15. Lena #3
I stare at him. “So this is how it’s always going to be? Men following me everywhere? For the rest of my—”
“Yes.”
One word. No elaboration. He looks back down at his desk.
I stand in his doorway with forty responses stacked up behind my teeth and none of them will change a single thing and we both know it, so I turn around and leave and find a different corridor to be furious in.
This is what he does. All day, this is what he does.
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t restrain. He doesn’t raise his voice or lock doors or do anything that I can push back against directly.
He is simply immovable, present everywhere I am and somehow also already wherever I’m going, and fighting him is like fighting water.
It just goes around whatever I throw at it and keeps being water.
I rearrange the sitting room furniture in the afternoon out of spite.
Move the chairs, the side tables, the lamp.
The housekeeper finds me doing it and watches with an expression of deep uncertainty.
I tell her I’m redecorating and she nods and leaves, and I feel approximately thirty seconds of satisfaction before I realize I’ve rearranged someone else’s furniture in someone else’s house and I’m still here.
Razvan finds me in the rearranged sitting room an hour later. He stands in the doorway, looks at the furniture, looks at me, and says nothing about any of it.
“In two days you’re coming with me to a nightclub. Business meeting. I’ll have someone bring clothing options for you tomorrow.”
I set down the book I’m not reading. “I’m not going to a nightclub.”
“You are.”
“And I’m certainly not wearing outfits you’ve selected for me.” I hold his gaze. “I’m not your doll. I have my own clothes and my own taste and I’m capable of dressing myself without your—”
“Your clothes are in Budapest.”
I open my mouth then close it.
“I’ll have someone retrieve them if you want,” he says, entirely unbothered. “Or you can choose from what’s brought tomorrow. Either way you’re coming.”
“You can’t just decide I’m going somewhere and expect me to—”
“I decide everything in this compound.” His voice doesn’t rise. Doesn’t have to. “You are in this compound. Therefore—”
“Therefore nothing! I am your wife, not your property, and if you think for one second that I will smile and perform for your business associates while you parade me around like a—”
“You’ll come,” he says, “because the alternative is staying here with twenty men watching you and nothing to do, and you’d rather be furious in public than bored in private.” He tilts his head. “I know which one you’ll choose.”
I stare at him.
He leaves.
I sit in my rearranged sitting room and think very specific thoughts about very specific suffering. The worst part, the part I will not say out loud to anyone, is that he’s right and we both know he’s right and in two days I am going to a nightclub.
In my own clothes.
The evening comes in slowly. Theo has dinner with us, which is the only part of any day I don’t have to work at, because Theo treats every meal like a social occasion and talks enough for all three of us and asks Razvan questions with the relentless confidence of a child who has decided someone is safe.
What’s the biggest car you have? Can I see the biggest car? Do you know how to fly a helicopter? If you learned to fly a helicopter could we go in it. Do you think dinosaurs would have liked helicopters?
Razvan answers every single question. Not warmly, not with the easy affection that Mike shows Theo, but seriously, like the questions deserve serious consideration. Theo receives this as the highest possible form of respect and doubles the volume of his interrogation accordingly.
After dinner Theo slides off his chair and wanders into the corridor and I start clearing plates because I need something to do with my hands. I’m watching the doorway and after a moment I follow.
Razvan is walking down the main corridor toward his office.
Theo is behind him.
Not called. Not invited. Not asked. He has simply fallen into step behind Razvan the way small children fall into step behind things they’ve decided to follow, his small legs covering twice the ground to match the pace, his face arranged into an expression of complete and serious purpose.
Razvan hasn’t noticed yet.
I stand at the end of the corridor and I watch my son follow his father down the hall and something happens in my chest that I have no name for and don’t want one.
It isn’t soft exactly. It isn’t sweet. It’s bigger than both of those things and more complicated and it sits behind my sternum and refuses to be filed anywhere clean.
Razvan reaches his office door and turns and sees Theo two steps behind him and he goes completely still.
Theo looks up at him. “I’m coming too,” he announces.
A long pause.
“Okay,” Razvan says.
He opens the door, Theo walks through it like he belongs there, and the door closes.
I’m standing alone in the corridor with this feeling I have no name for pressing against my ribs and nowhere to put it.
I go to bed alone and stare at the ceiling for a long time.