The Summer Garden (69 page)

The Nurse Is In, Flip Side

On a Friday night that December, 1955
, Alexander came home from work with Anthony, and lo and behold Tatiana was already home! Not only was she home, but she was wearing a clingy cotton-knit cream-colored top over a black pencil skirt. The table was set, the candles were lit, the music was playing, and the wine was poured.

“What is that unbelievable smell?” Alexander said, walking in confounded.

“Leek and bacon stuffing!” she exclaimed.

Standing close, she pressed intimately against him as she served him. They had a roast with oven potatoes, with leek and bacon crunchy stuffing, which Alexander declared was the best. “What’s in it?”

“Leeks. Bacon.” Tatiana laughed. “Also cubed and toasted bread, made by yours truly.”

“Of course.”

“A few diced carrots, some garlic, some butter, chicken broth, a little milk, all cooked for about an hour. I’m so glad you like it, darling.”

Darling?

For dessert she made him cream puffs with chocolate sauce and black Russian tea. Alexander was so full he couldn’t move from the table.

“Whatever it is you did, Dad, you have to do more of it. Mom, this was great.”

“Thank you, son.”

Tatiana and Ant were clearing the dishes when Alexander said, “So what exactly did I do that was so wonderful?”

With the plates in her hands, Tatiana said, “I have great news, you two. Guess what?”

Alexander’s breath stopped in his chest. Please,
please
, let it be—

“I’ve been promoted!”

The breath was let out.

“You
what
?”

“Shura, they made me head ER nurse!”

Alexander sat quietly. Anthony stood quietly. “That’s great, Mom,” he said, glancing at his father. “Congratulations.”

Alexander said nothing. Now he understood the clingy sweater and the leek stuffing.

“Aren’t you happy for me?” she asked, frowning slightly. “I got a raise.”

“Have you accepted yet?”

Tatiana stammered. “I said I was going to talk to my husband, but—”

Nodding, Alexander said, “Good, let’s talk about it,” cutting her off, glancing at Anthony. “Later.”

Anthony looked away.

Later, on the deck, it went like this:

“Honey, a raise, isn’t that great?”

“Yes, wonderful.” Alexander said, smoking and not looking at her. “Seven thousand dollars. Tania, our profit from the business last year after paying all labor and operating costs was $92,000. The business is booming. We can’t keep up with the work. Our land is now worth $10,000 an acre. That’s nearly a million dollars, in case you forgot your math skills. So I’m pleased for your raise, but…let’s just put it into a little bit of perspective.” Alexander paused. “This raise,” he said, “does it come with a raise in hours?”

“Just one more shift, honey.”

He waited to hear.

“Just four days a week. You work six days.”

“I know how many days I work, Tatiana,” he said. “When is this extra shift going to be?”

She coughed and stopped looking at him. “I would work Monday, Wednesday, Thursday—and then Friday seven to seven…” Tatiana stopped, adding very quietly, “Graveyard.”

“I didn’t hear,” Alexander said. “What?”

“The graveyard shift. Seven in the evening till seven on Saturday morning.” She must have seen the expression on his face because she said quickly, “But I’ll be here for Ant on Saturdays, like always. And I know you have to go to Yuma, but you and Ant can just pick me up from the hospital on Saturday morning and we’ll drive straight out. I’ll sleep in the truck. I’ll be fine. Really. We’ll work everything out. I’m sorry, but as head ER nurse I have to work on the busiest night of the week. It’s such a big responsibility.”

He was smoking and said nothing.

She came closer to him. “I’ll have off Tuesdays, and Saturdays and Sundays. All the other nurses have work at least one weekend day…”

“
Already
gone from the house,” Alexander interrupted, “gone from your family fourteen hours a day three days a week. Forty-two hours not in this house. On Wednesday you came home at almost eight-thirty.”

“Iris was late,” Tatiana said apologetically.

“Now you want to be gone all night,” Alexander continued, “gone from the house
at night
. I didn’t go to Las Vegas once without you. I didn’t go to DC for Richter. I don’t go to Yuma, I don’t go anywhere that will take me from your bed for an
occasional
overnight, and you want to work overnight in the fucking hospital, every week, times fifty-two, times forever?”

“Darling,” Tatiana said pleadingly, “what can I do?” She touched his arm; he yanked away. She stood up to face him. “I know you don’t like my work,” she said. “You’ve never liked it. But this is what I do. This is what I am. I have to work—”

“Bullshit. You choose to work.”

“For us!”

“No, Tatiana, for you.”

“Well, who do
you
work for? Don’t you work for you?”

“No,” said Alexander. “I work for
you
. I work so that I can build you a house that will please you. I work very hard so you don’t have to, because your life has been hard enough. I work so you can get pregnant; so you can cook and putter and pick Anthony up from school and drive him to baseball and chess club and guitar lessons and let him have a rock band in our new garage with Serge and Mary, and grow desert flowers in our backyard. I work so you can buy yourself whatever you want, all your stiletto heels and clingy clothes and pastry mixers. So you can have Tupperware parties and bake cakes and wear white gloves to lunch with your friends. So you can make bread every day for your family. So you will have nothing to do but cook and make love to your husband. I work so you can have an ice cream life. From my first lobster on Deer Isle, to every boat trip in Coconut Grove, to the last brick in Scottsdale, this is what I do. What do you do, Tatiana?”

The wind taken out of her sails, she took one step to him, then stopped and opened her palms when Alexander turned his face from her. “Darling,” she said. “Please. I can’t leave my job.”

“Why not? People leave their jobs every day.”

“Yes, other people,” she said. “But too many people depend on me. You
know
that.”

“Your son and husband depend on you too, Tania. The babies you’re not having depend on you, too.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, clenching her fists against her stomach. “I know—but we’ll get pregnant, we will, it’s just a matter of time.”

“I’ve been back nearly ten years,” said Alexander. “Tick tock.”

Her legs shaking, Tatiana stepped away. Alexander stood from the bench. “Okay, I’m going to tell you what I think. It’s like this,” he said grimly. “Quit or don’t quit. Take the promotion or not take it.
But,
if you take the graveyard shift, mark my words, we will eventually—I don’t know how, and I don’t know when—live to regret it.” Without saying another word he walked inside.

In bed Alexander let her kiss his hands. He was on his back, and Tatiana sidled up to him naked, kneeling by his side. Taking his hands, she kissed them slowly, digit by digit, knuckle by knuckle, pressing them to her trembling breasts, but when she opened her mouth to speak, Alexander took his hands away.

“I know what you’re about to do,” he said. “I’ve been there a
thousand
times. Go ahead. Touch me. Caress me. Whisper to me. Tell me first you don’t see my scars anymore, then make it all right. You always do, you always manage to convince me that whatever crazy plan you have is really the best for you and me,” he said. “Returning to blockaded Leningrad, escaping to Sweden, Finland, running to Berlin, the graveyard shift. I know what’s coming. Go ahead, I’ll be good to you right back. You’re going to try to make me all right with you staying in Leningrad when I tell you that to save your hard-headed skull you
must
return to Lazarevo? You want to convince me that escaping through enemy territory across Finland’s iced-over marsh while pregnant is the only way for us?
Please
. You want to tell me that working all Friday night and not sleeping in my bed is the best thing for our family? Try. I know eventually you’ll succeed.” He was staring at her blonde and lowered head. “Even if you don’t,” he continued, “I know eventually, you’ll do what you want anyway. I don’t want you to do it. You know you should be resigning, not working graveyard—nomenclature, by the way, that I find ironic for more reasons that I care to go into. I’m telling you here and now, the path you’re taking us on is going to lead to chaos and discord not order and accord. It’s your choice, though. This defines you—as a nurse, as a woman, as a wife—pretend servitude. But you can’t fool me. You and I both know what you’re made of underneath the velvet glove: cast iron.”

When Tatiana said nothing, Alexander brought her to him and laid her on his chest. “You gave me too much leeway with Balkman,” he said, kissing her forehead. “You kept your mouth shut too long, but I’ve learned from your mistake. I’m not keeping mine shut—I’m telling you right from the start: you’re choosing unwisely. You are not seeing the future. But you do what you want.”

Kneeling next to him, she cupped him below the groin into one palm, kneading him gently, and caressed him back and forth with the other.

“Yes,” he said, putting his arms under his head and closing his eyes. “You know I love that, your healing stroke. I’m in your hands.”

She kissed him and whispered to him, and told him she didn’t see his scars anymore, and made it if not all right then at least forgotten for the next few hours of darkness.

Tatiana accepted her new position, and Alexander’s money went to the bank. They lived on her salary and had plenty left over. They had nothing to spend money on. Alexander did buy Tatiana a new car. She wanted something sporty, so he bought her a red Ford Thunderbird—just out on the market and all the rage—so his wife could have the wind blowing through her nurse’s cap as she flew to the hospital to work her Friday night graveyard shift.

They spent money on clothes and shoes. Quite a fashion plate, she bought designer dresses and the latest capri slacks and stiletto heels and silk slips. She bought Alexander fatigues and rayon shirts and long johns and jerseys, and suits that were not drab flannel but linen and cotton, so when Alexander went out for a drink without her on Friday nights, he could look smashing.

Anthony was the best dressed boy in school. Smartest, tallest, strongest, most athletic, most beautiful boy in all of Phoenix. There was nothing that Anthony could not do. Having learned from his own experience, Alexander tried to instill in his distressingly good-natured and open son a sense of the circumspect, a slight reserve, some conservation of the confident gleam when it came to the opposite sex. He was slightly anxious for Anthony’s future: the playing field was so unlevel.

Alexander’s family strolled out into the Commons, starched, shined, slick. The husband and son: tanned and dark and broad, one a miniature of the other, pressed without a wrinkle, and
she!
petite but high-heeled, freckled still, blonde and buxomy, bedazzling still, her arm always through his. Families with children, for whom Alexander had built houses, stopped them on Main Street, near the Little Red School House, shook his hand, offered him cigars, a drink, small gifts, as they told him how much they liked their new homes, appreciated the craftsmanship that went into them.

And once an old man fell on his knees—but not in front of Alexander—and cried and said I know you. I’d know you anywhere. Thank you for saving my little girl.

It had been months since Alexander and Tatiana talked about building the house. Maybe months was too kind.

It had been months since they talked about having a baby. Maybe months was too kind.

They were busy, busy, busy.

Alexander didn’t know when the change happened, because it was so gradual, like the slight ebbing away of the shoreline, like dune erosion; years went by unnoticed, and suddenly you looked and the dunes were gone, but one day when he glimpsed in her closet her crisp white nurse’s uniform, not only did he not feel one solitary beat of arousal, but distinctly what he felt in his chest was a cold gnashing of the metaphoric teeth.

The Russian Cook

On Friday nights Alexander took care of Anthony
, but the boy got older, became more self-sufficient and often wanted to stay out with his friends. Alexander started to stay out with his friends himself, drinking or going over Johnny’s to play poker. Young and single, the high-wired stud Johnny was his latest foreman. The business was hopping and after working hard, Johnny really liked to unwind. Shannon and Skip, who played poker with them, had to go home at midnight. But Johnny didn’t have anywhere to be at any time and so he and Alexander went out with a bunch of his derelict friends.

On Fridays, Alexander could come home at midnight, at two, at three, and once, he went to a strip club downtown with Johnny-boy and his friend Tyrone and came home at 4:30—not 5:08!! but plenty late, and plenty drunk. The house was quiet. Anthony was at Francesca’s. No one knew when Alexander came home. No one cared. It was all okay. There wasn’t a single voice in the wilderness to cry, to be upset, to say, darling, do you know what time it is? Where have you been? Please don’t stay out so late. I’m waiting for you warm in our bed. I waited for you in Coconut Grove, and on Bethel Island, and I waited for you in this house, too, leaning over the table for you in my little silk robe, all delicious and bare underneath. But that was then. Now what Alexander got instead every Saturday morning at eight was Tatiana’s small hand on his head, her kissing lips on his cheek, and her murmur: “Husband, woo-hoo, it’s eight, you’ve got to go to work. Wake up, sleepy head. Did you have fun last night with your wild friends?”

In the early summer of 1956, Shannon and Alexander were drinking by themselves at Maloney’s on Stetson. Skip had had a fight with his pregnant wife Karen, and they were making up. Phil never went out drinking without Sharon. Johnny was pursuing new female pastures. Alexander and Shannon talked about the Red Sox’s terrible year, about the plutonium bomb, about possibly including bomb shelters with the new construction, and about Israel and Egypt and the Suez War. They talked about the upcoming Presidential election, and whether Adlai Stevenson had a chance of beating Eisenhower. They talked about the civil war raging in Indochina after the defeat of France—but Alexander noticed that Shannon was bothered by something. When he asked if everything was all right, Shannon avoided the issue but finally, around midnight, when he had to be home, blurted out that he simply didn’t know how he was going to remain monogamous for the rest of his life.