Полина Саймонс – The Summer Garden (страница 22)

“Can I now?”

“Of course. Any time. You haven’t expressed any interest.” He paused. “Until now.”

There was something slightly … Tatiana didn’t know … pointed in his remark. Something accusing. But accusing her of what? Of cooking and cleaning and washing for him? Of braiding her hair and shaving and scrubbing herself pink, and putting on gauzy dresses and sheer panties and musk oil to come to meet him in the evenings? Of letting him have an hour or two with his boy in the mornings?

She contemplated making an issue of it. But an issue of what? She studied him, but he was already past it, as he was past most things, reading the paper, drinking, smoking, talking to Anthony.

Tatiana did come on the boat ride the next morning.

“Your hair is in a crew cut,” a girl murmured to him after she sauntered to stand by his side while Tatiana sat quietly nearby, Anthony on her lap. “Almost like you’re in the army,” the girl persisted when Alexander didn’t reply.

“I was in the army.”

“Oh that’s great! Where did you serve?”

“On the Eastern Front.”

“Oh, wow. I want to know everything! Where is this Eastern Front, anyway? I’ve never heard of it. My father was in Japan. He’s still there.” The girl, who looked to be in her late teens, continued nonstop. “Captain, you’re driving the boat so fast, and it’s getting so windy, and I’m wearing this flouncy skirt. You don’t think it’ll be a problem, do you? The wind isn’t going to kick the skirt up, in an immodest sort of way?” She giggled.

“I don’t think so. Ant, do you want to come, help me steer?”

Anthony ran to his father. The girl turned around to glance at Anthony and at Tatiana, who smiled, giving her a little wave.

“Is this your son?”

“Yes.”

“Is that, um … ?”

“My wife, yes.”

“Oh. Excuse me. I didn’t know you were married.”

“I am, though, nonetheless. Tania, come here. Meet … sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

As Tatiana walked past the girl to get to Alexander, she said, “Excuse me,” and added evenly, “I think the wind might indeed kick up that immodesty you were talking about. Better grab on to the skirt.”

Alexander bit his lip. Tatiana stood calmly next to him, her hand on the wheel.

That evening walking home, he said, “I either continue to invite questions or I can grow out my hair.” When she didn’t say anything—because she didn’t think her husband with a head full of shiny black hair would be repellent enough—he prodded her to tell him what she was thinking.

She chewed her lip. “The constant female attention … um … wanted or unwanted?”

“I’m indifferent, babe,” he said, his arm around her. “Though amused by you.”

Tatiana was quiet when Alexander came home the following evening.

“What’s the matter? You’re more glum than usual,” he asked after he came out from the bath.

She protested. “I’m not usually glum.” Then she sighed. “I took a test today.”

“What test?” Alexander sat down at her table. “What does the husband want for dinner?”

“The husband wants plantains and carrots and corn and bread, and shrimp, and hot apple cobbler with ice cream for dinner.”

“Hot apple cobbler?” Alexander smiled. “Indeed. Indeed.” He laughed, buttering his bread roll. “Tell me about this test.”

“In one of my magazines. Ladies Home Journal. There’s a test. ‘How Well Do You Know Your Husband?’”

“One of your magazines?” His mouth was full. “I didn’t know you read any magazines.”

“Well, perhaps it would behoove you to take that test, too, then.”

He was twinkling at her from across the table, buttering another roll. “So how did you do?”

“I failed, that’s how I did,” Tatiana said. “Apparently I don’t know you at all.”

“Really?” Alexander’s face was mock-serious.

Tatiana flung the magazine open to the test page. “Look at these questions. What is your husband’s favorite color? I don’t know. What is his favorite food? I don’t know. What sports does he like best? I don’t know. What is his favorite book? His favorite movie? His favorite song? What’s his favorite flavor ice cream? Does he like to sleep on his back or his side? What was the name of the school he graduated from? I don’t know anything!”

Alexander grinned. “Come on. Not even the back or side question?”

“No!”

Continuing to eat his roll, he got up, took the magazine out of her hands and threw it in the trash. “You’re right.” He nodded. “There is nothing to be done. My wife doesn’t know my favorite ice cream flavor. I demand a divorce.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you think a priest will give us an annulment?” He came up to her, sitting dejectedly in the chair.

“You’re making fun,” Tatiana said, “but this is serious.”

“You don’t know me because you don’t know what my favorite color is?” Alexander sounded disbelieving. “Ask me anything. I’ll tell you.”

“You won’t tell me anything! You don’t talk to me at all!” She started to cry.

Wide-eyed, flummoxed, stopped in mid-laugh, Alexander speechlessly opened his hands. “A second ago, this was all kind of funny,” he said slowly.

“If I don’t even know a simple thing like your favorite color,” Tatiana said, “can you imagine what else I don’t know?”

“I don’t know my own favorite color! Or movie, or book, or song. I don’t know, I don’t care, I never thought about it. Good God, is this what people are thinking about after the war?”

“Yes!”

“Is this what you want to be thinking about?”

“Better than what we’ve been thinking about!”

Anthony, bless his small ways, came out of his bedroom, and, as always, prevented them from ever finishing any discussion until he was well asleep. All the things they talked about had to involve him, be compelling to him. As soon as he heard his mother and father talking in animated tones, he would come and take one of them away.

But later, in their bed, in the dark, Tatiana, who still had on her glum face, said to Alexander, “We don’t know each other. It occurs to me now—perhaps a little belatedly—that we never did.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said. “I know how you’ve lived and I know how you like to be touched. You know how I’ve lived and you know how I like to be touched.”

Oh. Alexander may have known theoretically, intellectually, how Tatiana liked to be touched, but he certainly never touched her that way anymore. She didn’t know why he didn’t, he just didn’t, and she didn’t know how to ask.

“Now, can I make love to you once without you crying?”

Certainly she didn’t want to make him touch her.

“Just once, and please—don’t tell me you’re crying from happiness.”

She tried not to cry when he made love to her. But it was impossible.

The goal was to find a way to live and touch where everything that had happened to them to bring them here could be put away somewhere safe, from where they could retrieve it, instead of it retrieving them any time it felt like it.

In the bedroom they were night animals; the lights were always off. Tatiana had to do something.

“What is that god-awful smell?” Alexander said when he came home from the marina.

“Mommy put mayonnaise in her hair,” said Anthony with a face that said, Mommy washed her face with duck poop.

“She did what?”

“Yes. This afternoon she put a whole jar of mayonnaise in her hair! Dad, she sat with it for hours, and now she can’t get the water hot enough to rinse it out.”

Alexander knocked on the bathroom door.

“Go away,” her voice said.

“It’s me.”