Sliver Of Truth

You may remember that I am a writer. Up until recently, I wrote articles for major magazines and newspapers-features, profiles of celebrities and politicians, some travel pieces. I’ve done well and I’ve always loved my work. But like so many things, that has changed over the last year. (Not that I don’t still love my work, although I’m not sure love is the right word for it. It’s more that I’m indivisible from the work that I do, simply couldn’t be or do anything else.) Lately I’ve been attracted to more serious subjects, wanting to explore things that have real meaning. I’ve found myself interested in survivors, people who have faced extraordinary circumstances and not just lived to tell it, but gone on to create greater purpose in their lives. I am fascinated by human endurance, by the capacity some people seem to have to turn tragedy into victory. Imagine that. Personally, I felt as if I had the whole tragedy thing down. It was the other part that remained elusive.

The next morning, bright light flooded the loft as I made a pot of coffee. I turned the television on to watch the Today show as I got ready to head out, but muted it finally because I couldn’t stand the chatter, the incessant commercials. I zoned out on the screen for a minute as I sipped the strong coffee. There was a picture of a smiling man and woman in the corner of the screen. The words Missing Couple were emblazened above them. I think they’d been missing awhile, no clue to what might have happened to them. I got the horrible unsettled feeling I get about this type of thing when I considered the possibility that no one might ever know their fate. I don’t like unanswered questions, unsolved mysteries. They give me angst. I turned away from the screen. I had my own problems to worry about, not the least of which was a looming deadline for O Magazine.

I peered out the window and saw that the people moving along Park Avenue South were in coats and hats. It was sunny but cold, my favorite kind of New York City day. I lingered for a while and found myself searching the street for the man I’d seen in the photographs. I looked for the tall, thin form, the sunken face. But, of course, he wasn’t there. And Max was dead. I wasn’t sure of much in my life. But I was sure of that.

I took a shower and got dressed. As I bundled myself up in my black wool peacoat and light-blue cashmere scarf, I pushed aside the events of yesterday and headed out the door.

ELENA JANSEN WAS a tiny bird of a woman, a former dancer with the New York City Ballet. She had a grace and strength to her carriage, a steel to her posture that made her seem powerful in spite of the fact that she just barely cleared five feet. Her eyes, a deep cocoa brown, were warm and liquid, her handshake firm and sure. I expected to find a shattered woman, to see some evidence of her tragedy in her physical bearing. But what I saw was defiance, a dare to the Universe to try to take her down again. I’d seen this before. In fact, I’d say it was the defining feature I’d found in the survivors I’d interviewed lately. A refusal to cower, to surrender, even when the world has revealed all its ugliness and horror. I imagined that sometimes I’d seen it in my own reflection, though that might have just been wishful thinking.

I followed her into a warm parlor overlooking Central Park. The room was decorated in deep reds with cream and gold accents. The walls were a gallery of photos of her years as a dancer and of her children. She was beautiful now in her early fifties, but as a younger woman, she had been truly stunning. I’d seen many of these photos in my preliminary research for this article I was writing for O Magazine.

“Well, then,” she said, sitting elegantly in an overstuffed brocade chair by the window. She motioned toward the matching sofa across from her. I took off my coat and extracted my notebook and pen from my bag and sat. “Shall we begin?”

She seemed not to want to waste any time, launched right into her story. “People say ‘stormy,’ and there’s a kind of romance to it, you know?” she said, looking straight into my eyes. “But I don’t think many people understood how dark, how dangerous those storms could be. At first even I thought his temper, his jealousy were signs of how much he loved me. But I was a stupid girl. What did I know?”

She told me how she met her husband. He was a wealthy surgeon who fell in love with her as she danced across the stage at the Met, was bold enough to send her a dozen white roses every day until she consented to dinner. Their engagement was brief, their wedding one of the social events of the year. She constantly heard how lucky she was to have found a man so in love, so devoted. She believed it, too, so it took her longer to notice the signs-or maybe she just ignored them-that there was something wrong with him, something frightening about him.