The Summer Garden

  “Seriously talk to me?”

  “I need your advice.”

  Last time the advice giving didn’t go so well. They went into one of the small quiet rooms off the main banquet hall and sat down on the couch. “What’s going on?” said Tatiana.

  Amanda looked distressed. “Tania, I don’t know what a good friend is supposed to do. I want to ask you—if you knew something about Steve, something you thought I should know, would you tell me?”

  Tatiana’s face flushed hot red. Oh, no. Amanda found out about the hospital! No wonder she’s upset. What to do now, I must own up. I should’ve told her straight away, but how could I have—and Tatiana said, “Oh, look, Mand, I’m sorry—”

  “What I want to know is: would a good friend tell her friend something unpleasant, something hurtful, something that could ruin their friendship? Does a good friend keep her mouth shut or is she obligated to say something? Is the mark of a good friend to tell or not to tell?” Amanda lifted her conflicted eyes to Tatiana.

  You weren’t my good friend! Tatiana cried to herself. It’s not fair, I didn’t know you, and he apologized and it was in the past. I should never have kept my mouth shut.

  “I think a good friend should tell, Amanda,” said Tatiana. “I’m sorry—”

  Amanda grabbed Tatiana’s hands. “I’m sorry, Tania. I don’t want to tell you this. I really don’t. I just think you should know, that’s all.”

  Very slowly Tatiana pulled her hands away from Amanda and stared hard at her cringing. “You have something to tell me?”

  “It’s about that cursed bachelor party. I wish they’d never had it.”

  “I know about the bachelor party,” Tatiana said.

  Amanda waved her off. “Oh, the girls, that’s meaningless.”

  “Oh? Well, if it’s not about the meaningless naked girls, then what is it?”

  She lowered her voice. “Alexander went into the bedroom with one of them.”

  Tatiana shook her head.

  Amanda shook her head. “The drunk was later, Tania,” she said. “That was for your benefit. As in, later the excuse was he got so drunk he couldn’t think straight. He was apparently fine when the girls were there. A number of people saw him go in, not just Stevie, please don’t be upset with me, you promise?”

  “I think it’s too late for that promise,” said Tatiana, standing up.

  Amanda covered her face.

  Tatiana, because her legs wouldn’t hold her, sat back down. She took Amanda’s hands away. “Amanda,” she said, “did Steve tell you this?”

  Amanda nodded.

  Tatiana tried to keep it together. “Did it ever occur to you that Steve might be lying?”

  “What?”

  “Lying, Mand. Not telling the truth. Shuckstering. Deceiving. Lying.”

  “Why would Steve lie about this?”

  “There are a thousand reasons, none of them I can go into now. Why would you repeat something like this to me on Cindy’s wedding day? Why wouldn’t you wait at least until the day after?”

  “You asked me to tell you!”

  Tatiana patted her. “Well, I walked into a trap there. But now I have two options. Either I believe my husband, or I believe your fiancé. My Alexander or your Steve. You’ll forgive me if I choose to believe my husband. And you know what, let’s not talk about this—ever again. If that’s all right with you.”

  “Tania, you’re being willfully blind, but that’s your choice.”

  “You think I’m being blind? There is only one way to settle this. We can bring Steve and Alexander in here—is that what you want? How do you think that’s going to end?”

  “One of them is going to lie,” Amanda said pointedly.

  “Exactly, but unlike you,” Tatiana said, plenty pointed herself, “I am married to the man who sleeps next to me every night, who wakes up next to me every morning.” She paused to let that sink in. “How often do you think he can lie before I know the truth? Especially that kind of truth—that he goes into rooms for twenty minutes and has it off with unclean whores who have it off with hundreds of men? You think that truth is easy to hide?”

  “Some men are very good at hiding their true selves.”

  “Some women are very good at not seeing their men’s true selves.”

  Amanda narrowed her eyes. “Are you making some kind of aspersions on Steve?”

  “No. But if we bring Alexander and Stevie in here—how many more stitches can Steve get in his face, how many more broken arms? And Cindy’s wedding will be ruined. You’ve already ruined my day. But I’m not the bride, I don’t have to recall this as my wedding day, which was blissfully unmarred by idiocy.” She took a deep breath. “So we’re just going to pretend that you never said a word to me.”

  “But it’s true, Tania! I know you don’t want to believe it about Alexander—”

  “No! You don’t want to believe this about Steve.”

  “Tell me what you know about Steve.”

  “In this case, that he is a malicious liar. Is that enough? The rest is more than I have the decency to share with you on this beautiful day. And you, Amanda, should open your eyes to your life. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” Tatiana walked out of the room in her peach high heels and her taffeta dress.

  Amanda came back to the table, without glancing at Alexander, who sat patiently, drank his wine, and finally asked Amanda where Tatiana was. Amanda said she didn’t know. Alexander waited a little longer and went to look for her. He walked the corridors and looked into every small room. He went outside to the back gardens where the photographers were setting up for the final photo of the bride and groom. Around the corner of the country club, he found her standing against the back wall, her arms by her side, her fists pressed into the stone behind her. Her eyes were closed, and she was hyperventilating.

  “Tania?” he said with worry. She opened her eyes and stared cold and hard at him. She didn’t speak, not even when he touched her. “What happened?”

  She said in a low dull voice, “What have you done to us, Alexander? What have you let into our house?” She couldn’t step away from the wall. Her knees were shaking. “I don’t know what to do anymore. How to help you, how to stop their subterfuge. I thought I gave you what you needed most from me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “But when are you going to give me what I need from you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What I need from you,” she said, “is not to be blind. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I can do that. What’s going on?”

  Shaking her head, she took his arm and stepped away from the wall. “I can’t stay here another minute. Call me a cab and I’ll go home. You stay as long as you want.”

  “You can’t leave in the middle of a wedding! What a scandal. We have to stay for the cake.”

  “I can’t stay here another minute.” Tatiana put her face in her hands. She couldn’t look at him. “I need to go home. Tell them I wasn’t feeling well. It’s not a lie.”

  She refused to go inside even to say good-bye. Alexander went back to make his apologies to Jeff, and they went home. What was happening?

  She kept saying, I’m doing the best I can. She kept repeating it like a mantra. But she wouldn’t tell him anything. He felt things start to slip away from him, invisible things, threads unraveling on a blanket he didn’t know was covering him.

  No, he knew.

  The blanket of his new calling, his new father, his new friends, his new brother. He chose them. They chose him. He chose them despite her tight-lipped reservations, because he believed she was naïve and her worries were unfounded. He still believed that. Days now since the wedding, and she still wasn’t talking.

  Eventually he asked her silent stoic back, “Who are you trying to protect?”

  And she replied through her back: “You.” She was washing the dishes.

  “Turn around.” She turned. “I need protecti
ng?”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying it, but yes, as much as ever.”

  “Tania, do you think it’s possible for you not to speak in code? When you talk can you speak either Russian or English, but not gibberish?”

  She said nothing, turning to the sink again.

  “Okay, that’s it,” he said, striding to her. “Don’t you shake your plummy little tail at me.” Picking her up from the sink, he carried her over and dropped her on the couch, stomach down. Falling on top of her, he pinned her legs between his, and clasped her wrists over her head. Her face was in the couch pillow. “Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to take the truth from you?”

  “Shh!”

  He stuck his chin into her neck, into her cheek, into her shoulder blades. He was tickling her and whispering to her as she kept laughing. “I’m trying to figure out if I should get it out of you by making love to you until you tell me, or by not making love to you until you tell me . . .”

  “Tough one,” she said. “But if the choice is mine, I might as well have the former.”

  “I think,” Alexander whispered into her ear, squeezing her wrists tighter, “the choice is mine, tadpole...”

  There was coughing behind them. They turned their heads and Anthony was standing at the foot of the couch, looking puzzled. “What are you doing?” he asked quietly.

  “Mommy won’t tell me something, and I’m trying to tickle it out of her.”

  “Dad’s trying to stubble it out of me,” Tatiana said, her head out of the sofa pillow. Alexander got off her, pulled her up; they sat primly on the couch and looked at their son, who stared at them with solemnity and finally said, “Whatever it is you were doing, Dad, it wasn’t working.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  In the heat of the night, near the mountains, Alexander sat outside with a cigarette on the rocking bench he had built for them, and she came out and climbed into his lap. It was sunset over the saguaro desert valley, and he rocked them back and forth, while she nuzzled him and murmured love in his ear, cooing pidgin English into him, through his skin. But nothing she said or did could erase the image of her in a peach taffeta dress, standing against the wall, her fists to the stone, saying, “What have you let into our house, Alexander?”

  What did that mean?

  What had he let in?

  But finally even the densest, most wrapped-up-in-himself husband in all of Scottsdale figured out that something wasn’t right when Tatiana brought him lunch, and Steve came by with inspection papers to sign, and Tatiana wouldn’t look at him. He said, “Hi, Tania,” and Tatiana didn’t even mutter a “Hey.” It was like Steve didn’t exist.

  Even blind Alexander noticed.

  Steve said, “Mand and I haven’t seen much of you guys lately. We should go out.”

  “Been busy, Stevie,” Alexander said slowly, staring at Tatiana, whose head was down. “Been in Yuma four days in the last two weeks. That little Korean conflict.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, how about this Saturday?”

  “We’re busy.” That was Tatiana, eyes to the ground.

  “Next Saturday?”

  “It’s our tenth anniversary,” she said.

  “The following weekend?”

  “Anthony’s birthday.”

  “Well, we’re having a Fourth of July party—you guys are coming to that, right?”

  “If it’s on a Friday, I have to work. In fact, I have to go now.” She never raised her eyes to him.

  At the car, Alexander opened the door for her and she got in without looking at him either! “Whoa,” he said, reaching for her through the open window. His fingers under her chin lifted her face. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. You have to get back to work. Look, the homeowners are here. Everything is fine.”

  “Tania.”

  “What do you want to do? Have it out on your construction site while a nice married couple waits for you to show them their plaster walls? You’ve got work to do. I’m going home to make dinner. What would you like? I was thinking of chili and corn bread.”

  “Yes, fine,” he said. “Tania, did Steve say something to you at the wedding?”

  “No,” she said.

  “What then?”

  “In the middle of the construction site?”

  “When I get home.”

  “Anthony and Sergio are having dinner with us.”

  “Tonight in bed.”

  “I’ve got to get up early for work tomorrow.”

  He opened the car door and pulled her out. “Come on, babe. Don’t play fucking games with me.”

  “You don’t want to know, Alexander. Believe me, you haven’t wanted the truth for three years, you aren’t going to want it now.”

  Frustrated, he let her go. Clearly now was not the time. And later at home was not the time—with Anthony and Sergio in the next room, and quiet music, and the sound of running water from the dishes and the laundry, and the laughter of two boys playing ball outside and Monopoly inside, there was no place for Sturm und Drang, which is why they both hated having any. Their quiet life worked in small decibels, or in higher decibels in their great bed behind locked doors, with Anthony long asleep or at his friend’s house. But not in bed, not together in a hot bath, not outside in the pool, or running around together, or watching the sunset and smoking, or during their divine Sundays, not during the most convivial moments, the most comfortable moments, the most conjugal moments was there a good time for these storms. Alexander realized unhappily that the only harsh words they’d had in the three years they’d lived in Phoenix had been over something to do with Steve or his father.

  Turned out that after the chili and corn bread, and a game of basketball, Anthony walked Sergio back down the road and Alexander and Tatiana had thirty minutes to themselves. He took her by the hand outside to their deck, placed her in front of him, sat down on the bench, lit a cigarette, and said, “Let’s have it.”

  She wasted no time. She had a lot to get out. “Alexander,” she said, “I’ve kept quiet for three years because I wanted to give you what you wanted. I know how you feel about Bill. You wanted to work with him, you wanted to be friends with Steve, you wanted me to keep quiet— so I did. After I have seen you be so unhappy, I wanted to do nothing to upset you. So I kept my mouth shut. But I can’t keep quiet any longer. Stevie—and his dad—they’re no good, Shura. They’re no good as friends, they’re no good as employers, and they’re no good as people. That’s the bad news. The good news is: the beautiful thing about living here, in Phoenix, is that they don’t matter. There’s somewhere else to go, something else to do, somewhere else to work. You are free, and you now have indispensable skills. Carolyn had her house built by a man named G.G. Cain, and she said he was the nicest man—”

  “Tatiana, wait, what are you talking about? I know G.G. But I’m not going to work for someone else. I’m not leaving Bill.”

  “Shura, you have to leave him. You do know that Stevie beat a man nearly to death?”

  Alexander shrugged. “What’s that got to do with me? Or Bill?”

  “Everything. How far do you think that fruit has fallen from the tree? Did you hear what I said? He beat a man nearly to death.”

  “It was a long time ago. I did some things too, a long time ago.” His face darkened.

  “You know what was a long time ago? Your birth,” Tatiana snapped. “As in, you weren’t born yesterday.”

  “Yes, because you know the way of male drunken bar fights. The guy had been making awful remarks about Amanda.”

  “Stevie says this to you and you believe him? Stevie, the man who tells anyone who will listen, including you, what Amanda does and does not do, is suddenly going to step up for her honor?” Tatiana laughed before turning grave. “Stevie, whose father buys his son’s freedom with the money he makes off your back?”

  Alexander rubbed his eyes.

  “Before he knew I was married to you, Steve was coming to the hospital pretend
ing to be taken up with me. Would you like to know the kinds of things he said to me?”

  “I can imagine. But he didn’t know me.”

  “He knew Amanda, didn’t he? He knew he was engaged, didn’t he? He knew I was married!”

  “All right, so he doesn’t treat his women very well.”

  “I’m not his woman. I’m your woman. And I’m telling you loud and clear that you need to protect your family.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Alexander said, his voice rising. “Protect my family? What the fuck does that mean? I work all day six days a week for my family.”

  “I’m not impugning how hard you work. I’m impugning who you work for.”

  “That’s it. I’ve heard enough.”

  “No,” said Tatiana, shaking her head, “I don’t think you have.” She took a breath. “Do you know that to this day, Steve says suggestive things to me when I come to see you and you’re not there? ‘You must be used to men looking at you, Tania,’ he says in his smarmy voice. ‘Even Walter said you looked pretty the other day, Tania, and I always thought Walter was a pansy,’ he says. ‘I like that dress, it really shows off your figure.’ And, ‘Don’t wear that dress again in front of Dudley, Tania. He’s going to go crazy.’”

  “Who the fuck is Dudley?” said Alexander.

  “How should I know?” replied Tatiana. “He says to Amanda, ‘How about a threeway, Amanda?’ instead of ‘Let’s get married in June, Amanda.’ And you, as they try to buy your land and take your wife, you don’t want to hear it so you can continue to pretend that the naked picture in Balkman’s office is just an anomaly, and that the wolf whistling, ogling, leering men building his houses are normal, too!”

  “Take my wife? They’re just men on roofs! What, New York didn’t have wolf whistling?”

  “Nothing like this. Never like this—so that I can’t come have lunch with my husband? Even a soldier, a warrior husband, is not enough anymore to make them stop? They ask you to go to Las Vegas, they invite you to strip clubs, and finally they get you out on a stag night.” Tatiana took a very deep breath. “To all this you keep shaking your blind head—”