That Saturday morning he said to her as he was getting ready for work and she was in bed, getting ready for sleep, “Tania, is Bradley the doctor in charge of ER?”
“Just the night shift.”
“He works only at night?”
“No. He does work the Friday graveyard. Why?”
“No reason,” said Alexander. “I didn’t remember until last night, but is my memory wrong or is David Bradley the same doctor who came to see you five years ago when Dudley was killed?”
“Was killed? I note with irony your use of the passive voice,” said a smiling Tatiana from the bed. “Yes, I think Bradley was. Why?”
“No reason.” Alexander was thoughtful as he fixed his tie. “Is he the one who looked at the marks on the back of your neck and then got all flustered like a schoolgirl?”
“Shura, I don’t know,” said Tatiana. “How do you remember that?”
“I didn’t remember it. Until just now.”
“Why are you remembering it just now?”
“No reason.”
“That’s the third time you said that.”
“Is it? I gotta go. I have a meeting at nine. Don’t forget we’re getting the Christmas tree this afternoon.” It was the end of November. The Christmas season was just beginning, but they liked to have their tree up for as long as possible. Had Bradley been carrying a torch for his wife for five years? Alexander wouldn’t have thought about it again, wouldn’t have cared, except that he couldn’t get her laughing head out of his chest, her throwing back her head, her hair, and heartily, throatily, lustily laughing.
Winter Wonderland
Two days later on Monday, Alexander and Anthony were once again impatiently waiting for Tatiana to come home. Alexander was bubbling inside. Anthony wouldn’t eat without her, and so Alexander sat like a stone on the couch and read the paper. Those lights in the desert valley sure were twinkling. And every one of them was another damn roadblock in the thirty-seven miles separating the hospital from their front door. Anthony had set the table, the bread was ready, the butter had been taken out of the ice box, the beef bourguignon she had made was heated up.
Tatiana walked in the door at nine thirty. “Sorry, I’m late,” she said.
Alexander got up from the couch—and said nothing. He did glare at her until he saw how wiped out she was. “Iris was late again,” said Tatiana, taking off her coat, putting her bag down. Yes, Alexander thought. But there was once a time when you punched the card and popped the clutch at 7:01, and didn’t care how late Iris was. “I have more responsibilities now,” she said.
“Did I say a word?” snapped Alexander.
The tips of her fingers were trembling. She barely ate. There was a small problem with Anthony at school, but Alexander didn’t know how to bring it up seeing how she was.
“Ant, Shura, you guys really should eat before I get home,” Tatiana said. “This is too late for you to have dinner. Please. Don’t wait. It makes me feel too bad, thinking of you sitting here waiting for me. Just eat in the future.”
“You want your family to eat without you three nights a week?” Alexander said quietly.
And she, nodding! said, “I’d rather you eat without me than eat this late. This is terrible.”
“Yes, it is,” Alexander said.
She didn’t lift her eyes.
Anthony came to his usual Phyrric rescue. Clearing his throat, he said, “Mom, don’t be angry, okay?”
“Great introduction.” Tatiana lifted her eyes to her son. “What did you do?”
“The principal wants to see you first thing tomorrow.”
Tatiana leveled her gaze on him. “And there I was,” she said, “going to go Christmas shopping for you first thing tomorrow, Anthony Alexander Barrington.”
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I got into a fight, Mom.”
She did a double take. “You what?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” said Anthony. “But the other kid has a broken nose.”
Tatiana glared at Alexander.
“What are you giving me dirty looks for?” Alexander said. “I didn’t break the kid’s nose.”
“Is his name Damien Mesker, by any chance?” asked Tatiana.
“Yes! God, how did you know?”
“Because we set his nose at ER this afternoon. Anthony, I thought you two were friends.”
“Mom, I didn’t mean to break his nose. We just got into a fight.”
“Where are your marks?”
“Well…” Anthony said, “I didn’t get hit. He went for me but I ducked.”
“I see.” Once again she glared at Alexander.
“What?” he said, shrugging. “You want your only child to stand there and take it?”
“It’s all my fault,” Anthony said quickly. “Don’t be upset with Dad.”
“Clean up, Ant.” Tatiana got up from the table. “Alexander, would you like to have your cigarette outside—now?”
Alexander gave his son a shove as he went out. “See what you did?” he whispered.
On the deck, Tatiana said, “Shura, what are you thinking teaching your boy to fight but not to have sense? He’ll break somebody’s nose now, but you know better than anyone that tomorrow it’ll be front teeth. And he did not use equal force. The other boy just pushed Ant.”
“Anthony has to know how to defend himself,” said Alexander. “The broken nose was an accident.”
“You’re impossible, that’s what you are,” said Tatiana. “Now I have to call the boy’s family. That’s another hour gone by, and it’s already after ten.”
“Yes,” said Alexander, sitting back against the bench, smoking, looking out onto the dark desert. “It is very late, isn’t it?”
After Anthony was made to call Damien and apologize, Tatiana talked a long time to Damien’s mother.
When Alexander came inside the bedroom, he found Tatiana asleep on top of the quilt in her uniform. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. In the cauldron inside his chest, tenderness swirled around, jumbled and swallowed by hostility. He shook her leg.
“Oh God,” she muttered, waking up. “I’m not alive tonight.”
“As always,” said Alexander. “At least tomorrow you have a day off.”
Quickly she undressed, stumbled to the bathroom, stumbled out, and fell into bed, her hair still in a bun, turning her face to him for a kiss, eyes closed.
“Do you want me to rub you?” Alexander whispered. She smelled faintly of musk oil that seemed to have permanently soaked into her skin, of lilac soap, of mint on her breath. His hand crept down her spine. Tatiana muttered something, groaned and was asleep. Alexander lay behind her, against her warmth, caressing her up and down, her soft round buttocks that fit so nicely into his hands, her soft thighs. Her skin was like a baby’s. This is what he imagined baby’s skin might feel like. He fondled her breasts that fit so nicely into his hands, gently pulled on her nipples, making her stir even in sleep, glided into the slope of her waist, rubbed her smooth stomach, stroked her fine fair hair. His hand prodded…but then he stopped. Leaning over her, his hand fanning her face, Alexander kissed her temple. Eventually he fell unhappily asleep.
In the morning he reached for her but she had to be at the principal’s office first thing. “Tania,” he said, sitting down to breakfast, “I’ll be home around twelve thirty for lunch.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, Shura,” Tatiana said, pouring him a cup of coffee and placing a croissant on his plate. “I…did I forget to tell you?” She laughed a little. “I’m not going to be here in the afternoon. After meeting with the principal, I was going to buy groceries, Christmas decorations, and then…um, I have to run to the hospital for a few hours.”
Alexander stopped drinking his coffee, stopped looking at her. For a few seconds he did not speak. Finally he said, “Anthony, can you wait outside for your mother? She’ll be right there.”
“Mom, we have to go. Mrs. Larkin is waiting.”
“Wait outside for your mother, I said.”
Casting an anxious look at Tatiana, Anthony left.
As soon as the door closed, Alexander turned to her. He was still sitting at the table. “What are you doing? Tell me, because I have no idea.”
“Honey,” Tatiana said softly, “you’re working anyway. What difference does it make?”
“All the f*cking difference in the world, Tatiana,” said Alexander. “You’re not sitting in an architect’s office, say mine, answering phones. Don’t tell me you’re working on your only day off till the weekend.”
“Well, I didn’t know you wanted to come for lunch,” she said apologetically. “You don’t usually come to have lunch with me anymore.”
They stared at each other for a short moment. “So?” he said. “I wanted to come today.”
“Anthony is going to be late for school,” said Tatiana. “And the principal is waiting.”
“Why are you going to the hospital? Are you picking up someone’s shift?”
“No,” she said, clearing her throat, her hands fidgeting. “It’s the children’s clinic at St. Monica’s Mission. They don’t have enough people to run it. They asked me to help, just for the Christmas season. They’re paying me double for four hours—”
“I don’t give a f*ck if they give you ten thousand dollars!” exclaimed Alexander. “How many times am I going to have to say it, we don’t need the money—” Suddenly he broke off, narrowing his eyes on her. “But you already know that,” he said slowly. “Let me ask you, who’s running this clinic with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is there an attending doctor? Or is it just you by your lonesome?”
“Yes, it’s mostly me. When I need extra help, sometimes Dr. Bradley—”
Alexander had heard all he needed to. He raised his hand and got up from the table.
“I run that clinic, Shura. Only when I need extra help…”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“We can’t…we can’t do this now,” Tatiana said faintly. “Anthony is waiting.”
“He certainly is,” said Alexander. “I’m waiting, too. You know what I’m waiting for? To have a full-time wife. You know how long I’ve been waiting? Since 1949. When—if ever—do you think I’m going to get that?”
“You’re not being fair,” Tatiana whispered, lowering her head so he wouldn’t see tears in her eyes. But Alexander saw. And he also saw Charlie’s eyes, and Erin’s eyes, and the boy’s and his mother’s eyes, and Dr. Bradley’s hand, and small Anthony jumping up and down for her when they were on the boat coming back from Berlin, and he saw her raised, naked hips in his fanned-out hands, and he lowered his own eyes and turned away from her.
Alexander turned his gaze, his head, his heart away from her.
Swinging his hand across the table, he flung his cup of coffee down onto the floor, where it shattered and spilled. Grabbing his wallet, he left with a great satisfying slam of the trailer door.
When he came home at six, Tatiana was home, the house was decorated comfortingly for Christmas, dinner was made, and the candles were burning. She made beef stroganoff, one of his favorites. She served him, poured his drink, served Anthony. They sat and broke their bread.
“Mom,” said Anthony, “how did you manage to put up all our decorations so quickly? The fake snow around the windowsills is an especially nice touch. Doesn’t it look great, Dad?”
“It does.” Alexander’s eyes were on his plate.
“How’s the stroganoff, Shura?”
“Good.” His eyes were on his plate.
“How was your day today?”
“Good.” His eyes were on his plate.
“I love Christmas,” Anthony said, bursting into song, It’s my favorite time of the year! Are we going to trim the tree this weekend?”
They ate with their son as their buffer, talking with him and through him. She made them bananas with rum and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Afterward Tatiana and Anthony cleaned up, while Alexander disappeared in the bedroom. He came out twenty minutes later, dressed in clean gray slacks, a clean white shirt, a gray tie. He was showered and clean shaven. He put on his jacket.
Tatiana wiped her hands on the dishtowel.
“I’m going out,” Alexander said.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“On a Tuesday?”
“That’s right.”
Tatiana opened her mouth, but Anthony was on the couch pretending to watch TV, and so she turned on her heels and gave him the back of her head.
Alexander met up at Maloney’s with duck-billed, rockabillied Johnny-boy, who was on a desperate prowl. Problem was, as Johnny put it, he was looking for a “week-long wife.” He had no interest in getting married, but all the girls, of which there weren’t enough, wanted nothing but to get married. All the servicemen had come home long ago, and now it was a buyer’s market—unfortunately for Johnny—with one girl for every five boys who wanted her. The girl didn’t have to put out until she was sure of Johnny’s seriousness of purpose, which he faked as best he could, being cocky and wily and a fast talker, but the conflict never went away, and Johnny never tired of talking about it. So this Tuesday night, he and Alexander talked and talked about it, and about their houses and their crews, and their customers, and then Johnny said, “Is everything all right, man?”
“Yes, fine.”
“You’re never out on a Tuesday night. Is Mrs. Barrington working or something?”
“No, no.” Alexander stared into his drink.
“Well, don’t look,” said Johnny, “but there are two young ladies eyeballing who I’m hoping is me.”
Alexander glanced over. Johnny smiled at the girls, who smiled back and then ignored him. He sighed. “It seems so easy. They smile. Why is the rest so hard?”
“Because you’re overthinking it,” said Alexander. “The hard part is getting them to look at you in the first place. If they’re eyeing you from the next table, the hard part’s done.”
“Hard part’s done?”
“Absof*ckinglutely,” said Alexander. “Call the bartender, ask him to send them a round of drinks.”
“And then?”
“You’ll see.”
Johnny did. A few minutes later, drinks in hand, the two women sauntered over to Johnny and Alexander.
“Thanks for the drinks, gentlemen,” they said, all smiles.
“You’re welcome,” said Johnny, glancing approvingly at Alexander. “But don’t give him any credit; he sent no drinks.”
“No?” said one of them. He glanced at her, then at his beer. “You’re Alexander Barrington, aren’t you?” she said.
“I am. Who wants to know?”
She stuck out her hand. “I’m Carmen Rosario. Remember, me and my husband talked to you last month about building in Glendale?”
“Oh, yeah.” Alexander didn’t remember. “So what happened with that?”
“We’re still thinking about it. Actually, I wanted to make an appointment to meet with you again, perhaps see some of your spec homes. We’re now thinking of building in Paradise Valley instead. We’ve got some land down in Chandler we’ve been trying to sell so we can build a little more centrally.”
“Call the office.” Alexander gave her his card. “I’ll be glad to sit down with you and…”
“Cubert.”
“Cubert.” He and Johnny exchanged a glance. Cubert?
“So, girls, where are your husbands?” asked Johnny. He was so out of control. He just said the first thing that came into his head.
The younger girl, whose name was Emily, tittered and said she wasn’t married. Carmen said her husband was in Las Vegas. Alexander smirked into his beer. Las Vegas! But no, Cubert apparently was a corporate real estate agent and had a lot of business there. “He’s also an EMT trainee at PMH. Where are your wives, gentlemen?”
“Alexander’s is home, and I don’t have one,” said Johnny, pseudo-plaintively. He had had too much to drink and wasn’t thinking even one pathetic move ahead because he said, “But I’m loooking for one.”
Emily immediately backed off—as in, took two steps back.
Carmen didn’t. “So are you Tuesday night regulars at this dive?”
“No, we’re Friday night regulars,” said Johnny.
“Oh, yeah?” said Carmen, smiling at Alexander. She was statuesque, dark-haired, put-together, coiffed, made-up, well-dressed, extremely large-breasted. “Where do you two live?”
“I live far,” said Alexander, putting down his empty glass on the bar. “And I’ve got to be going.”
Johnny pulled him aside. “You can’t leave yet!” he whispered. “I think I said something wrong, scared Emily off.”
“You think?” said Alexander. “Probably telling her you’re trawling for a wife was not the smartest thing you could’ve said. Oh, well, slick, better luck next time. Try the other one—she seems more friendly. After all, Cubert’s in Las Vegas.”
They laughed quietly. “Friendly to you, maybe,” Johnny said. “You’re indifferent and yet she is being flirty with you, why?”
“That’s why.”
Johnny convinced Alexander to stay for another drink.
They all went to sit at a darkened table in the corner. Carmen sat next to Alexander. Quickly he drank his beer, his fifth of the night. Carmen volunteered a lot of information about herself. She asked him questions about building a house, designing it, about stone or stucco, flat roofs or pitched. She heard flat roofs were more energy-efficient; was that true?
“That may be true,” said Alexander. “But there are only two kinds of flat roofs. Ones that leak and ones that don’t leak yet.”
Oh, how merrily Carmen laughed, jiggling her backcombed head, as if Alexander were Bob Hope! “You’re an architect, a home builder. You’re a jack of many trades, aren’t you?”
“And you don’t know the half of it, girls,” Johnny said, grinning. “Tell them about all the other things you were, man.”
Alexander got up. “I really have to go. Thanks for the drink, Johnny. Nice to meet you, ladies.”
Carmen got up, too. “So I’ll call you then, and we’ll arrange something?”
“Not me,” said Alexander. “Call Linda. She is my arranger.”
“Well, it was very nice to meet you, Alexander.” Nodding her breasts at him and smiling, she gave him her red-nailed hand.
Alexander drove home carefully. He’d had a little too much to drink.
At the house, the porch light shone for him. The door was locked. Tatiana didn’t like to lock the doors when he wasn’t home; she said it seemed like locking him out, but after Dudley, Alexander instilled in her the importance of dead bolt locking both doors at all times and drawing the shades while she was by herself in the middle of the desert wilderness.
When he came in, she was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him, drumming her fingers. The house was dark, just the stove light was on. Alexander didn’t say anything as he shut and locked the door and took off his jacket. When he went to get some water from the fridge, she said, “Why are you going out drinking on a Tuesday night?”
“Why not?”
“What are you doing, Alexander?”
“What are you doing, Tatiana?” His voice was raised. It was the liquor.
She kept hers quieter. “Why are you fighting with me?”
“I’m not fighting with you. I walked in the door. I said nothing.”
“I know you’re upset. But you think the reasonable way to deal with it is for you to be away from me drinking at a bar?”
“Oh, is that what we’d be doing if I was home?” said Alexander. “Dealing with it?”
“Away from me drinking on a Tuesday!”
“And why not? You’re away from me sixty hours a week.”
“I work!” she yelled.
In two strides Alexander loomed over her. “First of all,” he said, “do I seem to you like I’m in the mood to be yelled at? How many times have I told you—don’t raise your f*cking voice to me. And second of all—I don’t want to hear about your work ever again. Got that?”
Looking up at him from the chair, Tatiana pulled his hand away from her face. Her short silk robe was coming loose. “Soldier, what are you doing?” she said tremulously. “Stand down.”
“You don’t tell me to stand down,” Alexander said loudly. “I’ll stand down when I want. Since you do whatever the f*ck you want.” He turned and walked into the bedroom.
Slowly Tatiana followed him. “Can we just talk about this reasonably—”
“We’re not going to talk about it at all.” He was at his closet. “Tell me—have you been so out of it, you haven’t noticed our days have been getting harder? Our minutes have been getting harder?”
“If they’re getting harder it’s because you’re making them harder,” said Tatiana.
“Oh, I’m doing that, am I?” Alexander ripped off his tie.
Tatiana sat tensely on the edge of the bed. The sashes of her robe had come half-undone; he could see a glimpse of her breasts, her navel, her blonde mound, her white thighs. “Yes,” she said. “You going out drinking, coming home late and not sober, acting like this, that’s making it harder.”
He unhooked his cuff links, took off his white shirt, his white tank, and stood before her bare to the waist. “Well, you know something?” Alexander said. “I’m done being nice. Completely done.”
“It’s just for December,” Tatiana said. “One month, and then—”
“What did I say?” he yelled. “I don’t want to talk about it!”
“Stop yelling! God!”
“Are you angry? Want to take it out on me?” Alexander tapped his chest. “Come on, babe. You want a fight? You’ve come to the right place.”
She blinked. “I don’t want to fight with you, what are you talking about?”
He unbuckled his belt, pulled it out of the loops.
“You can’t be this upset with me, Shura,” said Tatiana, “for four hours at a children’s clinic. Is it something else—”
Not letting her finish, Alexander raised his hand and swung the belt down. She gasped as it whistled through the air and hit the bed in a thud next to her bare thigh. “Tania!” he said, bent over her. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it. Which part of that didn’t you understand?”
“Oh, what’s wrong with you?” Tatiana said in a frightened voice, nearly falling back on the bed, her hands barely supporting her.
“Did I say, don’t rattle me?” Her robe had come open.
“Yes.” Quietly.
“Did I say, don’t speak about your f*cking work to me?”
“Yes.” Quieter and quieter. “Shh.”
“Don’t tell me to shh. You shh. Because the very next time you open your mouth,” he said through his teeth, “I’m going to lose my temper.” He was still standing enormous over her, half naked himself.
Tatiana edged her way off the bed. “Excuse me,” she said in a small voice. “I need to get past.”
As always, her tiny, naked vulnerability with her trembling erect nipples pointing up at him brought out the worst in him when his temper was this hot at his throat. Her surrender didn’t quell him; just the opposite, it incensed him; and incensed his concupiscence also. She was afraid? She had every right to be. Sometimes he was just plain not nice, and knew it, and didn’t care. Unable to restrain himself, Alexander did not let her go past.
Her robe flung off, his clothes off, blankets and pillows off the bed, he laid her on her back in front of him, straddling her, holding her wrists tight above her head. Squirming slightly, she said nothing, raising her face to him, raising her breasts to him. “Shura,” she whispered.
“Don’t Shura me.” He flipped her by her legs onto her stomach, pressing her into the bed, pressing her lower back, her hips, her upper thighs into the bed.
“Shura,” Tatiana repeated, muffled in the sheets.
Restraining her with one hand, Alexander unwrapped her braid with the other, fingers pulling through the strands, letting her hair spill out. “Are you too tired tonight, Tania? Barely awake? Would you like to put on some pajamas? Are you not in the mood?” he whispered into her neck, slipping his fingers between her legs, and groaning.
After a few moments, she moaned in return. “Let me turn around.”
“No.” The flat palms that had been spanning her back were now spanning the backs of her thighs. “I want it my way, not your way.” He spread her legs and knelt between them, leaning over her prone body, gripping her hair, sliding inside her. It felt so good that he stayed a while, but then withdrew, opened her up a little more, and pressed himself between her buttocks.
Oh dear God…wait, Shura, wait… Tatiana whispered hoarsely. Let me touch you.
“No,” whispered Alexander as he guided himself into her, slowly, but not that slowly. “I’m going to touch you. Lie still.”
Her hands grasped the sheets, the edge of the mattress, the rattling brass rails of the headboard. He continued to push himself in.
Shura…wait…I’ll—let me turn around and you can—
“No.” He was fully inside. He took a breath, still so upset with her. His face was in her neck. She smelled of vanilla…of burnt caramel sugar…of cream…of rum.
Both his hands moved up to grip her forearms. He pulled out and thrust back in.
The brass rails nearly came apart as she cried out.
He pulled out and thrust back in.
In out, in out, his every thrust punctuated by her jagged cries.
He didn’t stop moving, or whispering to her.
She was panting, perspiring, her neck, her face wet from the great tension.
Pressing her head into the sheets, sucking the rear slope of her shoulders, his body over her, don’t move, Tania, oh but he moved.
He had to stop. He couldn’t believe it, but he was about to come—unheard of this fast, especially after drinking. She was always too much for him like this, in such exquisite distress, on her stomach, face in sheets, blonde mane all over, gasping, grasping. Slowing down, taking shallow breaths, propping up, Alexander tried to get control of himself, but it was no use. He was done for.
Panting he lay collapsed on top of her afterward as she continued to heave underneath him in small whimpers. His face was in her hair.
The next morning when Alexander opened his eyes, Tatiana was already up and in uniform. They didn’t speak for a few minutes. She wasn’t smiling as she eyed him. “Do you ever intend to tell me where you were last night,” she finally asked, “or should I stop asking and draw my own conclusions?”
He stretched. “I had a drink with Johnny.”
“Ah. Your nice, ever-searching, ever single, bar-hopping, doll-hunting friend Johnny-boy. You’re teaching him a few things you know?”
Alexander rubbed his eyes. “Um—isn’t it a little early for this?”
“Last night you weren’t interested in talking.”
He got a hot leap in his stomach as he sense-remembered her last night. All his five senses remembered her. He didn’t feel just a beat of arousal, he felt a pounding.
Tatiana left the room and Alexander got up to go wash. She came back with a cup of coffee for him. “Don’t forget about the party tonight.”
“What party?” He took the coffee from her hands.
“The Christmas party at the hospital,” Tatiana said slowly, frowning.
“Oh. Yeah.” Now Alexander remembered. “I don’t want to go.”
“We have to.”
“Perhaps you haven’t noticed,” said Alexander, “but I’m not in a party mood.”
“I can’t help but notice.” Tatiana lowered her gaze. “Still, we have to go.”
“We don’t.”
“Alexander,” she said, staring up at him, “are you telling me that you don’t want to go to the Christmas party at my hospital, to which all the spouses come?”
“Finally I’m making myself clear.”
“Fine, suit yourself,” she said, grabbing her bag and walking away. “But I’m going.”
“Great, go,” Alexander said into her white-uniformed back. “You do all sorts of things I don’t want you to, why stop at a party?”
Tatiana stopped at the bedroom door. After watching him warily, with a great sigh she slowly came back to him. Alexander stood in front of her, angry and naked, and morning-and-Tatiana-inflamed. She put down her nurse’s bag.
“Shh,” she said softly, lifting her face to him, as her hands lowered and took hold of him. “Shh. Come on.” She stroked him. “Come on…out of the battle zone. Weapons down, soldier.”
He wanted her on her knees in front of him. His palm nearly went on top of her head. On the one hand, such gratification. But on the other hand—“It’s after six. You’re going to be late for work.” Alexander with inhuman effort forced himself to pull her hands off him. “Run along now.”
“You’re going to come, right?” She kissed his chest.
“Under protest.”
“Of course.”
As soon as Alexander walked into the common room on the third floor of the hospital and took one look at his wife, he knew the night was going to lead to no good. Tatiana had this uncanny ability: be exhausted and raw like twine when she came home, but when she was at a hospital party, surrounded by her friends, it was as if she had done nothing all day but soak in a hot bath. She was refreshed and flushed, and as Alexander walked in, she was standing with a group of people, one of them Dr. Bradley, and she was throwing her head back in delight.
He must be quite a joker, quite the wit, Alexander thought, making his way to her, something ugly twitching inside his heart. She just can’t stop the pealing when she’s around him.
Her hair was loosely braided, there was a long curled tuft at the back that bobbed when she laughed and the red velvet ribbons that barely held the braid together bobbed and shook, too. Gold hair strands fell around her face. She was wearing makeup and her mouth was glossy red. To match the mouth, she was wearing a show-stopping new dress in flaming Christmas red—Alexander guessed trying to get as far away as she could from nursing white. The dress had a fitted bodice stacked with breasts and taffeta, taffeta that zigzagged into a swing skirt full of gathered tulle and netting layers. Underneath she wore a starched crinoline petticoat he could hear crinkle every time she moved. He bet he wasn’t the only one who could hear it. The dress had puffed bolero sleeves—as though she were a flamenco dancer, about to dance the salsa and sing “La Bruja.” The boned corset made her waist even more tiny and her breasts even more prominent than usual. Her four-inch-high red slingbacks were satin and her legs, in seamed nylon stockings, were lovely.
She was lovely.
Alexander said nothing about the unbelievable dress, not a word. While he shook hands all around, Tatiana got him a drink and some food. He joined in the ongoing conversation regarding the future of the medical profession in the United States. There was heavy overcrowding at hospitals because of the baby boom. The hospitals couldn’t cope, the maternity clinics couldn’t cope. Somebody asked why, if the building industry could cope with the demand for more housing, couldn’t more hospitals be built with larger maternity wings? Alexander said that in the eight years they had lived in Arizona, a million new houses went up, while Phoenix still only had the one hospital.
“Well, perhaps you should design and build us a new hospital, Alexander,” said Carolyn. “To help with the baby overcrowding. And then your wife could run it.”
“A hospital just for Tania!” said Bradley with a laugh, looking at Tatiana. “What an idea!”
“Yes, but did you know,” said Carolyn, “that more and more women are choosing to have their babies at home with the help of a midwife? I decided to take a course and I’m now a registered midwife, thank you very much.” She smiled. “No more Tupperware for me. Tania,” she said, “you won’t believe how much money I make in my spare time. You should become a midwife. You’d be very good at it, you know.”
“Of course she would,” said Bradley. “Tania is good at everything.”
Tatiana demurred from an answer; Alexander demurred from so much as glancing at her, curtly excusing himself out of the idiotic conversation and going to get another drink.
“Well, hello there, Alexander!”
He turned. It was the woman from yesterday—Carmen.
“Oh, hello,” he said coolly, stepping away and glancing across the room. Tatiana was otherwise engaged and hadn’t looked his way. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you, Cubert, my husband, is training to be an EMT here in his spare time.” She tutted. “Because he’s got so much of it. But more important, what are you doing here?”
“My wife works here.”
“Your wife works? Which one is she?”
“Which one’s Cubert?” he asked, not pointing out Tatiana.
“Right over there.” Cubert was a little skinny nervous thing, motioning for Carmen from the other side of the room. Tutting, she ignored him, taking out a cigarette. “Have you got a light?”
Flicking on his lighter, Alexander brought it to Carmen’s cigarette. She cupped his hand as she lit up, as if there were an Arizona super-cell tornado swirling through the common room at Phoenix Memorial Hospital.
Of course it was at this very moment that Alexander lifted his eyes and saw Tatiana across the floor, her darkening gaze on him.
“So I called your secretary,” Carmen said, puffing, smiling, “but she said you’re busy until after the New Year. Is there anything you can do about that?”
“If Linda says I’m booked, I’m booked.” Alexander stepped away. “I have to go. Excuse me—Carmen, right?”
Cubert was getting more insistent in calling for her, and an exasperated Carmen rushed off.
And then Tatiana wouldn’t speak to him. Alexander asked her if she wanted a drink. She said no. He asked her if she wanted some more food. She said no. He stopped asking and she moved away, going to stand next to Bradley, Carolyn, and Erin. She drank, ebbed, flowed, and then said something and they burst into laughter, and Bradley took Tatiana’s hand, bowed before her theatrically, and kissed it.
He did it as a joke, everyone smiled and went on talking as if it were nothing, everyone except Alexander, that is, who walked over to Tatiana, took her carefully by her arm, pulled her slightly away with an “excuse me” and said, “I’m leaving.”
“It’s only eleven.”
“Seems plenty late, don’t you think?”
She wasn’t looking at him. “All right, go,” she said. “I’ll be home a little later.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I am…later.”
His hand on her bolero sleeve squeezed harder.
“It’s fine. You go.” Tatiana pulled herself away. “This way you’ll still have time to make your bar rounds.” Her mouth was tight. And then she looked up at him. “When you need to stay and talk to me, you run out for a drink with your boys who go to meet the girls. If you had any decency you would stay with your wife for thirty more minutes at her Christmas party.” The starched crinoline crackling, she turned to walk away, making a little dismissing motion with her hand. “But you go to it, little barfly, fly away. Shoo.”
Alexander stared hard at her!—her loose blonde hair swirling in a wild wind inside his heart.
He left.
Trouble waited for her at home, Tatiana knew.
The porch light was on. Alexander was sitting out back. Well, at least they would have this one dressed. Tatiana was helpless during the naked arguments in the bedroom. She always lost the fight and had to plead for understanding, agree to anything, acquiesce to anything, to everything. It wasn’t even acquiescing, it was just complete submission. Like yesterday. She was never right in the bedroom, which was why he liked to fight in it so much.
The house was unlocked—because the man of the house was home. She came in, dropped her purse on the shelf, and went to check on Anthony. He was sleeping deeply.
After taking off her cashmere ivory coat and red heels, Tatiana made herself a cup of tea but couldn’t go out back. She went on the front deck instead and sipped her tea, shivering in her Christmas dress.
Alexander was on the rear deck with his back to the house, and Tatiana was on the front deck with her back to the house.
Finally, her tea long finished, she walked through, opened the back door and stepped out. Only a small yellow light shone over the door. Alexander was smoking, drinking a beer, and didn’t turn her way. She debated going to sit at the table in the corner across from him. He didn’t like her close when he was upset. But she knew he needed her close when he was upset, and so she sat by him on the rocking bench, not touching him, but close enough to smell the leather of his WWII bomber jacket and the cigarettes and beer on his breath. He looked so handsome tonight when he came to the party, his short black hair in a clean sheen, face freshly shaven, dark suit pressed, white shirt crisp. And now he was in his black long johns that he knew she loved and his bomber jacket that he knew she loved, his long limbs spread out on the bench, his body so wide, and so grim tonight.
“It’s cold out, no?” Tatiana said. “The desert in the winter is not always hospitable.”
“Yes, it’s ice everywhere.”
“No, it isn’t, Alexander.” So he wasn’t wasting time. “Come on, what’s been the matter with you?”
“Nothing’s been the matter with me.”
“How in the world do you know Cubert’s wife?”
“She and her husband came to look at some spec homes last month. But what does she have to do with anything? Tania, women have been dressing up, coming close, flirting, asking me for a light, for a house, for a job for years. They were on the boat in Coconut Grove, they are here in Scottsdale. Who cares?”
“Shura, where are we going wrong?” Tatiana whispered. “You and I are not allowed to go wrong anywhere—what are we doing that’s not right?”
“I’m going to tell you what,” Alexander replied, finally turning to face her. “Because obviously I have not been making myself clear the last eight years. What’s not right in our house,” he said, “is you putting your work, your hospital, the things you do, the other things you do before me and our marriage.”
“Alexander, I don’t put anything before you,” she said. “I put up with everything—”
“Put up with me? Are you f*cking kidding me?”
“Wait, wait, I misspoke,” she said, her hands fanning out, trying to steady him. “I meant I never cease to be what I’ve always been for you. And as you know,” she said, with slight color coming to her cheeks, “I never deny you.”
“Tania, you’re not home for sixty to sixty-five hours in your week!” said Alexander. “You deny me those hours, don’t you? The hours you are home you are no f*cking good to anybody. Have you seen yourself lately? You’re worse than ever.”
“No good to anybody, are you joking?” she exclaimed, and suddenly her hands went down as she became less interested in steadying him, needing to steady herself instead. “What’s not done for you? Is your house not clean? Are your shirts not pressed? Is your dinner not on the table? Is your bread not fresh? Do you ever have to move to pick up your own plate, to pour your own coffee, make your own bed? For God’s sake, Alexander,” Tatiana said, “I’m your maid and your milk-maid.” She paused to let the army words sink in. “What is it that I don’t do for you?”
Alexander said nothing.
All Tatiana heard in the silent chasm was his internal screaming.
“Oh, what’s happening?” she whispered, and her hands went up to him again. “Shura, angel, come on, look at all we have…I know you’re sad about…but look at the rest of our beautiful life. Look at our perfect Ant. We have him. And so many bad things are behind us.”
“Obviously not all bad things,” said Alexander. His elbows were on his knees as he lit another cigarette.
“No, they are, they are.”
He pulled away from her reaching hands. “Lazarevo is behind us, too, Tania,” he said. “Lazarevo, Deer Isle, Coconut Grove, Napa, Bethel Island. They’re all behind us. You know what’s not behind us? Leningrad.” He blew out smoke from his mouth. “That’s not behind us.”
Tatiana, despite her great effort at self-control, started to shake. Addressing only what she could of his comment, she said, her teeth clattering, her face in her chest, “Yes, but every day when I drive home, I think of running out of Kirov, turning my face to you. Every night when I come in your arms, it’s a bit of Lazarevo for me—every day in Arizona.”
And what did her loving husband say to that? “Oh, give me a f*cking break,” he said. “Frankly the amount of time I spend on you, I could make a chair come.”
Gasping, she jumped up. She whirled to go.
“That’s right, go,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Can’t even finish it, can you?”
“Finish what?” Her voice was raised. “You say things like that, and you want me to finish? Fine, I’ll finish.” She felt herself getting hot in the neck. “You spend time on me? Yesterday you spent time on me? Yes, you’re right, because that was effective and satisfying.”
“Yes,” said Alexander, smoking, staring at her with his brazen eyes. “It was both.”
Tatiana had to back away and grasp the deck railing behind her. “It’s late,” she said quietly, her eyes to the ground. And this is so pointless. “It’s very late, and I’m exhausted. I have to work tomorrow. I can’t be without sleep and then be on my feet for twelve hours. Why don’t you hang in there until the weekend and then we can talk some more about this.”
Alexander made a mirthless sound. “Oh, you’re good. To show me how much you want to solve our problems, you’re telling me to wait till the weekend?”
“And what problems would you like to solve tonight?” Tatiana asked tiredly.
“This very f*cking thing in your voice,” he said. “You’re with me right now and look, you’re already thinking of tomorrow, of flying to your work; you’re already glazed over. I’ve become the annoying thing you do while you can’t wait to get to the thing you really want to do. I’m now Kirov instead of Alexander. You say you remember Kirov? When you slogged twelve dogged hours to have five flurry minutes with me—and not the other way around?”
“God, is it possible for you just once,” exclaimed Tatiana, “to keep yourself from saying every nasty thing you can think of?”
“I’m not saying every nasty thing I can think of.”
She twisted away to give him the back of her head, to face the desert.
She heard him light another cigarette. They didn’t speak for a few minutes. Then Alexander spoke. “Who are you putting on a red dress for, Tatiana?” he asked quietly, inhaling his nicotine. “I know it can’t be for me.”
That made her spin back to him. He was sitting casually, a foot crossed over a knee, an arm stretched out across the back of the bench, smoking, but his eyes on her were black and anything but casual. Tatiana walked across the deck, her hands in supplication. She wasn’t angry at him anymore and she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t care what he did. Moving his foot off his knee, she kneeled between his open legs, her swing skirt ballooning out in a red parachute on the deck. “Husband,” she whispered, “what are you talking about?” Looking up into his ominous face, she slid her hands up his quads until they rested on him.
Alexander continued to smoke, his other arm draped over the bench. He didn’t touch her himself, but he let her touch him. “What’s happened to my wife?” he asked. “Where are her hands to bless me?”
“Here they are, darling,” she whispered, caressing him. “Here they are.”
“Who are you wearing red for, Tatiana?”
“You, Shura…only you—what are you worrying yourself over?”
“Where’s that burka to cover you completely?” He took a breath. “Are you dressing up for Dr. Bradley?”
“No!”
“Do you think I’m blind?” Nothing was casual or relaxed anymore about his tense body. The arm came off the bench. “That I have no idea what good old Dr. Ha-ha-so-f*cking-funny Bradley is thinking when he touches your back? When he kisses your hand, pretending it’s just a joke, you think I don’t know what he’s thinking? When he stands close to you, looks into your nice red lips as you talk, when his eyes shimmer at the mention of your name? He’s gone soft in the head, you think I don’t know? I was the one with the hat in my hands, standing for hours waiting for you to get out of Kirov. What,” said Alexander, “you’ve moved on from me? You want to bring Bradley to his knees now?” He paused. “You don’t have to wear red for that.” Here it came. His face darkened and he grabbed her caressing arm and pushed her so hard away that she fell on the deck. “Well, go to it, little one,” said Alexander. “Because, personally, I’m broken from being on my knees so long.”
“Oh, Shura,” Tatiana whispered, creeping back to him. “I beg you, please stop. Please. You’re getting yourself crazy over nothing.” She came between his legs again, pulling up on him, clinging to his leather jacket, to his neck, looking up into his face, into his eyes, pulling him down to herself, to her soft and quivering mouth. They kissed, her hands surrendering up to him, his cigarette thrown down. His hands gripping her face, he was bent to her, kissing her helplessly as she was on her knees in front of him in her red bolero dress.
“Go—go twirl your hair in his face, Tania,” whispered Alexander into her mouth. “Like you once did for me. Maybe he’s unblemished. Not me. I’m f*cking scarred from the inside out.”
“Yes!” Tatiana cried in a temper, pulling away from his hands. “Mostly on your damned heart!” Pushing him in the chest, she jumped up. She was panting. “I know what it is,” she said. “This is absurd of you, and deliberately cruel. This is our life here, our real life, with real things going on. I know this isn’t Kirov or Lazarevo. What ever is.” Her voice cracked. “What ever is. I know you want it back, but it’s gone, Alexander! It’s gone and we will never have it again, no matter how much you want it.”
Alexander stood from the bench. “You think it’s Lazarevo I want from you?” he said in a stunned voice.
“Yes,” Tatiana said loudly, taking half a step back. “You want that young girl back. Look at her, how beautiful she was, how young, and how much she loved me!”
“No!” Tatiana saw he was struggling to restrain himself from taking one step to her. “I don’t need your 18-year-old self to love me. I can get that any second of any day.” He was breathing hard to keep in control. “I don’t even have to close my eyes.” He broke off to take another breath.
Oh Shura.
“I’d settle not for Lazarevo but for Napa,” he said. “I’d settle for our first months here in Scottsdale. I’d settle for a week in Coconut Grove, for one hour on Bethel Island. I’d settle for anything other than what I’m getting from you lately,” he said, “which is a whole lot of f*cking nothing.”
“Oh God, I honestly don’t know what you’re accusing me of,” she whispered, unable to look at him, lowering her stricken head. Tatiana’s hands were clenched at her chest. Alexander’s hands were clenched at his sides. He was on one side of the wooden deck railing, she on the other, the potted yellow prickly pears between them, their hands knotted, their mouths twisted.
Black silence passed crashingly between them.
“You’re glad we don’t have a baby,” Alexander finally said. “Because you don’t ever want to leave your work.”
“I’m not glad we don’t have a baby!” she said, her voice breaking. “But you’re right, I don’t want to leave my work. Leave work and do what? Stare at the walls all day?” She squeezed her hands together, trying to keep herself from emitting a cry. “Shura, we’ve been through this and through this. When I get…” She couldn’t continue.
“That’s right, do please stop yourself,” he said, shaking his head. “Words are so f*cking cheap. But don’t you find it ironic,” he went on in a voice that was anything but ironic, “that we made Anthony in Leningrad? In complete desperation, when the bombs were whistling by, when we were both at death’s open door, the besieged and starving Leningrad begat our only child. You’d think that here, in the land of plenty—” He broke off, his gaze fixed on the planks of the deck, and stepped further away from her. “You don’t want to hear it. You’ve never wanted to hear it, but I’m telling you once again,” Alexander said, “it’s because you’ve put that place between us in our bed—you with your trembling fingers and visions of death—and you’ve put it between us and our hope of ever having another baby—yes! Don’t shake your head at me!”
“What you’re saying is not true!” Tatiana cried, fighting the impulse to put her hands over her ears.
“Oh, it’s true and you know it! You’ve got nothing left for a baby, nothing! Everything you have goes to that f*cking hospital.”
“Please stop, please,” she whispered. “I’m begging you…”
Alexander stopped. When he spoke again, every breath out of him was exhaled with alkaloid poison anguish. “I won’t make peace with it,” he said. “I know you want me to, but I can’t and I won’t. I know you think we’ve been dealt a fine hand here, but very soon Ant will be grown and gone—and then what?”
“Shura, please!”
“Don’t you see,” said Alexander, “that unless an infant comes to this house, we are forever in the ice in Lake Ladoga with your dead sister and sunk under the winter tree with your brother? We are against the wall with my mother and father with blindfolds over our faces, and I’m digging coal in Kolyma. The baby,” he whispered wrenchingly, “is the American thing. The baby is the new house and the new life. The baby is the power that sustains the stars. Don’t you see that?”
Her head shuddering in sorrow, Tatiana’s hands were clasped in a suffocating prayer—at her throat.
Everything she had she gave to him. Everything—except the one thing he desperately wanted. Except the one thing he desperately needed.
“Our house is divided against itself,” said Alexander.
She shook her head. “Please don’t say that,” she whispered. “God, please.”
Waving his hand to flag the finish, Alexander collected his beer can, his ash tray. “There’s no use talking any more about it,” he said, walking past Tatiana to the house. “We’ve talked it now to death.”
These were the snapshots of their brief and unspeakably silent love that night: Tatiana with her legs draped over the bedroom chair, her white crinoline and red flowing skirt spread around and near and over Alexander’s lowered black black head. And this: Alexander standing, not touching, and Tatiana kneeling on the floor in front of him. And this: Tatiana on her hands and knees in her red bolero dress, Alexander behind her. And finally the afterglow: he’s gone back outside and is sitting on the deck, smoking, and she is alone in the armchair, in her red bolero dress. The ticks of time, the fractions of an hour, four bars of a rhyme. There was no whispering, no sighing, no crying out, not a single oh Shura. The only muted sounds coming out of her throat were as if she had been suffocating.
And the next morning Tatiana got up and flew to work in the red Ford Thunderbird rag-top Alexander bought her so she would love him.
Faith Noël
Tatiana and Bradley were sitting across from each other having lunch that afternoon, a Thursday. Tatiana kept the conversation flowing, shop talk, other nurses, and patients, Red Cross blood drive, which she organized every year for the city of Phoenix. “Did you hear about the woman who refused a Cesarian section for her twins?” Tatiana asked.
“This isn’t one of your little jokes, is it?” He grinned.
“No, no joke,” she said seriously, now wishing it were. “One of the babies was stillborn.”
Bradley stopped smiling and nodded. “I know. The other one is okay, though. He’s already been adopted. But sometimes this happens with twins.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana. “I was one of those too-small, non-Cesarian twins. But that was in a Soviet peasant village. This is going on in your maternity clinic, David. The woman refused the op because she said the doctor looked shifty.”
“I’m not responsible for the choices Cesarian mothers make in my clinic.”
“Mmm,” she said. “You mean non-Cesarian mothers. Are you responsible for Dr. Culkin?”
Bradley rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately for him, yes. Shifty, she said? Dr. Culkin, a pediatric surgeon who came to work drunk?”
Tatiana nodded. “Perhaps that woman was right to express reservations about his services, don’t you think? He could’ve cut out her lungs by mistake.”
They both smiled.
She looked away.
“By the way,” Bradley said, “you looked very beautiful yesterday.”
“Thank you.” She wasn’t looking at him.
“You were the loveliest woman in that room.”
“Very specific, but thank you.”
Suddenly Bradley reached over and placed his hand over hers. It was not the hand that had her wedding ring on it. She took her hand away. Reaching for her again, he opened his mouth, and she shook her head.
“David,” she said, in a very low voice. “Don’t say anything.”
“Tania…”
“No. I beg you.”
“Tania…”
“Please,” she said, her eyes lowered.
He leaned to her, halfway across the narrow table.
“David!” she cut him off, too loudly, then lowered her voice in supplication. “Please…”
“Tania, I have to tell you—”
“If you speak another word to me, one more word, I won’t be able to have lunch with you again,” said Tatiana. “I won’t be able to talk to you again or work with you again. Do you understand?”
He stopped, silently staring at her.
“If you break the unspoken barrier between us, you’ll stop being like everyone else I sit down to have lunch with. We’ve been good friends, it’s no secret.” She blinked. “There will be no fooling anyone anymore if you open your mouth. Because then I won’t be able to come home and look my husband in the face and say you and I are just co-workers.”
“Is that what you say to him when he asks?”
“Of course.”
“Does he…ask?”
She blinked again, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Yes. Even then he doesn’t believe me. I’m not doing anything wrong by sitting down having lunch with you twice a week, as we chat about all sorts of nonsense. But I would be doing something wrong if I sat down with you after hearing what you cannot say to another man’s wife.” Tatiana could see Bradley was deeply conflicted. “What you cannot say,” she repeated intensely, “to another man’s wife.”
“Tania, if you only knew…”
“Now I know.”
“You have no idea.”
“Now I do.”
“No, Tania,” Bradley said, shaking his head with sadness. “You really don’t.”
“We were friends,” she said weakly. “We are still friends.”
“Did you know how I felt?”
“I’m married, David,” said Tatiana. “Married in a church, sworn before God, promised for life to someone else.” She winced as she said it. Her Alexander was now someone else? Tatiana’s head was deeply down. She was ashamed. She sat with Bradley because he was calm and didn’t blame her for unfathomable sorrows she could not fix; because he made her laugh; she sat with him because he made her a little bit happy. Isn’t that what friends did? This is what Vikki did.