Bombshell (12 page)

 

I didn't see Jonathan Somerfield again that evening. It was as if he had disappeared completely, along with all those romantic notions I'd conjured up about him. I did, however, meet the artist, once I made my intention to purchase
Mariella in the Afternoon
known to the curator.

The curator, a reed-thin woman with short dark hair and a brittle smile, was naturally, delighted. “Well, it's fortunate you came tonight,” she said, as if the coveted painting were in danger of being snatched up by a member of those black-clad ranks, who seemed more interested in their cocktail chat than the art that surrounded them. “The artist is here. You have the opportunity to meet him. Now where did he run off to?” she continued, gazing anxiously about the room.

That surprised me. I guess I had assumed Chevalier was dead, based on the tidy sum the painting was going for.

He might as well have been, I thought, once the curator, whose name, she told me, was Pamela Stone, led me through the crowd to the office at the back of the gallery, where we found a man stooped over a chair placed before a dark window, smoking.

“Oh!” Pamela said, as if startled herself to find him alive. Wrinkling her nose, she began to wave at the curl of smoke drifting from his cigarette; then, as if in fear of offending him, she clasped her hands before her. “Marcus,” she called to him, as if he were a small child. “There's someone here I'd like you to meet.”

The man, who looked ancient, glanced up at us, a weariness in his blue eyes. He was completely bald, and his flesh hung from his face, as if weighted down by the sadness that permeated his grayish features.

No, he wasn't dead. But there was an emptiness in his eyes that seemed to suggest he had already moved on from this life.

Pamela made the introductions, babbling on merrily about my interest in
Mariella in the Afternoon.
Chevalier didn't seem to move a facial muscle as she chattered on. In fact, the only reason I knew he was listening was the flicker of curiosity
that passed through his eyes when the curator mentioned my intent to purchase his work.

“Come!” Pamela said now, holding out a hand to him. “Why don't we have a look together, shall we?”

He stood, looking much taller than his stooped frame had suggested and, somewhat mournfully, stubbed out his cigarette and this only after Pamela's suggestion.

We moved through the crowd, which seemed to part before Chevalier, though he kept his gaze high above it, until we reached the painting in question.

I watched the artist as his eyes came to rest on
Mariella in the Afternoon
. He looked almost startled to see it, as if its creation had little to do with him.

Pamela must have noticed, too, because suddenly she was going on and on about how
Mariella in the Afternoon
was representative of Chevalier's earlier career, with its use of color, its moodiness, as if the artist himself weren't standing right there to comment.

I, on the other hand, decided to take this opportunity to settle the dispute that raged, albeit tenderly, between my parents to this day. When Pamela came to a pause in her little discourse, I turned to Chevalier.

“The figure in the distance,” I began, gesturing to that ambiguous form on the road that snaked away from the pretty little house, the even prettier woman. “Who is it?”

He glanced up to where I pointed, as if noticing the figure for the first time, a frown creasing his features.

“Who is she waiting for?” I asked, hoping to prod some sort of answer from him.

He turned to me, studying my face as if seeing it for the first time, then, finally, opened his mouth to speak.

“Who says she is waiting for anyone?”

 

I arrived at the house where Kristina Morova once lived a few minutes early the following Sunday afternoon. A sturdy brick structure attached seamlessly to its twin neighbor and set off only by the discoloration of the aluminum storm door that flanked its otherwise pristine entrance, it looked like any other house in this section of Brooklyn.

Though I had viewed that carefully edged lawn, that pretty little planter that now stood empty in the stone cold, at least twice before on my fruitless pilgrimages here, I had never, ever felt the shiver of pure anxiety that permeated my system the moment my taxi pulled up in front.

I was scared to death. And I didn't like the feeling one bit.

But I was going to have to deal with it, I thought, as I paid the driver and slid out of the car, almost wanting to throw him another fifty to wait outside for me. Just in case.

In case of what?

God only knew. But I knew that car service in Brooklyn was not as immediate as it was in Manhattan. If things went…awry, there was bound to be awkwardness. An awkwardness that would only escalate if I had to wait while a new car came to ferry me away.

I wished I could leave right now.

But I didn't leave. Instead, I summoned whatever courage I had left, pulling my cashmere coat more tightly around me against the wind. Underneath, I wore a wool pants suit more appropriate for the office than a Sunday afternoon dinner. Yet somehow a suit had felt right as I stood before my closet that morning. Like armor against whatever was to come.

Now it just made me feel foolish.

Even more so when the front door swung open to reveal a ruddy-faced woman who appeared to be as overdressed as
I was for a Sunday afternoon, in cranberry slacks and a ruffled, cream-colored blouse.

“Grace Noonan?” she said, as if still trying to get used to the name. “Katerina,” she finished when I nodded. “Come in. Come in.”

Once I had stepped into the tiny foyer, she leaned in to hug me and then thought better of it. Probably because I literally backed away from her gesture. I felt embarrassed, but only briefly. I was too busy studying her face for something familiar, but there was nothing in the slanted, mud-brown eyes and thick nose that said this woman was a relation of mine. She looked like someone I might have sat next to on the subway a thousand times before. Someone I would have never given a second thought to.

She smiled at me, made uncomfortable, I was sure, by the way I was staring at her. My gaze moved to her teeth, slightly askew and a tad yellow, before I remembered my manners. “You have a lovely, um, home,” I said, then looked around to see if this statement was true.

We were only in the foyer, but it had a cozy feel, furnished with what looked like a small mahogany accent table and a pretty lamp.

“Thank you,” she said, relief evident in her voice. Then, as if this was the invitation I had been waiting for, she said, “Come inside. Let me get you something to drink. Sasha should be home soon.” Then she smiled again. “Your sister,” she explained, her eyes gleaming with emotion and making me realize how very much I suddenly wanted to cry myself.

She left me in a comfortable living room, with overstuffed, fraying couches, a scuffed but shiny coffee table and a curio cabinet that held a myriad of trinkets. I barely looked at my surroundings until she was gone. Then I stood again, feeling
antsy, and found myself face-to-face with a photo on the far wall that I might have said was myself, if not for the somewhat dated brown bouffant hairstyle.

I moved closer, my heart in my throat as I studied the laughing eyes, noting absently that they were more hazel than the blue gray of my own, but that pointed chin was mine, as was the slight tilt to the eyes….

“That is Kristina,” came Katerina's voice, startling me.

I turned to acknowledge her return to the room, then watched as she placed two glasses of tea on the table before she turned to face the photo once more.

“She was just sixteen there,” she said as I studied the eyes again. “That photo was taken by a professional photographer,” she continued, her voice closer as she came to stand beside me. “He told Kristina she could be a model.” I saw her shake her head out of the corner of my eye. “She spent all her savings on the pictures he took and then she never did anything with them!” She smiled, reaching one hand out reverently to touch the photo. “But she was so pretty. Too pretty,” she said, almost wistfully.

Before I had time to wonder at this, I heard the rattle of locks, followed by the thud of heavy footfall. “Ah, this is Sasha,” Katerina said, glancing at me in anticipation.

My sister, I thought, my mind mimicking Katerina's moniker for Sasha, though even calling her a half sister felt like a leap for me. But whatever label I gave this stranger, I could not have anticipated the fact of her, once she appeared in the oval entryway.

Standing at what looked like close to six feet tall in her thick-soled, metal-encrusted black knee-high boots, Sasha Morova was a giant. And not a very attractive one. Her unevenly chopped dark hair was dyed a bright red—at least
patches of it were. Her skin was pale and her eyes shadowy above a nose that had been pierced twice—a hoop hung from the left nostril and a small pink gem graced the right. Her eyes might have been hazel like Kristina's, though it was hard to tell their color as they were thickly lined in black and practically covered by a hank of bright red hair. Her mouth might have been pretty—bow-shaped, full—if it wasn't for the hoop that popped out of it.

“Sasha, I told you to be home an hour ago,” Katerina chastised her.

Sasha ignored the reprimand. “When are we eating? I'm
starved,
” she said, continuing though the archway to the next one, which would lead her out of the room and, I imagined, to the kitchen beyond.

“Sasha! Don't be rude, we have a…guest,” Katerina said, the apologetic smile she turned on me a bit strained.

As if she had finally realized her aunt was not alone, Sasha paused, regarding me with what looked like suspicion.

Finally someone who feels just like I do, I thought, as I took my first good look at Sasha's face.

Because despite the piercings, the bad makeup and the somewhat sullen expression, it was my own, I realized. The eye color was different, as was the mouth. But the shape was there. The nose…

I felt a shiver move through me, followed by a wave of sorrow when I glimpsed something in her eyes that also mirrored my own. Something I could not fathom, yet understood on some level.

“Sasha, this is your sister,” Katerina said with a finality that suggested simply by stating it she hoped to make it true. “Grace.”

Sasha snorted at this, a smile—or a sneer, I couldn't tell
which—marring her features. I couldn't blame her. Sister? I would have snorted myself, if I weren't supposed to know better.

“Sasha,” Katerina said again, the warning clear in her tone.

Sasha rolled her eyes, held out one hand, wreathed in leather-studded bracelets, and said, “Nice to meet you,
sis.
”

I took that hand in mine and almost smiled in recognition at the cold, leathery texture of it. Suddenly I knew what made her so familiar to me, besides the resemblance to Kristina that we shared. It was that at her age I had been very like Sasha. Wearing an air of rebellion and a lot of false bravado. The kind of confidence that had sent me out on the streets of Brooklyn clad much the way she was—though sans the piercings and the bad dye job—in a leather jacket that clearly couldn't hold out the cold, and no gloves. Even the fingernails I recognized, glancing at the bitten down nubs that hinted at her true confidence level—painted black of course—before Sasha quickly dropped her hand. I felt buoyed by this recognition, and saddened at the same time.

I remembered how hard it was to be sixteen. Almost as hard as it was to be thirty-four.

 

We sat down to dinner a short while later, and over tepid wine, dumplings and oddly spiced meats, I politely answered Katerina's questions about my life. She was amazed I had spent some growing-up time in Brooklyn, and impressed by my successful career at Roxanne Dubrow. It was a bit awkward, since Sasha seemed to preside in silent judgment over the whole thing, but once Katerina turned the subject to Kristina, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

I learned how Kristina had come here when she was a young girl, with her mother and Katerina, hoping to set
up a life with their father, who had emigrated ahead of them, only to discover he had set up a life already with someone else.

I learned of Kristina's desire to be an actress, thwarted, I suspected, by her pregnancy with me, though Katerina was polite enough not to say so.

I learned how she had loved Jean Harlow, Rita Hayworth, Jayne Mansfield. Had fashioned her hair after Marlene Dietrich once and kept her brows as finely shaped as well.

I learned she had a temper—surprise, surprise—and how, as a teen, she had left a boy standing on the stoop waiting for her for over an hour, because he hadn't thought to bring her flowers. I was starting to wonder if it was possible that I had inherited the title of Breakup Queen.

Finally, I asked about my father.

“He was killed in Vietnam,” Katerina said with some hesitation. “While she was…while she was pregnant with you,” she finished. “They had…had planned to marry.”

Sasha, who had remained silent through most of the retelling of Kristina's history, shoveling in her food, snorted at this last statement. “She wasn't going to marry him and you know it,” she said with a glare at her aunt. “She drove him away. Just like she drove my father away.”

Katerina looked down at her hands, a sudden sorrow seeming to descend over her features. When she finally composed herself, she gave me a wan smile. “The Morova women—we've never had much luck with men. I told you about my mother, God rest her soul. Her life was never easy, raising two daughters alone. In fact, it was she who…well, my mother thought it was too much for Kristina to keep a baby when she was so young herself….”

She spoke so impersonally about the baby whose mother
was too young to raise her that it took me a moment to realize she was talking about me.