Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) by Kadish Rachel

Author:Kadish, Rachel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

I ride the shuttle bus to the airport with George. It seems imperative not to let him out of my sight a moment longer than necessary. When I’m with him my dread thins and some crude compass points unsteadily forward. I love this man. Everything else is up for grabs. My speaking voice has risen a register. I sound winded. I sound like one of my damn students, every sentence ending in a question. Secrecy, heretofore absent between George and me, burgeons.

What are you thinking?

Nothing particular.

Engagement has been, so far, the worst thing to happen to our relationship. According to Yolanda, this is all in my head. According to Jeff, I ought to refuse George outright until he comes to the table with an endorsable deal. And according to Hannah—the only one with a livable track record where relationships are concerned—I need to sort it out without George’s help. I need, according to Hannah’s womanly wisdom, to approach a man like a bomb defuser approaching an unexploded ego. Never mind that this parses with nothing in my experience of men. (And why, after all, have I felt so certain I understand men? My years disappointing Jason? Jeff’s harsh tutelage? A camaraderie with Adam—whose primary food group is pizza? My father who can’t, it turns out, stay on the phone with me?) This is the big time. This is playing for keeps. If George knew how compassless I feel, according to Hannah, he would burst out from between the airport’s magazine-and-candy racks, sprint down the Terminal 2 concourse, clear the jetway in a single grand jeté to the tarmac, and lift off for Buffalo under his own steam, flapping his way northwest beyond the runway until he’s nothing but a contrail of wounded pride on the horizon.

There goes another good one, the travel pillow saleswoman says wistfully in my ear.

Note to self: Investigate whether development of surrealism was concurrent with moments of intense psychic torque in individual authors’ lives.

I insist on walking George to security, my arm wrapped tightly with his, stepping through the fluorescent-and-tile jungle of LaGuardia Airport. At the end of the snaking line, he takes me by the shoulders. His eyes are a vibrant brown that makes me want to cry. “Tracy, since we got engaged you’ve been very quiet. What’s going on?” He brushes my face with a warm, dry palm. “You all right?”

Oh, George. If I could only roll out my heart for us to salve together. But I’m afraid you’ll spontaneously combust. “I’m just a bit freaked,” I say. “But I’m okay.”

His hand stops moving. He looks stricken. “Freaked? By being engaged to me?”

“But okay,” I urge. “You know. Freaked-but-okay?” I bob my head, willing him to sign on to this diagnosis.

The line advances. Walking backward, his bag rolling between us, George moves with it. “But you’re good with this, right?” he says. “With us?”

Hannah’s urgent coaching blasts in my head. Before me lies a minefield of language. Gingerly I set down one foot, then the other.

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