“Hi. Thanks for coming to my exhibit,” Ana approached him.
“I said I would, didn’t I?” Michael turned to her with a friendly smile.
Gosh, he’s even better looking than I remembered, she observed. Don’t look at her tits, Michael told himself, attempting to focus on Ana’s eyes instead. But he couldn’t help but notice in passing that her outfit was Jess modest than the one she had worn in church. This time the young woman wore a short brown dress that hugged her curves.
“I really like this painting,” he said, assuming a contemplative demeanor. “I especially love the set of contrasts you establish here.”
“Which ones?” In her mind, the painting expressed a unified theme: the suffering that results from a dying love.
“Well, the angularity of the lovers’ position versus the soft curves of their bodies, for instance,” Michael remarked, gesturing towards relevant parts of the painting. “Plus the antithesis between the tenderness with which they hold each other and the anguish of their facial expressions,” he pursued. “Not to mention the complementary color palette you use,” he added, risking overkill.
As she listened to Michael’s comments, Ana wondered, does he even notice that this painting shows two naked people having sex? She was surprised that Michael seemed to mention every other element of her work, omitting only the most obvious. “You know, this painting’s mainly about sex and love,” she helpfully explained.
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Michael replied with a bemused smile.
“My gallery owner asked me to do a painting about something that sells,” Ana shrugged with an air of resignation.
“And you thought that two people looking like they’re both in excruciating pain while making love would do the trick?” Michael followed the lead of her conversational directness. Will she take offense? he wondered.
To his relief, Ana laughed good-naturedly. “That’s what I call a compromise. Usually, I paint only serious themes,” she made a sweeping movement with her hand to indicate her other paintings, which featured popular themes, such as death, disease, massacre, hunger and despair. “I depicted the scene just to please Tracy.”
Michael nodded in agreement. “I get it. Enough anguish to please critics and enough nudity to please customers.”
“That was precisely my theory,” the quirky artist concurred.
“Just out of curiosity, has anybody expressed interest in buying this particular painting yet?”
“Let’s just say that my hypothesis has not yet been confirmed.”
“Good. Because I’d like to buy it,” Michael offered, surprised by his own atypical impulse of generosity.
Ana directed him an incredulous look. “Did you take a peek at the price tag yet?”
“Why? Do I look that poor to you?”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that ...”
Michael glanced at the title of the painting. “Goodbye forever? What’s that all about?” Then he noticed the price, “Three thousand bucks? Holy shit!”
“You are aware of the fact this is a posh art gallery, not a flea market, right?” Ana double-checked.
“Yes and I stand by my offer,” he confirmed.
“You really don’t need to, honestly. I’m sufficiently impressed by your noble intentions,” she assured him.
“No, I mean what I say. I want to buy it,” Michael insisted.
“Are you sure?” When he nodded, Ana’s face lit up with childlike joy. “Thank you so much!” She stepped forward and hugged him so tightly that he could feel the softness of her breasts pressed up against his chest. As she whispered a few more words of gratitude, currents of tingles ran from his ear to his neck, through his torso, all the way down to his toes.
“I really do like your art, Ana,” Michael said. “You have a way of expressing the sadder emotions. You give them nuance and range. Personally, I haven’t seen many contemporary painters who are able to do that as well as you do.” As he uttered the word range, he made a sweeping gesture with his hand, which accidentally brushed up against Ana’s hip. Michael’s whole body quivered, electrified by this unexpected touch. “Sorry,” he apologized.
“Don’t worry about it,” she placed her hand briefly upon his shoulder. “I’m Romanian. We Latin women are used to a lot worse.”
He looked at her with a sense of relief. She’s absolutely radiant, he thought. And that wasn’t just his impression. In point of fact, Ana beamed with delight. Many people had complimented her paintings and some had bought them. But hardly anyone grasped their essence as well as Michael. “I really appreciate your gesture. It’s so nice of you,” she repeated.
“Well, don’t thank me yet. I still have to seal the deal with the gallery owner,” Michael reminded her. The young woman promptly ushered him into Tracy’s office.
After they parted on that Friday afternoon, Ana left the gallery in a daze. She looked up at the sunny September sky. The clouds were so clearly defined that they almost looked painted upon a pale blue background. I must be floating on air, she told herself, uplifted by a sense of peaceful elation. Each time she recalled Michael’s fluid gaze gliding over her body and pausing to look admiringly into her eyes, she fell into a trance, like a schoolgirl experiencing her first infatuation.
Under the spell of these fresh impressions, Ana crossed the street to take the People Mover to the RenCen, where she had parked her car. When she arrived downtown, there seemed to be a big commotion around the subway station.
“What happened?” an elderly woman asked.
“A man fell under the train,” replied a middle-aged woman wearing clogs.
“Did someone push him?” a young man wanted to know.
“No. I heard this guy who was a friend of his say that he threw himself under the train,” a young woman commented.
“But why?” the first woman inquired.
The young woman shrugged. “Who knows? Poor guy ... His friend was saying that has a wife and three kids. Can you imagine what those poor souls will feel when they find out about what happened to their dad?”
These snippets of conversation sobered Ana, taking her mind off her recent encounter with Michael. On the drive back home, she kept thinking about that misfortunate man’s suicide. What could have driven him to such a desperate act? she wondered. Was it alcohol? Debt? Drugs? An illness? Losing his job? Heartache from a failed love affair? Ana went through a few possible reasons. None of them seemed compelling, however. Nothing could be bad enough to abandon your children, she told herself. When she picked up Michelle and Allen from school that afternoon, she embraced them warmly, as one does when reuniting with loved ones after a long separation.
“Mama, stop it! I’m not a baby anymore,” her daughter protested.
But Ana disagreed. No matter how old they are, they’ll always be my babies, she told herself.
Chapter 12
Although Ana had closed the bedroom door, she could still hear the children’s voices shouting and laughing. On that Friday evening, they were hosting a double slumber party. In the spirit of equality and fairness, Rob had allowed both Michelle and Allen to invite their friends over for pizza and a sleepover. It was already past ten. Ana hoped that the kids’ energy level would go down, but no such luck. They were charged up like batteries, while she and Rob felt exhausted. To relax, Ana went online to check her email. She found five spams and three messages. Four of them advertised enlarging various body parts while the last one, by way of contrast, suggested liposuction. The three real messages came from people she didn’t know.
Let’s see, Ana opened the first, with only mild curiosity. It was from an artist who wanted to know if she had an art agent. No I don’t, she replied. The second was from a man who claimed to have seen her painting of the two lovers. He wondered if she would be willing to do an idealized representation of him and his wife. Ana responded that she didn’t do portraits. The last note was from an artist who wanted her to recommend his work to her gallery owner. Ana repl
ied that she’d be happy to, but she’d have to take a look at his art first. As she was about to log off, she became aware that the house was unusually quiet. Back in the old days, when the kids were calm without adult supervision for more than a few minutes, it often meant they were up to no good. Once she even caught them making mud pies in the living room with the leftover fudge.
She found the boys in Allen’s bedroom, playing Nintendo. Ana headed next for Michelle’s room. It was empty. She checked the playroom and her studio, down in the basement. Nobody was there either. She proceeded to search in the front and back yards. Still no sign of the girls. “Rob?” she called out. “Where are the girls?”
Her husband was on the phone with a childhood friend. He winced at the interruption. “Don’t worry about it. They’re having fun.”
“But I looked everywhere and couldn’t find them,” his wife insisted.”
“They’re probably playing outside.”
“At 10:30 p.m.? In the dark? By themselves?”
Ana’s anxious tone set off his trigger. “Listen, I’ll have to call you back. My wife’s freaking out about something,” he informed his friend, then turned to his wife: “Why must you ruin everybody else’s pleasure? Let the kids enjoy their childhood!” he exclaimed. Ever since Michelle and Allen had become old enough to have some independence, Rob resented his wife’s over-protective attitude. She’s just being neurotic, was his default explanation for most of her maternal anxiety.
“I’m just more responsible than you,” Ana rebutted. “I don’t let young girls run around unsupervised at night.”
“If you truly cared, you wouldn’t be answering emails or tinkering with your drawings instead of looking after the kids,” Rob objected.
“Excuse me, but I’m only human. I may need to take a break in the evening just as you do,” Ana replied, surprised by the shrillness of her own voice.
“A break from what?”
She could see disdain flaring in her husband’s eyes. A feeling of resentment welled up in her throat. At that moment, Michelle and her friend Marsha stepped in. Ana’s pent-up anger was instantly released: “Michelle, where have you been?”
“Outside. By the little stream.”
“What were you doing walking around in the dark without adult supervision?” her mother pursued.
“Daddy gave me permission,” Michelle fell back upon her usual defense.
Ana turned to her husband again. “She’s only ten. What if she gets kidnapped? There wouldn’t even be any witnesses around this late at night.”
“Mama, don’t be such a scaredy cat!”
“I’m just trying to protect you from harm,” Ana replied more calmly.
“No, you’re not,” Rob countered. “You’re just being neurotic, worrying about nothing.”
“I may be neurotic, but at least I’m not irresponsible.”
At this point, Michelle intervened. She was growing weary of witnessing conflagrations between her parents. “Stop it. Both of you. Can’t you see? You’re both right,” she attempted to mediate. She first turned to her father. “Daddy, you’re right to let me do more things. I’m getting older, so I should have more freedom.” Then she addressed her mother. “And Mom, you’re also right to tell me that I shouldn’t go wondering around the neighborhood at night.”
Ana’s anger evaporated. She felt sorry for the girl, obliged by the mounting tension between her parents to mature beyond her years. She recalled several heated discussions with Rob that had been stopped by Michelle’s tearful pleas, “Don’t fight, because if you do, you’ll end up like Natalie’s parents. And I’ll kill myself if you get a divorce!” their daughter had threatened. Those words, and especially the desperation and intensity with which her daughter clung to an image of loving, unified parents, daunted her mother. For years, Ana believed that such an image was only a mirage, if it had ever existed at all. Yet she was afraid to shatter her daughter’s dreams of a happy family. “You’re right, Michelle. You may be only nine, but you’re wiser than both of us put together,” Ana remarked, looking straight into her husband’s eyes. Rob couldn’t understand the dangers out there, she told herself. The unforgiving harshness of the world. But she did. Because, unlike him, she had experienced real trauma rather than watching it on television as a form of entertainment.
When she went to bed that night, Ana could tell that she’d be overtaken by the spell again. The nausea rose from the pit of her stomach all the way up to her throat. She heard herself break into tears, in spite of herself, outside the realm of conscious control. Sanglots de desespoir, a French poet might have written with his elegant Monblanc fountain pen. Neuralgic hysteria, an old-fashioned psychiatrist might have diagnosed, prescribing some barbiturates to calm her down.
As for Ana, she just called it unhappiness. A deep, visceral sadness periodically filled her with a negative energy without any identifiable source or solace. To help soothe her nerves, she went into the bathroom and removed the package of sleeping pills from the right-hand drawer. She gathered four little elongated white capsules into the cup of her hand, popped them into her mouth and washed them down with a glass of water. She then went to bed and slipped under the covers.
Her eyes wide open and her mind wondering far away, Ana had a flashback to a day in the park that, in retrospect, she viewed as the last day of her childhood. Ana recalled a Sunday afternoon when she was allowed to wear white again, since nearly a year had passed since her parents’ death in the Timisoara massacre. She was eleven going on twelve. The anti-communist revolution was already behind them and life began to change beyond recognition in Romania. Within the space of one year, the country suddenly transformed. It became filled with shops, markets, bars, strip clubs and a growing black market, as people, especially the seedier elements, thrived by consuming the corpse of the decaying communist society.
On that warm June afternoon, however, Ana was focusing on life’s simple pleasures. She was licking a chocolate ice cream cone, glad that food was finally readily available. Feeling sympathy for the eleven year old girl who had lost her parents, Grandma Anca spent her precious savings on taking her granddaughter to an amusement park so that Ana could feel like a child again.
As the girl was enjoying her ice cream cone standing next to the carousel, Nicu, the neighbor’s eighteen year old son, who already drank too much and was what Grandma Anca referred to as a “derbedeu,” yelled out loud, among his group of friends, “Nice pink panties, Ana! Can we take them off?”
Perhaps that was only a harmless joke. But Ana blushed, not even daring to look down to check if her panties could be seen through her white summer dress.
“Don’t pay any attention to that hooligan,” her grandmother whisked the girl away from the group of rowdy young men.
But Ana couldn’t conquer her embarrassment. “I should have worn the white ones instead,” she mumbled.
“It doesn’t matter,” Grandma Anca said. “What matters is that you know how to respect yourself,” she peered meaningfully at her granddaughter through her large, pink-rimmed glasses.
“Okay.” Ana replied, eager to forget about the whole unpleasant episode.
But Grandma Anca squeezed her hand emphatically: “If you don’t treat yourself with respect, no man ever will,” she repeated. “They’ll only spit on you their dirty seed.”
“That sounds pretty gross,” the girl decided, throwing away the remains of the soggy ice cream cone.
As far as she could recall, that was the only birds and bees conversation Ana ever had with her grandmother. Yet she relived that moment in her dreams disturbingly often, down to the dusty, heavy feel of the hot air on that June afternoon; the derisory sexual comment whose sharp jab she had never felt before; the sense of shame towards her budding sexuality and her grandmother’s resolve to inculcate in her a sense of dignity that, the elderly lady sensed, would be her strength against the onslaught of predatory young men in a nascent capitalist society filled with a disconcerting m
ixture of opportunity and corruption.
Then, in another flashback, Ana saw Nicu again. He was bent over her, with his tender brown eyes, aquiline nose and an abandoned smile upon his lips. One moment he was gazing sweetly into her eyes, the next she felt the heat of his breath flowing in a string of incoherent words. She sensed him delving into her body, despite her repeated cries for him to stop. As so often before when she recalled her first so-called lover, Ana felt her skin become saturated with cold beads of perspiration. At first he had been sugary sweet, that Nicu. He reminded her of the honey drop candies her grandmother used to buy for her as a special treat, with their hard shell exterior and soft, nectar-like interior, which, once she bit into them with a crunch, spilled a gooey liquid into the cavern of her mouth, inundating her with an overpowering sweetness that bordered on nausea.
After that incident, Ana thought, her grandmother’s words of advice about preserving her feminine virtue became more or less meaningless, the way injunctions about propriety and honesty are rendered derisory by the reality of murder, famine and war. Live through what I’ve lived through at the hands of your fellow human beings, of your own friend and neighbor no less, she addressed her husband in her own mind, and only then you’ll have the right to lecture me about spoiling the children’s fun! He’ll never understand me, Ana concluded, feeling misunderstood and alone in her new country, in her own house. But I am not alone, she reminded herself. I have Allen and Michelle. Dear God, please let him not turn my own children against me, was Ana’s last coherent thought before finally drifting off to sleep.
Chapter 13
Michael felt himself sinking into the giving softness of the pillow. A warm, tingling sensation enveloped his midsection. He didn’t dare open his eyes, fearing that it might break his concentration. In the dark, he intuited her presence. Her long dark hair covered him like a silky blanket. Her mouth wrapped around him, determining the pulse of his desire. When he was about to lose control, he pulled her up towards him. Strangely, however, he felt more resistance than anticipated. Something isn’t right about this, it occurred to him. She didn’t glide up his body with sufficient ease; her curves didn’t envelop him with the fragile softness he expected. As Michael opened his eyes, the fantasy of Ana vanished. “Karen?” he asked incredulously. Once fully awake, he realized that his life was back to normal. “What a pleasant morning surprise,” he attempted to mask his disappointment.
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