by Hawke, Jessa
“What do we do?” she asked, staring beseechingly up at Anabelle and Henry. “Oh, what do we do? We cannot live on my money—I haven't got any! And she may, that old gorgon, she could ruin everything!” And without making any bones about it, Isadora burst into some spectacular tears.
Henry let her carry on for a moment or two before speaking. “Enough with that, Lady Givens. You are a gently bred lady, for all your recent rashness. Your new husband's mother may come around yet, but for God's sake, the two of you must learn to behave responsibly. You cannot continue making the same impulsive decisions you have been making, running around, behaving like children. I suggest you approach Lady Haversham with the news together—”here, Devon's face revealed that he had been planning to leave that task entirely up to his wife, “--and then, in an effort to demonstrate your newfound maturity and familial bliss, you will ask her advice on how to budget according to your needs. Or did you learn nothing from the state your father fell into?”
Anabelle knew she was lost. Hopelessly, entirely lost in this man, this man who spoke the hardest truths when nobody else around him was willing to behave their age. Eyes brimming with grateful tears, she looked up at his calm profile, realizing that if she felt safe with him before, it was nothing compared to how she felt about him now. The feeling lengthened, continued even as Henry escorted her sister and Haversham from the room. Considering his words, she sat waiting for him on the velvet-backed chair where he left her, feeling simultaneously vulnerable and impregnable. She could not stop the hammer of her heart as she waited for Henry to re-enter the room.
When he did, he busied himself with tidying up the mantelpiece, an act that seemed completely insane to her, given the emotions that had just passed through that room.
“Henry,” she called out to him, and found herself unable to continue from the feeling that squeezed her in that moment. He glanced at her curiously, but still said nothing about what had just passed between the foursome. All Anabelle could hear was the loud tick of the grandfather clock, and suddenly, the enormity of what she was not saying became almost completely deafening.
“Thank you,” she said hoarsely, then cleared her throat. “Thank you for not telling Isadora that at the end, my father did not talk of her, but of his horses.”
Henry finally crossed the room and sat next to her. As he reached a steady arm around her and drew her into the safe cavern of his body, Anabelle realized, quite simply and irrevocably, that she loved him. She loved Henry Princely, and she would belong to him for as long as he would have her, and if that was only a week, an hour, or a day, it would be enough to last her whole life through.
“I think, my dear, that there has been more than enough pain in here today. There was no need to add to it,” he told her.
Anabelle squeezed his waist tightly. He was hers! What had she ever done to deserve this wonderful, dependable man? Why, she could rely utterly on him. “Henry,” she asked, propping her chin up on his shoulder, “Why did you marry me? You said you did not want to save anybody, and clearly, I need saving.”
Henry looked down at her, the surprise in his eyes completely clear. “I married you because I am in love with you, you silly goose. And we all need saving now and again.”
“You need saving, Henry?” she asked in wonderment, heart pounding even harder at his admission.
“Of course I do,” he answered, shifting their positions so that she was wrapped entirely in his arms, the place that was home to her. “After my father died, I lost my mind. Do you have any idea how many times I thought about running out and leaving my mother to this hell?” He snuggled her deeper. “You and I have much in common, Anabelle. As much as we all would like to pretend that we are perfect, we can no longer don our masks when we lose the people most important to us. And you, my love, have lost so much more than I. And yet you somehow managed to keep your head above water.”
“Hardly.”
“Stop being so hard on yourself! Everybody's family indulges in madness far more frequently than we would like to admit; what kind of man would I be if I did not acknowledge and understand that?”
“The best man. My only man,” she told him, and kissed him with her entire heart.
He smiled warmly. “You know, my mother had not laughed in years before you came along.”
“Truly?” Anabelle was shocked.
Henry nodded. “You brought sunshine into this home simply by being nobody but yourself. You, Anabelle Givens, prove yourself not a damsel in distress, but an equal partner each and every day.”
A lightness came over Anabelle, a sliding of a heavy burden from her shoulders, one that she had not had any idea she bore. And from this lightness came a giddiness that she could not and more importantly, did not want to suppress.
“You mean I am more than just a wife, Henry Princely?” she teased, loving him utterly.
“You are exactly the right kind of wife, Anabelle,” said Henry Princely, and kissed her soundly.
THE END
Forbidden Desires
Sunshine. Sunshine is important when you’re frying blini, thought Nastya. As she pours in the water over the flour and eggs, mixing it all with a tall wooden spoon, she thinks about all the times she swears the batter can hear her. Smooth, yellow batter slides from the ladle onto the pan, and the first sizzle is always the one that you hear with bated breath. Because the batter can rebel against you at any moment, sticking to the pan, and then all you’re left with is a sticky, gooey mess that nobody wants to eat. Everybody always wants to eat what Nastya puts out on the table.
That’s what Maks used to say, anyway. He was the one who started the trend of all their customers calling her Nastya, too, which is a short version of her name, affectionate, like a kitten curling up next to you in a warm, living pile. Anastasia slides the last blin, so far removed from what the Americans know as pancakes it might as well be living on a different planet, onto a spatula and transfers it to a plate that is stacked high. She turns the stove off and waits for the pan to cool. As the steam rises up into the sunlight, and her gaze lands on the full circle of the crepes before her. And as always, the tears come because the memories of Maks come. Maks, and his blonde hair and his big, booming laugh, and his tan skin. Maks, who dazed her on the bridge overlooking the central canal of Moscow with his youth and his promises, who stole her away from her home and brought her here.
They met when she was twenty-two and he was three years older. She knew nothing but food, how to mix and pound and knead, how to chop and pluck feathers from chickens. She lived with her mamma in one of the last-standing cottages on the dividing line between urban and rural Belarus, not daring to dream of anything bigger. Because who among the realistic dreamed of something better than what they had? It was a recipe for disaster, and so she beat egg whites until they had the stiff white peaks of meringues and chopped heads of cabbage to stew in boiling water and their own juices on a rustic stove in rustic pots that were used by her grandmother. It was her mamma’s birthday, and she needed some vodka for the table, even if it was just the two of them. She hadn’t had a chance to brew their homemade moonshine, and she didn’t have time now.
She met Maks while she was haggling over a bottle at a kiosk near the runok, the local marketplace run by busy, wrinkled old women whose wizened faces and loud, brash voices never quite seemed to match up. She noticed him, of course, but didn’t think much of him, her gaze passing over him like water over a stone. He looked just like any other guy, Slavic in the lines of his face, his eyes the color of the clear, cloudless sky above them, although his clothes were definitely far above what you could dig up at the runok. She was just getting the price of the bottle down a few more thousand rubli when he came up behind her and slid the amount the vendor was asking for into the small slotted space. She whirled around, furious.
“Who the hell are you? Take your money away, I don’t need your charity!”
When he smiled, it was the self-assured smile of a man who is bo
th impatient and worth his salt enough to know that he is. “I value my time more than my money,” he told her, his eyes scanning her up and down. The vendor had hurriedly taken the money before it could be snatched away, thrust out the vodka bottle in question, and closed down the kiosk for lunch. The deal was over.
Anastasia was steaming. “That was way too much for the bottle! I can brew better stuff at home than that, and I wouldn’t even need that much to buy the potatoes for it!” She didn’t like the way he was looking at her was making her feel, too hot and round and blooming; she felt, quite suddenly, as if she couldn’t control her breasts and hips and thighs, couldn’t hide them underneath her dress.
“I like a woman who knows her drink well,” he told her, the energy coming off of him in waves. “Tell me, though, if you can make it better—why didn’t you?”
He got her with that question. They walked for hours, ending up at her mamma’s birthday, where he shared the vodka bottle with them. It went better three ways, anyways. They met the day after, and the day after that. Maks lived in Moscow and he was in her town on a working vacation, the kind that they had back then, and after two weeks, it was over. But by then, he had charmed her, and he was inviting her to visit him in Moscow. Her mother flat-out said no. “No ring, no deal,” she said, and Anastasia went anyway. Maybe she had always been rebellious, or maybe she saw the first glimmer of hope in her life—a visit to such a big city might be her ticket out, because a visit could mean a ring sometime later, sometime soon. Maks lived with his own mother anyway, so she could have someone to hide behind, if she got scared.
And she was, at first. Maks was not violent, nor was he a drunk, but he was a man, and she was afraid she was sending him the wrong message by going alone to visit him. She needn’t have worried. He introduced her to his mother, and for what must have been the first time in the history of the world, they got along splendidly. She learned where he bought his clothes, and that while he was working for his uncle, he had relatives in America. And that was where he wanted to move. She felt that same energy in him as when they first met, and it spooled out of him in wild spirals, a motivational force that made her faith in him match her attraction to him. That kind of intensity is always sexy, in its own right, and Anastasia was far from immune from such a person. She didn’t mind. In fact, when, at the end of her two-week stay with Maks and his mother, Maks dropped down to one knee on the bridge overlooking the statue of the founder of the city, she felt like her heart had jumped up from her chest into her mouth, and that the waters unfolding beneath her were her own life path, spreading its bounty. Maks meant protection. Maks meant America.
She supposes now that she always knew that that’s where he was headed. And her stilted life made her easily seduced by the prospect, and also by Maks. Despite his intense energy, he proved to be tender in bed, taking care of her and he was gentle; in this, he was always light years ahead his counterparts, for they still lived in a time and a place where a man’s pleasure was the only one that was normalized, and women were still vessels. She always loved his body, the long length of it, no excess fat anywhere. She loved the way she looked in his eyes, lush and ripe, despite the ordinariness she harbored in her heart. In her, she knew he had felt that he had found a partner, and so he was the first to look past her fine blond hair and pink-lipped mouth to ask for her opinion. She knew, even then that she would follow him anywhere.
He first suggested it when they were already in bed together. She had moved in with him and his mother after their wedding, a fact her mother had not been happy about, but what were you going to do? There was no denying things were easier in Moscow, more advanced. Nastya liked having a washing machine and a T.V., and it was these things she was thinking of, laying with her hair spread over Maks’ chest, post-coital, when he first talked about moving to the states.
She immediately shifted from the warm, languorous mood that being naked with Maks induced to a state of alertness. She rolled over until she was looking sideways at him; she had to see his face. At first, she said nothing. Then she asked.
“How?”
His uncle would sponsor him, he told her, blue eyes excited. He’d get him the papers he needed, the ones that would say he already had relatives in America. He had raised enough seed money with his two buddies, Roman and Anton, to start up a food market. He would bring his mother along; in this, Nastya did not question him. She knew her mother believed you should die where you were born and would never move. But she did catch on one detail of the plan, the one that was nearest and dearest to her heart.
“A food market?” she asked softly, tracing a finger across his chest.
“Imagine it, Nastush, a food market! With a little restoranchik up front where you can make the best dishes fresh, and people can sit and eat. I can sell the kielbasa, you can slice it. I can order the fresh fish, you can fold it into all four corners of the kuliebaika.” When he spoke, Maks unconsciously grabbed her hand in his, as if they were one and the same body and soul, and she knew that anything he did for himself, he did for her.
She said yes.
Standing in the kitchen of that food market now, she recalls those first few weeks in America, when life seemed to be going so fast it almost slipped right through your fingers. She takes the plate of blini and puts it on top of the glass top display of all the soft cheeses; they are as soft and fragrant as her own creations. Whoever wishes to can add it to the blini, wrap the slightly crisp edges around them into delicious flutes, and cut them open or chew on them while holding them with the bareness of their fingertips. The back door bell rings, and Anastasia knows who it is straight away. It is Roman, and he has this week’s flour, a necessary staple of her store.
It was Roman, her husband’s best friend, who brought him the news. She came across them arguing in the back amidst the latest shipment of sardine cans, and she hid behind the racks of pickle jars to listen.
“I won’t pay him that much for the watermelon,” Maks was saying, and she knew he was angry.
“Why not?” Roman asked, but he looked like he already knew.
“Because we pickle them ourselves. He’s asking for top dollar for the product, plus the cost of brining and the containers. I won’t have it. I don’t care if he IS someone important here.”
“Maks, please understand… I can’t take that message back to him. It looks like you have no respect for him.”
“I don’t have any respect for him.”
Nastya knew they were talking about Boris Isakovich, who went by Gosha, locally. He essentially controlled all the associated Eastern European food markets in their area, and had thug-like underlings who would go and collect what Gosha felt was his due. In return, he paid off the local police to look sideways when the goods that would come into the businesses would either have to be smuggled in—how else were you going to get caviar by the pound if you weren’t going to go to the dock warehouses—or if a worker’s papers weren’t exactly, well, presentable. Cheap labor and rare goods were accessible to all—for a price.
If you happened to be like Maks, in the states legally with your green card, and you weren’t looking to buy through Gosha’s distributors, it did not mean in any way that you were safe from having to pay off krusha, literally translated, meaning “roof,” but in fact referred to protection from the local cops. Because Gosha’s men might trash your place, steal the sardines you were importing from your uncle back in Omsk. Maks told her he was not afraid, and as brave as she’d like to have believed her husband to be, she knew that he was thinking about the promise he made to his mother.
“Why go to the land of the free,” she had said, “if you have to belong to someone else?”
It wasn’t so much that Roman and Anton, who had helped Maks with the seed money for his business wanted to belong to Gosha. It was more that they had not brought their mothers overseas with them and being with Gosha involved a certain lifestyle that Anastasia imagined was quite seductive. And they were so young when it all
started—who isn’t seducible when they’re young? Young men with fast cars, access to all sorts of goods, and power. Young men in America were addicted to power the way that the middle-aged were addicted to alcohol back where they came from. And so Roman went to work as one of Gosha’s distributors, and when she came across them arguing, she saw that there was concern in the young brunette’s eyes. He was genuinely concerned that if Maks did not start purchasing from Gosha, Gosha would make trouble for him.
If Maks was concerned about this, he did not show it. Those were golden days, at the start. It was all the way that Maks had promised her it would be—the food market with the apples in brine, buckwheat sold by the scoopful, sweet Turkish delight and Strela chocolates, cones in their bright gold foil wrappers. A small kitchen in front for Nastya, for her blini, manti filled with meat, and pirogies of stewed cabbage and potatoes. She rolled everything out by hand, mixed all the dough recipes from scratch. They built up a steady customer base, which was unsurprising since they lived in an area where immigrants from their hometowns lived and were brimming over with nostalgia for a taste of the old country. Many of these were men who were trying to raise enough money to bring their wives and children to meet them in the states. No matter where they found their pleasure at night—it was assumed that men had roving eyes—there was still nobody to prepare them the homemade meals they were used to. Word got out around fast that Nastya’s blini were the best to be had. But the best thing was a separate apartment from Maks’s mother, where Anastasia did not have to fear being overheard through paper thin walls when she and Maks were making love.
Anastasia pauses for a moment before heading to the back to meet Roman. It is painful to remember those nights with Maks, because it is this that she thinks she misses the most—being touched, being stroked and parted by a man’s hand. She has not felt it since Maks has been gone, one month already. She has noticed the way that Roman has been looking at her, like she is a new car that he would like to acquire and take for a ride. What she hates most of all is how this makes her feel, sickeningly as if she might just not mind. She shakes it off, trying to convince herself that she has simply grown lonely in Maks’s absence.
