“But Heather was crazy about him and didn’t even blink an eye when she found out what he really did for a living.”
“She didn’t mind that he was a smuggler?”
“Remember I said she’d always liked bad boys. Whatever hesitation or skepticism she might have had, he charmed out of her. She said she was a goner after the first month.”
Beatrice made a sour face and shook her head because it sounded all too familiar—much the same thing had happened with her and her husband, only it had taken a while longer for her to fall completely under his spell.
“Vadim was very upfront with her in the beginning, saying he really wanted to move to America one day because so many Russians had gone and were doing well there. But that was fine with her because she didn’t plan on staying in Russia, and if things worked out between them, she’d happily take him home with her when the time came.
“Whether he tricked her or it really was good between them, by the time she was to leave she couldn’t imagine going home without him.”
“And so, ‘Reader, I married him.’” Beatrice said the famous line sarcastically and then shook her head again, disgusted by too many rancid memories of her own failed marriage.
“Well, no, they didn’t get married for a while after they got to America. She was smitten but she wasn’t stupid. Meanwhile Vadim kept a low profile and, as far as she knew, just enjoyed exploring his new homeland.
“He was eager to see America, so that first summer back they traveled for a couple of months: Los Angeles, Seattle, Phoenix, New York. What Heather didn’t know was that in each of those cities when she wasn’t around, Vadim made contact with Russian criminals who were running all kinds of illegal businesses—drugs, human trafficking, illegal weapon sales. And right after they married, he went to work.”
Beatrice touched Mills’s arm and then stood up. “I’ll be right back.” She walked toward the bathroom although she didn’t need to use it. For some unknown reason, hearing this story had opened a floodgate inside her, and now all sorts of really toxic emotions were pouring out. Of course most of them had to do with her ex-husband. Until that moment she thought she’d done a pretty good job of keeping her emotions in check, sorting sanely through the marital disappointments, heartaches, bitter memories, and bad experiences and throwing a great many of them out of her head and heart. But even just hearing this fragment of Heather Cooke’s story got Beatrice raging again—at her ex-husband, herself, at their failed marriage, at what an abysmal waste that part of her life had been. In a final letter to her husband, she had written, “If I could somehow erase every single pixel of our relationship from my memory I would do it without hesitation. Even the good times, even the great—I’d press ‘delete’ in a second.”
In the bathroom now she stood looking at herself in a mirror above one of the sinks. “Loser. How could you have been so naive?” She sighed and closed her eyes. Her brain quickly filled with a mean circus of lousy, noisy memories and images, all jostling around and elbowing each other aside so they could get to the center ring to perform and annoy her.
“OK, enough.” She ran cold water over her hands, checked her eyes to make sure there were no tears, and went back out to Mills and his story of Heather Cooke, alchemist.
As Beatrice sat down again at the table, a thought raised its hand in her head to ask a question. “Did Heather’s husband know about the alchemy?”
“No, not at the beginning. As I said, it wasn’t something she wanted others to know—in fact, very few did besides her mother. You know those people who are really talented at sports or a musical instrument but rarely play or practice because it doesn’t interest them?”
“My ex-husband. He was wonderful at chess but didn’t play because the game bored him.”
“That was Heather too. She didn’t practice alchemy for a variety of reasons but was certainly a master. As an academic, however, she was able to investigate it without raising suspicion by writing her doctoral thesis on the history of alchemy in America. Not the trendiest topic in the world, but it allowed her to explore the subject for years, and along the way discover answers to some of her questions. She told whoever asked that she’d grown intrigued by alchemy both as a practice and metaphor after having worked for so long in an adjacent field of study. Since her degree was in metallurgy, it made perfect sense.”
“But then one day her husband found out about it and everything changed,” Beatrice broke in, beating Mills to his punch line. As soon as she spoke, she knew it was mean and a result of her mini-meltdown in the ladies’ room. Here she was, half grumpy, half edgy. Should she go home alone and sulk? Some part of her soul was just east of furious now but should she leave it alone and let it run its course, or take some kind of action that might help assuage it? Was that even possible? Can we ever say to our furies when they’re laying siege to our borders that they should take a few deep breaths and back off a little?
Mills, sweet Mills, didn’t bite back with meanness. Instead he just picked up the story right after what Beatrice had said. “But how Vadim found out is a great story in itself.” He was about to continue when he looked more closely at Beatrice. “Are you all right? Do you want to go home?”
“No, but would you mind if we walked a little bit? I’m feeling sort of antsy.”
“Of course.”
They left the café and walked slowly together by the side of the river. Cornbread was off the leash, zigzagging slowly here and there, sniffing the world. Now and then a bicyclist or jogger whizzed by or they passed other walkers but for the most part they had the area to themselves. After a while Beatrice took Mills’s hand. They walked in silence until she said, “OK, I’m OK now. Tell me how he found out.”
“Vadim hadn’t been feeling well for a while so he went to a doctor and had some tests done. They didn’t like what they found so more tests were ordered. Eventually it was discovered he had stage three stomach cancer.”
Beatrice stopped and turned to Mills. “How bad is that? I know nothing about cancer.”
“Bad. Anyone with stage four is a goner, notwithstanding miracles. He came home from the hospital and told Heather he was dying.
“Now this next part is a little foggy because neither of them would tell me any of the details. I had to put their two stories together to come up with a whole.”
“Why wouldn’t they tell you details?”
“You’ll see in a minute. What they did say, both of them, was Heather ordered Vadim to take off his shirt and lie down on the couch. When he asked why, she said, Just do it. She put both hands on his stomach and closed her eyes. The hands stayed in one spot for a long time. Vadim tried to speak but she said, Shut up. When she took her hands away, she told him to stay there and left the room.
“She was gone quite a long time but on returning she had a small bottle in her hand, like the kind of little liquor bottle stewardesses give on an airplane when you buy a cocktail. She told him to drink it all and then lie back down again. Vadim didn’t know what she was doing but said her voice was one he’d never heard before. It was hard and not to be questioned—‘a teacher’s voice,’ he called it.
“The drink tasted like Coca-Cola, which made it even stranger. He thought, I told her I have cancer and she brought me a soda? But he drank it all and lay back down, as ordered. She put her hands on his stomach again, one on top of the other but this time in a different spot, down much lower.