Then it was my turn. "The Devil," she said, and of course. I knew it. Why even play the game? I sat and listened to Marva explain how people misunderstand the Devil card. It was really not a bad card. It was just a sign of extreme attachment to earthly pleasures. Right, I said, and I nodded like I understood, as I glared back at the Devil, with his blue flesh arms spread wide, and the two child figures underneath him, attached at the skin.
"See how they are attached at the skin?" Marva said. "It"s like they choose to be there, it"s an earthly attachment, not an eternal attachment. So don"t despair really. It doesn"t mean you"re going to h.e.l.l."
I nodded again. Right, I said, as I looked at the Devil blowing fire into only one of the children"s backs. The boy"s face was sort of sad, but almost vacant, as if he felt the pain but couldn"t understand the reason his skin seemed to be on fire.
"I"m scared," Laura said, coming into my room later, tugging on my arm.
Laura had strange, thick wrists, and sometimes at night, she barely looked human to me.
"Not tonight, Laura," I said. I was frustrated in bed, thinking of how Jonathan walked me to my father"s apartment at the end of the night and didn"t even lean in to kiss me on the cheek or hold my hand. How I put my arms around him, and felt he was heavier now, with flab around his waist like a thick belt. "You have to sleep in your own room."
"I don"t want to!" she screamed.
I picked Laura up and took her out of my bedroom into the living room. My father was still up, reading the paper. "Dad," I said. "Here is your child."
I draped Laura over my father"s lap, and we both laughed a little.
"h.e.l.lo, child," he said to Laura.
"h.e.l.lo, old person," said Laura, who had stopped crying.
"Now, that"s just mean," my father said.
The fireplace was lit, and the da Vinci painting looked nice in the firelight. It was midnight. Sometimes, I felt calm and happy with my new family. I sat down next to my father and Laura and closed my eyes.
"What are you reading?" Laura asked.
"A story," my father said, turning the page.
"What kind of story?"
"A very long story about many different kinds of people."
"What"s it called?"
"The newspaper."
Laura laughed. "Read it to me," she said.
My father dramatically opened The New York Times to the business section. "Once upon a time, in a faraway land, lawmakers promised that their opposing viewpoints would not harm safety-net programs-"
"Dad!" Laura giggled. "No more."
"I"m not finished yet . . .," he said.
"Tell me a real story," she said. "Tell me how you and mom met again."
"I"ve already told you," my father said.
"But Emily doesn"t know," she said. "Emily, do you know?"
I looked at my father, but I wouldn"t open my eyes. I couldn"t look at them.
"No," I said. "I don"t know."
I didn"t really. When did they meet? Was it twenty years ago, across the lawns at a block party? When did they fall in love? It could have been anytime, anywhere, in front of my face.
I heard Laura bang her fist on his knee. "Dad, tell us."
"Well," he said, "frankly, it"s late, and I"ve got to get up early tomorrow."
"Daaaaaaad," Laura said. Laura banged her fist on my knee now. "They met at the movies."
"Oh yeah?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and calm.
"My mom started crying halfway through the movie because the movie was sad. She still does that. Dad took her hand and said, "Don"t worry."" Laura picked up my hand and laced our fingers together. "Like this."
"That was nice of him," I said. I heard my father"s knees crack when he stood up, folding the newspaper into quarters. "What movie were they seeing?"
"Mrs. Doubtfire," my father said, his voice coming from the kitchen. "The Robin Williams one."
"Oh," I said. "I saw that movie when I was eleven."
"You couldn"t have been that young," he said.
"I was," I said. "I know for sure. I was at the theater with you."
I remembered that day specifically because on the way out of the theater Mark didn"t hold the door for me, and it slammed in my face, and I thought this was a sure sign he didn"t want to be my husband, and afterward in the car, I was glad when my father lectured Mark on what it meant to be a gentleman. "You open the doors, you pay for the meal, and you drive," he said. "It doesn"t matter if it"s your G.o.dd.a.m.n grandmother or your wife, you got that?"
I heard my father place his teacup in the sink and leave the room.
"Kde je hrob Franze Kafky?" the teacher said. It was our second cla.s.s together. "Like, Where is grave of Franz Kafka?"
"Kde je," she repeated. "Where is . . ."
The cla.s.s was silent.
"idovsk hbitov na Olanech," the teacher said. "In case any of you are interested in visiting it. The Jewish Cemetery at O."
The cla.s.s was even more silent, if that was possible.
"Oh, don"t be afraid," she said. "Czech is not as terrifying as it looks. And we do have grammar, despite what any Germans might be telling you on the street. All you need to know, really, is that once you learn the alphabet, you"re all set because every letter in Czech is always p.r.o.nounced the same. And you p.r.o.nounce, most of the time, every single letter in the word.
"For example," she said. "It is Thursday. It is tvrtek."
She led us through the word phonetically: Ch-trv-tek.
"Oh," Jonathan said loudly, as though he were still the teacher in the front of the cla.s.sroom. "That explains it."
Everybody laughed. When somebody finally p.r.o.nounced it correctly, she dismissed us.
Jonathan and I set off for the miniature museum. The miniature museum showcased microscopic exhibits like Kafka"s head carved into a poppy seed, or a golden train sculpted on a strand of hair. Jonathan and I looked up the address of the museum and set off to find it. We walked for an hour until the snow started to acc.u.mulate on top of our hats.
"Maybe it"s microscopic," I said. I stopped walking. "Maybe you can"t actually find the museum without a microscope."
Jonathan put his mouth close to my ear in front of the St. John of Nepomuk statue. He whispered something I couldn"t hear. It was something important, I know that, because it made him lift up my face with his finger. He kissed me, and it was new and welcome and familiar. I was electrified. Finally. The snow had started to melt; rain was running over our feet like rivers. Jonathan"s skin was smooth and his dimples deep. The details of the city were emerging. Below St. John of Nepomuk, an angel appeared, her stone finger over her lips.
"That statue is supposed to grant you a wish," I said. "You"re supposed to touch it and it grants you a wish."
Jonathan reached out his hand and touched St. John of Nepomuk. He closed his eyes. "I wish I wasn"t such a dumba.s.s."
I laughed. We began walking.
"Let"s go get some absinthe," Jonathan said. "Have you had it here yet?"
"No," I said.
We went to the Cafe Louvre. Cafe Louvre was a giant restaurant with so much s.p.a.ce it was like eating in a really beautiful department store.
"h.e.l.lo," the waiter said when we sat down at our table. The waiters in Prague always spoke in perfect English, but I liked to respond in Czech for practice.
"Dobr den," I said.
"We would like to have some absinthe," Jonathan said. "Not the cheap stuff. And a pivo."
The waiter took our menus and left.
"So how long have you been a lawyer?" I said.
"Too long," Jonathan said.
"You don"t like it?"
"I like it the way I like stable things," he said. "It"s boring. I do product liability. It pays well. Sometimes it"s exciting. Sometimes it"s not. Sometimes all I talk about all day is a fence."
The waiter came back with our absinthe. He put two cups of green liquid in front of us. It looked like antifreeze. He ripped open two packets of sugar and poured them into two spoons. He dipped the sugar into the absinthe, and then lit the sugar on fire. A flame grew over the spoon like electric mold, and the sugar caramelized. I laughed while Jonathan stared into my eyes. The waiter poured the flaming sugar into the absinthe and stirred. Jonathan and I picked up our gla.s.ses, toasted to nothing except transformation, which felt like enough. I swallowed the absinthe, and it was huge and hot down my throat. It felt like swallowing the sun whole, like a giant mistake.
"Am I different?" he said. "Sometimes you look at me like I"m different."
"You are different."
"I am," he said. "You"ll be disappointed, I"m sure."
"I don"t have very high expectations," I said.
"I like it here," he said. "I like who I am here. With you."
"Sometimes it"s nice to get away," I said. "You take a step back from your real life. You find out things you didn"t, couldn"t, possibly know before."
I felt like I was lying, even though I was barely saying anything at all.
"What"s wrong with what you know?" Jonathan asked.
"Don"t you want to know what you don"t know?"
"What don"t you know?"
"Why the universe started as a singularity," I said to him. "For instance."
He laughed. My whole body was tender. If Jonathan reached out to touch me in that moment, he would have left hand imprints all over my body.
"What the f.u.c.k is a singularity?" he asked. "Can you explain to me, right now, what a singularity is?"
"It"s infinitesimal."
"I still don"t get it."
"Yeah, neither do I," I said.
"Well if you find out, do let me know. I"ll be hanging off the edge of my f.u.c.king seat," he said.
He smiled to let me know his swears were always compliments.
The walls of the hotel served as lit storage cabinets designed to look like a giant, illuminated checkerboard. In the white s.p.a.ces, thin statues of gaunt men and women were stretched at their heads and feet. There were stacks of round dinner plates and bunches of steel firewood. Maybe it was the absinthe in my blood, maybe it was the Marshmallow Sofa, but something about the room just didn"t feel right.
"That"s my sofa," I said, pointing to the black Marshmallow Sofa in front of the coffee table. "I picked out that sofa."
Jonathan sat down on it.
"Does it make you question everything you thought you knew about sitting down?" I asked.
He ran his hand over the leather. "I don"t know anything about sitting down," he finally said. I laughed.
He took my hand and pulled me into his lap. My whole body felt limp. His touch had always been too powerful a thing. His touch was something I a.s.sumed I"d find in other men, but never did. He smoothed my hair away from my face. It was all happening again. Just like it used to. Except when we used to sleep together, Mr. Basketball always wanted me on my back, on a bed. He touched my b.r.e.a.s.t.s while he moved inside me, held my forehead down with his other hand. Jonathan sat upright and slid my underwear down my legs. "Is this all right?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. I nodded. "Please."
He unzipped his pants, and they dropped to the floor. I could see through his boxers that he wasn"t hard. Mr. Basketball was always hard. Mr. Basketball was hard even when he was on the other side of the room reading the dictionary. Jonathan didn"t get hard until we were both naked, until he was against me, and even then he wasn"t fully extended, and as if to change the subject he said, "You don"t shave anymore."
We were both embarra.s.sed. I was embarra.s.sed not for being unshaven, but for the way I had shaved when I was younger. I had been too scared to cut myself, so I only shaved the upper part and he had once said it looked like Bert from Sesame Street.
"Can we have this discussion after, please?" I asked. He laughed, took my face in his hands, kissed me, relaxed now that he was inside me, we were together again, and I thought, I can"t believe Mr. Basketball is inside me again.
By the end, he was shaking.
"I"m sorry," he said. "I haven"t had s.e.x in eleven months."
"That"s okay," I said. Eleven months?