Marion is howling internally. This isn’t what she wanted. She wanted to go to the ballet with Sveyta. Will Sveyta ever go to the ballet with a cleaning woman?
“Just let me know if the family is satisfied,” Marion says, and Sveyta moves to her closet, where she puts away her shoes in the correct shoebox. Marion waits to be invited for tea and a cigarette. Then they can discuss the apartment, the family, the type of people she will be working for, these rich who are different from you and me. Let’s discuss how different.
But Sveyta makes no suggestion, and so Marion closes her door. A brief impasse, she tells herself. She looks at the envelope in her hand. It’s sealed. Sveyta didn’t want her to look inside when they were together. She sits on the bed and works open the flap.
There are two twenties in there. Forty dollars. Marion upends the envelope and lets the offensive pay waft to the floor. Her back hurts.
Nathan at Thirty-Four
Nathan at thirty-four hasn’t had many relationships. It’s not that they have been disasters, but they have had a tendency to deflate. Many of Nathan’s friends and relatives are marrying and having children. Nathan tries to point to his poetry as proof that he’s been doing something too as an adult, but his friends and relatives say, Oh yes, and turn back to their respective spouses and children.
After the first night with Marion, Nathan is tempted to let it all go. They are so different, he and Marion, and he’s not sure if she likes him or not. She’s interesting-looking, but not necessarily his type. Then he remembers that he is thirty-four and that this is not a common occurrence for him and calls the number she left.
Marion comes over to his apartment and essentially never leaves.
What happens next for Nathan: a period of high productivity. Marion works nights, drinks with the head chef, and then takes the F back to Carroll Gardens to fuck him. He writes in the morning while Marion slips in and out of ill-defined hungover sleep. She’s thinking about whether her stomach can handle eggs, and he’s thinking about work. But they find they easily live together in the same space. They sleep well and they eat well. They both know that this natural cadence they have with one another is rare.
Nathan’s book comes out, gets some good reviews, and wins an award. Marion takes off a few weeks from the restaurant to go on tour with him. She handles the directions, the rental cars, the flights. Nathan pays for everything, but it’s Marion who coordinates. Nathan says, Thank you, thank you. She says, I like your poetry.
It comes quickly in the night after the book tour is over: Nathan wants kids. It’s a genetic ache. Nathan asks Marion to marry him. She takes the ring and says, But no wedding. She’s watched brides, and she can’t do what they do. She can’t smile for that many pictures. Also, there’s a chance that Nathan hasn’t realized that he is more attractive than she is. Photographic evidence of her plainness might hurt her cause. Last, her family is better left to itself in Sheepshead Bay.
She waits for Nathan to throw a tantrum, but he smiles. Just so long as I get to marry you. Marion hides her revulsion at this greeting-card sentiment.
Nathan and Marion go to City Hall on her next day off. She wears a dress, and Nathan hands her a bouquet that he bought at a floral shop near his apartment. He wears a new suit that fits him well and a flower through his lapel that matches the bouquet, and has had a haircut and a shave. Two friends of his are the witnesses, and Marion notices that they are frosty with her. One is his publisher; the other is Denise. They don’t trust her. This must mean that there is more money than she thinks. She looks at Nathan’s shoes. He says, I even got a shoeshine.
After, they all go to a bar. Nathan insists they order champagne. He hasn’t told his family he’s getting married. Marion told her mother, and her mother seemed happy. Mom, Marion said, Mom, he’s well-off. Her mother said, Good for you, honey. Then she said, Better make sure this sticks.
She’s not marrying him only because of money, Marion knows that she’s not, but she’s sick of being poor. She doesn’t know how to do anything that will make her money. The only thing she can do well is steal, and she knows she shouldn’t be doing that, even from the bipolar Brazilian woman who’s asking for it.
Denise doesn’t like Marion, can’t understand why Nathan wants to marry this uneducated waitress who never smiles, this young woman who does not look young. Marion looks Denise up and down as if she is appraising the cost of her outfit, her makeup, her bag, her haircut. When Denise speaks, she swears she sees a slight curl to Marion’s lip. However, Denise forces herself to acknowledge that Nathan seems happy with her. He rushes around the bar, telling strangers that he must return to his wife, have they met his wife, and he is proud. He tells everyone that he didn’t believe this would happen for him. He believed that marriage was for other people.
Marion doesn’t agree. She thinks Nathan was made for marriage. It will suit him. She wonders why it didn’t happen earlier.
A Russian Family Arrives in New York
It was a long flight, even in first class, and the teenagers moan in the back of the town car that they need sleep. They need their beds. Their mother sits in the passenger seat, next to her husband, the girls’ stepfather, who taps the wheel with his hand at stoplights.
“Soon, my darlings, soon.”
It’s been a difficult year, but in escaping Moscow just before the sun disappears, the mother feels she has done her duty. They’ve arrived in New York for the cool fall air, and she tells the girls that the sun remains in New York even in the winter. It is cold, but the sun shines.
The girls don’t care; they know New York. They will be in ballet class every morning and part of the afternoon. Late afternoon, they will Skype with Russian tutors. Their mother will make them practice English by talking to waiters, salesgirls, and doormen. They will not speak English in their ballet class, because it’s not about language there, it is about movement. It is about grace, and the mother does not find anything graceful or elegant in English. There is no economy, and where there is no economy, there is no sophistication.
They arrive at the apartment building as the Central Park streetlamps flicker on. The mother points them out to her daughters, but they whimper and say they are tired. “Too tired to notice something lovely?” their mother asks. She tells her husband, “Look at the lights.” He grunts and parks the car in front of the building. A valet is on her side, opening the car door for her, protecting her from the traffic. Her husband hands the keys to the valet and gives him instructions for the car in broken English.