The Summer Garden (127 page)

“They were so young,” whispers Rebecca.

“Like us,” says Washington.

The children sit. Somewhere soft the music plays. The children’s wives and husband are asleep. The children’s children are asleep—even the teenagers who got tired of air hockey and ping pong and basketball and board games, even the Harvard students; it’s late even for them. The math major is sharing a room with Tommy and Anthony Jr., he and his piercings far down the hall from pristine and protected Becky.

Up on the heights by the mountain, the four of them sit at the island, in the house where they grew up. They’ve brought out the midnight food. Cold leek and bacon stuffing, pieces of turkey straight from the Cling Wrap. They drink old wine, they open new beer.

They sit, winding down. On this Thanksgiving they sit just a while longer, for comfort, for peace, for family, for memory, for the blissful childhood they all shared that flew by and ended much too soon. They sit in the oasis and eat their mother’s bread. During the day in front of their wives, their husbands, their children, they talk about sports and kids, and politics, and weapons, and work, but at night on holidays they never do.

Harry and Pasha talk of going out on the boat with him at sea, possibly the Biscayne Bay, when they were small. They both remember palm trees, green water, hot, remember him massive between them, themselves just fingerlings. No Janie, no Ant. He put the boys on the bench and showed them how to wrap a staysail. He gave them fishing rods and hooks and worms and they sat flanking him, with their lines in the water. Their mother sat at the rudder.
Come with me and I will make you fishers of men
. He was smoking, yanking on his line once in a while, and they were imitating him and yanking on theirs. The fish ate the worm around the hooks but were never caught. Then Harry got very interested in his hook. What else could it catch? Could it catch a piece of clothing? Wood? A good chunk of Pasha’s thigh?

“Harry, so there was something wrong with you from the very beginning, do you see?” says Janie.

Pasha says, “Yes, but I pulled the hook out of my leg and administered first aid to myself, so there.”

“Well, you are your mother’s son,” says Harry. “And
I
showed you that—and never a word of thanks. We all should be so lucky as to know who we are from the very beginning.”

“We all knew who we were,” says Jane Barrington. “From the very beginning.” She turns to Anthony. “Did he ever go fishing with you, Ant?”

“Once or twice,” replies Anthony.

And just a few feet away, in the long darkened butler’s pantry between the banquet dining room and the kitchen, there is a small alcove between the wall and the cabinets. In this alcove stands a small stool, and on this stool sits Tatiana, her eyes closed, her head back, pressed into the wall in her little hiding space, shaking a little bit, nodding, listening to his children carrying him on their grown-up voices.

Alexander comes out looking for her, and Tatiana, though herself sleepless, undresses and lies down with him. She wants to talk about the day, but he is tired and tells her they’ll debrief in full tomorrow. She waits until he is asleep, and then disengages and in her robe comes back out to the now solitary kitchen and makes herself a cup of tea. The hums of the house soothe her. She knows what floorboards creak and where the grease stain from a sticky little finger is. She knows the corner of the living room area rug shredded by Janie’s ratel of a Labrador. She knows the drips of the faucet and the smell of garlic each time she walks past the
garlic tomb
as she calls it—a spherical clay pot with holes on top, a kind of scented candle in reverse.

The house is
all
.

In solitude she reflects and comforts herself. She doesn’t want the day to end.

She makes bread.

She mixes a little warm milk with sugar and dry active yeast and puts the cup under the hot lamp to bubble up. She sits on her high stool, sipping her tea, and watches the yeast mixture slowly fleck with bubbles, rising in a creamy froth. After swirling it with a spoon and making it all liquid, she sits and watches it bubble up again.

After fifteen minutes she gets out the flour, melts her butter and warms another two cups of milk. She separates her eggs, and beats the whites until they are firm and foamy. When she turns around, a bleary-eyed Anthony is sitting watching her from across the island. “I can’t believe you’re still up.”

“I can’t believe you’re still up.”

She makes him a cup of tea. “So what do you think of your daughter’s new paramour?”

Anthony shrugs. “I don’t have to sleep with him, do I? What do I care? I’d prefer he didn’t parade his tongue jewelry in front of her family, but no one asked me.”

“Rebecca says he’s her first real love,” says Tatiana.

“At eighteen it all seems like real love,” he replies, and breaks off, and then they glance at each other and say no more. Indeed it does, thinks Tatiana. And sometimes it is.

Spread over the island, Anthony watches her. Wherever she goes, his gaze follows, as she combines the flour and sugar and eggs and milk and yeast until it all holds together and then she kneads it, adding melted butter a little at a time until it is all soaked through.

She took a piece of black cobble-hard bread and cut it into four pieces the size of a deck of cards each. Then she cut the deck of cards into half again. One half she wrapped for morning. One half she put on four plates. She put one plate in front of her sister, one plate in front of herself, one plate in front of Alexander, and one plate in front of their mother’s chair. She took a knife and fork, and cut a small piece from her share. A drop of blood from her mouth fell on the table. She ignored it. Putting the bread into her mouth, she chewed it for minutes before finally swallowing it. It tasted moldy, and faintly of hay.

Alexander was long done with his piece. Dasha was long done with her piece. The sisters would not look at their mother’s bread or at their mother’s empty chair. All the chairs were empty now except for hers and Dasha’s. And Alexander’s. Another drop of blood fell onto the table. What did her sister teach her to say a few days ago, kneeling in front of their mother who had died? Give us this day our daily bread, Dasha said.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” said 75-year-old Tatiana in her home in Scottsdale, Arizona.

“Amen,” said Anthony. “I have memories of you making bread that go back over fifty years. You don’t realize what a complete food bread is until you see all the ingredients that go into it.”

Tatiana nodded, lightly smiling. “Yes,” she said, opening her palms and bowing her head before the kneaded dough. “Cottonseed, or hay. Cardboard. Sawdust. Linseed. Glue. A complete food, bread.”

After she buttered a large ovenproof dish she placed the kneaded dough into it, covered it with a white towel and put it into the dark oven. Now the bread had to rise. She sat by her son; they sipped their tea. It was so quiet in the house, just the faucet dripped.

“Mom,” he said, “you do know that we know you sit there and listen to us, don’t you?”

She laughed. “Yes, son,” she said fondly. “I do.” She caressed his face, she kissed his cheek. “Tell me about Ingrid. She’s no better?”

Anthony shook his head. He stopped looking at his mother. “She’s worse than ever. She told the doctor it’s all my fault. I drove her to it. I’m gone all the time. I’m never home.” He pressed his lips together in sharp disappointment. “For fifteen years, she’s been saying this. You’re always on the road, Anthony. Like I’m a truck driver.” He tutted. “I made her check into Betty Ford in Minnesota two days ago.”

“Well, that’s good. That will help.”

He seemed unconvinced. “She’s staying for at least eight months. I told her I don’t want her back unless she is better.”

Tatiana considered him. “What about your sons? Who’s going to take care of them?”

“She doesn’t take care of them now, Mom! That’s the whole f—problem. Tommy’s a good boy, but Anthony Jr. is always in trouble.” Anthony sighed. “And I mean
trouble
. In school, with his friends. With the law.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to say anything during the day, no reason to make everyone upset over this. But I’ve given the President my resignation. I have no choice. I can’t continue. I mean, honestly, what am I supposed to do? The boys…I can’t leave them, and now she’s gone.” He paused. “We’re leaving Washington.”

This was monumental. Anthony had lived in DC for over twenty years.

“I accepted a new position—as commander of Yuma.”

Yuma! Tatiana nodded, trying not to show her excitement.

“It’s a three-year post,” Anthony continued. “Intelligence, weapons, some travel. The boys will come with me, and I’ll be mostly in one place. I haven’t asked, but I’m sure Harry will help me out when I’m away; my kids won’t know what hit them after a week with him.”

“I’m sure Harry will help you out,” Tatiana said carefully. She knew her son wasn’t happy, and her own satisfaction was intrusive. This wasn’t about her. “I know you don’t think it’s wonderful, son,” she said. “But it
is
wonderful. Your sons will be better for having their dad. And Harry is going to go through the roof. Just imagine, both of you at Yuma. I want to wake him up and tell him.” Her hand remained on Anthony’s unhappy face. “You’re doing the right thing. And you’ve done well. Buck up,” she said softly. “Be strong. You have a lot to do. Perseus is only one man.” She smiled. “He can’t be everywhere at once.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, kissing her hand, leaning into it, and then said with deep regret, “Besides, how many Andromedas can a man have in his life?”

Their heads were together. Tatiana was hoping at least one more. “Have faith, bud,” she whispered to her son.

Suddenly there was noise of familiar footsteps. Alexander appeared in the archway. His face was not amused. “What do I have to do around here,” he said loudly to a sheepish Tatiana, “to get my wife to stay in bed with me? You have been up since sunrise, and it’s three in the morning. What’s next? Are you going to start bringing your chair to his front yard, too?” He turned and motioned for her. “Come,” he said, inviting no argument. “Now. Come.”

In their bedroom, she took off her robe and climbed naked into bed with him, into the old big brass bed they had shared since 1949. He was sulky but only for a moment, since he wanted to go to sleep and needed to touch her. “You couldn’t stay in my bed, could you?” They lay face to face. “We were so nice, so warm. But no.” He was caressing her back, her breasts, her thighs.

“I needed to make bread for tomorrow,” she whispered, her kneading hands on him.

“Now that you’ve been in this country for fifty-six years, one of these days I will have to take you to a supermarket,” said Alexander, “and show you this thing we have in aisle twelve—called
bread
. All kinds, all the time. No ration cards, no blizzards, and you don’t even have to wait in line for it.” He was relaxed now, warm, enlarged; he rubbed her back, murmuring to her something about Anthony Jr. being angry, and Tommy being sad, and the baby being cute, and the day being good, and not caring much for Washington despite his mathematical sycophancy…he murmured and nuzzled and she caressed him into relief and sleep.

Back over the years she flies, to Anthony’s voice, learning how to accompany himself on the guitar. In their winter jackets, he and his dad sit on the deck called My Prerogative near the house called Free on Bethel Island in December 1948, Alexander holding both fishing lines while Anthony is showing him how to play and sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” as Tatiana at her open kitchen window is cooking a ham with a brown sugar glaze for the holiday dinner, watching them out on the deck, struggling with the chords and the notes and the fishing lines, heads together, four-year-old Anthony holding his guitar in his two little arms, leaning into his smoking, twenty-eight-year-old father, as she listens to their chuckling voices, one deep, one soft, rising above the cold canals, drifting down the canopies…

Here we are as in olden days,

Happy golden days of yore…

Two

Soon the century has come and gone
, from one sea to another and back again across the waters. Tatiana and Alexander have walked through the old world, they’ve walked through the new. They’ve lived.

But the mangoes are still ripe and sweet, the avocados are fresh, so are the tomatoes. They still plant flowers in their garden. They love to go to the movies, read the paper, read books. Once a month they drive up to Yuma to visit their sons and grandchildren. (Harry shows Alexander the latest weapons he’s working on; Alexander loves that best.) Once a month they drive up to Sedona and the Canyon. Once a month they drive up to Las Vegas. They love American television, comedies best. And other things that the penthouse suite up on the thirty-sixth floor of the Bellagio over Vegas Strip shows them.

“Tania, quick, come here, see what’s on TV.”

She comes. “Oh my.”

“What a country. Bread—and this.”

At home they sit on the couch late into the evening. The TV is off, and he can tell she is nearly asleep. The blanket is over their laps. She sits with her head pressed against his arm.

“Tatia,” he calls for her. “Tatiana, Tania, Tatiasha…”

“Hmm?” she says sleepily.

“Would you like to live in Arizona, Tatia?” Alexander whispers, looking at the fire, “the land of the small spring?”

“Yes…” she echoes. “Yes, my horse and cart, yes, my soul.”

He has his last cigarette sitting outside their bedroom, smelling the nightshade.

They swim in their pool every morning. Once, after they swam five laps and were resting, panting, holding on to the edge, Alexander said, “Did you know that when King David got old he was advised by his counselors to take in a young virgin to warm himself?”

Tatiana blushed at the unexpectedness of that.

“No, you
kill
me,” said Alexander, pulling her to him.