Chapter 3
Now Mark even took me along — not because he wanted to, but because a wife at the table gave him the look of a decent family man. And the look of decency Mark loved more than anything in the world.
— Friday we're having dinner with the guys, that restaurant on Warren Street, — he said, not tearing himself from the mirror. — Dress decently. And, for God's sake, smile. Do you still know how to smile?
— I know how.
— Then show it. At least be a wife in public, not a corpse.
I came out in the black dress — the very one he'd once loved. He measured me with a look.
— Change. In that you look like you're at your own funeral. — He yanked something bright out of the closet and threw it at me. — Put this on. And let your hair down. You're still a woman, aren't you, not a mop.
I changed. Let my hair down. Did everything he ordered — the way I always did.
While I fastened my bracelet, his phone chimed. He glanced at the screen, quickly typed something, smiling at one corner of his mouth, and slid the phone into his pocket.
— Who's texting? — I asked, already knowing the answer.
— Work, — he answered without a blink. — Let's go, we're late. And I'm begging you — no circus tonight.
In the car he was silent, and I looked at his profile in the light of the oncoming headlights and tried to remember when he'd last looked at me the way he was looking at his phone now. I couldn't.
— Smile, — he reminded me, parking. — And remember: you're my wife. Behave accordingly.
Accordingly to what — he didn't specify. But I knew anyway: quietly, invisibly, conveniently. Like a piece of furniture brought out into society.
The restaurant was expensive: dimmed light, white tablecloths, that particular hush you pay extra for. His crowd was already seated at a long table — colleagues, someone's wives, someone's not-wives. I was introduced with a collective nod, and within a minute I was forgotten.
Mark immediately ended up beside the woman at the head of the table — pulled out her chair, poured her wine first, before everyone. I sat down at the far end, between someone's wife and an empty chair.
— So you'd be Mark's wife? — My neighbor, a plumpish woman with kind eyes, tried to start a conversation. — He's so charming. The whole department's crazy about him. — She broke off, catching something in my face, and hurriedly buried herself in her plate.
The woman at the head of the table was called Margo. Striking, with scarlet lips and a laugh half a tone louder than necessary.
— So that's what you're like. — She barely grazed me with a glance. — Mark, you never said you had such a… quiet wife.
— Ariana doesn't like noisy crowds, — he answered for me, the way you answer for a child taken out visiting from pity.
— I noticed. — Margo smiled, and that smile made my stomach go cold. They were acquainted. Far too well acquainted for "Margo" and "his wife."
I reached for my glass and caught the look of one of the men — quick, appraising, full of the same knowledge everyone at that table had. He looked away at once. They all knew. I sat in a circle of people, every one of whom knew more about my disgrace than I did.
Dinner dragged on endlessly. Glasses clinked, someone told jokes, waiters brought dishes I couldn't swallow.
— And what do you do, Ariana? — one of the men asked politely.
— She's a homemaker, — Mark beat me to it and smirked. — Or rather, just a keeper. Of the home. Cooks divinely — isn't that right, darling?
— That's right, — I said, and the word stuck in my throat like a lump.
— How sweet. — Margo studied me as if I were an old-fashioned thing in a shop window. — I can't imagine life without work, myself. Sitting at home, waiting for a husband… — She gave a little shudder. — Deadly boring.
— Not everyone can be as interesting as you, — Mark said to her, and the two of them laughed — together, in sync, the way people laugh who have plenty of shared jokes. And, probably, shared nights.
— Remember that corporate retreat in Sochi? — Margo leaned toward him, lowering her voice, but not so much that I couldn't hear. — When you and I…
— Margo, — he cut her off with mock sternness, laughing with his eyes alone. — There are children present.
— Where? — She swept the table with a feignedly innocent look and lingered on me. — Ah, you mean the wife. Sorry.
The table snickered. I smiled. Smiled as if it were a joke and not a knife they were taking turns twisting in my chest.
He reached over and brushed a strand from her face — a habitual, domestic gesture, the way a husband fixes his wife's hair. In front of me. No one at the table was even surprised. Only I was surprised — that I was still capable of feeling pain.
— You're not eating anything at all, darling, — he suddenly remarked, playing at concern. — At least have some wine. Or have you forgotten how to drink too?
— Leave her be, Mark, — Margo purred. — Not everyone knows how to… relax.
And again that shared laugh of theirs.
— To Mark! — Margo raised her glass. — To the best man in this city. Some lucky woman got him. — She looked me dead in the eye, with a challenge. — You are lucky, aren't you, Ariana?
— I'm lucky, — I said, and drank. The wine was bitter as bile.
Music started, a few couples went out to dance. Mark offered his hand — not to me, to Margo. In front of the whole table, in front of me, he led her out onto the floor. I stayed sitting with my glass, and the woman beside me delicately looked away.
Then he and Mark — Margo — went out "for a smoke" and didn't come back for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes I sat at a stranger's table, answered polite questions, smiled — and counted every second, imagining what you can do out in the cold for twenty minutes besides smoke a cigarette.
The kind-eyed neighbor quietly touched my hand under the table.
— Don't look over there, dearie, — she whispered. — Don't torture yourself. Just don't look.
But I looked. I always looked — as if, by keeping my eyes on them, I could hold on to at least something. There was nothing to hold on to.
They came back flushed, and she sat down even closer to him than before. I dropped my napkin. Leaned to pick it up — and froze.
Under the table, hidden from everyone by the white cloth, Margo's hand lay on my husband's knee. Not brushed by accident — lay there. Like it owned the place. And as I watched, her fingers crept slowly higher.
Blood rushed to my face, my ears, roaring so loud the voices at the table merged into one solid drone. The whole world narrowed to that hand under the cloth — a strange woman's hand on my husband's thigh.
I straightened up. Looked at Mark — straight, dead-on, begging with my eyes alone: take it away. Not in front of me. Please.
He met my gaze. And didn't look away. And didn't move her hand — just looked at me, calmly, with a lazy smirk, as if asking without words: and what will you do?
Nothing. I did nothing. That was the most terrible part — I was the one who looked away first.
Something inside me broke loose and crumbled down, like plaster off a rotting ceiling. I stood up — abruptly, the chair scraping the parquet — mumbled something about the restroom, and nearly ran between the tables.
Someone called after me — maybe Mark — but I didn't turn. My legs carried me on their own, the walls swam, and I barely made it into the toilet before I doubled over the sink.
I was sick, turned inside out. I stood gripping the cold edge, looking in the mirror at a woman with running mascara — and didn't recognize her. Mark was right. I no longer recognized myself.
With trembling hands I dialed Dana.
— Come get me. Please. The restaurant on Warren Street.
— What happened?! Ariana, are you crying?
— Just come get me. I can't be here anymore. I can't.
— On my way. Don't go anywhere, hear me? On my way.
I slid down the wall onto the cold tile, pressed the phone to my chest, and sat there listening to a stranger's revelry hum behind the door.
The door opened. In came Margo — to freshen her lipstick, as if nothing had happened.
— Oh, you don't feel well? — She glanced at me in the mirror, taking out her scarlet lipstick. — Ate something bad?
— You know he's married, — I forced out, getting up. — Aren't you ashamed at all?
— Ashamed? — She was genuinely surprised. — Darling, he should be the ashamed one. Or you — for clinging to a man who doesn't want you. But me? What for? I just take what's lying around loose.
— Take your hands off him.
— If he were yours, I couldn't reach him even if I tried. — She blotted her lips with a tissue, looked me over appraisingly in the mirror, and walked out. — So the question isn't for me, darling.
I was left alone. The woman in the mirror stared me down: thirty years old, running mascara, a stranger's bright dress my husband had ordered me to wear. I didn't know that woman. And, it seemed, I didn't want to.
Dana was waiting at the entrance. She saw my face — and didn't ask about anything. Just hugged me and led me to the car.
— He didn't even come out, — I said in the darkness of the cabin. — I fled his dinner, and he didn't even come out to see where I'd gone.
— Thank God for that. — Dana gripped the wheel until her knuckles whitened. — Ariana, leave him. Hear me? Before he devours you completely.
— And where would I go? — My voice cracked. — I have nothing. No money, no corner of my own, no profession. He took it all — quietly, little by little, over seven years. I didn't even notice the moment I stopped being a person and became his thing.
— You'll stay with me.
— And sit on your neck? — I shook my head. — He's right. I have nowhere to go.
— Don't you dare! — Dana slapped the wheel with her palm. — Don't you dare repeat his words after him!
But I was already repeating them. That was the whole horror of it — I'd long since been thinking and speaking in his voice.
— Stay at my place tonight, — Dana asked, braking at my building. — Just one night. Don't go back to him.