The Post-Birthday World (35 page)

The fortnight’s lead-up to Lawrence’s departure for Moscow was civil but strained. Irina never took back what she said about his

own special thing
or softened her sense of injury over not being invited. When it was time for him to leave for Heathrow, they both agreed it wasn’t
sensible
for Irina to accompany him to the airport. As he watched for his cab out a living-room window, Lawrence asked with seeming idleness, “So— do you think you’ll see some people while I’m gone?”

“Sure, I suppose.”

“Well—like who?”
Irina tilted her head quizzically. “Betsy. Melanie. The usual suspects.”

“And I guess you’ll see your editor. And that author you’re working with.”

“That’s right.” This was filler dialogue, and she was perplexed why he drew it out. He knew her friends, and as for which she elected to consort with in his absence, she’d be bound to tell him as these occasions arose when they spoke on the phone.
“Anyone else?” His expression was so anxious that she got it.
In another life, or in another relationship, Irina might have been able to reassure him expressly. But for the same reasons that Lawrence wouldn’t own up to what he thought about when they had sex (whatever those were), she and Lawrence had never discussed what lay at the heart of that night in Bournemouth last autumn, much less the Gethsemane of Ramsey’s forty-seventh birthday. Were they ever to do so, this was not the time and place—the air crackling between them for weeks, Lawrence’s cab due any moment. Nevertheless, Irina did hold his eyes an extra beat, and imbued her response with a gravity that she prayed he understood:
“No.”
The flicker of relief in his face seemed to indicate that the interchange had been a success, though there was no way to know for sure.

While Lawrence was in Russia, Irina was very productive. Because she was mad at him, she didn’t pine, and never wandered the flat with that floating, disconnected vagueness that had sometimes afflicted her while he’d been in Sarajevo. She rose promptly with an alarm, tidying up the coffee grains after the pot was on, sweeping militantly to her studio with her cup. So dutifully did she toil over her drawing table that the illustrations for

The Miss Ability Act
were in danger of getting overworked, and she completed the project well before its due date. On long walks late afternoons, she didn’t stroll so much as march. She made time to see friends two or three nights a week, injecting these evenings with such vivacity that Betsy remarked on her good form. She was careful to keep her alcohol intake moderate, and to eat sensibly, though couldn’t resist the odd cigarette as a token of up-yours-Lawrence defiance.

In all, she was an efficient little mechanism, who had her own work and her own friends, and the fact that in Lawrence’s absence she was

just fine,
thank you very much, provided a mean satisfaction. Still, there was a thin, brittle feeling to this just-fineness, as if she’d turned into one of those dry Scandinavian crispbreads that never have enough salt. If her evenings of a readily dispatched bacon sandwich were refreshingly simple, they were too simple. Maybe it was embarrassing for an emancipated woman of the 1990s, but Irina was possessed of a profound drive to do for someone else, and when it was merely a matter of taking out her own rubbish, acting on her own desire for an oatcake and slice of cheddar, half the time she couldn’t be bothered.

When she masturbated on restless afternoons, the physical gratification was technically more pronounced than when she was forced to depend on Lawrence’s poignantly flawed ministrations. Yet even here, the simplicity made for thin gruel. Maybe some measure of what made sex with someone else so much more interesting was what was wrong with it. The most thunderous orgasm still seemed trifling unshared, and unlike the drifting bask that followed on proper sex, in private there was no afterglow. She missed postcoital smugness—that unspoken mutual congratulation over a job well done.

Thus her very one-two-three competence at solitude throughout the month served only to demonstrate that, living by yourself, this was as good as it got, and that wasn’t good enough by a yard. Returning from walks to an empty flat, she couldn’t tell Lawrence about the irksome invasion of American evangelicals at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, drowning out the crusty soapbox socialists who, post-Blair, had become quaint, for-tourists-only anachronisms, like the classic red phone-box. Untold, stories didn’t seem quite to have happened. Inexorably, then, Irina was once again thrown back on her understanding of herself as a woman who craved, more than professional kudos, material prosperity, the respect of peers, or the camaraderie of close friends,

a man.
If that made her smallminded, biologically trite, unrealized as an individual, or lacking in selfrespect, so be it.

Said man, however, was incommunicative, even for Lawrence. He blamed the sparseness of his phone calls on a hectic schedule, but their few conversations yawned with so many gaps of silence that she sometimes imagined that the connection had failed. Of course, Lawrence never liked talking on the phone, and if his discourse comprised meetings recounted or set-piece recitations of the historical justifications for Chechen secession, he always took refuge in facts. They were inept enough at addressing touchy subjects face-to-face, so the rift she’d opened between them over this trip was hardly going to be bridged in short, expensive phone calls from a Moscow hotel. At least he didn’t take umbrage at her forceful iterations of how swimmingly her life was proceeding in his absence; why, she rather wished that he would. Times past, they had both had trouble issuing that most difficult of romantic licenses: permission to have fun without you. For her own part, Irina had to make herself sound interested in his adventures. Why hadn’t he wanted her along? Why was the stingy thrill of annexing

her
country for his own not outweighed by the benefits of annexing all that tundra for them both?

The music of the front-door lock was off-key. The usual jingling symphony of his key ring jangled the still afternoon air; the rake of metal in the escutcheon was abrasive. Now accustomed to having the flat to herself, Irina felt invaded. It was Lawrence’s flat, too, she told herself, and there was nothing presumptuous about his walking in without knocking. She waited for his traditional mating call—

“Hey!” He pecked her cheek, and didn’t meet her eyes.
Irina Galina!
—to resonate down the hall, but heard only a shuffle and slam. He lumbered into the living room and unshouldered his bags. Though washed out, he looked younger than she remembered, and he had definitely lost weight.

For intimates even small partings are estranging, but for a moment the distance between them seemed so great that this might have been a first awkward platonic reunion after a harrowing breakup. “Hi,” she said shyly, and offered, “Coffee? Or would you prefer to start unpacking?”

“Sure, let’s have coffee first.” He trailed her to the kitchen, looking around with the nervous curiosity of a guest who had only been here once before and did not quite remember the location of the loo. Doubtless he was just confirming with his usual paternalism that she’d hoovered the carpet. But idling as she ground the beans, he did seem distracted, making her running commentary about problems she’d been having with the hot-water tap feel like tiresome domestic prattle. Still, someone had to say something. For pity’s sake, a month in Russia should hardly leave one at a loss for words.

“So,” she said once they’d carried their coffee to the living room. Lawrence looked at his glass critically. He liked it with less milk. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, fine,” he said.

“You look pale. And thinner.”
“I’m underslept,” he said. “The last few nights. The group’s had

some conflicts, over our sympathy, or lack of it, with the Chechens. It’s taken hours to hash them out. As for thinner, well, you know the food in Russia.”

“No, as a matter of fact I don’t. I’ve never been there.”

“I’m here ten minutes, and you want to fight?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound pointed. I don’t want to fight.

If nothing else, I’m no good at it.”

“You got pretty good at it before I left.” It was Lawrence who seemed
to want to fight. He kept his gaze trained forty-five degrees to the left of
her face, as if there were a third person sitting over at the dining table. He
wasn’t drinking his coffee.
“Well, you’ll be pleased to learn that Betsy’s on your side. She said,
‘Hey, it’s a business trip!’ And pointed out that if I really wanted to go to
Russia so much, I could pick up and go on my own.”
“She’s right.”
“I know. It was annoying.” She took a sip. “Though I doubt I’ll go.
Ya
” “Irina, would you
nye khotela syezdit v Rossiyu. Ya khotela syezdit v Rossiyu s toboy.
give it a rest
?” he exclaimed.
She flinched. She’d tried to deliver the thought with conciliating tenderness. Yet in
I didn’t want to go to Russia, I wanted to go to Russia with you
he could only hear nagging. “I’m sorry. Drawing is very involving in a way, but my work is all in a room sitting, and sometimes I envy your
going interesting places and meeting new people.”
“Well, that’s not my fault. If you want a more adventurous professional life, do something else.”
It was disconcerting; they were both basically saying the same thing,
yet concurrence staunchly took the form of dispute. Even when she bowed
her head and said, “I know it’s not your fault. That’s what I’m saying,”
they still didn’t seem on the same side. She gave up, and changed the
subject.
“By the way, my mother already wants to know if we’re coming for
Christmas.”
“Oh, great.”
“Of course, we could always go to Las Vegas instead . . .” Irina threatened.
“Anything but Vegas. I guess Brighton Beach gets us out of that.” “My mother likes you.”
“I could be anybody so long as I tell her she’s wearing a nice dress.” Irina felt a building desperation to provide him something positive to
have come home to. So far he’d returned to a woman who was bitter about
having been left behind, whose work was dull, and whose family was
burdensome. But she could only lay her hands on the very sort of lame
compliment that Lawrence had just pilloried: “Speaking of which, I like
your new shirt.”
The fact that he’d arrived wearing clothing that she didn’t recognize
had heightened his unfamiliarity when he walked in. The black crewneck
with a slashing diagonal red line and punctuating white dot suggestive of
Russian constructivism was more daring, and frankly more stylish, than
Lawrence was wont to don.
“Oh, yeah. Got it in Moscow, at GUM.”
“
Yo u
went
shopping
? Without a gun to your head?”
“I don’t see what’s so suspect about that. I’ve bought things in my
life.”
“I didn’t say it was ‘suspect.’ Just out of character.”
“Well, I was ah, I was looking for something for you. In fact . . .” He
got up to rustle around in his luggage, and came up with a plastic bag.
He thrust it into her hands. There was no card. The present wasn’t
wrapped.
Giving anyone anything takes courage, since so many presents backfire. A gift conspicuously at odds with your tastes serves only to betray
that the benefactor has no earthly clue who you are. Accordingly,
showing up at the door with a package could be more hazardous than arriving empty-handed. Tendering nothing risks only seeming thoughtless
or cheap. Barring the generic gratuity like a nice bottle of booze—and
the neutral offering has its own pitfalls of seeming too impersonal or
cautious—any present risks exposing the donor for a fool, and the relationship as a travesty.
But the choker she pulled from the bag was quite pretty—a band of
black velvet with a delicate floral enamelwork in the center. Its finely
painted bouquet against a cream background was characteristic of a
Rostov finift. So what was it about the gift that didn’t quite work? The
word? Given the prickly tenor of his homecoming, did “choke-her” sound
upsetting? That was absurd. No, it was just this funny feeling that it
could have been anything. See, Lawrence hadn’t seemed impatient to give
her the bag as soon as he walked in, nor had he made anxious inquiries
about whether she liked it when she first pulled the choker from its tissue
paper, and now he wasn’t fussing over it to show her how to work the
clasp. So she had a hunch that, perhaps bought in haste on the last day in
order to give her “something,” the present didn’t mean much to Lawrence, in which case it couldn’t possibly mean much to her. Even if the
choker were expensive, Irina might have been more touched had he
rocked up instead with a little package of Russian seasoning for their
popcorn.
Oh, she was being unreasonable! Lawrence had been run ragged, and
for him to have darted out for any token at all was sweet. She thanked
him profusely, and put it on.
Irina followed him into the bedroom, where he took his bags to unpack, frustrated that it was only four-thirty p.m., which precluded a reunion activity like a drink or dinner any time soon. Nevertheless, she was taken aback when Lawrence announced that he had a box of documents from the trip to haul to Blue Sky, and he was leaving for the office. “Can’t you do that tomorrow?”
“I’ve got e-mail to catch up on. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
The box was heavy, and he decided to ring a minicab. Irina walked down with him to await its arrival at the curb. She knew he was busy, and behind at the office. Still, there was something very, very wrong about his having been gone for a whole month only to flee after a single cup of coffee that he didn’t drink. It was so wrong, so disturbing on a ground-shifting, tectonic level, that as soon as she started to think about it her mind shimmied over to whether to dress the salmon tonight with a vanilla sauce or sesame seeds and soy.
When the taxi pulled up, they faced each other on the sidewalk. Displaying the sleeve-tugging insecurity that Lawrence couldn’t abide, she asked, “You are glad to see me, aren’t you?”
Yet rather than act annoyed, Lawrence looked into her face long and soberly, and for the first time since his arrival met her eyes. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her hard against his chest. “Of course I am,” he said. “Very glad.”
She was so grateful for the moment of warmth that it seemed to wipe out all his previous combativeness in a stroke, and she touched the choker at her throat with a resolve not to find it meaningless but to treasure it always, because it was beautiful and because anything from Lawrence necessarily meant the world. Yet as he scooted into the cab and waved, assuring her that he’d be back by nine at the latest, she had the eerie impression of saying good-bye to him in a more profound sense than the one in which one commonly bids farewell to a man who will return a mere four hours hence for dinner.