The Summer Garden

by Paullina Simons

And he did.

  The sins, the scars, the wishes, the desires, the dreams of the fathers, all in that one small boy on Bethel Island learning how to fish, sitting patiently waiting for the prehistoric sturgeon that wasn’t coming, now lost. Now gone.

  Oh my God, Tatiana thought, is this what my father and mother went through when our Pasha went missing? How little I understood.

  Tatiana and Alexander lost their way. After Anthony went missing, they all went missing, all went lost in the woods of the wretched imaginings of the things that could have befallen him.

  One evening Alexander came home late from work to find Tatiana lying fetal in the bedroom on top of the bed while the small ones were by themselves in the playroom.

  “Come on, Tania,” he said quietly, giving her his hand. “We still have three other children. They can’t find their way either. You have to help them. Without you, they’ve got nothing.”

  “I keep waiting for the next stage,” Tatiana whispered, struggling up. “What is it? When will it come?”

  “Don’t wish for it, babe,” said Alexander. “It’ll be here soon enough.”

  It came with a visit from Vikki.

  Many people called with sympathy, with misgiving. Many people called with advice, with consolation. Francesca cooked dinner for Alexander and the children for weeks. Shannon, Phil, Skip, Linda all took care of Alexander’s business. After Amanda had left him, Shannon thought he would never rebuild his life, but soon he had found a woman named Sheila with two kids of her own, who’d been left by her husband. She moved in, they combined their families, were given a wholehearted seal of approval by Tatiana, who thought Sheila was almost the woman Francesca was, and now Sheila helped Tatiana by picking her kids up from school, driving them to dance, to baseball, taking them to her house to play. Everyone was solicitous; they all helped out.

  Vikki didn’t do any of that.

  Ordo Amoris

  Vikki had been out of touch for months, traveling in Europe. She flew in from Leonardo DaVinci in Rome to Sky Harbor in Phoenix by way of JFK in New York. Vikki rented a car, and drove north on Pima and made a right on Jomax. Vikki stormed through the faux-gilded gates, through the large square stone courtyard with the paths and the trees and the fountains, sank down at their white kitchen table, threw her arms down, threw her head down, and wept.

  Alexander, in his suit, having just come home from work, and Tatiana, in a short fashionable checkered silk dress—the modern fad having finally caught up with her clean look and long, unsprayed hair—both stood and watched Vikki’s inexplicable sorrow, staring first at her and then at each other in such troubled apprehension that Tatiana could not even go and put her arm around her closest friend. It was Alexander who patted Vikki’s back and got Vikki a cup of coffee and a smoke, and stood by her until the slow motion deafening moment ended. Vikki calmed down enough to speak. She said she had called Tom to wish him a happy birthday, and heard what happened. In a strident voice, over and over, she kept repeating that her husband would help Anthony, would find Anthony . . .

  “He’s trying, Vikki,” said Alexander pacifically. “He’s doing all he can.”

  “Tom is CCC, Alexander, he knows everything.”

  “He doesn’t know this.”

  “They have men crawling through that jungle. If anyone can find him, Tom can.”

  “I suppose. He’s had men looking for him for four months.”

  Four months!

  It was dinner time. The children ran in, climbed all over Aunt Vikki, who calmed down, even smiled. Tatiana fed everyone, Alexander liberally poured the wine. After the children went to play, the adults discussed the possibilities.

  A bald fact remained: Anthony wasn’t on assignment when he vanished. He was on leave. Unless foul play or AWOL was involved, men didn’t vanish while signed out on leave thirty miles away down a straight road in a safe town filled with U.S. servicemen.

  Vikki looked like she had something to say about that.

  She looked like she had something to say about a whole manner of things. But not looking at Tatiana, she said nothing, and they, not looking at her, asked her nothing.

  They didn’t speak to each other as they got ready for bed. Tatiana read, Alexander went outside their patio for his last smoke of the night. In bed they stayed quiet. Her tight mouth told him more than he wanted to know. Sidling toward her, Alexander bumped his head against her arm.

  “Shh. I’m trying to read.” She leaned over and kissed his hair. Didn’t look at him, though. Alexander thoughtfully rubbed his face, remaining at her shoulder. Vikki’s reaction to Anthony’s disappearance was not Francesca’s reaction to Anthony’s disappearance, and Francesca had spent fifteen years feeding Anthony and driving Anthony and watching Anthony play with Sergio—who had enlisted to fight in Southeast Asia himself, until he found out he was sick with lymphoma and couldn’t go. (Now he was in remission—and home.)

  Alexander bumped his head against Tatiana’s arm again.

  “I’m. Trying. To. Read.”

  Pulling down the sheet covering her, Alexander gathered her nipple into his fingers, nuzzling his face against her breast.

  Tatiana put down her book.

  After he made love to her, after her last oh Shura, after turning off the lights, Tatiana said quietly into the hollow of his throat, “It’s because Vikki doesn’t have a child of her own. That’s why she’s so overwrought. Think how far back she and Ant go. She’s known him his whole life, from the moment he was born at Ellis.”

  “I know that,” said Alexander, rubbing her back. He could not have this conversation with Tania. He didn’t know if he could have it with Vikki.

  Alexander waited until he was sure Tatiana was asleep; she still fell asleep in the crook of his arm—either facing him like now as a vestige of their long-ago Luga tent, or spooned by him as a vestige of their long-ago Deer Isle twin bed—and then quietly disengaged, threw on his long johns and went outside.

  Alexander found Vikki on the covered patio in the back, smoking.

  Vikki Sabatella Richter, at nearly forty-seven, remained what she had always been—a remarkable, striking woman. Dark, tanned, lean, with long hair, long neck, long arms, long graceful coltish legs that tonight were crossed and bare. Her ankles were tapered, her toe-nails painted red like her fingernails. She wore lots of makeup, lots of jewelry, she smelled of heady perfume and operas and late nights out. She was the dramatic, full-breasted, dark-haired, dark-eyed friend that was too attractive for most girls to be friends with. Most girls were always in Vikki’s tall shadow.

  Alexander had known Vikki for nearly a quarter-century. They were old friends. But now for the first time Alexander looked at Vikki as he had not looked at her before. He looked at her as a man might look at a woman. And this woman was sitting on his porch, sunken and shrunk into her drink and her cigarette, and her hair was unbrushed and her makeup smeared around her eyes. To the man in him this arresting woman looked as if she were fracturing from her broken heart.

  “It’s so nice, here, Alexander,” she said in her smoky voice. Even the mournful voice was redolent of drink and too many late cigarettes. “I’ve always loved it here. It really is like magic.”

  “Yes, it’s good.” He lit his own late cigarette. They smoked and listened to the wind. The lights were always on in the twinkling valley, as if it were Christmas every night. There was great comfort in the big house, in the taupe and azure desert, in the silence of the mystic mountains.

  “Are you fretting?” Vikki asked. “Can’t sleep? I’m not surprised. I have something, if you want. I can’t go to sleep myself when I’m frantic. I took one earlier. I’ve got maybe thirty not so good minutes left.”

  “No, I don’t need anything,” Alexander said. “It’s been months for us. This is fresh only for you.”

  She was quiet, and then she was crying again, crying like her heart was being cut out. Alexander wanted to say shh but his throat failed him for a moment. “What’s going on, Vik
ki?” he whispered.

  “Oh, Alexander,” she said.

  Oh, Alexander?

  Minutes passed.

  With a great inhale of breath, he spoke. “Vikki,” he said. “I talk to your husband three times a week to find out if he has any news about Ant. I need you to tell me”—Alexander drew another breath—“is there anything Richter suspects that might prevent him from helping me fully and with his whole heart?”

  Through her barest mouth, Vikki whispered, “No. Not a thing.”

  “You said earlier, my husband knows everything.”

  “Not this.”

  Teary minutes dripped by. “I’m very sorry, Alexander. I can’t look at you in my shame. Please don’t hate me.”

  “Vikki, the day I judge you will be a sorry day for me at the gates of hell.” He tried not to show his disapproval, his displeasure.

  “Do you think Tania saw through me?”

  “Now there’s a judge for you. But I think in this one instance, she didn’t.”

  They sat.

  Crying again, Vikki said, “For so many years I pretended so well.”

  “You certainly did.” Alexander shook his head in dismay. “You both did. How in the world did you do it?”

  When she was silent, Alexander, distressed by her non-answer, turned to her, only to be even more distressed by the sight of Vikki sitting with her long arms draped in a cross supporting her rocking body. Alexander knew something about this pose of anguish. He turned his whole chair to face her. “All right. Calm down.” He paused, lightly patting her. “Vikki, what were you thinking? I don’t understand how you of all people could have let it happen.”

  Vikki collected herself, carefully chose her words. “I didn’t let it happen. I fought against him since he turned seventeen.”

  “Seventeen? Oh my God, Vikki.”

  “He simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. I said to him from the very beginning, Ant, what the hell are you thinking? Have you completely lost your mind? And he said—yes.”

  Alexander closed his eyes. Seventeen! Vikki stopped speaking.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” Alexander said, with a miserable sigh, squeezing Vikki’s hands. “I’m not Tania. I was once a teenage boy myself, and I’m still a man. As a man, I understand. As a teenage boy, I understand. Just—tell me what happened.”

  “For over a year I steadfastly fought against him, is what happened.” Vikki spoke in a voice so low as if the mountains should not hear. “At first I was shocked—like you; when I realized how serious he was, I tried to talk him out of it. I didn’t even know why I had to point out to him the reasons against it, they were so numerous and insurmountable. Certainly I don’t have to point them out to you or to the woman who is going to feel like I’ve committed an unspeakable sin. However, Anthony saw nothing, understood nothing, cared about nothing. To say that he was persistent and utterly indifferent to each and every one of my persuasive arguments would be a flagrant understatement. He was relentless.”

  “Shh,” said Alexander. “Slow, and quieter, Vikki.”

  “I surrendered right after his high school graduation, the summer before he left for West Point. You bought him his truck, and a brand new guitar that year, remember? Oh, he liked his truck and he played a fine guitar. Played the guitar like he was ringing a bell, as they say. He sang a fine tune—“Jailhouse Rock” performed Anthony style. He sang me songs in English, Russian, Spanish and even my Italian!” Tears falling down her face, Vikki sang for Alexander the way Anthony once sang for her. “‘O Sole Mio/sta ’nfronte a te/the Sun, my own sun/is in your face.’ He sang me, ‘I will give my very soul/just to kiss you.’ He sang me ‘Cupido, cupido prego’ . . . and your very own ‘Dark Eyes’—yes, ‘Ochi Chernye’ was his specialty!” Vikki exclaimed. “‘Ochi chernye/ ochi strastnye/ ochi zhguchie/ i prekrasnye . . .’” She faded off. “He was so multi-lingual.” She broke a piece off her smoky singing voice and choked on it. “Yes,” she said, nodding, “he had quite an arsenal, your son. And for a year he kept bringing all his weapons. No harm, he said. He was going away in a few months. He was not a child, he was almost eighteen—as if that were the only problem— and now we were two adults! We knew what we wanted—one long weekend at the Biltmore to sate his hunger and appease my curiosity. I said to him surely he didn’t need a whole weekend and he replied that yes—he did.” She shook her head. “On fire, I tell you,” she whispered. “He became impossible to refuse, to refute, to resist. And so . . . ”

  Alexander remembered Anthony from that summer before he left for West Point sitting alone outside on the moon deck, strumming his guitar, nearly naked in the Arizona 115-degree heat, singing “Ochi Chernye” over and over. Alexander and Tatiana had said quietly to each other that the girl must have been something else.

  Tonight he shook his incredulous head. “You stopped resisting,” he said to Vikki, lighting another cigarette. “Feel free to move forward through this part.”

  Vikki nodded. “I stopped resisting. Queen Victoria would have stopped resisting.” Seeking relief from visceral memory, her arms crossed over her torso, her body folded over her crossed legs. “Do you want to hear what happened with us after?”

  Alexander shuddered. “No. The rest I know.”

  “Do you?” But Vikki didn’t say it with surprise. She said it as in, no, you don’t.

  Alexander said he did. “Many years ago,” he said, “when I was even younger than Ant, I found myself in a similar situation with one of my mother’s friends, who was about the same age as you had been—thirty-nine. I was barely sixteen. She was my first, and she was great, but once I got a taste of it, I wanted all the girls. Needless to say it lasted just one summer with her.”

  Vikki studied her hands. “Well, I wasn’t Anthony’s first.” They both didn’t know what to say.

  Alexander stared at her, realizing something. “Vik, you moved here in ’58 and then suddenly moved back to New York in ’61. That August, as I remember. When Ant went to West Point.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t—you didn’t move back... for him, did you?”

  “I thought you knew the rest?”

  “Obviously—less well than I thought.”

  “Alexander!” Vikki whispered. “No one could lay a hand on that boy without falling completely under his spell. Certainly not a thirty-eight-year-old woman who had traveled the world over, who had seen and loved and endured she thought everything. He made me lose all reason.” Vikki shuddered. “He didn’t win my heart. He took my heart.” She lowered her chin into her chest. “But he was eighteen.”

  “Not answering my question, Vik.”

  “I am,” she replied. “I am answering your question.”

  Alexander shook his head. His own Svetlana had been heartbroken but not as brave. She had wanted something more from him that he did not have and could not give. When he moved on, she didn’t persist. He could only imagine how his own son treated the woman in front of him. He didn’t know what to ask next. “Did you... see him again?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “When he had his weekend pass, he would come to New York and stay with me.”

  “Until when?”

  “Until he left for Vietnam,” said Vikki.

  That was the jaw-dropping thing.

  “You continued to see each other for four years?” Alexander said, astonished.

  “Yes. Don’t know everything, do you? Our casual weekend at the Biltmore lasted a little longer than we expected. I don’t know how we kept it hidden from you, from Tania. From Tania particularly.”

  Alexander asked (having to ask!), “Ant didn’t end it?”

  “He didn’t end it,” said Vikki, her voice cracking, her demeanor crushed, “because I acted like there was nothing to end. I was just a freewheeling gal. Anytime he wanted to get together, we got together. When he didn’t, we didn’t. No pressure either way. No promises, not a single pledge for tomorrow. Just fun with us. From beginning to end, nothing else but
fun.”

  Alexander’s chair was no longer facing Vikki. He certainly wasn’t. His elbows were on his knees, his head was down. The cigarette dangled out of his mouth.

  “I won’t lie to you,” Vikki said. “There was some fun. New York in the 1960s for a fledgling man and his tour guide. New York is a city for all seasons, for all lovers. Even dead end lovers like us. And, I didn’t fool myself for a second, Alexander,” she said. “No one knew better than I what a dead end we were. I’m 20 years older than him!” she cried. “When he would be 40, still a young man, I would be 60! When he would be your age now, still virile and strong, I would be 70! I’m older than his mother, for God’s sake! His mother and I—I can’t look her in the face. This is shameful. It’s degrading for me to explain to you.”

  “No need to explain anymore.”

  “I didn’t want him to think anything he could do would hurt me,” Vikki went on. “I know how frightening that is for a young boy just starting out. Last thing he needed. So I pretended I was casual toward him, to let him have his young life, the life he needed to have and deserved to have, knowing that eventually he would find someone to marry, someone to have children with. He could not have that with me.”

  “After all,” said Alexander, “you are already married.”

  “That’s right. To his commanding officer.” She didn’t look at Alexander when she spoke.

  “What did Ant want, Vikki?” Alexander asked quietly.

  “What do you think, Alexander?” said Vikki. “He wants what you have. What you’ve had your whole life.” She looked like she was in a suffering haze. “He could not have that with me. I am many things, but I know my limitations—and he knows them, too.” Her hands were trembling. “And—my sham marriage gives me a permanent air of respectability so I don’t have these complications in my life. It’s much simpler that way. Never any explanation for the lack of anything on my part. Life for weekends at the Biltmore is all Vikki is capable of.”

  Alexander was listening and wished he weren’t. “Answer me,” he said. “What did Anthony want?”

  “Oh, look,” Vikki said, with fake dismissiveness, “you know how the young are. He wanted his cake, he wanted his fun, his Biltmores, his strolls down the Hudson. Sure, he said he wanted me. He wanted all the girls. He wanted everything. And why not? He had everything.” She wept. “Everything.”