Chapter 5

The next day, Annie and Evelyn arranged to spend the morning touring the National Museum, before meeting some of the other expat wives for lunch.

Normally, if Annie had to go a mile or two around town, she walked. It was free, good exercise, and (for better or worse) a way to see the city. But schlepping it on foot really wasn’t Evie’s style—so, Annie hailed a cab and swung by the Inter-Continental to collect her friend instead.

When Evelyn piled into the backseat, sporting a fur stole that hardly fit the mild weather, there was something of a glow about her. “You seem happy today,” Annie said with a hint of envy. “Enjoying Belgrade so far?”

“Oh,” Evie said carelessly, “just glad to see Ricky. By the time I got here, he’d already been away on this junket for two whole weeks, you know? I was about ready to climb the walls. So the last couple of nights ... well, let’s just say we’ve been making up for lost time.”

Annie pursed her lips, perplexed. How could the woman overlook her husband’s roving eye so easily? Of course, Evie didn’t know about that red-haired tramp from the club (Annie was trying to pretend she didn’t know about that one either). Even so... “I don’t get it. Our husbands acted like jackasses last night. So how can you be ... intimate, right afterwards? I was tempted to kick Tom to the couch. Doesn’t that stuff bother you?”

“The way I see it, boys are going to be boys sometimes, no matter how much we might prefer otherwise. No point getting too worked up over it.”

A glance at Annie showed she was unimpressed by these platitudes; and Evelyn tried again, less flip. “Look, the reason Ricky and I stay married is because we have fun together. We know each other. We like each other. It isn’t because we took some vows a quarter-century ago, and it certainly isn’t because I have him locked in a chastity belt. So yeah, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I trust him not to let me down when it counts, and he never has. Also, I make sure to get what I want out of the marriage. And hot sex with my Latin lover,” she winked, “is definitely high on that list.”

Annie couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Evie, you’re so uninhibited. For the rest of us, it’s not so easy to overlook our spouses’ screw-ups. Or to dial up hot sex on demand, for that matter!”

Evie grimaced sympathetically. “Sex not so great right now? It happens sometimes. So—what are you doing about it?”

What a weird question, Annie thought. She pondered a moment. “Well, I did read in a magazine about ‘sex positions.’ Like, besides missionary I mean. I tried a couple, with Tom, but it didn’t really work. It was awkward, and he didn’t seem all that interested.”

“Hm, let’s take a step back.” Evelyn’s tone indicated that the situation was worse than she’d feared. “If you don’t understand what you want, then you certainly won’t be able to coach your husband. Think about other guys, before Tom. What did they do in bed that you really liked?”

“Uhhh...” Annie stalled. The truth is that there weren’t any ‘other guys’ in the sense that Evelyn intended. Oh, there had been plenty of boyfriends, in college and afterward. But until marrying Tom, she’d never let things progress much further than ‘making out’.

The pattern had become very predictable. She’d date a man for a while, and it was pleasant enough. But sooner or later, he’d get frustrated with her boundaries and use it as an excuse to break up. Then Annie would take that as confirmation of her principles—if the guy wasn’t willing to wait and go at her (glacial) pace, he’d obviously never been good enough for her anyway. Rinse and repeat.

All this might make it sound like she was frigid or puritanical, but that wasn’t really it. True, Annie’s character had a certain natural reticence, but she was only a lukewarm Episcopalian, and had never viewed the erotic as dirty or profane. When her parents sought to preempt awkward questions with a copy of Love and Sex in Plain Language, she’d read it with dutiful interest.

Still, deep in her heart, Annie remained wedded to the Victorian notion that female sexuality was a prize to be withheld. Who knows where this attitude had come from—perhaps from subliminal messages in her upbringing, or her social set, or the old movies she liked. But by the time she reached college, it had taken firm root.

There, she’d found a like-minded clique of young women: intelligent, self-assured, and selective to the point of abstinence. They’d had nothing but disdain for girls who gave it up cheap. It’s not that they were ‘saving it for marriage’ as a matter of principle—simply that in practice, they somehow never managed to find that guy who was successful enough, and thoughtful enough, and honorable enough, and patient enough to be worthy of their virginity. And until they did, they certainly weren’t going to settle.

To Annie, this had seemed like a matter of basic self-respect—and so, after graduation, she’d gone on respecting herself that way, right up to the moment when Tom put a ring on her finger.

Of course, she understood that this inexperience made her, if not an aberration, then still something of an outlier. And not only among the women of her generation. Hell, Evelyn had obviously sowed many more wild oats in her youth than Annie ever had, and she must be old enough to remember a time when ‘the pill’ was a novelty!

The temperamental gulf between the two friends was so large, in fact, that Annie couldn’t even begin to think of how to bridge it. Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Just then, their car pulled up in front of the museum. “We’re here!” she said, cutting short the conversation with cheery finality. “Thanks for talking that over with me, you’ve been a big help.”

After purchasing tickets, they huddled in the lobby to consult their brochures. “Do you want to see the Yugoslav artists?” Annie asked.

Evelyn gagged. “Soviet-Realism meets peasant-provincialism? No thank you. I’ll stick to the 19th century masters.”

Trading light chit-chat, the pair traced a winding route to the impressionist gallery. Annie was enjoying the conversation, and she allowed the art to flow over her without paying any particular notice—until, unexpectedly, a luminous pastel in shades of moss and marigold snared her attention.

The painting showed a mother, kneeling beside a child of perhaps two or three that bore a melancholy expression. The mother’s face was obscured, but her body language spoke volumes. Earnestly, passionately, her hand stretched out to clutch at the babe’s garment: approaching ever so close, yet never quite able to touch. From just that small gesture, you could feel how the woman yearned to hold and protect her offspring. How desperately she wanted to spare the child every pang of pain and sadness...

Evelyn drifted over to see what had caught Annie’s eye. “Ah, Mary Cassatt! She’s brilliant, isn’t she? ... Yes, that’s motherhood in a nutshell.” After a leaden pause, she pulled a kleenex from her handbag and dabbed an eye. “Oh fuck, now I’m missing my brood! I’ll have to give them a call tonight. Enjoy your freedom, Annie. Once you have kids, it changes everything.”

Annie felt a catch in her own throat, hot tears behind her eyelids, and had to look away.

It wasn’t Evie’s fault; she couldn’t have known. There had been many reasons to come to Belgrade. Tom’s ambitions and the wealth they hoped he’d earn; the chance to jettison her own fruitless career; the prospect of foreign adventures. But there was one other reason too. One ache she was fleeing—one heartbreak that she never told other people about; and that she had hoped (secretly, irrationally) to leave behind in the turmoil of moving abroad.

It was the absence of children in her life.

After the wedding, when she’d said she wanted to start a family right away, Tom was amenable. And for a while, she hadn’t worried about the lack of results—in fact, she’d been glad for the time to just be a couple. But as the years marched on, full of dashed hopes and false-alarms, a growing sense of emptiness and unfulfillment had begun to oppress her.

She couldn’t say whose ‘fault’ it was—maybe their bodies were just incompatible. But neither of them was eager to roll the dice on costly, debilitating fertility treatments. So, they just kept trying. And failing. Sometimes, she thought the very worst part was how maddeningly philosophical Tom could be about it. “If it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen,” he’d say. “There’s no point agonizing over things we can’t control.” She hated when he talked like that—as if the idea of children was appealing enough, but nothing that he’d ever really crave. It made her feel alone.

By the time Tom proposed moving to Serbia, their barrenness had spanned a full five years and started in on a sixth. Annie was ready to jump at any sort of change. If she couldn’t be a mother in the States, then maybe she could reinvent herself as something else entirely overseas. It hadn’t worked, of course. But she couldn’t really blame herself for trying.

Now, with an effort, she pushed these thoughts down and glanced back at her friend. Evelyn had composed herself, and was eyeing Annie shrewdly. “Are you ok, honey?”

She managed a watery smile. “Yeah. It’s just a moving work of art, that’s all.”

Evie looked unconvinced. “Well, it is that.”

They met the girls at Mamma Mia, another Belgrade hangout that was popular with transplants from America and Western-Europe.

There were eight in their party, and the mood was convivial. Annie and Evelyn sat at opposite ends of the table, which was laden with generous platters of pasta, cutlets, salad, and bread, along with endless bottles of a surprisingly good Croatian red.