CHAPTER TWELVE
Gone Astray
So Blue Thinking About You
Wednesday night after work Alexander sat in front of an obscure bar-restaurant all the way south in Chandler. He sat in his truck, the engine still running, his unbandaged, barely scabbed-over hands on the wheel. He was in his best suit. He had driven miles from his usual haunts to meet Carmen.
It was past eight, past the time he was supposed to meet her and he—who was never late unless Tatiana made him late—was sitting in the truck. All he had to do was turn off the engine and go inside. What was the problem?
Tatiana was still making him late.
It took something out of Alexander to prepare for this, to prevent questions in case any arose, to think of contingencies. “Can Ant go to Francesca’s after school? I’m working late,” he had said to Tatiana that morning. They hadn’t been speaking, except through and about Anthony. Alexander had been counting—depending—on more unbearable silence, but instead this morning, Tatiana had said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Another late meeting? Like you don’t work hard enough. Will you eat?”
Alexander promised her he would eat.
And now it was eating him up inside.
He said to her as they were getting ready, “I don’t know how late I’ll be. It’s way down south.”
And Tatiana said, “Don’t worry. Just go do what you have to do. I’ll be waiting. How are your hands? Are they feeling better? You want me to rebandage them?”
This after four days of barely speaking!
So now Alexander was sitting here, about to go do what he had to do. And he couldn’t leave the truck.
“Do you want me to call?” he asked just before she left for work, when she was already at the door, cap on, nurse bag in her hands.
“If you’re going to be very late, call,” said Tatiana. “Otherwise just come home.” She did not, however, look at him when she said these things, nor raise her eyes to him.
The engine hummed. The whirling dervish inside him was so unstill and so merciless that he found himself shaking the wheel in a hellish attempt to get control of himself.
It was all right. It would be all right. She would never know—about this. Alexander did not tell her his prepared lies about Tyrone because she had not asked, and he was certainly not going to volunteer. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, she never looked at him and said, “Where were you till six in the morning?”
Yet things were happening in his tranquil house that he could hardly ignore. Tatiana had not cooked for him since Friday; had not made fresh bread! She had not washed his clothes. She had not made his side of the bed, or picked up his cigarette butts, or thrown away his newspapers, or brought him coffee. Tatiana had not gone grocery shopping. Both Monday and Tuesday, Alexander had to bring milk home.
“You haven’t bought milk,” he said on Monday.
“I forgot,” she said.
Tuesday she said nothing and he didn’t ask. Both days she worked, and at night the lamps had not gone on, the candles had not been lit. Both evenings Alexander had to light the Christmas tree himself when he got home. And despite their civil words this Wednesday morning—a fact remained as stark and foreign as the Japanese in Normandy: they had not kissed since Saturday, had not touched in bed since Saturday. These were uncharted waters in their marriage. Since they had been together, they had not spent a single day without touching; it was as certain as the moontides; and now they—who slept at night as if they were still on the ground in his tent in Luga—had not touched for four days!
What did Alexander think was going on with her?
He wasn’t thinking about her. He was thinking only about himself and all the lies he could tell her so that she would never find out.
Carmen’s sedan was in the lot. She was already inside waiting. He turned off the engine. He had to go in. They would have a drink, maybe a quick—very quick—bite to eat. Afterward—Alexander had brought cash for the Westin hotel, condoms for himself, he was ready. He’d go with her, spend an hour, maybe two, shower, get dressed, leave.
And here’s where the trouble was: right at the point of showering with hotel soap and leaving Carmen to go home to an “I’ll be waiting” Tatiana. When he came home after having sex with another woman, would he have to look Tatiana in the face, or could he count on her eyes being turned away from him? Or would he have to not look her in the face? She would smell the hotel soap. He’d have to shower without soap. She’d smell the wet hair. She would know by the look in his eyes. She would know by his averted eyes. She’d know by touching him. She would know instantly.
Carmen was waiting for him. Shouldn’t he have decided not to go through with it before the moment he was nattily dressed and freshly showered and had condoms in his pocket?
Condoms.
Alexander’s heart closed in around itself. That’s how deliberate he was, how prepared, how set for betrayal. This wasn’t an out of control moment, like last Friday night. Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just got drunk and lost control. It doesn’t mean anything, honey, honey, honey.
No. This was premeditated betrayal. This was betrayal in cold blood.
Alexander wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t out of control, and he had bought condoms in advance.
He could barely convince even himself about the out of control moment last Friday night. He did, after all, sit at the bar alone, waiting for Carmen to show up. Would that sound out of control to Tatiana’s ears? On the one hand, Tania, my faithful truck, on the other, sitting in a bar for an hour waiting for the party girl. It all evens out, right?
It was dark in the lot. The lights of the bar were twinkling. Through the decorated-for-Christmas windows, Alexander could see people moving about inside, couples talking.
She is so sanguine and so busy. She works sixty hours a week. She’ll never find out. Even if she finds out, she’ll forgive me. She forgives me for everything. We will go on as before.
Yet his house was not cleaned and his clothes were not washed. There was no food on his table, nor lips on his face.
Alexander was breathing hard, trying to wade through his mire. Having dinner with another woman! He had never done it, not even in the years before Tatiana when he was in the army—especially when he was in the army. When he was a garrison soldier, he bought the girls drinks, and thirty minutes later, their skirts were hitched up at the parapets. Those were his courtships. Alexander was thirty-eight years old and he had never taken anyone out for dinner before he had sex with them, except Tatiana.
The imagining himself in the awkwardness, in the stilted conversation, in the pretend flirtation was paralyzing his hands behind the wheel, was tamping out his desire for someone new, his excitement for a bit of strange. And then the coming home, showered—or perhaps not showered? It was unimaginable. Tamping out with a talon of steel.
And suddenly—He is lying on dirty straw. He has been beaten so many times, his body is one bloodied bruise; he is filthy, he is hideous, he is a sinner and he is utterly unloved. At any moment, at any instant, he will be put on a train in his shackles and taken through Cerberus’s mouth to Hades for the rest of his wretched life. And it is at that precise moment that the light shines from the door of his dark cell #7, and in front of him Tatiana stands, tiny, determined, disbelieving, having returned for him. Having abandoned the infant boy who needs her most to go find the broken beast who needs her most. She stands mutely in front of him, and doesn’t see the blood, doesn’t see the filth, sees only the man, and then he knows: he is not cast out. He is loved.
What a blithering idiot.
Alexander started up the engine, put the truck into reverse, peeled out of the parking lot and drove home, leaving Carmen waiting for him inside the restaurant. On the way home, he remembered—just in time—pulled into a gas station, and threw out the condoms he bought into the public trash.
He got home after nine thirty.
After parking the truck next to her Thunderbird, Alexander walked quietly up the deck stairs and watched Tatiana from the unshaded window. She was in her short silk robe, her hair was down. She hadn’t seen him yet, hadn’t heard him pull up; the music must be playing. She was sitting at the kitchen table, her back to the door, her head lowered, her shoulders slumped. She was holding her stomach and she was crying.
On the table there was fresh bread. One candle was lit. The Christmas tree was bright, the table lamps were on, the lights around the windows sparkled.
Anthony was nowhere to be seen.
Unable to watch her anymore, Alexander took a deep breath, and with his heart as heavy as a rock, opened the door. Please, please, let me keep my brave and indifferent face.
Tatiana wiped her eyes first and then turned to him. “Hey,” she said. She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling.
“I was done early,” Alexander said, taking off his suit jacket, looking around.
“Oh.”
“Where’s Ant?”
“With Sergio. I’m letting him stay over.”
Alexander frowned, his troubled mind reeling. “You’re letting him stay overnight on a Wednesday?” This was incongruous.
“As a treat for him.”
His heart was hammering in his chest.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I made a little food.”
Alexander dumbly nodded.
“Well, go wash then. I made some…blinchiki. Meatball soup. Soda bread.”
Without washing, he sank into the chair. She made blinchiki? It’s a good thing she wasn’t close to him because she would’ve heard the repentant pounding of his wanton black heart. “Aren’t you going to eat?” Alexander asked.
“I’m not hungry,” she replied. “But I’ll sit with you—if you want.” Tatiana put food on his plate, poured him a beer, water, brought him the day’s newspaper. The music was on, the candle was burning at his table!
Comfort and joy…o tidings of comfort and joy…
God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay,
Remember, Christ, our Savior, was born on Christmas day…
The sash of her robe had gotten loose. As she stood to pour him another beer, Alexander glimpsed an ivory lace camisole, through which he could see her body, nude except for the white suspender belt and lace stockings. He felt sick. Looking down, he read the paper, and ate—and did not lift his eyes to her. The only things they said to each other during dinner were, hers, “How do you like the blinchiki?” and his, “They’re excellent, we haven’t had them in years.”
When he was done and Tatiana stepped close to take his plate, Alexander put down the paper and stopped her with his hands on her waist, slowly turning her to him. Opening the robe, he pulled it off her shoulders.
“Hmm,” he said. “Chemise new?”
“For you,” she said. “You like?”
“I like.” But he couldn’t look up. He did manage to pull the camisole down, to bare her heavy milky breasts to his wounded hands. Fondling her, cupping her, he put his lips on her nipples, as she quaked and moaned under his mouth, quivering uncontrollably like a violin, alive, soft, perfect. “Why so sensitive?” Alexander whispered, one torn half of him still clambering up from the abyss. Suddenly he became afraid—almost certain—that Tatiana was reading his thoughts. Putting his hand under the camisole and patting her bottom, Alexander let go of her and quickly stood from the table.
He may have been able to hide his thoughts from her, but what he could not hide in their bed was the ravening lead gravity of guilt pulling all his organs down into the earth. There was simply no love tonight. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said.
“No?” she said, and turned away.
He offered her something for herself. Tatia, remember our fifth wedding anniversary? he whispered achingly to her. Anthony was napping in the trailer and we were in Naples on a deserted Gulf beach in the late afternoon, on a blanket on white sand. We had been swimming and you were briny and wet. I lay stretched out on my back and you kneeled over my mouth. You couldn’t keep yourself upright; you pitched forward and remained on your sandy elbows and knees. My head was thrown back, my face buried in you, and I held your hips in place with my hands. We were in a straight line, you and I, you above me. Happy birthday, happy anniversary, happy napping Anthony, and on joyful wing/cleaving the sky/sun, moon and stars forgot,/upward I fly. Everything was forgot for that one hour of honeysuckle bliss on a white sand beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Please, Tatiasha. Kneel over me. Keel forward, let me touch you. Give me honey, give me bliss, cleave the sky, and forget everything.
Her back to him was still, as if she had not heard, as if he had not whispered.
After she was asleep, Alexander spooned her to him, into the crook of his arm, against his chest. Her hair tickled his ribs. It took him hours to fall asleep. Was it his imagination, or was there a promise of future agony that he heard in her clipped voice all evening? She kept trying to say something to him—and failing. He certainly wasn’t going to ask, but how did she go from lying in bed in a fetal position Saturday night to making him his favorite meal and crashing her naked body through his hit parade?
“Lay your sleeping head, on my faithless arm,” he inaudibly whispered, trying to remember Auden, suffocating on the poison cocktail of his self-hatred and his conscience.
Baby, Please Come Home
The following morning, Alexander walked into the office to get his messages, to see his appointments for the day, and to make sure Linda had taken care of the hundreds of Christmas bonuses. Efficient to a fault, she said she had done it weeks ago when he first asked. She said to him, “Were you a bad boy and forget about your appointment last night?”
“What appointment?”
“What appointment? With Mrs. Rosario, Alexander! You made it. She was in your book.”
“Oh. I must’ve forgotten,” he said carefully. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, you weren’t home either,” said Linda. “Because she came here last night around nine looking for you.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Rosario.”
Alexander was quiet. “Linda, what’s wrong with you that you were still here at nine?”
“Don’t you know I have no life?” she said. “I live to manage yours. She came by and asked if she could call your house. I didn’t know what to do. I was very worried myself. We thought maybe something had happened. You never forget your appointments.”
“Did she”—Alexander spoke with difficulty—“call my house?”
“Uh-huh. Spoke to Tania.”
“Mrs. Rosario spoke to Tatiana?”
“Uh-huh. She was pretty upset.”
“Who?” Alexander said in a dull voice.
“The client, of course,” said Linda. “You know your wife is constitutionally incapable of getting angry at you.”
Unsteadily Alexander walked outside and sat in his truck. He was doing that a lot these days. Sitting in his truck. Soon it was going to become his home.
F*cking Carmen called his house! Well, that was one scenario he did not imagine—the married woman calling his house, asking for him. That’s the permutation Alexander had not seen, and he thought he had prepared for every quadratic contingency.
He couldn’t think straight. But why didn’t bad things go down? Why didn’t they have it out yesterday? They were alone, they had all night. He would have thought of something to say that sounded like the truth. Why did Tania dress down to a see-through chemise for him? Why the food, the candles? What in the name of heaven was going on at his house? Alexander’s mind was baffled and bewildered.
He had to go check on the status of three of his houses. The electricians were coming to one, the foundation was being poured on another, and the Certificate of Occupancy inspector was coming to the third. But at lunch Alexander went to the hospital. Even though he knew Tatiana never had a break long enough to have a cup of coffee, much less a brief calm talk about another woman calling their house asking for him, how could he not go?
He found her sitting by herself in the cafeteria, drinking milk; she looked grim and white. “Hey,” she said, barely glancing at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Come outside for a minute,” he said.
When they were out in the sun-filled parking lot, Alexander stopped walking and said, his teeth grinding, his eyes to the ground, “Why didn’t you tell me Carmen Rosario called you last night?”
“Did you come to the hospital to ask me this? She didn’t call me,” said Tatiana. “She called our house looking for you.” She laughed lightly. “She asked to speak to you and when I said you weren’t home, she said, well, where is he? in a tone that you can imagine I for one found peculiar. I told her you were working late. She said yes, and she was the one you were supposed to be working late with. I’ll tell you,” Tatiana continued, folding her hands together, “she seemed quite upset. I didn’t know what to say, since I didn’t know where you were, so I apologized for you. I thought you would want me to do that, right, Alexander? Apologize to Carmen Rosario for you?” She paused. “I told her you must’ve forgotten. It must have slipped your mind. Sometimes your mind does that, plays tricks on you, I told her. Where you forget certain things.”
If Alexander’s head were any lower, it would be hitting the f*cking ground. He took a shaky step back. “Why are you doing this?” he said quietly. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday? Why did you play this charade with me, make me dinner, put music on? What for?” He could not lift his eyes to her.
“I don’t understand the question,” said Tatiana.
Alexander examined the cracks in the pavement.
“You have a hundred appointments like this throughout the year,” said Tatiana. “You told me you were working late. You’ve told me that many times when you met with clients in the past. Yes, you didn’t show up for your appointment, but I don’t know why. You could have gotten busy with other things. You could have not had her number handy. You could have made a mistake and gone to the wrong restaurant. It’s your business, I don’t get that closely involved in it. You didn’t tell me it was Carmen you were meeting, but so what? You don’t submit to me the names of the clients who are interested in building a home with you. That’s never been our marriage.” Tatiana stopped. Alexander couldn’t even hear her inhale and exhale, that’s how quiet she was while speaking and breathing. “The woman you were meeting to talk about building a house called and said you never showed up. She seemed perfectly within her rights to be irritated. I would think most of your clients would not look kindly on being left waiting in some bar/restaurant down south in Chandler and would probably call our house demanding, ‘Well, where is he?’”
They could not continue this conversation in the parking lot. “Tatiana…” he repeated. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“What’s the matter? Why are you getting yourself all worked up?” Tatiana said. Only the tips of her fingers trembled. It was the only part of her, besides her white-stockinged legs and the hem of her white uniform, Alexander could see.
“If you thought I was having dinner out,” Alexander said, because he could think of nothing else—nothing else at all—to say, “why did you make me food then?”
“When does my husband ever refuse blinchiki?” said Tatiana in a straight voice, staring directly at him, “even when he has his dinner out?”
Oh God! “Tania…” he let out in a hoarse breath.
She backed away and said, “Well, listen, if there is nothing else, I have to go back to work.”
Yes, go back to the root of all evil. He didn’t say it, just in case she told him he was the root of all evil. “Wait,” Alexander said. His reeling mind couldn’t see through the fog in the clear-blue-sky, broad-daylight, crisp winter day. Should he now lie and say, I really truly was just going to meet up for a drink with Carmen? We really truly were going to talk about the house—condoms in my pocket notwithstanding? Should he say, I did almost nothing wrong—this Wednesday—aside from premeditating my lascivious and traitorous plans. As opposed perhaps to last Friday, when things really truly were much more murky and tawdry, but I’m hoping you’ll forget about last Friday altogether. And I know it seems bad, me going to meet another woman to take her to a hotel to have sex with her, but I didn’t let her go in my truck on Friday. My truck is pristine. Don’t I get some points for that? Isn’t that at least like moving my pawn one square forward on the board?
Alexander couldn’t see one move ahead, one step ahead, one word ahead. He would be damned if he opened his mouth. So he said to her, wait, but what he meant was, I got nothing.
“I really must fly,” said Tatiana. “But you have to go back to work, too, no? Have you rescheduled your appointment with Mrs. Rosario? Will you be working late in Chandler tonight?”
“Tania, no,” Alexander said in a defeated voice.
“Ah,” she said, walking away.
If Alexander didn’t have to meet with the electricians at a 7000-square-foot River Crossing house for a family who needed the house delivered yesterday, he never would have gotten out of his truck. But he had to meet with the electricians, and he was still with them in the late afternoon when Carmen’s sedan pulled up and she got out, all flashy earrings, flashy makeup, flashy tight black and white sweater. Don Joly, the electrician, watching her from the window, whistled softly under his breath. “Va-va-voom,” he said.
Alexander turned his back.
She walked in, found him. “Hello, Alexander.”
“You might want to get out of the house,” he said without facing her. “It’s not safe here. A construction site. I’m not insured for accidents to unauthorized visitors.”
“Um, can I speak to you a moment?”
“Speak at your own peril,” Alexander said, without looking up from the framing, where thirty feet of electrical wire lay tangled. He was measuring the distance between the outlets; according to code they had to be no more than six feet apart and he was afraid the one in front of him was more than six feet from the one on the left, which meant it would have to be redone, which meant, like dominoes, all the rest in a room would have to be redone. He had to measure it out six hundred times in a house this size, and all before Christmas next week.
“Alexander, can you turn around?”
Slowly he stood up and turned around. “What?” he said. “I’m busy.”
“I see that. Were you busy last night, too, when I waited like a fool alone in that restaurant?”
“I was busy last night, too.” Every single thing inside him had shut off to her. He couldn’t believe he was speaking to her.
“I don’t understand anything,” Carmen said. “I thought we had agreed to meet. Did you forget?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I forgot.”
Sharply inhaling, she said, “I don’t believe you. We made plans. You couldn’t forget.”
“Except I did, Carmen, I completely forgot.”
“You’re trying to humiliate me! Why?”
“Why?” He took a breath to calm himself. “Why did you call my wife?”
“I didn’t call her! I was calling you.”
“At my f*cking house?” Alexander’s voice was too loud. He was disgusted by her. And by himself. Don Joly amid planks on the second floor must have been listening, and how could he not, Don Joly and all his merry men, listening to Alexander fighting with a woman not his wife. This was crossing the border into another country, and it was going to get around to everyone, all because of his own indecency.
“Yes, at your f*cking house!” Carmen said, just as loudly.
Alexander had enough. He took her by the elbow and led her out into the street. “Look,” he said. “I work here. Work. Do you understand? Also I’m married. Do you understand that? Unlike you I don’t have a pretend marriage, I have an actual marriage. You were calling my home, where I live with my wife, to ask her why I didn’t show up for our rendezvous! Have you got no f*cking sense at all?”
“That’s not what I did,” Carmen said defensively. “I was very professional.”
“Professional? Screeching into the phone, ‘Where is he?’ That’s professional?”
“Your wife was very composed,” Carmen said. “More than you are right now. But if you didn’t want me to call, then why didn’t you just show up like you promised?”
They were standing on the sidewalk in the middle of a new street, in the middle of a new community, Alexander and a woman, arguing!
“Carmen, I never thought about it again after Friday,” said Alexander. “That’s why. But besides that, first priority to my wife, second to everything else.”
“You weren’t thinking about your wife last Friday,” she said, raising her voice, sticking out her ridiculous chest. “She was quite far from your thoughts then.”
“Not as far as you flatter yourself into thinking,” Alexander retorted. “But are you even f*cking kidding coming here and raising your voice to me?”
“Stop talking trash!” she yelled. “I’m not your wife. You better show me some respect.”
“Who the f*ck do you think you are, lady?” said Alexander, stepping closer to her and speaking quieter. “Respect? You get into a car with a complete stranger and you think because I let you suck my dick for two minutes you deserve respect?”
She gasped. “Let me?” She turned red in the face.
“As opposed to what? Not only did I let you, Carmen, but you didn’t get as much as a free drink from me.”
“Oh!” She was flushed and wheezing. “Oh—oh—you’ll be sorry, Alexander!”
“I’m already plenty sorry.”
“Because of your deplorable conduct, your wife—”
“You know what,” Alexander said, cutting her off, coming up close, too close, and leaning into her face. “Before you say another word, this is what you’re going to do. You are going to get into your car and drive the f*ck away from here. You obviously haven’t read the papers carefully about me, and you might want to go do that, but I’m warning you right now, don’t threaten me, don’t insult me, don’t rail at me, just get quietly into your car and drive away—while you still can—and don’t ever come near me or my houses again.”
She opened her mouth but Alexander shook his head, taking one more half step until he was inches away from her face. “Not near me, or my houses, or my wife, ever again.”
She opened her mouth.
He shook his head. “No, Carmen. When I said, not another f*cking word, I meant—not another f*cking word. Just get into your car and drive away.” He was talking so menacingly that she finally shut up, hearing him loud and clear.
Her stockinged knees shaking, chest heaving in her va-va-voom sweater, Carmen managed to open the car door, get in, and drive away.
Having a fight with a woman not his wife! It was so unseemly, it was so scandalously wrong.