CHAPTER TEN
Blockade Girl
The Nurse Is In, Flip Side
On a Friday night that December, 1955, Alexander came home from work with Anthony, and lo and behold Tatiana was already home! Not only was she home, but she was wearing a clingy cotton-knit cream-colored top over a black pencil skirt. The table was set, the candles were lit, the music was playing, and the wine was poured.
“What is that unbelievable smell?” Alexander said, walking in confounded.
“Leek and bacon stuffing!” she exclaimed.
Standing close, she pressed intimately against him as she served him. They had a roast with oven potatoes, with leek and bacon crunchy stuffing, which Alexander declared was the best. “What’s in it?”
“Leeks. Bacon.” Tatiana laughed. “Also cubed and toasted bread, made by yours truly.”
“Of course.”
“A few diced carrots, some garlic, some butter, chicken broth, a little milk, all cooked for about an hour. I’m so glad you like it, darling.”
Darling?
For dessert she made him cream puffs with chocolate sauce and black Russian tea. Alexander was so full he couldn’t move from the table.
“Whatever it is you did, Dad, you have to do more of it. Mom, this was great.”
“Thank you, son.”
Tatiana and Ant were clearing the dishes when Alexander said, “So what exactly did I do that was so wonderful?”
With the plates in her hands, Tatiana said, “I have great news, you two. Guess what?”
Alexander’s breath stopped in his chest. Please, please, let it be—
“I’ve been promoted!”
The breath was let out.
“You what?”
“Shura, they made me head ER nurse!”
Alexander sat quietly. Anthony stood quietly. “That’s great, Mom,” he said, glancing at his father. “Congratulations.”
Alexander said nothing. Now he understood the clingy sweater and the leek stuffing.
“Aren’t you happy for me?” she asked, frowning slightly. “I got a raise.”
“Have you accepted yet?”
Tatiana stammered. “I said I was going to talk to my husband, but—”
Nodding, Alexander said, “Good, let’s talk about it,” cutting her off, glancing at Anthony. “Later.”
Anthony looked away.
Later, on the deck, it went like this:
“Honey, a raise, isn’t that great?”
“Yes, wonderful.” Alexander said, smoking and not looking at her. “Seven thousand dollars. Tania, our profit from the business last year after paying all labor and operating costs was $92,000. The business is booming. We can’t keep up with the work. Our land is now worth $10,000 an acre. That’s nearly a million dollars, in case you forgot your math skills. So I’m pleased for your raise, but…let’s just put it into a little bit of perspective.” Alexander paused. “This raise,” he said, “does it come with a raise in hours?”
“Just one more shift, honey.”
He waited to hear.
“Just four days a week. You work six days.”
“I know how many days I work, Tatiana,” he said. “When is this extra shift going to be?”
She coughed and stopped looking at him. “I would work Monday, Wednesday, Thursday—and then Friday seven to seven…” Tatiana stopped, adding very quietly, “Graveyard.”
“I didn’t hear,” Alexander said. “What?”
“The graveyard shift. Seven in the evening till seven on Saturday morning.” She must have seen the expression on his face because she said quickly, “But I’ll be here for Ant on Saturdays, like always. And I know you have to go to Yuma, but you and Ant can just pick me up from the hospital on Saturday morning and we’ll drive straight out. I’ll sleep in the truck. I’ll be fine. Really. We’ll work everything out. I’m sorry, but as head ER nurse I have to work on the busiest night of the week. It’s such a big responsibility.”
He was smoking and said nothing.
She came closer to him. “I’ll have off Tuesdays, and Saturdays and Sundays. All the other nurses have work at least one weekend day…”
“Already gone from the house,” Alexander interrupted, “gone from your family fourteen hours a day three days a week. Forty-two hours not in this house. On Wednesday you came home at almost eight-thirty.”
“Iris was late,” Tatiana said apologetically.
“Now you want to be gone all night,” Alexander continued, “gone from the house at night. I didn’t go to Las Vegas once without you. I didn’t go to DC for Richter. I don’t go to Yuma, I don’t go anywhere that will take me from your bed for an occasional overnight, and you want to work overnight in the f*cking hospital, every week, times fifty-two, times forever?”
“Darling,” Tatiana said pleadingly, “what can I do?” She touched his arm; he yanked away. She stood up to face him. “I know you don’t like my work,” she said. “You’ve never liked it. But this is what I do. This is what I am. I have to work—”
“Bullshit. You choose to work.”
“For us!”
“No, Tatiana, for you.”
“Well, who do you work for? Don’t you work for you?”
“No,” said Alexander. “I work for you. I work so that I can build you a house that will please you. I work very hard so you don’t have to, because your life has been hard enough. I work so you can get pregnant; so you can cook and putter and pick Anthony up from school and drive him to baseball and chess club and guitar lessons and let him have a rock band in our new garage with Serge and Mary, and grow desert flowers in our backyard. I work so you can buy yourself whatever you want, all your stiletto heels and clingy clothes and pastry mixers. So you can have Tupperware parties and bake cakes and wear white gloves to lunch with your friends. So you can make bread every day for your family. So you will have nothing to do but cook and make love to your husband. I work so you can have an ice cream life. From my first lobster on Deer Isle, to every boat trip in Coconut Grove, to the last brick in Scottsdale, this is what I do. What do you do, Tatiana?”
The wind taken out of her sails, she took one step to him, then stopped and opened her palms when Alexander turned his face from her. “Darling,” she said. “Please. I can’t leave my job.”
“Why not? People leave their jobs every day.”
“Yes, other people,” she said. “But too many people depend on me. You know that.”
“Your son and husband depend on you too, Tania. The babies you’re not having depend on you, too.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, clenching her fists against her stomach. “I know—but we’ll get pregnant, we will, it’s just a matter of time.”
“I’ve been back nearly ten years,” said Alexander. “Tick tock.”
Her legs shaking, Tatiana stepped away. Alexander stood from the bench. “Okay, I’m going to tell you what I think. It’s like this,” he said grimly. “Quit or don’t quit. Take the promotion or not take it. But, if you take the graveyard shift, mark my words, we will eventually—I don’t know how, and I don’t know when—live to regret it.” Without saying another word he walked inside.
In bed Alexander let her kiss his hands. He was on his back, and Tatiana sidled up to him naked, kneeling by his side. Taking his hands, she kissed them slowly, digit by digit, knuckle by knuckle, pressing them to her trembling breasts, but when she opened her mouth to speak, Alexander took his hands away.
“I know what you’re about to do,” he said. “I’ve been there a thousand times. Go ahead. Touch me. Caress me. Whisper to me. Tell me first you don’t see my scars anymore, then make it all right. You always do, you always manage to convince me that whatever crazy plan you have is really the best for you and me,” he said. “Returning to blockaded Leningrad, escaping to Sweden, Finland, running to Berlin, the graveyard shift. I know what’s coming. Go ahead, I’ll be good to you right back. You’re going to try to make me all right with you staying in Leningrad when I tell you that to save your hard-headed skull you must return to Lazarevo? You want to convince me that escaping through enemy territory across Finland’s iced-over marsh while pregnant is the only way for us? Please. You want to tell me that working all Friday night and not sleeping in my bed is the best thing for our family? Try. I know eventually you’ll succeed.” He was staring at her blonde and lowered head. “Even if you don’t,” he continued, “I know eventually, you’ll do what you want anyway. I don’t want you to do it. You know you should be resigning, not working graveyard—nomenclature, by the way, that I find ironic for more reasons that I care to go into. I’m telling you here and now, the path you’re taking us on is going to lead to chaos and discord not order and accord. It’s your choice, though. This defines you—as a nurse, as a woman, as a wife—pretend servitude. But you can’t fool me. You and I both know what you’re made of underneath the velvet glove: cast iron.”
When Tatiana said nothing, Alexander brought her to him and laid her on his chest. “You gave me too much leeway with Balkman,” he said, kissing her forehead. “You kept your mouth shut too long, but I’ve learned from your mistake. I’m not keeping mine shut—I’m telling you right from the start: you’re choosing unwisely. You are not seeing the future. But you do what you want.”
Kneeling next to him, she cupped him below the groin into one palm, kneading him gently, and caressed him back and forth with the other.
“Yes,” he said, putting his arms under his head and closing his eyes. “You know I love that, your healing stroke. I’m in your hands.”
She kissed him and whispered to him, and told him she didn’t see his scars anymore, and made it if not all right then at least forgotten for the next few hours of darkness.
Tatiana accepted her new position, and Alexander’s money went to the bank. They lived on her salary and had plenty left over. They had nothing to spend money on. Alexander did buy Tatiana a new car. She wanted something sporty, so he bought her a red Ford Thunderbird—just out on the market and all the rage—so his wife could have the wind blowing through her nurse’s cap as she flew to the hospital to work her Friday night graveyard shift.
They spent money on clothes and shoes. Quite a fashion plate, she bought designer dresses and the latest capri slacks and stiletto heels and silk slips. She bought Alexander fatigues and rayon shirts and long johns and jerseys, and suits that were not drab flannel but linen and cotton, so when Alexander went out for a drink without her on Friday nights, he could look smashing.
Anthony was the best dressed boy in school. Smartest, tallest, strongest, most athletic, most beautiful boy in all of Phoenix. There was nothing that Anthony could not do. Having learned from his own experience, Alexander tried to instill in his distressingly good-natured and open son a sense of the circumspect, a slight reserve, some conservation of the confident gleam when it came to the opposite sex. He was slightly anxious for Anthony’s future: the playing field was so unlevel.
Alexander’s family strolled out into the Commons, starched, shined, slick. The husband and son: tanned and dark and broad, one a miniature of the other, pressed without a wrinkle, and she! petite but high-heeled, freckled still, blonde and buxomy, bedazzling still, her arm always through his. Families with children, for whom Alexander had built houses, stopped them on Main Street, near the Little Red School House, shook his hand, offered him cigars, a drink, small gifts, as they told him how much they liked their new homes, appreciated the craftsmanship that went into them.
And once an old man fell on his knees—but not in front of Alexander—and cried and said I know you. I’d know you anywhere. Thank you for saving my little girl.
It had been months since Alexander and Tatiana talked about building the house. Maybe months was too kind.
It had been months since they talked about having a baby. Maybe months was too kind.
They were busy, busy, busy.
Alexander didn’t know when the change happened, because it was so gradual, like the slight ebbing away of the shoreline, like dune erosion; years went by unnoticed, and suddenly you looked and the dunes were gone, but one day when he glimpsed in her closet her crisp white nurse’s uniform, not only did he not feel one solitary beat of arousal, but distinctly what he felt in his chest was a cold gnashing of the metaphoric teeth.
The Russian Cook
On Friday nights Alexander took care of Anthony, but the boy got older, became more self-sufficient and often wanted to stay out with his friends. Alexander started to stay out with his friends himself, drinking or going over Johnny’s to play poker. Young and single, the high-wired stud Johnny was his latest foreman. The business was hopping and after working hard, Johnny really liked to unwind. Shannon and Skip, who played poker with them, had to go home at midnight. But Johnny didn’t have anywhere to be at any time and so he and Alexander went out with a bunch of his derelict friends.
On Fridays, Alexander could come home at midnight, at two, at three, and once, he went to a strip club downtown with Johnny-boy and his friend Tyrone and came home at 4:30—not 5:08!! but plenty late, and plenty drunk. The house was quiet. Anthony was at Francesca’s. No one knew when Alexander came home. No one cared. It was all okay. There wasn’t a single voice in the wilderness to cry, to be upset, to say, darling, do you know what time it is? Where have you been? Please don’t stay out so late. I’m waiting for you warm in our bed. I waited for you in Coconut Grove, and on Bethel Island, and I waited for you in this house, too, leaning over the table for you in my little silk robe, all delicious and bare underneath. But that was then. Now what Alexander got instead every Saturday morning at eight was Tatiana’s small hand on his head, her kissing lips on his cheek, and her murmur: “Husband, woo-hoo, it’s eight, you’ve got to go to work. Wake up, sleepy head. Did you have fun last night with your wild friends?”
In the early summer of 1956, Shannon and Alexander were drinking by themselves at Maloney’s on Stetson. Skip had had a fight with his pregnant wife Karen, and they were making up. Phil never went out drinking without Sharon. Johnny was pursuing new female pastures. Alexander and Shannon talked about the Red Sox’s terrible year, about the plutonium bomb, about possibly including bomb shelters with the new construction, and about Israel and Egypt and the Suez War. They talked about the upcoming Presidential election, and whether Adlai Stevenson had a chance of beating Eisenhower. They talked about the civil war raging in Indochina after the defeat of France—but Alexander noticed that Shannon was bothered by something. When he asked if everything was all right, Shannon avoided the issue but finally, around midnight, when he had to be home, blurted out that he simply didn’t know how he was going to remain monogamous for the rest of his life.
“Oh, man,” Shannon said, “I don’t know about you, but you won’t believe the kinds of crazy excuses I’m hearing not to get it on—and this after just three years of marriage. I swear, Alexander, some of them I’ve never heard before. She says it keeps her awake afterward and she can’t do her daily work the next day! Do you believe it? You hire me a cleaning lady, she says to me, and I’ll have sex with you. I said to her, why don’t I just have sex with the cleaning lady?”
“Good,” said Alexander, nodding. “I’m sure that went over well.”
Shannon continued like he was on fire. “Or, she says, how can you think about sex, didn’t you read about what’s happening in the Suez? Alexander! I can’t have a pop because there’s trouble in the Middle East? If peace in that region were a criteria for sex, all civilization would come to a grinding halt!”
Alexander laughed.
Shannon, with a lot to get off his chest, and unable to do it in front of other men, in a torrent told Alexander that not only had his marital relations become more sporadic, but what remained of them was so rudimentary as to be comparable to self-abuse. “She says to me, I have to get up early tomorrow to take care of your children. Can you just get it over and done with? Don’t worry about me, she says. Just take care of yourself. I’ll be all right. I don’t need anything.”
“Oh, so Amanda is a thoughtful wife,” said Alexander. “I don’t know why you’re complaining.”
Shannon said he found himself more and more attracted to other women, aroused by complete strangers in the street. He couldn’t stop fantasizing about the wives who came to house meetings, whom he met at construction sites. He dreamed of make-up girls, librarians, other mothers with young babies. “Basically anyone in a skirt,” said Shannon, and then added quickly and gravely, “But not nurses. Not at all. They’re an absolute turn off. Ugh. They might as well be a man.”
“Very good, sergeant.” With an approving grin, Alexander patted Shannon on the back and bought him another drink. “But I don’t know what to tell you, man. You’re f*cked.”
“Would that I were. But I’m warning you, you’re going to be without a foreman soon, because I’ll be arrested for the graphic thoughts I have about other women. All of them with their pointy bras and tight sweaters, their swing skirts, their stockinged ankles. I dream all day of girdles and petticoats.” Shannon paused, lowering his voice. “Even the full long-leg panty girdles.”
“No, please,” said Alexander. “Not those. Never has anything worse been invented in the history of women’s fashion.” The open girdle, with its nylon stockings, satin garters, slivers of thighs, peeking panties and promise of heaven was set on a royal plinth, but the panty girdle was hideous. Tania did not own one.
“Really, you think so?” said Shannon, rubbing his flushed face. “I find them quite attractive. Do you see what kind of trouble I’m in?”
“I do, I do, man. Desperate trouble.”
“How do you do it, Alexander—stay sane? You have a swarm of women constantly around you. You always act a bit aloof, but I see them trying to flirt with you. Don’t you notice them? Don’t you find them attractive?”
“You can’t help but notice,” said Alexander. “But it’s not the same with me, Shan. I did it smart, you see, I went out with all the girls—without girdles—before I got married. Now that I’m married, I don’t need sex.” He grinned.
Shannon’s drunk mouth fell open. “You’re joking?”
“Yes,” Alexander said, making a serious face, and they laughed and clinked glasses and drank.
Shannon said he could no longer ignore the chore that his marriage bed had become. “Is this going to be it? Forever? That’s all I’m going to get? Straight up once a week?”
“Why didn’t you think about this before you married her?”
“Amanda was so hot before we got married! She lured me in, and then said, Hah, little fishy, joke’s on you.”
“Indeed, my good friend, indeed.” Steve Balkman did nail that one, didn’t he, Alexander thought. He did say Amanda was only putting out to get him to marry her. To think that that bastard was right about anything.
“Alexander…” Shannon asked cautiously, “Tania didn’t trick you?”
Alexander debated answering. “Not yet,” he said at last. “But some women are a complete mystery. Who knows what’s next?”
“Is she a mystery?”
“Yes,” Alexander said. “She is a complete mystery.”
“How do you work through the other stuff?”
“Through what?”
“You know…the one woman stuff.” Shannon struggled with his words. “I mean…I know you like steak. Who doesn’t? Filet mignon is great—but every night? Don’t you once in a while crave a plain old cheeseburger out?”
Alexander was thoughtfully rubbing his beer glass. “I think the trick is,” he finally said, “you’ve got to marry yourself a girl that can cook across a broad range of menu options, so you don’t have to go out. Because you’re right. Every once in a while, a small American snack is all that’s required. But sometimes you want a full course Russian meal with dessert.”
“Exactly!” said Shannon. “And I’ve been to your house. Tania is a very good cook.”
Alexander nodded, lighting a cigarette.
“And she makes everything. She’s made us fajitas, and lasagna, and some Russian food—oh, those blinchiki were incredible.”
“Yes, blinchiki are her Russian specialty,” Alexander agreed. “She only makes them on extra special occasions. But what about the unbelievable sweet potatoes with rum and marshmallows she made last Thanksgiving? Oh, and let’s not forget plantain. When we lived in Coconut Grove, all she served me was plantain. I had nothing but plantain every day, every way, for months.” Alexander smiled. He took a long happy inhale of his cigarette. “Also she bakes.”
“Yes, she makes the most delicious cream pies, lemon meringue, cream puffs.”
“Shannon, stop thinking about my wife’s cooking.”
They stared into their beers.
“I think I’m just hungry,” Shannon said. “We’ve drunk aplenty but haven’t eaten anything. You want to order some bar food?” They looked around. There were only a few patrons settled in the chairs, mostly male.
“I’ll just wait till I get home,” said Alexander, turning to his drink. “I know she left me a small something in the coldest part of the ice box while she works.”
Shannon stared at Alexander. “Hey, man,” he said, “why don’t you just tell her you don’t want her working anymore? It’s so simple.”
Not looking up from his glass, Alexander didn’t answer for some time. “Shannon,” he finally said, “the three-dimensional, divide-and-conquer algorithm of why Tatiana continues to work is too f*cking complicated for me to explain to you after six beers. Let’s just leave it.”
“Um—yes, I think that would be best,” mumbled a dazed and drunk Shannon.
That Sunday when everyone was gathered at their house for a barbecue, Tatiana brought out a tray of food to the pool patio and said, “Shannon, what would you like? I’ve got some tenderloin here, but there are also cheeseburgers on the grill if you prefer.”
Shannon’s horrified eyes flared from Tatiana to Alexander, who held his mouth closed to keep from laughing. Nothing on her face moved.
Alexander followed her to the grill and whispered, bending to her neck, “You’re a very naughty girl. He’s never going to tell me anything again.”
Tatiana turned to him, handing him a tray of cheeseburgers and toasted buns. “I’m a very good girl,” she said. “Tell him when you’re hungry, I feed you.”
Shannon Fed
A few months later, Amanda called Tatiana at the hospital and asked to see her. Tatiana would have said no: she was too nerve-racked at work to idly chit chat, and the forty-five minutes in the middle of the day she had to herself she reserved for solitude, or to sit with the other nurses or with the attending physicians. But Amanda sounded so forlorn that Tatiana could not say no. They met at a small luncheonette outside the hospital on Buckeye. The sleeping baby was with Amanda. The toddler was with grandma. Amanda ordered nothing except coffee. Tatiana ordered a BLT, eyeing Amanda’s swollen eyes, her unmade-up face, her barely brushed hair.
“If I tell you, you won’t believe it.”
“Tell me.”
“Shannon is seeing someone.” Amanda started to cry.
“No, not Shannon!”
“Yes. I found a receipt from a hotel room in his pants pocket when I was doing his laundry. During the day, Tatiana! Do you understand?”
Tatiana was quiet. “You were doing his laundry during the day?”
“During work hours. He is supposed to be on construction sites, and instead—look!” Amanda flung a receipt from the Westward Ho across the table.
“That Ho is trouble,” said Tatiana, shaking her head. “What did I tell you? I thought so from the beginning. It’s haunted by evil spirits.”
“You’d think he’d be more careful.” Amanda sniffled. “But I think he wanted me to find out, I really do. He wanted me to know.”
Tatiana took Amanda’s hand.
Amanda was not eating. Tatiana was hungry, but Amanda was sniffling! Tatiana thought it was bad form to dig into her appetizing BLT when her friend was having such a crisis. She kept murmuring, “Mmm,” for comfort, all the while glancing at the bacon, lettuce and tomato on white toast.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Amanda, wiping her face. “What would you do?”
“What does Shannon want to do?” asked an evasive Tatiana. She didn’t think Amanda was ready to hear what Tatiana would do. “What did he say when you confronted him?”
“Can you believe it,” said Amanda, “he asked if I had taken a good look at our marriage lately. He said I take him for granted, I never get dressed up, or made up anymore, and how I never want to, you know…do it anymore, and when I do it’s just no good!”
“Oh God,” said Tatiana. “He didn’t say that. Well, did you tell him it’s not true?”
“No!” Amanda cried. “Because it is true! I don’t get dressed up or made up. I don’t want to have sex anymore. I’m tired, I’m busy, I want to read my book, I have a thousand things I’m thinking of that I can’t turn off. But he wants to have sex all the time—like every weekend! Every single one! For God’s sake, I’m not a whore, Tania. I can’t do it every weekend. I’ve got responsibilities now. I’m a mother, a wife. I’ve got a house to maintain, to clean, two babies to raise. I told him he was unreasonable and demanding. He told me it was my fault he went to the Ho because I wear pajamas to bed. Can you even believe it?”
“I can’t believe it,” Tatiana said. “You wear pajamas to bed?”
“I need you to tell me. You and Alexander…you have a perfect marriage. Is Shannon being unreasonable?”
Tatiana coughed. “Look, I told you before, all relationships are different. What’s right for one isn’t right for another. You have to find your own comfort zone.”
“Shannon says sex is part of the marriage contract. He says I owe him sex! Is he being ridiculous or what?”
Tatiana didn’t answer.
“Tania?”
She deflected slightly. “You’re upset now. Figure it out slow, see what you can live with. Then go from there.” She paused. “But, Amanda,” said Tatiana, “Shannon is right. How much and what kind and when, that you have to work out, but there is no question that marriage must provide the one thing nothing else provides.”
“You think so?” Amanda frowned skeptically.
“It’s indisputable.”
“Oh—but every cursed week!”
“Like I said, you have to figure out what’s reasonable.”
“But what do you think? Is it reasonable for him to be so demanding?”
“I really don’t know, Mandy, honey,” Tatiana said. “And don’t fool yourself, my marriage isn’t perfect. It is what it is. Like life. It’s true, my cup has been very full. It has also been very bitter.” She looked away for a moment. “But we do happen to be well-matched in many areas.”
“Is once a week too much?”
Tatiana averted her gaze and her reply. “I don’t know what to tell you. Obviously for you it is.” Once a week! She could hear Alexander’s voice in her head: “Pajamas to bed, straight up and once a week! What mortal man would put up with that?” “But it’s also obvious that for Shannon it isn’t.”
Tatiana and Amanda didn’t speak for a few moments. “What do I do, Tania?” Amanda asked quietly. “I don’t want to lose my marriage. I wanted to get married for so long.”
“I know that. Let me talk to…let’s just take this one day at a time.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I wouldn’t wear pajamas to bed, Mand.”
A Christening Conversation
Shannon did not leave Amanda. Somehow they worked it out, she put on a nightgown instead of pajamas, got pregnant right away and had another baby.
Tatiana, Alexander, and Anthony were invited to the christening in June 1957. Anthony, much to his dismay, was put in charge of seven children under five. His father advised strict order.
Amanda asked Alexander if he wanted to hold her newly christened month-old baby girl. He politely declined.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Amanda. “She won’t break.”
Touching the baby’s head, Alexander again declined.
Tatiana ran quick interference, moving him away, diverting his attention to a small thing at the buffet counter. Amanda could not know that Tatiana’s husband had never held a baby in his life.
After dinner, the adults were sitting in Shannon’s dining room having coffee and cake when Skip’s wife, Karen, commented, “Do you know that besides our Tania, I don’t know any other women who work outside the home?”
The women at the table seconded with murmurs. The men glanced at Alexander and then at their dirty forks. Tatiana stared at Alexander sitting across from her, and he gave her a look that said, You want to handle this one?
All right, Shura, I’ll handle it. “Well, Karen,” said Tatiana, putting down her fork and folding her hands, “I know I’m not the only nurse in my hospital. There are 194 other nurses, all women. And Anthony’s teachers—all women. The librarians—women. Oh, and the tall ladies selling you makeup at the cosmetics counter at Macy’s, women, too. Maybe,” Tatiana said, “you don’t know any women working outside the home, because they’re too busy working.”
There was tittering, followed by an uncomfortable silence. Everyone was pretending to nibble at their cake—including Alexander!
“Yes, but how many of them are married like you?”
“No one is married like me,” said Tatiana, her eyes on her husband. “It’s true, most of the women are widows, or unmarried. Some are older. Some are younger. But, Karen, they’re still all women.”
“Oh, I know, I know, but I’d never want to be a nurse. It seems so yucky,” said Karen with distaste in her voice and on her face. “Are you a triage nurse? Or a receptionist nurse?”
“I’m an acute care nurse. A critical care nurse.” Alexander did not look up, palming his hands. Right, Shura? Tatiana wanted to say. You remember, no, when I was a critical care nurse, running out onto the Neva River ice in the middle of the battle for Leningrad to carry your body back to shore? And then I became your terminal care nurse?
“You must see some wicked bad things,” Karen said.
“In my life,” said Tatiana, “I have seen many things I wish I had not seen.” She looked down at her hands still folded on the table.
“So how many hours do you work?”
“Fifty.”
“Fifty!” No one at the table could believe it. “I can’t imagine there is any time left for all the other work,” said Karen. “Who cooks in your house?”
“I do.”
“Who cleans?”
“I do.”
“Laundry?”
“Still me.”
The girls whistled. There was a silence.
And then Amanda said, “Yes, but who has the children, Tania?”
Tatiana didn’t say anything; she looked at Alexander, who kept his steady gaze on his own steady hands.
It was Anthony who leapt inside the dining room and in a loud upset voice exclaimed, “Leave my mother alone! She works harder than any of you—at everything. While you’re having your little lunches, she heals sick people and dying people. That’s what she does while you’re sipping ice cream sodas, passing judgment on her. That’s what she is—a critical care nurse and a mother.”
Tatiana pointed to Anthony. “Amanda, here is my child. You remember him, don’t you?”
Anthony whirled on his father. “And if she wasn’t a Red Cross nurse, you,” he said, shaking, pointing his finger at Alexander, “you know where you would be.”
“Anthony! That’s enough.” That was Tatiana.
“It’s not enough!”
Alexander stood from the table and fixed Anthony with such a grim and deadly stare that the boy fell mute and ran from the room. Tatiana excused herself. They left soon after.
In the truck, they managed to remain quiet, but at home, Anthony did not remain quiet. They had barely got in the door, still standing in the open space in front of the kitchen where Dudley had been shot when Anthony said, trying to keep his voice low, “Dad, I simply don’t understand how you could’ve sat there and said nothing.”
“Anthony!” Tatiana yelled. “Go to your room!”
“No!” Anthony yelled back.
Alexander slapped Anthony square in the mouth with the flat of his hand. “Do not ever,” he said, “raise your voice to your mother.”
“Why not—you do!”
Coming between them, Tatiana grabbed Alexander by his forearms and said very quietly, “No. Stop right now.”
“You’re telling me to stop right now?” Alexander said. “Are you listening to him?”
And behind her, a suddenly empowered Anthony said, “It’s all your fault, Mom. It’s because everything he does is fine with you—everything! He yells at you, that’s fine. He doesn’t say one syllable when people are attacking you—that’s fine, too!”
“Anthony!” yelled Alexander. Tatiana dug her nails into his arms, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to dislodge her without violently dislodging her, and she was hoping he would stop himself in front of his son.
He did. The tension in his body slightly receding, Alexander lifted his arms up and away from her, took her by the shoulders, looked down into her face and said quietly, “He speaks that way because you let him. You’ve been letting him get away with everything his entire life. I’m not going to let him. Now let go of me.”
Anthony was standing panting.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Alexander said to Anthony. “How many times does your mother tell you, stay out of our business. You want to try your luck with me, fine, be upset with me, but what are you even thinking, talking that way to your mother?”
With tears of pride pinching his face, Anthony said in a much quieter voice, “Oh, I get it now, so against me, my mother needs defending!”
This time, Tatiana wasn’t holding on to Alexander anymore. She whirled on Anthony herself. “Your father is right, you are completely out of line,” she said as she pushed him down the hallway and into his room, mouthing, “Stop it!” before she slammed the door.