Grażyna Plebanek - Illegal Liaisons

“Your neighbors. And the door was open.”

He stared at her, made-up, hair neatly brushed, innocent, in a so-called blessed state.

“Stefan didn’t want to say what happened but …”

“But you guessed,” he interrupted her.

He didn’t invite her in; he couldn’t bear her entering the room where his children sat at the table.

“One of your attacks of jealousy, is it?” She studied him tenderly, almost curiously. He was on the point of raising his arm to tell her to leave when she said, “What do you want from me? Just tell me once and for all and at last I’ll know.”

“Have you slept with him?”

“That’s my business.”

“Is it his child?”

“No, it’s mine,” she replied calmly.

“And who else’s? Mine?”

Andrea’s hand roams toward her belly, rests on it like a shell on a shelf .

“No,” she finally says, slowly and clearly. “I wanted it to be yours but you weren’t ready. The child’s mine and Simon’s.”

“I don’t believe you!” yells Jonathan, alarmed by the squeaky pitch of his voice. “I don’t believe you about anything, you’re terrible, terrible …”

He yells so that his legs give way; he sinks to the chair and from the chair, lower. He doesn’t feel the touch of her hand on his hair; it’s as if he is turning numb, his tissues despairing in the distress of being rejected .

She bends over him but it isn’t concern that speaks through her. She forms questions, but so quickly that she hasn’t got time to add question marks. They sound senseless .

“I was supposed to wait, was I,” she hisses, “but what for? You knew that I loved you, that I wanted a child with you. Is it fair to want that? I can’t fill in gaps with words like you; I act, it’s actions with me, you don’t see that, you don’t see …”

“What actions?” Jonathan hides his face with his elbow; his glasses are askew, the floor digs into his ribs. “Like yesterday?”

“What are you talking about?” Andrea wants to lean over him to hear better but her belly is too large, so she straightens her knees and asks from above, louder, “What?”

“You’re always going to be like that, unfaithful, remote! I don’t want you like that.”

“It’s not me.” She shakes her head above him. “It’s your lack of will. And your family.”

Jonathan rises, first to his knees, then gets up; now he looms over her, unshaven, exhausted .

“No, no, no,” he repeats. “It’s not my family, not me. It’s you! You’re the one who’s like that, you’ll always be like that! I’m scared of you. I don’t want you when you’re like that.”

MEGI LISTENS to the sounds of Warsaw – the screech of trams, ambulance sirens, the rattle of garbage trucks. Her city. And yet, when her cousins had asked her whether she missed the place, she’d nodded – because she did but it was Brussels she missed. Her local patriotism is muddled: she can’t stand visitors speaking badly of Warsaw, she defends it, then leaves and doesn’t think about it, head over heels in love with Brussels .

But now she feels as though her other city is betraying her. Fury mounts in her, seethes, is uncontrollable. Megi cries; her mother comes out to her on the balcony where, despite the frost, her daughter tends to sit with a glass of tea; she strokes her hair which is longer now, the highlights growing out. And Megi begins to talk: how rumors closed in on her, from Martyna’s mention of seeing Jonathan and Andrea in the street, through Przemek’s seemingly casual hints, to Jonathan’s reaction on hearing that Andrea had left Simon. And now Martyna had phoned again, asking – as if solicitously – what could have happened to Jonathan to make him leave Ludwik’s party so abruptly .

“That’s still no reason to …” Her mother tries to comfort her .

“He was walking with Andrea! Carrying shopping bags!”

Her mother runs her hand down her back, no doubt thinking that her daughter isn’t dressed warmly enough – it is, after all, minus five degrees – but doesn’t say anything, taking on to herself words sticky with tears .

Suddenly Megi pulls her head away from her mother’s shoulder .

“I’m going to call that roach! I’ll call and give her a piece of my mind!”

A whirl of suspicions had surrounded her ever since she’d said out loud to her mother, “I think he’s unfaithful.” From that moment all the filings were drawn to the magnet – dates tallied, exchanged glances made sense, even Jonathan’s T-shirt, wet along the spine, had been like that not because he’d been to the gym but because he’d poured a bottle of water down it to make it look credible .

“I’m going to call her, I’m going to call.” Megi presses the keys on her cell but can’t find Andrea’s number .

“My God, how stupid I am,” she moans and quickly wipes her tears away because there’s movement in the apartment. Antosia has just woken up and Tomaszek will be up in a moment, too .

“Go to them,” whispers Megi to her mother. “Please.”

She turns and holds her face to the freezing wind. She is thinking about Jonathan – and is horrified by the boundless love, hatred, contempt, and admiration she feels for him. Because if he leaves them, if he follows his feelings, if he leaves his life for the other woman, Megi will hate him. Yet she will also admire him and despise herself for this admiration, for her own weakness in face of the strength of a man who has the courage to go his own way .

But if Jonathan stays with them, if he chooses what Megi had chosen not so long ago when she’d dropped the man she’d fallen in love with, she will also understand him. In her loathing and disgust she will understand his scruples, deep love for his own, inseparability from his children, what he feels for her. Is it just habit?

Megi can’t think about it, it hurts too much. Was he repulsed by her, was that why he couldn’t make love to her?

She thinks about her own affair scornfully now – there was no comparison with what Jonathan was doing to her now. That other thing was just a plain old yuppie cock-up, a typical office romance. But although Megi distils the hackneyed truth, hides behind it, she remembers that she’d been in love. If it had come out into the open then, she doesn’t know how it would all have ended .

She knocks over her mug with her sleeve; the tea spills over the balcony tiles. Megi can’t go to fetch a cloth because her face is all blotchy and Antosia will immediately know she’s been crying and will ask questions. So Megi stands as the brown puddle with tea dregs in the middle freezes over .

Or maybe I should leave him in peace, to sort it out for himself, she now thinks soberly. Not make a middle-class tragedy of it, not make a song and dance? If she leaves Jonathan people will enjoy the game, will watch two people fight. In return they’ll conscientiously condemn the person Megi loves. And she’ll leap into her role as the betrayed, hurt party. Is that what she wants, other people to lick her wounds?

Megi, the lawyer, orders herself to be pragmatic and wraps her arms around herself because she’s terribly cold. Andrea isn’t one of those crafty pieces of work who use sex to get on; Andrea could only lose by her relationship with Jonathan. The tea puddle glistens in the sun peeking through the clouds; Megi’s eyes fill with tears again. She hates herself for this understanding of her rival. Because Megi doesn’t really want to lose Jonathan. She’s crushed by hard facts: his trousers rolled up at the bottom of the wardrobe although she’d told him numerous times to fold them, the sink full of stubble, which – as usual – he hadn’t rinsed out after shaving. Him playing football with the children .