Besides, Viktor was a nice guy. I’d met him soon after meeting Heather and I instantly liked him. “You must be Julie,” he’d said when Heather introduced us, a hint of a Ukrainian accent and a wide smile that I found impossible not to respond to. He was quite tall, a good three or four inches above his tall, willowy wife, and had cropped light brown hair, magnetic blue eyes, and a fit build that spoke of good genes and careful dieting. He was casually elegant—the sort of man who looked like he was made of money even when he dressed down in jeans and a sweater. Maybe he seemed a little stiff at times—he wasn’t the best conversationalist—but the guy was a doctor. Those science types are supposed to be nerdy, and he could be forgiven for not being particularly good at small talk. So what if he was “anal,” as Alison said, about how he expected things to run in his house. I’m a type-A, hyper-organized person, too, and it’s not as if Viktor expected Heather to do everything on her own. Plus, the guy was a renowned surgeon; I’m sure he was used to giving orders and having them followed, and it’s hard to turn that off at home. But he didn’t seem arrogant to me. He didn’t go around trumpeting his accomplishments, although of course he didn’t have to because everyone knew who he was.
He obviously wasn’t a Pittsburgh native, but he’d been quickly embraced as one, a star at Children’s Hospital, his smiling face regularly appearing in the SEEN column in the local paper, usually with Heather at his side. They were an attractive couple, that’s for sure, the sort of people that I thought of back then as golden. The truth is that I was proud to call myself Viktor Lysenko’s friend.
Brian and I have made it into that SEEN column a few times ourselves, although I’m not sure we appreciated it as much as Viktor. He was an immigrant; his family had arrived in Pittsburgh from Ukraine when he was ten years old, his parents working day and night to give their son a better life. He’d made the best of their sacrifices and gone on to an Ivy League university and a top medical school. My husband and I liked to think of ourselves as self-made, too, although we were born into solidly middle-class families and we’re both Pittsburgh natives. Brian travels constantly for his job, but no matter how many different states or countries he’s been to, he’s never lost his Pittsburghese. It will slip out, especially when he’s talking to locals. “Yinz guys going to see the Stillers play on Sunday?” he’ll say, reverting back to the speech of his childhood. I do it, too, catching myself telling the cleaning lady that all she needs to do is “red up” the living room or warning clients in the winter that they need to be careful because it’s “slippy” outside.
It always filled me with pride to think of how far I’d come from the split-level in Glenshaw where my parents raised me and my younger sister. Brian and I worked hard to move up from our own tiny starter home, and I can see now that I might have idealized Sewickley and people like Heather and Viktor. Back then, I took people at face value and it wasn’t hard to believe the best of Viktor—this good-looking, supremely successful guy who seemed friendly.
I didn’t think again about what Alison said until the incident about a month later at the Chens’ party, but it must have stayed in my mind, because that bruise on Heather’s arm was the first thing I thought of afterward.
The Chens are amazing people. I mean, Walter Chen is a renowned architect and his wife, Vivian, an expert in stem-cell research. I’d been honored to represent one of the houses Walter designed for his own family. I sold it for above asking, too, which is probably why Brian and I even made the guest list for the party at their house in the city. Our kids had attended the same summer camps, but the Chen children were older, not that we’d have seen much of them even if they had been the same age. Vivian Chen called herself a tiger mom without any irony and I’d heard that she had her fourth child in order to complete her own string quartet. While that might not be true, Vivian certainly made her kids perform at every party she and Walter hosted, and the party that night was no exception.
The sound of stringed instruments echoed off the marble that tiled seemingly every inch of the Chens’ five-thousand-square-foot mansion in Shadyside. Crystal chandeliers sparkled off the sheen and their lights, in turn, sparkled off the stemware on trays borne by waiters discreetly moving through the crowd of elegantly dressed guests.
I guess I’m lowbrow, because I find violins, even heartfelt rather than these mechanical-sounding ones, screechy and grating. I discreetly left the crowd gathered in the Chens’ enormous living room as the children sawed their way through Mozart’s String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat Major, a title I remember only because Vivian Chen had it printed on programs with her children’s names and ages. I wandered in search of a bathroom, turning down a hallway whose gold-papered walls were hung with multiple family photos and framed accolades. Just as I found a beautiful jewel box of a powder room, I heard a male voice say, “Stop!”
Thinking it was directed at me, I actually stopped and turned around. But I was alone in the hall. I heard muffled voices before the man’s voice rose again: “You’re not going anywhere!” Curious, I followed the voices until the hall opened up to a family room, and I saw a couple standing with their backs to me, framed by an enormous Palladian window overlooking the Chens’ sizable property. The man had the woman from behind, holding her upper arms tightly against her body as she wriggled fruitlessly like a bug caught on its back. It was Heather and Viktor.
Startled, I stepped back, trying to retreat up the hall as if I were the one who had something to be ashamed of, but they must have caught my reflection in the window, because Viktor immediately let go of Heather and they both turned toward me.
“Julie! How are you?” Viktor’s voice was back to the one I knew, the friendly, reasonable tone so unlike the snarl I’d heard moments before that I thought I must have imagined it. He was smiling, too, coming toward me with his arms opened wide and Heather right behind him.
I let him embrace me, trying not to shrink from his touch, but when Heather hugged me, I held on for a second, murmuring, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said in her normal voice, light and undisturbed, her gaze meeting mine for a moment before moving to her husband’s handsome face. They were themselves, the same normal, lovely couple that I was used to, and I doubted what I had seen even as I found myself subconsciously searching her visible skin for bruises like the one Alison had told me about. Viktor’s grip must have left marks on her arms, but Heather was a wearing a tea-length plum satin gown with a high neckline and three-quarter-length sleeves, so I could only envision the imprint from Viktor’s hands.
I wanted to talk to her about it afterward, but there was never a moment. For the rest of the party she was by Viktor’s side, and during the long week that followed I thought about calling her or texting, but what would I say? “Did your husband hurt you”? I mean, it seemed so rude. I’d clearly walked in on a private moment, and who knew what had really been happening. It could have been something sexual between them for all I knew.
I didn’t text Alison either, though I thought about it. What good would it do to feed her imagination? I’d gotten a glimpse of a couple’s private life, but what could I really conclude from that twenty seconds? Heather had said she was fine—so I should believe her, right? A part of me needed to believe her.
Except it preyed on my mind all that following week, the tight grip of those fine-boned surgeon’s hands, the way she’d struggled in his grasp. I kept replaying the glimpse I’d gotten of his scowling face as they were wrestling, the sound of his angry voice. And then the way he’d suddenly changed—the creepily carefree, friendly smile that he’d turned on me.
By the time we met at the coffee shop that Friday, I’d decided to take Heather aside to talk, but I got delayed by a business call and she was already sitting next to Sarah as Alison talked about a carjacking at the local mall that had been top of the news that morning.
“At least they caught the guy, but he could have killed her—it’s terrifying when you think about it,” Alison was saying, and I glanced at Heather, wanting to see her reaction, but she only nodded in agreement, making me question myself again. How could I bring up what I’d seen at the party after that conversation? Would she think I was comparing her husband’s behavior to that of a common criminal? Worse, if I’d misunderstood what I saw, wouldn’t she be offended? I didn’t want to risk our friendship, but I really wanted to talk about it with somebody. Later that afternoon I broke and pulled out my phone.
“Sarah? I need to tell you something.”
chapter three
SARAH