The Summer Garden

“Where is my mother?” Anthony said at ten o’clock that evening.

That was a good question indeed. Where was his mother? When Alexander called the hospital, Erin told him Tatiana was working a double shift.

“She is what?” Alexander put his hand on the counter to steady himself. “Erin, let me speak to her.”

“I can’t, she’s in major trauma, she can’t come to the phone. I’ll ask her to call you when she gets out.”

Anthony didn’t believe his mother was working a double shift. Alexander didn’t believe it himself. They didn’t know what to do as they sat numbly at the kitchen table. Earlier they had eaten the remains of yesterday’s blinchiki, and Anthony—still happy then, his mouth full—said, “Oh, Dad, thank you, what did you do so right that we have blinchiki tonight?”

What did he do that they had blinchiki? Certainly nothing right.

But at ten thirty in the evening, with the food long gone, Anthony said, “Something’s happening, isn’t it? Mom shuffled me off to Sergio’s in the middle of the week as if another Dudley is lying dead in our house.”

Alexander thought his son’s association was quite apropos.

An unquenchably upset boy was Alexander’s ostensible reason for driving forty miles at midnight on Thursday to see Tatiana. They sat in the waiting room with two drunks, a man with a broken leg, a woman with a hacking cough, and a feverish tiny baby.

They paged her again, and again. They had to wait another thirty-five minutes before she rushed out through the double doors. The son ran to her. The husband stayed put in his seat, grimly studying his scabbed palms.

“What’s wrong, what’s happened?” she said, extremely stressed.

“Nothing,” Anthony said. “Mom, why are you here? Why are you working a double shift? You never work a double shift. And why didn’t you call us back? We were so worried. Why didn’t you tell us you were working tonight? Why aren’t you coming home?”

Alexander thought the boy did pretty well with the questions. He forgot these: What do you suspect that I can instantly deny so I can make you feel better and touch you again, and never have to think or talk about this in my life? What have I done? What lies can I spin out now to undo it? And when is the coroner’s crew coming to clean our house of Carmen, Tatiana? That’s the question Alexander thought Anthony should ask.

Tatiana sat down in the chair. They tried to keep their voices low. The drunks were listening. “I’m working a double shift, bud, that’s all,” she said. “It’s Christmas. We’re short-staffed, and very busy. Everybody is getting hurt. Everybody,” she said, “is getting very very hurt.”

“Please,” said Anthony. “You threw me out of the house yesterday. You think I’m a child? Yesterday Dad said he was working and not coming home. Tonight you’re working and not coming home. You’ve been fighting since last week. You think I don’t see things going on?” He was near tears. “Please.”

Tatiana took his face into her hands. He was already seven inches taller than she, and fifty pounds heavier, and yet he stayed in the space where she held him, his head pressed into her neck, as if he were three. Alexander sat with his elbows on his knees, looking at the floor. He knew that space himself.

“There is a Christmas concert in my school tomorrow,” said Anthony.

Tatiana nodded. “I know. I’m coming.”

“Mom!” Anthony exclaimed. “Are you upset with Dad? Please don’t be upset with Dad about the other—”

“Anthony!” That was Alexander. “Not another word.”

“Yes, Anthony,” said Tatiana. “Not another word.”

She was paged. Another ambulance came in. She tried to disengage herself. “Bud, I’m sorry. I’ll be home soon. But right now I really have to run.”

The triage nurse called for her. One of the drunks crept up to her. Anthony was still pressed to her. Someone was wheeled fast and bloodied on a stretcher. Alexander couldn’t look at her. He knew she needed his help with Anthony, but he wasn’t giving it to her until she called him by name. “Anthony,” said Tatiana, “tell your father I have to go.”

“He’s sitting right here, Mom,” said Anthony. “Tell him yourself.”

Alexander got up. Very quietly he said to her, “As always—you can do without all of us sinners, can’t you?” And then physically dragged Anthony away from his mother. “Come on, bud,” he said. “Mommy is busy. Let’s go home. Look what I bought today.” He took out a bag of peanut M&Ms. “Have you seen these? M&Ms with peanuts in them. What a country. Want one?”

David Bradley flung open the double doors, in scrubs. “God, where is she?” Then he saw her. “Tatiana, please!” he called. “Now!”

“Don’t worry, son,” Tatiana said to Anthony, standing up. “Your father will take care of you. Go home.” She didn’t even glance at the father before she rushed away.

At eight in the morning on Friday, Tatiana was not home. Alexander waited until nine. Anthony’s concert was at 9:30. He drove to the school, watching for her car coming up Jomax. He found her in the packed auditorium, still in her nurse’s uniform, and she hadn’t even saved him a seat! He had to stand in the back. The principal came out, the piano played, the children sang, the band performed. He watched her clap clap clap for their son, she stood up, took pictures, and even talked to the other parents about what a nice job the children had done of rendering the Christmas classics. The children went back to their classrooms, and she vanished in the departing crowd. By the time Alexander caught up with her, she was already at her Thunderbird. His hand slammed shut the car door. “Tania!”

Her head was down. “Can you let me open my car, please?” she said.

“No. Can we do this like adults?”

“Do what?”

He leaned in to her. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing, what are you doing?” They stared at each other for a moment before he looked away. She looked immensely tired. She couldn’t stand straight.

“Did you get off work at seven?” he asked quietly, standing close, wanting to touch the pallid cheek, the blonde eyebrows.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

“I did come home,” Alexander said, his fingers reaching for her face. “Come on. Let’s go. I took the morning off work.”

“You did? Great!” Tatiana said, moving away from his hands. “One thing though—I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I know,” said Alexander. It was no longer a question of what lie to spin that she would believe. It was becoming in a whirlwind a question of how much truth to give her so that she would ever believe him again. “I know you don’t want to, but you have to talk to me.” He took her upper arm. “Come on, let’s not do this in the middle of the school parking lot. All these people…” The other parents were ambling to their cars, chatting happily about Christmas plans, gifts for the kids, the lovely weather, the sleigh rides together. Alexander and Tatiana stood mutely to let them pass.

“I know you’re upset with me—”

She raised her hand to stop him.

“What do you want to do?” Alexander said, opening his hands. “Go on like this? Not speaking? Eventually you’ll have to talk to me, no?”

“No,” said Tatiana, barely shaking her head and opening the car door. “I’m all talked out.”

How can you be talked out, you haven’t spoken three words to me since Saturday! Alexander wanted to say. “Let’s go home,” he said cajolingly. “You can yell, you can do whatever—”

“Do I look to you like I can yell or do whatever?” Tatiana stood at the open car door. “And do I need to yell?” She looked like she would fall down or faint if she didn’t sit down. Alexander reached out to hold her steady, to touch her, but she put her hands up as if she wanted him to disappear from her sight. “No.” She leaned against the car, crossing her arms, and shut her eyes.

“Open your eyes,” said Alexander. She opened them. They were almost obsidian, the color of the Black Sea. “Tania…” he said, keeping his voice from breaking—just. “Babe, please. Let’s go home. Let me explain, let me talk to you.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No more talking for us. Besides, I have to go to the mission.”

“The mission?” he said, frowning. “You just worked twenty-four straight hours. You have to go home and sleep, no?”

“No. The little children don’t know and don’t care about my sleep. The children are waiting.”

“Yes, they certainly are,” Alexander said, his fists clenching, finally stepping away from her. She always knew how to say just the thing to make him step away. “Your son—who is your actual child—has been waiting and waiting.”

“His father is taking care of him, no?”

“He needs his mother.”

She clenched her own fists, and stepped toward him. Alexander opened his arms. “Right here,” he said. “Here I stand.”

“Indeed you do,” said Tatiana. She took a breath. “Alexander, when you asked me to marry you, did you realize our marriage might last longer than one moon cycle?”

“I was hoping.”

“No, I don’t think you were. Yes, you said, we were only going to do this once and we might as well do it right, but you were thinking do it right for a month. A year between furloughs, perhaps. While you were trying to get into Germany from Russia. I’m not saying the quest for me wasn’t real, but what else, after all, did you have to live for? You could try to find me, try to stay alive for me, or you could smoke away your life in a Soviet onion field. So you chose me. How ennobling! But this isn’t briefest Lazarevo, is it? This is days and days and months and years, and all the minutes in between, just you and me, one man and one woman in one marriage.”

“I know very well what this is, Tatiana,” said Alexander, her fragile voice like concrete pressing on his heart.

“Do you? A marriage isn’t as easy as taking a drink of water. This is not pretend life during war, or pretend Soviet marriage, the two of us against the NKVD, with pretend Soviet choices. This is real American life. Full of choices, full of freedoms, full of opportunities, money, conflicts, constant pressures. There is suffering—when we cannot have what we think we deserve and it torments us.” She paused. “And there is temptation.”

“Tania, stop. Not in the parking lot. I want to go home.”

“You want to have this conversation at home?” Her eyes had dulled again. “In the home I worked so hard to make as a sanctuary for you from the rest of your life? A haven I made for you where you could go and have peace?” She shook her head. “I don’t think you want to have this conversation there.”

“I do.”

“Alexander Barrington,” Tatiana said, “my friend, my husband, I don’t think you have been paying attention. I’m not talking about love. Richter thinks he loves Vikki, too. Vikki thinks she loves each of the boys she is with. Love is like taking a drink of water. You have the nerve to whisper to me about Naples. Strangers could love in Naples on a white sand beach!” she cried. “Dogs could love in Napa. Fruitflies mate in Lazarevo. Love is so easy!”

He stood breathless and blinking, listening to her wash away the colors his life was painted with.

“I’m not talking about love,” she repeated.

“Clearly,” he said. “Can you not talk about it in a parking lot? Can we go home? The house is empty. Ant is in school.”

“There is no peace in that house.”

“Oh, I know. You’ve taken it with you. I want to go there anyway.”

Tatiana stared him down, which was quite a feat considering she came up to his elbow. “You think you can do as you please, and then take me home?”

“Tania, if you will let me talk to you, it will be fine,” said Alexander. “I will make it fine. Because I did nothing wrong.”

“No?”

“No,” he said, his brave and indifferent face on like a stone mask. “But please let’s go home so I can explain.”

Tatiana stepped close, in her white uniform, and she lifted her earnest face to him, her yearning eyes to him, in the sunlit parking lot of Anthony’s school, in the middle of the cold December morning, and she put her hands on his chest. “Alexander,” she whispered, “kiss me.”

An involuntary gasp left Alexander’s throat.

Her fists were clenched on his shirt, near his heart, her questioning, hoping, hurting eyes filling with tears were gazing up at him. “You heard me,” she breathed out. “My husband, the father of my baby, my horse and cart, my life, my soul, with your truest lips, kiss me.”

The coroner’s crew wasn’t coming anytime soon to clean Carmen off the walls of their house. Alexander’s choice was before him. Either he kissed her or he stepped away. But either way, whichever way, he was finished.

Because it was checkmate.

Alexander stepped away. “Tatiana, this is ridiculous. I’m asking and asking, let’s go home and finish this. I refuse to do this with you in public.” He could not look at her.

Tatiana got into her Thunderbird and screeched out of the empty parking lot.

Baby, it’s Cold Outside

Tatiana didn’t come home any time that Friday. Next Wednesday was Christmas. On Monday, Vikki, Richter, Esther, Rosa were all flying in from snowy East to spend Christmas with them. What were they going to do?

Alexander called her at the mission, called her at the hospital, but she didn’t come to the phone or return his call. “I’m sorry, Alexander,” said Erin, said Cassandra. “She’s busy, she’s in surgery, she’s in trauma one, trauma two, one accident after another, one heart attack after another, there’s even been a knifing! she can’t come to the phone.”

He and Anthony couldn’t stay in their empty house. They went out to dinner and to the pictures. They saw The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They barely spoke.

The Christmas tree remained unlit, and Alexander had forgotten to put the outside lights on. Coming back at eleven at night, they couldn’t see their house at all at the top of the Jomax hill. The little beacon was pitch black from the inside and out.

Alexander called her again. He thought of going to see her, but they’d already had three fruitless discussions in parking lots and waiting rooms. For the second night he couldn’t sleep in their bed. He smoked until he couldn’t see straight from the poison and remained on the couch until Saturday morning.

After the ER receptionist told him that Tatiana had left the hospital at seven, Alexander waited for her, but when she wasn’t home by nine, he went to work, taking Ant with him, not wanting the boy to stay by himself in the house.

Anthony was so dismally mute sitting in the corner of the reception area that Alexander could barely attend to his appointments. Go shopping, Ant, get an ice cream; here, take some cash, buy yourself anything. But Anthony wouldn’t move.

Tonight the Barrington Custom Homes Christmas party was being held at the new spectacular model home they had just finished. Alexander and Tatiana were hosting, as they had every year for the last six. A hundred and fifty people were invited. There was a lot at stake, for instance, a coveted invitation to build a house for the prestigious Parade of Homes builders’ competition of 1959.

At four in the afternoon, Alexander returned home with Anthony to get ready. Tatiana was not home.

She had been home, however, because all the dishes that were once in the cupboards and cabinets were lying shattered on the linoleum floor. All the dishes. And the cups and bowls, too. Dudley, Carmen, their marriage on the floor of their house.

Alexander and Anthony stood grim, gaping at the chaos, at the madness.

“Tania, will you forgive me for going to prison?”

“Yes.”

“Will you forgive me for dying?”

“Yes.”

“Will you forgive me…”

“Shura, I will forgive you for everything.”

“Somebody’s been home,” said Anthony, throwing his jacket on the coathook. “But I don’t think it was my mother.”

It took them over an hour to clean up the broken shards.

When Alexander came inside the bedroom to change, he emitted a wretched groan. On their quilt, on their cream blanket with crimson buds, lay spread out in long sad bitter strands the remains of Tatiana’s blonde hair. All chopped up and chopped off, the hair lay in a tangled mess. Alexander’s sharpest army knife with the gun-blue steel blade was thrown on the floor nearby.

For a long time Alexander sat on the bed, his hands on his knees, while on the bedroom radio Vivaldi’s Sposa Son Disprezzata played. He was simply astonished at the reaction of the serene woman he thought he knew so well to the man-made battle he had brought into their quiet house. He had thought that like everything else it would be at worst a skirmish. But this was war. Fida son oltraggiata…

And inside his head, he kept hearing Tatiana’s soft voice, hard as nails, saying, “Alexander Barrington, my friend, my husband, I don’t think you have been paying attention.”

It wasn’t possible that this was happening! Alexander’s heart cried. It wasn’t possible! Real life couldn’t grind them down, too. They were beyond this, weren’t they? They were Alexander and Tatiana. They had crawled on their bellies across frozen oceans, across continents on jagged rusted spikes, they were flayed for their sins, were beaten and bled dry, to get to each other again. This could not be happening.

When Alexander came out of the bedroom, showered and ready, Tatiana’s fifteen years of hair cleaned up and on his dresser, he said to his son, “Ant, something tells me that Mommy isn’t going to be coming to our party this evening. What do you want to do? I have to go.”

The affair was being catered while in the house there was nothing to eat except Spam—the American Lend-Lease gift to the starving war-torn Soviet Union—which Tatiana always kept on hand, Spam which Anthony was now eating with a fork, right out of the metal can. Sunk down in the couch, Anthony looked up at his father and said, “She’s left us, hasn’t she?” He started to cry.

His throat closing up, Alexander sat down next to his son. “She hasn’t left us,” he said. “She hasn’t left you.” Somebody give me a f*cking tracheotomy.

“So where is she?”

“You think if I knew, I wouldn’t be there right now, party or no party?” said Alexander. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, Dad.”

“Ant, I’m sorry. Your dad behaved badly and Mommy is very upset. I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you. But don’t worry, she’ll return, you’ll see.”

“Like she returned for you?”

Alexander attempted to stay casual. “Something like that.” He ruffled his son’s hair. “Now come on. There’s actual food at the party.”

“Spam is actual food,” said Anthony, looking inside the can. “That was the last one. I’ve been eating them since last week. That and her dry stale bread in the breadbin.”

“It’s good we can buy more Spam and bread,” Alexander said as he locked up. This time he left the tree on, the Christmas lights on, the porch light on, in case she came back before they did. What had happened yesterday to cause the mad emotion he just saw in their house? Anthony was right—the woman who smashed the dishes and hacked off her hair with his army knife was not Tatiana. Something must have happened.

Or rather—something else must have happened. But what?

In the truck, Anthony said, “Why can’t you just tell Mom you’re sorry? That’s what I do.”

Alexander smiled bleakly. “What do you have to be sorry for, Antman? You know you can do no wrong in your mother’s eyes.”

“I do things that upset her sometimes,” Anthony said with a shrug. “Like fighting with that Mesker kid. But you know how she is. She just wants to hear you say you’re sorry, and she’ll forgive you.”

“I think this one time,” said Alexander, “she might need more than I’m sorry.”

Of course she didn’t show up at the party. Alexander, broiling, defeated, outraged, exhausted, was losing his mind. Without her by his side, he walked around, drinking, pretending to be social, to be hospitable, yes, the house, and yes, the food, and yes, the son is quite handsome, and the son sat on the couch and didn’t touch the food, and every other question was, “Where is Tania?” and meanwhile, every five minutes, Alexander would go to a small private office and dial everybody he knew who wasn’t at the party. No, Carolyn and Cassandra told him, we don’t know where she is. No, Erin and Helena told him, we don’t know where she is. No, Francesca told him, but with a pause, I don’t know where she is. He kept her on the phone longer because of the pause, but she maintained she knew nothing. He even called Vikki in New York, where it was one in the morning. Vikki was obviously indisposed—but also uninformed. “Have you lost our Tania?” Vikki asked. “Don’t worry. She’s never far. Try to find her before I come on Monday.”

Where was she? She could be collapsed somewhere, fainted on the road. How could she subject her son to this? The boy had done nothing; why make him suffer?

The party wound down, by eleven everyone had gone. The caterers cleaned up. Linda helped close up. When she said good-night to Alexander, sympathy and pity were in her eyes.

He and Anthony didn’t speak on the way home. Alexander was chewing over what he could possibly say or do if she was home—feeling the way he was feeling, which was coming off his hinges—while Anthony was within earshot. So when they got home and saw her car not there, Anthony became distraught, but Alexander was relieved. He didn’t want to see her in front of their son.

A stiff and withdrawn Anthony turned on the TV, but there was nothing on. It was late. He stared at the color bars and numbers flashing on the screen. Alexander sat on the couch with him. Their shoulders were pressed into each other.

“Ant, go to bed.”

“I’m going to wait for her.”

“I’ll wait. You go on to bed.”

“I’ll wait, too.”

“No.”

Anthony opened his mouth to speak.

Alexander got up. “Go to bed, Anthony. I’m not asking you.”

Anthony too got up. “You’re going to be waiting a long time,” he said emptily, walking past his father. “I know something about that. And just like before, she won’t be coming back.” What he didn’t say, but what he clearly wanted to say, and what Alexander heard and felt was, she won’t be coming back—just like last time, and it’s all your fault—just like last time.

When Anthony was in bed, Alexander came in and sat by him, patting his back, his shoulders, his legs. He leaned over, touched Anthony’s black hair. The boy was on his stomach facing away.

“What time is it?” Anthony asked in a muffled voice.

“Twelve-thirty.”

They both groaned.

“Anthony,” said Alexander, “you want your mom and dad to try and make it better? Then I’m warning you, if your mom comes back tonight, don’t come out of your room. The adults need to have it out their own way. You have to stay inside, put a pillow over your head, go to sleep, do whatever you need to, but under no circumstances do I want to see you open your door. You got it?”

“Why?” Anthony said. “There are no dishes left to break.”

Alexander pressed his mouth to Anthony’s head. “You’re a good kid, bud,” he whispered. “Just stay in your room.”

He called the hospital. “Erin, please,” he said, choking over his rasping words. “Tell me where she is.”

“Alexander, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I would tell you. I promise you, I would tell you. I honest to God don’t know.”

One in the morning, and she was still not home.

He went outside, and in near dark, by feel alone, with just the small yellow light on the deck, he chopped wood. They didn’t have a fireplace, but he chopped wood for the fireplaces in houses he built, to make them more pleasing at finish-out stage. Wood logs in the fireplace on move-in day. Just a little personal touch from Barrington Custom Homes at no extra charge.

He kept hearing her voice inside his head. “Alexander, I know you’ve lost everyone you ever loved, but you’re not going to lose me. I swear to you on my wedding band, and on my maiden ring that you broke, I will forever be your faithful wife.”

She had said this to him once, in Lazarevo.

It was cold in the desert in the December night. Alexander wore nothing but fatigues and a black army T-shirt and it was just what he needed. The labor got rid of some of the fury, the grinding anxiety, the debilitating fear.

What if this was one of the things they couldn’t fix?

What if she didn’t come home again tonight?

Alexander had no sanity left, none.

Faster and faster the axe came down. He wanted to be weak from the physical exertion; he did not trust himself. Groaning in his agony, he brought the axe down on the withered stump until there was no oxygen left in his lungs.

He heard a noise. Oh God—the pebbles! That was her car in the driveway. He threw down the axe and ran, coming around the house and under the covered carport just as she was getting out, and Tatiana didn’t even have a chance to gasp before he was on her. He grabbed her and shook her. He was so out of breath, he could not speak, and she did not speak.

“Where the f*ck have you been?” he groaned, shaking her limp in his arms. “Do you have any idea what—Anthony has been going through? My God—couldn’t you have thought one f*cking second—at least about him?” He was shaking her but weaker and weaker, and then his hands went around her, his arms clasped around her. He pressed her to his chest. “My God, where have you been?” he said. He was trembling.

“Let go of me,” she said, in a voice he did not recognize. “Get your hands off me.”

Alexander didn’t just let go. He staggered away.

With Leningrad ice and a blockaded face, with her bitter condemning eyes on him, Tatiana stood, her back to the red Thunderbird. She was wearing pink capris and a short pink sweater. She looked shattered like she hadn’t slept in days; the raccoon-like rings, the ashen mouth, the sunken cheeks, and the hair! Her hair…it was gone, cut off, sheared to her neck. It curled up now, was tousled. Alexander had been afraid she had given herself a military cut, but she had merely changed her life and become a different woman. This new woman looked barely able to stand. Perhaps it was the pink stilettos. That was his other thought after the shock of her hair. Having been gone for three days, having vanished, disappeared, she was coming back home at one thirty on a Sunday morning, wearing pink capris and pink stilettos.

Tatiana stood by her car. Alexander was panting a few feet away. It was cold; he was burning hot.

“Where the f*ck have you been?” he repeated. “Answer me.”

“Where have you been?” she said. “Did you answer me?”

“You didn’t ask me a single thing.”

“I didn’t have to, did I?”

Blinking, he took a step back. “Since Thursday gone from our house,” Alexander said. “Where were you?”

“I owe you no explanation,” she said in a barely controlled voice. “So stop talking to me like I do. I owe you nothing.”

“You owe me nothing?” His head shuddered, his body shuddered from the effort to control his emotion. “Who are you talking to, Tatiana?” Alexander said, deathly quiet.

“You, Alexander,” she said, her acrid voice in her eyes. “I’m talking to you. Because it’s very obvious that you owe me nothing.”

He tried not to look away. Tried and failed. “That’s not true.”

“Stop speaking! Stop. Stop.” Her voice got lower and lower. “I can’t do this,” she said just above a whisper, pressed against the car, her fists at her sides. “I don’t know what’s happening, what’s happened to us. I understand nothing! But I can’t do this anymore.” She started to shake like he was shaking. “You have to leave this house.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You haven’t been home for three days,” said Alexander. “You’re coming home at one thirty in the morning, wearing f*ck-me heels, and you’re telling me I have to pack my bags? Where have you been?” His voice rose decibel by decibel. He took a step toward her, and one more.

“I’m done answering your questions.”

“You haven’t answered a single f*cking one!”

Tatiana’s fists were pressed to her chest. She was leaning against the car, and it was a good thing, because she was falling down. Holding herself up by the door handle, she reached down and threw the stilettos off. Now she was minute. Alexander’s heart, burned, scarred, furious, raw, was helpless before her.

“Yesterday in ER—” she began to say, but he cut her off.

“No,” he said. “Not until you tell me where you were tonight.”

“I had dinner with David Bradley.”

The sails, the boat, the rudders, the anchor were pulled out from under Alexander. “You had dinner with David Bradley?” he repeated slowly.

“That’s right.”

He was quiet. “Must have been a long dinner,” he said at last.

“It was,” said Tatiana. “And now that we have that out of the way, let me tell you about last night. Last night your friend Carmen Rosario and her husband were brought in, accompanied by police, amid charges of a knifing. They had a domestic dispute that escalated out of control. Apparently Cubert stabbed Carmen, and she retaliated by stabbing him back. He got a shoulder wound, nothing too serious. We managed to save him—so unfortunately for you, she’s not a widow.”

All Alexander said was, “She is not my friend.”

“No?”

“No.”

Tatiana was supported by the car. “Apparently Carmen—” She broke off. “I know this,” she said in her fake calm voice, “because I chose not to take care of Carmen’s wound—I’m sure you understand the delicacy of the situation—and took care of Cubert’s wound instead, and he, in his emotional state, told me more than I think he intended to. According to Cubert, his wife has been addicted to the lustful desire that men have for her rather, um, substantial breasts.” Tatiana paused.

Alexander stepped three feet back. He would have liked to step three countries back.

“Carmen could not keep the boobs in her shirt since before they were married. They had been having this trouble since the start. Cubert had hoped that marriage would cure her, but alas, it had not, resulting in his year-long bout with impotence and his frequent trips away from home. Yes, I agree with your shaking head. I also thought he was telling me too much. And I wouldn’t tell you this,” Tatiana said, “except as it relates to my larger story. Imagine Cubert’s surprise then, when upon his return from Las Vegas yesterday, Carmen informed him that she was pregnant.”

Alexander listened intently, frowning, sensing more trouble for him blowing in just around the next breath—as if he already didn’t have plenty. His hand went up. “I’m going to stop you right there,” he said.

Tatiana continued as if he had not spoken. “Cubert and Carmen had some words about this,” she said in her infuriating, fraudulently collected voice. “Cubert, as any normal husband would—when informed of his wife’s pregnancy—naturally tried to stab her in the chest.” Tatiana paused, for maximum effect, Alexander thought, though no pause was necessary: everything was already to the f*cking hilt. “Then and only then, as she was bleeding from her mammary, did Cubert inquire of his wife whose child it was. Since he knew, you see, that it couldn’t be his. And just guess, Alexander,” said Tatiana, less collected, less fraudulent, her hand gripping the door handle behind her, “what Carmen told Cubert?”

Alexander was mute. He wished he were deaf. So that’s why all the dishes were broken. So that’s why the hair was cut. Now he understood. Madness indeed. F*cking Carmen. In war, men lost their lives for less than this. Dudley lost his life for threatening his family. What was Alexander supposed to do now? “Why didn’t you walk over to exam room number two,” he finally asked, “and talk to Carmen? One question and you would’ve known she was lying.”

“Oh, I would have,” said Tatiana, “but having been stabbed in her ample bosom, Carmen was unconscious, so it was difficult to extract information from her, other than science confirming her positive blood-work.” She uttered a sound of such anger and despair that Alexander himself wished he had something to hold on to.

“Tania,” he said, taking one of the deepest breaths of his life. There was nothing left for him to do but stand up, but he simply could not believe what he was about to say to his wife. “Last Friday I was with her, but I didn’t have sex with her.”

Tatiana broke down.

Alexander stood helplessly, and then went to her, trying to take her by the arms. She hit him, straight up into his chin, and staggered from the car, barefoot on the pebbles. Seeing double for a moment, he went after her, catching her by the front deck, trying to hold her, to calm her down, the way he had done so many times when she was upset and he held her to make her better.

This time he did not make her better.

Tatiana didn’t say, “Let go of me,” which he could take. She said, “Don’t touch me!” Which he could not.

He stopped touching her. “Let me tell you what happened.”

“Do I look to you like I want to hear anything?” she yelled, hobbling back to the car.

“Had you come home with me yesterday,” Alexander said, following her, “I would’ve told you what happened. I would have told you the truth before you got to f*cking Cubert, who doesn’t know the truth. How many times did I ask you to come home?”

She whirled to him. “You haven’t lifted your lying eyes to me all week! You have been screaming to me for the last seven days! I’m going deaf from your screaming! What more do you think I need to hear? The details? Oh, yes, do, please—regale!”

In a low voice he said, “Babe, I’m so sorry.” They were standing feet apart. His chin was at his chest.

“And what about Wednesday?” she asked. Her hands covered her face.

He could barely look at the periphery of her convulsing body. “On Wednesday, I was going to meet up with her again, but you know I didn’t. I came home.”

“Meet up with her again for what?” Tatiana said into her hands. “Tell your wife, Alexander—meet up with her again for what?”

In one large step, Alexander came and took her in his arms. “Please, Tania,” he whispered. She didn’t just struggle with him; she pushed him away like he was burning her. Her emotion made her frantic and stronger, whereas his remorse made him quiet and weaker. To hold her required more from him than he was able to give and talk at the same time, to explain what he could not explain, to say what he could not say. He lost his breath trying to keep her still. She was hyperventilating from the struggle to twist away. “Let go of me! Let go!”

“No!” he said, spinning her around and getting behind her. He pinned her forearms in front of her, to keep her from hurting either herself or him. “Slow down, or you’re going to faint. Come on—just a bit of reason—”

Tatiana flailed her head from side to side, her body in spasms. “I’ll show you f*cking reason,” she said, fighting desperately to get out of his hold.

It was the first time in his life Alexander heard Tatiana swear. He held her arms tighter, standing pressed behind her, his face lowered into her neck. She was against the side of the Thunderbird. “Tania, I’m trying very hard to tell you what happened,” he said, “but you won’t let me get two words out.”

“Oh, I’m listening,” she panted. “I’m just not believing my f*cking ears. Now let go of me, I said!” Heaving sideways, she hit him in the jaw with her head and tore away from him. They were both speechless. He tried to get his breath back, and she wasn’t even trying. She couldn’t breathe at all.

“Tania, please,” Alexander said, stretching out his hand.

She reeled away. “Tell me,” she said, “how does it work? Do you take your wedding ring off beforehand? Or during?”

“Ring doesn’t come off,” said Alexander. “Carmen is lying.”

“Oh, she’s the one who is lying, is she!”

“She is. I know this for a fact because I didn’t have sex with her.” He took a step to her. Her fist flew out and struck him. “Oh, for f*ck’s sake!” he yelled, remorse gone, quiet gone, temper here, anger here. “What are you doing? Stop fighting me!”

She squared off against him—yes, that’s right, she squared off against him—feet away, half his size, chest to chest, fists to fists. “Don’t come near me, Alexander,” said Tatiana, clenched and blazing. “Don’t ever touch me again.”

“Stop f*cking saying that!”

“No.” She jabbed her fist at him so fast, he barely jerked away. “Get out of my house.”

“F*ck you,” Alexander said, grabbing her fists. “This is my house, too. I’m not going anywhere.” She tried to pull away, but he bore down on her, grinding her fists in his hands. “You didn’t come back at one thirty in the morning to tell me to go. If you didn’t want to see me, you could’ve just stayed with your f*cking doctor, stayed all night with him, and not bothered me with your bullshit.” Alexander shook his head like a black Lab, and perspiration flew at her from his hair. “You don’t want to hear it from me, you don’t want to have it out, so what’d you come back for, Tatiana? Just to tell me not to touch you?” He squeezed her fists furiously and then pushed her away. “I wasn’t f*cking touching you when you weren’t here! Why didn’t you just stay where you were?”

“I was three days in the hospital, working!” she yelled, hitting him against his raised and parrying hands. “I wasn’t f*cking Carmen!”

“I wasn’t f*cking Carmen either!”

“She says you were!”

“She’s a lying cunt!”

“Well, you should know, Alexander,” said Tatiana. “You were f*cking her.”

Alexander shoved her away from him. He was unbearably hot. From his intense effort to control himself and her, cold sweat was covering him, soaking his T-shirt, soaking his body. He stepped away, and she, grabbing her stomach, bent over, breathing shallow, trying to stop herself from retching. There was no comfort, not for her, not for him.

“Tatiana, I’m going to repeat again,” he said, panting, “I didn’t have sex with her.”

“I’m going to repeat again, I don’t believe a word you say—so stop speaking! She’s lying is she? Are you often accused of knocking up women you have no business with? So what were you doing with her last Friday until six in the morning? Just having a drink? A little smoke? Getting her up the stick with your cigarette?” She exhaled her misery, still bent over, clutching her stomach, unable to look up or straighten up. When he said nothing was when she lifted her eyes. “Those were not rhetorical questions,” she said scathingly. “I would like an answer.”

“What the f*ck am I supposed to say to that?”

“That’s right! How about, you’ve been banging her for months. Her, anyone, everyone, every Friday night. So convenient for you—Ant’s away, I’m away. You never would have told me about this either. Just happened to be caught this time, weren’t you?”

“Stop it!” Alexander didn’t know how to calm her down, he didn’t know how to calm himself down. “This is crazy! I didn’t have sex with her. And you know she is lying because you know she can’t be pregnant by me.”

“I don’t know it at all,” said Tatiana. “Your lies are what I know.”

“You know it!” Alexander yelled. “I can’t believe I even have to tell you this, for f*ck’s sake! For f*ck’s sake!”

“Oh, yes, scream at me, good!” she screamed, holding on to the car and pointing to the house. “Your son is inside. What, he isn’t traumatized enough?”

“Oh, plenty traumatized,” Alexander said, lower and through his teeth. “And why not? His mother never comes home. He must think he’s an orphan again.”

Gasping, she came at him with violence on her face and hands. There was no getting away from her jabbing fists, from her frenzied arms. “I can’t believe,” she said, her face streaming, “I left my baby to go and find you. I can’t believe I chose such a heartless bastard over my boy. I wish to God I had never gone. You with your ugly f*cked-up faithless heart, you should be rotting in Kolyma, gang raping the male loggers there—that should be your fate, instead of coming here to betray me!”

Alexander rammed her against the car, his hand on her throat. A red veil covered his sight. He wasn’t just hot anymore, smoke was coming out of his pores. “Oh my God,” he said, gripping her neck. “Will you never f*cking stop?”

“Will you never f*cking stop? Get away from me,” she said hoarsely, choking, trying to pull away from his hands. He let go. She was coughing.

“Why are you still here? Quick. Go to your Carmen. She and her tits are waiting for you.” Insane she came for him again, and Alexander didn’t know how to stop her when he himself was so close to the void. He moved his face away slightly, put his hands up slightly. His only advantage was his height because she was unstoppable. She seized his T-shirt; he yanked away, and the shirt ripped, tore from top to bottom. She hit him in the chest, in the stomach. He’d had enough.

“Tania,” he said, grabbing her wrists, “that’s it. Stop it.”

“No!”

He squeezed her wrists harder and harder but she didn’t cry out. Instead she stood like she was numb and without flinching said, “Break them. Go ahead. Everything else I got, you broke.”

He pushed her away but she was right back on him. “I’m warning you,” he said, pushing her away again, keeping her literally at arm’s length. “Get away from me—”

“You get away from me,” she said, choking on her tears and her words. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Nothing I ever gave you was enough. All we had, all I gave you, all that I gave you was not enough!” She went to strike him with her right fist, he half-blocked her and she struck him with her left, and he took it because he deserved it.

“There is no hope for us,” said Tatiana. “I will not live like this. I will never live like this. Loyalty was your only condition for a life with me, and you knew it when you went and f*cked another woman, degraded me, and showed me exactly what I’m worth, which is nothing—and what you’re worth, which is nothing. So now pack your bags and go where you want, go where you belong. It’s not with me. I don’t care what you do anymore.”

Alexander had to get away from her—she wasn’t the only one whose judgment was about to be vanquished by her anger. She, having lost all reason, was saying things to deprive him of all reason. “Listen to me! Are you f*cking deaf? I will repeat—once again—I didn’t have sex with her! I didn’t have sex with her!”

“Repeat ad nauseam—but it’s her word against yours, Alexander,” Tatiana said, her face distorted, her body shaking. “That’s all I got. Your word against hers. And we now know what your word is worth, don’t we? Not even a breath on which it’s uttered. Unholy lies on your side, and she says she is pregnant—do you understand—pregnant!” She was overcome, devastated; she couldn’t continue.

“Well, at least someone around here is getting pregnant,” Alexander said through clenched teeth, bending in his own stricken fury. “And it didn’t take fifteen f*cking years.”

“Like I’d keep any baby that was yours!” cried Tatiana. “I’d take a coat hanger to it before I kept one of your babies!”

Alexander hit her so hard across the face that she reeled sideways and fell to the ground.

Blinded he stood over her. Guttural sounds were coming from his throat. Her arms covered her head. “You have stepped out of all bounds, all decency,” he said, yanking her up. “I can’t believe how much you hate me.” When he flung her away from him, Tatiana couldn’t get her balance and fell again on the pebbled stones, shaking her head, mouthing something, trying to stand up, crawl away. But Alexander had lost his mind. Growling in his helpless rage, he came after her, bent over her, shoved her back down onto the ground, swung out his open hand—

And from behind Anthony came running up to him, knocking him away. “Don’t touch my mother!” he yelled.

Alexander pushed his son aside. Fleetingly he remembered himself fighting with his own father, just like this, over his own mother, just like this, twenty-five years earlier in Leningrad, on the very edge of their deaths. There was only one difference. Alexander was not Harold Barrington.

“Anthony,” he said, grabbing the boy and nearly lifting him in the air as he pushed him toward the deck, “what the f*ck are you doing? What did I tell you?”

Anthony ripped away from Alexander. “Don’t you dare hurt my mother,” he said, clenching his fists.

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake!” Alexander yelled. “How many times do I have to say it? Can we have one minute of privacy? One f*cking minute! I told you to stay inside! GO!” Grabbing Anthony, he pushed him through the door, down the corridor and into his room, where he shoved him on the bed, and said, “Who do you think you’re dealing with? Stay in your f*cking room.”

“Don’t hurt my mother,” whispered Anthony, crying into Alexander’s back. “Please.”

Alexander somehow managed not to go out front to her. Blinded, he groped his way to the back door, and stormed panting outside.

Tatiana got herself off the ground and, holding on to the deck railing, stumbled her way to the bathroom. She wanted to go comfort Anthony but she didn’t want him to see her like this. She remained alone for many minutes, trying to pull herself together. Alexander had hit her very hard. She cleaned the blood from her mouth as best she could. From her temple down to her jaw, her eye, her nose, her mouth, nothing was uninjured. Her ear was ringing deafening bells in her head. Her whole body was throbbing.

Finally she went to see her son. Tatiana knew very well his conflicted dual allegiance to his parents. Tonight it was tearing Anthony up; he was inconsolable. Tatiana listened to him, nodded, said, I know, and yes, it’s like this and like that. “You’re a child. Let the grown-ups try to solve their messes. Dad told you—why did you disobey? Stay in your room, he said.”

“Mom, don’t go near him again, stay away from him. Leave him alone. For God’s sake, he shot a man dead.”

“Anthony, he shot more than one man dead. Every one of the marks on his body is nothing compared to what he has seen and done in his short life, in the rivers, in the lakes, house to house, door to door, and yes, hand to hand. You know about your father. I’ve told you enough times. He saved you and me, we left him behind, and he was nearly destroyed. This is what’s left.”

“Stop making excuses for him.”

“Don’t you want me to make excuses for him?” she asked in a breath.

“I don’t know anymore,” Anthony whispered.

Me neither, Ant, Tatiana thought. Me neither. She caressed her son’s face. She was not in control, she was doing what she could for the boy. “Your dad’s lived a brutal life. He’s doing the best he can. I’m making no excuses. I’m telling you once again to stay out of our business.”

He turned away from her, his shoulders heaving.

“All your life, Anthony, from the time you were small, you’ve tried to get between our grown-up words, our fights, as if it’s your responsibility to moderate us. Well, it isn’t. It’s ours.”

“Mama, are you…very upset with him?”

“I’m not going to speak about it to you. You’re young. When I was fourteen, I also knew so little. But believe me, one day you’ll understand.” She swallowed. “The power you have over someone who loves you,” said Tatiana, “is greater than any other power you’ll ever have.” She fought to continue. “You know—you’ve known all your life—that your father has that power over me.” She lowered her head. “But yes, Anthony, yes, darling. I am very upset with him.”

Anthony continued to cry. From the outside, Tatiana heard breaking booming noises. They were piercing her.

She left the son and walked unsteadily outside to the father.

Alexander was taking the deck table to the stump. Holding on to the railing, she watched the axe go up and down. He didn’t stop until the table was shattered into splintered fragments.

“Alexander…”

“Don’t come near me.”

He walked up the deck, picked up the wooden rocking bench he had built for them, raised it above his head and hurled it crashing to the ground. Jumping over the railing, he grabbed his dropped axe and hacked the bench on which they had sat and rocked every night, his axe flying like a scythe up and down through the night air, slicing apart their life.

Then he came for her, gasping, panting.

Seeing his wild eyes, Tatiana backed away but, tripping over her own hasty feet, slipped to the floor of the deck. “Alexander, stop it!” she cried, her hands up. “I can’t finish this with you when you’re like this.”

“You want to finish it with me, do you?” he said. “Well, come on then, I’m your man, finish it.” His black shirt was hanging in matted shreds on him, his fatigues were soiled, his fists clenched, his arms raised. “Here I am—go ahead, Tatiana, stand up and f*cking finish it.”

“Please! You’re scaring me…” She was having trouble getting the words out through her numb jaw. She was down on the deck, trembling, her hands at her face. “Please, get hold of yourself.”

“I was telling and telling you—you have to get hold of yourself,” he said, towering over her, utterly unrepentant. “Did you f*cking listen? I don’t think so. And believe me, this is hold of myself. Now stand up.” He took a menacing step toward her; his boots were at her bare feet. “Stand up, I said.”

“Okay. Okay. Just—” He needed her to stand up, she struggled up, grabbing on to the railing and managing to pull herself to her feet. Tiny she stood, terrified and shaking in front of drenched heaving enormous unhinged him, and did the only thing she ever did when she didn’t know how to make things better but when she wanted to calm, to comfort, to bring impossible things down to a possible level. Slowly she opened her hands. “Here I am, Shura,” Tatiana whispered, her face up, her palms up. “Here I am. Okay? I’m not shouting anymore.”

“Yes, you’re a paragon of virtue,” Alexander said, looking away from her face. “Calm and you, like birds of a feather.” But he withdrew, one step, two. His hand gripped the railing. “Why are you here?” he asked. “You can’t possibly have anything else to say. You’ve said it all, every last f*cking thing you could think of. Hope you’re proud of yourself. Hope you’re happy with yourself.”

Tatiana didn’t know what to say. The thing I said, you know I didn’t mean it, she whispered inaudibly, only her mouth moving. I’m just in pain. He didn’t hear. She couldn’t speak and stand at the same time, barely having the strength for one. Hoping it wouldn’t upset him again, she whispered, Shh, shh as she sank to the deck. Alexander panted, struggling for breath, and she tried to find the voice in her chest.

At last she found it. “This is your house,” said Tatiana. “I won’t tell you to leave your house again. Don’t break the furniture you built with your hands.” It was too late for that. All the wood furniture he had made for the deck was gone, except for one lonely chair in the corner. “I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll take Ant and we’ll go. Then I’ll figure out what to do.” Her mouth twisted, she lowered her head.

His mouth twisted, Alexander lowered his. Both his hands now gripped the railing. “I see. So you weren’t quite finished. You still have some evil left.” He nodded. “Quite a bottomless pit inside you, isn’t there?” He paused. “What’s next? Are you about to tell me you’ll take Anthony and go stay with your f*cking doctor until you figure out what to do?” His liquid eyes pools of despair, Alexander stood looking at her as if waiting for her to answer. But she remained silent. Not a sound came from Tatiana.

After a short disbelieving gasp, he said, “So what are you waiting for? Would you like me to help you pack?” His voice trembled. “Or first give you my hand to help you off the ground?”

Tatiana wanted to stand up on her own to go, without silently beseeching him, but couldn’t. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stand up without Alexander’s help. And that’s when she knew she was finished. That’s when she knew she was powerless against him, that she didn’t even have her anger as a weapon anymore. She might as well have been naked. She sat and counted out the beats of her heart.

“I left you on Fridays in all my trust and love,” Tatiana said at last, utterly broken, “believing you would know the way even if I didn’t stand over you every admonishing minute.”

“I knew the f*cking way,” said Alexander. “I was blind drunk when I found my way to your hospital—to you—because I needed saving, and what did you do?” He pitched his voice to mimick her. “I have to go, Shura; I have to attend to someone else with real needs, Shura; can’t you be more understanding, Shura; I’m working, working, working, so go to hell, Shura.”

Tatiana, shivering hot, was glad she was on the floor of the deck and didn’t have far to fall, her head hung low, her jaw not moving, her lip swelling, trickling blood. “Was it the Friday when you had her lipstick all over your face?” she asked. “Is that the Friday you’re talking about? My mentioning it wasn’t enough? You wanted me to wipe it off for you, too?”

Alexander backed away from her, to the farthest corner and sank in the solitary chair. Tatiana heard the lighter flick on, once, twice, as he unsuccessfully tried to light a cigarette. Finally she smelled the burning nicotine. She wasn’t looking up. But she listened to him inhale, hold, inhale, hold, smoking it down. After he smoked down one, he lit another.

“What did you think would happen?” Tatiana asked. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

At first he didn’t answer. “Obviously,” he finally replied. “This is what I thought, and wanted, and hoped for. That you would never know.”

“You thought you could keep this a secret from me?” she asked. “Of all the secrets you could keep, you thought you could keep this one? You, with the truest eyes, all you had to do was lift them to me after you got caught in a little white lie, lift them to me and say I didn’t want you to worry; sorry. That’s all you would have had to do when passing me that coffee cup last Saturday—just look me in the eye and lie.” Shaking her head, she stared into her palms. “And when you touched me, you couldn’t tremble, and when I asked your lips to kiss me, you had to kiss me instead of step away. You think you can love me and betray me? You think you can kiss me and betray me?” whispered Tatiana. “You couldn’t a day ago, but that’s all you would have had to do—then you could’ve kept your secret.”

Alexander smoked and said nothing.

“It also would’ve been helpful if your lovers didn’t call my house.”

Alexander smoked and said nothing.

“To say you were transparent would not be doing justice to how clearly you were telling me in a dozen different ways you were up to no good.” Tatiana didn’t even want to feel the shadow of his presence fifteen feet away. “So I’ll ask differently—what did you think was going to happen when I knew?”

Alexander smoked down his cigarette before he answered her. “I thought you wouldn’t really care,” he said. “I know that once you might have cared, but I thought that now you would go on with your consuming work, having your little secret lunches, pretending you’re chaste. I thought we might have words, and then you’d pat me gently on the back, kiss me fondly on the head, but in your heart of hearts not give a rat’s ass.”

Tatiana flattened over her knees. “Oh, Alexander,” she whispered. She couldn’t speak. “What did I ever do to you that you can say that to me?” She gasped it out through the throat and chest.

A desperate sound came from his smoke-filled mouth.

“I can’t take it,” she said, holding her stomach. “I can’t bear it. Come here.” She stretched out her arms. “Beat me unconscious and then I won’t care.” A choking Tatiana felt for the deck under her knees. He and his Carmen were like cholla in her eyes. She couldn’t see in front of her. She opened her hands. “Oh, my God, but who is going to help me…?” she whispered in a suffocating voice. “I need help, who is going to help me?” She had to leave the deck immediately, immediately, or she would lose what little sense she had left, the smooth glass of her center already so jagged with his ministrations. Please help me. Please. One ounce of pride to lift me off my feet. One stale gram of sawdust and cardboard pride.

“Tania,” Alexander said into her back. “I know you give yourself to the dying and the afflicted.” He groaned. “But I’m dying and afflicted, too.”

“I can’t help you anymore, Alexander,” said Tatiana. “I can’t even help myself.” She was weeping on her hands and knees. “You turned your back on me despite everything. Well, I’m turning my back on you, despite more things than you know. There. Those are my words. Fond enough for you?” Groping for the deck, she started crawling away from him to the house, crawling away from the only love she had ever known.

She heard him get up and come toward her where she was tilting, spilling over. She lifted her face. Motionless he stood, and then fell on his knees before her.

“Afflicted, Tania,” he said in a ruptured voice. “Look at me. I’m not the drunk in the ER waiting room. I’m your husband. Have mercy on me, too.” He had to stop speaking for a moment. “I come to you every single day of the life that you’ve given me,” said Alexander, “hoping you will touch me—and I stand in line—and you touch me, and I’m good to go for just a few more hours until I need your comfort again. I can’t do without you.” His hands were gripped in front of him, his words barely carrying. “I can’t make it without you, and you know it.”

Tatiana couldn’t turn from him, both of them feeble with fear and sadness.

“Please believe me,” he said. “I didn’t have sex with her. All the things you think I forgot, I remembered them last Wednesday. I haven’t been blameless—” He lowered his head in defeat. “You’re blinded and can’t see straight, I know, but just think for one second and you’ll see through her lies.”

“I can’t even see through yours,” said Tatiana. “I don’t know her at all.”

Alexander tilted his head to stare into her face. Their wretched anguished eyes blinked miserably at each other.

“You know I can’t make her pregnant,” he said. “You know she is lying at least about that, right? After what I’d seen in Moscow, after what my mother taught me, and all during my years as a garrison soldier, think—what did I tell you about myself and the women I’d been with? Have I ever had it off bareback with anyone? Ever, even once in my whole f*cking life?”

“Yes,” she said faintly. “With me.”

“Yes,” Alexander said, sinking down. “Only with you.” His shoulders slumped. “Because you are holy.” He looked at his hands. “And a fat load of good it’s done me.”

Tatiana clutched her arms over her stomach, bending over. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t find her voice. When she looked up at him, she found him leaning forward, the copper champagne seeping out of his eyes. “Shura,” she whispered. “I’m going to have a baby.”

At first she didn’t think Alexander heard her, he was mute so long. “You what?” he said in horror.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she mouthed, her shoulders quaking, her swollen lips quivering.

On his haunches Alexander staggered away. Everything became silent except for her low crying, and the terrible sounds that were coming from his throat. “Oh my God,” he breathed out, pressing his back against the wall like a wounded animal. “When were you going to tell me this? God, please, please don’t say—”

“On blinchiki Wednesday,” whispered Tatiana. “When you went to have sex with another woman.”

Alexander groaned as if he were being flayed. He turned away into the wall of the house. His body was in a shudder.

Time passed, and Alexander said nothing, his head in his knees.

And Tatiana said nothing, her head in her knees.

Indeed now it felt as if they had said everything.

She had been feeling so poorly for weeks, and had been throwing up since Saturday. She attributed the sickness to the unfathomable things that had been going on inside her house, things that she found herself completely unable to deal with. She almost wished her husband could look her in the face and lie, like he did in the Soviet Union when he had to save her life, look her in the face and lie, so she wouldn’t have to live with the ghastly truth—and her life would be saved. She was a month late, but in the stress of the last few weeks, no one noticed, not him, and not even her. Last Tuesday night she was having a bath when she ran a soapy washcloth over her nipples, and she yelped so loudly that Alexander came in from the living room, knocked on the door and asked if she was all right.

And so on Wednesday Tatiana went and got herself a blood test.

Afterward she left work early, bought some food, bought a nice thing to wear for him. Came home, made a little bread, cooked. Alexander was working late, but he would never say no to blinchiki, no matter what time he came home. He would come in, and he would know she had something to tell him, because that is how she always told him things that were too big for regular clothes, for regular food. She lit the candles, put on the music. Tatiana thought that after she would tell Alexander the only thing he had wanted to hear every single month for ten years, that somehow they would make better whatever impossible thing had happened last Friday night. She thought somehow they would pull through it. Maybe he could pretend he was telling the truth and she could pretend to believe him.

But then at nine o’clock, the phone rang, and it was Carmen. Carmen saying, “Well, where is he?” in a tone no woman was allowed to use about someone else’s husband. That’s when Tatiana realized that maybe they wouldn’t pull through it.

And thirty minutes later, someone else’s husband walked through the door. Alexander looked so guilty, so repentant, so threatened, and so bewildered, that not only could he not look at Tatiana, not only could he not kiss her, or speak to her, or make love to her, he couldn’t even see through the blinchiki and the see-through camisole for what they really were: Shura, I have something fantastic to tell you. Sit down, because you simply won’t believe it. And that’s when she knew how blinding the black vile visions in his eyes must have been.

Tatiana lifted her head from her knees, and Alexander was standing in front of her, eyes full of black vile visions. She hadn’t even heard him come near. Once a soldier, always a soldier, in stealth, even in life.

“Come on,” he said quietly, bending to her and lifting her whole into his arms. He carried her inside. After setting her down next to the sink, he crushed five trays of ice into it and filled it with cold water. Tatiana thought he was going to tell her to put her face into it, and was about to meekly impotently protest—when Alexander submerged his own head into the ice.

After five seconds of watching him, her face ached. “Alexander,” she whispered. “Alexander…” Her hand went on his back. He was still under. How long had it been? She got a little worried, and pulled on his soaked shredded T-shirt, tried to pull him up, but he stood like he had turned to stone, his hands gripping the edge of the porcelain sink, his body bent forward, his entire head up to his neck sunk downward into the freezing slush.

“Alexander, please,” she whispered. Oh, he was good. She was now begging him. She yanked on him. “Come on, please.” It must have been well over a minute, possibly two, when he finally lifted his head, gasping for breath.

“I’m burning up,” was all he said, crossing himself.

Panting, not drying off, he put some ice into a dish towel dipped in the freezing water, and took her by the shoulders. Setting her down on the couch, settling her deep into the crook of his arm, he held the towel to her face, his molten eyes blinking at her from inches away, wet, icy, inflamed, in silent remorse. Her head tipping back onto his shoulder, Tatiana closed her eyes. Soon her face was numb. The heart wasn’t numb, though. Maybe he could submerge her heart in ice for two, three years, and when he pulled it out, she’d be as good as new.

“The swelling has gone down a little,” Alexander said. “I know it hurts. Ice, no ice, you’re going to be black and blue tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

“For this you’re sorry?”

In their bed, Tatiana couldn’t stop sobbing, turned away from him, rolled into a fetal ball. But she was naked. He was naked. He had removed the blankets off the bed and left them uncovered. He was on his back, with both arms over his face. She kept wiping her uninjured cheek; the salt was eating her lip. It was dark.

An excruciating sound came from his throat. “You have no right to say such vicious things to me, no right to incite me intentionally and deliberately when you know I’m at the end of my f*cking rope. How could you not have had the slightest sense to protect yourself, especially knowing that you’re—” Alexander couldn’t continue.

“What, you of all people can’t understand why I’d be completely crazed? Completely beyond the sanity pale?”

He was breathing heavily. “I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong with you,” he said. “You’re telling me to pack my bags, to leave our house, knowing you’re going to have a baby?”

“And this surprises you why? Have you seen what’s been happening in our house?”

“Stop talking to me like this in our bed, Tatiana. My white flag is up,” said Alexander. “I have no more.”

“My white flag is up, too, Shura,” she said. “You know when mine went up? June 22, 1941.”

They lay. He struggled for his words. “Did you…sleep with that man?”

Tatiana coiled around herself, pressing her face into the pillow. “I can’t talk to you,” she said, her voice muffled. “I had dinner with him in a public place. Unlike you I never forget what I am. I can’t believe you’re shameless enough to ask about him.”

Alexander started to ask something else and broke off. Tatiana knew, there were some things her warrior husband had no strength for, and this was one of them. There were some things Alexander could not ask. But she would be damned before she let him turn it around to her. Damned. This time she wasn’t going to help him with a single word.

Tatiana wanted to ask him about Carmen, but she herself was so afraid. She knew he would lie to save them—especially now. He would look her in the face and with his velvet voice and his velvet eyes lie, and she would never know the truth, and would never understand, and would walk around with lies and betrayal for the rest of her life, and never again know what Alexander’s word was worth.

She couldn’t not ask.

Yet she couldn’t ask.

She felt him creep up behind her. She felt his warm pained breath as he pressed his face into the nape of her neck, into what was left of her hair.

“Tatia, I didn’t sleep with her,” he said. “Please believe me.”

Lies? Truth?

“Turn to me,” he whispered.

“I am your one wife,” she said without turning.

“Please turn to me, my one wife.”

“Except for this—anything you do is fine with me,” Tatiana said, and started to cry. “Our son is right. Anything you do is fine with me. Every day I love the ground on which you walk, Alexander,” she whispered. “From the beginning, this was so. So if you raise your voice or your hand to me, I bow my head and take it. And if you need me, any way you need me, any time you need me, I give you my body and take it. You have ruled over me with your scepter. And if you’re shut away and can’t find your heart, I walk beside you up and down the Stonington hills, walk beside you through our entire America, waiting until you love me again. And when you raise your weapon, your .45 caliber cannon and fire into my face, and I am now served that up too without fail as I close my eyes each night—that and Leningrad and Stockholm and Berlin—I say, this is the hand that I have been dealt. I say as I say to everything, this is my cross.” Tatiana’s already cracked voice broke, and broke again. “And for that—I have you.”

Alexander brought himself closer to her, to fit behind her in a spoon, in a crescent moon. His face remained in her hair. His hand slipped around her hip and over her stomach. His body was shaking. “Please…turn to me.”

“No,” Tatiana said. “Can’t you see how afraid I am to face you? I made you a promise in that Lazarevo church. I gave you my hand, I promised you, no matter how you treat me, what you do to me, I am steadfast by you, I am resolute, I am always with you.”

He turned her around himself.

Tatiana closed her crying eyes so she wouldn’t see his lying eyes.

“I followed you a thousand miles to the front,” she said brokenly. “I would’ve followed you to hell. And did.”

“I know,” he said.

“I would have lived out the rest of my days with you in one room on Fifth Soviet, making you kasha and stepping over crazy Slavin as I ran to get you your daily bread.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “My whole life, I have been nothing but good to you, why are you hurting me like this?”

His trembling arms went around her. “Please…” Alexander whispered, his voice, his body breaking down. “I can’t take it. I’m running on empty seeing you like this—please—” He exhaled in raw shallow breaths.

They lay not speaking until he was a little calmer, and she was a little calmer, smelling his familiar scent, being held by him. “Shh,” Alexander whispered soothingly. “Shh. Come on. Please don’t cry. Please.” He moved to lie on her pillow, his lips touching where he had hit her, his hands stroking her hair. “Tania, my wife, I didn’t sleep with her,” he said. “Open your eyes and look at what I am. Look inside me. I didn’t sleep with her.”

She stared at him in the dark, intensely mining his face. “You’re doing this deliberately,” she said after a minute. “You’ll tell me anything I want to hear, because you know how desperately I want to believe you. You’ll make your eyes anything, because you know how desperately I want them to be true.”

“They are true.” His hand glided over her, from the crown of her hair, down her back, slow and soft and soothing to her calves…and up again. Her eyes involuntarily closed. His velvet hands, too, would lie, to save them.

“I’m working late, Tania, you said. I have a meeting, Tania. I spilled beer on my jeans. You laid out your lies for me like a buffet at Christmas. What were you covering up for if not…” She squeezed her eyes to stop the tears from springing to them again. “I don’t want to know.”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“What am I going to do? I can’t have her name mentioned in our bed. But I don’t know what to do with the black hole where my faith in you has been.”

His arms stretched unyielding around her. “Have faith,” he said. “I will fix it.”

She took a frail breath. “Did you…touch her?”

He stopped caressing her. “Tatiana, please forgive me.” Alexander breathed out, crestfallen. “I did.” He wouldn’t let her gasping body turn away. “Look at me, here I am,” he whispered, his face weak from shame. “Don’t turn away. I’m yours. I am only yours. I belong to you. I just f*cked up, babe.”

Hours passed in darkness.

Over it, under it, across it, through it, passed torrents of grisly words and storms of shattered confessions. Everything was out, everything was in their bed, everything was said, and felt.

Tatiana watched Alexander’s face when he spoke to her, watched it for truth, for meaning. She listened to him, her hands on him when she asked him things over and over, her hands on him when he answered her over and over. She placed her cheek on his chest when he spoke to her, to hear his voice through his heart. Her mouth was over his mouth, inhaling for the truth on his breath that came from inside him. Lies? Truth?

But the truth was merciless. Completely uncircumspect, weighing no consequence, he planned, talked, sat, bought drinks, flirted with another woman, fully aware, fully receptive, week in, week out, as if he were not married. He lay in wait and went into a car with another woman, remembering to take off his jacket, but leaving his wedding ring on. What odd lines of right and wrong he marked inside his head. And if that grave matter weren’t enough, four days later, amid blatant lies, with full knowledge of his actions and deliberate consent of his mind, he bought condoms to take another woman to bed while his wife sat at home waiting to tell him they were going to have a desperately wanted baby. Alexander kissed another woman. He touched another woman. And she touched him. Tatiana simply didn’t have the necessary armor around her untainted, unprotected heart to bear this.

She lay stunned and numb, lay quietly and stared at him in the dark, wondering if this was indeed unfixable and if it wasn’t, why did it feel so unfixable, while Alexander kneeled at the bottom of the bed and kissed her feet, and whispered, Please Tania, please forgive me.

She knocked, yes, but how could you let her in, Shura? How could you let her in?

He faced away from her, his scarred back to her.

She crept to him and touched his wounds, his tattoos, his hammer and sickles, his SS Eagles, she put her face lower on his back where his kidney had been ruptured, vividly seeing him lying gray on the crimson ice, knowing that if she didn’t do something instantly, he was going to die. Tonight she wanted all his scars, his tattoos, his body, his soul to tell her what to do, how to set it right.

She tried to set it right by touching him. She stroked the knotted muscles in his arms, in his shoulders, she kissed his stomach, though kissing was difficult with her swollen lip, but to touch him she did it. She tried to move lower, down the line of his black hair, but couldn’t after what he had told her.

Please, Tania, please forgive me. And touch me.

In a little while, she tried again. With her unsteady hands, she took hold of him. He was so familiar, so true. She knew him so well, what he liked, what he loved, what he needed. She was like his own hands: anytime anywhere she knew how to give it to him in a dozen different ways. And tonight when he responded to her sad and milking hands, she put her swelling mouth on swelling him. But it hurt too much. She pressed her wet face against him, rubbing salt into him, her hands falling away, her body falling away. How could you let her touch you?

I’m sorry, Tania, I’m so sorry.

I guess even we can be broken.

“We cannot be broken,” he said. “We cannot be broken by f*cking Carmen. She was nothing. She meant nothing. It meant nothing.”

“Alexander, you and I have been through too much to have this kind of compound fraud in our bed. You’re right in this sense—it’s not any of the other things we have borne. It’s not death. It’s not our lost families or your butchered body. It’s not starvation, or Leningrad. It’s not war, or life in the Soviet Union.” She paused. “You know what it is though, Shura?”

His head was hung. He didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry, Tania. Please.”

“I’m your only family. The only allegiance you have in this world is to me. You selling me out for meaningless milt-market—not even for love—that’s not nothing, is it? Meanwhile I’m shackled to you.” She started to cry again. “I’m holding all your open wounds together. I’m on the train to Kolyma with you, I’m in the filth of the Gulag with you. I’m lashed with you and burned with you, I eat out of the same bowl with you, and when you die I’ll be the one to stick the helmet over your rifle into that shallow ground.”

“Oh dear God, Tania, please.” He was astride her, threading his arms around her. His shoulders were shaking. “Please. I’m sorry.”

She turned her head and closed her eyes and tried to fly away from bitter life.

He held her hands apart and put his face between her breasts. He was kissing her chest and he was whispering, but what she couldn’t hear. Because she was crying. He whispered inaudible unheard truths into her mouth, kissed her bruised lips, kissed her breasts, cupping them, caressing them, whispering again, kissed her achingly sensitive nipples until she pleaded no more no more, and he whispered, just a little more, his wet contrite lips kissing her wet vulnerable nipples.

Oh, Shura…

When she could heave her body up from the bed, she tried again. Sitting next to him, she took hold of him, caressing him, and when her soft hands made him hard, she put her bloodied lips on him and kissed all of him, from his groin up to his head that was cupped into her kneading palm, kissed him and lightly rubbed him, smooth and straight, into her lips and into her tears. You are so beautiful, she whispered, crying. Without knowing anything but you, I always thought so.

“And I have known,” he said. “I have come to you knowing. No one is like you. You are more than I have ever deserved. I was so afraid you didn’t love me like you used to. I was terrified you felt for someone else. You were always working, and I was felled by our other struggle”—he choked—“and I wasn’t thinking. But those are just words, nothing more. I’m sorry.” Pledging, repenting, promising, pleading.

She listened to him, she nodded. They were all just words. What good were his promises to her? He couldn’t explain, she didn’t understand. She tried to fix it by letting him touch her.

With her tiny hand, she took his big hands, all ripped up and raw from the cholla, and placed them on her breasts. You have the strongest hands, she whispered. He pulled away. With her slender hand she took his long, thick fingers, tense and trembling, and put them between her thighs. He pulled away. Look at me, she whispered, crying, lying on her back, opening her legs. I’m defenseless before you. Please touch me. I’m like you love, Shura. Like you love.

Kissing her mound, pressing his palm over her, covering her, he shook his head and crawled away.

“Please touch me,” she said. “Why won’t you touch me?”

“Don’t you understand what I come to you for?” said Alexander. “I can’t have communion with you until you forgive me.”

He was right.

He pressed his forehead to her forehead, his damp stubbled face to her face. He pressed his lips into her heart, his wet black hair tickling her clavicles. Please forgive me. White gold is the color of my true love’s hair.

All that love, and it still was not enough. She was weeping in her despair.

“How can I forgive you?” she said. “This is the one thing I don’t know how to forgive.”

“I’m damned,” Alexander said, falling on his back. “I was blinded by stupidity for a brief moment in our life, for a flicker in the eternity in which you and I live, and I stumbled. I f*cked up. I am sick and completely wrong. I am low and revolted. I promise I will do everything I can to fix it, to make it better.” He took a breath. “But—what do you mean, you don’t know how to forgive me?”

In her weakest whisper, Tatiana spoke. “Alexander Barrington,” she said, “tell me, would you know how to forgive me?”

They both knew the inconceivable answer to that inconceivable question.

The answer was no.

He stared at her mutely and then covered his face with his arm. “Well, what are you and I going to do, Tatiana?” he said in a desperate voice. “We can’t live like we’ve been living.”

She started to speak, to present him with a number of choices, and that’s when he opened her legs and climbed on her to comfort her shaking body from its monumental distress of the unbearable endless night.

“Listen to me,” Alexander said, holding her head between his forearms. His hands were clamped on top of her head. “Understand this one thing and then everything else will become easier. You and I have only one life. There is no other choice. A long time ago we went to war together, went into one trench together, lived through Leningrad together. Remind yourself of all we have been through. Did we think we would get even a Lazarevo? And after Lazarevo that we would have Napa, or Bethel Island—or here? I know that sometimes the things we carry become too much for us. We are burned down, but somehow we have to pick ourselves up and keep going. Sometimes I come back from war, and I’m dead, and sometimes I hear your voice and ignore it, and sometimes the impossible happens, I don’t know how, and I don’t know why. I have no defense for myself,” he said. “I know you want one, but I have no excuse. I don’t have a single justification. This one time in my life when I need more than just I’m sorry, I have nothing but my profound regret. I don’t want justice from you,” said Alexander. “I want mercy.” He groaned. “I made a terrible mistake, and I’m begging you to forgive me. Tatiana, I’m begging you,” he said in a collapsing breath, “to forgive me. But there is no separate life for you and me. There is no other bunker, no packed bags, there is no leaving, there are no other wives. There is nothing else ever, but you and me.” He held down her hands, his body was over her, covering her, his face was above hers and she was tiny underneath him, looking up at him, under the black moon. “Do you really think I would let you leave me?” he whispered. “Don’t you remember what I said to you in Berlin? When we were lost in the woods, raging against our fate?”

“Yes,” Tatiana whispered back, her hands going around his neck, closing her eyes. “You said, I let you go once. This time we live together, or we die together.”

“That’s right,” said Alexander. “And this time, we live together.”

Tears rolled from her eyes.

He bent and kissed the sorrow from her face. Milaya, rodnaya moya, kolybel i mogila moya…zhena moya luybimaya, zhizn moya, lyubov moya…prosti menya. Prosti menya, Tania…prosti menya i pomilui…he whispered into her broken face, into her broken mouth.

What? I can’t hear, what are you saying?

In two languages, whispered Alexander, I am singing for my marriage.

Prostrate, he knelt between her legs. “Babe, Tatiasha, my whole life,” said Alexander, pressing his forehead into her heart. “My cradle and my grave, my wife, the only woman I have ever loved—I’m sorry. Please, Tania, help me. Have mercy on me. Please forgive me.”

He lay down next to her, his left hand threading under her head. His right hand caressed her. He kissed her body, from the top of her shorn hair to the tips of her feet, and all within her. His gentle fingers touched her. His big hands held her. And it was sometime when his warm, repentant mouth was on her without relief that Tatiana, desperately moaning, exquisitely aroused in all her sorrow, said, “I will forgive you.”

“You’ll say anything right now, won’t you?”

“Yes, right now, anything.” She lifted herself up, folded her body over him, took hold of his black sad head, and cried.

Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli—I will forgive you.

And then, at last, he was inside her. There was communion.

Oh, Shura.

Oh, Tania.

And so it was.

Afterward they lay nestled, tangled, breast to breast, belly to belly, still conjoined, welded, smelted, soldered to each other, their mouths barely touching, barely breathing, flush together, side by side, soul to soul. Her arms were around him. His arms were around her. Their eyes were closing. They hadn’t slept in three days and it was light on Sunday morning. She kissed his pulsing throat, touched his damp back. His scarred warm hands cupping her bruised face, he said, his voice breaking, “O merciful God, are we really going to have a…baby?”

“Yes, Shura, yes, my husband, yes. We are really going to have a baby.”

Tonight was a night of many firsts. Alexander did something he had not done since 1943 when he found out whose blood was coursing through his bloodless veins.

He wept.

Tatiana resigned from Phoenix Memorial Hospital.