The Summer Garden

by Paullina Simons

  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 s
omething 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.

  They stayed at a motel court inland but every day kept drifting out to the bay. Tatiana was worried about the money running through their fingers. She suggested selling the camper. “We can’t stay in it anyway. You need to wash—”

  “I’ll wash in the ocean.”

  “I need somewhere to cook your food.”

  “We’ll eat out.”

  “We’re going to go broke.”

  “I’ll get work.”

  She cleared her throat. “We need a little privacy...”

  “Ah, now you’re talking. But forget it, I won’t sell it.”

  They were strolling along Bayshore Avenue, past moorings that fingered out into the water. He pointed to a houseboat.

  “You want to rent a boat?”

  “A houseboat.”

  “A what?”

  “A boat that is also a house.”

  “You want us to live on a boat?” Tatiana said slowly.

  Alexander called to his son. “Anthony, how would you like to live in a house that is also a boat?”

  The child jumped up and down.

  “Anthony,” said his mother, “how would you like to live in a snowy mountain retreat in the north of Canada?”

  Anthony jumped up and down.

  “Alexander, see? I really don’t think you should be making all your life decisions based on the joy of one small boy.”

  Alexander lifted Anthony into his arms. “Bud,” he said, “a house that is moored like a boat and sways like a boat, but never moves from the dock, right on the ocean, doesn’t that sound great?”

  Anthony put his arms around his father’s neck. “I said yes, Dad. What more do you want?”

  For thirty dollars a week—the same money they didn’t want to pay Mrs. Brewster—they rented a fully furnished houseboat on Fair Isle Street, jutting out into the bay right between Memorial Park and the newly broken construction site for Mercy Hospital. The houseboat had a little kitchen with a small stove, a living room, a bathroom with a toilet—And two bedrooms!