The Summer Garden (76 page)

“Of course she would,” said Bradley. “Tania is good at everything.”

Tatiana demurred from an answer; Alexander demurred from so much as glancing at her, curtly excusing himself out of the idiotic conversation and going to get another drink.

“Well, hello there, Alexander!”

He turned. It was the woman from yesterday—Carmen.

“Oh, hello,” he said coolly, stepping away and glancing across the room. Tatiana was otherwise engaged and hadn’t looked his way. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you, Cubert, my husband, is training to be an EMT here in his spare time.” She tutted. “Because he’s got so much of it. But more important, what are
you
doing here?”

“My wife works here.”

“Your wife works? Which one is she?”

“Which one’s Cubert?” he asked, not pointing out Tatiana.

“Right over there.” Cubert was a little skinny nervous thing, motioning for Carmen from the other side of the room. Tutting, she ignored him, taking out a cigarette. “Have you got a light?”

Flicking on his lighter, Alexander brought it to Carmen’s cigarette. She cupped his hand as she lit up, as if there were an Arizona super-cell tornado swirling through the common room at Phoenix Memorial Hospital.

Of course it was at this very moment that Alexander lifted his eyes and saw Tatiana across the floor, her darkening gaze on him.

“So I called your secretary,” Carmen said, puffing, smiling, “but she said you’re busy until after the New Year. Is there anything you can do about that?”

“If Linda says I’m booked, I’m booked.” Alexander stepped away. “I have to go. Excuse me—Carmen, right?”

Cubert was getting more insistent in calling for her, and an exasperated Carmen rushed off.

And then Tatiana wouldn’t speak to him. Alexander asked her if she wanted a drink. She said no. He asked her if she wanted some more food. She said no. He stopped asking and she moved away, going to stand next to Bradley, Carolyn, and Erin. She drank, ebbed, flowed, and then said something and they burst into laughter, and Bradley took Tatiana’s hand, bowed before her theatrically, and kissed it.

He did it as a joke, everyone smiled and went on talking as if it were nothing, everyone except Alexander, that is, who walked over to Tatiana, took her carefully by her arm, pulled her slightly away with an “excuse me” and said, “I’m leaving.”

“It’s only eleven.”

“Seems
plenty
late, don’t you think?”

She wasn’t looking at him. “All right, go,” she said. “I’ll be home a little later.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I am…later.”

His hand on her bolero sleeve squeezed harder.

“It’s fine. You go.” Tatiana pulled herself away. “This way you’ll still have time to make your bar rounds.” Her mouth was tight. And then she looked up at him. “When you need to stay and talk to me, you run out for a drink with your boys who go to meet the girls. If you had any decency you would stay with your wife for thirty more minutes at her Christmas party.” The starched crinoline crackling, she turned to walk away, making a little dismissing motion with her hand. “But you go to it, little barfly, fly away. Shoo.”

Alexander stared hard at
her
!—her loose blonde hair swirling in a wild wind inside his heart.

He left.

Trouble waited for her at home, Tatiana knew.

The porch light was on. Alexander was sitting out back. Well, at least they would have this one dressed. Tatiana was helpless during the naked arguments in the bedroom. She always lost the fight and had to plead for understanding, agree to anything, acquiesce to anything, to everything. It wasn’t even acquiescing, it was just complete submission. Like yesterday. She was never right in the bedroom, which was why he liked to fight in it so much.

The house was unlocked—because the man of the house was home. She came in, dropped her purse on the shelf, and went to check on Anthony. He was sleeping deeply.

After taking off her cashmere ivory coat and red heels, Tatiana made herself a cup of tea but couldn’t go out back. She went on the front deck instead and sipped her tea, shivering in her Christmas dress.

Alexander was on the rear deck with his back to the house, and Tatiana was on the front deck with her back to the house.

Finally, her tea long finished, she walked through, opened the back door and stepped out. Only a small yellow light shone over the door. Alexander was smoking, drinking a beer, and didn’t turn her way. She debated going to sit at the table in the corner across from him. He didn’t like her close when he was upset. But she knew he needed her close when he was upset, and so she sat by him on the rocking bench, not touching him, but close enough to smell the leather of his WWII bomber jacket and the cigarettes and beer on his breath. He looked so handsome tonight when he came to the party, his short black hair in a clean sheen, face freshly shaven, dark suit pressed, white shirt crisp. And now he was in his black long johns that he knew she loved and his bomber jacket that he knew she loved, his long limbs spread out on the bench, his body so wide, and so grim tonight.

“It’s cold out, no?” Tatiana said. “The desert in the winter is not always hospitable.”

“Yes, it’s ice everywhere.”

“No, it isn’t, Alexander.” So he wasn’t wasting time. “Come on, what’s been the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s been the matter with
me.
”

“How in the world do you know Cubert’s wife?”

“She and her husband came to look at some spec homes last month. But what does
she
have to do with anything? Tania, women have been dressing up, coming close, flirting, asking me for a light, for a house, for a job for years. They were on the boat in Coconut Grove, they are here in Scottsdale. Who cares?”

“Shura, where are we going wrong?” Tatiana whispered. “You and I are not allowed to go wrong anywhere—what are we doing that’s not right?”

“I’m going to tell you what,” Alexander replied, finally turning to face her. “Because obviously I have
not
been making myself clear the last eight years. What’s not right in our house,” he said, “is you putting your work, your hospital, the things you do, the
other
things you do before me and our marriage.”

“Alexander, I don’t put anything before you,” she said. “I put up with everything—”

“
Put up
with me? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Wait, wait, I misspoke,” she said, her hands fanning out, trying to steady him. “I meant I never cease to be what I’ve always been for you. And as you know,” she said, with slight color coming to her cheeks, “I never deny you.”

“Tania, you’re not home for sixty to sixty-five hours in your week!” said Alexander. “You deny me those hours, don’t you? The hours you
are
home you are no fucking good to anybody. Have you seen yourself lately? You’re worse than ever.”

“No good to anybody, are you
joking
?” she exclaimed, and suddenly her hands went down as she became less interested in steadying him, needing to steady herself instead. “What’s not done for you? Is your house not clean? Are your shirts not pressed? Is your dinner not on the table? Is your bread not fresh? Do you ever have to move to pick up your own plate, to pour your own coffee, make your own bed? For God’s sake, Alexander,” Tatiana said, “I’m your maid and your
milk
-maid.” She paused to let the army words sink in. “What is it that I
don’t
do for you?”

Alexander said nothing.

All Tatiana heard in the silent chasm was his internal screaming.

“Oh, what’s happening?” she whispered, and her hands went up to him again. “Shura, angel, come on, look at all we have…I know you’re sad about…but look at the rest of our beautiful life. Look at our perfect Ant. We have him. And so many bad things are behind us.”

“Obviously not all bad things,” said Alexander. His elbows were on his knees as he lit another cigarette.

“No, they are, they are.”

He pulled away from her reaching hands. “Lazarevo is behind us, too, Tania,” he said. “Lazarevo, Deer Isle, Coconut Grove, Napa, Bethel Island. They’re all behind us. You know what’s
not
behind us? Leningrad.” He blew out smoke from his mouth. “That’s not behind us.”

Tatiana, despite her great effort at self-control, started to shake. Addressing only what she could of his comment, she said, her teeth clattering, her face in her chest, “Yes, but every day when I drive home, I think of running out of Kirov, turning my face to you. Every night when I come in your arms, it’s a bit of Lazarevo for me—every day in Arizona.”

And what did her loving husband say to that? “Oh, give me a fucking break,” he said. “Frankly the amount of time I spend on you, I could make a chair come.”

Gasping, she jumped up. She whirled to go.

“That’s right, go,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Can’t even finish it, can you?”

“Finish what?” Her voice was raised. “You say things like that, and you want me to finish? Fine, I’ll finish.” She felt herself getting hot in the neck. “You spend
time
on me? Yesterday you spent time on me? Yes, you’re right, because that
was
effective and satisfying.”

“Yes,” said Alexander, smoking, staring at her with his brazen eyes. “It was both.”

Tatiana had to back away and grasp the deck railing behind her. “It’s late,” she said quietly, her eyes to the ground. And this is so pointless. “It’s very late, and I’m exhausted. I have to work tomorrow. I can’t be without sleep and then be on my feet for twelve hours. Why don’t you hang in there until the weekend and then we can talk some more about this.”

Alexander made a mirthless sound. “Oh, you’re good. To show me how much you want to solve our problems, you’re telling me to wait till the weekend?”

“And what problems would you like to solve tonight?” Tatiana asked tiredly.

“This very fucking thing in your voice,” he said. “You’re with me right now and look, you’re already thinking of tomorrow, of flying to your work; you’re already glazed over. I’ve become the annoying thing you do while you can’t wait to get to the thing you
really
want to do. I’m now Kirov instead of Alexander. You say you remember Kirov? When you slogged twelve dogged hours to have five flurry minutes with me—and not the other way around?”

“God, is it possible for you just
once
,” exclaimed Tatiana, “to keep yourself from saying every nasty thing you can think of?”

“I’m not saying every nasty thing I can think of.”

She twisted away to give him the back of her head, to face the desert.

She heard him light another cigarette. They didn’t speak for a few minutes. Then Alexander spoke. “Who are you putting on a red dress for, Tatiana?” he asked quietly, inhaling his nicotine. “I know it can’t be for me.”

That made her spin back to him. He was sitting casually, a foot crossed over a knee, an arm stretched out across the back of the bench, smoking, but his eyes on her were black and anything but casual. Tatiana walked across the deck, her hands in supplication. She wasn’t angry at him anymore and she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t care what he did. Moving his foot off his knee, she kneeled between his open legs, her swing skirt ballooning out in a red parachute on the deck. “Husband,” she whispered, “what are you talking about?” Looking up into his ominous face, she slid her hands up his quads until they rested on him.

Alexander continued to smoke, his other arm draped over the bench. He didn’t touch her himself, but he let her touch him. “What’s happened to my wife?” he asked. “Where are her hands to bless me?”

“Here they are, darling,” she whispered, caressing him. “Here they are.”

“Who are you wearing
red
for, Tatiana?”

“You, Shura…only you—what are you worrying yourself over?”

“Where’s that burka to cover you completely?” He took a breath. “Are you dressing up for Dr. Bradley?”

“No!”

“Do you think I’m blind?” Nothing was casual or relaxed anymore about his tense body. The arm came off the bench. “That I have no idea what good old Dr. Ha-ha-so-fucking-funny Bradley is thinking when he touches your back? When he kisses your hand, pretending it’s just a joke, you think I don’t know what he’s thinking? When he stands close to you, looks into your nice red lips as you talk, when his eyes shimmer at the mention of your name? He’s gone soft in the head, you think
I
don’t know? I was the one with the hat in my hands, standing for hours waiting for you to get out of Kirov. What,” said Alexander, “you’ve moved on from me? You want to bring Bradley to his knees now?” He paused. “You don’t have to wear red for that.” Here it came. His face darkened and he grabbed her caressing arm and pushed her so hard away that she fell on the deck. “Well, go to it, little one,” said Alexander. “Because, personally, I’m broken from being on my knees so long.”

“Oh, Shura,” Tatiana whispered, creeping back to him. “I
beg
you, please stop. Please. You’re getting yourself crazy over nothing.” She came between his legs again, pulling up on him, clinging to his leather jacket, to his neck, looking up into his face, into his eyes, pulling him down to herself, to her soft and quivering mouth. They kissed, her hands surrendering up to him, his cigarette thrown down. His hands gripping her face, he was bent to her, kissing her helplessly as she was on her knees in front of him in her red bolero dress.

“Go—go twirl your hair in his face, Tania,” whispered Alexander into her mouth. “Like you once did for me. Maybe he’s unblemished. Not me. I’m fucking scarred from the inside out.”

“Yes!” Tatiana cried in a temper, pulling away from his hands. “Mostly on your damned heart!” Pushing him in the chest, she jumped up. She was panting. “I know what it is,” she said. “This is absurd of you, and deliberately cruel. This is our life
here
, our
real
life, with real things going on. I know this isn’t Kirov or Lazarevo. What
ever
is.” Her voice cracked. “What
ever
is. I know you want it back, but it’s gone, Alexander! It’s gone and we will never have it again, no matter how much you want it.”