The Summer Garden (59 page)

The medical examiner’s assistants examined the body to determine cause of death. Gunshot wound to the head, Alexander said evenly.

Gunshot wound to the head, they wrote.

Who was Alexander, the police asked, to shoot a man in the head when his wife was only inches away? Who are you? They said something about reckless endangerment. Couldn’t you have waited until he wasn’t so close to your wife before you shot him?

He didn’t think he could have waited, no. For the thirtieth time he told them that once he came fully out of that doorway, he would have had to drop his weapon, and there would have been no other time, and his wife would have been assaulted in front of him, and then they both would have been killed. Impatiently he pointed to Dudley’s loaded pistol, reminded them that they were policemen. They reminded him
he
wasn’t a policeman. He said that surely they knew it was all about snap judgment in a pitched battle. You lost your life, or he his. That was the only choice. There was no later.

They said it wasn’t war. But Alexander disagreed. He said it was. A man came up the hill to his house wanting to kill him and hurt his wife. The man brought war to his house. Now he lay dead. These were the facts and they were not in dispute. Only the degree of force, and Alexander’s snap judgment, and Steve Balkman’s broken face were in dispute.

The police examined the Colt, the rounds. Did he always keep a loaded gun in his house? Yes, all his weapons were always loaded, said Alexander. They lived by themselves up in the mountains. He had to be prepared for anything. They examined the weapons he kept in the bedroom: two models of the M-1 carbine, and an M4 submachine gun in a locked cabinet with the ammunition. He kept the German Walther, the Colt Commando, the M1911, and a .22 caliber Ruger with their extra magazines and all his knives in his nightstand, which he locked during the day and unlocked at night. They asked why he chose the M1911 out of all his handguns. The Ruger was supposed to be more accurate. Alexander said he chose the weapon that would inflict the maximum damage. He chose the M1911, the handcannon of pistols, he said because he knew he would get only one chance to kill Dudley.

Who
was
he? the police asked. Where did he learn to shoot? Did he have marksman qualifications?

Alexander looked at Tatiana. She sat numbly. Yes, he said. He had marksman qualifications. He was a captain in the U.S. Officer Reserve Corps. Funny how one little sentence could change things. They looked at Alexander differently then. Treated him differently. A captain in the U.S. Army. Did he fight in the Second World War? Yes, he said. He fought in the Second World War.

And no one asked him anything after that.

At noon, the hospital arrived with a body bag.

The police told them not to touch anything. This was a crime scene. On Monday, a cleaning crew would come to break it down and clear the room of the detritus of death. Until Monday the captain and his wife and child had to stay elsewhere.

Sergeant Miller said there would be a public inquest into a wrongful death, but privately Miller told Tatiana and Alexander he didn’t know how the Balkman kid made it as long as he had without getting killed. Rumor was, Miller said, that his army injury while stationed in England had not been just friendly fire.

Everyone left—and finally they were alone.

Alexander closed the door after Miller and came to sit next to her on the couch. She raised her eyes to him. They stared at each other. Perhaps he stared. She glared.

“You call this normal, Alexander?” said Tatiana.

Without saying a word he got up and disappeared into the bedroom. She heard the shower go on in the ensuite bath. “Let’s go,” he said when he came out. But she couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her inside. “I can’t stand up,” she said. “Let me have a bath.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t have you sitting in his bloody water. Just stand for five minutes, and when you’re clean, I’ll run you a bath.”

Alexander took off her terry robe, her bloodied camisole, threw them both in the trash. He held her hand as she stepped into the tub. He took off his clothes, got under the shower with her. The water was so hot, and yet she shivered uncontrollably while he carefully washed the brown dried blood from her face, her neck, her hair. He shampooed her hair twice, three times. Bit by bit, Alexander pulled Dudley out of Tatiana’s hair. When she saw the bony chunks he was pulling out, she started to sink into the tub and, slippery and scared, couldn’t stand, no matter how much he implored her. Crouching beside her, he continued to clean her hair. “It’s useless,” she said, reaching into the cabinet near the sink for the scissors. “I can’t touch it anymore. I can’t have you touch it anymore.”

“No,” he said, stopping her, taking the scissors away. “You’ve cut off your hair once before, but now I’m here. I’ll get it clean. If you cut it, you’ll be upsetting only me.”

She stared hard at him. He said, “Ah. Is that the point?” And handed her back the scissors.

But she didn’t cut it. She leaned over the tub and threw up in the toilet.

He waited, his head down. He cleaned himself with the soapy washcloth, and afterwards silently washed her face and scrubbed her entire body, holding her up with one wet arm.

“How many times in my life will you be cleaning blood off me?” Tatiana asked, too weak to stand.

“By my count, it’s only twice,” Alexander replied. “And both times, the blood is not yours. So we can be thankful for the mercies we’re given.”

“My leg isn’t broken this time, or my ribs.” But this violence in her little house. The Germans with their tanks across the River Luga, from their Luftwaffe plane formations raining down warning leaflets before the machine gun rounds, punctually from nine to eleven.
Surrender or die
, the leaflets said.

Alexander didn’t speak to her through the subsequent bath, which he ran for her, didn’t speak as he dried her and laid her on the bed, covering her, bringing her coffee, holding her head while she drank. He asked if there was anything else she needed, because he had to go outside to clear his head. She pleaded with him not to go. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was sitting and watching her from the armchair, all his weapons, including the automatic rifles, between his legs.

“Why did you come out? What did you hear?” Tatiana asked.

“The crashing door. First I reach for my weapon, then I open my eyes.”

“The Colt has come in quite useful.” She stared at him. “The Fritzes, the Soviets, Karolich, and now even in America, we’re recreating our old life. We just can’t seem to get away from it.”

“We’re not recreating our old life. Every once in a while, we simply can’t hide who we are. But he is the dregs found everywhere, even in America. You know what’s come in useful? My U.S. Army commission. Richter had said I’d never know when it would come in handy. He’s been proven quite right.” Alexander paused. “Why did you get up? Why were you out there?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why?”

“I felt something. I was frightened.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Why would I?”

“Because you felt something. Because you were frightened.”

“You didn’t give a damn about my feelings and fears for three years,” she said. “Now suddenly I’ve got to wake you in the middle of the night for them?”

He shot up off the armchair.

“Please, please don’t go,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”

He left anyway.

Tatiana heard the back door opening, closing. She wanted to get up, go to him. But she was crashing. She slept.

The phone kept ringing, or was that just a dream? She kept hearing his voice. Was that just a dream, too? For some reason she started being afraid she was alone again, without him, she began to whimper in her sleep, to cry for him. “Alexander, please help me, please…Alexander…” She couldn’t shake herself awake. It was his hands that woke her, holding her firmly, lifting her to sit.

They looked at each other. “We have to leave here,” he said.

“We have to get Anthony.” She started to cry. “My God, what if he’d been here with us?”

“Well, he wasn’t. And Francesca said she’d keep him till Sunday.”

“Let’s stay here. I don’t want to leave my bed.”

“I can’t be in this house with his blood and brains everywhere.”

Her tears spilling, she stretched out her arms to him. He got into bed with her. She curled up inside his body.

“How do you do it?” she whispered. “Such frenzy, and you stay calm.”

“Well, somebody has to stay calm, Tania.” He patted her behind.

“But it’s almost like you get calmer. Were you like this always?”

“I guess.”

“Were you like this at war? In Finland? Over the Neva in your pontoon boat? Crossing Polish rivers? In all your battles? From the beginning?” She peered into his cool bronze eyes.

“I guess,” he said.

“I want to be like you.” She stroked his face. “It’s a survival thing. That’s how you did it, stayed alive. You’re never rattled.”

“Obviously,” said Alexander, “I’m sometimes rattled.”

They got dressed and left their house. Dudley’s insides remained on their walls.

She went into shaking distress when they passed the old beat-up truck parked a mile down by the side of the road.

“Which hotel?” he asked her, grim but not in shaking distress.

“Don’t care. As long as it’s not the Ho,” she said, her head back.

They went to the Arizona Biltmore Resort, designed by another of Phoenix’s adopted sons, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They took a penthouse suite and were in the steaming bath together when the room service came. They ordered it, Alexander went to get it, but they didn’t eat it. Barely dry, they crawled out into a starched hotel bed and slept dead till Sunday morning.

When they got Anthony, they told him there had been a burglar at the house, a small problem, they couldn’t go back for a while. They stayed a luxurious two days at the Biltmore, had Sunday brunch, swam in the pool. On Monday morning the clean-up squad came from the coroner’s office, and by Tuesday morning when they returned, it was as if Dudley had never existed.

They replaced the rug, the linoleum. Alexander built two new kitchen cabinets. They repainted the house, they bought a new couch.

But Alexander became wretched again. The house had become soiled for him. Arizona had become soiled for him. He told her if everything went all right at the inquest, they would sell the land and leave. He made his choice, chose Bill Balkman, and look what happened. “And you know, Tania, it all began with that picture of the naked girl.”

Tatiana was silent.

“I couldn’t place my finger on what was wrong with it, but now I know. It was a test for everyone who came in, every painter, every roofer, every framer Balkman hired. They all had to walk past that topless gate. They said something about it, they smiled knowingly, they exchanged a glance that told Bill they were on the same page. It’s not a coincidence that every crew he hired behaved exactly the same way. He hired them based on their reaction to that picture. That’s how he managed to weed them out. Now I know.”

“What did my husband do to make Bill Balkman think he was one of them?” Tatiana asked quietly.

Alexander sighed. “I did nothing. I said nothing. And that’s how he knew I would be okay with it. And he was right. I was willing to overlook it.”

Tatiana disagreed. She said that perhaps Balkman wanted some of what Alexander was to rub off on his son. Perhaps a better example than himself was what Balkman wanted for his son Stevie.

Alexander said nothing.

Tatiana couldn’t fall asleep in her own house without a tranquilizer, couldn’t fall asleep without the P-38 by her side of the bed.

Even with the tranquilizer and the Walther, she woke up every night, perspiring, screaming, seeing before her sleeping eyes an image she could not shake down, not even during daylight—her husband, her Alexander standing like a black knight, looking straight at her with his deadly unwavering gaze, pointing a .45 caliber weapon at her face—and firing. The deafening sound of that shot reverberated through all the chambers of Tatiana’s heart.

She needed nearly the whole bottle of champagne before she would let him touch her again. After a pained and underwhelming coupling, she lay in his arms, the alcohol making her woozy and light-headed.

“Tatiasha,” he whispered, “you know, don’t you, that if it weren’t for women like you who love their men, the soldiers who come back from war would all be a little like Dudley. Cast out, afflicted, completely alone, unable to relate to other human beings, hating what they know, yet wanting what they hate.”

“You mean,” Tatiana said, looking into his face, “what you were like when you came back?”

“Yes,” Alexander said, closing his eyes. “Like that.”

She cried in his arms. “You’re still like that, walking around with the war this close.”

“Yes, I’m pretending I’m civilized. What did you tell me in Berlin under the linden tree?
Live as if you have faith, and faith shall be given to you.
So that’s what I keep trying to do.”

“How could you have shot him when I was just inches away? And shot him with your left hand, too. God! Your marksman rating is for your right hand, soldier. You don’t know how to shoot with your left.”

“Um—”

“What if you missed?”

“I didn’t miss.”

“I’m asking you—what if you did?”

“There was a lot at stake. I tried not to miss. But Tania, you threw in your lot with mine. You knew what you were getting into. Who better than you knows what I am?” Suddenly he let go of her and moved away.

“What?” Tatiana said, reaching for him. “What?”

He shook her arm off him. “Stop talking to me. I can hear you loud and clear through all the pores of your skin. You’re so hostile. I know what you’re thinking.”

“No, you don’t. What?”

“That because I had forgotten what you are, look what I’ve let into our house,” Alexander said coldly. “Isn’t that what you said to me?”

In their bed, under the white quilt, Tatiana pulled him back to her, held him close, pressed him to her heart, to her breasts. “That’s not what I’m thinking, darling,” she said. “When did I ever expect you to be perfect? You pick yourself up and you try to do better. You fix what you can, you move on, you hope you can learn. The struggle doesn’t end just because you know the way. That’s when it’s only beginning.”