The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons
He sat back down. She clutched him. “Don’t—don’t go—please.”
“Just in the bedroom, Tatiasha, just in our bedroom.”
Sitting, covered in blood, she talked to the police, her head down, while in the bedroom, away from her, Alexander, his head up, standing, talked to the police.
Why were you up, they asked her. Why did you call the hospital? Why were you in the kitchen? Why didn’t you run to the bedroom? Did you hear him come up the steps? Why did he come? Is it true he and your husband had a fight? We got a report of an assault, of two assaults. That man wanted to press charges against your husband. What happened? The man was badly hurt. The other man is badly hurt. Sergeant Miller intervened. The other man is Steve Balkman, he said. All the policemen nodded. Not again, someone said. Were they drunk, was your husband drunk? What was the fight over? Were there two separate fights or was it the same fight? Alexander shattered a man’s face, broke another man’s teeth, why? Was it true that there already was bad blood? His father, Bill Balkman, a long-time member of this community, said he didn’t know what had happened. It was a complete surprise. He said it was just a fight between boys. Boys will be boys, he said. He told them all to take it easy. His son was going to be fine. It would all be just fine. Yet a man was lying in her house dead.
Where did your husband shoot from? He didn’t know Dudley had a pistol, how did he know to take a gun to the bedroom door? Why did he use deadly force? Was there a way to get the man to release you without lethal violence? Was it breaking and entering? Attempted assault, attempted rape, attempted murder? Was it excessive force on the part of your husband to hit another man at a party simply for making a rude comment about you? And was Dudley overreacting to Alexander’s over-reacting? And what did Steve Balkman do this time?
Two more reporters came from the Phoenix Sun, standing in the living room with their spiral notebooks and their whooshing camera flashes, writing it all down, recording it for the morning papers. Did he touch you? Did he hit you? Did he cut you? Is any of this your blood?
Was Tatiana hurt? No one could say for sure, not even Tatiana. Only Alexander said, no, she’s not hurt, she’s in shock. They were worried about her. They called for a doctor. Sergeant Miller said he wanted her to go to the hospital. She refused. Alexander thought she should go. She refused. She was fine, she said. She was a nurse, she knew about these things.
Hours went by. Alexander remained in the bedroom with the police. She would catch glimpses of him, pacing, smoking, sitting on the bed. Then they closed the door, and she cried again. Dudley’s body remained limp on the floor behind the bloodied couch where she sat.
Finally Alexander came out of the bedroom. She clutched at him desperately, she buried her face in him. He kept repeating, shh, shh. His arms were around her. Suddenly his presence terrified her. She began to cry again, push him away. The police, the medical emergency workers, the reporters, stood silently watching while Alexander, pressing her bloodied head to him, kept soothing her. Tania, he kept whispering, shh, shh. Come on. She might need a shot, he finally said, getting up to get her nurse’s bag. She is clammy. I’m fine, she said, but couldn’t stop shaking. She looked at Alexander standing smoking. He was calm. He wasn’t agitated, his hands were steady, his movements normal. He was in control of himself. She remembered him near Berlin on the hillside, strapped with machine guns, grenades, semi-automatic pistols, automatic weapons, alone in a trench, systematically mowing down the battalion of soldiers who were crawling, running, charging up the hill to kill him, to kill her.
A man came up the hill to hurt my wife, Alexander said to the police without emotion, a cigarette in his mouth. Look at the door. The front door lock is busted, one of the hinges broken. The police were going to check out the Montana prison escape story. They were going to talk to Bill Balkman about hiring a man suspected of escaping prison, suspected of murder. It was a federal offense to hire a man suspected of a felony.
How did Dudley know where Alexander lived? Who would have given Dudley Alexander’s address? And if it was Steve Balkman, wouldn’t he have had to give him the address before the party, since after the party, he wasn’t talking? Why would Steve do that—give Dudley Alexander’s address? That Steve Balkman, Miller said, shaking his head. Loved trouble, caused trouble, always been trouble. Well, that’s it, he said. This time we’re not keeping it out of the papers, no matter what his father does.
It was six in the morning. The light was barely steel blue over the mountains. Someone brought coffee, rolls. Alexander gave Tatiana a cup, tried to get her to eat.
A drunk, belligerent man was dead in the middle of the night after breaking and entering a mobile home in the McDowell Hills a mile up a dirt road from Pima Boulevard in the middle of nowhere. Those were the undisputed facts. Neither Tatiana nor Alexander shared with the police the three years of disputed facts. Or the lifetime of disputed facts.
Sun came up, more police came, took more pictures. At eight in the morning Alexander called Francesca and asked her to keep Anthony the rest of the day. Tatiana continued to sit on the couch. She leaned back at one point, fell back and thought she passed out. When she opened her eyes, she was in the crook of Alexander’s arm, and Dudley’s body was still behind her. The chalkline was on their black and white linoleum floor. In the light of merciless day, the blood was now drying and browning, chips of bone were over the living room carpet, in the hall in front of Anthony’s bedroom, on the counters, on the door, on the walls. Tatiana looked back only once. Dudley was still all over Tatiana. Nothing anybody could do about that until the police left.
The phone did not stop ringing.
The police asked Alexander if he knew Dudley’s next of kin. Who did they notify of his death? Alexander and Tatiana exchanged a disbelieving glance. Were they really being asked about Dudley’s next of kin?
A doctor finally arrived to examine her. She was fine, she said, shaking; she didn’t need a doctor. Alexander got her a blanket, covered her with it. Carefully the doctor removed the blanket and took off her robe. He asked if she’d been assaulted, if she’d been beaten, hurt, penetrated. She watched Alexander watching her from across the room in her stained see-through camisole. He walked over and pulled the terry robe back over her. The doctor pulled it off again, looked at her arms, her legs, her red throat where Dudley had grabbed her. Pulling her hair back, he noticed the suck marks on the back of her neck. He asked about them. She didn’t reply. Normally she would have blushed, but not this morning. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No.”
“What are those?”
She didn’t reply, just raised her eyes at him. The doctor was the one who became deeply flustered. “You’re covered with blood, with some bruises. It’s hard to tell where you’re actually hurt from this particular incident. I apologize.”
“I’m a nurse at Phoenix Memorial Hospital,” she said. “I know if I’m hurt.”
The doctor was David Bradley. She’d never met him. He was one of the attending physicians in ER, but he worked nights and she worked days. After seeing the marks on the back of her neck, he was unable to meet her eyes. She closed hers anyway.
Ten, eleven in the morning. Finally the coroner came and pronounced the body—dead! What would we do without coroners? Alexander quietly said to Tatiana.
The medical examiner’s assistants examined the body to determine cause of death. Gunshot wound to the head, Alexander said evenly.
Gunshot wound to the head, they wrote.
Who was Alexander, the police asked, to shoot a man in the head when his wife was only inches away? Who are you? They said something about reckless endangerment. Couldn’t you have waited until he wasn’t so close to your wife before you shot him?
He didn’t think he could have waited, no. For the thirtieth time he told them that once he came fully out of that doorway, he would have had to drop his weapon, and there would have been no other time, and his wife would have been assaulted in front of him, and th
They said it wasn’t war. But Alexander disagreed. He said it was. A man came up the hill to his house wanting to kill him and hurt his wife. The man brought war to his house. Now he lay dead. These were the facts and they were not in dispute. Only the degree of force, and Alexander’s snap judgment, and Steve Balkman’s broken face were in dispute.
The police examined the Colt, the rounds. Did he always keep a loaded gun in his house? Yes, all his weapons were always loaded, said Alexander. They lived by themselves up in the mountains. He had to be prepared for anything. They examined the weapons he kept in the bedroom: two models of the M-1 carbine, and an M4 submachine gun in a locked cabinet with the ammunition. He kept the German Walther, the Colt Commando, the M1911, and a .22 caliber Ruger with their extra magazines and all his knives in his nightstand, which he locked during the day and unlocked at night. They asked why he chose the M1911 out of all his handguns. The Ruger was supposed to be more accurate. Alexander said he chose the weapon that would inflict the maximum damage. He chose the M1911, the handcannon of pistols, he said because he knew he would get only one chance to kill Dudley.
Who was he? the police asked. Where did he learn to shoot? Did he have marksman qualifications?
Alexander looked at Tatiana. She sat numbly. Yes, he said. He had marksman qualifications. He was a captain in the U.S. Officer Reserve Corps. Funny how one little sentence could change things. They looked at Alexander differently then. Treated him differently. A captain in the U.S. Army. Did he fight in the Second World War? Yes, he said. He fought in the Second World War.
And no one asked him anything after that.
At noon, the hospital arrived with a body bag.
The police told them not to touch anything. This was a crime scene. On Monday, a cleaning crew would come to break it down and clear the room of the detritus of death. Until Monday the captain and his wife and child had to stay elsewhere.
Sergeant Miller said there would be a public inquest into a wrongful death, but privately Miller told Tatiana and Alexander he didn’t know how the Balkman kid made it as long as he had without getting killed. Rumor was, Miller said, that his army injury while stationed in England had not been just friendly fire.
Everyone left—and finally they were alone.
Alexander closed the door after Miller and came to sit next to her on the couch. She raised her eyes to him. They stared at each other. Perhaps he stared. She glared.
“You call this normal, Alexander?” said Tatiana.
Without saying a word he got up and disappeared into the bedroom. She heard the shower go on in the ensuite bath. “Let’s go,” he said when he came out. But she couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her inside. “I can’t stand up,” she said. “Let me have a bath.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t have you sitting in his bloody water. Just stand for five minutes, and when you’re clean, I’ll run you a bath.”
Alexander took off her terry robe, her bloodied camisole, threw them both in the trash. He held her hand as she stepped into the tub. He took off his clothes, got under the shower with her. The water was so hot, and yet she shivered uncontrollably while he carefully washed the brown dried blood from her face, her neck, her hair. He shampooed her hair twice, three times. Bit by bit, Alexander pulled Dudley out of Tatiana’s hair. When she saw the bony chunks he was pulling out, she started to sink into the tub and, slippery and scared, couldn’t stand, no matter how much he implored her. Crouching beside her, he continued to clean her hair. “It’s useless,” she said, reaching into the cabinet near the sink for the scissors. “I can’t touch it anymore. I can’t have you touch it anymore.”
“No,” he said, stopping her, taking the scissors away. “You’ve cut off your hair once before, but now I’m here. I’ll get it clean. If you cut it, you’ll be upsetting only me.”
She stared hard at him. He said, “Ah. Is that the point?” And handed her back the scissors.
But she didn’t cut it. She leaned over the tub and threw up in the toilet.
He waited, his head down. He cleaned himself with the soapy wash-cloth, and afterwards silently washed her face and scrubbed her entire body, holding her up with one wet arm.
“How many times in my life will you be cleaning blood off me?” Tatiana asked, too weak to stand.
“By my count, it’s only twice,” Alexander replied. “And both times, the blood is not yours. So we can be thankful for the mercies we’re given.”
“My leg isn’t broken this time, or my ribs.” But this violence in her little house. The Germans with their tanks across the River Luga, from their Luftwaffe plane formations raining down warning leaflets before the machine gun rounds, punctually from nine to eleven. Surrender or die, the leaflets said.
Alexander didn’t speak to her through the subsequent bath, which he ran for her, didn’t speak as he dried her and laid her on the bed, covering her, bringing her coffee, holding her head while she drank. He asked if there was anything else she needed, because he had to go outside to clear his head. She pleaded with him not to go. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was sitting and watching her from the armchair, all his weapons, including the automatic rifles, between his legs.
“Why did you come out? What did you hear?” Tatiana asked.
“The crashing door. First I reach for my weapon, then I open my eyes.”
“The Colt has come in quite useful.” She stared at him. “The Fritzes, the Soviets, Karolich, and now even in America, we’re recreating our old life. We just can’t seem to get away from it.”
“We’re not recreating our old life. Every once in a while, we simply can’t hide who we are. But he is the dregs found everywhere, even in America. You know what’s come in useful? My U.S. Army commission. Richter had said I’d never know when it would come in handy. He’s been proven quite right.” Alexander paused. “Why did you get up? Why were you out there?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why?”
“I felt something. I was frightened.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you felt something. Because you were frightened.”
“You didn’t give a damn about my feelings and fears for three years,” she said. “Now suddenly I’ve got to wake you in the middle of the night for them?”
He shot up off the armchair.
“Please, please don’t go,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”
He left anyway.
Tatiana heard the back door opening, closing. She wanted to get up, go to him. But she was crashing. She slept.
The phone kept ringing, or was that just a dream? She kept hearing his voice. Was that just a dream, too? For some reason she started being afraid she was alone again, without him, she began to whimper in her sleep, to cry for him. “Alexander, please help me, please...Alexander . . .” She couldn’t shake herself awake. It was his hands that woke her, holding her firmly, lifting her to sit.
They looked at each other. “We have to leave here,” he said.
“We have to get Anthony.” She started to cry. “My God, what if he’d been here with us?”
“Well, he wasn’t. And Francesca said she’d keep him till Sunday.”
“Let’s stay here. I don’t want to leave my bed.”
“I can’t be in this house with his blood and brains everywhere.”
Her tears spilling, she stretched out her arms to him. He got into bed with her. She curled up inside his body.
“How do you do it?” she whispered. “Such frenzy, and you stay calm.”
“Well, somebody has to stay calm, Tania.” He patte
“But it’s almost like you get calmer. Were you like this always?”
“I guess.”
“Were you like this at war? In Finland? Over the Neva in your pontoon boat? Crossing Polish rivers? In all your battles? From the beginning?” She peered into his cool bronze eyes.
“I guess,” he said.
“I want to be like you.” She stroked his face. “It’s a survival thing. That’s how you did it, stayed alive. You’re never rattled.”
“Obviously,” said Alexander, “I’m sometimes rattled.”
They got dressed and left their house. Dudley’s insides remained on their walls.
She went into shaking distress when they passed the old beat-up truck parked a mile down by the side of the road.
“Which hotel?” he asked her, grim but not in shaking distress.
“Don’t care. As long as it’s not the Ho,” she said, her head back.
They went to the Arizona Biltmore Resort, designed by another of Phoenix’s adopted sons, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. They took a penthouse suite and were in the steaming bath together when the room service came. They ordered it, Alexander went to get it, but they didn’t eat it. Barely dry, they crawled out into a starched hotel bed and slept dead till Sunday morning.
When they got Anthony, they told him there had been a burglar at the house, a small problem, they couldn’t go back for a while. They stayed a luxurious two days at the Biltmore, had Sunday brunch, swam in the pool. On Monday morning the clean-up squad came from the coroner’s office, and by Tuesday morning when they returned, it was as if Dudley had never existed.
They replaced the rug, the linoleum. Alexander built two new kitchen cabinets. They repainted the house, they bought a new couch.
But Alexander became wretched again. The house had become soiled for him. Arizona had become soiled for him. He told her if everything went all right at the inquest, they would sell the land and leave. He made his choice, chose Bill Balkman, and look what happened. “And you know, Tania, it all began with that picture of the naked girl.”