The Summer Garden (2 page)

Under his orange rubber overalls, he was wearing dark green army fatigues and a green long-sleeved army jersey, covered with sweat and fish and salt water. His black hair was in a military buzzcut, his gaunt perspiring face had black afternoon stubble over the etched bones.

He came up to the woman in pristine white who was sitting on the bench. She raised her eyes to greet him—and raised them and raised them, for he was tall.

“Hey,” she said. It was a breathing out. She had stopped eating her ice cream.

“Hey,” he said. He didn’t touch her. “Your ice cream is melting.”

“Oh, I know.” She licked all around the wafer cone, trying to stem the tide but it was no use, the vanilla had turned to condensed milk and was dripping. He watched her. “I can never seem to finish it before it melts,” she muttered, getting up. “You want the rest?”

“No, thank you.” She took a few more mouthfuls before she threw the cone in the trash. He motioned to her mouth.

She licked her lips to clean away the remaining vanilla milk. “Better?”

He didn’t answer. “We’ll have lobsters again tonight?”

“Of course,” she said. “Whatever you want.”

“I still have to go back and finish.”

“Yes, of course. Should we, um, come down to the dock? Wait with you?”

“I want to help,” said Anthony.

Tatiana vigorously shook her head. She would not be able to get the fish smell off the boy.

“You’re so clean,” said Alexander. “Why don’t you stay here with your mother? I’ll be done soon.”

“But I want to help you.”

“Well, come down then, maybe we’ll find something for you to do.”

“Yes, nothing that involves touching fish,” muttered Tatiana.

She didn’t care much for Alexander’s job as a lobsterman. He reeked of fish when he returned. Everything he touched smelled of it. A few days ago, when she had been very slightly grumbling, almost teasing, he said, “You never complained in Lazarevo when I fished,” not teasing. Her face must have looked pretty crestfallen because he said, “There’s no other work for a man in Stonington. You want me to smell like something else, we’ll have to go somewhere else.”

Tatiana didn’t want to go somewhere else. They just got here.

“About the other thing…” he said. “I won’t bring it up again.”

That’s right, don’t bring up Lazarevo, their other moment by the sea near eternity. But that was then—in the old bloodsoaked country. After all, Stonington—with warm days and cool nights and expanses of still and salty water everywhere they looked, the mackerel sky and the purple lupines reflecting off the glass bay with the white boats—it was more than they ever asked for. It was more than they ever thought they would have.

With his one good arm, Jimmy was motioning for Alexander.

“So how did you do today?” Tatiana asked him, trying to make conversation as they headed down to the dock. Alexander was in his big heavy rubber boots. She felt impossibly small walking by his side, being in his overwhelming presence. “Did you have a good catch?”

“Okay today,” he replied. “Most of the lobsters were shorts, too small; we had to release them. A lot of berried females, they had to go.”

“You don’t like berried females?” She moved closer, looking up at him.

Blinking lightly, he moved away. “They’re good, but they have to be thrown back in the water, so their eggs can hatch. Don’t come too close, I’m messy. Anthony, we haven’t counted the lobsters. Want to help me count them?”

Jimmy liked Anthony. “Buddy! Come here, you want to see how many lobsters your dad caught today? We probably have a hundred lobsters, his best day yet.”

Tatiana leveled her eyes at Alexander. He shrugged. “When we get twelve lobsters in one trap and have to release ten of them, I don’t consider that a good day.”

“Two legals in one trap is great, Alexander,” said Jimmy. “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of this. Come here, Anthony, look into the live-well.”

Keeping a respectful distance, Anthony peered into the tank where the lobsters, already banded and measured, were crawling on top of one another. He told his mother he didn’t care much for their claws, even bound. Especially after what his father told him about lobsters: “They’re cannibals, Ant. Their claws have to be tied up or they would eat each other right in the tank.”

Anthony said to Jimmy, his voice trying not to crack, “You already
counted
them?”

Alexander shook his head at Jimmy. “Oh, no, no,” Jimmy quickly said. “I was busy hosing down the boat. I just said approximately. Want to count?”

“I can’t count past twenty-seven.”

“I’ll help you,” said Alexander. Taking out the lobsters one by one, he let Anthony count them until he got to ten, and then carefully, so as not to break their claws, placed them in large blue transfer totes.

At last Alexander said to Anthony, “One hundred and two.”

“You see?” said Jimmy. “Four for you, Anthony. That leaves ninety-eight for me. And they’re all perfect, as big as can be, right around a five-inch carapace—which means shell, bud. We’ll get 75 cents a piece for them. Your dad is going to make me almost seventy-five dollars today. Yes,” he said, “because of your dad, I can finally make a living.” He glanced at Tatiana, standing a necessary distance away from the spillage of the boat. She smiled politely; Jimmy nodded curtly and didn’t smile back.

As the buyers started to pour in from the fish market, from the general store, from the seafood restaurants as far away as Bar Harbor, Alexander washed and cleaned the boat, cleaned the traps, rolled up the line, and went down dock to buy three barrels of bait herring for the next day, which he placed into bags and lowered them into the water. The herring catch was good today, he had enough to bait 150 lobster traps for tomorrow.

He got paid ten dollars for the day’s work, and was scrubbing his hands with industrial-strength soap under the water spout when Jimmy came up to him. “Want to wait with me and sell these?” He pointed to the lobsters. “I’ll pay you another two dollars for the evening. After, we can go for a drink.”

“Can’t, Jimmy. But thanks. Maybe another time.”

Jimmy glanced at Tatiana, all sunny and white, and turned away.

They walked up the hill to the house.

Alexander went to take a bath, to shave, to shear his hair, while Tatiana, placing the lobsters in the refrigerator to numb them, boiled the water. Lobsters were the easiest thing to cook, 10–15 minutes in salted boiling water. They were delicious to eat, breaking the claws, taking the meat out, dipping them in melted butter. But sometimes she did think that she would rather spend two dollars on a lobster in a store once a month than have Alexander spend thirteen hours on a boat every day and get four lobsters for free. Didn’t seem so free. Before he was out of the bathroom, she stood outside the door, knocked carefully and said, “You need anything?”

There was quiet inside. She knocked louder. The door opened, and he towered in front of her, all fresh and shaved and scrubbed and dressed. He was wearing a clean green jersey and fatigues. She cleared her throat and lowered her gaze. Barefoot she stood with her lips level with his heart. “Need anything?” she repeated in a whisper, feeling so vulnerable she was having trouble breathing.

“I’m fine,” he said, walking sideways past her. “Let’s eat.”

They had the lobsters with melted butter, and carrot, onion and potato stew. Alexander ate three lobsters, most of the stew, bread, butter. Tatiana had found him emaciated in Germany. He ate for two men now, but he was still war thin. She ladled food onto his plate, filled his glass. He drank a beer, water, a Coke. They ate quietly in the little kitchen, which the landlady allowed them to use as long as they were either done by seven or made dinner for her, too. They were done by seven,
and
Tatiana left some stew for her.

“Alexander, does your…chest hurt?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“It felt a little pulpy last night…” She looked away, remembering touching it. “It’s not healed yet, and you’re doing all that trap hauling. I don’t want it to get reinfected. Perhaps I should put some carbolic acid on it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Maybe a new dressing?”

He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyes to her, and for a moment between them, from his bronze-colored eyes to her sea-green passed
Berlin, and the room at the U.S. Embassy where they had spent what they both were certain was their last night on earth, when she stitched together his shredded pectoral and wept, and he sat like a stone and looked through her
—much like now.
He said to her then, “We never had a future.”

Tatiana looked away first—she always looked away first—and got up.

Alexander went outside to sit in the chair in front of the house on the hill overlooking the bay. Anthony tagged along behind him. Alexander sat mutely and motionlessly, while Anthony milled about the overgrown yard, picking up rocks, pine cones, looking for worms, for beetles, for ladybugs.

“You won’t find any ladybugs, son. Season for them’s in June,” said Alexander.

“Ah,” said Anthony. “Then what’s this?”

Tilting over to one side, Alexander looked. “I can’t see it.”

Anthony came closer.

“Still can’t see it.”

Anthony came closer, his hand out, the index finger with the ladybug extended.

Alexander’s face was inches away from the ladybug. “Hmm. Still can’t see it.”

Anthony looked at the ladybug, looked at his father and then slowly, shyly climbed into his lap and showed him again.

“Well, well,” said Alexander, both hands going around the boy. “Now I see it. I sit corrected. You were right. Ladybugs in August. Who knew?”

“Did you ever see ladybugs, Dad?”

Alexander was quiet. “A long time ago, near a city called Moscow.”

“In the…Soviet Union?”

“Yes.”

“They have ladybugs there?”

“They
had
ladybugs—until we ate them all.”

Anthony was wide-eyed.

“There was nothing else to eat,” said Alexander.

“Anthony, your father is just joking with you,” said Tatiana, walking out, wiping her wet hands on a tea towel. “He is trying to be funny.”

Anthony peered into Alexander’s face. “
That
was funny?”

“Tania,” Alexander said in a far away voice. “I can’t get up. Can you get my cigarettes for me?”

She left quickly and came out with them. Since there was only one chair and nowhere for her to sit, she placed the cigarette in Alexander’s mouth and, bending over him, her hand on his shoulder, lit it for him while Anthony placed the bug into Alexander’s palm.

“Dad, don’t eat this ladybug.” One of his little arms went around Alexander’s neck.

“I won’t, son. I’m full.”

“
That’s
funny,” said Anthony. “Mama and I met a man today. A colonel. Nick Moore.”

“Oh, yeah?” Alexander looked off into the distance, taking another deep drag of the cigarette from Tatiana’s hands as she was bent to him. “What was he like?”

“He was like you, Dad,” Anthony replied. “He was just like you.”

Red Nail Polish

In the middle of the night
, the boy woke up and screamed. Tatiana went to comfort him. He calmed down, but would not let her leave him alone in his bed, even though it was just across the nightstand. “Alexander,” she whispered, “are you awake?”

“I am now,” he said, getting up. Moving the nightstand out of the way, he pushed the two twin beds together so Anthony could lie next to his mother. They tried to get comfortable, Alexander against the wall spooning Tatiana spooning Anthony, who instantly fell asleep in his mother’s arms. Tatiana only pretended to fall back to sleep. She knew that in a moment Alexander would get up and leave the bed.

And in a moment, he was gone. She whispered after him.
Shura, darling.
After a few minutes, she got up, put on a robe and walked outside. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the yard. She looked for him all the way down to the dock. Alexander was sitting on the bench where Tatiana usually sat waiting for him to come back from the sea. She saw the flare of the cigarette in his mouth. He was naked except for his skivvies, and he was shivering. His arms were crossed over himself, and his body was rocking back and forth.

She stopped walking.

She didn’t know what to do.

She never did know what to do.

Turning around, she stumbled back to their room and lay in bed blinkless, staring beyond Anthony’s sleeping head until Alexander came back, icy and shaking, and fitted in behind her. She didn’t move and he said nothing, made no noise. Just his cold arm went around her. They lay there until four when he got up to go to work. As he ground the coffee beans in the pestle, she buttered a fresh roll for him, filled his water containers and made a sandwich for him to take on the boat. He ate, drank his coffee, and then left, his free hand traveling under her chemise for a moment to rest on her bare buttocks and then between her legs.

They had been on Deer Isle exactly five minutes, breathing in the salt water of the afternoon and seeing the lobster boats returning to shore, and already Tatiana said that a month would not be long enough to spend here. Their agreement was just a month in every state and then onward. Forty-eight states, forty-eight months, beginning with Deer Isle. “A month won’t be enough here,” she repeated when Alexander said nothing.

“Really?” And nothing more.

“You don’t think it’s great here?”

A small ironic something crossed his silent mouth in reply.

On the surface, Stonington had everything they needed: a general store, a variety store, a hardware store. The general store sold newspapers, magazines and, most important, cigarettes. It also sold coffee beans and chocolate. On North and South Deer Isle, there were cows—thus milk, cheese and butter—and chickens that laid eggs. Grain was shipped in by the shipload. There was plenty of bread. Plenty of apples, peaches, pears, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots, turnips, radishes, eggplant, zucchini. There was cheap and plentiful lobster, trout, sea bass, pike. There even was beef and chicken, not that they ever ate it. Who’d ever believe the country had been through a Depression and a world war?