Anthony ran to him at the door. Tatiana walked up with less than her full smile, a wooden spoon in her hand. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He kissed her.
“You smell like beer,” she said.
“I went out for a drink with Stevie,” he said, sinking down at the table.
“Oh. How was it?” She turned to the stove. “Ant, time for bed, like we agreed.”
“But Mom—!”
“Now, Anthony,” said Alexander.
Grumpily Anthony got up to go. As he was walking away, Alexander circled his little wrist. “Ant,” he said, “when your mother tells you to do something, you just do it. No need for grumpy. Got it?”
After the boy left the room, Alexander watched Tatiana’s back to him as she focused on the stove. She was making chicken molé enchiladas and cilantro lime rice. Tania was teaching Francesca English, and Francesca was teaching Tania Mexican food. It was a fine barter of services.
“Are you upset because I went out for a drink?” he asked at last. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”
Coming to him with a plateful of food, leaning over and kissing his head, she said, “I’m not upset with you, darling. Though I wouldn’t mind if you called to tell me when you’d be coming home so I know when to make dinner ready for you.” She gave him more rice, bread, filled his glass, then stood quietly by him, pressing her body against his. His hand automatically went around her and under her skirt to touch her nylon stockings. Tracing up the seam, he stopped on the space of bare flesh suspended just under her open girdle. He loved that space. “I know it’s been crazy,” he said. “It’s not going to be that way forever. I won’t let it be that way. I’ll—I’ll take care of it. But what else is wrong?”
She sighed.
“Oh, sighs are so unpromising.”
Anthony ran out to tell them what was on the radio, and Alexander took his hand away from Tatiana and said, “Not radio. Bed, Anthony. Now.”
But after Anthony disappeared inside his bedroom, Alexander sighed himself. Telling Tatiana he’d be right back, he went into Anthony’s room, where the boy was silently putting on his pajamas. Alexander watched him for a few moments, then helped him turn the top right way out, took him to the bathroom, helped him with his teeth and face, brought him back, settled him under the covers, and sat on the bed.
“What’s up, bud?” Alexander asked. “Everything okay? School okay? Sergio okay? Mommy okay? What are you glum for?”
“I’m tired,” Anthony said, turning on his side, away from Alexander. “I got school tomorrow.”
Turning off the light, Alexander bent over the bed, his arms flanking the boy. “Your dad’s working too much,” he said quietly. “I know. No one’s used to it anymore.” They barely worked the last two years they had been traveling, just enough to get by. “But remember when you were three, and I was on the lobster boat? I left the house at four in the morning, and came back at five in the evening? That was a long day.”
“I don’t remember,” said Anthony. “But in that place with the long-necked birds and the canals you didn’t work at all, not even picking apples. We just kept trying to catch that fish. What was it called?”
“Prehistoric sturgeon. Didn’t do such a great job, did we, Antman?”
“Should have stayed there longer,” said Anthony. “We would’ve caught him. Mommy said he swam all the way from that river where you got married so you could catch him.”
“Your mommy is very funny.” Alexander pressed his lips to Anthony’s head. “You played me nice songs on your guitar on the deck of that canal,” he whispered. “This Sunday, you’re going to help me finish our front deck. I’m going to need your help, bud, okay?”
“Okay, Dad.” And the boy’s arm went around his neck.
After dinner, during which she remained quiet, he went outside for a smoke. Tatiana followed him. The darkened mountains were calming in the moonlight, but not as calming as Tatiana’s hands on him. He pulled her to sit on his lap. She sat briefly, pressing her cheek to his cheek, and then got up. That was less calming.
“You don’t want me to sit on your lap when I tell you what I’m about to tell you,” she said, chewing her lip in agitation.
He studied her. “What are you doing? Are you…weighing your words?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m having trouble—look, it’s like this.” She sighed. “Your Steve Balkman is a young man? A handsome fella with a bit of a swagger? Has a broken right arm?”
“Yes…how did you—”
“He was brought into ER late one night a while back and I was the one who helped set his arm when I came in to work the next morning.”
He frowned. “So? He broke his arm falling off a ladder.”
There was a silence. “No, he didn’t,” said Tatiana. “He broke it in a drunken brawl.”
“What?” Alexander got testy. Her face was making him testy. It was asking for a reaction he didn’t want to give. “All right, so?”
Tatiana backed away to the railing. “Two men came in together, both injured. The police came. This Steve Balkman apparently had been making inappropriate comments about the other man’s girlfriend.” She paused. “The problem was, the other guy was badly busted up, and his family was going to press charges. In the end, William Balkman came—is that your new boss?—he came in, talked to the cops, to the other man’s family, smoothed things over, and no charges were filed.” She took a deep breath, adding quietly, “I think the injured guy had been Balkman’s other foreman.”
Alexander glared at her until she looked away. “Okay,” he said. “You didn’t want to tell me, and now you’ve told me. It’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. But so what? He’s hardly going to be telling the new guy he was in a bar fight. I wouldn’t.”
“In a bar fight with his previous foreman over inappropriate comments.”
“Tania,” said Alexander, “are you worried about my safety? Afraid for me? That something might happen to me if I go for a drink with him? I tell you what, worry about all kinds of things, but don’t worry about that.”
She tried to say something, but he didn’t want to hear it. Talking to her about Las Vegas or resigning his army commission was clearly out of the question. “You’re making a big deal out of absolutely nothing,” he said, getting up.
In bed he said, “Don’t you understand? This place is going to be my career and my future. I’m going to be an architect, Tania. I’m going to build houses.”
“I know. The work is perfect for you. But there are hundreds of home build—”
“NO!” he yelled.
Alexander was shouting. He raised his voice, was upset, so upset he yelled at her while they were both naked, under covers, in their bed. They had not had loud words in the bedroom since Coconut Grove and that was—not this. Not knowing how to deal with it, Tatiana, her lips a nerve-ending away from trembling, said in her quietest voice, “Shh. I’m sorry. We won’t mention it again.” She reached for his face.
“This job is perfect for me,” he said, jerking away from her. “If you can’t understand why, I can’t and won’t and refuse to explain it to you.”
“Darling, you don’t have to explain anything.”
“That’s right. I don’t. I want us to go out to dinner with Steve and his fiancée, so you can see for yourself he’s all right.”
“He has a fiancée?”
“I don’t understand why that would surprise you!”
Her lip bitten she said nothing.
Alexander was breathing hard. “What?” he said. “What? What? What?” He turned to her, glaring. “Tell me right now before I—”
Tatiana opened her mouth to speak.
“I don’t want to hear it!”
Tatiana closed her mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “How can you judge him? You haven’t even met him!”
“Oh, I met him, all right,” Tatiana said. “I set his arm, remember? But I’m not judging anyone. You’re right. I’m just being—a ninny. Let’s not talk about it anymore. It’s so late.” She forced a smile. She rubbed his chest. She stroked his face. “It’s fine. Shh. And you’re right. This isn’t the Gulag, this isn’t Catowice.”
After Alexander fell asleep, Tatiana put on her silk robe and went to sit at the kitchen table, putting her face down on her arms. What could she do? It was clear that whatever Alexander needed from her, he didn’t need or want to hear about the Balkmans. She didn’t tell him that Steve came back to the hospital three times looking for her, came back even after she told him she was married, not interested, not keen on him. “Come out with me—you’re finer than all the girls in Vegas, and I’ve seen them all. Come out with me”—arched eyebrows, slick suggestive grins—“You won’t regret it.” She hoped her grim stare told him she didn’t get the filthy joke he shared with her.
Not only this, but he recently had made another trip to the hospital, broken arm and all, following another drunken brawl. He and his buddies had stripped a man naked and kicked him repeatedly. Carolyn Kaminsky, the nurse on duty who told her about this, described the arrival of Bill Balkman, after which the police and the beaten man once again quietly dropped the charges and went away. Tatiana wanted to tell Alexander but he didn’t want to hear it. I’ve heard worse in the army. That would be his answer. And perhaps he was right. Alexander would know better than she what a man like Steve might say to a woman like Tatiana.
She was still sitting when Alexander staggered out of the bedroom half an hour later looking for her. “I hate it,” he said, “when you sit in the middle of the night and f*cking fret at the kitchen table like you did on Bethel Island. My whole life flashes before my eyes. Come to bed.”
The Nurse is In, the A Side
The following evening, a depressed Tatiana rushed home after work. She tried very hard to be home before Alexander so she could start dinner and get things in order before he came home hungry and tired. Anthony was having pizza for Sergio’s birthday. She had to pick him up at nine.
To her surprise Alexander’s truck was already outside. It was only quarter of eight. Usually Friday nights he was home later. She came up the steps and opened the door. He was sitting on the couch, his head tilted to the side. Tatiana barely noticed the bouquet of flowers on the table. “Shura?”
He groaned.
She rushed to him. “What’s wrong?”
He was spread out on the sofa in his long johns, a wet towel over his face. She pulled the towel off. His eyes were closed. He was listless. He shook from side to side. “I don’t know. I’m sick…”
“Oh, dear, what’s the matter?”
“My whole body hurts, I can’t move…”
She threw her nurse’s bag to the floor.
“No, no,” he said. “Bring the bag.”
With the bag she came, bending over him solicitously. She kneeled on the couch by his side to feel his head, his face. His eyes remained closed. He was damp from the towel. “I don’t think you have a fever…”
“I need a nurse…” he muttered.
“Darling, I’m here,” she said.
“Are you in uniform?”
“Of course. I just came home from work.”
“Is your hair up in a tight bun?”
“Of course. Shura, open your eyes.”
“Your white shoes, your white stockings all on?”
“Yes, yes, what are you doing?”
“I need a nurse…” he muttered again.
There was silence from Tatiana.
“Hmm,” she finally said in an officious tone. “It does appear as if you’re gravely ill. I need to give you a full check-up before I make my diagnosis.”
“Whatever you think is best, Nurse Metanova.”
From her bag, she procured a stethoscope. “Can you take off your crew? I need to listen to your lungs.”
The stethoscope was deliciously cold on his chest.
When he opened his eyes her expression was solemn. She had put her nurse’s hat back on and undone the top buttons of her uniform, revealing her soft cleavage. “I need to check you for ill humors,” she said, pulling off his long johns. “Please sit very still and don’t move. This can be dangerous. We must proceed with caution.” She unhooked her front closing bra, undid her uniform all the way, leaving fastened only the button under her breasts, now pushed together and spilling out. She was exposed to him, coral hardening nipples, cream stomach, her light open girdle gartering her sheer white stockings. She kneeled on the carpet between his legs. “Hmm,” she said again, taking hold of him. “Ill humors indeed. But I think we may be able to fix it, Captain Belov.”
Retrieving a little mineral oil from her bag, she rubbed it on herself, then on him, and put him slippery between her breasts, sliding back and forth on him.
He couldn’t take it. “I think I’ve got a severe case,” he said, groaning, struggling not to close his eyes. “I’m sick to the core.”
Nodding her head in somber agreement, she caressed him, pulsing and engorged, slowly up, slowly down with her slick hands. “Ill humors are serious things, Captain. There are no guarantees.”
His hands went into her hair; her cap fell off. He heaved himself off the sofa, bent to her and kissed her. “I’m sorry about yesterday, Tatia,” he whispered. “The silly shouting. I just don’t want you to worry. Please trust me on this. Please.”
“Captain!” she said, her fingers tightening their spiral stroke around him, rendering him speechless. “Please. You mustn’t speak. It’s for your own good.”
“Is there a treatment for ill humors?” Alexander asked, falling back on the couch.
“Well, in the olden days, the remedy,” Tatiana replied calmly, “was to have them sucked out of you.”
He wasn’t calm when he said, “I see. Do you think that treatment will work today? Modern medicine seems to have progressed so far beyond that.”
“You’re right, but all we can do is try. Now sit still and don’t move. The mouth shall know no restraint. It is our only hope.”
The mouth never knew restraint. He tried to stop her at the end, he really wanted her on top of him in that uniform and the insanity-inducing open girdle, but she whispered, “Captain, you want to be cured? Then come in my mouth. Like you love.” Stopping her was obviously completely impossible.
Alexander’s response to Tatiana’s white nurse’s outfit and her tight bun became so Pavlovian that he found himself becoming aroused at the first sight of her on work mornings, then during the occasional afternoons they met for lunch, and then at the glimpse of the uniform hanging in the closet, ironed and ready for next day. The nadir was his starched tumescence at just the thought of the white uniform. After a while she pronounced him terminal and said there was absolutely no hope for him.
He joyously agreed.
But still she made every excuse known to Alexanderkind not to go out to dinner with Steve and his fiancée.
Dinner with Steve and his Fiancée
Coming home late, he was speeding up Pima, knowing she was home with Ant and they were waiting for him. It was their first Christmas season in Arizona. Alexander had hung Christmas lights around the house and now they sparkled multi-colored like a city of dreams from down the road. He could see his little lit-up house shining on the hill as soon as he turned right on Jomax, still a mile downstream. The tension of the frenetic day began to leach out of him. After he parked his truck, he lingered on the front deck for a moment so he could see her through the window.
She has nested peace all through the house; everything is dusted and spotless. They have books and magazines and newspapers, and shoes and baseball bats, and sofa blankets and Christmas holly, but everything has a place, everything looks like comfort. The table lamps are on dim, the stove is on, the white snowflakes are patched on the windows. He will tell her to draw the shades in the future, but tonight he’s happy to watch her without her seeing him. He feels as if he is standing behind the lilac tree in the summer of their Lazarevo. Her hair is piled high on top of her head and she is hiding her body in one of his worn army crews—which means when he picks it up, it will smell like her. He must remember to ask her not to wash it. He keeps telling her, she is a true Alberto Varga girl: she could be wrapped in a rug and still look naked. She is getting butter for the bread; she’s made sugar cookies, they’re cooling on the rack. His gaze drifts to his son, who is sitting at the table pretending to do his homework. Actually what Anthony is doing is following her with his eyes. Wherever she moves, his venerating gaze follows. Anthony says something, and she laughs, throwing back her head, and then comes over and kisses him. Alexander watches his son’s face being kissed by her, then hers as she kisses him.
He opened the door, and they came to him. The tree was twinkling, the house smelled of pine, the stew smelled great, the warm bread and the sugar cookies even better.
“Dad’s home!” said Anthony, taking his keys.
“Daddy’s home,” echoed Tatiana, lifting her face to him. “So late.”
Alexander kissed her mouth, her neck. Cookies and musk. “Nice,” he whispered.
Over dinner he said, “We’re going out with Steve this Friday.”
“No, I can’t this Friday.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Tania, I’ve been working for Bill four months! You’ve never met him or Steve.”
“I wouldn’t say I’ve never met Steve,” she said dryly. “But I know what you mean.”
“Stop that. I’m completely out of excuses.”
“I’m not though.”
“They think I’m making you up.”
“Oh, listen,” she said breezily. “We’ll go in the New Year.”
“Yes, then, too. But Bill is having a Christmas party next week.”
“Sorry, can’t make it. Vikki and Tom are coming next week. Aunt Esther and Rosa are coming. Did you forget? We have a full house for the holidays. Anthony and I have a lot to do to get ready.”
“Oh, no, does Vikki have to come?” Anthony said plaintively.
“Yes, Anthony, be nice. She loves you. She’s buying you a bike.”
“Aunt Esther already bought me a bike.”
“Well, then, you’re going to have two and be grateful.”
“Ant, you are going to help on Saturday,” said Alexander. “Because on Friday as it turns out, your mother is busy.”