The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons
Everybody loves the karaoke; Alexander and Tatiana used to delight the grandkids—and their own children—by together singing “I Walk the Line” and “Groovy Kind of Love” (everyone’s favorite), and Alexander alone singing to loud howls, à la Leonard Cohen, that if Tatiana wanted another kind of love, he’d wear a mask for her, and all three brothers, like the Animals, boisterously singing the naughty, chest-tugging “When I Was Young.” But now the machine belongs firmly to those twenty and under.
And then Anthony Jr. picks up the microphone, his black eyes on his father, and without music, without a beat, without any accompaniment, puts away the Goth and the snark for three minutes of an astonishing a cappella rendition of “The Summer of ’69” that fills the house, shows his extraordinary but deeply hidden gifts, leaves them all speechless—even the ten-year-olds—and after the final those were the best days of my life, forces Anthony to leave the room, with Tommy trailing him, asking, “What’s the matter, Dad? He was so good, what’s the matter?”
Alexander sits in the corner of the small sofa by the window watching them all, slightly away from the hullaballoo, though two of Janie’s youngest girls, Vicky and Nicky, are nestled around him.
Tatiana comes and stands behind him, leaning over. “You okay?” she whispers. “Loud in here? Go inside, lie down. You’re tired.”
She can’t have a whisper with him without her children, who are watching, pipe up with, “Dad, really, go lie down, you’re exhausted.” “It’s been such a long day, how are you feeling?” “Daddy, go ahead, don’t stay up for our sake, you know what night owls we are.”
He laughs. “Stop mothering me. I’m fine,” he says.
“But can you see Pasha and Harry are getting that home movies look about them? Now is a very good time for me to take a long walk.” He turns to Tatiana. “You coming?”
His is a rhetorical question. He knows she likes to skulk nearby while they dissect the seconds of time past. Not him; not anymore. Taking the baby from Janie, Alexander goes for a stroll in the lit-up agaves with the newly named monarch, Shannon Clay III, while Tatiana hides inside.
The kids do this every Thanksgiving after karaoke—the custom of the holiday. The lights go out in the den and a crowd gathers, the teenage girls, the Harvard girls, this year even the aloof boyfriend, and the petite and curious fourth-grade teacher. With Tommy by his side but Anthony Jr. nowhere to be seen, Anthony cranks out an old 8mm projector, and soon choppy black- and-white images appear on the cream wall capturing a few snapshots from the canyon of their life—that tell nothing, and yet somehow everything. They watch old movies, from 1963, 1952, 1948, 1947—the older, the more raucous the children and parents becoming.
This year, because Ingrid isn’t here, Anthony shows them something new. It’s from 1963. A birthday party, this one with happy sound, cake, unlit candles. Anthony is turning twenty. Tatiana is very pregnant with Janie. (“Mommy, look, that’s you in Grammy’s belly!” exclaims Vicky.) Harry toddling around, pursued loudly and relentlessly by Pasha—oh, how in 1999 six children love to see their fathers wild like them, how Mary and Amy love to see their precious husbands small. The delight in the den is abundant. Anthony sits on the patio, bare chested, in swimshorts, one leg draped over the other, playing his guitar, “playing Happy Birthday to myself,” he says now, except it’s not “Happy Birthday.” The joy dims slightly at the sight of their brother, their father so beautiful and whole he hurts their united hearts—and suddenly into the frame, in a mini-dress, walks a tall dark striking woman with endless legs and comes to stand close to Anthony. The camera remains on him because Anthony is singing, while she flicks on her lighter and ignites the candles on his cake; one by one she lights them as he strums his guitar and sings the number one hit of the day, falling into a burning “Ring of Fire ... ” The woman doesn’t look at Anthony, he doesn’t look at her, but in the frame you can see her bare thigh flush against the sole of his bare foot the whole time she lights his twenty candles plus one to grow on. And it burns, burns, burns . . . And when she is done, the camera—which never lies—catches just one microsecond of an exchanged glance before she walks away, just one gram of neutral matter exploding into an equivalent of 20,000 pounds of TNT.
The reel ends. Next. The budding novelist Rebecca says, “Dad, who was that? Was that Grammy’s friend Vikki?”
“Yes,” says Anthony. “That was Grammy’s friend Vikki.”
Tak zhivya, bez radosti/bez muki/pomniu ya ushedshiye goda/i tvoi serebryannyiye ruki/v troike yeletevshey navsegda . . .
So I live—remembering with sadness all the happy years now gone by, remembering your long and silver arms, forever in the troika that flew by . . .
Back even further, to 1947 he takes them. “Look at how funny Grammy is!” the grandchildren peal. “Is she arm wrestling with Grandpa?” All you can see through the unsteady camera are her two thin white arms over a man’s strong dark forearm upright and motionless on the picnic table.
“She was always running around chasing you, Ant.” “What a knock-out she was.” “Still is,” says Rebecca. “Daddy, look at you, sitting on her lap, being kissed by her. It’s so weird! How old were you here?”
“Um—four.”
“Where is Grandpa? You’ve been showing us all these reels for years, and we’ve never seen anything of him.”
“Well, he was the one holding the camera, wasn’t he? You saw his forearm. What more do you want? It’s just for him. She was always performing for him,” says Anthony.
“Come on, you don’t have a single reel with him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Dad. You must have something! Come on, show us something. Show us Grandpa, Dad, Ant. Please.”
Reluctantly Anthony rummages in the cabinet where the reels are kept. Unwillingly he spools one on, impossibly adept with his one arm, and in a moment, to a collective inhale, flickering on the cream wall, as if by ghostly magic, a young dark man appears near the swimming pool, putting on a tank top to cover his scarred back when he sees the camera on him. He hops up on the diving board, arms out, body straight, about to dive in. The blonde woman is in the water. Click click click, the projector whirrs. His white teeth, his wet black hair, his long-legged, muscular frame fill the wall. The vague shapes of his dark tattoos are visible. He’s been roofing, his chest is broad, his arms enormous. He dives in, far and strong, in an arc, and pulls the woman by her treading feet under the water. When they come up for air, she is trying to get away, but he won’t let her. Only when they’re in the frame together can you really see how large he is and how tiny she is. Soundless, whirr, whirr, just the two of them flinging their bodies against each other, kicking, splashing, and then she jumps into his hands and he lifts her above his head as she straightens up, in a little bikini, arms out, and sways, sways to balance, and for a moment they stand straight, she in the palms of his hands, with her own arms outstretched, right above him. And then he flicks her, sending her falling wildly back, the camera is shaking from laughter, and he is shaking from laughter, and when she comes out of the water she jumps on his back and covers his neck and head with kisses as he turns to the camera and bows and waves, a smile on his face. Click click, whirr whirr, the spool unspools, the wall goes white, and the only sound in the room is the vibration of the projector.
“They were so young,” whispers Rebecca.
“Like us,” says Washington.
The children sit. Somewhere soft the music plays. The children’s wives and husband are asleep. The children’s children are asleep— even the teenagers who got tired of air hockey and ping pong and basketball and board games, even the Harvard students; it’s late even for them. The math major is sharing a room with Tommy and Anthony Jr., he and his piercings far down the hall from pristine and protected Becky.
Up on the heights by the mountain, the four of them sit at the island, in the house where they grew up. They’ve brought out the midnight food. Cold leek and bacon stuffing, piec
They sit, winding down. On this Thanksgiving they sit just a while longer, for comfort, for peace, for family, for memory, for the blissful childhood they all shared that flew by and ended much too soon. They sit in the oasis and eat their mother’s bread. During the day in front of their wives, their husbands, their children, they talk about sports and kids, and politics, and weapons, and work, but at night on holidays they never do.
Harry and Pasha talk of going out on the boat with him at sea, possibly the Biscayne Bay, when they were small. They both remember palm trees, green water, hot, remember him massive between them, themselves just fingerlings. No Janie, no Ant. He put the boys on the bench and showed them how to wrap a staysail. He gave them fishing rods and hooks and worms and they sat flanking him, with their lines in the water. Their mother sat at the rudder. Come with me and I will make you fishers of men. He was smoking, yanking on his line once in a while, and they were imitating him and yanking on theirs. The fish ate the worm around the hooks but were never caught. Then Harry got very interested in his hook. What else could it catch? Could it catch a piece of clothing? Wood? A good chunk of Pasha’s thigh?
“Harry, so there was something wrong with you from the very beginning, do you see?” says Janie.
Pasha says, “Yes, but I pulled the hook out of my leg and administered first aid to myself, so there.”
“Well, you are your mother’s son,” says Harry.
“And I showed you that—and never a word of thanks. We all should be so lucky as to know who we are from the very beginning.”
“We all knew who we were,” says Jane Barrington. “From the very beginning.” She turns to Anthony. “Did he ever go fishing with you, Ant?”
“Once or twice,” replies Anthony.
And just a few feet away, in the long darkened butler’s pantry between the banquet dining room and the kitchen, there is a small alcove between the wall and the cabinets. In this alcove stands a small stool, and on this stool sits Tatiana, her eyes closed, her head back, pressed into the wall in her little hiding space, shaking a little bit, nodding, listening to his children carrying him on their grown-up voices.
Alexander comes out looking for her, and Tatiana, though herself sleepless, undresses and lies down with him. She wants to talk about the day, but he is tired and tells her they’ll debrief in full tomorrow. She waits until he is asleep, and then disengages and in her robe comes back out to the now solitary kitchen and makes herself a cup of tea. The hums of the house soothe her. She knows what floorboards creak and where the grease stain from a sticky little finger is. She knows the corner of the living room area rug shredded by Janie’s ratel of a Labrador. She knows the drips of the faucet and the smell of garlic each time she walks past the garlic tomb as she calls it—a spherical clay pot with holes on top, a kind of scented candle in reverse.
The house is all.
In solitude she reflects and comforts herself. She doesn’t want the day to end.
She makes bread.
She mixes a little warm milk with sugar and dry active yeast and puts the cup under the hot lamp to bubble up. She sits on her high stool, sipping her tea, and watches the yeast mixture slowly fleck with bubbles, rising in a creamy froth. After swirling it with a spoon and making it all liquid, she sits and watches it bubble up again.
After fifteen minutes she gets out the flour, melts her butter and warms another two cups of milk. She separates her eggs, and beats the whites until they are firm and foamy. When she turns around, a bleary-eyed Anthony is sitting watching her from across the island.
“I can’t believe you’re still up.”
She makes him a cup of tea. “So what do you think of your daughter’s new paramour?”
Anthony shrugs. “I don’t have to sleep with him, do I? What do I care? I’d prefer he didn’t parade his tongue jewelry in front of her family, but no one asked me.”
“Rebecca says he’s her first real love,” says Tatiana.
“At eighteen it all seems like real love,” he replies, and breaks off, and then they glance at each other and say no more. Indeed it does, thinks Tatiana. And sometimes it is.
Spread over the island, Anthony watches her. Wherever she goes, his gaze follows, as she combines the flour and sugar and eggs and milk and yeast until it all holds together and then she kneads it, adding melted butter a little at a time until it is all soaked through.
She took a piece of black cobble-hard bread and cut it into four pieces the size of a deck of cards each. Then she cut the deck of cards into half again. One half she wrapped for morning. One half she put on four plates. She put one plate in front of her sister, one plate in front of herself, one plate in front of Alexander, and one plate in front of their mother’s chair. She took a knife and fork, and cut a small piece from her share. A drop of blood from her mouth fell on the table. She ignored it. Putting the bread into her mouth, she chewed it for minutes before finally swallowing it. It tasted moldy, and faintly of hay.
Alexander was long done with his piece. Dasha was long done with her piece. The sisters would not look at their mother’s bread or at their mother’s empty chair. All the chairs were empty now except for hers and Dasha’s. And Alexander’s. Another drop of blood fell onto the table. What did her sister teach her to say a few days ago, kneeling in front of their mother who had died? Give us this day our daily bread, Dasha said.
“Give us this day our daily bread,” said 75-year-old Tatiana in her home in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“Amen,” said Anthony. “I have memories of you making bread that go back over fifty years. You don’t realize what a complete food bread is until you see all the ingredients that go into it.”
Tatiana nodded, lightly smiling. “Yes,” she said, opening her palms and bowing her head before the kneaded dough. “Cottonseed, or hay. Cardboard. Sawdust. Linseed. Glue. A complete food, bread.”
After she buttered a large ovenproof dish she placed the kneaded dough into it, covered it with a white towel and put it into the dark oven. Now the bread had to rise. She sat by her son; they sipped their tea. It was so quiet in the house, just the faucet dripped.
“Mom,” he said, “you do know that we know you sit there and listen to us, don’t you?”
She laughed. “Yes, son,” she said fondly. “I do.” She caressed his face, she kissed his cheek. “Tell me about Ingrid. She’s no better?”
Anthony shook his head. He stopped looking at his mother.
“She’s worse than ever. She told the doctor it’s all my fault. I drove her to it. I’m gone all the time. I’m never home.” He pressed his lips together in sharp disappointment. “For fifteen years, she’s been saying this. You’re always on the road, Anthony. Like I’m a truck driver.” He tutted. “I made her check into Betty Ford in Minnesota two days ago.”
“Well, that’s good. That will help.”
He seemed unconvinced. “She’s staying for at least eight months. I told her I don’t want her back unless she is better.”
Tatiana considered him. “What about your sons? Who’s going to take care of them?”
“She doesn’t take care of them now, Mom! That’s the whole f— problem. Tommy’s a good boy, but Anthony Jr. is always in trouble.” Anthony sighed.
“And I mean trouble. In school, with his friends. With the law.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to say anything during the day, no reason to make everyone upset over this. But I’ve given the President my resignation. I have no choice. I can’t continue. I mean, honestly, what am I supposed to do? The boys...I can’t leave them, and now she’s gone.” He paused. “We’re leaving Washington.”
This was monumental. Anthony had lived in DC for over twenty years.
“I accepted a new position—as commander of Yuma.”
Yuma! Tatiana nodded, trying not to show her excitement.
“It’s a three-year post,” Anthony continued. “Intelligence, w
“I’m sure Harry will help you out,” Tatiana said carefully. She knew her son wasn’t happy, and her own satisfaction was intrusive. This wasn’t about her. “I know you don’t think it’s wonderful, son,” she said. “But it is wonderful. Your sons will be better for having their dad. And Harry is going to go through the roof. Just imagine, both of you at Yuma. I want to wake him up and tell him.” Her hand remained on Anthony’s unhappy face. “You’re doing the right thing. And you’ve done well. Buck up,” she said softly. “Be strong. You have a lot to do. Perseus is only one man.” She smiled. “He can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Thank you,” he whispered, kissing her hand, leaning into it, and then said with deep regret, “Besides, how many Andromedas can a man have in his life?”
Their heads were together. Tatiana was hoping at least one more. “Have faith, bud,” she whispered to her son.
Suddenly there was noise of familiar footsteps. Alexander appeared in the archway. His face was not amused. “What do I have to do around here,” he said loudly to a sheepish Tatiana, “to get my wife to stay in bed with me? You have been up since sunrise, and it’s three in the morning. What’s next? Are you going to start bringing your chair to his front yard, too?” He turned and motioned for her. “Come,” he said, inviting no argument. “Now. Come.”
In their bedroom, she took off her robe and climbed naked into bed with him, into the old big brass bed they had shared since 1949. He was sulky but only for a moment, since he wanted to go to sleep and needed to touch her. “You couldn’t stay in my bed, could you?” They lay face to face. “We were so nice, so warm. But no.” He was caressing her back, her breasts, her thighs.