The Summer Garden (16 page)

“It was a fake life,” said Alexander. “There was nothing real about it.”

“It was the realest life we knew.” Stung at his bitter words, she sank down to the deck.

“Oh, look,” he said dismissively, “it was what it was, but it was a month! I was going back to the front. We pretended we were living while war raged. You kept house, I fished. You peeled potatoes, made bread. We hung sheets on the line to dry, almost as if we were living. And now we’re trying it in America.” Alexander shook his head. “I work, you clean, we dig potatoes, we shop for food. We break our bread. We smoke. We talk sometimes. We make love.” He paused as he glanced at her, remorsefully and yet—accusingly? “Not Lazarevo love.”

Tatiana lowered her head, their Lazarevo love tainted by the Gulag.

“Is any of it going to give me another chance to save your brother?” he asked.

“
Nothing
is going to change what cannot be changed,” she replied, her head close to her knees. “All we can do is change what can be.”

“But, Tania, don’t you know that the things that torture you most are the things you cannot fix?”

“That I know,” she whispered.

“And do I judge
you
? Let’s see,” said Alexander, “what about taking ice away from the borders of your heart? Is that changeable, you think? No, no, don’t shake your head, don’t deny it. I know what used to be there. I know the wide-eyed joyous sixteen-year-old you once were.”

Tatiana hadn’t shaken her head. She bowed her head; how different.

“You once skipped barefoot through the Field of Mars with me. And then,” said Alexander, “you helped me drag your mother’s body on a sled to the frozen cemetery.”

“Shura!” She got up off the deck on her collapsing legs. “Of all the things we could talk about—”

“On the sled
dragged
,” he whispered, “your entire family! Tell me you’re not still on that ice in Lake—”

“Shura! Stop!” Her hands went over her ears.

Grabbing her, removing her hands from her head, Alexander brought her in front of him. “Still there,” he said almost inaudibly, “still digging new ice holes to bury them in.”

“Well, what about you?” Tatiana said to him in a lifeless voice. “Every single night reburying my brother after he died on your back.”

“Yes,” Alexander said in his own lifeless voice, letting her go. “That is what I do. I dig deeper frozen holes for him. I tried to save him and I killed him. I buried your brother in a shallow grave.”

Tatiana cried. Alexander sat and smoked—his way of crying—poison right in the throat to quell the grief.

“Let’s go live in the woods, Tania,” he said. “Because
nothing
is going to make you skip next to me again while walking through the Summer Garden. I’m not the only one who’s gone. So let’s go make fish soup over the fire in our steel helmet, let’s both eat and drink from it. Have you noticed? We have one pot. We have one spoon. We live as if we’re still at war, in the trench, without meat, without baking real bread, without collecting things, without nesting. The only way you and I can live is like this: homeless and abandoned. We have it off with the clothes on our back, before they start shooting again, before they bring reinforcements. That’s where we still are. Not on Lovers Key but in a trench, on that hill in Berlin, waiting for them to kill us.”

“Darling, but the enemy is gone,” Tatiana said, starting to shake, remembering Sam Gulotta and the State Department.

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t live without the enemy,” said Alexander. “I don’t know how to wear the civilian clothes you bought to cover me. I don’t know how not to clean my weapons every day, how not to keep my hair short, how not to bark at you and Anthony, how not to expect you to listen. And I don’t know how to touch you slow or take you slow as if I’m not in prison and the guards are coming any minute.”

Tatiana wanted to walk away but didn’t want to upset him further. She didn’t lift her head as she spoke. “
I
think you’re doing better,” she said. “But you do whatever you need to. Wear your army clothes. Clean your guns, cut your hair, bark away, I will listen. Take me how you can.” When Alexander said nothing, nothing at all, to help her, Tatiana continued in a frail voice, “We have to figure out a way that’s best for
us
.”

His elbows were on his knees. Her shoulders were quaking.

Where was he, her Alexander of once? Was he truly gone? The Alexander of the Summer Garden, of their first Lazarevo days, of the hat in his hands, white-toothed, peaceful, laughing, languid, stunning Alexander, had he been left far behind?

Well, Tatiana supposed that was only right.

For Alexander believed his Tatiana of once was gone, too. The swimming child Tatiana of the Luga, of the Neva, of the River Kama.

Perhaps on the surface they were still in their twenties, but their hearts were old.

Mercy Hospital

The following afternoon at 12:30,
she wasn’t at the marina. Alexander could usually spot her from a great distance, waiting for them on the docks, even before he entered the no wake zone. But today, he pulled up, he docked, let the women and the old men off as Anthony stood by the plank and saluted them. He waited and waited.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“Good question, son.” Alexander had relented; she had asked him this morning to forgive Anthony, and he did and took the boy with him, admonishing him to keep to himself. Now Ant was here, and his mother wasn’t. Was she upset with him after yesterday’s excruciating conversation?

“Maybe she took a nap and forgot to wake up,” said Anthony.

“Does Mommy usually sleep during the day?”

“Never.”

He waited a little longer and decided to bring the boy home. He himself had to be back by two for the afternoon tour. Anthony, his joy in life unmitigated by external circumstance, stopped and touched every rust spot, every blade of glass that grew where it wasn’t supposed to. Alexander had to put the boy on his shoulders to get home a little faster.

Tatiana wasn’t home either.

“So where’s Mommy?”

“I don’t know, Ant. I was hoping you’d know.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

“We’ll wait, I guess.” Alexander was smoking one cigarette after another.

Anthony stood in front of him. “I’m thirsty.”

“All right, I can get you a drink.”

“That’s not the cup Mommy uses. That’s not the juice Mommy uses. That’s not how Mommy pours it.” Then he said, “I’m thirsty
and
I’m hungry. Mommy always feeds me.”

“Yes, me too,” said Alexander, but he made him a sandwich with cheese and peanut butter.

He thought for sure she would be back any minute with the laundry or with groceries.

At one thirty, Alexander was running out of options.

He said, “Let’s go, Antman. Let’s take one more look, and if we can’t find her, I guess you’ll have to come with me.”

Instead of walking left to Memorial Park, they decided to walk right on Bayshore, past the construction site for the hospital. There was another small park on the other side. Anthony said sometimes they went there to play.

Alexander saw her from a distance, not at the park, but at the Mercy Hospital construction site, sitting on what looked to be a dirt mound.

When he got closer, he saw she was sitting motionless on a stack of two-by-fours. He saw her from the side, her hair in its customary plait, her hands laid tensely in a cross on her lap.

Anthony saw her and ran. “Mommy!”

She came out of her reverie, turned her head, and her face wrinkled in a contrite scrunch. “Uh-oh,” she said, standing up and rushing to them. “Have I been a bad girl?”

“On so many levels,” Alexander said, coming up to her. “You know I have to get back by two.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, bending to Anthony. “I lost track of time. You okay, bud? I see Daddy fed you.”

“What are you doing?” Alexander asked, but she was pretending to wipe the crumbs off Anthony’s mouth and didn’t reply.

“I see. Well, I have to go,” he said coldly, bending to kiss Anthony on the head.

That evening they were having dinner, almost not talking. Tatiana, trying to make light conversation, mentioned that Mercy Hospital was the first Catholic hospital in the Greater Miami area, a ministry of the Roman Catholic Church, and it was being built in the shape of a cross, when Alexander interrupted her. “So this is what you’ve been doing with your free time?”

“Free time?” she said curtly. “How do you think you get food on your table?”

“I didn’t have food on my table this afternoon.”

“Once.”

“Was that the first time you were sitting there?”

She couldn’t lie to him. “No,” she admitted. “But it’s nothing. I just go and sit.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just do, that’s all.”

“Tatiana, let me understand,” Alexander said, and his voice got hard. “You have the Barnacle House to visit, the Vizcaya Palace, the Italianate Gardens, there is shopping, and libraries, there’s the ocean, and swimming and sunbathing, and reading, but what you do with the only two hours you have to yourself all day is go and sit in a dust bowl, watching construction workers build a
hospital
?”

Tatiana didn’t say anything at first. “As you well know,” she said quietly, “the way you are toward me, I have much more than two hours to myself all day.”

Alexander didn’t say anything.

“So why don’t you call Vikki and ask her to come down and spend a few weeks with you?” he said at last.

“Oh, just
stop
forcing Vikki on me all the time!” Tatiana exclaimed in a voice so loud it surprised even her.

Alexander stood up from the table. “Don’t raise your fucking voice to me.”

Tatiana jumped up. “Well, stop talking nonsense then!”

His hands slammed the table. “What did I say?”

“You left me and were gone for three days in Deer Isle!” she yelled. “
Three days!
Did you ever explain to me where you were? Did you ever tell me? And do
I
bang the table? Meanwhile I sit for five minutes a block away from our house and suddenly you’re all up in arms! I mean, are you even serious?”

“TATIANA!” His fist crashed into the table and dishes rattled off to the floor.

Anthony burst into tears. Holding his hands over his ears, he was saying, “Mommy, Mommy, stop it.”

Tatiana threw up her hands and went to her son. Alexander stormed out.

Inside the bedroom Anthony said, “Mommy, don’t yell at Daddy or he’ll go away again.”

Tatiana wanted to explain that adults sometimes argued but knew Anthony wouldn’t understand. Bessie and Nick Moore argued. Anthony’s mom and dad didn’t argue. The child couldn’t see that they were getting less good at pretending they were both made of china and not flint. At least there was actual participation, though as with all things, one had to be careful what one wished for.

Many hours later Alexander came back and went straight out on the deck.

Tatiana had been lying in bed waiting for him. She put on her robe and went outside. The air smelled of salt and the ocean. It was after midnight, it was June, in the high seventies. She liked that about Coconut Grove. She’d never been in a place where the nighttime temperature remained so warm.

“I’m sorry I raised my voice,” she said.

“What you should be
sorry
about,” Alexander said, “is that you’re up to no good. That’s what you should be sorry about.”

“I’m just sitting and thinking,” she said.

“Oh, and I was born yesterday? Give me a fucking break.”

She went to sit on his lap. She was going to tell him what he needed to hear. She only wished that just
once
he would tell her what
she
needed to hear. “It’s nothing, Shura. Really. I’m just sitting. Mmm,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek against his. His cheek was stubbly. She loved that stubble. His breath smelled of alcohol. She breathed it in; she loved that beer breath. Then she sighed. “Where’ve you been?”

“I walked to one of the casinos. Played poker. See how easy that was? And if you wanted to know where I’d been back in Deer Isle, why didn’t you just ask me?”

Tatiana didn’t want to tell him she was afraid to know. She had gone missing for thirty minutes. He had been lost, gone, missing and presumed dead for years. She wished sometimes he would just think,
think
of the things
she
might feel. She didn’t want to be on his lap anymore. “Shura, come on, don’t be upset with me,” Tatiana said, getting off.

“You, too.” He threw down his cigarette as he stood up. “I’m doing my level best,” he said, heading inside.

“Me, too, Alexander,” she said, head down, following him. “Me, too.”

But in bed—she naked, holding him, he naked, holding her, nearly there, nearly at the very end for him—Tatiana clutched him as she used to, feverishly clutched his back and under her fingers, even at the moment of her own breaking abandon, felt his scars under her grasping fingers.

She could not continue. Could not, even at that moment.
Especially
at that moment. And so she found herself doing what she remembered
him
doing in Lazarevo when he couldn’t bear to touch her: Tatiana stopped him, pushed him away, and turned her back to him.

She put her face in the pillow, raised her hips and cried, hoping he wouldn’t notice, hoping that even if he did notice, he would be too far gone to care.

She was wrong on all counts. He noticed. And he wasn’t too far gone to care.

“So
this
is what your level best looks like, huh?” Alexander whispered, out of breath, bending over her, lifting her head off the pillow by her hair. “Presenting your cold back to me?”

“It’s not cold,” Tatiana said, not facing him. “It’s just the only part that’s taken leave of
all
its senses.”

Alexander jumped off the bed—shaking and unfinished. He turned on the lamp, the overhead light, he opened the shades. Unsteadily she sat up on the bed, covering herself with a sheet. He stood naked in front of her, glistening, unsubsided, his chest heaving. He was incredibly upset.