Triptych (11 page)

Chapter Seven

Chicago, 1986

I climb the stairs to my condo on the top floor of a refurbished three-story Victorian. A short hallway leads into the living room.

“Got any advice for me today?” I ask Edmundo Suave, turning to cut past him on my way to the kitchen. “Go ahead. Throw me your two cents. Everyone else has.”

“Edmundo,” who has lived with me for a long time, remains stoically silent.

Edmundo is an oil portrait of a young, handsome, dark-haired Latino man. I had purchased the unsigned treasure at a garage sale shortly after I'd moved in. Friends joke that he's my boyfriend; Vaclav thinks it's the most hideous thing on the planet. “Ach, his eyes, it is like they follow me.”

Indoors, the light has turned shadowy. Sure where I am headed, at least for the moment—to a romantic evening with my lover—I flip the wall switch. The all-white galley kitchen gleams. When Vaclav first visited, he mistook me for a clean freak. After all, I've owned the condo for ten years and every surface is still shiny and unmarred, but he quickly caught on. I do not obsessively run around with bucket, sponge, and cleaning rags. Truth is, the appliances and countertops are rarely used.

I place the bag containing our meal from May Lee's on the counter space between the double ovens and refrigerator. A rust-colored droplet on the white tile catches my eye. Dried spaghetti sauce, a memento from last week's attempt at homemade. My lack of domestic skills has become a sense of wonder and amusement to Vaclav, and he had been guardedly impressed to find the sauce bubbling beside a tall pot of water boiling on the stove when he arrived. “Grandmother's recipe,” I'd announced dramatically just before he spotted the empty Papa Luigi's jar not so well hidden behind me.

Vaclav claims to be an excellent cook. More than once he has offered to make something, but each time I have politely and firmly refused. Opening a cupboard door above the bag, I'm aware of the sweet cabbagy smell escaping from the food containers inside. The scent is not so appetizing and for a second I'm tempted to phone Vaclav and set him loose in my kitchen. Our time together is not about eating a meal, but about satisfying another sort of hunger.

My condo is just 900 square feet, and storage space is precious. I own but two vases and in this cupboard is where I keep them. Behind me, a window cut in a dividing wall opens into the dining area. The table is already set with placemats, china and cutlery. I put them out this morning before leaving for work. I had also added one of my vases to the arrangement with purple silk irises.

I pass through to the living room and pause before Edmundo, still stoically standing by. I stare into dark wistful eyes. “Who are you? Where are
you
from?”

His expression as usual remains frozen.

Even if Edmundo hadn't appeared so mysterious and sexy in his open-neck white shirt and black jacket, I would have bought the painting. Simply for the significance of the date in the bottom corner. 1956. The year of the Hungarian Revolution.

The paper-wrapped sampler purchased from Irina is squeezed in beside the bouquet of flowers in my tote. I unwrap the piece.

Where we love is home.

Abruptly, I stand. “I have a home.” I sigh. “Then
why
don't I feel at home?”

I turn from the wall. Buying my own place on a librarian's salary meant years of scrimping and saving. To furnish the space, I frequented flea markets and garage sales. The result is a mix of affordable new and vintage finds, a style I call “bohemian modern.”

An open floor plan and soaring ceilings make my small condo seem bigger. I love the tall windows that show me treetops and let light flood in. The sun has moved to the opposite side of the building, yet even now the polished hardwood flooring retains its warm blush.

The living room's centerpiece, a simple, clean-lined white sofa, is my most extravagant purchase, and I had patiently waited through four markdowns before I could justify the splurge. It faces the fireplace. The large white shaggy area rug in front of the sofa came from an estate sale, as did the two Danish arm-chairs flanking it.

A lamp with a tassled-shade rests on a narrow table aligned against the sofa's back. I pull its chain. A porcelain deer letter-holder I'd recently picked up at a yard sale is reflected in the mellow glow. The deer is lying down, curled up against a green porcelain “grass” pillar, her eyes closed, her expression so angelic, I cannot resist petting her.

When Vaclav and I first got together I thought how wonderful it was to find someone who was attracted to me for who I was. Small-town librarian. Conversation group leader. Mentor to refugees, local artists. The closer we became, the stronger my desire to have
him
be the teacher. I wanted to be more. An artist.

I've not been disappointed. Through Vaclav I have discovered a form to express what I feel inside.

I am not my mother. No set pattern. Outside the lines.

Several of my deconstructed samplers adorn the walls. My gaze skates from colorful abstract to colorful abstract until it hits me. I could be looking at the walls of the parsonages where I grew up. All that is needed is a blue ribbon from the county fair.

My heart sinks. What do I really know about my mother? She died before I could get to know her as a person, an adult. What I was left with were stories of her past. A self-absorbed adolescent's eye view of her.

I turn back to the letter-holder where I've tucked a travel brochure. A month ago, Mariska had announced she'd booked a flight to Budapest for September. She's determined to return home to the old country before she becomes too frail to travel. I'd asked if I might join her. She couldn't have been more delighted.

In the bathroom, I run water into the vase, set it on the bedside table, and shove the flowers inside, pausing for half a second to take in the sweet perfume of the vibrant orange rose at the bouquet's center.

At the wicker chair I salvaged from curbside rubble, I unknot Mariska's shawl, remove it from around my hips, shake and whisk it through the air. The fringe on the silky black fabric flutters as the shawl flies over the chair's arched back and drifts to a billowy landing. I adjust it so that “the Kandinskys” are prominently displayed.

You must do some personal unstitching
.

All these years, trying so hard to separate myself from my mother—was it time to do the opposite? What had Irina said, conciliation?

The door bell chimes and Vaclav steps through. Earlier, at the library, he had looked more casual. Now, his neatly pressed work shirt is fully buttoned, tucked into his jeans—a man of purpose. He bends to kiss me, and I detect the familiar scent of CJ's Laundry where, behind the counter, presses hiss and spew starch-infused steam. My wandering thoughts, the starchy aroma—all distractions—vanish as my mouth yields to the warm, pillow softness of his lips.

He buries his face in my hair, nuzzles my ear, whispers, “My love, I breathe you in and it is like I am in Prague, awash in the morning air of spring.”

I stand unmoving, but there is a tide sweeping through me. He begins kissing my face, letting his lips open and close on my skin, tasting the flesh. He reaches down and gathers me up into his arms. He holds me for a long time, hugging me to his chest as if I were Sleeping Beauty and he'd just revived me from the witch's trance. I moan and he starts walking with me down the short hallway to the bed.

We move slowly at first, but when I open my eyes, catch him studying my face, his expression tender and adoring, I reach up, burrow my fingers in his hair, grab on, and our motion lets loose a surge that we can't possibly keep up with, only give in to.

I am still clinging to his hair when it is over. My arm falls away, spent.

On our backs, side by side, we lie completely still. Magically, a dove in the tree outside the double windows behind us coos to its mate.

The setting sun glows through the stained-glass panels covering the windows behind us, bathing us in a gilded light. The former owner had installed the two large panes of golden swirl glass, rescues from a Victorian mansion. Each features a green opalescent heart, topped with a clear jewel stone, and a double border of blue-green glass. The panels are set into a floor-to-ceiling white wooden frame ideal for a fanciful headboard, I decided upon moving in.

Stained glass: in the churches of my youth, in the library where I work as an adult, and now in my bedroom.

Beneath the glass panels, the lower section of the wooden frame is solid and high enough to rest against. Vaclav props a pair of pillows against the unforgiving length of board and shifts to a semi-seated position, scrunching his head and shoulders against the padding, trying to get comfortable. Finally, he lifts an arm and cups his hand behind his head for support. I snuggle into the crook of his arm and press my face into his neck, savoring his masculine scent.

I look up. His brow is furrowed, and he is staring at Auntie Mariska's shawl as if seeing it for the first time.

“Zeros?” he says. “This what you think of self?”

My gaze tracks his to the reworked section I had left exposed. I laugh. “My Kandinsky circles? You don't like them? Half the ladies in my conversation group think I've committed a crime. The other half admires my creativity. You? What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Vaclav pulls his hand out from behind his head and, turning to me, clasps my face between his palms. His grasp is gentle but there is force behind it. “I think you are layered, like those circles. Complex, bright, bold, full with many gifts. I know, I am with you and see how you care for others, how you have strong will, good mind, imagination…full with passion when we are in the bed.”

His slight smile is sexy and I place my finger on his lip, begin tracing his mouth. His hand closing over mine stops me. His words sound thick. “You are generous benefactor with me. Because of you, I have start as artist in America. Cregility.”

I start to correct him, “Credi—” then stop. Vaclav's eyes have taken on a gray cast, the distant sad look he always gets when thinking about the place he can never return to. The Old Country. His parents. I spoon myself tightly against his side, lean into the smoothness of his chest.

Vaclav wriggles away, sits upright. The irritation in his voice is barely contained. “Bah. You say you want to show example to group. Why bring this?” He flings his arm in the direction of the shawl. “You hide behind another person's story. It belong to your aunt, no? What is
your
story?”

I am sitting up now too. “What is it? What's wrong?” I ask. “Tell me.”

He rubs a hand over his suddenly weary expression. “There will never be going back for me.”

“Oh c'mon,” I say, taking his hand, gently kissing a knuckle, then another. “Going home is your dream. You'll make it come true…”

“No—” Vaclav pulls free of my grasp. “Never happen. Manka, she is with baby.”

“What? You said you love me—” My hands ball into fists. I blink several times. “Manka is forty. Manka just signed a teaching contract. Manka has a girlfr…”

The pain is too great. I look away.

What did I have?
Married, unobtainable Vaclav. I knew this going in. Clear boundaries. It was what I wanted. Still, somewhere inside me, on some deep level, I had believed he and Manka didn't share the special intimacy that we experienced together, that the affection he showered on me was mine exclusively, for as long as I wanted.

But you saw the way Manka looked at him. You knew,
a voice in some recess of my brain reminds me.

I slide down and roll on my side so that my back is to Vaclav. A tear escapes the corner of my eye, the bead so heavy and hot I am certain that it will leave a permanent gash on my cheek. Inexplicably, I envision the prominent tear-drop eye in Vaclav's
Lolita
piece at the library. Another tear seeps down my face.

Vaclav makes no attempt to comfort me. Instead, I am left to stare at the cheery bouquet in the vase on the bedside table, understanding now that it was not a romantic gift.
My consolation prize.

The flowers give me an insight. I had been wrong in thinking that Vaclav would free me from the spell of guilt, shame. Yes, Vaclav held a key, but not the only key.

I lift a corner of the white bedding, dab my nose, blot damp cheeks. Maneuvering upright again, I glance over at the shawl. I
was
like those zeroes. I had a gap to fill. Vaclav had even said so.

I hold his hand again and observe the dirt embedded beneath the nails. “You're planted here now…with your very own little Miss or Mr. America—” I say, kissing his knuckles, one by one, waiting until the lump in my throat subsides. “But that doesn't mean you won't one day go back. You'll be a good father. You're a generous, excellent teacher. Look at how you've helped me grow.”

I take a breath. Put on a smile. Decide to try out something new on Vaclav. A small, white untruth.

“I have some news too,” I say. “You asked about my story. I've booked a trip to Budapest. It's what I've been preaching in my conversation group. I want to go there, discover what it tells me about my mother's world, how it relates to now, to me. Maybe even to how she died.”

Vaclav draws me close. I rest my head against his chest again, above his heart. I hear its
thump, thump, thump.
I am warmed by his body, which gives off surprising waves of heat. His hand strokes my hair. We are quiet, pondering the changes in store for us. Until the phone rings.

At first, the interruption is easy to ignore. The phone is in the living room, and it would be foolish to leave the peace we have only this moment rediscovered. The noise stops, but then, it starts again. This time the ringing is incessant. Insistent.

I leave my bed and go into the living room. “Hello? Who? Zsófi? What? Auntie Mariska? Of course I'll come.”