The Summer Garden (126 page)

Every once in a while when she can stand it—or when she can’t stand it—she looks through it. Alexander never looks through it. Tatiana knows what Anthony is about to see. Two cans of Spam in the pack. A bottle of vodka. The nurse’s uniform she escaped from the Soviet Union in that hangs in plastic in the museum closet, next to the PMH nurse’s uniform she nearly lost her marriage in. The
Hero of the Soviet Union
medal in the pack, in a hidden pocket. The letters she received from Alexander—including the last one from Kontum, which, when she heard about his injuries, she thought would be the last one. That plane ride to Saigon in December 1970 was the longest twelve hours of Tatiana’s life. Francesca and her daughter Emily took care of Tatiana’s kids. Vikki, her good and forgiven friend, came with her, to bring back the body of Tom Richter, to bring back Anthony.

In the backpack lies an old yellowed book,
The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems
. The pages are so old, they splinter if you turn them. You cannot leaf, you can only lift. And between the fracturing pages, photographs are slotted like fragile parchment leaves. Anthony is supposed to find two of these photographs and bring them back. It should take him only a few minutes.

Cracked leaves of Tania before she was Alexander’s. Here she is at a few months old, held by her mother, Tania in one arm, Pasha in the other. Here she is, a toddler in the River Luga, bobbing with Pasha. And here a few years older, lying in the hammock with Dasha. A beaming, pretty, dark-haired Dasha is about fourteen. Here is Tania, around ten, with two dangling little braids, doing a fantastic one-armed handstand on top of a tree stump. Here are Tania and Pasha in the boat together, Pasha threateningly raising the oar over her head. Here is the whole family. The parents, side by side, unsmiling, Deda holding Tania’s hand. Babushka holding Pasha’s, Dasha smiling merrily in front.

Someday Tatiana must tell Alexander how glad she is that her sister Dasha did not die without once feeling what it was like to love.

Alexander. Here he is, before he was Tatiana’s, at the age of twenty, getting his medal of valor for bringing back Yuri Stepanov during the 1940 Winter War. Alexander is in his dress Soviet uniform, snug against his body, his stance at-ease and his hand up to his temple in teasing salute. There is a gleaming smile on his face, his eyes are carefree, his whole man-self full of breathtaking, aching youth. And yet, the war was on, and his men had already died and frozen and starved…and his mother and father were gone…and he was far away from home, and getting farther and farther, and every day was his last—one way or another, every day was his last. And yet, he smiles, he shines, he is happy.

Anthony is gone so long that his daughters say something must have happened to him. But then he appears. Like his father, he has learned well the poker face and outwardly remains imperturbable. Just as a man should be, thinks Tatiana. A man doesn’t get to be on the President’s National Security Council without steeling himself to some of life’s little adversities. A man doesn’t go through what Anthony went through without steeling himself to some of life’s little adversities.

In this hand Anthony carries two faded photographs, flattened by the pages of the book, grayed by the passing years.

The kitchen falls quiet, even Rachel and Rebecca are breathless in anticipation. “Let’s see…” they murmur, gingerly picking up the fragile, sepia pictures with their long fingers. Tatiana is far away from them. “Do you want to see them with us, Grammy? Grandpa?”

“We know them well,” Tatiana says, her voice catching on something. “You kids go ahead.”

The grandchildren, the daughter, the son, the guests circle their heads, gaping. “Washington, look! Just look at them! What did we tell you?”

Shura and Tania, 23 and 18, just married. In full bloom, on the steps of the church near Lazarevo, he in his Red Army dress uniform, she in her white dress with red roses, roses that are black in the monochrome photo. She is standing next to him, holding his arm. He is looking into the camera, a wide grin on his face. She is gazing up at him, her small body pressed into him, her light hair at her shoulders, her arms bare, her mouth slightly parted.

“Grammy!” Rebecca exclaims. “I’m positively blushing. Look at the way you’re coming the spoon on Grandpa!” She turns to Alexander from the island. “Grandpa, did you catch the way she is looking at you?”

“Once or twice,” replies Alexander.

The other colorless photo. Tania and Shura, 18 and 23. He lifts her in the air, his arms wrapped around her body, her arms wrapped around his neck, their fresh faces tilted, their enraptured lips in a breathless open kiss. Her feet are off the ground.

“Wow, Grammy,” murmurs Rebecca. “Wow, Grandpa.”

Tatiana is busily wiping the granite island.

“You want to know what my Washington said about you two?” Rebecca says, not looking away from the photograph. “He called you an adjacent Fibonacci pair!” She giggles. “Isn’t that
sexy
?”

Tatiana shakes her head, despite herself glancing at Washington with reluctant affection. “Just what we need, another math expert. I don’t know what you all think math will give you.”

And Janie comes over to her father who is sitting at the kitchen table, holding her baby son, bends over Alexander, leans over him, kisses him, her arm around him, and murmurs into his ear, “Daddy, I’ve figured out what I’m going to call my baby. It’s so simple.”

“Fibonacci?”

She laughs. “Why, Shannon, of course. Shannon.”

The fire is on. It’s dark outside and still. They’ve had dessert; Kerri’s blueberry pie was so good that Anthony asked for seconds, and not only did he ask for seconds but he asked what other kind of pie she made and if she played acoustic or electric guitar, and whether she knew how to play his favorite: “Carol of the Bells.” Amy and Mary wanted to know where she bought the pie crust because it was delicious, and Kerri turning red said she made the crust herself. “You made the pie crust
yourself
?” asked an incredulous Amy. “Who does that?”

The family settled in to louder pockets of familiarity. From the other rooms of the house came noise, of smaller children fighting, a pinball machine, of a pool cue being thrown as a javelin, of tickling, of baseball card trading, of glasses falling on the floor, of older girls maternally screaming, “If you don’t stop it this instant, I swear, I’ll…”

Finally the fifteen long-haired young collect in the gallery around a karaoke machine and while their parents and grandparents and guests sit in captivity and cheer, they belt out song after song with glee, indifferently out of tune, ecstatically out of time. Rachel and Rebecca put on quite a show shouting at the top of their voices they want to be young the rest of their life, how good it feels to be alive, and they want to be eighteen till they die.

Everybody loves the karaoke; Alexander and Tatiana used to delight the grandkids—and their own children—by together singing “I Walk the Line” and “Groovy Kind of Love” (everyone’s favorite), and Alexander alone singing to loud howls, à la Leonard Cohen, that if Tatiana wanted another kind of love, he’d wear a mask for her, and all three brothers, like the Animals, boisterously singing the naughty, chest-tugging “When I Was Young.” But now the machine belongs firmly to those twenty and under.

And then Anthony Jr. picks up the microphone, his black eyes on his father, and without music, without a beat, without any accompaniment, puts away the Goth and the snark for three minutes of an astonishing a cappella rendition of “The Summer of ’69" that fills the house, shows his extraordinary but deeply hidden gifts, leaves them
all
speechless—even the ten-year-olds—and after the final
those were the best days of my life
, forces Anthony to leave the room, with Tommy trailing him, asking, “What’s the matter, Dad? He was
so
good, what’s the matter?”

Alexander sits in the corner of the small sofa by the window watching them all, slightly away from the hullaballoo, though two of Janie’s youngest girls, Vicky and Nicky, are nestled around him.

Tatiana comes and stands behind him, leaning over. “You okay?” she whispers. “Loud in here? Go inside, lie down. You’re tired.”

She can’t have a
whisper
with him without her children, who are watching, pipe up with, “Dad, really, go lie down, you’re exhausted.” “It’s been such a long day, how are you feeling?” “Daddy, go ahead, don’t stay up for our sake, you know what night owls we are.”

He laughs. “Stop mothering me. I’m fine,” he says. “But can you see Pasha and Harry are getting that home movies look about them? Now is a
very
good time for me to take a long walk.” He turns to Tatiana. “You coming?”

His is a rhetorical question. He knows she likes to skulk nearby while they dissect the seconds of time past. Not him; not anymore. Taking the baby from Janie, Alexander goes for a stroll in the lit-up agaves with the newly named monarch, Shannon Clay III, while Tatiana hides inside.

The kids do this every Thanksgiving after karaoke—the custom of the holiday. The lights go out in the den and a crowd gathers, the teenage girls, the Harvard girls, this year even the aloof boyfriend, and the petite and curious fourth-grade teacher. With Tommy by his side but Anthony Jr. nowhere to be seen, Anthony cranks out an old 8mm projector, and soon choppy black- and-white images appear on the cream wall capturing a few snapshots from the canyon of their life—that tell nothing, and yet somehow everything. They watch old movies, from 1963, 1952, 1948, 1947—the older, the more raucous the children and parents becoming.

This year, because Ingrid isn’t here, Anthony shows them something new. It’s from 1963. A birthday party, this one with happy sound, cake, unlit candles. Anthony is turning twenty. Tatiana is very pregnant with Janie. (“Mommy, look, that’s you in Grammy’s belly!” exclaims Vicky.) Harry toddling around, pursued loudly and relentlessly by Pasha—oh, how in 1999 six children love to see their fathers wild like them, how Mary and Amy love to see their precious husbands small. The delight in the den is abundant. Anthony sits on the patio, bare chested, in swimshorts, one leg draped over the other, playing his guitar, “playing Happy Birthday to myself,” he says now, except it’s not “Happy Birthday.” The joy dims slightly at the sight of their brother, their father so beautiful and whole he hurts their united hearts—and suddenly into the frame, in a mini-dress, walks a tall dark striking woman with endless legs and comes to stand close to Anthony. The camera remains on him because Anthony is singing, while she flicks on her lighter and ignites the candles on his cake; one by one she lights them as he strums his guitar and sings the number one hit of the day, falling into a burning “Ring of Fire…” The woman doesn’t look at Anthony, he doesn’t look at her, but in the frame you can see her bare thigh flush against the sole of his bare foot the whole time she lights his twenty candles plus one to grow on.
And it burns, burns, burns…
And when she is done, the camera—which never lies—catches just one microsecond of an exchanged glance before she walks away, just one gram of neutral matter exploding into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of TNT.

The reel ends. Next. The budding novelist Rebecca says, “Dad, who was that? Was that Grammy’s friend Vikki?”

“Yes,” says Anthony. “That was Grammy’s friend Vikki.”

Tak zhivya, bez radosti/bez muki/pomniu ya ushedshiye goda/i tvoi sere-bryannyiye ruki/v troike yeletevshey navsegda…

So I live—remembering with sadness all the happy years now gone by, remembering your long and silver arms, forever in the troika that flew by…

Back even further, to 1947 he takes them. “Look at how funny Grammy is!” the grandchildren peal. “Is she
arm wrestling
with Grandpa?” All you can see through the unsteady camera are her two thin white arms over a man’s strong dark forearm upright and motionless on the picnic table. “She was always running around chasing you, Ant.” “What a knock-out she was.” “Still is,” says Rebecca. “Daddy, look at you, sitting on her lap, being kissed by her. It’s so weird! How old were you here?”

“Um—
four
.”

“Where is Grandpa? You’ve been showing us all these reels for years, and we’ve never seen anything of him.”

“Well, he was the one holding the camera, wasn’t he? You saw his forearm. What more do you want? It’s just for him. She was always performing for him,” says Anthony.

“Come on, you don’t have a single reel with him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on, Dad. You must have something! Come on, show us something. Show us Grandpa, Dad, Ant.
Please
.”

Reluctantly Anthony rummages in the cabinet where the reels are kept. Unwillingly he spools one on, impossibly adept with his one arm, and in a moment, to a collective inhale, flickering on the cream wall, as if by ghostly magic, a young dark man appears near the swimming pool, putting on a tank top to cover his scarred back when he sees the camera on him. He hops up on the diving board, arms out, body straight, about to dive in. The blonde woman is in the water. Click click click, the projector whirrs. His white teeth, his wet black hair, his long-legged, muscular frame fill the wall. The vague shapes of his dark tattoos are visible. He’s been roofing, his chest is broad, his arms enormous. He dives in, far and strong, in an arc, and pulls the woman by her treading feet under the water. When they come up for air, she is trying to get away, but he won’t let her. Only when they’re in the frame together can you really see how large he is and how tiny she is. Soundless, whirr, whirr, just the two of them flinging their bodies against each other, kicking, splashing, and then she jumps into his hands and he lifts her above his head as she straightens up, in a little bikini, arms out, and sways, sways to balance, and for a moment they stand straight, she in the palms of his hands, with her own arms outstretched, right above him. And then he flicks her, sending her falling wildly back, the camera is shaking from laughter, and he is shaking from laughter, and when she comes out of the water she jumps on his back and covers his neck and head with kisses as he turns to the camera and bows and waves, a smile on his face. Click click, whirr whirr, the spool unspools, the wall goes white, and the only sound in the room is the vibration of the projector.