The Summer Garden (54 page)

“Tania, do you think it’s possible for you not to speak in code? When you talk can you speak either Russian or English, but not gibberish?”

She said nothing, turning to the sink again.

“Okay, that’s it,” he said, striding to her. “Don’t you shake your plummy little tail at me.” Picking her up from the sink, he carried her over and dropped her on the couch, stomach down. Falling on top of her, he pinned her legs between his, and clasped her wrists over her head. Her face was in the couch pillow. “Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to
take
the truth from you?”

“Shh!”

He stuck his chin into her neck, into her cheek, into her shoulder blades. He was tickling her and whispering to her as she kept laughing. “I’m trying to figure out if I should get it out of you by making love to you until you tell me, or by not making love to you until you tell me…”

“Tough one,” she said. “But if the choice is mine, I might as well have the former.”

“I think,” Alexander whispered into her ear, squeezing her wrists tighter, “the choice is mine, tadpole…”

There was coughing behind them. They turned their heads and Anthony was standing at the foot of the couch, looking puzzled. “What are you doing?” he asked quietly.

“Mommy won’t tell me something, and I’m trying to tickle it out of her.”

“Dad’s trying to stubble it out of me,” Tatiana said, her head out of the sofa pillow. Alexander got off her, pulled her up; they sat primly on the couch and looked at their son, who stared at them with solemnity and finally said, “Whatever it is you were doing, Dad, it wasn’t working.”

“Tell me about it.”

In the heat of the night, near the mountains, Alexander sat outside with a cigarette on the rocking bench he had built for them, and she came out and climbed into his lap. It was sunset over the saguaro desert valley, and he rocked them back and forth, while she nuzzled him and murmured love in his ear, cooing pidgin English into him, through his skin. But nothing she said or did could erase the image of her in a peach taffeta dress, standing against the wall, her fists to the stone, saying, “What have you let into our house, Alexander?”

What did that mean?

What had he let in?

But finally even the densest, most wrapped-up-in-himself husband in all of Scottsdale figured out that something wasn’t right when Tatiana brought him lunch, and Steve came by with inspection papers to sign, and Tatiana wouldn’t look at him. He said, “Hi, Tania,” and Tatiana didn’t even mutter a “Hey.” It was like Steve didn’t exist.

Even blind Alexander noticed.

Steve said, “Mand and I haven’t seen much of you guys lately. We should go out.”

“Been busy, Stevie,” Alexander said slowly, staring at Tatiana, whose head was down. “Been in Yuma four days in the last two weeks. That little Korean conflict.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, how about this Saturday?”

“We’re busy.” That was Tatiana, eyes to the ground.

“Next Saturday?”

“It’s our tenth anniversary,” she said.

“The following weekend?”

“Anthony’s birthday.”

“Well, we’re having a Fourth of July party—you guys are coming to that, right?”

“If it’s on a Friday, I have to work. In fact, I have to go now.” She never raised her eyes to him.

At the car, Alexander opened the door for her and she got in without looking at him either! “Whoa,” he said, reaching for her through the open window. His fingers under her chin lifted her face. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. You have to get back to work. Look, the homeowners are here. Everything is fine.”

“Tania.”

“What do you want to do? Have it out on your construction site while a nice married couple waits for you to show them their plaster walls? You’ve got work to do. I’m going home to make dinner. What would you like? I was thinking of chili and corn bread.”

“Yes, fine,” he said. “Tania, did Steve say something to you at the wedding?”

“No,” she said.

“What then?”

“In the middle of the construction site?”

“When I get home.”

“Anthony and Sergio are having dinner with us.”

“Tonight in bed.”

“I’ve got to get up early for work tomorrow.”

He opened the car door and pulled her out. “Come on, babe. Don’t play fucking games with
me
.”

“You don’t want to know, Alexander. Believe me, you haven’t wanted the truth for three years, you aren’t going to want it now.”

Frustrated, he let her go. Clearly now was not the time. And later at home was not the time—with Anthony and Sergio in the next room, and quiet music, and the sound of running water from the dishes and the laundry, and the laughter of two boys playing ball outside and Monopoly inside, there was no place for
Sturm und Drang
, which is why they both hated having any. Their quiet life worked in small decibels, or in higher decibels in their great bed behind locked doors, with Anthony long asleep or at his friend’s house. But not in bed, not together in a hot bath, not outside in the pool, or running around together, or watching the sunset and smoking, or during their divine Sundays, not during the most convivial moments, the most comfortable moments, the most conjugal moments was there a good time for these storms. Alexander realized unhappily that the only harsh words they’d had in the three years they’d lived in Phoenix had been over something to do with Steve or his father.

Turned out that after the chili and corn bread, and a game of basketball, Anthony walked Sergio back down the road and Alexander and Tatiana had thirty minutes to themselves. He took her by the hand outside to their deck, placed her in front of him, sat down on the bench, lit a cigarette, and said, “Let’s have it.”

She wasted no time. She had a lot to get out. “Alexander,” she said, “I’ve kept quiet for three years because I wanted to give you what you wanted. I know how you feel about Bill. You wanted to work with him, you wanted to be friends with Steve, you wanted me to keep quiet—so I did. After I have seen you be so unhappy, I wanted to do nothing to upset you. So I kept my mouth shut. But I can’t keep quiet any longer. Stevie—and his dad—they’re no good, Shura. They’re no good as friends, they’re no good as employers, and they’re no good as people. That’s the bad news. The good news is: the beautiful thing about living here, in Phoenix, is that they don’t matter. There’s somewhere else to go, something else to do, somewhere else to work. You are free, and you now have indispensable skills. Carolyn had her house built by a man named G.G. Cain, and she said he was the nicest man—”

“Tatiana, wait, what are you talking about? I know G.G. But I’m not going to work for someone else. I’m not leaving Bill.”

“Shura, you have to leave him. You do know that Stevie beat a man nearly to death?”

Alexander shrugged. “What’s that got to do with me? Or Bill?”

“Everything. How far do you think that fruit has fallen from the tree? Did you hear what I said? He beat a man nearly to death.”

“It was a long time ago. I did some things too, a long time ago.” His face darkened.

“You know what was a long time ago? Your birth,” Tatiana snapped. “As in, you weren’t born yesterday.”

“Yes, because you know the way of male drunken bar fights. The guy had been making awful remarks about Amanda.”

“Stevie says this to you and you believe him? Stevie, the man who tells anyone who will listen, including you, what Amanda does and does not do, is suddenly going to step up for her honor?” Tatiana laughed before turning grave. “Stevie, whose father buys his son’s freedom with the money he makes off your back?”

Alexander rubbed his eyes.

“Before he knew I was married to you, Steve was coming to the hospital pretending to be taken up with me. Would you like to know the kinds of things he said to me?”

“I can imagine. But he didn’t know me.”

“He knew Amanda, didn’t he? He knew he was engaged, didn’t he? He knew I was married!”

“All right, so he doesn’t treat his women very well.”

“I’m not his woman. I’m your woman. And I’m telling you loud and clear that you need to protect your family.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alexander said, his voice rising. “Protect my family? What the fuck does that mean? I work all day six days a week for my family.”

“I’m not impugning how hard you work. I’m impugning who you work for.”

“That’s it. I’ve heard enough.”

“No,” said Tatiana, shaking her head, “I don’t think you have.” She took a breath. “Do you know that to this day, Steve says suggestive things to me when I come to see you and you’re not there? ‘You must be used to men looking at you, Tania,’ he says in his smarmy voice. ‘Even Walter said you looked pretty the other day, Tania, and I always thought Walter was a pansy,’ he says. ‘I like that dress, it really shows off your figure.’ And, ‘Don’t wear that dress again in front of Dudley, Tania. He’s going to go crazy.’”

“Who the fuck is Dudley?” said Alexander.

“How should I know?” replied Tatiana. “He says to Amanda, ‘How about a threeway, Amanda?’ instead of ‘Let’s get married in June, Amanda.’ And you, as they try to buy your land and take your wife, you don’t want to hear it so you can continue to pretend that the naked picture in Balkman’s office is just an anomaly, and that the wolf whistling, ogling, leering men building his houses are normal, too!”

“Take my wife? They’re just men on roofs! What, New York didn’t have wolf whistling?”

“Nothing like this. Never like this—so that I can’t come have lunch with my husband? Even a soldier, a warrior husband, is not enough anymore to make them stop? They ask you to go to Las Vegas, they invite you to strip clubs, and finally they get you out on a stag night.” Tatiana took a very deep breath. “To all this you keep shaking your blind head—”

“Look, I’m not blind! I know it all. Why do you think I don’t go to Vegas? I know exactly what’s going on, but it’s just bullshit,” he said. “I’m inured to bullshit. You should’ve heard how the men in my penal battalion talked. Steve is a monk compared to them.”

“Your men talked about me?”

“Steve doesn’t talk to me about you!”

“Not to you, but to others! Go ask Walter what Steve says about me. Recently Walter’s been so embarrassed, he won’t look at me anymore, not even to say hello.”

She saw Alexander taken aback by that. Finally. Something got in. He frowned. “That’s it, you’re not coming to the construction sites anymore,” he said.

Tatiana looked at him, opened her palms to him. When all she saw was his closed face, she crossed her arms on her chest. “That seems a normal way to live? Hiding your wife from the people you work with, as if you’re still with the soldiers who buy or take women when they pass through foreign towns? This is your solution? Live like we’re in a penal battalion? Live like we’re in the Gulag?”

“Stop your overreacting. Stevie’s all right. And he is my friend.”

“Like Dimitri was your friend? Like Ouspensky was your friend?”

“No! Are you really comparing Stevie with Dimitri?”

“Even here, this is not how people are, Shura. They weren’t like this at Ellis, at NYU. They’re not like this at my hospital, they’re not like this at the market, at the gas stations. Sure, some try to get friendly. But there is something else going on here. Can’t you see—Bill Balkman hires
only
these kinds of people. You don’t see something wrong with that?”

“No!”

“Everything is raunchy and grody. Nothing is sacred. Nothing. You don’t think it rubs off on you? Weren’t you the one who told me you breathe oxen, you live oxen?”

“Stop using my own words against me. This isn’t it.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Recreating the Red Army for yourself on your little construction sites?”

“Tania!” exclaimed Alexander. “You better stop right now. I’m not going to get into what you’re trying to recreate in your little emergency room, so don’t start a fight that you can’t finish and can’t win.” He raised his hand before she said another word. “Look, I don’t want to quit my job,” he said, “and I’m not going to. Bill treats me very well. I have seven houses I’m building, he gives me a three percent bonus for each one. Who else is going to do that for me?”

“He charges twice as much for his builder’s commission as G.G. Cain does, which is why all your houses are so expensive and many are built like cardboard boxes. That seems normal to you, a low-quality custom home and a thirty percent commission? Bill should give you twenty-five percent of his damn commission, not three, seeing he couldn’t finish one house on time if it weren’t for you.”

“Oh, now you’re a regular Milton Friedman, too?”

“Who?”

“Balkman is talking of making me partner soon. If I go somewhere else, I’d have to start at the bottom and make no money again. That’s your idea of a happy Alexander? Here, I do well, Bill trusts me, and no one bothers me.”

“They bother
me
.”

“Don’t come there!” Alexander broke off. Lowering his voice, breathing hard, he said, “I’m done—done—talking about this. Anything else?”

“There is.”

“If you don’t get to it in exactly one fucking second—”

“Oh.” Tatiana clasped her hands together. “I see. Well, in that case, let me get to it in exactly one second. Steve is all right, you say. He’s your friend. Fine. So when your unassailable buddy Steve tells Amanda who tells me—at Cindy’s wedding—that at the Westward Ho, you”—She grasped the sides of the rail—“that you took one of the girls into one of the rooms—”

Alexander stood up abruptly. Tatiana stopped speaking. He didn’t blink, but something happened to his face—it fell and hardened at the same time. Something crumbled and cemented. He said nothing, just continued to stare at her.

“Shura…”

“Tania, I need a second.”

“You need a second? I’ve managed to live carrying those words inside me since last week.”

“You know how you did it. You did it because you know they’re not true.” He lit another cigarette. His fingers were stiff.

“It’s your word against his, husband,” Tatiana whispered. “That’s all I got. Your word against his. And you just spent fifteen minutes telling me that his word is good. You’re working with a man who says these things so that your wife hears, so that your wife believes they could be true. You’re good friends with someone who wants your wife to think those words are true.”