Everyone laughed.
“On top of the Afghani war,” Alexander continued cheerfully, taking a drink of champagne and lighting his cigarette, “they are heavily subsidizing all their Eastern satellites—East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria. Plus they are funding a standing army of millions of Soviet men across the breadth and width of Eastern Europe. They’re paying for the Czech wall and its guards, they’re paying for the Berlin Wall and its guards. They’re paying for the guards around Lech Walesa’s prison cell, for the guards to keep the Poles out of churches. Is it viable for them to divert their resources from this, Ant? Away from the Berlin Wall and into SDI?” Alexander shrugged and smiled. “Perhaps it is. Perhaps that’s where they should divert their resources from. If they can’t defend it, the wall is coming down, Walesa is free, and the Catholics attend Mass in Krakow. The Soviets are having a very hard time keeping Christ away from Polish Communists. But they are also funding every new rebellion in Africa and South America, and subsidizing Cuba and Vietnam. And insurgencies in Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada. Creating chaos throughout the world doesn’t come cheap, you know.” Alexander’s eyes were glazed over Tatiana, as if he were remembering something, perhaps about chaos in the universe where all was one, where all was all right, and all was reconciled—and then he went on. “In 1979,” he said, “the Soviets paid for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and to help them repel the Chinese invasion. The same year they overextended themselves into invading Afghanistan. They continue to fund and supply the Vietnamese Army, one of the largest standing armies in the world. Why do they do it? And what does Vietnam still need an army like that for? Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, they’re all one.” Now he smiled at Tatiana. “The Soviet Union produces nothing of value except gold and oil, and with the Gulag machine disassembling, labor, cheap as it is, is no longer free. The criminal prisoners alone are not enough to prop up the command economy of the Soviet state. So Anthony Barrington, my son, your third question is, you want to know if I think—with their hands already so deep in every pot—the Soviets should spend hundreds of billions of rubles they don’t have on the stupidest thing you have ever heard of?” Alexander laughed. “But of course, I say. They must!”
Coda
“Farewell, queen,” said he, “henceforward and for ever, till age and death, the common lot of mankind, lay their hands upon you. I now take my leave; be happy in this house with your children, your people, and with king Alcinous.”
HOMER, The Odyssey
One
Many years passed since the seagulls in Stockholm, Sweden, and the hospital in Morozovo and the hut in Lazarevo; and many more still since the granite parapets in the finite twilight of the Northern sun.
It was Thanksgiving 1999.
While two turkeys were peaceably hiding in two ovens, the house was a zoo. Five opinionated women were in the kitchen, five loud cooks to spoil the broth. One was making mashed potatoes, one was making green bean casserole, one was cooking sweet potatoes. The loudest of all was adjusting her nursing bra, making milk, and the quietest of all was making bacon leek stuffing and yams with rum and a brown sugar glaze. Seven preadolescent and teenage girls were flung over the kitchen table gabbing about music and makeup, toys and boys. Next to them was a small infant seat and in it a small infant. The young girls were impatiently waiting for their grandmother to finish the leek stuffing and make the preacher cookies she’d been promising.
Across the long, sunny gallery, in the den, five mature professional men were cursing at an inanimate rectangular object on which the Cowboys were being carved up by the Dolphins. A toddler sat on his grandfather’s lap with his grandfather’s large hands over his ears.
Four boys were running in a pack around the house, at the moment playing ping pong polo. Three boys and one gangly twenty-year-old were playing basketball outside. Music piped through the speakers. The house was so loud that when the doorbell rang no one heard.
It’s the end of November, and outside is 72 degrees. They’re all going in the heated pool after dinner.
The freshly repainted walls are covered in memories. The beds are made. The fresh flowers are in vases. The mirrors have no streaks, the hardwoods are polished. The California golden poppy, orange fiddle-neck and desert lavender bloom winter wild across the hills and by human design in their bedroom garden.
The dining room is banquet hall sized—because the one who built it had been thinking generationally. It has space for two long wooden tables pushed together. The tables are clothed in gold and scarlet and are set in crystal and china for twenty-six people: four grown children, three of their spouses, fifteen of their children, and two guests.
One mother.
One father.
At the head of the room, above where he sits, a small plaque reads, “He brought me to his banqueting table and his banner over me was love.” Under the plaque stands the gangly basketball player, a stranger to this house, staring at the walls and the photographs.
In her madhouse of a kitchen, Tatiana’s sea-foam eyes shine in her round face as she shows her granddaughters how to make preacher cookies. “All right,” she says. “Preacher cookies. Watch and learn. Half a cup of butter. Two cups of sugar. Half a cup of milk. Boil, boil boil.” Her soft flaxen hair comes down below the nape of her neck. Her makeup is light. She has gained weight in her breasts and her hips but remains trim, and as if to prove it, wears a form-fitting, short-sleeve, jersey-knit, periwinkle dress. Her shoulders and the bridge of her nose are dusted with freckles. Her face is smooth, her skin plump and filled out. She swims every day, dives still, rides trail horses in Carefree, walks through the desert, plants flowers, lifts her smaller grandchildren in her arms. She has aged well.
“When it boils,” Tatiana says, “you add three cups of quick oats, a cup of powdered unsweetened cocoa, and then, at your discretion, either half a cup of coconut, half a cup of walnuts, or half a cup of peanut butter.”
Here ten different voices give their ten opinions. Tatiana sighs theatrically and puts in half a cup of coconut. “Your grandfather likes it with coconut, so that’s how I make it. When you’re in your own house, you can make it how you like.” She stirs until the oatmeal is cooked, for about a mushy minute, maybe longer, and then takes it off the stove, and immediately spoons out glops of fudgy cookies onto foil. “They’ll be ready in an hour,” she says. Really, she might as well be speaking Russian because the older girls, the younger girls, the teenage girls, and even their chuckling dressed-up mothers all take a ball, hot on napkins, and pop them ah-ah-ahhing in their mouths.
There is frightening noise from the crystal-clad dining room. Tatiana is sheepishly told that Tristan and Travis, Harry’s 10-year-old twins, are playing football with their two older brothers who should know better.
No one wants to mention that the football they’re playing around her banqueting china is not touch but tackle.
Rachel and Rebecca, Anthony’s 19-year-old girls, both sophomores at Harvard, are gossiping loudly at the table with chocolatey red mouths. Rebecca has brought a boyfriend for Thanksgiving—a first for her, a first for the family—and is now giving her younger, open-mouthed cousins the loud, G-rated low-down on him, in full hearing of Tatiana, as if hoping Grammy will hear and approve. Rebecca’s boyfriend finally appears in the kitchen after playing basketball and touring the house, and is introduced simply as Washington. He is tall, lanky-awkward, long-haired, laconic and unshaven for the holidays. When he speaks, Tatiana, with a small disapproving frown, notices a ball of silver flash on his tongue.
“Grammy, Washington is a math major!” Rebecca effuses, hanging on to Washington. “Aren’t you impressed? Grammy loves math majors, don’t you, Grammy? And Washington is brilliant!”
Tatiana smiles politely at Washington, who tries to look brilliant and nonchalant. He pastes a return smile for Tatiana, analyzes her face intently, looking for something, excuses himself after ten seconds and goes to get a dr
ink without asking Rebecca if she wants one.
Rebecca, twinkling like a comet, says in a low voice, “Grammy, I think he is my first real love. Though truthfully, when you’re this young, can you even tell?” She glances longingly after Washington.
“No, honey,” Tatiana says to Rebecca. “You can’t tell anything about love when you’re young.”
“Grammy, you’re being ironic with me, and I simply won’t stand for it,” Rebecca rejoins, her chocolate lips puckering on Tatiana’s face. “I’m going to write a book about you and then you’ll be sorry.”
“I give them till Christmas,” Tatiana says quietly to Anthony, who has just walked in, heading straight for the preacher cookies.
“That long?” he says, swallowing the gooey ball.
A small dark delicate-looking boy trails behind him. “Dad,” he says, “can I go to Grandpa’s shed? We were making a chess board last time I was here. He said I could finish it.”
“Don’t ask me, Tomboy,” says Anthony. “Ask Grandpa. Though you might want to wait till half-time to ask him anything.” With his hand on his son’s shoulder, he turns to his mother. “Mom, are you still collecting blood for Red Cross?”
“Who wants to know?” Tatiana smiles. “As President of the Phoenix Chapter, I think I must. We have a blood drive next week. Why, you want to donate a pint?”
“Why just a pint?” Anthony says. “Take the whole armful.” And he grins back.
Pushing her small brother out of the way, Rebecca steps up to her father, taking him by his one arm, which he disengages from her, trying to take another cookie. She grabs him again and says petulantly to Tatiana, “Grammy, ask Daddy what he thinks of Washington. Ask him.”
“Becky, honey, your father is standing right here. I give you permission to ask him yourself.”
“He won’t tell me!”
“What does that tell you?” Anthony says. “Let go. I have to go back for the disembowelment of the Cowboys. Tom, you coming?”
“That kid Washington plays pretty decent basketball,” says ten-year-old Tommy. “If that’s worth anything.”
“Dad,” says Rachel, coming up to his left side and poking him in the rib, “why don’t you tell Grammy what I just heard Grandpa shouting at the TV in full hearing of the two-year-old.” The model-tall girls, identically made up, identically attired, identical, stunning, flank their father, their identically affectionate gazes on him.
Anthony winks at Tommy. “We won’t tell her, will we, bud?” He stares at his daughters. “Will you two let go of me? Tom, where’s your brother? Uncle Harry wants him to watch Samson until Grandpa calms down.”
“Grandpa was standing in front of the TV,” whispers Rachel with a big grin but in a low voice so the young ones won’t hear, “and yelling at his team, ‘Hey, girls! Why don’t you Cowboy the fuck up?’”
“Shhhhh!” exclaims Tatiana. “Rachel Barrington!”
“What? He’s your husband!”
Shaking her head, Tatiana takes Tommy by the hand and the last two preacher cookies on a napkin and walks from the kitchen, through the long wide gallery with plants and pictures and floor-to-ceiling windows, to the family room, where she stands behind the couch and leans over a white head.
“Shura,” she says quietly, her hand with the preacher balls extended, “be good. Don’t teach the toddlers all you know just yet.”
Alexander, without taking his eyes away from the TV, reaches over, takes one of the cookies, pops it into his mouth, leans his head slightly to her, and says in his rasping baritone, “I was good. I covered his ears. And if you saw the defensive line—God, when’s half-time? I need a cigarette.”
Tommy loiters by the side of the couch. “Grandpa, what about my chess board? Can we go finish it?”
“What a good idea, Tomboy,” says Alexander. “Let’s go right now.” Standing up, he turns to Tatiana. Though his hair is white, and thinner, it is not gone from his head. Tatiana cuts it herself every month with her electric clippers. There are many physical things that age has not taken from Alexander: his height; his straight posture; his hands—with the iron handshake, still like a vise, and with softness still like feathers; hands that still work in his shed, whittle chess pieces, trim bushes, hold reins and children, shoot basketballs, touch his wife. His arms that do the frontstroke in the pool and support his weight in bed; his lucid eyes, still twinkling peace under his black-gray eyebrows, his caramel eyes— that suddenly narrow.
“Hey!” he shouts at two boys rolling in from the dining room. “Yes, you, Tristan, Travis—secure that! How many times do I have to tell you? Not one more time, you hear me? No horseplay in the house on holidays. Take the life-threatening games outside.”
Before Pasha even has a chance to get up from the couch and glare at his sons, they instantly and silently and in an orderly fashion high-tail it outside. Alexander smiles at Tatiana, and Tommy reaches for his hand. “Just for a minute, though, bud,” says Alexander. “I’ve got a houseful today. But you’re staying the week; I promise, we’ll finish the set, okay?”
“Okay, Grandpa.”
“How has your brother been treating you?”
“Terrible.”
“Ignore him. He’s in a bad mood.”
“He’s been in a bad mood since the day he was born.”
During merciful half-time, Alexander gathers with his sons on the patio: him and Anthony and Harry—who has supposedly quit—for a long smoke, Pasha for a cold beer.
Alexander’s sons are tall. Harry, the slimmest and tallest, is taller even than his father, a fact for which he jokingly blames his mother for allowing him to nurse until he was two and a half. (“You’re depending on a two-year-old to wean himself? Grown-ups can’t wean themselves!” Alexander had said to Tatiana.) Harry and Pasha are blond. Anthony’s pepper is slowly salting.
Pasha now likes to call himself Charles Gordon Barrington. His wife, Mary, always so proper, calls him, “Chaaarles.” As soon as she turns her back, his brothers mutely imitate her. “Chaaaarles,” they mouth. To his family he will always be Pasha, except to Jane, who, to tease him, calls him Chaaarles now, too. Not exactly like the sainted warrior of Khartoum; at 41, Charles Gordon Barrington is the U.S. Army chief surgeon at the Hayden Veterans Medical Center right on Indian School Road in Phoenix. His mother comes to have lunch with him once a week. His father continues to persist in his lifelong aversion to hospitals, so father and son play golf instead. Since Alexander left the hospital back in March of 1970, just in time to receive his Congressional Medal, he has never been back. Whatever ailments befall him, he’s got his own nurse, right around the clock, and a son who anxiously observes his condition twice a week from holes one through eighteen. The son looks for signs of heart disease, emphysema, old age. Alexander is eighty. He figures any time now, Pasha might see the last. But not while the son demands golf twice a week, and makes Alexander walk the eighteen holes. Every few months, Alexander gets to play golf with two of his three sons.
Anthony doesn’t play golf.
Pasha was the last of the four kids to marry, gallivanting intemperately through his twenties, and finally falling for another doctor when he was thirty and in residency; in 1988 they settled into an overworked life, and together they, organized, temperate, efficient, had twins in 1990—a girl, Maria, whom they call Mia, and a boy, Charles Gordon— and were done, and their family was ordered and quiet, and they each worked sixty hours a week. They now live in Paradise Valley, in a house Barrington Custom Homes built for them, and they come over on Sundays to spend the day. Except Mary is pregnant again at 41, inexplicably, and they don’t know how to tell anyone. It is so unlike them not to plan. Pasha advises Mary not to go anywhere near his mother if she doesn’t want the whole family to find out.
Harry Barrington, 39, is a U.S. Army nuclear, biological, chemical and conventional defense specialist. As Harry likes to point out, “I’m not a weapons specialist. I’m the weapons specialist.” After getting his doctorate in n
uclear physics from MIT in 1985, he has been working for the Department of Defense at Yuma Proving Ground. His career was made at the end of the eighties when he had been experimentally designing a long tube that was 19 feet long and only 14 inches in diameter. His brothers called it, “just a souped up punji stick.” Suddenly Iraq invaded Kuwait and Harry and his team of scientists had to work around the clock, and in record time designed a guided bomb unit that in its final form weighed nearly 5000 pounds and was fitted with over 600 pounds of explosive.
Alexander said, “Harry, my son, if the bomb weighs 5000 pounds, does it even need to explode?” Apparently, yes it did. It needed to penetrate concrete Iraqi command centers deep underground before it detonated. It was called a bunker buster. It was such a rush job that the initial bunker busters were constructed out of the army’s old artillery material.
Harry married a tiny girl named Amy in 1985, when he was 25, and his generous wife gave him one boy after another, after another. They had Harry Jr. in 1986, Jake in 1987 and then the twins Tristan and Travis in 1989. In one final last ditch attempt for a girl, they produced Samson in 1997, who is enough boy for four. Now all five sons trail like puppies after Harry and he teaches them what he knows. The rest of the family loudly fears for the fate of the world. They drive up from Yuma once a month to spend the weekend at the house. Amy and Mary are good friends.
The Summer Garden Page 96