True Love: Deconstruction

Vanya was a complicated man. Alaina often felt that she knew no less than six versions of him, and it was this very quirk that so endeared him to her. Though cold, he was prone to a fiery temper, usually giving over to fits of blind, uncompromised rage; on the other hand, he was also a gentle soul, polite and considerate – often to a fault. He was ambitious and hardworking, usually overextending himself well into the evenings with his work at the graduate school, and yet, he never failed to leave his professional baggage where it belonged: at the door of his office with the singular, lonely window. In bed, he was generous and thoughtful, always putting Alaina's needs well ahead of his own – an astounding feat for a man who came home flustered, exhausted, and otherwise belligerent. He was fastidious and meticulous...and yet all at once a slob, leaving his neat and orderly piles of debris in trails that crisscrossed throughout the apartment.

At present, he was sitting, ramrod straight, in his favorite high-backed armchair, pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, smoke swilling through the air around his head in an acrid cloud. He had spread before him yesterday's paper, and was scanning over the sports section. While he felt no tugging of the heartstrings for his homeland's football team, he still responded to instinctive nationalistic pride: he grumbled vaguely at the bad news, appraising the numbers with hollow disappointment. Being a man just shy of thirty, he still loped about the arid green field in the summertime, chasing the hexagons of a soccer ball along with the fantasies of his youth.

"Lena?" he called around his pipe. "Lena!"

Timidly, Alaina peered around the corner. "Vanya?"

He surveyed her, coolly, calculatingly. "Come in here. Tell me about your day," he insisted. But as usual, insistence with him was a matter of charisma rather than intimidation.

She sighed, sitting in the chair opposite him: an ancient, oak rocker that groaned under even Alaina's mousy weight. "Well," she began, averting her eyes from his. How could such beautiful, rich eyes be so cold, she wondered. "I got a letter from the school today," she said, careful to reign in her excitement, lest he read her wrongly. He had a tendency to overanalyze, and worse, to overreact. The bruise on her right temple throbbed, an angry reminder. "It was an acceptance." She watched him for signs of hot emotion, her muscles coiling like springs in the event of an eruption.

But Vanya showed no such display. He merely flipped the page of his paper, his eyes trained diligently on the political columns from behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. "I see," he said, in a voice as close to approval as he could manage. "That is good, Lena. But I am thinking you will not be pursuing the Realgymnasium, am I right?"

The disappointment was painfully obvious in his voice. She knew he would prefer a more Bolshevist trajectory for her life – which was, of course, hypocritical of him in every way imaginable. But then Vanya was well aware of all his hypocrisies, and affectionately referred to them as contradictions. 'Semantics,' he would say with a wave of the hand, were this pointed out to him. That was another thing about him: he could be blithe and unbothered by his own innate flaws, but heaven help the subordinate who disappointed him.

Naturally, Alaina qualified as such.

"I haven't decided which course to take yet," she offered hopefully. She'd had enough hardship over the week, and was quite ready to be received by the kinder, softer Vanya tonight.

Vanya chortled low in his throat, removing his pipe and eying her obscenely over the top of his glasses. "But you've certainly decided which one you won't take," he laughed. It was a deep, booming sound, one that radiated out from his chest. He shook his head like a father might at the mischievous antics of his trickster son. "Do as you like: the education is free."

The thing was that Alaina did not want to become a career woman: she had become accustomed to her quiet life with Vanya, here in this luxurious professor's apartment with its plush upholstery and its elegant crystal and so forth. Despite herself, she enjoyed cooking for him, cleaning for him, generally keeping house for him – it was a better life than that of her mother, the typist or her father, the mechanic. Her sister, of course, had married an American and had disappeared somewhere into the distant West. From time to time – usually around holidays – Alaina would receive post from dear Helen. Her letters were decidedly friendly, describing her life of quaint hydrangeas and PTA meetings; of barbecues and caldesacs, where the most prominent crisis was a mix-up in the mail.

That was all well and good, she supposed, but she preferred this life, no matter the cost. Licking her split lip, Alaina thought, Every life has pros and cons. I've made my choice.

Both her parents had met Vanya, and both of them approved, in ways of their own. Alaina's father was a dark, robust man, phlegmatic and benign. He praised Vanya and afforded him a shocking amount of leniency concerning his youngest daughter, perhaps in light of her sincere and ongoing infatuation with him. Her mother, while never particularly vocal on the subject, stated her approval in more subtle ways: during visits, she would always leave plates of preferred sweets about the kitchen, or might suggest to him a number of promising books in his field of interest. On one occasion, she had even gone so far as to engage in a lengthy conversation with him – something she rarely did, even with her own daughters.

Oddly, it was no secret, the tense nature of their relationship. Vanya was not ashamed of the injuries he inflicted upon Alaina, and made no effort to deny them. Neither was he particularly proud of them, never drawing undue attention to them – they were not trophies for display, and they were not bits of filth to be swept beneath the rug. They simply existed, a tribute to the bizarre couple. "It's only natural," Alaina's mother had once said to her, "with the two of you, violence is like foreplay. I expect nothing less but an outright row – anything else and I'd think something is wrong!"

Alaina shook her head, staring at her cuticles.

Quite suddenly she found herself in Vanya's grasp, cradled between his arms, his dress shirt sleeves rolled up, revealing his snowy white skin to the elbow. "What are you thinking about?" he purred.

Ah, she thought. Then it was sensuous, big Vanya tonight. He never failed to occupy her, never failed to entertain her with his many flips and switches. "Nothing. It's only..." she faltered. The truth, in any case, was nearly always the wrong answer with him. "Next fall," she swallowed, "when I go to school, who will cook? Who will clean? I cannot manage all of it."

Vanya settled his weight on her shoulders; he was a surprisingly slight man, tall and considerably slimmer than his fellow countrymen. "We can hire a maid," he suggested, uninterested.

"And how will I travel still?" she continued, the lie making itself inescapably truthful now that she gave it some thought. "I don't like the idea of you gallivanting all over the world without me. I would miss you terribly," she gushed.

"And I would miss you, milyi, and so you will still travel with me. Surely you understand I have some standing with the school offices, that I can arrange extensions to accommodate our busy lifestyle. Why," he kissed her hard on the uninjured side of her face, "they would owe it to me! A favor! Is it not the school's fault I must go – as you so astutely put it – gallivanting all over creation?"

Uh-oh, thought Alaina, he is getting grandiose. He did this, when he was warming up for a big show. But tonight, she did not feel much like indulging him; she was not in the mood to audience one of his ridiculous productions. She grabbed hold of his narrow wrist and pulled his hand over her pounding heart. Please don't do this, she silently begged, not tonight.

Feeling her panic in the palm of his hand, he seemed to comply. He paused for a moment, evening out his strained breathing, before resuming his speech on a more earthly level. "Lena," he murmured, "Lena my love, do not worry. We have so many months until then. For now, enjoy the time. Autumn will come and with it, all the pitfalls and glories of education." He crossed back to his side of the table, folded his paper haphazardly and put out his pipe before returning to her. The monster within the man had been appeased, and tonight, he knew he was wanted as a hero instead. So, he scooped her up into his arms, reveling in the way she clung to him. He carried her aloft, determined to prove himself to his damsel in ever-present distress.

"Oh Vanya," she smiled, trying and failing to depose him of his boyish tendencies, for she loved them too much. She loved him, much too much. "Oh, Vanya."