CHAPTER EIGHT
Ellis Island, 1943
EDWARD CAME IN TOcheck on Tatiana in the middle of August. She'd been in America seven weeks. She was sitting in her usual place by the window, with a naked and diapered Anthony on her lap, tickling him between his toes. She had been feeling much better, her breathing was deep, she was almost not coughing. She had not seen blood in her cough for a month. The New York air was doing her good.
Edward took the stethoscope from her chest. "Listen, you are doing much better. I think I'm going to have to discharge you." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
Tatiana said nothing.
"Do you have anywhere to go?" Edward paused. "You will need to get a job."
"Edward," said Tatiana, "I like it here."
"Well, I know. But you're all better."
"I was thinking, maybe I work here? You need more nurse."
"You want to work at Ellis?"
"Very much."
Edward talked to the chief surgeon at the Public Health Department, who came in to talk to Tatiana, informing her that she would have to be put on something called a three-month probation to see if she could keep up with the work, if she had the necessary skills. He told her that she would not be employed by Ellis Island but by the PHD and as such would sometimes have to pull duty at the New York University hospital downtown if they had a shortage of nurses there. Tatiana agreed, but asked if she could live at Ellis, "maybe work as night nurse?" The surgeon was not keen. "Why would you want to? You could get yourself an apartment right across the bay. Our citizens don't live here."
Tatiana explained as best she could that she hoped some of the detained refugees at Ellis could look after her son while he was still small, and though she wanted to work, she had no one to leave him with and to make matters easier for everyone she could stay in her current convalescent room.
"But it's so small!"
"One room just right for me."
Tatiana asked Vikki to buy her a uniform and shoes. "You know you only get two pairs of shoes?" said Vikki. "War rationing. You want one of them to be nurse's shoes?"
"I want my only pair to be nurse's shoes," said Tatiana. "What I need more shoes for?"
"What if you wanted to go dancing?" asked Vikki.
"Go where?"
"Dancing! You know, do a little lindy hop, a little jitterbug? What if you wanted to look nice? Your husband isn't coming back, is he?"
"No," said Tatiana, "my husband isn't coming back."
"Well, you definitely need nice new shoes if you're going to be a widow."
Tatiana shook her head. "I need nurse's shoes and white uniform, and I need to stay at Ellis, and I not need nothing else."
Vikki shook her head, her eyes flickering. "It'sanything else. When can you come have dinner with us? How about this Sunday? Dr. Ludlow says you're being discharged." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
Vikki bought Tatiana a uniform that was slightly big, and shoes that were the right size, and after Edward discharged her, she continued to do what she had been doing in her white hospital gown and gray hospital robe--look after the foreign soldiers who were shipped to New York, treated, and then sent elsewhere on the continent to do POW labor duty. Many of them were German soldiers, some were Italian, some Ethiopian, one or two French. There were no Soviet soldiers.
"Oh, Tania, what am I going to do?" Vikki was in her room, sitting on the bed, while Tatiana lay in bed, breastfeeding Anthony. "Are you on a break?"
"Yes, a lunch break." Tatiana smiled, but the irony went past Vikki's unlistening ears.
"Who takes care of your boy while you do rounds?"
"I take him with me. I put him on empty bed while I take care of soldiers." Brenda palpitated every time she saw it, but Tatiana didn't like to leave him sleeping alone in the room, so she didn't care how much Brenda palpitated. If only there had been more immigrants, someone could take care of her baby while she worked. But there were very few people coming through Ellis. Twelve in the month of July, eight in the month of August. And they all had their own children, their own problems.
"Tania! Can we talk aboutmy situation? You know, don't you, that my husband is home with me now."
"I know. Wait little while," Tatiana said. "Maybe war will take him again."
"That's the problem! They don't want him. He can't operate heavy machinery. He's been honorably discharged. He wants us to have a baby. Can you even imagine?"
Tatiana was quiet. "Vikki, why you get married?"
"It was war! What do you mean,why did I get married? Why didyou get married? He was going off to war, he asked me to marry him, I said yes. I thought, what's the harm? It's war. What's the worst that can happen?"
"This," said Tatiana.
"I didn't think he'd be coming back so soon! I thought he'd be back for Christmas, once, twice. Maybe he'd be killed. Then I could say I had been married to a war hero."
"Is he not war hero now?"
"It doesn't count--he's alive!"
"Oh."
"Before he came back I had been going dancing every weekend, but now I can't do anything. God!" she exclaimed. "Being married is a real drag."
"Do you love him?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Sure." Vikki shrugged. "But I love Chris, too. And two weeks ago, I met a radiologist who was nice...but it's all over for that now."
"You right," Tatiana said. "Marriage very inconvenient." She paused. "Why do you not get, what is it called?"
"A divorce?"
"Yes."
"What are you, crazy? What kind of country do you come from? What kind of customs do you have there?"
"In my country," said Tatiana, "we faithful to our husbands."
"He wasn't here! Surely I can't be expected to be faithful to him when he is thousands of miles away, and getting up to no good in the Far East? As far as divorce...I'm too young to get divorced."
"But not too young to be widow?" Tatiana flinched when she said it.
"No! There is an honor that comes with being a widow. I can't be a divorc?e. What am I, Wallis Simpson?"
"Who?"
"Tania, you're doing well. Brenda tells me, albeit grudgingly"--Edward smiled--"that you are very good with the patients." Edward and Tatiana were walking between the patient beds. Tatiana was carrying an awake and alert Anthony.
"Thank you, Edward."
"Are you afraid your boy is going to get sick from being around sick people?"
"They not sick," Tatiana replied. "Right, Anthony? They wounded. I bring my boy, and he makes them happy. Some of them have wives and sons back home. They touch him and they happy."
Edward smiled. "He is a very fine boy." Edward stroked Anthony's dark head. Anthony paid Edward back by grinning toothlessly. "You take him outside?"
"All time."
"Good. Babies need fresh air. And you, too." He cleared his throat. "You know, on Sundays the doctors from NYU and PHD play softball in Sheep Meadow, in Central Park, and the nurses come to cheer us on. Would you like to come this Sunday with Anthony?"
Tatiana was too flustered to answer. They were on the stairs when they heard the clomping of high heels. "Edward?" a voice screeched from the ground floor. "Is that you?"
"Yes, sweetheart, it's me." Edward's voice was calm. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
"Well, thank goodness I found you. I've been looking everywhere for you."
"I'm right here, sweetheart."
Mrs. Ludlow walked up the stairs, panting, and the three of them stopped on the landing. Tatiana held her baby closer. Disapprovingly, Edward's wife eyed Tatiana and said, "A new nurse, Edward?"
"Nurse Barrington? Have you met Marion?"
"Yes," said Tatiana.
"No, we never met," declared Marion. "I never forget a face."
"Mrs. Ludlow," said Tatiana. "We meet every Tuesday in dining room. You ask me where Edward, and I say I don't know."
"We have never met," repeated Mrs. Ludlow, with extra firmness to her voice.
Tatiana said nothing. Edward said nothing.
"Edward, can I talk to you in private? And you," she added, glaring at Tatiana, "are too young to be carrying a child. You're not carrying him correctly. You're not holding his head. Where is the baby's mother?"
"Marion, sheis the baby's mother," said Edward.
Mrs. Ludlow was critically silent for a moment, then tutted and before anyone could say anything, she tutted again with emphasis, muttered the word "immigrants" and dragged Edward away.
Vikki stormed into the hospital ward, grabbed Tatiana by the arm and pulled her out into the corridor. "He askedme for a divorce!" Vikki whispered in an indignant and offended hiss. "Can you believe it?"
"Um--"
"I said I wasn't giving him a divorce, it wasn't proper, and he said he would sue me for a divorce and win because I--I don't even know what he said--broke some covenant. Oh, I said to him, like you weren't with Far Eastern whores while you were away from me, and you know what he said?"
"Um--"
"He saidyes ! But it's different for soldiers, he said. Do you even believe it?" Vikki shook, Vikki shrugged, Vikki warded off the insulted glint in her eyes. Her mascara did not run, and her lips never lost their shine. "Fine, I said, just fine, you're the one who is going to be sorry, and he said he was already sorry. Ugh." She shuddered and brightened. "Hey, come for dinner on Sunday. Grammy is making Sunday lasagna."
But Tatiana didn't. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/ab*.html
Come for dinner, Tania. Come to New York, Tania. Come play softball in Sheep Meadow with us, Tania. Come on the ferry ride with us, Tania, come for a car ride to Bear Mountain with us, Tania. Come, Tania, come back to us, the living.