The Summer Garden

by Paullina Simons

  “Where’s Mommy?”

  “Good question, son.” Alexander had relented; she had asked him this morning to forgive Anthony, and he did and took the boy with him, admonishing him to keep to himself. Now Ant was here, and his mother wasn’t. Was she upset with him after yesterday’s excruciating conversation?

  “Maybe she took a nap and forgot to wake up,” said Anthony.

  “Does Mommy usually sleep during the day?”

  “Never.”

  He waited a little longer and decided to bring the boy home. He himself had to be back by two for the afternoon tour. Anthony, his joy in life unmitigated by external circumstance, stopped and touched every rust spot, every blade of glass that grew where it wasn’t supposed to. Alexander had to put the boy on his shoulders to get home a little faster.

  Tatiana wasn’t home either.

  “So where’s Mommy?”

  “I don’t know, Ant. I was hoping you’d know.”

  “So what are we gonna do?”

  “We’ll wait, I guess.” Alexander was smoking one cigarette after another.

  Anthony stood in front of him. “I’m thirsty.”

  “All right, I can get you a drink.”

  “That’s not the cup Mommy uses. That’s not the juice Mommy uses. That’s not how Mommy pours it.” Then he said, “I’m thirsty and I’m hungry. Mommy always feeds me.”

  “Yes, me too,” said Alexander, but he made him a sandwich with cheese and peanut butter.

  He thought for sure she would be back any minute with the laundry or with groceries.

  At one thirty, Alexander was running out of options.

  He said, “Let’s go, Antman. Let’s take one more look, and if we can’t find her, I guess you’ll have to come with me.”

  Instead of walking left to Memorial Park, they decided to walk right on Bayshore, past the construction site for the hospital. There was another small park on the other side. Anthony said sometimes they went there to play.

  Alexander saw her from a distance, not at the park, but at the Mercy Hospital construction site, sitting on what looked to be a dirt mound.

  When he got closer, he saw she was sitting motionless on a stack of two-by-fours. He saw her from the side, her hair in its customary plait, her hands laid tensely in a cross on her lap.

  Anthony saw her and ran. “Mommy!”

  She came out of her reverie, turned her head, and her face wrinkled in a contrite scrunch. “Uh-oh,” she said, standing up and rushing to them. “Have I been a bad girl?”

  “On so many levels,” Alexander said, coming up to her. “You know I have to get back by two.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, bending to Anthony. “I lost track of time. You okay, bud? I see Daddy fed you.”

  “What are you doing?” Alexander asked, but she was pretending to wipe the crumbs off Anthony’s mouth and didn’t reply.

  “I see. Well, I have to go,” he said coldly, bending to kiss Anthony on the head.

  That evening they were having dinner, almost not talking. Tatiana, trying to make light conversation, mentioned that Mercy Hospital was the first Catholic hospital in the Greater Miami area, a ministry of the Roman Catholic Church, and it was being built in the shape of a cross, when Alexander interrupted her. “So this is what you’ve been doing with your free time?”

  “Free time?” she said curtly. “How do you think you get food on your table?”

  “I didn’t have food on my table this afternoon.”

  “Once.”

  “Was that the first time you were sitting there?”

  She couldn’t lie to him. “No,” she admitted. “But it’s nothing. I just go and sit.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just do, that’s all.”

  “Tatiana, let me understand,” Alexander said, and his voice got hard. “You have the Barnacle House to visit, the Vizcaya Palace, the Italianate Gardens, there is shopping, and libraries, there’s the ocean, and swimming and sunbathing, and reading, but what you do with the only two hours you have to yourself all day is go and sit in a dust bowl, watching construction workers build a hospital?”

  Tatiana didn’t say anything at first. “As you well know,” she said quietly, “the way you are toward me, I have much more than two hours to myself all day.”

  Alexander didn’t say anything.

  “So why don’t you call Vikki and ask her to come down and spend a few weeks with you?” he said at last.

  “Oh, just stop forcing Vikki on me all the time!” Tatiana exclaimed in a voice so loud it surprised even her.

  Alexander stood up from the table. “Don’t raise your fucking voice to me.”

  Tatiana jumped up. “Well, stop talking nonsense then!”

  His hands slammed the table. “What did I say?”

  “You left me and were gone for three days in Deer Isle!” she yelled. “Three days! Did you ever explain to me where you were? Did you ever tell me? And do I bang the table? Meanwhile I sit for five minutes a block away from our house and suddenly you’re all up in arms! I mean, are you even serious?”

  “TATIANA!” His fist crashed into the table and dishes rattled off to the floor.

  Anthony burst into tears. Holding his hands over his ears, he was saying, “Mommy, Mommy, stop it.”

  Tatiana threw up her hands and went to her son. Alexander stormed out.

  Inside the bedroom Anthony said, “Mommy, don’t yell at Daddy or he’ll go away again.”

  Tatiana wanted to explain that adults sometimes argued but knew Anthony wouldn’t understand. Bessie and Nick Moore argued. Anthony’s mom and dad didn’t argue. The child couldn’t see that they were getting less good at pretending they were both made of china and not flint. At least there was actual participation, though as with all things, one had to be careful what one wished for.

  Many hours later Alexander came back and went straight out on the deck.

  Tatiana had been lying in bed waiting for him. She put on her robe and went outside. The air smelled of salt and the ocean. It was after midnight, it was June, in the high seventies. She liked that about Coconut Grove. She’d never been in a place where the nighttime temperature remained so warm.

  “I’m sorry I raised my voice,” she said.

  “What you should be sorry about,” Alexander said, “is that you’re up to no good. That’s what you should be sorry about.”

  “I’m just sitting and thinking,” she said.

  “Oh, and I was born yesterday? Give me a fucking break.”

  She went to sit on his lap. She was going to tell him what he needed to hear. She only wished that just once he would tell her what she needed to hear. “It’s nothing, Shura. Really. I’m just sitting. Mmm,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek against his. His cheek was stubbly. She loved that stubble. His breath smelled of alcohol. She breathed it in; she loved that beer breath. Then she sighed. “Where’ve you been?”

  “I walked to one of the casinos. Played poker. See how easy that was? And if you wanted to know where I’d been back in Deer Isle, why didn’t you just ask me?”

  Tatiana didn’t want to tell him she was afraid to know. She had gone missing for thirty minutes. He had been lost, gone, missing and presumed dead for years. She wished sometimes he would just think, think of the things she might feel. She didn’t want to be on his lap anymore. “Shura, come on, don’t be upset with me,” Tatiana said, getting off.

  “You, too.” He threw down his cigarette as he stood up. “I’m doing my level best,” he said, heading inside.

  “Me, too, Alexander,” she said, head down, following him. “Me, too.”

  But in bed—she naked, holding him, he naked, holding her, nearly there, nearly at the very end for him—Tatiana clutched him as she used to, feverishly clutched his back and under her fingers, even at the moment of her own breaking abandon, felt his scars under her grasping fingers.

  She could not continue. Could not, even at that moment. Especially at that mom
ent. And so she found herself doing what she remembered him doing in Lazarevo when he couldn’t bear to touch her: Tatiana stopped him, pushed him away, and turned her back to him.

  She put her face in the pillow, raised her hips and cried, hoping he wouldn’t notice, hoping that even if he did notice, he would be too far gone to care.

  She was wrong on all counts. He noticed. And he wasn’t too far gone to care.

  “So this is what your level best looks like, huh?” Alexander whispered, out of breath, bending over her, lifting her head off the pillow by her hair. “Presenting your cold back to me?”

  “It’s not cold,” Tatiana said, not facing him. “It’s just the only part that’s taken leave of all its senses.”

  Alexander jumped off the bed—shaking and unfinished. He turned on the lamp, the overhead light, he opened the shades. Unsteadily she sat up on the bed, covering herself with a sheet. He stood naked in front of her, glistening, unsubsided, his chest heaving. He was incredibly upset.

  “How can I even try to find my way,” he said, his voice breaking, “if my own wife recoils from me? I know it isn’t what it used to be. I know it isn’t what we had. But it’s all we have now, and this body is all I’ve got.”

  “Darling—please,” Tatiana whispered, stretching out her hands to him. “I’m not recoiling from you.” She couldn’t see him through the veil of her sorrow.

  “You think I’m fucking blind?” he exclaimed. “Oh God! You think this is the first time I noticed? You think I’m an idiot? I notice every fucking time, Tatiana! I grit my teeth, I wear my clothes so you don’t see me, I take you from behind, so nothing of me touches you—just like you want.” He enunciated every syllable through his teeth. “You wear clothes in bed with me so I won’t accidentally rub my wounds on you. I pretend not to give a shit, but how long do you think I can keep doing this? How much longer do you think you’re going to be happier on the hard floor?”

  She covered her face.

  He swept his hand across and knocked her arms away. “You are my wife and you won’t touch me, Tania!”

  “Darling, I do touch you...”

  “Oh, yes,” he said cruelly. “Well, all I can say is, thank God, I guess, that my tackle is not maimed, or I’d never get any blow. But what about the rest of me?”

  Tatiana lowered her weeping head. “Shura, please . . .”

  He yanked her up and out of bed. The sheet fell away from her. “Look at me,” he said.

  She was too ashamed of herself to lift her eyes to him. They were standing naked against each other. His angry fingers dug into her arms. “That’s right, you should be fucking ashamed,” he said through his teeth. “You don’t want to face me then, and you can’t face me now. Just perfect. Well, nothing more to say, is there? Come on, then.” He spun her around and bent her over the bed.

  “Shura, please!” She tried to get up, but his palm on her back kept her from moving until she couldn’t move if she wanted to. And then he took his palm away.

  Behind her, leaning over her, supporting himself solely by his clenched fists on the mattress, Alexander took her like he was in the army, like she was a stranger he found in the woods whom he was going to leave in one to-the-hilt minute without a backward glance, while she helplessly cried and then—even more helplessly, was crying out, now deservedly and thoroughly abased. “And look—no hands, just like you like,” he whispered into her ear. “You want more? Or was that enough lovemaking for you?”

  Tatiana’s face was in the blanket.

  Himself unfinished, he backed away, and she slowly straightened up and turned to him, wiping her face. “Please—I’m sorry,” she whispered, sitting down weakly on the edge of the bed, covering her body. Her legs were shaking.

  “You cover me from other people because you don’t want to look at me yourself. I’m surprised you notice or care that other women talk to me.” He was panting. “You think they’ll run in horror, like you, once they catch a glimpse of me.”

  “What—no!” Her arms reached for him. “Shura, you’re misunderstanding me... I’m not frightened, I’m just so sad for you.”

  “Your pity,” he said, stepping back from her, “is the absolute last fucking thing I want. Pity yourself that you’re like this.”

  “I’m so afraid to hurt you . . .” Tatiana whispered, her palms openly pleading with him.

  “Bullshit!” he said. “But ironic, don’t you think, considering what you’re doing to me.” Alexander groaned. “Why can’t you be like my son, who sees everything and never flinches from me?”

  “Oh, Shura . . .” She was crying.

  “Look at me, Tatiana.” She lifted her face. His bronze eyes were blazing, he was loud, he was uncontrollable. “You’re terrified, I know, but here I am”—Alexander pointed to himself, standing naked and scarred and blackly tattooed. “Once again,” he said, “I stand in front of you naked and I will try—God help me—one more fucking time.” Flinging his fists down, he was nearly without breath left. “Here I am, your one man circus freak show, having bled out for Mother Russia, having desperately tried to get to you, now on top of you with his scourge marks, and you, who used to love me, who has sympathized, internalized, normalized everything, you are not allowed to turn away from me! Do you understand? This is one of the unchangeable things, Tania. This is what I’m going to look like until the day I die. I can’t get any peace from you ever unless you find a way to make peace with this. Make peace with me. Or let me go for good.”

  Her shoulders rose and fell. “I’m sorry,” Tatiana said as she came to him, putting her arms around him, kneeling on the floor in front of him, holding him, looking up into his face. “Please. I’m sorry.”

  Eventually she managed to soothe him back on the bed. Alexander came—not willingly—and lay down beside her. She pulled him on top of her. He climbed where he was led as her hands went around his back. She wrapped her legs around him, holding him intimately and tight.

  “I’m sorry, honey, husband, Shura, dearest, my whole heart,” Tatiana whispered into his neck, kissing his throat. With heartbroken fingers she caressed him. “Please forgive me for hurting your feelings. I don’t pity you, don’t turn it that way on me, but I cannot help that I’m desperately sad, wishing so much—for your sake only, not mine—that you could still be what you once were—before the things you now carry. I’m ashamed of myself and I’m sorry. I spend all my days regretting the things I cannot fix.”

  “You and me both, babe,” he said, threading his arms underneath her. Their faces were turned away from each other as Alexander lay on top of her, and she stroked the war on his back. Naked and pressed breast to breast they searched for something they had lost long ago, and found it briefly, in a fierce clutch, in a glimmer through the barricades.

  The Sands of Naples

  Alexander came home mid-morning and said, “Let’s collect our things. We’re leaving.”

  “We are? What about Mel?”

  “This isn’t about Mel. It’s about us. It’s time to go.”

  Apparently Frederik had complained to Mel that the man who was running his boats full of war veterans and war widows was possibly a communist, a Soviet spy, perhaps a traitor. Mel, afraid of losing his customers, had to confront Alexander, but couldn’t bring himself to fire the man who brought him thousands of dollars worth of business. Alexander made it easy for Mel. He denied all charges of espionage and then quit.

  “Let’s head out west,” he said to Tatiana. “You might as well show me that bit of land you bought. Where is it again? New Mexico?”

  “Arizona.”

  “Let’s go. I want to get to California for the grape-picking season in August.”

  And so they left Coconut Grove of the see-through salt waters and the wanton women with the bright colored lipstick, they left the bobbing houseboats and Anthony’s crashing dreams, and the mystery of Mercy Hospital and drove across the newly opened Everglades National Park to Naples on the Gulf of Mexico.

&nbs
p; Alexander was subdued with her, back to Edith Wharton polite, and she deserved it, but the sand was cool and white, even in scorching noon, and the fire sunsets and lightning storms over the Gulf were like nothing they’d ever seen. So they stayed in the camper on a deserted beach, in a corner of the world, in a spot where he could take off his shirt and play ball with Anthony, while the sun beat on his back and tanned the parts that could be tanned, leaving the scars untouched, like gray stripes.

  Both he and the boy were two brown stalks running around the white shores and green waters. All three of them loved the heat, loved the beach, the briny Gulf, the sizzling days, the blinding sands. They celebrated her twenty-third birthday and their fifth wedding anniversary there, and finally left after Anthony’s fourth birthday at the end of June.

  They spent only a few days in New Orleans because they discovered New Orleans, much like South Miami Beach, was not an ideal city for a small boy.

  “Perhaps next time we can come here without the child,” said Alexander on Bourbon Street, where the nice ladies sitting by the windows lifted up their shirts as the three of them strolled by.

  “Dad, why are they showing us their boobies?”

  “I’m not sure, son. It’s a strange ritualistic custom common to these parts of the world.”

  “Like in that journal where the African girls put weights in their lips to make them hang down past their throats?”

  “Something like that.” Alexander scooped up Anthony into his arms.

  “But Mommy said the African girls make their lips big to get a husband. Are these girls trying to get a husband?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Daddy, what did Mommy do to get you to marry her?” Anthony giggled. “Did Mommy show you her boobies?”

  “Tania, what are you reading to our child?” said Alexander, flipping a squealing Anthony upside down by his legs to get him to stop asking questions.

  “National Geographic,” she said, lightly batting her eyes at him. “But answer your son, Alexander.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” said Anthony, red with delight, hanging upside down. “Answer your son.”