Real Life & Liars (7 page)

IVAN BLINKS AGAINST THE MORNING LIGHT AND HOLDS HIS BREATH
for a moment. He hears no sounds of romance from next door and relaxes. He tries to put out of his mind all the noises he heard last night, how long they carried on, and the fact that it’s his baby sister over there.

Ivan pulls on his jeans and doesn’t bother with a shirt. Coffee. A desperate need for coffee pulls him up off the bed and out into the quiet house.

Baby sister. Ivan thought he’d be much older before his life compressed so dramatically, but it really does feel like yesterday that tiny newborn Irina dropped into their lives like a penny in a fountain.

Katya was a teenager then, at turns enthralled and resentful, especially when she got stuck babysitting because Mira was teaching a night class, or grading essays and needed some quiet. Ivan was a preteen, just noticing girls.

He remembered only holding her when he was seated on the couch and she was sleeping; otherwise, he was too afraid to drop or break her. By then, Max was old hat at this, and he’d sling her around like a sack of sugar. But Ivan could hardly believe his eyes. Irina didn’t even look real, so limp and pliable she was, but the warm lump on his arms filled him with something warm that swelled his chest. He would later call that brotherly love and protectiveness.

Then it seemed his teen years flew by, and he was always busy at guitar lessons, or at his after-school job, and went off to college. His student-teaching year he did live at home, but he was working so hard he barely noticed the passage of time. By then he was well into a long string of disastrous girlfriends, who thought Irina was precious.

As Ivan comes down to the main floor of the house, off the staircase, he realizes that some of those girlfriends probably stuck around longer just to keep smiling at Irina. And she was easy to smile at, with those huge round eyes and that tumble of black hair that was never combed neatly because who had the time to do it?

Ivan is brought up short by the sight of present-day Irina, hair uncombed, in a nightgown, leaning on the kitchen counter, shoulders slumped and her head dropped. He hears something like a gulp and realizes she’s sobbing. He runs over to turn her around in a hug and she jumps a foot off the ground, then hits him in the chest.

“Damn it, Van! Don’t sneak up on me!”

Her nose is running, her eyelashes are wet with tears, and Van’s heart stops for a moment, because he remembers seeing her face like this before. He sets her arm’s length so he can peer into her face, thinking of Darius.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I’m fine. Just a little emotional, is all. It’s been crazy.”
Irina shrugs away from him and wipes her tears and snot with the back of her hand.

“Nothing? I come down here to find you sobbing in the kitchen, and you say nothing? What did he do?”

Irina turns away and starts to make coffee, continuing to sniff. “Who?”

“Who? Your husband?”

“Oh, heh. I’m a little spaced, I guess. No, he’s fine. Never better. He’s sweet as could be.”

Irina flips on the coffee, and Van pulls her shoulder until she turns back around. “What’s the problem?”

“I…I can’t tell you. I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t…I mean, it’s private.”

Van fills in the rest of her sentence.
You wouldn’t understand.
Because it’s about marriage, and God knows Ivan couldn’t possibly understand anything connected to a relationship. He reaches past her to grab a coffee mug. “Well, I’m glad it’s not your husband because I’d have to punch him, which means I’d end up in the ICU and miss the party.”

Irina laughs, and she sounds like Mira, that same tinkly sound, like glassware clinking in a merry toast. “Oh, Van. You’re so funny.”

“A regular laugh riot. I know my students think so. I mean, I think they’re laughing
with
me.”

She smiles, and Van relaxes a bit. He decides to write this off as travel exhaustion and “female issues.” Doesn’t appear to be anything like with that Alex creep last year.

They both fill their mugs and take seats at the kitchen table, a piece of fifties kitsch rescued from a soon-to-be-demolished diner, one of Mira’s more whimsical decorating touches in this old Victorian house.

“So,” Van begins, as Irina wipes her face again and shakes her mop of hair off her face. “What’s it like to be married?”

She gulps hard and shifts in her chair. “I don’t know yet, really. We just got back from Vegas, after all. It just feels like I’m on an extended vacation with a boyfriend.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Long enough. Look, don’t start in like Katya and grill me. I’ve had enough of that for the rest of my life.”

“Enough of what?” Katya has come down the steps and shuffles across the kitchen, zombie fashion, her voice gravelly with sleep.

“Forget it,” Reenie says, sulking into her cup, though no one has said anything insulting to her yet as far as Van can tell. She always used to get angry about what you might do before you’d even done it. About the only thing she planned ahead in her life.

“Where’s Mom?” Katya plunks down on a chair, resting her head in a hand, wincing at the coffee. “Lord, Van, you made this strong enough.”

“Reenie made it. Mom’s off doing yoga somewhere I think, since you were in her usual place.”

Katya gets up. “I want to flip the radio on and listen for the weather.” She searches the kitchen counters, and Van trades a smirk with Irina.

They all turn at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Darius appears, wearing a white T-shirt and baggy flannel pants. Van shivers at the memory of all the romantic noises last night. Darius walks to Irina, takes the back of her head in one massive hand, and bends to kiss her, lingering far too long for a quick “good morning” peck, in Van’s estimation. Then he straightens, looks at her cup, and says, “That caffeinated?”

“Yeah,” she answers. “What of it?”

He cocks one eyebrow and says, “Go easy on the caffeine. It’s not
good for you.”
He nods to Ivan. “Good morning. I have to run out to the car a minute.”

Katya flips on the radio and pauses in fiddling with the dial
long enough to cast a look back at Van. She cocks one eyebrow and shakes her head.

Van tries to meet Irina’s eyes to ask,
What the hell was that,
but he’s interrupted in that effort by a shout, and Darius blurs past them, running.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Zielinski!” he yells, as he trots up the stairs.

Irina and Van turn to peer through the door leading to the back porch. They see their mother, upside down on her yoga mat, in her underwear.

“What’s his problem?” grunts Mira, looking back at them from between her legs. She folds herself down to the floor, legs flat, arms straight and upper body curled up toward the ceiling. “You’d think he’d never seen ‘downward-facing dog’ before.”

KATYA’S CELL PHONE BLASTS HIP-HOP IN HER EAR, AND SHE WOULD
like to ignore it, like she’s ignoring the bright morning sun and a bladder so full she feels like a cow in need of milking. It stops and the silence is like a balm on her aching head, but it starts up again right away.
It’s getting hot in here, so take off—

She snatches it up. The clock on it reads “7:58” and the Caller ID says
CHARLES
. Katya wants to reprogram it to say
THE BASTARD
.

“What.”

“I can’t find the kids’ toothbrushes.”

“Why is that my problem?”

“Where are the toothbrushes, Katya?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, I’m not a child. The kids were responsible for their own packing.”

“Well, none of them have toothbrushes.” The reproach in his voice is unmistakable.

“Well then, you’ll have to go out to the toothbrush fields and
harvest some new ones!” She snaps her phone closed, then slaps it down on the bed. Cell phones, you just can’t satisfactorily slam them, she thinks.

“It’s getting hot in here…”
Katya decides to ask Irina to fix her phone.

“What.”

“What’s the matter with you today?” Still Charles. Who else?

“It’s early, and the first thing I hear from you isn’t: Good morning, sweetheart, how did you sleep? Or even a hello, simply a demand to find some toothbrushes that are not my responsibility.”

He sighs roughly into the phone, and says in a voice both acidic and sickeningly sweet: “Good morning, sweetheart. How did you sleep? Now, the kids seem to have misplaced their toothbrushes. Do you have a suggestion for me?”

“Oh, I have a suggestion all right…”

When she hangs up a few seconds later, she imagines Charles gaping at the phone, surrounded by whining kids. And despite the hangover, and her desperate need to pee, Katya smiles.

She descends the stairs, her body feeling so heavy she leans against one wall the whole way down.

A shower does little to ease Katya’s headache, and nothing at all to ease her own sense of embarrassment at being hungover on such an important day. She thought she had only had three glasses of wine, which is not so bad over several hours and dinner, but she must have miscounted. The coffee Irina made looked like used motor oil, so she just dumped it in the sink.

What was up with Darius and getting on her about caffeine? Odd for her to hook up with someone so bossy, but then, he is almost twice her age.

For the getting-ready portion of the day, Katya selects a pair of cropped pants and a silk sleeveless blouse. She blow-dries her hair
in front of the oval standing mirror in the corner.

With each pull of the brush, more hair comes away on the bristles, until the whole thing looks like a rodent with a purple handle. Katya tips her head forward toward the mirror and pulls along the side part in her hair, trying to detect thinness. It would be just her luck to inherit Max’s baldness gene instead of Mira’s lush, thick hair that’s gone a gorgeous shade of silver.

Mine will probably go all gray and snarly, thinks Katya, scowling at her face. She dots on her makeup with practiced precision, picking up different compacts for different areas of her face: lightening for her dark circles, bronzer for her cheeks, cover-up for a blemish or two.

Someone knocks, and Katya says “Come in,” because that’s what one is supposed to say.

Mira comes in, wearing one of Max’s old shirts and apparently nothing else. Katya looks away from her back into the mirror. Just like her mother to run around half-dressed with company in the house, like it’s still 1966.

“Oh, I forgot, Irina’s next door. Well, I’ll just say ‘Good morning’ to you, then. How did you sleep?”

“Grand.” Katya gets out the blush stick and tries to sweep color across the apples of her cheeks. For this, she affects a wide smile that reflects the exact opposite of her emotional state. “Think Darius has recovered from his accidental peep show?”

“He’ll live.”

Katya pauses in her making up to look at her mother in the mirror. “If you need some proper yoga clothes, I’m happy to take you shopping.”

“I don’t need some yoga clothes. Underwear works just fine on a warm day. Anyway, the sooner Darius gets to know us, the better. Get those blinders off right away.”

“If he sticks around much longer.”

“Katya.”

“I can’t say I’ll be shocked if they split up. Can you?” Mira doesn’t answer, and Katya knows it’s because she’s right. Reenie’s closest brush with monogamy before getting suddenly married was a six-week boyfriend she heard about named Alex, whom no one ever got to meet.

Katya continues making up: eyeliner, lipliner, powder, and she notices her mother is still standing there. She stops in midpuff with the powder and turns to face Mira. “What?”

“Nothing. Just waiting for you to finish so I can get a proper hug.”

Katya puts down her puff, checks her face, and crosses the room. She squeezes her mother’s shoulders and goes back to the mirror. “You got any Aleve around here? I’m not feeling well this morning.”

“Indeed not,” Mira says, calling over her shoulder. “But I can make you some willow-bark tea. Excellent for headaches.”

Katya grimaces into the mirror. Bark? No thanks.

IRINA SHOVES OPEN THE DOOR TO FIND DARIUS SHAKING IN THE
corner of the room, curled up, fetal style.

“Are you all right?”

That’s when she notices his face, contorted with the effort of holding in laughter. He finally lets loose a guffaw, which turns to chuckles. Irina leans in the doorway and waits for him to collect himself. “You got it together now?”

“I’m sorry, baby. But…damn. I may never get over the sight of that ass in the granny panties.”

“Hey!” Irina whips a pillow across the room, and Darius ducks into the fetal crouch again. “That’s my mom, it’s not funny.”

“Then why’s she hanging out her ass on the porch?”

Irina shakes her head, feeling a headache pressing its way to the front of her head. “I don’t know, but don’t laugh at her. I hate that.”

Darius rubs his hand over his face and breathes deep. “You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m not good with embarrassment.”

Irina’s limbs feel heavy with sudden exhaustion. “You know, I’m feeling pretty tired. I think I’m going to rest for a while.”

Darius is at her side in two beats of her pulse. “Are you OK?” His hand hovers over her stomach. She stretches out on the bed.

“Fine, just tired is all. They say that happens in the first trimester.”

Darius curls himself down to plant a kiss over her belly button. “Good to know. That means our baby there is doing her thing.”

“I’m sorry, I feel like I should entertain you here, in a houseful of my relatives. But I’m just…”

“No, it’s all right. I can study. Or if I get sick of that, I’ll dig up one of your dad’s books and read it. There must be one around here somewhere.”

“Sure. Just don’t expect Tolstoy if you get ahold of a Dash Hammond book.”

“Got it.” He plants another kiss on her forehead after she burrows under the thin cotton sheet.

Irina turns over to face the window, which opens up to Patty’s house to the north. She sees a figure moving behind the house’s gossamer curtains as they’re tossed around by the wind. The air swirling around the room already feels heavy with summer, though it’s not even midmorning.

Irina is not sleepy in the least. Exhausted, physically, but not sleepy. She simply wanted privacy, space to think, something that’s become a premium with Darius around.

Thirty-five years her parents have been married, and together over forty years, dating back before Katya’s birth. Almost twice the span of her life. Irina can’t grasp it, and it makes her heart hammer to think about it. She feels more sure at that moment than she’s ever been about anything, that she can’t stay with Darius that long. She won’t even last five years with him.

Irina remembers her best friend in school, Dawn. Dawn’s parents were split up, something she bore pretty well, all things con
sidered. For one thing, it was as common as catching a cold to have divorced parents. So she didn’t have to worry about a stigma. But, Dawn was always missing out on something because she was at her dad’s house every other weekend. She even missed Irina’s sixteenth birthday party—a slumber party, with all the girls giggling on the second-floor sleeping porch—and Irina had told her just to switch weekends or have her dad drive her over.

“No,” Dawn had responded solemnly. “Everything goes through the courts. We do exactly what the paper says.”

Then there was the drinking. Dawn always was a drinker.

Irina shifts, trying to get comfortable, despite a strange pulling sensation in her side.

I can’t do it,
she thinks, the silent admission bringing both fear and relief. Fear because of what she’s gotten into, relief that she could finally admit what she realized the moment of their kiss at the cheesy Vegas chapel. She hasn’t lied to Darius. She won’t abort his child. In her own mind the thing inside her is shifting from a cluster of cells to something resembling a person, and she can’t just throw it away at this point, even if she’s legally allowed to.

He wants the baby. She can see it in the ardent smile on his face when she walks into a room. It’s not for her, she knows. It’s for the child.

Before that missed period, he was nice enough, but he didn’t call consistently, and he canceled plans on her once with almost no notice, and Irina suspected that he was seeing another girl.

She almost didn’t tell him about the baby, but her conscience prevailed upon her at the last moment, and she never expected him to start campaigning for marriage. The most she expected was cash toward an abortion.

She still wasn’t going to marry him when he started wooing her so actively, with flowers and jewelry, and heartfelt if corny “I love you” cards that made everyone at the office jealous. The breaking point was that night when he formally proposed, on one knee,
in front of the entire restaurant. He had the Vegas plane tickets already in his pocket.

No, earlier than that, Irina corrects herself. It really started the previous week, when he told her that he and his first wife had lost a baby, and they just couldn’t keep their marriage together after that.

Irina never stood a chance after seeing a single tear skim a laugh line on its way down his face.

She resolves to give him the baby and a divorce. Annulment maybe, if that’s possible. He will likely hate her forever for leaving him. But Darius doesn’t understand he’s not getting a mother for his child and a life companion.

No. He’s getting a girl barely out of adolescence who doesn’t know jack shit about anything, and who would never be able to finish the marathon of motherhood. Darius will marry another girl who is smarter and older and wiser, who will raise the baby just like her own, and they will all be happy together. She pats her belly.
Sorry kid, but you’ll be better off without me right from the start.

Irina hears two quick knocks and buries her head. What could Darius want now?

But it’s Katya’s voice. “Irina? Are you in there? I need some help with my cell phone.”