The Summer Garden (73 page)

“Did I say anything?” said Anthony. “And then they were arrested?”

“Then they were arrested.”

“Mommy said you were arrested, too.”

“Bud, I was arrested so many times, I lost count.” Alexander smiled.

“She said you saw your father in prison right before he died?”

“Yes.” They made a left on Pima. Soon they’d be home.

“Did you see your mother?” Anthony was looking at him intensely.

“No.” And here it was. Here was the infernal moment of the burnt-out cigarette, singeing another hole in the soul.
Alexander had walked out of his house one morning to go to school, and when he came out, the mother was gone, the father was gone, the family was gone. He never saw or spoke to his mother again after that morning when he left so casually without even a “catch you later.”

“Your mom is once again unfortunately right about me,” Alexander said. “This is the one thing I really
can’t
talk about. Ask her if you want. Sorry, bud.” Alexander tightened his hands around the wheel.

They retreated back into their corners of the bench.

“So how did you escape?” Anthony asked.

“Which time?”

“When you were seventeen.”

“I jumped off a train off a bridge into the River Volga.”

“A long way down?”

“A
long
way down.” A hundred feet into the great unknown.

“And then you met Mommy?”

Alexander laughed. “Yes,” he said. “I jumped into the river, details details details, typhus, army, war with Finland, and then I met Mommy.”

“Typhus…is that why you’re always telling me to shower?”

“I’m telling you to shower,” Alexander said, “so you don’t repel the girls when you’re older.” Though perhaps less showering and more repelling might level that field a little.

“Dad, please,” said Anthony, “we’re not having another one of your talks, are we?”

“No, son, no.”

“Tell me how you met her.” Anthony’s eyes warmed in anticipation. His whole body turned on the bench seat to his father.

“I was walking down a Leningrad street, on patrol,” said Alexander, “and she was sitting across the road on a bench eating ice cream.”

“That’s not how Mommy tells it,” Anthony said teasingly. “She says you got on the bus for her and stalked her practically to Finland.”

“The stalking was second. First she sat on a bench.” Alexander smiled. “She was
really
enjoying her ice cream.”

“What else?”

“That’s it. She was singing. Humming. ‘We’ll Meet Again in Lvov, My Love and I.’” Alexander breathed in the distant melody of that song. He could barely remember how it went.

“And what did you do?”

“I crossed the street.”

Anthony was staring at him. “But why?”

“You
have
seen your mother, Anthony, right?”

“Was she pretty at sixteen, too?”

“You could say that.” Alexander blinked her away from his eyes so he could see the road.

“But there were other pretty girls in Leningrad, weren’t there? Mommy says you had other lady friends before her.”

Alexander shrugged, to convey what he couldn’t say to his son, which was: there was a nightly parade, a pleasant buffet of girlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirls—and then there was your mother.

Anthony was thoughtful. “I once heard you say to Mommy that you had been born twice. Once in 1919 and once with her. Was it on that street in Leningrad?”

“
I
said this?” Alexander did not remember. “When did I say that?”

“On Bethel Island. I was lying next to her. And you were whispering.”

“You remember Bethel Island?” Alexander smiled with piercing nostalgia.

“Yes,” Anthony said, not smiling. “You two were so happy then.” He turned to the passenger window.

And Alexander stopped smiling.

After getting home, he walked in and sat on Anthony’s bed. “Listen,” he said, “are you going to be okay alone for a few hours if I go see Mommy at the hospital?”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh.”

“I just…You’re such a big guy now, fourteen and a half.”

“I’ll be fine, Dad. Go. Leave the pistol by my bed.”

Alexander gave his son a poke. “Don’t ever tell your mother I taught you how to shoot, or there will be no joy for either of us.”

“You don’t think she knows what we do when she is away?”

“Anthony.”

“All right, all right.”

“Be good. Call the hospital if there’s a problem.”

An hour later Alexander was at the reception desk at ER. Erin’s face lit up. “Hi, Alexander,” she said. “This is a surprise. Hold on, I’ll page Tania. She’s in surgery. She has a spleen rupture and a five-car accident.”

In a moment the phone rang. “Your husband is here to see you,” Erin said into the phone. She paused with a smile. “Yes,
your
husband.”

Alexander saw an old man in rags shuffle limply and stop next to him. “Is she coming soon?” the man said, looking at Erin expectantly.

“I told you, she’ll be here in a few minutes, Charlie,” replied the nurse. “Take a seat.”

Alexander looked inquisitively at Erin.

“Without her,” she whispered, “he can’t stay sober.”

A mother walked up carrying in a boy not much older than nine. “We’ve been waiting so long,” the mother said in a strident voice. “He needs her.”

“She’ll be here in a minute,” Erin said, whispering to Alexander, “I should say, take a number, shouldn’t I?”

Alexander thought of leaving.

But the next minute through the latched double doors came Tatiana, and her eyes were on him and for him and there was a smile on her face. If he’d had a cap, he would have taken it off and held it in his hands.

“Hey,” she said, coming close.

“Hey.”

She pressed against him briefly. “What’s wrong? You okay?”

“I am now.” Alexander nearly shuddered. “You busy?”

“Swamped as usual. What’s the matter?” She peered at him, her palm on his chest.

“Nothing.”

“Oh.” Tatiana paused, chewed her lip. “I have maybe a half-hour before the next surgery. Want to go get a cup of coffee?”

What I want is to meander eight kilometers down the canals with you from Kirov to your Fifth Soviet door. I want to get on the tram with you, the bus with you, sit in the Italian Gardens with you. That is what I want. I will take the cup of coffee in your hospital cafeteria.

Erin cleared her throat and motioned with her eyes over to the seats. Tatiana glanced over. “Who’s first?”

“Husband first”—Erin smiled—“then Charlie.”

“I’ll be right back,” she said to Alexander and walked over to Charlie.

Alexander watched Charlie’s face. It softened, the smile curled up on his dried, scabbed lips. She sat next to him and took his hand. “Charlie, what’s bothering you today?” she said solemnly in her sing song voice.

“Want a drink so bad, Nurse Tania,” he stammered.

“Yes, but you don’t want to be unconscious under the cars again, do you? You don’t want to be brought here on a stretcher with your leg broken again, do you?”

Charlie’s mouth mulled. “You’d take care of me.”

“Charlie, I’m not here every day, you know that. And you see how many people I have to take care of,” said Tatiana. “Now you can do this. Have you been going to your meetings?”

After spending five minutes with him, she walked three seats over to the patiently waiting boy and the impatiently waiting mother. The boy was having spasms again in his legs, crippled by muscular dystrophy. Tatiana rubbed his legs and talked to him, and Alexander watched the boy’s stricken face and the mother’s resentful face.

When Tatiana came back to him, Alexander said, “Twenty minutes left.”

But as they were walking past examination room Number 7 on the way to the cafeteria, a young girl inside was crying for her mother. Apparently the girl had been found in an empty apartment down on Baseline, the mother gone, the apartment filthy. Social Services and the police were trying to locate another living relative.

“We’re all trying to find our mothers,” Alexander whispered before Tatiana went into the exam room, replaced the glucose IV bag and sat by the four-year-old until she stopped crying.

In the cafeteria, they got coffee and sat side by side, their arms touching. He took her hand under the table. “Five-car accident, huh?”

“I’m telling you, this drinking and driving business is nasty.” Tatiana shook her head. “People don’t know the laws of motion. They should be required to take a physics course before they set foot in a bar or inside a car.”

“But of course they should.” Alexander smiled. “Which laws of motion are these now?” With his thumb he wiped a piece of who knew what off her eyebrow.

“Objects in motion—say, blood in the veins—will stay in motion even when suddenly compelled to stop by an outside force. You won’t believe how tough sudden deceleration is on the veins.”

“You and your physics. You’re not racing bikes in the hospital, are you?”

“We did that yesterday,” Tatiana said, smiling lightly, “but the unwitting ambulance driver we were racing got
real
upset.”

“I bet.” Alexander was staring at her. Her Russian moon face was drawn tonight, her eyes were opaque and her mouth was pale, as if she’d been breathing too much through it while running from critical tent to terminal tent. He adjusted the strands of her hair back under her cap.

“What’s the matter, darling?” she said softly, placing her hand on his face. “What’s wrong with my husband that I need to fix?”

Alexander lowered his head. But before he could tell her all the things that were wrong with her husband—one of the minor ones being that he could not sleep alone one more Friday night, not
one
more—a male voice from behind them said, “Tania?” It was Dr. Bradley. Alexander let go of Tatiana. “Sorry to interrupt, but it’s time,” Bradley said, glancing at Alexander. “We’re due in scrubs in three minutes.”

They got up. “Yes, I’ll be right there,” said Tatiana, taking a last sip of coffee. “Dr. Bradley, you remember Alexander, my husband?”

Alexander shook hands with the doctor, who went to wait by the door.

Tatiana patted Alexander on the chest. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, honey,” she said, and made to go. He didn’t move and said nothing. She stopped, studied him, this way, that, considered him. Then she stepped in and lifted her face.

Blocking her with his body so she was hidden from Bob Hope’s view, Alexander bent to her upturned face, and kissed her soft pale pink parted lips.

“I’ll see you, babe,” he said.

And then he watched her rush out, talking about surgeries and sutures. Dr. Bradley opened the door for her and prodded her out with his hand on her back. Alexander emphatically threw their coffee cups away. Before he left, he sat in the waiting room next to Charlie, who reeked something terrible. Alexander had to move two seats over. Charlie turned to him, gummed toothlessly, nodded his head, and said, “That’s right. If you sit long enough, sometimes she comes again.”

“Does she?”

“If she has time. Sometimes I sit all night. I fall asleep, I wake up and she is sitting by me. I go when she goes.”

Alexander remained in the chair another thirty minutes, watching the doors. But Tatiana didn’t come again, and he went home.

That Saturday morning he said to her as he was getting ready for work and she was in bed, getting ready for sleep, “Tania, is Bradley the doctor in charge of ER?”

“Just the night shift.”

“He works only at night?”

“No. He does work the Friday graveyard. Why?”

“No reason,” said Alexander. “I didn’t remember until last night, but is my memory wrong or is David Bradley the same doctor who came to see you five years ago when Dudley was killed?”

“
Was
killed? I note with irony your use of the passive voice,” said a smiling Tatiana from the bed. “Yes, I think Bradley was. Why?”

“No reason.” Alexander was thoughtful as he fixed his tie. “Is he the one who looked at the marks on the back of your neck and then got all flustered like a schoolgirl?”

“Shura, I don’t know,” said Tatiana. “How do you remember that?”

“I didn’t remember it. Until just now.”

“Why are you remembering it just now?”

“No reason.”

“That’s the third time you said that.”

“Is it? I gotta go. I have a meeting at nine. Don’t forget we’re getting the Christmas tree this afternoon.” It was the end of November. The Christmas season was just beginning, but they liked to have their tree up for as long as possible. Had Bradley been carrying a torch for his wife for five years? Alexander wouldn’t have thought about it again, wouldn’t have cared, except that he couldn’t get her laughing head out of his chest, her throwing back her head, her hair, and heartily, throatily, lustily laughing.

Winter Wonderland

Two days later on Monday
, Alexander and Anthony were once again impatiently waiting for Tatiana to come home. Alexander was bubbling inside. Anthony wouldn’t eat without her, and so Alexander sat like a stone on the couch and read the paper. Those lights in the desert valley sure were twinkling. And every one of them was another damn roadblock in the thirty-seven miles separating the hospital from their front door. Anthony had set the table, the bread was ready, the butter had been taken out of the ice box, the beef bourguignon she had made was heated up.

Tatiana walked in the door at
nine thirty
. “Sorry, I’m late,” she said.

Alexander got up from the couch—and said nothing. He did glare at her until he saw how wiped out she was. “Iris was late again,” said Tatiana, taking off her coat, putting her bag down. Yes, Alexander thought. But there was once a time when you punched the card and popped the clutch at 7:01, and didn’t care how late Iris was. “I have more responsibilities now,” she said.

“Did I say a word?” snapped Alexander.

The tips of her fingers were trembling. She barely ate. There was a small problem with Anthony at school, but Alexander didn’t know how to bring it up seeing how she was.

“Ant, Shura, you guys really should eat before I get home,” Tatiana said. “This is too late for you to have dinner. Please. Don’t wait. It makes me feel too bad, thinking of you sitting here waiting for me. Just eat in the future.”