The Immortalists(92)

Varya finds herself drifting as he speaks. She sees the cherries, their yellow and black and red, with the soft focus of a dream. He uses his phone to show her a photo of his family. It’s early fall, the trees a fuzz of mustard and sage. Luke’s parents have his thick blond hair, though theirs is lighter than Luke’s. His brother – ‘Asher,’ he says – is a young teen, his face pimpled but grinning openly, his hands on Luke’s shoulders. Luke can’t be more than six. His shoulders rise into Asher’s hands, and his smile is so wide it’s nearly a grimace.

‘What about you?’ he asks, putting the phone back in his pocket. ‘What’s your family like?’

‘My older brother was a doctor, as I mentioned. My younger brother was a dancer. And my sister was a magician.’

‘No shit. With a black hat and a rabbit?’

‘Neither.’ Around them, the lighting is dim, so Varya can’t pick out things to worry her. ‘She was fantastic with cards, and she was a mentalist – her partner would pick an item from the audience, a hat or a wallet, and she would guess it without verbal cues, blindfolded and facing the wall.’

‘What are they doing now?’ asks Luke, and she startles. He watches her. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that you used the past tense. I thought they must have –’

‘Retired?’ asks Varya, and shakes her head. ‘No. They’re gone.’ She doesn’t know what makes her say what she does next; perhaps it’s that Luke is leaving, and there is something that feels so unusual, so relieving, about sharing with another person these things she’s only told a therapist. ‘My youngest brother died of AIDS; he was twenty. My sister – took her life. Looking back, I’ve wondered if she was bipolar or schizophrenic, not that there’s anything I can do about it now.’ She finishes her glass and pours another; she rarely drinks, and the wine makes her feel lazy, dulled, open. ‘Daniel got caught up in something he shouldn’t have. He was shot.’

Luke is quiet, gazing at her, and for a ridiculous moment she fears he will reach out and squeeze her hand. But he doesn’t – why would he? – and she exhales.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘Is that why you do the work you do?’ She does not answer, and he pushes on, hesitantly at first and then with deliberateness. ‘The medications we have now – well, they would have saved your brother’s life, if they’d been available back then. And genetic testing could make it possible to detect an individual’s risk of mental illness, even to diagnose them. That might have saved Klara, right?’

‘What is your article about?’ Varya asks. ‘My work, or me?’

She tries to keep her voice light. Inside her is a vein of fear, though she isn’t sure why.

‘It’s difficult to separate the two, isn’t it?’ When Luke leans forward, his eyes loom, and something deep in Varya lurches. She realizes it now, what frightened her: she never told him Klara’s name.

‘I should leave,’ she mumbles, pressing her hands to the table to stand. Immediately the floor seesaws upward, the walls sway, and she sits – she falls – down again.

‘Don’t,’ says Luke, and now he does place his hand on hers.

A bubble of panic climbs her throat and bursts. ‘Please don’t touch me,’ she says, and Luke lets go. His face is sorrowful; he finds her pathetic, and this is more than she can tolerate. She stands again and this time is successful.

‘You shouldn’t drive,’ Luke says, standing, too. She sees panic in his face, the same panic she feels, and this alarms her even more. ‘Please – I’m sorry.’

She fumbles with her wallet, drawing out a thin stack of twenties, which she deposits on the table. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Let me drive you,’ he presses as she makes her way to the door. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Where do I live?’ she hisses, and Luke drops back; even in the dark of the bar she can see him redden. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ and she is now at the door, she is outside of it. After checking behind to make sure Luke is not following her, she sees her car and runs.





33.


She wakes on Saturday to a crunch of pain in the center of her back and a hammer in her skull. Her clothes are wet with sweat and stink. She kicked off her shoes in the night, and her sweater as well, but her blouse sticks to her stomach and her socks are so damp that when she peels them off they drop heavily to the floor of the car. She sits up in the backseat. Outside, it is morning, and Grant Street is thick with rain.

She brings the heels of her hands to her eyes. She remembers the wine bar, Luke’s face coming toward her, his voice low but insistent – It’s difficult to separate the two, isn’t it? – and his hand on hers, which was hot. She remembers running to the car, and curling in the backseat like a child.

She is starving. She crawls from the backseat to the front and scrabbles around in the passenger seat for yesterday’s leftovers. The apples have turned spongy and brown, but she eats them anyway, as well as the warm, puckered grapes. She avoids the car mirror but catches sight of herself, accidentally, in the passenger side window – her hair like Einstein’s, her mouth drooping open – before she looks away and finds her keys.

At her condo, she strips off her clothes, depositing everything directly in the washing machine, and showers for so long the water turns cool. She pulls on her bathrobe – pink and ridiculously fluffy, a gift from Gertie, something Varya never would have bought for herself – and takes as much Advil as she thinks her body can stand. Then she climbs into bed and sleeps again.