“Captain!” she said, her fingers tightening their spiral stroke around him, rendering him speechless. “Please. You mustn’t speak. It’s for your own good.”
“Is there a treatment for ill humors?” Alexander asked, falling back on the couch.
“Well, in the olden days, the remedy,” Tatiana replied calmly, “was to have them sucked out of you.”
He wasn’t calm when he said, “I see. Do you think that treatment will work today? Modern medicine seems to have progressed so far beyond that.”
“You’re right, but all we can do is try. Now sit still and don’t move. The mouth shall know no restraint. It is our only hope.”
The mouth never knew restraint. He tried to stop her at the end, he really wanted her on top of him in that uniform and the insanity-inducing open girdle, but she whispered, “Captain, you want to be cured? Then come in my mouth. Like you love.” Stopping her was obviously completely impossible.
Alexander’s response to Tatiana’s white nurse’s outfit and her tight bun became so Pavlovian that he found himself becoming aroused at the first sight of her on work mornings, then during the occasional afternoons they met for lunch, and then at the glimpse of the uniform hanging in the closet, ironed and ready for next day. The nadir was his starched tumescence at just the thought of the white uniform. After a while she pronounced him terminal and said there was absolutely no hope for him.
He joyously agreed.
But still she made every excuse known to Alexanderkind not to go out to dinner with Steve and his fiancée.
Dinner with Steve and his Fiancée
Coming home late, he was speeding up Pima, knowing she was home with Ant and they were waiting for him. It was their first Christmas season in Arizona. Alexander had hung Christmas lights around the house and now they sparkled multi-colored like a city of dreams from down the road. He could see his little lit-up house shining on the hill as soon as he turned right on Jomax, still a mile downstream. The tension of the frenetic day began to leach out of him. After he parked his truck, he lingered on the front deck for a moment so he could see her through the window.
She has nested peace all through the house; everything is dusted and spotless. They have books and magazines and newspapers, and shoes and baseball bats, and sofa blankets and Christmas holly, but everything has a place, everything looks like comfort. The table lamps are on dim, the stove is on, the white snowflakes are patched on the windows. He will tell her to draw the shades in the future, but tonight he’s happy to watch her without her seeing him. He feels as if he is standing behind the lilac tree in the summer of their Lazarevo. Her hair is piled high on top of her head and she is hiding her body in one of his worn army crews—which means when he picks it up, it will smell like her. He must remember to ask her not to wash it. He keeps telling her, she is a true Alberto Varga girl: she could be wrapped in a rug and still look naked. She is getting butter for the bread; she’s made sugar cookies, they’re cooling on the rack. His gaze drifts to his son, who is sitting at the table pretending to do his homework. Actually what Anthony is doing is following her with his eyes. Wherever she moves, his venerating gaze follows. Anthony says something, and she laughs, throwing back her head, and then comes over and kisses him. Alexander watches his son’s face being kissed by her, then hers as she kisses him.
He opened the door, and they came to him. The tree was twinkling, the house smelled of pine, the stew smelled great, the warm bread and the sugar cookies even better.
“Dad’s home!” said Anthony, taking his keys.
“Daddy’s home,” echoed Tatiana, lifting her face to him. “So late.”
Alexander kissed her mouth, her neck. Cookies and musk. “Nice,” he whispered.
Over dinner he said, “We’re going out with Steve this Friday.”
“No, I can’t this Friday.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Tania, I’ve been working for Bill four months! You’ve never met him or Steve.”
“I wouldn’t say I’ve never met Steve,” she said dryly. “But I know what you mean.”
“Stop that. I’m completely out of excuses.”
“I’m not though.”
“They think I’m making you up.”
“Oh, listen,” she said breezily. “We’ll go in the New Year.”
“Yes, then, too. But Bill is having a Christmas party next week.”
“Sorry, can’t make it. Vikki and Tom are coming next week. Aunt Esther and Rosa are coming. Did you forget? We have a full house for the holidays. Anthony and I have a lot to do to get ready.”
“Oh, no, does Vikki have to come?” Anthony said plaintively.
“Yes, Anthony, be nice. She loves you. She’s buying you a bike.”
“Aunt Esther already bought me a bike.”
“Well, then, you’re going to have two and be grateful.”
“Ant, you are going to help on Saturday,” said Alexander. “Because on Friday as it turns out, your mother is busy.”
In a small, exclusive, Italian-American restaurant in Scottsdale called Bobo’s, Alexander sat at the table with Steve and Amanda, waiting. As always, Tatiana was late. She was consistently late absolutely everywhere. He didn’t know how she kept her job. Did he not buy her a watch three months ago to help her keep time? She got off work at seven, but here it was after eight. Alexander tried not to feel impatient. The bread came, the menus. Amanda was a young, pretty, light-brown-haired gal, coiffed and made up, who looked like she might run to heavy with age. She was easy to talk to, and Alexander hoped that Tania liked her; everything would be so much easier if the four of them could be friends.
He chatted with Steve and Amanda, but eventually even Steve said, “You think everything is all right?”
Nodding, Alexander motioned for the wine menu. Bobo, the owner, brought it over himself. “Señor Alexander, where is our señora?”
“Late again, Bobo.” Alexander smoked, smoked, smoked, drumming, drumming, drumming.
And then, even before he raised his head and saw her, he knew she had arrived because there was a slight change in the restaurant air, as if a small breeze had swept through.
Bobo brought her over himself. Alexander and Steve stood up.
She was wearing a fitted embroidered lavender dress he had not seen before, and her hair was in a Russian peasant braid with a few strands falling around her cheeks. She had on light mascara and pink lip gloss.
“Thank you, Bobo, for such personal service.” Alexander turned to Steve and Amanda. “Bobo’s been secretly in love with my wife for months.”
“What do you mean secretly, señor?” said a delighted, cue-ball-headed, bull-necked, short, black-doe-eyed Bobo in a thick Italian accent. “Openly, openly. Señora, if he doesn’t treat you right, you know where to go.”
“Thank you, Bobo,” said a shining Tatiana. “He’s been on his best behavior, but it’s always good to keep him on his toes.” After melting, Bobo reluctantly left. Tatiana raised her face to Alexander. “Hey,” she said with a smile. “Sorry I’m late.” He did not kiss her in public and wasn’t going to start tonight. Touching her braid, he turned her to his friends and, with his hand on her shoulder, said, “Amanda, Steve, this is Tania—my wife.”
After slightly flinching at the sound of a man saying “my wife” with such happiness, Amanda politely shook Tatiana’s hand. Alexander saw that Tatiana barely offered her hand to Steve, who didn’t look directly at her, his face flushed.
Well, Tania did look quite glossy. Alexander was flushed himself.
They all sat down. Amanda in a composed and friendly tone, said, “Tania, it’s so nice to finally meet you. Alexander’s told us so much about you.”
“Has he?”
“Oh, yes. I can’t believe he’s been working with my Stevie for so long and we just met.”
“Oh, no, Steve and I already met,” Tatiana said evenly. “I took care of his arm at PMH a few months ago.”
“Stevie, you never told me!” s
quealed Amanda.
Steve’s face was impassive. “Well, I didn’t know it was her, did I?” he said, pouring himself some wine. Lifting his gaze from the glass, flip and smiling toothily, he said with a shrug, “Sorry, I really don’t remember meeting you.”
“No?” said Tatiana.
“Tania, would you like a glass of wine?” Alexander asked, so cool, without even raising his eyebrows!
“Oh, yes, thank you, Alexander. I do enjoy a glass of wine now and again.” She said it with a short cough but without blushing. He leaned into her a little when he clinked his glass against hers.
“How was work?” he asked quietly.
“Not too bad today.” Just as quietly.
“Where’s your watch?”
“Oh.” She let out a sheepish laugh. “Must have left it home.”
“Not very useful at home, is it?”
He poured her a little more wine, offered her bread, opened the menu for her. She said, thank you very much. And he said, you’re welcome. So refined. Like characters from Edith Wharton. Alexander smiled, wondering if fine fin-de-siècle manners could hide their profound conjugal ease.
When he looked across the table, Amanda was staring at him. “So how long have you two been married?” she asked quickly, looking embarrassed at being caught out staring.
“Seven years,” replied Tatiana.
“Seven years, wow.” Amanda raised her brows at Alexander. “No seven-year itch for you, huh, Alexander?”
“Not very likely,” he said. Tania smelled like lilac and looked dressed in lilac from the Field of Mars, the tops of her breasts swelling over the lavender fabric of the low, scalloped neckline. She was so lush and bosomy, so blonde and sparkling, Alexander didn’t know how anyone could be talking about anything when his wife looked like this.
“You have such long hair, Tania. I’ve never seen hair that long,” said Amanda, whose hair was fashionably short, like all the women’s now— short, teased, sprayed, coiffed in a bouffant. “They let you wear it like that in the hospital?”
“No, it’s up in a bun when I go to work.”
“You really should cut it,” Amanda advised in a helpful tone.
“Oh, I know—I’m hopelessly out of style. But what to do?” Tatiana smiled. “The husband likes it long.”
Amanda turned to Steve. “Which way do you like it, Stevie?”
“As you know, I like it any way, Mand.” And they both laughed. Tatiana glanced at Alexander. He knocked her leg.
Steve told a joke, everyone enjoyed it, even Tatiana, and thus encouraged, Steve told another and another. He told stories of his time stationed in England, about meeting Amanda at one of his houses, about his father pushing him into college. He was gregarious, funny, could tell a good story. Amanda sat close, listening to every word. Then she tried to ask Tatiana questions, but no one knew the cardinal rule about human beings better than Tatiana: that everyone wanted most to talk about themselves. So, after vaguely telling Amanda that she had lived in New York, that she and Alexander got married and then he went to the front (none of which was, strictly speaking, untrue), Tatiana swerved the conversation away from herself, and Amanda began her own account of growing up in quiet Phoenix when it was all farmland, and the Indians would come into the center of an unpaved town for the Saturday market on Indian School Road. Tatiana remarked that she still went to that very crowded morning market. Yes, it was shocking how many people lived in Scottsdale now! Amanda said. Did New York have even more people? She couldn’t imagine it. She’d never been anywhere but Phoenix and was so jealous of Steve who had been to exotic England and now was going to Vegas practically every month.
“Stevie,” she said, “promised to take me to Vegas with him.” She tilted her plaintive head. “I’m still waiting, baby.”
“Soon, baby, soon.”
“Steve and his dad have been trying for months to get Alexander to go to Vegas with them.”
“Have they?” This from Tatiana.
Alexander tried to change the subject, because Vegas was a sore subject at his house. But Amanda steamrolled ahead, asking if Tatiana had ever been to Vegas and when Tatiana curtly said no, Amanda exclaimed, “Oh, you’re like me, you’ve never been anywhere!”
Alexander laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Amanda for some reason didn’t look as if she found his laughter remotely amusing.
“Nothing, excuse me.” He tried to turn serious. “Tania, you’ve never been to Sweden?” His eyes were unserious. “Finland, perhaps?”
Her leg knocked into his. “No,” she said.
“What about Russia?”
Her leg knocked into his harder. “No,” she said. “You?” Turning to Amanda, Tatiana said, “Before we came to Phoenix we travelled the United States, so we did actually see a bit of America. And we spent some time in Nevada,” she added, “but decided not to go to Las Vegas, because we didn’t think it would be a good place for our small boy.”
“Oh, that’s certainly true!” said Steve. “Only big boys in Vegas.” Amanda tittered uproariously.
Tatiana had on a nice pasty smile.
Alexander changed the subject to business: the houses under construction, new architecture designs in Phoenix, and then the imminent war with Korea. Steve was singularly uninterested in Korea despite Alexander’s best efforts to steer his friend to the topic. Steve would not be steered. “Don’t have the stomach for politics, man, you know that. Even less when I’ve had a few.” He ordered a beer for himself. “I like jokes. I have another one about Vegas. Want to hear?”
“Steve-o, ladies present,” Alexander said. “No stupid drunk jokes.”
Amanda told Alexander not to worry, she’d heard them all.
“Manda, you haven’t heard this one,” said Steve. “You’ll think it’s hilarious.” He took a swig of his beer. “A man comes home to find his wife with a packed suitcase. She tells him she’s leaving and going to Vegas, because she heard she can make $100 a night doing what she gives him for free. The man thinks about it and then starts packing his own suitcase. The wife asks him where he is going, and he replies, ‘I’m going to Vegas, too.’ When she asks him why, he says, ‘Because I want to see how you’re going to live on $200 a year.’”
Oh, how Amanda and Steve laughed.
Alexander laughed too, but Tatiana wasn’t laughing. He sighed slightly, but fortunately the food came. He gave Tatiana some of his steak, took some of her lasagna, poured her some more wine.
Suddenly Amanda said, “Stevie and I are getting married in the spring. Right, Stevie?”
“Absolutely,” Steve said, draping his arm around Amanda, dangling it over her shoulder very close to her breast.
Alexander glanced at Tatiana’s moist but compressed mouth. “Congratulations,” said Tatiana in a tone that said, Lord have mercy on you.
“And when we get married I’m not going to work. Am I, Stevie?”
“Of course not, doll. You can stay home and eat bonbons all day in your robe and slippers.”
Was Amanda trying to stir things up? Alexander was obtuse when it came to things like this, but by the look on Tatiana’s face, he had his answer, and then, as if to prove it, his wife asked, “How long have you two been engaged?”
Amanda didn’t reply and Steve said, “Nearly four years.”
“Ah,” said Tatiana. “Four years.” Without inflection.
“What about you?” Amanda asked.
Tatiana waved her hand casually. “Oh, it was war. Things weren’t the same then. Everything had to be so quick.”
“Everything?” Amanda said, with a giggle. “So how long?”
When Tatiana still didn’t reply, Alexander said, “Two days.”
“Two days!” exclaimed Amanda, peering at Alexander and then falling quiet.
“He was going to the front,” Tatiana hastily explained.
“Obviously not so hastily,” Amanda said. “So you have just the one boy, Tania? Are you thinking of having mo
re?”
“We’re thinking about it.”
“Are you thinking about it, or doing something about it?” Amanda said, and Steve laughed into his food, and Tatiana, whose job it was to become friendly with Amanda so the four of them could do things together, was instead like the tetchy building inspector, obviously not willing to give the certificate of occupancy to anyone without additional incentives. Alexander pulled on her braid lightly.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said when she stopped laughing. “I hope I don’t offend you, Tania, the way I talk.”
“Not at all.”
“Hang around too long with Stevie and his buddies, and you can’t help it. He’s simply ruining me.” She said it with delight. “You should have heard the joke he told me the first time he met me. No, it’s too horrid to repeat in public, isn’t it, hon?”
“I don’t remember the joke, Mand. I’m sure it was awful, knowing me.”
“Remember, the ‘just like a baby’ joke?” She giggled wildly, and even blushed!
“Steve,” said Tatiana in a withering tone, “I love a good joke. Let’s hear it.” Her cold eyes never left Steve’s face.
Steve laughed. “Nah,” he said. “You don’t want to hear that joke, Tania. It’ll make a truck driver blush.”
“Indeed,” said Tatiana.
Frowning, remembering something too distant for clarity, Alexander looked at Tatiana’s face, and then across at Steve, who was shaking his head, not looking at Tatiana, examining the remains of the cold steak on his plate. It occurred to Alexander that Steve, during the whole dinner, had barely addressed Tatiana, barely spoken to her directly; in fact, though very much himself in all other ways, he acted as if she were not sitting at their table.
“We’re inviting you to our wedding,” Amanda went on, wonderfully oblivious. “The invitations go out right after Christmas. Scottsdale Country Club, very exclusive. Jeff and his fiancée Cindy want to get married there, too, but between you and me, it’s not going to happen. Jeff is simply not ready to get married yet. We’re inviting two hundred people. It’s going to be an extravaganza.” She gurgled. “Tania, you probably didn’t have a big wedding. Sounds like you didn’t have a lot of time to prepare.”