Fifty slides, one for every year: that was how I pictured it in March, and that was how I made it. Veselin was turning fifty on the twelfth of October, a Saturday, and for that Saturday I booked the hall at a restaurant on Freedom Square, for eighty people, with prosciutto, cheese cured in a skin sack, and lamb baked under the sač. I put the slideshow together at night, at the kitchen table, on the old laptop Milijana left behind when she went off to study in Belgrade. The first forty-four slides were what everyone expects at a party like that. A baby in a cradle on Ljubomir. A first bicycle on Trg slobode, under the plane trees. The army. Our wedding. Milijana's christening. The opening of the Gluhović Driving School, with a ribbon I bought and I cut, because that morning he had quarreled with the contractor. The last six slides were just for him.
I found out by accident, the way, I suppose, people always find out. Last winter Veselin's phone screen cracked, and he opened his Viber on Milijana's tablet to send the insurance company pictures of a scratched car. Afterward he forgot to log out. The tablet sat on the shelf next to the recipe books, and one evening in March, while I was looking for a recipe for uštipci, it lit up. "Did you tell her the seminar is in Banja Luka? Bring that blue shirt, you look good in it." The message was from Aleksandra, an instructor at his school, a woman of thirty-four who taught student drivers parallel parking on the street by the Arslanagić Bridge. I read the whole conversation. It had been going on for ten months. The seminar in Banja Luka was in Herceg Novi, and in the photo from the promenade Veselin was wearing the blue shirt I had ironed for him.
I said nothing. I have been a bookkeeper for twenty-two years, and I know an account is not closed until all the paperwork is in. I took forty-one screenshots, emailed them to myself, and deleted the trail. I kept ironing his shirts, the blue one too. On Saturdays I went to the market under the plane trees, bought figs and honey from the same woman from Popovo Polje, and asked her about her grandchildren. When Veselin left for a seminar in Doboj in May, I wished him a safe trip. When he went to a trade fair in Novi Sad in July, I packed him sandwiches. I had never sat behind the wheel, not once in twenty-five years of marriage: the wife of a driving school owner, he used to say, does not need to drive, she gets driven. He told his brother on the phone that I was somehow calmer this year and that it must be my age.
The plan was simple. After the slide with the school opening came number forty-five: "March. Seminar in Banja Luka." Under the title, the photo from the promenade in Herceg Novi, on a bench under a palm tree. Then the blue shirt, then the message where he calls me "her," then the hotel bill, then their joint plan for Novi Sad. On the fiftieth slide, over the cake I had ordered from the pastry shop in the Old Town, it would say: "Happy birthday, Vesko. Aleksandra has a present for you. I have packed you a suitcase." I invited Aleksandra myself. I wrote her name in my own hand on the place card for table seven, with the other instructors. That night, for the first time since March, I slept until morning.
I had to get the childhood photos from my mother-in-law. Cvijeta lives alone on Ljubomir, in a house with a stone wall around the yard. She is seventy-eight and has eyes that see more than a person would like. She brought out a shoebox full of pictures, made coffee, and sat down next to me. She had a story for each one: here Vesko is three and scared of a goat, here he fell out of a cherry tree and did not cry so his father would not see. Then she pulled one out and laid it face down on the table. "Don't put this one in." I turned it over. It was her late husband Vidoje, young, at some village dance, and beside him a woman in a light-colored dress who was not Cvijeta.
"Everybody knew," she said, and sipped her coffee. "I found out last, and I knew longest. At a wedding near Bileća, in front of half the village, I poured red wine all over that dress of hers. I thought he would be ashamed. Vidoje died twenty years ago, and nobody remembers her anymore. But to this day, when I walk into the shop, somebody points: there goes that Cvijeta who poured the wine." She looked at me for a long time over her cup. She did not mention Aleksandra. She only said: "Vesko is his father's son, Radmila. You do as you like. Just make sure you don't end up named after his sin." When I left, she put a jar of ajvar in my bag, and the picture of Vesko scared of the goat.
The night before the party I sat in the kitchen until three. I did not delete the first slideshow. I copied it onto a small USB stick, wrapped it in gold paper, and tied it with a red ribbon, like a present. Then I made a second one. The first forty-four slides stayed the same. I put the last six together slowly, the way you put together a year-end account, and at the end I played the whole thing from the beginning, without sound, to see how it looked. Veselin was asleep in the room across the hall, snoring as always, peacefully, like a man nobody had ever taken the steering wheel from.
Saturday was warm, the way it can be in Trebinje in October, when the plane trees are already dropping leaves all over the square and people still sit outside in shirtsleeves. Everyone came: Veselin's brother from Herceg Novi, the godparents, the neighbors, people from the municipality, the instructors at table seven, and Aleksandra in a green dress, laughing a little louder than she should have. A neighbor from Ljubomir drove Cvijeta in, and she sat in the corner with her bag on her lap. Milijana arrived by bus from Belgrade and hugged her father for a long time, like a little girl. Veselin gave a speech. He thanked the godparents, his brother, his instructors, "who are like family to me," and finally "my Rada, who puts up with everything." Everyone laughed. Milovan the waiter lowered the screen and handed me the remote.
I stood up, took the microphone, and said: "Fifty years, fifty pictures." The lights dimmed. The first pictures went the way I knew they would. The goat drew laughter, the army photo applause, the wedding sighs from the tables where the women sat. I did not watch the screen. I watched table seven. Aleksandra was drinking wine and typing something under the tablecloth, and every time, the phone buzzed in Veselin's pocket. At the slide with the school opening someone shouted "Long live the boss!" and the instructors slapped their palms on the table. Then came number forty-five.
On a white background, in black letters, it said: "March. Veselin at a seminar in Banja Luka." Below was a photo of me in the office of a driving school in Bileća, holding my enrollment slip. The hall went quiet, then laughed. Next: "May. Veselin at a seminar in Doboj." Me at the wheel of a red car with a school sign on the roof, and beside me my instructor from Bileća, a gentleman of sixty, with his hand on the hand brake. Next: "July. Veselin at a trade fair in Novi Sad." Me with my driver's license held up to my chin, like a medal. The women applauded. Someone called out: "Look at her, sneaking off to the competition!" The instructors laughed loudest. All but one.
Number forty-eight: "August. Veselin on a business trip." Milijana and me in Herceg Novi, on the promenade, on a bench under a palm tree, with two ice creams. The guests saw the sea and a mother with her daughter. Veselin saw the bench. Number forty-nine: "September. Veselin at a seminar." A small gray used car, registered in my name. The fiftieth slide was the cake from the pastry shop in the Old Town, and over it a single sentence: "Happy birthday, Vesko. From Monday on, I drive alone." The hall applauded. They thought I meant the license. His brother whistled through his fingers. At table seven Aleksandra got up and went toward the restrooms, and Veselin sat with a glass in his hand and looked at me the way he had not looked at me in twenty-five years, like someone he had yet to meet.
When the lights came up, Cvijeta was the first to clap, from her corner, slowly, with her bag on her lap. She said nothing, only nodded toward me, the way people on Ljubomir greet each other over a fence. Milijana hugged me and whispered, "Mom, you're crazy," and laughed until she cried. She did not know anything yet. I told her that same night, in the car.
After midnight, when the guests had gone and Milovan was collecting the glasses, I gave Veselin the little gold package with the red ribbon. "This is the other one," I said. "Also fifty slides. Watch it alone, at home. I don't sleep there anymore." He turned the package over in his hands and asked how long I had known. I said: since the uštipci. He did not understand, and I did not explain. He asked who else knew. "Nobody, for now," I said. "You choose who you show it to." I had been carrying the key to the studio apartment by the Trebišnjica in my jacket pocket since August.
My gray car was waiting in the lot behind the restaurant. Milijana sat down beside me, buckled her seat belt, and looked at me as if she were seeing her mother behind the wheel for the first time, which was the truth. I drove slowly along the river, under the plane trees, to a building with balconies facing the water. In front of the entrance there was one single free space, between a van and a dumpster. Parallel parking had never been my thing. Milijana counted the attempts out loud. I made it on the third, and nobody honked at us.