The Summer Garden (87 page)

Tatiana wanted to stand up on her own to go, without silently beseeching him, but couldn’t. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stand up without Alexander’s help. And that’s when she knew she was finished. That’s when she knew she was powerless against him, that she didn’t even have her anger as a weapon anymore. She might as well have been naked. She sat and counted out the beats of her heart.

“I left you on Fridays in all my trust and love,” Tatiana said at last, utterly broken, “believing you would know the way even if I didn’t stand over you every admonishing minute.”

“I knew the fucking way,” said Alexander. “I was blind drunk when I found my way to your hospital—to you—because I needed saving, and what did you do?” He pitched his voice to mimick her. “I have to go, Shura; I have to attend to someone else with
real
needs, Shura; can’t you be more understanding, Shura; I’m working, working, working, so go to hell, Shura.”

Tatiana, shivering hot, was glad she was on the floor of the deck and didn’t have far to fall, her head hung low, her jaw not moving, her lip swelling, trickling blood. “Was it the Friday when you had her lipstick all over your face?” she asked. “Is that the Friday you’re talking about? My mentioning it wasn’t enough? You wanted me to wipe it off for you, too?”

Alexander backed away from her, to the farthest corner and sank in the solitary chair. Tatiana heard the lighter flick on, once, twice, as he unsuccessfully tried to light a cigarette. Finally she smelled the burning nicotine. She wasn’t looking up. But she listened to him inhale, hold, inhale, hold, smoking it down. After he smoked down one, he lit another.

“What did you think would happen?” Tatiana asked. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

At first he didn’t answer. “Obviously,” he finally replied. “This is what I thought, and wanted, and hoped for. That you would never know.”

“You thought you could keep this a secret from me?” she asked. “Of all the secrets you could keep, you thought you could keep this one? You, with the truest eyes, all you had to do was lift them to me after you got caught in a little white lie, lift them to me and say I didn’t want you to worry; sorry. That’s all you would have had to do when passing me that coffee cup last Saturday—just look me in the eye and lie.” Shaking her head, she stared into her palms. “And when you touched me, you couldn’t tremble, and when I asked your lips to kiss me, you had to kiss me instead of step away. You think you can love me and betray me? You think you can
kiss
me and betray me?” whispered Tatiana. “You couldn’t a day ago, but that’s all you would have had to do—then you could’ve kept your secret.”

Alexander smoked and said nothing.

“It also would’ve been helpful if your lovers didn’t call my house.”

Alexander smoked and said nothing.

“To say you were transparent would not be doing justice to how clearly you were telling me in a dozen different ways you were up to no good.” Tatiana didn’t even want to feel the shadow of his presence fifteen feet away. “So I’ll ask differently—what did you think was going to happen when I knew?”

Alexander smoked down his cigarette before he answered her. “I thought you wouldn’t really care,” he said. “I know that once you might have cared, but I thought that now you would go on with your consuming work, having your little secret lunches, pretending you’re chaste. I thought we might have words, and then you’d pat me gently on the back, kiss me fondly on the head, but in your heart of hearts not give a rat’s ass.”

Tatiana flattened over her knees. “Oh, Alexander,” she whispered. She couldn’t speak. “What did I ever do to you that you can say that to me?” She gasped it out through the throat and chest.

A desperate sound came from his smoke-filled mouth.

“I can’t
take
it,” she said, holding her stomach. “I can’t
bear
it. Come here.” She stretched out her arms. “Beat me unconscious and then I won’t care.” A choking Tatiana felt for the deck under her knees. He and his Carmen were like cholla in her eyes. She couldn’t see in front of her. She opened her hands. “Oh, my God, but who is going to help
me…
?” she whispered in a suffocating voice. “I need help, who is going to help
me
?” She had to leave the deck immediately,
immediately
, or she would lose what little sense she had left, the smooth glass of her center already so jagged with his ministrations.
Please help me. Please.
One ounce of pride to lift me off my feet. One stale gram of sawdust and cardboard pride.

“Tania,” Alexander said into her back. “I know you give yourself to the dying and the afflicted.” He groaned. “But I’m dying and afflicted, too.”

“I can’t help you anymore, Alexander,” said Tatiana. “I can’t even help myself.” She was weeping on her hands and knees. “You turned your back on me despite everything. Well, I’m turning my back on you, despite more things than you know. There. Those are my words. Fond enough for you?” Groping for the deck, she started crawling away from him to the house, crawling away from the only love she had ever known.

She heard him get up and come toward her where she was tilting, spilling over. She lifted her face. Motionless he stood, and then fell on his knees before her.

“Afflicted, Tania,” he said in a ruptured voice. “Look at me. I’m not the drunk in the ER waiting room. I’m your husband. Have mercy on me, too.” He had to stop speaking for a moment. “I come to you every single day of the life that you’ve given me,” said Alexander, “hoping you will touch me—and I stand in line—and you touch me, and I’m good to go for just a few more hours until I need your comfort again. I can’t do without you.” His hands were gripped in front of him, his words barely carrying. “I can’t make it without you, and you know it.”

Tatiana couldn’t turn from him, both of them feeble with fear and sadness.

“Please believe me,” he said. “I didn’t have sex with her. All the things you think I forgot, I remembered them last Wednesday. I haven’t been blameless—” He lowered his head in defeat. “You’re blinded and can’t see straight, I know, but just think for one second and you’ll see through her lies.”

“I can’t even see through yours,” said Tatiana. “I don’t know her at all.”

Alexander tilted his head to stare into her face. Their wretched anguished eyes blinked miserably at each other.

“You know I can’t make her pregnant,” he said. “You know she is lying at least about
that
, right? After what I’d seen in Moscow, after what my mother taught me, and all during my years as a garrison soldier, think—what did I tell you about myself and the women I’d been with? Have I ever had it off bareback with anyone? Ever, even
once
in my whole fucking life?”

“Yes,” she said faintly. “With me.”

“Yes,” Alexander said, sinking down. “Only with you.” His shoulders slumped. “Because you are holy.” He looked at his hands. “And a fat load of good it’s done me.”

Tatiana clutched her arms over her stomach, bending over. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t find her voice. When she looked up at him, she found him leaning forward, the copper champagne seeping out of his eyes. “Shura,” she whispered. “I’m going to have a baby.”

At first she didn’t think Alexander heard her, he was mute so long. “You
what
?” he said in horror.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she mouthed, her shoulders quaking, her swollen lips quivering.

On his haunches Alexander staggered away. Everything became silent except for her low crying, and the terrible sounds that were coming from his throat. “Oh my God,” he breathed out, pressing his back against the wall like a wounded animal. “
When
were you going to tell me this? God, please,
please
don’t say—”

“On blinchiki Wednesday,” whispered Tatiana. “When you went to have sex with another woman.”

Alexander groaned as if he were being flayed. He turned away into the wall of the house. His body was in a shudder.

Time passed, and Alexander said nothing, his head in his knees.

And Tatiana said nothing, her head in her knees.

Indeed now it felt as if they had said everything.

She had been feeling so poorly for weeks, and had been throwing up since Saturday. She attributed the sickness to the unfathomable things that had been going on inside her house, things that she found herself completely unable to deal with. She almost wished her husband
could
look her in the face and lie, like he did in the Soviet Union when he had to save her life, look her in the face and lie, so she wouldn’t have to live with the ghastly truth—and her life would be saved. She was a month late, but in the stress of the last few weeks, no one noticed, not him, and not even her. Last Tuesday night she was having a bath when she ran a soapy washcloth over her nipples, and she yelped so loudly that Alexander came in from the living room, knocked on the door and asked if she was all right.

And so on Wednesday Tatiana went and got herself a blood test.

Afterward she left work early, bought some food, bought a nice thing to wear for him. Came home, made a little bread, cooked. Alexander was working late, but he would never say no to blinchiki, no matter what time he came home. He would come in, and he would know she had something to tell him, because that is how she always told him things that were too big for regular clothes, for regular food. She lit the candles, put on the music. Tatiana thought that after she would tell Alexander the
only
thing he had wanted to hear every single month for ten years, that somehow they would make better whatever impossible thing had happened last Friday night. She thought somehow they would pull through it. Maybe he could pretend he was telling the truth and she could pretend to believe him.

But then at nine o’clock, the phone rang, and it was Carmen. Carmen saying, “Well, where
is
he?” in a tone no woman was allowed to use about someone else’s husband. That’s when Tatiana realized that maybe they wouldn’t pull through it.

And thirty minutes later, someone else’s husband walked through the door. Alexander looked so guilty, so repentant, so threatened, and so bewildered, that not only could he not look at Tatiana, not only could he not kiss her, or speak to her, or make love to her, he couldn’t even see through the blinchiki and the see-through camisole for what they really were: Shura, I have something
fantastic
to tell you. Sit down, because you simply won’t believe it. And that’s when she knew how blinding the black vile visions in his eyes must have been.

Tatiana lifted her head from her knees, and Alexander was standing in front of her, eyes full of black vile visions. She hadn’t even heard him come near. Once a soldier, always a soldier, in stealth, even in life.

“Come on,” he said quietly, bending to her and lifting her whole into his arms. He carried her inside. After setting her down next to the sink, he crushed five trays of ice into it and filled it with cold water. Tatiana thought he was going to tell her to put her face into it, and was about to meekly impotently protest—when Alexander submerged his own head into the ice.

After five seconds of watching him,
her
face ached. “Alexander,” she whispered. “Alexander…” Her hand went on his back. He was still under. How long had it been? She got a little worried, and pulled on his soaked shredded T-shirt, tried to pull him up, but he stood like he had turned to stone, his hands gripping the edge of the porcelain sink, his body bent forward, his entire head up to his neck sunk downward into the freezing slush.

“Alexander,
please
,” she whispered. Oh, he was good. She was now begging
him
. She yanked on him. “Come on, please.” It must have been well over a minute, possibly two, when he finally lifted his head, gasping for breath.

“I’m burning up,” was all he said, crossing himself.

Panting, not drying off, he put some ice into a dish towel dipped in the freezing water, and took her by the shoulders. Setting her down on the couch, settling her deep into the crook of his arm, he held the towel to her face, his molten eyes blinking at her from inches away, wet, icy, inflamed, in silent remorse. Her head tipping back onto his shoulder, Tatiana closed her eyes. Soon her face was numb. The heart wasn’t numb, though. Maybe he could submerge her heart in ice for two, three years, and when he pulled it out, she’d be as good as new.

“The swelling has gone down a little,” Alexander said. “I know it hurts. Ice, no ice, you’re going to be black and blue tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

“For this you’re sorry?”

In their bed, Tatiana couldn’t stop sobbing, turned away from him, rolled into a fetal ball. But she was naked. He was naked. He had removed the blankets off the bed and left them uncovered. He was on his back, with both arms over his face. She kept wiping her uninjured cheek; the salt was eating her lip. It was dark.

An excruciating sound came from his throat. “You have no right to say such vicious things to me, no right to incite me intentionally and deliberately when you know I’m at the end of my fucking rope. How could you not have had the slightest sense to protect yourself, especially knowing that you’re—” Alexander couldn’t continue.

“What,
you
of all people can’t understand why I’d be completely crazed? Completely beyond the sanity pale?”

He was breathing heavily. “I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong with you,” he said. “You’re telling me to pack my bags, to leave our house, knowing you’re going to have a baby?”

“And this surprises you why? Have you seen what’s been happening in our house?”

“Stop talking to me like this in our bed, Tatiana. My white flag is up,” said Alexander. “I have no more.”

“My white flag is up, too, Shura,” she said. “You know when mine went up? June 22, 1941.”

They lay. He struggled for his words. “Did you…sleep with that man?”

Tatiana coiled around herself, pressing her face into the pillow. “I can’t talk to you,” she said, her voice muffled. “I had dinner with him in a public place. Unlike you I never forget what I am. I can’t believe you’re shameless enough to ask about him.”