On Tuesday night, just after ten o’clock, Diane stood in her kitchen staring at the phone buzzing in her hand. Julia had just hung up on her—but at least she had called. Weak with relief, Diane sank into a chair and buried her head in her hands. Julia had been impatient, but her voice had sounded strong and steady. She was all right.
After her heart stopped racing, Diane took a deep breath and dialed Jim’s lab. Twelve rings and no answer; he must be on his way home. Such a reasonable, optimistic man, Diane thought. He hadn’t spent the whole evening lolling around like a fevered invalid, indulging in memories and doubt. He’d gone on as he always did, in orderly steps, trusting that all would work out for the best. She envied him his serenity.
She’d only just pulled herself out of bed, away from her memories, which lingered with her still as she moved around the kitchen brewing a pot of decaf. Now, relaxing in the knowledge that her daughter was safe, Diane sank into a chair and sat staring out the window and saw, instead of the dark night, the one time she’d tried to live only for herself, the one time Jim had lost his composure.
It was 1980. Jim was happily ensconced in his new lab, Chase and Julia were ten and eight, engrossed in their school and friends, and Diane was wild to get back into her work. All summer as she chauffeured her children to the beach or took them shopping for school clothes, she remembered her springtime conversation with Lisa. She needed to take a vacation just for herself. Where should she go? What should she do?
At the end of September that year, she managed to get down to New York for the International Jewelry Convention, where the hustle and chatter and glitter of the other jewelers and their displays usually revitalized her. This year she found herself drawn to a Finnish jewelry designer, Tarja Wiio, whose work Diane had admired for a long time. Even though Tarja herself seemed formidably cold, she asked her to join her for dinner that night.
They skipped the banquet held in the ballroom of the hotel and took the elevator to the restaurant on the top floor, where the lights were low, the prices high, and the food sumptuous. After ordering champagne and salmon and duck with cherries, Diane leaned back in her chair and smiled.
“God, it feels so good to know I get to eat an entire meal without interruptions!”
“Oh?” Tarja looked puzzled. In many ways the Finnish woman resembled Diane—both of them were tall and large boned. But Tarja’s hair was white-blonde, cut helmet–style, and her posture was almost military. “Who interrupts you?”
“Why, the children. The telephone. Or one child gets home late from ballet, and the other has to leave for a scout meeting. That sort of thing.”
“I see. I have no children, fortunately.”
“Are you married?”
“Oh, no.” The Finn seemed slightly offended by the thought.
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes.”
Tarja didn’t elaborate, and Diane didn’t want to seem intrusive. She changed the subject. “I like your new designs, Tarja. They are strong, powerful. Almost shocking—but I mean that as a compliment.”
“I understand. Thank you.” Tarja speared a flaky piece of salmon with her fork. “I liked the design you did about five years ago. The handsome pins that looked like military medals.”
Trust Tarja to speak honestly, rather than praising her current, tired, redundant line, simply to be polite, Diane thought. She smiled. “Thank you. I was proud of those pins. I’d like to get back to that kind of work. I have a feeling that women’s jewelry is about to change. With more women working at executive levels, they’ll want serious jewelry.”
“Go on …” Tarja urged, smiling slightly.
“I’d like to develop a new fine jewelry line for Arabesque. I’ve been thinking about it for months. Using gold, silver, precious and semiprecious stones set in opulent, ornate, but very formal designs. Heavy. Weighty.” Pulling a pen and pad out of her purse, Diane quickly sketched two examples. “Like this. And this.”
Tarja studied them, then nodded. “Yes. I see.”
“But they’re not quite right, are they?” Diane stuffed the pad and pen back in her purse. “I’m so frustrated! I can’t quite see what I want. My mind’s crowded with images of Darth Vader and Strawberry Shortcake and Winnie-the-Pooh! Whenever I have a quiet moment in my studio, I find myself drawing cartoon shapes—daisies, balloons, building blocks.”
“You need a vacation.”
“You’re right. I do.” Diane took a swallow of champagne. “I need to get as far away as possible from my ordinary life.”
“Why don’t you come to Helsinki?” Tarja suggested. “I could show you my studio, my city, and then we could fly together to Leningrad and see the Hermitage.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!” Diane declared, discovering that she was surprised and even slightly—and depressingly—frightened by such an extravagant thought.
“Why not?” Tarja demanded.
“Well—it would be so expensive. The airfare. Hotels.”
“You could stay with me, of course. I have plenty of room.”
Diane stared at Tarja. “How long does it take to fly to Helsinki?”
“Fifteen hours, more or less. Are you afraid of flying?”
“Oh, no. It’s not that. But I’d have to be away from the children for so long—”
“That would be good for you,” Tarja declared. “Were you not only now just saying so?”
“Yes, yes … I think I’d better order some coffee,” Diane told her. It was so appealing, the thought of experiencing two truly foreign countries, especially Russia, with its history of excess and opulence, its wealth of artwork.
“Your children are old, are they not?”
“Eight and ten.”
“And healthy?” Tarja’s voice was stern.
“Yes. Yes, they are healthy.”
“And they have a father.”
“Yes, and we’ve got a housekeeper, now, too.” Diane hesitated, then was surprised to hear herself saying, “Yes, Tarja. I think you’re right. I think I should go.” It will be good for Jim to have to truly be in charge for a while, without relying on me, she thought. And it will be good for my children to know I have a life, and that they can survive without me.
Tarja seemed to read her thoughts. “It will be good for you,” she declared.
Before she left, Diane sat Chase and Julia down in front of a globe of the world and pointed out exactly where she was going. She pulled out volumes of the encyclopedia and had them read aloud to her about Finland and Russia. Finland lived in an uneasy alliance with its vast neighbor. It was an odd country, struggling for its own singular identity. Diane felt a kinship with it. She felt like a country struggling to be free but attached by irrevocable geography to a magnificent, obstinate territory: motherhood. Jim traveled away from his children often, without worrying about their safety, without feeling a tug, a pain, or any agonizing guilt. Diane wanted the same for herself.
The weather, so golden in Massachusetts, was bronze in Helsinki. Light glanced off the modern glass-and-stone buildings in brilliant chips, and the air was crisp and metallic, as if extracted from coins.
Tarja met Diane at the airport, put her up in her chic apartment in residential Tapiola, and spent two days showing her the city. The second day she took Diane to her studio, which was located in the heart of Helsinki in a brazen chrome-and-glass arrow of a structure that shot its way skyward between two neoclassical brick edifices. Tarja’s shop was remarkable. Her jewelry was displayed not under a glass counter, but instead in small silk- or velvet-lined vaults built at eye level into a dark blue wall, brightly lighted, protected by locked glass doors. Most of the jewelry was one of a kind, made from silver or gold, some set with precious stones. It could not be called pretty. It was powerful, unsettling, some of it ugly. The heavy, twisted, peaked, and pitted pieces seemed like bits of landscape wrested from the surface of the moon. Diane imagined their cold weight against her hand.
“Extraordinary. Fantastic.”
“Let me show you my workroom.”
Tarja led Diane through a narrow hallway to a windowless room at the back of the building. Immediately Diane was accosted by the familiar, not-unpleasant odor of melted metals, wax, and plaster, of crucibles cooling from the small furnaces. Safety goggles and face shields lay on plain wooden workbenches near Plexiglas collection boxes for precious-metal filings. Drills, magnifiers, electronic scales, propane and acetylene torches, polishing lathes, all stood gleaming. In one corner was a security vault for the priceless sheets and crumbs and ingots of gold and silver.
“This is my idea of heaven,” Diane said wistfully. “God, I envy you, Tarja. You’re serious about your work.”
Tarja shrugged. “I am an artist.” She didn’t seem surprised or complimented. “And I have no children who require my time and energy.”
The next morning Tarja ushered Diane into her small mini and drove north, up to her summer cabin on a lake near Lappo. The day was brilliant with sunshine. Almost immediately the road was surrounded by battalions of forests with pine trees so massive that they looked like statues of trees, their trunks hewn from iron.
About an hour from the city they turned off the much-traveled major road onto a smaller, quiet one, and from that onto a lonely, winding narrow path. The forest opened up around them. Cylinders of light shimmered down through the evergreens, exposing sunny open spaces lush with wild berry bushes, underbrush, fallen deciduous leaves, moss-coated rocks. In the midst of all this stood Tarja’s cabin, unpainted pine, satiny as skin, with bright circles of colored glass hanging in the windows. It looked as at home in the middle of the forest as if it had sprung up from the roots of the surrounding trees.
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” Diane exclaimed, jumping out of the car.
Tarja smiled. The two women crossed back and forth over the crunchy carpet of autumn leaves, carrying their luggage and groceries into the cabin.
“Put your things in the bedroom. I’ll sleep in the living room. I insist,” Tarja directed.
While Tarja turned on the heat and electricity, Diane looked around the cabin. There were just two rooms: a long rectangle serving as living room, kitchen, and dining area, and a bedroom; a tiny hallway led to a bathroom and sauna. It was all stark, plain pine, slick glass, polished ceramic. The lines were squared and angular, the colors of the curtains, bedspreads, towels, even the cushions on the benches bright, blank reds and blues and yellows.
“Now, come with me,” Tarja said when she’d finished her chores. She led Diane outside through a spacious woods of birches and pines that spread around the cabin. Very quickly they came to the shore of an enormous, jewel-blue lake. The sun was deceivingly bright; it made the air look warm. Diane had taken off her coat and gloves in the house. Standing in only her wool slacks and sweater, she shivered.
“Are you hungry? While the sauna heats up, we’ll take a quick dip, then have a sauna, then I promise you your food will taste like heaven.”
“What do you mean, take a quick dip, Tarja? That water must be freezing.”
“It’s not freezing! Do you see any ice?”
“Well, Tarja, I know that. I can see that. What I mean is, that water must be very, very cold.”
“Of course it is. It will be a shock. Then the heat of the sauna will be shocking, too. But it is good for you. We Finns do this all the time. I do it every weekend that I can, every month of the year, except perhaps in February. That’s why I am so slender, and why my skin is so good, and why I look so young. It improves the circulation. It is restorative. You’ll see.”
“Well, go ahead since you’re used to it, but I can’t possibly—I’d have a heart attack and die. I’m really not the outdoor type, anyway.”
But Tarja was already striding back toward her cabin, so Diane slowly followed her strange friend along the narrow leaf-strewn path through the woods, considering. A few years ago she would have eagerly relished such a new, invigorating experience. Wasn’t this exactly the sort of thing she’d come for—to experience the new and foreign?
Certainly she was seeing a new side of Tarja—not just her naked body as, back inside the cabin, the Finnish woman unabashedly stripped off her clothes—but a bolder, brassier facet of Tarja’s personality. Here in her own country Tarja was still not cheerful, but she was self-assured, even bossy. She did not exude happiness so much as triumph, and Diane watched her with a growing mixture of admiration, amusement, and fondness.
Oh, well, in Rome do as the Romans do, Diane admonished herself, and how bad could it be, for Tarja was undressing with an extraordinary eagerness. Tarja’s body, exposed to the brilliant sunlight, was as geometric as the jewelry she designed—so thin that her hipbones protruded, making, with the swollen mound rising at her crotch beneath a concave stomach, a triangle. Her small, tight breasts were mere doorknobs. Tarja was long, straight, narrow, and her skin was so pale that it seemed like translucent silver leaf stretched over her luminescent white bones. In this place you believe in fairy tales, Diane thought, watching Tarja race naked out the door and along the forest path, her flashing body as natural, as elemental, as if she were a fish-woman risen from the lake.
In contrast, Diane recognized the languid weight of her own body as she peeled off her wool slacks and sweater. Even though she was standing in a patch of sunshine, her skin pimpled and constricted as it was exposed to the chill air.
“Come on!” Tarja yelled.
“I’m coming!” she yelled back, then dashed out the door. Immediately she was shocked by herself, as painfully embarrassed by her nakedness in the outdoors in the daylight as if she were in a spotlight onstage with an audience of hundreds.
She ran with her arms crossed over her chest, partly from shyness, partly to support her heavy breasts, which bobbled as she ran. Sticks and brittle leaves snapped beneath the delicate skin of her feet like tiny explosions of cap guns, powdering her soles with their dust. Her own movements as she ran along made the sunlight flicker unsettlingly against her eyes, and the air became eerily more substantial—as if she were passing through not shade and brightness but through matter, now sharp, now soft.
Ahead of her Tarja screamed piercingly as she hit the water. At the shoreline Diane hesitated, watching as the other woman leaped and frolicked.
“Don’t stop now!” Diane urged herself. Then she jumped.
The water was so cold she felt as if her skin were sizzling against her bones. Already, from the run and the chill of the northern air, her heart was thudding, but when she plunged into the water’s icy depths, it was instantly transformed into a jackhammering machine, automatically functioning like a steel motor within her appalled, assaulted flesh. The cold of the lake water drove her breath from her lungs. Her body was a scream of pain. She sank, feetfirst, through the blurry cold, each organ, muscle, bone, and nerve flinching fiercely. Gleaming water closed over her head. This was like childbirth in its extremity. Everything human in her was helpless.
Not of her own volition, she suddenly surfaced. Almost without consciousness she gasped and sputtered, thrashing her arms against the freezing, burning blue. As she pulled the frigid air into her tortured lungs, her body became a statue: marble solid, still. Her limbs, her torso, her heart, and veins were made of rock. And this hardening was bliss.
She let herself sink down once more.
“Come out now!” Tarja was yelling. “You must—” Then she splashed out from the shore and grabbed Diane’s upper arm and pulled her. Diane didn’t help; she couldn’t. Tarja hauled her upward until Diane lay curled on the grass, gasping for air. This air, warmer than the water, hit her once again like a slap, as if the universe had convulsed against her. Diane’s ears were ringing; her sight was blurred.
“Wow. You are in terrible shape,” Tarja scolded. “Come on.” She pulled Diane up against her and they stumbled toward the cabin. Diane could not feel her feet or legs or any part of her body. Her consciousness had shrunk to a nugget within a fiery field of red. If Tarja had not pulled her along, she would simply have toppled over woodenly and died. But by the time they reached the cabin, her fingers and feet were tingling, and the warm air inside was balm to her lungs.
Tarja pulled Diane to the back of the cabin, opened the heavy wooden sauna door, and brought her into the tiny room of intensely dry heat. At once Diane’s skin dried so fast she felt as if it were cracking like the skin on plump, ripe grapes. Her heart, which had been laboring mechanically inside her, swelled with an animal flexibility until it bulged against her chest.
“I’m going to die,” Diane gasped.
“No, you won’t. Just lie down. Catch your breath.”
Tarja arranged Diane’s weak body on a narrow, flat plank. It was so fiercely hot it seemed airless. Diane fought off a wave of claustrophobia.
“Wake up!”
She was not aware that she had passed out. “Wake up, Diane. Sit up.”
She felt Tarja’s hands pulling at her until she was sitting, leaning against the sauna wall. Strange pricklings at her hairline told her that she was sweating. Odd, every bit as odd as childbirth, how her body continued to slug along on course, to live, to function, without her permission or even her desire.
She felt like someone who has traveled very far.
“Here,” Tarja said, handing her a small glass of very rich, dark beer. “Drink this.”
Diane obeyed. The beer was delicious. Her breath came back to her, her senses returned, and she was at last completely relaxed.
Later she showered and dressed, then sat feasting on herring with sour cream, onions, and dill, poached salmon with a creamy mustard sauce, new potatoes, moist radishes gritty with salt, and dense sweet dark bread that she slathered with butter. Far beyond the confines of the forest the sun was setting, sinking the sheltered cabin into a cozy gloom. Diane and Tarja did not talk except to say, “Do you want more of this?” and “Yes, please”; they sat quietly watching the darkness come. Later they did the dishes in a companionable silence, then listened to an opera on Tarja’s portable stereo before going to bed.
Her sleep was thick, creamy, dreamless. It was as if her bones had melted into milk. When she awoke, Diane lay very still beneath the Marimekko duvet, looking at the sunlight on the papery skin of the silver birches outside the window. Her pleasure was complete.
Here in Finland Diane recognized the depth of the infidelity of which she was capable: not of experiencing ecstasy with another man but of finding it on her own, by herself. It was as if in the Finnish lake she’d set herself free, singed the claims of her children and her husband from her skin, from her heart. She wasn’t ashamed. She wasn’t sorry. She was triumphant. She was herself again, Diane, alone.
She was ready to go to Russia.
Tarja was a naturally quiet woman, not given to small talk. During the drive back to Helsinki, to the airport, and during the flight to Leningrad, Diane leaned her head against the cold windows and let her thoughts drift free. It was the first time in years that she’d had so much uninterrupted time.
Perhaps it was being so far north that made her think of the winter before, when Chase had entered a figure-skating competition. Diane went to the town rink with some other mothers to watch the competition and the award ceremony. She noticed how she and her friends talked and laughed with a shrill vivacity they hadn’t exhibited since they were adolescents. When Chase skated out on the ice, a tiny brave figure alone in the bright lights, Diane’s heart caved in with love and terror. If he fell, if he embarrassed himself, she would die right there in the bleachers. He didn’t fall, and she didn’t die, but she knew her heart had been scarred, as if burned by the intensity of her apprehension.
When, the previous spring, a popular second-grade girl named Melony didn’t invite Julia to her birthday party, Julia’s distress had inflamed Diane like a fever. She’d held her daughter, soothed her, reasoned with her; she’d taken her out for a hot fudge sundae and a Disney movie, and all the time her heart was black with hate.
It wasn’t only sorrow and fear that mauled her heart; it was hope, and sometimes happiness so powerful it hurt. Diane knew what was important to her children, and it wasn’t that they have a mother who made pretty jewelry; it was a mother who made brownies and brought them to school for their birthdays. Diane made those brownies. She dyed eggs at Easter and hid them, along with straw baskets, balls and bats, water pistols. She made Christmas cookies with them and labored over homemade Halloween costumes. She volunteered to ride in buses when their classes went on field trips to the Museum of Science or Old Sturbridge Village. All the commotion of those trips, the giggles and shouts and popped bubble gum, the little girl sick in the aisle, the little boy who caught his finger in the metal seat frame—those marked her heart, too. Being around little children was like living inside a hailstorm.
Now that her children were older, she still didn’t know, she thought no one knew, where the child ended and the mother began. Of course there had been times when she and Jim were first in love when she’d felt this same union with him; looking into his eyes as they lay in each other’s arms, she had thought: I am you, we are each other, we are one. That melting rapture returned between them occasionally, reminding her that when the children were off on their own, they would still have each other. But when would that be? Would a cord snap between them? Would she feel it break, hear the twang? When would she know that her actions didn’t influence her children’s lives? For even as she drove across the Finnish countryside and flew deep into the Soviet Union, she felt delinquent, guilty, as if she were stealing something—her mind, her emotions, her body—that really still belonged to her children.
Tarja and Diane arrived in Leningrad at night, in time to be driven to the Astoria Hotel where Tarja had made reservations. Diane was exhilarated at being in Russia but exhausted by the traveling, and by her thoughts. She sank into a deep sleep on her rather lumpy bed.
The next morning, after a breakfast of black bread and tea, they were met by their Intourist guide, a pleasant young woman who introduced herself as Khristina Ahkmatova. She led them to her gray Volga and pointed out landmarks of the city as she drove toward the Hermitage.
“On your right you will see St. Issac’s Cathedral. St. Issac was the patron saint of Peter the Great. Across the square you will see Mariinsky Palace, home of City Soviet, what you would call our town hall.” The woman handled her car deftly and spoke English well. “Now you see before you the famous Bronze Horseman, that statue of Peter the Great given to him by Catherine the Second. The rearing horse symbolizes Russia, trampling the serpent that symbolizes the forces opposed to his reforms.”
“It’s beautiful,” Diane said. Neither of the other women replied, so she sat in silence looking at the city, which gleamed even on this dreary day.
They drove into Dvortsovaya Ploshchad. Diane had read that the Winter Palace was four blocks long and contained more than a thousand halls and rooms, but actually to be one tiny figure in the midst of such enormity was overwhelming. Like a child, she pressed her nose right against the car window for the best view. The buildings surrounded a parade ground wide enough to hold an army of thousands. In its center rose the Alexander Column, as phallic as the Washington Monument, if more slender, with an angel on top. The massive complex of buildings was both sedate and grandiose; the sheer size was a statement that overpowered the severe and rather monotonous classical facade.
The line of people waiting to tour the Hermitage was equally overwhelming. Diane and Tarja stood patiently behind their guide in a line that looked endless but moved fairly quickly. Diane could catch snippets of French and German and what she thought was Finnish, but most of the people spoke in Russian and looked Russian.
“We have over two and one half million objects on display in over fourteen miles of halls and galleries.” Without preamble, Khristina Ahkamatova began to lecture. “The museum is so vast and the displays so glorious that visitors have been known to faint.”
Diane understood. During the long day as they walked through the Hermitage, so much exuberant beauty dumbfounded her. She gaped at samovars thick with gold and silver, encrusted with jewels, at the vast bronze-and-gold throne room where a twenty-seven-square-meter map of Russia sparkled with semiprecious stones, the cities and rivers marked by emeralds and rubies, at ornate mirrors, crystal chandeliers, painted ceilings, marble statues, gilt-trimmed malachite pillars. Turning, looking down, catching her breath, over and over again her eyes caught on the head scarves of the Russian women, who dressed somberly for the most part but covered their heads in material brilliant with color, swirling with intricate designs. A sense of recognition swept over her. A wonderful intoxication, a kind of lust, an excitement that always invaded her blood, making her restless, sleepless, irritable, moody—and that always preceded a period of real creative accomplishment—was beginning to assail her. She was both sorry and glad when it was time to go back to the hotel. She was exhausted. But they would return the next day.
In the hotel dining room, over a first course of caviar and starka, Diane said, “This is exactly what I needed, Tarja. I’m this close to coming up with my new designs. This close.” She held up her thumb and forefinger, indicating the fraction of space between her mind and its breakthrough.
The next morning the two women rose early. When they went down to the lobby to meet their guide, the desk clerk called Diane over.
“Mrs. Randall? We have something for you. It just arrived.”
He handed her an envelope. She ripped it open and read:
julia in hospital.
meningitis.
come home.
jim.
“Oh, God!” Diane moaned. Her body rocked backward as if from a blow. “Tarja. My daughter’s sick. I must go home at once.” Turning back to the desk clerk, she said, “I need to leave at once.”
“Oh, no,” he assured her. “You cannot leave for four days. You see what your ticket and your visa says.”
“I know, I know, but my daughter is sick. Here, look at the telegram.”
“I’m sorry. I cannot help you.” The man turned away.
“Diane,” Tarja said, “calm down. You must be calm. This is going to be difficult. They do not like spontaneity or change. I’ll make some phone calls. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you, Tarja. I’ll get the Service Bureau to book a long-distance call to the States for me.”
The next few hours passed with a vivid intensity, each minute clicking by with the sharpness of a knife blade slicing its mark into Diane’s heart. Various Russian officials listened and mumbled and nodded at Diane, then informed her that changes could not be made; she would have to wait until the time her visa stated to leave. When Diane insisted that they make the necessary changes, or put her in touch with someone who could, the clerks would nod and disappear, eventually returning with another functionary. While she waited, she tried to reassure herself: Jim would be with Julia, and Jean would fly up; Julia loved her grandmother, and Susan would fly in, too. The telephone operator could not get a line through to Boston. Officials came and went, sometimes listening sympathetically, sometimes speaking with Tarja in barking syllables, always referring the problem to someone else. Khristina Ahkmatova arrived to take them to the museum. When they explained Diane’s problem and asked for help, she said merely, “I’m sorry. I am not qualified for that. I am only your guide. I am sorry.” Eventually she went away.
Tarja advised Diane to wait at the desk. She went to their rooms and packed both bags, just in case.
Diane sat by the desk and waited. She thought of Julia, and she cried. She’d refused to believe in some abstract system of justice that delivered punishment to mothers who went off on their own to indulge in completely selfish experiences. Jim certainly didn’t narrow his life by such superstitions. But sitting there as heavy hours went by, she felt guilt grow until it overshadowed her. Of course. Motherhood was a universal thing, an organic, mysterious, jealous power. Diane had spurned motherhood, choosing to indulge in a few moments of pure, free, individual ecstasy—and now she was paying the price.
Tarja said, “Come eat lunch.”
“I can’t eat. I’m not hungry. How can I eat when my daughter is deathly ill? I’m so far away. What is it with these people? Why can’t they help?”
“Probably they’re checking on you. Their system doesn’t allow for easy changes. You must be patient.”
“Perhaps I should take a taxi to the airport and see if I can get on a plane, any plane anywhere.”
“That wouldn’t work. Their system doesn’t allow for that, either.”
“ ‘Their system … their system.’ ”
“Yes, it is convoluted. Everything must be checked and double-checked, and no one wants to take responsibility for an unofficial act. But you knew this before you came, Diane. I wrote you that it might be cumbersome.”
“Yes. I know. I never dreamed this would happen.”
So Diane waited, sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Astoria, blind to the beauty around her, focused on thinking only of her daughter.
At about three o’clock in the afternoon, she was approached by a tall, slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed man in his early sixties. Unlike the hotel officials, he was expensively dressed in a well-tailored suit of dark gray wool. He looked Russian, but his English was perfect.
“Hello, Diane Randall,” he said. “My name is Erich Malenkov. I understand you have a problem.”
She leaped from her chair. “My daughter—This came this morning.” She held out the telegram. “I must leave at once.”
“Yes.” Maddeningly, he sat down in a chair and gestured her to hers. “Could I see your passport and your hotel identity card?”
She handed them to him in silence. He studied them carefully.
“What is your husband’s name?”
“Oh, really. Is this necessary? Time is passing by—”
“Diane.” Tarja spoke her name, only that, as a warning.
“If you will help me, I will help you.” Erich Malenkov’s smooth tone did not change.
Diane sighed. “Jim Randall.”
“Your parents’ names?”
“Al White. Jean White.”
“Your mother’s maiden name?”
“Marshall.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“Two brothers, one sister. And two children, ten and eight, and the eight-year-old is sick—” She found herself pleading, “She has meningitis. Please, can we cut through this red tape—”
“Yes,” Erich Malenkov said, surprising her. He stood. “We can go now. Your bag is ready?”
“Well, yes—” Diane was confused.
“I’ll drive you both to the airport myself. We have reservations for you on a plane to Helsinki that leaves in three hours, and on to Boston via London from there. Perhaps in Helsinki you’ll be able to get a phone line to Boston more easily.”
He led Diane and Tarja to his car—a long, shining black sedan.
The scenery of the city, the river Neva, wound past her car window. She’d traveled so far to see this, to be here, and now every cell in her body ached to be gone from this place, to be back home.
Leaving his car with a porter, Erich Malenkov escorted Diane and Tarja through the airport, down a corridor, to the waiting room of a plane boarding for Helsinki. When he held out her ticket to her, Diane nearly ripped it from his hand.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so very much. I can never thank you enough.”
He nodded. “I am glad to help.”
On the plane, seated between Tarja and an enormous Russian whose shoulders shoved into her seat, Diane fastened her seat belt with shaking hands. She leaned back into her seat, closed her eyes, and prayed silently, as the plane shuddered, roared, and lifted off into the cloud-flecked sky.
Not quite twenty-four hours later, she landed at Logan. She’d put a call through to Jim from Helsinki and again from London, and as she went down the narrow ramp from the plane, she saw that Jim was waiting for her at the gate. He looked as tired as she felt, and as frightened.
Brushing past an embracing couple in front of her, she reached Jim. “How is she?”
“Better. Not out of danger, but better.”
Diane put her hand on his arm in a gesture that was both beseeching and steadying. Jim didn’t move to hug or kiss her but took her heavy carry-on bag from her hand and turned away. “The luggage ramp’s this way.”
As they waited for her suitcase to come off the conveyer, then hurried to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Jim described Julia’s illness and its symptoms in painful detail. Diane knew he was not trying to torture her, and yet he seemed angry with her, as if her having left had somehow sparked this terrible infection. For it was an infection of the spinal cord, a complication of the common cold that Julia had been recovering from—or so Diane had thought—when she left for Finland. Julia had complained of chills and a headache, and a rising fever made her increasingly apathetic and miserable. Jim had thought it was simply the flu. But when he took her to see their pediatrician, Dr. Walker had discovered that Julia’s neck was so stiff she could not bend it forward. Immediately he’d put her in the hospital and run blood tests. When the tests came back, the doctor’s suspicions were confirmed—the meningitis was curable but required constant vigilance. She’d be in the hospital at least two weeks.
After what seemed an eternity, they arrived at the hospital, parked in the enormous echoing underground lot, and raced through the wings and down the long hall to Julia’s room. And there she was, lying in bed, pale and unmoving, her eyes shining with that false brightness that results from fever and dehydration. Diane could see that in only six days Julia had lost weight. Her cheeks were sunken. IV tubes ran from a nearby stand down into her arm.
“Oh, baby,” Diane cried, rushing to her daughter.
“Mommy,” Julia said. “I’m scared.”
Diane bent over her daughter, putting her cool cheek against Julia’s warm face, kissing her hair. She put her own fears aside. “You don’t have to be. Daddy says you’re fine, and the medicine is helping you. You’ll be better soon.”
“And you’re here now.”
“Yes. I’m here now.” Diane sat on the bed and held both of her daughter’s hands. “Oh, honey, you’ll be all right, I promise.”
And she was. For the next eight days Diane sat by her daughter’s side in the hospital, reading aloud her favorite books, singing to her while she dozed, laughing at idiotic children’s TV shows with her, and then finally when Julia felt well enough to be restless the last few days, cutting out paper dolls and teaching her to embroider. When memories of her splendid dive into the crystalline Finnish waters flashed uninvited to her mind, Diane shoved them away with the same flush of guilt with which an adulterous married woman puts away thoughts of her lover. Not here, not now, it wasn’t appropriate, it wasn’t safe.
The next spring Diane came out with her line of fine jewelry: brooches, earrings, necklaces cast in silver with a fused gold overlay, shaped in scrolling Byzantine forms that were almost letters, or lilies, or lions rampant, intertwined, each with a semiprecious stone centered in the middle. She’d invested heavily in national advertising; the company had come up with a picture of a sleek dark-haired executive woman wearing a navy blue suit, a white silk blouse, and an Arabesque brooch at her neck, as she talked to a boardroom of men. The line sold out.
She’d never tried to go back to Russia again. She’d never wanted to tempt Fate, or whatever force it was that ruled the lives of mothers.
Ten years later, Diane sat alone in her kitchen, waiting to hear her husband’s step at the door, eager to tell him that they’d weathered another crisis: Julia was safe.