The Summer Garden (96 page)

“Are you fretting?” Vikki asked. “Can’t sleep? I’m not surprised. I have something, if you want. I can’t go to sleep myself when I’m frantic. I took one earlier. I’ve got maybe thirty not so good minutes left.”

“No, I don’t need anything,” Alexander said. “It’s been months for us. This is fresh only for you.”

She was quiet, and then she was crying again, crying like her heart was being cut out. Alexander wanted to say
shh
but his throat failed him for a moment. “What’s going on, Vikki?” he whispered.

“Oh, Alexander,” she said.

Oh, Alexander?

Minutes passed.

With a great inhale of breath, he spoke. “Vikki,” he said. “I talk to your husband three times a week to find out if he has any news about Ant. I need you to tell me”—Alexander drew another breath—“is there anything Richter suspects that might prevent him from helping me fully and with his whole heart?”

Through her barest mouth, Vikki whispered, “No. Not a thing.”

“You said earlier, my husband knows everything.”

“Not this.”

Teary minutes dripped by. “I’m very sorry, Alexander. I can’t look at you in my shame. Please don’t hate me.”

“Vikki, the day I judge you will be a sorry day for me at the gates of hell.” He tried not to show his disapproval, his displeasure.

“Do you think Tania saw through me?”

“Now there’s a judge for you. But I think in this one instance, she didn’t.”

They sat.

Crying again, Vikki said, “For so many years I pretended so well.”

“You certainly did.” Alexander shook his head in dismay. “You both did. How in the world did you do it?”

When she was silent, Alexander, distressed by her non-answer, turned to her, only to be even more distressed by the sight of Vikki sitting with her long arms draped in a cross supporting her rocking body. Alexander knew something about this pose of anguish. He turned his whole chair to face her. “All right. Calm down.” He paused, lightly patting her. “Vikki, what were you thinking? I don’t understand how
you
of all people could have let it happen.”

Vikki collected herself, carefully chose her words. “I didn’t let it happen. I fought against him since he turned seventeen.”

“Seventeen? Oh my God, Vikki.”

“He simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. I said to him from the very beginning, Ant, what the hell are you thinking? Have you completely lost your mind? And he said—
yes
.”

Alexander closed his eyes. Seventeen! Vikki stopped speaking.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” Alexander said, with a miserable sigh, squeezing Vikki’s hands. “I’m not Tania. I was once a teenage boy myself, and I’m still a man. As a man, I understand. As a teenage boy, I understand. Just—tell me what happened.”

“For over a year I steadfastly fought against him, is what happened.” Vikki spoke in a voice so low as if the mountains should not hear. “At first I was shocked—like you; when I realized how serious he was, I tried to talk him out of it. I didn’t even know why I had to point out to him the reasons against it, they were so numerous and insurmountable. Certainly I don’t have to point them out to you or to the woman who is going to feel like I’ve committed an unspeakable sin. However, Anthony saw nothing, understood nothing, cared about nothing. To say that he was persistent and utterly indifferent to each and every one of my persuasive arguments would be a flagrant understatement. He was relentless.”

“Shh,” said Alexander. “Slow, and quieter, Vikki.”

“I surrendered right after his high school graduation, the summer before he left for West Point. You bought him his truck, and a brand new guitar that year, remember? Oh, he liked his truck and he played a fine guitar. Played the guitar like he was ringing a bell, as they say. He sang a fine tune—“Jailhouse Rock” performed Anthony style. He sang me songs in English, Russian, Spanish and even my Italian!” Tears falling down her face, Vikki sang for Alexander the way Anthony once sang for her. “‘
O Sole Mio/sta ’nfronte a te/the Sun, my own sun/is in your face
.’ He sang me, ‘
I will give my very soul/just to kiss you.
’ He sang me ‘
Cupido, cupido prego
’…and your very own ‘Dark Eyes’—yes, ‘Ochi Chernye’ was his specialty!” Vikki exclaimed. “‘
Ochi chernye/ochi strastnye/ochi zhguchie/i prekrasnye
…’” She faded off. “He was so
multi-lingual
.” She broke a piece off her smoky singing voice and choked on it. “Yes,” she said, nodding, “he had quite an arsenal, your son. And for a year he kept bringing
all
his weapons. No harm, he said. He was going away in a few months. He was not a child, he was almost eighteen—as if that were the only problem—and now we were two adults! We knew what we wanted—one long weekend at the Biltmore to sate his hunger and appease my curiosity. I said to him surely he didn’t need a whole weekend and he replied that yes—he did.” She shook her head. “On
fire
, I tell you,” she whispered. “He became impossible to refuse, to refute, to resist. And so…”

Alexander remembered Anthony from that summer before he left for West Point sitting alone outside on the moon deck, strumming his guitar, nearly naked in the Arizona 115-degree
heat
, singing “Ochi Chernye” over and over. Alexander and Tatiana had said quietly to each other that the girl must have been something else.

Tonight he shook his incredulous head. “You stopped resisting,” he said to Vikki, lighting another cigarette. “Feel free to move forward through this part.”

Vikki nodded. “I stopped resisting. Queen Victoria would have stopped resisting.” Seeking relief from visceral memory, her arms crossed over her torso, her body folded over her crossed legs. “Do you want to hear what happened with us after?”

Alexander shuddered. “No. The rest I know.”

“Do you?” But Vikki didn’t say it with surprise. She said it as in,
no, you don’t.

Alexander said he did. “Many years ago,” he said, “when I was even younger than Ant, I found myself in a similar situation with one of my mother’s friends, who was about the same age as you had been—thirty-nine. I was barely sixteen. She was my first, and she was great, but once I got a taste of it, I wanted all the girls. Needless to say it lasted just one summer with her.”

Vikki studied her hands. “Well, I wasn’t Anthony’s first.” They both didn’t know what to say.

Alexander stared at her, realizing something. “Vik, you moved here in ’58 and then suddenly moved back to New York in ’61. That August, as I remember. When Ant went to West Point.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t—you didn’t move back…for him, did you?”

“I thought you knew the rest?”

“Obviously—less well than I thought.”

“Alexander!” Vikki whispered. “No one could lay a hand on that boy without falling
completely
under his spell. Certainly not a thirty-eight-year-old woman who had traveled the world over, who had seen and loved and endured she thought everything. He made me lose all reason.” Vikki shuddered. “He didn’t win my heart. He took my heart.” She lowered her chin into her chest. “But he was
eighteen
.”

“Not answering my question, Vik.”

“I am,” she replied. “I am answering your question.”

Alexander shook his head. His own Svetlana had been heartbroken but not as brave. She had wanted something more from him that he did not have and could not give. When he moved on, she didn’t persist. He could only imagine how his own son treated the woman in front of him. He didn’t know what to ask next. “Did you…see him again?”

“Yes,” she replied. “When he had his weekend pass, he would come to New York and stay with me.”

“Until when?”

“Until he left for Vietnam,” said Vikki.

That was the jaw-dropping thing.

“You continued to see each other for
four
years?” Alexander said, astonished.

“Yes. Don’t know everything, do you? Our casual weekend at the Biltmore lasted a little longer than we expected. I don’t know how we kept it hidden from you, from Tania. From Tania particularly.”

Alexander asked (
having
to ask!), “Ant didn’t end it?”

“He didn’t end it,” said Vikki, her voice cracking, her demeanor crushed, “because I acted like there was nothing to end. I was just a freewheeling gal. Anytime he wanted to get together, we got together. When he didn’t, we didn’t. No pressure either way. No promises, not a single pledge for tomorrow. Just fun with us. From beginning to end, nothing else but fun.”

Alexander’s chair was no longer facing Vikki. He certainly wasn’t. His elbows were on his knees, his head was down. The cigarette dangled out of his mouth.

“I won’t lie to you,” Vikki said. “There was some fun. New York in the 1960s for a fledgling man and his tour guide. New York is a city for all seasons, for all lovers. Even dead end lovers like us. And, I didn’t fool myself for a second, Alexander,” she said. “No one knew better than I what a dead end we were. I’m 20 years older than him!” she cried. “When he would be 40, still a young man, I would be 60! When he would be your age now, still virile and strong, I would be 70! I’m older than his mother, for God’s sake! His mother and I—I can’t look her in the face. This is shameful. It’s degrading for me to explain to you.”

“No need to explain anymore.”

“I didn’t want him to think anything he could do would hurt me,” Vikki went on. “I know how frightening that is for a young boy just starting out. Last thing he needed. So I pretended I was casual toward him, to let him have his young life, the life he needed to have and deserved to have, knowing that eventually he would find someone to marry, someone to have children with. He could not have that with me.”

“After all,” said Alexander, “you are already married.”

“That’s right. To his commanding officer.” She didn’t look at Alexander when she spoke.

“What did Ant want, Vikki?” Alexander asked quietly.

“What do you think, Alexander?” said Vikki. “He wants what you have. What you’ve had your whole life.” She looked like she was in a suffering haze. “He could not have that with me. I am many things, but I know my limitations—and he knows them, too.” Her hands were trembling. “And—my sham marriage gives me a permanent air of respectability so I don’t have these complications in my life. It’s much simpler that way. Never any explanation for the lack of anything on my part. Life for weekends at the Biltmore is all Vikki is capable of.”

Alexander was listening and wished he weren’t. “Answer me,” he said. “What did Anthony want?”

“Oh, look,” Vikki said, with fake dismissiveness, “you know how the young are. He wanted his cake, he wanted his fun, his Biltmores, his strolls down the Hudson. Sure, he said he wanted me. He wanted
all
the girls. He wanted everything. And why not? He had everything.” She wept. “
Everything
.”

Every stone tile in the deck flooring was being examined by Alexander.

“I thought for sure he’d be finished with me after a month, after six months, a year. But, no, he kept coming back,” Vikki said, wiping her face. “Until he graduated—and then without a backward glance left for Vietnam. I said to him, it’s a good thing we were just having fun, Antman. Makes it easier for you to go. Thank you for having a good time with me. Thank you for the moonlight waltzes you and I have never had, thank you for the promises we never made, for the sun that didn’t shine above our heads. Aren’t you glad you’re not breaking my heart? Aren’t you glad now, when you are leaving, that you’re not in love with me?” Vikki’s face was in her hands.

Alexander sat with her a while. But there was really nothing more to say.

When he got up, he said, “Vikki, you might think this one over a little more carefully. The parents may be forgiven for being blind fools, but I’m telling you, this kind of thing is
very
difficult to hide from a husband.”

Vikki waved him off. “Alexander, you know better than anyone that, unlike you, Tom has been a terrible husband. A good man, a bad husband.”

“Even terrible husbands see things like this.”

“Yes, well, when the husband is in Vietnam since 1959, coming back stateside only twice a year, and bleeding U.S. Army since 1941, I know he can’t see anything. I haven’t seen Tom in two years. I hadn’t spoken to him in six months. Had it not been his birthday, I never would’ve called. Certainly he didn’t call me to tell me about Ant; and why would he? I wouldn’t worry about it. He knows nothing.” She paused. “Are you going to tell Tania?”

“I don’t know,” Alexander replied. “I don’t
want
to tell her. But for twenty-eight years I’ve had a hard time keeping anything from my wife.” Vikki looked away and Alexander looked away, collecting the glasses, throwing out their butts. “You think now is the time to improve my game?”

He said good night to her.

In stealth, with calm breath, he came back to bed, listening for Tatiana’s breathing.

“I’m awake,” she said.

He sighed. “Of course you are.”

She turned to him and they lay silently, their arms intermingling.

“You went to talk to her?”

He nodded, searching her face for a frame of mind.

“Does she know where Ant is?”

“No.” Alexander brought her closer. “I didn’t ask.”

Tatiana lay her ear on his chest, listening minutely to his heart. “Did you ask her…did she tell you things you didn’t want to hear?”

“She told me things I didn’t want to hear.”

Alexander told Tatiana about Vikki and Anthony.

After he was done, Tatiana was silent and when she spoke, she spoke very slowly. “Suddenly, Dasha not seeing what was right in front of her nose is easier to understand, isn’t it? And they didn’t hide it—like we didn’t. They left it everywhere for us to see—and I see it everywhere now.” She put her hands over her face for a moment. “My friend Vikki has always been a spirited gal,” she said then. “When I first met her she was crying because her first husband was coming back from war and she didn’t know how to tell her lover, whom she had not even told she had a husband. She was unfaithful to her first, she was unfaithful to her last, and to all the boyfriends in between. She fell for Richter—she always wanted to fall for a war hero—and married him despite all sense and reason. Certainly he has not done right by her in return, and I won’t speculate on the chicken or the egg question. My opinion is,” said Tatiana, “that she chose him to marry exactly because she knew she was always going to be the mistress and not the wife with him. The role suits her.” Tatiana paused. “And here’s my small solace to us: Vikki has had beaus in Africa, in Europe, in Asia, in Australia. She has traveled far and wide, having fun with the boys.” Tatiana blinked unhappily. “It wasn’t until she cried at my table today that I knew—of all the parasailing, passing fancies that have come and gone, Anthony is the one boy she cannot forget.”