The Ladies' Lending Library (31 page)

Sonia knows that she must go to her daughter, must open her arms to her, hold her close, try to undo what she has seen, as if the blood streaming from Nastia’s face and scalp, the smear of her mouth, could be smoothed away. But her arms stay cinched about her waist; the most she can do is to sink, slowly, to her knees, and then to sit on the sand.

Laura remains on her feet: she knows what her mother is thinking. She is blaming her for not looking out for her friend, her best, her only friend; for not knowing what was going on at the Shkurkas’ cottage; for not knowing or caring what she knew. And whether or not she knew why Nastia kept to her room so much, and what the word
asthma
meant from Mrs. Shkurka’s lips, Laura, of all the spectators at Kalyna Beach, knows why this particular drama has occurred. Knows that somehow, while fixing her hair or washing her face, Mrs. Shkurka has found the message inscribed so neatly on the bathroom wall. And suddenly Laura can’t keep from crying out; she sinks to her knees in front of her mother, sobbing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Sonia raises her arms to her daughter, pulls her into an embrace. “Shh, shh,
donyu,
don’t cry, there’s nothing for you to be sorry about. There’s nothing you could have done to stop it—nobody knew, nobody guessed.”

Stroking Laura’s limp, fine hair, feeling her daughter shudder so helplessly in her arms, Sonia feels something unlock in her, something buried painfully deep. Her voice is soft, as if it were a lullaby she were crooning. “Nobody asks to be born, Laura. We think we are born out of love, we think we are born for happiness. But even if our parents loved each other, even if they wanted
us more than anything else, it changes once we come into the world. Everything changes. What’s happened to Nastia—there’s no excuse for it,
donyu,
and there’s no way anyone could have stopped it.”

Laura barely breathes. For the first time in as long as she can remember, she has her mother all to herself; her mother is holding her, stroking her hair, speaking to her as if her daughter were a friend, and not an enemy. Sonia forgets, for a moment, about her other children, the ones whom Darka’s shepherded up the hill; forgets that Max will be back with the rest of the men at any moment, and that tonight will be the party for which she’s been longing all summer long. She sits on the sand, with her daughter in her arms, and tells her a story.

“Once, in our village, there was a girl who was very pretty and very spoiled. Her mother adored her, and her brother loved her, and the girl ended up by thinking she was better than everybody else, that nothing bad could ever touch her.” Sonia breaks off, starts rubbing at her foot, the site of an old blister, a bright pink scar.

“And?” Laura prompts, needing to break the silence that’s fallen on her mother, afraid to break the delicate spell that binds them together. For she knows that this story which has begun like a fairy tale, like the
baiky
her baba used to tell her, will be different from them in some crucial way.

“And so they decided to teach her a lesson, the people in the village—the boys in the village.” Sonia draws away, a little, from her daughter; as she speaks, her eyes are fixed on the lake. Her voice is different now, the kind of voice you use to talk to yourself instead of to the person beside you.

“One day they followed her when she went walking by the river—it
was spring and all the trees were in bloom, and her mother had let her spend the afternoon doing just what she pleased when she should have been working, helping …

Laura frowns: she was wrong, this isn’t a new kind of story but the same one she’s heard so many times before. How the proud, lazy girl gets punished for her sins; how it’s better to be busy and obedient and meek. Yet as her mother continues, Laura leans in towards her, afraid to lose even one word.

“So the girl walks down to the riverbank, where the apple trees are in bloom; she thinks of herself as one of those blossoms, pink and white and free to fly off in the wind, wherever she chooses. And all the time the boys are watching her, thinking how pleased she is with herself, without a care in the world, because she
is
the world, all of it that matters. And just at the moment when she’s most lost in herself, most careless and free, the boys rush up to her and grab her and carry her into the river. First they make sure she gets covered with the muck from the bank, they smear it all over her dress and her legs and her hair, and then they dump her in water just deep enough to cover her, all except her face. They laugh at her and leave her to make her way back to shore.”

“And?” Laura asks again, eagerly this time. She knows that her mother’s story has its own momentum now, that it has taken its teller to a place that is neither Kalyna Beach nor the Old Place, but somewhere in between, where remembering happens.

“She couldn’t swim—and she was too proud to tell them. They ran off and she became frightened, too frightened to cry out for help, or to move to free herself, in case she drowned. She knew she was going to die in that river, and that nothing could save her, and so when he came at last to rescue her, she’d given up caring.”

“Who rescued her? Who was it, Mamo?”

But Sonia doesn’t hear the question. “He carried her out of the water, and he washed her and fetched a towel and dry clothes for her. He walked her back home and she made him swear that he would never tell anyone what happened, especially their mother. And he kept her secret, even though—” And here Sonia breaks off the story. “It doesn’t matter,” she says sadly. “We’d better go.”

But it does matter to Laura. It matters to her as much as knowing why Nettie Shkurka has battered her daughter’s face. But neither mother nor daughter can say a word; all they can do is take in the sound of the waves Nastia hates so much, pounding steadily, uselessly, against the shore. Sonia has got to her feet and is brushing the sand off her shorts; the voice she uses to tell Laura it’s time to get dinner ready is no longer the voice of the woman who held her in her arms, or who told the story of the girl who was rescued from drowning. It is the voice of Our Mother: tired, resigned, commanding, but with something else folded into it, something that is almost a plea.

“Come along, Laura, they’ll be wondering what’s happened to us. Come on,
donyu
—we’ve got work to do.”

It startles Laura: this is not a command so much as an invitation never before extended. Join us, become one of us, women who know what life is and what it can never be, who must hoard what little power we have, power not to save the beaten or to keep ourselves from drowning, just power over our children’s lives, for as long as we can hold them, nothing more than that.

Sonia looks at her watch; her voice takes on a hint of impatience. “Look, Laura, I know you’re upset about Nastia. It’s terrible, what’s happened. But that’s the way life is. If you’d grown up where I did—if you knew what kind of things can happen to
people, not just being thrown into a river, but things you can’t even imagine, in the war—”

Laura has jumped to her feet; she’s remembering the mess she made of Sonia’s dress, she’s anticipating the scene her mother will make when she discovers it, the accusations of deliberate destructiveness, of malice. Her mother won’t want her company then, she won’t be calling her
donyu,
she will never hold her in her arms, or stroke her face again. And now, her head pounding, a stone in her stomach, Laura starts shouting.

“I don’t care about the war—I don’t care about the Old Place, and what happened there. We live here, I was born here—that’s what Baba Laryssa always told us. You don’t know anything, you don’t even try. I wish you were dead. I wish you’d died instead of Baba!”

Sonia keeps herself from staggering; digs her bare feet into the soft, pliant sand. She has imagined Laura saying this—she has thought it herself, even wished it. She looks into her daughter’s face, sees the glasses perched on Laura’s nose like a thick-winged butterfly, the puppy fat that’s swallowed her bones, the frown of puzzlement, of stubborn inability to accept or understand. Suddenly, she is filled with anguish, and a desire stronger than any she has ever known, to become for her daughter what she can never be: the perfect mother, all-wise and all-loving. A mother with both her eyes open—unlike the eye of God on the cathedral dome—both eyes looking not just out, but in, as well. Knowing her own flaws and failings, struggling to change the bitterness and fear inside her to love.

But before Sonia can reach out her arms, Laura has run off into the lake, her chunky body churning through the still and silky water.

The distinctive feature, the theme, if you like, that distinguishes this year’s party at the Senchenkos’ cottage, is unmistakable. Yes, there is the same food and drink, the same banter at the bar. There are the same long dresses and Bermuda shorts, the same tours of the cottage to show off whatever choice piece of decor Jack has had installed over the summer. But this year the sameness is shot through with the excitement everyone shares about the Burton–Taylor affair, which is far more of a blockbuster than
Cleopatra.

Jack is rigged out in a toga with a purple stripe down the edge, and a laurel crown made out of gilded cardboard. Nadia, he explains, won’t be down for a while; she’s still in her room, altering her costume. He had it made up as a surprise by a dressmaker in town: an exact replica of the blue-and-gold dress Cleopatra wears in the throne scene. Damn thing hadn’t been ready till this very afternoon—he arrived only a few hours ago, to discover when Nadia tried on the dress that it didn’t fit. “So she’s taking it in here and there,” he explains, pointing to his chest and hips. “She’s not built
exactly
like Liz Taylor,” he says, flashing a grin at the men.

Ivan Plotsky sits down at the baby grand and belts out the
Cleopatra
theme song, waggling his bristly eyebrows to the lyrics he improvises, in which “nail her” is made to rhyme with “Taylor,” “hurtin’” with “Burton,” “quibble” with “Sybil” and—something of a stretch—”
kyshka
” with “Fisher.” Joe Bozhyk is looking everywhere for Peter Metelsky, who, as everyone knows, does phenomenal imitations of Rex Harrison and has been known to drop beach balls down his shirt and take off Liz Taylor to a T. Even after Ivan leaves the piano, the conversation continues to revolve around the movie of the century.

“Joseph Mankiewicz—his name sounds Polish, but he’s really Ukrainian, you know.”

“I still think
Taras Bulba
is a way better film—Yul Brynner, now
that
guy can act.”

“What are you talking about, he doesn’t have to act, all he does is shine up his scalp and he steals every scene!”

“Didn’t Tony Curtis have a thing for that German actress who was playing the
Polachka?
Christine Something—Krautman, Kauffman, was that it? She was only a kid, too—not much older than your Laura, Max. Yep, old Toothsome Tony walked out on Janet Leigh the way Burton’s left what’s-her-face, Sybil. Christ, and they think
we
have funny names.”

Mostly it’s the men talking; the women are still nervous, exhausted really, with the aftershock of what they’re calling Nettie’s Breakdown. None of the men know anything about it, except Al Vesiuk, who’d driven Nastia to some friends who have a cottage farther along the bay. Dave Lazar is a skin specialist, one of the best there is. To a small crowd of women trying to cool off by touching their iced drinks to their faces, Annie gives the details: “He had to put in a few stitches, but it’s not too bad, Al says. There’ll be a few scars but nothing she won’t be able to hide with a stick of concealer. Thank God she missed the eyes.” She tells them that Dr. Lazar and his wife will keep Nastia with them while Nettie’s medication is kicking in.

At the word
medication
the women nod, sagely. Not a few of them have had episodes that gave what their doctors call “cause for concern.” On their bathroom shelves, high up where they think their children can’t see and read the labels, are prescription vials of Valium and Librium and sleeping pills that they only take—they swear it—when they absolutely have to. And none of
them has ever been a tenth as crazy as Nettie, who is sleeping soundly with the help of some NightEez administered by Halia Bozhyk. Stefka Stechyshyn is with her now—they’re taking turns, the way they do checking up on the children. And so far, none of the husbands has a clue. When Nettie had her attack, they’d been off, most of them, in the Senchenkos’ new speedboat, touring the lake, looking at some investment property Jack had his eye on. Al, thank God, had been home—and Al could be trusted, Al who’d sworn the Hippo-something oath.

It’s not that the women want to deceive their husbands—they don’t consider it a deception, keeping the news from them, but a kindness. Everyone understands the need for secrecy, for which another word is
loyalty,
not so much to Nettie, as to what Annie calls “their own kind.” Not just Ukrainians—and can you imagine the scandal it would cause if word got out to the
Anhleetsi?
Loyalty not just to Ukrainians, but to women themselves. For a mother to harm her own child—it’s unthinkable. Spanking, yes; discipline, a swipe with the wooden spoon, of course. But to lose control like that—to
let go.
It’s something far more scandalous than anything they’ve encountered through the Lending Library; something far more frightening, too, for nearly all of them can confess to moments, with their children, when they have only just kept themselves from lashing out in old country style.

But it is not to discuss Nettie Shkurka’s breakdown that Sonia Martyn is closeted with Sasha Plotsky in one of the two ground-floor bathrooms. Sasha is livid at what’s happened to Nastia, but she’s even more upset at what she feels in her bones is a whole series of disasters brewing.

“
Bozhe kokhaniy,
am I the only one with eyes in my head? Nadia’s in hiding at her own party and Peter, Mr. Life-of-the-Party,
is missing—doesn’t that spell out anything suspicious to you? What did Peter say when you talked to him yesterday? You did talk to him? Sonia?”