The Summer Garden

Slowly Alexander turned his head to Tatiana, who was next to him, her arm through his. He tapped her hand. “Do I know him?”

“Yes, and no. You drink the milk he brings every day.”

“He’s the milkman?”

“Yes.”

They continued walking.

“I heard,” Alexander said evenly, “that he’s had it off with every woman in the village but one.”

“Oh,” Tatiana said without missing a beat, “I bet it’s that stuck-up Mira in house number thirty.”

And Alexander laughed.

He laughed!

He laughs!

And then he leaned to her and kissed her face. “Now that’s funny, Tania,” he said.

Tatiana was pleased with him for being pleased. “Will you explain to me why you don’t mind the boy wearing your cap?” she asked, squeezing his arm.

“Oh, it’s harmless.”

“I don’t think it’s so harmless. Sometimes seeing your army cap prevents me from seeing Stonington. That isn’t harmless, is it?”

And what did her inimitable Alexander say to that, strolling down a sublime New England autumn hill overlooking the crystal ocean waters with his wife and son?

He said, “What’s Stonington?”

And a day later Tatiana finally figured out why this place was so close to her heart. With its long grasses and sparkling waters, the field flowers and the pines, the deciduous smells coupled with the thinness in the air—it reminded her of Russia! And when she realized this—the minutes and hours of claret and maroon maples, the gold mountain ash and swaying birches piercing her heart—she stopped smiling.

When Alexander came home from the boat that evening and went up to her, as usual sitting on the bench, and saw what must have been her most unresponsive face, he said with a nod, “Ah. And there it finally is. So … what do you think? Nice to be reminded of Russia, Tatiana Metanova?”

She said nothing, walking down to the dock with him. “Why don’t you take the lobsters, go on up?” he offered. “I’ll keep the boy while I finish.”

Tatiana took the lobsters and flung them in the trash.

Alexander bit his amused lip. “What, no lobsters today?”

She strode past Alexander to the boat. “Jim,” she said, “instead of lobsters, I made spaghetti sauce with meatballs. Would you like to come have dinner with us?”

Jimmy beamed.

“Good.” Tatiana turned to go, and then, almost as an afterthought, said, “Oh, by the way, I invited my friend Nellie from Eastern Road to join us. She’s a little blue. She just found out she lost her husband in the war. I hope you don’t mind.”

Jimmy, as it turned out, didn’t mind. And neither did a slightly less blue Nellie.

Mrs. Brewster was beaten for her rent money again. Tatiana was cleaning the cut on her hand for her, while Anthony’s eyes, as somber as his father’s, stared at his mother from the footstool at her feet.

“Mama was a nurse,” said Anthony reverentially.

Mrs. Brewster watched her. There was something on her mind. “You never told me where you come from, the accent. It sounds—”

“Russian,” said the three-year-old whose father wasn’t there to stop him.

“Ah. Your husband a Russki, too?”

“No, my husband is American.”

“Dad is American,” said Anthony proudly, “but he was a captain in the—”

“Anthony!” Tatiana yanked his arm. “Time to go get Dad.”

The next day Mrs. Brewster expressed the opinion that the Soviets were nasty communists. This was her son’s view. She wanted another seven dollars for the water and electric. “You’re cooking all the time on my stove there.”

Tatiana was rattled at the shakedown. “But I make dinner for you.”

Mrs. Brewster said, patting the bandage Tatiana had wrapped around her hand, “And in the spirit of communism, my son says he wants you to pay thirty dollars a week for the room, not eight. Or you can find another collective to live on, comrade.”

Thirty dollars a week! “All right,” said Tatiana through her teeth. “I’ll pay you another twenty-two a week. But this is just between us. Don’t mention it to my husband.” As Tatiana walked away, she felt the glare of someone who’d been beaten by her son for rent money and yet still trusted him more.

No sooner had they met Alexander on the dock than Anthony said, “Dad, Mrs. Brooster called us nasty communists.”

He glanced at Tatiana. “She did, did she?”

“She did, and Mama got upset.”

“She did, did she?” He sidled up to her.

“No, I didn’t. Anthony walk ahead now, I have to talk to your father.”

“You did, you did,” Anthony said. “You get that tight mouth when you get upset.” He tightened his mouth to show his father.

“Doesn’t she just,” said Alexander.

“All right you two,” Tatiana said quietly. “Will you go on ahead, Anthony?”

But he lifted his arms to her, and she picked him up.

“Dad, she called us communists!”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“What are communists?”

That night before dinner, of lobsters (“Oh, not again!”) and potatoes, Anthony said, “Dad, is twenty-two dollars a lot or a little?”

Alexander glanced at his son. “Well, it depends for what. It’s a little money for a car. But it’s a lot of money for candy. Why?”

“Mrs. Brooster wants us to pay twenty-two more dollars.”

“Anthony!” Tatiana was near the stove; she didn’t turn around. “No, the child is impossible. Go wash your hands. With soap. Thoroughly. And rinse them.”

“They’re clean.”

“Anthony, you heard your mother. Now.” That was Alexander. Anthony went.

He came up to her by the sink. “So what’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s time to go, don’t you think? We’ve been here two months. And soon it’s going to get much colder.” He paused. “I’m not even going to get started on the communists or the twenty-two dollars.”

“I wouldn’t mind it if we never left here,” she said. “Here on the edge of the world. Nothing intrudes here. Despite …” she waved her hand to Mrs. Brewster upstairs. “I feel safe here. I feel like no one will ever find us.”

Alexander was quiet. “Is someone … looking for us?”

“No, no. Of course not.” She spoke so quickly.

He placed two fingers under her chin and lifted her face to him. “Tania?”

She couldn’t return his serious gaze. “I just don’t want to go yet, okay?” She tried to move away from his hand. He didn’t let her. “That’s all. I like it here.” She raised her hands to hold on to his arms. “Let’s move to Nellie’s. We’ll have two rooms. She has a bigger kitchen. And you can go for a drink with your pal Jimmy. As I understand, he’s been coming around there a little.” She smiled to convince him.

Letting go of her, Alexander put his plate in the sink, clanging it loudly against the cast aluminum sides. “Yes, let’s,” he said. “Nellie, Jimmy, us. What a fine idea, communal living. We should have more of it.” He shrugged. “Oh, well. Guess you can take the girl out of the Soviet Union, but you can’t take the Soviet Union out of the girl.”

At least there was some participation. Though, like Tatiana kept saying, not great.

They moved to Nellie’s. The air turned a little chilly, then a lot chilly, then cold, particularly in the night, and Nellie, as they found out, was Dickensianly cheap with the heat.

They may have paid for two rooms, but it was all never mind to Anthony, who had less than no interest in staying in a room all by himself. Alexander was forced to drag his twin bed into their room, and push the beds together—again. They paid for two rooms and lived in one.

They huddled under thick blankets, and then suddenly, in the middle of October, it snowed! Snow fell in balls out of the sky, and in one night covered the bay and the barely bare trees in white wool. There was no more work for Alexander, and now there was snow. The morning snow fell, they looked out the window and then at each other. Alexander smiled with all his teeth.

Tatiana finally understood. “Oh, you,” she said. “So smug in your little knowledge.”

“So smug,” he agreed, still smiling.

“Well, you’re wrong about me. There is nothing wrong with a little snow.”

He nodded.

“Right, Anthony? Right, darling? You and me are used to snow. New York had snow, too.”

“Not just New York.” The smile in Alexander’s eyes grew dimmer, as if becoming veiled by the very snow he was lauding.

The stairs were slippery, covered with four inches of old ice. The half-filled metal bucket of water was heavy and kept spilling over the stairs as she held on to the banister with one hand, the bucket with the other and pulled herself up one treacherous step at a time. She had to get up two flights. At the seventh step, she fell on her knees, but didn’t let go the banister, or the bucket. Slowly she pulled herself back to her feet. And tried again. If only there were a little light, she could see where she was stepping, avoid the ice maybe. But there wouldn’t be daylight for another two hours, and she had to go out and get the bread. If she waited two hours there would be no bread left in the store. And Dasha was getting worse. She needed bread.

Tatiana turned away from him. It was morning! There was no dimming of lights at the beginning of each day; it was simply not allowed.

They went sledding. They rented two Flexible Flyers from the general store, and spent the afternoon with the rest of the villagers sledding on the steep Stonington hill that ran down to the bay. Anthony walked uphill exactly twice. Granted, it was a big hill, and he was brave and good to do it, but the other twenty times, his father carried him.

Finally, Tatiana said, “You two go on without me. I can’t walk anymore.”

“No, no, come with us,” said Anthony. “Dad, I’ll walk up the hill. Can you carry Mama?”

“I think I might be able to carry Mommy,” said Alexander.

Anthony trudged along, while Alexander carried Tatiana uphill on his back. She cried and the tears froze on her face. But then they raced down, Tatiana and Anthony on one sled, trying to beat Alexander, who was heavier than mother and son, and fast and maneuvered well, unhampered by fear for a small boy, unlike her. She flew down anyway, with Anthony shrieking with frightened delight. She almost beat Alexander. At the bottom she collided into him.

“You know if I didn’t have Ant, you’d never win,” she said, lying on top of him.

“Oh, yes, I would,” he said, pushing her off him into the snow. “Give me Ant, and let’s go.”

It was a good day.

They spent three more long days in the whitened mountain ash trees on the whitened bay. Tatiana baked pies in Nellie’s big kitchen. Alexander read all the papers and magazines from stem to stern and talked post-war politics to Tatiana and Jimmy, and even to indifferent Nellie. In Nellie’s potato fields, Alexander built snowmen for Anthony. After the pies were in the oven, Tatiana came out of the house and saw six snowmen arrayed like soldiers from big to little. She tutted, rolled her eyes and dragged Anthony away to fall down and make angels in the snow instead. They made thirty of them, all in a row, arrayed like soldiers.

On the third night of winter, Anthony was in their bed restfully asleep, and they were wide awake. Alexander was rubbing her bare buttocks under her gown. The only window in their room was blizzarded over. She assumed the blue moon was shining beyond. His hands were becoming very insistent. Alexander moved one of the blankets onto the floor, silently; moved her onto the blanket, silently; laid her flat onto her stomach, silently, and made love to her in stealth like they were doughboys on the ground, crawling to the frontline, his belly to her back, keeping her in a straight line, completely covering her tiny frame with his body, clasping her wrists above her head with one hand. As he confined her, he was kissing her shoulders, and the back of her neck, and her jawline, and when she turned her face to him, he kissed her lips, his free hand roaming over her legs and ribs while he moved deep and slow! amazing enough by itself, but even more amazingly he turned her to him to finish, still restraining her arms above her head, and even made a brief noise not just a raw exhale at the feverish end … and then they lay still, under the blankets, and Tatiana started to cry underneath him, and he said shh, shh, come on, but didn’t instantly move off her, like usual.

“I’m so afraid,” she whispered.

“Of what?”

“Of everything. Of you.”

He said nothing.

She said, “So you want to get the heck out of here?”

“Oh, God. I thought you’d never ask.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jimmy asked when he saw them packing up the next morning.

“We’re leaving,” Alexander replied.

“Well, you know what they say,” Jim said. “Man proposes and God disposes. The bridge over Deer Isle is iced over. Hasn’t been plowed in weeks and won’t be. Nowhere to go until the snow melts.”

“And when do you think that might be?”

“April,” Jimmy said, and both he and Nellie laughed. Jimmy hugged her with his one good arm and Nellie, gazing brightly at him, didn’t look as if she cared that he had just the one.

Tatiana and Alexander glanced at each other. April! He said to Jim, “You know what, we’ll take our chances.”

Tatiana started to speak up, started to say, “Maybe they’re right—” and Alexander fixed her with such a stare that she instantly shut up, ashamed of questioning him in front of other people, and hurried on with the packing. They said goodbye to a regretful Jimmy and Nellie, said goodbye to Stonington and took their Nomad Deluxe across Deer Isle onto the mainland.

In this one instant, man disposed. The bridge had been kept clear by the snow crews on Deer Isle. Because if the bridge was iced over, no one could get any produce shipments to the people in Stonington. “What a country,” said Alexander, as he drove out onto the mainland and south.

They stopped at Aunt Esther’s for what Alexander promised was going to be a three-day familial visit.

They stayed six weeks until after Thanksgiving.

Esther lived in her big old house in a quaint and white Barrington with Rosa, her housekeeper of forty years. Rosa had known Alexander since birth. The two women clucked over Alexander and his wife and child with such ferocity, it was impossible to leave. They bought Anthony skis! They bought Anthony a sled, and new boots, and warm winter coats! The boy was outside in the snow all day. They bought Anthony bricks and blocks and books! The boy was inside all day.

What else would you like, dear Anthony?

I’d like a weapon like my Dad has, said the boy.

Tatiana vehemently shook her head.

Look at Anthony, what an amazing boy he is and he talks so well for a three-and-a-half-year-old, and doesn’t he look just like his father did? Here’s a picture of a baby Alexander, Tania.

Yes, Tatiana said, he was a beautiful boy.

Once, said Alexander, and Tania nearly cried, and he was never smiling.

Esther, seeing nothing, continued. Oh, was my brother ever besotted with him. They had him so late in life, you know, Tania, and wanted him so desperately, having tried for a baby for years. Never was a man more besotted with his child. His mother too. I want you to know that, Alexander, darling, the sun rose and set on you.

Cluck, cluck, cluck, for six weeks, wanting them to stay for the holidays, through Easter, through the Fourth of July, maybe Labor Day, for all the days, just stay.

And suddenly, late one evening in the kitchen, when Alexander, exhausted from playing in the snow with Anthony, fell asleep in the living room, and Tatiana was clearing up their tea cups before bed, Aunt Esther came into the kitchen to help her, and said, “Don’t drop the cups when you hear this, but a man named Sam Gulotta from the State Department called here in October. Don’t get upset, sit. Don’t worry. He called in October, and he called again this afternoon when you three were out. Please—what did I tell you?—don’t shake, don’t tremble. You should have said something when you called in September, given me a warning about what was going on. It would have helped me. You should have trusted me, so I could help you. No, don’t apologize. I told Sam I don’t know where you are. I don’t know how to reach you, I know nothing. That’s what I told him. And to you I say, I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. Sam said it was imperative that Alexander get in touch with him. I told him if I heard from you, I’d let him know. But darling, why wouldn’t you tell me? Don’t you know I’m on your side, on Alexander’s side? Does he know that Sam is calling for him? Oh. Well. No, no, you’re right of course. He’s got enough to worry about. Besides, it’s the government; it takes them years just to send out a veteran’s check. They’re hardly going to be on top of this. Soon it will go into the inactive pile and be forgotten. You’ll see. Tell Alexander nothing, it’s for the best. And don’t cry. Shh, now. Shh.”

“Aunt Esther,” said Alexander, walking into the kitchen, “what in the world are you telling Tania now to make her cry?”

“Oh, you know how she is nowadays,” Aunt Esther said, patting Tatiana’s back.

On Thanksgiving, Rosa and Esther talked about having Anthony baptized. “Alexander, talk some sense into your wife. You don’t want your son to be a heathen like Tania.” It was after a magnificent dinner during which Tania gave thanks to Aunt Esther, and they were sitting late in the deep evening, with mulled apple cider in front of a roaring fire. Anthony had been long bathed and fussed over and adored and put to sleep. Tatiana was feeling sleepy and contented, pressed against Alexander’s sweatered arm. It reminded her throbbingly of another time in her life, sitting next to him, like this, in front of a flickering small stove called the bourzhuika, feeling calmed by his presence despite the apocalyptic things going on just steps from her in her own room, in her own apartment, in her own city, in her own country. And yet, she sat like this with him and for a fleeting minute was comforted.

“Tania is not a heathen,” Alexander said to Esther. “She was dunked into the River Luga promptly after birth by Russian women so old they looked as if they lived in the times of Christ. They took her from her mother, babynapped her, you might say, and muttered over her for three hours, summoning the love of Christ and the Holy Spirit onto her. Tania’s mother never spoke to the old women again.”

“Or to me,” said Tatiana.

“Tania, is this true?”

“Alexander is teasing, Esther. Don’t listen to him.”

“That’s not what she asked, Tatia. She asked if it was true.” His eyes were twinkling.

He was teasing! She kissed his arm, putting her face back against his sweater. “Esther, you mustn’t fret about Anthony. He is baptized.”

“He is?” said Esther.

“He is?” said Alexander with surprise.

“He is,” Tatiana said quietly. “They baptized all the children at Ellis Island because so many of them used to get sick and die. They had a chapel, and even found me a Catholic priest.”

“A Catholic priest!” Catholic Rosa and Protestant Esther raised their hands to the heavens in a loud interjection, one happy, one slightly less so. “Why Catholic? Why not even Russian Orthodox, like you?”

“I wanted Anthony,” Tatiana said timidly, looking away from Alexander’s gaze, “to be like his father.”

And that night in their bed, all three of them, Alexander didn’t go to sleep, lightly keeping his hand on her. She felt him awake behind her. “What, darling?” she whispered. “What do you need? Ant’s here.”

“Don’t I know it,” he whispered back. “But no, no. Tell me …” his voice was halting, “was he … very small when he was born?”

“I don’t know …” she replied in a constricted voice. “I had him a month early. He was quite little. Black-haired. I don’t really remember. I was in a fever. I had TB, pneumonia. They gave me extreme unction, I was so sick.” She clenched her fists to her chest, but groaned anyway. And so alone.

Alexander told her he couldn’t stay in wintry Barrington any longer, couldn’t do snow, winters, cold. “Never again—not for one more day.” He wanted to go swimming for Christmas.

Whatever Anthony’s father wanted, Anthony’s father got. The sun still rises and sets on you, husband, she whispered to him.

Sets mainly, he whispered back.

They said a grateful goodbye to Esther and Rosa, and drove down past New York.

“Aren’t we stopping to see Vikki?”

“We’re not,” Tatiana said. “Vikki always goes to visit her mentally ill mother in California during Christmas. It’s her penance. Besides, it’s too cold. You said you wanted to go swimming. We’ll catch her in the summer.”

They drove through New Jersey and Maryland.

They were passing Washington DC when Alexander said, “Want to stop and say hello to your friend Sam?”

Startled she said, “No! Why would you say that?”

He seemed pretty startled by that. “Why are you getting defensive? I asked if you wanted to stop and say hello. Why are you talking to me as if I asked you to wash his car?”

Tatiana tried to relax.

Thank goodness he dropped it. In the past, he never used to drop anything until he got his answer.

Virginia, still in the thirties, too cold.

North Carolina, in the high forties, cold.

South Carolina in the fifties. Better.

They stayed in cheap motels and had hot showers.

Georgia in the sixties. Not good enough.

St. Augustine in Florida was in the seventies! on the warm ocean. St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States, had red Spanish tile roofs and was selling ice cream as if it were summer.

They visited the site of Ponce De Leon’s Fountain of Youth, and bought a little immortal water, conveniently in bottled form.

“You know it’s just tap water, don’t you?” Alexander said to her, as she took a drink from it.

“I know,” Tatiana said, passing him the bottle. “But you have to believe in something.”

“It’s not tap water I believe in,” Alexander said, drinking half of it down.

They celebrated Christmas in St. Augustine. Christmas Day they went to a deserted white beach. “Now this is what I call the dead of winter,” said Alexander, diving into the ocean water in swimming shorts and a T-shirt. There was no one around him but his son and wife.

Anthony, who didn’t know how to swim, waded at the edge of the water, dug holes that looked like craters, collected seashells, got burned, and with his shoulders red and his hair sandy, skipped on the beach, singing, holding a long stick in one hand, and a rock in the other, moving his arms up and down to the rhythmic beat of the tune while his mother and father watched him from the water.

“Mr. Sun/ Sun/ Mr. Golden Sun/ please shine down on/ please shine down on/ please shine down on me …”

After weeks in St. Augustine, they drove south down the coast.

CHAPTER TWO

Coconut Grove, 1947

The Vanishing

Miami in January! Tropics by the sea. It was eighty degrees and the water was seventy-five. “Better,” said Alexander, smiling. “Much better. Now we stay.”

Sprawled near the calm aqua waves of the Atlantic and Biscayne Bay, Miami Beach and South Beach were a little too … grown up for them with a small boy, with the rampant gambling casinos, the made-up, dressed-up women walking the streets, and the fanned, darkened 1930s Art Deco hotels on the ocean that looked as if men with mortal secrets lived there. Perhaps such hotels were rightful places for the Tatianas and Alexanders of this world—but she couldn’t tell him that. She used Anthony’s moral well-being as her excuse to leave. From South Beach, they drove twelve miles south to Coconut Grove, where it was calmer and neater. Cocoanut Grove, as it was called before the roads and the trains and the tourist trade came in 1896, was just a little town on Biscayne Bay with twenty-eight smart elegant buildings, two large stores doing whopping business, and a luxury hotel. That was then. Now the prosperity was like the sunshine—abundant and unabated. Now there were parks and beaches, marinas, restaurants and stores galore, all etched on the water under the fanning palms.