The Language of Sisters (28 page)

“I have agreed to it. And now I need to change this. What about what I want? Is that not relevant to you at all?”

“I want you to be happy, Nick. If you're not happy with me, then we'll quit seeing each other.”

“That easy for you, is it?”

Oh, that triggered him right on up the temper ladder. “It's not easy for me to say that we'll quit seeing each other, but I'm also not going to get in a deeper relationship than what I want, what I can do.”

“Shit,” he muttered. “You really know how to make me feel like I am nothing in your life.”

“I don't mean to—”

“Yes, you do. You're clear on that. You could walk away from us, from this, easily.” He stood up and yanked on his boxers. “You just said so. You said we could quit seeing each other, as if it wouldn't matter to you at all. As if I don't matter to you at all.”

“I don't want to walk away from us, Nick. I thought you and I had an understanding. I thought you wanted what I want.”

“What I want is a committed relationship with you. I have always wanted that. I was clear about it. I thought, I hoped, we could move in that direction.”

“I told you from the start we couldn't. I was up-front and honest. Now you want to change my mind.”

“Can't I?” His eyes were soft, and sad, but still truly pissed.

“You can't.” But he could. And I couldn't let that happen. “I'm not ready and you have a bad job that I am not going to deal with.”

“I have a job that I love, Toni. It's what I've always wanted to do. I believe in what I do. We take down drug dealers, we break up drug rings. It's relentless, but I know what I'm doing is right.”

“It's not right for me.”

“I would never ask you to quit your job, Toni. Even when you were working crime and justice and you were in dangerous places sometimes, I never said quit.”

“If you had, I would have been even madder than I am now.” I threw a pillow across the room.

“Feel better?”

“ No. ”

I threw another pillow.

“Feel better now?”

“No.” I threw one more, then laughed, couldn't help it.

I saw a smile tip a corner of his mouth.

“Nick, I know you love your job, but I don't want to be so wrapped up in you that I have to”—I stroked my throat, suddenly tight, as if despair was shutting it down—“have to lose ...”

“You're not going to lose me. I'm careful.” He stared out his window at the river, then turned back to me, his shoulders not as straight as they had been before. “Okay, Toni. Here's where I am. I want to be with you, but I need more between us. You don't. You know where I am, and when you're ready, I'm here, if you want to change things. I'm not going to wait forever, but I will wait now.”

Why do I cry so easily? I put my arms over my head. I wanted to hide. Nick wrapped his arms around me, and I cried on that chest of his. “I am so screwed up.”

“You aren't screwed up, babe.”

“I'm sorry I threw your pillows. That wasn't nice.”

“It's okay. Don't cry. Come here. No, don't pull away, come here, baby. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you... . I bought chocolates for you. Want a chocolate?”

I did.

Nick deserves more than me, more than this.

* * *

I loved Marty's parents, they loved me.

It was ridiculous. Everything was butterflies and rainbows and puppies that didn't slobber.

I didn't know a thing about planning a wedding, but it didn't matter. My mother and Marty's mother, Raina, sat down with me one day, after they had had lunch to discuss “our children's wedding.”

They asked me ten questions about what I wanted. Flowers, colors, bridesmaids, invitation design, etc. My head spun. But, first question they asked—when did I want the wedding?

I told them to ask Marty. They said they had. Marty wanted to get married as soon as possible, preferably “next weekend.” The mothers were in a mighty stew about that one. They “could not possibly” get it together that quickly. They both wagged their fingers at me, as only Russian mothers can do. “No. That is no.
Tsk!
”

“The wedding must be perfect,” my mother said. “For our children.”

Raina nodded. “It is a gift, from us to you, our son and daughter. We will plan this for you, okay?” She cupped my face, kissed my cheeks and said, “You are now my daughter, Antonia. I love you.” And then she peered down at my stomach, her face hopeful. “Is there a baby in there yet? I want to be a grandmother.”

My mother sat up straight. Yes to being a grandmother! “You do it, Toni. You do a quickie. We want the baby.”

The reception would be at the restaurant, that was a given.

I hear nightmares about mothers-in-law. My mother-in-law was, is, beautiful, as is Marty's father, who is so like him.

Marty and I let the mothers do their thing. They were delighted to do it. The fathers got together to “help” and ended up in our garage, my father's man cave, where they watched football. They also “helped” by going golfing together.

Both Marty and I were working long hours and the mothers had the wedding in hand, so we decided to spend more time in bed together. It was more relaxing and exciting.

I decided to keep my last name. I know Marty would have liked it if I changed it, but I couldn't. Maybe it was because of what the Kozlovskys went through in Moscow. Maybe it was my independent streak. But I was a Kozlovsky forever, and so in love I could hardly think.

As for my bridal shower, fiery fight on who got to do that, but JJ ended up doing it because she got all bossy and promised cool hair products from her salon. Bachelorette party, another fiery fight on who got to do that, but Zoya and Tati did it because they promised everyone a packet of stripper panties. A bridal brunch, fiery fight again, my aunt Polina won because she put her foot down and threatened to “let my temper run around and about like Russian Mafia!”

The rehearsal dinner, for eighty, as no one could be left out, Marty's parents hosted at their home.

Then the-day-after-the-wedding brunch. Another fiery fight. Anya and Aunt Holly took charge. Forcefully.

Miraculously, at the end of planning the wedding, the mothers were best friends, as were the fathers. You want fairy tale. Marty and I had a freaking fairy tale.

We loved the bridal shower, the bachelor and bachelorette parties, the bridal brunch, the rehearsal dinner, and the day-after brunch. The wedding was spectacular because all of our family and friends were there. Two hundred people, about half of Russian descent.

It was too perfect.

Perhaps that was the problem.

It was too sparkly and shiny and bright to be true, so it was taken away.

15

“I'm worried about Dmitry,” Valerie said.

“Me too,” Ellie said.

“What? What wrong my Dmitry?” my mother asked, dropping her fork, her voice low. We were at my parents' house for Sunday dinner. Valerie's family begged out as Ailani was writing an essay on how to become a homicide detective, and Gino was going to his niece's birthday party.

Gino was not pleased that Ellie wasn't with him at the niece's birthday party, which made Ellie put a bag to her face when she told us. “I can't stand his family,” she said.

“What is this? Why the worry?” my father asked, his head swiveling back and forth, daughter to daughter. “What is happening with my son now?”

“His sadness is back,” I said.

“My Dmitry.” My mother's lips trembled.

“No,” my father said, his shoulders hunching. “No. Not again.”

“When is he coming home?” Valerie asked.

“Soon, he said.” I poured a glass of wine for my mother, who was now saying the Our Father and crossing herself.

“How soon?” Ellie asked.

“For the wedding.” There was still no set date for Ellie's wedding. I poured a glass of wine for my father.

“Please, God,” my father said, tilting his head up. “Bring my son back home to me.”

“All this ...” My mother threw her hands in the air. “Always walking, searching. Wandering, he calls it, on that bloggy that he writes.” She put a hand to her lips as the tears spilled.

“But no wandering to Russia,” Valerie said. She looked exhausted.

“Russia!” my father spat out. “Was Soviet Union. Dangerous government. Dangerous men. He does not need to go to Russia. Not safe.”

“When he comes home, he wants answers, Papa.” I leaned forward. “The truth.”

“The truth?” My father suddenly stood up and slammed his fists on the table. We all jumped. “I tell this family the truth many times. Many times! The truth is Dmitry is my son, your mother's son. He is your brother.” He stabbed a finger at us. “That is truth! He comes to us a little boy, a gift from God, and we raise him as a Kozlovsky. But still. Not enough, never enough!

“You want more truth? The truth is we hardly, by an inch, not even two inch, made it out of the Soviet Union alive. I barely lived in that prison. Your uncle Leonid, gone. My father, gone.” He didn't bother to wipe his tears. “Curse that man who tormented my father. He has been in hell, all these years, where he belongs. Your mother, so ill when I return. Our names on The List. Do you not remember, you girls, do you not remember? Antonia? Valeria? Elvira?”

We all nodded.

“So there. The truth is we take Dmitry with us when we leave. Yes. It was like that. We hide. We leave it behind. All behind!” My father slammed his fists on the table again.

He gets angry when Dmitry is unhappy. It makes him unhappy, so it brings on anger. “Dmitry should leave it behind. Be happy. Grateful that no men come in the middle of the night, drag us off, beat us, starve us ... but no, he not. He walk around this earth. He should come home, marry nice Russian girl. Have the babies.”

We were silent. My father did this now and then, a proclamation. He would stand at the table, or hit it with both hands. Then he would settle down.

He settled back down, sighed. “Never enough for my boy.”

“He says it's hard to move forward in your own life when you don't know who you are and where you came from,” Ellie said.

“He says he knows you two have kept something from his past from him,” Valerie said. “Have you? What do you know?”

“Ack,” my father said, rolling his head in his hands.

“
Tsk, tsk,
” my mother said. “We keep the past in Moscow, where it belongs, but how we make Dmitry happy, Alexei?”

My father's eyes widened. “I have answer!”

“What Alexei?” my mother said, touching his arm. “What the answer?”

“We plant a vegetable garden together.” He grinned. He knew the answer!

A vegetable garden? Ellie, Valerie, and I exchanged a glance.

“Yes. Vegetable garden,” my father said. “Then maybe he stop walking. Stop trying to find something, someone, who not there, who he will not find again. Stay home. Grow carrots. Radish. Tomatoes. He tell me in high school, he remember a vegetable garden. He say it to me many times, but he no like potatoes or beets. So no potatoes and beets. We buy land, and he work the land and we use vegetables in restaurant. What you think, Svetlana?”

“Yes! You are smart, Alexei,” my mother gushed. “You think of everything.” She tapped her head with her finger. “Right there.”

My father smiled, proud. Proud his wife was proud of him.

My mother stood up, leaned over, and kissed him on the lips. He hugged her, kissed her back. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I'm trying to eat,” Valerie said. “That's enough.”

They laughed together. My mother kissed him again. “You solve this problem, Alexei. Now you call our son, say come home, no?”

“Yes, I do it once again. Tomorrow. I had enough of this,” my father said. “Now is time I tell him. Dmitry come home. Gets a wife and the babies. And a garden. No beets. No potatoes.”

He kissed her cheek. She smiled at him with such seduction, I rolled my eyes.

“I'm but an innocent child,” I said. “I should not have to see this.”

My father lifted my mother onto his lap. She
giggled.
Yes, it was a giggle.

“Mama!” Ellie said. “Papa!”

“Stop,” Valerie drawled. “I'm still drinking wine.”

My mother shrugged.

“Your mother is very tired,” my father told us.

Mama didn't look tired. In fact, she giggled
again.

My sisters and I made our excuses, got up to leave. Our parents gave each of us a hug, kissed both of our cheeks, and as soon as we were a millimeter out the door, it slammed shut.

“Sheesh,” Valerie said, moving her heel away quick as could be so as not to get it smashed.

* * *

“Who was the architect who built your home?”

“The architect? Jer Engleton. I slept with him.”

Now that was an interesting factoid. My pen paused above my yellow writing pad. “You did?”

“Yes.”

The woman I was interviewing for an article for
Homes and Gardens of Oregon,
Liza Pennington, was massively hung over. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Her blouse was open one too many buttons, and her mascara was smeared. She didn't know, wouldn't have cared. She was too thin. Her cleaning lady had just left. I had the impression that the cleaning lady had hauled Liza out of bed.

We were at her dining room table staring out at the panoramic view of Portland from her 4,500-square-foot home in the hills. Liza and her husband, Eddy, a technology CEO, lived in a steel, glass, and wood wonder. Jer Engleton was a talented architect. “My husband doesn't know it.”

“Ah.” As a reporter, I hear a lot. It never ceases to amaze me how people open up to me. Anything they say can and will be held against them, so to speak, and I've had some doozer quotes in the past. But this was an article about Liza's home, not her hangover or the affair, so I wouldn't be using it.

“I couldn't resist Jer.”

“Why not?” That was me being voyeuristic. Shame on me.

“Jer is attractive enough, but basically it was his butt.”

“His butt made you cheat?”

“Yes. My husband has a skinny butt. My butt's bigger than his. But Jer. Nice big butt. Not fat. But hips. And my husband works all the time. I pay attention to my husband when he gets home. I talk to him, listen, give him massages, sex whenever he wants, but he hardly knows me. He thinks everything is fine between us because he's happy, ergo I must be happy, and that ticks me off.”

“That would make me mad, too.”

“He'll say, ‘How are you, Liza,' and before I can answer he'll say, ‘I'm hungry, what's for dinner?' So he doesn't truly care.”

“How are you, then?” I knew how she was. It was blatantly obvious. She was depressed. Searching for light. Struggling with a cloying sadness that could not be shaken away and using alcohol to self-medicate.

“I'm lonely. Alone. I love my husband, and it hurts me every single day that he doesn't really see me. But Jer, the architect, saw me from the start. He listened to me. Not only about the house but about who I was. Jer knew more about me in one day than my husband and we've been married fifteen years. So, it wasn't actually about Jer's butt. It was about the brain a few feet above the butt.”

“Why don't you leave your husband?”

“Because I love him. We've been together a long time. We met in college. I already said that.” She had not said that. Liza lit a cigarette, impatient, efficient. I truly hate cigarette smoke, but I couldn't say anything. It was her house.

“Are you still with Jer?”

“Yes. I'll be with Jer until my husband pays attention to me. I can't live like I'm dying. That was a stupid thing to say. Sorry. I hate clichés.” She puffed out smoke in a
smoke ring.
I was impressed.

“Why don't you tell your husband how you feel?”

“I did. I have. Several times.” She tapped her cigarette on a glass ash tray. “He was gobsmacked each time. He changed for about two weeks, then went back to who he was.”

“So why do you love a man who doesn't pay attention to you? Who doesn't want to know you?”

“I don't know. Prodding question I can't answer. Are you sure you don't want wine? I had this stuff flown in from France.” She poured a glass.

“No, thanks.”

She poured me a glass and handed it to me. She almost fell out of her blouse. I thought she was going to cry and run more mascara down her face, so I steered the questions back to her home.

“Tell me about your goals for the home when you were first designing it.”

“Are you married, Toni?”

“No.” The question still hurt.

“Ever been married?”

“Yes.”

“Got rid of him, huh? I understand. I can't do that to my husband. When you love him, you love 'em, right?”

“Right.” I stayed calm. She blew another smoke ring.

The front door opened and a man walked through. Tall, skinny, smiling. “Hi, honey.”

“Hi, Eddy, how are you?”

“Fine. How are you, Liza? I'm hungry. What's for lunch? Who do we have here?”

I stood and shook his hand, we chatted. Eddy was a nice, bland man, but I could see what Liza meant. Loving, thought all was well, would never hurt her; in fact he was obviously indulgent, but dense like a tree trunk.

For a woman who wanted a husband who would delve deep through life with her, who was in touch with his emotions, and hers, who was interested in her as a woman, who dreamed and worried and cried with her, who paid attention and was thoughtful and insightful, it would be an unending, emotionally degrading problem. The relationship was hollow. One person knew it. The other didn't have the capacity to recognize it. Hard to work through.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Toni. I'm hungry,” Eddy the dense husband said again. “What's for lunch? Will it be ready soon? Did you pick up my dry cleaning? You know my mother's coming for lunch on Saturday?”

“Yes. Yes. And yes.” Liza got up and got him his lunch, then returned.

Liza's shirt was undone almost to mid-boob. She had mascara down her face from tears. She was clearly hung over. Her husband was absolutely blind to that blatant call for help or was narcissistic or thoughtless enough not to care.

“See what I mean?” Liza said.

“I think I'm hungry,” I said to her. “When's lunch?”

We laughed and she filled her wineglass and blew another smoke ring.

“Jer, the architect, is awesome in bed. Don't put that in the article.”

* * *

I went out to the kayak house and stared at my red kayak, then Marty's, and our tandem. I swallowed hard and brushed my tears away. I pulled my kayak out and sat in it. I held the row across me.

Marty and I kayaked in Oregon, Alaska, the San Juan Islands, Florida, Montana, and Mexico.

We laughed. We met new people. We saw sheared cliffs, towering mountains, fascinating geological formations, sunsets and sunrises that were surely hand-painted, twisting rivers, sandy beaches, bears, herds of deer, elk, beavers, coyote, and one wolf. We kayaked in the sun, the rain, and twice the snow.

When we were done kayaking for the day, we set up our tent, or headed to our hotel, had dinner and wine, and when we were recharged, we had wild and rolling and loving sex.

Then we fell asleep and did the whole thing the next day.

“Toni, look at that.” He would point at an eagle, a carving in a ridge, a purple line across the sky.

“There's something about nature that makes you feel alive, yet tiny, grateful, like your whole city life is not real life, don't you think, Toni?”

“I love feeling like I'm part of the river, but more than that, I love feeling that we're part of the river together, Toni... .”

“You're my river, Toni... .”

“I feel like a new person after that trip. Do you? Do you feel different? How? Where do you want to go for our next trip, Toni? Tell me and I'll get it planned... .”

We laughed. We talked. Nothing I said was too small for him to listen to and comment on.

He held my hand. He made me feel like the sexiest woman in the world. He looked at me and I knew he wanted me naked.