Just Between Us Read online

  “Viktor Lysenko?” Julie asked that first morning. “As in Dr. Viktor Lysenko?” She sounded surprised and more bubbly than usual, although Julie’s excitement meter always ran at a higher level than the rest of ours.

  “That’s him,” Heather said, her casualness in sharp contrast to Julie’s enthusiasm. Seeing my and Sarah’s blank faces, Julie said, “Viktor Lysenko is a preeminent plastic surgeon, he specializes in craniofacial and reconstructive surgery. There was an article about him in the Post-Gazette last month; didn’t you see it? He volunteers worldwide, too, performing operations free for people in poor countries.”

  “Wow,” Sarah said, “he sounds like a saint.”

  There was only the faintest hint of snideness, but I remember that Heather flushed at Sarah’s comment. “He’s just Viktor to me,” she said in a light tone, before deftly changing the subject.

  Was he the one who’d left that large mark above her wrist? That had been my first thought when she’d jerked her sleeve down to hide it, my pulse uncomfortably quickening. I’d known her for almost two years and I’d never seen anything, never suspected, but after I tried to remember the shape of that large, purple splotch—hadn’t those been finger marks on her skin?

  What if I hadn’t noticed that bruise? And what if another one of those familiar white envelopes hadn’t been waiting for me just the day before, giving me that same awful jolt I always felt when one showed up in my mailbox? I tried not to read them, but sometimes I’d tear one open, rapidly skimming the crabbed handwriting. They always ended the same way: “I never meant to hurt you. Please forgive me.”

  If that hadn’t been fresh in my mind, would I have been so concerned when I saw that bruise on Heather? Would I have been so quick to call Julie after?

  chapter two

  JULIE

  Heather? Abused? “I can’t even begin to imagine that,” I said to Alison, and quite firmly, too. She could be hypersensitive and I thought she was inflating Heather’s reaction. “Perhaps she was just embarrassed that she had a blemish on that beautiful skin—I’d want to cover it up, too. Why would you assume someone’s hurting her? You shouldn’t think the worst of people.”

  If I focused on the bad and the ugly, I’d never get anything done. I’d certainly never sell another house. Look for the good in everything and you’re sure to find it—I read that somewhere a long time ago and I liked it enough to scribble it down. I carry it around on a little laminated note card that I keep in my purse. It’s helpful just to hold it tight when I’m dealing with a difficult client or a hard-to-sell property. Like the man I helped recently who said, “Every place you’ve shown me is a dump!” This after hours of driving within a twenty-mile radius to show him properties in his price range.

  He used to live in a large, beautifully maintained, four-story Victorian, and that has spoiled him for anything else. He’s getting divorced and doesn’t seem to realize that this has seriously cut into what he can now afford. I guess all he pictured was freedom on the other side of signing that final legal document and starting fresh in some high-ceilinged, ultramodern bachelor pad. Stainless steel, stone, and a twentysomething bimbo reclining naked on a leather sectional. No can do when his ex-wife is keeping the house and he doesn’t have any equity. After alimony and child support, he can only bring a limited down payment to this purchase.

  I know what will happen; I’ve seen it before. He’ll end up choosing a small apartment or townhome in a barely middle-class neighborhood with dirty white walls, stained carpeting that’s just a grade above industrial, and a kitchen last updated circa 1990. He’ll have plenty of time to contemplate the demise of his marriage as he eats his microwave dinners alone at the laminate kitchen counter.

  This is the life he chose, so he’s got to make the best of it—we all have to live with the consequences of our actions. I’ve had to live with having dismissed Alison’s concerns about Heather out of hand. I was upset with her for even suggesting that Viktor Lysenko could ever hurt his wife. “He’s a really caring doctor,” I said. “If he was hurting Heather, wouldn’t she have confided in us?” I forced it right out of my mind because that’s what I always do to stay positive. You’ve got to be careful about what you allow space for in your thoughts—garbage in, garbage out.

  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

  If I’d thought anything about Heather and Viktor’s marriage, it was that they were less likely than the rest of us to experience marital tension because they had a much higher income than most of us. I’m not saying that money buys happiness, of course not, but what it can do is alleviate certain stresses. You can farm out the cleaning, cooking, and even child care. Of course, if I’d stayed at the law firm, we could have had all those things, but I didn’t trust anyone else to take proper care of my kids. Eric’s teaching salary wasn’t a lot for a family of five to live on, but we pinched pennies and never hired anyone to do a job we could do ourselves, or sometimes we put off things like updating our kitchen or replacing our aging minivan. What could people like Heather and Viktor, who had more than enough money to pay for all of their living expenses, possibly have to feel stressed about?

  “Who knows what was going on at the party,” I said to Julie. “It was late and everybody was drinking. You said yourself you walked in on them. If they seem fine, they probably are.”

  “But what about what Alison saw—” Julie started.

  “It was a small bruise, for God’s sake,” I interrupted her. “It’s a big leap to conclude that Heather must be a battered spouse. For an IT consultant, Alison has an overactive imagination.”

  I know that sounds harsh, but there was just something about Alison’s personality that could sometimes rub me the wrong way. What irritated me about her? This is where I am ashamed of myself, because it was nothing more than her needing attention. Alison wanted company, following us around with a big-eyed eagerness that reminded me of my father’s golden retriever.

  Cookie sat at my father’s feet every night as he read the paper in his leather wingback chair. He went straight there every evening when he came home from his law office, sinking back like a turtle pulling into its shell, only leaving his paper when my mother called everyone to the supper table. I wanted his attention, desperately wanted him to notice me, but I’d be damned if I’d wait, like that big dog at his feet, staying for the occasional moments when he’d lean down and rub one of her long, silky ears. The poor creature was content with these scraps of affection. It’s one reason I’ve always been a cat person.

  It wasn’t Alison’s fault that she reminded me of Cookie, with her shaggy blond hair and soft retriever eyes. She had that same eager look. Sometimes I imagined that I could see a tail wagging when Julie laughed at something Alison said. I know that Julie laughed sometimes just to please Alison, because that’s the way Julie was—lightness and laughter, a person without a mean bone in her fit body.

  I don’t mean to sound so short-tempered about Alison, because I truly enjoyed her friendship, too; she was nice and generous and very smart, far smarter than her puppy-dog behavior initially led me to believe. Truthfully, I think part of what annoyed me about Alison was that she thought she and Julie had more in common because they’d both chosen to keep their careers while raising their kids and I hadn’t.

  It’s not that I was ashamed of being a SAHM. I was proud of it. I loved being home with my kids and I placed great value on my time with them—but I felt defensive about having to justify my choice.


  That’s why I was initially happy when Heather joined us. It made me feel like I didn’t have to apologize for choosing my kids over my career. Although if people asked Heather what she did, sometimes she’d say, “Nothing,” which I really disliked. Being a mother is not nothing—not at all. Granted, it’s not like being a model, which was Heather’s past life, or even a lawyer, IT consultant, or real-estate agent. You can’t put “Mom” on your résumé—but it’s not nothing.

  But maybe that’s the way Viktor treated it? Treated her? I’d never seen any signs of that, but I could certainly find out. Daniel and Sam had been given roles in the school’s fall play and I was one of the parent volunteers. “I have to drop off Daniel’s costume,” I said to Julie. “I’ll see if I notice anything.”

  Heather’s house was much larger than the rest of ours. It sat high on the hill in an area called Sewickley Heights, which I sometimes referred to as Puck Palisades because of the Penguins players who owned grand homes there.

  There were large stone pillars on either side of the drive up to Heather’s house, and the mansion itself was also stone, an imposing, Victorian-looking structure that, combined with the circular driveway, reminded me of British period dramas. I always half expected to see a butler come out to greet me. Instead, it was Heather who opened the large, arched wooden door, giving me a languid wave as I stepped out of the car and reached in to the backseat to fetch Daniel’s costume.

  “Thanks for bringing it.” Heather greeted me with a quick peck against the cheek. She looked amazing, but then she always did, even in an old pair of jeans and a slouchy sweater over a T-shirt. An outfit like that would make me look frumpy and even shorter, but on her it was the epitome of casual chic. “Come on in and have something to drink,” she said, leading the way through the front hall and into the massive eat-in kitchen with its high-end white cabinets and huge unbroken slabs of Carrara marble. While I draped Daniel’s costume over a chair back, Heather opened the door of the enormous side-by-side stainless-steel refrigerator and practically disappeared inside it. “Which would you prefer,” she said, lifting something off the door.