In a small, exclusive, Italian-American restaurant in Scottsdale called Bobo’s, Alexander sat at the table with Steve and Amanda, waiting. As always, Tatiana was late. She was consistently late absolutely everywhere. He didn’t know how she kept her job. Did he not buy her a watch three months ago to help her keep time? She got off work at seven, but here it was after eight. Alexander tried not to feel impatient. The bread came, the menus. Amanda was a young, pretty, light-brown-haired gal, coiffed and made up, who looked like she might run to heavy with age. She was easy to talk to, and Alexander hoped that Tania liked her; everything would be so much easier if the four of them could be friends.
He chatted with Steve and Amanda, but eventually even Steve said, “You think everything is all right?”
Nodding, Alexander motioned for the wine menu. Bobo, the owner, brought it over himself. “Señor Alexander, where is our señora?”
“Late again, Bobo.” Alexander smoked, smoked, smoked, drumming, drumming, drumming.
And then, even before he raised his head and saw her, he knew she had arrived because there was a slight change in the restaurant air, as if a small breeze had swept through.
Bobo brought her over himself. Alexander and Steve stood up.
She was wearing a fitted embroidered lavender dress he had not seen before, and her hair was in a Russian peasant braid with a few strands falling around her cheeks. She had on light mascara and pink lip gloss.
“Thank you, Bobo, for such personal service.” Alexander turned to Steve and Amanda. “Bobo’s been secretly in love with my wife for months.”
“What do you mean secretly, señor?” said a delighted, cue-ball-headed, bull-necked, short, black-doe-eyed Bobo in a thick Italian accent. “Openly, openly. Señora, if he doesn’t treat you right, you know where to go.”
“Thank you, Bobo,” said a shining Tatiana. “He’s been on his best behavior, but it’s always good to keep him on his toes.” After melting, Bobo reluctantly left. Tatiana raised her face to Alexander. “Hey,” she said with a smile. “Sorry I’m late.” He did not kiss her in public and wasn’t going to start tonight. Touching her braid, he turned her to his friends and, with his hand on her shoulder, said, “Amanda, Steve, this is Tania—my wife.”
After slightly flinching at the sound of a man saying “my wife” with such happiness, Amanda politely shook Tatiana’s hand. Alexander saw that Tatiana barely offered her hand to Steve, who didn’t look directly at her, his face flushed.
Well, Tania did look quite glossy. Alexander was flushed himself.
They all sat down. Amanda in a composed and friendly tone, said, “Tania, it’s so nice to finally meet you. Alexander’s told us so much about you.”
“Has he?”
“Oh, yes. I can’t believe he’s been working with my Stevie for so long and we just met.”
“Oh, no, Steve and I already met,” Tatiana said evenly. “I took care of his arm at PMH a few months ago.”
“Stevie, you never told me!” squealed Amanda.
Steve’s face was impassive. “Well, I didn’t know it was her, did I?” he said, pouring himself some wine. Lifting his gaze from the glass, flip and smiling toothily, he said with a shrug, “Sorry, I really don’t remember meeting you.”
“No?” said Tatiana.
“Tania, would you like a glass of wine?” Alexander asked, so cool, without even raising his eyebrows!
“Oh, yes, thank you, Alexander. I do enjoy a glass of wine now and again.” She said it with a short cough but without blushing. He leaned into her a little when he clinked his glass against hers.
“How was work?” he asked quietly.
“Not too bad today.” Just as quietly.
“Where’s your watch?”
“Oh.” She let out a sheepish laugh. “Must have left it home.”
“Not very useful at home, is it?”
He poured her a little more wine, offered her bread, opened the menu for her. She said, thank you very much. And he said, you’re welcome. So refined. Like characters from Edith Wharton. Alexander smiled, wondering if fine fin-de-siècle manners could hide their profound conjugal ease.
When he looked across the table, Amanda was staring at him. “So how long have you two been married?” she asked quickly, looking embarrassed at being caught out staring.
“Seven years,” replied Tatiana.
“Seven years, wow.” Amanda raised her brows at Alexander. “No seven-year itch for you, huh, Alexander?”
“Not very likely,” he said. Tania smelled like lilac and looked dressed in lilac from the Field of Mars, the tops of her breasts swelling over the lavender fabric of the low, scalloped neckline. She was so lush and bosomy, so blonde and sparkling, Alexander didn’t know how anyone could be talking about anything when his wife looked like this.
“You have such long hair, Tania. I’ve never seen hair that long,” said Amanda, whose hair was fashionably short, like all the women’s now—short, teased, sprayed, coiffed in a bouffant. “They let you wear it like that in the hospital?”
“No, it’s up in a bun when I go to work.”
“You really should cut it,” Amanda advised in a helpful tone.
“Oh, I know—I’m hopelessly out of style. But what to do?” Tatiana smiled. “The husband likes it long.”
Amanda turned to Steve. “Which way do you like it, Stevie?”
“As you know, I like it any way, Mand.” And they both laughed. Tatiana glanced at Alexander. He knocked her leg.
Steve told a joke, everyone enjoyed it, even Tatiana, and thus encouraged, Steve told another and another. He told stories of his time stationed in England, about meeting Amanda at one of his houses, about his father pushing him into college. He was gregarious, funny, could tell a good story. Amanda sat close, listening to every word. Then she tried to ask Tatiana questions, but no one knew the cardinal rule about human beings better than Tatiana: that everyone wanted most to talk about themselves. So, after vaguely telling Amanda that she had lived in New York, that she and Alexander got married and then he went to the front (none of which was, strictly speaking, untrue), Tatiana swerved the conversation away from herself, and Amanda began her own account of growing up in quiet Phoenix when it was all farmland, and the Indians would come into the center of an unpaved town for the Saturday market on Indian School Road. Tatiana remarked that she still went to that very crowded morning market. Yes, it was shocking how many people lived in Scottsdale now! Amanda said. Did New York have even more people? She couldn’t imagine it. She’d never been anywhere but Phoenix and was so jealous of Steve who had been to exotic England and now was going to Vegas practically every month.
“Stevie,” she said, “promised to take me to Vegas with him.” She tilted her plaintive head. “I’m still waiting, baby.”
“Soon, baby, soon.”
“Steve and his dad have been trying for months to get Alexander to go to Vegas with them.”
“Have they?” This from Tatiana.
Alexander tried to change the subject, because Vegas was a sore subject at his house. But Amanda steamrolled ahead, asking if Tatiana had ever been to Vegas and when Tatiana curtly said no, Amanda exclaimed, “Oh, you’re like me, you’ve never been anywhere!”
Alexander laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Amanda for some reason didn’t look as if she found his laughter remotely amusing.
“Nothing, excuse me.” He tried to turn serious. “Tania, you’ve never been to Sweden?” His eyes were unserious. “Finland, perhaps?”
Her leg knocked into his. “No,” she said.
“What about Russia?”
Her leg knocked into his harder. “No,” she said. “You?” Turning to Amanda, Tatiana said, “Before we came to Phoenix we travelled the United States, so we did actually see a bit of America. And we spent some time in Nevada,” she added, “but decided not to go to Las Vegas, because we didn’t think it would be a good place for our small boy.”
“Oh, that’s certainly true!” said Steve. “Only big boys in Vegas.” Amanda tittered uproariously.
Tatiana had on a nice pasty smile.
Alexander changed the subject to business: the houses under construction, new architecture designs in Phoenix, and then the imminent war with Korea. Steve was singularly uninterested in Korea despite Alexander’s best efforts to steer his friend to the topic. Steve would not be steered. “Don’t have the stomach for politics, man, you know that. Even less when I’ve had a few.” He ordered a beer for himself. “I like jokes. I have another one about Vegas. Want to hear?”
“Steve-o, ladies present,” Alexander said. “No stupid drunk jokes.”
Amanda told Alexander not to worry, she’d heard them all.
“Manda, you haven’t heard this one,” said Steve. “You’ll think it’s hilarious.” He took a swig of his beer. “A man comes home to find his wife with a packed suitcase. She tells him she’s leaving and going to Vegas, because she heard she can make $100 a night doing what she gives him for free. The man thinks about it and then starts packing his own suitcase. The wife asks him where he is going, and he replies, ‘I’m going to Vegas, too.’ When she asks him why, he says, ‘Because I want to see how you’re going to live on $200 a year.’”
Oh, how Amanda and Steve laughed.
Alexander laughed too, but Tatiana wasn’t laughing. He sighed slightly, but fortunately the food came. He gave Tatiana some of his steak, took some of her lasagna, poured her some more wine.
Suddenly Amanda said, “Stevie and I are getting married in the spring. Right, Stevie?”
“Absolutely,” Steve said, draping his arm around Amanda, dangling it over her shoulder very close to her breast.
Alexander glanced at Tatiana’s moist but compressed mouth. “Congratulations,” said Tatiana in a tone that said, Lord have mercy on you.
“And when we get married I’m not going to work. Am I, Stevie?”
“Of course not, doll. You can stay home and eat bonbons all day in your robe and slippers.”
Was Amanda trying to stir things up? Alexander was obtuse when it came to things like this, but by the look on Tatiana’s face, he had his answer, and then, as if to prove it, his wife asked, “How long have you two been engaged?”
Amanda didn’t reply and Steve said, “Nearly four years.”
“Ah,” said Tatiana. “Four years.” Without inflection.
“What about you?” Amanda asked.
Tatiana waved her hand casually. “Oh, it was war. Things weren’t the same then. Everything had to be so quick.”
“Everything?” Amanda said, with a giggle. “So how long?”
When Tatiana still didn’t reply, Alexander said, “Two days.”
“Two days!” exclaimed Amanda, peering at Alexander and then falling quiet.
“He was going to the front,” Tatiana hastily explained.
“Obviously not so hastily,” Amanda said. “So you have just the one boy, Tania? Are you thinking of having more?”
“We’re thinking about it.”
“Are you thinking about it, or doing something about it?” Amanda said, and Steve laughed into his food, and Tatiana, whose job it was to become friendly with Amanda so the four of them could do things together, was instead like the tetchy building inspector, obviously not willing to give the certificate of occupancy to anyone without additional incentives. Alexander pulled on her braid lightly.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said when she stopped laughing. “I hope I don’t offend you, Tania, the way I talk.”
“Not at all.”
“Hang around too long with Stevie and his buddies, and you can’t help it. He’s simply ruining me.” She said it with delight. “You should have heard the joke he told me the first time he met me. No, it’s too horrid to repeat in public, isn’t it, hon?”
“I don’t remember the joke, Mand. I’m sure it was awful, knowing me.”
“Remember, the ‘just like a baby’ joke?” She giggled wildly, and even blushed!
“Steve,” said Tatiana in a withering tone, “I love a good joke. Let’s hear it.” Her cold eyes never left Steve’s face.
Steve laughed. “Nah,” he said. “You don’t want to hear that joke, Tania. It’ll make a truck driver blush.”
“Indeed,” said Tatiana.
Frowning, remembering something too distant for clarity, Alexander looked at Tatiana’s face, and then across at Steve, who was shaking his head, not looking at Tatiana, examining the remains of the cold steak on his plate. It occurred to Alexander that Steve, during the whole dinner, had barely addressed Tatiana, barely spoken to her directly; in fact, though very much himself in all other ways, he acted as if she were not sitting at their table.
“We’re inviting you to our wedding,” Amanda went on, wonderfully oblivious. “The invitations go out right after Christmas. Scottsdale Country Club, very exclusive. Jeff and his fiancée Cindy want to get married there, too, but between you and me, it’s not going to happen. Jeff is simply not ready to get married yet. We’re inviting two hundred people. It’s going to be an extravaganza.” She gurgled. “Tania, you probably didn’t have a big wedding. Sounds like you didn’t have a lot of time to prepare.”
“You’re right, we didn’t,” Tatiana replied. “Our wedding was tiny. Just us, the priest, and the couple we paid to be our witnesses.”
Amanda looked at Tatiana incredulously. “You got married and didn’t even invite your families?”
Alexander and Tatiana said nothing.
Amanda went on. “What about a wedding reception? You didn’t have any food? Any music? How can there be no food or music at a wedding?”
It was Alexander who answered her. “There was music,” he said. “Oh, how we danced on the night we were wed.”
An odd hush fell over the table. “But I can’t remember if we had any food.” He paused. “Did we have food, Tania?” He didn’t look at her.
“I don’t think so, Shura.” She didn’t look at him.
“What did she just call you?” asked Amanda.
“Just a nickname she has for me.” He couldn’t take one more second of Amanda watching them, not one more. He stood up, pulling Tatiana up, too and motioning to Bobo, who instantly had the band start to play “Bésame Mucho.” On the dance floor Alexander drew her to him. “Tania, come on, they’re all right. Lighten up. You’re not being very good.”
“But, Shura, you tell me I’m so good,” she murmured against his chest, blinking up at him.
Alexander threaded his large fingers through her small ones. “Stop that right now,” he said, gazing down at her and squeezing her hands.
“Tell me, why won’t your buddy Steve marry that poor girl?”
“Why buy the cow,” said Alexander, “when you can get the milk for free?”
He was expecting her to laugh, but she didn’t. She said with a straight face, “You think she’s giving him free milk?”
“And cheese and butter too.”
And then she laughed.
Bésame, bésame Mucho…
“All I want to do,” he said, “is kiss the top of your breasts. Right now.”
Como si fuera esta noche la ultima vez…She lifted her face to him. “Let’s go home and you can kiss me all over.” Que tengo miedo perderte, perderte despues…
When they got back, Alexander called for the bill and Tania excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. Amanda went with her. The girls were barely a yard away from the table when Alexander said, “Stevie, you crazy bastard, did you say something inappropriate to my wife when she was setting your arm? She’s acting as if you killed her dog.”
Steve shrugged. “Alex, I’m sorry, man, I know she says she set it, and I’m sure she’s right, but I honestly don’t remember ever meeting her.”
“Stop bullshitting me. You told me four months ago you met someone at the hospital, remember? It was her, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t think so.” Steve lowered his voice. “I meet so many goils.”
“In the hospital? How many times do you go to the f*cking hospital?”
“If I said anything to her, I apologize. I didn’t know she was your wife or I never would have said anything, ever. You know that, man. Here, let me have that. Dinner’s on me. I insist.”
The following Friday Alexander was back at Bobo’s, once again waiting for her, this time with Vikki and Richter. They had just flown in; he picked them up at Sky Harbor, got them set up at home, left Ant at Francesca’s, and now they were all waiting. When Tatiana finally arrived, only forty minutes late (“Oh, for Vikki, you’re almost on time!”), it was Vikki not Bobo who jumped up and squealed, throwing her arms around Tatiana.
They spent the next four uncompressed, unstilted, unmannered hours, eating, drinking, smoking, swearing, dancing, even rude-joking.
Vikki and Richter were a good-looking couple, young and tall, in love and all charged up. Nearly all conversation at the table, directed entirely by two soldiers, revolved around Korea. Vikki and Tatiana couldn’t get a word in. “In fact, you’re not allowed to speak,” Richter said to Vikki. “I know all you want to do is complain about me, and I’m not going to let you spoil a perfectly good evening of hearty man talk about war.”
“Well, if you didn’t do so many things wrong, Tom, I wouldn’t have to complain about you.”
Richter was aghast that the U.S. troops had just been ordered to pull out of South Korea, since the intentions of the Communist North were so clearly to cross the 38th parallel. Five months earlier, in July 1949, Owen Lattimore, a State Department official, had said that the only thing to do was to let South Korea fall but not to let it look as if the U.S. had pushed it to fall. Calling into question Lattimore’s loyalty and priorities, Alexander wanted to know what kind of message that was sending to the North Koreans and the Soviets, who were arming and training them.
“I’ll tell you what kind of message,” Richter said. “Come any time, take what you want. Take what you think is yours. Reunite—please. We won’t stop you and, more important, we don’t want to stop you.”
Alexander had just read the military intel reports from General Charles Willoughby, who said that the North Koreans, despite their firm denials were already amassing on the 38th parallel.
“We’re pulling out our troops, and they’re arming the DMZ?” Richter said. “Do you see a small problem with this?”
Alexander saw.
“Come spring, they’re going to invade,” said Richter, “be in Seoul a month later and then we won’t be able to stop them even if we wanted to.”
“If our troops are getting pulled out, Tom, maybe we won’t have to go?” Vikki said expectantly, taking his hand.
“Bite your tongue, woman,” Richter said, pulling his hand away. “We’re shipping out to Seoul, even if you and I and Willoughby are the only Americans left in the entire f*cking Korean peninsula.”
“Well, that’s just great, Lieutenant-husband,” said a deflated Vikki. “That’s just f*cking great.”
Pouring her wine and lighting her cigarette, Richter said, “Stop sulking.” He turned her to him. “That’s an order, Viktoria.”
“That’s an order, Viktoria,” she mimicked.
And then they kissed for five minutes, wine glasses in hand, right at the table, while Alexander turned his gaze politely away to Tatiana, who did not turn politely away, her expression affectionate and unwithering. He didn’t have to even ask for a seal of approval on Tom Richter—from the first moment she met him. “Richter could take your Vikki right on the table,” Alexander whispered into Tatiana’s ear, his forehead pressed to her temple, “and it would be just dandy with you, but my poor buddy Steve tells one tasteless joke and gets nothing but scorn.”
During dessert Vikki finally managed to edge in one complaint. “It was our first anniversary last month,” she said, “and do you know what my newlywed besotted husband bought me? A food processor! Me—a food processor!”
“It was a hint, Viktoria.”
Vikki theatrically rolled her eyes. Richter just rolled his.
Trying not to smile, Alexander glanced at Tania, who was loving on her death-by-chocolate cake and hardly paying attention. She embraced electric gadgets with all her heart. There was not an electric can opener, a blender, a coffee maker that did not get his wife wildly enthusiastic. She window shopped for these items every Saturday, read their manuals in the store and then at night regaled Alexander with their technical attributes, as if the manuals she was reciting were Pushkin’s poetry.
“Tania, darling, my closest friend,” said Vikki, “please tell me you agree. Don’t you think a food processor is extremely unromantic?”
After thinking carefully, her mouth full, Tatiana said, “What kind of food processor?”
For Christmas, Alexander bought Tatiana a Kitchen-Aid food processor, top of the line, the best on the market. Inside it she found a gold necklace. Despite a very full house, and Anthony right outside on the couch, she made love to Alexander that Christmas night in candlelight wearing nothing but the necklace, perched and posted on top of him, her soft silken hair floating in a mane and her warm breasts swinging into his chest.
The Roofer
She had gotten herself dressed up, a yellow flowing dress with a short jacket; her hair was loosely braided and her face was scrubbed. She’d brought Alexander lunch but he was nowhere to be seen on the site—just the roofers, who were busy in the open loft space of the new structure. She stood by the car and while she waited, she thought about her dear Vikki, who had just left, and how uncomfortable she made her son Anthony, who wasn’t himself for the week Vikki and Tom had stayed with them. And Vikki wasn’t her usual self either. She married Richter after a whirlwind romance a year ago, but now he was about to leave for Korea, and she didn’t want to go, but what was a married young gal to do while her husband was across the world? Vikki had witnessed first hand how Tatiana lived by herself in New York. “I don’t want to live like Tania did, being a flippin’ widow,” Vikki complained, even to Alexander.
“Tell me,” Alexander said to Vikki, who looked puzzled by the suddenly pleased look on his face, “exactly how bereaved was she? And spare me no macabre detail.” Tatiana had to rescue her friend, drag away her trouble-making husband and end the conversation.
Tatiana’s thoughts were interrupted by the roofers, who had stopped their work and were staring at her. Feeling self-conscious, she got back in the car and no sooner than she did that—
“Hello, Tania.” Steve Balkman was knocking on the window, opening the sedan’s door. “Alexander’s not here. He must have forgotten you were coming.”
“Unlikely,” said Tatiana, reluctantly getting out.
“He had to run back to Pop’s office to get some forms for the damn inspectors. I had the wrong forms on hand. He’ll be back soon.”
Tatiana debated not waiting.
Steve cleared his throat.
“Please,” she said. “The less said the better.”
“If I offended you in the hospital that time, I apologize,” he said.
“No offense taken.” Which time?
“You know I never would’ve said anything to you had I known Alexander.”
Tell that to the former foreman with a girlfriend.
“I was just fooling with you. I’m very happy with Amanda.”
A man can be perfectly happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her, Tatiana thought, in memory of the immortal Oscar Wilde. She said nothing, moving a step away from him. Where was that husband of hers? She didn’t like the way the roofers were staring at her. They’d never act like that if Alexander were here.
Steve smiled. “You look very pretty today,” he said, looking her up and down. “Come, I’ll introduce you to our crew.”
Shaking her head, Tatiana said, “I’m not the queen, Stevie. I’m Alexander’s wife. Do yourself a big favor, don’t introduce me to other men.”
Steve’s smile barely faltered. “Oh, we’re all friendly around here. Believe me, your husband knows very well how it is.”
“No,” Tatiana said coldly. “I don’t think my husband does.”
It was to the frozen smile on Steve’s face that Alexander returned, and Tatiana and Steve did not get to have a fuller discussion about Alexander’s understanding nature. Alexander handed the signature forms to Steve and took Tatiana and the food basket in his truck to a lot nearby, where they had their lunch away from everyone.
“You’re dressed too nicely, Tania,” he said. “I don’t need it, and those animals certainly don’t.”
She didn’t want to say what she was thinking—I can’t get dressed up for you because the people you work with can’t show a little basic respect?
He leaned over. “They’re just a*sholes, ignore them. I have to go back. Kiss me.”
She was all pulpy-lipped and slightly dishevelled from having his hands in her hair and under her petticoat when they returned to the construction site. As Alexander was walking her to her car, there was a wolf whistle. Alexander glared at the pack of roofers who were finishing their lunch. “Are you out of your minds?”
No one acknowledged his speaking to them.
Tatiana drove away without comment.
Alexander walked away without comment.
He didn’t get far before the head roofer gave Alexander a knowing smile.
Where did Balkman get these people from? But the worker must have been from a country that did not know the ancient code of man. With raised eyebrows, the roofer looked down the road where her sedan had disappeared and said, “She is somethin’ else, that one. Must keep you up—”
“You must be f*cking kidding me,” said Alexander.
The roofer was also missing the faintest sense of self-preservation. He opened his mouth again to speak. Alexander grabbed the man by the shirt lapels and hurled him to the ground. In an offended huff (he was offended!) the roofer quit and took his whole crew with him.
Bill Balkman was not happy.
“You work for me,” Balkman said to Alexander. “You represent my company. This reflects badly on our business, people quitting left and right. And you know these people don’t mean anything by it. It’s just men talking.”
“That’s bullshit,” said Alexander. “I’ve been around, I’ve been in the army, for f*ck’s sake, and nowhere did men talk like that about another man’s wife—not unless they wanted to lose their teeth.”
“Oh, come on, it’s just good old fun. Amanda, Margaret, they don’t mind.”
Margaret was Bill’s girlfriend. Alexander said pointedly, “Tania is my wife. Marriage is her protection.” Maybe it wasn’t in the Soviet Union, where it was her death sentence. But they weren’t in the Soviet Union. “She is completely off limits,” he said. “There is no discussion on this issue. Bill, we’re going to have a major problem over this if I’m going to have to explain it again”—Alexander glared at Balkman—“to anybody.”
“Calm down, calm down,” Balkman said quickly. “You’re right, of course. He was out of line. I’m glad he’s gone. He was terrible, anyway. But in the meantime, what are we going to do without even a terrible roofer?”
Alexander hired a few extra guys and spent the spring hauling heavy glazed blocks and concrete and sitting under the hot sun spackling the mortar undercoating and then laying ceramic roof tile on top of it, which Balkman showed him how to do. He was diligent, hard-working, fast. “Good work, man,” Balkman called from below, in full hearing of Steve, and gave Alexander a raise.
From hauling thousands of pounds of roof tiles and cement bags, day in and day out, Alexander’s arms and chest started to look like they were carved out of stone, by Roman sculptors. He became massive. None of his shirts and jackets fit; he had to buy a new everything.
In the summer Tatiana hosted her first Tupperware party. She did it for her friend Carolyn Kaminsky, who was always doing something extra besides nursing. This month it was Tupperware. Tatiana invited a few nurses, Francesca—who declined, having recently given birth—and reluctantly, on a plea from Alexander, Amanda and Cindy, Jeff’s girl. Despite the social gatherings they all went to, the dinner parties, the barbecues, and the occasional all-girl lunches, Tatiana’s friendship with Amanda was proceeding slowly, much like the vaunted wedding—that did not happen in spring.
Twelve women came over on a Sunday afternoon. Anthony went over Sergio’s. Alexander promised to stay in the work shed and not come out until the women left.
The party was a success. Tatiana had prepared little pirozhki and finger sandwiches with homemade bread. They drank black tea like Russians. The ladies, always taking an opportunity to look attractive, were all well turned out, comely and tall, Carolyn especially, teased, tweezed, back combed, sprayed, swing skirts, petticoats, full panty girdles, high collar pressed shirts all. A pint of black liquid eye liner was used among them. Only Tatiana wore little makeup, her freckles uncovered by pancake powder. She had on a dress Alexander liked, sans petticoat, a soft floral raw silk dress with bow ties for sleeves, and was bare-legged (he liked that too), her hair plaited and swirled into a bun to maintain appearance with the rest of the ladies.
They were nearly at the end of the gathering, the girls deciding on their plastic container orders. They’d been chattering about the latest in Ladies Home Journal—“Frozen Foods that Will Send Shivers Down his Spine,” “Two Novel Ways to Use Mirrors,” “Faking Flawless Skin”—when one of the women looked out the window and said, “Tania, you have workmen here on a Sunday? One of them is coming to your house.” All the girls peeked out.
Tatiana bit her lip. He was supposed to stay in the shed!
“Oh, that’s not a workman,” said Amanda. “That’s her husband.”
Slowly, the nurses turned their heads to Tatiana.
The back kitchen door opened and Alexander stepped in. He was wearing his torn, faded Lees and large brown work boots, in which he must have stood six-five. He was perspiring, and his enormous browned bare arms were covered with dirt and wood particles. The short sleeves of his black T-shirt were rolled up to his shoulders, and the slices of gray scars and blue tattoos were clearly visible. “Hello, ladies,” he said, standing in the doorway, grinning white teeth at them through his black stubble, a day unshaven. He brought with him heat from the outside, cigarette smoke, sweat—and clammy confusion among the decorous women. “Hi, Carolyn, how’s it going? Sorry to interrupt. Tania, can you get me my cigarettes and something to drink, please? I’ve run out.”
Quickly Tatiana got up.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” said Melissa in a stilted voice.
“Oh, yes, sorry. Um, girls, this is Alexander, my husband.”
He tipped his invisible hat; she hurried to get him his things.
Carolyn said, “Alexander, why don’t you sit down right here and have a drink with us. We’re almost done, aren’t we, girls?”
“Oh, yes! It’s so hot out, by all means, do please sit. And we’re almost done anyway.”
Promptly bringing him his lemonade and cigarettes, Tatiana said, “Alexander has a lot of work to do in the shed, don’t you?” She pushed him to the door.
“Oh. Yes. As it turns out, yes, yes, I do.”
He drank straight from the pitcher and didn’t stop until half the lemonade was gone. “It is hot out there. Well, nice to meet you, ladies.” He took his cigarettes from her, with a wink, and was gone. When the door had shut, a smiling Carolyn said, “Tania, where did you find him?”
“Loose on the street,” said Tatiana, starting to clear off the table.
“Was he loose for long? Where did his scars and tattoos come from?”
“Scars, where did those arms come from?” said Melissa.
“Scars and tattoos from war, arms from roofing.” She busied herself with cleaning up.
“He’s a roofer? He has a tattoo of a cross. Is he religious?”
“He has another one, of a hammer or something. Is that a roofing thing, too?”
Oh, bless them. It was as if the Iron Curtain had not descended all over Europe.
“When’d you get married?”
“In 1942.”
The girls fortunately did not pick up on 1942 being in the middle of some silly war somewhere. Time really did mute many things.
Amanda said, “He works for my fiancé, Steve, of Balkman Custom Homes. Steve and his dad own the business. Steve and I are getting married soon ourselves. He and Alex are best friends.”
Cindy, a pixie girl with short dark hair, said, “He works with my fiancé, Jeff, too. We’re getting married soon.”
The nurses listened politely and then turned to Tatiana. “So tell us, what kind of a husband is he?” Melissa asked. “Is he grumpy? Is he moody? Is he demanding?”
Tatiana tried hard not to compress her mouth. Her husband was all those things, and then some. “He’s the reason you punch the clock and pop the clutch as soon as your shift is over,” said Carolyn, pinching Tatiana.
“Doesn’t she just,” said Erin. She was the receptionist. “She won’t even wait for the next shift nurse to come in. Seven o’clock comes and she’s in her car at seven oh one.”
“Girls, are you quite done?” Tatiana said, and Carolyn and Erin laughed.
They wanted to know what he did for a living, how many hours he worked, whether he had to get dressed up to go to work, or if he looked like that all day long, whether he came home tired. He was a soldier, for how long? What was his rank? Was he still a captain? How long was he at the front? Did he bring some of the war home? Giggling accompanied that question.
“He brought all of the war home,” said Tatiana, not giggling.
Another thirty minutes of rampant and largely unanswered curiosity passed before she waved goodbye to the last of them and came around the house to the back deck, where she found Alexander sitting on the deck rail, smoking. He had taken off his T-shirt in the heat.
“What are you doing coming in, especially so messy?” Tatiana said, walking up the deck steps. “You promised to stay away. They talked about nothing else but you the rest of the party.”
“Oh?” he grinned. “What did they want to know?”
She shook her head and laughed.
“So what did you tell them?” His smile was from ear to ear. “Anything good?”
“Stop that. Go get clean. Ant will be home soon.”
“Did you tell them at least,” he asked, lowering his voice, “how much you like me messy?”
He was impossible. Yet seeing him sitting on top of the railing, his legs dangling in her favorite jeans of his, his happy crème brûlée eyes melting at her, the whites of his teeth beaming through the stubble, his spiky black hair, his gorgeous muscled arms and smooth bare chest glistening, Tatiana had to hold on to the deck chair because she didn’t want him to see her legs start to tremble. But Alexander was smiling at her so widely, he must have already known. He put down his lemonade, put out his cigarette, and jumped down.
She put up her hands. “Shura, please,” she said hoarsely.
“All right,” he purred. “Since you asked so nicely.”
Picking her up into his arms, he carried her to his work shed, kicking the door shut behind them and setting her down. It was scorching inside. The shed was organized, cleaned up, but it still smelled of saw and wood and metal and large power tools, oiled with grease. Reaching out, he moved one strap of her sundress down, then the other. He pulled the dress off, unhooked her bra, pulled off her underwear, and left her standing bare in front of him.
She tried to keep her breath from quickening, as she stood naked under his man’s gaze, her legs from trembling, her nipples from hardening. She failed on all counts.
Finally he spoke. “Tania,” he said calmly, his hands circling her waist, pulling her against his jeans and his belt buckle. “I’m not even going to get undressed. I’m going to leave my jeans on and my boots on, but you’re going to be naked like this”—he lifted her and set her down on his work counter—“on the potato counter I built for you.” Standing between her legs he rubbed his perspired chest against her impossible erect nipples. This time there was nothing suppressed about her moan. She leaned back on her unsteady arms. He scoured his stubble over her mouth, her neck, her breasts. “You like a bit of this,” Alexander whispered, less calm. “Did you tell that to your Tupperware friends?” He tugged her nipples. “Did you?”
She moaned into his mouth in response. They kissed hotly. Her arms wrapped around his neck. His arms wrapped around her back.
“Of course not,” he said, unbuckling his belt, unzipping his jeans. “You’re all prim and proper and buttoned up with them.” He laid her flat on his work surface, bringing her hips to the edge. Her hands grasped the counter.
“What do you want me to do next, Tatia?” he said, standing over her, his hands gripping her thighs. “Tell me.”
She couldn’t even mouth an oh Shura, crying out.
She came instantly upon his entering her.
Sunday by the Pool
The summers are broiling, no question about it.
But during winter in Scottsdale, as they try to live a regular life, they wear long sleeve shirts and light jackets and still sit outside and drink their tea and have a smoke, looking at the valley and the mountains and the sunset over the desert. After their first spring on the hill, Alexander says that perhaps Tatiana is right, perhaps there is nothing quite like the Sonoran Desert covered by brittlebush, like sunflowers in vivid bloom, with the red ocotillo and the white saguaro and the pale rose palo-de-fierro reflecting in the relentless sunglow.
It never rains except during the short monsoon season, every day is sunny, every night is warm and the stars are out. There is no snow. “It’s good there is no snow,” they say obliquely to each other. Aunt Esther caught a virulent cold in the blizzard of 1951, barely made it out alive. Tatiana wonders if there is snow in Korea where Vikki and Richter are. North Korea crossed the 38th parallel in June 1950, just as Richter had predicted, and surrounded Seoul in South Korea in weeks, and it was another two months before the United Nations finally got their act together and let MacArthur fight back.
Alexander and Tatiana drive 200 miles to Tucson and back at least one weekend a month for his intel work at Fort Huachuca. She and Ant sightsee while Alexander sifts through reams of classified, top secret, unanalyzed Russian data about weapons and satellites—space and European—and activities—space and worldwide. He also reads many of General Willoughby’s reports. Yuma Test Station is reopened during the course of the war and Alexander gets reassigned there, where to satisfy his additional seventeen days a year of active duty he tests and trains other young reservists on new ground-combat weapons—munitions, artillery, armored vehicles. Yuma is larger in size than Rhode Island. It tests weapons for all four branches of the U.S. military and Alexander’s assignment orders start coming only to Yuma. Tania is not as happy. Tucson is historical and beautiful and full of Catholic missions for her and Anthony to tour, while Yuma is in the middle of nowhere, and has nothing in it but Alexander. She grumbles only slightly. She always goes. Anthony never grumbles. It’s his favorite part of the month, because every once in a while, if his father is not preoccupied or busy, he takes Anthony for a ride in a WWII armored Jeep.
At home, Tatiana never stops cooking. Thanks to Francesca, she now knows how to make tacos and enchiladas, burritos and tostadas, fajitas and killer beergaritas. Infrequently she makes Russian food—pirozhki, blinchiki, chicken soup, salad Olivier. She wishes she could make borsht, but borsht has cabbage. All Russian food does something to them, like Russian language. They still speak Russian at the dinner table, so that Anthony will continue to know Russian, but they’re Americans now; they have gotten so used to speaking English in front of other people that sometimes even in bed, they speak it. After all, the things Alexander whispers to her in the swelter of night have always been in English.
But Tatiana hears Alexander humming Soviet war songs as he works around the house. He hums them quietly so she doesn’t hear, but she hears. The days she hears them, she speaks Russian to him, and as if understanding, he speaks Russian back. But Russian hurts them both. He tries to stop humming, they hang their heads and continue with their outer life, in English, except for the vestiges of the past they can’t burn down.
Tatiana makes bread dough on the days she doesn’t work, so that there is always enough; all Alexander has to do is put it in the oven. “Even you can turn an oven on, can’t you, commander of a battalion?” There is no talking her out of the bread-making and he has stopped trying and helps her now, seeing that with his help she gets done quicker. Kneading the dough, they chat quietly. They talk of work, his—not hers—she tells him jokes, they talk of Sundays—they are always together on Sundays—of Anthony’s school, of how he’s doing, what he’s doing, the friends he’s made. They talk of Alexander’s architecture courses, of his heavy workload, of whether he needs a degree, whether it’s worth it to continue—it seems too much, with work, college, reserve. He asks her once if she thinks he should resign the reserve when his commission is up, and she stares him down and replies that it’s not the commission he should resign. He does not bring it up again.
Sometimes they try to iron out their few small difficulties—him working too much and too late, him going out with Steve, which Tatiana never likes. Alexander doesn’t want to hear it. He says he accepts that there are some people she is just not going to like, and that’s fine with him. But because of her muted antipathy to the people Alexander works with, certain things that should be easy are made slightly more difficult: social gatherings, parties, days at carnival fairs, work dinners, encounters at construction sites. The undercurrent of her solemn, barely hidden disapproval is further sustained by their mutual inability to talk to his home building friends or to her hospital friends about the things that brought them here: courtships, engagements, families at weddings, things that for other people are fairly straightforward. They don’t admit even to each other they have a little trouble navigating the waters of the life of the magazine quizzes that everyone else around them seems to be sailing through. They do their best—they go to parties, they mingle—and then they come home and cook and clean and play with Anthony and build things, and make caramel (her burnt sugar, his condensed milk) and every once in a while even play war hide-and-seek in the saguaros.
Bill Balkman loves Alexander, and Alexander knows it and needs it, and Bill is the main reason why Tatiana says much less than she wants to about the cannibalistic lobsters her perfect husband is in a live tank with. Alexander is never home because of Bill’s love for him. He has been put in charge of nearly everything in the home building process, from the pouring of the foundation to the landscaping. He is so competent and swift that Balkman begins to give Alexander small bonuses for houses built ahead of schedule. While Alexander is thrilled at the bonus, Tatiana wants to emphasize the small—but of course doesn’t.
Alexander and Tatiana talk of Truman, of McCarthy, of Sam Gulotta thinking about premature retirement, of Korea and Richter, of the French fighting in Indochina against Stalin’s guerrillas, and how Southeast Asia will most likely be the next stop on Richter’s military train through life. They speak of many things.
What they never talk about in their Ladies Home Journal life: Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. The rivers in which they swam, the rivers they fought across, their blood trail that runs across continents. Sisters with warm hands. Grandfathers in hammocks. Bare linden trees in Germany. And frozen lakes with ice holes.