CHAPTER ELEVEN
Blue Christmas
Merry Merry Merry
In early November 1957, Alexander was checking out a new marble and granite quarry down on West Yuma and thought he’d stop by to see Tatiana at the hospital. The receptionist told him she was in the cafeteria. Through the glass door he saw her sitting with—who was that? He looked slightly familiar—a doctor. Usually he found her having lunch with one of the other nurses, but here she was sitting with a doctor—ah yes, it was Dr. Bradley. Alexander vaguely remembered him from the Christmas parties. Fair-haired Bradley looked fit for a doctor.
What struck Alexander about Tania having lunch with Bradley was the casual ease of her body while she sat with him. She was relaxed, elbows on the table, legs carelessly crossed. Sucking her drink through a straw like a little girl, she was listening animatedly while he talked animatedly. Alexander was just about to come in when she threw back her head and laughed at something the doctor said.
Perplexed, Alexander watched her, his eyes and solar plexus opening to something he had not expected to see. He was used to seeing the eyes of men on her—though Bradley’s were perhaps a little more keen than most—but this was new. Tatiana laughed long and with joy at this regular Bob Hope of a doctor while she blithely rearranged and tightened her hair bun.
Alexander didn’t go in. He stood a moment by the door and then turned around.
“You didn’t find her?” Cassandra called after him.
“No.” He was walking out.
“Want me to page her?”
“No. Got to get back to work. Thanks, though.”
That night after she came home, Alexander was quiet, observing her. She made him meatball soup and fajitas. Anthony was at basketball practice.
“Shura, Cassandra told me you came by today, is that true?”
“I did, but I didn’t realize what time it was. I had to run.”
“You didn’t even page me to say hello?”
“I was ten minutes late to my one thirty.” Alexander took a spoonful of the soup, weighed his words. “What did you do for lunch?”
“Oh, it was so quick today—we had four code blues,” she said. “I had it with Dr. Bradley. You remember him?”
“I do.” Alexander didn’t say anymore. What was interesting to him was that she didn’t say anymore.
“You like the fajitas, Shura?”
“Yes. Francesca has taught you well.”
After dinner, Alexander was lying on the couch, not going outside for his smoke, still watching her. He had to go pick up Ant in a little while.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine.” But Alexander wasn’t fine.
Was it his imagination? Could he be wrong?
No, he saw her happiness. He wasn’t imagining that.
“Come here,” he said, sitting up.
She was drying the dishes.
“Put the rag down and come here.”
“Shura…you have to go pick up Ant in fifteen minutes.”
“Why so much discussion? Come.”
She came and stood in front of him, her eyes soft, fond.
Taking the rag out of her hands, Alexander drew her close between his legs, his hands going underneath her wool jersey skirt to the bare space above her stockings. The girdle was open and satin, the underwear sheer nylon mesh. Pulling up her sweater, he pressed his mouth into the top of her warm stomach and silently rubbed the backs of her thighs, his fingers circling, circling, becoming more insistent when he felt her skin flush and get warmer.
After her hands went around his head and her breath became shallow, Alexander laid her down on the couch and opening her legs slightly so he could see her, caressed her thighs in steady circles. She was very flushed, very warm. He watched her face, her elongated neck, her white thighs, her barely there underwear. He unhooked the front clasp of her bra and her breasts fell out, the nipples up and coral.
“Shura, please…”
“Okay, babe.” He bent to her breasts, continuing to rub her. A quivering unquiet minute went by. And another. Straightening up, Alexander whispered, “Look at you. Your nipples are so wet, so hard, and you are so warm, and my fingers are so close, rubbing you gently, round and round and round…right on the seam of your underwear…Tania, can you feel me?”
She barely moved, barely breathed.
“I can pull back your underwear, like this, just a little, move it over an inch with my fingers…”
She moaned. His fingers circled.
“Come on, Shura, please…” She clutched his forearms.
“Please what? Tell me. Please what?”
“…Put your fingers on me, please…”
“Tatia,” he whispered, “my fingers…or my lips?”
Tatiana moaned so loud, and when she did, Alexander took his hands off her. She opened her eyes, opened her mouth. “Oh my God, Shura, what—”
“I gotta run,” he said, helping her sit up, giving her a slight push off the couch. “Have to pick up Ant.”
She fell back into his arms.
“Mommy…your son needs to be picked up from practice.”
“Oh God. I can’t wait, Shura,” she said, kissing him hungrily. “I can’t wait another second.”
She had to wait another few hours, but that night Alexander made love to her as if it weren’t a Wednesday and they had to be up again at five. Completely in command, he made love to her so thoroughly, so relentlessly and by the end so desperately that after he was done, there was not a pod or a wedge or a hollow on Tatiana’s body that had not been kissed, licked, stroked, sucked, confined, filled, restrained and released. He devoured her. He made love to her until she was limp, until she was hobbled by love. Until there was not a single weeping inaudible Oh Shura left in her throat, not a single breath even to beg for mercy. She couldn’t move after he was done with her. He came inside her while kneeling upright on their bed, holding her upright too, under her buttocks. She was pressed up to him and over him and around him, while their mouths were agape against each other. His climax was so intense he nearly dropped her.
The next morning at five thirty, Tatiana made him potato pancakes with bacon on the side.
“So this is what I have to do to get potato pancakes around here?” Alexander said, his mouth full.
She was too embarrassed to lift her gaze to him. Her fingers trembled when she touched him, her raw, tender lips trembled when she raised her face to say goodbye to him. “Shura, darling, what got into you?” she murmured, blushing, averting her eyes. “It’s a school night.”
“You got into me,” replied Alexander. “Like a hand grenade.”
But it didn’t last. That night was just a moment in time. Tatiana didn’t run home that evening, didn’t especially fuss around him; she simply went on as she always was and so nothing erased for Alexander the image of her sitting comfortably across from the comedian doctor.
Tatiana’s laughing was another girl’s disrobing.
Alexander did what he always did when he carried too many things that were too heavy for him: from the effort of dragging them around, he withdrew. He became sullen, moody. He snapped at her for the little things, unable to snap at her for the big things. He constantly showed his irritation with her for being late, for being tired, absent-minded, for falling asleep during TV shows, for forgetting to buy things. In his silence he went on and took care of what he had to take care of. He put on his suit and had meetings with husbands and wives, he paid his crews. He put on fatigues and got his hands dirty when he had to. He played poker with Johnny, he went out with Shannon, he played basketball with Anthony, he swam. He came home and warmed up what she had made for him when she wasn’t home, he sat at her table and ate her food hot when she was, and when he needed her, he took what he needed.
Alexander wanted to ask her about the doctor but couldn’t. The man who fought the world wasn’t strong enough to ask if his maiden wife had a flicker of feeling in her heart for someone else.
Holy Mother, Hear My Prayer
Thanksgiving 1957 quietly came and went. Vikki and Richter had separated. Now he was miserable and she was in Italy with her new “friend,” also an Italian. Vikki said she would come for Christmas, and in her unfathomable world, Tom Richter would be coming with her. “He is still my husband,” Vikki said indignantly to Tatiana. “Why the shock?”
Aunt Esther was not feeling well and remained in Barrington. She too was going to come for Christmas with Rosa. Now that there was no war, Alexander’s Yuma duty was reduced to a small sporadic amount of classified intel. Last year, around the time of the Hungarian revolt, it got busy, but this year he satisfied his annual duty back in July when there was a ton of stuff for him to translate. Alexander always made sure his twenty-four days of service were finished by November because there were never enough days between Thanksgiving and Christmas for all the things Tatiana had to do.
Friday night after Thanksgiving, Tatiana was working, and Anthony and Alexander were together. They had pizza and Cokes, went to see Around the World in Eighty Days, and were on their way home in Alexander’s truck. It was after ten.
Though Anthony may have wanted to be like his mother—and it was certainly a fine thing to aspire to—he was often silent and inward with his father. Tonight they were by each other without speaking, one lost here, the other there.
Tatiana always tried to engage the boy, to draw him out, so Alexander tried—like her. “What’ya thinkin’ about, bud?”
Anthony shrugged. “I was just wondering…if you had a mother.”
“That’s what you’re thinking about? My mother? Not girls your own age?”
“I’m not talking about that with you, Dad.”
A smiling Alexander said, “Of course I had a mother. You know I did. You saw pictures of her at Aunt Esther’s house.”
“Do you remember her?”
“I do.”
“Mommy says you don’t like to talk about her.”
“She’s right.” Alexander didn’t like to talk about his mother most of all, Dennis Burck from the State Department still a stain, a stab in his heart, reminding him of the things he could not fix. “But Mommy doesn’t talk about her family either, does she?”
“Are you joking? She never stops. All she talks about is Luga. I’ve heard the stories so many times, it’s almost become my childhood.”
Alexander nodded in agreement. “Mommy does like to talk about Luga, doesn’t she?”
Anthony stared ahead at the road. “She told me about Leningrad, too.”
“She did?” Inside the truck got quiet.
“I didn’t say she told it to me easy. I said she told me.” Anthony’s fingers twitched. “She even told me about you and her brother.”
“She did?” Alexander nearly stopped driving.
“I didn’t say she told it to me easy,” Anthony repeated. They stopped speaking. Alexander’s chest started to hurt.
“I’ll talk to you,” Alexander said. “What do you want to know?”
Anthony was looking at his father. “Was your mother pretty?”
“I thought so. She was very Italian. Dark curly hair, tall.”
“What about your father?”
“He wasn’t pretty,” Alexander said dryly. “He was a Mayflower Pilgrim. Very New England.”
“Did you love him?”
“Anthony, he was my father.” Alexander tightened his hands around the wheel, frowning, glancing at his son. “Of course I did.”
“No, no, Dad, I—I meant—” Anthony stammered, got flustered. “I meant, did you love him even though he was a Communist?”
“Yes, even though he was a Communist.”
“But how?”
“He was infectiously idealistic,” said Alexander. “He thought it would work; I think to the end he didn’t understand why it didn’t. On the surface it seemed so right! Everyone working only for the common good, everyone sharing the fruits of their labors. Suddenly there was no fruit. No one could understand why, least of all him.”
“What about your mother?”
“She wasn’t an idealist,” Alexander said. “She was a romantic. She did it for him, believed in it for him.”
“What about you—were you on his side or hers?”
“Initially his…he had a way about him. He could convince you of anything. He was a bit like your mother in that respect,” said Alexander. “I wanted to be like him. But when I got to be about your age, I couldn’t ignore the realities as well as he could. My mother and I both couldn’t ignore them. So my father and I, you know, we butted heads.”
Alexander and Anthony fell silent again, staring at the night road. They were coming down Shea to Pima, just desert around them. Alexander knew what Anthony was thinking—that in their house there was only one rule of law, and it wasn’t Anthony’s. Head butting was not allowed in their house. Thinking back, Alexander couldn’t believe some of the things Harold Barrington allowed an adolescent Alexander to get away with. “My father was a civilian, not a soldier, Ant,” Alexander said finally. “There’s a world of difference.”
“Did I say anything?” said Anthony. “And then they were arrested?”
“Then they were arrested.”
“Mommy said you were arrested, too.”
“Bud, I was arrested so many times, I lost count.” Alexander smiled.
“She said you saw your father in prison right before he died?”
“Yes.” They made a left on Pima. Soon they’d be home.
“Did you see your mother?” Anthony was looking at him intensely.
“No.” And here it was. Here was the infernal moment of the burnt-out cigarette, singeing another hole in the soul. Alexander had walked out of his house one morning to go to school, and when he came out, the mother was gone, the father was gone, the family was gone. He never saw or spoke to his mother again after that morning when he left so casually without even a “catch you later.”
“Your mom is once again unfortunately right about me,” Alexander said. “This is the one thing I really can’t talk about. Ask her if you want. Sorry, bud.” Alexander tightened his hands around the wheel.
They retreated back into their corners of the bench.
“So how did you escape?” Anthony asked.
“Which time?”
“When you were seventeen.”
“I jumped off a train off a bridge into the River Volga.”
“A long way down?”
“A long way down.” A hundred feet into the great unknown.
“And then you met Mommy?”
Alexander laughed. “Yes,” he said. “I jumped into the river, details details details, typhus, army, war with Finland, and then I met Mommy.”
“Typhus…is that why you’re always telling me to shower?”
“I’m telling you to shower,” Alexander said, “so you don’t repel the girls when you’re older.” Though perhaps less showering and more repelling might level that field a little.
“Dad, please,” said Anthony, “we’re not having another one of your talks, are we?”
“No, son, no.”
“Tell me how you met her.” Anthony’s eyes warmed in anticipation. His whole body turned on the bench seat to his father.
“I was walking down a Leningrad street, on patrol,” said Alexander, “and she was sitting across the road on a bench eating ice cream.”
“That’s not how Mommy tells it,” Anthony said teasingly. “She says you got on the bus for her and stalked her practically to Finland.”
“The stalking was second. First she sat on a bench.” Alexander smiled. “She was really enjoying her ice cream.”
“What else?”
“That’s it. She was singing. Humming. ‘We’ll Meet Again in Lvov, My Love and I.’” Alexander breathed in the distant melody of that song. He could barely remember how it went.
“And what did you do?”
“I crossed the street.”
Anthony was staring at him. “But why?”
“You have seen your mother, Anthony, right?”
“Was she pretty at sixteen, too?”
“You could say that.” Alexander blinked her away from his eyes so he could see the road.
“But there were other pretty girls in Leningrad, weren’t there? Mommy says you had other lady friends before her.”
Alexander shrugged, to convey what he couldn’t say to his son, which was: there was a nightly parade, a pleasant buffet of girlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirls—and then there was your mother.
Anthony was thoughtful. “I once heard you say to Mommy that you had been born twice. Once in 1919 and once with her. Was it on that street in Leningrad?”
“I said this?” Alexander did not remember. “When did I say that?”
“On Bethel Island. I was lying next to her. And you were whispering.”
“You remember Bethel Island?” Alexander smiled with piercing nostalgia.
“Yes,” Anthony said, not smiling. “You two were so happy then.” He turned to the passenger window.
And Alexander stopped smiling.
After getting home, he walked in and sat on Anthony’s bed. “Listen,” he said, “are you going to be okay alone for a few hours if I go see Mommy at the hospital?”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh.”
“I just…You’re such a big guy now, fourteen and a half.”
“I’ll be fine, Dad. Go. Leave the pistol by my bed.”
Alexander gave his son a poke. “Don’t ever tell your mother I taught you how to shoot, or there will be no joy for either of us.”
“You don’t think she knows what we do when she is away?”
“Anthony.”
“All right, all right.”
“Be good. Call the hospital if there’s a problem.”
An hour later Alexander was at the reception desk at ER. Erin’s face lit up. “Hi, Alexander,” she said. “This is a surprise. Hold on, I’ll page Tania. She’s in surgery. She has a spleen rupture and a five-car accident.”
In a moment the phone rang. “Your husband is here to see you,” Erin said into the phone. She paused with a smile. “Yes, your husband.”
Alexander saw an old man in rags shuffle limply and stop next to him. “Is she coming soon?” the man said, looking at Erin expectantly.
“I told you, she’ll be here in a few minutes, Charlie,” replied the nurse. “Take a seat.”
Alexander looked inquisitively at Erin.
“Without her,” she whispered, “he can’t stay sober.”
A mother walked up carrying in a boy not much older than nine. “We’ve been waiting so long,” the mother said in a strident voice. “He needs her.”
“She’ll be here in a minute,” Erin said, whispering to Alexander, “I should say, take a number, shouldn’t I?”
Alexander thought of leaving.
But the next minute through the latched double doors came Tatiana, and her eyes were on him and for him and there was a smile on her face. If he’d had a cap, he would have taken it off and held it in his hands.
“Hey,” she said, coming close.
“Hey.”
She pressed against him briefly. “What’s wrong? You okay?”
“I am now.” Alexander nearly shuddered. “You busy?”
“Swamped as usual. What’s the matter?” She peered at him, her palm on his chest.
“Nothing.”
“Oh.” Tatiana paused, chewed her lip. “I have maybe a half-hour before the next surgery. Want to go get a cup of coffee?”
What I want is to meander eight kilometers down the canals with you from Kirov to your Fifth Soviet door. I want to get on the tram with you, the bus with you, sit in the Italian Gardens with you. That is what I want. I will take the cup of coffee in your hospital cafeteria.
Erin cleared her throat and motioned with her eyes over to the seats. Tatiana glanced over. “Who’s first?”
“Husband first”—Erin smiled—“then Charlie.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said to Alexander and walked over to Charlie.
Alexander watched Charlie’s face. It softened, the smile curled up on his dried, scabbed lips. She sat next to him and took his hand. “Charlie, what’s bothering you today?” she said solemnly in her sing song voice.
“Want a drink so bad, Nurse Tania,” he stammered.
“Yes, but you don’t want to be unconscious under the cars again, do you? You don’t want to be brought here on a stretcher with your leg broken again, do you?”
Charlie’s mouth mulled. “You’d take care of me.”
“Charlie, I’m not here every day, you know that. And you see how many people I have to take care of,” said Tatiana. “Now you can do this. Have you been going to your meetings?”
After spending five minutes with him, she walked three seats over to the patiently waiting boy and the impatiently waiting mother. The boy was having spasms again in his legs, crippled by muscular dystrophy. Tatiana rubbed his legs and talked to him, and Alexander watched the boy’s stricken face and the mother’s resentful face.
When Tatiana came back to him, Alexander said, “Twenty minutes left.”
But as they were walking past examination room Number 7 on the way to the cafeteria, a young girl inside was crying for her mother. Apparently the girl had been found in an empty apartment down on Baseline, the mother gone, the apartment filthy. Social Services and the police were trying to locate another living relative.
“We’re all trying to find our mothers,” Alexander whispered before Tatiana went into the exam room, replaced the glucose IV bag and sat by the four-year-old until she stopped crying.
In the cafeteria, they got coffee and sat side by side, their arms touching. He took her hand under the table. “Five-car accident, huh?”
“I’m telling you, this drinking and driving business is nasty.” Tatiana shook her head. “People don’t know the laws of motion. They should be required to take a physics course before they set foot in a bar or inside a car.”
“But of course they should.” Alexander smiled. “Which laws of motion are these now?” With his thumb he wiped a piece of who knew what off her eyebrow.
“Objects in motion—say, blood in the veins—will stay in motion even when suddenly compelled to stop by an outside force. You won’t believe how tough sudden deceleration is on the veins.”
“You and your physics. You’re not racing bikes in the hospital, are you?”
“We did that yesterday,” Tatiana said, smiling lightly, “but the unwitting ambulance driver we were racing got real upset.”
“I bet.” Alexander was staring at her. Her Russian moon face was drawn tonight, her eyes were opaque and her mouth was pale, as if she’d been breathing too much through it while running from critical tent to terminal tent. He adjusted the strands of her hair back under her cap.
“What’s the matter, darling?” she said softly, placing her hand on his face. “What’s wrong with my husband that I need to fix?”
Alexander lowered his head. But before he could tell her all the things that were wrong with her husband—one of the minor ones being that he could not sleep alone one more Friday night, not one more—a male voice from behind them said, “Tania?” It was Dr. Bradley. Alexander let go of Tatiana. “Sorry to interrupt, but it’s time,” Bradley said, glancing at Alexander. “We’re due in scrubs in three minutes.”
They got up. “Yes, I’ll be right there,” said Tatiana, taking a last sip of coffee. “Dr. Bradley, you remember Alexander, my husband?”
Alexander shook hands with the doctor, who went to wait by the door.
Tatiana patted Alexander on the chest. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, honey,” she said, and made to go. He didn’t move and said nothing. She stopped, studied him, this way, that, considered him. Then she stepped in and lifted her face.
Blocking her with his body so she was hidden from Bob Hope’s view, Alexander bent to her upturned face, and kissed her soft pale pink parted lips.
“I’ll see you, babe,” he said.
And then he watched her rush out, talking about surgeries and sutures. Dr. Bradley opened the door for her and prodded her out with his hand on her back. Alexander emphatically threw their coffee cups away. Before he left, he sat in the waiting room next to Charlie, who reeked something terrible. Alexander had to move two seats over. Charlie turned to him, gummed toothlessly, nodded his head, and said, “That’s right. If you sit long enough, sometimes she comes again.”
“Does she?”
“If she has time. Sometimes I sit all night. I fall asleep, I wake up and she is sitting by me. I go when she goes.”
Alexander remained in the chair another thirty minutes, watching the doors. But Tatiana didn’t come again, and he went home.