Cal made me needy, into a person who craved touches, confessions, partnership. He made me everything I never wanted to be. Mikhailovs don’t need women. It was true after all: I needed a man, that man, my man. The men in my family had their uptight women, and I had my revelation of a man, a man they would have wished they could be if they had gotten to know him. They never would. He was mine and I was smarter than to share him.

“You look sad,” Cal said, catching me before I fell into a well of feelings I didn’t want to have.

“I’m hungry,” I blurted, and he nodded, taking my hand and leading me to the narrow stairwell to The Studio.

I was concentrating on walking up the steps, one at a time, when I heard crying. I worried it was me, but a quick sweep of my cheeks ensured it wasn’t. Lifting my head, I saw Cal holding Rosie, the mousy little moll buried into my guy’s body. I was so hungry and so starved for Cal’s attention. I wanted Rosie to disappear, go back to New York so he would stop inhaling my air. I was over him. I was over my patience.

“I was raped,” Rosie wailed.

And suddenly, I was well on my way to sober.

16

February 1934

The night of Rosie’s incident, my initial reaction was to have no reaction at all. I sat at the head of the bed, back wedged into the corner of the room, eyes staring into space as we rang in the New Year listening to Rosie’s tearful telling of the assault. I tried not to look at him. I could barely look at him when he wasn’t crying and seeing him sob was disturbing. It was as though the well of sadness I had always recognized in him had begun to surge from his pores, flooding the room with the depth of his emotions. I don’t know if I had ever been more uncomfortable in my life. Cal, however, naturally moved into a nurturing role. While it had been obvious he had a tenderness toward Rosie, it was strange to witness the purity of their connection. Cal seemed fatherly in a way I hadn’t expected. Cradling his arms around Rosie’s lithe figure, Cal rocked and hushed him with soothing coos. I felt as though I was witnessing something I shouldn’t, a part of Cal I hadn’t needed to see. It was an image that would stay with me and one I would have preferred to forget. The rawness reverberated in my mind, sending hot waves of nausea through my body, yet I wasn’t sure if I was troubled or disgusted by Rosie’s recounting.