Zoya (49 page)

“Paul, my darling, I can't.”

He looked wounded as he listened to her, and she tried to find the words to explain it.

I'm past that now. I'm too old to marry anyone.”

“Don't say that, Zoya, look at you! You haven't changed since the first time I saw you.” She was still so very lovely.

“Yes, I have,” she smiled pleasantly, “inside. I want to grow old quietly, to see Matthew on his way, and Marina become exactly what she wants to be. I want her to have the luxury of doing exactly what she wants to do, to be who she has to be … and that's what I want too.”

He had feared that, even before he asked her. He had wanted to marry her for years, but he couldn't. And now that he was free, the moment had passed for her. He wondered if things would have been different if Allison had died sooner. His weekends with Zoya were less frequent now, but they still went to his house in Connecticut from time to time, but in recent years the weekends were less important to her. It was their friendship she loved, and she would have wanted more than that of marriage. She would
have wanted passion. The children were her only passion now. The children, and still, the store. Always that, in memory of Simon.

“I can't be anyone's wife again. I know that now. I gave everything I had to give to Clayton and then Simon, a long time ago. Now there's me. The children, my work, and you, when we both have time for it. But I couldn't give you enough of myself to justify marrying you. It wouldn't be fair to you. I want some time for myself now, Paul, as awful as that must sound. But perhaps now it's my turn to be selfish. I want to travel when the children are old enough, to be free again. Maybe to go back to Russia again one day … to visit St. Petersburg again … or Livadia …” She knew it would be painful for her, but it was a dream she'd had in recent years, and each year it was more possible. All she needed was the time, and the courage to go back. But she knew she couldn't do all of that with him, he had his life, his house, his work, his gardening, his friends. His life had slowed down considerably in recent years. “I think I have just grown up, finally.” At sixty-six, he suddenly seemed much older, but Zoya didn't say that. “I was so busy surviving for so many years. I finally discovered that there is a great deal more than that. Perhaps if I'd known that earlier … perhaps things might have been different for Sasha.” She still blamed herself for her daughter's death, and it was difficult to look back and see what she could have done differently, and it didn't really matter anymore. For Sasha, it was much too late, but not for Matthew, or Marina, or even herself. She still had some living to do, and she had chosen to do it on her own, no matter how much she loved Paul Kelly.

“Does this mean it's over for us?” He looked at her with sad, wintry eyes, as she gently leaned over and kissed him on the lips, and he felt the same fire he had always felt for her since the first day they'd met.

“Not unless you want it to be. If you can accept me like this, I'll be here to love you for a long, long time.” Just as she had been there for him during the years when he was married.

He laughed quietly, “Just my luck, the world has finally come of age, people are doing things that would have shocked the world twenty years ago, sleeping with each other openly, living in sin, and what happens? I offer you respectability a dozen years too late.” They both laughed as they sat comfortably in her library. “Zoya, you're too young for me.”

“Thank you, Paul.” They kissed again, and a short while later, he went home. She had promised to spend the weekend in Connecticut with him, and he was somewhat mollified when he left. Zoya tiptoed to Marina's room then, to watch her as she slept, and she smiled again. The world would be hers one day. Tears filled Zoya's eyes, as she gently bent to kiss her cheek, and dreaming peacefully, Marina stirred beneath her grandmother's loving hand.

“Dance on, little one … little ballerina … dance on …”

CHAPTER
50

The Kennedy years were exciting ones for Zoya at the store. The young senator's wife set exciting trends that everyone followed. And Zoya admired her greatly. She was even invited to dine at the White House, much to her older son's delight. Zoya was still as beautiful, as elegant, as she had been when he was a child. At sixty-one, Zoya was recognized by everyone, as she strode proudly into her store, straightening a hat, frowning at something she didn't like, changing the flowers with a practiced hand. Axelle was gone by then, and her shop only a memory, but Zoya had learned her lessons well from her.

Marina was at Juilliard by then, dancing professionally occasionally, and whenever Zoya saw her dance, she could almost feel her own heart leap again, as she danced for Diaghilev more than forty years before. Matthew graduated from Harvard in June of 1961, as Zoya sat in the front row with Nicholas and applauded for him. He was a fine young man, and she was proud of him. He was going on to business
school, and then to work in the store with her. Nicholas wanted him to work with him, but Matthew was more interested in retailing, he confessed. Zoya had promised to keep the store open until he was ready, and both boys laughed.

“You wouldn't close your doors if the place burned to the ground,” Matthew teased, and she laughed. She knew her boys well and loved them deeply. She was chatting distractedly with Nicholas on a flight back to New York. And finally she turned to him. It was easy to see he had something on his mind, and she decided to ask him.

“All right, what is it, Nicholas? I can't stand the suspense anymore.” Her eyes danced as he laughed nervously.

“You know me too well.” He straightened his tie and cleared his throat.

“I should after all these years.” He was thirty-nine years old. “What are you hiding from me?” and suddenly she remembered her brother taking her for a ride a thousand years before, and teasing him about his dancer. She knew without his telling her, that the source of her son's embarrassment was a woman.

“I'm getting married again.”

“Should I applaud or cry?” She laughed, “Will I like this one better than the last one?”

He looked at her quietly, a handsome man with her own piercing eyes. “She's an attorney. In fact, she's going to work for Paul Kelly. She lives in Washington, she's been working for the Kennedy administration. She's funny and bright, and a terrible cook,” he laughed, “and I'm crazy about her. In fact,” he looked uncomfortable again, “I was hoping you'd come to dinner with us tonight, if you're not too
tired.” For more than a year they'd been commuting back and forth between New York and Washington, D.C.

Zoya looked at him with serious eyes, hoping he had made a wiser choice this time. “I was going to work late at the store, but … I could be convinced otherwise.” They both laughed as he dropped her off at her apartment on the way to his own. Julie was already waiting there for him, and he told her he'd invited his mother to have dinner with them as she stared at him with terror in her eyes.

“Oh, no! What if she hates me? Look at this dress! I didn't bring anything decent with me from Washington.”

“You look wonderful. She won't give a damn about that.”

“The hell she won't!” Julie had seen photographs of her, and she always looked impeccable and was dressed in the best of the latest fashion.

Zoya looked her over carefully that night, when they went to dinner at La Cote Basque. It was near the store, and it was her favorite restaurant. And she was everything Nicholas had said she was, amusing, bright, excited about life, intent about her work, but not to the exclusion of all else. She was ten years younger than Nicholas, and Zoya was certain she would make him a good wife. So much so that she made an important decision that night when she left them. She was going to give them the imperial egg as a wedding gift. It was time to pass it on to her children.

She walked quietly back to the store by herself after that dinner, and let herself into the silent halls with her key. The night watchman wasn't surprised
when he saw the light under her office door. She came by often late at night, just to check on things, to take some work home with her. And as she went home again, she thought to herself how nice it would be to have Matthew working with her one day. He had remained the light of her life, the child she had thought she was too old to bear. Simon had been right. He had kept her young, even now, as she walked home, spry at sixty-two, to Marina, anxiously waiting up for her beloved Grandma.

It was midnight when she got home, and heard her granddaughter call out to her from her bedroom.

“Grandma, is that you?”

“I certainly hope so.” She walked into her room, took off the hat she'd worn to dinner with Nicholas and Julie, and smiled at the child who looked so much like her. Her red hair was as long as Zoya's still was, though hers was now white, and Marina's was cascading over her nightgown. “Guess what! I've been asked to dance at Lincoln Center!”

“Now there's a coup! Tell me what happened.” She sat down on the edge of her bed, listening to her chatter happily. She lived only to dance, but there was no denying it now, it wasn't just grandmotherly pride, the child had enormous talent. “All right, now tell me when.” She had reeled off the names of the entire cast, the choreographer, the director, their life histories, the music, to her the when wasn't as important.

“In
six
weeks! Can you believe it! I'll never be ready.”

“Yes, you will.” Her studies had suffered a little bit in recent years, but to Marina that didn't matter either, and Zoya found herself wondering frequently if
this time, the muses would sing, if Marina would one day be a great dancer. She had long since told her about dancing for the Ballet Russe in Paris in her youth, and once with Nijinsky, and then long after, she had told her about Fitzhugh's Dance Hall. Marina loved to tell the tale, it made her respectable grandmother seem far more exotic.

And six weeks later, the performance went beautifully. She was reviewed for the first time. At fifteen, she was on her way. Marina was a real ballerina.

CHAPTER
51

Nicholas's first child, a daughter, was born in 1963, the same year that John Kennedy was shot, and that Matthew came to work at Countess Zoya. And Zoya was deeply flattered when Nicholas and Julie named their baby girl Zoe, it was an Americanization of her own name, and in truth, she liked it much better.

Marina was dancing full-time by then, at seventeen. She had taken Zoya's Russian name and was known as Marina Ossupov. She was working hard and traveling all over the country. Nicholas thought she should be forced to go on to college once she finished school, but Zoya didn't agree with him.

“Not everyone is made for that, Nicholas. She already has a life. Now that you're a father, don't be so stuffy.” Zoya was ever open to new ideas, always excited about life, never boring. And Paul was still deeply in love with her. He had retired several years before and was living in Connecticut full-time. She drove out to see him whenever she could, and he always complained that she was much too busy. The store seemed to be enjoying a whole new life. She
had brought in Cardin, Saint Laurent, Courroges, and now Matthew went with her when she went to Paris. He chased every model he could, and enjoyed staying at the Ritz. At twenty-four, he was full of excitement and mischief, not unlike his mother. And instead of slowing down, as she had promised to do, once he came on the scene, she only seemed to work harder.

“Your mother is amazing,” Julie told Nicholas, and unlike most daughters-in-law, she really meant it. The two women had lunch together from time to time, and by the time little Zoe was five, Zoya had bought her her first tutu and ballet shoes. Marina was twenty-two by then, and a star of major proportions. She had danced all over the world, to rave reviews. She was the darling of ballet devotees everywhere, and the previous year she had even danced in Russia. She had told Zoya excitedly about her visit to Leningrad, which had been St. Petersburg, she had seen the Winter Palace, and even visited the Maryinsky. It brought tears to Zoya's eyes as she listened to her. It was like a dream come true … all those places she had left more than fifty years before, with a piece of her still there, and now Marina had been there. She still talked about going to Russia herself, but claimed that she was saving it for her old age.

“And when will that be, Mom?” Nicholas teased on her seventieth birthday. “I'm getting old faster than you are. I'm almost fifty. The trouble is you don't look it, and I do.”

“Don't be silly, Nicholas, I look absolutely ancient!” But the amazing thing was that she didn't. She was still beautiful, the red hair now white, but always exquisitely groomed, and the neat suits and
slim dresses she wore showed her still lovely figure. She was an object of envy to all, and a source of inspiration to all those who knew her. People still came to the store and begged to see The Countess. Matthew was always telling funny stories of people who absolutely insisted they
had
to see her.

“Rather like the Louvre,” Zoya said dryly, “only somewhat smaller.”

“Now, Mother, don't be modest. Without you, the store would be nothing.”

But it wasn't true anymore. Matthew had applied the merchandising techniques he had learned at business school, and in his first five years, had doubled their sales. He added a new perfume called, of course, “Countess Zoya” the year after that and in the first five years, the sales once again doubled. By 1974, Countess Zoya, the woman and the store, was a legend.

But with the legend came inquiries that interested Matthew, but terrified his mother. Federated wanted to buy the store, as did several other chains, a liquor company, and a company that sold canned foods, but wanted to diversify their investments. Matthew went to Nicholas's office to discuss it all with him, and the two brothers conferred for days. Nicholas was only surprised that the offers hadn't come sooner.

“It's a tribute to you,” Nicholas said quietly, looking fondly at his younger brother. But Matthew only shook his head, and moved swiftly around the room. He was a man who was always in motion. He picked up books, glanced at things in his brother's bookcase, and then turned to face him again as he shook his head.