“So why don’t you tell him to fish or cut bait, Mand?” asked Tatiana.
Amanda was quiet. “Because what if he cuts bait, Tania?”
Tatiana hoped that what she was thinking was not plain on her face, which was, Hallelujah. She placed her hand on Amanda’s hand. “You want me to give you a secret way to get Steve to marry you? I don’t have it. I didn’t have it for me. I don’t have it for you.”
“Well, Alexander married you, didn’t he?” Amanda said. “You must have done something.”
“Alexander and I are not you and Steve,” said Tatiana, and when she saw Amanda’s fallen face, she added quickly, “Cindy and Jeff aren’t you and Steve either. Everybody is different. You have to do what’s right for you.”
“You know what I did? I told my Jeff there was someone else,” Cindy giggled. “That got him really worked up.”
Amanda waved her off. “I’ve been telling that to Steve for five years. You know what he says? The more the merrier, Mand. Let’s bring him to Vegas with us for a little threeway.”
Oh, he is such a prize, Tatiana wanted to say. Please let that not show on my face.
“Tania, tell me what to do,” Amanda said. “Please.”
“Manda,” said Tatiana, “I don’t know why you keep thinking I have all the answers.”
“Because look at what you and Alexander have,” Amanda said resentfully.
“You don’t want my life, trust me,” said Tatiana. “You don’t want to know what it took for him and me to claw our way up that hill off Pima. You won’t believe it if I ever told you. And we’re still finding our way. I’m a terrible example. I was lucky in this—he loved me. But had he not, I would’ve had to move on. I would’ve had no choice, right?”
“Tatiana!” That was Amanda raising her genteel voice in a restaurant. “Are you saying Steve doesn’t love me?”
How did she get drawn into this inane conversation? “He doesn’t want to marry you,” Tatiana said quietly. “That much is clear.”
Amanda got up sharply from the table. “He does love me,” she said, her voice shaking. “He does. You don’t know. He’s a good man. He does love me.” She stormed out of the restaurant.
Across the table Cindy stared perplexed at Tatiana, who shrugged and said, “Why does she ask for advice, if she doesn’t want the advice?” and motioned the waitress for the bill. No cherry pie today.
After coming home from the bar that night, in bed, as Alexander was rubbing Tatiana’s back, he said, his mouth moving down her spine, “Tania, stop talking to Amanda about me.”
“I don’t talk to Amanda about you.”
“You told her you’d never been with anyone else, didn’t you?”
“First of all, I didn’t say that. They were having quite a conversation last week at lunch—these lunches, by the way, that you keep insisting I go to—about whether Cindy was an actual virgin or a technical virgin when she got together with Jeff. I, for one, was having some trouble with the differences. Apparently Cindy has read in one of her magazines that in some parts of the world, in some countries, she would have been considered a technical virgin. So I asked,” said Tatiana, “if they stamped that sort of thing on her passport when she traveled.”
Alexander laughed; even his caressing hands on her buttocks laughed.
“Amanda joked that on her passport, the words ‘was born not a virgin’ would be printed—at least I hope that was a joke,” said Tatiana. “At this point, I ordered dessert and excused myself from the conversation. However, they pursued me like lions running after a frail zebra. I simply said you were my actual first and gave no other information. What was I going to say? What did you want me to say? That you were my technical twentieth?”
Alexander wasn’t laughing anymore. “What I want you to do is change the subject.” He held her in place with his open palms, his mouth moving over her tailbone.
“I do change the subject!” With uncharacteristic irritation, Tatiana moved away from him and sat up. “I’m the queen of the changed subject, Alexander. Including that burning question. Whether there were some small technicalities that I perhaps overlooked. But eventually I have to say something, no?”
He sat up himself. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Answer me—did you want me to lie?”
“Just tell them it’s none of their fucking business, Tatiana. Leave the table. But what happens is, you tell it to Amanda, and she goes and tells it to Steve who then tells Jeff, and suddenly I find myself being snickered at by two drinking men at a bar at night. It’s too much information for them, you understand that part, right?”
“What kind of screwed-up friendship, screwed-up universe is that,” Tatiana exclaimed, “where I can’t reply to a simple question from two girlfriends because of the way it’s going to be interpreted among the animals you call your friends? Vikki knows this about me, and I’m sure she’s told Richter—Richter, who fought with Patton and MacArthur! Do you see him snickering?”
“This is how it is in this universe,” Alexander retorted. “In this one, keep quiet.”
Tatiana cleared her throat. “Really?” she said. “Well, let me ask you, do you think I should be hearing from Amanda that you wish I weren’t working and that you want to have a baby and I don’t?”
Alexander sat up against the brass rails. “I didn’t say that.” He paused. “But surely it’s no surprise to you that I want you to stop working.”
“Oh, that’s not the surprise,” said Tatiana. “What is a surprise, however, is hearing Amanda talk to me about my private life that you discuss with Steve, of all people!” Her voice was raised.
“I don’t discuss it with Steve,” said Alexander, keeping his quieter. “He casually asked me if I liked your job and I casually told him less than you. That was all. I wasn’t complaining.” He broke off, not looking at her.
“You were just being pretend casual?”
Now he raised his eyes. “It’s not a surprise to you, Tania, that I was being pretend casual, is it?”
Tatiana took a breath. “You know what?” she said, “I can’t believe you haven’t quit your job yet,” she said. “But if you insist on staying with Balkman, please do me a favor and stop talking about my personal business to your buddy Steve. Just like you asked me not to discuss the simplest things with my friend Amanda. All right? Not even pretend casual.”
Alexander did not resume caressing her lower back.
The Bachelor Party
Jeff and Cindy were getting married! Jeff was thirty-five and a bachelor all his life. He had started working with Steve four years ago, kept going to Vegas with Steve, got engaged to Cindy, dragged his feet like Steve, set several dates, like Steve, but now really was getting married— and not postponing! Amanda was swollen with indignation. Over dinner Tatiana asked Alexander what he thought about it. They had just finished eating. “I think nothing about it. I stay out of their business.” He cleared his throat. “But the groom and his friends are having a bachelor party.”
Tatiana sat like a stone. Stirring her tea pretend casual. “I’ve heard about bachelor parties. Sort of a last hurrah before marriage? You get drunk, offer him marriage advice.” She smiled thinly. “Sounds like fun.”
“Yes, something like that,” said Alexander, not taking his eyes off her. “Every once in a while...”
Tatiana got up abruptly and started clearing the table.
“. . . once in a while, the men go to a place where women dance.”
Tatiana stacked dishes in silence.
“Is this... upsetting you?” he asked. “Is this upsetting me?” she said incredulously. “I don’t understand the question. Are the women dressed?”
“Not entirely dressed.”
“So you have the answer to your own question built in.”
“I go, I drink, I sit, I talk, somewhere the girls dance, I come home. What’s the problem? You have no trouble with me going out for a drink. This is a drink with some pool??
?”
“And naked women.”
“I deserve your trust. I’ve been exemplary.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Tatiana, “I must have forgotten, in your slew of medals, I can’t remember—did you get one for being exemplary?”
“What’s with the sarcasm? I didn’t say I deserved a medal. I said I deserved your trust.”
“Exemplary is not a favor to me, Alexander. It’s a condition.”
“How can I not go?” Alexander said cajolingly, standing up. “I have to go. It’s Jeff. You and I are in the wedding party. I mean, be serious. They’ll laugh me out of town. It’s for Jeff.”
“Naked girls for you on Jeff’s behalf?” Tatiana raised her hand to stop him. “Look, don’t use that voice of yours with me and don’t insult me with your I-just-don’t-understand-why-you’d-be-upset attitude. I may not have had as much experience as you in this area—as if such a thing is even possible—but I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were—”
“I know what goes on. Carolyn told me that at her fiancé Brian’s bachelor party, the girls not only got naked but performed personal dances for the men. When Carolyn found out she postponed the wedding for a year.”
“Brian? I thought her husband’s name was Dan,” said Alexander.
“It is,” Tatiana said pointedly. “I’m using the word postpone loosely. A year later she married Dan, who did not have naked women at his bachelor party.”
“Tania,” he said, lowering his voice, “give me a fucking break.”
“Naked girls dancing in front of you—real close. Am I just too naïve to get why this is okay? Explain it to me. I’m just a peasant girl from Luga. Explain it to me slowly and declaratively so I understand.”
His bemused expression didn’t change as he opened his arms to her. She backed all the way to the other side of the kitchen, raising her hands to stop herself and him. “I can’t talk about this anymore. That Steve...I can’t talk about it.”
His eyebrows puzzled. “Steve? What does this have to do with him?”
“Everything, I’m sure. He’s the one arranging the entertainment? He’s got you so that even you now think I’m too prudish. The damn ironies just pile up, don’t they?” She glared at him. “You keep saying to me, this is the modern world, this isn’t the Soviet village. You say that’s how it’s done in America. Fine. That’s how men behave. Great. If you think it’s okay, that’s enough for me. I don’t know anything but you,” Tatiana said, trying not to let her voice break. “Now you tell me that you want to go get drunk and have naked women flap their boobs in your face. Go ahead, make your wife okay with that one, too.”
“It’s a bachelor party!”
“It’s naked women!”
“Just looking,” he said, opening his hands.
“At naked women!”
They were getting too loud.
Anthony came out. His radio show was over. He observed his mother, tight-lipped, panting, at one end of the counter, and his father, standing tensely at the other, looked at one, the other, then turned around and walked back to his room.
They forced themselves to stop for Anthony’s sake. Alexander stepped away, Tatiana turned to the sink. He went outside to smoke. She followed him in a little while and stood on the deck in front of him holding on to the railing behind her. “Shura, I’m going to make it nice and simple for you,” she said. “I’m going to tell you what I think.”
“Please. Because I just don’t know.”
“You are my husband,” she said. “I trust you explicitly. I believe in you completely. But the thought of you going to this little shindig profoundly upsets me. I see no good that can come from it. I question Steve’s motives. You caring what Steve or Jeff or Bill Balkman will think of you if you don’t go disappoints me. You should care what I will think if you do.”
Alexander was sitting on the bench, not looking up at her at the rail.
“I’m asking you please not to go,” said Tatiana. “I can’t imagine you thought I’d be all right with it.”
“I thought you’d see it for what it is,” he said, “which is nothing.”
“You going to see naked women dance while you’re drunk is not nothing, Shura. It’s a difference of degree, not kind, from here to the girls of Las Vegas.”
“Come on,” he said. “You’re—”
“Overreacting? Not understanding? Being too naïve? You’re right, I wish I could be more understanding—like, say, Amanda. I know that at times like these, you wish perhaps you were married to someone like her. But you’re not. Though I hear she is available.”
Groaning, Alexander shook his head, not looking at her.
“I’m going to tell you something,” Tatiana said. “I didn’t want to say anything, because I had no intention of going. But... I’ve been invited to a party, too.”
Now he looked up at her.
“That’s right. Saturday night,” she said. “The girls are having a hen night. Cindy invited me.”
“A hen night?”
“Yes. We all get dolled up and go out. They want to go to this place called the Golden Corral. Have you heard of it?”
Now he stood up. Even his cigarette was put out. “Yes, I’ve heard of it,” he said. “Servicemen go there to party with the party girls.”
“Oh, servicemen. You mean like soldiers? And it’s rowdy? Ah, well. See, that’s the kind of place I thought it was,” Tatiana said. “And I don’t go out without you at night. I don’t go drinking and playing cards like you do. And so when Cindy asked me, I said no. Because I didn’t think you’d like me in a place like that.”
“And you’d be right.”
“Well, I,” she said, looking across at him, “don’t like you in a place like that.”
“All the men are going!” he exclaimed. “It’s a normal thing. Normal, remember?”
“You can’t sell me your double standard on this one,” said Tatiana, shaking her head. “Not buying it—I already got plenty, thanks.” She paused and waited, and when there was nothing from him, she folded her hands and said, “You know, I thought you had no interest in that anymore. But you’re telling me I’m wrong. I didn’t know that. You live and learn. So since you don’t want to do this for me to be kind to me, and since the rules are changing in our marriage, then why don’t we not talk about it anymore. I don’t want to be a party pooper. You go to your naked party, and I will go to the Golden Corral, and we’ll leave it at that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go put Ant to bed.” She turned to go.
He came up to her and put his hand over her mouth. “Stop it, you impossible Russian wife,” he said. “Just stop it. I won’t go.” Tatiana’s hands glided over his arms. “I don’t want to upset you. I thought you might’ve been all right with it. What was I thinking?” He shook his head. “I’ll go, have a few drinks, play some pool, give marital advice, but I won’t go to the club. Fair enough?”
She muttered a muffled assent.
He kissed the top of her head and took his hand away from her face with a great sigh.
Friday night, Alexander, in black slacks, a black collared shirt and black shiny shoes, shaven, showered, spiky-haired, strapping, sparkling, sober, left for the bachelor party at eight, saying he’d be home by one, which was later than he’d ever gotten home. He kissed her when he left. He smelled great and looked fantastic.
One o’clock came.
In her silk robe, bare underneath, Tatiana waited. When he came home late and not sober, he liked to breathe his beer-laden breath on her, liked to lay his intoxicated hands on her.
Two o’clock came—and went.
She waited with increasing anxiety until 2:30, thinking that was enough time to get home from practically anywhere in Phoenix, but when 2:45 came and went, suddenly the anxiety turned into frantic fear. Forget the naked dancers, she imagined only the mangled car accident victims she saw die nearly every day in ER. He would be drunk and driving home for many miles with other Frid
ay-night revelers. She paced the trailer up and down, she changed into jeans and his old army shirt, she sat by the phone, and suddenly became afraid that it was possible, just possible, that these years were all they were going to have together. All of it, gone on this Friday night.
The minutes dripped one into another. She looked at the kitchen clock. 2:55. Only ten minutes had passed since the last time she’d looked, since her irregular heart slipped and hammered in her chest, whiling away the seconds, drip drip drip, beat beat beat, sixty nine drops of her blood draining into a minute of an open infected wound in his back, one hundred and fifty beats of her heart into a minute of his life. Gripping her stomach, her chest, she turned off the AC and paced the house, paced outside, listened in the night air for him. It was the beginning of June. Just last week Alexander had turned thirty-three. They had a pool party with many of the same friends he was out with tonight.
Was that her fate—and his? After all they had been through, beginning in one June, ending in another? In three weeks, they were supposed to be celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary. She shouted “Alexander!” into the night. An echo came back to her, a faint Alexander . . . They lived so far out, in such deathly silence near the mountains, that Tatiana could usually hear his truck when he was still three miles down on Pima. She could see his lights. She would sit outside other nights listening for the sound of his truck engine rolling down the highway and making the right onto Jomax. She looked at the clock.
2:58. Was it only three minutes since she last looked?
Oh my God.
3:00.
3:30.
3:53.
4:17.
Tatiana called Phoenix Memorial emergency room and spoke to Erin, who told her that no, Alexander had not been brought in bleeding and dead.
4:47.
She lay on the floor prone, motionless.
At eight minutes past five (5:08!!) she heard the truck in the drive. It was lurching forward.
She jumped up and ran outside, and was nearly run over by the Chevy. It crashed into a cinder block in the drive; the door was flung open. Tatiana saw instantly he was all right and very drunk. She had never seen him this drunk. It was useless to scream at him now, but what was she going to do with all her anger? He looked at her completely unfocused and mouthed, “Hey, babe.”