Burning Down the House (3 page)

J
ONATHAN STOOD
in his underwear holding his phone. He said Come in when Ian and Alix knocked and then Oh fuck when he looked at his texts. When they walked in, he said: Patrizia and the twins just landed. Who wants to come with me to get them?

You guys have a good time, said Alix. Enjoy.

Ian stood waiting and as Alix walked out he grabbed her hand but she kept walking.

You sending me to the wolves? he called after her. I just got here.

Jonathan ripped the tag off of a sweater with his teeth and let it drop to the floor. He pulled the garment over his head as if he'd just killed an animal and was wearing its skin. He did the same thing with his pants. He left the room a crime scene of bags and clothes and products. He and Ian went out and down the hall. Vlad was waiting in a larger car on the gravel drive.

Has Alix always been such a bitch? Jonathan said. You've known her about as long as I have.

Yes, said Ian. But she's nothing compared to you.

Jonathan smiled out the window. His jaw twitched. You're so right, he said. He tilted his head forward, laughing, and began to slide into a knowingly sexy slouch.

Ian ignored it and looked out his own window into the infinite shades of green. Ian thinks: I must believe that Poppy will be on this plane, otherwise why would I be in the car with Jonathan. This is the only explanation.

At the airstrip, Roman was running down the field waving his arms around and kicking up dirt and laughing maniacally. He looked like a sped-up film of a person from another era, only instead of from the past he had come from the future. His brother Felix was the opposite: slow, graceful, curious, a vision of a boy from a previous century. Behind them the plane was already taxiing and gliding away into the dreamy British afternoon.

Jonathan had pushed the fantasy of his much-younger half brothers' Slavic nanny out of his mind for a few hours and now it arrived before him in the flesh and he seemed to unhinge inside and surrender air. Ian saw this happen as they approached her. The young woman was walking with Patrizia, Jonathan's stepmother, who eventually greeted him in her courtly way. Ian could tell by the way Jonathan closed his eyes when he kissed Patrizia that he was affected by the presence of the new woman.

Now the party can start, Jonathan said breathlessly, although he hadn't been running.

Patrizia kissed him several times on alternating cheeks and introduced him to Neva. They nodded hello. Ian too made his hellos. Now the plane was far away and there were horses grazing in the distance and some wild pheasants prancing around a tree. Ian could see that Neva was in her twenties. He could see Jonathan seeing Neva.

She was beautiful but not pretty.

Roman, she called, come take your jacket. It's raining. She had an appealing accent. She excused herself and walked quickly to catch up with the boys.

Ian thinks about what an asshole Jonathan is and at the same time Ian thinks about Poppy. He is disappointed that she wasn't on the plane, isn't with Patrizia and the kids, even though he was told that she wasn't coming until later. His wishful thinking becomes real in his mind again and again. It is like a play that is always running for him. The longest-running show on earth, in Ian's head. He smiles to himself, but this does nothing to change the reality that he is always dreaming.

N
EVA MET UP
with Roman and handed him his jacket and continued to carry his backpack. She cajoled him into putting on the jacket and playfully wrestled one of his arms into a sleeve while he pulled out the other and it went on this way. She leaned into him with her shoulder and pressed against one sleeve to keep him from extracting his arm, Roman squirming and kicking and pressing his head into her body. She led him toward the car. Roman kept shaking his head as if he were saying a perpetual no to the world.

She maneuvered him into the SUV. As she was about to get in, the other boy, Felix, came up from behind her. He looked right through his brother who was by now playing a video game and got into the car and took out a book. He was carrying his own backpack. Neva swung herself up into the enormous vehicle and crouched into the last row, behind the boys. She watched the two of them, each intently focused on his occupation. They didn't look back.

Patrizia and Jonathan and Ian settled in and Vlad took the wheel and the car rolled off and passed by the runway again where another plane was landing and it was bigger than the first and a few more men were standing around watching it, some just admiring its size. The plane stopped and one man emerged and stood on the steps leading down to the airstrip and this was Steve. Hulking, almost ungainly but not awkward, standing on the edge of the world. Surveying, studying, simultaneously rejecting and engaging. A larger more encompassing version of his son Jonathan, as if sleek, handsome Jonathan had been swollen with thoughts and strategies and bloated with the burdens of running an empire, had been drained of some color as in a faded but important photograph, growing more significant, not less, with age. Steve: Patrizia's husband, Alix and Jonathan's father, Roman and Felix's father, Poppy's uncle and father. Steve: whose fortune made possible this wedding, this plane, these people, this life. As Neva pulled away in the car Steve turned and seemed to notice her from a great distance, seeing right through the tinted window. He turned his head as if he wanted her to be aware that he was watching her. When she looked back at him she thought she could feel his eyes staring directly into hers. She took two energy bars out of the backpack and handed them to Roman and Felix and the SUV went sliding out past the tiny airport along the lovely road back to the house.

Riding in the car Neva is reminded of another car ride, her first car ride, sixteen years ago. She was ten. She remembers gliding through the countryside as if on water. Now she glides through another country, another landscape, and feels as if she herself is the water. A river. The River Neva. She has let life run through her. She has suffered. She has survived. She knows this about herself so completely that this knowledge is simply a part of who she is. She is stoic like a river. She is sensuous like a river. She does not need people, like a river. The river takes everything that is thrown at it, into it, and keeps moving, moves on. She has taken everything and moved on. She has made a new life, found a place in the world. She takes care of children. She keeps them afloat. There is nothing she cannot carry. She is deep and her inner current is a storm of force in which somebody could sink. She is calm like a river. She is reflective like a river. She is strong. She is incredibly, terrifyingly, unapologetically strong.

Now come hours of solitude, hours of time change. Hours of unpacking for the boys while they eat dinner with the family and she is left alone. She's never been to England before and she notices the way the sun bleeds slowly through layers of colored silk and evening comes on in blue glimmers and a thrilling coolness arrives and blows the leaves and flowers. The night air brings sounds of laughter and debate and bitter tones and honest whispers and the boys fall into bed with their hair swept over their faces.

She keeps to herself to avoid explanations, the complicated exposition that accompanies a new job and always tires her. Her room adjoins the boys' and she listens to them move in their sleep as if they are playing soccer throughout the night.

She recalls a conversation on the plane with Patrizia, their words, mostly Patrizia's words, flying along like birds darting in and out of the clouds beside the plane. Patrizia drank wine and she talked to Neva as if they'd known each other forever and her confidences fell from her mouth like teeth in some dream about losing all of your teeth, clattering and a little bloody.

Over the ocean Patrizia tells Neva that she has been trying to have another child for a long time. In a kind of monologue, half drunk, her eyes half closing, she describes years of needles, years of drugs. All for another baby, she says, wistfully, angry, mocking herself. She doesn't seem to care if the boys can hear her, but they aren't listening.

Neva wonders on the plane if she will ever have children of her own, Children of the River. She once read an article about children born of rape in Rwanda. They were called Children of Bad Memories. Her children if she has them will be Children of Good Memories. Her children if she has them will be loved. She has some long-ago good memories but few recent ones. She will make some good memories. She decides to do that. Yes, she thinks, I will figure out how to do that.

In the middle of the night Neva realizes that she hasn't eaten dinner. She goes downstairs in the dark and finds the kitchen.

Inside, dim light and the gleaming angles of appliances here and there. A gnawing sound vibrating from an old refrigerator and the only food in it bottled water, champagne, and eggs. In the glow from the open fridge she could make out a figure leaning against the counter, through the gloom, his hand locked around the neck of a bottle of champagne. He nodded to a glass on the counter. Neva picked it up and held it out and he filled her glass and she sipped and drank. The liquid was arid, elegant. She sipped again.

I would be happy with water, she said.

The man took a swig and then topped off her glass.

You think you would, he said, but you're mistaken.

Solitary, large but not muscular, his eyes searching as if seeking out some hidden meaning beyond enlightenment, beyond reason or spirit or truth.

Really, said Neva, I'm okay with water.

She finished the little left in her glass and walked several steps to the sink. She could see better now.

At least drink the bottled water, the man said.

Really, this is fine, she said, filling her glass from the tap.

You're the boys' new nanny?

She kept the glass up to her mouth while she thought about how to respond.

I'm Steve, he said. Their father.

I know, she said. I'm Neva.

She turned around and washed her glass and dried it and put it back in a cupboard. She thought that maybe she should leave now but the thought was swept quickly along on a river of thoughts. The more compelling thought was about how different Steve was from the way she had imagined him, how much larger and yet more approachable. She had known that she wouldn't be afraid of him, but she hadn't guessed that she would want to be around him. She had expected to hate him.

How old are you? he asked.

Twenty-six.

Where're you from?

Russia.

How long have you been here?

I came to the States when I was ten years old.

Not much older than the twins, he remarked. He took a long swallow from the bottle.

The boys are very sweet, she said. I'm glad to be taking care of them.

They're not sweet. But maybe you haven't realized that yet.

Well—she smiled—they're very bright.

Felix is. I worry about him. Roman's an operator. He'll be fine. He opened the refrigerator and with his hulking back to her he said, Why the hell isn't there anything to eat around here?

I don't know.

They're probably having it all flown in from someplace. Jonathan and his goddamn expensive palate.

Neva began opening cupboards and said, I'll find something. Do you like eggs? I see some oil, I can cook them with that.

Scrambled, not overcooked.

She had already found a pan and lit the stove.

She has entirely forgotten the thought of leaving and is deeply engaged in the feeling of being around Steve, being present with him, settling in to what seems like a very natural rhythm. If she is a river then he is an ocean, and she feels herself flow naturally in his direction. Already in the car that took her away from home she was gliding, gliding toward this moment.

She finds, much to her surprise, that she does not hate him. Instead, she feels as if she knows him.

I'll find a bowl, she said. She looked around for a bowl and a fork to stir the eggs. She opened drawers, but she found only keys, a screwdriver, duct tape. Far off in the house the plumbing rumbled and drifted off. She opened another cabinet and found a fork sticking out of a teapot.

You can just crack them in the pan, he said. I like them that way.

All right.

Neva stirred the watery eggs and they swirled into one another.

Couldn't sleep in this strange house? he asked her.

She didn't answer him.

Steve nodded his head as if answering the question for himself. You've had a hard life, he said. It's a crazy world, isn't it?

Not crazier than any other, she said.

To other worlds, he said, raising the bottle. You seem like you might've come from another one.

She found a stash of plates in a dirty old dishwasher and cleaned one and put the eggs on the plate and handed him the eggs and fork.

I sometimes feel that way, she said.

He offered her his fork. Have something to eat, he said.

I was only thirsty, she said.

They stood together in silence while he ate. The light outside was bleaching a little bit away from darkness and the objects in the kitchen became slightly more visible, dirtier. It was a fancy house with a filthy kitchen. He handed her the plate and she washed it and the pan and dried everything and put it all away.

You don't have any family, do you?

No, I don't, said Neva.

Didn't think so.

He finished the champagne and left the empty bottle on the counter.

I hope you enjoy your time with us, he said.

I'm sure I will. Thank you for the opportunity.

He watched her for a moment and nodded some more. Go back to bed, he told her.

She did. Crawling back under the heavy covers she squeezed her eyes shut and searched longingly for sleep. When it came she dreamed of a dog, its eyes closed, floating on the water. Not dead but dreaming.

She awoke not long after with the dawn not yet breaking and the thick drapes blocking out any early light. Felix was standing next to the bed, looking down at her.

What is it? she asked him. Are you okay? But he said nothing and slunk off and went back to his own bed and when it was time to get up he didn't seem to remember the incident.