BOOK THREE: DISSONANCE
Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Troilus and Cressida. I. iii.
CHAPTER NINE
The Five-Year Plan
Pushkin’s Book
It is August 1952, scorching afternoon, and they are in the pool. Alexander is sitting on the diving board, swinging his legs, while Tatiana and Anthony are standing ready to jump into the shallow end. This is their fourth race.
“Tania, give the boy a break,” says Alexander.
Onetwothree. They dive in. Anthony, who’s been taking swimming lessons, courtesy of Aunt Esther (what isn’t courtesy of Aunt Esther concerning Anthony?), is using the breast stroke to keep up with his languid mother, who, in her yellow polka dot bikini is using—Alexander doesn’t even know what. Wings maybe? She is merrily gliding through the water, and this time Anthony reaches Alexander’s foot half a second before her and shrieks with glee. Tatiana grabs on to Alexander’s other foot. Anthony takes one look at his father’s skeptical face and says, “What? She didn’t let me win. I beat her fair and square.”
“Yes, son.”
“Oh,” says Anthony. “Well, let’s see if you can do better.”
“Don’t challenge your father, Anthony,” says Tatiana. “You know he doesn’t like to be challenged.” Her eyes are twinkling.
“I’ll show you challenged,” he says.
Alexander and Tatiana stand together at the edge of their fifty-foot-long pool, their own half a width of a prehistoric river. She is slim and white and freckled from the sun. He is chocolate with long gray ridges. His man’s body is hard and muscular and looks unbeatable by an elfin woman who barely comes up to the hammer and sickle tattoo on his upper arm.
Onetwothree, they dive in, Alexander and his Tatiana, man and woman, husband and wife, lovers.
Anthony sits on the diving board and cheers wildly—for his mother! The mother he has just wanted his father to race and beat.
Alexander slows down, turns his head and says, “What’s the matter, tadpole? Feet made of molasses?” But he speaks too soon; she’s already in front of him, kicking him in the face for good measure as she swims ahead. With him she is not gliding; she is using all her wings and things. He lunges forward and falls on her in the deep end, pushing her under and then hoists her up, turns her to him, treading water, and says, you cheater! that’s how you play dominoes, too. Tatiana is squealing, and he is gripping her kicking body, and his face is in her wet gleaming neck, and Anthony, that boy, jumps from the diving board, right onto his mother and father, and says, all right, break it up, and then wrests the mother from the arms of the father. He lets him.
Alexander shows Anthony how he crouches and she climbs on his shoulders; he straightens up, holding on to her hands and then lets go, and she also straightens up and balances, standing on top of his shoulders for a long moment before pushing off his trapezoid in a nearly perfect, splashless forward dive. Mom, says Anthony, looking impressed, where did you and Dad learn to do that? And Dad, glancing at Mom in the water, says, Lazarevo.
Mom teaches Anthony the racing dive, the backward pike, the reverse pike—and then Alexander brings the diving lesson to a screeching halt when he sees her show Anthony the reverse flip dive, facing away from the pool, springing into the air, somersaulting and nearly hitting her head on the board. He orders them both out, though not before throwing her on his back, holding her upside down by her feet and jumping in the pool with her—for his own version of the flip dive.
They’ve eaten, he’s smoked, they’ve played basketball—her against Anthony, and then facing off against him in a comical one on one—they’re back in the pool gliding about—not diving, not racing—digesting, and it’s broiling out though nearing evening. It’s been an average of a hundred and ten for forty days.
Tatiana says to him as she swims by, “Shura, do you have a plan?”
“Like a five-year plan?” Alexander says, smiling, floating on his back.
“Like in—how long do you plan to be out of work?”
“Who’s out of work?” he replies. “Somebody’s got to take care of the boy. It’s his summer vacation. He and Sergio need supervision. Someone has to be the sheriff to their cops and robbers, someone has to make them lunch while they chase lizards, read the comics and swim all day. I’ve become a modern housewife. My day is not complete unless I wipe my hands on a dishrag.”
Tatiana says fondly, “I don’t care. Stay home as long as you want.”
Alexander doesn’t tell her that he interviewed with G.G. Cain two weeks ago. He met his wife, Amoret, met his grown kids. He told G.G. everything upfront, told him about the war and the Red Army and Tatiana. They talked about the Balkmans. The things in the papers about Stevie had been devastating. Bill Balkman had no choice but to sell his business to a competitor, take his son, who was barely out of the hospital, and leave Phoenix, no one knew for where. Amanda had tearfully come by Phoenix Memorial and told Tatiana that Steve, his jaw wired shut, demanded his engagement ring back. Tatiana tried to make her feel better. “You’ll find someone else, Mand. You’ll see.”
“Easy for you to say, Tania. I’m twenty-six next month. Who’s going to want an old maid of twenty-six?”
Alexander told G.G. everything, then waited. G.G. called him back, took him to lunch, and said that he and Amoret considered him very seriously, but in the end just couldn’t hire him. “I wish you would’ve come to work for me three years ago when we first talked. You would’ve been invaluable to my business.” But now…yes, the inquest concluded it was self-defense and extreme provocation under duress—a justifiable homicide. Yes, Alexander was an army captain. But it was bad publicity. His was a small family-run company, G.G. said, it built only five homes a year. No room for mistakes, and this sort of thing could potentially be very bad for business. He was sorry. He paid for lunch.
Alexander doesn’t tell Tatiana any of this. He has another plan. He watches her swim away and calls after her, “I want to sell the land. I want to move.”
She is pretending she doesn’t hear. She swims back. “What did you say?” she says. “I didn’t hear.”
Alexander chases her across the pool. God, she is fast. He’s never seen a stronger woman swimmer. After he catches her and swirls her around and gets the breath out of her, he says, “Ignore me at your own peril.”
“Ignore me,” she says, panting, “at your own peril. I told you we’re not selling it and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
His fingers are in her ribs. She squirms. “I have only one word for you,” he says. “Six hundred thousand dollars.”
Tatiana is trying to wriggle away from him. “My genius mathematician grandfather taught me well, but even your nine-year-old son can tell you that’s four words—ow!”
Back under the water she goes. While she is under she pulls the hair on his legs.
He yanks her up. “We can go to Napa Valley, open that winery you wanted.”
Tatiana is still spluttering. “No, thank you. In fact, a little less champagne these days would do me good. I can barely walk.” She smiles, breathless.
Lifting her high, Alexander throws her into the deep end. “All right, but this is my final offer,” he says, panting when he catches her again. “I will go to New York for you. You can get your stupid job back at NYU, be close to Vikki.”
Now she jumps on him, tries to push him under. “Oh, you,” Tatiana says, her hands around his neck, rocking him into falling over. “You’ll say anything, won’t you?”
“Vikki needs you,” Alexander tells her solemnly, throwing her off, then dodging her. “She’s so distraught at leaving Richter out in Korea. For the sake of our nation, I hope he’s a better soldier than he is a husband. But what’s a girl like Vikki to do all alone in New York City? She needs you. Oh, and did I mention six hundred thousand dollars?”
Getting out of the pool, Tatiana stands on the stone deck, dripping and panting, her hands on her hips. “Stop this. We’re not moving,” she says. She’s got a tiny waist out of which her hips extend like two halves of a golden delicious apple. Her flat stomach glistens, her breasts are heaving. He is looking up at her. She is golden delicious.
“In the words of our Great Leader and Teacher, Comrade Stalin,” says Alexander, “what is this slavish attachment to a small plot of land?”
“Shura, for three years they tried to buy it from us, tried to take it from us. They didn’t succeed, but you’re telling me they’re going to take it from us anyway?”
“Um, do you not remember what happened,” asks Alexander, “in our house? In our house, Tania.”
“Yes. Every day I try to forget. But you’re going to let a crazy man from Montana take away your ninety-seven acres? Your mother bought this for you,” says Tatiana. “She kept the money secret from your father to give to you, so someday you might make your way back home and build yourself a new life. This land was in the Bronze Horseman book you gave me eleven years ago when we walked through the Summer Garden.”
“What’s this Summer Garden?”
Her hands remain unbaited at her hips. “Did you forget that I didn’t let Dasha burn that book when we needed fuel during the blockade? She and I carried it on the truck across the Road of Life.” She pauses just briefly in the blazing Arizona sun. “And then by myself I carried it halfway across the Soviet Union. You came to Lazarevo to get this money—”
“Is that why I came to Lazarevo?”
“That money,” she continues unperturbed, “bought me safe passage to Sweden, to England, and to America. And now, every morning when you go outside to smoke and see the Phoenix valley, your mother is reminding you what she thought about the life of her only son. This is what you want to sell out to buy a houseboat in Coconut Grove?”
After a minute’s pause, Alexander says, “In all fairness, my mother also loved boats.”
Tatiana takes a long jump off the deck right into his arms. Strapping her legs around him, she wraps her arms around him and making her voice deep like his, she says, “That’s it, ho ho ho, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Alexander laughs. They kiss exuberantly.
“Now—much more seriously,” she says, “what would you like to play, Captain? Marco Polo?”
“How about Little Red Riding Tania?” he says, all teeth.
“Okey-dokey.” Making her voice high high high, she says gamely, batting her eyes, “Oh, Captain, what big arms you have…”
“All the better to hold you with, my dear.” He squeezes her wet body to him.
“Oh, Captain, what big hands you have…”
“All the better to grab you with, my dear.” He grabs her behind and presses into her.
“Oh, my, Captain! What a—”
Anthony takes a running jump, right into the pool, right into his mother and father.
Alexander pushes his son underwater and when he releases him, Tatiana pushes her son underwater, and when she releases him they both embrace him and kiss his face.
“Ant, want to play Marco Polo?”
“Yes, Dad,” says Anthony. “You’re it. And no chasing only Mommy this time.”
Alexander has one more plan. He is a little afraid to talk to Tatiana about it, because after this one, he’s all out. But the deed to the land has both their names on it. To mortgage it, he needs her signature. He has to talk to her, but he is afraid she won’t give in; she hates all loans, all borrowing. He knows how she feels about touching any part of the land. She won’t mortgage even ten acres to build herself her own dream house!
It takes Alexander two hours of stilted beginnings and many cigarettes to get his idea for himself out to Tatiana.
To his surprise, she doesn’t just approve. She joyously, whole-heartedly, completely approves. They take out a mortgage on twenty acres, a fifth of their land, for eighty thousand dollars. He rents a tiny storefront on Scottsdale’s Main Street, gets community association approvals to build in several upscale Scottsdale subdivisions, advertises in the paper, incorporates as Barrington Custom Homes and starts his own business. This is what Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman buys for Alexander.
In between working at the hospital, Tatiana consumes herself with helping him. She combs through the finances, organizes the books, pays the bills, buys the office supplies, the furniture, the phones, the drafting table. Both she and Anthony help him paint, decorate.
“With no offending pictures anywhere,” Tatiana says happily.
“Oh, I take them down before you come,” says Alexander.
Free Market Forces
They both thought the business would start slow. They prepared for that. In the beginning Alexander planned to do everything himself because there would be only one or two houses to build. He would continue going to school to finish his degree, and meanwhile they would be looking to hire and train the right people and adjust to the demands of owning a small business. She would keep the books, he would do everything else.
But what happened was not in their plan. Alexander got two phone calls the first week, seventeen the second, fifty-four the third.
“Are you the Alexander Barrington, the army captain who was all over the papers a few months ago?”
“I am, yes.”
When they came, the wives gaped, and the men, after talking for a few minutes about building the house, would say, “So tell us what really happened that night. What a story!”
News of Alexander’s feat had swept the cities of Phoenix, Tempe and Scottsdale like brushfire.
In Scottsdale every person knew about him.
Here goes Alexander, who, to protect his wife, keeled a man and got away with it, they whispered, as Alexander, Tatiana, and Anthony strolled down Main Street. They studied Tatiana surreptitiously, but no man so much as openly glanced at her. She became invisible to most men. Her invisibility was in inverse proportion to Alexander’s visibility. All the girls—single, married, widowed—in Maricopa County came past his office to take a look at the architect, home builder, prisoner of war, commissioned officer, a man who loved his wife so much he keeled for her.
After advertising for staff, Alexander received five hundred applications, nearly all from women. He made Tatiana interview them. To say that the girls were disappointed in being interviewed by the rescued wife would have been an understatement. Tatiana recommended Linda Collier as an office manager, the most proficient, organized and brisk woman—in her early fifties—she could find, and gave Francesca the cleaning account.
Both Alexander and Tatiana—and G.G. Cain, much to his detriment —grossly underestimated the free market phenomenon known as “a temporary demand spike,” brought on by forces outside the control of the marketplace, such as umbrella sales during rain, lumber sales during tornado season—or shooting a man dead for your wife’s honor in your own mobile home.