A Dark Oval Stone

When Miriam turned around, a woman she didn’t know was waiting for her.

“You are Mrs. Kovatch?” the woman said in a heavily accented voice. Her brown hair, streaked with thick patches of gray, was pulled back in a jumbled ponytail that would tangle painfully when she took out the elastic band.

Miriam nodded.

“I want to ask how are you, but is stupid question.” She looked away nervously, stepping aside as someone needed to get past them.

“Don’t worry. I know what you mean.“ Miriam tried to imagine how this woman knew Paul, how she happened to be at the funeral luncheon. Her accent, her bright clothes—an orange, flowered blouse with powder blue pants—and her glittery blue eye shadow gave her the look of someone from a depressed country, of someone reveling in the astounding choices of a Western economy. Yet in her eyes was a confident kindness that attracted Miriam.

“My name is Svetlana,” and then she said a last name that included a “xha” sound from the back of her throat that Miriam could not have repeated if her life depended on it. “I know your husband. He helped me incredibly much.” All her h’s were pronounced “xha.” Another person squeezed past them, and this seemed to disconcert Svetlana.

“Let’s go in there,” Miriam said, leading her toward the front of the house to a smaller room where there were fewer people. She sat on the love seat and motioned Svetlana next to her. They sat slightly crooked, facing each other, outer knees touching. Miriam watched Svetlana gather her thoughts. She couldn’t tell if it was the language barrier that was giving her trouble, or what she wanted to say.

Svetlana seemed to come to a decision. “I have been married twenty-five years,” she stated. “My husband and I come here two years ago, and he thought maybe life would not be so hard. He drank very much and he was, I think you say, a mean drunk. At first I am thinking I am deserving this treatment, because I am the one who wanted to come to America. But Mr. Kovatch, your husband, tells me this is a lie. I have no money to pay him, but he was helping me with a divorce anyway, and also to find work, and most of all, to find safety. It is my husband who should be dead, not yours,” she concluded. “I am not ashamed to say this.”

Miriam felt powerless to respond.

Svetlana’s chin sank into the collar of her blouse, apparently spent.

They sat, in silence strangely companionable, and people passed by them as if they were invisible.