This Is Not a Love Song Read online

  “We drove as fast as we could out of town, and when we saw roadblocks ahead, we abandoned the cars and fled into the hills. We thought the Serbs would ignore us—they wanted us to leave; we left.” Edina stared across the room at the stiff, spooked faces of the pioneers. “After an hour, we came upon an orchard. There were about thirty of us, men and women both. We were halfway through the orchard when sniper fire started. The trees were like the ones here—short, the branches low to the ground—and we hid wherever we could. I was with my fiancé, but when the shooting started we were separated. He had given me an old shotgun, but that was foolishness. I had never fired a gun in my life, and the trees were so dense that it was impossible to see what was happening even five or ten meters away—just bullets coming through the branches. Then mortars started exploding all around, and when that stopped, the Chetniks moved in on foot. We could hear the sound of their rifles—automatics, Kalashnikovs—going pop-pop-pop. The only thing to do was stay low and shoot at anyone with good boots—the kind the army had given to the militias.

  “Because of the war, none of the fruit had been picked, and the ground was covered with rotten apples. For hours I crawled through that mush. Hiding, waiting, then crawling some more. By the time the sun was down, the Serbs moved on and I reached the forest at the edge of the orchard. I waited all night for my fiancé or one of the others, and then at dawn I started walking alone. At noon I found a refugee convoy moving toward Sarajevo, but the trucks kept breaking down, and there were checkpoints, and it took eighteen hours to get to the city. All that time, the smell was in my skin, my hair, my mouth, everywhere. No matter how much I scrubbed, the smell wouldn’t go away.” Edina bolted down what vodka remained in her cup. “So today, when you were picking apples and thinking about Wisconsin and Halloween and Todd the quarterback, that’s what was on my mind.”

  Tears traced snail tracks down Kirsten’s face. “I am so, so sorry,” she said. “If I had known—”

  “You couldn’t have,” Edina said. It was some comfort to know that whatever Kirsten said next, it would not begin with Do you know what that reminds me of? Vitas handed Kirsten a wadded paper napkin, which she used to dab at her eyes. His jaw was set, his eyes narrow. He looked like one of those quiet, solid Scandinavians who lived across the Baltic, men carved from ice.

  “Is good time to go home,” Vitas said.

  VITAS DROVE, EDINA rode in front, and Kirsten passed out in the backseat. Vitas assured Edina that he knew the way; all they had to do was go east until they hit the lake, and from there it would be a simple right or left turn to bring them to Evanston. Edina found a classical music station on the radio and turned it up loud enough to dispel any obligation to make conversation. Vitas kept his eyes on the road, his face illuminated by the headlights of oncoming traffic.

  Twenty minutes into the drive, his eyes lingered in the rearview mirror, taking in the scene in the backseat. He watched the road for a while, then lowered the volume on the radio.

  “Is okay if talking?” His voice startled Edina. She had been wondering if she had said too much—wondering if two months in the States was affecting her in ways she hadn’t expected. “All-American apple pie makes very tired, and talking is good for staying awake.”

  A smile pricked the corners of her mouth. “So it’s the pie, not the vodka?”

  “Of course,” Vitas said. “Vodka give energy. But pie? Look what it do to Kirsten.”

  The road was four lanes in each direction, bordered by parking lots and department stores. The line of streetlights strobed off the hood of the car. “You’re not going to tell me about your first time, are you?” she said.

  Vitas chuckled before he spoke. “Well, is not like Kirsten first time,” he said. “Is first time in love. I think is different.” He sounded almost shy, skirting around the edges of the story rather than plunging headlong into the telling. There was a sudden burst of sound as Vitas rolled his window down an inch, followed by the flare of his lighter. He had both hands off the wheel, steadying it with his knees. He stoked a cigarette to life extravagantly, as if it were a cigar.

  “There was girl, long times ago, when I am at university,” he said. He ashed his cigarette against the top of the window; the sparks raced away from the car. “How to say how beautiful? Hair is like mink—so dark, but in the light, is glowing. Dark eyes too. Dark as coffee after long night of vodka.”

  “You’re the one who should have been a poet,” she said.

  He made a noncommittal noise—a clipped hum—and jetted a plume of smoke toward the window. “During this times, is many things for poets to write. We believe are making new world. We are seeing Berlin Wall, Solidarity, Havel. Now is our turn, yes? I making speeches, writing articles, leading marches, always saying same thing: ‘Lithuania must be free!’” Vitas chopped the air in front of him, and the tip of his cigarette arced like neon. “Sometimes crowds so big that I use bull’s horn, and everyone is cheering. I wave arms and cheering is getting louder. When troops come for first time, we saying, ‘Go home! Go back to Moscow!’ They have guns and we have banners, but we do not care. We are young, and is crazy time.”

  “The young rebel,” Edina said, smiling in the darkness. She pictured Vitas, his hair thicker, his features more angular, his skin flushed in the long days of a Baltic summer. “The girls must have loved you.”

  “Girls. Well. Now are bringing me back to start of story.” He checked the rearview mirror—not a darting glance, but slowly, casually. “All the time I making speeches and saying Lithuania must be free I am in love with this girl—”

  “The girl with the mink hair?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Is most beautiful girl at university. Also sweetest. Also smartest. And here is funny thing: she love me too.”

  “I thought you said she was smart.” Edina played along—she felt the rhythm of their walk in the orchard returning—but her heart wasn’t in it. And despite herself, she counted every time he looked in the rearview mirror and wondered if Kirsten’s hair could be described as mink.

  “Smart about everything, but not love,” he said. “But I do not complain. Is angel. Is bringing me coffee in the morning and vodka at night and rubbing my feet after marches and listening to speeches and telling me how to say better this or that. Her name was Nadia Volkonsky. You are listening? Volkonsky. Very Russian name. Very un-Lithuanian name. It never matters. Nadia is born in Vilnius, and her heart is one hundred percents Lithuanian.

  “But then is January, and many more troops coming, and soldiers are killing demonstrators. All of us going crazy. We are pulling down statues of Russian heroes and tearing down street signs in Russian. Anything looking Russian or sounding Russian or smelling Russian: all must go. And I hear voices behind my back say, ‘How can Vitas be for real when is banging that Russian slut?’ I saying to them all to fuck off, but their words stay in my head. My country belongs to Russia for too long, and now it must be ours, must be free, must be…” He paused for a moment, the streetlights illuminating his face in slow pulses. “Must be clean.”

  Edina shifted in her seat. The faint sound of a piano seeped from the speakers.

  “So there is me, big man in movement, and I see Nadia, and I should see angel, because angel is what she is, but what I seeing now is Russian devil. I say to her things are no good. She is not making me happy. Is not understanding me. All bullshit things. Then one day at protest leaders’ meeting, I start big argument with her, and in front of everyone I saying to her, ‘Go home to Moscow!’ Is same thing we saying to soldiers. She looks for someone to tell me I am asshole—is roomful of her friends, her comrades—but nobody says nothing.”

  Nobody says nuzzing. Edina mouthed the words to herself.

  “Is standing there, my angel, with tears in her eyes. I feel those eyes, hot like coal, but I am not looking at her. I am looking down. Waiting for her to leave. We all do same. All of us heroes of revolution. So brave in streets, but in our hearts, cowards.”

  E
dina listened to the metronomic tick of the road against the tires. They were moving east along a road populated with gas stations and low, flat office parks. Wisps of exhaust reached upward into the cold night air. After a red light, the gas stations gave way to a dense stand of trees, a black mass of wadded shadows that lined the road.

  “You want last chapter?” Vitas said, his voice breaking the silence, again surprising Edina. “For long time, I am thinking I ruin her life. Nadia is sweet, so kind, and see: This is what happens. It kills her, I am thinking, for me to throw her away. But ten years ago I am in Saint Petersburg, making interviews. I going to café and am seeing woman with husband and little girl. Woman is beautiful, and from clothes and hair I can tell is rich too. And husband doesn’t look like old, fat Russian. Rich, but not mafia.” Vitas lit another cigarette, quickly this time, and took a long drag. “Of course is Nadia, and is singing song with little girl and when is done husband claps and gives little girl big hug. Is perfect, yes? Is maybe life I could had. So what I do? I get up. I run. Run like chair is on fire. And when I get to street I still running, and everyone thinking I am crazy drunk. Or thief.” He paused, and the tip of his cigarette glowed. “Or maybe,” he said, “man who is seeing ghost.”

  They were on a street without stoplights, angling south alongside the railroad, the lake roiling darkly behind tall maples and quiet mansions.

  “Now you see,” Vitas said, and then added: “Is something you should know.”

  THEY CARRIED KIRSTEN into her apartment and put her in bed with a glass of water on the nightstand and a shopping bag near her head. Edina did not ask Vitas how he knew where Kirsten lived.

  When they left, Edina shoved her hands deep in her pockets for the walk to their building. One fist gripped the whistle on her key ring—part of her welcome package from Kirsten, who told her that blowing the whistle would scare away muggers or rapists and summon the police to her side. It was that simple.

  They covered the distance without speaking, their breath rising in spectral puffs on the darkened side streets. Yellow light warmed the windows of the houses. Televisions spilled blue pulses onto the empty porches. The trees were almost bare. Wet leaves were pasted to the sidewalk, while the dry ones could be heard scrabbling across the road in the sharp, lakeward wind. In silence they climbed the three flights of stairs to where their apartment doors faced each other across a narrow, dimly lit hallway.

  “Edina, you know what I trying to say in car?”

  She had her key in her hand. She was tired, her limbs heavy and useless, like a parachutist fallen into the ocean, struggling for air as her chute fills with water. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been a very long day. I don’t think I’m any good at talking right now.” She wanted to tell him that it was unnecessary—this confession, this explanation. Wasn’t it enough that Kirsten was young and pretty? Did he also have to see in her the face of a love he had abandoned? Edina didn’t blame him for trying to relive happier moments, before regret had taken a bite out of his heart. She just didn’t want to hear his attempts to justify it.

  “I am not clear,” he said, screwing up his face. “If can speak like you, would be simple to say.”

  She saw in his eyes that he wanted her to make this easier for him, but nothing was ever easy.

  “I hoping,” he said, “that you are not thinking I am like those men. The men with good boots.”

  Those men? She groped for something to say. “You—you didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Yes, is different,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. “But is also same.”

  She looked down the corridor, the line of doors receding in the distance. Her key was in her hand. All she wanted was to be inside, to close the door on this day.

  Vitas leaned closer. “Is what I trying to say in car,” he said. “I want to be honest. And is why I tell you about Nadia—because you are alike her. Brave.”

  “Me?” she said. “But I thought—what about Kirsten?”

  “The girl?” He shook his head. “I not understand.”

  She was beginning to feel dizzy—all that vodka and nothing to eat all day—and with one hand blindly sought the knob of her door. “I’m sorry,” she said again, turning her back on him. “I’m very tired. I must—I need—good night.” She unlocked the door, the whistle jangling against her keys. She knew Vitas was standing behind her, but without looking back she slipped inside her apartment.

  The glass dome of the peephole flickered when Vitas’s apartment spilled light into the hallway, then blinked when his door closed. The only sound was the rattle of steam rising in the radiators. Although it was dark in her apartment, she squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could stop the tears from coming. Sobs constricted her throat and she slid to the floor, where she hugged her knees tight to her chest.

  She wasn’t brave. That part had come out all wrong, and now it was worse than a lie. She wasn’t brave, and she had tried to hold something back for herself, but all she had done was make a mess of everything. She wasn’t brave, and her fiancé—sweet, serious Satko—didn’t just disappear. They were separated when the first bullets struck, but all through the sniper fire and the mortar rounds, they had called to each other. She would shout his name and wait for his reply, then crawl through the stony crab apples and fetid mush toward the sound of him answering, “Didi! Didi!” Neither of them dared to stand because of the snipers, and for an hour she heard the distant, throaty huff of the mortars followed by the spray of shrapnel and splintered wood over her head. They called each other’s names, but the terrain was steep and deeply rutted and they never seemed to draw any closer.

  Satko called her name even after Edina saw the boots crushing the fallen fruit. She wanted to yell to him one last time to be quiet, to tell him the soldiers were coming, but when she saw those boots in the next row of trees she knew that any sound would give her away. She gripped the stock of the shotgun. She could kill the man closest to her, but there would be more, and the blast would lead them right to her. Amid the web of branches under one of the trees she curled herself into a ball and inwardly begged Satko to do the same. To hide. To wait. To bury her name deep in his throat and let it lie there, silent, where it could not betray him.

  This Is Not a Love Song

  She was Kitty to her parents, Katherine to the nuns in high school, Kate when she was in college. But to anyone who knew her then—Chicago in the first years of the nineties, her hands tearing at her guitar like a kid unwrapping a Christmas present—she had already become Kat.

  Like the rest of the horde of art students and rockers-in-training, we lived in Wicker Park, where rents were low and apartments doubled as studios, rehearsal spaces, black-box theaters, and flophouses. The park itself was still a rusty triangle of scalded grass littered with needles and broken bottles. It would be a few years before the new trees and the swing sets and the DIE YUPPIE SCUM stencils on the smooth-bricked three-flats; before the press would hype Chicago as “the next Seattle,” and record-company types started skulking around the bars. Back then, there weren’t any boutiques on Damen selling five-hundred-dollar sweaters—just bodegas, auto-body shops, and empty storefronts whose faded signs whispered of plumbing supplies and cold storage.

  Later there would be the brief flurry of albums and magazine covers, but back then the only people paying attention to her were the music nerds on the lookout for the next band you hadn’t heard of and the rock critic from the free weekly who wrote mash-note reviews of any girl with a guitar. And me, of course, but by then I’d been paying attention to her for so long that I’d started to make a career out of it.

  Interior. Stairwell. Evergreen Avenue loft.

  She stands in the doorway, a ghost outlined by the yawning black of the stairwell. She looks drained, which is how she often looked in those days. Her arms are folded across her chest, and her skin bleeds into the T-shirt, white on white. Her hair must have been black then, because in the picture it’s fused with the empty space aroun
d her, and her face really pops: jaw set, teeth bared, eyes canted to the side, as if the shutter caught her the second before she spit out some curse. Maybe this was the night the van got torched by our next-door neighbors—teenage Latin Kings or Latin Lovers or Latin Disciples, we hadn’t yet figured out how to read their tags. Maybe it was the night the bass player told Kat he was going to law school. Or maybe she’d just been ambushed by Casimir the landlord wanting to know, For sure, no joking, when you pay me my rent, huh? When you pay me my rent? You can say that the way her body burns a hole in the middle of the image is just a photographer’s trick, a little darkroom magic to saturate the blacks and flush everything to the whitest white, and you’d be right. But you can’t deny that she’s pissed.

  Interior. Basement of Kat’s parents’ house. River Forest, Illinois.

  If you can’t imagine Kat in the gray skirt and Peter Pan collar required by the nuns at our all-girls high school, it’s probably because you’ve never seen the pictures I took when I was the president and only dues-paying member of the photography club and Kat was spending afternoons and weekends punching out songs in her parents’ basement and running them through the four-track she bought with a summer’s worth of babysitting money. She was my only subject—my muse, you could say—but that was because she was the only one who would sit still while I fussed over lenses and light readings and angles. It wasn’t patience—even then she was focused; even then she was very good at tuning out background noise. I took rolls and rolls of film of her bent over her guitar, her hair a veil over her eyes, her lips soundlessly counting out the beat. Then I’d disappear for days of red-light seclusion in my studio, which my parents insisted on calling the laundry room. A set of these pictures, soulful black-and-whites mostly, spiked with a few hallucinatory color shots, won the school art prize our senior year and had the added bonus of convincing every girl in our graduating class that we were a couple. It’s too bad we weren’t; maybe we wouldn’t have been so lonely, so frustrated, so perpetually amped up.