The Imperial Wife (11 page)

“Ready,” I say, instructions memorized. I can't possibly eat, my stomach flip-flopping.

The weekend before, I spend an entire paycheck shopping for the occasion. Entering Bergdorf's department store is not unlike entering Worthington's, where the salespeople instantly appraise your worthiness of their solicitude. A store where dresses hang far apart from their neighbors in neat rows, sleeves queued up like soldiers. So different than the usual places I shop—the Russian-preferred discounted jumble of Loehmann's, the bins of sample sales and clearance racks of Century 21. At Bergdorf's, even the sale signs, when they crop up, are so discreet and tiny, they almost dare you to scrutinize them.

In a dressing room the size of my bedroom, I tremble into dresses of pink floral patterns and absurdly expensive blue and white cotton twill, and hold my breath at the exorbitant price tags.

“What is the return policy?” I ask the saleswoman. She assures me it is sixty days with receipt so I buy the Chanel blazer and bag and conceal the sales tag in one of the pockets.

As the day draws closer, I rifle through my mother's drawers for jewelry that looks most like pearls, trying out two of Bergen County's fanciest salons for elaborate up-dos and leaving looking less like Ingrid Bergman and more like Emily Dickinson. I research New Jersey's best dessert and flowers and wine as if my Russian manners would translate in this sphere, as if the Russian emphasis on culture would register as familiar to them.

“Wow.” Carl appraises me when I'm standing at his door in an approximation of “old money” attire. I look like a headmistress of some decrepit British institution.

When I left the house earlier, my mother stared at me in bewilderment. “What did they do to your hair and why in the world did you buy that overpriced housecoat?”

Carl says, “You didn't have to get so fancy. I told you they're pretty casual. You should have just worn what you always wear.”

“Are you saying I look hot?”

“You always look hot, baby.” He tries to nuzzle near my chin before withdrawing. “But I'm afraid to touch you. You're like a doll in a store or something and you smell like fabric softener.”

“That's Chanel No. 5, hon.”

“So you like smelling like laundry?”

“I figured that's what your mother wears.”

“First of all, she hates perfume, and she'd never buy any Chanel except at consignment,” he says, enfolding me in his arms. I am amazed that he truly doesn't understand the source of my anxiety, that he's probably never felt its equivalent. “Second of all, you're trying way too hard. You should be yourself.”

Be myself? What does it even mean to be “yourself”? Isn't life a series of situational personas? I'm internally working the freshly acquired tenets of optimism
(an outcome of a single situation does not dictate who I am and what I am capable of becoming)
but in reality, I'm too nervous to come into contact with anything, to rumple or stain. A rapid agitation worms inside my belly. Carl dresses in his usual pleated pants and rolled-up navy button-down shirt. His process is the opposite of mine, an impression of indifference when the result is unstudied perfection. He runs a lazy brush through his hair, then pours himself a glass of water, squeezes a lemon down its side. He kisses me at the corner of my mouth.

“Aren't we late?” I ask, by now wanting the whole thing over. I'm holding a box inside which, I'm convinced, is a squashed vanilla butter cream cake.

He insists we take the subway so he can better point out the signposts of his childhood. I don't want to admit that my new shoes are digging into my heels with each step; I can feel two slicing lines across the back of each foot. With each gingerly step, I feel burdened by the stiff layers, the jewelry choking my neck.

Down into the station, the heat of the Chanel blazer suffocating, I am weighed down by the effort of staying erect in a crowded train, the fabric of the dress stiff and unyielding. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the train's window and can see how he compared me to a doll, all square and painted, the quilted handbag drooping like a piece of excess skin, the clownish pink lipstick.

Out of the subway, evening is settling. We walk away from the frenzied rush of Lexington toward the stillness of Park, where the pain of my feet has faded into a pleasant dullness. For me, the East Sixties may as well be an alien landscape. We turn on Madison, where boutiques are locking away jewelry for the night, expensive children's clothing stores are displaying a single style of cashmere, past delicate pyramids of chocolate squares and watches with flat, empty faces. We encounter the kind of people who live here and work at Worthington's, dining outdoors even though the air still carries the chill of spring, ponytailed mothers in sailor stripes pushing prams. Little girls eating sundaes at glass counters and Bendel's bags swinging between legs. Each block as manicured as my colleagues at work. Pampered in all this understated grace and beauty, this land of expensive boater shirts and anorexic mixed greens. I feel a burst of envy that Carl got to grow up here, taking all this for granted. Once my father got an especially large massage tip and in a burst of triumph and a hunger that could not be sated, my parents and I ordered more dishes from the local Chinese place than we could possibly eat, the remains of ribs like a cemetery of bones piling high on our plates.

In the lobby, past the greetings of the suited doorman, I try to forge some kind of confidence. But my heels are killing me and the string of the cake box is digging into my skin.

“Don't worry so much,” he says. “It's no big deal. Trust me.” He's patting his pockets for something, but his hands emerge empty.

I stall him, a hand on his wrist. “Do they know I'm a Russian Jew?”

“You're being silly,” he snaps.

This is the first time he stops using our new couple voice. I knew that time would come but it's unexpected, a turning of the page, the end of a particular phase. I wonder if I've shown too much of myself, if my insecurity has risen to the surface despite all my work at changing my cognitive patterns. His sharpness is surprising, this sudden coldness that freezes the expressiveness of his face and turns him into the subject of a portrait.

“Of course you're right. I was just joking,” I assure him. We ring the doorbell.

His father ushers us inside a living room that appears to be the beginning of a long maze, vertiginous ceilings sheltering incomprehensible places like pantries and linen closets. The very immensity of the space is wrong, unnatural for Manhattan, but I inwardly focus on breathing exercises and present Carl's father with the cake.

“Not necessary,” he says, not in a polite way but as though he means it. It really is unnecessary. The vanilla cake goes off to the side and I never see it again.

“Ah, there you are.” Frances Vandermotter appears in a cardigan and neat, pleated pants, highlighted hair pulled back into a bow clip. A sliver of blue skin is camouflaged under her eyes. She presses a single cold cheek against mine and is speaking loudly and exceedingly slowly. “You'll. Want. A. Tour.”

My impulse is to assure her my English is fluent. “That would be great.”

I had pictured a home chic and preppy, pointillist and perfect. But there's a mismatched quality to the place, the furniture pieces not in proportion with each other, too big or too small. American and English antiques clutter the tops of Queen Anne cabinets, faded cotton chintz curtains. I summon my charm and unleash it on the art as planned, except the art is not very interesting or varied, a series of Dutch nautical landscapes, a portrait of a prim Puritan woman.

“Carl tells me you're an intern at Worthington's. I'm afraid the art will disappoint you,” his mother says.

“No, no, I love landscapes.” I meet Carl's eyes over her shoulder. He shrugs in apology, mouths,
I swear I never said you were an intern.

“And this one was inherited from an elderly aunt. Your boss in Nineteenth Century might be interested to appraise it sometime.” You pass the pursed-lipped woman in a white cap, her eyes steely with resolve.

“It's well executed.” I'm aware that by pretending to some kind of authority, I'm actually wielding it. “It's got great depth, actually.” Next to the Puritan lady, a set of worn Princeton fleeces are framed, and the bureau holds an army of brass ship bells. Everything needs a good dusting but you can tell each item has importance, that its placement in relation to its neighbors is not incidental.

“Those bells belonged to the schooner that brought Armand's relatives from the Old World. So you see, you and Carl are both immigrants of a kind,” she says. She is gesturing toward a cabinet, a glass shrine to silver. “These over here are Paul Revere.”

“Paul Revere,” I repeat, squinting at a creamer and a pair of sugar tongs, the words conjuring some vague horseback figure from high school history. I realize I will have to brush up on its significance with Lucas in Early American. “How wonderful.”

She is telling me about some ancestral privateer who helped with the blockade of Boston, but then a voice drifts in from the living room, from a place that seems miles away. “Drinks, Cece, bring Tanya around, will you?”

“Tanya,” Frances says, ushering me out. “Is it short for anything?”

“Tatiana.”

“Ah, of course! I always loved those indexes in the back of long Russian novels where the various names are explained. Everyone had so many different names. Every time a character popped up, you had to consult the glossary to make sure you haven't met them before. Remember, Skip?”

From what seems like entire countries away, Armand calls back, “Ask your son. He's the Russian scholar. Do you know how old I must have been when I read
War and Peace
? Nineteen, twenty? And how old am I now?”

“Okay, we get it. You're old.” Frances winks, two ladies making the best of their men's shortcomings. “Wine or something more interesting?”

As the evening progresses, I stop wondering why a man named Armand is called Skip. After some initial small talk about Russian literature, they don't ask me questions about the immigrant experience or about my parents in New Jersey. They drink and nibble, and discuss recent auctions and reminisce about fabulously rustic summers in Maine where reams of cousins hike, wait in line for the outhouse, and jump-start cocktail hour at four. And I feel bold enough to peel off the heat of my Chanel jacket with its carefully pinned price tag and laugh along with them at experiences I could only faintly imagine: pool parties where no one swims, with names I am expected to recognize, after-hours charity shopping to benefit children's foster care, family lacrosse games, a sport that never made sense to me, a house in Maine that sounds romantic even if I imagine my mother wondering why rich people like this couldn't afford a house with indoor plumbing. It is wading into a beautiful, cold pool, the water bracing and shimmering. But Carl hasn't said a word.

I notice a vagueness in the man I'm besotted with, as if Carl's not related to them, as if we're two arbitrary couples socializing. On our way back from the tour of the apartment, Carl and his father sit at an angle on their chairs across the extensive dining room table. Carl's only contribution is about the foster children's organization he and his mother oversee. He asks about the funds, about particular kids, if they have remained with their families, if there had been successful adoptions, which ones have aged out of the system. He insists on photographs and smiles only when he recognizes the faces of the kids, beaming or wearing tight smiles of artifice, flashing their baby teeth. He plays basketball with two of them on Saturday mornings, but only now does the importance of the organization in his life become clear to me.

How different it is compared to my raucous family dinners, where everyone's business is splayed out on the table next to the food, where I'm teased about finding a “normal job” or a “husband, finally.” How different this Vandermotter exchange on culture and outdoors and sport compared to the drunken squeals of the Russian wives, the costume parties where the men dress as women in wigs and fake boobs, the swaying guests belting accompaniment to an impromptu piano recital. I'd been embarrassed by most of that, actually, by an immigrant lack of polish and sophistication, by its clannishness, the simple, peasant food. I find I like the coolness, the calm way Carl's father has of putting together drinks, deliberately, ice cubes first, the careful splash of lime, the neat shaving of citrus peel, and the way his mother wafts from room to room with her narrow, limpid eyes replicated in Carl.

“Another?” his father asks by the bar, and I say yes, yes to everything offered, and I hear my own voice colonizing the space, making it mine.

“You know, speaking of names, Carl tells me I'm an expert namer,” I say, and launch into the story of how we met.

“Really? We had no idea. Whatever can that mean?” His father announces this as if relieved that somebody's talking, that they can all pave over Carl's silence with their chatter.

“I name paintings.”

“You mean those titles are made up by people like you? I thought the artist named his own painting.”

“Sometimes, but many times they come in untitled so it becomes our job. Titles sell paintings.”

“Yes,” Frances says. “I'm sure they do.”

“Your internship sounds fascinating.” Armand pops an oyster cracker in his mouth, scalloped and dotted with salt. “When we come by Worthington's next, we'll be sure to look you up.”

“Oh, yes,” Frances says.

“I'm actually not an intern. I'm an assistant cataloguer.”

“Oh?” Armand says and, through the murk of wine, I'm convinced they're impressed, that my position has been elevated in their eyes.

And when they plant good-night kisses, I say a million thank-yous and return to the cherry stateliness of the elevator, I feel Carl coming back to himself, returning to focus.