Page 31 of Slanting Towards the Sea

TWENTY-EIGHT

IT SURPRISED NO ONE as much as it had me, that I could be friends with Vlaho’s wife.

That I would be able to witness him forming a family with someone else without completely disintegrating.

But life serves bitter dishes sometimes that, after you’ve chewed on them for a while, start to taste good, and become good for you.

Kind of like taking a sip of olive oil, its piquancy biting down your throat, but then working healing wonders in your stomach, intestines, veins.

The dish was bitter for a long time. After Vlaho called to tell me Marina was pregnant, I didn’t want to see either of them. For some time, Vlaho continued inviting me to meet for coffee, but I couldn’t stomach it. That guillotine still hung above me. Seeing him would’ve snapped the rope.

A part of me hoped they would pack up and move to Cavtat so I could roam the town without fretting I’d run into them.

In a town as small as Zadar, with its one cinema, one theater, one mall, one vendor near the town bridge selling roasted chestnuts in winter or corn on the cob in summer, it was bound to happen sooner rather than later.

I ran into Marina on the town bridge of all places, when Maro was three months old.

I noticed her a moment before she saw me, but there was nowhere to go to avoid her unless I wanted to throw myself into the murky water below.

Her face opened in a smile as she stopped, blocking my way with the rosemary-colored stroller.

She was puffier than the last time I’d seen her, she’d obviously retained much of her baby weight. But despite that, her face was drawn, dark circles under her eyes showing she wasn’t getting much sleep. A new-mother face.

A face I would never have.

The town bridge undulated under the footsteps of people treading past us, a movement you could feel only if you stood still.

It destabilized me, made me unsteady on my feet.

The pram was luckily facing away from me.

I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I saw his son, the son he’d had with someone other than me.

“Hey,” Marina said. She reached for me and kissed both my cheeks. “I’m so happy to see you.”

I could tell she meant it, but I couldn’t pretend I returned the sentiment.

Nights and nights of agony, imagining them across the town, sharing a bed.

Nights and nights of cold-sweat terrors, sharp images of them loving each other.

Worst of all, nights upon nights of feeling his lips on mine, the pressure of his head nestled between my shoulder blades, his center against my center, only to wake up empty-handed.

Phantom pain, they call it, when a limb you’ve lost still feels like it’s there, hurting.

“Where are you off to?” she asked.

“Just buying new flip-flops for the summer.”

“Oh,” she said. “Do you have time for coffee?”

The baby cooed. She put her hand inside the pram and rocked their son back to sleep, her eyes never leaving mine.

“Congratulations on your baby,” I said, my mouth desiccated. “I don’t really have time for coffee.”

Marina looked at her watch, her lips breaking into that same conspiratorial smile she’d flash when we mocked ?ime, our Italian teacher.

“It’s eleven. If you’re out and about, it either means that you have a day off or you’re working the afternoon shift, which doesn’t start until two.

” She pushed the stroller a step forward, then reached for my arm. “Come on.”

I was too stunned to say no, so my legs followed her. We walked in silence for a while. “How’ve you been?” she asked me as if I were the one who’d produced another human being since we’d last talked.

My impulse was to lie. To hide how this whole business of them marrying and having a baby stretched the very fabric of me to the point where I wasn’t sure anything was left but the holes.

That a veil had come over me, even darker than it had been when I first learned I was infertile.

But another part of me, a wicked part, wanted to dump all this on her.

Make her rot with guilt and remorse. Caught in between those two options, I said nothing.

A gauze hung over the pram, shielding Vlaho’s son from the June sun, and protecting me from seeing him. Still, my eyes glued to it, drawn by its irresistible magnetic force.

“Still learning Italian?” she asked.

“Yeah, right. We barely made it to our first-level exams, the class was so bad.”

“True,” she cackled, a clean, untethered sound. It reminded me of why I’d liked her when I first met her, how at ease with herself she was. “Signor ?ime made us laugh so hard we almost started speaking Italian through our asses.”

We were on Kalelarga now. There was bustle around us, people rushing about, shopping, just like when we’d strolled the town in search of a non-occupato table for our coffee after class.

I could almost hear the echoes of our giggles as we spoke Croatian words with an Italian accent.

She’d been the only friend I’d made in Zadar since high school.

It hit me, this truth I hadn’t been aware of.

I didn’t only resent Marina for taking Vlaho from me.

I resented Vlaho for taking Marina from me too.

Our sandals synchronized their tapping against the cobblestoned street. Despite wanting to break the pattern, I couldn’t make myself fall out of rhythm with her.

“I’ve missed you,” she said. “We both have.”

I snorted. It was so sudden and piglike that Marina started laughing and so did I. A strange sense of release streamed between us. We fell into an easier silence from then on.

He had missed me.

We found a table on the Forum and ordered our macchiatos.

“I’m sorry,” she said, stirring a packet of sugar into her cup. “We never planned for any of this.”

A tremor started deep in my bones. Last thing I wanted to hear about was how they were consumed by a sudden flame of irresistible passion. How was that any better than slowly giving in to it? “Look, you were both single, and you hit it off. I get it. Neither one of you owes me any explanations.”

“It wasn’t like that. It’s…” She sighed, looking toward Ugljan island across the Zadar Channel, as if that’s where she’d find the words. “We were both—”

A buzz hissed in my ears, my whole body blaring at the impending doom. If she said one more word, I would get annihilated right then and there. “Please.” I put my hands over my ears, staring down at the pram’s wheel. “I really don’t want to know.”

In my peripheral vision, Marina nodded her agreement. Funny how we could carry on an entire soul-crushing conversation without ever looking at each other.

The tower bell above us sounded half past, and the baby stirred and started bellowing its throaty, nasal cries.

Before I could react, Marina lifted him up and pressed him against her chest. He was unbelievably tiny in his onesie, his thin froggy legs splayed apart, his bum covered in a diaper that was much too big for it.

His feet were pink and chubby and crinkled, each of his toes the size of a single lentil.

Marina was saying something I couldn’t hear.

“Would that be okay?” Her voice sharpened at my ear.

“What?”

“Would you mind holding Maro while I run to the bathroom? I swear my bladder shrunk to half its size since this fellow elbowed his way out.”

There was no way I was taking him. “I, um—”

But Marina was already handing him over, adjusting his miniature head against my breastbone, to the side so that he could breathe. She was gone before I could say no. And just like that, Vlaho’s baby was resting against my heart.

He was weightless, yet I’d never held anything more substantial.

His gossamer hair tickled my chin. He made the funniest little expressions, as if he were going through a roller coaster of emotions but was unbothered enough to open his eyes.

He looked goofy and wise at the same time, a pink Smurfy sage.

He had his father’s nose. I put my lips on his soft head.

He smelled like baby powder and innocence.

To my horror, my chest expanded to usher him inside. “Hey there, little one.”

Marina stood at the cafe’s entrance with a sneaky smile. She took her time walking over. “You want to give him back, Aunt Ivona?”

I shook my head, breathing the baby in again. “You witch. I bet you didn’t even have to pee.”