Authors: Roberta Latow
‘Jay,’ she called out.
He turned around. ‘Yes, Mimi.’
She could see in his eyes that he expected her to apologize. In a moment of weakness, from fear of losing him, she very nearly did. Instead she asked, ‘Would you pass me my robe?’ unable even to stand naked in front of him. He handed it to her. Once more she was about to say something to soothe his anger, but then she saw her black lace nightdress lying on the floor where he had thrown it. He had taken her while she was still unconscious in sleep. That was the reality. Mimi knew she had blinded herself to it long enough. She would never apologize. Nor would she ever go back to him.
She slipped on the silk kimono. With him still watching her, she rose from the bed. He seemed to be waiting for that apology or at the very least an explanation.
‘I did ask you never to fuck me like that again. I won’t be coming back home, I think I’d like to stay here. I think we should live separately for a while.’
‘Just like that?’
‘No, Jay, not just like that. Because this marriage is over. What happened this morning should not have happened to two people who have had a good long run in marriage with lots of rewards in it. Ours still had, a few days ago.’
He sat down on the bed and gently took her by the arm. ‘There is someone else?’
‘This has only to do with us, you and me. Our marriage has been the best there could be, but it’s had its run.’
‘Because you don’t want to change?’
‘No, Jay, because I
do
want to change, but not the way you want me to.’
‘The family?’
‘I’m not deserting you or the family. I’m quitting a
marriage that no longer works. You should admit that. It can’t work if I’m not happy, and I can’t change to suit you.’
‘What’s all this about, Mimi, suddenly not being happy?’ Then he surprised her. ‘No, don’t bother to answer that. I don’t really want to know. You want some space, a separation. You try it. But, Mimi, I hope you know what you’re getting into. From being a happily married woman in New York for your entire life to being just another chic divorcee … you think that’s going to bring you happiness? You just think that way, and wait and see. What a rude awakening you are going to get, my dear. You’ve had a terrific marriage, it’s opened all doors. Sex just about every day of your married life, and no husband could have been more devoted to giving you pleasure in that. You’ve been spoiled all your life. Dump me, dear, and your father’s gone, and while Rick is a great guy, he’ll never give you the stability or the life I have. Divorce, living alone in New York, that’s a different ball game, and it’s tough.
‘You’re not as easy to love and live with as you think, Mimi. You’re private, closed up in many ways. I called you dangerous before, and you are, because you held me prisoner with sex, your charm and aloofness, your Slovak coquetry. You’ve held me all these years by those things. I saw them as a challenge to get through in order to take possession of you. It never occurred to me that I might never possess you. After all these years I see that you never gave yourself wholly to me as I wanted you to. I never possessed you totally, brought you to heel as I did my other wives and lovers. Instead you took me over, possessed me. Maybe we’ve both had enough, only I wouldn’t give in whereas you did.’
Mimi looked genuinely shocked. He smiled. ‘You think I’m being cruel because you’re leaving me? It’s not true. I’m not a cruel man. Selfish, yes. I have two other wives who will attest to that, and several lovers. But not cruel.
Maybe honest, blunt even, because I’m hurt, because I feel cheated that I never did possess you.’ He fell silent. Mimi could think of nothing to say. They looked at each other, and it was more embarrassing and sad than anything else. Finally he cleared his throat and told her, ‘I think it’s all been said now.’
He stood up. ‘Let’s keep it amicable.’ He reached out for her hand and she gave it to him. That old Jay Steindler charm was in play. He pulled her up by the hand, clasped her in his arms, stroked her hair and said, ‘Let’s keep it quiet, the divorce, as quiet as possible. Reno, Nevada, I think. Call your lawyer.’
Again the feeling of shock. She stepped back. ‘I hadn’t even thought about divorce. Nor about being a woman alone without a husband in New York. A cruel dig, Jay.’
‘Yes, maybe. I left both my other wives. This way round maybe you have to allow me a little cruelty. I’ve never been walked out on before. But I don’t like sounding cruel, or being thought cruel, so we won’t give that away, will we?’
‘You don’t like getting less than you bargained for.’
‘That’s true.’ He smiled.
‘And you always bargain to get twice as much as you give, Jay.’
‘Yes, that’s true too, Mimi. Who will tell the children?’
‘We will tell the children,’ she said. ‘But let’s for the moment get rid of the anger we both have before we tell anyone.’
She was surprised, even relieved, to see tears come into Jay’s eyes. They were genuine. She hadn’t lived with him for more than a quarter of a century not to know that. She bit her lip to hold back her own tears. She saw him visibly brace himself, gather all his strength to restrain those tears.
‘You’ll be staying here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t we both come and go as we like? As you said,
you’re not leaving the family. It’s only me you’re leaving.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We have a dinner engagement tonight, let’s keep it.’
‘I think not, Jay.’
He kissed her on the forehead. A cold kiss that said he was gone from her life. She hadn’t fully realized during all their years together how really selfish he was. How quickly he would dispose of things that no longer gave him what he wanted. She was grateful for that selfishness.
A spin-off of leading a separate life was the amount of leisure time. Mimi marvelled at how many more things she could fit in a day merely by not being married to Jay.
A few days after their break-up she went to their house and arranged to remove her personal things. When she had brought them to the Stefanik house, Mimi really felt as if she were beginning her life all over again, although she was still living pretty much as she had when she had been married to Jay, the difference being that there was more time. So much more time.
How could she not miss Jay? He had been such a mainstay of her existence for nearly half her life. What she didn’t miss was living with his selfishness, his underlying disrespect for her as a women, an independent human being. He had tried to mould her to fit his needs, his complex desires. That Mimi had lived with that for so long and had ignored it for everything that was good about him and their marriage was the hardest thing to take about their split up.
The children had been shocked. They loved Mimi and Jay, the family, but reluctantly respected their parents’ decision. The extended family, though less supportive at first, eventually rallied, especially when Jay made it clear that Mimi, whether he lived with her or without her, would always be its matriarch. It was only she who was not so sure of that. Mimi was not so certain of anything. The changes were too swift and left her reeling, reassembling, re-evaluating her life and what she wanted. Sophia was loyal and supportive as
ever. Her only comment, ‘My Gott.’ And then she baked a mocha cream cake, Mimi’s favourite.
Those first days after she left Jay, Mimi contemplated calling Alexander in Prague. He was not always in her thoughts, but certainly at the back of her mind. Often she would remove his letter from her drawer. Long after the roses were gone, she thought about them, wondered what he was doing, what his life was like, and half expected he might replace them. But he never had.
Mimi knew in her heart she would one day go to Prague to seek him out. That conviction grew stronger every day, but she would not move in haste. She wanted to get her own house in order before she took such a momentous step. Nearly every day of the months of silence since he had appeared at the house, she sat down and wrote him a letter which she never posted. She tied them with a yellow satin ribbon and placed them in a drawer. One day she would give them to him.
Since her father’s death, Mimi had hardly disturbed Karel’s papers. There had always been tomorrow to do that in. Now it seemed tomorrow had come. Mimi divided her time between that fascinating labour and working with some of the women at the atelier, only to find that she had lost interest in that business. She thought of redesigning her department at Saks, but the moment she started discussions at the Fifth Avenue shop she was bored. The notion faded. Only dealing in contemporary paintings mildly held her interest. If she could find anything to dislike Jay for – apart, of course, from selfishness and manipulation of her during their years of marriage – it was that he had destroyed for her those slender life-lines that had ensured her survival. Before long Mimi’s greatest interest, her utter fascination, was getting to know Karel through his papers. She fell in love with him all over again, but this time more as a man than as a father. Slowly she began to understand his passion for his country. Czechoslovakia began once again to be her country. The remarkable events that took place the day of his interment on
the family estate were now seen quite differently. And always with her investigation into her father’s life and that sad day when he was sealed forever in the family crypt, her thoughts drifted towards Alexander. She relived their first meeting, their sexual possession of each other. The memory could still excite her. Their attraction for each other, that kiss in this very house. There was much to contemplate.
Her decision came suddenly. At the first opportunity of assembling Angelica, Milos and Robert for supper she set their minds at rest about what she was going to do. She hoped it might ease their concern about her. Though she loved them dearly, she could not bear their constant phone calls, their idea that she was lonely and unable to create a life for herself beyond being their mother, the wife of Jay Steindler, chic hat designer, private art dealer.
A dinner was held in the kitchen of the Stefanik house: Sophia, Mimi, and her three children attended. Each had made an effort to be there. It was a happy dinner and delicious, with Sophia cooking all the things the children loved. And after dinner, Mimi told them that she had become caught up in her father’s papers, his life and his country, and that they had opened new interests for her. They seemed pleased, encouraging her to take time to rediscover her heritage. Then she told them, ‘Guys, leaving your father was the beginning of many changes for me. I want a new life. That’s not to say that I want to abandon all of my old one, just to move away from some of it. I hope you can understand that.’
There had been endless questions, to which she could give very few answers. But when Angelica asked, ‘What about the hat business?’ she answered without hesitation.
‘I’m selling that company off.’
‘And the art dealing?’ asked Robert, who with Milos had been keen on that since they were children when Mimi and Barbara had taken them around exhibitions and museums.
‘All dealing suspended for the time being.’
‘You’re dropping out of your life,’ suggested Angelica.
‘And beginning all over again. How exciting. Mom, you’re the greatest.’
‘You can travel, go around the world,’ offered Milos.
‘Just don’t let yourself get picked up by some gigolo. You’re a stunner, Mummy, and you have money. Alone, out in society … you know, all that sort of stuff. It happened to my friend Jessie’s mom,’ warned Angelica.
‘But Jessie’s mom is pretty dumb and was sort of desperate for a man. That’s not our mom, Ange,’ said Robert, a note of annoyance in his voice.
‘Sorry, Mom, Robbie’s right. A stupid thought. Travel sounds great, bumming around the world without a care in the world. You deserve at least that, Mummy.’
‘Well, I might return to Czechoslovakia.’ Mimi hadn’t realized until that moment that that was really what she wanted to do.
‘Return to your roots and all that.’
‘Something like that.’ And the man I have fallen in love with, she mentally footnoted her statement.
Mimi was quite taken aback by their loyalty, their affection for her, their enthusiasm for a new life for their mother. Not one day more did she hesitate. Lawyers were galvanized into preparing the sale of her businesses, the first of a series of events that coincided to persuade Mimi to take a leap into the unknown. For the first time since she had left her father’s house to live with Jay, Mimi had time to review her father’s life. He seemed to occupy much of her thoughts now she was once more living in the house he had left her. His things represented a world that had been snatched from her as a child. Those same things which, in the years when they had come together as a family, she had tolerated but had in her heart rejected, now suddenly took on a new importance for her. She realized how very cosmopolitan the house was. Alone there with Sophia, it was like being on an island, a European island, in the middle of Manhattan. She had ceased to think of
herself as a Czech, a non-American, after she had arrived with Sophia in New York. It was not a matter of denial. That would have been impossible once her father had returned to find her and she had lived with her family in this very house. It was more that she had assimilated with New York, America. They represented safety, success, excitement, life, love and happiness. Everything that might have lost its significance, but hadn’t.
Mimi had assumed that Karel had become like her. On the surface, he had. She read his papers and diaries, she searched out documents, records of the possessions he still held in Czechoslovakia, which had many years before been made over to the Countess Mimi Alexandra Stefanik. Recovering from the surprise of her father’s gifts, and his silence about them in his lifetime, Mimi began to understand that, although he had left his country behind him, he had neither abandoned nor driven it from his heart. His homeland remained the centre of his life until his death. He had chosen to love two countries, America and the country of his birth. One was like a secret lover, a mistress that he kept hidden, the other was his life, where he flourished and chose to display his love openly. Or so she had once thought. The years since his death had always held surprises concerning Karel, whom she had come to understand but had never really known. The man she knew was the man of her dreams. She had recognized only what he had been in her dreams, in her fantasies. In reality, Mimi had ignored all the things he was that didn’t fit her picture of him.
Coincidence on coincidence, an invisible net drawing her into its centre? Then she received telephone calls from her cousin in Prague – the new government was returning properties confiscated by former regimes to their original owners. For the Stefanik family, the first was the country estate in its entirety. Mimi instructed, ‘Set it up, I’ll take it.’ Then the palace in Prague, and a possibility of the hunting lodge. Childhood memories came floating back. And, as a world she had been denied for most of her life was suddenly
thrust upon her, so was a new identity: the Countess Mimi Alexandra Stefanik.
She was suddenly wrapped up in a world she had considered lost forever. It had never occurred to her that any of it would one day be hers, that she wanted it to be, until it was. With every acquisition returned to her came the sad news of its dereliction, almost its destruction. Fifty years of neglect and looting under Communist control had ruined properties and companies still owned by her. They were run into the ground and debt-ridden. In taking them back she would inherit a lifetime of work for her and her children in restoring what had belonged to them before the Second World War. And what shocked her more than anything was that she did not hesitate for one minute. She wanted it all, every last possession restored to her family, including every object looted from her estates. She would seek them out without sparing herself.
More than once during those months since she parted from Jay, she nearly went back to the safe haven that being married to him had provided. It took courage not to, to fight the crisis and remain alone, adrift in the world. It was scary but exciting to begin again. She went through Karel’s papers and old photographs and deeds to properties, something she had neglected since his death. Mimi began to feel curious about Czechoslovakia, about Prague especially. Who would she have been, how different her sensibilities, had she returned to Prague after the war as Mimi Stefanik? She couldn’t imagine how things would have been but the thought intrigued her and caused her to follow more closely events in that country.
For a women who is middle-aged though looks and feels young, who has her family behind her and is newly divorced, it is a necessity to re-evaluate her life. Where do you go from there? What do you do with the rest of your life? Mimi found it horrifying that, with youth receding, an awful lot of options were falling by the wayside. There had always been men in Mimi’s life, but she had never gone in search of them, any
more than she had sought a lover or a husband. She had gone in search only of a father. Men had always cared for Mimi. She had come to expect and like that. Even in these strange, lonely days and nights away from Jay, she was certain a man of substance would come into her life again. She would know love better than she had ever known it before.
She wanted to fly to Prague, to seek it out, to knock on Alexander’s door. But she didn’t feel strong enough. When she went to him, if she went to him, it would have to be for the right reasons. To give herself up to him, and to love. Mimi found it disturbing that two men, Jay and Alexander, within a very short timespan, had called her dangerous. She wanted better than dangerous, she wanted extraordinary for Alexander.
Instead she went to stay with Barbara in Salzburg where her husband was rehearsing an orchestra. They talked about the past, their long and firm friendship. It was a happy visit, and Mimi told her about Alexander. She extended her visit to Barbara to attend a social event few outside Austria’s elite are invited to. At her hostess’s request, and as her house-guest, Mimi was extended an invitation, since Barbara and her husband were the guests of honour. She attended a grand ball in a magnificent palace in the hills above Salzburg, given by one of Austria’s foremost aristocrats, where the musical elite joined the aristocracy of various countries at a gala evening.
It was one of those affairs for which the women rifle their safe-deposit boxes for jewels and men sport their decorations. Mimi found it splendid but shocking, a step back in time and into a European culture she had not experienced before and could never have imagined existing in the 1990s. Especially shocking as the man who was to be her partner at the ball was an Austrian prince, several years younger than herself, who wore the German Iron Cross, that coveted distinction from the Second World War, dangling from a Nazi ribbon round his neck.
Barbara had sought to satisfy Mimi’s penchant for younger
men in choosing him for her. She was not so much shocked at the young man’s decoration as surprised. He was a handsome Austrian, intelligent, not unamusing, and with a reputation for liking women too much. There was an awkward moment when Barbara made the introductions. When he saw the three of them staring at the cross, he fingered it. A light came into his eyes and he told them, ‘It was my father’s. I am very proud to wear it. The Führer himself placed it around his neck.’ And with that he changed the subject, encircled Mimi’s waist and waltzed her into the stream of dancers.
The war had been over for nearly fifty years and all was supposedly forgiven if not forgotten. She understood, for the first time, maybe not forgiven on both sides. That seemed more than obvious for most of the men wore their Nazi war decorations pinned to expensive and well-tailored dress-suits. Some women flaunted them on ribbons pinned to their sumptuous ball-gowns. It was unnerving, embarrassing. Mimi felt ridiculously naive to have thought that the Nazi was gone from the world for ever. The deadly glamour lingered.