He took me to Prague and we stayed in the Four Seasons near Mala Strana. We’d rented a car and driven about an a hour to the small town where he’d been born and had lived until he left for good. There was no family for me to meet. His mother’s sister, the aunt who’d raised him, had died a year earlier, he explained, after suffering from ovarian cancer.
But we wandered through the quaint cobblestone streets with the tourists, stopping in shops and having a local beer at the pub. He knew everything about the history of the town, Kutná Hora, once the second most important town in Bohemia because of its silver mines, now just a side trip tourists make while visiting Prague.
He spoke with the locals in Czech, explained to me how things had been during the communist era. How there were lines around this block for oranges that had come from Cuba, how this thriving store once was just a hollow space with empty shelves, how the communist propaganda had been taught in that tiny school.
On the way back to the city we stopped at a small Bohemian restaurant which, with its heavy oak tables, wood paneling, and thick ceiling beams, could have been plucked from the Middle Ages, if it weren’t for the jukebox and the young thugs smoking cigarettes and drinking enormous glasses of beer at the bar. The waiter brought a giant cast-iron platter of meat and potatoes. We ate until we were stuffed.
He’d been quiet all day. Not sullen or morose; just contemplative, maybe a bit sad. I just assumed that it was hard for him to be back in the place where he grew up, where so much had been lost-his parents, his aunt. I didn’t press him to talk.
“Isabel,” he said when we were done with our meal and waiting for our dessert. His accent was heavier than I’d ever heard it, had been since we’d arrived in the Czech Republic, as if being home, speaking his native language, reconnected him to a part of himself he’d neglected, even tried to quash. “I never thought I’d bring anyone here. Never thought I’d want to.”
“I’m glad you shared this with me,” I said. “I feel so much closer to you.” He was looking at me attentively; I felt heat rise to my cheeks. He wasn’t handsome, not beautiful in the classic sense. But his intensity, the hard features of his face, had a kind of magnetic power that lit me up inside. He dropped his eyes to the table.
“I want to share everything with you,” he said softly. He reached into his pocket and slid a blue velvet box across the table toward me. “Isabel. Maybe it’s too fast. I don’t care. I could have done this the night I met you.”
I opened the box to see a gleaming, cushion-cut ruby in a platinum setting. It was breathtaking.
“Isabel,” he whispered, grabbing both my hands. “This is my heart. I’m giving it to you. I’d die for you. Marry me.”
I remember being stunned but nodding vigorously, tearing as he put the ring on my finger and came to kneel beside me and take me into his arms. People around us looked on; one woman, another American-I could tell by her Tommy Hilfiger sweater and khaki pants, but mainly by her sneakers-clapped her hands and released a happy little cry.
What had I expected to feel in that moment? I didn’t know. You see it from the outside, stylized and engineered to sell in films and commercials. You hear the stories your sisters and girlfriends tell. But you only know how it’s meant to feel. It’s one of those moments in your life, in your relationship-the markers, the milestones, the important snapshots. But I could only experience the moment as I experience everything, observing, narrating. How Marcus was as close to emotional as I’d ever seen him. How the men at the bar turned to look at us, one of them sneering. How the lights were too dim for me to really see the ring. How a truck passed by and caused the bottles on the shelves behind the bar to rattle slightly. And I observed myself: happy, surprised, and, dare I admit it, a little relieved that my life wouldn’t pass without this moment. From the outside, I supposed it looked very romantic. But that’s where romance dwells, isn’t it, in the observation? Inner life is far too complicated; one doesn’t feel romance. You feel love, and even that isn’t one note resounding above all others; it’s one element in the symphony of your emotions.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” my sister said. “You barely know him.”
Marcus and I had announced our engagement over dinner at my sister’s, and Linda and Erik had made all the appropriate noises; embraces were exchanged, there was the excited chatter about plans and when and where. But later in my sister’s bedroom while Marcus, Erik, and the kids tried out a new computer game Marcus was testing, Linda and I had the real conversation. I knew it was coming, of course, I’d seen her shoulders tense, noticed the brittle quality to her smile, the worried eyes.
“When it’s right, you know,” I said with a shrug. “Right?”
That’s when she started to cry, just tear a little, really. But still, it was enough to cause disappointment, and not a little anxiety, to wash over me.
“I thought you liked him,” I said, sinking onto the bed beside her.
“Izzy” she said, raising her eyes to the ceiling, then lowering them to mine. She took my hand. “He’s just so… cold. There’s something unavailable about him, something distant.”
I shook my head. “You just need to get to know him better,” I told her. “That’s all. It’s a cultural difference.” But there was a hard knot in my middle.
She nodded and tried to smile. “Just take your time with the wedding. You get to know him a little bit more before you dive in.”
I felt a lash of anger then. “You know what I think, Linda?”
“Don’t,” she said, lifting her hand.
“I think you don’t really want me to be happy in a relationship.”
“Stop it, Isabel.”
I lowered my voice to a whisper. I didn’t want everyone else to hear. “I think you’re happier when I’m unhappy. That you’re more comfortable when I’m alone so that you can be the one with everything-the great career, the perfect family.”
“That’s bullshit,” she spat, “and you know it. You know I’m right. That’s why you’re so angry. Christ, Isabel, he’s just like our father.”
If I didn’t love my sister so much, I would have slapped her. Instead, I got up and walked out of the room.
“Izzy” she called after me. I heard apology in her voice but I didn’t care. I told Marcus I wasn’t feeling well and we left soon thereafter.
I didn’t talk to my sister for almost two weeks-which felt more like two years. Eventually, she called to borrow a pair of shoes and things went back to normal-no apologies, no discussion, no resolution, just water under the bridge. Marcus and I were married six months later in a small church up in Riverdale near my mother and stepfather’s home. An intimate gathering of my family and friends followed. Marcus didn’t have anyone to invite. At the time, it didn’t really seem strange or sad. I don’t recall thinking about it. We were happy; that was the only important thing.
5
Detective Grady Crowe stepped out onto Seventh Avenue, leaving St. Vincent’s Hospital. He pulled his leather coat together and brought the zipper up beneath his chin, took the black knit cap from his pocket and slid it over his close-cropped hair.
It was rush hour. The streets were packed even downtown with people hustling back and forth, huddled against the frigid air. It was a Village crowd, hipper, more casual than what he’d see if he’d found himself in Midtown at this hour. Messenger bags slung across chests instead of briefcases gripped in tight fists, leather instead of cashmere, denim instead of gabardine.