1
Mandy
My feet felt glued to the grass beneath them.
It didn’t matter how ridiculous—or how physically impossible—that was. It didn’t even matter that I knew I was perfectly capable of walking away from the spot where I stood. None of that mattered because that was how it felt. I didn’t care how dramatic that made me. My brain was short-circuiting as the crowd passed around me, like water around a stone. I broke up the tide of flapping graduation robes and smiling faces as I stood staring at the man standing under the tree, his arms folded, and a fake smile plastered on his face.
The line from that old movie played in my head over and over, in a thick Italian accent to boot. I had to bite back nervous laughter.It was fitting, wasn’t it? Only, it wasn’t the day of my wedding; it was the day of my graduation.
I’d worked so hard for that day, spending hours and hours studying, researching, and attending lectures and classes. I’d avoided all temptation that might have set me back. I’d gone full nights without sleep and managed to rack up enough hours for six years of credit, in only four.
And there my father stood . . . looking for all of the world like a proud papa should. When I refused to move towards him, he finally pushed off of the tree, opening his arms as he strode in my direction.
I wanted to run.
“Manya!” he boomed, his thick Russian accent replacing the Italian that had been filling my head. I winced at how noticeable his dialect was among all of these Americans. “My little Manya! Not so little anymore, eh?” He chuckled, wrapping me up in his thickly muscled arms as if he didn’t at all notice how frozen I still was. “You did so good, Masha, finishing your schoolwork!”
His arms tightened, almost lifting me off of my feet and forcing my face into his coat. He smelled like cigar smoke and expensive brandy, a scent so ingrained in my childhood that I almost forgot where I was . . .whenI was, even. “I’m so glad I could make it here in time to watch you walk. To think, I get to see you do it twice today. It’s not every day a father can boast such a thing!”
He was too excited. His words blurred together in my head and my vision swam as he set me back on my feet. “Nyet, Papa,” I answered instinctively, cutting myself off as I heard the Russian slip from my tongue. “No, Daddy . . . Dad . . . Father.” I settled on the least offensive name on my lips, shaking my head. “It is not Manya here. I go by Mandy now.”
He knew that. I had been going by that name since we had moved to America after my mother’s death. Even more strictly since having left for college. “You get to see me do what twice today?” I continued in confusion. I pushed away from him and blinked at the flicker of irritation across his face.
“The walk, Manya.” He stressed my name, taking me firmly by my shoulders. “Did you not check your messages? I left you a voicemail on your cell phone. I told you. Your wedding, it is today. I thought you were just being stubborn, trying to drag your heels. . .”
He trailed off, and where I had felt frozen before I now felt . . . I didn’t even have a word for the emotion clamoring up the back of my throat. “Nyet,” I whispered, shaking my head decisively. “I’m not getting married. . .”
“You said that before, remember? But our deal was either you pay your way in college or else you be ready for the boy I pick for you. And you certainly have not been paying your own way.” He didn’t seem at all disturbed by the way I was trying to pull away from him. Instead, he easily tucked me into his side and walking on.
I had made that deal at seventeen, desperate to get away, to get out, to hide away as far from his job and his ‘family’ as I could. .. . My head spun as we walked to the car, my father’s driver in the front dipping his head as my father opened the back door.
“Manya, be reasonable, you don’t want to pay all those bills. You wouldn’t be able to. You want to be able to put that degree of yours to use. This way we both win, da?” He spoke so calmly, as if he wasn’t orchestrating my life. As if he wasn’t ripping the rug of reasonability, I had stood on for the last handful of years right from under my feet.
Without another word, he pushed me into the car, closed the door behind me, and walked to the other side. The tinted windows filled my vision as we drove away.
It was the only sight that I took in over the next handful of hours.
He handed me off to a team of women to get me dressed. My aunts, my babushka: none of them pressured me. None of them asked. They didn’t require words as they painted my face and slipped me into a white, perfectly fitted dress. Not as they twisted my hair up into curls and pinned them to my head in an elaborate up-do. There was nothing to be said.
Not until I found myself standing outside the heavy wood of the church doors, my bridal party proceeding ahead of me, one after another, and my father approaching from the other side to take my arm, did I finally get shaken back to some sort of awareness.
Before my father could reach us, my babushka turned and grabbed my chin in her talon-like fingers, well wrinkled with age. Her beady, black eyes stared into me, cutting through my haze. “Manya, it is a marriage. You do not have to like him. You do not have to tolerate him even. You handle him though, da? You learn this . . . you have happy marriage.”
Her face approached mine rapidly, kissing me harshly as if to imprint the words from her lips into my brain. It was the one spot of clarity I had before being handed off to my father and marched down the aisle like some sort of consolation prize.
Everything was like looking through a sheet of soundproof glass. I couldn’t see anything clearly. I couldn’t hear anything except for muffled bursts of sound. My husband-to-be was large, I could see that much, but the details of his face were lost on me as I listened to the buzzing of the pastor in front of us.
We are gathered here today, yada, yada, yada. . . . I muttered my ‘I do’ at the right time only due to a nudge from behind.
I stared ahead; my chin lifted despite the fuzzy state of my awareness. It was only when my name was uttered for the second time that I seemed to snap somewhat out of it.
“Do you, Dmitry Yerikovich Koalitsia, take Manya Yevaevna Sorokin as your lawfully wedded wife?” the pastor droned, his eyes on the man beside me. And for the first time I allowed my gaze, unfogged, to slip to the tall man to my left.
He was handsome, hellishly so, with strong, angular features and bright blue eyes offset by his dark hair. He looked like he could have stepped off of any major fashion magazine cover into the tailored suit he wore so effortlessly . . . but it was his name that stuck out to me.
Koalitsia…
His ‘I do’ was stronger—more certain—than mine had been, and when he turned towards me, an arrogant smile pulled at the corners of his mouth having caught me staring. Like my babushka, his face descended, his lips filling over mine and enveloping me in a warm haze of clove tobacco and expensive cologne before it fully registered.