Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) by Rachel Kadish Page A

up plans.
    â€œYou’re sure you want to do this?” I say. “Yolanda is good, she really is. But the play itself may not be a winner. You may regret coming. Maybe we ought to hold off, and plan something else.”
    â€œI won’t prosecute if the show is a flop. Besides, I love theater. And didn’t you say you’re not free any other evening this week? And that your friend gave you an extra ticket?”
    In fact Yolanda phoned this weekend to insist I invite
that George guy
to the opening—a gesture I found brave given her current emotional state. The thought of what George and Yolanda might make of each other, especially with Yolanda poised to vaporize all unrepentant males, makes me anxious. But I’m out of arguments. We agree that he’ll come by my apartment and we’ll take the subway to the theater. Remembering Adam’s caution that I might have discouraged George on our first date, I hesitate before getting off the phone. “I’m looking forward to it,” I say.
    There’s a substantial pause before George replies. “I’ll see you at seven.”From the street comes the long honk of an irate driver. The phone line is silent. I rise and, with ripening dismay, shut my window.
    â€œMeanwhile,” says George, “I’ll phone the Canadian embassy to find out whether it’s a violation of international trade laws to give my heart to an American.”
    My giggle makes me sound like a fourteen-year-old.
    Â 
    At six-thirty I dress. The miniskirt and top are maroon and tight, a gift from Yolanda:
If you’ve got the body, wear the clothes. If you don’t, you’ll regret it when you’re fifty.
    I turn grimly before the mirror.
    Being a proponent of difference feminism rather than equality feminism, I am not in principle alarmed by miniskirts. But I’m accustomed to seeing a scholar in the mirror, not a pair of legs. The outfit isn’t me—or rather, it’s more of me than I usually display. On the plus side, though, it definitely gives the vibe that I’m into the guy. I add a gauzy black scarf, which produces a more brooding, dramatic look than I’d intended; the effect, a little more Edna St. Vincent Millay than my usual, is definitely bold.
    On the other hand, sexual boldness didn’t exactly guarantee her happiness.
    I exchange miniskirt and scarf for a pair of black pants.
    If I were a postmodernist, I’d say St. Vincent Millay never had a chance at what she wanted. I’d say that all love is revisionist history. That totalitarian governments should take lessons from lovers. That I will rewrite this moment depending on the events of the future. In retrospect, it will be the moment I stood in front of the mirror and knew, despite wanting to believe otherwise, that George was a dead end, or worse, a black hole into which I’d pour months of my life. Or else I’ll hail it as the moment I understood, in some indefinable way, that George was for me. Either way, though, I’d have to concede that the whole thing was a construct. Postmodernists can’t believe in love. It’s illegal.
    As a modernist I can, technically, believe in love—but only as reconstituted from the fragments of shattered cultural ideals. Facing down the mirror, I remind myself that I was, for most of graduate school, a Romanticist, specializing in the shapely narrative, the honest hero, love as destiny. This seems to brighten my prospectsuntil I recall how in college I once heard my Romanticism TA, when he thought no one was listening, say to another grad student
Love is shit.
    Shit.
    I change into jeans. And a slightly snug blouse. The buzzer sounds. I drop my hairbrush, grab my handbag, and, flushed, stride my way through the hall and into the elevator.
    At the door he kisses me. It’s a soft, long kiss, and when he’s finished I’m not. I slide my fingers into his fine straight hair and greet him