The Summer Garden (90 page)

“To make it like a communal apartment?” Tatiana grinned. “No, she is fed up with New York, fed up with that Tom Richter of yours, fed up. She says she’s going to get a job at Phoenix Memorial, that way I can live vicariously through her.”

“Do you…need to live vicariously through her?” asked Alexander.

“Nope. It’ll be nice to have my friend here, though.”

“Yes. But don’t tell Ant. He’ll leave us for good,” said Alexander. “You know how he gets when she’s around.” They drank, they ate, they listened to Bobo’s serenading big band music. Bobo always found good bands to play in his popular restaurant. “I’m glad for you your Vikki is moving here,” Alexander said, “but your flip mention of that bane of my existence place you worked in reminds me of something more important. You were supposed to talk to your doctor today. Did you?”

“Um, yes.” Tatiana put down her fork. “Shura, he knows how you feel,” she said, rubbing his suit sleeve. “But what is he supposed to do? He says it’s hospital policy. He can’t change it. Husbands are simply
not
allowed in the delivery room. It’s just not done.”

Alexander put down his fork. “Tania, did I not make myself clear last time we went to see him?”

“You did,” she said. “That’s why you are not allowed to come to the doctor with me anymore. You’re getting all upset with him, but it’s not his fault. It’s just policy.”

Having finished his food, Alexander filled his flute full, filled hers halfway. “Policy, fault, procedure, hospital rules, blah blah blah. I don’t care. Did you tell him that your husband doesn’t give a shit about his hospital policy?”

“Perhaps not in those
exact
words,” said Tatiana, “but I did tell him—”

“That either I’m going to be in the delivery room,” said Alexander, “at the birth of my own child, or you’re not having the baby in his fucking hospital.”

“Something along those lines, yes.”

“God, I was right to hate that place. It’s still torturing me.”

“Shh.” Tatiana took a sip of champagne and turned to him. Her hand went over his. “The doctor is a civilian. He doesn’t understand the firefight in the woods mentality. He just knows the rules. Now shh,” she murmured, her elongated peach-polished nails lightly scratching the back of his hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure out something. I’m thinking of a plan.”

“Oh, no.” Alexander laughed. “Oh, no! Please, no, not another plan.”

“Shura!”

His shoulders heaved up and down. “Honestly, I don’t know if we can survive another one of your plans, Tatiasha,” he said. “We are just not the strength that we once were.”

Her shoulders heaved up and down as she laughed herself.

Alexander gazed down the plunging neckline of her halter dress. He didn’t understand how her always remarkable breasts could have gotten this mouth-wateringly enlarged, this milky, this creamy—her whole full-up, pulsing, pregnant body had gotten stunningly sexy. She was like extravagant Napa Valley Tania but squared. Maybe cubed. Alexander couldn’t
think
of her without embarrassing himself. The other day he drove by a fruit stand and found himself inexplicably thickening. A fruit stand! Turned out it was the word STRAWBERRIES on the sign. She washed her hair with strawberry shampoo. No, the things that roamed and rambled in his crazed head these last few months…“Stop laughing,” he said. “Stop, or I’m going to bend down in this restaurant, in front of everyone…” He couldn’t help himself. He lowered his head and put his mouth into her soft swelling cleavage.

Blushing, embarrassed, exceedingly pleased, Tatiana said hoarsely, “Husband, it’s unseemly for you to be this excited by a pregnant woman.”

Alexander smiled, his arm going around her. “Why? You think making love to a pregnant woman is redundant?”

Her hands resting on his forearm, they stared at each other, blinking, twinkling, at a loss for words.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He roamed her face. Still can’t take my eyes off of you. Holding her head to him, caressing her stomach, he kissed the freckles near her nose, kissed her lightly pulsing lips. “How is our potato pancake baby today?” Referring to the desperate November spawning that finally produced a fry, a fingerling.

“Moving, marching, shoving, kicking,” she replied. “A true warrior like his father.”

Alexander remembered helping her out of the bath last night, watching her dry herself, and when he couldn’t take it anymore, kneeling in front of her, his hands spanning her great, taut, still damp, naked belly, and pressing his mouth against her navel. “If it’s a boy,” said Alexander at Bobo’s, “I want to name him Charles Gordon—after the warrior-saint defender of Khartoum. To the Sudanese he was the Gordon King, or as they called him, the Gordon Pasha. And we can call him
Pasha
.”

Tatiana blinked, once, twice. “Anything you want, my love,” she said.

“If it’s a girl, I want to name her Janie.”

“Anything you want,” Tatiana whispered, “my love.” She took a small sip of champagne and placed his obeisant cheek into the palm of her hand. “The white night I left you in the Summer Garden I sailed home on wings through azure skies. I grew red wings—I fell in love with you—that summer night when I was barely seventeen and you were twenty-two…”

With all the flowers and the gifts, Alexander took Tatiana home in his faithful 1947 Chevy truck that had 194,000 miles on it. They left her car in Bobo’s lot.

The midsummer night had a thousand burning stars, the Queen of the Night, the orchid cactus, opened, and at lilac dawn the swallows sang.

The Second Coming

One sweltering August night
, two weeks in their brand new magnificent adobe pueblo house with a red-rust tile roof, a home that smelled like new wood and fresh paint and cut flowers, on top of their great bed where they slept and loved and fought and bled, with the blankets off and clean sheets on, in the blue light of night, under a waxing gibbous moon, Tatiana was almost at the very end. They had propped her up at the lower part of the bed. The curtains over the French doors to their secluded garden were open and the moon shined through, otherwise there was no other light in the bedroom, just darkness to soothe her. Anthony was in his wing on the other side of the house.

Their good friend, the registered midwife, Carolyn Kaminski, was sitting on a stool at the foot of the bed, and Alexander, who was supposed to be sitting on his own stool up near Tatiana’s head, kept jumping up every few minutes and going to stand next to Carolyn. The central air was off; the room was the temperature of the womb. Alexander was so hot that he had to excuse himself to Carolyn and take off his T-shirt, and now stood bare to the waist, in his long johns, saying, when, when, when, she can’t do this much longer.

I can do this as long as I need to, Shura, whispered Tatiana from the bed.

Alexander, go sit next to your wife. Hold her hand. Give her a drink. There is nothing to see here, folks, nothing yet.

Alexander would go, give Tatiana a drink, sit for a fidgety second, rub, stroke, hold, wipe, whisper, kiss, and then, as soon as he felt the belly tighten, up he was again, by her legs, crowding Carolyn.

Tania, your husband is impossible. Is he always this impossible?

Yes, Tatiana breathed out. He is always this impossible.

He is crowding me. He is making me nervous. Alexander, go. Give me some room, your wife needs you when she bears down. I’ve never had a husband present at the birth, said Carolyn, and now I see why. This is very stressful. I don’t think this is for men. Tania, tell him to go sit. Alexander, you obviously won’t listen to me, but you’ll do what your wife tells you, won’t you?

I will do what my wife tells me, said Alexander, standing like a post at the foot of the bed.

Tatiana smiled. Carolyn, let me push my foot into his hand. My feet keep slipping off the bed when I bear down. Shura, sit on the stool, or however you’re comfortable, and hold my foot steady while Carolyn holds the other, okay?

He went on one knee on the floor and held her foot steady, while Carolyn sat on the stool and held the other. The belly spasmed, Tatiana bore down, and Alexander breathed out. Carolyn,
look—
is that the crown?

Yes—and now even Carolyn smiled. Almost here. That is the crown. Alexander had thirty seconds to get up, to lean over, to put his lips on Tatiana’s wet face, to whisper, you’re doing great, babe. The crown, Tatiasha, almost, oh God, almost.

Hurts, Tania? asked Carolyn. You are being so brave. Alexander, your wife is being so brave.

She always does quite well.

Yes, Tatiana said. After all, my threshold for pain has been set so high. I can walk under that limbo stick.

The span of Alexander’s arms was wide enough that he was able to, while kneeling, hold Tatiana’s hand with one hand and her foot with the other. The next time she bore down was the worst time for her, she might have even been screaming, but Alexander could barely hear, seeing only the baby’s head appear in slow motion. Tatiana’s stiff body relaxed for a few panting seconds, and Alexander, letting go of her foot, reached past Carolyn to put his hand on the sticky soft grapefuit-sized head.

Alexander, don’t touch, said Carolyn.

Carolyn, let him touch, said Tatiana.

Alexander, calm down, this is it, said Carolyn. The baby will be here in half a minute. I’ll clean him up, I’ll wrap him in a blanket, I’ll give him to you to hold, but please, for the love of God, let me do my business now. Go sit by your wife.

Where’s the rest of him? said Alexander, hand on the baby’s head, moving slightly to the center instead of to the side.

Be patient, Alexander, the rest is next. Go sit, I tell you.

A panting Tatiana said nothing, her eyes barely open. She motioned for him. Not surrendering his new position a millimeter, Alexander pulled up, and propping himself on one arm, leaned fully over a naked Tatiana—his other hand still between her legs on the baby’s head—and kissed her. He was so hot, he was drenched, almost like she was drenched. When he straightened up, he refused to move out of Carolyn’s way, and she kept saying, move, Alexander, move just a foot over, move to the side where you were. Tania! Your husband is not letting me do my job.

Alexander’s intense eyes were only on Tatiana, who smiled and said, Carolyn, can’t you see? He is pushing you out of the way.

I see. Tell him to stop.

Let him, Carolyn, Tatiana whispered. Let him. Show him how to catch that baby.

Tania, no!

What are you afraid of? Just look at him. Let him catch his baby.

Thank you, Tatiana. And Alexander went on one knee between her legs, as Carolyn was anxiously bent by his side, her hands next to his. The order of the universe, Alexander felt, was restored.

The belly tightened, Tatiana clenched up, one soft slippery push, and the purple baby glided out, swam out face down, front down into the waiting, grasping, open hands of his father. It’s a boy, Tania, Alexander breathed out without turning his son over. Hold him, just like that, don’t move, Carolyn was saying as she cleaned out his mouth and Alexander finally heard his first sound all night.

“Wah…Wah…Wah…Wah…” Like a little wailing warble. And with his first breath he became pink not purple.

Alexander let the boy be placed front down on Tatiana’s stomach, keeping his hand over him and over her, and after Carolyn tied up the cord, he picked up his warm sticky infant, holding him in his palms, and brought him close to Tatiana’s face, whispering, Tania, our boy. Look how small he is.

He pressed his wet forehead into her wet cheek.

Look at him flailing, squirming, wailing. Buddy, what? Been cooped up too long?

He held the boy in his fanned-out palms.

Oh God, how can he be so blessedly tiny? He is smaller than my hands.

Yes, my love, said Tatiana, one hand on her husband, one hand on her child. But then you do have very big hands.

Standing up, Alexander walked over to the open French doors so he could take a better look at the baby in the moonbeam light. Charles Gordon Pasha, he whispered.
Pasha
.

The baby stopped squirming, moving, crying; he relaxed all his limbs and lay sticky and small and completely still in Alexander’s open palms, blinking, clearing his eyes, blinking, clearing his eyes, trying to focus on his father’s face so close.

Tania, whispered Alexander, pressing his damp son to his bare chest, to his heart. Look, Tania, look, what a small, little, lovely, tiny baby.

BOOK FOUR: MOON LAI

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 

“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me.”

I
SAIAH
6:8

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Man on the Moon

The Wages of Harold Barrington, 1965

Tatiana and Alexander are watching Anthony.
It’s just the three of them in their kitchen this morning, just like before, when there were just the three of them. The babies are still asleep. The morning is Tatiana’s favorite time of the day in her favorite room of the house. The kitchen—just as they had dreamed it—is sparkling white, with off-white limestone floors, white glazed cabinets, white appliances, pale yellow curtains, and every morning sunlight rises in the kitchen and moves through the house room by room. In the mornings they gather here to make their cereal and their coffee, to eat the croissants and the jam she’s made.

But early this morning, at seven thirty, only Anthony is eating, sitting on a high stool at the island while his mother and father stand at attention, across from him. Alexander, like a pillar, just stands. Tatiana clutches the back of the bar stool. As if oblivious to them, Anthony drinks his coffee and picks up his second croissant.

“Guys, at ease,” he says. “My food is getting stuck in my throat.”

They don’t move.