Tatiana and Alexander_A Novel

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

Barrington, August 1944

 

"WHERE ARE WE GOING?" Vikki said. "Andwhy ? I don't want to take the train to Massachusetts. I don't want to go so far. What is it with you and these train trips? You just came back from Arizona, isn't that enough? It's raining, it's miserable, and I worked a double shift yesterday and I work another double on Monday. Can't I just stay home? Grammy is making her lasagna. I have to do my nails and iron my dress and my hair, and did you hear, women are shaving their legs and under-arms now. It's all the rage. I was going to try. They told me that at Lady Be Beautiful, where by the way you promised me Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html

 

you were going to come with me. Why do we have to go anywhere? Couldn't I just stay home and have a bath?"

 

"No. We have to go," said Tatiana, pushing Anthony in the carriage, and pushing Vikki in the back.

 

"Why do I have to go with you?"

 

"Because I don't want to go alone. Because my English is not so good. Because you my friend."

 

Vikki sighed.

 

She sighed for five hours on the train, all the way to Boston. "Vikki, I counted. That was three sighs per mile. We went two hundred and forty miles. That's seven hundred sighs."

 

"That wasn't sighing," Vikki said petulantly. "That was breathing."

 

"Exasperated breathing, yes." She wished for her brother. Pasha would have gone with her and never uttered a word of misery, he would have just been stoic by her side. Her sister would have complained though, much like Vikki was doing. "I should've asked Edward," Tatiana muttered, covering up Anthony. It was raining in Boston, too.

 

"Why didn't you?"

 

"Can younot let me know every single thing you feeling at all times? I don't want to know that you grouchy about doing me favor. Just do it, and stop complaining."

 

Vikki stopped sighing.

 

The girls took a cab from Boston to Barrington since there were no local trains. The cabbie said, "That will be twenty dollars, going all that way."

 

Vikki gasped, then yelped as Tatiana squeezed her thigh. "That will be fine," Tatiana said to the cab driver.

 

"Twenty dollars? Are you crazy?" The girls settled into the back of the cab with Anthony on Tatiana's lap, and the taxi screeched off. "It's half a week's pay for me. How much do you get paid?"

 

"Less than that. How you think we going to get there?"

 

"I don't know. By bus?"

 

"Well, too far to walk to bus."

 

"But it's going to be twenty dollars more to get back."

 

"Yes."

 

"Can you tell me now what we're doing?"

 

"We going to visit one of Anthony's relatives." She knew she shouldn't do it, Sam had told her she shouldn't, but she could not help herself. For some reason she felt it was going to be all right. Besides, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html

 

she might soon need a favor from one of Anthony's relatives.

 

"You have relatives in the United States?"

 

"I don't. He does. I need you with me for support. If I need help, I will pinch arm really hard, like this."

 

"Ouch!"

 

"Right. Until I do, you stand there, and smile, and say nothing."

 

An hour later they were at Barrington. Tatiana paid and the girls got out. Barrington was a white town with black shutters and green oaks lining the clean streets. It was homey and peppered with white spires peeking out over the trees. There were some open shops along Main Street, a hardware store, a coffee shop, an antiques gallery, and a few women on the streets. None of them were pushing carriages--no young babies in sight except for Tatiana's Anthony.

 

"Did you just spend more than two weeks' salary on his trip?" asked Vikki, taking out a brush for her tangled hair.

 

"Do you know how much money I spent to come to here from England? Five hundred dollars. Was that worth it?"

 

"Absolutely. But to comehere ?"

 

"Just push carriage for me."

 

"Wait, I'm busy." Vikki continued brushing.

 

Tatiana glared at her.

 

"Oh, all right."

 

"Let's go and ask where Maple Street is."

 

From the newspaper shop on the corner of Main, they learned that Maple was just a few blocks away. In the rain they walked there.

 

"Hey, something just occurred to me," Vikki said. "The town is named Barrington, and your last name is Barrington. Is that a coincidence?"

 

"Thatjust occurred to you? Stop. We here." They stopped at a large white colonial clapboard house with black shutters, and overripe maples in the front yard. Up the brick walk they went, came up three steps, and stopped at the doorbell. They stood without ringing it.

 

"What are we doing?"

 

Tatiana couldn't get her courage up. "Maybe we should leave," she said.

 

"Are you joking? All this way, to leave?" Vikki rang the bell herself. Tatiana left Anthony's carriage at the foot of the steps and she held her son in her arms. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html

 

The door was opened by a stern-looking, properly dressed, perfectly coiffed, older woman. "Yes?" she said in a brusque voice. "You're collecting? Hold on, let me get my purse."

 

"We not collecting," Tatiana said quickly. "We come--I come to speak to Esther Barrington."

 

"I'm Esther Barrington," said Esther. "Who areyou ?"

 

"I--" Tatiana hesitated. She held out her boy. "This is Anthony Alexander Barrington," she said. "Alexander's son."

 

Esther dropped the keys she was holding in her hands. "Whoare you?"

 

"I am Alexander's wife," said Tatiana.

 

"Where is he?"

 

"I don't know."

 

Esther's face turned red. "Well, I'm not at all surprised. Tothink you would have the nerve to come here, to my house! Who do you think you are?"

 

"Alexander's wife--"

 

"I don't care who you are! Don't you shove your son in my face, as if suddenly I'm supposed to care. I am very sorry for you--" Her stern voice belied Esther's wretched expression. "Very sorry, but you have nothing to do with my business."

 

Tatiana took a step back. "I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. I just wanted you to--"

 

"I know what you wanted! You're bringing me your bastard child. What? That's going to make it all better?"

 

"Make what better?" said Vikki.

 

Esther didn't reply to Vikki as she continued to raise her voice. "Do you know what your father-in-law said to me as he left my house for the last time fourteen years ago? He said,My son is none of your business, cunt . That's what he said to me! My flesh-and-blood nephew, my Alexander none of my business. I wanted to help them, I said I would keep the boy while he and his wife went to train-wreck their lives in the Soviet Union, but he spat on my offer. He didn't want any part of me, of our family. He never wrote to me, never telegraphed. I never heard from him." She paused, panting. "What's the bastard doing now, anyway?"

 

"He is dead," Tatiana said faintly.

 

Esther couldn't even mouth an "Oh." Her hands clutching the door-knob, she staggered back, and said, "Well, fine. Don't you, whoever you are, come to me now and tell me your stranger son ismy damned business." With her trembling hand Esther slammed the door as loudly as she could and the girls were left standing on the porch.

 

"Hmm," said Vikki. "How did you expect that to go?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html

 

Trying hard not to cry, Tatiana turned around and walked back down the steps. "Better than that, I think."

 

What had she expected? She didn't know the relations between Alexander's father and aunt before the Barringtons left the United States, but she was sure of one thing from Esther's reaction: Esther knew nothing--not about her brother, not about her sister-in-law and not about Alexander. And really, that was the only thing Tatiana had come to find out--whether Esther had any information that might help Tatiana. She didn't. Tatiana was done. The promise of distant family, of perhaps a familial bond for her son, was too much of an intellectual intangible for Tatiana at a time when she was single-mindedly set on just one thing--finding out the truth about what happened to Alexander.

 

She placed Anthony back in the carriage, and they walked down the path to the street. "Fourteen years," Vikki said. "You'd think she'd get over it. Some people have such long memories."

 

Slowly they made their way back to town. "Hey, what was that word?" Tatiana asked. "What did Alexander's father call her when he left?"

 

"Never mind. Ladies don't use that kind of language. Our Esther has a bit of the soldier in her. Someday I'll teach you the bawdy words in English."

 

Tatiana said, "I know bawdy words in English." Quietly. "Just not that one."

 

"How would you know anything? Dictionaries don't have them. Phrase-books don't have them." Vikki prodded her. "Not any phrase-books I've ever seen."

 

"I once," said Tatiana, "had very good teacher."

 

They were on Main Street when a car pulled up to the sidewalk and Esther jumped out, her makeup long gone, her eyes red, her gray coiffed hair disheveled. She went in front of Tatiana.

 

"I'm sorry," Esther said. "It was a shock to see you. And we had never heard a word from my brother since he left America. I didn't know what happened to them. No one in the State Department would tell us a thing."

 

Back at the house, the girls were fed to bursting with ham and bread and ham soup, and were given coffee, and Anthony was put upstairs into a bed, barricaded on all sides, and allowed to nap.

 

For someone who had harbored a grudge for over a decade, Esther cried like the wife of the hanged when Tatiana told her about her brother and his wife, and Alexander.

 

She insisted that the girls stay until Sunday, and the girls did. Esther was a decent woman. She herself had no children, was sixty-one, a year younger than Harold, and the only surviving Barrington. Her own husband had died five years earlier, and Esther now lived alone with Rosa, her housekeeper.

 

"Was this where Alexander lived?" Tatiana kept her eyes on Esther, afraid to look around, afraid she might see a vestige of a child Alexander.

 

Esther shook her head. "His house is about a mile away from here. I don't speak to the people who live in it now, they're right snobs, but if you want I could drive you past there so you can take a look."

 

"They had woods behind their house?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html

 

"Not anymore," Esther replied. "All houses there now. The woods were nice. Alexander had a friend--"

 

"Teddy? Or Belinda?"

 

"Is there any part of his life you don't know?"

 

"Yes," said Tatiana. "The present part."

 

"Well, Teddy died in '42, in the Battle of Midway. And Belinda became a frontline nurse and is now in North Africa. Or Italy. Or wherever those troops are now. Poor Alexander. Poor Teddy. Poor Harold." Esther shook her head. "Stupid Harold. His whole family ruined, and that boy--that golden, unbelievable boy--do you have a picture?"

 

Tatiana shook her head. "He remained what he was, Esther. You haven't heard from him, then?"

 

"Of course not."

 

"Or anything about him?"

 

"Not a word. Why?"

 

Tatiana struggled up. "We really must be going."

 

On the train to New York, Vikki stared out the window.

 

"What's wrong, Vik?"

 

"Nothing. I was just thinking," said Vikki, "that when I first met you, except for that faded scar on your face, you seemed like the least complicated person I had ever met."

 

Staring at her boy, Tatiana put her hand on Vikki's leg. "I'm not complicated," she said. "I just need to find out what happened to my husband."

 

"You told me and Edward he was dead."

 

Tatiana stared out the window as the train whizzed through the wet summer Massachusetts countryside.

 

Have you been looking for me? she had once asked him, and he replied, All my life.

 

She said nothing further as she put her head back on the seat and, stroking Anthony's head, shut her eyes until they were in Grand Central Station.