm, and she takes it, as he points upwards. From the heavy, late afternoon sky, soft curls of snow are just beginning to tumble down. She blinks her eyes against the sudden fall of flakes, but the change in weather gives her a sudden sense of satisfaction. The snow adds a new sensation of quiet, dulling their footfalls and the sounds of traffic below, and gives a feeling of intimacy, as if the two of them are the only people left in the world. Together they walk down the street, where the thin lamps are spreading fingers of diffuse yellow light above their heads, catching the soft swirl of snow in their beams, until they find a taxi. He holds open the door for her, listens to her voice giving the driver the theatre name. As he walks around to the other side of the car, something makes him stop and look back for a moment, up the winding street at the tall brick houses, but still, no clear memory comes back to him.
They have to wait a few minutes for a table for supper after the show, and while they wait, Estelle pulls out her mobile phone and calls home, as Alexander tries valiantly not to listen.
“No, we’re just having some supper, Frank. Won’t be long. There are cold cuts in the fridge, and there’s fresh bread on the counter.” A pause. “On the counter. No, the other one. By the stove.”
She smiles thinly at Alexander.
“Okay. See you later.”
They are shown to their table, and as he waits for her to sit down, Alexander asks the question that has been in his mind for the whole day.
“Does he know you’re with me?”
She nods.
“And he doesn’t mind?”
“Oh, I’m sure he does.” She smiles at him. “You look confused.”
“Do you blame me?”
His eyes are clear and warm as they watch her; the soft lights thrown by candles and wall-lamps suit their deep brown colour and the firm contours of his face.
“Let me ask you something. Why didn’t you go to Moscow?”
She sighs. “Don’t get all logical on me. I don’t know what I’m doing any more, or why. If you really want to know, all I can tell you is that a few days ago, we had a blow-up, Frank and I. No broken plates or anything…” She pauses, conscious that she is rambling slightly. This depth of revelation about her marriage does not come easily to her.
“Anyway, he was upset about my writing ambitions, and about the trip to Russia, even though I told him you weren’t going. And most of all, he was upset about you.”
He waits for her to continue.
“So, ever the understanding wife, I told him I wasn’t sure I really cared about writing the damned novel. Not enough to fight with him all the time. Or have him carping and criticising over my shoulder. And that if he really begrudged me the trip to Moscow, I’d rather cancel it. And I told him that you had never been planning to go with us anyway.”
“And how much of all that is true?”
She laughs, but without humour. “Just the last bit. That you were never part of the trip. And here’s the funny thing. I think that’s the only part he didn’t believe. Because you didn’t mention it to him when you met, and he sees you as an honest man.”
Alexander nods. “Ah yes. We met at his office last week.”
“Yes, thanks for getting around to telling me. He only mentioned it in passing, almost by mistake. Quite a secretive couple, the two of you. Anyway, the irony of the thing was that he liked you. A lot. Meaning, I think, that he could see why I like you. He thinks you’re a passionate man. He’s just concerned that you’re becoming passionate about me.”
She can hardly believe she has said it, but those last words hang in the warm air between them like echoes. He looks to her, and she sees him swallow, follows the constriction of his throat as he decides what to say. A waiter has approached them, has introduced himself, and is waiting for a response that does not come, for Alexander cannot look away from her. She glances up at the waiter and says something, she is not sure what, and he goes away. And then Alexander’s hand is reaching across the table for hers, and she sees it as though watching the whole scene happening in a movie. Perhaps a script that she has written, or would wish to write. His fingers are reassuring and tentative at the same time, and she holds them back, for just a few moments. And then she pulls her hand away. He takes his hand back, too, and picks up his menu.
“So, if you agreed to stop writing, and cancel Moscow, why are you sitting here with me?” His tone is slightly curt. “Surely cutting off our friendship was part of the deal too?”
“It was, in an unspoken kind of way. But then, having made all those concessions…”
“Sacrifices.”
She raises an eyebrow in acknowledgement, and continues.
“Anyway, as soon as I’d said all that, in fact, even while I was saying, I realized it was all complete lies. I still wanted to write. I sure as hell wanted to go to Moscow. And I didn’t want to lose you. As a friend.”
He feels tossed about, rocked emotionally, like a man struggling to control a small boat on a rough sea. A moment of bliss is followed by a fall from grace, and the pattern is repeated. They have talked about other things for a while now – the play, the theatre in general; it is his way of trying to get back on an even keel, but it seems that nothing can restore his equanimity tonight. He is not happy with the food either. The scallops are overcooked, and over-seasoning has killed their inherent sweetness. He toys with them, as she finishes her meal.
“Will Lauren call you from Russia?” she asks.
He is not sure about this. Usually she would keep in touch, but she knows of his antipathy to the whole trip, and she may take that as a signal to lie low for a week.
“You know, she really just wants to help you. To maybe help you see that you were not the cause of Katya’s death.”
“Lauren is a very kind person. She loves me, and hates to think of me suffering, and I think that has clouded her thinking up to now. The facts are that I defected, and left Katya there, in mortal danger.”
“Did you have a choice?”
“I could have stayed with her.”
“But I thought they would have caught you both?”
He nods. “Probably. But it was such a long shot, to try and get out the way we did. I was swept along, I never had time to think things through. She was so excited, and so desperate to leave, and I couldn’t see another way. Neither of us could.”
He finishes his wine, and re-fills both their glasses.
“I do remember well feeling so confused during that whole time. I was struggling – not only with the dangers we were facing, but with the fact that she had been betraying me, that the woman I trusted and loved had concealed a double life from me.”
“Were you angry?”
“Yes, of course I was. But you know, I never felt uncertain that she loved me. She went through a huge change to marry me. She had to find a way to balance her beliefs and her love for me. She was a brilliant, fearless woman. She questioned everything.”
