Kirstin Allio - Clothed, Female Figure - Stories

Indeed, whenever we fought, my English failed me, as did the entire body of my psychologist’s training. This fight was something to do with the way I’d left the apartment. I hadn’t tidied up sufficiently. I hadn’t put away the clean dishes from the previous night’s dinner, for example. My husband was suspicious of everyone and everything, and he somehow thought the likelihood of our apartment being broken into — by the police, that is — was greater because I’d left it in shambles. I knew a little bit about the drugs, but I never said anything.

Arturo was just beginning to walk at the time of the trip to Italy. My husband was very proud of him. My husband wanted to take him out and show him on the streets, in the bars and restaurants, as a son of Italy. We visited various cousins of my husband, and my husband always pulled Arturo away from me and presented him as if he belonged solely to my husband.

The last three days of our vacation we spent on the Mediterranean. It reminded me of the Black Sea, where I’d been as a child: so calm, like a bathtub, families like porpoises picnicking on the rocks, riding bicycles down piney paths, eating late and lavishly. We went to the shale beach in the afternoons and my husband would swim out to the boats while Arturo clapped and paddled in the shallow water.

Our last afternoon there was a terrific thunderstorm. As I remember, there was an ominous warning rustle through the pines and in a matter of seconds the sky was cracking like ice on a river in springtime and the air was throwing off shards of electricity. I could see my husband’s slick black head dipping way out in the water and I began waving frantically. Then the sky dumped out its buckets.

What should I do? I tried to shield Arturo, but I had nothing on but a bathing suit. I’d left our clothes and towels at the hotel, in the midst of another fight with my husband. The rain was surprisingly cold and hard, like one of those “massaging” showerheads. Arturo began to whimper.

Just then, a teenage boy appeared at my elbow. How can I describe it? He was like a courtier in a castle, he had that air of grave attendance. His hair was jet and he had a low forehead and fluted nostrils. His gaze was intent, as if I were the sole reason for this moment. His tanned body in a swimsuit was strangely flat, almost one-dimensional. He held out his big towel. I nodded gratefully and wrapped up Arturo. My baby’s slightly droopy eyes, one was what they call “lazy,” his copper hair like mine in a delicate ridge over the crest of his head (now darkened with water), his soft bare body…

“I am Seryozha,” the teenage boy bowed to Arturo. Arturo smiled from beneath the towel.

“Come on!” He gestured for us to follow. He pointed to a big pine on the beach of which one half was charcoaled, branded by lightning. “That was last summer,” said Seryozha, by way of a warning.

He herded us along the path. Lucky it was wide, because you could hardly see past the curtain of rain in front of you, and I was sure I would have stumbled with Arturo. When we got to the little hotel where we were staying, I held Arturo away from me to unwrap the towel and return it. Seryozha shook his head vigorously. “Tomorrow.”

This seemed at the time the kindest thing that anyone had ever offered. He bowed again, and disappeared into the rainstorm.

I’m sorry, Natasha. This has nothing to do with you, really, I mean you shouldn’t be concerned for me like my mother.

Maybe you’re my conscience, actually. Did you get the letter where I said you were my mother’s? I admit I was kind of proud of myself for figuring out that little piece of psychology.

I admit it’s kind of funny to keep writing to someone who doesn’t write back to you, but in a way it reminds me of some art project sanctioned at my college. Anyway, feel free to destroy these letters. I certainly never want to see them.

Last night we went to a Medieval town about an hour’s drive away for a late dinner. Francesca had recommended the restaurant, with outdoor, torch-lit tables in a cobblestone chasm walled by stone churches. Emmie and Mark had a bad “row,” as Hedwig calls it, beforehand, so Emmie stayed behind with Felix. Mark wanted to take Roman. Hedwig and Lorene urged me to come along in order to help Mark with Roman. I would have stayed home out of loyalty to Emmie, I know I would have. Ah! Could you see this coming? Please tell me you couldn’t. Have you ever felt like all that was surreal in the night is a curse in the morning?

It was in the car on the way home. We took a different car from Lorene and Hedwig & Co. because of Roman’s car seat. It was with our clothes on. I kept thinking of that diamond-shaped view of the ocean through the hedges, and our keyhole of nakedness. I said, Please don’t tell Emmie. And Mark laughed, Emmie and I tell each other everything! The kind of slippery teasing that writes a reprieve for everything. That covers all its bases. Do you know what I mean? I know my mother would say that’s not teasing, Leah, that’s an abuse of power. Can you just hear her?

My husband roared at me, “You left me in a thunderstorm!” Oh, I needed to laugh. What a baby my husband sounded like. What a stupid baby. It came to me that I would not tell him about Seryozha — whose name couldn’t, I realized, possibly have been Russian.

I suppose it was in that moment that I knew I was leaving.

Here is the truth, Leah. I would be the crazy one if crazy was what it took to get free.

I told myself that I did not want to “go down” with my husband, certainly that was his slang, and again I needed to laugh at the evocation. For example I had not the least intention of being at home when the police arrived heaving with petty resentment at having to climb four stories. Ours was a walk-up, just like yours, Leah. I would not pretend I wasn’t terrified of those black-nosed German Shepherds, police dogs with thick muscular tails used, like kangaroos, for superior balance.

“Where was I supposed to have thought you’d gone, Natalie, Moscow?” my husband shouted.

Yes, I called myself Natalie then. Assimilation. I thought it sounded odd, harsh, nonsense, but that’s what I thought a professional immigrant would do. Not a housecleaner or a nanny.

When I take too many painkillers now there’s a side effect of my uterus contracting, and I think, mincing down the stairs to Virginia’s children from my attic, that children are truly our penance for being, once, ourselves, children. But then I think, why should you, Leah, have to pay for being Leah?

The storm cleared and my husband said he would take Arturo to the town center where there was an arcade with many small shops, cafés, and a fruit market. They would spend the afternoon making friends with the shopkeepers. Fine, I said. Goodbye, Arturo. I had to kiss him in my husband’s arms although I did not want to go near my husband.

I allowed one moment of silence in our little hotel room.

When I think about my son now, it’s not the way I knew him, held him, and held onto him when he was a baby. I try to imagine him as a grown man, that he’s tall and kind and handsome, that he’s been a good son to his father and his stepmother, that he’s gone into the tile business or gone to college, that he says with curious pride he’s half Russian. Even if he doesn’t, that maybe he thinks it’s his secret.

I must add that as far as I know he has never tried to find me.

No, I never allow myself to think of him like that — in my arms, on the beach of the Mediterranean, in a wild thunderstorm. Because in that moment, I was sure Seryozha (and I know I didn’t hear Sergio) was our guardian angel. I was sure he was a sign. That this was the beginning. The cleansing rain, the hotel room with its welcome, stuffy warmth, Arturo’s eyes gleaming with excitement at our rescue.